Notes:
‘Period. End of Sentence’, the short documentary film on the stigma surrounding women during menstruation in rural India, has been shortlisted at the 91st Oscar in the Documentary Short Subject category. The short film is directed by award-winning Iranian-American filmmaker Rayka Zehtabchi. It is executive produced by Guneet Monga and is co-produced by Monga’s Sikhya Entertainment, which has backed films like ‘The Lunchbox’ & ‘Masaan’. The 26-minute film follows the exploits of two girls from Hapur village in Uttar Pradesh as they struggle to fight the stigma against menstruation and install a pad vending machine in their village.

Notes:
Uday Shankar, currently chairman of Star India and president of 21st Century Fox Asia-Pacific (only Asia), has been elected as vice president of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) for the year 2018-19 at the 91st AGM of the apex industry body. Shankar is the first Indian media and entertainment executive to assume the leadership position in a national industry chamber like FICCI. He has recently been appointed Chairman of Star and Disney India and President of Asia Pacific unit of The Walt Disney Company. The appointment is part of Disney’s integration planning for its acquisition of 21st Century Fox and strategic alignment of its consolidated international business units.

Notes:
Jammu and Kashmir has become the first State in India to bring in a law banning “sextortion”, i.e. sexual exploitation of women by those in positions of authority or those in a fiduciary relationship or by a public servant. The State Administrative Council (SAC) led by Governor Satya Pal Malik has recently approved two bills – the Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Bill, 2018 and the Jammu and Kashmir Criminal Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2018. The latter bill seeks to amend the Ranbir Penal Code (RPC), whereby specific offence under section 354 E is being inserted to provide for the offence of ‘Sextortion’. The RPC is the criminal code applicable in the state of J&K. Sextortion is a corruption in a form where the government officials, judges, educators, law enforcement personnel force people for sexual favours in return of something which is under their authority to grant.

Notes:
Industry body Nasscom has collaborated with the IIT-Madras for its FutureSkills Platform that is targeted at re-skilling/upskilling 4 million people from the IT-ITeS industry, students entering the workforce and employees of other industries/government on digital skills. The partnership will be directly with the Sector Skills Council (SSC), which is the education and skill development initiative of Nasscom. The SSC and IIT Madras will work towards building a skills academy and establish a program with extensive courses and training programmes to facilitate skill building in the institution.

Notes:
An international team of astronomers has discovered the most-distant object ever spotted in our solar system. It’s provisional designation is ‘2018 VG18’ & nicknamed as “Farout” for its extremely distant location. The pinkish dwarf planet is more than 100 times farther from the sun than Earth is — and almost four times more distant than Pluto. Farout is about 120 astronomical units (AU), where 1 AU is defined as the distance between the Earth and the Sun. It is discovered by Scott S Sheppard from Carnegie Institution for Science, David Tholen from University of Hawaii, and Chad Trujillo from Northern Arizona University in the US. On 17th Deember 2018, Farour’s discovery was announced by the International Astronomical Union (IAU)’s Minor Planet Center. The second-most-distant observed solar system object is Eris at about 96 AU & Pluto is currently at about 34 AU.