Notes:
Veena Sendre from Chhattisgarh has been chosen as India’s first ‘Miss Trans Queen’. She defeated Namita Ammu of Tamil Nadu to claim the title at the national-level beauty contest organised in Mumbai on October 7. Sendre, a former Miss Chhattisgarh, belongs to Mandir Hasaud village in Raipur.

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On 10th October 2018, Ghatam maestro Vikku Vinayakram has recently won the special lifetime achievement award from the Music Academy in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Vinayakram is one of the best-known faces of percussion from South India. He plays Carnatic music with the ghatam (an earthen pot), and is credited with popularising the ghatam. This award does not fall under the institution’s annual recognitions and honours. It is conferred once in a while to artistes of outstanding calibre who the Music Academy feels deserve an independent recognition. Mr. Vinayakram is the third musician to receive special lifetime achievement award from the Music Academy. The earlier recipients of the award were dancer Kamala Lakshminarayanan and violinist Lalgudi G Jayaraman.

Notes:
At the 2018 Asian Para Games, Indian javelin thrower Sundar Singh Gurjar won a silver in the men’s F46 category with an effort of 61.33m in which two-time Paralympic gold medalist Devendra Jhajharia finished fourth. In the same event, Rinku picked up a bronze to make it an India-dominated podium. The F46 category of disability covers upper limb deficiency, impaired muscle power or impaired range of movement.

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IIT-Madras has collaborated with Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA) to enhance data-driven governance. Through this engagement, the Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (RBC DSAI ) at IIT-Madras has agreed to support the State government on various data science and ICT-related challenges. The collaboration is expected to contribute towards various aspects of governance, including education, healthcare, and agriculture. TNeGA is the State nodal agency under the IT department to support and drive all e-governance initiatives of the State government while RBC DSAI is an inter-disciplinary centre for research in AI.

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Senegal will host the 4th summer Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in 2022, the first to take place on the African continent. The 2022 decision was taken at a two-day International Olympic Committee (IOC) meeting on the sidelines of the 2018 Buenos Aires Youth Olympics. Senegal will host the youth games in three places: Dakar; a new city of Diamniadio, close to the capital; and the coastal resort of Saly. The games will be held in May or June, at the end of the dry season to greatly reduce the prevalence of tropical diseases. Thousands of athletes age 15-18 from over 200 countries usually participate in the summer games competing in over 40 sports as diverse as badminton, boxing, fencing, table tennis, rugby, and weightlifting.

Notes:
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has participated in the 17th Council of Heads of Government (CHG-2018) meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which was held in Dushanbe, Tajikistan from October 11th to 12th .The SCO CHG meeting is a forum that enables India to engage with SCO member countries and Observer states of Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia. It is the first major meeting since Kyrgyzstan took over as chair of the Organisation. The leaders discussed prospects for further development of SCO and exchanged in-depth views on current international and regional issues. This was the 2nd CHG meeting since India became a full member of SCO in June 2017. Last year, CHG meeting was held in Sochi, Russia and was also attended by EAM.

Notes:
The Meghalaya government will launch a new scheme ‘Blue Revolution: Integrated Development and Management of Fisheries’ on 26th October 2018. The Blue Revolution is being implemented to achieve economic prosperity of fishermen and fish farmers and contribute towards food and nutritional security through optimum utilisation of water resources in a sustainable manner keeping in view the bio-security and environmental concerns. Under the Blue Revolution, the state government will develop new ponds on another 1,000 hectares of land, feed mills and retail outlets since many people do not know the places where they can get local fishes. For the scheme, the Central Government has sanctioned Rs 51 crore.

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Tata Group veteran Sunil Bhaskaran has been appointed as the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Managing Director (MD) of low cost carrier AirAsia India with effect from November 15, 2018. He will oversee the next phase of expansion and growth of the company, AirAsia India said in a statement. The airline, jointly owned by Tata Sons and Air Asia Bhd, has been without a CEO for the past six months. Currently, Bhaskaran is vice president of corporate services at Tata Steel and has over three decades of experience in the fields of manufacturing, export and commercial operations with the Tata group. AirAsia India has a market share of less than 5% and a fleet of 19 aircraft.

Notes:
In Jammu, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has recently signed pact with the Central University of Jammu (CUJ) to set up the ‘Satish Dhawan Center for Space Science’ to expand its presence to the northernmost state of India. The space centre at CUJ is proposed to be spread on an area of about 1,150 square metres. It will have facilities for Geospatial Data analysis that will help in sustainable use of natural resources and planning land-use pattern. It will have ground-based observations for Atmospheric Studies, research lab for astrophysics, Atmospheric Sensing and Glacier studies Lab for better use of large quantity of water stored in the form of seasonal snow, ice and glaciers in the rivers of North India. Apart from this, Disaster Management Center will also be set up here that would be able to take up research in the area of different disasters like flood, Landslides, forest fires, drought and climate change.

Notes:
On October 11, the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) launched a Roll on-Roll off (Ro-Ro) service in Assam from Neamati to Majuli island. This service will reduce the road route distance of 423 km that trucks take from Neamati to Majuli Island via Tezpur Road Bridge to only 12.7 km with the use of river route. The IWAI has procured a new vessel MV Bhupen Hazarika at a cost of Rs 9.46 crore for the new service. The vessel which is 46.50 meter long and 13.30 meter wide has a carrying capacity of 8 trucks and 100 passengers. The vessel can sail at the speed of 22 km per house. Majuli is one of the biggest riverine islands in the world located on river Brahmaputra and faces serious challenges of connectivity. It has 144 villages with a population of over 1,50,000. The RoRo service was launched in collaboration between IWAI and Assam government.