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The Kerala Sahitya Akademi Awards for the year 2017 have been announced on 23rd January 2019. In it, ‘Nireeswaran’ by V.J. James has been adjudged the best novel of 2017, while Aymanam John’s Ethara Characharangalude Charitra Pusthakam has secured the award for the best short story. Mindaprani, written by Veerankutty, is the best poetry. The award is given each year by the Kerala Sahitya Akademi (Kerala Literary Academy) to Malayalam writers for their outstanding books of literary merit.

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Aparna Kumar has become the India’s first woman Indian Police Service (IPS) DIG and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) officer to successfully complete the South Pole expedition. She unfurled the National and the ITBP flags at the South Pole on 13th January 2019 after covering 111Km of walking on the snow. Aparna will now attempt to conquer the North Pole this April. She has covered six of the highest peaks across continents including the Mount Everest. The one left for her to scale is the Mount Denali in Alaska.The ITBP is a Central Armed Police Force which is primarily deployed to secure the icy Himalayan borders of the nation since its Inception in 1962.

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The Southern Railway has bagged the number one position for cleanliness in the country. This achievement was under the category of other than Premium Category trains in the recent Trains Cleanliness Survey conducted by IRCTC on all India level. During the year 2018, Southern Railway’s gross earnings also stood at more than Rs six thousand crores rupees which is almost 10% higher than the last year earnings. To cater to the growing demands of passengers, Southern Railway has also introduced 54 trains over past four years.

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Kartik Sharma from India has won the New South Wales men’s Amateur Golf Championship in Australia. Kartik notched up a magnificent win over Australia’s Nathan Barberie in the scheduled 36-hole final to emerge as champion. Kartik has been playing for India since the age of 10 as part of the National Squad. He had been selected to represent Indian Golf Union for three events in Australia.

Notes:
Jayant Kaikini, renowned Kannada poet short-story writer, columnist and playwright and lyricist, has won the prestigious 2018 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature for ‘No Presents Please: Mumbai Stories’ at the Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet. The novel is a collection of short stories set in Mumbai dating back to the 1980s. It offers a fine-grained, ground-up view of arguably India’s greatest metropolis. The book was originally written in the southern Indian language of Kannada and translated into English by the award-winning translator Tejaswini Niranjana. The $25,000 (£19,100) prize rewards the best writing about south Asian culture from writers of any ethnicity and from all over the world, will be split equally between author and translator. It will be split equally between author and translator. No Presents Please is the first work in translation to win the award in the prize’s eight-year history.

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Malaysia has been stripped of the right to host the 2019 World Para Swimming Championships for threatening to refuse to allow Israeli athletes to take part. The decision was taken by International Paralympic Committee (IPC) after the Malaysian authorities failed to provide the necessary guarantees that Israeli Para swimmers could participate, free from discrimination, and safely in the Championships. IPC President Andrew Parsons said when a host country excludes athletes from a particular nation, for political reasons, then they have absolutely no alternative but to look for a new Championships host. The 2019 championships was a qualifying event for the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics & were due to take place in Kuching on July 29-August 4.

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On 27th January 2019, Ace shuttler Saina Nehwal won her first Indonesia Masters title after three-time world champion Carolina Marin of Spain limped out of the final due to a leg injury in Jakarta. Marin was leading 10-4 in the first game when she developed an injury in the knee.

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Dr. Poonam Khetrapal Singh has been appointed the South-East Asia regional director of the World Health Organization (WHO) for a second five-year term. Under her leadership, the Region has made remarkable progress. In her first term, she focused on building an increasingly responsive and accountable WHO in the Region, while prioritizing persisting and emerging epidemiological and demographic challenges; promoting universal health coverage and building robust health systems; strengthening emergency risk management and articulating a strong regional voice in global health agenda. In the last five years, four countries eliminated measles and six controlled rubella. Thailand became the first in Asia-Pacific and the first with a large HIV epidemic—to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis. Maldives and Sri Lanka were certified malaria free. Maldives, Sri Lanka and Thailand eliminated lymphatic filariasis, India was declared yaws-free and Nepal trachoma-free.

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As per latest report of the World Steel Association (WSA), China is the largest producer of crude steel accounting for more than 51% of production. While, India has replaced Japan as world’s second largest steel producing country. The crude steel production of India in 2018 was at 106.5 MT. It went up by 4.9% from 101.5 MT in 2017. Japan produced 104.3 MT in 2018, down 0.3% compared to 2017. Global crude steel production reached 1,808.6 MT for the year 2018 from 1,729.8 MT in 2017, a rise of 4.6%. The WSA is the international trade body for the iron and steel industry. Its members represent around 85% of the world’s steel production, including over 160 steel producers with 9 of the 10 largest steel companies, national and regional steel industry associations, and steel research institutes.

Notes:
On 29th January, the 8-member Lokpal search panel hold its first meeting to select members of anti-corruption ombudsman Lokpal. The committee, headed by former Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai, is understood to have discussed modalities related to the appointments of the chief and members of Lokpal. The meeting comes days after the Supreme Court set up a February-end deadline for the search committee to send a panel of names who could be considered for the appointment as chairman and members of Lokpal by Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led selection committee. The Lokpal Act, which envisages establishment of the anti-graft body Lokpal at the Centre and Lokayuktas in states to look into cases of corruption against certain categories of public servants, was passed in 2013.