1) International Red Panda Day 2020
•The International Red Panda Day (IRPD) is celebrated on third Saturday of September every year to raise public awareness and support for red panda conservation issues. In 2020, the IRPD is being observed on 19 September 2020. The day was launched by the Red Panda Network in 2010. The first international red Panda day was celebrated on 18th September 2010.
2) PM Modi launches “Ghar Tak Fibre” scheme in Bihar
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched nine highway projects and Optical Fibre Internet Services in Bihar. The optical fibre services are being provided under the scheme “Ghar Tak Fibre”. These services are to be executed along with combined efforts of Common Service Centre.
•The project is to be implemented Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under the scheme “Ghar Tak Fibre”. The project will connect 45,945 villages in the state and will thus enable the Digital revolution to reach the farthest corner of Bihar.
3) PM Modi awarded Ig Nobel Prize 2020 for medical Education
•Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi has been awarded the Ig Nobel Prize 2020 for Medical Education. He has been awarded the prestigious award for “using the COVID-19 pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can”.
•PM Modi is the second Indian Prime Minister to be honoured with the Ig Nobel Prize. Prior to this, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was awarded in 1998. He jointly won the Ig Nobel Peace Prize with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan for aggressively peaceful explosions of atomic bombs.
•PM Modi shares the award with Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, Donald Trump of the USA, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow of Turkmenistan. Apart from this, the governments of India and Pakistan jointly won the Ig Nobel Peace Prize 2020 for having their diplomats surreptitiously ring each other’s doorbells in the middle of the night, and then run away before anyone had a chance to answer the door in Islamabad and New Delhi city respectively.
4) India launches first ever direct cargo ferry with Maldives
•India and the Maldives have launched the first-ever direct Cargo Ferry Service on 21 September 2020 to boost trade between the two countries. The cargo ferry service will connect the Indian ports of Tuticorin and Cochin ports with Kulhudhuhfushi and Male ports in the Maldives.
•This initiative will help to cut costs and reduce the time taken to transport goods between the two countries. The Cargo Ferry Vessel MCP Linz operated by the Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) will be used to connect the Indian and Maldivian ports.
5) Logo and song for “Destination North East-2020″ festival unveiled
•The Union Minister, Dr Jitendra Singh has unveiled the Logo and song for festival “Destination North East-2020” (The Emerging Delightful Destinations) through a video conference. The four-day event is to be formally inaugurated by Home Minister Amit Shah on September 27, 2020.
•The festival helps to familiarize people of other parts of the country with the rich unexplored potential of North East. It also promotes the tourism potential of the North East. The festival will give a boost to handicrafts, handloom, organic products and cultural troupes of North East. The main objective of the programme is to make the unexplored potentials of the North East Region available to the young entrepreneurs all over the country. The festival was launched in a couple of years in 2018 (in Chandigarh) and in 2019 (in India Gate, New Delhi).
6) J&K launched National Generic Document Registration System
•Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, Manoj Sinha launched the National Generic Document Registration System for the union territory. The system was developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) to address the diversity and variations that prevails across the states on account of formats, languages, processes and formulae.
•The software enables “anywhere access” to information and data to both the Enforcement Agencies and to the common man. The system has so far been adopted in three states namely Punjab, Rajasthan and Maharashtra. Six more states and union territories such as Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Goa, Bihar, Manipur, Jharkhand and Mizoram are moving towards the system. The national generic document registration system was developed under Digital India Land Records Modernization Programme.
7) Novak Djokovic wins 2020 Italian Open title
•Novak Djokovic has defeated Argentine Diego Schwartzman, 7-6, 5-3, to win 2020 Men’s Single Italian Open title and his fifth overall Rome title. In Women’s single, Simona Halep defeated champion Karolina Pliskova, 6-0, 2-1, to win her first Italian Open title.
