HCS Yearly Current Affairs 2020: Awards & Recognitions-I

HCS Last One Year Topic Wise Current Affairs: Awards & Recognitions Part-I

Haryana Civil Services Exam

CURRENT AFFAIRS YEARLY 2020

Last one-year Current Affairs For HCS Exam: Awards & Recognitions Part-I

1. EPFO conferred with Platinum Partner Award for highest transactions on UMANG App.

• On the occasion of completion of 3 years of UMANG App, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad unveiled the newly instituted UMANG Awards for Partner Departments of Centre and States based on average transactions in the past six months across all services. 
• Employees' Provident Fund Organisation has been conferred with Platinum Partner Award for registering more than 25 lakh transactions on UMANG App.
• EPFO aimed to harness the potential of UMANG app to enable easy and round-the-clock access to its services, especially to the subscribers residing in remotest of locations. 
• This led to the launch of EPFO services on UMANG

2. Bhutan’s Queen Mother Gyalyum Sangay Choden Wangchuck has been awarded the United Nations Population Award.

• The award has been presented to her in the individual category for 2020 for her work on sexual health and ending gender violence.
• The awardee in the organisational category is HelpAge India that works on elder care. 
• Only two Indians have been awarded in the past four decades since the award was established in 1981: former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1983 and industrialist-philanthropist J.R.D.Tata in 1992.
• The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) has announced this award 
• She founded a volunteer organisation called ‘Respect, Educate, Nurture and Empower Women’ (RENEW).

3. The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize 2021 for their roles in establishing the strategic and diplomatic ties between the two nations.

• Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Lord David Trimble on November 25, 2020, submitted the candidacy of PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince for Nobel Peace Prize 2021.
• The former minister of Northern Ireland, Lord David Trimble had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998 which gives him the privilege of nominating others.
•  The Nobel Peace Prize Committee will further review the candidacy of Netanyahu and Al Nahayan.

4. India has won its first International Emmy Award. 

• Netflix web series Delhi Crime has won the Drama Series award at International Emmy Awards 2020.
• The show has won the Best Drama Series award at the 48th International Emmy Awards which was held virtually this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
• The show is written and directed by Richie Mehta features actress Shefali Shah as the main character.

5. Kerala Tourism has been bestowed the coveted 'Highly Commended' Award by World Travel Mart London, as a recognition for its remarkable activities aimed at promoting Responsible Tourism (RT) during the challenging times of the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Kerala's Responsible Tourism (RT) Mission received this recognition in the category of 'Meaningful Connections.
• The RT Mission received the award for its innovative work on 'Wok at Home Videos' and storytelling audio and video series produced and presented by various Mission units in the state during the pandemic that has posed multiple challenges to the tourism sector.

6. Pilibhit Tiger Reserve have bagged the first-ever international award, TX2 for the conservation and preservation of the majestic animals.

• Pilibhit Tiger Reserve was the first to receive the award among 13 tiger range countries.
•  It achieved this goal in just four years from 2014 when it had 25 tigers which went up to 65 in 2018.
• The award was virtually presented to the principal chief conservator of forest of the state, by the United Nations Development Program.
• TX2 is the global award that was set up in 2010 in St. Petersburg, Russia by international organizations working for tiger conservation like WWF, UNDP, and IUCN.

7. VP Venkaiah Naidu has presented Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award in Excellence to Sudha Murty.

• Venkaiah Naidu presented the 21st Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award for Excellence in Philanthropy to Chairperson of Infosys Foundation Sudha Murty virtually.

8. India-Japan cooperation has won the OECD Mutual Agreement Procedure 2019 Award.

• This was announced on the occasion of Second Tax Certainty day by OECD
•  India with Japan has won the 2019 Award on Co-operation for highest agreement ratio for a pair of jurisdictions for transfer pricing cases. 
• The Award to India-Japan Mutual Agreement Procedure (MAP) Cooperation demonstrates India's commitment to provide tax certainty and efficacious dispute resolution mechanism for the Japanese companies doing business in India.

9. Union Education Minister Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ will be conferred with the Vatayan Lifetime Achievement Award at a virtual ceremony on 21st November, 2020.

• Vatayan International Awards given by the Vatayan-UK organization in London, honours poets, writers and artists for their exemplary work in their respective fields’.
• Before many famous personalities like Prasoon Joshi, Javed Akhtar have been awarded the Vatayan Awards for their literary contribution.
• This award will be another in the list of many other national and international awards and honours conferred to the Minister for writing, poetry and other literary works. 

10. The Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokriyal ‘Nishank’ has inaugurated the Lilavati Awards based on the theme of women empowerment.

• The award is an initiative of All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).
• The Lilavati Award aims to recognise the efforts of AICTE affiliated institutions in treating women.
• The award has been named after the 12th century book called “Lilavati”. 
• The book was written by the mathematician Bhaskara II. 
• The prize was handed out for the first time at the International Congress of Mathematicians that was held in 2010

11. A Bangladeshi teen Sadat Rahman has been awarded the International Children’s Peace Prize for his work to stop cyber bullying of teens. 

• The award was given away  by the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai during a ceremony in the Netherlands.
• The prize is given away by the international children’s rights organization KidsRights to a child who fights courageously for children’s rights.
• Sadat Rahman has created the anti-cyber bullying app ‘Cyber Teens’ to help teenagers who are sufferers of cyber bullying.  
• The app provides information to the young people about  internet safety. It also provides them a channel to safely report the cyberbullying confidentially. 

12. Malayalam author S Hareesh has won the coveted JCB Prize for Literature 2020 for his novel, Moustache.

• The book has been translated in English by Jayasree Kalathil and published by HarperCollins India.
• The novel addresses a wide range of issues plaguing the society at large through the symbol of a moustache, which withholds connotations of both gender and caste. 
• Hareesh’s work is a fine literary example of a modern classic.

13. Tamil Nadu has topped the Union ministry of Jal Shakti’s National Water Awards 2019 in the 'best state category'.

• The award will be presented during the second National Water Awards 2019 distribution ceremony scheduled on November 11 and 12 through a virtual platform.
• The ministry confers the award based on various parameters, including implementation of irrigation water supply schemes such as check dams, performance under micro irrigation, increase in irrigation coverage, performance in roof top rain water harvesting and status of implementation of water accounting and auditing.

14. Actor Sonu Sood has been honoured with the prestigious SDG Special Humanitarian Action Award by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), for helping thousands of migrant workers reach home during lockdown.

• The award was presented to him via a virtual ceremony.
• Apart from arranging transportation facilities for migrant workers to help them reach homes during lockdown, Sonu also looked after the educational needs of underprivileged students.
• He recently launched an initiative to provide full scholarships for higher education to students facing financial challenges.

15. The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2020 has been awarded jointly to Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson.

• The two economists were awarded "for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats."
• Their discoveries have benefitted sellers, buyers and taxpayers globally.
• The prize comes with a 10 million Swedish krona cash award and a gold medal.
• The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences was established in 1969.
• The 2019 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Indian-American economist Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.

16. Nobel Peace Prize 2020 has been won by the World’s largest humanitarian organization, the World Food Programme.

• The organization has been given the prize for its efforts to combat hunger, for contributions to make conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas better and for playing the role of driving force to stop use of hunger in the form of a weapon for war and conflict.
• The Nobel Peace Prize comprises a diploma, a gold medal, and a 10 million Sedewish Kronor cheque.

17. The Nobel Prize for Literature 2020 has been awarded to American poet Louise Glück 

Glück is a poet and essayist.

• A professor at Yale University, Glück made her debut in 1968 with her collection titled 'Firstborn' that was lauded by literary critics.
• Gluck has been consistently writing poems, responding to the times we live in with her written word.

18. The 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna “for the development of a method for genome editing. 

• In a first in Nobel history, Chemistry prize awarded to a women-only team;
• Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna have discovered one of gene technology’s sharpest tools: Genetic scissors: a tool for rewriting the code of life. 
• Using these, researchers can change the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms with extremely high precision.
• This technology has had a revolutionary impact on the life sciences, is contributing to new cancer therapies and may make the dream of curing inherited diseases come true.
• Emmanuelle Charpentier : Director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, Berlin, Germany
• Jennifer A. Doudna: Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, USA 

19. The 2020 Nobel Prize for physics has been awarded to Roger Penrose for black hole discovery and Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for discovering “a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy.

• Roger Penrose will receive half of this year’s prize “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity,” and the other half will be shared by Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for the “discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy.”
• Roger Penrose invented mathematical methods to prove that the general theory of relativity leads to the formation of black holes.
• Genzel and Ghez developed methods to see the center of the Milky Way, which gives us the evidence of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
• Prof Ghez is only the fourth woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics after Donna Strickland, Maria Goeppert Mayer, and Marie Curie.

20. Three scientists Harvey J Alter, Charles M Rice, and Michael Houghton, have jointly bagged the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology.

• It has been given for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus.
• Dr. Alter and Dr. Rice are American medical researchers. Dr. Houghton is a British Professor of virology.
• A gold medal and prize money of 10 million Swedish krona will be given to winners.
• The discovery of the Hepatitis C virus has revealed the cause of the remaining cases of chronic hepatitis.
• Currently, there is no effective vaccine against hepatitis C, and this research work has raised hope for the development of an effective vaccine.
• The Nobel Prize is awarded in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, economics, and peace.

21. Late actor Om Puri was honored at the third India International Film Festival of Boston this year with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

• The award was received on his behalf by his wife Nandita Puri.
• Other big winners of the night were Malayalam film Kaanthi, which won the Best Feature Film Award.
• The Best Actor Male was won by Victor Bannerjee for playing a priest in Josef: Born In Grace. 
• The Best Actor Female went to Shylaja Ambu for Kaanthi.
• The film festival was held virtually this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, from October 16 to 18. It is based in Boston USA.

22. An Indian organization, Global Himalayan Expedition has won the prestigious UN Global Climate Action Award for its efforts to combat climate change amid the Covid pandemic.

• GHE is a corporation that manages ‘Impacts Expeditions’ to the Himalayan villages in native areas. These expeditions will have a valid cause. For instance, to set up solar energy in remote villages.
• GHE is an Indian corporation that strengthens technology and tourism in order to support remote groups to gain solar energy.
• GHE utilizes a portion of the charged expedition fee in funding the cost of transmission, hardware, training, and installation of village-scale solar micro-grids.
• The microgrid network launched by the Global Himalayan Expedition is then owned and handled by the community.

23. Veteran female playback singer Usha Mangeshkar was conferred Gan Samragni Lata Mangeshkar by the Maharashtra Government for the year 2020-21.

• She is the sister of famous playback singer Lata Mangeshkar.
• Usha Mangeshkar has sung songs in Marathi, Hindi, and several other Indian language films.
• This award is given by the cultural department of the Maharashtra government.
• This award includes a cash prize of five lakh rupees, a certificate, and a memento.

24. Rajya Sabha MP and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Sanjay Singh has been chosen for the 'Gandhi Award' instituted by the Mahatma Gandhi National Foundation.

• He was instrumental in India's diplomatic intervention to remove Mahatma Gandhi's images on beer bottles of a private company in Israel
• The award will be presented to him by Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu at a ceremony in New Delhi in January 2021.
• The AAP National Spokesperson was chosen for the award by a committee Chaired by former Madras High Court Acting Chief Justice K Narayana Kurup and convened by Senior Journalist and Literary luminary, Jayashankar Menon.
• Sanjay Singh was a native of Sultanpur in Uttar Pradesh. He was a mechanical engineer by profession.
• He has gained national attention by raising several popular issues in the upper house of Parliament
• Mahatma Gandhi National Foundation, Chairman Eby J Jose

25. Activists from Belarus,  Iran, Nicaragua, and the United States were awarded the Right Livelihood Award, sometimes referred to as the “Alternative Nobel".

• Nasrin Sotoudeh, an Iranian lawyer, who has defended activists, opposition politicians, and women prosecuted for removing their headscarves, was given the award “for her fearless activism, at great personal risk, to promote political freedoms and human rights in Iran.”
• Bryan Stevenson, US Civil Rights Lawyer won the award “for his inspiring endeavor to reform the US criminal justice system and advance racial reconciliation in the face of historic trauma.”

26. Aishwarya Sridhar's photo titled 'Lights of Passion' has won the 'Highly Commended' award at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2020. 

• The 23-year-old has become the first Indian to win the coveted award.
• Sridhar's photo is a picture of a tree illuminated with fireflies. The fireflies and stars in the sky form a surreal galaxy around the tree. It won under the Behaviour-Invertebrates category.
• The invertebrate category includes stills revealing the most interesting or memorable behaviour of any of the multitude of smaller animals without a backbone, whether on land, in the air, or in water.
• Sridhar, a wildlife photographer from Panvel, captured the photo during a trek in Bhandardara in June last year. The photo will be put on display from October 16.

27. Shai Evra of Princeton University, US, will be awarded the 2020 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize.

• He will be awarded for his outstanding work on high dimensional expanders in combinatorial and geometric topology and on Golden Gates for 3-D unitary groups.
• SASTRA Ramanujan Prize is given annually for outstanding contributions by individuals of age less than 32 years in mathematics.
• The award is presented at an international conference in Number theory in December at SASTRA University in Kumbakonam.

28. Ravi Santhanam, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), HDFC Bank has been recognized in the Forbes list of ‘The World’s Most Influential CMOs’.

• Ranked at Number 39, he is the only CMO of an Indian company to be featured in the illustrious list which includes marketing heads of Apple, BMW, Lego, Adobe, Microsoft, P&G among others.
• This is the eighth edition of this annual list released by Forbes with research partners Sprinklr and LinkedIn.
•  This year, 427 global CMOs were eligible for consideration.
•  It is generated using data from news reports, websites, and social networks to measure influence.

29. The Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (IACC) has presented the lifetime achievement award to business icon Ratan Tata as part of its recent global leadership awards.

• The IACC leadership bestowed the IACC Lifetime and Global Excellence Awards to Tata owing to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.
• Tata, who grew the revenues for India's largest conglomerate 'The Tata Group' to nearly USD 100 billion by 2011-12, remains an influential industrialist, philanthropist, and humanitarian to this day.
• Tata, who has accepted fewer awards over the last few years, received the honour as he believed that these awards inspire future global leaders and strengthen bilateral economic ties between India and the US.

30. Indian-origin philanthropist Harish Kotecha has won the prestigious Sandra Neese Lifetime Achievement Award.

• He has been awarded for his work in the US to meet the needs of children and youth experiencing homelessness.
• Mr. Kotecha is the founder and president of Hindu Charities for America.
• Sandra Neese Lifetime Achievement Award: This award is given annually to recognize the people who have tirelessly worked to provide safety, shelter, and a future to the children.