The Nettukaltheri open prison in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, has recently launched a culinary program to help prisoners pursue a career in the food industry. This initiative aided by an NGO, the Family Planning Association of India, aims to provide cooking lessons to interested inmates, so that they can earn their living as chefs during the parole period or after being released from prison. The inmates who perform well will be provided with certificates.
Every year, World Hindi Day is celebrated on January 10. The day is observed to promote the use of the Hindi language across the globe. The day also marks the anniversary of the first World Hindi Conference, inaugurated in Nagpur in 1975, by the then Prime Minister – Indira Gandhi. While World Hindi Day is celebrated on 10 January, the National Hindi Diwas is observed every year on 14 September.
23-year-old Prabhu, a native of Avinashi Town, Tiruppur District, Tamil Nadu, won the gold medal in the under 74-kg category, at the Asian Powerlifting Championship, Istanbul, Turkey, held in the last week of December, 2021. The victorious, post-graduate student was welcomed with flowers and firecrackers at the Coimbatore Airport, on 31 December, 2021. It was also a blissful moment for his family and well-wishers, who supported him by crowd-funding over Rs 3 lakh for his foreign trip.
Seven-year-old Jewel Mariam Basil, from Kothamangalam, Kerala, is all set to write her name in the Guinness Book of World Record. On 8 January, 2022, the Class II student of the Vidya Vikas School, swam four km across the Vembanad lake, in one hour and 53 minutes, accompanied by two boats and coast guard officers. She finished her swim at Kolothum Kadavu fish market in Vaikom, where she was welcomed with warm applause and cheers. Jewel has been taking swimming lessons for the past year.
For the past two years, Rajesh Kumar, an assistant teacher at Government Middle School in Tetri village, near Ranchi, Jharkhand, has turned his car into a classroom simply by fixing a whiteboard on it. Rajesh took this initiative to teach children in his village by reaching out to them, when he noticed that many students were missing online classes due to the lack of mobile phones. These days, he sees almost 100% attendance in all his classes.
Shafi Vikraman from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, spent his time gaining knowledge during the lockdown by enrolling himself for virtual courses. He has earned over 130 online certifications from overseas universities including Yale, Columbia and Princeton. Shafi, in his mid-fifties, has received certifications from 16 countries and ended up learning diverse subjects such as finance, forensics, medicine, robotics, psychology, and so on. Currently, he is studying 22 courses.
Viswanadhula Vinisha is just two years and ten months old. However, in the past three months, she has won five different awards and earned her place in the India Book of Records, International World Records, Genius Book of Records and the Noble World Record. The preschooler from Kadapa district, Andhra Pradesh, can sing 30 rhymes, identify national symbols, road signals, the solar system and answer 50 questions on general knowledge without any mistake.
74-year-old Padma Shri Awardee Sindhutai Sapkal, better known as Anathanchi Maye or Mother of Orphans, passed away following a heart attack, at a private hospital in Pune on January 4, 2022. Sindhutai had adopted more than 1,000 orphan children in her lifetime. She was also remembered for her work towards the rehabilitation of women. In 2010, a Marathi biopic of Sindhutai titled Mi Sindhutai Sapkal Boltey, was released in Maharashtra.
Chennai International Airport has been ranked eighth for its on-time performance (2021), by Cirium – a provider of aviation data to the aerospace, aviation, finance and travel industries. It is the only Indian airport among the global international airports, to be ranked within the top 10. The top three ranked airports are Miami Airport, United States (US), Fukuoka Airport, and Haneda Airport from Japan.
Schools in Korba, Chhattisgarh, with the support of IPS officer Bhojram Patel, recently came up with a new program – Khaki Ke Rang, School Ke Sang (Enriching School with Experience of Khaki-police), to address and resolve the fear of police from young minds. As per this initiative, police personnel visit schools twice a week to conduct interactive sessions with students. These sessions aim to impart a better understanding of the basic laws, traffic rules, and also the ill-effects of drug addiction and cyber-crimes among the students.
