UN Public Service Award

Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on 28 June 2013 received the prestigious United Nations Public Service Awardfor his mass contact programme initiative. The award was presented at a function held in Bahrain by United Nations Under Secretary General Wu Hongbo. Chandy bagged the first place in the category Preventing and Combating Corruption in the public. He received the award for the mass contact programme conducted by him in 2011 after becoming the Chief Minister for the second time. A total of 5.5 lakh petitions were received in 2011, of which three lakh were resolved.

Financial assistance of 22.68 crore rupees was given to the people during the programme. The highlight of his mass contact programme was that the problems of the people could be directly communicated to the Chief Minister without any intermediary.

Knighthood for Services in Health Sector

Prof Michael Stratton, the scientist who made identification of the genes causing breast cancer, was awarded prestigious knighthood in the Queen Elizabeth II Birthday Honours. The research conducted by the Prof Michael Stratton on Cancer Genome Project at the Sanger Institute helped considerably in diagnosis as well as treatment of cancer. Apart from Michael Stratton, three more knighthoods were awarded in healthcare sector. These included Professor Andrew Hall for services to public health, Professor Peng Tee Khaw for research in glaucoma as well as Stephen O’Rahilly for research on the causes of human obesity.

About Michael Stratton

• Michael Stratton is the Director of Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridgeshire.

• He was the founder of Cancer Genome Project, which was directed towards hunt for the genes which cause different kinds of cancers.

• The breast cancer gene called BRCA2 was identified by him as well as his team in 1994.

About the Knighthood honour

Knight, in general, is the person who is granted the honourary title of knighthood by political leader or a monarch. In early days, Knighthood was conferred on the mounted warriors in Europe.

However, since Early Modern period, this title is considered as absolutely honorific.

French award for Contribution to Protection of Human Rights

Central Himalayan Environment Association (CHEA), an NGO in Uttarakhand on 6 June 2013 bagged a French award for its contribution to protection of human rights. The Central Himalayan Environment Association (CHEA) is a voluntary organisation based in Nainital. It was honoured with Special Mention of the 2012 Human Rights Prize of the French Republic in appreciation of its work in the field of defence of socio-economic rights and sustainable development of people.

CHEA was involved in strengthening community forestry institution (Van Panchayats) for women’s empowerment and affirmation of economic and social rights of rural communities in the Indian Central Himalayan region. The award basically consists of a medal and a diploma and it was presented to director of Central Himalayan Environment Association (CHEA) by the Ambassador of France Frans Richier at a function in Delhi.

Award for God Particle Discovery

The Asturias Foundation announced on 29 May 2013 that Physicist Peter Higgs and Francois Englert and the European organization for Nuclear Research won the 2013 Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research in recognition of their work establishing the existence of the so-called God particle. Higgs and Englert - along with the late Robert Brout - formulated in 1964 the existence of a subatomic particle that came to be known as the Higgs boson. But it was only in 2012 that the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, was able to confirm the existence of this particle through experiments conducted with the Large Hadron Collider.

This finding, which has been called the greatest discovery in the history of the understanding of Nature, enables a glimpse at what happened immediately after the Big Bang.

Higgs is a native of Newcastle, England, who taught for 16 years at the University of Edinburgh. Englert is an 80-year-old Belgian, is affiliated with the Institute for Quantum Studies at Chapman University in California. Along with a cash prize of 50000 euros (about 64000 US dollars) and a sculpture by Joan Miro, each award recipient gets a diploma and an insignia bearing the Prince of Asturias Foundation’s coat of arms. Spain’s Crown Prince Felipe will give the award at a ceremony in the northern city of Oviedo. The prize is regarded as the Ibero-American world’s equivalent of the Nobels.

Golden Goblet at Shanghai Film Festival

Russian film, The Major won Golden Goblet on 23 June 2013 for best feature film at the 16th Shanghai International Film Festival. The film talks about how things go out of control when corrupt police officers try to cover up a hit-and-run case for their colleague. The jury headed by Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper opined that the film revealed a complicated Russian society, as well as great Russian art and storytelling tradition.
Its director, Yuri Bykov won awards for best director and outstanding artistic achievement. The Jury Grand Prix went to Sweden film Reliance directed by William Olsson. The film also won awards for best screenplay and best cinematography. Hong Kong actor Nick Cheung won the Golden Goblet for best actor for the film Unbeatable. Ten-year-old Malaysian child star Crystal Lee became the youngest actress to win the award for best actress in the festival’s history. Some 1665 films produced in 112 countries were screened during the nine-day festival that ran from 15 June to 23 June 2013.

Indian Healthcare Visionary of the Decade Award

Harvard trained and internationally acclaimed Indian American Cardiac Surgeon and Healthcare Economist Dr Mukesh Hariawala on 28 June 2013 was recently conferred the prestigious Indian Healthcare Visionary of the Decade award at a glittering ceremony of the 4th Annual Business Leadership Conclave at Hotel Leela in Mumbai.

Also felicitated with other prestigious awards were industrialists Ratan Tata , Transformational Leader of the Decade and Mukesh Ambani who is the Millennium Business Leader of the Decade. After the award ceremony, Mukesh convincingly laid out a 100 Billion Dollar Medical Tourism opportunity for India as a byproduct of US President Barack Obama’s new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act which unofficially is also termed Obamacare.

Walter Scott Prize 2013

Tan Twan Eng, the Malaysian author was declared as the winner of Walter Scott Prize for his English fiction novel The Garden of Evening Mists. He got 25000 pounds for the prize. The ceremony was held in Melrose, situated at the Scottish borders. He won the award during Borders Book Festival which was held from 13 June 2013 to 16 June 2013. The prize was given to him by Duke of Buccleuch. The Garden of Evening Mists is first novel by any overseas writer that has won 4-year-old Walter Scott Prize. According to the new rule introduced in 2012, authors from Commonwealth were made eligible for the entry into the competition for this prize.
The Garden of Evening Mists won over the strong shortlist which included Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel. There were also other novels by English writers such as Anthony Quinn, Rose Tremain and Pat Barker as well as Australian author Thomas Keneally. Tan Twan Eng on 14 March 2013 was also announced as a winner of the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize. He became the first Malaysian author to win the most prestigious literary prize of Asia for the same novel The Garden of Evening Mists.

About the Walter Scott Prize

• The Walter Scott Prize for the historical fiction was founded in the year 2010.

• It is a British literary award.

• With the prize money of 25000 pounds, Walter Scott Prize is one among the largest literary awards in the UK.

• Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch were the creators of this award.

• The winner of the prize is announced every year in June in Melrose at Borders Book Festival.

Eligibility for a book to enter into competition for Walter Scott Prize

• It is important for a book to be published first in Ireland, UK or Commonwealth in order to be eligible for this prize.

• Because the award is given for historical fiction, therefore a historical fiction is defined as the one where the primary events of the book take place more than 60 years ago.

India Abroad Publisher’s Special Award for Excellence 2012

Legal Activist and the youngest daughter of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Amrit Singh received the India abroad publisher’s special award for excellence 2012. Amrit is senior legal officer for national security and counterterrorism at the Open Society Justice Initiative based at the New York. Amrit Singh was given the award at the event organized by India Abroad on 21 June 2013 for her report Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Torture and Extraordinary Rendition released in February 2013. The report stated that 54 nations comprising Pakistan helped the US in its war against al-Qaida by hosting CIA prisons on their territories and detaining, interrogating and torturing terror suspects. Congressman Bera was honoured as the India Abroad Person of the Year for Political Achievement 2012. He is only the third Indian-American to be elected to the US congress.

World Street Food Congress

Indian street food vendors Ashok Sah and Vijay Chaudhary won the critics award at the World Street Food Congress in Singapore. The Congress was held from 31 May 2013 to 9 June 2013. They had gone there as a part of a team of Indian street food vendors. Alongside the World Street Food Congress, a World Street Food Dialogue was also held. It discussed the responses of the national and provincial governments in India towards promoting street food vending as well as social-economic dynamics of street food vending.

NTR Literary Award

Manoj Das, the Noted Oriya writer on 28 May 2013 was presented the NTR National Literary Award. The NTR National Literary Award was chosen by the jury of NTR Vignana Trust, headed by its chairperson N. Lakshmi Parvati which carries a cash prize of 1 lakh Rupees and citation. The award recognises Das’s contribution to literature, both in Odiya and English. Manoj Das was also conferred with Padma Sri award and had his stories figured in the compilation of best literary works released in the US. The award is instituted in memory of the actor-turned-politician who made a mark for his struggle to protect Telugu pride. He has penned down his first novel at the age of 14. The award is coincidently given to Manoj Das on the same day which is marked by the birth anniversary of former Chief Minister and Telugu Desam founder Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao.