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• Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Tourism and Culture Prahlad Singh Patel inaugurated Shirui Lily Festival, 2019 at Shirui Vangayan Ground of Ukhrul in Manipur. The initiative will provide an opportunity to youth outside the region to develop a positive perception about North-East. He also said this will create a lifelong impression in their mindset about the scenic natural beauty of the region, its cultural aesthetics and hospitality of its people.

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• Uttar Pradesh State government is planning to organize India’s first training and performance program of world-famous KHON Ramlila. It is a masked form of Ramlila art of Thailand.
• The program will be organized by the Culture Department of Uttar Pradesh in collaboration with the Thai government.
• The program will be organized on the 26th of October. The participating artists will get training from experts in Thailand as part of the cultural exchange program between the two countries. The artists will perform at Grand Deepotsav function in Ayodhya.
• The art KHON Ramlila of Thailand has been included in the list of UNESCO’s Intangible cultural heritage.

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• The All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) has bagged the first prize of ?3 crore under the government’s Kayakalp scheme for 2018-19.
• The Kayakalp Award was instituted as part of the 'Swachh Bharat Abhiyan' on 15 May, 2015 as a national initiative to recognize and felicitate public health facilities that demonstrate high levels of cleanliness, hygiene and infection control measure on promoting cleanliness in public spaces.
• Under the Central Government Hospitals A category, after AIIMS Delhi, Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), Puducherry was judged as the runner-up in this category with ?1.5 crore prize money, and Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh and Safdarjung Hospital, Delhi won the Commendation Award of Rs. 50 Lakh each.

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• Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo have jointly awarded 2019 Booker Prize. This award has been given jointly to two people for the first time in nearly 30 years.
• Both the winners will share prize money of 50,000 British Pounds for their novels. Total six books were shortlisted for the award and Salman Rushdie's tragicomic 'Quichotte' was one of them.
• Bernardine Evaristo became the first black woman to win this prize. Margaret Atwood received the award for her novel 'The Handmaid's Tale' and Bernardine Evaristo won Booker Prize for her novel 'Girl, Women, Other.' She has become the first black woman and the first black British writer to win the Booker Prize. Canada’s Margaret Atwood has become oldest (79) to win Booker Prize.
• Margaret Atwood had won her first Booker Prize in 2000 for ‘The Blind Assassin.’ She is the second women author to win the Booker Award twice and fourth overall writer.

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The UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation awards were announced at a ceremony held in Penang, Malaysia, marking 20 years since its institution. This year marked 20 years of the UNESCO Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation, which was conceived in Penang, Malaysia, during UNESCO's landmark 'Economics of Heritage' regional conference in 1999. The List of Awards Category include :

1. Award of Distinction: Vikram Sarabhai Library, Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad. It is restored by architect Brinda Somaya
2. Award of Merit: Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue (Mumbai), a Jewish Synagogue restored by Abha Narain Lambah and Our Lady of Glory Church (Mumbai) restored by David Cardoz and and Ainsley Lewis

• Honourable Mention: Flora Fountain (Mumbai). It is restored by conservation architect Vikas Dilwari and his team.

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• The Reusable Launch Vehicle Program was launched by ISRO in 2016.  It aims to cut down the launch cost by reusing the spacecraft. So far, the RLV (Reusable Launch Vehicle) has been tested over water. For the first time, ISRO will test in land. The RLV will function as a space shuttle that will carry a payload to space and glide back to the earth. While returning, it is to land like a normal aircraft.  The landing of the RLV is to be tested at Challakere in Chitradurga district in Karnataka.

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• India ranked 102 out of 117 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2019 that is placed at much below to its South Asian neighbours such as Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan. The GHI report pointed out that "India is suffering from a serious hunger problem".
• The Global Hunger Index measures countries on a 100 points scale, where a score of 0 (zero) is considered as best performing countries and 100 is the worst.
• The Global Hunger Index report, prepared and published jointly by Irish aid agency Concern Worldwide and German organization Welt Hunger Hilfewas, calculated on the basis of four indicators that are - child mortality, undernourishment, child wasting (weight for age) and child stunting. The major focus of the index was on the relation between climate change and hunger. The report also explains the impact of extreme weather on food production and food security.

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• The government’s flagship programme, Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY), touted as the world’s largest government-funded healthcare programme, has crossed the 50 lakh treatment mark.
• Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh have emerged as the top-performing states under the scheme.

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• India ranks 82 among the 128 countries surveyed by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), an international organisation that promotes giving to transform lives and communities across the world.
• The findings is an aggregate of trends for each country that emerged in surveys conducted by CAF over the past decade (2009 to 2018) and formulated as the World Giving Index (WGI). The survey covered 1.3 million (13 lakh) people worldwide.
• According to the WGI, USA stood at the top followed Myanmar, New Zealand and Australia. Others in the top ten countries included Ireland, Canada, UK, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. India at 82 on the index falls below Nepal (53), Pakistan (69), Mexico (73) and Brazil (74). At the bottom of the list are Yemen, Greece and China.

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• NITI Aayog with Institute for Competitiveness as the knowledge partner released the India Innovation Index (III) 2019. Karnataka is the most innovative major state in India.
• Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Telangana, Haryana, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Gujarat, and Andhra Pradesh form the remaining top ten major states respectively. The top ten major states are majorly concentrated in southern and western India.
• Sikkim and Delhi take the top spots among the north- eastern & hill states, and union territories/city states/small states respectively. Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh are the most efficient states in translating inputs into output.

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• The Hurun Research Institute has released the inaugural Hurun Global Unicorn List 2019, a ranking of the world’s billion-dollar tech ‘start-ups’ founded in the 2000s and not yet listed on a public exchange.
• Hurun Research found 494 unicorns in the world, based in 25 countries and 118 cities.
• The world’s unicorns are based in only 25 countries around the world, spread around 118 cities. China beat the US to lead by 206 versus 203, and together they accounted for over 80 per cent of the world’s unicorns. Europe has 35 unicorns.

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• The Hurun Research Institute has released the inaugural Hurun Global Unicorn List 2019, a ranking of the world’s billion-dollar tech ‘start-ups’ founded in the 2000s and not yet listed on a public exchange. Hurun Research found 494 unicorns in the world, based in 25 countries and 118 cities.
• By city, Beijing is the world’s unicorn capital with 82, comfortably ahead of San Francisco with 55, which is followed by Shanghai, New York and Hangzhou. As a region, Silicon Valley leads the world with 102 or 21 per cent of the world’s unicorns.

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• Night Blindness is caused due to deficiency of Vitamin A. It is a type of vision impairment also known as nyctalopia. People with night blindness experience poor vision at night or in dimly lit environments

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• In a bid to protect forests, the Government has taken a conscious decision to establish an International Standard Zoo and Biopark on the forest land at Gorewada, Nagpur. 
• The Zoo will have attractions like Bio Park, Indian Safari, African Safari, Night Safari, Research, Education and Training, facilities for tourists, etc”.

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• ISRO stands for Indian Space & Research Organisation,
• Its headquarters are situated in Bengaluru, Karnataka and its chairman is Kailasavadivoo Sivan