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• Over the last few years, under the Barrier-Free Project, the Kerala government has been working towards making all major tourist destinations accessible and disabled-friendly.
• Now in a major announcement, Kerala Tourism Minister K Surendran has said that all tourist spots will be covered under the project and will be disabled-friendly & accessible by 2021.

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• Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik flagged off 15 'PRAKHAR' vans, with the latest addition taking the number of such special vehicles to curb street crimes in the national capital.
• These patrol vans tasked especially to curb street crimes as well as crimes against women in the vulnerable areas are specially designed and equipped with latest gadgets for quick transmission of information about any crime.
• The new vans are in addition to the already operational 15 'PRAKHAR' vans launched last month.

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• In an effort to raise awareness about the perils of using plastic, the Kotpad Notified Area Council (NAC) in Koraput district, Odisha is providing free meals to the poor in exchange for a kilogram of plastic waste.
• The programme entails a meal for anyone who brings a kilogram of used polythene bags, plastic bottles and cups and it is being carried out under the state government's 'Aahar' scheme.

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• Tamil Nadu has become the first State in the country to enact a law on contract farming with President Ram Nath Kovind giving assent to the Agricultural Produce and Livestock Contract Farming and Services (Promotion and Facilitation) Act.
• The law would safeguard the interests of farmers when there is a bumper crop or during major fluctuation in market prices. In such a scenario, the farmers will be paid a predetermined price arrived at the time of signing agreements with buyers.

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• To understand the stress and devise the strategy to eliminate financial burden in the telecom sector, the government has set up a Committee of Secretaries (CoS) under Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba.
• The Committee of Secretaries (CoS) will have representatives from law, finance and telecom ministries that will study subjects like reduction in Spectrum Usage Charges (SUC) and Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) charges, a 2-year moratorium on spectrum auction to ease cash-flow in the sector.

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• Odisha Government is all set to partner Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), co-founded by Nobel laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, for targeted intervention in a set of social sectors including poorest of the poor through policy formulation and evaluations based on experimental research.
• This is the first comprehensive partnership J-PAL would have with an Indian State after the Banerjee-Duflo duo was conferred the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel, simply known as the Nobel Prize for Economics.
• J-PAL is going to work in at least eight districts of the State including the KBK region on improvement of poorest of the poor, women as well as nutrition.
• The partnership with a prestigious research centre like J-PAL is being done under Odisha Government’s 5T Initiatives which look at transformative action.

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• Life expectancy in India has increased from 49.7 years in 1970-75 to 68.7 years in 2012-16, as per the National Health Profile 2019 released.
• For the same period, the life expectancy for females is 70.2 years and 67.4 years for males.

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• The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) for the country was 2.3 whereas in rural areas it has been 2.5 and it has been 1.8 in urban areas during 2016 as per the latest available information.
• On the health status indicators, the survey finds that on communicable diseases, in 2018, maximum number of cases and deaths due to malaria have been reported in Chhattisgarh (77,140 cases and 26 deaths).

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• Elections in Jharkhand will be held in five phases and will start on November 30. Results for the Jharkhand assembly elections will be declared on December 23.
• Polling will be held in 81 assembly seats in Jharkhand.
• The first phase of Jharkhand assembly elections will be held on November 30, the second phase will be held on December 7, third phase on December 12, fourth phase on December 16 and the last and fifth phase of polling will be held on December 20.

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• Cyber frauds accounted for a total of 12,213 individual reports across all states and union territories in India, the second most individually reported cases of cyber-crime came in the form of sexual exploitation.
• Uttar Pradesh tops the list, with 4,971 of the total 21,796 reported cases coming from UP.

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• Raunak Sadhwani has becomes India’s 65th Grandmaster. He defeated Russian GM Alexander Motylev to become the Grandmaster at the age of 13 years, 9 months and 28 days.
• Sadhwani’s first GM norm came in the 2019 Aeroflot Open and the 2nd in the 2019 Porticcio Open and the final norm at FIDE-Chess Grand Swiss.

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• The 2019 Military World Games (also known as Olympic Games for military) is being held from 18–27 October 2019 in the capital of Hubei Province, Wuhan, China.
• Its opening ceremony was held on 18 October 2019 and the event was officially inaugurated by Chinese President Xi Jinping.
• The games are officially known as 7th CISM Military World Games. It is top multi-sport event for military personnel from across the globe. Following the conclusion of 2015 Military World Games (held in South Korea), China won the bid to host the Games for the first time in 2015. Besides being the first international military multi-sport event to be held in China, it is also the largest ever military sports event to be held in China.

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• The world's oldest natural pearl has been discovered on an island off Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
• The 8,000-year-old pearl was found during excavations at Marawah Island which also revealed the earliest architecture in the UAE.
• The discovery proved that pearls had been traded in the region since Neolithic times. The pearl will go on display later this month at the Louvre gallery, Abu Dhabi.

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• Sri Lanka has been removed from the "Grey List" of the international terror financing watchdog FATF.
• It will no longer be subject to the Financial Action Task Force's monitoring under its on-going global anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) compliance process.
• In October 2016, the FATF announced that Sri Lanka will be subjected to a review of the International Cooperation Review Group (ICRG) of the terror financing watchdog to assess the progress of AML/CFT effectiveness in the country.
• The FATF is an inter-governmental body established in 1989 to combat money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system.
• The FATF retained Pakistan on its "Grey List" and warned it of getting blacklisted, if it does not control terror funding by February next year.