From 28th November to 2nd December 2018, Tata Open India International Challenge 2018 (badminton) was held in Mumbai.
Winners:
Event Winner

• Men’s Singles Lakshya Sen (India)
• Women’s Singles Ashmita Chaliha (India)
• Men’s Doubles Arjun M.R., B. Sumeeth Reddy (India)
• Women’s Doubles Ng Wing Yung, Yeung Nga Ting (Hong Kong)
• Mixed Doubles Nipitphon Phuangphuapet, Savitree Amitrapai (Thailand)

On 2nd December 2018, Atlawim Debebe of Ethiopia, won the Full Marathon with the timing of 2 hours 17 minutes 17 seconds in Pune International Marathon. Second and third positions were secured by Ethiopians Teshome Getachew and Bekele Asefa respectively. In women’s Full Marathon Kenya’s Pascalia Chepkogei came first with a timing of 2 hour 50 minutes 27 seconds. Belew Mekonnen and Fekede Tilahun of Ethiopia occupied the second and third positions respectively. Dekebe Tafa and Degefa Gezmu from Ethiopia won the men’s and women’s half marathon respectively.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, popularly known by his initials AMLO, has been sworn-in as the new President of Mexico on December 1, 2018. He won the historic landslide victory at July 1 presidential election 2018 with over 50% of the popular vote. He started his six-year term with a promise to end the corruption, poverty and extreme violence that have plagued the country for more than a decade. This was the first time since the 1988 election that a presidential candidate was elected with an absolute majority (50%+1) of the votes cast. The President of Mexico is the head of state and government of Mexico. Under the Constitution, the president is also the Supreme Commander of the Mexican armed forces.

The International Day of Persons with Disabilities is observed every year on December 3 to promote the rights and well-being of persons with disabilities in all spheres of society and development and to increase awareness of the situation of persons with disabilities in every aspect of political, social, economic and cultural life. The annual observance of the Day was proclaimed in 1992, by a United Nations General Assembly resolution. The 2018 theme ‘Empowering persons with disabilities and ensuring inclusiveness and equality’ focuses on empowering persons with disabilities for an inclusive, equitable and sustainable development as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This year, the United Nations has launched the first-ever flagship report on disability and development “UN Flagship Report on Disability and Development 2018 – Realizing the SDGs by, for and with persons with disabilities”. The Report provides an evidence base for disability-inclusive policy-making, implementation and monitoring and evaluation of an inclusive, accessible and sustainable global development agenda.

World number one Norwegian Magnus Carlsen has retained his World Chess Championship title, beating US opponent Fabiano Caruana in a tie-breaker event.

India’s first owl festival was held at Pingori village in Purandar taluka of Pune from November 29. The two-day festival, organised by Ela Foundation (an NGO working towards nature education and conservation), will give information on owl conservation and feature art forms like pictures, paintings, lanterns, lamp shades, posters, origami, stitched articles, poems and stories on owls.

UNESCO accepted a joint bid for Korean wrestling to be recognized as one of the world’s most treasured cultural practices. This bids a new step in their reconciliation efforts of North and South Korea. The two Koreas had originally filed separate applications for their traditional form of wrestling to be recognized on the UN agency’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list. The announcement is the latest in a string of symbolic gestures between Seoul and its nuclear-armed neighbor in recent months. In North Korea, it is known as Ssirum and in South Korea, it is known as Sssireum. The wrestling has been practiced at village festivals for centuries.

The elections were held during the General Assembly meeting of ISSF in Munich in which Raninder secured 161 votes to make it to the coveted position. The 51-year-old Raninder is currently the president of the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI). The NRAI president was also awarded the ISSF diploma of honor gold medal at the General Assembly by the outgoing longest-serving president of the ISSF, Olegario Vazquez Rana, who was at the helm for 38 years. Vladimir Lisin, of Russia, was elected as the seventh president of ISSF and Alexander Rather was elected as the new secretary general of ISSF in the same General Assembly meeting.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador won a president election of Mexico which was conducted on July 2018.His first act after he became president was signed an agreement with three Central American counterparts to create a plan to stem the flow of migrants seeking asylum in the US. Lopez Obrador also thanked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, stating he would like to reach an agreement with both Ottawa and Washington to tackle immigration issues.

Nagaland signs MoU with Estonian academy on e-governance.

The bilateral naval exercise ‘Konkan 18’ started between the navies of India and the UK at the Goa coast from November 28. The exercise will provide a platform for the two navies to periodically exercise at sea and in harbour, so as to build interoperability and share best practices.

Nagaland has become the first amongst the North-Eastern States and the second state overall in India to launch the single emergency number ‘112’ under ERSS. The state has integrated the emergency system with Tourist Police and Highway patrol and will expand to interior districts subsequently.

Haryana won the 2018-19 BC Roy Junior National Championships (Tier II), beating Manipur by a slender 1-0 margin in the final at Railways Ground, Rajkot on 28th November 2018.

In February 2019, India’s first international indigenous film festival will take place in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. The fest is an initiative of activist film collective Video Republic that has been campaigning for indigenous communities in the State. The three-stop event will kick off on February 19 and 20, moving on to Puri from February 21 to 23 to eventually culminate in an interaction with the adivasi communities at Niyamgiri. It will showcase films made by indigenous people or made by non-indigenous filmmakers in collaboration with the indigenous communities. The aim of the fest is to build a platform for indigenous communities from the world over to share, have a dialogue, collaborate and to use cinema as a mode of united assertion, resistance and activism against exploitative forces.

The UK’s Cambridge Dictionary has recently declared “Nomophobia”, the word that describes the stress and anxiety caused by being separated from your mobile, as People’s Word of the year 2018. The word is defined as the fear or worry at the idea of being without your mobile phone or unable to use it. Based on the results of a popular vote, Nomophobia was chose over the other shortlisted words – ‘gender gap’, ‘ecocide’ and ‘no-platforming’.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel peace laureate & Myanmar leader, will be stripped of Freedom of Paris award over her failure to speak out against a crackdown on Myanmar’s Rohingya minority. The move, which follows similar decisions by Glasgow, Edinburgh and Oxford, would make Myanmar’s de facto leader the first person to lose the freedom of the French capital, a purely symbolic award. The move will be finalised by the city council at a meeting in mid-December 2018. Apart from this, Suu Kyi has already been stripped of her honorary Canadian citizenship and her Amnesty International’s “Ambassador of Conscience Award”. In 2017, nearly 5,00,000 people belonging to Myanmar’s Rohingya minority have been displaced after violence allegedly instigated by the country’s military, causing a major humanitarian crisis.