The Daily Brief – 18th September, 2016

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• The violence in the Kashmir valley has entered its 71st day, with army batallions being moved to North and South Kashmir. One boy was killed, and over 30 persons injured in clashes yesterday. The civilian death toll has now risen to 83.
• Famed Tamil music composer Ilayaraaja will hold a concert in Washington D.C. on the 25th of September. U.S Senators and Congressmen are among the list of luminaries expected to attend. The concert is being planned to celebrate the composer’s rare achievement of completing over a thousand films.
• The Union Minister for Sports Vijay Goel has announced that Paralympics athletes would be considered for the prestigious Rajiv Khel Ratna awards from next year onwards.
• Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has announced a closed-ended plan, ‘Bima Diamond‘, on the occasion of its diamond jubilee year. The plan offers risk cover of a full sum assured during the policy and half the sum assured beyond the policy during the extended cover period or equal to half of the policy term.
• Haryana Sports and Youth Affairs Minister, Anil Vij, has announced a cash award of Rs. 4 crore for Paralympics medalist Deepa Malik, at par with medal-winners at the Olympic Games. Deepa Malik became the first Indian woman athlete to win a medal at a Paralympics. She won a silver medal in the women’s shot put event with a throw of 4.61m at the Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Deepa was confined to a wheelchair in 1999 due to a spinal tumour that paralysed her from waist down.
• A preliminary investigation has revealed that the Scorpene submarine data leak took place at the office of the naval defence contractor DCNS in France and not in India. The announcement was made by the Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Sunil Lanba. 
• Ankita Raina has won the $50,000 ITF women’s doubles title with Emily Webley Smith of Britain. The Indo-British pair beat Hanyu Guo and Xinyu Jiang of China.
• An explosion rocked the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan and injured at least 29 people yesterday. It is yet unclear whether the explosion was a result of an attack, or an accident.

• A young Iraqi woman, Nadia Murad Basee Taha, who survived trafficking at the hands of the Islamic State (IS), has been appointed a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. She is also a Nobel Peace Prize nominee. The appointment marks the first time a survivor of atrocities is bestowed with this distinction. A relentless advocate for victims, Ms. Murad was recently named one of Time magazine’s ‘100 Most Influential People of 2016.’ During her Ambassadorship, she will focus on advocacy initiatives and raise awareness around the plight of the countless victims of trafficking in persons, especially refugees, women and girls.
• Pulitzer-winning US playwright Edward Albee, author of masterpieces such as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? has passed away. Considered one of the most important American playwrights of his time, Albee wrote a variety of controversial plays diving into anxieties, disillusionments and death. Albee has won three Pulitzer Prizes for best drama.
• Using NASA’s Hubble space telescope, astronomers have captured the sharpest, most detailed observations of a comet breaking apart 108 million kilometres from Earth. In a series of images taken over three days in January 2016, Hubble showed 25 fragments consisting of a mixture of ice and dust that are drifting away from the comet at a pace equivalent to the walking speed of an adult. These observations provide insight into the volatile behaviour of comets as they approach the sun and begin to vaporise, unleashing powerful forces.
• A 17-year-old has been euthanised in Belgium in what is the first application of rules adopted by the country in 2014 allowing doctor-assisted death for minors of all ages.
• The International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer is observed every year on September 16. The day is a commemoration of the date in 1987 on which the Montreal Protocol was signed, relating to ozone layer depletion. The Montreal Protocol is an international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out production of numerous Ozone Depleting Substances (ODSs) that are responsible for ozone depletion. It was agreed on 26 August 1987 in Montreal, Canada and entered into force on 26 August 1989. It was followed by a first meeting in Helsinki, May 1989, and is credited with the phasing out of harmful sbstances such as chloroflourocarbons (CFCs).

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