Awards & Honours GK Questions with Answers – Page 11

UNEP was created in 1972 after the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment and has its headquarters at Nairobi in Kenya.

The National Film Awards are organised by the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, which handles films, broadcasting and the press.

The Press Council of India first began working in 1966 and functions today under the Press Council Act, 1978; it is a self-regulatory watchdog whose chairman is chosen by a committee of the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and a member of the Council…

The Kalinga Prize for the Popularisation of Science was created in 1951 with a donation from Biju Patnaik, the founder of the Kalinga Foundation Trust of Odisha, and UNESCO awards it to writers, editors and broadcasters who explain science to ordinary readers; the first prize went to the French physicist…

UNESCO instituted the Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize in 1997 in memory of the Colombian editor of El Espectador, who was murdered outside his office in 1986 for writing against drug cartels; the prize is presented each year on World Press Freedom Day, 3 May.

The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 3 May as World Press Freedom Day in 1993, acting on a recommendation of the UNESCO General Conference that followed the Windhoek Declaration of African journalists in 1991; UNESCO presents the Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize on this day.

National Press Day marks the day in 1966 on which the Press Council of India began its work as a moral watchdog of the press, and the Council itself organises the observance and presents its National Awards for Excellence in Journalism around it.

The Chameli Devi Jain Award for an Outstanding Woman Journalist was instituted in 1980 by the Media Foundation in New Delhi and is named after Chameli Devi Jain, a freedom fighter who was jailed during the national movement.

Palagummi Sainath received the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2007 for journalism that placed the agrarian crisis, farmer suicides and rural poverty at the centre of national reporting, work also known through his book Everybody Loves a Good Drought.

A science correspondent who had gone from Punjab to the United States, Gobind Behari Lal shared the Pulitzer Prize for Reporting in 1937 for his coverage of a scientific meeting, and he is remembered as the first Indian-born winner of the prize.

Joseph Pulitzer died in 1911 and his will provided for the prizes, which Columbia University first gave out in 1917.

The Hungarian-born American publisher Joseph Pulitzer left money in his will to Columbia University in New York, which set up a school of journalism and the prizes that carry his name; the first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded in 1917 and are announced every year by the university on the recommendation…

The Indian Express Group began the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards in 2006, a little over a decade after the death of its founder, and the award now covers print, broadcast and digital reporting in a long list of categories, with a separate Journalist of the Year honour.

The awards were instituted in 2006 in memory of Ramnath Goenka, the founder of the Indian Express newspapers, and are administered by the group through an independent jury that has usually been chaired by a former judge of the Supreme Court.

The Param Vir Chakra is the highest wartime gallantry decoration of the Indian armed forces, given for the most conspicuous bravery in the presence of the enemy, and its peacetime equivalent is the Ashoka Chakra; neither belongs to the civilian order of precedence.

Sri Lankabhimanya, which means the pride of Sri Lanka, is the highest national honour of that country and is awarded for exceptional and outstanding service to the nation; the name itself carries the clue, since the country is named in the award.

The Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum is the senior order of Japan, and the chrysanthemum is the emblem of the imperial house, which is why the flower gives the order its name and why the Japanese throne is called the Chrysanthemum Throne.

Until December 2011 the Bharat Ratna could be given only for exceptional service in art, literature and science or for public service of the highest order, and sport was outside its scope.

The rules of the Bharat Ratna provide that not more than three awards may be made in a particular year, and there is no obligation to make any award at all in a given year, which is why several years have passed with none.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom was established in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy, replacing an earlier Medal of Freedom of 1945, and it is awarded for especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural and other significant public…