Sahitya Akademi award winner Prabhanjan passed away recently. He belongs to which state?

Bengali New Year also known as Pahela Baishakh was celebrated in West Bengal and among Bengali communities in Assam, Tripura and also in Bangladesh. The festival usually falls on 14 April every year which marks the first day of the initial month of Baishakh of the Bengali solar calendar. The 7th century King Shashanka of ancient Bengal started this Bengali era which was estimated to be in 594 AD in Gregorian calendar and it was later modified by Mughal emperor Akbar for the purpose of tax collection. On this day, the Bengali business community opens new books of accounts known as Halkhata to mark the beginning of the new accounting year. In 2016, UNESCO declared this festival as "cultural heritage of humanity".

International No Diet Day (INDD) was observed on May 6 to promote a healthy lifestyle and raise awareness of the dangers and futility of dieting. The day also aims to raise awareness about the various dieting disorders which exist such as anorexia and bulimia. The INDD symbol is a blue ribbon. The INDD was first created in 1992 by Mary Evans Young to help people appreciate their own bodies. British feminist Mary was an anorexia patient(an eating disorder). She is the director of the British group "Diet Breakers" among the weight issues. The main agenda of INDD is Educating people on how to diet effectively and responsibly to improve healthy life and raise awareness about fatphobia, weight discrimination, sizism and potential dangers of commercial diet plans, honoring the victims of weight-loss surgery and eating disorders, promoting body acceptance and body shape diversity.

The US is suspending its obligations under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty effective February 2 and will withdraw from the treaty in six months. It is a 1987 arms control agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union with an Unlimited duration.

The US space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that its InSight lander has deployed its first instrument Seismometer (SEIS) onto the surface of Mars, completing a major mission milestone that will allow scientists to peer into the Martian interior by studying ground motion also known as marsquakes. The Insight will deploy two more instruments namely Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment (RISE) and Heat Probe (HP3) to study Mars' deep interiors.

Superfan Naotoshi Yamada, famous in Japan for having been to every Summer Games since 1964, has died aged 92 with an unfulfilled dream of watching the Olympics when it returns to Tokyo next year. A Japanese Olympic mega-fan who attended every summer games since Tokyo in 1964 has died, just over a year before his home city was to host its second Olympics.The Tokyo businessman was a national celebrity in his own right with his repeated, gleeful appearances in Olympic stands.

Indian Railways bagged 17 awards at the 'National Energy Conservation Awards (NECA) 2018' held in New Delhi. Under 'transport' category, Indian Railways obtained 10 awards for the subsector railway station. Vidisha railway station in Madhya Pradesh won the first prize. Under 'building' category, Indian Railways got three awards for subsector Railway hospitals. Railway hospitals of Izzatnagar division won the first prize. Under 'institution' category, Indian Railways bagged four awards for subsector state PWD, CPWD and PHED. Passenger reservation system complex building of Secunderabad division won the first prize. The awards are given by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency under the Ministry of Power to various institutions for adopting energy efficiency measures.

The 340m wide asteroid named 99942 Apophis will fly past Earth like a 'moving star- like point of light' on April 13, 2029. It will fly above the earth's surface at 30,500 km and first become visible with a naked eye in the night sky over the Southern Hemisphere from the east coast to the west coast of Australia.In 2004, astronomers at the Kitt Peak National Observatory based in Arizona discovered Apophis and claims about the chance of 2.7% that asteroid may impact Earth in 2029. However, further observation ruled out that chance but Apophis still has a small chance of impacting Earth which is less than 1 in 100,00- many decades from now.

India and Ukraine have discussed bilateral trade featuring the importance of exports and imports between the 2 countries. The deliberation was part of the 4th Meeting of India-Ukraine Working Group on Trade and Economic Cooperation (IU-WGTEC) held in New Delhi. Both the countries should share the mandatory requirement to be fulfilled at the time of exporting or importing of any product to promote trade. Both the countries have agreed to collaborate in the field of small and medium entrepreneurship.