India and South Africa sealed three-year strategic programme (2019-21) to further boost cooperation in the number of key areas including defence and security, trade and investment, the blue economy, tourism, IT and agriculture.
President of South Africa - Cyril Ramaphosa.
Social activist Nanaji Deshmukh, Music maestro Bhupen Hazarika & former President Pranab Mukherjee have been awarded Bharat Ratna. 112 Padma Awards, including 4 Padma Vibhushan, 14 Padma Bhushan & 94 Padma Shri Awards are conferred by President.
Bharat Ratna award was established in 1954.
According to the Status Paper on Government Debt for 2017-18, the Centre’s total debt as a percentage of GDP reduced to 46.5% in 2017-18. The total debt of the States has been rising over to 24% in 2017-18 and is estimated to be 24.3% in 2018-19.
NK Singh headed the FRBM Review committee.
Bengaluru-based start-up focused on micro-lending to students has secured a licence from RBI to foray into NBFC services. SlicePay enables students to buy daily goods and services online from various platforms at a maximum credit of Rs 60000.
SlicePay founders - Rajan Bajaj and Deepak Malhotra.
The fourth edition of Bharat Parv, showcasing the spirit of Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat will begin at New Delhi. The objective of this festival is to generate a patriotic fervour and promote rich cultural diversity of the country.
Union Minister for Tourism - K. J. Alphons.
Lakshmi Vilas Bank has reappointed Parthasarathi Mukherjee as its managing director. He will continue for the next two years. The bank is looking to issue up to 15 crore equity shares to mobilize equity capital and to raise capital adequacy ratio.
Headquarters of Lakshmi Vilas Bank – Chennai.
Indian start-ups will get an opportunity to participate in the international summit, to be held in Dubai in April 2019. It is one of the biggest start-up investment events in the region organized by the UAE’s Ministry of Economy.
Dubai's AIM was started in 2017.
IIT Ropar has developed an Android App “Roshni” to assist visually impaired people to determine the denomination of currency notes. It utilizes an adaptable deep learning framework, which uses the patterns and features embedded on the notes to differentiate.
Seeing AI App by Microsoft is used to recognize currency notes.
Scientists in China cloned 5 monkeys successfully to be utilized for human disease research, claiming the monkeys are closer to the human in physiology, making them better models for research on disease pathogenesis & potential treatments.
China’s 1st cloned monkeys were born in 2017.
Famous Hindi writer and essayist, Krishna Sobti passed away at the age of 94. She had won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1980 and was awarded the Jnanpith award in 2017.
Sahitya Akademi Awards are given in 24 Indian languages.