Eminent Sindhi writer Vasdev Mohi has been selected for the 29th Saraswati Samman for his short stories collection- Chequebook. Saraswati Samman carries a cash award of 15 lakh rupees & a literary recognition given annually by the KK Birla Foundation
He has also received Sahitya Akademi Award
GSAT-30 was successfully launched onboard Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana. The satellite will provide Indian mainland & islands coverage in Ku-band and extended coverage in C-band covering Gulf countries, a large number of Asian countries & Australia
It has a mission life of 15 years
Senior Advocate Harish Salve has been appointed the Queen's Counsel for the courts of England, announced by the U.K’s Ministry of Justice Department. The appointment is done by the Queen, on the advice of the Lord Chancellor
He served as a Solicitor General for India (1999-2002)
Centre & Assam government signed a loan agreement worth $88 million with World Bank for modernisation of Assam Inland Water Transport Project to help Assam improve the passenger ferry infrastructure including those on Brahmaputra & Barak rivers
Assam Capital: Dispur; CM: Sarbananda Sonowal
RBI has asked urban cooperative banks to report exposures of ₹5 crore or more to a central repository, within a month of end-of-quarter comprising 3 sections: exposure to large borrowers, reporting written-off accounts & reporting of balance in CA
Cooperative banks are jointly regulated by RBI & state govt
Bajaj Allianz General Insurance has received approval for two proposals for health & motor insurance proposals under the regulatory sandbox. These include 'co-pay' under health insurance and ‘pay as you consume’ for motor insurance
IRDAI HQ: Hyderabad; Chairman: Subhash Chandra Khuntia
ICICI Bank has introduced a facility to enable the bank’s customers to log-in to their internet banking account using their registered mobile number, OTP & their debit card PIN which involves the same two-factor authentication process
ICICI Bank CEO: Sandeep Bakhshi; HQ: Mumbai
South Africa has put in place online visa facility for Indian tourists on a pilot basis. It is seeing a 30.2% growth in tourists arrivals from India on a y-o-y basis & is expecting the number of Indian arrivals to grow to 1 lakh in 2020
Currency: SA rand; Capitals: Cape Town, Pretoria, Bloemfontein
Union MHA Amit Shah presided over signing of a quadripartite pact of MHA with State govts of Tripura, Mizoram & leaders of Bru community to permanently settle 34,000 internally displaced people in Tripura & sanctioned around ₹600 crore as a settlement pack
Brus are the second largest ethnic group in Mizoram
Indian GM Abhijeet Gupta beat Aleksej Aleksandrov of Belrus in the 10th & final round to win the 18th Delhi Open International Grandmasters Chess Championship in New Delhi. The 30-year old Gupta secured a win in 37 moves to seal the top prize
He has an ELO rating of 2603