Noted novelist Kavita Mahajan passed away recently, she belongs to the language of;

Dominic Thiem clinched the Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell 2019 title held at Barcelona, Spain which was held from April 22 through April 28, 2019. He secured 6-4, 6-0. The Austrian became just the fourth player in the past 15 years to lift the title in Barcelona, joining Rafael Nadal, Kei Nishikori, and Fernando Verdasco. He's also the first Austrian winner at this event since Thomas Muster in 1996. Thiem now has 13 ATP Tour titles, nine of which have come on clay.

The Indian men's football team gained two places to rise to 101 in the FIFA rankings released on 4 April 2019. With 1219 total ranking points, the Indian team lies 18th among the Asian countries. Belgium holds on to the top spot, while Iran topped the Asian rankings at 21 followed by Japan (26), South Korea (37), Australia (41) and Qatar (55).

ISRO Planning to Launch 32 Space Missions in 2019. The missions include the second lunar mission Chandrayaan-2 (Rs.800-crore mission) to land on the moon with lander and rover. India's maiden human space mission in 2021-22, Gaganyaan, will also be pursued this year. Among the ISRO's achievements in 2018 were launch of the heaviest satellite GSAT-29 (3,423 kg) on November 14 and building the heaviest communication satellite GSAT-11 (5,854 kg), launched on December 5 onboard the Arianespace space agency's rocket from French Guiana on the north Atlantic coast of South America.

Mobikwik, digital financial services company collaborated with pioneer of digital insurance in India, Aegon Life Insurance to launch a Rs 20 smart digital insurance product in order to protect its wallet users from death and accident related disability cover for up to Rs 2 lakh. he main objective for this initiative is to improve the insurance penetration in India (this is currently at 3.7%) , that is to drive financial inclusion for the masses. The company has created 3 variants of the amount assured between Rs. 1 lakh, Rs.1.5 lakh and Rs. 2 lakh at no extra cost and the policy can be availed at a premium of Rs 20, Rs 30 and Rs 40 respectively depending on the protection amount and this is issued instantly. The insurance product launched is termed as the Aegon Life Group Term Plus Plan. It is available on MobiKwik App.

Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC), under the Ministry of Finance, is organizing the World Customs Organisation (WCO) for Asia-Pacific region in Kochi, Kerala from 8th to 10th May 2019. As India currently holds a seat of Vice Chairperson of Asia Pacific region, it is hosting this meeting in this capacity. Pranab Kumar Das, Chairman of CBIC will chair the meeting. It will discuss the progress being made in carrying forward various initiatives and programmes of WCO, in promoting, securing and facilitating cross-border trade in the Asia Pacific region. Participants include customs delegations from over 20 countries of Asia Pacific region and senior officials of WCO and its regional bodies namely Regional Intelligence Liaoning Office (RILO) and Regional Office for Capacity Building (ROCB).

Astronomers Captured the First Image of a Black Hole which was a halo of dust and gas, tracing the outline of a colossal black hole at the center of the galaxy M87 (Messier 87) with the help of The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) observations. Black Hole.Black holes were first predicted by Einstein's theory of relativity and these are the extreme cosmic objects, containing incredible amounts of mass within a tiny region.The galaxy is 55 million light-years away from Earth.

In a first, The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) opened a visitors' gallery with 5,000 capacity at Andhra Pradesh's Sriharikota island. The gallery has a clear line of sight to two launch pads and large screens to explain launcher and satellite features. This comes as ISRO is launching defence satellite EMISAT along with 28 foreign satellites on April 1, 2019.

'Period. End of Sentence' has made it to the Oscar shortlist in the Documentary Short Subject category. This is a film about women in India fighting against the deeply rooted stigma of menstruation and delving upon the work of real-life 'Pad Man' Arunachalam Muruganantham. A total of 104 films had originally qualified in the category. India's entry for the Foreign Language Film Category, Village Rockstars is out of the Oscar race.

Department of Biotechnology (DBT) working under ministry of science and technology has recently launched human tissue mapping project called MANAV: Human Atlas Initiative. It has been launched to improve understanding on human physiology. Objective of this initiative is to map every single tissue of human body to find out deepest information and roles of tissues and cells linked to a variety of ailments. Department of Biotechnology has issued funds of Rs 13 cr to two institutions in Pune, Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (IISER) and National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS).

Global research agency Fitch has raised India's growth forecast for the current fiscal to 7.8 per cent from the earlier 7.4 per cent. However, forecast for the next two fiscal, 2019-20 and 2020-21, have been shaved by 20 basis points (100 basis points means 1 per cent) to 7.3 per cent. Fitch's latest projection for the current fiscal is higher than what is estimated by the Reserve Bank of India and even the Government. While the RBI's estimate is 7.4 per cent, the Government feels that it could be 7.5 per cent. However, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut its projection to 7.3 per cent from 7.4 per cent. India Ratings too lowered its growth projection by 20 bps to 7.2 per cent.