Union government retained the interest rate for General Provident Fund (GPF) at ___________ % for the first quarter of the current financial year 2019-2020.

India's 3rd-largest non-life insurance provider in the private sector, HDFC ERGO General Insurance Company launched a scheme termed 'Mosquito Disease Protection Policy' which will cover a person against common mosquito-borne diseases, namely, Dengue Fever, Malaria, Chikungunya, Japanese Encephalitis, Kala-azar, Lymphatic Filariasis and Zika Virus. These mosquito-borne diseases leads to financial burden due to hospitalisation or affects the No Claim Bonus of any conventional Health Insurance. The policy by HDFC ERGO will cover hospitalisation expenses. The policyholder may opt for a huge amount to be paid as a policy benefit on offering the proof of hospitalisation. The policy will also pay the beneficiary the sum insured, if in case of the policyholder dies due to the disease.

Shri Godavarthi Venkata Srinivas (IFS:199C) was appointed as the next Ambassador of India to the Republic of Senegal. Presently, he is Joint Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs. He succeeds Shri Rajeev Kumar, who is the High Commissioner of India to the Republic of Mozambique.

M S Yadav has been elected as general secretary of the newly formed, All India Federation of PTI Employees' Unions (AIFPTIEU) by the 45 elected council members from different centres of PTI (Press Trust of India) during the two days meeting in Lucknow. In other appointments, Bhuwan Choubey was elected as president, P C Maity was elected as treasurer, Md. Sallimuddin and O J Tomy were elected vice-presidents, M S Hasan and B T Mohan Rao were elected assistant general secretaries. In addition of this, a 16-member executive body was constituted which comprised Meheruddin, Sunil Gaur, Jagmohan Rawat, Arvind Kumar Singh, Naresh Pal, Rajbir Singh, K K Verma, Kulbhusan Yadav, Salav Rastogi, Sudip Ghosh Choudhury, Gopal Prasad Sav, G N Patnaik, R S Batwal, Mahender Verma, A K Tripathy and Sayeed Latifudfin.

Group Captain Chandra Shekhar Bhatt took over the command of Air Force Station Faridabad in a Ceremonial parade at Station Parade Ground. He took the charge from Group Caption Kaushik Das. He was commissioned in the Logistics branch of IAF in 1990. He has the experience of holding various appointments in Operational bases and Depots. The Officer has been commended by the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief (AOC-in-C) and Chief of the Air Staff (CAS) for his distinguished service.

The government allotted its 7-croreth free cooking gas (LPG) connection, as a part of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY).7 crore free LPG connections have been issued in the past 34 months which approximates to almost 69,000 connections per day. This scheme was launched on 1st May, 2016 with the aim of issuing 5 crore connections to women from poor families.42% of the total connections have been issued to SC/ST. The highest number of connections have been issues in Uttar Pradesh (1.26 crore), followed by West Bengal (78 lakhs) and Bihar (77.51 lakh).

World Thalassaemia Day 2019 was celebrated on May 8 worldwide with a theme of "Universal Access to Quality Thalassaemia Healthcare Services: Building Bridges with and for Patients". The purpose of this day is to honour all patients of thalassaemia and their wards who never gave up despite all odds and also to support researchers who are striving to create an improved quality of life for people with thalassaemia across the world. To celebrate this day, Thalassaemia International Federation (TIF) organised 3 online competitions worldwide with a certain theme. This online competition will include a video challenge, a photo contest, and a story competition.

Asian Development Bank (ADB) launched 5$ billion Action Plan for Healthy Oceans and Sustainable Blue Economies for the Asia and Pacific region. This will support ADB's developing member countries' efforts for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), inclusive of the SDG 14: Life Below Water. Among the 10 rivers that transports 88% to 95% of plastics into the sea globally, 8 are in Asia and Pacific region. The Healthy Oceans Action Plan was launched at the 52nd Annual Meeting of ADB's Board of Governors, Fiji.

An international team of more than 200 astronomers from 18 countries has published the first phase of a major new radio sky survey at unprecedented sensitivity using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) telescope in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. The survey discovered 3,00,000 hidden galaxies using radio astronomy in a tiny corner of the northern hemisphere at low radio frequency. It is believed that these findings will help shed new light on some of the Universe's deepest secrets. This includes the physics of black holes as well as research into how galaxy clusters evolve. The LOFAR telescope is operated by ASTRON in The Netherlands and is considered to be the world's leading telescope of its type. It is made up of a network of radio antenna across seven countries, forming the equivalent of a 1,300-km diameter satellite dish. It is capable of detecting light source beyond the power of optical instruments. Radio astronomy allows scientists to detect radiation produced when massive celestial objects interact.

By using Indian multi-wavelength space observatory AstroSat, the astronomers from Thiruvananthapuram and Mumbai have identified a new population of ultraviolet stars in the globular cluster NGC 2808. Globular clusters are collections of thousands to millions of stars, moving as one unit. These stars are tightly held together by gravity of the cluster itself, and are believed to have formed together at roughly the same time. The NGC 2808 is one of the most massive globular clusters that we know of, and is located at a distance of 47,000 light years from us. This cluster was observed by the team of researchers using the UltraViolet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) on-board AstroSat. So far, AstroSat has taken images of over 2,000 individual stars in NGC 2808 through various ultraviolet filters. AstroSat is the India's first dedicated multi wavelength space observatory. It was launched in September 2015. It orbits in low earth equatorial orbit at altitude of 650 km and has mission life of 5 years. It observes universe in the optical, Ultraviolet (UV), low and high energy X-ray regions of the electromagnetic spectrum.

In a bid to strengthen Indo-French ties, India has been designated as the guest of honour at the Paris Book Fair in 2020, while France will be the guest country at the New Delhi World Book Fair (NDWBF) in 2022. The announcement was made by the nodal agency - National Book Trust (NBT) - in a statement on Friday. The Livre Paris (Paris Book Fair) will take place from March 20 to 23, 2020.