ESIC UDC and Steno Recruitment 2019: General Awareness | 12th April 2019

World Bank, United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), and Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) launched new social impact bonds exclusively for women, called Women’s Livelihood Bonds (WLBs), with an initial corpus of Rs 300 crore.

Women’s Livelihood Bonds (WLBs) will enable individual women entrepreneurs in sectors like food processing, agriculture, services, and small units to borrow around Rs 50,000 to Rs 3 lakh at an annual interest rate of around 13% to 14% or less and have a tenure of 5 years.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has been invited to deliver an address at the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Abu Dhabi. This is the first time that a leader of the non-Muslim country has been invited to the OIC conference.

US President Donald Trump signed Space Policy Directive-4 (SPD-4), ordering the Pentagon to establish the Space Force as the 6th branch of the United States military, to go along with the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard, in order to secure and extend American dominance of the space domain.

According to BCG-IBA Report – EASE Reforms for Public Sector Banks, released by Union Minister of Finance & Corporate Affairs, Punjab National Bank (PNB) secured the top spot among all public sector banks in the implementation of ‘Reforms agenda’.

IRCTC launched its own digital payment aggregator called ‘IRCTC iPay’. With iPay, passengers will not need any third-party platforms as it will provide payment options like credit card, debit card, unified payment interface and international card.

The CCEA has approved Rs 2,790 crore interest subvention for extending loans by banks to sugar mills. This is in addition to Rs 1,332 crore already approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) in June 2018.

Thailand and the United States hosted the annual Cobra Gold military exercise, the biggest activity of its type in the Asia-Pacific region with 29 nations taking part as participants or observers. Apart from the 2 countries, 7 countries who participated in the exercise were India, Singapore, Japan, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and South Korea.

Bihar has become the first state to deploy specially-trained dogs to check smuggling of liquor which continues to take place inspite of the total ban imposed in the state for the last 3 years.

Railway Minister Piyush Goyal launched Rail Drishti Dashboard in New Delhi. Mr Goyal stated that the Dashboard has been launched to keep people informed about the work going on in the Railways across the country.

Zimbabwe started to trade its new currency, the RTGS dollar, two days after the central bank announced measures to try and resolve a chronic monetary crisis.

Michael Daniel Higgins is an Irish politician who has served as the 9th President of Ireland since November 2011.

Rwandan franc is the currency of Rwanda.

The Ukai Dam, constructed across the Tapti River, is the second largest reservoir in Gujarat after the Sardar Sarovar.

Tamil Nadu became the first state in the country to get a second Coast Guard district headquarters - Thoothukudi. The first district headquarters is Chennai.