Gandhi Peace Prize winners announced

The Centre has announced the winners of the Gandhi Peace Prize, which was last conferred to ISRO in 2014. Vivekananda Kendra, Kanyakumari, won the award for 2015 for rural development and education, while for 2016, the award has been jointly given to Akshaya Patra Foundation for providing mid-day meals to children and Sulabh International for its work towards emancipation of manual scavengers. For 2017, the award was given to Ekai Abhiyan Trust for their contribution to education for rural and tribal children, and for 2018 the prize will be given to Yohei Sasakawa, who is a goodwill ambassador of the WHO for leprosy elimination. The award was instituted in 1995 during the commemoration of Mahatma Gandhi’s 125th birth anniversary.

HAL’s LCH completes weapon trials

Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) has completed weapon trials of the Light Combat Helicopter (LCH) and achieved a milestone by carrying out air-to-air missile firing on a moving aerial target. The defence behemoth’s chairman and managing director R. Madhavan claimed that it was the first time in the country that an helicopter had carried out an air-to-air missile engagement. “With this, LCH has completed all weapon integration tests and is ready for operational induction,” he said. LCH also has 20mm turret gun and 70mm rockets as its other weapons, for which the firing trials were held in 2018. “LCH is the only attack helicopter in the world capable of operating at altitudes as high as Siachen Glacier,” he said.

ISRO to launch imaging satellite on Jan 24

Space agency ISRO will launch imaging satellite Microsat-R along with student payload Kalamsat from its spaceport in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, on January 24. “The 46th flight of Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C44) will launch Microsat-R and Kalamsat from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota,” ISRO said in a statement. The four-stage launch vehicle, which has alternating solid and liquid stages with two strap-on configuration, has been identified for the mission and configuration designated as PSLV-DL, the statement said. “PSLV-C44 is the first mission of PSLV-DL and is a new variant of PSLV,” the agency said. The student payload Kalamsat will be the first to use PS4 as an orbital platform.

Oilfield auction deadline deferred again

The Centre has deferred for the second time the deadline for submission of bids in the auction of 25 oil and gas fields that hold resources worth an estimated Rs 1 lakh crore, said upstream regulator Directorate General of Hydrocarbons. The second round of Discovered Small Fields (DSF) auction opened in August, and December 18 was the original deadline for submission of bids. This was deferred by a month to January 18 and now, it has again been deferred without intimating a new deadline. In 2016, the government brought in a new DSF policy wherein ‘idle’ small discovered fields of state-owned ONGC and OIL were taken away from them and auctioned to private players on liberalised terms, including marketing and pricing freedom and lower taxes.

A blueprint for a $5 tn economy by 2025

A working group of the commerce and industry ministry on January 16 came out with a blueprint suggesting a host of long and short-term measures to increase the size of India’s economy to $5 trillion by 2025. According to its report, agriculture and manufacturing sectors can contribute $1 trillion each, while the contribution from the services sector has been pegged at $3 trillion. The group was constituted by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion in the ministry with participation from the government and industry. It was tasked to develop a roadmap towards achieving a $5 trillion economy by 2025. “India’s potential to achieve a $5 trillion GDP by 2024-25 is within the realm of possibility,” the report said.

Govt revamps bravery awards for children

The women and child development ministry has revamped the national awards for children as Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar. In the past, the National Bravery Awards were organised by an NGO called Indian Council for Child Welfare (ICCW). Recently, the ICCW’s financial integrity was questioned by the Delhi High Court during the hearings of a writ petition. In view of this, the government dissociated itself from the ICCW and revamped the scheme. The awards will be given in two categories of Bal Shakti Puraskar to individuals and Bal Kalyan Puraskar for institutions or individuals working for kids. President Ram Nath Kovind will present the awards on January 22.

Tax exemption process for startups eased

The Union government on January 16 eased the procedure for seeking income tax exemption by startups on investments from angel funds and prescribed a 45-day deadline for a decision on such applications. The move comes against the backdrop of various startup founders claiming that they have received notices under Section 56(2) (viib) of the Income Tax Act to pay taxes on angel funds raised by them. Entrepreneurs have raised concerns over these tax notices. The notification comes after Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu raised the matter with the finance ministry. The new procedure says that to seek the exemption, a startup will apply to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion. The application shall be moved by the department to the Central Board of Direct Taxes with necessary documents.

RBI eases ECB policy, lifts sectoral curbs

The RBI on January 16 came out with a new policy for overseas borrowings, allowing all eligible entities to raise foreign funding under the automatic route and removing sectoral curbs. All eligible borrowers can now raise External Commercial Borrowings (ECB) up to $750 million or equivalent per financial year under the automatic route. The “liberalisation” in the new framework ECB and rupee-denominated bonds has been done to further improve the ease of doing business, the RBI said. The list of eligible borrowers has been expanded to include all entities eligible to receive FDI. Additionally, port trusts, SEZ units, SIDBI, EXIM Bank, registered entities engaged in microfinance activities, registered societies, trusts, cooperatives and NGOs can also borrow under the new framework.

Infosys picked to develop tax filing system

The government has announced that IT major Infosys will develop the next-generation income tax filing system for Rs 4,241.97 crore, which will cut down the processing time for returns to one day from 63 days and expedite refunds. The Cabinet gave its “approval to expenditure sanction of Rs 4,241.97 crore for Integrated E-filing and Centralised Processing Centre 2.0 Project of the Income Tax Department”, said Union Minister Piyush Goyal. He said the project is expected to be completed in 18 months and will be launched after three months of testing. The e-filing and Centralised Processing Centre projects have enabled end-to-end automation of all processes within the I-T Department using innovative methods to provide taxpayer services and to promote voluntary compliance.

2018 sixth warmest year since 1901

As many as 1,428 people died due to extreme weather events in India last year, which was also the sixth warmest year since 1901. The average temperature over India during 2018 was “significantly above normal”, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said. The country’s average season mean temperatures were also “above average” with the winter season (January-February, +0.59 degree C) being the fifth warmest since 1901 and the pre-monsoon season (March-May) the seventh warmest, it said. The average mean monthly temperatures were also “warmer than normal” during all the months of the year except December, it said. Meteorologists have pointed out global warming as behind the rise in temperatures.

Cabinet approves funds for 13 new varsities

The Union Cabinet on January 16 granted approval to an expenditure of over Rs 3,600 crore for setting up of 13 new central universities within the next 36 months. The varsities were established under the Central Universities Act, 2009, in Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu. While one university each is to be set up in 11 of these states, J&K will get two new central varsities. “The Cabinet has given its approval for incurring an expenditure of Rs 3,639.32 crore for the 13 central universities for recurring cost and creation of necessary infrastructure for completion of the campuses. The work will be completed within 36 months,” said Union Minister Piyush Goyal.

Amazon, Flipkart seek deadline extension

Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart have sought an extension of the February 1 deadline for complying with the revised FDI norms in e-commerce, stating that they need more time to understand the details of the framework. In December, the Centre had announced new regulations that would bar online marketplaces with foreign investments from selling products of the companies where they hold stakes, and ban exclusive marketing arrangements. Another provision states that the inventory of a vendor will be seen as controlled by a marketplace, if over 25 per cent of the vendor’s purchases are from the marketplace entity, including the latter’s wholesale unit. On January 15, the Internet and Mobile Association of India had also urged the government to defer the implementation.

Facebook to tighten political ad rules

Facebook has said it will tighten rules for political ads in countries like India where elections are scheduled in the first half of the year, building on transparency efforts already underway in the US, Britain and Brazil after a series of scandals. “As we prepare for major elections around the world this year, we are continuing our focus on preventing foreign interference and giving people more information about the ads they see across our platforms,” the social media giant said. In India, the network will launch an Ad Library and enforce authorisations before the polls. Facebook was forced to admit last year that Cambridge Analytica, a political firm working for Donald Trump in 2016, had hijacked the data of millions of its users.

May survives no-confidence vote

British Prime Minister Theresa May won a confidence vote in Parliament on January 16 and then appealed to MPs from across the political divide to come together to try to break the impasse on a Brexit divorce deal. MPs voted 325 to 306 that they had confidence in May’s government, just 24 hours after handing her EU withdrawal deal a crushing defeat. The UK is now in the deepest political crisis in half a century as it grapples with how, or even whether, to exit the European project. May said she believed Parliament had a duty to find a solution that delivered on the 2016 Brexit referendum result. But with MPs deadlocked on the way forward, the UK could face a disorderly “no-deal” Brexit, a delay to Brexit, or even another referendum on membership.

Trump taps Indian-Americans for key posts

US President Donald Trump has nominated three influential Indian-Americans to powerful administration positions. Rita Baranwal was nominated for the post of Assistant Secretary of Energy (Nuclear Energy), Aditya Bamzai for member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board and Bimal Patel as the assistant secretary of Treasury. The nomination of Baranwal, Bamzai and Patel was sent to the Senate on January 16. So far, Trump has nominated or appointed more than three dozen Indian-Americans in key positions. Nikki Haley, the first cabinet ranking Indian-American, and Raj Shah, the first Indian-American deputy Press Secretary, have left the Trump administration.

AI identifies unknown human ancestor

An artificial intelligence system has identified a previously unknown human ancestor that roamed the planet tens of thousands of years ago and left a genomic footprint in Asian individuals, scientists say. By combining deep learning algorithms and statistical methods, researchers from the University of Tartu in Estonia, Institute of Evolutionary Biology and the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Spain found that the extinct species was a hybrid of Neanderthals and Denisovans and cross bred with modern humans in Asia. The finding, published in Nature Communications, would explain that the hybrid found last year in the caves of Denisova - the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father - was not an isolated case, but rather was part of a more general introgression process.

Coffee species threatened with extinction

Climate change and deforestation are putting more than half the world’s wild coffee species at risk of extinction, including the popular commercial coffees Arabica and Robusta, scientists warned. Research published by experts at Britain’s Royal Botanic Gardens found that current conservation measures for wild coffee species are not enough to protect their long-term future. Among coffee species threatened with extinction are some that could be used to breed and develop the coffees of the future, including some that have resistance to disease and that can withstand worsening climatic conditions. Targeted action is urgently needed in specific tropical countries, especially in Africa and forested areas that are being hit hard by climate change, they said.

‘Ideal diet’ for planet’s health revealed

Scientists have unveiled what they say is an “ideal diet” for the health of the planet and its people - including a doubling of consumption of nuts, fruits, vegetables and legumes, and a halving of meat and sugar intake. If the world followed the ‘Planetary Health’ diet, the researchers said, more than 11 million premature deaths could be prevented each year, while greenhouse gas emissions would be cut and more land, water and biodiversity would be preserved. “The food we eat and how we produce it determines the health of people and the planet, and we are currently getting this seriously wrong,” said Tim Lang of the University of London who co-led the research. Feeding a growing population of 10 billion people by 2050 with a healthy, sustainable diet will be impossible without transforming eating habits, improving food production and reducing waste, he said.

Newsmakers

Mountaineer Satyarup Siddhanta has become the world’s youngest person at 35 years and 274 days to scale the tallest mountains and volcanoes in all seven continents. He beat Australian Daniel Bull, who had achieved the feat at the age of 36 years and 157 days.

The Union government on January 16 notified the appointment of Karnataka High Court Chief Justice Dinesh Maheshwari and Delhi High Court Justice Sanjiv Khanna as judges of the Supreme Court.