Nirav Modi arrested, to appear in UK court

Fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi, the main accused in the $2 billion Punjab National Bank scam case, was arrested on March 20 by Scotland Yard in London. The arrest came days after a London court issued an arrest warrant against him in response to a request by the Enforcement Directorate for his extradition in a money laundering case. “Nirav Deepak Modi was arrested on behalf of Indian authorities on Tuesday in Holborn,” the Metropolitan Police said in a statement. The location indicates that Nirav Modi, wanted in India in connection with the Rs 13,500 crore PNB scam case, was arrested from where he is believed to have been living in a plush apartment in Centre Point in the West End.

Sawant proves majority in Goa Assembly

Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant proved the majority of his BJP-led government in the Assembly, comfortably winning a floor test on March 20. Twenty MLAs voted for the motion of confidence, while 15 opposed it. The special session was convened by Governor Mridula Sinha to conduct the floor test, after Sawant was sworn in as the CM during the wee hours of March 19. Besides 11 BJP MLAs, three each from the Goa Forward Party, MGP and Independents supported Sawant during the head count in the House. All 14 MLAs of Congress and one from NCP stood up against the motion. The change in leadership was necessitated due to the death of Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar on March 17.

Justice Ghose appointed as India’s first Lokpal

Former Supreme Court judge Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose was on March 19 appointed as India’s first Lokpal, the anti-corruption ombudsman, an official communique said. Former Chief Justices Dilip Bhosale, Pradip Kumar Mohanty, Abhilasha Kumari besides sitting Chief Justice of Chhattisgarh High Court Ajay Kumar Tripathi have been appointed as judicial members in the Lokpal. Former Sashastra Seema Bal chief Archana Ramasundaram, former Maharashtra chief secretary Dinesh Kumar Jain, former IRS officer Mahender Singh and former IAS officer Indrajeet Prasad Gautam have been appointed as non-judicial members.

Builders get GST leeway till March 31

The GST Council, headed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, allowed builders an option to choose between old tax rates and the new ones for under-construction residential projects to help resolve input tax credit issues. Builders will get a one-time option to continue paying tax at the old rates (effective rate of 8 per cent or 12 per cent with input tax credit or ITC) on ongoing projects (buildings where construction and actual booking have both started before April 1, 2019, but which will not be completed by March 31, 2019), said revenue secretary A.B. Pandey. The new tax rate of 1 per cent for affordable houses and 5 per cent for others, without ITC, will apply on new projects.

CPSE ETF receives bids worth Rs 6,072 cr

The CPSE Exchange Traded Fund received bids worth Rs 6,072 crore from as many as 16 anchor investors, with the portion getting subscribed nearly six times. The fifth tranche of the CPSE ETF opened for subscription on March 19, wherein the government seeks to raise at least Rs 3,500 crore. The anchor book has been subscribed 5.78 times against the anchor base issue size of Rs 1,050 crore. The portion not exceeding 30 per cent of the maximum amount to be raised shall be available for allocation to anchor investors. The fourth Further Fund Offer will close on March 22, helping the Centre mop up funds towards meeting its disinvestment target of Rs 80,000 crore for the current fiscal year.

Germany initiates EU move against Azhar

Germany has initiated a move at the EU to designate Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist, days after China blocked a bid at the UN to ban him, diplomatic sources said. They said Germany was in touch with EU members to list Azhar as a terrorist, which will result in his travel ban as well as freezing of his assets in the bloc. Germany has floated a proposal to ban Azhar by the EU, but no resolution has been moved yet. Diplomatic sources said all 28 members will have to support the move to ban Azhar as the bloc decides on such issues under the principle of consensus. On March 15, France imposed financial sanctions on Azhar and said it will work with its European partners to put his name on the EU list of persons and entities involved in terrorist acts.

Kartarpur: India, Pak hold technical talks

India and Pakistan on March 19 held a meeting of technical experts on the Kartarpur corridor during which its alignment, coordinates, and other engineering aspects of the proposed crossing points were discussed. An Indian delegation will visit Pakistan to take the discussions further at a meeting on April 2 on the Pakistani side of the Attari border. The meeting comes days after the two countries held talks to finalise the modalities for the corridor linking Gurudwara Darbar Sahib in the Pakistani town of Kartarpur with the Gurdaspur district in Punjab. The technical meeting at the level of experts, including engineers and surveyors, was held at “proposed zero points” in the follow up to the decision reached on the March 14 meeting.

WHO mulls registry of gene editing research

It would be irresponsible for any scientist to conduct human gene-editing studies in people, and a central registry of research plans should be set up to ensure transparency, WHO said on March 19. After a meeting in Geneva, the WHO panel of gene editing experts - which was established in December after a Chinese scientist said he had edited the genes of twin babies - said it had agreed a framework for setting future standards. It said a central registry of all human genome editing research was needed “in order to create an open and transparent database of ongoing work”, and asked the WHO to set up such a registry. “The committee will develop essential tools and guidance for all those working on this new technology to ensure maximum benefit and minimal risk to human health,” said WHO’s chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan.

Exim Bank extends credit line to Maldives

The Exim Bank has extended a $800 million line of credit (LoC) to the Maldives for financing developmental projects. Projects covered under the LoC include various infrastructure development projects, the bank said in a statement. With this agreement, the Exim Bank has so far extended three LoCs to the Maldives, taking the total value of such instruments to $880 million. It has now in place 245 LoCs, covering 63 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the CIS, with credit commitments of around $24.24 billion, available for financing exports from India. The agreement was exchanged during the recent visit of Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj.

NASA finds evidence of water on Bennu

Scientists have discovered evidence of abundant water-bearing minerals on the surface of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu. Using early spectral data from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft orbiting the asteroid, the team identified infrared properties similar to those in a type of meteorite called carbonaceous chondrites. “Scientists are interested in the composition of Bennu because similar objects may have seeded the Earth with water and organic materials. OSIRIS-REx data confirm previous ground-based observations pointing to aqueously altered, hydrated minerals on the surface of the asteroid,” said Victoria Hamilton, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

NASA finds pulsar racing at 4 mn km/h

NASA has discovered a pulsar hurtling through space at nearly 4 million km an hour - so fast that it could travel the distance between Earth and the moon in just six minutes. Pulsars are superdense, rapidly spinning neutron stars left behind when a massive star explodes. This one, dubbed PSR J0002+6216 (J0002 for short), sports a radio-emitting tail pointing directly towards the expanding debris of a recent supernova explosion, NASA said. Pulsar J0002 was discovered in 2017 by a citizen-science project called Einstein@Home, which uses time on the computers of volunteers to process Fermi gamma-ray data.

A pan-Arab body for space programme

Eleven Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Morocco, signed on to the first regional team to cooperate on a space programme. The pan-Arab team’s first project is a satellite that Arab scientists will work on from the UAE. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashed, the UAE’s vice-president and prime minister, vowed in 2017 to send four Emirati astronauts to the International Space Station by 2022. The UAE announced last month that its first astronaut will blast off on a mission on September 25. The oil-rich Gulf state has two astronauts in training as it looks to get a space programme aimed at exploring Mars off the ground. The first Arab in outer space was Saudi Arabia's Sultan bin Salman Al-Saud, who flew on a US shuttle mission in 1985.

Newsmakers

Parliament Speaker Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was sworn in as Kazakhstan’s interim president on March 20, a day after longtime leader Nursultan Nazarbayev abruptly resigned. Nazarbayev surprised many by announcing in a televised address that he would step down after nearly 30 years in office that has included the whole of Kazakhstan’s time as an independent nation.

The Abel Prize in mathematics was awarded to Karen Uhlenbeck of the US for her work on partial differential equations, the first woman to win the award. Uhlenbeck, 76, is a visiting senior research scholar at Princeton University, as well as visiting associate at the Institute for Advanced Study, both in the US.