Sri Lanka declares emergency from midnight

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena will enforce a nationwide emergency from midnight on April 22 following Easter Sunday suicide bomb blasts at churches and luxury hotels that killed 290 people and wounded more than 500. “The government has decided to gazette the clauses related to prevention of terrorism to emergency regulation and gazette it by midnight,” his office said. A local radical Muslim group - National Tawheed Jamath - is suspected of plotting the blasts, Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne said, adding that all suicide bombers involved in the blasts are believed to be Sri Lankans. He said the chief of National Intelligence had warned the police regarding the probable attacks before April 11.

Jan Dhan deposits set to hit Rs 1 tn mark

Total deposits in bank accounts opened under the Jan Dhan Yojana is set to cross Rs 1 lakh crore soon. The total balance in Jan Dhan accounts was Rs 97,665.66 crore as on April 3, as per government data. The total number of Jan Dhan accounts has crossed 35.39 crore. More than 27.89 crore account holders have been issued RuPay debit cards. The yojana was launched on August 28, 2014 with an aim to provide universal access to banking facilities to all households. Enthused by the success of the scheme, the NDA government enhanced the accident insurance cover to Rs 2 lakh from Rs 1 lakh for new accounts opened after August 28, 2018. The overdraft limit was also doubled to Rs 10,000. The government also shifted the focus on accounts from “every household” to “every unbanked adult”.

India, China review post-Wuhan progress

Foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale held talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing on April 22 and reviewed the progress of bilateral ties after the Wuhan summit, emphasising that both countries should be sensitive to each other’s concerns. Gokhale’s visit is taking place amid renewed optimism that the vexed issue of listing of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN, which has been stalled by China, is headed for a resolution in the coming weeks. Gokhale said both sides were making efforts to implement the understandings reached at last year’s informal summit in Wuhan between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping. One of the issues that was expected to figure during this round of talks was China’s continued attempts to block efforts to list JeM chief Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN. 

Civil Services Day not observed due to polls

There were no celebrations on the occasion of Civil Services Day due to the ongoing polls. The day is celebrated on April 21 every year when bureaucrats rededicate themselves to public service, and awards for excellence are conferred. “Civil Services Day is not being observed due to the polls. Its date will be decided once the new government takes over,” said V. Srinivas, additional secretary, Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances. He said the government may consider clubbing this year’s celebrations with next year’s programme. Civil servants took to social media to greet their fraternity. “It was on this day that Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel addressed the first batch of civil servants in independent India at Metcalf House, where he referred to them as the ‘steel frame of India’,” the central IAS association said.

Arab League pledges $100 mn to Palestine

The Arab League has pledged to pay $100 million a month to the Palestinian Authority (PA) to plug the gap left when Israel blocked tax transfers earlier in the year. Israel collects taxes on behalf of the PA, but withheld $138 million in transfers in February over Palestinian payments to political prisoners jailed for attacks against Israelis. The Arab League’s move comes as the Trump administration prepares to unveil a much-touted ‘deal of the century’ for peace between the Palestinians and Israel. The Palestinian leadership, which has boycotted Washington over a series of moves including recognising the bitterly disputed city of Jerusalem as capital of Israel, says it can no longer trust the US as a broker. The Arab League said the deal will not succeed in achieving long-lasting peace in West Asia.

Job creation trebles to 8.61 lakh in February

Net employment generation in the formal sector almost trebled to 8.61 lakh in February compared to 2.87 lakh in the same month of last year, according to the latest EPFO payroll data. The retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation has been releasing payroll data from April 2018, covering the period starting September 2017. According to the latest data, the highest job creation was recorded in January 2019 at 8.94 lakh against the provisional estimate of 8.96 lakh released last month. The data showed that 80.86 lakh new jobs were created in the 18 months from September 2017 to February 2019. However, the EPFO has revised downward the number of net subscribers added or new jobs created from September 2017 to January 2019 to 72.24 lakh from 76.48 lakh released last month.

TCS modernises 1.5 lakh post offices

India’s largest IT services company, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), said it has deployed an integrated solution for India Post that has helped modernise a network of more than 1.5 lakh post offices in the country. The partnership was aimed at equipping India Post with modern technologies and systems to enable it to offer more services to customers. “At the heart of this transformation is the Core System Integration (CSI) programme designed and implemented by TCS. This involved deploying an integrated ERP solution that caters to mail operations, finance and accounting, and HR functions, and connects its vast network of more than 1.5 lakh post offices, making this the largest distributed e-postal network in the world,” TCS said.

Trump set to end Iran sanctions waivers

The Trump administration is poised to tell five countries - India, China, Japan, South Korea and Turkey - that they will no longer be exempt from US sanctions if they continue to import oil from Iran, officials said. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo plans to announce on April 22 that the administration will not renew sanctions waivers for the five countries when they expire on May 2. It was not immediately clear if any of the five nations would be given additional time to wind down their purchases or if they would be subject to US sanctions on May 3 if they do not immediately halt imports of Iranian oil. The move is aimed at ramping up pressure on Iran by strangling the revenue it gets from oil exports.

Comedian Zelenskiy set to be Ukrainian prez

Exit polls in Ukraine showed that a comedian with no political experience had easily won enough votes to become the next president of a country at war. The apparent landslide victory of Volodymyr Zelenskiy, 41, is a bitter blow for incumbent Petro Poroshenko, who tried to rally Ukrainians around the flag by casting himself as a bulwark against Russian aggression and a champion of Ukrainian identity. Two exit polls showed Zelenskiy had won 73 per cent of the vote with Poroshenko getting just 25 per cent. Zelenskiy, who plays a fictitious president in popular TV series Servant of the People, is now poised to take over the leadership of a country on the frontline of the West’s standoff with Russia following Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and support for a pro-Russian insurgency in eastern Ukraine.