Samia Suluhu Hassan becomes Tanzania’s first woman president

Samia Suluhu Hassan, 61, made history when she was sworn in as Tanzania’s first female president. Hassan’s inauguration comes two days after she announced the death of President John Magufuli.

President Magufuli, a prominent COVID-19 skeptic in Africa whose populist rule often cast his East African country in a harsh international spotlight,  died at the age of 61.

First elected to the presidency in 2015, Magufuli was serving a second five-year term won in 2020 elections that the opposition and some rights groups said were neither free nor fair. 

Magufuli, a populist, had earned the nickname ‘Bulldozer’ for muscling through policies and drew criticism for his intolerance of dissent, which his government denied.

Under Magufuli, Tanzania, one of Africa’s most populous countries with 60 million people, made no efforts to obtain vaccines or promote the use of masks and social distancing to combat the virus. 

After Magufuli selected her as his running mate in 2015, Hassan became Tanzania’s first female vice president. She was the second woman to become vice president in the region since Uganda’s Specioza Naigaga Wandira who was in office from 1994 to 2003.

Hassan will complete Magufuli’s second term in office which had just started after he won elections in October.

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India, France working on third joint space mission

India and France are working on their third joint satellite mission, even as the bilateral space collaboration is entering into multiple domains, including human spaceflight programme.

ISRO and French space agency CNES (Centre National dEtudes Spatiales) have undertaken two joint missions ‘Megha-Tropiques’, which was launched in 2011, and ‘Saral-Altika’ in 2013.

ISRO and CNES have completed the feasibility study to realise the earth observation satellite mission with thermal infrared imager, TRISHNA (Thermal infraRed Imaging Satellite for High resolution Natural resource Assessment) and are working towards finalising an implementing arrangement for the joint development.

The two space agencies have also finalised all interface control documents for accommodating CNES’s ‘ARGOS’ instrument in ISRO’s OCEANSAT-3 satellite. ARGOS instrument has been delivered at Bengaluru for integration with the satellite.

ISRO chairman K.Sivan said India is also working with France on joint experiments and accommodation of scientific instruments in space missions.

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Rajya Sabha passes Insurance (Amendment) Bill, 2021

Rajya Sabha passed Insurance (Amendment) Bill, 2021 to raise the foreign investment limit in the insurance sector to 74 per cent with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman saying while control will go to foreign companies, the majority of directors and key management persons will be resident Indians who will be covered by law of the land.

The announcement regarding increasing the foreign direct investment (FDI) limit to 74 per cent was made by Sitharaman while presenting the Union Budget on February 1. Currently, the permissible FDI limit in life and general insurance stands at 49 per cent, with ownership and management control with Indians.

Giving out reasons for the decision to raise the FDI limit, she said insurance companies are facing liquidity pressure and the higher limit would help meet the growing capital requirement.

Sitharaman said India received FDI worth Rs 26,000 crore in the insurance sector after 2015 when the foreign investment limit was raised to 49 per cent from 24 per cent.

The Bill to hike the FDI limit in insurance, she said, was brought after extensive consultations by sector regulator IRDAI.

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Russia deploys giant space telescope in Lake Baikal

Russian scientists launched one of the world’s biggest underwater space telescopes to peer deep into the universe from the pristine waters of Lake Baikal.

The deep underwater telescope, which has been under construction since 2015, is designed to observe neutrinos, the smallest particles currently known.

Dubbed Baikal-GVD, the telescope was submerged to a depth of 750-1,300 meters, around four kilometres away from the lake’s shore.

Neutrinos are very hard to detect and water is an effective medium for doing so. The floating observatory consists of strings with spherical glass and stainless steel modules attached to them.

Russian scientists say the telescope is the largest neutrino detector in the Northern Hemisphere and Lake Baikal — the largest freshwater lake in the world — is ideal for housing the floating observatory.

The Baikal telescope will rival IceCube, a giant neutrino observatory buried under the Antarctic ice at a US research station at the South Pole.

Lake Baikal

Situated in south-east Siberia, the 3.15-million-ha Lake Baikal is the oldest (25 million years) and deepest (1,700 m) lake in the world. It contains 20 per cent of the world’s total unfrozen freshwater reserve. Known as the ‘Galapagos of Russia’, its age and isolation have produced one of the world’s richest and most unusual freshwater faunas, which is of exceptional value to evolutionary science.

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India, Japan hold review meeting on patent cooperation

The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) and the Japan Patent Office (JPO) held the Fourth Review Meeting under Memorandum of Cooperation on Industrial Property.

Both sides agreed to commence the function of offices acting mutually as competent International Searching Authority (ISA) and International Preliminary Examining Authority (IPEA) under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), from July 1, 2021.

The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) makes it possible to seek patent protection for an invention simultaneously in each of a large number of countries by filing an international patent application. Such an application may be filed by anyone who is a national or resident of a PCT Contracting State. It may generally be filed with the national patent office of the Contracting State of which the applicant is a national or resident or, at the applicant’s option, with the International Bureau of WIPO in Geneva.

During the meeting, both sides reviewed the progress under the Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) on industrial property between India and Japan and the Action Plan between the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks (CGPDTM) of India and the JPO based on the MoC, and confirmed the views to further deepen the cooperative relationship between both the offices for the future cooperation.

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Govt develops Mobile Seva AppStore

The government, while encouraging private players to host apps, is equally keen to develop and strengthen its own mobile app store, the Parliament was informed.

India’s first indigenously developed App Store — Mobile Seva AppStore — hosts more than 965 live apps from various domains and categories of public services, Minister for Electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha.

Prasad informed that India is the largest user of mobile apps, and mentioned that the Digital India programme coupled with encouragement being given to Indian innovators to create apps has become a big movement. Citing India App Market Statistics report 2021, he said that around 5 per cent apps on Android are from Indian Apps developers. 

Accordingly, the Mobile Seva App Store was started which besides hosting government apps is also encouraging private apps to come on board.

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Spain passes law allowing euthanasia

Lawmakers voted to make Spain the seventh country in the world and the fourth in Europe to allow physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia for long-suffering patients of incurable diseases and people with unbearable permanent conditions.

Legislators from Spain’s left-wing governing coalition and other parties supported it, while conservative and far-right lawmakers voted no and vowed to overturn the legislation in the future.

The Bill was the result of a lengthy legislative journey that began three years ago and underwent several rounds of revision in parliamentary committees and in the Senate.

The law is expected to go into effect in mid-June, when Spain’s public health system will need to provide life-ending assistance in justified cases.

Euthanasia — when a doctor directly administers fatal drugs to a patient — is legal in Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland. In some US states, medically assisted suicide — when patients self-administer lethal drugs under medical supervision — is permitted.

Politicians in Portugal have tried to pass a law similar to neighbouring Spain’s, but the country’s Constitutional Court blocked the legislation, arguing that the Bill was imprecise in identifying the circumstances under which life-ending procedures could occur.

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Labour Bureau inks agreement with BECIL for conducting all-India surveys

The Labour Bureau has signed a service level agreement with Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Ltd (BECIL) for providing technical and manpower support for conducting all India surveys, including on migrant workers. 

The Labour Bureau is an attached office of the ministry of labour & employment.

The surveys to be undertaken by the Bureau will be integrated with the technology provided by the  BECIL, which will substantially reduce the time taken for completion of surveys by at least 30-40 per cent. 

The ministry in order to implement the newly introduced category of Fixed Term Employment (FTE) has decided that the manpower engaged through the IT partner for supporting these surveys will be offered Fixed Term Employment. 

The Fixed Term Employment is a historic provision in the recent labour codes which will bestow various benefits on the workers engaged for a fixed term by treating them at par with permanent workers.

This year the Bureau will launch and complete five all India surveys on migrant workers, domestic workers, AQEES (All India Quarterly Establishment-based Employment Survey (AQEES), employment generated by professionals and employment generated in transport sector. These surveys will generate enormous data for devising the right policies for employment and welfare of labour.

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India-US S&T forum launches Artificial Intelligence initiative

The Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF) has launched the US India Artificial Intelligence (USIAI) Initiative to focus on AI cooperation in critical areas that are priorities for both countries.

USIAI will serve as a platform to discuss opportunities, challenges, and barriers for bilateral AI research and development collaboration, enable AI innovation, help share ideas for developing an AI workforce, and recommend modes and mechanisms for catalysing partnerships.

Research in artificial intelligence is being promoted and implemented in India through a network of 25 technology hubs working as a triple helix set up under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS). 

The US-India AI Initiative will provide an opportunity for key stakeholder groups to share experiences, identify new R&D areas and opportunities that would benefit from synergistic activities, discuss the emerging AI landscape, and address the challenges of developing an AI workforce.

The ambitious flagship initiative, USIAI, leverages IUSSTF’s ability to bring together key stakeholders from India and the United States to create synergies that address challenges and opportunities at the interface of science, technology, and society. 

Over the next year, IUSSTF will conduct a series of roundtables and workshops to gather input from different stakeholder communities and prepare White Papers that identify technical, research, infrastructure, and workforce opportunities and challenges, and domain-specific opportunities for R&D in health care, smart cities, materials, agriculture, energy, and manufacturing.

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Haryana passes Bill to recover damages after violent protests

The Haryana Assembly passed a Bill that will allow authorities to recover compensation from violent protesters for any damage to property.

Haryana Home Minister Anil Vij said the Bill was meant to hold accountable those who burn shops and damage other public and private property during protests. 

The Haryana Recovery of Damages to Property during Disturbance to Public Order Bill, 2021 was tabled in the House last week. It was passed after an hour-long discussion on March 18.

A claims tribunal will be set up to assess damage to property and fix liability. The collector can order the attachment of property or bank accounts of those asked by the tribunal to pay compensation. Those affected can move the Punjab and Haryana High Court against the tribunal’s ruling, but only after submitting 20 per cent of the compensation ordered.

Uttar Pradesh has invoked similar provisions to seek damages from alleged rioters who targeted government property during protests in 2019 over amendments to the citizenship law.

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IPS officer Ganapathy takes over as chief of NSG

IPS officer M.A. Ganapathy took over as the new chief of the counter-terrorist force National Security Guard (NSG).

A former Director General (DG) of the Uttarakhand Police, Ganapathy was handed over the traditional baton by Indo-Tibetan Border Police chief S.S. Deswal, who has been heading the force in an additional capacity since October last year.

The orders for appointment of Ganapathy, a 1986-batch IPS officer, as the NSG DG were issued by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) on March 16.

He is set to superannuate from the service in February, 2024, when he attains the age of 60.

Ganapathy was serving as the DG of the Bureau of Civil Aviation (BCAS) under the civil aviation and had earlier served in central deputation as the joint secretary for Naxal management and internal security (in the Union home ministry) and as the Special DG or chief of the Central Industrial Security Force’s aviation security group that guards major civil airports in the country.

The NSG was raised in 1984 as the federal contingency commando force and its primary task includes undertaking specific counter-terrorist, counter-hijack operations and VVIP protection duties. 

Newsmakers

Veteran Kathakali exponent Guru Chemancheri Kunhiraman Nair, whose portrayal of Lord Krishna and Kuchela on stage enthralled the audience, passed away in Kozhikode in Kerala. He was 105. Guru Chemancheri founded Bharatiya Natyakalalayam in 1945, which was the first school of dance in north Kerala and later went on to establish several other dance schools, including the Kathakali Vidyalayam in his native village. Several awards and recognitions came his way over the years including that of the Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi and Kerala Kalamandalam. He was honoured with Padma Shri in 2017.

Ram Swaroop Sharma, BJP MP from Mandi in Himachal Pradesh, was found dead in his official residence in New Delhi. He was 62. Born at Jalpehar village in Mandi district on June 10, 1958, Sharma was a two-time MP. He was elected to the 16th and 17th Lok Sabha from Mandi parliamentary constituency in 2014 and 2019.

BJP leader and former Union minister Dilip Gandhi passed away at the age of 69. He had served as the Minister of State for Shipping in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led central government. The BJP leader, who started his career as a corporator in late 80s, had won the Lok Sabha elections three times since 1999 from Ahmednagar in Maharashtra.

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