Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

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India ‘reviewing’ Pakistan request for opening an air route

News

• India is “reviewing” Pakistan’s request to open an air route from Mumbai to Karachi and northwards for flights towards Europe.

Beyond News

• It has been more than ten days since Pakistan shut its airspace for civilian flights following military tensions.
• It is reliably learnt that following international pressure Pakistan also sought permission to open another east-bound route from Karachi, to enter India near Ahmedabad, via Muscat (for flights towards South East Asia and beyond).
• India, however, rejected this proposal as there was no reciprocal permission for traffic exiting the country in the opposite direction.
• Pakistan says it attempted to open one eastbound and one westbound transiting airway through Pakistani airspace between the Muscat and Mumbai FIRs (Notam A0258/19), but reciprocal connectivity was denied by Mumbai FIR (Notam A0357/19).

Supreme Court warns Haryana on damage to Aravalli range

News

• The Supreme Court cautioned the Haryana government against doing “anything” to harm the ecologically fragile Aravalli range.

Beyond News

• The court had threatened the Haryana government with contempt if it went ahead with the amendments virtually allowing massive scale of construction in the Aravalli Hills.
• The court had said the amendments pull the carpet from under a series orders passed by the Supreme Court over the years to protect the Aravalli and Shivalik ranges from builders and indiscriminate mining.
• The court had pointed out how the once-lush Aravalli region was devastated after years of indiscriminate and illegal mining. The entire Aravalli area is devastated and entire flora and fauna there has gone.
• In October last, the court had expressed shock over 31 “vanished” hills in the Aravallis and had asked Rajasthan to stop illegal mining in 115.34-hectare area.

ED working on initiating legal proceedings against Nirav Modi in U.K.: sources

News:

• The United Kingdom’s Home Secretary has referred India’s request for the extradition of multi-crore Punjab National Bank fraud case fugitive Nirav Modi to a court there for initiating legal proceedings against him.

Beyond News

• After filing charge sheets against Mr. Modi and others, the agencies had got an Interpol Red Notice issued against him last year.
• In response to a diffusion notice seeking his whereabouts, the UK authorities had confirmed his presence there. However, the UK Police has not yet detained him. It seems the court may now initiate legal action against him as and when it takes cognisance of the matter.
• In its first charge sheet, which was filed in May 2018, the ED arraigned Mr. Modi and 23 other accused persons and entities. The agency had by then established alleged diversion of $629.21 million dollars (about ₹4,302 crore) by them. The funds were traced to the United States, Hong Kong, Belgium and Dubai.
• The fugitive businessman’s three companies Solar Exports, Stellar Diamonds and Diamonds R US had allegedly got Letters of Undertaking (LoUs) for ₹6,498 crore fraudulently issued through the PNB’s Brady House branch in Mumbai.
• The funds so obtained by the said three entities were partly used for payments to various overseas companies and also for offsetting earlier LoUs. Payments were made to 17 overseas entities in Hong Kong, Dubai and the United States since 2011 in the guise of export or import.
• The modus operandi involved fraudulent import or export, wherein there were no actual manufacturing activities undertaken in any of the dummy overseas companies. The invoices of export/import were overvalued to a huge extent so as to inflate the balance sheets and procure high credit facilities from banks.

The jewellery exported from India was dismantled, the diamonds/pearls taken out of it and gold/silver were sent for melting. The melted metal was re-exported to Dubai or India and precious stones like diamonds and pearls were separately re-exported to India. The whole process was carried out without any substantial value addition and was only for inflating the turnover of Indian companies,

Relaxation of rules to aid red-flagged Andamans tourism project

News

• The Environment Ministry has amended laws that now allow a proposed tourism project in the Aves island, of the Andaman and Nicobar island (A&N) territory, to come up.

Beyond News

• The project was the only one of three high-profile proposed tourism projects that did not get a clearance from an expert committee on coastal clearance. This was because the proposed Aves island project was located 20 m away from the High Tide line(HTL) and existing rules required such projects to be at least 50 m away.
• The new rules did ease the way for the Aves island project, it was also done to broadly align the changes in coastal zone regulations in the country’s mainland States with the island regions.
• In December, the government had issued a coastal regulation zone notification that largely allows tourism and development projects located near coasts in mainland States to come up closer to the sea. It also issued an Island Zone Protection Notification to allow similar relaxations in the A&N Islands.
• In January, an expert committee of the Union Environment Ministry “deferred” clearance to a ₹100 crore proposal by the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation Limited to develop an island resort, as well as put up “premium tents” and “tree houses,” on the grounds that it did not account for the biodiversity of the islands’ coast.
• After site visits, the committee recommended two of the at Lalaji Bay on Long Island and at Smith Island for island protection zone clearance, with caveats. However, the Aves Island project was still red-flagged primarily because of the 50 m clause. In light of the notification, the committee is likely to re-look the project.
• The Centre has been working on a long-term plan to make several of the A&N islands more conducive to tourism. Last year, the Home Ministry revived an Island Development Agency that would coordinate infrastructure projects to aid tourism in the A&N islands as well as Lakshadweep.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

Pakistan to upgrade group of banned outfits to high risk

News

• Pakistan has decided to upgrade a group of banned outfits, including the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), to the “high risk” category and start monitoring and re-examining their activities to comply with the requirements of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

Beyond News

• The Paris-based global watchdog against financial crimes had expressed dissatisfaction over considering these entities as low to medium risk and said Pakistan did “not demonstrate a proper understanding of the terror financing risks posed by the JeM, Islamic State (IS), Al Qaeda, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation (FIF), Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Haqqani Network, and persons affiliated with the Taliban”.
• All these groups have now been described as “high-risk” entities and would be subject to greater scrutiny by all agencies and institutions of the country, starting from their registration to operations and from their fund collection to bank accounts and issuance of suspicious transactions, information sharing and so on.
• The institutions include the Federal Investigation Agency, Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, State Bank of Pakistan, National CounterTerrorism Authority, Financial Monitoring Unit, among others.
• The institutions would complete this exercise within two weeks so as to present a compliance report to a delegation of the Asia Pacific Joint Group, a regional associate of the FATF, slated to visit Islamabad on March 24.
• The delegation would review Pakistan’s performance on the basis of Islamabad’s fresh exercise and submit its assessment report to the FATF headquarters.
• The FATF would then make a fresh review of Pakistan’s current progress and whether the country should be moved out of the “grey list” it imposed last year or be downgraded to the “black list” having serious financial and economic repercussions in case of serious shortcomings.

NASA captures images of supersonic shockwaves

 News

• NASA has captured unprecedented photos of the interaction of shockwaves from two supersonic aircraft, part of its research into developing planes that can fly faster than sound without thunderous “sonic booms”.

Beyond News

• When an aircraft crosses that threshold around 1,225 km per hour at sea level it produces waves from the pressure it puts on the air around it, which merge to cause the ear-splitting sound.
• In an intricate manoeuvre by pilots at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, two supersonic T-38 jets flew just 30 feet apart below another plane waiting to photograph them with an advanced, high-speed camera.
• The rendezvous at an altitude of around 30,000 feet yielded mesmerising images of the shockwaves emanating from both planes.
• This data is really going to help, advance understanding of how these shocks interact.
• Sonic booms can be a major nuisance, capable of not just startling people on the ground but also causing damage like shattered windows and this has led to strong restrictions on supersonic flight over land in jurisdictions like the United States.

New beetle species’ get names from pop culture

News

• Scientists have discovered 103 beetle species in Indonesia that are new to science, and named one of them after the Star Warscharacter Yoda and three others after characters from French comics series The Adventures of Asterix .

Beyond News

• The Indonesian island of Sulawesi has been long known for its enigmatic fauna, including the deer-pig and the midget buffalo.
• However, small insects inhabiting the tropical forests have remained largely unexplored.
• The researchers reported on finding a total of 103 new species of beetles from the genus Trigonopterus.
• A small greenish, forest-dwelling species was aptly named after the Star Wars character Yoda, while three species were named after Asterix, Obelix and Idefix.
• Naturally, Trigonopterus obelixis larger and more roundish than the other two.

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