Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

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EC to launch app to help voters share malpractice proof

News

• The Election Commission will launch a multi-lingual mobile application empowering people across the country to share evidence of malpractice by political parties, their candidates and activists ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, directly with the electoral body.

Beyond News

• Chief Election Commissioner O.P. Rawat told that such an application, called Model Code of Conduct Violation Reporting App, was made available for the first time in Bengaluru in the run-up to the recently concluded Karnataka Assembly polls.
• The application registered a total of 780 downloads and complaints were received from the users. Accordingly, action was taken by the officials concerned in all the cases. Through this mechanism, they intend to encourage larger public participation in checking corrupt practices and ensuring a free and fair election process.
• The application, part of the steps taken by the Commission to prevent abuse of money and muscle power, allows for sharing of photos and short audio and video clips from the spot itself.
• Geo-location of the reported incidents will also get recorded and the officials concerned will immediately receive the alerts. This will ensure an effective response.
• As part of the implementation, the application will also be made operational in the coming Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.
• The growing abuse of social media bots for influencing public opinion has emerged as another major challenge for the Election Commission and plans are on to devise a counter mechanism.
• In order to address such challenges in the cyber world, an entire floor at the EC headquarters has been dedicated to the development of an independent and advanced computer operations infrastructure having full access control. A social media cell is already functional.
• These bots are automated accounts often active on popular social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, which use Artificial Intelligence to trigger and influence political debates with an objective to shape public opinion.
• Experts have found evidence that bots are also programmed for spreading fake news on the Internet.

Habitat loss may have triggered Nipah outbreak

News

• According to a report by the World Health Organization, there is “strong evidence” that the emergence of bat-related viral infections can be attributed to the loss of the animal’s natural habitats.

Beyond News

• As the flying fox [fruit bat] habitat is destroyed by human activity, the bats get stressed and hungry, their immune system gets weaker, their virus load goes up and a lot of virus spills out in their urine and saliva,the report adds.
• There are studies on Hendra and Nipah viruses that hint at reproductive and nutritional stress [fewer food resources] as potential role players in virus spillover.
• In the case of the Hendra virus the Nipah equivalent in Australia  scientists found that when fruit bats are stressed (through habitat fragmentation, habitat reduction and physiological stress), the percentage of bats infected with the virus increases drastically, increasing the likelihood of passing it to humans through horses.
• Nutritional stress through the loss of food resources a direct consequence of habitat loss and climate change  brings bats closer to urban areas.
• Forest fragmentation and hunting bats for food also bring them closer to humans and is often an important cause of disease transmission.
• Conservationists worry that the recent Nipah outbreak could cause a knee-jerk reaction of calls for bat culling. Culling bat populations may seem like an easy solution and has been tried in Australia  but studies warn that instead of reducing the outbreak of such zoonotic diseases, it could cause even more damage, chiefly ecological.
• That’s because about a quarter of the more than 1,300 bat species seen worldwide feed on fruit and nectar and are crucial pollinators (of fruit trees, including mango, guava and banana), helping maintain genetic diversity in agricultural systems. They are also important seed dispersers; other bat species help bring rodent and insect numbers under control.

China wants Pakistan to relocate Hafiz Saeed to a West Asian country

News

• China has asked Pakistan to explore ways of relocating Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed to a West Asian country in response to mounting international pressure to act against him for his links with terror groups.

Beyond News

• Chinese President suggested this course of action allowing Saeed to live a quiet life in a West Asian country  to Pakistan Prime Minister on the sidelines of the Boao Forum in China last month.
• Abbasi has consulted the government’s legal team, which is yet to come up with a solution. The issue is expected to be referred to the next government as the Prime Minister will leave office on May 31 after completion of his tenure. The general election will be held at July-end.
• The JuD has been accusing the government of taking action against Saeed at the instance of the U.S. and India.
• Saeed, who has been declared a global terrorist by the United Nations, the U.S. and India, carries a reward of $5 million on his head for his alleged involvement in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
• Pakistani authorities last year put him under house arrest for almost nine months but were forced to release him on the orders of the Lahore High Court.
• Earlier this year, the JuD was put on the list of banned organisations just before the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) meeting in Paris.
• Following the meeting, it was decided to put Pakistan on the grey list for its failure to prevent terror financing.
• A Presidential Ordinance was issued to freeze all assets of Hafiz Saeed, linked to the JuD and its charity arm, Falah-i-Insaaniyat Foundation.
• Interestingly, the JuD was not put in Schedule 1 of the Anti Terrorism Act under which the leaders of a banned organisation must be arrested.
• An Interior Ministry source said a formal notification of its placement on Schedule I was held back.
• Another clue that the JuD and the FIF were not banned as claimed by the government is the list of banned organisations by the National Counter Terrorism Authority.
• The JuD has a network of over 150 ambulances, six hospitals, 60 schools and scores of madrassas across Punjab and the Pakistan-administered Kashmir and northern areas.
• In January this year, the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan issued a circular to all companies barring them from donating money to those entities put on the UNSC sanctioned list. The government also tabled a Bill to formalise the ban on the JuD but it has not been passed so far.

US disinvites China from multinational military exercise

News

• The Pentagon said it has withdrawn an invitation for China to participate in a multinational naval exercise the U.S. is hosting this summer, a sign of fresh tension between Pacific powers.

Beyond News

• The move comes amid high-stakes maneuvering over North Korea’s nuclear programme, which is scheduled to be the subject of a meeting in June between President Donald Trump and the North’s leader, Kim Jong Un.
• Washington also is engaged in a sprawling trade dispute with China over U.S. complaints about market access and technology policy.
• The U.S. had included China the past two years in the large-scale exercise known as Rim of the Pacific, or RimPac, as part of an effort during the Obama administration to stabilize military relations with Beijing, which have been disrupted many times by China’s objections to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.
• A Pentagon statement said the decision to disinvite the Chinese navy was “an initial response” to what it called China’s militarization of the South China Sea.
• China’s Defense Ministry had said in January that it was consulting with the U.S. over an invitation to take part in RimPac.
• The Pentagon cited what it called strong evidence that China has deployed anti-ship missiles, surface-to-air missile systems and electronic jammers to contested areas in the Spratly Island region of the South China Sea. It called on China to remove these systems.
• The Pentagon also cited its objections to China’s recent landing of bomber aircraft at Woody Island.
• China maintains that the South China Sea is its sovereign territory.

India moves WTO over U.S. steel tariffs

News

• India has launched a complaint against the United States to challenge U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminium, a filing published by the World Trade Organization showed.

Beyond News

• Indian officials told Reuters last month that their government would open a WTO dispute if the country’s firms were not granted an exemption.
• Trump imposed the tariffs in March, levying 25 % on steel imports and 10 % on aluminium. He said they were justified by national security concerns and therefore outside the WTO’s remit.
• India, China, Russia, Japan, Turkey and the European Union have all dismissed that claim, regarding the U.S. tariffs as ”safeguards” under the WTO rules, entitling them to a combined $3.5 billion in annual compensation.
• India’s retaliation claim seeks to recoup a cost of $31 million levied on its aluminium exports and $134 million on steel, and it has said it could target U.S. exports of soya oil, palmolein and cashew nuts in its retaliation.
• Its latest legal challenge seeks to force the U.S. to scrap the tariffs entirely. It follows a similar move last month by China, which Washington called “completely baseless”.
• Under WTO rules, the U.S. has 60 days to settle the complaint, after which India could ask the WTO to set up an expert panel to adjudicate.
• In its complaint, India listed a string of ways the U.S. tariffs violated the WTO rules and unfairly damaged India’s interests.
• It said they broke the WTO’s safeguards agreement and the U.S.was trying to use its tariffs to get other countries to agree to “voluntary export restraints”.
• The U.S. had also exceeded the maximum import tariff allowed by the WTO and the tariffs were not applied uniformly to steel and aluminium imports from all suppliers, breaking a core principle of the WTO rulebook.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

Trade in tokay geckos continues in Bengal

News

• Even as the International Day for Biological Diversity was celebrated , the Border Security Force (BSF) seized three tokay geckos from West Bengal’s Malda and Murshidabad districts.

Tokay gecko

• The tokay gecko or gekko gecko, a lizard species with orange-spotted blue-grey skin, is protected under the Schedule III of the Indian Wildlife Protection Act.
• Data made available by the SSB says more than 100 tokay geckos were seized between 2014 and 2017 across its different frontiers.
• Smugglers raised false hype about the medicinal value of these wildlife species to create a demand for them both within and outside India.

Beyond News

• The smugglers were carrying the geckos in wire mesh cages concealed in nylon carrybags when they were intercepted by a BSF patrol party and handed over to the Divisional Forest Officer.
• While six tokay geckos have been seized by the South Bengal Frontier of the BSF in 2018, the Siliguri Frontier of the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) in north Bengal seized 24 tokay geckos between November 2017 and April 2018.
• Agni Mitra, Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, a statutory government body, said that it was because of the spurt in smuggling that tokay geckos were brought under the Schedule III.

Geckos above 13 cm in length and over 350 grams in weight fetch exorbitantly high prices in China and parts of South Asia.

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