Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

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Nepal to skip BIMSTEC military drill in India

News

• The Nepal Army has withdrawn from the first BIMSTEC military exercise to be held in India following a political row in the country over the participation in the event, a media report said.

Beyond News

• Prime Minister K.P. Oli asked the national defence force not to participate in the drill, compelling the Nepal Army leadership to rollback its earlier decision to take part in the first-ever military exercise of the regional grouping initiated by India.
• The decision was taken just a day before the Army squad was set to travel to Pune, where the drill will commence, the Kathmandu Post
• The move came after strong criticism from different quarters, including influential leaders of the ruling Nepal Communist Party.
• The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) comprises Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal.

LEMOA already fully operational

News

• The India-U.S. foundational agreement for mutual logistics support, the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA), has been fully operationalised over the past few months, official sources said.

Beyond News

• Earlier this week, India concluded the third foundational agreement, Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA), which is meant for secure encrypted communications.
• The SOP document was shared with the U.S. two months ago.
• India had concluded the LEMOA in August 2016 in a culmination of a decade of negotiations between the two countries.
• The pact gives both countries access to designated military facilities on either side for the purpose of refuelling and replenishment in primarily four areas — port calls, joint exercises, training and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.
• The SOPs include designating the points of contact for the U.S. military to work with, and set up, a common account for payments.
• So far, the three services had individual accounts from which payments were being made during military exercises.
• The biggest beneficiary of the LEMOA is the Indian Navy, which interacts and exercises the most with foreign Navies.
• The Navy has a fuel exchange agreement with the U.S. for fuel transfer on the high seas, which is set to expire in November.
• Now fuel exchange gets subsumed into the LEMOA and does away with the need for a separate agreement, an officer said.
• With COMCASA, India has signed three of the four foundational or enabling agreements with the U.S. meant to improve interoperability between the militaries and allow transfer of high-end military platforms.
• The first one, the General Security Of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), which is for information safety, was signed in 2002.
• COMCASA, which was signed at the 2+2 dialogue, is an India-specific version of the Communication and Information on Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA).
• The last one remaining is the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geo-spatial Cooperation (BECA).

Allow NRIs to manage foreign funds, says SEBI panel

News

• Facing widespread opposition from various sections of the market, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has proposed amending most of the clauses of the contentious circular issued in April that barred Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) from managing overseas funds that invest in India.

Beyond News

• A SEBI panel has suggested that NRIs, along with Overseas Citizens of India (OCI) and Resident Indians (RIs), be allowed to manage foreign funds that invest in India subject to certain holding limits.
• The panel report, which was made public, states that a single NRI, OCI or RI cannot hold more than 25% of the assets under management (AUM) of the foreign portfolio investor and the aggregate holding of such entities has to be below 50% in the foreign portfolio investment (FPI).
• Further, while an NRI, OCI or an RI cannot be in control of the FPI, there would be no restriction on such entities to act as investment managers provided such managers are properly regulated in their home jurisdiction.
• Interestingly, as per the panel report, the Department of Revenue has communicated to SEBI that the principle laid down in Rule (9)3 of the Prevention of Money Laundering (Maintenance of Records) Rules 2005 is for the purpose of customer due diligence and it need not be applied to determine the eligibility of foreign portfolio investors.
• It also added that there is no legal compulsion for SEBI to adopt the definition of beneficial owner (BO) as laid down by PMLA Rules for eligibility criteria.
• This is broadly in line with the thinking of the group that the BO criteria under PMLA may be made applicable only for the purpose of KYC and not as eligibility criteria for FPIs, including those having NRIs/OCIs/Resident Indians (RIs) as their constituents, stated the panel in its report.
• In April, SEBI announced that NRIs/PIOs and RIs cannot manage FPIs. While the regulator gave six months time to foreign portfolio investors to comply with the new framework, the deadline was later extended till December 31.
• The recent past had seen industry bodies peg the potential outflows at $75 billion due to the SEBI diktat though the regulator had brushed aside such concerns.
• Meanwhile, SEBI has given time till September 17 for public comments on the panel recommendations.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

On the brink of extinction

News

• The koala population in Australia’s of New South Wales (NSW) state may face extinction by 2050 if the current rate of tree felling is maintained, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) warned.

Findings

• The WWF said in a new report that since the repeal of the NSW Native Vegetation Act in August 2017, the forest clearing rate has tripled to a total of 20,258 acres in the north of the state, reports Efe news.
• According to the WWF, this may have led to the destruction of the habitat of 247 native species, including the koala, an iconic native Australian marsupial that has been designated as vulnerable to extinction under commonwealth and state law.
• Last year, the WWF warned that the felling of trees reduced by 53 and 26 per cent respectively the koala population in the eastern states of Queensland and NSW.
• The koala, which in Aboriginal language means “no water” – referring to the fact that 90 per cent of its hydration comes from the eucalyptus leaves it eats, is considered a vulnerable species in Queensland, NSW and in the Australian Capital Territory.
• Since European colonization, koalas, which have been living in Australia for 25 million years, have lost their habitats as a result of urban, agricultural and mining development, climate change, and the commercialization of their skins until the 1930s.
• In some areas, koalas have also died due to chlamydia, a bacterium that causes injuries to the genitals and eyes, causing infertility and blindness, slowly consuming them to death.
• The koala, which is particularly sensitive to any change in the environment, spends about 20 hours a day sleeping or resting, and uses the remaining hours to feed on leaves of several species of eucalyptus.

In Bengal, another train stops for elephants

News

• Stopping a train to let elephants take their time to cross a track appears to have become a habit for locomotive pilots of the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR).

Beyond News

• Loco pilot eased the 55468 Down Bamanhat-Siliguri Jn passenger train afternoon after spotting a large herd of elephants approach the track between Nagrakata and Chalsa stations in northern West Bengal.
• Fellow locomotive operators Amar Nath Bhagat and Pawan Kumar had done the same thing with the same train between Gumla and Sivok stations in the same section a fortnight ago.
• NFR’s tracks cut through 29 notified elephant corridors, many of them in the Dooars region of northern West Bengal, where train hits killed at least 30 elephants in five years till December 2017.
• According to a 2017 study by Wildlife Trust of India, Project Elephant and UK-based NGO Elephant Family, the jumbos regularly use 86% of the corridors of northern West Bengal and 66% of those in the Northeast.
• The study said the elephant habitat is about 2,200 sq. km. of the forest area of 3,051 sq. km. in northern West Bengal, straddling Terai, western and eastern Dooars.

Researchers look overseas for radar images of floods

News

• Researchers in Kerala are turning to foreign space agencies to source satellite radar imagery for post-flood analysis and damage assessment as the decommissioning of ISRO’s RISAT-1 last year has left India without an indigenous radar imaging satellite for civilian applications.

Beyond News

• While the University of Kerala has tied up with the Michigan Technological University to map the areas that were flooded last month following torrential rains in the State, the Kerala Agricultural University has partnered with the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University to assess the crop damage.
• The research teams are sourcing radar images from the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency to prepare inundation maps.
• Radar imaging satellites like ESA’s Sentinel and ISRO’s RISAT are particularly useful for monitoring floods and assessing damage because they are capable of penetrating cloud cover and operating day and night and in all weather conditions.
• In 2016, U.S. space agency NASA had reported a ‘debris generating’ event near RISAT-1. In 2017, the satellite was decommissioned and declared non-operational in the annual report of the Department of Space. RISAT- 2, another satellite in the series that was built by Israel Aerospace Industries and launched in 2009, remains in orbit but is reserved for strategic applications.
• Researchers stress the need for ISRO to focus on the development of a successor to RISAT-1. The increasing frequency of climate-change induced events in the country warrants a dedicated indigenous satellite resource, they contend.

Trump wants to stop subsidies to growing economies like India, China

News

• President Donald Trump said he wants to stop the subsidies that growing economies like India and China have been receiving as he wants the U.S., which he considers as a “developing nation,” to grow faster than anybody.

Beyond News

• President also accused the World Trade Organization (WTO) of allowing China to become a “great economic power“.
• Trump also warned he was ready to slap tariffs on virtually all Chinese imports into the United States, threatening duties on another $267 billion of goods on top of $200 billion in imports primed for levies in coming days.
• The moves would sharply escalate Mr. Trump’s trade war with Beijing over his demands for major changes in economic, trade and technology policy. China has threatened retaliation, which could include action against U.S. companies operating there.
• Stock prices slipped after his comments, with the S&P 500 off 0.2%, while China’s off-shore trade yuan currency fell against the dollar.

Mr. Trump has already imposed 25% tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods, mostly industrial machinery and intermediate electronics parts, including semiconductors.

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