CURRENT AFFAIRS 8 OCTOBER 2019

CURRENT AFFAIRS 

8 OCTOBER 2019

BY SUMIT 

Happy Dussehra 2019

Happy Dussehra 2019

1.AUTOMATIC EXCHANGE OF INFORMATION (AEOI)(GS-2,3)

CONTEXT: India gets first tranche of Swiss account details under automatic exchange framework

• India has received first tranche of details about financial accounts of its residents in Swiss banks under a new automatic exchange of information framework between the two countries, marking a significant milestone in the fight against black money suspected to be stashed abroad.
• India figures among 75 countries with which Switzerland’s Federal Tax Administration (FTA) has exchanged information on financial accounts within the framework of global standards on AEOI, an FTA spokesperson told PTI.
• This is the first time that India has received details from Switzerland under the AEOI framework, which provides for exchange of information on financial accounts that currently active as well as those accounts that were closed during 2018.

AUTOMATIC EXCHANGE OF INFORMATION (AEOI):

What does this mean for India, and how will the exchange of information be governed?

• This is not a new measure. In 2016, India and Switzerland had signed an information-sharing deal on bank accounts, which was to come in effect from September 2019.
• The step is likely to shed more light on the wealth Indians have stashed away in Swiss bank accounts, for so long governed by strict local rules of secrecy.
• In 2018, data from Zurich-based Swiss National Bank (SNB) had shown that after declining for three years, money parked by Indians in Swiss Banks rose 50 per cent to CHF (Swiss Franc) 1.02 billion (Rs 7,000 crore) in 2017 over the previous year.

What is AEOI?

• Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) is systematic and periodic transmission of “bulk” taxpayer information by the source country to the residence country, which is possible under most of the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreements (DTAAs) and Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters (MAC).
• It aims to reduce global tax evasion. 
• It is to be carried out under Common Reporting Standard (CRS) of OECD.
• AEOI is the exchange of information between countries without having to request it.

Need for AEOI:

• Tax payers operate cross border whereas tax administration is limited to national borders. This has helped tax evasion by shifting money to other countries by citizens. Both tax evasion and tax avoidance have escalated; facilitated by quick transfer of income from one country to another.
• Vast amounts of money are kept offshore and go untaxed to the extent that taxpayers fail to comply with tax obligations in their home jurisdictions.
• Tackling this cross national transfer of money to avoid and evade taxes indicate that national efforts are not enough to fight black money. Hence there is the need for tax cooperation and tax information exchanges between countries.

Significance and benefits of AEOI:

• Enables the discovery of formerly undetected tax evasion.  
• Enable governments to recover tax revenue lost to non-compliant taxpayers, and will further strengthen international efforts to increase transparency, cooperation, and accountability among financial institutions and tax administrations.
• Generate secondary benefits by increasing voluntary disclosures of concealed assets and by encouraging taxpayers to report all relevant information.

2.Status quo(GS-1,3)

CONTEXT: Supreme Court orders status quo in Aarey case till Oct 21; Maharashtra assures no trees will be felled

• The Supreme Court on Monday recorded an assurance given by the State of Maharashtra that no more trees will be felled in the Aarey forest for a Metro car shed till the next date of court hearing on October 21.
• A Special Bench of Justices Arun Mishra and Ashok Bhushan, convened urgently and exclusively to hear the case after the apex court took suo motu cognisance of a letter written by law student Rishav Ranjan to the Chief Justice of India about the cutting of over 2600 trees in the Aarey, ordered status quo.
• The Bench also recorded the submission made by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, for Maharashtra, that the detained protestors have already been released, and if any are left to be freed, they would be so immediately on the furnishing of personal bond.

Status quo :

• Status quo is a Latin phrase meaning the existing state of affairs, particularly with regard to social or political issues.In the sociological sense, it generally applies to maintain or change existing social structure and values.With regard to policy debate, the status quo refers to how conditions are at the time and how the affirmative team can solve these conditions for example "The countries are now trying to maintain a status quo with regards to their nuclear arsenal which will help them if the situation gets any worse."
• It is the nominative form of the prepositional Latin phrase "in statu quo" – literally "in the state in which", which itself is a shortening of the original phrase in statu quo res erant ante bellum, meaning "in the state in which things were before the war". To maintain the status quo is to keep the things the way they presently are. The related phrase status quo ante, literally "the state in which before",means "the state of affairs that existed previously

VIDEO:Aarey Protest: What Has Happened So Far?....BY INDIA TODAY..

3.Reang or Bru Tribes(GS-1,3)

CONTEXT:Mizoram Bru refugees stall another repatriation attempt in north Tripura

• Mizoram Bru refugees housed in makeshift camps in north Tripura stalled another repatriation initiative on Monday. Hundreds of women inmates dressed in black fatigues and carrying black flags staged noisy protests around the vehicles sent by Mizoram government to take back the refugees.
• Authorities managed to send only 46 families under a rehabilitation package sponsored by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) after the current repatriation initiative launched on October 3. Over 30,000 Bru, also known as Reang, refugees are stranded in six camps in Kanchanpur subdivision of north Tripura since they fled ethnic strife in Mizoram in September 1997.

Reang or Bru Tribes:

• Riang or Bru  are one of the 21 scheduled tribes of the Indian state of Tripura.
• The Bru are the second most populous tribe of Tripura after the Tripuris.
• The correct nomenclature for this ethnic group is actually Bru although the name Reang was accidentally incorporated by the Indian government during a census count.
• The Bru can be found all over the Tripura state in India.
• However, they may also be found in Mizoram, Assam, Manipur and Bangladesh.

Culture and religion

• The marriage system is similar to other Tripuri tribes of Tripura.
• There is no dowry system.
• Dance is an integral part of Reang life.
• The Hojagiri folk dance of Riang sub tribe is rather well known all over the world.
• ‘Buisu’, not ‘bihu’ is the most popular festival of reang tribes.
• The majority of the Reang belong to the Vaishnav school of Hinduism and claim Kshatriya status.
• They are polytheists and believe in multiple Gods and Goddesses.

Language

• They speak the Reang dialect of Kokborok language which is of Tibeto-Burmese origin and is locally referred to as Kau Bru.

• Why in news? More than 30,000 people belonging to the Bru community, who fled from Mizoram to Tripura in 1997 in the wake of inter-community violence, are set to be repatriated to Mizoram
• LATEST:Mizoram Bru refugees stall another repatriation attempt in north Tripura

4.Trio win Nobel Medicine Prize for work on cells, oxygen(GS-3)

2019 Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine: Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe, Gregg L. Semenza and William G Kaelin Jr

(BY RSTV)

• US researchers William Kaelin and Gregg Semenza and Britain’s Peter Ratcliffe on Monday shared the Nobel Medicine Prize for discoveries on how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability, the Nobel Assembly said.
• “They established the basis for our understanding of how oxygen levels affect cellular metabolism and physiological function,” the jury said.
• Their research has “paved the way for promising new strategies to fight anaemia, cancer and many other diseases.”
• The jury said the trio had identified molecular machinery that regulates the activity of genes in response to varying levels of oxygen, which is central to a large number of diseases.
• “Intense ongoing efforts in academic laboratories and pharmaceutical companies are now focused on developing drugs that can interfere with different disease states by either activating or blocking, the oxygen-sensing machinery,” the jury said.
• Kaelin works at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the US, while Semenza is the director of the Vascular Research Program at the John Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering.
• Ratcliffe is the director of clinical research at the Francis Crick Institute in London, and director of the Target Discovery Institute in Oxford.
• The three will share the Nobel prize sum of nine million Swedish kronor (about USD 914,000).
• They will receive their prize from King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist Alfred Nobel who created the prizes in his last will and testament.
• Last year, the honour went to immunologists James Allison of the US and Tasuku Honjo of Japan, for figuring out how to release the immune system’s brakes to allow it to attack cancer cells more efficiently.
• The winners of this year’s Physics Prize will be revealed on Tuesday, followed by the Chemistry Prize on Wednesday.
• The Literature Prize will be announced on Thursday, with two laureates to be crowned after a sexual harassment scandal forced the Swedish Academy to postpone the 2018 award, for the first time in 70 years
• The Peace Prize will follow on Friday, with bookies predicting a win for Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg on betting sites such as Ladbrokes.
• The Economics Prize will wrap up the Nobel prize season on Monday, October 14.

5.Faceless e-assessment scheme for taxpayers launched

(GS-3)

• Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday inaugurated the Income Tax Department’s National E-assessment Centre (NeAC), which will reduce face-to-face interaction between taxpayers and tax officials. The setting up of NeAC is a step for better taxpayer service, reduction of taxpayer grievances in line with the Prime Minister’s vision of ‘Digital India’ and promotion of ease of doing business, the Finance Ministry said in a statement. It added that under the new system, taxpayers will receive notices on their registered e-mails as well as on registered accounts on the official web portal. They will also receive real-time alerts by way of SMS on their registered mobile number, specifying the issues for which their cases have been selected for scrutiny

• Dubbed as a major initiative in the direction of taxation reform, the Income-Tax Department on Monday launched a faceless e-assessment scheme to eliminate interface between an assessing officer and a taxpayer.
• To begin with, 58,322 income tax cases have been selected under the National e-Assessment Center (NeAC), officially launched by Revenue Secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey here.
• The scheme was to be launched by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, but due to her official exigencies, including meetings with the Prime Minister, she could not formally launch the initiative.
• He said the initiative, aimed at improving taxpayer’s ease and convenience, has been achieved in record time.
• The revenue department said the scheme will bring in a “paradigm shift” in taxation by eliminating human interface in the income tax assessment system.
• “This will improve taxpayer’s ease and convenience,” it said.
• The National e-Assessment Center (NeAC) will facilitate the faceless e-assessment scheme across the country and benefit taxpayers, it added.
• Ease of compliance for taxpayers, transparency and efficiency, functional specialisation, improvement in the quality of assessment, risk-based and focussed approach, better monitoring and expeditious disposal of cases are some of the salient features of the scheme.
• A total of 2,686 officials of the I-T department have been deputed for implementation of the scheme.
• Later talking to reporters, Pandey said, “Anyone whose case is selected for scrutiny will be able to file all the documents online. Now the officer who is going to assess the case will also be selected randomly,” he said and added that the number of cases that are selected for scrutiny is based on certain criteria, including cases where there are serious discrepancies
• To a question, if the government will be providing relaxation in personal income tax, the revenue secretary said: “I have no idea”.
• In her July Budget speech, Sitharaman had announced the faceless assessment scheme.
• The existing system of scrutiny assessments in the Income-tax Department involves a high level of personal interaction between the taxpayer and the Department, which leads to “certain undesirable practices on the part of tax officials”, she had noted.
• To eliminate such instances, she had said the scheme of faceless assessment in electronic mode involving no human interface will be launched in a phased manner.
• The setting up of National e-Assessment Centre (NeAC) is a “momentous step” towards the larger objectives of better taxpayer service, reduction of taxpayer grievances in line with Prime Minister’s vision of ‘Digital India’ and promotion of ease of doing business, the finance ministry said.

6.Govt launches Ganga Aamantran Abhiyan, a month long exploratory open water rafting expedition(GS-2,3)

• Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat yesterday launched a unique initiative called 'Ganga Amantran' to connect with the stakeholders of the river. It is a pioneering exploratory open- water rafting and kayaking expedition on the Ganga river to begin on coming Thursday and will continue till 11th of next month.
• The expedition will start at Devaprayag and culminate at Ganga Sagar covering the entire stratch of over 25,000 kilometres of the River. This is the first ever effort by National Mission for Clean Ganga to raft across the entire stretch of the river and also the longest ever social campaign undertaken through an adventure sporting activityy to spread the message of River Rejuvenation and Water Conservation on a massive scale.  

7.Indian Air Force to mark 87th anniversary today(GS-3)

Air Force Day is being celebrated today, marking 87th anniversary of Indian Air Force. IAF is the fourth largest air force in the world after the US, China and Russia. The IAF has over 60 airbases all over India. The Hindon Air Force Station of the Indian Air Force is the largest in Asia and 8th largest in the world. Its motto 'Nabha Sparsham Deeptham' meaning 'Touch the sky with glory' is taken from the eleventh chapter of the Bhagavad Gita. During its 'Raahat' mission in Uttarakhand flash floods. IAF made a world record in aviation by rescuing almost 20,000 civilians.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a tweet today, on Air Force Day, a proud nation expresses gratitude to our air warriors and their families. He further said, the Indian Air Force continues to serve India with utmost dedication and excellence.

8.WTO to host first World Cotton Day celebrations in Geneva(GS-3)

World Trade Organisation, WTO will host the first World Cotton Day (WCD) celebrations in Geneva today. This event stems from the application by the Cotton-4 countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali) to the United Nations General Assembly for its official recognition of a World Cotton Day, reflecting the importance of cotton as a global commodity.

Union Textiles Minister Smriti Irani is representing India in the five-day event of World Cotton Day being observed at Geneva beginning today. The plenary session will be attended by heads of states, heads of international organisations and executives from the private sector.

World Cotton Day will celebrate the many advantages of cotton, from its qualities as a natural fibre, to the benefits people obtain from its production, transformation, trade and consumption. World Cotton Day will also serve to shed light on the challenges faced by cotton economies around the world because cotton is important to least developed, developing and developed economies worldwide.

The World Cotton Day launch will give more than 30 countries exposure to producers, processors and businesses and more than 400 participants will be celebrating cotton in Geneva with thousand more around the world.

A cotton exhibition is also being held where TEXPROCIL, Handloom Export Promotion Council (HEPC), Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) and the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) will be setting up their stalls.

A sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi made out of cotton will be displayed to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of the Father of the Nation. The Cotton Textiles Export Promotion Council (TEXPROCIL) will be displaying India’s high quality cotton textiles at the exhibition.

At the exhibition HEPC will be displaying hand woven products from prominent clusters of India and will also have a live demonstration of the charkha by Pitta Ramulu, National Awardee weaver. The charkha will be donated to the WTO after the event.

The India pavilion at the World Cotton Day exhibition is being curated and designed by NIFT, a pioneer institute of fashion education in India. Fabrics which have been given Geographical Indication like Venkatagiri, Chanderi, Maheshwari and Ikkat sarees will be displayed along with many other traditional Indian textiles and organic cotton fabrics.

Between 2011 and 2018, India implemented a Cotton Technical Assistance Programme (Cotton TAP-I) of about 2.85 million US dollars for seven African countries namely Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad and also Uganda, Malawi and Nigeria.

Cotton is a global commodity that is produced all over the world and a single tonne of cotton provides year-round employment for five people on average. Cotton is a drought - resistant crop ideal for arid climates, it occupies just 2.1 per cent of the world’s arable land, yet it meets 27 per cent of the world’s textiles need. In addition to its fibre used in textiles and apparel, food products are also derived from cotton like edible oil and animal feed from the seed