📰 Major solar flare detected in dwarf star close to sun
•The Sun’s closest star neighbour, Proxima Centauri, a cool dwarf star situated a little over four light years away, may not be inclined to harbour habitable planets, if its temperament is anything to go by. AstroSat, along with other space and earth-based observatories, has detected a powerful solar flare sent out by this star.
•At an energy of 10-raised-to-30 ergs, this explosion is about 100 times a typical flare. “If [such a flare] occurs in our Sun, it might have a devastating effect on power grids, interrupt broadcasts and electricity, affect electronic instruments, and cause excess UV radiation in space,” Professor K.P. Singh of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, who was involved in the research, said in a joint press release issued by the observatories.
Observation campaign
•On 31 May 2017, three space-based observatories, the Astrosat, Chandra and Hubble Space Telescope, and the ground-based High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) observatory, participated in a multi-wavelength simultaneous observation campaign.
•“The mission teams of all satellites agreed to point to this star and spend a whole day watching this particular star. Also, AstroSat is sensitive enough to easily catch a flare from a star that is so close to us, if it happens during the night time of the satellite and if the telescope is pointed towards this star, as was the case here,” Professor Singh said in an email to The Hindu .
•Last year’s discovery of Proxima Centauri b — a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri and, more importantly, lying in its habitable ‘Goldilocks’ zone — had set everyone wondering if it could host life.
•“It [the solar flare] makes it quite improbable for Proxima Centauri b to host a life form as we know it,” said Professor Singh.
📰 Aboriginals landed in Australia 65,000 years ago
Study says fresh evidence pushes back arrival period up to 18,000 years
•The timing of the first arrival of humans in Australia has been studied and debated for decades. Now, researchers have found evidence that suggests the ancestors of aboriginal Australians landed in the northern part of Australia at least 65,000 years ago.
•The finding, which was published on Wednesday in the journal Nature , pushes back the timing of when people first came to the continent by about 5,000 to 18,000 years. It also suggests that humans coexisted with colossal Australian animals like giant wombats and wallabies long before the megafauna went extinct.
•“This is the earliest reliable date for human occupation in Australia,” Peter Hiscock, an archaeologist at the University of Sydney, who was not involved in the study, said in an email.
•“This is indeed a marvellous step forward in our exploration of the human past in Australia.”
•Previous archaeological digs and dating had suggested people migrated to Australia between 47,000 and 60,000 years ago.
•However, a new excavation at an aboriginal rock shelter called Madjedbebe revealed human relics that dated back 65,000 years.
•“We were gobsmacked by the richness of material that we were finding at the site: fireplaces intact, a ring of grind stones around it, and there were human burials in their graves,” said Chris Clarkson, an archaeologist from the University of Queensland in Australia and lead author of the study. “No one dreamed of a site so rich and so old in Australia.”
Over 11,000 artefacts
•The Madjedbebe site had been studied in the 1970s. But during more recent visits in 2012 and 2015, Mr. Clarkson and his colleagues recovered more than 11,000 artefacts from the deepest layers of the excavation pit. In addition to uncovering leftovers of an ancient campfire and archaic mortars and pestles, they also found flaked stone tools and painting material. They also unearthed the earliest known examples of edge-ground axes, which are stone axes that would have had handles, which were 20,000 years older than those found anywhere else in the world.
•Mr. Clarkson said the finding provided further insight into the complex capabilities of ancient humans as well as the chronology of when they migrated from Africa and spread across the world.
•He added that the findings provide evidence against a prevailing theory that people rapidly drove Australia’s largest animals to extinction shortly after arriving on the continent.
•“It puts to bed the whole idea that humans wiped them out,” said Mr. Clarkson. “We’re talking 20,000 to 25,000 years of coexistence.”
•To determine the age of the artefacts, the team had to date the sediment layer where they were buried. They first performed radiocarbon dating on sediment starting at the surface until they got to layers that were about 37,000 years old. They then shifted to a technique called optically stimulated luminescence dating for the deepest layers, which was used to measure the last time the sand in the rock shelter was exposed to sunlight.
•Think of a grain of sand as an empty battery that slowly collects charge once it’s buried. As long as it remains in the dark it will continue gaining energy over time. If researchers can recover the grain of sand, and keep it dark, they can then use a laser to release the “charge” within it. By measuring the amount of energy the grain of sand releases, and comparing that with the amount of radiation that the sand was exposed to while it was buried, researchers can determine when it was last in sunlight.NYT
📰 Half of HIV-infected get treatment now: UNAIDS
India’s pharma sector has a major role in helping to meet global target for access to medicines, says report
•For the first time since the global onset of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the scales have tipped in favour of patients. The latest UNAIDS report, released on Thursday, reveals that more than half of all People Living with HIV (PLHIV) now have access to HIV treatment.
•Further, globally AIDS-related deaths have almost halved since 2005.
•“We met the 2015 target of 15 million people on treatment, and we are on track to double that number to 30 million and meet the 2020 target,” said Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS. “We will continue to scale up to reach everyone in need and honour our commitment of leaving no one behind.”
•As of last year, 19.5 million of the 36.7 million HIV+ patients had access to treatment. Deaths caused by AIDS have fallen from 1.9 million in 2005 to 1 million in 2016.
New infections in India
•The bad news is that the majority of the cases — nearly 95 per cent of the cases in 2016 — were concentrated in just 10 countries, India being one of them. India has 2.1 million people living with HIV, with 80,000 new infections annually, as of 2016. In 2005, the annual incidence was 1,50,000 people.
•“India is the country where most new HIV infections are occurring in the Asia-Pacific region. While India has made big progress with new infections dropping significantly, the emergence of HIV in some locations that were earlier considered ‘not high-burden’ areas is a cause for concern.,” said Eamonn Murphy, Director, UNAIDS Regional Support Team for Asia-Pacific.
•While the world seems to be on track to reach the global target of 30 million people on treatment by 2020, access to medicines remains a major barrier and India plays a special role. The report states that “although important progress has been made in improving access to medicines for people living with HIV, insufficient availability and poor affordability of essential medicines in low- and middle-income countries remain major barriers.
Averting market failures
•Actions focused on the intersections between intellectual property rights, innovation, and public health are vitally important for resolving market failures in medicine development and manufacture, unmet needs for research and development, and pricing.
•This is especially true in light of the concentration of the generic pharmaceutical industry in India, and the global AIDS response’s continued reliance on the Indian industry, which supplied nearly 90% of antiretroviral medicines in low- and middle-income countries in 2015”.
•The report, Ending AIDS: Progress towards the 90–90–90 target, is the annual scorecard for progress.
•In 2016, 1.8 million people became infected with HIV. While this is a drastic decline from the peak of the epidemic in 1997 when 3.2 million got infected, experts maintain that since 2010, the decline in new infections has only been 16%.
•Going by this trend, the global target of reducing the figure to 500,000 a year by 2020 — adopted as a global target by UNAIDS in 2013 — seems unattainable.
•The idea behind the 90-90-90 target is to diagnose 90% of people who are HIV positive; get 90% of the diagnosed HIV+ people on antiretroviral treatment, and 90% of those on antiretrovirals should be virally suppressed. This is attained when an HIV+ patient’s viral load reaches an undetectable level, curbing transmission.
📰 ‘Why is sharing data with state a problem?’
Citizens giving info to private players, observes SC judge
•If 99% of citizens are ‘unconcerned’ about sharing personal data with private players, how is it qualitatively different if the state has the same information, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud of the Supreme Court asked on Thursday.
•“Most citizens are unconcerned about where or how their personal data is used. You say there are 35 crore Internet users and 18 crore telephone users, but 99% of people are not concerned... When you operate your iPad with your thumbprint, your data is public...” Justice Chandrachud, part of a nine-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India J.S. Khehar, orally observed.
•“The moment you want to travel from Mumbai to Delhi, you will get 100 suggestions. Your private and personal data is in private hands, so is there anything qualitatively different when the state has it? You have surrendered your personal life to private parties, but here we are saying that the state should be restricted from having it,” Justice Chandrachud said, addressing senior advocate Sajan Poovayya, appearing for the petitioners.
•The questions from the Bench came on the second day of the hearing on the reference whether right to privacy is an inviolable fundamental right under the Constitution. The final view of the nine-judge Bench would be a core factor before another five-judge Constitution Bench decides whether the Aadhaar scheme was a violation of the citizens’ right to privacy.
•The queries are significant because over 100 crore people have already parted with their biometric details for Aadhaar cards. The massive enrolments were initially done through private contractors and agencies. The petitioners have questioned the mammoth exercise; whether the informed consent of the citizens was taken before they parted with their personal details and whether there was information given to people about how and where their personal data would be used. Finally, the government had not specified in a statutory law, where the data would be protectively stored.
Pedestal of secrecy
•Answering Justice Chandrachud about the ‘unconcerned’ citizen, Mr. Poovayya said that even if one citizen was concerned about how, where and who uses his personal data, it is an obligation under the Constitution to protect his dignity and privacy. “Right to privacy does not stand on the pedestal of secrecy, it holds forth from the pedestal of dignity,” Mr. Poovayya submitted.
•“Apple even has watches monitoring my heartbeat. My informed surrender of data to a private player in this digital age is not my surrender of my personal data to all. If this private player takes my data and gives it to all on the Internet, then I can sue him for breach of contract. But if I give it to the state, where are the corresponding restrictions and deterrents?” Mr. Poovayya asked the court.
•He submitted that parting of personal information to a private player is for a specific limited purpose. “Again, can you [Supreme Court] say that just because I put my information in the public domain, I have no right to further assert my right to privacy,” asked Mr. Poovayya.
Chilling effect
•He said the very apprehension that the state is ‘watching’ chills the citizens’ rights. “Unlimited power of the government to collect, assemble, analyse, profile and use my personal data, chills me. That is, even if the state does not do so... But again, I may be a favourite of the state now, but they can use my personal data against me if I ever cross them years later,” Mr. Poovayya submitted.
•He said “no reasonable expectation of privacy is ill-suited in a digital age”.
📰 Centre sees a thaw on H-1B
Sushma says Trump has acknowledged the contributions of Indian skilled workers
•External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday said that during his recent visit to the United States, Prime Minister Narendra Modi succeeded in making President Donald Trump recognise the contributions of Indian skilled professionals to the American economy.
•Responding to a question of V. Maitreyan in the Rajya Sabha on whether the H-1B visa issue was taken up, Ms. Swaraj said though it was not mentioned specifically, Mr. Modi had an extensive discussion with President Trump on the spirit behind the visa.
•The External Affairs Minister cited the joint statement through which, she said, President Trump applauded “the entrepreneurship and innovation of Indians and Indian-Americans that have directly benefited both the nations”.
•Ms. Swaraj said if the United States took any decision adversely impacting Indian professionals, such a move would eventually hurt its own interests.
Closely engaged
•In a written reply on the same issue, the government said it remained closely engaged with the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Administration on issues relating to mobility of Indian skilled professionals, including through the H-1B visa programme.
•The response also quoted the joint statement of Mr. Modi and Mr. Trump, which noted that: “recognising that we are in an increasingly digital world, the leaders agreed to intensify the mutually beneficial partnership to fully harness their innovation capabilities to solve global development changes.”
•In the current U.S. Congress, six Bills relating to H-1B and L-1 visa programmes have been introduced by individual congressmen and senators. However, none of them has so far been passed and no comprehensive policy changes have been made.
📰 India, Japan civil nuclear deal comes into force
Tie-up to ensure energy security and clean power
•The landmark India-Japan civil nuclear agreement came into force on Thursday. Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar exchanged the diplomatic notes with the Japanese envoy to India to formalise the completion of the process.
•“The India-Japan Agreement for Cooperation in the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy entered into force on July 20, 2017 with the exchange of diplomatic notes between Dr. S. Jaishankar, Foreign Secretary and H.E. Mr. Kenji Hiramatsu, Ambassador of Japan to India,” said a statement from the Ministry of External Affairs.
•The pact was signed in Tokyo during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Japan on November 11, 2016.
•“This Agreement is a reflection of the strategic partnership between India and Japan and will pave the way for enhanced cooperation in energy security and clean energy. It seeks to promote full cooperation between the two countries in the development and uses of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes on a stable, reliable and predictable basis,” said the statement.
•The deal is essential for bringing a network of nuclear energy cooperation for India, especially with the U.S. as prominent American nuclear companies are owned by the Japanese nuclear majors like Toshiba.
📰 ‘GSTN, CBDT to share data’
Data exchange, analytics can help stop tax evasion, says GST Network chairman
•The Goods and Services Tax Network and the Central Board of Direct Taxes will soon join hands to share data to stop tax evasion, GST Network ChairmanNavin Kumarsaid in an interview .
•Vendors from whom small businessmen buy products or services are too small to be in GST, but for businesses to get input tax credits, the vendors must be registered. So, even those not eligible for GST have to register...
•We had done a study of the state VAT and we found that 37% of the taxpayers registered were below the Rs. 5 lakh threshold. They had registered voluntarily precisely for this reason because manufacturers and wholesalers would buy from them only if they were registered so that they could utilise the input tax credits. So the same kind of thing will happen here as well.
Since the GST Network is going to be such a vast repository of corporate tax data, will the CBDT also have access to this data?
•It is in fact part of our mandate also. At this point of time, we are busy with registrations, return filing, etc. But after some time, when we have the data, we will also be undertaking data analytics. We can do analytics on our own data, but we can do much more if we get data from other sources like the Income Tax Department. That is on the cards. If we take their data, of course, they will also want our data. We will have to share.
But won’t there be legal issues since the data is confidential?
•This is also [of the] government and that is also [of the] government. We are only handling it on behalf of the government. So, if the government decides it should be done, there will be no legal issues.
•Before GST even started, in Maharashtra, the State government obtained income tax data and matched it with their VAT data and discovered a tax evasion of the order of Rs. 300 crore in a month. So, this kind of thing is doable and should be done. It will happen.
How many people have registered on the GST Network so far?
•Of the 86 lakh existing tax payers who are to be migrated to GST, we have reached 70 lakh. Tomorrow [July 21] is the last day for these people to come on the portal unless the government extends this. By our account, there are about 15 lakh remaining. And still about 10,000-12,000 per day have been coming, so maybe the government will extend the date.
Have you asked the government to extend the date for migrations?
•We have told the government that this is the status and it is up to them to take a call on this.
How many provisional IDs have so far been granted?
•Provisional IDs were created for all 86 lakh who were earlier registered on other tax networks. Of the 70.5 lakhwho have migrated, 41 lakh of the people who have activated their accounts have completed their applications also.
How many new registrations have taken place since the Network began accepting them?
•New registrations have been a real surprise. When we started, we didn’t have any baseline data, so we went to the states and looked at the growth of the VAT registrations, and there we found the growth was on average 5%. So, we calculated that on a base of 80 lakh, an annual rate of 5% would be the growth. But since we started the new registrations on June 25, already the number has crossed 8 lakh.
•And, it is not slackening. About 35,000-40,000 new people are registering every day.
What is the peak traffic capacity of the GST Network?
•If you look at the number of people we can handle, we had envisaged that at the beginning we could have 1.3 crore people.
•As things are going now, we have enough spare capacity for people who want to register afresh. I don’t know how long this stream of new registrants will continue, but another 10 lakh is a distinct possibility, taking the total to about 98 lakh. We’ll get there in the next 2-3 months.
Is the infrastructure robust enough to handle the peak load of tax filers?
•We have studied the taxpayer behaviour in terms of return filing for service tax, central excise and VAT and we found that 50% of the taxpayers file their returns on the last day, and during that last day, most of them are between 4 -5 p.m. We have kept that in mind while designing the system. If a company wants to upload invoices as they are generated, that can also be done. We are starting this from next week.
•We are also going to provide an offline utility which works with an Excel sheet. You can put your invoice data in the Excel sheet and this utility will import that data and upload it to the portal. You don’t have to come to the portal to punch in the data.
•We are also asking the MSMEs to upload their invoices every week at least, and the bigger businesses must upload them every day. Then, even if everybody comes on the last day, it won’t matter, because the bulk of the work is done already.
📰 ‘Cement prices may rebound with supply-demand boost’
Demonetisation impact wearing off since Q1 of FY18: ICRA
•Rating agency ICRA on Thursday said that it expected cement demand growth to recover to about 5% during 2017-18 as against a decline of 1.2% in 2016-17, driven by a pick-up in the infrastructure segment, mostly road and irrigation projects and the housing segment.
•Cement prices recovered from February 2017 and reached pre-demonetisation levels in most markets by April 2017.
•While improvement in the supply-demand scenario in FY18 is expected to support the cement prices going forward, sustenance of the same is critical, given the rising costs.
•“While in the short term, demonetisation has had a negative impact on real estate and construction activities and hence on the cement off-take, the impact has started to subside from Q1 FY18, driven by a pick-up in the infrastructure segment,” said Sabyasachi Majumdar, senior vice-president & group head, ICRA Ratings.
•Further, the increased budgetary allocation for the infrastructure sector, which includes roads, railways, metro, irrigation and housing, during FY18 will directly and indirectly support cement demand.
•Also, higher rural credit and increased allocation for rural, agricultural and allied sectors, including the demand for rural housing, are significant contributors to the overall cement demand mix, he added.
Drop in production
•All-India cement production dwindled by 1.2% YoY to 279.8 million MT in FY17 for the first-time over the last decade. Cement volumes declined between November 2016 and March 2017 by 9% when compared to the corresponding previous, following demonetisation.
•However, cement volume growth has witnessed recovery since March 2017 and reported a growth of 17.5% on MoM basis to 25.2 million MT. Prices too have seen improvement across markets, especially since April 2017.
📰 The new President
It is Ram Nath Kovind’s use of discretionary powers that will define his presidency
•As India’s 14th President, Ram Nath Kovind will be expected to play the important role of safeguarding the spirit of the Constitution and the foundations of our parliamentary democracy. Unlike his immediate predecessor Pranab Mukherjee, Mr. Kovind moves into Rashtrapati Bhavan after a stint in a Raj Bhavan. Arguably, it is a Raj Bhavan, and not the office of the Vice-President, that is the best preparatory ground for the non-ceremonial duties of the President, particularly those that may involve invoking the office’s discretionary power. After general elections that produced hung Lok Sabhas, former Presidents R. Venkataraman, Shankar Dayal Sharma and K.R. Narayanan adopted different procedures to decide who would have the first shot at forming the government. Venkataraman and Sharma invited the leader of the single largest party, with varying results. While Rajiv Gandhi declined Venkataraman’s invitation in 1989, A.B. Vajpayee accepted Sharma’s invitation in 1996, only to see his government last no more than 13 days. In 1998, Narayanan ascertained the support Mr. Vajpayee had before calling him to form the government. Like these predecessors, Mr. Kovind may be involved in situations with no set precedent. Also, while the use and abuse of Article 356, and the imposition of President’s Rule, are now monitored closely by the higher courts, as President he will necessarily have to use his own discretion should the Union Cabinet send such a recommendation. On contentious pieces of legislation, he can be extremely influential when he counsels caution, using his moral authority and the weight of his public office.
•Mr. Kovind secured an impressive victory, receiving more than the number of votes pledged to him, signifying acceptance levels that go beyond the NDA’s political spectrum. Once the names of the candidates for the election were known, much of the interest centred on the support he would garner from Opposition parties not affiliated to the Congress. That he did win substantially more votes vindicates the faith the BJP’s leadership placed on his candidature. To the BJP’s credit, it did not choose a dyed-in-saffron member of the Sangh Parivar. Mr. Kovind’s candidature may have been a strategic political compromise. On the one hand it ensured the wider support that the BJP wanted and, on the other, it wasn’t entirely politically neutral, not enough anyway to allow the Congress or the Left parties the satisfaction of a consensus candidate. He is a Dalit, and his nomination was intended by the BJP to signal a socially inclusive agenda. But as President, Mr. Kovind will have to rise above political and social identities. He will be called upon to apply his mind and distinguish between settled conventions and questionable precedents in arriving at decisions. The office of the President was not conceived as merely a ceremonial post. The discretionary powers that he has demand a delicate balance without slipping into being either an unthinking rubber stamp or an overzealous interventionist.
