📰 U.S. raises spectre of Russia sanctions
Says sanctions aimed at every country that has military and energy connections with Russia
•India and the U.S. are engaged in senior-level consultations over recent American sanctions against Russian entities, even as two visiting U.S. defence officials have told New Delhi that India is not fully immune to the sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA).
•However, the government is unfazed, multiple government sources told The Hindu . Even Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had visited Moscow to discuss a slew of defence deals, including the S-400 air-defence missile systems.
•P.S. Raghavan, Convener, National Security Advisory Board, told The Hindu that the U.S. could not seek to sustain a strategic partnership with India while trying to weaken India at the same time. “CAATSA is aimed at every country that has military and energy connections with Russia. And while the U.S. may claim it has a strategic motive, it cannot deny it has strong commercial objectives behind it. Basically, the U.S. is saying don’t go to them [Russia], come to us [U.S.],” Mr. Raghavan, a former Indian Ambassador to Russia, said.
•A senior military source said that India had conveyed to the U.S. at various levels its concerns about the implications of U.S. sanctions against several Russian entities involved in military supplies to India. “Both at the Foreign Secretary level and in the U.S., we have conveyed our stand that the sanctions cannot impinge on our relations with Russia, especially military acquisitions,” he said. Discussions, he said, are continuing.
•On January 29, the U.S. began imposing sanctions on foreign companies under Section 231 of CAATSA for transactions made with Russian defence and intelligence sector. “There is far more at risk at strategic level for the U.S., and they acknowledge that,” the military source said.
•Russia is India’s biggest arms supplier to India, accounting for 62% of acquisitions in the past five years, show latest estimates.
•“The U.S. can’t offer anything that can compare to the S-400 [air-defence missile system] for India. Add to that, its processes are much more complicated. While the Russian government’s nod allows the contract to proceed, in the U.S., the private companies have hesitations, the U.S. Congress, the DoD, State Department, White House, etc, can object and scuttle any deal,” Mr. Raghavan said.
U.S. position
•The Hindu has learnt that since February, at least two senior U.S. defence officials have conveyed to India in no uncertain terms that India would not be immune to the proposed sanctions under CAATSA.
•According to Section 231 of CAATSA, any country or entity that carries out “transactions with the intelligence or defence sectors” of the Russian government would face sanctions from the U.S.
•The Ministry declined to comment on what India’s response to the warnings was. However, it is understood that Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale and Defence Secretary Sanjay Mitra have both raised serious objections to the U.S. proposal in their bilateral meetings. The Indian Embassy in Washington DC remains engaged on the issue, military sources said.
•“We totally appreciate Indian’s concerns. It was raised in discussions during senior-level meetings last month. We are very concerned because we very much hope to maintain the momentum and the trajectory of this relationship. We want to deepen our cooperation and not reduce it,” Joe Felter, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for South and Southeast Asia, told PTI in an interview earlier this month.
•The new U.S. Pacific Commander nominee Admiral Philip Davidson also counselled a Senate hearing against penalising India for its defence ties with Russia.
•A senior defence source said if the U.S. sought to unsettle India-Russia ties, it would not mean the U.S. will gain out of it through arms deals. “Today we have multiple options, from France to Israel. It would be better for the U.S. not to try and scuttle our military ties,” he said.
📰 ‘There must be a new treaty, to the advantage of India and Nepal’
Nepal’s former Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai says the land boundaries must be revised and regulation is necessary to cater to the needs of the 21st century
•Weeks after the visit of Nepal’s Prime Minister K.P. Oli to New Delhi, officials say they are planning for a visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Kathmandu and Janakpur in mid-May, before the end of the Baishakh. Ahead of Mr. Modi’s visit, Nepal’s former Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai , who has split from the ruling Communist parties, and is visiting India, says a full overhaul of the 1950 Peace and Friendship Treaty is the first priority. Excerpts:
PM Modi is expected to travel to Nepal in the second week of May, his first visit with a new government in place. What should the priority be for India and Nepal now?
•Number one priority for both PMs should be to resolve all the outstanding issues raised by the Eminent Person’s Group, that have been left by history, and then to focus on economic development. Nepal should ensure that strategic interests of India are maintained, and India should cooperate in the development of Nepal.
When you say issues raised by the EPG, there is a demand for revising boundaries, for more regulation of India-Nepal border and the provision of compulsory work permits for Indians, leading to a total overhaul of the 1950 Peace treaty. These are not issues India has been in favour of. Why do you think they are necessary?
•The land boundaries must be revised and regulation is necessary to cater to the needs of the 21st century. There must be a new treaty, one which is to the advantage of both the countries. Why should we stick to the old treaty, which suffers from a colonial hangover. On the one side [Nepal], the signatory was the Maharaja-Prime Minister, while on the other, it was the Indian Ambassador. How can you continue such a treaty in modern times?
•But in India, Nepal’s desire for a revised treaty is seen as an attempt to pull away from India, particularly when China is establishing its presence in Nepal.
•No, nothing of the sort. I think India should be a more secure power. Why should India be insecure about its relationship with Nepal? China can never be a substitute to India. Indians should establish their advantage in Nepal, and not be scared of China. Of course, we are also in favour of better relations between India and China, as that will benefit the whole world. Revising the treaty has nothing to do with China.
What is your impression of PM Oli’s visit to India? Have the issues of the past over the Constitution been put at rest?
•Generally, it was seen as a positive visit, especially since the personal relations of PM Oli had soured with the establishment in Delhi, and that seems to have been fixed. But no visit can be successful until the long-pending issues between India and Nepal are fixed. On the Constitution, it is entirely an internal matter of Nepal and it is for the Nepali people to decide their Constitution. Unfortunately, the ego clash between Mr. Oli and the government in Delhi [in 2015] has meant that issues with the Constitution, such as ensuring the federal structure by establishing 10 provinces and the rights of not just Madhesis but also Janjatis and Tharus and women have suffered. Nepal has a huge trade deficit with India, we import 15 times of what we export. But now that we do have a Constitution and a government, it is time to work towards a new structure of ties.
Prime Minister Oli is expected to further consolidate power in the next few weeks or days with a merger of his Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist Leninist) with former PM Pushpa Kumar Dahal ‘Prachanda’s’ CPN (Maoist). You have been left out of this, despite your links with them, how do you see this new unified Communist party?
•Talks are still on for this, but even if the unification happens, I can see serious differences between the Maoists and the UML. So it will not be sustainable. I have been saying that instead of merging two parties, we should form a new inclusive front across Nepal. Given the economically backward situation and the multi-ethnic, multilingual social composition and a very sensitive geopolitical positioning between India and China, the old political ideology won’t work, and we need something new. That’s why, by choice I left the party, so I haven’t been left out.
📰 Cabinet approves death for rape of girls under 12 years
Criminal Law (Amendment) Ordinance increases minimum jail term to 20 years
•In response to the outrage over recent cases of rapes in Kathua and Unnao the Union Cabinet on Saturday approved the promulgation of an ordinance to provide death penalty for rapists of girls below 12 years, according to a senior government official.
•The Criminal Law (Amendment) Ordinance provides for stringent punishment of a jail term of minimum 20 years or life imprisonment or death for rape of a girl under 12 years.
Amendments to be made
•An official of the Ministry of Women and Child Development said amendments would be made to the Indian Penal Code, the Criminal Procedure Code, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and the Indian Evidence Act.
•As per the ordinance, for the crime of rape of a girl under 16 years, minimum punishment has been increased from 10 years to 20 years, which can be extended to imprisonment for the rest of life. Minimum punishment for rape of women has also been increased from rigorous imprisonment of 7 years to 10 years, which can be extended to life imprisonment. It provides for speedy investigation and trial, which must be completed in two months. There will be no provision for anticipatory bail for a person accused of rape or gang rape of a girl under 16 years.
📰 Fugitive Economic Offenders Ordinance cleared
Empowers authorities to attach, confiscate proceeds of crime
•The Union Cabinet on Saturday approved the promulgation of the Fugitive Economic Offenders Ordinance, 2018, which would empower the government to seize the domestic assets of those deemed by a court to be fugitive economic offenders.
•“The ordinance would lay down the measures to empower Indian authorities to attach and confiscate proceeds of crime associated with economic offenders and the properties of the economic offenders and thereby deter economic offenders from evading the process of Indian law by remaining outside the jurisdiction of Indian courts,” the government said in a release.
To help recovery
•“The ordinance is expected to re-establish the rule of law with respect to the fugitive economic offenders as they would be forced to return to India to face trial for scheduled offences,” the release added. “This would also help the banks and other financial institutions to achieve higher recovery from financial defaults committed by such fugitive economic offenders, improving the financial health of such institutions.”
•The ordinance has a provision for a ‘Special Court’ under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, to declare a person as a Fugitive Economic Offender.
•“A Fugitive Economic Offender is a person against whom an arrest warrant has been issued in respect of a scheduled offence and who has left India so as to avoid criminal prosecution, or being abroad, refuses to return to India to face criminal prosecution,” the release said. “A scheduled offence refers to a list of economic offences contained in the Schedule to this ordinance.”
•So as to ensure that the court is not over-burdened, only those cases where the total value involved in such offences is Rs. 100 crore or more will be within the purview of the ordinance.
📰 ‘Death penalty will deter reporting’
Ordinance on rape a knee-jerk reaction: activists
•Death penalty for rape of girls upto 12 years will deter the victim and their families from reporting such crimes instead of acting as a deterrent for criminals, said activists who slammed the government for its “knee-jerk reaction” in bringing an ordinance on the issue.
•“In cases of child sexual assaults we know that most of these crimes are committed by people known to them [the victims] or those within the family. Can you imagine anyone coming forward to complain about such crimes knowing that death penalty is the punishment that maybe imposed. Is the government not going to push the crime further underground and disable the victim from coming forward,” asked activist and lawyer Vrinda Grover.
•As per the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) data for 2016, 94.6% of total crimes against children under the POCSO Act as well as Section 376 are committed by either relatives or acquaintances.
•Ms. Grover said that announcing a harsher penalty such as death may prove to be futile when the conviction rate under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act is as low as 18%.
•“Instead of investing their resources and attention to fixing the gaps in the legal system and creating a more enabling, accessible and sensitive legal system, they are just going to do a gimmick and silence and blunt the national outcry and international criticism. This is a grave crisis and the government has abdicated its responsibility in ensuring the safety and security of women and children,” she said.
Consultation denied
•Bharti Ali, co-founder of HAQ: Centre for Child Rights, questioned the government’s decision to take the ordinance route. “What is the great hurry? Why can’t we have a more consultative process. Why are we not allowing democracy to function the way it should? There are constitutional processes built in to frame laws and policies,” Ms. Ali said.
•She also questioned why sexual assaults against boys have been left unaddressed by the ordinance and why sentencing is being determined on the basis of age. “Are they saying some rape is okay and some rape is not okay?” Ms. Ali said.
📰 Ramsar tag likely for Sunderbans
Experts and activists say the status is not enough to preserve the unique and endangered ecosystem
•The Sunderban Reserve Forest, spread of 4,260 sq. km. with over 2,000 sq. km. of mangrove forests and creeks, is likely to be declared a Ramsar Site soon. Earlier this week, the West Bengal government gave its approval to the State Forest Department to apply for recognition under the Ramsar Convention.
•“We have got approval from the government. All the necessary documents are ready and through the Government of India, we will apply to the Ramsar Convention Secretariat. It will take anything between three and six months for the status,” Ravi Kanta Sinha, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, West Bengal, told The Hindu .
•Mr. Sinha said, being conferred the status of a wetland of international importance will not only be a matter of pride for the Sunderbans but also bring a lot of international scientific attention and intervention to the area.
•The Indian Sunderbans, with 2,114 sq. km. of mangrove forests, comprise almost 43% of the mangrove cover in the country according to a 2017 Forest Survey of India report. Other than the forests, home to about 100 Royal Bengal tigers, the creeks and river systems of the Sunderbans are also part of the reserve forest and once conferred a Ramsar site status, it will be the largest protected wetland in the country.
•There are currently 26 sites in India recognised as Ramsar wetland sites of international importance, including the East Kolkata Wetlands also in West Bengal.
Alarming reduction
•Experts, however have been raising questions about increased encroachment at the East Kolkata Wetlands.
•“Spread over 125-square-km (12,500 hectare) the wetland area of the water bodies have been decreasing over the past three decades. In 1986, the percentage of water bodies was 30.6% which dropped to 26.3% and in 2011 further dropped to 24.7%,” Ajanta Dey, joint secretary of Nature Environment and Wildlife Society, said.
•Environmental activist Subhas Datta said the Sunderbans is already a World Heritage Site, and another feather in its cap as a Ramsar site will not help in its conservation, even as the recognition has not helped the East Kolkata Wetlands. “What is required is the implementation of existing laws and regulations by the tribunals. I have submitted more than 500 photos citing environmental degradation of the Sunderbans before the National Green Tribunal,” Mr. Datta said.
•Other than threats such as climate change, sea level rise, widespread construction and clearing of mangrove forests for fisheries is posing a danger to the Sunderbans. Ms. Dey said another threat is the 1,320-megawatt coal-based thermal power plant at Rampal, just a few kilometres north of the reserve forest in Bangladesh.
•“Sunderbans is a contiguous ecosystem spread across India and Bangladesh and any adverse move will affect the entire ecosystem. We had raised the issue at the IUCN [International Union for Conservation of Nature] meeting of 2017,” she said.
📰 Plants butterflies depend on
Team lists 834 plants that caterpillars feed on
•Before they become colourful nectar-feeding butterflies, caterpillars are voracious leaf-eaters. Scientists have compiled a list of 834 such plants that most butterfly caterpillars of the Western Ghats feed on, hoping this will aid ecological studies and butterfly conservation.
•The Western Ghats is home to 336 butterfly species. Their ‘larval host plants’ — plants that butterfly larvae or caterpillars feed on — range from common plants like the Indian curry leaf tree to rarer ones like the curled Aerides orchid found only in the southwestern tracts of the Ghats. Though many of these host plants have been documented since the 1800s, the records are scattered and hard to find, says Ravikanthachari Nitin of the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru.
•“The taxonomies of the plants [as well as the] butterflies are also archaic and outdated,” he says.
•Curating existing literature and recent unpublished records, Nitin and his colleagues (including naturalists from the Travancore Natural History Society) assembled a complete list of butterflies and their larval host plants for the biodiversity hotspot. Updating their scientific names based on latest taxonomy, the team’s paper — published as a monograph in the Journal of Threatened Taxa — lists a total of 834 larval host plants used by 320 butterfly species in the mountain range. Their list reveals that the larval host plants of 16 butterflies are still unknown (including those of the Nilgiri tit and the Kodagu brush flitter which are found only in specific localities in the Ghats).
Specific families
•The team’s compilations also show that 81 butterfly species depend on plants belonging to the pea or legume family (Fabaceae). Another 71 of these winged insects such as the aces, scrub hoppers, demons and bobs lay their eggs on grasses and bamboos (belonging to the plant family Poaceae). On the other hand, some plants are used by just a single butterfly species. Only the larvae of the moth-like Indian dusky partwing, for instance, live on wild arrowroot leaves (Marantaceae).
Dependence
•The authors hope their list will highlight the diversity of plants on which butterfly species of the Western Ghats depend; 48 species of butterflies are found nowhere else in the world. The plants are also important because their decline can signal a decrease in butterfly diversity too, says Nitin. “Endemic butterflies like the Malabar banded peacock, Kodagu forest hopper and Shiva sunbeam which feed only on a single plant species would be more at risk,” he adds.
📰 IACS team designs logic devices for DNA-based computation
The DNA logic gates can create interfaces between silicon and DNA-based computers
•Scientists at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS), Kolkata, have been successful in designing DNA-based logic devices that would find application in DNA-based computation. They have designed reusable YES and INHIBIT logic systems by using a small molecule that serves as a fluorescent probe and binds to both a four-stranded DNA structure (G-quadruplex) present in human telomeres and nucleic acid cleaving enzymes (nucleases).
Fluorescence
•The fluorescent probe — carbazole ligand — selectively binds to the G-quadruplex over other DNA structures present in the human genome. Once it binds to the DNA (G-quadruplex), the small molecule inhibits certain enzymes (nuclease S1 and exonucleases) from degrading the DNA. However, certain other enzymes (DNase I and T7 endonuclease I) can degrade the DNA even when bound by the small molecule.
•While the small molecule by itself shows weak emission at 373 nm and 530 nm, the fluorescence intensity gets enhanced 14-fold at 530 nm once it binds to the DNA. Similarly, the small molecule bound to the DNA exhibits different fluorescence behaviour in the presence of different enzymes and this has been taken advantage of by the team led by Prof. Jyotirmayee Dash from the Department of Organic Chemistry to design conceptually novel logic devices. The results were published in the journal ACS Synthetic Biology.
Computation
•For instance, DNase I enzyme degrades the DNA-bound small molecule and so when both the DNA the DNase I enzyme are used as inputs the fluorescence at 530 nm weakens. The output is therefore taken as zero. On the other hand, nuclease S1 enzyme does not degrade the DNA bound by the small molecule and so when both DNA and nuclease S1 enzyme are used as inputs the fluorescence at 530 nm does not get affected. The output is taken as one.
•“So the INHIBIT logic gate is constructed using DNA and DNase I as inputs while the inputs of DNA and nuclease S1 form a YES logic gate,” she says.
•Once the DNA is degraded by the DNase I enzyme, the logic system can be reused by supplying heat to deactivate the enzyme. “The logic system can be recycled for three cycles by adding a heat deactivation step. After three consecutive cycles, the efficiency of the system decreases by only 33%,” says Prof. Dash.
•The team went a step further to design combinatorial logic systems (individual logic gates integrated into one another such as INHIBIT−INHIBIT and NOR−OR) by using different combinations of four nucleases (enzymes) as inputs.
16 combinations
•The researchers were able to get 16 different combinations by adding one, two, three or four enzymes (nuclease S1, Exo I, T7 Endo I and DNase I) to the DNA-bound small molecule. The different combinations of the four enzymes are taken as inputs and the fluorescence response at 530 nm is taken as the output.
•Of the 16 combinations, only four combinations are fluorescent (output taken as 1) and 12 are non-fluorescent (output taken as zero). The square numbers (1, 4, 9, 16) are assigned as fluorescent combinations, whereas the rest are assigned as non-fluorescent combinations. “So by suitable programming we can modulate the system to carry out complex calculations (for example, identification of square numbers up to 16) by varying the inputs,” she says.
•“We hope that these DNA logic gates will provide the ability to not only create more complicated, sequential DNA computations but also create interfaces between silicon and DNA-based computers. The DNA-based nanodevice could be useful for diagnostic sensors and other biomolecular machines,” Prof. Dash says.
📰 IIT Roorkee develops a potent molecule to treat chikungunya
When 5 microMolar was used a reduction of almost 99% in the virus was seen
•A team of researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee has achieved a measure of success by finding a small molecule that has good antiviral activity against chikungunya virus. The antiviral activity was so high that the small molecule was able to achieve almost 99% reduction in the virus when 5 microMolar was used.
•Currently, there are no drugs to treat chikungunya or any vaccine to prevent it.
Virus structure
•Using structure-based studies of chikungunya virus-specific nsP2 protease, the team led by Prof. Shailly Tomar from the Department of Biotechnology had earlier identified two small molecules — Pep-I and Pep-II — for their inhibitory activity. Protease inhibitors have already been used successfully against HIV and hepatitis C virus.
•In the latest study, published in the journal Biochimie, the researchers report that one of the two molecules — Pep-I — has superior antiviral activity against chikungunya virus. The small molecule was found to effectively bind to the protein of the virus (nsP2 protease) and prevent the virus from replicating.The researchers hypothesised that any molecule that inhibits nsP2 protease should have antiviral activity. To test the hypothesis they carried out antiviral studies using cell lines. “The studies confirmed that both molecules had significant ability to kill the virus. The Pep-I molecule was very efficient in killing the virus — 99% reduction in virus at 5 microMolar,” says Prof. Tomar. The Pep-II molecule showed reduced antiviral activity of only 50% even at a higher concentration of about 200 microMolar.
•“When 10 microMolar of Pep-I was used no viable virus could be detected in the culture. The antiviral activity was tested by adding the molecules directly into the virus culture. The two molecules also reduced the viral RNA thus confirming the antiviral activity,” says Rajat Mudgal from the Department of Biotechnology at IIT Roorkee and one of the first authors of the paper.
•“We found even when the concentration of the two molecules was less than 50 microMolar, they were able to effectively inhibit the protease. Generally, when less than 50 microMolar concentration produces good enzyme inhibition it is considered good in terms of potency and effectiveness,” says Harvijay Singh who is the other first author of the paper.
Specific action
•The team then tested whether the molecules were specifically inhibiting only the chikungunya virus. They used Sindbis virus, the model virus of the genus alphavirus to which chikungunya belongs, to test the specificity. “These two molecules did not show antiviral activity against Sindbis virus indicating that they are very specific to chikungunya virus,” says Prof. Tomar. The specificity of molecules to inhibit only the chikungunya virus is not surprising as these molecules are structure-based.
•“We will try and improve the potency of the inhibitors by making derivatives of the molecules through in silico work,” says Prof. Tomar.
📰 Bacteria help remove sulphur from fossil fuels
Sulphur is a major pollutant emitted by fossil fuels
•Using novel bacterial strains, scientists have successfully removed sulphur from fossil fuels such as petroleum and coal. Sulphur is one of the major pollutants emitted during the combustion of fossil fuels.
•Scientists from CSIR-Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology (CSIR-IMMT) in Bhubaneswar used four bacterial strains that use dibenzothiophene (an organic sulphur compound which is a major contaminant of fossil fuel) as an energy source thereby getting rid of the sulphur.
Bacterial strains
•To find novel bacterial strains that can selectively eliminate this organic sulphur, the researchers searched the microbial type culture collection (MTCC) of CSIR-IMTECH (Institute of Microbial Technology) and selected 10 bacterial strains with dsz genes.
•“The dsz genes are central to sustainable bio-desulfurization. The presence of dsz genes and the metabolites which take part in desulfurization were first screened. We have also used bio-informatic tools for phylogenetic studies. More studies can reveal new bacterial species for desulfurization of coal,” says Madhabi M. Bhanjadeo, PhD scholar at the institute in an e-mail to The Hindu.Ms. Bhanjadeo is the first author of a paper published in the journal PLOS ONE.
•The selected bacteria were grown in a medium supplemented with dibenzothiophene and other nutrients required for growth. They found that four bacteria were able to use almost 99% of the sulphur compound in just 10 days.
•The four strains are Rhodococcus rhodochrous, Arthrobacter sulfureou, Gordonia rubropertinita and Rhodococcus erythropolis.
•“Since the sulphur-specific cleavage is vital for organic sulphur removal, we explored potential bacterial strains that desulphurise through a specific pathway (4-S pathway). Usual end products of this pathway are 2-hydroxy biphenyl and sulphate ions but in our study two of the bacterial strains are devoid of these end products, suggesting a variation in the pathway. The novel bacteria hold hidden pathways that we are yet to be explored,” says Dr. Umakanta Subudhi, from CSIR-IMMT and corresponding author of the paper.
Ecofriendly
•The new process is also eco-friendly and economical, and these new bacterial strains can be potentially explored for the removal of sulphur from fossil fuels on a commercial scale.
