29, March 2019 29/03/2019 – Posted in: Daily News – Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Future of Bitcoins and other crypto currencies in India

 

News Flash

A direction on the future of bitcoins and other crypto currencies is likely today as the Supreme Court hears an appeal against the ban on them.

Last month, the court had directed the government to draft a regulatory framework for these electronic currencies in order that the legal and regulatory framework under which they can operate in the country would be clear.

 

What Reserve bank of India says?

Reserve Bank of India is in favour of the ban. The RBI had in April last year disallowed banks working with crypto exchanges. Being unable to covert electronic currency to cash most crypto exchanges left the country and a substantial drop occurred in traded volumes. Buying and selling of bitcoins is allowed in India.

What is Bitcoin

Bitcoin is a digital currency created in January 2009. It is believed that it was conceptualised by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, whose true identity has yet to be verified. Bitcoin offers the promise of lower transaction fees than traditional online payment mechanisms and is operated by a decentralized authority, unlike government-issued currencies. It uses blockchain technology to keep records of each transaction done, this mean every transaction has a decentralised record, in this way it is easier to keep the track of the transactions.

Transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distributed ledger called a blockchain. Bitcoins are created as a reward for a process known as mining. They can be exchanged for other currencies, products, and services.

 

Bitcoin has been for

• Illegal transactions.

• High electricity consumption in mining process.

 

But banning will have negative effect

  • Indian investors will be unable to actively participate in bitcoin exchanges.
  • The technological advancement like blockchain technologies could not be used in different potential areas.

 

Blockchain 

The working Bitcoin exchanges rests on a distributed digital ledge which could become the backbone of the global financial system and radically alter the manner in which transactions are made and recorded. A blockchain is a growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data. By design, a blockchain is resistant to modification of the data.

It will reduce the roles of middlemen, middleware and central nodes which authenticate and reconcile payments. Banks, exchanges, escrows and auditors would be rendered redundant by a few gigabytes of shared data.

 

 

 

 

Sundarbans

 

News Flash

India and Bangladesh begin a cruise service today that will take passengers along the Sundarbans, the world’s largest delta and mangrove forest system and home to the Royal Bengal Tiger.

Sundarbans

Last month, the Indian side of the Sundarbans was designated a Wetland of International Importance under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, making it the largest protected wetland in the country. It is also a Unesco World Heritage Site.

However, the concerns over the degradation of the wetland also important and It is debatable whether a cruise crossing the archipelago will benefit or threaten it further.

 

Issues threatening the wetland

  • The rising sea levels swallowing the forest.
  • Increasing water salinity damaging plant and marine life.
  • Encroachment for human inhabitation and pressures of population.

 

Aim

This move is aimed to strengthen inland waterway routes between the two countries. Both countries have already started movement of goods along the inland waterways.

 

How it is planned

The cruise will cover over 1,500 km and will provide passengers a breathtaking view of three rivers — the Ganga and the Brahmaputra in India and the Yamuna in Bangladesh — and the diverse ecosystem along them.

The route to Bangladesh includes Kolkata, Namkhana and the Sundarbans, and on the Bangladesh side, Barishal, Chandpur, Narayanganj and Dhaka, with each vessel accommodating around 50 tourists.

Source: Times of India

 

 

The Golan Heights

 

News Flash

Last week the U.S. recognised Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

However it is of no surprise as President Donald Trump’s pro-Israeli attitude is well known. Mr. Trump has already recognised as Israel’s capital Jerusalem.

The city was captured by Israel in parts in the 1948 and 1967 wars and which is claimed by both Israelis and Palestinians.

 

Background

Golan Heights are strategically important plateau beside the Sea of Galilee, and was captured from Syria in the 1967 war. Among the territories it captured in the war, Israel has returned only the Sinai Peninsula, to Egypt. In 1981, as it passed the Golan annexation legislation, the Security Council passed a resolution that said, “the Israeli decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and without international legal effect”.

 

What After it : Responses and Reactions 

  • The Syrian government, after fighting eight years of a civil war, is weak and isolated.
  • Even from the Arab world nothing more than silence can be expected.
  • Mr. Trump’s decision flouts international norms and consensus, and sets a dangerous precedent for nations involved in conflicts.
  • The decision also overlooks the wishes of the inhabitants of the territory. Most of the Druze population that has been living in Golan for generations has resisted Israel’s offer of citizenship and remained loyal to Syria. This they did even amidst Israel’s settlement activities.
  • Mr. Trump is making the possibility of any future peaceful settlement difficult by recognising Israel’s sovereignty, just as he made any future Israeli-Palestinian settlement complicated with his decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

Source: Indian Express

 

The hump-backed mahseer in IUCN Red List

 

News Flash

The hump-backed mahseer, found in the waters of the Cauvery, has been added to the Red List as Critically Endangered.The fish is one of the 229 species added to the Red List last November; this update also reveals that the threat status of 12 other Indian species, including great hornbills, has increased.

The inhabitation of hump-backed Mahseer: The hump-backed mahseer —a large freshwater fish also called the tiger of the water and found only in the Cauvery river basin (including Kerala’s Pambar, Kabini and Bhavani rivers).

  • The inclusion of the mahseer in the Red List was possible only once the fish got its scientific name last June—Tor remadevii—thanks to detailed research by Rajeev Raghavan (Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean.

 

IUCN’s other Exclusion and Inclusion

  • Five other species have also made it to threatened categories: two wild orchids, the Arabian scad (a marine fish) and two wild coffee species found only in a few localities in the Western Ghats.
  • While 31 species that were already in the Red List have been down-listed (since threats are not as significant as earlier thought or due to conservation efforts).
  • The threat status of 12 species has increased. The great hornbill (found in India and southeast Asia) was earlier categorised as “Near Threatened”. It is now “Vulnerable” due to high hunting pressure coupled with habitat loss and deforestation, while the wreathed hornbill has moved from “Least Concern” to “Vulnerable”.

 

Significance of IUCN Red List

Conservation managers use information from the Red List to understand threats to specific species and plan effective conservation strategies to improve the conservation status of individual or groups of species.

For instance, it is thanks to its new IUCN status that Shoal (an international organisation working to conserve freshwater species) initiated ‘Project Mahseer’ last month along with other stakeholders to enable conservation action for the hump-backed mahseer.

Source: The Hindu

 

 

Brexit and political crises in Britain

 

News Flash

In Britain the political crisis intensifies as there was no consensus on Brexit. MPs failed to back any of the eight alternative options — ranging from a no deal Brexit to customs union membership to a confirmatory public vote — put to them on Wednesday night.

 

Different positions 

• The Speaker of the House has insisted MPs can’t be asked to vote on the same withdrawal agreement repeatedly.
• Labour has rebuked the government for considering attempting to get the deal through by separating the withdrawal agreement text from the political declaration on the future relationship, warning this would amount to the “blindest of blind Brexits.”
• The Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland has insisted it would still vote against the deal, which they said posed a “strategic risk” that Northern Ireland would remain trapped in the backstop.
So the possibility of midterm elections for the house of common is becoming a reality.

Source: CNN International

 

 

 

Martha Farrell Award 2019

 

News Flash

Delhi govt school teacher Manu Gulati will receive Martha Farrell Award 2019.

 

Her Contributions 

  • Helping young girls in receiving formal school education.
  • Working with boys and girls at government schools in sensitising them about gender neutrality.
  • She also works with India Foundation’s “Market Aligned Skills Training Program”, through which she facilitates training programs for beauticians, weavers, sales girls etc in Jalandhar in Punjab, Betul in Madhya Pradesh and in Baramullah in Kashmir.

In the Gender Equality category, the award went to Mahila Jan Adhikar Samiti (MJAS), a women-led organisation which started as a collective of rural women and, eventually, transitioned into a registered organisation in 2000 to fight against domestic violence.

 

About Martha Farrell Award

The Martha Farrell Awards began in 2017. Instituted in the memory of Dr Martha Farrell, a prominent activist for gender equality and women’s empowerment, the award is co-sponsored by Rizwan Adatia Foundation (RAF) and Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) and supported by Martha Farrell Foundation (MFF). The award gives a prize money of Rs 1.5 lakh to each of the winners in two categories- Most promising individual (any gender), Best organisation for Gender Equality.

Source: Indian Express