Table of Contents
Island hopping
- Abdulla Yameen’s tenure was marked by a serious deterioration in ties with India
- President Solih first visit abroad, to New Delhi
- ‘India First’ policy + “our closest neighbour”
- PM Modi was he only head of government present at Mr. Solih’s inauguration.
- $1.4 billion assistance package
- Health care
- Education
- Water
- Sanitation
- India’s support to the Maldives as it seeks to rejoin the Commonwealth and its entry into the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA).
- 4 agreements: information technology, culture, agri-business, and visa arrangements
- Maldives’s assurance: fully sensitive to India’s security and strategic concerns
- Maritime security: coordinated patrolling, aerial surveillance and capacity building
- SAGAR: Security and Growth for All in the Region
Move fast and fix things
- Facebook: identified globally for privacy breaches, misinformation campaigns and even interfering in the election processes of major democracies.
- The New York Times: sharing of user data with the knowledge of top management
- Indian civil society activists had fought against Facebook very publicly on net neutrality.
- Acquisitions + any application which got access to Facebook data had to share it back with Facebook
- August 2017: right to privacy judgment came
- Justice B.N. Srikrishna, data protection committee
- Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology: wrote to FB
- April 2018: Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT
- September 2018: Central Bureau of Investigation
- Government has prioritised more data collection and privacy-impairing legislation: DNA Technology (Use and Application) Regulation Bill
- Despite having the second highest number of Internet users in the world, India has little to show as a country in investigatory outcomes, measured regulatory responses or parliamentary processes which safeguard users.
Controversial exit
- Trump’s decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria
- Within a day of the announcement, Secretary of Defense James Mattis quit, while allies say the move would affect the battle against the Islamic State in Syria.
- The U.S. is already stranded in Afghanistan (for 17 years) and Iraq (over 15 years) without a way out.
- The U.S. has only 2,000 troops in Syria.
- The U.S. support for the Kurdish rebels has irked Turkey.
Important News
- All 22 accused set free in Sohrabuddin encounter case
- CBI could not prove conspiracy as 3 main witnesses turned hostile, says judge
- Can Arunachal’s tallest tree build a road?
- Siang district: Arunachal Pradesh
- Atang Ane (Ficus elastica) means ‘mother rubber tree’ in the Adi dialect.
- Venkaiah warns members
- RS adjourned yet again; Chairman urges Jaitley to talk to leaders during recess
- LS panel suggests automatic suspension
- The Rules Committee of the Lok Sabha, an advisory body to Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, on Friday suggested “automatic suspension” of members who troop into the Well of the House or disrupt the proceedings despite being repeatedly warned by the Speaker.
- India reminds China of peace
- Says it’s an important prerequisite for continuous development of bilateral ties
- UAE to deposit $3 billion in Pakistan’s central bank
- The United Arab Emirates said on Friday it will soon deposit $3 billion in the central bank of Pakistan to help “enhance liquidity” as the country struggles with a balance of payments crisis.
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