Table of Contents
President’s Secretariat
• Shri Ram Nath Kovind, planted a Baobab sapling in the
gardens of Rashtrapati Bhavan.
• This sapling was gifted by the University of Madagascar
as a gesture of goodwill in return for the Neem tree that
the President planted at the University campus in
Antananarivo during his State visit to Madagascar in
March.
• The Baobab tree has a life span of over 2000 years. It is
high in medicinal and nutritional properties, quite like
the Neem tree.
President’s Secretariat
• The exchange of these plants spotlights the value both India and Madagascar attach to
traditional knowledge and medicine in their respective cultures
Prime Minister’s Office
• Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has announced exgratia
payment of Rs. 10 lakh each to the next of the kin
of those who were killed in Mosul, Iraq.
Supreme Court
• Supreme Court has refused to stay its March 20 verdict banning automatic arrest and registration of cases under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
• The division bench of Justices A K Goel and UU Lalit, however, said that it will consider the Centre’s review petition for detailed hearing.
•It said the matter is listed after ten days and asked all parties in the case to file their written the submissions within stipulated time.
Human Resources Minister
• Prakash Javadekar today released INDIA RANKINGS 2018
for Higher Educational Institutions and presented awards
to the institutions under the National Institutional
Ranking Framework, NIRF.
• The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru was
adjudged the overall best institution in the country.
•Indian Institute of Technology, Madras has been adjudged
the best engineering college and the Indian Institute of
Management-Ahmedabad the best management
institution.
Fin Min
• Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today said, the impact of demonetisation and GST implementation has resulted into higher formalisation of economy.
• Mr Jaitley said, this fact is further substantiated by filing of more than one crore IT returns by tax payers during the financial year 2017-18 in comparison to 2016-17.
• He said, direct tax collections for financial year 2017-18 has been 18 per cent higher than the previous financial year. The Minister said, the data reveals the efficiency of tax department and rise in number of honest tax payers
Commerce and Industry Minister
• Suresh Prabhu today launched digital initiatives for ease
of exports.
• Mr Prabhu said, this is a major step towards digital India
in export trade, ushering in efficient assessment, quality
monitoring and traceability.
• Export Inspection Council will ensure that Inspection done
be best of standards which will confirm to very stringent
conditions of that quality of product that are exported
from India will always be what is promised.
Commerce and Industry Minister
• At the same time making it digital would mean that people
don’t have to rush from one place to another, it can be done
from one single place.
•Under the digital initiatives for ease of export, Mr
Prabhu launched three integrated digital portals, namely
Safe Food Export Traceability Portal, One Laboratory One
Assessment Portal and Monitoring Export Alerts Portal.
Fake News
•I&B ministry’s misguided war on ‘fake news’
• The ministry’s guidelines, had sought to control
journalists by cutting off accreditation if they had been
found to be creating or spreading fake news.
• There had been an immediate outcry around these rules
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi has, thankfully, intervened
to end this step of I&B.
Fake News
•Outcry: lack of clarity around what ‘fake news’ meant,
and because anyone could file a complaint and block
reporting.
• The rules threatened to cramp legitimate investigative
and source-based journalism.
• The rules were silent on propaganda sites.
• Fake news bedevils the world today.
• Solutions should be clearly defined and targeted.
• Politicians often put out fictions to win elections, but is
it possible to stop them without gagging free speech?
• Clearly a distinction needs to be made between
conscious fabrication of news for political purposes and
news reports put out in the belief that they are
accurate, pending correction if controverted by future evidence.
• Print and television media, which already have editorial
filters.
•Heavy handed curbs: will only abridge media freedom
and destroy democracy.
• Eliminating fake news entirely is a utopian project, and
attempts to establish utopias in real life result in
totalitarian dystopias.
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