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AFSPA

• AFSPA stands for Armed Forces Special Powers Act

• Law exists and is operative in several parts of the northeast and in Kashmir.

• 350 serving officers of the Indian army have moved the Supreme Court.

• Demand: actions of armymen in areas where the AFSPA is in force be beyond legal scrutiny.

• Supreme Court back in 2016: soldiers do not enjoy absolute immunity even when AFSPA was in force.

• In 2017, SC asked the CBI to probe the death of a 12-year-old boy in Manipur and the agency booked, earlier this month, a major for cold-blooded murder.

• Two things are amiss with the serving soldiers’ move.

1. By initiating the legal challenge on their own, rather than leaving it to the army as an institution, they question the institutional integrity of the army and its ability to act in the best interest of its soldiers.

2. The more fundamental issue is the notion that actions of members of the armed forces should be beyond scrutiny.

• AFSPA is a draconian law that has no place in a democracy.

• No organ of the state should have the unfettered authority to kill or maim citizens without establishing culpability of the kind for which such penalties have been specified in the law.

• Ideally, AFSPA should be removed from the statute book.

• To hold that it is all right for a major to haul a 12-yearold out of his home, lock up his parents and proceed to beat up and kill the boy in cold blood, as the CBI says happened in Manipur, goes against all principles of natural justice and democratic accountability.

• Senior army personnel have, of late, started to speak on political matters in a trend that is not in consonance with total subservience of the armed forces to civilian authority.

Important News

PM Modi announces ₹500 crore aid

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday announced an immediate financial assistance of ₹500 crore to rain-battered Kerala after reviewing the flood situation, even as rescue operations continued in Pathanamthitta and Thrissur districts amid heavy rain.

• “As per the initial estimate, the State has suffered a loss of ₹19,512 crore. The actual loss can be ascertained after the water recedes in the affected areas. The State has sought an immediate assistance of ₹2,000 crore,” CM of Kerala said.

• Mr. Modi also announced an ex-gratia of ₹2 lakh per person to the next of kin of the deceased and ₹50,000 to those seriously injured from the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund (PMNRF) • – Hanan pays it back to her brethren

UAE promises support, forms panel

• The Prime Minister of United Arab Emirates (UAE) a ‘UN is saddened by loss of life, destruction’

• UN chief Antonio Guterres has expressed sadness over the extensive damage and displacement caused in rain-battered Kerala. “…The United Nations is of course saddened by the loss of life, destruction and displacement caused by floods in India,” said Stephane Dujarric, the UN Secretary-General’s spokesperson. When asked if the UN had been asked for help, he said they had not received any direct request.

Imran sworn in as Prime Minister

• New era dawns in Pakistani politics

• Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Imran Khan was sworn in at a ceremony here on Saturday, ushering in a new political era as the former cricket captain and World Cup hero officially took the reins of power.

• The ceremony at the President’s House marks the end of decades of rotating leadership between the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), punctuated by periods of army rule.

Breakthrough in Dabholkar murder case

• The CBI has arrested Sachin Andure, suspected to be one of the two shooters involved in the murder of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar five years ago.

• The breakthrough follows the sustained interrogation of three people arrested by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad last week from and Pune.

• The ATS subsequently picked up Andure from his Aurangabad residence and questioned him, after which he, too, allegedly confessed to his participation and revealed details similar to those that came to light in Kalaskar’s interrogation, officers said.

Revise trade laws, tariffs: U.S. Ambassador

• Calling upon India to rethink trade barriers, tariffs and regulations in order to become a “hub” for innovation and production, U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Juster says that India and the U.S. need to see trade relations as an “important strategic element” of their ties.

• He made a particular mention of barriers for the technology industry, including a Reserve Bank order telling technology companies to base all their servers in India.

• After rounds of intense trade negotiations since June, India agreed this month to put off until late September its plan to hit the U.S. with retaliatory tariffs worth $ 235 million on 29 American products.

• The U.S. Ambassador’s comments are an indicator that trade issues will be highlighted during next month’s “2+2” ministerial engagement between India and the U.S., though the main purpose of the talks is the inaugural engagement of Defence and Foreign Ministers on both sides.

‘Human traffickers should be treated as murderers’

Former A-G Sorabjee praises work done by social activist

• Noted jurist and former Attorney General of India Soli Sorabjee on Saturday remarked that human traffickers should be treated as murderers for ruining the lives of young girls by pushing them into ‘vicious cycle’ of flesh trade.

• “Frankly I think these traffickers should be treated as murderers…The way they ruin the lives of young girls, and for what, for money. The whole thing is a big vicious cycle. We are dealing with very ugly, nasty people,” Mr. Sorabjee said.

• He was speaking at the first Multiple Action Research Group (MARG) – Dr. Anand Prakash Memorial Lecture on ‘Victim of Human Trafficking and the Criminal Justice System’.

• Mr. Sorabjee also praised the work done by social activist Sunitha Krishnan, co-founder of Prajwala, an NGO that rescues, rehabilitates and reintegrates sex-trafficked victims into society.

In rhino country, a division to boost conservation efficiency

• In about a week’s time, an entire forest division in Assam will start moving 160 km northeast. The one-horned rhino of the Kaziranga National Park (KNP) is the reason for this “long march”.

• On August 14, Assam’s Environment and Forest Department issued a notification saying the KNP had been split into two divisions — the existing Eastern Assam Wildlife and the new Biswanath Wildlife — for “intensive wildlife management”.

• The Brahmaputra separates the two divisions straddling a total area of 1,030 sq.km. Kaziranga had an area of only 232 sq.m when it began its journey as a proposed reserve forest on June 1, 1905.

Helium is now 150

• On August 18, 1868, helium was discovered by astronomers studying the sun during a total solar eclipse.

• The site of this discovery was none other than the Andhra coast.

• It is the only element to have been seen in the sun before it was known to exist on earth.

• Identifying helium was key in usherring in a new era in astronomy, namely astrophysics.

• “Sitting here on Earth, and by analysing nothing more than the spectrum of light, we can now determine the chemical compositions of stars and gas far far away, and even calculate their temperature and density, ” says Niruj Mohan Ramanujam.

Meghalayan farms are also bird habitats

• While several of India’s natural ecosystems including forests are now ‘Protected Areas’ (PAs), there are many patches that fall outside PA-limits but also support wildlife.

• Meghalaya’s Nongkhyllem Wildlife Sanctuary and reserve forest are surrounded by community-managed forests and wooded betel leaf farms.

• A recent study by Wildlife Conservation Society-India found out how important these wooded areas are for birds.

• The researchers studied how different groups (guilds) of birds — including nectar drinkers like sunbirds and insectivores such as drongos — use these two habitats and the different woodland vegetation found there. They find that areas outside the protected areas were used by all guilds of birds, suggesting that these areas maintained a functional bird community.