| | 5 THINGS FIRST | International Yoga Day; election for 3 Kerala Rajya Sabha seats; Rajnath Singh on 3-day visit to Mongolia; Sebi board meet to revamp IPO norms; South Korean President meets Vladimir Putin in Moscow | |
| | 1. Why these are the best days for J&K MLAs |  | President has approved governor’s rule in J&K. Governor NN Vohra has placed J&K assembly under suspended animation. Unlike other states, where President's rule is imposed in such situations, J&K constitution provides for governor's rule for six months, but only after the consent of the President of India. - Good news for MLAs: Assembly in suspended animation means that MLAs don’t lose their seats. What they lose is the legislative power to make laws. So they are entitled to their salary and allowances since suspended animation means the assembly is suspended, not the MLAs. That’s basically like getting paid with no work.
- Matter of days: An assembly is kept in suspended animation only if the governor feels that there is possibility of government formation in the near future. If that doesn’t happen, he can recommend dissolution of assembly, in which case MLAs cease to be MLAs.
- Not just MLAs: J&K police chief is happy because "it is much easier” to work under governor’s rule. BVR Subramanyam would be happy with his appointment as the new chief secretary of J&K.
Read the full story here
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| | 2. Don’t miss today’s Yoga spectacle, you paid for it |  | It’s national yoga party this morning. It’s so big you can’t miss it. There’s a reason you shouldn’t – it’s all your money. - What we spend: There’s no single consolidated figure but some official numbers give an idea. AYUSH ministry, for instance, spent over Rs 36 crore on the last three yoga days. Indian missions abroad have had budgets ranging from Rs 600 (for Kandahar in 2017) to 1.3 crore (New York in 2015). That adds up to about Rs 14 crore for three years.
- Most of this went into advertisements. Other ministries and state governments also organise events.
- What do events cost? It varies depending on scale and location. The biggest one organised on June 21, 2015 in Delhi cost Rs 7.5 crore
- Why? It was India’s idea (PM Modi proposed it at UNGA on 27 September 2014) to observe June 21 as International Day of Yoga so we have to be seen as being enthusiastic about it.
- No peace of mind: Uttarakhand forest department spent sleepless nights worrying over wild elephants crossing the PM’s path when his cavalcade crosses a jungle area. That was after deploying 3 teams to search for snakes and monkeys at the FRI campus where PM Modi will do yoga along with an estimated 50,000 people.
Read the full story here
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| | | 3. Digital India is still 75% away |  | - Caged in age: Nearly thrice as many younger adults use the internet in India, compared to the older adults - with 35% of the 18-36 year olds net savvy, compared to just 13% of the 37 plus crowd, according to a report by Pew Research.
- Classes apart: For every one non-collegiate educated adult owning a smartphone, there are almost 5 graduates in India who own a smartphone.
- No quarters given: A little over a fourth of adult Indians do not even own a mobile phone, leave alone a smartphone - more than half, or 52% of adult Indians have a basic mobile phone and not a smartphone.
- Gender gap: Just 11% of adult women in India use social networking sites, compared to 28% of adult men - in line with the trend in developing economies where social media usage tilts towards men.
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| | 4. Why Buffett, Bezos & JP Morgan want this Indian doctor |  | - Who is he? Atul Gawande, a surgeon and journalist, has been named the CEO of the yet to be named joint venture between Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan Chase to cut down healthcare costs for the three firms, who between them employ more than 1.1 million people.
- Why was he chosen? Gawande has written extensively on the inefficiencies plaguing the US healthcare system, and is a professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School; the unnamed company has been freed from the pressure of earning a profit, giving Gawande a free hand to incorporate technology as a means to cut down healthcare costs—JP Morgan, for instance, spent $1.25 billion last year on healthcare of its 300,000 employees and their families.
- Starting point: The new company was announced this January by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway and Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase - with Gawande set to take charge from July 9.
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| | NEWS IN CLUES | | 5. Which chef saved his town’s economy with cheese & rice? | - Clue 1: His birthplace is the same as singer Luciano Pavarotti’s and automaker Enzo Ferrari’s.
- Clue 2: He’s also a brand ambassador for Gucci and Maserati.
- Clue 3: His three-star Michelin restaurant has month-long waiting lists and guests like the Obamas and Mark Zuckerberg.
Scroll below for answer | |
| | 6. The new yo-yo test: 5 years, 34 series, 200+ games |  | According to the ICC’s Future Tours Programme (FTP) released on Wednesday, between 2018-23 Team India will… - Play 200+ international matches across all formats—the most by any side under the FTP calendar.
- Enjoy home advantage in 102 of those games (before May 2023).
- Be the only side, apart from England and Australia, to feature in five-Test series in the period.
- Travel to West Indies in its opening series of the inaugural World Test Championship (July 2019).
- Take on Sri Lanka (away) in its opening series of the 13-team ODI League (June 2020).
- Play 5 series each with Australia, England & West Indies (the most).
Full story here | |
| | XPLAINED | | 7. Summer Solstice |  | - What: The longest day (and shortest night) of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.
- When: Today (June 21). The exact moment of ‘peak’ sunlight is reportedly 1537 IST.
- Why: The term ‘solstice’ comes from Latin —‘sol’ means sun and ‘sistere’ means to stand still.
- How: The 23.4° tilt in the Earth’s axis causes varying amounts of sunlight to reach different regions during its year-long orbit around the Sun. Today, the North Pole is tipped more towards the sun than on any other day of the year. In fact, the sun will directly shine down on the imaginary Tropic of Cancer latitude.
- However, that does not mean more heat or that the Earth is any closer to the Sun, per common misconceptions.
- Which: Summer solstices happen twice each year (once in each hemisphere). Summer Solstice for the Northern Hemisphere = Winter Solstice for the Southern Hemisphere, and vice-versa.
- Also, during Equinoxes, the Sun shines directly on the Equator and the length of day and night are nearly equal in either hemisphere.
Key dates for 2018 (N.Hemisphere perspective)- Spring Equinox: Thursday, March 22
- Summer Solstice: Thursday, June 21
- Autumn Equinox: Sunday, September 23
- Winter Solstice (N. Hemisphere): Saturday, December 22
BTW: The longest day of the year was the reason why Narendra Modi chose June 21 as the International Day of Yoga. More here | |
| | 8. Nine out of 10 Indian refugees landed up in the US | - Despite Trump: Indians were among the top 10 countries of origin of asylum seekers in the US last year, according to a UN report on refugees - with 7,400 Indians seeking asylum in the land governed by Donald Trump.
- Preferred destination: Of all the Indians who sought refuge or asylum overseas in 2017, more than 93% went to the US - in all, 7,936 Indians sought asylum last year.
- Could Trump be right? The US, which has cracked down on illegal immigrants, including Indians—50 of whom have been detained at a federal prison—became the largest recipient country of refugees in 2017, overtaking Germany, with 331,700 applications for asylum - a 27% increase from 2016.
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| | | 9. Chanda Kochhar may be the last woman standing |  | Women bankers in India, particularly the CEOs celebrated for breaking the glass ceiling, have had an unprecedented bad run in the corner office this year - ironically, in the year of their retirement. - Ghosts of banks past: Usha Ananthasubramanian, who was due to retire in August this year, from her post as MD & CEO of Allahabad Bank, and is currently serving a de facto suspension, finally had her past catch up with her when the CBI named her as an accused in the $2 billion Nirav Modi scam which occurred on her watch as CEO of Punjab National Bank.
- A hat-trick is enough: From a woman who could do no wrong to a woman who can do nothing right to right the troubled ship that is Axis Bank, Shikha Sharma, its MD & CEO, was forced to make a virtue out of a necessity when the RBI refused to sign off on her fourth term as Axis Bank’s top honcho, beginning this June, apparently unhappy with the bank’s rising bad loans - Sharma is now due to quit by December this year.
- Grouse about spouse: If behind every successful man there’s a woman, the reverse certainly wasn’t the case for Chanda Kochhar, MD & CEO of ICICI Bank, who’s been forced to go on an extended vacation pending an enquiry into a possible conflict of interest regarding the grant of a loan to the Videocon Group at a time when the company was in business with her husband Deepak Kochhar - her current tenure due to end on March 31, 2019.
That said, it’s not all bad news for women in financial services, especially those at the lower rungs - the rural development ministry has proposed to employ women’s self-help group as banking correspondents in villages with low transactions. For more details, read here | |
| | 10. The last cheque ever written |  | - A cheque of Rs 40,000 isn’t what cops would expect to find alongside a suicide note. But that’s what a 69-year-old retired government employee left before he departed.
- And a request… The note said he wanted his last rites to be performed in Srirangapatna, Mysuru—also the location of the lodge where he hanged himself. The cheque was to cover the expense of the funeral.
- Not alone: The man, identified as Ramakrishna, had a family, with “well settled” children—but did not want to be a burden to them, even after death.
- Depression as a result of “multiple organ failure” forced him to take the drastic step. Over 50 million in India suffer from depression, according to WHO.
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| | Answer to NEWS IN CLUES |
Massimo Bottura. His restaurant Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy, was crowned the best restaurant in the world. It took top spot on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list—organised and compiled by William Reed Business Media, from the votes of more than 1,000 restaurateurs, chefs, food writers, and gastronomes worldwide | |
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