| | 5 THINGS FIRST | Today: IPL 2020 schedule likely to be announced; Future Enterprises board meet could finalise sale of retail business to Reliance Retail; ex-PM Mahathir Mohamad’s new party makes debut in Malaysian bypolls Tomorrow: England vs Pakistan, 2nd T20I, Manchester; PM Modi’s monthly radio address | |
| | 1. Testing times ahead for students |  | - Upholding the University Grants Commission’s (UGC) July 6 decision to conduct examinations by September 30, the Supreme Court (SC) on Friday said that no state can promote students without conducting final examinations.
- However, the SC said that states have the power under the Disaster Management Act (DMA) to postpone the exams beyond the deadline and will need to consult the UGC to decide on the new date.
- After the UGC order last month on holding the examinations, states like Delhi and Maharashtra had cancelled final year examinations of state universities. UGC had countered it saying as the regulator of higher education, only it had the power to do so.
- It’s not just final year college students who can’t escape exams — in a separate case, six cabinet ministers of opposition ruled states, viz., West Bengal, Punjab, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, have jointly filed a review petition in the SC against conducting the National Eligibility cum Entrance Examination (NEET) and the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), citing unsafe conditions due to Covid-19
- On August 17, the SC had dismissed a plea seeking postponement of NEET and JEE due to Covid-19, saying that “life must go on”.
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| | 2. Covid grips CSK in Dubai |  | - The IPL was rocked on Friday by news of Chennai Super Kings (CSK) fast bowler Deepak Chahar (middle in pic) and 11 other members of the team’s contingent testing positive for Covid-19 in Dubai.
- How: Per IPL's Covid protocols, every person would get tested at the airport upon landing in the UAE, followed by two tests at the hotel on days 3 and 6. (CSK reached Dubai on August 21). While one member tested positive on arrival itself, Chahar and a few others failed the subsequent tests on August 23 and August 26.
- Also in focus: CSK was the only team that held a camp in India before flying out to Dubai. The location of the five-day camp, which began on August 16: Chepauk Stadium, in Chennai’s Triplicane area — a Covid hotspot. The BCCI had expressed its concerns then, but they were not heeded.
- Now: Those who have failed the test have been shifted to a separate quarantine centre, with the team's training cancelled till September 5. Chahar, however, can return to training only after a 14-day quarantine period, following which he will have to test negative twice, 24 hours apart, before being permitted to re-enter the biosecure zone. Read about IPL's SOPs here.
- The BCCI insisted there was no immediate threat to the tournament, which is scheduled to start from September 19.
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| | 3. Farm sector posts record kharif crop acreage |  | - Despite the pandemic and flood situation in many states, the sowing of kharif crops in the country touched an all-time high area of 1,082 lakh hectares, as of Friday. That’s an over 7% increase from the corresponding period last year and 1.5% beyond the average acreage of the past five years. The last all-time high kharif acreage was in 2016, at 1,075 lakh hectares.
- The higher acreage can be attributed to a good monsoon rainfall and proactive measures, taken by farmers and governments during the lockdown period, to beat the impact of Covid-19 on agriculture. Barring damage due to inclement weather, several crops will benefit from the government’s procurement policies.
- Now, a good kharif output could also help bring overall retail inflation within the RBI’s threshold band of 2-6% in the coming months. (Since April, it has been hovering at 7% largely due to high food prices).
- “Sowing of rice is still continuing in some parts, while sowing of pulses, coarse cereals, bajra and oilseeds is almost over,” said agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Friday. “We are confident that with so much acreage, over total foodgrains production in 2020-21 will cross the targeted 298.32 million tonnes.”
- However: Experts and farmers said incessant rains since the last few weeks and pest attacks could impact the final yield particularly in early sown varieties. Also, will there be demand to absorb the surplus production? Unless it picks up strongly in the months to come, crop prices might collapse, hurting farmers immensely.
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| | 4. Who is a minority in India? |  | - A question: The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to examine whether a community could be declared as a religious and linguistic minority based on its population in a state to allow it to run institutions of its choice.
- The law: Section 2(c) of National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992 had granted minority status to five communities (Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis) based on their national population.
- The challenge: A petition before the apex court has challenged the validity of Section 2(f) of National Commission for Minority Education Institution Act for giving power to the Centre to declare minority community.
- The argument: It says that "followers of Judaism, Bahaism and Hinduism are being deprived of their basic rights to establish and administer educational institutions. On the other hand, Muslims are in majority in Lakshadweep (96.58%) and Kashmir (96%). Christians are majority in Nagaland (88.10%), Mizoram (87.16%) and Meghalaya (74.59%)".
- A judgment: The SC had last year dismissed a petition asking for minority status to be based on the population at the state level. "States were formed on linguistic basis. That is not the case with religion. What is the problem if a community is majority in Jammu & Kashmir but minority in all other states? In Lakshadweep, Hindus may be 2% but they follow Hinduism which is the majority in India,” the court had said.
- A problem: The share of minorities in the population also changes at the district level. Even in states where a minority community is not in majority, it may dominate some pockets. For instance, there are four districts of Manipur where Christians are in majority. Muslims constitute over 70% of the population in Kerala’s Malappuram district. Buddhists are a majority in Sikkim’s North District and Arunachal’s Tawang. So, how local can we go?
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| | NEWS IN CLUES | | 5. Which famous cartoon character was originally named ‘Too Much’? | - Clue 1: He made his debut in September 1969 on CBS TV, and has since spawned a slew of spinoff series.
- Clue 2: The character has a speech disorder and tends to pronounce most words as if they begin with an ‘R’.
- Clue 3: He’s a male Great Dane and lifelong companion of amateur detective Shaggy Rogers.
Scroll below for answer | |
| | 6. Japan’s longest-serving PM bows out |  | - Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving Prime Minister, surprised the world by announcing his resignation on Friday, citing health reasons. “I made a judgment that I should not continue my job as a prime minister,” he said. “I would like to sincerely apologise to the people of Japan for leaving my post with one year left in my term of office, and amid the coronavirus woes, while various policies are still in the process of being implemented”.
- Poor health: Abe, 65, has had ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease, since he was a teenager, but he said his condition had worsened recently. Concerns about Abe’s health began this summer and grew this month when he visited a Tokyo hospital two weeks in a row, reports Associated Press.
- A stalwart: He was first elected as Japan’s youngest prime minister in 2006, at age 52, riding a nationalistic agenda, but his stint ended a year later because of his health. He returned to power in December 2012, prioritising economic measures — the “Abenomics” formula. As Prime Minister, he has bolstered Japan’s defence, its security alliance with the US and has pushed hard to reverse the country’s pacifist constitution — a vestige of World War II. His term also coincided with the strengthening of the Quad group comprising India, US, Australia and Japan, as a hedge against China’s growing maritime influence.
- What now: Abe is expected to stay on until a new party leader is elected and formally approved by the parliament. His successor would hold the post until the current term ends in September 2021.
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| | 7. Covid warriors take a hit | - Over 87,000 healthcare workers have been infected with coronavirus in India so far, official data showed. Six states — Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, West Bengal and Gujarat — accounted for nearly three-fourths (74%) of the case burden and over 86% of the 573 deaths.
- Lax infection control in hospitals and the want of stringent containment measures in localities where health professionals reside could be the possible factors, officials said.
- Quoted: “Solidarity with health workers cannot be met with mere words of encouragement but by concerted efforts to strengthen the health workforce. Safety net for their families should be provided including a term insurance cover of over Rs 2 crore, with the government as sole guarantee,” said Giridhar Babu, epidemiologist at the Public Health Foundation of India.
Where the country stands: | |
| | 8. UK honour for Indian-origin spy Noor Inayat Khan |  | - On Friday, Noor Inayat Khan became the first Indian-origin woman (and first of South Asian descent) to be honoured with an English Heritage blue plaque for her efforts as an undercover spy in Nazi-occupied Paris in World War II.
- Who: Born to an Indian father and an American mother, Khan was a descendant of Tipu Sultan. She was the first undercover female radio operator to be flown into Nazi-occupied France, serving behind enemy lines in the Special Operations Executive, a body set up by Sir Winston Churchill.
- She began her mission in 1943, but was arrested by the Gestapo. She managed to escape from prison, but was shortly recaptured and was transferred to Dachau concentration camp where she was executed in 1944.
- What: Since 1866, over 900 blue plaques, on buildings humble and grand in London, have honoured the notable men and women who have lived or worked in them. Khan’s plaque was placed on her family home on Taviton Street in Bloomsbury.
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| | 9. Two sides of Washington |  | Donald Trump on Thursday (early Friday IST) accepted the Republican Party’s presidential nomination for the November election by blasting Democratic rival Joe Biden as a hapless career politician who will destroy “American greatness”. While he gave the speech on the South Lawn of the White House, protesters gathered just outside the cordoned-off area to call for the end of the Trump administration, blowing horns and sirens in an attempt to drown out his televised speech (though they were at a distance). | |
| | | BEFORE YOU GO | | 10. An ingenious method to track China’s Uighur crackdown |  | China runs the most sophisticated information blackout programme the world has ever seen. Turns out those very tools China deploys for this can reveal a lot. Using blanked-out areas on Baidu Maps and cross-referencing it with images from external satellite data providers, the Buzzfeed News identified 268 newly built compounds in Xinjiang to detain Uighur minorities. Explore the investigation here | |
| | | Answer to NEWS IN CLUES | Scooby Doo. Joe Ruby, the animation veteran who co-created the popular character and kids show with Ken Spears at Hanna-Barbera Productions, has died. The 87-year-old animation veteran passed away due to natural causes on Wednesday at his home in California’s Westlake Village, reported Variety. | |
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| Written by: Rakesh Rai, Judhajit Basu, Sumil Sudhakaran, Tejeesh N.S. Behl
Research: Rajesh Sharma
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