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At least two persons have died of the H3N2 subtype of seasonal influenza, which has infected rising numbers of people since mid-December last year, the Health Ministry has confirmed.
After a nationwide surveillance exercise, the Ministry said it had found at least 451 confirmed cases of H3N2 virus since the beginning of this year.
The first recorded death from H3N2 this year was of an 82-year-old man in Karnataka’s Hassan district. According to official reports, he was hospitalised on February 24 and died on March 1. He had diabetes and high blood pressure.
The second deceased was a 56-year-old lung cancer patient in Haryana’s Jind district who tested positive for the H3N2 virus in January and died of it last week.
H3N2 patients display symptoms similar to COVID-19: fever, cough, breathlessness, wheezing and pneumonia. The Health Ministry has advised social distancing and mask wearing to prevent the spread of the virus.
Editorial
Belated, but essential (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, Indian Polity)
The Finance Ministry’s March 7 notification placing all transactions involving virtual digital assets under the purview of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) is a much-needed, even if belated, step.
The government has been struggling in recent years to formulate an appropriate regulatory response to deal with the pandemic-era upsurge in advertisements soliciting investment in virtual assets as well as reports of actual investment.
A July 2021 online report by BrokerChooser.com, for instance, had estimated India as being the country with the highest number of ‘crypto owners’, at 10.07 crore, which was more than threefold the number of owners of crypto assets in the second-ranked U.S. Even if this is discounted as a speculative guesstimate, measures and disclosures by the government indicate that the volume of trade in unregulated virtual assets has grown sizeably in recent years.
Last month, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary informed the Lok Sabha that the Enforcement Directorate was ‘investigating several cases related to cryptocurrency frauds wherein a few crypto exchanges had been found involved in money laundering’.
And that as much as ₹936 crore had been attached or frozen as on January 31, on being deemed to be proceeds of crime. The decision to mandatorily bring all trade in virtual digital assets under the PMLA now lays the onus of ascertaining the provenance of all activity, including safekeeping, in such assets upon individuals and businesses participating in or facilitating these transactions.
A moment of reckoning for AUKUS and Australia (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
The week ahead is likely to be crucial for Australia. An announcement about an “optimal pathway” for AUKUS — the security partnership between the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom — is on the horizon, with implications for Australia’s plans to operate a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines within the next decade.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has called it “the single biggest leap in defence capability in Australia’s history”.
Officials in Canberra, however, are still concerned. Their country requires a favourable path to develop deterrence capabilities against potential adversaries, but even the most positive outcome of the AUKUS consultations is not without drawbacks.
The main issue for Australia is that many of its regional partners oppose the Royal Australian Navy operating nuclear attack submarines. Some, such as Indonesia, have been open about their reservations.
Others, such as India, despite being politically supportive of AUKUS, appear conflicted about the prospect of these submarines operating in the regional littorals.
For its part, Canberra has attempted to assuage concerns by explaining to its counterparts in regional capitals that AUKUS does not provide Australia with nuclear weapons capability, but is rather a means of acquiring nuclear maritime propulsion.
Officials have even attempted to distinguish AUKUS from other groups such as the Quad (India, the U.S, Japan, Australia). Canberra describes the Quad as a normative grouping that lays out a vision for the region and AUKUS as a more technical arrangement.
Ground Zero
China’s massive Hainan bet (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 1, Geography)
On March 10, 2023, Xi Jinping officially began his precedent-defying third term, with the ceremonial National People’s Congress (NPC) confirming him as China’s President for the next five years.
The first decade of the Xi era, which was defined by China’s return to one-man rule and the end of the collective leadership model, came to a close with three years of the ‘zero-COVID’ policy essentially walling China off from the rest of the world.
A decade into what Beijing has declared as “a new era” under Xi, China stands at a crossroads. Beijing is facing searching questions about its place in the world, and many observers, both within China and abroad, are asking if the reform era, which saw China opening up and integrating with the world, has ended. Three years of isolation only reinforced those perceptions.
Forty years ago, China stood at a similar crossroads. In 1992, Deng Xiaoping embarked on a “southern tour” to give his stalled reforms a second wind from Shenzhen, just three years after the events at Tiananmen had shaken China and the world.
Xi appeared to be taking a leaf out of the Deng play book when, right after last year’s NPC session, he decided to begin the last year of his second term with his own southern tour.
News
Categorisation of terrorism on the basis of motivation is ‘dangerous’, says India (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
India said the tendency to categorise terrorism on the basis of motivations behind terrorist acts is “dangerous” and asserted that all kinds of terror attacks, whether motivated by Islamophobia, anti-Sikh, anti-Buddhist or anti-Hindu prejudices, are condemnable.
Ambassador Ruchira Kamboj, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, said the international community needs to stand guard against new terminologies and false priorities that can dilute its focus of combating the scourge of terrorism.
The tendency of categorisation of terrorism based on the motivations behind terrorist acts is dangerous and goes against the accepted principles that ‘terrorism in all its forms and manifestations should be condemned and there cannot be any justification for any act of terrorism, whatsoever’.
Underlining that there cannot be good or bad terrorists, she said such an approach “will only take us back to the pre-9/11 era of labelling terrorists as ‘Your Terrorists’ and ‘My Terrorists’ and erase the collective gains the international community has made over the last two decades”.
Govt. amends KYC to add NPOs, ‘politically exposed persons’ (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Indian Polity)
The Union Finance Ministry has amended the Prevention of Money Laundering (Maintenance of Records) Rules for widening the scope of Know Your Customer (KYC) norms to include Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs), non-profit organisations (NPOs) and those dealing in virtual digital assets (VDA) as reporting entities.
The decision has been taken ahead of the expected Financial Action Task Force assessment of India later this year.
The Ministry has made the exchanges and intermediaries dealing in VDA, such as cryptocurrency, reporting entities under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), thus making it mandatory for them to adhere to the client/user KYC requirements.
Under the Act, reporting entities are required to keep all the relevant records of their beneficial owners and transactions for five years.
The Ministry has issued another notification, which defines PEPs as individuals who have been entrusted with prominent public functions by a foreign country, including the heads of States or governments, senior politicians, senior government or judicial or military officers, and important political party officials.
“In such cases, transactions of ₹10 lakh and above will have to be reported to the Financial Intelligence Unit. Non-profit organisations formed for religious or charitable purposes, and registered as trust or society, too have been added to the list.
Another key decision is the lowering of ownership threshold from 25% to 10%, thereby treating any individual or group holding 10% ownership in a reporting entity as a “beneficial owner” for the purpose of PMLA rules.
News
India, U.S. to launch a semiconductor subcommittee (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
India and the United States on Friday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that will pave the way for creating a semiconductor sub-committee under the Commercial Dialogue between the U.S. Department of Commerce and India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the Ministry of Commerce.
One of the major outcomes of the Commercial Dialogue was the memorandum of understanding on establishing semiconductor supply chain and innovation partnership,” announced Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal. News about the MoU was shared by visiting U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
Mr. Goyal said the key features of the Commercial Dialogue included creating “reliable supply chains, diversifying and friend-shoring [sourcing of material from countries with similar social and political values], facilitating climate and clean technology cooperation, inclusive digital growth, talent development, post-pandemic economic recovery, and a focus on cooperation”.
Mr. Goyal and Ms. Raimondo welcomed the recent launch of the U.S.-India initiative of Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) that will broaden “strategic technology partnership”.
A joint statement issued after the event declared, “The Minister and the Secretary charged the semiconductor sub-committee with convening its first engagement in advance of any Commercial Dialogue mid-year review and reviewing recommendations from the joint industry-led task force launched in connection with the iCET.”
Australia, India sign audio-visual co-production agreement (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
India and Australia have signed an audiovisual co-production agreement under which private, quasi-government or governmental agencies of the two countries enter into contracts to produce films together.
The government has so far entered into 15 such agreements with various countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Canada.
An audio-visual co-production will be entitled to claim all the benefits extended in both the countries. “The respective contributions of the producers of the two countries may vary from 20% to 80% of the final total cost of co-produced work.
A third country can also participate in the co-production as a multilateral project, subject to conditions and limits laid down in the laws in force, between the party countries.
The Ministry plans to make incentive applications completely online through the revamped Film Facilitation Office (FFO) website.