10 APRIL 2016

Ø  Wildlife authorities have launched a massive exercise to conserve Olive Ridley turtles in the Krishna Wildlife Sanctuary (KWS). An unprecedented number of over 10,500 eggs of the turtles have been collected since early March. They are being conserved in the rookeries set up within the KWS limits.

Ø  Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold a meeting with senior officials of the Department of Posts, or India Post, to take stock of its preparedness to roll out its payments bank. Mr. Modi will be updated on the other initiatives of the department, including digitisation and e-commerce services. The Public Investment Board has approved the Rs. 800-crore proposal of India Post, and it is expected to come up for Cabinet approval in the next 15 days. India Post has selected Deloitte to advise it on setting up the payments bank, which is expected to be operational by March 2017. India Post was among the 11 entities to have received licences for setting up the payments bank from the Reserve Bank of India last year. As many as international financial conglomerates, including the World Bank and Barclays, have shown interest to partner the postal department for setting up the bank.

Ø  A crucial counter-terror pact is likely to be among the list of agreements that the President of the Maldives, Abdullah Yameen, may conclude during his visit to India on Sunday and Monday, a high-level Maldivian diplomatic source told. The Maldives has been seeking regional support to deal with extremism as 40 of its citizens are reportedly fighting alongside the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The issue was discussed between India and the Maldives during the March visit of Maldivian Foreign Secretary Ali Naseer Mohammed and Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar when both sides agreed on “information sharing” to counter terror. “Our biggest challenge is the potential returnees from the IS terror camps who are trained in firearms. Apart from the pact on counter-terror, diplomats on both sides are also working on welcoming an agreement on double taxation avoidance in the field of international air transport. The Union Cabinet has already given its nod on February 24 to the new agreement which will stop double taxation of international air transport between India and Maldives. Experts have noted that the visit of President Yameen which comes just two days before the beginning of the Indian Ocean Region dialogue in Indonesia gives India one more opportunity to convince the Maldives to join the Indian Ocean Region Association .

Ø  The Colombo Port City project, which both China and Sri Lanka have decided to develop into a financial hub, will not have any impact on Indian security, visiting Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said. The Prime Minister highlighted that his government wanted to turn the port of Hambantota into another Shenzhen— the city that was at the heart of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. He rejected the contention that like Gwadar in Pakistan, the Chinese will manage the operations of the port. Mr. Wickremesinghe said the Sri Lankans were talking to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chadrababu Naidu about greater cooperation between Sri Lankan ports and Visakhapatnam once an economic and technology agreement with India is materialised. “What we are doing in Sri Lanka is an economic and technology agreement with India, FTA with China, FTA with Singapore and GSP plus with EU.”

Ø  South Korean steelmaker POSCO on Friday told an Indian green court that it would not be able to set up a $12 billion steel plant in eastern Odisha state by July 2017, as the construction is yet to begin. Regulatory hurdles have pushed back the project, billed as India's biggest foreign direct investment, for more than a decade. POSCO's lawyer told Reuters after a hearing in the National Green Tribunal that the company has not been able to obtain forest and other clearances while its environmental clearance is valid until July 2017.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Florida on a NASA cargo run to the International Space Station on Friday, and its reusable main-stage booster landed on an ocean platform minutes later in a dramatic spaceflight first. The successful autonomous touchdown of the booster at sea marked another milestone for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and his privately owned Space Exploration Technologies in the quest to develop a cheap, reusable rocket, expanding his edge in the burgeoning commercial space launch industry.