8 APRIL 2016

Ø  At a press conference that could derail the already faltering peace process between India and Pakistan, High Commissioner Abdul Basit on Thursday accused India of suspending Foreign Secretary-level talks and hinted that the NIA team due to visit Pakistan had not received clearance from Islamabad yet. However, the MEA said the High Commissioner had been contradicted by his own Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson who on Thursday evening said the “countries are in contact” to work out dates for the Foreign Secretary talks.

Ø  The Supreme Court on Thursday slammed the Gujarat and Haryana governments for “hazy” presentation of facts and outdated charts on rainfall data in a hearing on the delay in declaration of drought and provision of urgent relief to thousands of lives in parched areas across the country as mercury levels continue to soar. At one point during the hearing on a PIL petition filed by NGO Swaraj Abhiyan, exasperated by lack of updated data on rainfall and water scarcity from the Manohar Lal Khattar-led Haryana government, a Bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and N.V. Ramana asked whether the State was even remotely serious about the sufferings of its people.

Ø  The Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party have demanded that Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley recuse himself from any matter pertaining to the Panama Papers, alleging that the “closeness of some BJP leaders” to sports promoter Lokesh Sharma, whose name has been found in the papers, would affect a fair probe. The Congress also demanded that a judicial probe be ordered into the allegations of Indians setting up offshore entities in tax havens.

Ø  India is the sixth largest military spender in 2015 having spent $51.3 billion even as the world spent $1,676 billion reversing a global trend which was on the decline since 2011., as per the latest report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The U.S. remained by far the world’s largest spender in 2015 despite its defence expenditure falling by 2.4 per cent to $596 billion followed by China, Saudi Arabia, Russia and U.K. China’s expenditure rose by 7.4 per cent to $215 billion.