CURRENT status

NEW DELHI — India's Air Force has raised objections to the indigenous new generation anti-radiation missile (NGARM) currently in development. The future of India's homegrown new generation anti-radiation missile (NGRAM) is likely to face a major roadblock following serious objections by its user, the Indian Air Force (IAF) over its capabilities The 60-kilometer-range NGARM, developed by state-owned Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), will undertake flight trials in three months but Indian Air Force (IAF) officials say the missile is too bulky. DRDO is developing NGARM for the service's Mirage-2000H, Jaguar, Su-30 MKI and the upcoming Light Combat Aircraft. "NGARM being developed by DRDO weighs around 140 kilograms and is too heavy, whereas IAF wants only such missiles that do not weigh over 100 kilograms; this one will not meet our requirement," said a senior Air Force official. "DRDO has never kept us in the

  NORTH SENTINEL ISLAND An American visiting one of the islands in India’s remote cluster of Andaman and Nicobar has been killed by a group of hunter-gatherers who live there isolated from the outside world NOTES The North Sentinel Island is home to the Sentinelese community, who allegedly killed the American, identified as John Allen Chau, after he was illegally ferried there by fishermen THE NORTH SENTINEL ISLAND North Sentinel Island is inhabited by a group of indigenous people, the Sentinelese. Their population is estimated to be between 50 and 400 individuals. They reject any contact with other people, and are among the last people to remain virtually untouched by modern civilization. IS IT LEGAL TO GO THERE? North Sentinel Island is about 50 km west of Port Blair, the capital of the island cluster. The Times of India reported in August this year that the Ministry of Home Affairs had relaxed the restricted area permit foreigners needed to travel to 29 islands in Andaman and Nico

The 32nd GST Council Meeting was held on 10th January 2019 at New Delhi. The decision taken in this meeting with respect to GST turnover limit and composition scheme changes would be effective from 1st April 2019. In the meeting, the Government took steps to provide compliance relief to small businesses by providing various concessions as discussed in this article. GST Turnover Limit Increased The Central Government has decided to provide two threshold limit for  GST registration  for suppliers of goods, Rs.20 lakhs and Rs.40 lakhs. However, each of the individual State Governments must decide on the threshold limit within a week as the State’s revenue is also tied to GST. This decision will now lead to various States having different GST threshold limits overtime. Service providers will continue to be required to register for GST once they cross a turnover of Rs.20 lakhs and in case of Special Category States at Rs 10 lakhs. Composition Scheme Simplified The Governmen

Tue 15 Jan 2019  06.00 GMT Last modified on Tue 15 Jan 2019  06.02 GMT Shares 452 D onald Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” has become the trademark of his presidency. It is the promise that more than any other has energized his base, and riled his opponents, and his dogged attachment to it has now brought a large part of the US government to a historic 25 days of partial shutdown. The potency of Trump’s wall – for his supporters and his detractors – stems from its simplicity. Build it tall, build it wide – he has pledged 1,000 miles of it – and America will be safe again. But how does that uncomplicated notion compare to the complexity of the border itself? Taken as a whole, the 1,954 miles of  US-Mexican border  is a place of astounding diversity – of terrain, of land-use, of city and countryside, of ethnicity. It traverses desert, river, mountain and sea. There is diversity, too, of political view among the 7.5 million people who live in US border coun

Renuka Ji dam project : Union minister inks agreement  Six states--Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh--on Friday signed an agreement for construction of Renukaji Dam Multi-Purpose Project in the presence of Union Water Resources Minister Nitin Gadkari. Chief Ministers ML Khattar, Jairam Thakur, TS Rawat, Arvind Kejriwal, Ashok Gehlot and Yogi Adityanath signed the agreement. Three projects are proposed to be constructed on the Yamuna and two of its tributaries, Tons and Giri, in the hilly regions of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh of the Upper Yamuna Basin. These include Lakhwar project on the Yamuna in Uttarakhand, Kisau on the Tons in Uttarakhand and Himachal, and Renukaji on the Giri in Himachal. The states had already signed an agreement in respect of sharing of cost and benefits of Lakhwar project in August 2018. After signing the agreement, Gadkari said an agreement among the states concerned regarding the Kisau project wou

What is electric mobility? What types of vehicles does it include? Electric mobility, according to the definition of the German government and the National Development Plan for Electric Mobility (NEP) comprises all street vehicles that are powered by an electric motor and primarily get their energy from the power grid – in other words: can be recharged externally. This includes purely electric vehicles, vehicles with a combination of electric motor and a small combustion engine (range extended electric vehicles – REEV) and hybrid vehicles that can be recharge via the power grid (plug-in hybrid electric vehicles – PHEV). Furthermore, the National Development Plan for Electric Mobility does not just look at specific vehicles but at the overall system. Aside from electric cars, this so-called systemic approach also includes the energy supply side as well as the charging and traffic infrastructure in its definition of electric mobility, since those components are interconnecte