Amazon Fires, RBI to transfer surplus, Organized Financial Crimes

• Norway, Ireland and Spain will formally recognise the state of Palestine, even as reports emerged of Israel pushing its way further into Rafah in southern Gaza.
• Israel is recalling its ambassadors from these three countries.
• The European countries’ announcements come weeks after 143 of 193 countries in the United Nations (U.N.) General Assembly voted for full membership to the U.N. for the State of Palestine.
• Norway has been involved in peace talks between Israel and Palestine for decades and hosted the Oslo process culminated in the Oslo Peace Accords, agreements for a resolution to the conflict and a two-state solution.

India’s policy towards Palestine has been long-standing and consistent. We have supported a negotiated two-state solution, towards the establishment of a sovereign, independent and viable State of Palestine within secure and recognised borders, living side by side in peace with Israel.

• The Indian External Affairs Minister met the Foreign Minister of Palestine in January 2024 and reiterated India’s support for a two-state solution.

Dig Deeper: Read about the Balfour Declaration and the Camp David Accords.

• The Election Commission (EC) told the Supreme Court that there was no “legal mandate” to provide the voter turnout data.
• There is no legal mandate to provide Form 17C [account of votes recorded] to any person other than the candidate or his agent,  as per the Election Commission.

In response to an application filed by the ADR, primarily seeking to disclose the authenticated record of voter turnout by uploading on the EC website scanned legible copies of Form 17C of all polling stations after each phase of polling.

• The NGO had alleged an inordinate delay in publishing voter turnout details followed by a sharp spike in figures from the initial voter turnout percentages released by the EC.
• Earlier, the Supreme Court had asked why the EC could not upload voter turnout details.
• EC claimed it was a voluntary and non-statutory initiative to disclose the voter turnout through the voter turnout app, website and various press releases.

Dig Deeper: Read Election Conduct Rules, 1961 sections in discussion.

• Brazil’s Amazon rainforest has experienced its largest blazes on record in the first four months of the year, with the environmental workers union placing partial blame on lower government spending on firefighting.
• Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has staked his international reputation on protecting the Amazon rainforest and restoring Brazil as a leader on climate policy.
• The Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, is vital to curbing catastrophic global warming because of the vast amount of greenhouse gas it absorbs.
• A record drought in the Amazon rainforest region, driven by the El Nino climate phenomenon and global warming, has helped contribute to dry conditions fueling fires this year.
• Roraima, the northern Amazon state that was hit the hardest by the fires.

More than 12,000 square kilometres (an area larger than Qatar) of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest burned between January and April, the most in over two decades of data, according to Brazil’s space research agency Inpe.

Dig Deeper: Read about the factors that worsened forest fires in the Amazon since 2029 which destroyed millions of hectares of rainforests.

• India’s quest to tap domestic reserves of critical minerals may not deliver their full commercial benefits before 2031.

It renders the country’s manufacturing plans vulnerable to supply shocks for minerals like lithium and cobalt whose global output is controlled by China, as per rating firm ICRA.

• The lack of critical mineral reserves deemed necessary for India’s green energy transition has resulted in 100% import dependence for minerals like lithium, cobalt, and nickel.
• The government recently began the process of auctioning 38 blocks of critical minerals.
• The quality and quantity of lithium resources discovered so far, including those in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), is inferior to other deposits in key producing regions of the world.
• While the Government is auctioning two lithium blocks in the ongoing auctions, the block in J&K has clay deposits, and the technology to extract lithium from them remains untested globally, ICRA said.
• The other lithium block being auctioned in Katghora, Chhattisgarh is a hard rock deposit that is expected to see higher competition, the rating agency reckoned.

Dig Deeper: Read about various states of India and respective critical mineral reserves found.

• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) approved a ₹2.11 lakh crore dividend payout to the central government for 2023-24, more than double the amount it paid for the previous 2022-23 financial year.

• As per the RBI, the economy remains robust and resilient, the Board has decided to increase the Contingent Risk Buffer to 6.5% for FY 2023-24.
• The transferable surplus for the year (2023-24) has been arrived at based on the Economic Capital Framework (ECF) adopted by the Reserve Bank of India, as per recommendations of the ‘Expert Committee to Review the extant Economic Capital Framework of the Reserve Bank of India’.

Dig Deeper: Read about other provisions of the RBI Act of 1934.

• The Centre of Indian Trade Unions has questioned the delay in releasing the All India Consumer Price Index for Industrial Workers (AICPI-IW) for February and March.
• It urged the Centre to release the data, compiled by the Labour Bureau, without delay and said such a delay is very unusual.
• All India CPI-IW is a very important labour statistic as it is indispensable for the regulation of wages and dearness allowance for millions of workers and employees in the country.
• These indices are also used for measuring inflation and other policy formulations.

Dig Deeper: Find out releasing agencies of other All-India inflation indexes.

• Nearly half of financial frauds targeting Indians originate from the three Southeast Asian countries of Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.
• Most web applications used to commit fraud are written in the Chinese language, thereby not ruling out the Chinese connection, as per the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre.
• In the first four months of the year, Indians had lost over ₹1,776 crore in 89,054 cases of financial crimes such as digital arrest, stock market scams, investment scams and romance or dating scams.
• These complaints were received on the national cybercrime portal and not all of them were converted into First Information Reports.

Dig Deeper: Read about the mandate of the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre.