Notes:
Australian Parliament has passed the country’s Free trade Agreement (FTA) with India, announced Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Once implemented, the trade agreement will provide duty-free access to the Australian market for over 6,000 sectors of India, including textiles, leather, furniture, jewellery and machinery. Australia offers zero-duty access to India for about 96.4% of exports from day one.

Notes:
Arittapatti village in Madurai district has been notified as the first Biodiversity Heritage Site in Tamil Nadu.
It has a rich biological and historical significance with the presence of around 250 bird species including 3 Raptor species – Laggar Falcon, Shaheen Falcon, Bonelli’s Eagle. It also has wild-life like Pangolin, Python, and Slender Loris. The notification comes under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002.

Notes:
The Supreme Court noted the absence of a law governing the appointments of election commissioners and chief election commissioners a disturbing trend.
The court flagged Article 324 of the Constitution, which talks about the appointment of election commissioners, and said it does not provide the procedure for such appointments. Since 2004, no chief election commissioner has completed the six-year tenure.

Notes:
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) cut its gross domestic growth forecast for India for FY23 to 6.6 per cent from 6.9 per cent.
The reasons are higher medium-term global uncertainty and slowing domestic economic activity. India is set to be the second-fastest growing economy in the G-20 in FY23, despite decelerating global demand and the tightening of monetary policy.

Notes:
The Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, EAC-PM has issued a working paper titled ‘Why India does poorly on global perception indices: Case study of three opinion-based indices’.
It says that the decline in India’s rankings on a number of global indices is due to the problems with the methodology used in these opinion-based indices. The Paper has analysed – Freedom in the World Index, V-DEM indices, and EIU Democracy Index.