Notes:
India has found problems with the current method under which the OECD index –Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI) – ranks countries based on their services trade policies. As per study commissioned by Indian Ministry of Commerce, the outcomes of index are biased and counter-intuitive. For example, the index seems to show the Indian services sector as one of the most restrictive, particularly in policy areas like foreign entry. This seems surprising as since 1991, the one area that has seen maximum liberalization in India is Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). The initial work suggests that there are both theoretical and practical inconsistencies in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) methodology. Additionally, the data seems to have been generated by rather arbitrary procedures and reflects a developed country bias. In order to rectify this, the Indian team of econometricians designed a new way of measuring restrictiveness in the services trade that would be more robust and would not have a bias either for developed or developing countries.

Notes:
After 29 glorious years of service from 1990 to 2019, the Indian Coast Guard ship (ICGS) Vigraha has recently decommissioned at Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh on May 16. During the 29 years of service, the ship has participated in major coast guard operations involving search and rescue, anti-poaching, pollution response, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, repatriation and joint exercises among others. ICGS Vigraha was the 7th Vikram-class offshore patrol vessel built by the Mazagaon Dock Limited, Mumbai and it was commissioned on April 12, 1990.

Notes:
The World Telecommunication and Information Society Day is observed across the globe every year on May 17 to help raise awareness of the possibilities that the use of the Internet and other Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can bring to societies and economies, as well as of ways to bridge the digital divide. The 2019 theme is ‘Bridging the standardization gap’. The day also marks the anniversary of the signing of the first International Telegraph Convention (ITC) and the creation of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

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A comprehensive survey on plastic pollution has been conducted by marine scientists on the Australian external territory of Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Around 600 people live in these remote places, which are sometimes described as “Australia’s last unspoilt paradise”. The scientists found an estimated 414 million pieces of plastic including nearly one million shoes and 370,000 toothbrushes on the beaches of remote Islands in the Indian Ocean. The survey published in the journal ‘Scientific Reports’ estimated that the beaches on the islands are littered with 238 tonnes of plastic. They believe their overall finding is conservative, as they weren’t able to access some beaches known to be hotspots of pollution. Researchers said, the scale of the problem means cleaning up our oceans is currently not possible, and cleaning beaches, once they are polluted with plastic, is time consuming, costly, and needs to be regularly repeated as thousands of new pieces of plastic wash up each day. The only viable solution is to reduce plastic production and consumption while improving waste management to stop this material entering our oceans in the first place.

Notes:
With sales estimated at Rs. 168.25 crore, London-based sculptor Anish Kapoor has topped the first edition of the Hurun India Art List. He is followed by artists Akbar Padamsee and Krishen Khanna, whose works were sold for Rs 45.84 crore and Rs 9.48 crore respectively. The Hurun Research Institute has ranked the top 50 Indian artists alive based on the sales of their works at public auction from April 2018 to March 2019. The report is based on data from top auction-houses and agencies in the industry. Hurun Report India in association with ArtPrice.com has recently unveiled the first edition of its India Art List, in which 24% of artists listed were women. Mr. Kapoor is known for using granite, marble, limestone and plaster to make geometric structures. He is the only artist to own the exclusive right to use the ‘blackest black’ pigment in the world developed by Vantablack.