Welcome to the Hindu News Analysis by Shankar Iyer's Academy. Displayed are the list of news articles selected for today's analysis and their page numbers in Chennai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Thiruvananthapuram editions of the newspaper. The link for the handwritten notes and the time stamping of the news articles are provided in the description box and the time stamping for the benefit of mobile phone viewers is also been given in the comment section. Now, let us move on to the first news article. Now, this editorial article is about foreign policy challenges that India has in comparison with what was before some five years ago, simply between 2014 and the present time 2019. Now, this will be part of your prelims under current events of national importance and in main GS paper 2 in India and its neighborhood relations, bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and affecting India's interests or agreements that do not involve India but affecting India's interests and also under effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India's interests and also on Indian diaspora. Now, the author opens the editorial with the recent developments in the global scenario that adds complexity to the Indian foreign policy challenges in dealing with the rise of China. The global scenario in 2019 is not the same as it was in 2014. Now, one of the recent developments is in the side of United States with Mr. Donald Trump winning the presidential election in the United States. See, the author says this because victory of Donald Trump gave a new dose of unpredictability in the United States policy decisions. For example, nobody expected that United States will withdraw from trans-pacific partnership and many didn't expect that United States will withdraw from joint comprehensive plan of action or in other words, the Iran nuclear deal. There were also a host of several other issues as well in which unpredictable decisions were made with respect to United States. Then if you see the ongoing trade war between United States and China and if you see the nature of this trade war is now becoming a technology war. This technological nature is said because of the US restrictions in Chinese investments in the high-tech areas in the United States and various restrictions were also placed on Chinese high-tech companies and similar restrictions. And on the other hand, if you take European Union, they are more preoccupied with the Brexit or British exit deal that is the exit of Britain from the European Union. And recently, we could see more erosion of US Russia arms control agreements. Now, there are some arms control treaty between United States and Russia such as SALT-1, SALT-2, START-1, START-2, SOT treaty, INF treaty that is Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The author says that recently we have seen several violations in these arms control treaties and we could see new and invigorated arms race happening in nuclear space and also cyber regimes. And US has also announced withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018. This deal is also called as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. And there is also increasing or rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran. And we also saw tensions increasing between Iran and United States as well in the recent times. So author says that all these recent developments somehow add complexity in handling China or the rise of China through the Indian foreign policy. See that, that is the global environment has become highly unpredictable these days. Now, he comes to neighborhood, here he talks about the invitations extended to the neighboring countries for the recent swearing and ceremony of the top leadership in our country. The author states that India did not want to invite Pakistan and that is why it did not invite SARC countries this time. We know that in 2014 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was swearing in, he invited SARC countries but this time he invited BIMSTEC countries only to avoid Pakistan. But know that it affected Maldives and Afghanistan because they are not member countries of BIMSTEC and we could know that that is one of the reasons that would have made our Indian Prime Minister to make his first visit after the swearing in to take into Maldives. Now, in addition to BIMSTEC, India also invited Kyrgyzstan. Now, you note that the Kyrgyzstan is the present chair in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the invitation was also extended to Mauritius this time. The India-Pakistan relations, it got strained, already strained but then it became very severely strained since 2016, September, when the Uri terror attack happened and recently we know about the Pulwama terrorist attack and the aftermath with respect to it the Balakot air strike and another. So, with regards to Pakistan, the author states that rather than having no communication between the two countries, it is better to have some kind of low-key and careful dialogues because low-key means dialogues that is happening but without much sound and noise. The author says that some kind of dialogue should go on between the two countries because these things may help in giving nuances and leverages at the required time. With respect to neighborhood, the author is asking India not to show dominance in the region rather to generate a broad-based consent. Dominance and playing favourites in the region could have been helpful in a pre-globalized world and in a world where there is no China asserting its power. Now, China is asserting its power in the region and there is globalization. In this scenario, dominance and playing favourites will not work. So, now things have changed. India have to make some solid action-based commitments with the nations in the region and India should become generous as a larger economy in the region. That is what the neighboring countries expect. That is what will make India support credible to them. For example, India should provide more line-of-credit financial assistance to the nearby countries and also the government shall have a more confident and coordinated approach in handling neighborhood organizations such as SARC, BIMSTEC, Bangladesh-Bootan-India-Napal Initiative, Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Forum for Regional Cooperation and the Indian Ocean RIM Association. Equal attention of bilateral importance shall be given to all these neighborhood organizations in handling them. And the central government or the government of India shall provide necessary attention to the state governments so as to foster or encourage or to create closer linkages with the state governments of India with the bordering neighbor countries. Then the author comes to managing China and the United States. See, according to the author, China will continue to be the most important issue at least even for next five years as well. The author suggests that changes should be made to the foreign policy with respect to China because the present policy is the old policy since 1980s which the focus of which has been on growing economic commercial and cultural relations with China while at the same time maintaining differences on boundary disputes by having dialogues and confidence building measures. According to this author, this policy is no longer sustainable. As we could see Doclam standoff happened between two countries in 2017.  Bhutan and India were strongly against it and after 71 days the standoff was resolved diplomatically and the author feels that the gap between India and China is growing and there has to be steps taken to address it. With respect to United States, the author say that it is a fickle partner. Now fickle partner means a partner who's frequently not loyal. Now we have taken several diplomatic efforts with the United States since or after the testing of nuclear test in 1998. Even though we have taken this many efforts in building the relations between India and United States, India was unable to continue the waiver to import oil from Iran. It also could not be a beneficiary in GSP program. Recently in month of May, we found that US has announced the currently looming issue between India and the United States is about the sanctions under the United States legislation of COTSA. That is, if India makes a payment or if India purchases S 400 air and missile defense system from Russia, then India will be facing sanctions from the United States. Now COTSA stands for countering America's adversaries through sanctions act recently enabled legislation of United States. Now there are some other issues. The United States does not want India to allow Hawaii in 5G trials in Indian telecom industry and there is a kind of reconciliation talks going on between United States and Taliban in Afghanistan and India is potentially concerned about the return of Taliban in Afghanistan after once United States leaves completely from Afghanistan. In such a global scenario, India cannot remain non aligned. See if China has some distance or some standing against Russia, that is if China moves closer to United States, then India has to move closer to Russia. See if China is moving closer to Russia, then India has to do external balancing with the United States. Now the present reality is that China and Russia are having a common front against United States and this means India has to externally balance China by moving closer to United States. But United States as we have seen already is a frequently disloyal partner or a fickle part. Now this is the reality in such a scenario we have to maintain Indian foreign policy. Arthur says that India lacks the ability to shape evens around it as it is having limitations in resources. Now if you see whether it is India or China with respect to investments or in giving line of credit to our neighbor countries, India is certainly lagging in this area and India should take credible steps to help the neighbor countries and we need to have synergized action and coordination in expanding foreign policy establishment in our neighborhood. Now this means when a specific effort is taken in a neighboring country. It is not just the ministry of external affairs, rather there should be synergy or collective coordination of all the relevant ministries. For example, if a project is with respect to agriculture, then ministry of agriculture has to be involved in it. The synergy of the ministry has to be utilized and relevant ministries, industries and other stakeholders have to be part of such a effort taken in our neighborhood country. Arthur suggests that India lags in project implementation. So there has to be urgent attention and evaluation of Indian investments and the project implementation that we have taken up in our neighboring countries. We should note that all these relationships and developments are interlinked and add to complexity in foreign policy. So to create a conducive regional environment, apt utilization or employment of external balancing along with new domestic consensus is required. Now by saying domestic consensus or by having a new consensus at home, the author could be implying that there has to be alignment of opinions on how to engage with all these countries and the countries in the neighborhood. And there has to be alignment or consensus among people, among the top leadership, among bureaucracy, among industries, white parties or ministries also. So with this, now let us move on to our analysis of next news article. The displayed practice question will be discussed in the final session. Now this article will be relevant in prelim syllabus in current events of national and international importance and in mains under GS paper two in India and its neighborhood relations and in bilateral regional groupings and agreements involving India and affecting India's interest and in effect of policies of developing countries on India's interest and in important international institutions, agencies, their structure and mandate. Now it states that Indian prime minister will meet the presidents of Russia, China and Uzbekistan. This is going to happen in the Shanghai cooperation organization summit which is to be held on June 14 in this month in the place Bishkek, that is the capital of Kyrgyz Republic, which is the chair in this Shanghai cooperation organization at present. Now this will be the first multilateral meeting of Indian prime minister after his reelection in the Lokshaba election. Now there will be various issues such as terrorism, issues relating to Afghanistan, regional security, multilateral dialogues and global scenario that are to be discussed during the summit. Now it is expected that the meeting with Russia and the meeting with China will be a bilateral meeting that is India Russia and India China. We have received similar requests from other countries as well but so far another expectation is that India will have a bilateral discussion with Uzbekistan as well. Now we know that the first informal summit between India and China was held last year 2018 in Wuhan in China. Now there is a possibility of the second informal summit between India and China in this year later. See India is also participating in the regional anti-terror structure of Shanghai cooperation organization. See we have been participating in tactical drills and counter-terror operation with other member countries of Shanghai cooperation organization under this RATS framework and in August 2018 India Pakistan and other countries joined in a tactical military exercise under this RATS framework and this year also India is expected to participate in a military exercise in Russia under the RATS. Now we will study about Shanghai cooperation organization this RATS framework and the importance of both in the Indian point of view. Now the formation of Shanghai cooperation organization was declared on 15 June 2001 in Shanghai. It was declared as an intergovernmental multilateral platform. Now before 2001 it was called Shanghai Five because at that time it had only five members such as China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The Shanghai Five was established in 1996 and the purpose was mainly to deal with boundary issues between China, Russia and the newly independent five states of Central Asian region. Now of these five newly independent states three of them were Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan and it is stated that they share boundaries with China and Russia. The Shanghai Five was formed with the signing of a treaty on deepening military trust in border regions and the treaty on reduction of military forces in border regions. In 2001 this organization this Shanghai Five evolved into Shanghai cooperation organization with the inclusion of Uzbekistan in the group. If you see at present the Shanghai organization or SCVO consists of eight full members and India, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan or eight full-time members. Now this organization has four observer states as of now. They are Afghanistan, Iran, Belarus and Mongolia and if you see the dialogue partners they are Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cambodia, Nepal, Turkey and Sri Lanka. If you see the observer states it has Afghanistan, Iran. If you see the dialogue partners our neighbors Sri Lanka and Nepal are there and of the five republics of Central Asia one country that has not joined this organization that is not part of that is not a member country of this organization is Turkmenistan. Now was India a founding member or was India a part of this institution since 2001? No because only in 2017 India became a India got complete membership of this SCVO organization with the support of all the member countries of this organization at that point of time. Prior to that India was acting as a observer state. Now let's talk about this SCVO charter. See we see it's a part of a regional organization. Any regional organization will have a set of you know the charter will have a set of rules like this see it came into effect in 2003 aims for strengthening the mutual trust and neighborliness among member states promotion of cooperation in various fields and one special thing is it also talks about environmental protection and the charter also calls for making joint efforts to maintain and ensure peace security and stability in the region right and it aims to move towards the establishment of democratic fair and rational new international political and economic order. So when we say new international political and economic order one of the objectives is promoting growth and equitable development in developing and least developed countries. Now what is the highest decision making body within this Shanghai cooperation organization? It is the heads of state council the council of heads of state heads of member countries. So it meets annually that is every year at one point it meets and take decisions and adopt various guidelines on all important matters. Now there are two permanent bodies one is Shanghai cooperation organization secretariat and the other is the executive committee of the regional anti-terrorist structure executive committee of the rats. Now the SCO secretariat is in Beijing and SCO rats is based in Tuscant in the country Uzbekistan. So SCO rats is a permanent body of SCO or Shanghai cooperation organization the main purpose is to facilitate coordination and interaction between various authorities of SCO member states to fight against three evils. According to SCO these three evils are terrorism extremism and separatism and other functions are coordination and information sharing right and since becoming a member India has been participating in almost all the activities of SCO rats and within this SCO rats framework there are legal foundations or legal framework for cooperation among member countries and it will have anti-terrorism operations joint counter-terrorism exercises and thereby ensuring security. They have also established a secure database with updated information on people and organizations those who are wanted with respect to terrorism separatism and extremism. Now there are some 19 universal conventions and protocols on combating terrorism by this Shanghai cooperation organization this rats SCO framework also monitors the status of ratification by the member states of SCO of these universal conventions of Shanghai cooperation organization. This rats SCO has you know cooperation with various organizations such as UNODC in UNODC there is a branch called terrorism prevention branch with them they have a relationship by a signed protocol and it has also signed MOUs with ASEAN and Interpol and they also have cooperation with Eurasian Group on combating money laundering and financing of terrorism shortly called as EAG and they also cooperate with United Nations Security Council counter-terrorism committee. You note that there is a there is a terrorism prevention branch of UNODC and there is a Eurasian Group on combating money laundering and financing of terrorism in European region and within United Nations Security Council you know that there is a counter-terrorism committee. Now let's see the importance of Shanghai cooperation organization for our country. Now when joining it had with the purpose of several geo-strategic considerations economic interests now energy and cultural outreach India has joined and the complete membership of India in this organization it actually raises India's stature or posture in this Eurasian region and with this platform India can play a greater role in the region security and economic development so now India actually got a boost because earlier there were already there were lack of direct land transport linkages particularly with Central Asia and Afghanistan we could see this SCO having a membership in SCO can actually help increase India's connectivity with Afghanistan Central Asia and Eurasia so when connectivity is increasing when connectivity is improving obviously the trade and commerce will be boosted up now India has announced its connect Central Asia policy in the year 2012 in the first India Central Asia dialogue which was held in Kyrgyzstan in the location bisque if you ask what is the main or important component of this connect Central Asia policy of 2012 it is improving connectivity and in addition to improving connectivity trade and commerce there is also an important factor of energy security by joining the Shanghai cooperation organization particularly with the SCO energy club so this relationship with SCO will obviously help to you know strengthen energy cooperation between Central Asia and India see the member countries of SCO have about around 25 percent of global oil reserves and if you take in terms of natural gas reserves they have 50 percent and with respect to coal reserves almost 33 percent and uranium reserves almost 50 percent of worlds known uranium reserves are available among the member countries of SCO now some of the other issues faced by the member countries of SCO are you know terrorism as we already seen drug trafficking small arms smuggling and related security challenges with this let's move on to next news article now this news article is about uranium enrichment by Iran now this article will be relevant in prelims under current events of international importance and it remains in GS paper 2 under important international institutions agencies structure and mandate because at the end we will be discussing about international atomic energy agency now before entering we'll have a view on this Iran nuclear deal it's also called as joint comprehensive plan of action now this deal was arrived between Iran and other countries in 2015 in the month of july now the main objective is to ensure that the nuclear program in Iran should be exclusively peaceful now the countries you know that have entered in the deal with Iran are United States UK Russia China France and Germany and therefore the deal is between Iran and P5 plus 1 when we say plus 1 it means Germany P5 are permanent members of United Nations Security Council they are USA UK Russia China and France and additionally European Union is also party to this deal now India is not a party to this Iran nuclear deal and after signing this deal Iran was allowed to have trade relationship with various countries particularly in oil and banking transactions as United States lifted the sanctions on Iran but what happened in May 2018 we have seen that United States withdraw from Iran nuclear deal in May 2018 because it felt that the deal does not have enough provisions to effectively control the nuclear program of Iran now one important provision of the deal is that Iran cannot hold the surplus enriched uranium with itself and therefore it has to sell the surplus enriched uranium to international buyers so now Iran is facing huge sanctions from United States and therefore Iran says that it will not sell the surplus enriched uranium in future if the countries that are party to the deal do not assist Iran from US sanctions and Iran claims that it can lower its commitments according to the deal if a member of the party violates the deal in the first week of May 2019 the Iran president gave a 60-day time period to the countries that are party to this Iran nuclear deal or this joint comprehensive plan of action and it requested to the countries to find a solution for Iran's oil trade against US sanctions now the president of Iran also warned that if the negotiations did not start at least immediately after the 60-day period Iran will start enriching uranium at higher levels than prescribed by the Iran nuclear deal now the news is that Iran has accelerated the uranium enrichment the international atomic energy agency has stated that the production rate of enriched uranium in Iran is increasing it is stated that Iran is now producing more enriched uranium while comparing with the previous times or it producing more enriched uranium than before but it is still not clear when it will reach the limits set by the joint comprehensive plan of action now after the strain in Iran-USA relations particularly since May 2018 when the month when United States withdraw itself from Iran nuclear deal a foreign minister from Germany has visited Iran and he has become one of the most senior western official to visit Iran since the strain in Iran-USA relationships now for the all the escalation of problems Iran's foreign ministry is blaming the United States and they have also assured that Iran will cooperate with European signatories of the deal that is United Kingdom France and Germany now if you consider this international atomic energy agency now it is an autonomous international organization within United Nations system it was created in the year 1957 because at that time there were greater fears and expectations that are generated by the discovery of nuclear technology and they found that the nuclear technology could be used in diverse ways and there were a lot of fears and in response to that this international atomic energy agency was created and it is the international center for cooperation in the nuclear field now main purpose is to promote safe secure and peaceful use of nuclear technologies all over the world India is a member of this international atomic energy agency since 1957 now this headquarters of international atomic energy agency is located in Vienna which is in the country Austria now a displayed prelims question will be discussed in the last session with this let's move on to next news article now this news article is an editorial about revised RBI circular with respect to non-performing assets or non-performing loans the author of this editorial has appreciated the balanced approach taken by RBI in the revised circular now this will be relevant in your prelims levels under current events of national importance and in economic development remains in GS paper 3 under Indian economy now this revised circular of RBI is titled as prudential framework for resolution of stress assets and this circular was recently issued on 7th June in a same way a similar circular was issued by RBI on February 12 of 2018 but that particular circular was struck down by the Supreme Court as ultra virus ultra virus means acting beyond one's legal authority that is RBI issuing directions beyond the powers it has been vested with or in other words RBI does not have power to do so now the new circular is applicable to various entities such as scheduled commercial banks all India term financial institutions which includes nabad national housing bank XIM bank that is export import bank of India small industrial development bank of India and small finance banks and also to systemically important non-deposit taking nbfcs and deposit taking nbfcs note that it is not applicable to regional rural banks now RBI has the right to direct banks to initiate insolvency proceedings in specific cases because of its powers by using its powers under section 35 AA of banking regulation act of 1949 so based on this provision only the new circular was issued by RBI now the main purpose of issuing these directions by RBI is to provide a framework for early recognition and early reporting and time bound resolution of stressed assets now what is stressed assets see a company borrows money from a bank for various business purposes or projects now the borrowed money is called as principle now for this principle company has to pay some amount as interest now if this principle or even the interest is not paid by a company for more than 90 days then such accounts are called as such assets or such borrowed money are called as non-performing assets are in short NPA sometimes these loans are either you know written off by the banks so as to save some of the bank's money from paying tax or these loans are restructured or these loans are modified as fresh loans so that they may not be classified as NPS so all these non-performing assets write offs and restructured loans can be called as stressed assets of a bank see restructured loan is a loan that is just restructured only the linians have been given the loan amount is not yet paid back when we mean restructured loans so therefore restructured loans are also a stressed asset of a bank now these are called as stressed assets because the bank or the creditor does not know whether it will receive the money back or not and there have been wide accumulation of more non-performing assets and this has led to various problems in the banking system across India so the insolvency and bankruptcy code was introduced in the year 2016 now as per insolvency and bankruptcy code when a company defaults on a loan of one lakh or more now the banks or the creditors can approach national company law tribunal and in this mechanism the banks can initiate proceedings under insolvency and bankruptcy code so when the banks initiate proceedings under IBC NCLT will grant moratorium of 180 days or roughly six months so that you know the creditors can come up with a uniform resolution plan by working together of a moratorium period in this context is the time during the loan term when the borrower is not required to make any payment now in this mechanism a single bank right a single creditor to a particular person cannot take actions unilaterally that is if a person has borrowed money from five banks in this resolution plan a single bank cannot take actions on its own or unilaterally so within that 180 days an insolvency professional will make a resolution plan now this resolution plan can be you know like providing some concession in the interest rates or some concession in the principal amount or even extending that time duration within which you know the amount can be paid and it could be several other measures as well if 75 percent of the creditors or the 75 percent of the banks agree with the resolution plan then the resolution plan will made into action otherwise the insolvency professional will liquidate or sell the assets of client and recover the dues now the new circular issued by RBI says that banks will have the freedom to decide whether they can drag the defaulter to the adjudicating authority or not now let's see some of the authors comments on RBI's approach in its recently released circular for understanding we'll also see the difference in approach between this new circular and the old circular that was released on February 2018 see the new circular manages to retain the spirit of the original version while at the same time it was able to accommodate the concerns of banks and borrowers because the older version was very stricter on banks now according to the new circular if the borrower defaults the payment then banks can review and decide on the resolution strategy within 30 days now according to original circular that is published on February 2018 the review period was just one day so with the huge operational constraints within the banking system the banks found one day review period as very difficult to follow and very not practical but now on the revised circular the bank has enough time to review and come up with the resolution strategy now in this new system banks or the creditors have the freedom to decide whether they have to take the defaulter to the adjudicating authority or not when resolution is not taking place within 180 days of resolution plan that is within 180 days of finalizing or making the resolution plan in the earlier circular it was there was no search options available to the banks and rba has made the inter creditor agreement between lenders as a mandatory one by this rba has ensured that the banks will you know have a collective or a common voice so coming to inter creditor agreement see we saw that the companies get loans from different banks at the same time for a particular project or particular business when they default on the loans it was difficult for banks to come up with a common resolution plan so to overcome this challenge an inter creditor agreement came into effect since july 2018 here creditor means banks who have lent the money and the term inter creditor agreement means agreement between different creditors or agreement between different banks see as per this inter creditor agreement the lead creditor will be authorized to formulate a resolution plan lead creditor is the one who has given maximum money to the borrower and this plan will be presented to other lenders for their approval all those creditors who are opposing the resolution plan will have the option to sell their stressed loans now for example if there is there are two banks a and b a has given 70 percent of the credit to a company b has given 30 percent and a have formulated a resolution plan b does not agree then b can sell the 30 percent asset to the bank a a will pay whatever the money required to bank b and bank a will get the money from the borrower now the bank b is no more in the picture this inter creditor agreement aims to quickly resolve the stressed asset issues now this is because the resolution process should not be stalled because of other small lenders now rba has made this inter creditor agreement mandatory the rba has also put a condition that descending lenders or disagreeing lenders you know the small creditors should not get less than the liquidation value they should get the commensurating value so rba has set a limit on recovery for the small creditors from the resolution process so ultimately rba is aiming for faster resolution of stressed assets so that the banking system is not affected for a long time with non-performing or stressed assets now there is one more point with respect to delayed implementation of the resolution plan here rba discourages the delay in the implementation of resolution plan by imposing some additional provisions now the key point here to notice that rba wants the banks to resolve non-performing assets within 180 day limit or transfer the issue to the adjudicating authority earlier the banks were you know either kept restructuring the loans or giving lenience to the borrowers or they kept this or hide the non-performing assets now with this new circular with this new freedom given to banks author hopes that the banks will take some concrete or positive steps as per the direction given by the reserve bank of india now the author also suggests that the government has to assess what is affecting the insolvency resolution process in our country now there are some defaulters wherein the defaulted you know the money will be huge for example sr steel whose resolution is still pending so there is a lot of delay so the author suggests that the government should address major concerns such as the delays in the resolution process and the other loopholes in the system so now let us move on to next news article now the displayed mains question will be discussed in the last session now this news article deals with the process of extradition now the analysis of this news article will be relevant in prelim silvers under current events of national and international importance and in mains in gs paper 2 under global agreements involving india and are affecting india's interest and bilateral agreements as well the effects of policies and politics of developing countries on india's interest now extradition means delivery of criminals or surrendering of fugitives to the requested country extradition is the delivery of an accused or a convicted individual to the country in whose territory the alleged crime has taken place for example if a person of a country b for a person whose citizen of country b has committed a crime in country a then country a will request to surrender the person from country b and this process of surrendering is called as extradition now india is party to many multilateral conventions that provide binding extradition framework to prevent or to stop transnational crimes such as corruption organized crime drug trafficking terrorism and aircraft hijacking so no country in the world including india has extradition treaties with all the nations of if you see india has extradition treaties with some more than 40 countries around 43 countries and extradition arrangements with 10 nations the extradition arrangements are non-binding and they do not impose any legal obligations international level on the party states whereas in a treaty there is binding it is binding and it has some legal obligations based on the particular treaty now for extradition india can make a request to a particular country when india's extradition treaty partners have their treaty obligations to consider india's request but when it is a non-treaty state or in the absence of a treaty it is just a matter of the foreign country to consider based on its domestic laws and procedures or sometimes the country can agree to india's extradition request it may seek a response of reciprocity that is in a similar ground when that country request when that country makes a extradition request india should support now it is stated that section 3 subsection 4 of indian extradition act of 1962 provides a legal basis for the extradition request of india with respect to non-treaty states now the news article talks about extradition of zakir naik who is wanted by india for the offence of money laundering now it is stated that the enforcement directorate is preparing to secure a non-bailable warrant against zakir naik on money laundering charges they say that some amount of some more than 190 crore is involved now the enforcement directorate can request the inter poll to issue a red notice against him based on this non-bailable warrant and it can also approach the malaysian government where is where we can see zakir naik to seek his extradition the malaysian prime minister has said that malaysia reserves the right to not allow the extradition of zakir naik to india because he feels that he is not going to get a fair trial in our country now inter poll is an acronym for international criminal police organization it is also inter governmental organization because it has some 194 member countries india is also one of the member and it helps in policing all the member nations to work together major objective is to keep the world as a safer place it helps the member nations to share and access data or information on crimes and criminals particularly those who you know await justice by escaping from one country to another our red notice by inter poll just alerts the police worldwide about internationally wanted criminals or fugitives our red notice is a is a request to law enforcement agencies worldwide you know to locate and provisionally arrest a person against whom extradition or surrender or some legal action is pending our red notice will have two type of information one with respect to the person with respect to the person name dob date of birth his hair and physical appearance so as to aid in locating the person and also identifying the person and the second is with respect to for what crime the particular person is wanted for what offense whether it is armed robbery or whether it is child abuse etc now generally red notices are published by inter poll at the request of a particular member country now we should know that it is not an international arrest warrant a red notice is a request based on that a police of a particular member state can arrest or cannot but it is therefore it is not an international arrest warrant whereas in an international arrest warrant the police of a particular country will secure arrest of a particular person because inter poll cannot compel the law enforcement authorities in a particular country to arrest someone who is the subject of a red notice if a person is subject of international arrest warrant arrest has to be made therefore with respect to red notice it is up to a member country to decide what legal value or respect it has to give to the notice now with this we come to the end of this article discussion now let us move on to next session practice come revision session now this question is with respect to international atomic energy agency we have given two statements and are asking which of the statements are correct international atomic energy agency was created in 1957 to promote safe secure and peaceful use of nuclear technologies now this statement is correct and also the year it is only in 1957 this agency was created and way back since 1957 India has been a member so therefore the second statement is wrong so the answer for this question is option a one only now this question is with respect to red notice of inter poll so the question a red notice is a request to law enforcement agencies worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition surrender or similar legal action which of the following issues the red notice they have given four options international court of justice international criminal court international criminal police organization and international police association today we saw that option c inter poll or international criminal police organization issues red notice so the answer for this question is option c now this main question in gs3 they're asking to assess the affirmative actions taken by rba to resolve the growing stressed assets in indian account now this question they're asking to assess the affirmative actions taken by rba to resolve the growing stressed assets in indian economy now there could be various affirmative actions taken by rba you could list all those actions and assess them with respect to resolving the stressed assets in indian economy now based on today's discussion you could you could assess how far the previous circular issued in february 2018 you know was helpful in resolving the stressed assets and how the new circular is having its advantages over the previous circular and you could also say that even the supreme court in its assessment find found that the earlier published circular was ultra vias or beyond the powers of rba to issue such a such a circular so that you could highlight the new new provisions with respect to the recent circular published by rba and using these informations you can write in your main's answer the next question with respect to gs paper 2 indias foreign policy requires much dynamic approach in the dynamic global scenario assess the indias challenges with respect to neighborhood and beyond now the first statement you need not focus all your energy and effort to write or explain about this statement you could write in two lines or three lines or a one liner with respect to the statement you know the recent developments in the world is leading to unpredictability in the global scenario and therefore dynamic in such a dynamic scenario dynamic approach is required so this is how you should you may start and then you can assess indias challenges with respect to neighborhood now coming to neighborhood you can assess with respect to challenges with respect to sark challenges with respect to beamstick if you know the specific challenges with respect to Bangladesh Bhutan India Nepal initiative or indian ocean dream association or you can also compare with respect to bcim framework so you can specifically talk about that and you can say that with respect to sark india has not been engaging now because of one country known as pakistan and you can assess these challenges and also for beyond you can you know talk about southeast asian region china central asia and also with respect to united states you can say with respect to challenges with respect to us the recent failures particularly with respect to gsp and also united states not you know renewing the waiver so as to import oil from ira and us is threatening india with sanctions if india proceeds with purchasing or making payment with respect to s 400 air and missile system air missile system from russia and all these things you can highlight in your main section based on today's editorial analysis there could be more points you could add on this with this we come to the end of today's the hindu newspaper analysis if you like the video press the like button comment share and subscribe to shankara is academy youtube channel for daily updates of the hindu news analysis


In these examples, we're going to use what we just learned about the properties of a square r. So in this problem, we are told that su is equal to 2x minus 8 and qA is equal to 3x minus 25. The first thing that we want to do is solve for x. Well, so if we look at this picture, su is a diagonal and qA is a diagonal. And because we just learned that squares share the properties of rhombite and rectangles, and because we know a property of a rectangle is that the diagonals are congruent, we can set up 2x minus 8 has to be equal to 3x minus 25. Solve this for x, so I'm going to subtract the 2x. It gives me negative 8x equals x minus 25, and then add 25 to both sides so we get x equals 17. Then it asks us to find su, and so that just means we are going to plug 17 back in for x. So 2 times 17 minus 8, and 2 times 17 is 34. 34 minus 8, we get 26. In order to do this problem, we can see that we are working with the measure of angle 3. And because we know that this is a square, the first thing that we know is that this is a 90-degree angle, angle u is a 90-degree angle, and then we also know that the diagonals bisect the opposite angles, which means angle 3 has been bisected. So if I take 90 and divide by 2, I know that angle 3 has to equal 45 degrees. And if I know that angle 3 has to equal 45 degrees, then I can set 2x minus 13 equal to 45, and then go ahead and solve for x. So if I add 13 to both sides, I get 2x equals 58, and divide both sides by 2, we get x equals 26. So again, because we know that angle u is a right angle, and because we know the diagonal has bisected it, that's why angle 3 is equal to 45 degrees, 90 divided by 2.


Oh, thank you, Mark. I don't know whether I should say that or not. Well, I was going to start this with thanking Eric for the kind words he said this morning, and thanking counsel and all the councils that I've worked with for the great advice they've given NHGRI and all the precursors of NHGRI through all these years. It's been great not only working with my colleagues in the Institute, but with the council. It's always been a really a very wise source of advice, and now I get to work with a board. I have to take a whole course on how to work with the boards. But thank you, Mark, for the effort of trying to embarrass me. You did a good job. So part of my leaving is, of course, very bittersweet, because I am very dedicated, as Mark said, to this project. I've been working on it, I think, for about three or three and a half years. It's a very exciting project, and I've learned a lot. I've learned a lot about developing countries. I've learned a lot about science in developing countries. And I think the project's going very well. You'll see the next few, the next year probably will be with the proof of the pudding, whether we start to actually get results. But it's very different working in developing countries, and I think that all of us working on this project are learning that. And it'll be important, and some of you on council already know that, but it'll be important for council to know that, too, as we come along. So I want to remind you just a little background that this is a joint project between the Welcome Trust, the NIH, and the Common Fund, and several ICs. And you'll see who those are. And the African Society of Human Genetics. I'm going to skip all the background about how it came to be, but I think it's important for you to remember the key aspects of H3Africa. Importantly, the awards are made directly to African institutions and PIs. This is not totally unique at NIH, but it is not very often done. Usually, Africans are funded through American grants, which then subcontract to the Africans. In these cases, the African PIs in control, and the American collaborator is very often a subcontractor. The PIs, the projects must deposit their data in public databases, and they must deposit their biospecimens in an H3Africa biorepository. And these two bullets are really unique to Africa. And you'll see that the policies are now being approved, but it has been a long discussion with the PIs to get these policies in place. And the grants that came in could propose collaborations with the H3A bioinformatics network. And I'll tell you a little bit more about that. And they all had to include a training component. Now, this is what the current map looks like. It is much many more sites than I ever dreamed of when we started this program. You can see there's a lot of stars. That means there are primary awards in South Africa and a lot in Nigeria. Those two aren't too surprising. But I think what's really surprising, and I said this last time I gave an update, is how much activity we have in West Africa. The prediction was that we would have a struggle getting good grants out of West Africa. And in fact, some of our best grants came out of West Africa. South Africa, of course, has a lot more infrastructure than many of the other countries. And we're now beginning to build our infrastructure and our presence in East Africa that has come more gradually than the other parts of Africa. And then the dots, of course, are all the collaborations. And you can see they really do cover the continent. And this is not a sub-Saharan African project. This is an African project. So it does include Northern Africa, which oftentimes is not included in the African project. OK. I said a little bit about the Bioinformatics Network. It is called H3A Bionet, and it is run out of South Africa, out of the University of Cape Town. It has 34 partner institutions, 32 of which are in 15 countries, and then two are in the United States. And what's really exciting about this in concept and now in reality is that it is beginning to form the glue that is holding the collaboration of H3Africa together. Because as you'll see in a minute, everyone in the consortium is working on different diseases. So naturally, they wouldn't come together if it weren't for H3Africa. And the common goals of building infrastructure and getting genomics going on the continent. So the role of H3Africa, I'm going to take a couple of slides and describe it because it really has started getting going. And I think there's a lot of interest in this. They will be the tools through which the PIs will submit their data to EGA. They will provide data storage backup and transfer. They will provide data access and visualization both to the public and to the investigators. They will provide training in bioinformatics. They will provide support for analysis and large-scale data analysis for these various ways of looking at genomes. I wonder why that didn't go forward. Oh, I think I left out a slide. Well, I can't remember what else on that slide. Oh, I see what happened. So the support for analysis is particularly important and I think one of the really novel things they're doing is providing e-bio kits to all the sites. They've also had some challenges in working with the sites, especially the center sites throughout Africa because we unknowingly, unwittingly in our RFA said that the centers didn't have to collaborate with H3A Bionet because we wanted them to also have their own abilities at analysis and so now we have some centers that don't need H3A Bionet to help them and so we're working with them to make sure that they use what's available that they don't have already on site or through a collaboration. So the next bio, the next infrastructure project that is part of H3Africa is the biorepositories and this is a two-phase approach. We are using a mechanism that allows a two-year pilot biorepository and we have started four pilots and then after two years there's an administrative review and we're coming up on that now in March during which a scale-up decision will be made and we can scale up between one and three biorepositories depending on how many funds we give them. So this will be something that you'll be hearing more about in the coming summer as we get the decisions from this administrative review and try to actually scale up a biorepository on the African continent. The four pilot projects that I mentioned have been working well together even though they are involved in the competition so that has been quite rewarding to see them trying to work together and they're scattered over the entire continent so this is not an easy challenge. So next we'll turn to the collaborative centers. I'm not gonna go through these but I just wanted to put them up so you would get a sense of the diversity of the projects. There really are no two projects working on the same thing and these are the smaller research projects. You can see that they are also spread all over and some of these are in very resource and infrastructure challenged countries so it will be very interesting for us to see what kind of infrastructure we can build in those countries. So progress report for the first year which we finished in August so we're halfway into the second year. Several of the sites have already especially the sites that were funded initially. We funded a group of grants in August a year ago and then we funded another group in this past August. The grants that were in the first group have almost all gotten their ethics approval. Now this is a challenge in Africa because we're recommending that they get open ethics approval that means that their data can be shared, their samples can be shared and that there can be secondary use of the data. There is some discomfort with that and I'll tell you a little bit about that in a minute. So they're now submitting their data especially the newer projects are submitting their data to the ethics review boards for their approval. As of the end of December we have eight sites that have gotten their ethics approval and they're actively recruiting samples and they're being restored on site and that's because we don't have a biorepository. So that is out of the group of about six grants that we funded in the initial phase. We expect from what we read in the applications and what the groups have now told us is that there will be about 50 to 75,000 participants recruited in total and these will of course all be genetically analyzed in either by genotyping or sequencing and the samples will be available in a biorepository. Most of them will collect blood and send the DNA to the biorepositories and freeze plasma which they will hold in their centers until there's additional funding to send that to the biorepositories also. And some of the centers are willing to collaborate our partner with other groups to provide additional samples and an example is NIDDK is considering an add-on program to collect urine samples from projects that are willing to participate and the NIDDK and several other institutes are very excited about this because of the additional information this is gonna add to the genetic information. Typical of an NHGRI project that we have formed many working groups. This takes a lot of time and I think it was probably a bit of a shock to Africans that we could possibly spend this much time on conference calls which has been an incredible challenge. Not just because they're not used to it but the telephone system and the internet has been a real challenge. And these are the ones that we have formed and they've been really very productive. Some of them, at least one has already sunset much to their delight. This is their achievements. The biorepository working group has developed a set of SOPs and they've developed this sample access policy that is going to be approved soon we hope. The Ethics and Regulatory Issue Working Group developed a set of open informed consent guidelines which is published on our website. The white paper is published on the website, excuse me. And I'll tell you a little bit more about this too that for the next upcoming consortium meeting they have organized a working group or a workshop of ethics chairs from around Africa. We wanted to do this because we know there's concern about the consent and we want to have a discussion with the people who will be approving the consents to make sure they understand that this is an international standard in the genomics community and that this is something that H3Africa is promoting. Then the Publications Working Group has developed a publications policy and the marker paper has been written and submitted to science. The Data Sharing Access and Release Group, there is a data access and sharing policy that is being reviewed by the steering committee and that's the last step before it's accepted. The phenotype harmonization working group has made recommendations about standardizing phenotypes among all the groups and then the genome analysis working group is working with other groups that have been sequencing and have SNP data throughout the African continent to develop a genotyping chip and that's going to be another side meeting at the next consortium meeting. We had one at the previous consortium meeting which we didn't get to go to because of the government being shut down but this will be a follow-on to that. As Mark said, we have had three meetings and then this is the fourth that we're about to have in Kampala, Uganda and the associated meetings are mentioned there. The NIDDK and the NHLBI and H3Africa have been working to put together a cardiovascular research meeting in Kampala where Macquarie University is and there are quite a few researchers at Macquarie that are interested in this field and we of course are going to advertise it as broadly as possible to interest Africans and any investigators from the North who might be interested in this problem in Africa. So there are, even though all of our grants are working on different diseases, there is a group of them that are working on cardiovascular diseases. So they will be speakers in addition to some invited speakers. And the idea is to try to tie together some of the commonalities and to encourage collaboration between these groups in whatever way might make sense. Then I mentioned that the development of the African-specific genotype, CHIP, that will be another workshop that will happen after the consortium meeting and then the ethics committee chairs will be meeting also. So what have been the challenges for us and for the Africans to date? A big challenge for us was the 40% failure rate of applications getting into the electronic application system. I think one of the other challenges I mentioned here is the difficulty with setting up grants offices in institutions that don't have them or trying to find a person that can actually sign and submit your application. That's one barrier, but the barrier of getting the application into the system and then correcting all the errors is another huge barrier, especially if people don't realize at the last minute that they have errors. There is that challenge. There's also a challenge in making awards at some of the under-infrastructured institutions and our grants management people have been incredible in getting these awards made, even though sometimes they're made and it's totally, all the funds are restricted because there's so many things that have been ironed out, but they have made awards at some institutions that have never had NIH awards before. And then we're finding now that in some of the more under-resourced countries that there's even a problem in getting the funds to the bank so that they can use them. That's taking, well there are researchers who were funded in September and they still don't have access to their money for that reason. I told you about the IRBs being concerned about some of the issues. And I mentioned teleconference communications problems. It continues to be a problem. So our challenges for the future will be establishing the full-scale bio-repositories as I mentioned. One of the expected challenges is shipping samples across the countries within the continent and then also outside Africa. We do have one pilot bio-repository that is the most like a business, a bio-repository business that we have run into and that we are funding and they have actually successfully shipped across country lines in many African countries. So we'll see if they continue to succeed to be able to do that. We need to be sure that we promote regular data release and from the research sites in accordance with the policies and we need to affect sample release. And this is the sample release policy that we hope will be accepted is one where the samples will be placed in the bio-repositories but not released to the public until the data is released.  And that really is within, that's very much like the mission of H3Africa to encourage collaborations in Africa. So letting go of your samples in Africa is very new. The idea of data release doesn't seem to be as striking as the sample release. So this will be a challenge but I think everyone's on board with policy once they hear it, they seem more comfortable with it. And this is a Charles Rattini saying he likes to say we've been struggling with the brain drain of the Africans coming to the North and we're hoping that H3Africa will help reverse that and we'll have a brain gain instead. And then in about a year or so we will face an extension of an application for an extension of H3Africa for another five years so that the whole program will be 10 years. And this will be a challenge. I think there's a lot of support for the program now within the institutes as well as within OD. So we're hoping that this happens and the program can come to fruition in 10 years. And of course, a big concern, probably the major concern when we started proposing this program was long-term sustainability and we certainly don't have any new ideas on how to do it other than what we said at the beginning but the longer that we are able to keep H3Africa going and people collaborating, I think the more likely there will be sustainability. So successes so far, we really are seeing that we've been empowering African scientists. They, as I said earlier, they are the PIs on these grants, they manage the science. I think that the Americans at first had a little more trouble understanding that. They couldn't just call us up and say, this is something that we need to do on this project. I'd have to say, you need to put your PI on the phone. And they've gotten used to it now but it has been a learning experience for both of them because neither of them were used to playing those roles. We've also started hearing the Africans play major roles and having significant ideas that are determining the course of the consortium and forming the consortium in a way that wasn't true at first. They really are speaking up on the conference calls and it's really great to see. I have to say this makes it harder to leave. And I think that they're starting to see that even though we have all these conference calls that the consortium working together can do a lot and can affect changes in a way that a single PI can't at times. And the whole fact that they're meeting and collaborating with scientists outside the home institution is one of the novel things about this program. The very first meeting several people came up to me and said, I have never been in a room with other Africans that I'm gonna collaborate with. I'm always in the room with northerners, Europeans or Americans, but this is really empowering. And we continue to get that sentiment although I think now it's not so novel and they're really enjoying it. So that's been really rewarding. We have been able to fund high quality applications that meet the standards of NIH review and that has been, that has been I think the hallmark of this program. We are really are doing exciting high quality research. When new people come to the consortium meeting, new people from America or Europe, they often say I was very impressed with the quality of the research. And then the whole difficulty of building infrastructure in under infrastructure countries is hard. We have begun those steps. We I think we are starting to make inroads but it really is not easy to do and you wanna be sure that that sequencer you're sending to a remote country doesn't turn into a doorstop and that's a major challenge. And I think one of the most recent developments has been people calling us up and saying, you know I work in Africa, the Africans aren't funded directly like in H3 Africa, but I wanna be, they wanna be part of the H3 Africa movement. How can we do that? Or I'm going to put in a application to NIH and the PI will be African. How do we become part of H3 Africa before we put that application in? So we're getting a lot of outside interest now. So one of the new working group communication and outreach is working on a set of guidelines for groups to become collaborators but not actually be members of H3 Africa. So I don't know quite what that'll look like but I think it could really spread the H3 Africa mission across Africa in a way that I hadn't really anticipated was going to happen this quickly. So I need to thank the H3 Africa team particularly here at NHGRI. We've worked together, some of us now for three and a half years and we've gotten through all the challenges that have been presented to us and I'm sure there will be new ones after I leave and they'll have lots of fun addressing those. Mark is now a project coordinator which is what I was before. Jennifer Troyer in the back who you met earlier will take over many of my duties and my activities. Jeff Struing has been a program director with us for the last year and he is managing the centers. Ebony Madden is not here. I think she got Snowden or Sick or something like that in North Carolina. She directs the ELSI part of the program. We have two of the best grants management people you could possibly have because they managed to get these grants made and awarded and up and running and funded. And that's Chris Darby and Diane Patterson. And of course, Queen Yuen who is our new program analyst and I think you all remember, Cheng Ge from last year, she was our two analysts have been terrific and they are sort of the glue that hold us together because they know everything when we need something. And then Sue Peno is a contractor we use and has helped us with the bio repository. So thank you to all of you for your support of me and to Eric and the Institute for their support of the program. Oh my gosh, can you see that? The Institute names are in black and the names of the people who are participating, you can see there. NIAID, OAR, NINDS, NIMH and NICHD have actively given money to the program. I didn't mention how much money there is in the program now. We started with exactly $5 million from the common fund. So that would be per year for five years, $25 million. Through contributions from the institutes and including NHGRI, it's now up to $62 million. So these people have really helped us raise money and we've actively gone out and gotten contributions from institutes that find this program to be exciting. Louise Witterhoff is in charge of bio repositories. The NIDDK group is the group working on this cardiovascular workshop and then Kim and Demali are other institutes that are very interested in getting more involved and our common fund liaison is Leslie Durr and she's been really important in promoting this program to the common fund and helping us get more funds. And I think that's it. We have a Facebook account, a Facebook site, and you can follow us on Twitter. And we also have an NH3Africa website. So I'm happy to take any questions that you might have. That's it. Jane, thank you very much for making this happen. It's amazing to see what's happened such a quick period of time. You mentioned that you were getting the ethics committee chairs together from various countries and that, which is wonderful. I think that's a great start. Is there similar activities going on with ministries of science and ministries of health from a sustainability standpoint that at some point in time, if they see value, there is some money, maybe not as much as we used to have, but there is some money in many of these countries and if they see value, they will pay. Yes, the outreach and communications working group. Its chair is a person who is very, very excited about getting the governments involved, which clearly is needed. NIH can't continue to be the only source of research and the welcome trust, I shouldn't say just NIH. And that committee has an idea of recruiting ambassadors from throughout the continent. They've already recruited two. One is South Africa and Botswana and I can't remember where the other one is, it's further north. And the role of these people will be to advocate to the ministers of science on the behalf of H3 Africa. I think it's gonna be a challenging program to keep going because it's gonna need some money and this isn't something the federal government can really invest in. But we're also inviting, every time we go to a different country, we're trying to invite the ministers of health or a major person to come to the meeting. And that's happened at a couple of meetings and I think it's gonna happen at this next one, but they're kind of hard to get there. And I think what you really need is a sit down discussion with them. Yeah. Often peer, if it's a peer event, they'll show up in my limited experience. The other thing is the ambassadors to this country are not that far from the Smithsonian, for example, where there's an NHGRI collaborative event that's been going, so there might be some things like that that you might get the word in via, just as long as the word starts getting into the government said, a lot of them may not even know this is all happening. No, no. If not the ambassadors, their staff. Yeah. Is there any significance to the places in Africa where you don't have any penetration? Do you hear about institutions or governments that kind of push back against these kind of programs? Let me see if we had... Intrusive or, you know, back... Well, no, I just don't think there's much science there. Well, but the Francophones are funded. I mean, this is the Francophone area. You know, the Benin's French and it is difficult with the Francophone countries. This is Congo, I think. This is... That's Malawi. This is Zimbabwe. I don't... It seems like we had an application from Zimbabwe and there was a site, an East Africa site, in the Congo for a while and I don't know what happened to that. I'm sorry. I don't know. I know there's, you know, there are universities, I think, in Kinshasa and, of course, Egypt, it's a real... It's very sad that we don't have anything from Egypt. We do have, I think it's this person here, has a new grant from the Egyptian government. So, they are working. Where have the PIs trained? A couple of them, a lot of them, have been trained in the United States and Europe. The PI in Ghana and the PI in Botswana have returned to the continent after they've retired from major roles in science in Europe. So, that's two really great recruits. Many of the others, the bioinformatics person was trained at EGA, for example, the H3A Bionet person. Some of them are certainly have their early education in Africa, but their PhDs may be done abroad. Yeah. A scientific question is, given the tribal, ethnic, religious, and national boundaries, what was the justification for building and using a genotyping chip instead of pursuing sequencing? It's hard for me to believe that the chip is going to be applicable to all of these regions with equal informant. Well, we will be collecting from a lot of regions. Money. If someone could give us money to sequence all these samples, we'd do it. Yeah. This just seems like a little thing, but do all of the PIs have satellite hookups and satellite modems to try to get around some of these communication issues? The... I don't know if they all do. I've been to a remote site that did. The broadband is there. The problem is it comes and goes. The electricity comes and goes. And I don't know what happens with the satellite dish. One of the things that H3I Bionet is doing that I forgot to mention is that they are actually doing a survey of the broadband width in all these different places. And who was it that told me, oh, somebody is able when they have a communication going on with a specific African country to go to Verizon and say, okay, widen the bandwidth for this amount of time. And apparently a lot of what's going on is the governments are restricting it. I know one government that's definitely restricting it and I think it's the fear of everyone having internet. So there are ways to get it improved at times. Yeah. Kind of on the lines of what Howard was saying in terms of gaining other types of support, is USAID involved? Oh, no. Because that'd be another avenue, like here I see USAID and GE partner with the Commercial Bank to Open Health Financing, for example, and this is in an engineering project that we did, USAID teamed with the Minister of Vietnam and Intel for significant funding for some projects that we were doing there. And I could see a similar kind of partnership for this project in Africa. The communications and outreach group is being challenged with trying to do something about this. I mean, taking really starting an advocacy group in Africa to go to the governments and say, if you want scientific progress in this country, you've got to improve the bandwidth and see how far we can get with that. But yes, we're trying to collaborate with the World Bank, for example, just gave one of our PIs a huge grant and that completely dovetails with something that we are doing, funding with them. We are trying to get more influence with the African Union and NEPAD, which is a subgroup. So yeah, and actually we have had some contacts with UNESCO, but they're not very responsive. But any information you have, we'd love to have. OK, Lucilla and Tony, and then I'm going to have to curtail the discussion. Yeah, I was just going to ask about other European countries because there are Swiss, Spanish, and my colleague in Mozambique was, he had a PhD from Sweden. So somehow other countries are also investing. So that's one question. The other one is about how connected to the MAPI program you plan to do. That always comes up when I talk. So the other countries, certainly the French are very involved in that Benin project and there's another one with very close ties to a Francophone country. And we would like to know about those projects. We would like to let them know that H3Africa wants to be involved with anyone who's interested in genomics and working on the continent. And the funders are trying to become more active in bringing northern funders to our meetings. So for example, someone from Canada is going to come this next time. And then there's another Canadian program. I don't really know the funders in Spain. And obviously I know them in England. But I don't know too many European funders. So any names you can give us, that would be great. And MAPI. Yes, we're trying to coordinate our meetings. They're always one step ahead of us. They met in Uganda about six months ago. And once they've got their calendar set, we're not able to dovetail the calendar. So we've got to do something about it. I just thought whether you could comment on what the Welcome Trusts experience was with this program. As I understand it, you didn't co-fund projects. You chose separate projects to fund. And I don't know how those decisions were made, but given their long history in infectious disease and global health with infrastructure that they fund directly in those countries, I was curious to know what their experience was. Those are listed here in those bottom three. You can see where they are. This South African one was further north, it was in another country initially. So what we did, and Welcome Trust actually did this for the very first time, was allow PIs to submit identical proposals to both places, like we do for NIH and NSF. And we didn't end up wanting to fund the same proposal. So it didn't even really matter, but it made the PIs feel better. They had a peer review as well. And they made their decisions based on their criteria. They have all centers, they don't have the other infrastructure parts, the pieces that we have. They are now contributing to the H3A Bionet, to the, we have a center within H3A Bionet to support meetings, et cetera. And they are starting to co-fund some of our infrastructure projects that way now. So I don't know what else you'd want to know about their decisions. I'm not privy. I'm not so curious about the decisions, but how did they find managing the projects? You described a lot of challenges. And I just wonder whether they experienced the same challenges or because they've done this before in Africa in some ways. They've found fellowships there. I think they've had the same challenges. One of their challenges is working with us. We get along great. But we have all these working groups and they're not used to that at all, but they've adapted. So, you know, I think it's going pretty well. And they, Francis had a chance to talk with the new director and I think he's very interested in it. Kay Davies is the co-chair of the advisory group and she's very, very excited about the program. But Mark, you had something to add? Yeah, Tony. Once the awards were made, once the grants were funded, we've been pretty much co-managing the program with the trust. We have bi-weekly calls with them. All of the meetings are co-funded and we're trying to completely coordinate the management of the program with the trust. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Jane. NHGRI is at the very beginning of a process to plan what the next phase, the large-scale sequencing program is gonna look like. So over the next six or seven months, we're gonna be collecting a lot of information, a lot of data from a lot of different sources and stakeholders and we'll be bringing that information to the council at this meeting and the subsequent to in May and September. We thought a nice way to initiate that information flow would be to invite the three center directors, Richard Gibbs, Rick Wilson and Eric Lander, to come and give a presentation to the council about the opportunities that they saw for biomedical research and employing the large-scale sequencing program. So it's their peak at the future. And I think we're gonna have a group presentation. Is that right? We're doing a tag team. All right, tag team and Eric's gonna start us off. I will.


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