Times top10

PM Modi to meet CEOs of Qualcomm, Adobe; UN General Assembly; RBI's open market purchase of govt. securities; In Delhi HC: Petition against Rakesh Asthana's appointment as Delhi Police commissioner; IPL: MI vs KKR

• Erdogan talks Kashmir: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan once again brought up the issue of Kashmir at the UN, saying Istanbul maintains “our stance in favour of solving the ongoing problem in Kashmir for 74 years, through dialogue between the parties...” Hours later, foreign minister S Jaishankar tweeted on the need to adhere to UNSC resolutions following his meeting with his counterpart from Cyprus, with which Turkey has a long ongoing conflict.
• Biden commits vaccines: US President Joe Biden said the US is doubling its purchase of Pfizer’s Covid-19 shots to share with the world to 1 billion doses as he embraces the goal of vaccinating 70% of the global population within the next year.
• Taliban seek a seat: The Taliban are challenging the credentials of the ambassador from Afghanistan’s fallen government, and has asked the UN to let the militant group represent the country, nominating Mohammad Suhail Shaheen as its new representative. The decision now rests with a U.N. committee that generally meets in November.
• France, US patch-up: France said it will send its ambassador back to Washington next week, days after it recalled the envoy as a fallout of the nuclear submarine deal between the US, UK and Australia. In a phone call, French President Emmanuel Macron and President Joe Biden “decided to open a process of in-depth consultations, aimed at creating the conditions for ensuring confidence,” a joint statement said.

Also: PM Narendra Modi called for easing international travel through mutual recognition of vaccination certificates. He was addressing the virtual Global Covid-19 summit hosted by Biden. Modi arrived in the US today.

The Supreme Court has dismissed the petitions by the Chhattisgarh government challenging a stay on investigations against BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra and former chief minister Raman Singh in the so-called toolkit case.

The court said: "We come across many cases of politically motivated FIRs lodged against political rivals in many states, and as the Supreme Court we cannot take up petitions challenging the efficacy and correctness of the decision behind the lodging of FIRs.” It asked the Chhattisgarh government to await the High Court's decision in the matter.

Background:

• In May, Patra, Singh and other BJP leaders tweeted an image of a document claimed to be a Congress “toolkit” enlisting measures to hurt Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s image. Fact-checking websiteAltNews said its analysis of images showed that the supposed "toolkit" was created on "forged Congress letterhead". Twitter later flaggedPatra's tweet as possible misinformation.
• The Chhattisgarh police later filed an FIR against Patra and Singh based on a complaint by the state president of the National Students' Union of India's Chhattisgarh.
• But on June 14, the Chhattisgarh High Court stayed the investigation, saying its continuation "will be nothing but an abuse of process of law".

• Over 5,500 Mynanmarese have fled a crackdown by the military and crossed over into Mizoram over the past week, news agency Reuters reports. Most arrived by crossing the Tiau river by boat, the head of the Young Mizo Association, a civil society group, said.
• The Myanmarese town of Thantlang in Chin State near the Indian border is otherwise home to 10,000 people, but most have left to seek shelter in surrounding areas including in India. There has been an upsurge in violence in the area after the National Unity Government, a rebel administration set up by opponents of the military rule, declared an uprising against the junta on Sept. 7.
• Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military toppled a government led by pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and took full control of the country.
• Since the coup, Mizoram has provided shelter to over 11,000 Myanmarese nationals, including former lawmakers belonging to Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD). There has been a similar influx of refugees into Nagaland and Manipur as well.
• Mizoram chief minister Zoramthanga recently urged Prime minister Narendra Modi to provide humanitarian assistance to Myanmar nationals coming to Mizoram.

Over in Nagaland...
R.N. Ravi has resigned as the union government’s interlocutor for Naga peace talks.

The Oversight Board, a semi-independent body that reviews Facebook's content-moderation policies, will examine the social media platform’s “cross-check” system that exempts high-profile users from rules applicable to the general users.

Tell me more:

• As part of a series of expose, The Wall Street Journal reported that the "cross-check" allowed certain high-profile users to post content that would otherwise warrant action by Facebook's content moderation team.
• The system was originally set up so that Facebook could avoid bad press when it takes down content that should not have been -m say, a body positivity content by a celebrity.
• But WSJ reports it allowed high-profile users to break Facebook's rules that apply to the rest of the users. The programme reportedly protects 5.8 million people as of 2020.

And now?

• The Oversight Board said the disclosures “have drawn renewed attention to the seemingly inconsistent” content-moderation policies of Facebook.
• The board will publish the information Facebook shares on the transparency report that the board will release in October. Note: This is separate from the transparency report that Facebook publishes.
• ICYMI: Facebook created the Oversight Board as part of an effort to address criticism over how it handles problematic content. Some of the board's decisions: Asking Facebook to provide a definite time-frame for Donald Trump's suspension, and overturning the removal of a post that claimed RSS and BJP were threatening “genocide of the Sikhs".

World Health Organisation. The global body on Wednesday released its revised air quality guidelines for six key pollutants including extremely hazardous particulate matters — PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ — making them more stringent compared with the earlier standards set in 2005. The new annual standard for PM_2.5 would be 50% less at 5 micrograms per cubic metre (µg/m3) compared with 10 µg/m3 in 2005 whereas its 24-hour mean would be 15 µg/m3 now compared to 25 µg/m3 in 2005. In India, the acceptable level for PM_2.5 is much higher — 40 µg/m3 and 60 µg/m3 for annual and 24-hour mean, respectively.