The Indian Council of Medical Research has launched the ‘Malaria Elimination Research Alliance (MERA) India’ to eliminate malaria from India by 2030. The initiative is a conglomeration of partners working on malaria control. The principal activity of the alliance is to prioritise, plan, conduct, scale up and translate relevant research in a coordinated and combinatorial way in order to have a tangible impact of this research on the population at risk for malaria. The MERA India does not intend to duplicate international efforts rather complement this on a national scale while contributing to the broader global agenda. The alliance will facilitate trans-institutional coordination and collaboration around a shared research agenda which responds not only to programmatic challenges and addresses gaps in available tools but also pro actively contributes to targeted research. It aims to harness and reinforce research in coordinated and combinatorial ways in order to achieve tangible impact on malaria elimination.

Puranik Yogendra (or Yogi) from Pune has become the first ethnic Indian to contest and win an election in Japan. He has been elected to Edogawa Ward assembly of Tokyo. Hence, this is the first-ever victory of a naturalized Japanese of Indian origin in elections in Japan. Yogi went to Japan to pursue higher studies in 1997 and worked with various IT companies there. He lived there for 20 years and has been the resident of Edogawa for 15 years. Puranik believes that his ties with his adopted home were strengthened after Japan went through earthquake and tsunami in 2011 and he came to know more about the country when would visit the affected area on weekends to help the people affected due to two calamities. Soon after, he obtained Japanese citizenship and came to enter politics; he was fielded by the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) of Japan in the recent polls.

The Defence Minister Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman is on a three days visit to Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Defence Ministers’ Meet. The SCO meeting is being held in the run-up to the SCO summit, which is expected to take place in June 2019.

Spain’s ruling center-left socialist party has won the snap elections that were held on April 28, 2019. The opinion polls had predicted a victory for outgoing socialist premier Pedro Sanchez. With 99 percent of the ballots counted, the Socialists led by Prime Minister Sanchez won 29 percent of the vote, capturing 123 seats in the 350-seat Congress of Deputies.

Cyclone Fani is expected to intensify into a very severe cyclonic storm and will continue to move North West and change its path to North East. Cyclone Fani’s landfall over Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh is ruled out. However, the possibility of landfall in Odisha is under continuous watch.

BuyUcoin, second oldest Cryptocurrency Exchange in India, has introduced a new and unique platform for wholesale cryptocurrency trading. This platform works on ‘free trading model’ which means it charges zero fee on any trade. This wholesale platform also known as OTC (Over-the-counter) Desk allows users to trade on a large scale with low price fluctuations. This new platform will help to improve the problem of liquidity of cryptocurrency in Indian market. This will also help in quicker transactions, better prices and market stability.

Kazakhstan under the chairmanship of it’s Prime Minister, Askar Mamin has set up Coordinating Council for attracting foreign investments inclusive of investments from India. Under Askar Mamin, a decision was taken to lay down the functions of Investment Ombudsman in order to venture for new approaches to improve investment scenario in Kazakhstan by efficiently interacting with the investors and providing solutions to current issues.The requirement for such task is to increase the volume of investment in fixed assets in the medium term to 30% of (Gross Domestic Product) GDP of the nation and the primary driver should be foreign direct investment (FDI).The meeting chose the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC) as a Unified Centre for the coordination of work on investment and promotion (Regional Investment Hub).

Indonesia in a landmark step on April 23, 2019 released a special stamp on the theme of Ramayana for the first time underlining strong centuries old cultural bonds. The stamp, designed by renowned Indonesian sculptor Padmashri Bapak Nyoman Nuarta, features a scene from Ramayana in which Jatayu valiantly fought to save Devi Sita symbolising the resolve of two peoples in the face of adversity.