India’s wildlife, Data breach, and other tech updates

What’s happening this week

• Imran Khan wants to cut roti, naan prices in distressed Pakistan economy.
• Reports say Osama Bin Laden’s son dead.
• China stops issuing individual travel permits to Taiwan
• Federal Reserves cuts interest rates after the 2008 crisis by 0.25%

Hey!

Heavy Rains in Gujarat shuts Vadodara down and India mourns the death of Coffee Baron VG Siddhartha.

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Into the wild

Roar… India’s tiger count increased by 33% to 2,967 in the last 4 years, hosting one of the largest Tiger population in the world. Tiger conservation is important to ensure the well-being of the forest ecosystem since they sit at the top of the food chain. And it’s a crucial measure for a growing economy like India, where the pressure to grow overrides conservation needs.

It has.. Has it? Prakash Javadekar, Union Minister for Environment told the Lok Sabha that India’s forest cover increased by 1% in a year. MP Maneka Gandhi from the same party confronted him saying that the satellite images can be misleading since they do not differentiate between commercial crops like sugar cane, tea, etc and trees.

From the wild to the ocean… Afroz Shah, lawyer, and environmentalist along with 4000 volunteers tidied up Mumbai’s Versova beach in a cleaning Marathon earlier in July. Cleaning initiatives lead by him bought the Baby sea turtles back to the Mumbai’s beach after 2 decades last year.

Man vs Wild… You know where this is going, how could we miss this… PM Narendra Modi to share screen space with Bear Grylls on the famous adventurous show Man vs Wild on 12th August. Excited?! Great… Don’t let miss filing your return. The due date has been extended till 31st August 2019. Here is how you can file your ITR:

• Income Tax e-filing website
• ERIs(e-Return Intermediaries) like Quicko that provide a better user interface, experience, and support.

Don’t lose your tax refund into the wilderness. File your ITR for free on Quicko and get the maximum refund.

Tech it away

Security… Seriously? Capital one hack affects more than 100 million customers. Labeled as one of the largest data breaches ever, it is said that for the majority of consumers the breach appears to have exposed only relatively non-significant details like names and addresses, and not the social security number or bank account number.

Tech Royals and Data… Apple joins Google, Twitter, and Facebook on the Data Transfer Project. The Data Transfer Project was launched in 2018 to allow individuals across the web to easily move their data between online service providers at their convenience. They are creating an open-source, service-to-service data portability platform.

Big Tech, Big Tax… Google, Twitter, Facebook, and other non-resident tech companies may have to pay direct tax on their earnings locally above INR 20 crore and a limit of more than 500,000 users. Multinational tech companies are accused of paying very little taxes domestically as compared to the earnings from customers in India through services like online advertising, and therefore ‘Significant Economic Presence’ (SEP) was introduced in the budget 2018.

Parallelly… Lawmakers globally, particularly in the European Union, are also looking at ways to tax Big Tech firms on revenue and profits generated locally. EU suggested a 3% tax on digital revenue earned from a country. France, however, may announce their own set of rules to tax tech companies.

Byte of the Day

Hyperloop in India: ultra-fast, futuristic transportation system a “public infrastructure project”