2019 Nobel Physics awarded to three scientists for work on cosmology

Canadian-American cosmologist James Peebles and Swiss scientists Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz won the 2019 Nobel Prize for Physics on Tuesday for shedding light on the evolution of the universe and discovering planets orbiting distant suns.
Peebles, of Princeton University in the United States, was awarded half the 9-million-Swedish-crown ($910,000) prize while Mayor and Queloz, from the University of Geneva in Switzerland, shared the other half.
"This year's Laureates have transformed our ideas about the cosmos," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement accompanying the award.
"While James Peebles' theoretical discoveries contributed to our understanding of how the universe evolved after the Big Bang, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz explored our cosmic neighbourhoods in the hunt for unknown planets. Their discoveries have forever changed our conceptions of the world." Physics is the second Nobel to be awarded this week; William Kaelin, Gregg Semenza and Peter shared the medicine prize on Monday for discoveries about how cells respond to oxygen levels.
Among the Nobels, physics has often taken centre stage with winners featuring some of the greatest names in science like Albert Einstein, Marie Curie and Niels Bohr, as well as ground-breaking inventors such as radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi.
Using theoretical tools and calculations, Peebles was able to interpret trace radiation from the infancy of the universe and so discover new physical processes, the academy said.
It said that Mayor and Queloz announced the first discovery of a planet outside our own solar system, a so-called "exoplanet", starting a revolution in astronomy. Over 4,000 exoplanets have since been found in the Milky Way.
"With numerous projects planned to start searching for exoplanets, we may eventually find an answer to the eternal question of whether other life is out there," it said.

Black money chase: Noose tightens on Swiss accounts; 50 Indians get notices

Swiss authorities are in process of sharing details of at least 50 Indian nationals having accounts in Switzerland-based banks, with regulatory and enforcement agencies in the two countries tightening their noose on individuals suspected to have amassed illicit wealth.
These individuals largely include businessmen associated with companies, including the dummy ones, in sectors ranging from real estate, financial services, technology and telecom to paints, home decoration, textiles, engineering goods, gems and jewellery.

Officials involved in the process of mutual administrative assistance between the two countries said.
Switzerland has been striving hard for the past few years to shed a long-standing perception of it being a safe haven for black money, while the issue has been a politically sensitive one in India as well.
When the Modi government first came to power in 2014, it had termed the crackdown on the black money, including those allegedly parked in Swiss banks, as a key focus area. Since then, the two countries have strengthened their framework for the exchange of information in cases of financial wrongdoings, including by signing the global automatic exchange of information framework.
The two countries have also strengthened their bilateral pact on this front and the economic considerations for boosting the bilateral economic ties have further helped increase the cooperation when it comes to bringing to book the people with dubious records, especially in amassing illicit wealth.
Citing the federal gazette notifications issued by the Swiss government to the concerned individuals, the officials said at least 50 Indian nationals have been issued notices in the past few weeks giving them one final opportunity to appeal against proposed sharing of their details with the Indian authorities.
Some of these notices have followed after the preliminary appeals by the concerned clients of Swiss banks have already been rejected due to inadequate supporting facts and documents, leaving a limited chance of their further pleas getting heard, officials said.
They said the sharing of details of Indian clients of Swiss banks with dubious records, showing suspected illegalities in amassing of funds deposited there, has been a continuing process in the recent months.
While details of more than 100 Indians nationals have been shared in the past one year by the Swiss government with the Indian authorities, there is a high chance that a large majority of the cases currently under scrutiny would result in the administrative assistance being provided in the coming months, officials said.
Under the Swiss laws, foreign clients of Swiss banks are given an opportunity to appeal against proposed sharing of their details within 30 days (only 10 days in some cases) after a country with a mutual assistance treaty, or party to the multilateral information exchange framework, seeks the details while giving sufficient proof of suspected financial wrongdoings.
While the Swiss government federal gazette notifications are made public when a foreign client is given an appeal opportunity, in some cases their full names are redacted due to some secrecy clauses and only a few details such as their initials, date of birth and the nationality are made public.
An analysis of such weekly notifications issued since the beginning of this year shows that Indian nationals have figured among these notices virtually every week, though full names have been redacted in a majority of the cases.
The full names that have been made public in recent weeks in the Swiss government federal gazette include Krishna Bhagwan Ramchand, Potluri Rajamohan Rao, Kalpesh Harshad Kinariwala, Kuldip Singh Dhingra, Bhaskaran Nalini, Lalitaben Chimanbhai Patel, Sanjay Dalmia, Pankaj Kumar Saraogi, Anil Bhardwaj, Tharani Renu Tikamdas, Mahesh Tikamdas Tharani, Savani Vijay Kanaiyalal, Bhaskaran Tharur, Kalpeshbhai Patel Mahendrabhai, Ajoy Kumar and Dinesh Kumar Himatsingka, Ratan Singh Chowdhury and Kathotia Rakesh Kumar.
However, there are many more cases where only initials have been disclosed for Indian nationals and these include NMA, MMA, PAS, RAS, ABKI, APS, ASBK, MLA, ADS, RPN, MCS, JNV, JD, AD, UG, YA, DM, SLS, UL, SS, RN, VL, UL, OPL, PM, PKK, BLS, SKN and JKJ.
Several of these persons and their companies are said to be based in Kolkata, Gujarat, Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai.
While a large number of Indians have been issued notices in recent weeks with Switzerland stepping up its process to share details of such individuals, many more such notices are in the offing in coming weeks as India has sought details about a large number of Indian clients of Swiss banks who are suspected to have indulged in illicit financial activities.
These include people whose names figured in the HSBC and Panama lists, as also those being probed by the Income Tax Department and the Enforcement Directorate among other agencies.
While Switzerland has always denied being a safe haven for black money, it has begun sharing details in recent years with several countries including India after submission of evidence about financial and tax-related wrongdoings of the Swiss bank clients.
Besides, a new global framework of automatic information exchange is now in place, which Switzerland's State Secretariat for International Finance (SIF) believes will increase transparency and prevent cross-border tax evasion.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Threads in Swiss dirty money probe: Tinder date, South Asian terror suspect

Swiss authorities investigating illegal funds have interesting anecdotes to tell: a man using his Tinder date to launder money and a suspected terrorist from a South Asian nation parking his wealth in Europe.
Switzerland informs India and other countries about suspected illicit wealth parked in its banks, seeking to shed the perception that the country is a safe haven for dirty money.

The Money Laundering Reporting Office Switzerland (MROS), in its latest annual report, has disclosed interesting cases where it collaborated with overseas authorities to uncover cases of money laundering and terror financing.
Under the Swiss Money Laundering Act, the MROS receives and analyses Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) in connection with money laundering and, if necessary, forwards them to the law enforcement agencies. It functions as a relay and filtration point between financial intermediaries and the law enforcement agencies.
The MROS is also the Swiss agency to which financial intelligence units (FIUs) of other countries can make requests for mutual administrative assistance and for exchange of information concerning the cases of money laundering and terror financing.

In 2018, the MROS received 795 enquiries from FIUs of 104 countries, up from 711 enquiries from 94 countries in 2017.
The number of foreign requests concerning natural and legal persons rose to 4,671, the MROS said. The requests from foreign FIUs have more than doubled since 2011 and stood at their highest ever level in 2018, it added.
The MROS did not give the country-wise number of the requests. The last time the MROS disclosed having received a foreign inquiry about Indians was in the year 2002.
These figures do not include the so-called spontaneous information exchange between MROS and other FIUs. In 2018, the MROS received 434 spontaneous information reports from 47 countries, up from 302 reports from 41 countries in 2017.
The MROS further said it received 132 SARs involving suspected cases of terror financing in 2018, up 159 per cent over the previous year. Of these, 88 SARs were submitted by banks, and the rest by money transmitters and other financial intermediaries.
Giving details of some cases, the MROS said a financial intermediary reported several business relationships in the name of Swiss residents related to a person, who was suspected by the authorities of his home country in South Asia of being engaged in terrorist activity.
The suspect was related to a former clan leader of a province in the South Asian country in question, and a member of an armed separatist group thought to be responsible for attacks on gas pipelines, polling stations and the country's armed forces.
The MROS found that he had narrowly escaped a military operation in which his relative, the former leader of a provincial tribe, had been killed. Since then, he had been on the run and taking an indirect route, he arrived in Switzerland, where he applied for asylum.
His asylum application was rejected, but his wife, who was not politically active, and his children were allowed to stay. Investigations further revealed that after leaving Switzerland, he travelled to another European country, where he is thought to still be living.
His family has considerable assets apparently deposited in banks all over the world. The wealth is said to have been generated mainly through the exploitation of natural resources, the MROS said.
In another case, a financial intermediary noticed that a third party had paid tens of thousands of Swiss francs into the private account of one of their clients.
When the client came to withdraw the money, the financial intermediary asked her for information regarding origin of the money. First, she failed to provide any information, but later said the money was not for her, but for an African acquaintance who she had known for three months.
She said she was asked to withdraw the money in cash and hand it over to a third party, failing which she might face serious consequences.
The MROS found the suspect was an African national living in Switzerland, whom the woman had become acquainted with a few months earlier over Tinder.
The MROS learned that the man had recently been arrested and it therefore forwarded the SAR to the criminal prosecution authority, which opened a criminal probe concerning threatening behaviour, coercion and money laundering.
In yet another case, a financial intermediary reported that a client, who was the legal guardian of her child, attempted to transfer money to a person abroad through the child's account, of which she was the sole signatory.
It was found that large payments and cash withdrawals had been made into and out of the account. The MROS examined payments since 2008 and discovered that more than 200,000 Swiss francs had been redirected up to 2017. It was also found that the client had transferred part of the money directly into her own account.
The MROS probe revealed that the payment to the person abroad was probably linked to a romance scam, a form of internet fraud whereby fraudsters dupe their victims into believing they have found love in order to obtain financial benefits from them.