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ALJAZEERA, Mansur Mirovalev, November 01, 2017 Moscow, Russia - Abdulmajid Abakarov, a 12-year-old boy from Russia's troubled province of Dagestan, had not seen his mother in three years. Zagidat Abakarova, 34, and her two younger children were "forcibly held" in Syria by her husband, who had joined ISIL, Russian officials said. On October 21, the boy waited for her at the airport in Grozny, the capital of neighbouring Chechnya, in an agitated crowd of civilians, security officers and journalists.  Days earlier, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov announced the arrival of seven "rescued" wives and 14 children of Russian ISIL fighters who had been killed, sentenced to death or jailed in Syria or Iraq. Kadyrov, who rules war-scarred Chechnya and cultivates an image of Russia's top Muslim leader, guaranteed the women's safe return.  The most common charge fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) fac...

LiveMint, EY-ASSOCHAM, November 01, 2017 New Delhi:  India is home to the largest number of malnourished children in the world, a report said on Wednesday, advocating that the country needs to frame policies with a focus on reducing health and social inequities. “Over the decade (2005-15), there has been an overall reduction in the infant mortality rate and under-five mortality rate in India, yet the country is housing about 50 per cent of undernourished children of the world,” said the joint study by Assocham and EY. The report found that towards the end of 2015, 40% of the Indian children were undernourished. On the other hand, it pointed out that urban India is faced with the challenge of overnutrition. India is ranked as the third most obese nation in the world after the US and China and also the diabetes capital of the world, with about 69.2 million people living with it as per the 2015 data by World Health Organisation, said the report. “About 37 per cent of our u...

The Economic Times, Dipanjan Roy Choudhury, November 02, 2017 The 19th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), which ensured a second term for Xi Jinping, consolidated his position as the most powerful Chinese leader in decades. It was held a little less than two months after the Chinese president and Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided in their Xiamen meeting to take a forward looking approach beyond the Dokalam episode.  The continuity in Chinese leadership is expected to further the outcome of the Xiamen meet held on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit. Yet, even as the two sides engage in a series of dialogues, all eyes in Delhi are on any aggressive approach to fulfil the ‘Chinese dream’ as espoused by Xi.  Initiatives launched by Xi, including the One Belt One Road (Obor), will certainly gain further momentum in the next few years. Delhi, along with others, will be closely watching the pace of execution of this mega plan, whose end goals still re...

The Hindu, Special Correspondent, November 01, 2017 Says premature to talk with WTO now on global e-com rules as benefit unclear India is considering drafting a comprehensive national e-commerce policy to develop an ecosystem that would support exports and protect consumer interests, said a senior government official. However, the country is of the view that starting negotiations on World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules in e-commerce would be premature at this stage as it was still unclear how they would benefit developing nations, including their companies and consumers, said Sudhanshu Pandey, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Addressing an interactive session on ‘e-commerce, digital infrastructure, trade rules and WTO,’ organised by industry body FICCI and Centre for WTO Studies, Mr. Pandey said several countries were enthusiastic about negotiating multilateral rules to govern international trade through e-commerce. However, such rules could hurt ...

The Hindu, AP, November 01, 2017 Lawyers for Facebook, Twitter and Google were grilled about why they didn’t notice how their platforms were misused earlier. Facebook, Twitter and Google acknowledged to U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday that Russian-linked accounts began exploiting their services in 2015 to sway last year’s presidential election. Lawyers for the companies were grilled about why they didn’t notice how their platforms were misused earlier, and about what they have done and will do to prevent such abuse from happening again. Why so late? The election was nearly a year ago. Why did it take so long for Facebook, Google and Twitter to see how their platforms were used by foreign actors to influence the election? Congress would really like to know. As Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., put it: “People are buying ads on your platform with rubles. They are political ads. You put billions of data points together all the time, that’s what I hear that these platforms do. They a...

Business Line By PT Jyothi Datta : October 27, 2017  Critics argue that the Prevenar 13 vaccine doesn’t merit a patent. The legal battle that brews over Pfizer’s pneumococcal vaccine in India is set to create a benchmark of sorts for vaccines in the arena of public health. Until now, innovation, access and affordability concerns have made for pitched legal battles largely in the pharmaceutical arena. But earlier this month, humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) or “Doctors without Borders” approached the Delhi High Court to overturn a patent granted on Prevenar 13, Pfizer’s pneumococcal vaccine. MSF contended that the patent granted by the Delhi Patent Office in August was “erroneous” and it disregarded evidence that the product was not a technical advancement, but involved a “mere addition of serotypes” to its already established 7-valent vaccine. MSF added that the decision indicated a weakening of India’s strict patentability standards. India’s...

Business Line By AM Jigeesh: October 31, 2017 Parliamentary panel to look into probe agency’s handling of corruption cases In the backdrop of mounting corruption cases against Opposition leaders, the Parliamentary panel on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice will review the functioning of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). An important consideration in the professional review of the premier investigating agency is the issue of abysmally low conviction rates, especially in corruption cases, reportedly just about 3 per cent. The panel, reconstituted recently, had its first meeting on Monday and decided to focus on studying the probe agency. It also decided to take a thorough look at electoral reforms, delay in appointment of judges in higher courts, and the problems in public grievance redressal mechanism. The BJP had taken over the chairmanship of the panel from the Congress recently. Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma was replaced by BJP general s...

Business Line By TV Jayan October 31, 2017 Increasing CO2 emissions due to human activities since the Industrial Revolution has turned oceans 30% more acidic Even as climate experts and policy-makers assemble for yet another round of climate talks in Bonn, Germany, next week, a battery of 250 scientists from 20 multi-disciplinary institutions in the host country may have some startling revelations to make. Increasing human activity-induced carbon dioxide emission since the Industrial Revolution has turned oceans 30 per cent more acidic taking a heavy toll on marine organisms both small and big, the German scientists will inform the 23rd conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention of Climate Change scheduled to begin in Bonn on November 6. Gigantic carbon sinks, oceans take up about a third of rising carbon dioxide emissions. But when absorbed by sea water, the greenhouse gas triggers chemical reactions, causing the ocean to acidify. This acidification, alon...

Moneycontrol   ByShishir Asthana, Oct 31, 2017 What public sector banks need is autonomy in operations. All government backed banks like HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank proved that autonomy is all that is needed to make it a success. What is it that public sector banks have that private sector ones do not? The obvious answer is non-performing assets (NPAs). Think deeper and we reach the root cause of all the ills of public sector banks. The government, more specifically, government interference is what separates the two type of banks. It is only because of lack of freedom, political pressure to allocate loans and over-the-shoulder policing that there is a mountain of toxic assets in public sector banks’ backyard. Not only has this resulted in ruining banks' balance sheets but has also prevented them from getting suitors. According to reports Axis Bank, despite its poor showing, has managed to get a private equity fund willing to pump money into it. ...

Moneycontrol ByNeha Alawadhi Oct 31, 2017  Little has changed in the attitude of the US towards H-1B visa workers despite President Donald Trump’s assurance to overhaul the system The issue of H-1B visa remains a sore point for the Indian information technology industry. Little has changed in the attitude of the US towards H-1B visa workers despite President Donald Trump’s assurance to overhaul the system. “The Indian firms are not well positioned to lobby the US government, further more they have for years been significantly under invested in US government relations particular in their ability to influence policy,” said Peter Bendor-Samuel, CEO of the Everest Group, in an email response earlier this month. The H-1B work visas, essentially allow highly skilled foreign workers to travel to the US and have been at the centre of a storm since US President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign last year. His “Make America Great Again” slogan took off in a big way, and ...