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TIMESOFINDIA.COM | Updated: Nov 22, 2017, 19:33 IST Days before the anniversary of the 26/11 attack, a judicial body in Pakistan on Wednesday ordered the release of Mumbai terror attack mastermind and Jamaat-ud-Dawah chief Hafiz Saeed from house arrest, PTI has reported. A judicial review board, comprising judges of the Lahore High Court, rejected a request from the government of Pakistan's Punjab, to extend Saeed's detention by three months. "The government is ordered to release JuD chief Hafiz Saeed if he is not wanted in any other case," PTI quoted the board as saying. The board rejected the plea to extend his detention on the grounds of insufficient evidence, reported Pakistani newspaper Dawn. Saeed may walk free in a couple of days if the government does not detain him in any other case. According to a source in the Punjab government, the government is considering detaining him in another case. "The government cannot afford to set Saeed fre...

BY MANOJ GAIROLA ON 22/11/2017 In what appears to be a gross violation of the Supreme Court judgement on the 2G spectrum case, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is considering allotting 7000 MHz of V-band spectrum without conducting auctions. If the department succeeds in allotting spectrum on first-come-first-served basis (FCFS) without auction, it would be running against the logic laid down by the 2G judgement, as V-band airwaves have very high potential for commercial applications. The Supreme Court had clearly laid down that the government shall allocate spectrum to private players only through an auction process. It is difficult to quantify the size of potential revenue loss for the government if V-band spectrum is given away for free. This is because the market value of spectrum, in most cases, can be realised only through an auction process. However, if we go by the methodology adopted by the former CAG Vinod Rai under whom the national auditor had ca...

Jacob Koshy, NEW DELHI,  NOVEMBER 22, 2017 22:26 IST ICMR makes it mandatory for companies, organisations to disclose outcomes From April, companies and organisations that have registered for clinical trials in India will have to disclose the outcomes of their tests within a year of completing them. “We never get to know about negative trial results … globally less than 60% of clinical trial outcomes are disclosed,” said Soumya Swaminathan, Head, Indian Council of Medical Research. Currently, all trials in India are registered on the Clinical Trials Registry — India (CTRI). Of the trials registered with the CTRI (as on June 30, 2017), 3,318 are prospective and 5,604 are retrospective registrations — which means details of these trials were uploaded after the companies conducting them had begun recruiting patients. India has had a mixed record with clinical trials, with reports, earlier in the decade, of prospective drugs being tested on people who were not...

Updated: November 22, 2017 18:22 IST | Reuters India's annual diesel consumption could rise to 150 billion litres by 2030 from 90 billion litres now, Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Wednesday. Annual gasoline consumption in the world's third-biggest oil consuming nation could rise to 50 billion litres by 2030 from 30 billion litres now, he said. The energy hungry nation, which is looking to cut its oil imports by 10 percent in 2022, aims to boost use of bio fuels, the minister said. India currently imports about 80 percent of its oil needs. Reference http://m.thehindubusinessline.com/economy/indias-annual-diesel-consumption-to-rise-by-2030/article9969808.ece

Updated: November 22, 2017 22:43 IST | Our Correspondent Barring chana and masur, majority of pulse seeds and pulses either ruled flat or traded lower on slack physical demand with tur (Maharashtra) quoted at ₹4,050-4,100 a quintal, while tur (Madhya Pradesh) ruled at₹3,600- 3,700. Tur dal (sawa no.) ruled at ₹5,500-5,600, while tur dal (full) was at ₹5,900-6,300 . Urad (bold) fetched ₹3,400-3,500, while urad (medium) ruled at ₹2,400-2,500. Moong (bold) traded at ₹4,500-4,700 , while moong (medium) went for ₹3,900-4,000. Reference http://m.thehindubusinessline.com/markets/commodities/mixed-trend-in-pulses/article9969938.ece

Updated: November 22, 2017 11:41 IST | Reuters Uber Technologies Inc paid hackers $100,000 to keep secret a massive breach last year that exposed the data of some 57 million accounts of the ride-service provider, the company said on Tuesday. Discovery of the company’s cover-up of the incident resulted in the firing of two employees who led Uber's response to the hack, said Dara Khosrowshahi, who was named CEO in August following the departure of founder Travis Kalanick. Khosrowshahi said he had only recently learned of the breach, which happened in October 2016. “None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it,” Khosrowshahi said in a blog post on the company website. The company's admission that it failed to disclose the breach comes as Uber seeks to recover from sexual harassment allegations and multiple federal criminal probes that culminated in Kalanick's ouster in June. The company said two hackers gained access to proprietary in...

G Chandrashekhar, November 22, 2017 Sensing the discontent among growers across the country and alarmed by the gathering storm in the form of protests, the Government recently announced a series of measures to boost domestic oilseeds and pulses prices that have dropped below the Minimum Support Price (MSP). But not all of these trade and tariff measures are likely to deliver the intended results. A 50 per cent ad valorem import duty has been imposed on yellow peas, following up on curbs on imported tur/arhar, urad and moong in August. The fiscal impost is under an utterly misplaced belief that large-scale import of low-priced yellow pea depressed domestic pulses prices, in general, and pigeon pea’s, in particular. The fact is yellow pea acts as a substitute for chana (gram or chickpea) and is largely consumed in northern and north-eastern regions. Importantly, chana prices have been ruling well above the MSP of ₹4,000 a quintal for 2016-17 and even above the MSP o...

Sunny Verma, New Delhi | Updated: November 23, 2017 The Union Cabinet approved the promulgation of an ordinance Wednesday to amend the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) to streamline the stressed-assets resolution process and effectively bar wilful defaulters from bidding for companies being put up for sale under the IBC. Sources said the ordinance was being sent to the President and his approval was expected “very soon.” Briefing reporters on the decisions of the Cabinet, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley spoke of the approval for the ordinance to make “some changes” in the IBC but did not provide any other detail. Government sources said the amendments to the IBC “explicitly prohibit persons declared as wilful defaulters” or those having a history of siphoning funds from a company, or convicted of fraud, from submitting a resolution plan for companies that are going through the corporate insolvency resolution process. The changes also empower the Insolvency and Bankruptc...

Dipankar Ghose, Raipur, November 23, 2017 While the BJP-led governments at the Centre and state have claimed that demonetisation hit Maoist finances, documents recovered from the site of an encounter in Abhujmaad on November 7 show that they successfully exchanged demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes adding up to Rs 2 lakh. D M Awasthi, Special Director General, Anti-Naxal Operations, Chhattisgarh, confirmed to The Indian Express that at least 20 pages of handwritten accounts, spanning several years, were recovered after the encounter in the jungles of Abhujmaad in Narayanpur district on November 7 in which six Maoists were reported to have been killed. A postscript in the ‘balance sheet’, maintained by the Nelnar area janatana sarkar (“local government”), for 2017 states: “Note bandi ke dauran 2 lakh jama kiya manta (Deposited 2 lakh during note ban).” While the year’s total expenditure has been put at Rs 46,720, there is a line which says that a sewing machine worth Rs 16,0...

ENS Economic Bureau, New Delhi, Published: November 23, 2017 The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on Wednesday approved a proposal to set up the 15th Finance Commission (FC) and finalise its terms of reference, finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Wednesday after a meeting of the Union Cabinet. Sources said, former revenue secretary and last chairman of the FRBM committee NK Singh is among the top contenders to head the 15th FC, although the government is yet to finalise the name of the chairman. Given that the commission will take around two years to complete the whole exercise, the government has taken the decision now for setting it up, Jaitley said. Upon endorsed by the government, the recommendations of the 15th FC will have to come into effect from April 1, 2020. The FC is formed every five years to recommend principles governing the allocation of tax revenue between the Centre, states and local bodies. The recommendations of the previous 14th FC, heade...

PTI, November 22, 2017 Air purifiers cannot "save us" from the ill-effects of pollution, environmentalist Sunita Narain has said, terming air pollution an "equaliser" which affects people across the board. Narain, a member of the Supreme Court-appointed pollution watchdog EPCA, said cleaning up Delhi's air would require energy and mobility transformations, where people would adopt cleaner fuels and embrace public transport. Speaking at the launch of her book 'Conflicts of Interest' yesterday, Narain said people have abdicated their responsibilities in reacting against pollution. "Air pollution is a great equaliser. We can put air purifiers at home but that cannot save us. After all, air is common," she said. The sale of air purifiers in Delhi has shot up in recent times due to severe air pollution and smog with the onset of winter. Narain, who heads the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), said institutions, suppo...

Vijaita Singh, NEW DELHI,  NOVEMBER 22, 2017 Standing Committee wants clarity on framework agreement signed in 2015 The parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs has asked Naga interlocutor R.N. Ravi to appear before it to explain the status of the Naga framework agreement that was signed in 2015. A senior government official said the panel headed by senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram asked Mr. Ravi to appear before the panel when it met last week to discuss the “security situation in the northeastern States of India”. Mr. Ravi and Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba have been asked to be present on November 27, an official said. The Centre recently gave a one-year extension to Mr. Ravi, Joint Intelligence chief who signed a framework agreement on behalf of the Union government with the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah) group to end the decades-old Naga insurgency. Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh, all BJP-ruled States that have Nag...

P. Samuel Jonathan, GUNTUR ,  NOVEMBER 23, 2017 In what is a considered a game changer for farmers in the State battling crop losses owing to vagaries of pest attack, a mobile app providing farmers free, reliable and quick diagnosis of crop damage has been designed by Indian and German scientists. Plantix, a pest diagnostic app, is creating a silent revolution among the farm lands in the State. The mobile app can be downloaded on smartphones and is helping the farmers to identify pests and suggest remedies. The simplified dashboard with easy-to-use features works with GPS coordinates. Farmers can take pictures of the affected crop and upload them on the app. The photographs are then analysed using artificial intelligence algorithms. The results are then returned immediately to the user. Critical information on symptoms, triggers, chemicals as well as biological treatments are provided. All pictures sent using the app, are geo-tagged thereby enabling real-time monitori...

Annie Massa, Nov 23 2017 Electronic-trading firms that have already transformed markets from stocks to foreign exchange to futures are diving into bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Five of the biggest electronic traders in the world are already trading bitcoin. Jump Trading LLC, Tower Research Capital LLC and Hudson River Trading are in the market, according to people familiar with the matter, along with Susquehanna International Group LLP. DRW Holdings LLC has been trading digital currencies since 2014, giving it a head start on competitors. High-speed firms have remade virtually every other electronic market, turning transactions over to algorithms and measuring market moves in milliseconds. But low volatility and trading volumes have eroded profits, pushing them to look for new opportunities. Bitcoin, which has huge price swings, rose to a new high above $8,000 on Monday. And with CME Group Inc. and Cboe Global Markets Inc. poised to offer bitcoin futures contracts, ...

Jeremy Kahn, Nov 23 2017 The data breach at Uber Technologies Inc. holds a lesson for software developers who use third-party services to store and share code: be careful what you share. Services like San Francisco-based Github Inc., GitLab and SourceForge are used by developers to collaborate on projects, track bugs in code and distribute early versions of applications. They’re also a target for cyberthieves. Uber lost records on 57 million customers and drivers after hackers gained access to a password-protected area of Github, one of the most popular code storehouses in the world. It’s happened before, too. “Code depositories can be very problematic,” Chris Boyd, an analyst at cybersecurity company Malwarebytes Inc., said. Many companies are slow to remove login details for these storage services when developers leave. Earlier this month, a security researcher found that software developers for Chinese drone manufacturer SZ DJI Technology Co. had left the priva...

Shaswati Das, Nov 23 2017 Intelligence agencies are preparing for a spurt in militant activity in Kashmir, with reports revealing militant groups plan to use the winter months for ratcheting up covert radicalization and recruitment drives. Senior intelligence officers stated that with active militancy on the decline in Kashmir, groups such as the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Hizbul Mujahideen were looking at cashing in on the snow cover in passes and ravines between December to March. However, with security forces continuously manning the areas along the Line of Control (LoC) as well as regions within the Valley, intelligence units stated that there would be little to no overground radicalization, recruitment rallies or group meetings. The tip-off comes just days before the centre’s interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma travels to Kashmir for a second round of talks on 26 November. “This is the cheapest and safest form of radicalization. The Hizbul has been losing ground st...