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Praveen Swami, The Indian Express, December 27, 2017 In A video released online on jihadist forums on Tuesday night, al-Qaeda has said the key to victory in Kashmir lies in waging war on Indian cities. “India is already using 600,000 troops just to hold on to Kashmir,” the organisation’s subcontinent second-in-command Usama Mehmood says in the video. “If it is attacked in Kolkata, Bangalore and New Delhi, it will come to its senses and release its grip on Kashmir.” For this to come about, Mehmood argues, “it is necessary that the jihadi movement becomes strong at the level of the subcontinent, and Muslims in the whole region stand behind the Kashmiri people.” “Look at America,” he says. “In the same way securing itself has become difficult for America throughout the world, the Indian army and Hindu government’s peaceful world should be made a war zone.” The video was released on the same day a new organisation, calling itself al-Qarar, released a video pledging allian...

Feroz Ali, Sudarshan Rajgopal, December 26, 2017 In 2005, India made some remarkable amendments to the Indian Patents Act of 1970, to keep medicines affordable in the country. Since then we have faced a significant blowback not just from the global pharmaceutical industry but also from developed world including from the U.S. and the European Union. At the heart of the matter are the strong standards for patents which India introduced to promote genuine innovation across all fields of technology, in perfect compliance with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) norms. In contrast, developed countries have weaker standards as a result of incessant lobbying by corporate behemoths. Twelve years later, we now know what it means: India rejects bad patents in far greater number than developed countries. The background The findings of a new study by us which examined all 1,723 pharmaceutical applications rejected by the Indian Patent Office (IPO) between 2009 and 2016 have been...

PTI, Islamabad, Dated: 26, 2017 Pakistan plans to adopt American and European-style surveillance to keep tracking the foreigners visiting the country, according to a media report. In the latest meeting of intra-provincial committee, Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif said Pakistan should adopt a tracking system being used by the U.S. and European countries to keep an eye on foreigners, the Urdu language Express News reported. There is a dire need of having such tracking system which will be helpful in monitoring the movement of foreigners, the minister said. Mr. Asif made the remarks after the secretary of the ministry of foreign affairs raised the issue of Afghan students studying in various seminaries in Pakistan, it said. The secretary briefed the committee on the links of these students with militancy in Pakistan on which the national security advisor said there should be surveillance of all such students and on expiry of their visit visas they should be sent back ...

 Reuters, Bejing , December 26, 2017 China sentenced a prominent rights activist to eight years in jail for subversion on Tuesday, his lawyer said, the harshest sentence passed in a government crackdown on activism that began more than two years ago. In a separate case, a rights lawyer avoided criminal punishment despite being found guilty of inciting subversion, because he admitted to his crimes, the Chinese court trying him said. Wu Gan, a blogger better known by his online name “Super Vulgar Butcher”, plans to appeal against the eight-year sentence handed down by the Tianjin Municipality’s No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court, his lawyer, Yan Xin, told Reuters. The harshness of the sentence prompted the German embassy in Beijing to issue a statement expressing disappointment. Wu regularly championed sensitive cases of government abuses of power, both online and in street protests. He was detained in May 2015 and charged with subversion. The activist criticis...

  The Hindu , Beijing  December 26, 2017  Atul Aneja China on Tuesday flagged the possible inclusion of Afghanistan in the China Pakistan Economic Corridor(CPEC) — a move that is likely to irk India. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi made the remark of opening the doorfor Kabul’s entry in an expanded CPEC in the backdrop of the first foreign ministers trilateral dialogue of China, Pakistan and Afghanistan. India has opposed CPEC, which passes through Pakistan occupied Kashmir(PoK), on grounds that it infringes its sovereignty. Speaking to the media in Beijing on Tuesday, Mr. Wang advocated that Afghanistan could join connectivity initiatives, in view of the urgency of improving its people’s lives. “So China and Pakistan are willing to look at with Afghanistan, on the basis of win-win, mutually beneficial principles, using an appropriate means to extend CPEC to Afghanistan,”the Pajhwok Afghan News quoted him as saying. China has called CPEC a “flagshi...

ET Bureau,  December 27, 2017 Reliance Communications will sell telecom assets, including spectrum, towers and fibre, worth Rs 25,000 crore by March 2018 to pre-pay lenders and exit the ongoing strategic debt restructuring (SDR) programme, chairman Anil Ambani said. The company in its new avatar as an enterprise-focussed business will sell stake to global investors to pare loans further, he added. Addressing a press conference on Tuesday, Ambani said the company had on Monday evening reached an out-of-court settlement with China Development Bank (CDB) which had filed an insolvency petition in the bankruptcy court to recover $1.78 billion, or about Rs 11,460 crore, from the telecom company. The company plans to monetise its real estate assets to generate an additional Rs 10,000 crore, and divest stake worth Rs 4,000 crore in the residual RCom — which consists of the global undersea cable business, data centres and enterprise business, after having s...

The Indian Express Sunny Verma  December 26, 2017  New Delhi After peaking in 2009 and remaining well above 40 per cent in the earlier years, banks’ NPA recovery rate has declined over the years to just 20.8% at the end of March. In an indication of deteriorating management of non-performing assets (NPAs), the rate of recovery of banks’ gross NPAs has been steadily declining for the past 12 years and hit the lowest level of 20.8 per cent in 2016-17, according to the latest data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Recovery of written-off loans through various channels, such as debt recovery tribunals (DRTs), has also been falling year-on-year. While the loan recovery rate has been falling, the number of cases being referred to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) benches for insolvency resolution has been correspondingly rising since the enactment of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) last year. “Recovery of banks’ NPAs remains poor, having declined...

The Indian Express Sunny Verma December 26, 2017 New Delhi  Even as the rate of recovery of bad loans has shrunk, the number of cases being filed for corporate insolvency resolution process (CIRP) under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), enacted in May 2016, has been rising. As on November 2017, over 4,300 applications under CIRP were filed in the various benches of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), according to data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). While resolution plans have been approved in 6 cases so far, a total of 19 cases have been closed by liquidation. In 25 cases, the admission of the cases to the National Company Law Tribunal have been set aside by the orders of appellate authorities, including the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal and the Supreme Court. The IBC also allows the operational creditors such as trade suppliers, employees, or workmen, to initiate insolvency resolution against companies. The data show that the operati...

 The Indian Express    Jagdeep Singh Deep  December 26, 2017 He was the poster boy for the Hizbul-Mujahideen (HuM) in Kashmir. But Burhan Wani has also been adopted by Sikh radical groups, going by the sale of a magazine with him on the cover describing him as ‘Hero of Freedom of Kashmir’ at the Shaheedi Jor Mela in Fatehgarh Sahib on Monday. A total of 10 lakh people are expected to congregate from Monday until December 27 at the mela, held annually to commemorate the martyrdom of Sahibzada Baba Zorawar Singh and Sahibzada Baba Fateh Singh, the young sons of the 10th Sikh master, Guru Gobind Singh. The magazine was being sold in a big stall manned by supporters of SAD (Amritsar), near the Rauza Sharif, amidst other radical material including books, car stickers, badges on Khalistani militants including Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. Called ‘Vangaar’ (Challenge), the pro-Khalistan magazine ran a cover story in its August 2016 issue on Wani descri...

The Indian Express Written by  Amitav Ranjan   December 26, 2017 New Delhi SEVERAL trucks carrying over 26,000 quintals of foodgrain for public distribution allegedly disappeared and a CBI investigation into the scam has been halted following a stay from the Srinagar bench of Jammu & Kashmir High Court. Last September, the CBI’s Srinagar unit filed an FIR against officials of the Food Corporation of India, private transporters and private depot managers for a “detailed investigation” into the alleged embezzlement of foodgrain through forgery of documents. According to the FIR, 130 trucks left over a period of months from FCI depots at Bhogpur and Kartarpur in Jalandhar (Punjab) carrying rice and wheat for storing at a private depot run on behalf of the FCI at Baramulla in J&K. The stocks crossed Lower Munda check-post near Qazigund but never reached the Baramulla depot for unloading. An enquiry by FCI had allegedly found that the stamp affixed on t...

THE HINDU C. Rammanohar Reddy December 26, 2017 As the U.S. loses interest in multilateralism in trade, India should actively try to arrest the organisation’s slide  Less than 25 years after the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was created, its future as a body overseeing multilateral trade rules is in doubt. The failure of the recent ministerial meeting at Buenos Aires is only symptomatic of a decline in its importance. Too ambitious? When the WTO was born in 1995, replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), it was given a large remit overseeing the rules for world trade. It was also given powers to punish countries which violated these rules. Yet, in what must be an unusual development in the history of international institutions, the WTO has been felled by the weight of the extraordinary ambitions placed on it. As a consequence, since the late 2000s, the organisation has been unable to carry out its basic task of overseeing a successful conduct of m...

THE HINDU Sobhana K Nair & TCA Sharad Raghavan December 25, 2017 New Delhi  Almost a third of the distressed power plants unable to repay loans worth crores are in Chhattisgarh, according to data from the Ministry of Power.  Last week, the ministry submitted a list 34 such projects to a parliamentary panel on energy, 10 of which are in the BJP-ruled Chhattisgarh, the highest in any state. The panel had posed a detailed questionnaire to the Union ministries of Power, Coal, Finance, as well as to the Reserve Bank of India, the concerned banks, and the developers. While many of the questions were answered, the government continued to refuse to reveal the exact amount of liability that these power projects owe to the banks. Further, in its reply, the government has all but shrugged off the responsibility of the high levels of non-performing assets (NPA) in the power sector. “The decision to set up a power plant is taken by concerned developer based on his own a...

THE HINDU Manojit Saha  December 25, 2017 MIGA’s guarantees can trigger about five times as much in FDI, says its CEO The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency — an arm of the World Bank group — which provides non-commercial guarantees, has supported 110 countries with $19 billion in guarantees across 850 projects. MIGA’s CEO and executive VP, Keiko Honda, explains how foreign direct investment receives a fillip due to the guarantees, and the agency’s plan for India. Sarvesh Suri, director, Operations Group, also joined the conversation: Why are you planning to enter India to provide guarantees? Honda: The G20, including India, has strongly encouraged multilateral development banks (MDBs) to help bring in more private investment to developing countries. By doing this, we can increase the money coming to countries — like India — that have strong potential. The ADB or the World Bank Group can be used to even draw private investors to sectors they genera...