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Rayan Naqash, January 11, 2017 “The Role of Men in Feminism,” reads the inscription on a memento that adorns the display cabinet in Mannan Wani’s room. The Aligarh Muslim University student had earned it for participating in a panel discussion. But the research scholar seems to have given up on debates and discussions, at least for now. Last week a picture of Mannan Wani posing with an assault rifle appeared online, the caption declaring his “activation date” as January 5 and identifying him by his new nom de guerre: Hamzah Bhai. An initiation ritual of sorts for Kashmiri militants of the social media age that has left his family devastated. “Shocking, shocking, shocking,” a weary Bashir Wani murmured on January 10. He follows a drill he has grown accustomed to in the last few days: giving reporters a tour of his son’s room at their home in Tekipora in North Kashmir’s Kupwara district and showing his academic certificates while talking about the “unfortunate turn of e...

Written by Pratik Kanjilal | Updated: January 11, 2018 These days, it’s almost impossible to pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV without being told, in gory detail, about the dark side of the Bitcoin story. The cryptocurrency, designed as a foil to the financial mainstream, has been sucked into its vortex, becoming the very monster that its libertarian creator or creators mistrusted. After a brief life of crime on the Dark Web, it has become the most volatile mainstream investment ever, which can only benefit a tiny handful of smart players and beggar the rest. It has just hit the derivatives market with futures on the Chicago bourses, precisely when analysts and merchant bankers are energetically disparaging it. In the second half of December 2017, it went through its first bear phase, another sign of mainstream maturity. And in India, the taxman is about to unleash his myrmidons on almost half a million high net worth individuals, for avoidance of capital gains tax during...

Written by Shruti Dhapola | New Delhi | Updated: January 12, 2018 The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which is facing criticism in the light of alleged data breaches, Wednesday announced a new method of identification called Virtual Identity — or VID in short. It also introduced what it described as a system of “Limited KYC” (Know Your Customer) to reduce the storage of Aadhaar numbers with the Authentication User Agencies (AUAs), while still letting them do paperless authentications. Essentially, the new VID system will hide the Aadhaar number from the authenticating agency, while still confirming the identity of the user. The statutory body, which is mandated to collect personal data of residents of India and to issue them a unique identification number called Aadhaar, says these steps will ensure greater privacy, and limit access to its database. On Thursday, the government pushed back against the critics of Aadhaar, asking them not to “overblow this issu...

J.P. Yadav Jan 12, 2018 Sangh economic wing Swadeshi Jagran Manch on Thursday said the Narendra Modi government's decision to ease foreign direct investment norms would go against the "interest of the country" and urged people to resist the move. "(The) Swadeshi Jagran Manch strongly opposes the decisions of the Union cabinet allowing 100 per cent FDI under automatic route for single-brand retail and construction development. We also express our strong resentment to (the) Union cabinet's decision to allow foreign investment up to 49 per cent in Air India and other decisions," the organisation's all-India co-convener, Ashwani Mahajan, said. Mahajan particularly targeted the government's decision to relax the 30 per cent local sourcing condition for single-brand retail, saying it ran counter to the government's "Make in India" policy. The Confederation of All India Traders, close to the Sangh-BJP, too opposed the "h...

Written by Sandeep Singh | New Delhi | Updated: January 12, 2018 HINTING AT a revival in the economy, the industrial sector witnessed an expansion in credit growth for the first time in 14 months in November 2017 over the same period the previous year. According to RBI data released Thursday, gross bank credit expanded 8.3 per cent in November, and credit off-take by the industry by 1 per cent. The contraction in credit growth to the industry since October 2016 had hit a low of (-)5.2 per cent in February 2017, while the gross bank credit growth stood at 3 per cent in the same month. The credit outstanding to the industry, which stood at Rs 27,30,300 crore in March 2016, had come down to Rs 25,99,100 crore in October 2017 as a result of decline in credit growth numbers and year-on-year contraction since October 2016. In November, it expanded to Rs 26,04,000 crore for the first time since the government announced its demonetisation policy in November 2016. Data show that c...

By: ENS Economic Bureau | New Delhi | Updated: January 12, 2018 Which is the asset class that delivers the highest long-run returns? This is one of the fundamental questions that have preoccupied modern economic thoughts. According to a new research, residential real estate, not equity, has been the best long-run investment over the course of modern history. In the paper, titled ‘The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870-2015’, economists Oscar Jorda, Katharina Knoll, Dmitry Kuvshinov, Moritz Schularick and Alan Taylor compare stocks, bonds and housing across 16 advanced economies over the past century and a half to arrive at an emphatic conclusion: The return on residential real estate has been as high as or higher than the return on equity. It bases this on a comprehensive dataset for all major asset classes, including total returns to the largest, but often ignored, component of household wealth, housing. The annual data on total returns for equity, housing, bonds, and bi...

By: AP | New Delhi | Updated: January 12, 2018 In bluntly vulgar language, President Donald Trump questioned Thursday why the U.S. would accept more immigrants from Haiti and “shithole countries” in Africa rather than places like Norway, as he rejected a bipartisan immigration deal, according to people briefed on the extraordinary Oval Office conversation. Trump’s contemptuous description of an entire continent startled lawmakers in the meeting and immediately revived charges that the president is racist, reports AP.  The White House did not deny his remark but issued a statement saying Trump supports immigration policies that welcome “those who can contribute to our society.” Trump’s comments came as two senators presented details of a bipartisan compromise that would extend protections against deportation for hundreds of thousands of young immigrants _ and also strengthen border protections as Trump has insisted. The lawmakers had hoped Trump would back their ac...

Rahul Tripathi | New Delhi | Updated: January 12, 2018 THE MINISTRY of Home Affairs is set to grant sanction for prosecution of nine separatist leaders, including Hurriyat chief SAS Geelani’s son-in-law Altaf Fantosh, under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, within the next week. Fantosh and eight others were arrested for allegedly receiving funds from Pakistan to carry out terrorist activities and stone-pelting in 2016 after the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani in Kashmir. The MHA, it is learnt, received a request for prosecution sanction from the National Investigation Agency (NIA) last week, which was forwarded to a two-member authority comprising former Allahabad High Court judge Dr Satish Chandra and former law secretary T K Viswanathan. Sources said the sanction, mandatory under Section 45 of the UAPA, is likely to be cleared by next week, failing which the separatists leaders will be eligible for bail. The NIA arrested Fantosh and eight ...

Written by Shubhajit Roy | New Delhi | Updated: January 12, 2018 THE GOVERNMENT on Thursday confirmed that National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval met his Pakistani counterpart Lt Gen Nasser Khan Janjua (retd) as part of “operational-level talks”, and stressed that “talks on terror can definitely go ahead”. The Indian Express had first reported the meeting between the two NSAs, held at a “neutral venue” in Bangkok on December 26. The report, on December 31, said that while the meeting was held a day after retired Naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, who is on Death Row in Pakistan, met his wife and mother in Islamabad, it was “pre-scheduled” and not linked to Pakistan’s treatment of Jadhav’s family. Responding to questions at the weekly briefing, the Ministry of External Affairs’ official spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said on Thursday, “India and Pakistan have a dialogue process and we have said terror and talks cannot go together. However, there are other dialogue mechanisms...

Sajid Iqbal, January 10, 2018 HAFIZ Muhammad Saeed, the head of the banned Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), toured Britain during the 1990s, stirring up Muslim youths to become jihadis years before 9/11, a BBC investigation has found. Hafiz Saeed, who has a $10 million bounty on his head for allegedly masterminding the Nov 2008 attacks in Mumbai, thrilled audiences in packed mosques in cities around this country by calling for a return to the days when Muslims waged jihad and infidels paid them protection money. Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), has always denied involvement in the Mumbai carnage. The revelation came amidst concerns for the British government and intelligence agencies about the large number of Muslims going abroad to fight “holy wars”. For most people this controversial religious calling came to the fore after 9/11, 7/7 (the attacks in Britain in July 2005) and the Arab Spring — young, disenfranchised and radical recruits heading from Britain to...

By: The Financial Express | New Delhi | Published: January 12, 2018 Aptly named Mission Indradhanush (MI)—it started out with vaccines against seven-life threatening diseases and now covers an expanded spectrum—India’s vaccination booster mission is a rare success for the country when it comes to health. In a country that registered a shockingly low 1% annual increase in immunisation coverage, the initiative has pushed up annual coverage growth rates to a 6.7%. MI was launched in December 2014, to drive vaccination against TB, poliomyelitis, hepatitis B, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus and measles, in 201 districts that had very low immunisation coverage. By July 2017, 2.55 crore children under two years of age and 68.7 lakh pregnant women had been covered in 528 districts across the country. Recently, the Centre launched the Intensified Mission Indradhanush (IMI) to reach 90% immunisation in 173 districts by December 2018. As per a report in The Indian Express, when MI was launch...