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The Indian Express:Updated: January 28, 2018 Kasganj, where one person died in communal clashes on Friday, and violence was reported on Saturday, lies in an area of near-total domination of agrarian communities — Lodh-Rajputs, Kachhi (Shakya) and Yadavs, all OBC communities — along with a significant presence of people from the minority community. Such has been the control of the agrarian community in the area that a Lodh-Rajput candidate has won every election from Kasganj Assembly segment since 1977, barring 2007 state elections when Hasratullah Shervani of the BSP was elected. While the then Mayawati-led BSP government had carved out a separate district from Etah in 2008 and named the new district Kanshiram Nagar — the Samajwadi Party (SP) government of Akhilesh Yadav renamed it Kasganj in 2012 — Kasganj town, where the incidents of communal violence has been reported from, comes under Etah Lok Sabha constituency. Barring 1980 and 1984, Etah has sent a cand...

The Economic Times, AP | JAN 27, 2018 TOKYO: A Japanese exchange has lost 58 billion yen ($530 million) in cryptocurrency because of hacking, according to Japanese media reports.  The Coincheck exchange said on its website Friday that it had halted sales and withdrawals of the currency, which is called NEM. It later added that it had restricted dealings in most other cryptocurrencies too.  At a Friday night news conference, Coincheck President Koichiro Wada bowed and apologized. He said the company may seek financial assistance, according to Kyodo News service. Japanese TV footage showed a small group of customers standing outside the company's Tokyo head office Friday night.  Coincheck, which calls itself the leading Bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange in Asia, said it detected the unauthorized access to its system about 3 a.m. Friday. Link: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/business/530-million-lost-in-hack-of-japan-crypto...

The Economic Times, BY ,MALINI GOYAL,  ET BUREAU | UPDATED: JAN 26, 2018 It hurts when you are a laggard. It hurts even more when it is in public display, every month, every week, every embarrassing day.  Pratyaya Amrit, principal secretary of Bihar's energy department, knows that feeling. In the power sector, like in many others, Bihar is a laggard. It has among the highest AT&C (aggregate technical and commercial) losses in power in the country. "We would be slightly better than Northeastern states," he says.  The performance has been poor all along. But there is a small change now. "We can now see our status and performance on the national portal in real time, with the latest facts and figures. You can now see desh me aap kahan hai (where you stand in the country). No one wants to be seen as a laggard," he says. The feeling is so strong that the Bihar government and its bureaucratic machinery are working hard to change it.  Bihar was rus...

The Wire,  BY   ALISON PEARCE   ON   27/01/2018 Premature – and potentially avoidable – death from cancer is costing tens of billions of dollars in lost productivity in a group of key developing economies. Over two-thirds of the world’s cancer deaths occur in economically developing countries, but the societal costs of the disease have rarely been assessed in these settings. In a paper published today in the Journal of Cancer Epidemiology we show that the total cost of lost productivity because of premature cancer mortality for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – known as BRICS – was $46.3 billion in 2012. (This was the most recent year for which cancer data was available for all these countries.) The BRICS countries are a diverse group of nations but were originally grouped together because they were rising emerging economies. Currently the five countries combined comprise over 40% of the world’s population and 2...

26 January, 2018  ISLAMABAD:  The United Nations Security Council’s sanctions monitoring team on Thursday started its two-day trip to Pakistan for an assessment of the country’s compliance with the world body’s sanctions regime. “The Monitoring Team (MT) of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) 1267 Sanctions Committee, dealing with the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and Daesh, is in Pakistan for a two-day visit,” Foreign Office spokesman Dr Muhammad Faisal told journalists at the weekly media briefing. The spokesman said that the visiting team was being briefed about the steps being taken by Pakistan in compliance with the UN sanctions. Moreover, the delegation was apprised of Pakistan’s perspective on terrorist threat in the region. The team would submit its visit report to the sanctions committee. Dr Faisal explained that besides assessing the compliance status of the country being visited by the team, the monitoring body also apprised the member states ab...

The Wire,  BY   M.K. VENU AND NOOR MOHAMMAD   ON   25/01/2018 The borrowings of India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), until recently a largely debt-free public sector undertaking (PSU), should figure prominently in the essential readings of Modinomics. The government recently decided that its growing expenditure-revenue gap in 2017-18, partly caused by lower Goods and Services Tax collections, must be fixed by milking the profitable oil public sector undertaking (PSU). So a bizarre idea was born in the name of creating “synergy between two big government owned PSUs”, namely between ONGC and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL). Since the government is the owner of both PSUs, all it had to do was sell its 51% stake in HPCL to ONGC and transfer nearly Rs 37,000 crore into the Centre’s kitty. With this, the divestment target for this year was more than met. Of course one wonders, if large-ticket deals like this can be carried out so...

The Indian Express, Written by Santosh Singh | Patna |  Updated: January 27, 2018 Improper maintenance, non-adherence to procedures, non-compliance of safety regulations by the operator. These are some of the common findings in probe reports prepared by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) into 20 of 25 accidents involving Pawan Hans Helicopters Limited (PHHL) over the last 30 years. Since 1988, 91 people were killed in these accidents, including 60 passengers, 27 pilots and four crew. The last of these accidents occurred on January 13 off the Mumbai coast, killing seven people including two pilots and senior ONGC officials. Five of the 25 accidents — from November 20, 2013, and including the one this month — are still under investigation. The probe reports, accessed by The Indian Express, directly indict the PHHL management for violation of safety norms and suggest that the accidents were more due to “organisational lapses than technical reason...

The Indian Express, Written by Sunny Verma | New Delhi |  Updated: January 27, 2018 The government has directed small public sector banks (PSBs) to cut their corporate loan exposure to 25 per cent of their risk-weighted assets over the medium term and focus more on retail lending. This strategy is being followed to shrink the size of relatively weaker banks over the next two years. According to the latest figures, the corporate loan exposure, for a number of PSBs, is around 50 per cent or higher, while retail exposure is around 15 per cent. In a communication to chairpersons and CEOs of PSBs, detailing the government’s reforms agenda, Banking Secretary Rajiv Kumar has said smaller PSBs must cut their corporate loan exposure by a minimum of 15 per cent by March 2019. Banks have been asked to ensure board-approved policies in place for achieving the loan exposure mix, for which they can pursue asset swaps and sales with the larger banks. Retail loans such as ...

The Financial Express, Written by Shubhajit Roy | New Delhi |  Updated: January 27, 2018 Lauding India’s “positive role” in the Indo-Pacific amid China’s growing assertiveness, all ASEAN leaders on Friday expressed a desire for it to play a more assertive role to ensure “peace, stability and prosperity” in the region. This was disclosed by a senior Indian official who was part of bilateral talks between the visiting leaders and Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the last two days. The leaders lauded India’s growth story as it was “one of fastest growing economies” and the Modi government has undertaken “amazing reforms”, said the official. Asked if ASEAN leaders favoured a more assertive role for India in the Indo-Pacific region, MEA’s secretary (east) Preeti Saran replied, “Yes.” Whether the leaders sought greater role from India in the wake of China’s growing expansionism in the Indo-Pacific, Saran said the India-ASEAN relationship stands on its own. “...

The Financial Express, New Delhi | Updated: January 26, 2018 The crucial Union Budget will be presented on February 1. The Budget 2018 will be the last full budget before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Under Income Tax Act, different set of rules and rates of taxes have been prescribed for computation of income. Similarly, various set of rules and principals have been prescribed in Accounting Standards. These rules play a vital rule in calculating the income which is chargeable to tax during the year. One of such important rules is ‘Matching Concept’. It is an accounting principle whereby an entity is required to recognize the revenue and its related expenses in the same accounting period. The matching concept is also relevant under Income-tax Act for the purpose of calculation of taxable income under different heads of income, i.e., Capital Gains, Residuary Income, Business profits, etc. An expense is matched with the source of income so that expense in relation to an exempt inco...