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Economic Times PTI Feb 06, 2018 WASHINGTON: A bill today was introduced in the US House of Representatives to end non-defence aid to Pakistan as it "provides military aid and intelligence" to terrorists.  It sought that the amount be redirect to infrastructure projects in the US.  Introduced by Congressmen Mark Sanford from South Carolina and Thomas Massie from Kentucky, the legislation will prohibit the US State Department and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) from sending American taxpayer money to Pakistan.  Instead, these funds will be redirected to the Highway Trust Fund, the account that pays for road infrastructure in the US.  The lawmakers alleged that Pakistan "knowingly" provides resources to terrorists.  Massie said the US should not funnel money to a government that "provides military aid and intelligence to terrorists".  This common-sense bill puts America first by reallocating tax dollars to roads

Economic Times By  Bloomberg   Feb 06, 2018 India's lenders, already struggling with $210 billion of stressed assets, may have to prepare for another hit as early as the coming financial year if new accounting norms kick in as planned on April 1. The IndAS -- based on the IFRS9 standards created in the aftermath of the financial crisis -- would require banks to make provisions for expected  bad loans  instead of the current system where they only cover actual losses incurred. CLSA estimates that would almost double stressed advances, boost provisioning by $30 billion and consume more than $26 billion in capital at state-run banks and $4 billion for private lenders. "The new Indian accounting standards could result in sizable incremental bad debt provisioning requirements for  Indian banks  given their relatively low levels of provision coverage at present," said Nicholas Yap, a Hong Kong-based credit desk analyst at Nomura International (HK) Ltd. "

FirstPost   Vivek Kaul   Feb 06, 2018  It took the BSE Sensex, India’s premier stock market index, nine months to rise from 30,000 mark to higher than 36,000 level. This meant a return of more than 20 percent from April 2017 to January 2018. In an era when fixed deposits give a post-tax return of 5 percent per year, a return of 20 percent in less than a year has to be fantastic. Of course, there are many listed stocks which have given more than 20 percent returns in during the same period. Between 29 January and 6 February, 2018, the BSE Sensex fell by around 5.8 percent and wiped out one-third of the gains in the nine months mentioned earlier. his means a week’s fall has wiped off one-third of the gains over a period of nine months. When the stock market falls, a new set of investors learn, the same set of lessons all over again. What does this mean? The price to earnings ratio of the BSE Sensex crossed 26 in late January 2018. This basically means an investor was willin

Economic Times AFP Feb 06, 2018 DARWIN: US commitment to the Asia-Pacific remains unwavering even though rivals falsely depict its influence as waning, the country's top general said today.  General Joe Dunford's remarks came weeks after the Pentagon unveiled a new national defence strategy labelling China as a "strategic competitor" that bullies its neighbours, and as America seeks to counter a narrative that President Donald Trump's administration is uninterested in Asia unless seen through the prism of North Korea  There's absolutely, in some corners, a concerted effort to portray the United States as a declining power, and obviously I reject that," Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said without naming China directly.  "If you look at the health of our alliances in the region... The evidence reflects anything other than a decline in Pacific power. We have enduring interests here, we have enduring commitment and an end

Economic Times PTI Feb 06, 2018 Meeting the government's vision of 100 per cent electrification of public transport and 40 per cent of personal mobility by 2030 is a 'huge challenge' that will require a single-minded focus, Tata Motors CEO and MD Guenter Butschek said today.  Government incentives must be directed towards full electric vehicles (EVs) only, as the industry would have to develop other technologies such as hybrids in order to meet regulatory requirements going ahead, he said.  "It is huge challenge... I think from a vision point of view, from an aspiration point of view, it is a good timeline but in order to get even close to it, we need to draft and translate it in to a policy," Butschek said at a media interaction here.  The challenge for the automobile industry will be to meet the demand of both conventional internal combustion engines (ICE) and electric vehicles, both of which would require big investments, he added.  On an assump

India Today  Kamaljit Kaur Sandhu New Delhi February 6, 2018 Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba operative  fled custody today  at the Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) Hospital in Srinagar, despite being guarded by three constables of the Jammu and Kashmir Police. Two of those men were killed when the fugitive's accomplices opened fire at them in the hospital's parking lot. The police are on the lookout for  the LeT  man -Mohammed Naveed Jat - but they're even more worried about a possible inside job. They believe Jat's escape was premeditated. Only they - and the hospital's doctors - could have known when he would arrive at SMHS. In fact, a top source says an investigation is under way to determine whether he was given a pistol before he reached the hospital. Jat, 22, had been brought to the hospital for a medical check-up. As soon as he got off in the parking lot, two pheran-clad terrorists fired at the trio of policemen accompanying him. One died on the spot

Times of India PTI, February 06, 2018 NEW DELHI: West Bengal on Tuesday used Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech at Davos that one who controls data would control the world to assail in the Supreme Court the ambitious Aadhaar scheme, saying the Centre would control personal information of citizens to have a grip over them. The Mamta Banerjee government was putting forth its arguments before a five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra which is hearing a clutch of pleas challenging the constitutional validity of the Aadhaar scheme and the enabling 2016 law. Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for the West Bengal government, referred to parts of Modi's recent speech at the World Economic Forum at Davos. "Whoever controls data is the most powerful and can shape the world," Sibal said quoting the prime minister. Using the statement to buttress his submissions against the Aadhaar scheme, Sibal said it meant that "who c

India Today Kamaljeet Kaur Sandhu, February 06, 2018 As per the data shared by the Ministry of Home Affairs in Parliament today, Uttar Pradesh has reported highest number of communal incidents in 2017. Uttar Pradesh, which recently witnessed violence in Kasganj, reported 195 communal incidents in 2017 in which 44 people were killed and 542 others were injured. Poll-bound Karnataka is second in the list, reporting 100 communal incidents in the last year in which nine people were killed and 229 injured. The MHA data was shared in Parliament by Minister of State for Home Affairs Hansraj Ahir in response to an unstarred question by Members of Parliament G Hari and T G Venkatesh Babu. According to the MHA data, Rajasthan, which is also due for polls this year, recorded 91 communal incidents wherein 12 people were killed and 175 injured. Bihar is fourth on the list with 85 communal incidents reported in 2017 which claimed three lives and injured 321 others. In

Business Line PTI, February 06, 2018 he deferral of the fiscal consolidation roadmap has left the task of strengthening weak public finances to the next government after the 2019 general elections, Fitch Ratings said today. The government has revised its 2018-19 fiscal deficit projections to 3.3 per cent of GDP and for the current fiscal to 3.5 per cent of GDP, compared with original targets of 3 per cent and 3.2 per cent, respectively. The postponement of consolidation in part reflects policies to support the economy, which was held back last year by weak investment and disruptions from demonetisation and the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), Fitch said. “The Indian government’s budget has pushed back fiscal consolidation, leaving much of the task of addressing the country’s relatively weak public finances to the next administration,” Fitch Ratings said in a statement. However, the Budget target revisions are modest, and are balanced by positive reform mome

Medical Express February 06, 2018 An international team of researchers has shown that two different compounds-one, an older malaria drug, the other a common laboratory dye with known antimalarial properties-can safely and effectively be added to treatment regimens to block transmission of the most common form of malaria in Africa. This development could help reduce the spread of P. falciparum malaria, including its drug-resistant forms, thus speeding progress toward elimination of the disease. "Although these two drugs have been around for more than half a century, this is the first time that the exciting and impressive effects of each of these drugs on malaria transmission have been so clearly demonstrated in a comparative study," said Roly Gosling, MD, PhD, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at UC San Francisco (UCSF). "Now we can say that the effectiveness of common malaria drugs used for seasonal malaria chemoprevention can be improved, wit