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The Economic Times Swapan Dasgupta, March 25, 2018 A few weeks ago, Cambridge Analytica was being touted in political circles as the secret weapon of a party desperate to oust Narendra Modi and reclaim what it sees as its rightful inheritance. Today, alas, that enterprising British company is in the eye of a storm. Its alleged sharp practices have directly contributed to Facebook losing billions in market cap and its iconic founder Mark Zuckerberg losing face for his company’s breach of trust.  The story of Cambridge Analytica and those at its helm is enthralling — especially as described by a British media that dotes on scandals. However, while sting operations can sex up an already delicious story, it is important to separate the wheat from the chaff. The real story is not that Analytica was contracted by Donald Trump for his successful presidential campaign of 2016. The controversy is principally centred on whether or not the political consultancy firm illegally mine...

The Economic Times PTI, March 25, 2018 NEW DELHI: Seizure of narcotic drugs like opium, heroin and cannabis in the country has increased by more than 300 per cent in the last five years with 2017 witnessing an all-time high recovery of over 3.6 lakh kg of narcotics, according to the latest NCB report.  A haul of 2,551 kgs opium (used to produce heroin), 2,146 kgs heroin, 3,52,379 kgs of cannabis (ganja or weed), 3,218 kgs of hashish (cannabis resin) and 69 kgs of cocaine (party drug smuggled into India mainly by west African traffickers) was seized by various anti-narcotics agencies in the country last year, the highest seizure of narcotics since 2013.  While the last year saw the total narcotic seizures at over 3.60 lakh kgs, it was 3.01 lakh kgs in 2016, over 1 lakh kgs in 2015, 1.1 lakh kgs in 2014 and about 1 lakh kgs in 2013, the NCB report accessed by said.  The year gone by also saw the maximum number of cases of interdiction of these illegal dr...

The Wire Kabir Agarwal, March 25, 2018 A fact-finding team comprising six farmer organisations, after visiting several  mandis  across the country in the last 10 days, has discovered that farmers are not getting the minimum support price (MSP) guaranteed by the government. “At not a single one of the nine  mandis   in five states were farmers able to sell any crop at the government-mandated MSP,” an interim report compiled by the fact-finding team stated. The report also estimated — based on modal prices from the government website  agmarknet  — that if farmers continue to be denied MSP, the loss to farmers in  rabi  season alone could amount to Rs 14,474 crore. A team comprising representatives from several farmer organisations participating in the fact-finding mission travelled to Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Rajasthan and Haryana to ‘find out at the ground level the truth about the price being realised by the farmer and the...

The Indian Express Basharat Masood, March 25, 2018 Five days after Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai took over as chairman of the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, replacing Syed Ali Shah Geelani, his youngest son has joined militant ranks in Kashmir. Like most recent recruits, Junaid Ashraf Khan (Sehrai), a 28-year-old management graduate, announced that he had joined militants by posting a picture holding an AK-47 rifle on social media. That makes him the first among the family members of the current top separatist leadership to take up arms. Police sources said he had joined the Hizbul Mujahideen in south Kashmir. Junaid had gone missing from home on Friday, and his family had registered a missing report with police on Saturday. Barely hours later, the photo of Junaid holding the gun surfaced. “Junaid’s older brother Rashid Ashraf and a friend had come and filed a missing person’s report at the police station saying that after 1 pm yesterday (Friday), this boy (Junaid) was missing,” Inspector Gene...

The Indian Express Sushant Singh, March 24, 2018 2018 marks a decade of the 26/11 terror attack, in which 10 Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists killed more than 150 people at multiple locations across Mumbai. Following the attack, the United States placed a bounty of $ 10 million on Hafiz Saeed, the founder and foremost leader of the Lashkar. Despite international sanctions on the Lashkar and sustained global pressure on Pakistan to act against terrorist groups, Hafiz Saeed has remained largely free. He intends to join mainstream politics now, and is scheduled to release the manifesto of his party, Milli Muslim League, on Friday. He has also challenged in court a February 10 notification by the government, freezing bank accounts and taking over assets linked to his Jamaat-ud-Dawa organisation and its charity arm, the Falah-i-Insaaniyat Foundation, under the Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Ordinance, 2018. Where does Hafiz Saeed currently stand in Pakistan’s larger political context?...

The Times of India PTI, March 25, 2018 LUCKNOW: The Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) of the Uttar Pradesh police has arrested ten persons, who it claimed were linked with Lashker-e-Taiba (LeT) and allegedly involved in terror-funding activities. "Ten persons were arrested from Gorakhpur, Lucknow, Pratapgarh and Rivan (MP) on Saturday by the ATS. These persons were involved in terror-funding on the directives from Pakistan," ATS IG Asim Arun said. The arrested men were identified as Naseem Ahamad, Naeem Arshad, Sanjay Saroj, Niraj Mishra, Sahil Masih, Uma Pratap Singh, Mukesh Prasad, Nikhil Rai alias Musharraf Ansari, Ankur Rai and Dayanand Yadav, he said. "A member of Lashker-e-Taiba used to remain in contact with them and ask them to open bank accounts in fake names and direct them as to how much money is to be transferred to which account. Indian agents used to get 10 to 20 per cent commission for this. Till now transactions of over Rs one crore have come...

Business Standard IANS March 26, 2018 The US has imposed sanctions on seven Pakistani companies for allegedly engaging in nuclear trade in a move that could undermine Pakistan's ambition of joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), an elite club of countries that can trade fissile materials and nuclear technologies. The list, prepared by the US Bureau of Industry and Security, declared that all seven companies were "reasonably believed to be involved, or to pose a significant risk of being or becoming involved, in activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the US", Dawn online reported on Monday. Overall, a total of 23 entities were added to the list that was published in the US Federal Register. The list also included 15 entities from South Sudan and one from Singapore. All 23 entities now face tough export control measures which could prevent them from conducting international trade. Among the seven Pa...

The Indian Express Aanchal Magazine, March 27, 2018 Stressing the need for more coordination between the central bank and the government, Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian Monday said that independence of a central bank is not only acquired through law but also by actions and good decision-making. A series of bad decisions, he said, can impact the credibility of a central bank. The CEA’s statement comes days after RBI Governor Urjit Patel, in the wake of the fraud detected at the Punjab National Bank, pointed at the central bank’s helplessness in dealing with public sector banks due to constraints of inadequate legal powers to supervise and manage them. Responding to queries from students of Jesus and Mary College in New Delhi as part of a lecture series, Subramanian said: “Independence is not acquired through the law but a large part is acquired through reputation and the history of good and effective decision-making. When you say a central bank has credibility...

The Indian Express March 27, 2018 Cobrapost has released a series of sting operations and claimed that senior employees of 17 media outlets in the country had agreed to push polarising stories for money when they were approached by an undercover journalist. The video of the sting operations purportedly showed that representatives of many of these media companies were willing to accept cash, and not raise a bill for that amount. Some of the major media outlets named in the sting operation include DNA, Dainik Jagran, Amar Ujala, India TV and ScoopWhoop. The investigation was called Operation 136 by Cobrapost, in reference to India being ranked 136th on Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, 2017. Journalist Pushp Sharma posed as Acharya Atal, who introduced himself in some of the meetings as belonging to an Ashram in Ujjain and in others as representing some Shrimad Bhagvad Gita Prachar Samiti. In the videos of the sting operation, employees of the 17 media co...

The Economic Times IANS, March 26, 2018 Medellin: Worsening land degradation caused by human activity is undermining the well-being of two fifths of humanity, driving species to extinction and intensifying climate change, the world's first comprehensive evidence-based assessment of land degradation and restoration said on Monday.  Land degradation is also a major contributor to mass human migration and increased conflict.  The dangers of land degradation, which cost the equivalent of about 10 per cent of the world's annual gross product in 2010 through the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, are detailed for policymakers, together with a catalogue of corrective options, in the three-year assessment report by more than 100 leading experts from 45 countries.  Produced by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the report was approved at the ixth session of the IPBES Plenary in this Colombian...

The Hindu Peerzada Sadiq, March 27, 2018 A police assessment says they are trying to get in touch with handlers in Afghanistan, Syria The number of recruits of the Islamic State-J&K and Al-Qaeda-motivated Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind in the Kashmir Valley “may be in single digits, but they are making desperate attempts to get in touch with their handlers in Afghanistan and Syria to widen their base here,” according to an ongoing police assessment. The fresh assessment was spurred by the killing of Muhammad Taufeeq of Hyderabad on March 11, along with Eisa Fazili and Syed Owais Shafi, in Anantnag’s Hakoora. Taufeeq, who first joined the Zakir Musa-headed Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind in 2017 and quit the outfit to be a part of the IS-J&K, “reflects a fierce competition even within the two extreme ideologies at its nascent stage in J&K,” it says. The Union Home Ministry had said in the Rajya Sabha in January that “nothing has been proved on the ground that the ISIS is oper...

The Hindu Stanly Johny, March 27, 2018 The Islamic State has weakened, but it continues to expand Does the rise of the Islamic State have anything do with Islam? What does it want and what is its strategy? In The ISIS Caliphate: From Syria to the Doorsteps of India, Stanly Johny, International Affairs Editor of The Hindu, explains what makes it stand apart from other jihadist groups and why it continues to inspire Muslim youth from different parts of the world, including India. An extract: What makes ISIS different from other jihadist groups is that it’s an insurgency as well as a proto-state at the same time. The way it operates is different from other organisations. Al-Qaeda, the most powerful force in the global jihadist landscape till the rise of ISIS, is largely a hit-and-run outfit. Osama bin Laden didn’t create a state. Nor did he declare himself as the Caliph of the world’s Muslims. He was always at the mercy of foreign governments or intelligence agencies — Saudi...