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THE HINDU  April 03, 2018 NEW DELHI Three trade receivable discounting systems (TReDS)—digital invoice discounting platforms—approved so far by the RBI have jointly implemented a blockchain solution, which is expected to help reduce frauds in bills discounting or receivable financing. The platforms—RXIL, A.TReDS and M1xchange—had been set up to bring together buyers, sellers and financiers for discounting the MSME invoices and provide them with timely funding. This is billed as India’s first live blockchain implementation in the enterprise financial segment. US-based MonetaGo has designed and implemented the production solution. Kalyan Basu, Managing Director & CEO, A.TReDs said: Our clients are particularly sensitive about their sourcing inputs, and we could not broadcast any of their private information to a shared network. This technology allows us to work with the other exchanges to achieve shared goals without sharing specific data”. Kashinath...

THE HINDU April 03, 2018 Anand Kalyanaraman In 2010, the government decontrolled petrol pricing. Four years later, it deregulated prices of diesel, too. But do public sector oil marketing companies (OMCs) truly have the freedom to set market-linked prices of these fuels? That’s a worry investors in these stocks — Indian Oil, HPCL and BPCL — will have to contend with as many big States go to the polls this year before the general elections are held next year. Consider this. In November 2017, with just a month to go for the Gujarat Assembly elections, oil prices had breached $60 a barrel and were on their way up. The global prices of petrol and diesel, on the basis of which the OMCs set fuel rates in India, were also going north. From about $69 a barrel at the end of October 2017, the C&F (cost and freight) price of petrol in the international market shot up to about $74 a barrel by November-end. With the exchange rate fairly steady at about ₹65 a dollar, the pr...

The Nation News April 03, 2018 Tahir Niaz Preparing to develop consolidated database of known terrorists, terror organisations I FMU prepares draft ‘action plan’ to prevent illicit cross-border currency transportation. ISLAMABAD - Pakistan is preparing to develop a consolidated database of known terrorists and terrorist organisations which will be accessible for financial institutions and law enforcement agencies of the country as the country has moved to address deficiencies in the country’s Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Financing Terrorism regime. The move comes on the heels of the plenary meeting of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) held on February 18-23 in Paris in which the Force approved nomination proposal tabled jointly by the US, UK, France and Germany to place Pakistan in the Grey List of FATF, according to the documents exclusively available with The Nation. Realising the consequences, Pakistan is fast moving to address the deficiencies in the cou...

THE HINDU April 03, 2018 Debapratim Purkayastha Online profiling agencies graze on legal grey zones, collating private data without consent for commercial use Ramesh Gupta was excited about his upcoming trip to Mahabalipuram. For months he had been planning this extended weekend getaway. He kept the plan under wraps, disclosing it only to two of his friends over his private email. So, Gupta was quite taken aback when he opened his email to find ads asking him to book into the ‘best guest houses in Mahabalipuram’ and ‘best taxi services for sightseeing’ in Mahabalipuram. After Manjunath Desai signed up on a third-party service provider that promised to compare the best health insurance plans for him, he suddenly started getting calls from different service providers claiming that they had the best insurance plans for him. These are just two of the millions of instances of how your privacy is at stake online. Sitting in front of your computer or using your smartph...

THE HINDU April 03, 2018 R.K Raghavan When manufacturers refuse to comply with requests to hack into phones, private agencies can sometimes help. We live in a complex world where every step towards improving quality of life and strengthening ethical conduct is frustrated by an equally determined move in favour of the opposite. This explains how a remarkable invention such as the cell telephone, meant to promote friendly human interaction at the workplace and elsewhere, serves also as a facilitator if not an abettor of crime and deceit. A technological breakthrough is thus both a blessing and a curse. It is widely known that both common criminals and economic offenders across the world misuse the cell phone for perpetrating crime and hiding proceeds therefrom. Citizens with criminal propensity are becoming savvier by the day with computerised appliances, thereby supporting the prognosis that a bulk of conventional crimes will in future become digital. This makes the li...

THE HINDU April 03, 2018 The law originally proposed a maximum prison sentence of 10 years and fine of 5,00,000 ringgit ($1,30,000) for the offence, but the government lowered the jail term to six years following a storm of criticism. Malaysia’s government on Monday pushed a law through Parliament that makes “fake news” punishable with a maximum six-year jail term despite an outcry from critics worried it will be used to stifle dissent before elections. The law targets foreign as well as local media, and is seen in part as an effort to silence criticism of the scandal surrounding sovereign wealth fund 1MDB that has rocked the administration of Prime Minister Najib Razak. The election is expected within weeks and Mr. Najib is battling to win a third term in office. After a debate spanning much of Monday and last week on Thursday afternoon, Parliament — which is dominated by the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition — voted in favour of the new law. The law origi...

The Telegraph April 03, 2018 Beijing: The Chinese government hit back on Monday at President Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum by acting on a threat to put tariffs as high as 25 per cent on imports of 128 American-made products, including pork and seamless steel pipes. The Chinese ministry of commerce indicated that the tariffs, which it first publicly suggested almost two weeks ago, were intended to pressure the Trump administration to back down from a simmering trade war. In addition to imposing additional tariffs on steel and aluminum from China and other countries, President Trump has threatened to put protective duties on other Chinese-made products worth $60 billion. "We hope that the United States will rescind its measures that violate World Trade Organisation rules as quickly as possible," the ministry said in an online statement about China's retaliatory tariffs. "China and the US are the world's two biggest economies, and coopera...

The Telegraph  April 03, 2018 New Delhi: Extreme weather events driven by global warming may raise the risk of food shortages in many countries, including India, says a study released on Monday that also forecasts a doubling of the Ganga's flow if the average global temperature rises by 2°C. The study has predicted the highest increase in the hunger climate vulnerability index (HCVI) - a measure of the risk of food insecurity in a country under global warming - in Oman, followed by India, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and Brazil. Scientists who used multiple computer simulations to generate future climate scenarios said all simulations projected an increase in India's HCVI due to an increase in the risk of floods that outweighs the beneficial impact of decreased drought length in the affected areas. "Climate change is expected to lead to more extremes of both heavy rainfall and drought with different effects in different parts of the world," Richard Bet...

DAWN April 03, 2018 AS India continues to use brutal methods to crush dissent in occupied Kashmir, it is clear that the Kashmiri people have rejected fear and are bravely confronting New Delhi’s harsh tactics to speak up for their rights. Some 20 people have been killed in acts of violence in the held valley since Sunday — at least 17 by Indian forces. While the Indian military alleges that many of the victims were ‘militants’, civilians too were amongst the dead as four demonstrators were killed when police opened fire on them. Thousands of Kashmiris had taken to the streets to denounce Indian rule as New Delhi had launched an ‘anti-militant’ operation near Srinagar. The situation on Monday was equally tense; a general strike was observed while the administration placed parts of the region under curfew. Over the past few years, such spurts of violence have understandably become very common, as New Delhi uses increasingly harsh methods to clamp down on Kas...

Live Mint April 03, 2018 As Mark Zuckerberg faces calls to testify before the Congress and lawmakers raise the idea of new regulations on tech, his peers have either stayed quiet or publicly criticized his company. New York: Facebook Inc. chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg has found himself with few defenders in the technology industry. Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook, Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and Salesforce.com Inc.’s Marc Benioff have criticized the social media network in the wake of its user data scandal involving political advertising firm Cambridge Analytica. Other tech leaders have remained quiet in the ensuing backlash against Facebook, in contrast to Silicon Valley’s usual practice of rallying around its own during major crises. Facebook has sought to repair its public image and trust with more than 2 billion users after reports surfaced that Cambridge Analytica obtained data on as many 50 million of those US accounts. As Zuckerberg, 33, faces calls to testify b...

THE HINDU April 02, 2018 Nigeria’s government will launch an investigation into allegations of improper involvement by political consultancy Cambridge Analytica in the country’s 2007 and 2015 elections, a presidency spokesman said on Monday. Garba Shehu said the investigation could lead to criminal prosecutions. The United Kingdom-based political consultancy is facing allegations that it improperly accessed data from social media website Facebook to target voters prior to United States presidential elections and Britain’s Brexit referendum in 2016. Reference: http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/nigeria-to-probe-alleged-cambridge-analytica-involvement-in-elections/article23415677.ece

THE HINDU April 02, 2018 Indian authorities may now have the opportunity to directly access data stored on U.S. servers.  Consider a scenario where a crime is committed in India and the suspect and victim are both Indian citizens. If the suspect used a U.S.-based messaging service to plan the crime, an Indian officer investigating would have to raise a request for data to the U.S. government where it is stored. Two weeks ago, U.S. President Donald Trump signed the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act (CLOUD Act), which will enable the U.S. government to enter into agreements with like-minded states for cross-border data sharing. This will allow law enforcement agencies from these states to directly obtain electronic data, held by communication service providers headquartered in the U.S., to combat crime. New Delhi, on the back of this development, will soon push for an India-U.S. data sharing agreement to serve the interests of its law enforcement and, more import...

The Express Tribune April 02, 2018 MUZAFFARABAD: Protest rallies were taken out across Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) on Monday to condemn the killing of youths at the hands of Indian forces in held-Kashmir. 20 people were killed in a Sunday search conducted by Indian forces in Shopian district of the restive region. Over 100 were injured in the operation. AJK Education Minister Iftikhar Gilani had said that the government will observe a “condemnation day” to raise awareness about the Kashmir dispute which had compromised peace in South Asia. A rally was taken out from press club to Quaid-e-Azam bridge. Government employees, local people and Kashmiri refugees, as well as workers of Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan Peoples Party and other religious parties took part into the rally. The protesters chanted slogans along the lines of “go India go back” and “we want freedom”. Speakers, while addressing the protesters, said that Kashmiris should be given the right of self-...

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE April 02, 2018 Umar Farooq Khan  Many countries generally concur that the measures to battle vicious fanaticism and fear-based oppression must be wide-ranging. A variety of mediations are employed like international joint efforts amongst police and administrations, financial and psychosocial intercessions in the neighbourhood urban groups, early citizenship-building modules in essential and lower auxiliary school and additional particular activities in connection with a social system. One of the key psychosocial intercessions is the utilisation of tutors. All in all, the tutoring procedure amongst coach and mentee is about change and strengthening. The emphasis is on creating and setting up the mentee’s grasp on, for instance, instruction, work, particular life challenges or on life as a rule. This article especially focuses on how an illicit and brutal grasp on life can be changed to a lawful and peaceful hold. A decent coaching process is por...

The Indian Express April 02, 2018 ICA referred to data available from market research firm IHS, China's National Bureau of Statistics and Vietnam General Statistics Office. According to data shared by ICA, India accounted for 11 per cent of global mobile production in 2017 compared to 3 per cent in 2014. India is now the second largest mobile phone producer in the world after China, as per information shared by Indian Cellular Association with Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. “We are happy to inform you that with the strenuous and calibrated efforts of government of India, ICA and FTTF, India has now emerged as the second largest producer of mobile handset by volume,” ICA National President Pankaj Mohindroo said in a letter to both the union ministers on March 28. ICA referred to data available from market research firm IHS, China’s National Bureau of Statistics and Vietnam General Statistics Office. According to data shared by ICA, ...

The Indian Express April 02, 2018 George Mathew While the recent increase in deposit rates and marginal cost based lending rate (MCLR) by many banks has raised the prospects for an across-the-board rise in interest rates, the RBI is set for a wait-and-watch mode in its monetary policy review later this week. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is likely to keep key policy rates unchanged at its upcoming policy review on April 5 despite an improvement in growth indicators and with inflation surprising on the downside at a time when banks have started raising lending and deposit rates. While the recent increase in deposit rates and marginal cost based lending rate (MCLR) by many banks has raised the prospects for an across-the-board rise in interest rates, the RBI is set for a wait-and-watch mode in its monetary policy review later this week. Soon after revising its term and bulk deposit rates by up to 50 bps, State Bank of India, India’s largest bank, had last month announ...