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Hindustan Times 03 July, 2018 Sanchita Sharma Union health and family welfare minister J P Nadda said scientists have found conclusive evidence of Nipah virus infection in the fruit bats found in Changaroth village in Perambra in Kozhikode. The mystery over the Nipah outbreak in Kerala mystery has been solved with fruit bats being identified as the source of the outbreak that killed 17 persons in Kozhikode and Malappuram districts in Kerala, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has confirmed. Bats from Changaroth village in Perambra in Kozhikode, where the first infections and death were reported, tested negative for Nipah virus in May, leaving epidemiologists wondering about the possible source of the zoonotic virus that jumps from bats and pigs to cause human infection. That question has now been answered with the testing of a second batch of bats. “Scientists have found conclusive evidence of Nipah virus infection in the fruit bats found in the area,” said ...

Livemint July 02, 2018 Leslie D'Monte If you are a 4G mobile phone user, hackers can identify the web pages you visit and re-route them to a scam website. All devices using longterm evolution (LTE), or fourth generation (4G) as it is better known, are at risk, reveals a new study carried out by security experts from the Horst Görtz Institute at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. The weaknesses “are impossible to close... and they are also still present in the upcoming mobile telephony standard 5G (fifth generation), the standardization of which is pending”, the researchers said in a 28 June press release. LTE documentations reveal that an integrity protection, which would prevent attacks, has been deliberately omitted, according to one of the researchers, Thorsten Holz. According to him, network operators ignored this issue because they would have had to attach “additional four bytes to each payload” to implement this security measure, which would increase data transmission...

Rediff.com June 29, 2018 PTI Days after imposition of governor's rule in Jammu and Kashmir, army chief General Bipin Rawat on Friday said army was operating with "people-friendly" rules of engagement in the Valley. "Our basic purpose is to go after terrorists who create violence and disturbance in the Valley. Our aim is not to cause inconvenience to civilian population who are not indulging in arson or violence," he said on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. Jammu and Kashmir was placed under governor's rule on June 20, the fourth time in the last one decade, after the Bharatiya Janata Party withdrew support to its alliance partner People's Democratic Alliance forcing Mehbooba Mufti to resign as the chief minister of the state. "There is nothing like stepping up... army continues to operate with the formulated rules of engagement," Rawat said when asked whether security has been stepped up in the Valley after the fall of th...

The Hindu June 30, 2018 PTI Tirupur Exporters’ Association (TEA) today urged textile mills to ‘save’ the knitwear garment export sector as cotton yarn price increase by Rs 20 a kg had made it difficult to sustain themselves in a competitive global environment. “The beleaguered knitwear export sector has been passing through a challenging business environment further to implementation of GST, which led to a continuous decline of knitwear exports month on month basis since October 2017 after completion of three months transition period, TEA president Raja M Shanmugham said in a release. Stating that the decline in exports for the second half yearly period of 2017-18 was 21 per cent, he said the most worrying factor was that the negative trend in exports growth was continuing in the current fiscal also The average of knitwear exports in April and May was 34 per cent, he said. Stating that the sector was now only booking orders and that business has now started to look ah...

The Wire June 30, 2018 Puja Mehra The rupee that  fell on Thursday  to an all-time low of 69.09 against the dollar in intraday trade is expected to remain under pressure. Although the Reserve Bank has been, and is expected to continue to defend the currency, using its stockpile of foreign currency reserves, by selling dollars in the open market, forecasters estimate that the 70-level mark will be breached before the year-end. While most Asian currencies are weakening, the rupee, among the three biggest losers, has lost over 5% of its value in the last three months, according to Bloomberg data. For reasons both global and specific to India’s macroeconomic parameters, foreign institutional investors  have pulled money  out of Indian debt and equity for the first time in a decade in the first six months of this calendar year. They have sold equity and debt worth nearly Rs 46,190 crore so far in 2018, the worst outflow since 2009, according to Bloomberg dat...

The Hindu May 24, 2018, Shiv Sahay Singh N.B. Debnath has vivid memories of January and February 2001, when Siliguri town in north Bengal recorded the first outbreak of Nipah virus in the country. “We had no idea what the virus was and everyday we (the doctors) thought that we will all die,” Dr. Debnath said. Of the 49 people who died during the viral epidemic, he recollects only one name, Ajit Maity. “Ajit Maity was a colleague and cardiologist, who died of the virus. He had treated patients at a nursing home in Siliguri from where the outbreak is supposed to have spread,” he said. Years later publications by scientists at the National Institute of Virology (NIV) Pune put the number case-fatality ratio as high as 74%. Researchers had described it as an illness with symptoms of fever associated with “altered sensorium.” Asok Bhattacharya, Mayor of Siliguri Municipal Corporation who was the Minister for Urban Development in the Left Front government in 2001, echo...

Down to Earth June 27, 2018 Vidya Soundarajan The ongoing showers have possibly brought reprieve to large parts of North-West and Central India, that were under the grips of the heat wave until recently, but the fatal heat waves are likely to come back with more frequency and intensity. An increase in temperature, heightened by unchecked global warming, exposed millions of Indians to the dangers of extreme heat, the northern and central parts being the most vulnerable . The increase in atmospheric humidity prevents perspiration, our natural defense against extreme heat, making us feel hotter than what the temperature reflects. Duration and intensity of heat waves set to increase in future The breaks in hot spells and night time drop in temperatures are two critical factors that allow for cooling and recuperation. However, humans will have less time and scope to recover as future heat waves are projected to be more sustained and cause higher night-time temperatures...

The Wire July 02, 2018, Anand Venkatnarayanan That the central Aadhaar database has never been breached and can’t be breached is an often-made claim, especially by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and its CEO. According to the UIDAI, sharing your Aadhaar number is also not an issue, since biometric authentication is required for misuse.   There is, however one place, where both Aadhaar numbers and fingerprint scans are available freely outside the central database — your local sub-registrar office. If you have at any point of time been a buyer or seller of property (or even a witness), it is ridiculously easy for anyone who can access registered property documents to create their own Aadhaar database and then become “you”. Last month, a SIM card distributor in Hyderabad discovered this by accident and managed to activate 6,000 SIMs using fingerprints and Aadhaar numbers harvested from property registration documents. The modus op...

Financial Express July 03, 2018, Saurabh Kumar In further relief to Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), the finance ministry has decided to pay Rs 120 crore to the railways arm to offset the losses due to waiver of service charge on tickets booked online through its portal in 2018-19. This follows a similar reimbursement of Rs 88 crore for 2017-18. According to a government official, reimbursements to IRCTC will continue till it is allowed to charge for e-ticketing services. After the demonetisation of old `500 and `1,000 notes in November 2016, IRCTC was asked not to charge customers for online ticketing service in order to promote digital transactions. While initially the directive was to not levy the charge till June 2017, the timeline has been revised multiple times and no service charge is levied till date. IRCTC used to charge `20 on each sleeper class and `40 on each air-conditioned class e-tickets. It also collected `80 for sleeper class and `1...

Deccan Chronicles July 03, 2018, REUTERS Kabul: Many among Afghanistan’s dwindling Sikh minority are considering leaving for neighbouring India, after a suicide bombing in the eastern city of Jalalabad on Sunday killed at least 13 members of the community. The victims of the attack claimed by militant group Islamic State included Avtar Singh Khalsa, the only Sikh candidate in parliamentary elections this October, and Rawail Singh, a prominent community activist. “I am clear that we cannot live here anymore,” said Tejvir Singh, 35, whose uncle was killed in the blast. “Our religious practices will not be tolerated by the Islamic terrorists. We are Afghans. The government recognises us, but terrorists target us because we are not Muslims,” added Singh, the secretary of a national panel of Hindus and Sikhs. The Sikh community now numbers fewer than 300 families in Afghanistan, which has only two gurdwaras, or places of worship, one each in Jalalabad and Kabul, the ...

The Express Tribune July 03, 2018, Asif Mahmood It might come as a surprise to many that the politico-religious Allah-o-Akbar Tehreek (AAT), which enjoys the backing of Milli Muslim League (MML), has fielded 14 women for the upcoming general elections . The AAT was formed after the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) refused to register the MML, a political face of the Hafiz Saeed-led Jamaatud Dawa (JuD), which was put on the special list of global terrorists by the United States in April 2018. The AAT has awarded tickets to 14 “highly educated women” to contest the upcoming elections from different constituencies. Some of these women were formerly associated with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). Of these 14 candidates, three have been nominated for reserved seats and one for minority seats, party sources said. One of the candidates, Advocate Iffat Tahira Soomro, had been the covering candidate for PTI Secretary Ge...

The Asian Age July 03, 2018  To deal with non-performing assets (NPAs) of banks, the government on Tuesday unveiled its “SASHAKT” programme which proposes to set up independent asset management companies (AMC) and steering committees for faster resolution of bad loans. The AMC will bid for stressed assets with loans over Rs 500 crore, including assets taken by National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for resolution. Finance minister Piyush Goyal said that the plan focuses on turning around assets in a manner that will not lead to job losses.   “The government will not intervene in the resolution process which would be entirely led by banks,” Mr Goyal said. There are about 200 accounts, each of which owes more than Rs 500 crores to banks. Their total exposure is about Rs 3.1 lakh crores. The gross NPAs of public sector banks stood at Rs 7.77 lakh crores at end-December 2017. Total NPAs of all banks, including private ones, were Rs 8.99 lakh crores. In a report su...

The Week July 02, 2018, PTI, New Delhi In perhaps his strongest defence of handling of the economy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his government steered the Indian economy out of "unbelievable" decay left by an "economist prime minister and a 'know-it-all' finance minister". India is now the fastest growing large economy of the world with strong fundamentals to propel further growth, Modi added. Rejecting criticism of jobless growth, he said if state after state is creating good number of jobs, how can the Centre be creating joblessness? He said problems in banks were identified in 2014 itself and they were freed from political interference in giving loans. The government brought the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code to ensure defaulters lose their companies, the Prime Minister said. In an interview to Swarajya magazine, he said when the BJP government came to power, the state of the economy was much worse than expected. "Things were te...