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Regi George Jenarius  Updated: August 09, 2018 While we’re still in the midst of dengue season the damage caused by the vector-borne disease this year is yet to be established. We can, however, tell you that it wouldn’t be a small toll, considering the number of cases it has raked up in the past. To give you a perspective of the magnitude of damage dengue can cause Last year, India in 2017 has seen 11,832 more cases of dengue compared with 2016, and the number of deaths from the vector-borne disease has been recorded at 46, eleven more than last year. In fact, in 2015 a total of 99,913 and 220 deaths across 35 states were reported by WHO.  According to the Directorate of National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP), till July 30, 2016, the total dengue cases in the country were 16,870 while for the same period in 2017 they numbered 28,702. The last one week alone saw 2,536 cases with 10 deaths.  As the fastest growing mosquito-borne dis...

Jimmy Leivon | Imphal | Updated: August 9, 2018 7:17:12 am In a landmark event, Myanmar government on Wednesday officially opened the Indo-Myanmar international land border in a grand ceremony held at Tamu, Myanmar. Myanmar’s Ministry of Labour, Immigration and Population Permanent secretary U Aye Lwin and Consul General of India in Myanmar attended the opening ceremony. The opening of the land border marked the abolishing of special land entry permission which was previously required for visitors entering the country via land routes. “This is a historic day for both the countries, a giant step in our bilateral relations and Act East policy,” said Nandan Singh Bahisora, Consul General of India, in Myanmar during the event. According to official sources, the agreement on land border crossing was signed between the two countries at Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar during the visit of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on May 11 last month. Wednesday’s event not only opened lan...

Written by Avinash Nair, Updated: August 9, 2018 7:15:20 am In the first-ever e-auctions for granite blocks in Gujarat, a real-estate developer from Ahmedabad and a businessman from Palanpur were among the winning bidders for the 10 granite blocks in Mehsana district. The auction for phase-I of granite blocks that closed on Wednesday evening not only sprung up new entrants in the mining sector, like the Ahmedabad-based Safal Constructions Pvt Ltd and Palanpur-based Arun Digital Corporation, but also saw the state government mop up royalty amounting to an estimated Rs 696 crore during the 30-year-lease period. “This is more than double the amount of royalty collected before e-auctions were introduced. The previous allotment regime had no concept of premium and the additional income now is due to the premium quoted by the bidder,” said Roopwant Singh, Commissioner of Geology and Mining department, Government of Gujarat. Among all the successful bidders, Safal Constructi...

ET CONTRIBUTORS, Aug 06, 2018, 01.52 PM IST Today, world order’s hallmark is its general instability and unpredictability, which in the eyes of the political philosophers, is the essence of the post-modernism. This essence of uncertainty reflects itself in myriad ways and forms that include non-state actors and terrorist organisations challenging sovereignty, cyber revolutions threatening the foundations of human security, democracy and law, and the artificial intelligence shaking the very notion of the prominence of the human race. The phenomenon of cryptocurrencies has brought the much-feared uncertainty, anonymity and unpredictability in the global financial system.  There was a time when one could take cash secretly and perform a transaction without any fear of surveillance or tracking by the regulatory agencies. The digitalisation of the financial system deprived us of that anonymity and privacy. The cryptocurrencies promise to return our privacy and anonymity. Howev...

Deepak Patel | New Delhi | Updated: August 9, 2018 3:14:02 am Negotiations between India and Australia on the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) are in a “slow period” currently and it is quite understandable as both the countries are heading into general elections, said Australian High Commissioner Harinder Sidhu in New Delhi on Wednesday. While releasing the report titled ‘An India Economic Strategy to 2035’, Sidhu said: “We are going through that process right now, the CECA, and it is never a steady pace. These things move quickly for a while and then they slow down and then they move again. We are just in a slow period at the moment. It is quite understandable, India is going into an election and Australia is going into election. We expect some slowing down in these kinds of arrangements.” The report has been authored by Peter Varghese, Chancellor, University of Queensland, who was the Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Austra...

Express News Service | New Delhi | Updated: August 9, 2018 2:36:45 am In a report placed in Parliament on Tuesday, the Comptroller & Auditor General (CAG) castigated the defence ministry and Navy for violating procedure in buying eight P-8I Poseidon Long Range Maritime Reconnaissance Anti-Submarine Warfare (LRMR-ASW) aircraft from US aircraft manufacturing firm, Boeing in 2009. The deal in 2009 was negotiated and signed by the UPA government. Interestingly, the current BJP government placed an order for four more P-8Is for the Navy in July 2016 under the same terms. Former Navy Chief, Admiral Arun Prakash (Retd) however criticised the CAG report, and told The Indian Express that “past experience has shown that overreach, combined with pedantic hair-splitting by the CAG without understanding the practical nuances of issues involved, has inflicted incalculable damage on our national security.” “The CAG, no doubt, has a vital function to perform as a constitutional a...

By Usman Hanif Published: August 9, 2018 Two technology firms in Pakistan have joined hands to establish a local online payment gateway system to take a share in the growing e-commerce market. Avanza Group and Premier Systems announced to invest over $5 million in the gateway, which will connect individuals with merchants and banks. The companies will set up the joint venture as Avanza Premier Payment Services (APPS). The size of Pakistan’s e-commerce market is estimated to be $1 billion, which should be $30-$40 billion in a country with a population of 207 million, said Mahmood Kapurwala, CEO of Avanza Group, which partnered with NCR, Avaya, Microsoft, and IBM. “We are looking at this gap as an opportunity,” he said. Financial technology (fintech) will add about 4 million jobs, 93 million bank accounts and $36 billion annually to the gross national product (GNP), and $7 billion to the government’s net revenue by 2025, according to McKinsey and Company, a worldw...

Anwar Iqbal Updated August 09, 2018   Asad Umar, a Pakisan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) leader who is expected to be next finance minister, said on Wednesday that Pakistan had been running a current account deficit of $2 billion a month for the last three months. Addressing a US think-tank from Islamabad, Mr Umar suggested resolving the Afghan dispute to improve Pakistan’s economic prospects and disagreed with those who say that political governments cannot make decisions about Afghanistan. The PTI leader, who came straight to Skype from Imran Khan’s meeting with the acting US ambassador, said that Washington agrees with PTI’s observation that Afghanistan was moving closer to a permanent peace. PTI leader sees a ‘potential opportunity’ for economic prosperity in Pakistan in restoring peace and stability to Afghanistan PPP’s Naveed Qamar and PML-N’s Tariq Fatemi also spoke at the think-tank — the US Institute of Peace — and agreed with the observation that Paki...

Mir Ehsan  Hindustan Times, Srinagar Aug 08, 2018 Four militants were killed and an army para-commando was injured in a gunfight in the forests of Rafiabad in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district on Wednesday. The Army’s 32 Rashtriya Rifles (RR) and 9 para-commandos launched an operation in the Hamam Markote forests of Rafiabad on a specific inputs about militant presence in the area. As the searches were on, militants opened fire on the forces resulting in injuries to a soldier. Later, four unidentified militants were killed in the encounter. Army spokesman Rajesh Kalia confirmed the killing of four militants at Hamam forests. “The operation is still going on as there is possibility of presence of more militants in the forests,” he said. The operation is underway at a place which is used by militants as a transit point after crossing the Line of Control. Officials said it is not clear whether the militants were fresh infiltrators or they were alread...

Arjun Srinivas  Hindustan Times, New Delhi Aug 09, 2018 As many as 4 million applicants, out of 32.9 million have not made it to the final draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam made public on July 30. While it’s not yet clear who will decide their fate, the issue of illegal immigrants in Assam has been historically determined by two tribunals. The first is the Foreigners Tribunal (FT), set up by the Assam government in 1964, to identify the legal status of suspected foreigners in Assam. There are 100 FTs in Assam as on date. The second is the Illegal Migrants Determination Tribunal, or IM (DT), established in 1985, with special provisions for Assam. It only considered the cases of those who had allegedly entered India after March 25, 1971; crucially, these placed the onus of proving citizenship on the accuser, rather than the accused. The IM (DT) Act was subsequently struck down by the Supreme Court as being unconstitutional in 2005. High p...

Agence France-Presse Paris Aug 08, 2018 19:31 IST Researchers at Israeli cybersecurity firm said Wednesday they had found a flaw in WhatsApp that could allow hackers to modify and send fake messages in the popular social messaging app. CheckPoint said the vulnerability gives a hacker the possibility “to intercept and manipulate messages sent by those in a group or private conversation” as well as “create and spread misinformation”. The report of the flaw comes as the Facebook-owned is coming under increasing scrutiny as a means of spreading misinformation due to its popularity and convenience for forwarding messages to groups. Last month, the app announced limits of forwarding messages following threats by the Indian government to take action after more than 20 people were butchered by crazed mobs after being accused of child kidnapping and other crimes in viral messages circulated wildly on WhatsApp. WhatsApp said in a statement: “We carefully reviewed this iss...

Arindam Majumder, New Delhi  Last Updated at August 9, 2018 02:23 IST Distressed Indian airlines may get a new line of funding from foreign lenders, as the government is mulling opening up the external commercial borrowing (ECB) route for them to raise working capital. The civil aviation ministry has sought the intervention of the finance ministry to allow airlines to tap foreign funds. “Airlines, in their correspondence with the government, have requested that since aviation has become a primary mode of transport and an essential part of the infrastructure, they should be given benefits such as access to ECB for working capital. We have written to the finance ministry asking for it,” said a senior ministry official. The ministry has also asked that the cap of such borrowings is to be set at $500 million (Rs 34.5 billion) for a single company and $1 billion (Rs 69 billion) for the entire sector. “Some airlines such as Jet Airways and IndiGo had demanded that the cap...

PTI, Islamabad August 8, 2018 13:47 IST Pakistan and Russia have signed an agreement to allow Pakistani troops to receive training at Russian military training institutes, a move aimed at boosting their bilateral defence ties. The agreement was signed on Tuesday at the conclusion of the first meeting of Russia-Pakistan Joint Military Consultative Committee (JMCC), according to Pakistan's defence ministry. "Both countries signed the Contract on Admission of Service Members of Pakistan in RF's (Russian Federation) Training Institutes," the ministry said. The Russian side was led by Deputy Defence Minister Col Gen. Alexander V Fomin who visited Pakistan from August 6-7 to attend the first session of Russia-Pakistan Joint Military Consultative Committee (JMCC). Lt. Gen (retd) Zamir ul Hassan Shah, Secretary Defence, led the Pakistani delegation during the JMCC meeting. Prior to the inaugural meeting, held on Tuesday in the ministry of defence R...

AP, PTI, Canberra August 9, 2018 08:23 IST Five former dual nationals have been stripped of their Australian citizenship due to their involvement with the Islamic State group overseas, a government minister said today. A total of six people have now lost their Australian citizenship since the law was changed in 2015 to enable dual nationals to lose their citizenship rights for actions contrary to their allegiance to Australia, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said. "I can confirm that five more individuals have ceased to be Australian citizens because of their involvement with Islamic State offshore," Dutton said in a statement. Dutton did not identify the five. The Daily Telegraph newspaper in Sydney said they were three men and two women who had flown to Syria and Iraq to join Islamic State group fighters. It is not clear when they travelled to the Middle East and when they lost their citizenship. Australia Broadcasting Corp. said they were age...