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Nirupama Subramanian | Chandigarh | Updated: August 10, 2018 With its new government still not in place, Pakistan is scrambling to put together a report to show it can combat terrorism financing as a delegation from the Financial Action Task Force-affiliated Asia Pacific Group (APG) is scheduled to visit the country on August 13. Initial reports in Pakistani media said the National Counter-Terrorism Authority (NACTA) had informed the caretaker government that it did not have the capacity to prepare the “National Risk Assessment Report”, and suggested that the Federal Investigations Agency (FIA) do it instead. The FIA too was reported to have cited lack of capacity. But last Friday, a day after the reports appeared, the National Task Force on Combating Financing of Terrorism held a day-long meeting to discuss Pakistan’s commitments at the FATF plenary in June this year, in order to put up a credible engagement with the delegation that will arrive in Islamabad next Monday.

By Reuters Published: August 9, 2018 The nightmare scenario for computer security – artificial intelligence programs that can learn how to evade even the best defenses – may already have arrived. That warning from security researchers is driven home by a team from IBM who have used the artificial intelligence technique known as machine learning to build hacking programs that could slip past top-tier defensive measures. The group will unveil details of its experiment at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday. State-of-the-art defenses generally rely on examining what the attack software is doing, rather than the more commonplace technique of analysing software code for danger signs. But the new genre of AI-driven programs can be trained to stay dormant until they reach a very specific target, making them exceptionally hard to stop. No one has yet boasted of catching any malicious software that clearly relied on machine learning or other variants of

Press Trust of India , Seoul Aug 10, 2018 North Korea on Thursday accused the United States of acting in bad faith, saying Washington’s push for full sanctions pressure against Pyongyang would stall progress on the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula. During landmark talks with US President Donald Trump in June, the North’s leader Kim Jong Un signed up to a vague commitment to denuclearisation, far from the longstanding American demand for the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of Pyongyang’s atomic arsenal. Trump has touted the summit with Kim in Singapore as a historic breakthrough, but both sides have since complained of stalling progress. In a statement, the North Korean foreign ministry accused the US of “insulting the dialogue partner and throwing cold water over our sincere efforts for building confidence which can be seen as a precondition for implementing” the agreement between Trump and Kim. The ministry added that expecting “any re

Yashwant Raj , Washington Aug 09, 2018 US Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday unveiled plans for the creation of a separate “Space Force” as the sixth branch of American military. “The time has come to establish the United States Space Force,” he said in a speech at the Pentagon. “Just as we’ve done in ages past, the United States meet the emerging threats on this new battlefield.” The new branch will have a separate command by the end of the year. “Space Force all the way!,” President Donald Trump tweeted from his resort in New Jersey where he is vacationing. Trump has pushed for the separate space command against the advise of his top military leaders, including secretary of defence James Mattis, who opposed the creation of a new force in a letter to Senator John McCain, the head of the Senate armed services committee. Trump said in June that he had “to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a space force as the sixth branch of the arme

PTI, Aug 10, 2018 The Lok Sabha on Thursday referred a bill seeking to ban unregulated deposit schemes to the parliamentary standing committee on the ground that it required thorough deliberations. When the Banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Bill 2018 was taken up for discussion, the House, through a voice vote, decided to refer it to the Standing Committee on Finance. Nishikant Dubey (BJP) said the ponzi schemes have defrauded gullible investors, particularly in many eastern states. As ponzi schemes also involve state administration and other authorities, the legislation requires comprehensive study, he said, adding that the bill should be referred to the Standing Committee to make it more effective. The bill is aimed at tackling the menace of illicit deposit-taking activities across the country. Companies and institutions, running such schemes, exploit the existing regulatory gaps and lack of strict administrative measures to dupe the poor and gullible p

By: Bloomberg | Published: August 10, 2018 9:45 AM Accusations of tax evasion and police corruption, a kidnapper who was kidnapped, a fugitive politician, and billions in bitcoin lost. This is crypto-trading Gujarat-style. The ingredients are part of an investigation in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state into allegations that investors poured cash into a bitcoin-based Ponzi scheme that could exceed the country’s largest banking scandal. The fallout extends as far as Texas and has embroiled a former lawmaker, tarnishing Modi’s ruling party months before an election. It began in February, when property developer Shailesh Bhatt charged into the Home Minister’s office in Modi’s home state of Gujarat, claiming he had been kidnapped by a group of policemen and told to pay 200 bitcoin, worth some $1.8 million at the time, for his release. He said he had nowhere else to go. The state’s elite Criminal Investigation Department was called in and the evidence it has unc

By: FE Bureau | New Delhi | Published: August 10, 2018 6:40 AM The Ministry of Civil Aviation on Thursday said it is likely to announce the third phase of the regional air connectivity scheme, Udan, next month. The routes up for auction in this phase will include popular tourist destinations such as Mahabodhi temple in Bihar, Ajanta and Ellora in Aurangabad and Hampi in Karnataka, among others. “We are planning to invite bids for Udan-3 in September and announce successful bidders by October,” minister of state for civil aviation Jayant Sinha told reporters on Thursday. The Ministry of Tourism had identified 12 tourist hotspots to connect under Udan. Under Udan, an airline can choose to serve the destinations on offer from anywhere depending on its traffic feasibility studies. In this scheme, fares are capped at Rs 2,500 for an hour-long flight for 50% of seats. The remaining seats can be sold at market rates. The Ministry of Civil Aviation provides a viability gap fundin

By: Pragya Srivastava | Updated: August 8, 2018 11:05 PM The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday approved the transfer of the surplus amount of Rs 50,000 crore for the year ended June 30, 2018, to the Government of India, which is Rs 5,000 higher than the budgeted amount of Rs 45,000 crore. The RBI follows July-June financial year. The dividend of Rs 50,000 crore to the government has come as a breather after a low dividend transfer last year (July 2017- June 2018), which economists said, was due to additional costs incurred on printing and managing excess liquidity after demonetisation. Last year, the RBI transferred only Rs 30,659 crore, against the budgeted amount of Rs 58,000 crore. The transfer was half of the Rs 65,876 crore in the previous year 2016-17 and lowest since 2011-12. “The Central Board of Directors of the Reserve Bank of India, at its meeting held on August 8, 2018, approved the transfer of surplus amounting to ₹ 500 billion for the year ended J

By: Pragya Srivastava | Updated: August 8, 2018 12:54 PM Public sector companies (PSUs) have beaten the private sector in the financial year 2017-18 by registering an employment growth of 8%, higher than the latter’s 6.3%, a study has shown. The PSU job growth was mainly driven by 58% employment growth in the logistics sector, 13% in the finance sector, and 8% in the banking sector, a Care Ratings study said. The study of employment growth in 700 companies also showed that overall job growth has declined in FY18 as compared with previous fiscal even as there was robust sales growth in some cases. The total permanent employees in the sample of these 700 companies increased from 3.98 million in FY16 to 4.29 million in FY17, further increasing by 6.6% in FY18 to touch 4.57 million. “There has been a marginal dip in the employment growth from 7.7% in FY17 to 6.6% in FY18 indicating pressures of job creation,” the study said. The companies with net sales of more than Rs 10

By: Banikinkar Pattanayak | New Delhi | Updated: August 10, 2018 11:02 AM Instances such as these abound in a study of India’s foreign direct investment (FDI) by KS Chalapati Rao and Biswajit Dhar of Institute for Studies in Industrial Development. While the authors refuse to comment on whether all errors in India’s FDI overstate it — some examples of big understatement are given — this means India’s FDI data will probably be viewed with as much scepticism as its GDP data; a final view on whether the FDI numbers are overstated or understated will require detailed analysis of each inflow into the country. Though the official narrative is that the rising FDI is a sign that Make-in-India has got a leg-up because of friendly investment policies, the authors say “a good portion of the increased (FDI) inflows during 2016-17 may be attributed to reporting of older cases (including duplicate reporting), a case of past omissions bolstering current inflows” (see graphic). Also, while F