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The Hindu August 28, 2018. They are trying to protect GSPC: Cong. The Congress on Monday alleged that the Centre, for the first time ever, has opposed a circular of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in a court of law, to protect the Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC) from being declared bankrupt under the new Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code law. “This is the first time in independent India, in 70 years, that the Government of India challenges a circular of the Reserve Bank in a court. There are always differences between the government and the RBI, but it never [reached] a court of law,” senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh told reporters at a press briefing. Circular challenged On February 12, the RBI had issued a circular stating that any company with over ₹2,000 crore of bank dues should be declared bankrupt if they did not clear them within 180 days. However, this RBI circular has been challenged by a number of private power companies in the Allahabad H...

Money Control August 27, 2018 As many as 700 villages in Maharashtra have officially confirmed that the outbreak of the pink bollworm infestation on cotton crops has crossed the "economic threshold limit", an official from Agriculture department said on August 26. An economic threshold is the insect's population level or extent of crop damage at which the value of the crop destroyed exceeds the cost of controlling the pest. The crossing of the threshold means that a sizable amount of the crop may be lost to the pest, according to the official. He said cotton is generally sown in 21,000 villages in the state. "This year, 39.7 lakh hectares of area has been brought under the cotton cultivation, compared to the last year's 41.1 lakh hectares," he said. The economic threshold limit is a parameter used to assess the outbreak of the pest. "This limit is crossed in the 700 villages which are mainly from Marathwada, Vidarbha and north Maha...

Business Standard August 26, 2018  The government will soon make it mandatory for unlisted companies to issue new shares only in the dematerialised form, senior officials said, amid intensified efforts to fight the black money menace. Besides, the unlisted corporates would have to ensure that shares are transferred only in dematerialised (demat) or electronic form. Initially, these regulatory requirements, expected to be effective from the first week of October, would cover more than 70,000 public companies, two senior government officials told PTI. Officials said that to begin with, issuance of new shares and transfer of shares by unlisted companies would have to compulsorily be in the demat form and that the decision has been taken after extensive discussions with stakeholders. With respect to issuance of bonus shares and stock split also, the entities would have to issue them in the demat form, they added. The proposed move would help in enhancing transpa...

The Wire August 26, 2018. The perennially patchy streets of Nepal’s federal capital are undergoing a major overhaul. The unseemly bundles of wires by the roads are being tidied up. The central secretariat is getting a facelift. The Nepali national capital has over the past week or so been gearing up, along multiple avenues, for the fourth summit of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectorial Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) on August 30 and 31. The star-turn, once again, will be Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. There is a lot of confusion. Most Nepalis don’t understand why Nepal, which is not even on the Bay of Bengal, is a part of BIMSTEC. The common perception among the intellectual class seems to be that India is promoting BIMSTEC in order to undercut the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), primarily to isolate Pakistan, which is a SAARC member state but not included in BIMSTEC. Nepalis are having a hard time believing tha...

The Hindu August 24, 2018 In another era, White colonisers had landed on Africa’s coast in search of resources and slaves. The traumatic epoch of slave trade and European colonisation, with its horrific human consequences, formally ended in the 1960s and 1970s. But arguably, the basic equation of Africa’s resource-rich periphery serving the metropolitan industrial centres in Europe and North America remained fundamentally unchanged. It is not that Africa has not progressed. The African Union (AU) — the culmination of the pan-African dreams of an earlier generation of leaders such as Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and Algeria’s radical ideologue Frantz Fanon — is a dynamic reality. South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Egypt, among others, are regional powerhouses. Rwanda has made a courageous comeback after an inter-ethnic genocide in the early 1990s. Yet, industrialisation has been patchy. Civil war, terror attacks and disease outbreaks have all undermined the efforts. While the threat ...

The Hindu August 27, 2018. India’s policy on dams has to be urgently reviewed The tragedy in Kerala has highlighted the dangers of excess water accumulation in dams. More than 20 dams released water that cascaded down the hills, leaving behind a trail of destruction. The opening of the gates of the Idukki dam, for instance, caused the Periyar river to swell rapidly and discharge seven lakh litres of water per second. Yet, the argument for dams — that they provide drinking water and water for agriculture — is today scientifically discredited. For independent geologists and hydrologists, dams represent a nightmare, an ephemeral triumph of engineering over common sense and the natural sciences. Increasingly, it is evident that dam proponents are ignoring crucial decision-making data now available on patterns of rainfall, geology and climate change. Dams store millions of tonnes of fresh water in large reservoirs, submerging prime forests, villages, farms and livelihoods. The 4,7...

The Wire August 24, 2018 Monsanto, now a division of Bayer, has been ordered to pay a whopping $289 million to a single American person, a former gardener, who developed cancer, allegedly through the use of their products. Dewayne Johnson testified that he applied the product – Ranger Pro, a highly concentrated version of Roundup weedkiller, which contains glyphosate – 20 to 30 times per year while working as a school groundskeeper. He told a jury in San Francisco that he had two accidents at work, in which he was soaked with the product. In 2014, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Earlier this year, Bayer bought Monsanto for $62 billion – all cash – in hopes to grow its business on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond. But even if Monsanto’s brands no longer exist as such, its legacy remains. Given that 5,000 other similar cases regarding Roundup are currently in progress in the United States alone, Bayer will need to write a new chapter in its public r...

Hindustan Times  August 27, 2018. India will make efforts to protect its citizens from influence campaigns on social media that could undermine the election process, Union information technology (IT) minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told a gathering of ministers from G-20 nations, the government said on Sunday. “India had taken a serious note of reported misuse of social media platform data,” a statement from the IT ministry quoted Prasad as saying at the G-20 Digital Economy Ministerial meeting in Salata, Argentina. “Such platforms will never be allowed to abuse our election process for extraneous means.” The comments come amid worry that data of users on web services such as Facebook and Twitter can be mined and misused in order to influence poll outcomes, a concern stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The minister also met messaging service WhatsApp’s global head last week to convey the concerns over the spread of fake news in the country. In March, Cam...

The Hindu August 26, 2018. Centre is turning its back on the State, Rajya Sabha member Binoy Viswam tells the court. Rajya Sabha member and former Kerala Minister Binoy Viswam moved the Supreme Court on Saturday, accusing the Centre of “turning its back” on the people of flood-ravaged Kerala. The Centre has neither released sufficient relief funds nor allowed foreign countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) help the State “re-build and return to its past glory,” he said. Mr. Viswam urged the Supreme Court to wield its extraordinary constitutional powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to do “complete justice” and direct the Centre to allow foreign aid for flood relief work and rehabilitation in Kerala. ‘Unwritten policy’ The lawmaker said the Centre had denied foreign aid for Kerala stating an “unwritten policy” said to have been followed since 2004, whereby the country does not accept foreign aid towards disaster funds until it is necessary. Mr. ...

The Economic Times August 26, 2018  The increasing difference between imports and exports is causing the current account deficit to swell. By some accounts, it could widen as much as 2.7% of GDP in the current fiscal, prompting a warning from former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan amid a trade war and rising US rates. Concerted efforts by the government and the Rajan-led RBI had curbed foreign exchange turmoil in 2013. ET takes a look at the state of India’s external account.  Reference- https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/indicators/indias-widening-trade-gap-raises-concerns/articleshow/65554266.cms

The Indian Express August 26, 2018 The division in the SS Khaplang faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-K) on the lines of nationality has brightened the hopes for an early settlement to the vexed Naga political problem. At a meeting held at its camp in the jungles of Myanmar last week, the NSCN-K had impeached its chairman Khango Konyak, an Indian. He was replaced by Yung Aung, a Burmese Naga and nephew of Khaplang who had led the outfit since its formation in 1988 until his death last year. According to intelligence agencies, Konyak and his gun-toting Indian followers might make an attempt to join one of Nagaland’s seven other insurgent groups, primarily NSCN-IM, to make peace with the Government of India. The rebels had a safe haven in Myanmar. But after Konyak’s impeachment, they have lost that ground. Though a safe passage was given to Konyak respecting his seniority and long association with the outfit, given the hostility within NSCN-K ...

Newshub. August 26, 2018. Mosquitoes are some of the most deadly creatures on the planet. They carry viruses, bacteria and parasites, which they transmit through bites, infecting some 700 million people and killing more than 1 million each year. With international travel, migration and climate change, these infections are no longer confined to tropical and subtropical developing countries. Pathogens such as West Nile virus and Zika virus have caused significant outbreaks in the United States and its territories that are likely to continue, with new invasive pathogens being discovered all the time. Currently, control of these diseases is mostly limited to broad-spectrum insecticide sprays, which can harm both humans and non-target animals and insects. What if there was a way to control these devastating diseases without the environmental problems of widespread insecticide use? A study released in May 2017 suggests Zika began spreading in Florida mosquitoes about three mo...

The News August 27, 2018 At the end of June this year, Pakistan was added to the ‘grey list’, the list of countries deemed by the FATF as not yet having taken sufficient steps to thwart money laundering and terrorist financing, as defined by international conventions and regulatory requirements. An action plan was agreed upon with time-bound tasks corresponding to each of the technical weaknesses identified by the FATF. Last week, Pakistan received a six-member delegation of the Asia Pacific Group (APG), the so-called FATF-style regional body responsible for our geographical region, for a follow-up visit. Press reports of the visit highlighted that the APG pointed out that work in key areas remained to be addressed prior to the mutual evaluation scheduled for October. The FATF is an intergovernmental body established to combat money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system. Pakistan was added to the...