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The Indian Express September 19, 2018 ICICI Bank is in talks with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) to settle alleged regulatory lapses involving its managing director and chief executive officer Chanda Kochhar, Videocon group and NuPower Renewables, a company run by Chanda Kochhar’s husband Deepak Kochhar, through the consent mechanism, chairman of the capital market regulator Ajay Tyagi said on Tuesday. Under the consent settlement process, an entity facing a probe by Sebi is subjected to certain fees and restrictions without admission or denial of alleged irregularities and the regulator thereafter drops its charges and investigations with a caveat that all disclosures made to it are correct. Tyagi said the regulator has received the reply of the bank to its show-cause notice with respect to a probe into alleged lapses in disclosure norms by Kochhar under the securities law. An ICICI Bank spokesperson said, “We have submitted our response to the s...

DAWN September 17, 2018 Ikram Junaidi The Senate Standing Committee on Interior will discuss on Monday (today) the issue of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), and Pakistan’s plan to get out of its grey list. According to the agenda of the meeting, the committee chaired by Senator Rehman Malik of the Pakistan Peoples Party will examine the details of the FATF’s demands and allegations against Pakistan. The committee will also consider the steps taken by Islamabad to get out of the FATF grey list, and any progress, if at all, that has been made so far. The Paris-based FATF is a global body that combats terrorist financing and money laundering. Its decision to place Pakistan on the global money-laundering grey list was made during a meeting in February. In June, Pakistan was officially placed on the list. Pakistan believes it has done a lot to get out of the grey list, such as banning both Jamaatud Dawa and its offshoot, Falah-i-Insaniyat. Their operations h...

FIRST POST September 19, 2018 SUHIT K SEN Nine Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have written to the European Union's (EU) highest official on foreign affairs and security policy, Federica Mogherini, to cancel all agreements with India till all the activists arrested in connection with the violence at Bhima Koregaon have been released. The letter, scathingly denunciatory in tone and content, was written on 12 September. It points out that all the people held — those earlier arrested now lodged in prison and undergoing trial and those held at dawn on 28 August now under house arrest — have been charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The letter describes this piece of legislation as 'one of the most barbaric laws, copied from the colonial law book'. It also details the plight of Professor GN Saibaba, a man with severe disabilities, who has been convicted for doing 'nothing but defend the rights of the Adivasis and Dalit people with w...

The Express Tribune  September 18, 2018 Shahbaz Rana Pakistan eyes nearly $8 billion investment from China and Saudi Arabia, under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), in road, energy and oil sectors, after the new government decided to pick schemes on their ‘merits’. Decisions are being taken after the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government completed its internal review of the multibillion dollar strategic initiative and came to a decision to open the corridor for investment by other countries that are either members of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) or on friendly terms with China and Pakistan. Priorities set for CPEC were not right in the past and some of the transport and road infrastructure projects were selected for phase-I of CPEC due to political reasons, said Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Reform Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar on Monday. He was speaking at a meeting of the Senate’s Special Committee on CPEC, chaired by Senator She...

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE SEPTEMBER 18, 2018 NEWS DESK Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) said on Monday it had arrested a Pakistani former ‘politically exposed person’ and his wife who were involved in money laundering in the UK, believed to to be the result of corruption in Pakistan. “Officers from the NCA’s International Corruption Unit have arrested a former Pakistani Politically Exposed Person, aged in his 40s, and his wife, aged in her 30s,” the agency said in an official statement. It was later reported that the arrested man was Farhan Junejo, a former assistant commissioner, who was accused of laundering Rs250 million abroad. Junejo was a close aide to late PPP leader Makhdoom Amin Fahim and was named in the Trade Development corruption scandal in addition to causing a loss of Rs1.5 billion to the national exchequer. ‘Looted wealth’: Accountability, justice declaration inked with UK Earlier, the UK’s National Crime Agency said that it had arrested a f...

The Economic Times September 18, 2018 China on Tuesday announced a tariff hike on $60 billion of U.S. products in response to President Donald Trump's latest duty increase in a dispute over Beijing's technology policy.  The announcement followed a warning by an American business group that a "downward spiral" in their conflict appeared certain following Trump's penalties on $200 billion of Chinese goods.  The Finance Ministry said it was going ahead with plans announced in August for the increases of 10 percent and 5 percent on 5,207 types of U.S. goods. A list released last month included coffee, honey and industrial chemicals.  The increase is aimed at curbing "trade friction" and the "unilateralism and protectionism of the United States," the ministry said on its website. It appealed for "pragmatic dialogue" to "jointly safeguard the principle of free trade and the multilateral trading system."  Th...

Daily Hunt September 17, 2018 News 24 &  News24Bureau/IANS Pakistan will no longer be able to send its Army trained terrorists to India easily. India has initiated smart fences along border that will stop infiltration without risking the lives of soldiers. That's because the technology will now catch the infiltrating terrorists. Launching two smart fencing pilot projects along the international border with Pakistan, Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday expressed the hope that there will be a change in the attitude of the new government in Islamabad towards India. "I don't think that there will be any change in Pakistan's nature. I pray to God that there would be change. I hope the change will be better than before," he told reporters who asked him whether he expected a change in the attitude with the formation of a new government under Imran Khan. He was talking to the media at the BSF headquarters in Paloura after launching two "smart...

The Economic Times September 18, 2018 The European Commission said on Tuesday it had opened a formal investigation into whether German carmakers BMW, Daimler and VW Group had colluded to avoid competition in developing clean emission technology.  The Commission, which oversees competition policy in the European Union, said in a statement it was looking into whether the carmakers agreed not to compete with each other on developing and rolling out systems to reduce harmful emissions from petrol and diesel cars.  "These technologies aim at making passenger cars less damaging to the environment.  If proven, this collusion may have denied consumers the opportunity to buy less polluting cars, despite the technology being available to the manufacturers," European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said.  Reference: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/business/eu-starts-probe-into-german-carmakers-over-clean-emissions/arti...

Daily Hunt September 18, 2018 The Asian Age Security sources said that Hizbul Mujahideen is suspected to have been roping in operatives from the state to recruit radicalized youths. Guwahati:  The Assam police on Monday decided to set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the ongoing attempt of the Kashmir-based Hizbul M-ujahideen to rope in Muslim youths in the state. The decision came after the arrest of four Hizbul Mujahideen operatives -three in Assam and one in Kanpur who hails from Central Assam's Hojai district. Pointing out that trail started with the arrest of Hizbul Mujahideen cadre Qamar-uz-Zaman in Kanpur by the Anti-Terrorism Squad of Uttar Pradesh on Thursday, security sources said that interrogation of Zaman led to the arrest of three Hizbul operatives in Assam. Within 48 hours, Assam police has arrested three operatives of the group, Shahnawaz Alam, Sahi-dul Alam and Omar Faro-oq, all from Jamun-amukh in Hojai district. Zaman who w...

THE ECONOMIC TIMES September 18, 2018 UNITED NATIONS: India has criticised the world body for not doing enough to cut off the drug trade that is financing the Taliban with over a billion dollars as it continues its military operations with the support of Afghanistan's neighbour.  Terrorist organisations operating in Afghanistan "benefit significantly from criminal networks operating drug cartels and stealing Afghanistan's natural resources", India's Permanent Representative Syed Akbaruddin told the Security Council on Monday during a debate on the situation there.  The opium produced in Taliban-controlled areas is estimated to account for 85 per cent of global illicit production, valued between $1.5 billion to $3 billion," he said.  "By some estimates, 60 per cent of the Taliban's revenues are from the drug trade. Poppy cultivation is said to be the largest cash crop in Taliban-controlled areas," he added.  Yet the UN has...

THE HINDU SEPTEMBER 17, 2018 PTI Islamabad has refuted media reports that it has expressed readiness to talk on the restoration of the India-Afghanistan land trade route through Pakistan. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi rejected the reports after .U.S Ambassador to Afghanistan John Bass was quoted as saying that Pakistan had approached Afghanistan earlier this year and indicated its willingness to resume trade between Afghanistan and India through the land route. “Pakistan has not agreed to consider Afghanistan-India trade through our land,” he was quoted as saying by the Express Tribune. Pakistan does not allow India to use the land route for trading with Afghanistan, he said. Reference:  https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/pakistan-denies-opening-land-route-for-india/article24969892.ece