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The Economic Times September 19, 2018 China on Wednesday sought "level playing field, transparent and fair environment" for its enterprises in India while expressing concern over New Delhi's reported move to exclude Chinese telecom companies Huawei and ZTE from 5G trials.  According to a report in China's state-run 'Global Times' on Sunday, the India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had barred Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp from the list of companies allowed to work with local companies in 5G technology-based trials due to "security" concerns.   However, a top DoT official had said they were in the process of setting up a panel which will decide on areas where 5G technology can be used.  Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan told on September 14 that "companies have come up with preliminary use cases. We are going to set up core group which will sit with them and look at what are the use cases that make sense to ...

THE WIRE September 19, 2018 Muhammad Raafi The Jammu and Kashmir government has once again imposed restrictions in several parts of the Kashmir Valley, particularly the capital city Srinagar, ahead of the eighth Muharram to prevent the Shia mourners’ Muharram processions. The processions stand “banned” in Kashmir since 1990 when armed insurgency began. It was eighth Muharram of 1989. A massive procession comprising approximately one lakh people marched from Shaheed Gunj via Budshah Chowk through MA Road to Dalgate. Vilayat Joo, a resident of Old Srinagar, who participated in the procession, recalled how the march was infiltrated by militants. “The procession comprised mostly of Sunnis. At Budshah Chowk, the procession was joined by militant commanders including Hameed Shiekh, one of the members of famous HAJY group.” The procession marched through MA Road amid “pro-freedom” slogans and culminated at Dalgate. Since then, the government in J&K never allowed ...

THE WIRE September 19, 2018 Contrary to initial media reporting on the potential extradition of AgustaWestland middleman Christian Michel, a UAE court has only offered its legal opinion but not issued an official order. The opinion of the Dubai court, The Wire has learned, is that UAE authorities do have the power to extradite a British national (Michel) to a third country (India). This was the question that UAE authorities had posed to the court in the last week of August 2018. On September 2, the court delivered its opinion and stated that the government was well within its rights to do so. There is, however, at the moment, no official court order clearing the extradition of the British middleman to India. The Indian mission in Dubai, The Wire understands, is in the process of getting more details. Michel is one of the three middlemen being investigated by Indian investigative agencies in what is commonly referred to as the VVIP chopper scam, shorthand for a 2...

FIRSTPOST September 19, 2018 Jammu/New Delhi: Pakistani troops have slit the throat of a BSF jawan after fatally shooting him along the international border (IB) near Jammu, officials said on Wednesday. The brutal and "unprecedented" incident that took place in the Ramgarh sector on Tuesday has prompted the security forces to issue a "high alert" across the IB and Line of Control (LoC) even as the Border Security Force has lodged a strong complaint with its counterparts — the Pakistan Rangers. Official sources said the body of Head Constable Narender Kumar also bore three bullet wounds and it could only be retrieved from a spot ahead of the Indo-Pak fence after over six hours as the Pakistani side "did not respond" to the calls to maintain the sanctity of the frontier and ensure that the BSF search parties were not fired upon. The Pakistan Rangers, the sources said, was asked to take part in a joint patrolling to trace the missing jawan, but ...

THE HINDU September 19, 2018 A Border Security Force (BSF) constable has been arrested on charges of spying for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan after being ‘honey-trapped’ through social media, the Uttar Pradesh police said on Wednesday. U.P. Director General of Police O.P. Singh said the accused, Achutanand Mishra, confessed to sharing confidential information regarding military establishments to a woman who claimed to be a “defence reporter” from Pakistan. The two were in touch since January 2016. The jawan was arrested from Noida by a team of the U.P. Anti-Terrorism Squad on the basis of inputs shared by the military intelligence, Chandigarh, that Army and paramilitary jawans were being honey-trapped through Facebook profiles of women. Following this, the ATS said its counter-espionage team found several Facebook profiles that were in touch with such fake profiles. Mr. Mishra was allegedly lured into sharing confidential military information...

THE HINDU September 19, 2018 R. Dinakaran Alibaba Group Chairman Jack Ma has said that the manufacturing industry that does not adapt to the new technologies will find it difficult to survive. Jack Ma, who was speaking at the Alibaba Cloud Computing Conference here, said New Manufacturing, as he called it, would disrupt the global manufacturing industry, but “we are going to have abundant opportunities in the next 10 to 15 years, you know,” he said. “The pains we are going to face are going to be unprecedented and way out of any expectation. So we have to be fully prepared. People are saying the real manufacturing is disappearing, but I don’t think so. Only the companies that lag behind in technology will disappear,” he said. Using or being present online doesn’t mean embracing technology and companies must adopt all the latest technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) and big data, he said. The next 30 years will see the arrival...

The Indian Express September 19, 2018 Pritam Pal Singh The Delhi High Court on Tuesday asked the Centre not to take coercive steps against the pharmaceutical companies for their batches already in the market, provided they stop manufacturing the medicines banned by the Centre. The government recently banned 328 fixed dose combination drugs. Justice Vibhu Bakhru passed the interim order in favour of few drug manufacturers who have challenged the Health Ministry’s September 7 ban on 328 FDCs, which are two or more drugs combined in a fixed ratio into a single dosage form. Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Maninder Acharya, who was defending the Centre’s stand, assured that they will not take any coercive steps against the firms. The court said that the interim order would apply to companies which was before it and directed the ministry to file an affidavit indicating the reasons for prohibiting manufacture and sale of the FDCs. It also asked the government to place before it...

THE WIRE September 19, 2018 The announcement to merge Bank of Baroda with Vijaya Bank and Dena Bank comes at an interesting time, after the finance minister revealed measures to manage the tumbling rupee last week. The government evidently believes that the merger will send a message to the world about its reformist zeal and improve investor sentiment at a time when the rupee is under pressure. Whether it constitutes meaningful reform at the present time is, however, open to question. Rajiv Kumar, secretary, department of financial services, contended that the new entity is “positioned for substantial rise in customer base, market reach, operational efficiency and wider bouquet of products and services for customers.” Well, that is always the hope in any merger. In this case, the hope is that one plus one plus one will make four. However, a wide body of research casts doubt on this proposition. According to a McKinsey study, only 30% of mergers capture the expected ...

THE WIRE September 19, 2018 In an attempt to refute allegations that his Bachelor of Arts degree from Thiruvalluvar University in Tamil Nadu’s Vellore is fake, ABVP’s Ankiv Baisoya, the newly-elected Delhi University Students’ Union president, has spoken to the media and said that he studied “several types of subjects” at the university between 2013 and 2016. “I wrote several types of exams, in English and skilled-based subject,” he reportedly said. Beyond being unable to remember which subjects he finished studying just two years go, as Scroll reported, Baisoya could not recall much about campus life or the the names of heads of departments. Baisoya (23) who won the presidential post with a margin of 1,744 votes, got admission into Delhi University’s postgraduate Buddhist Studies programme on the basis of marksheets allegedly issued by Thiruvalluvar University. The National Students’ Union of India, the Congress’ student wing, had claimed that Baisoya had furni...

The Indian Express September 19, 2018 Sandeep Singh and Anil Sasi When Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd started missing deadlines on short-term debt instruments late last month, rating agencies ICRA, India Ratings and CARE belatedly swung into action to abruptly downgrade IL&FS and its subsidiary from a high investment grade all the way down to junk status, indicating actual or imminent default. But the rumblings are unlikely to stay confined to just the stakeholders in the company, including LIC, Central Bank of India, HDFC Ltd and SBI. Less than four months before the defaults, IL&FS issued four series of non-convertible debentures and raised an aggregate of Rs 735 crore through them. Documents accessed from the Registrar of Companies show that Series 1-A and 1-B were issued in May to raise Rs 260 crore and Rs 200 crore, respectively, at a coupon of 8.9 per cent and 9 per cent, Series 1-C was issued in June 2018 to raise Rs 200 crore at a coup...

The Economic Times September 18, 2018 BEIJING: China on Tuesday welcomed Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi's maiden visit to Afghanistan and expressed its backing for their action plan for peace and reconciliation talks with the Taliban.  Qureshi visited Kabul on Saturday during which he held a one-on-one meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and both the leaders agreed to join hands for peace and stability in the region.  Reacting to Qureshi's visit, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said that China commended the positive statements made by the two sides after the visit.  "China is a friend and neighbour to Afghanistan and Pakistan. We hope they can develop their relations in sound and steady way," Geng said.  "We commend their positive statements. China support the two countries in implementing their action plan and move forward the Afghan reconciliation process," he said, without elaborating.  ...

THE HINDU September 19, 2108 The Union Cabinet did not consider on Wednesday the Rs 4,500-crore plan to more than double the production assistance paid to sugarcane farmers and transport subsidy to sugar exporting mills, sources said. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) may take up the Food Ministry’s proposal next week, they added. The ministry has proposed a sharp increase in production assistance to farmers at Rs 13.88 per quintal for the 2018-19 marketing year (October-September), from Rs 5.5 at present. The proposal to raise production assistance and transport subsidy of up to Rs 3,000 per tonne to mills for export of five million tonnes of surplus sugar, is part of the government plan to clear more than Rs 13,500-crore in arrears sugar mills have towards farmers. Yesterday, sources had said the government will have to bear about Rs 4,500 crore on account of these measures to help sugar mills and cane farmers. These steps will enable mills to boost...

THE HINDU September 119, 2018 M. Somashekhar India has decided to place four more reactors under the IAEA safeguards. Accordingly, two Russian-designed Pressurised Light Water Reactors and two Pressurised Heavy Reactors being built with Indian technology will be covered. With this, a total of 26 Indian nuclear facilities will be under the international nuclear energy watchdog. This was stated by Sekhar Basu, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission and Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy, at the 62nd General Conference of IAEA Vienna, Austria, on Wednesday. Basu, whose extended term in office ended on Wednesday, reiterated the primacy to IAEA in its central role in promotion of atomic energy for peaceful uses and prosperity of the mankind while maintaining its due support in safeguards. Giving an update on the country’s nuclear power programme, Basu said the plans to build 21 reactors by 2030 was on track. Discussions with foreign partners for bringing different tech...

THE HINDU  September 18, 2018 Shishi Sinha An Inter-Ministerial Committee has rejected the view of the Reserve Bank of India and suggested setting up of an independent Payments Regulatory Board (PRB). The Committee, headed by Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg, has also put forward a draft of the proposed Payment and Settlement System Bill 2018 for consideration by the Cabinet. The members of the committee include IT Secretary Ajay Prakash Sawhney, UIDAI CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey and RBI ED S Ganesh Kumar. Though the committee has suggested the PRB to be an independent payments regulator, it has provided for the RBI to have significant representation on the board. It also envisages a formal mechanism for co-ordination between the RBI and the PRB so that the “regulation of payments, in so far as it may be relevant in the context of financial stability, monetary policy and credit policy is achieved harmoniously”. According to the report made publi...