Happy Media

The Economics Times December 03, 2018 Honey trapping' is one of the new methods used by Pakistan-based terror groups to woo youths towards militancy and use them as human carriers for delivering arms from one place to another or acting as guides to  infiltrating terrorists, officials said.   An intelligence-based operation had led to the arrest of Syed Shazia, a woman in her early 30s from Bandipore, a fortnight ago. It was seen that she had many accounts on social  networking sites such as Facebook and Instagram which many youths in the Valley followed, they said. Officials from the central security agencies had been keeping a watch on the Internet Protocol (IP) address used by Shazia for several months. She used to converse with youths and would promise to meet them only if a certain "consignment" was delivered from one place to another, the officials said. Shazia had been in touch with some officials in the police department as well, but the officials termed

Livemint November 29, 2018 Chinese researcher He Jiankui has claimed that he used  CRISPR to produce the world’s first “designer babies” . On Wednesday, he said a second pregnancy was underway. A look at the genetic editing system that may change our relationship with genetics for better, worse or both. Why is CRISPR in the news? He Jiankui has claimed that he produced the world’s first genetically-edited babies. Jiankui said he used CRISPR—Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats—to alter the genes of a pair of twins while they were embryos to make the babies resistant to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. He said a possible second pregnancy had resulted from his project. The announcements prompted mostly criticism from other experts in the field. Using CRISPR to make changes to embryos and germline cells—sperm, eggs and zygotes—is contentious as the modifications are passed to progeny. Can genetic editing prevent serious diseases? In 2017, a US sci

The Hindu December 02, 2018 Balram Bhargava The disease spectrum of Zika ranges from asymptomatic or mild illness to severe birth defects, including brain damage and microcephaly in newborns. Every year, several lives across the world are lost or debilitated due to vector-borne diseases such as dengue and chikungunya. In India, the first case of dengue was detected in 1964 in Kolkata, with numbers rising due to a lack of vector control, unplanned urbanisation, climate change and varying immunological reasons. The same holds true for chikungunya, another debilitating mosquito-transmitted disease. After remaining incipient for almost 32 years, chikungunya re-emerged as a deadly infection, in 2006, with more than 1.5 million cases reported in India, and causing deaths or long-lasting physical impairment in millions of individuals around the globe. While India struggled with the double burden of dengue and chikungunya, a covert virus called Zika sprang into action. Zika was fir

Indian Express Tavleen Singh, December 02, 2018 The president of the ‘secular’ Congress party is often seen in temples these days encircled by Hindu priests. But, what enthralled me about his visit to the Brahma temple in Pushkar last week was that it was here that a priest anointed him as a Kashmiri Brahmin with the ‘ gotra ’ Kaul-Dattatreya. Was this anointment considered necessary to his political future because a BJP spokesperson taunted him about it? Surely, as the president of a party that wears its ‘secularism’ as a badge of honour, it would have been better for Rahul Gandhi to not respond at all to this stupid taunt. Advertising But, when the Prime Minister himself has taken to making stupid taunts into big political issues in the election campaign for the five states, whose results will come on December 11, it is hard to blame anyone else. Minor Congress leaders made a couple of very stupid jibes about Mr Modi’s parents. He turned them into huge issues at hi

Times of India December 01, 2018 WASHINGTON: More than 20,000 Indian nationals, mostly men, have sought asylum in the US since 2014, according to the latest figures.  Till July, a maximum number of 7,214 Indian nationals had applied for asylum in the US. Of these only 296 were women, according to the information  provided by the US Department of Homeland Security to the North American Punjabi Association (NAPA). California-based NAPA, has been working  among illegal immigrants from Punjab. As per the information obtained by the NAPA from Department of Homeland Security, 2,306 Indian nationals applied for asylum in the year 2014. Of  these 146 were women and the gender of one of the Indian applicants is not known. The next year, 2,971 Indians, including 96 women, sought asylum.  In 2016, as many as 4,088 Indians, including 123 women, asked for asylum from the US. In both 2015 and 2016, gender of one applicant each was not known. In 2017, the Department of Homeland Security rec

Rediff December 01, 2018 Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday held a trilateral meeting, the second among the three countries after a gap of 12 years, on the sidelines of the G-20 summit here to discuss cooperation in various areas. The Russia-India-China meeting came hours after Prime Minister Modi, his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe and US President Donald Trump held their first trilateral meeting on the margins of the summit. "Deepening engagement with valued development partners. President Vladimir Putin, President Xi Jinping and PM @narendramodi participate in the RIC (Russia, India, China) trilateral in Buenos Aires. @KremlinRussia," the Prime Minister's Office tweeted. "2nd Russia-India-China 'RIC' Trilateral Summit took place in Buenos Aires after a gap of 12 years. In a meeting characterised by warmth and positivity, leaders discussed cooperation and coordination in variou

The Economics Times December 01, 2018 BUENOS AIRES: US President Donald Trump and  Chinese President Xi Jinping will wrap up a global summit  on Saturday with high-stakes talks expected to determine  whether they can begin defusing a damaging trade war  between the world's two biggest economies. With the United States and China locked in growing  disputes over commerce and security that have raised  questions about the future of their relationship, Trump and  Xi are due to sit down for dinner at the end of a two-day  gathering of world leaders in Buenos Aires. The first day of the G20 summit offered glimmers of hope for progress between  Washington and Beijing despite Trump's earlier threat of new tariffs, which would increase  tensions already weighing on global financial markets.  But on the eve of what is seen as the most important meeting of US and Chinese leaders  in years, both sides said differences remained, and the outcome of the talks were  uncertain. Thi

The Economics Times December 01, 2018 Seema Sirohi The Chinese are fuming but these days few  care about their “sensitivities” in Washington.  In this post-sensitive era, it’s OK to rain on   their parade. The latest “outrage” was a 12-  city, 26-day tour by Lobsang Sangay,   resident of the Tibetan government in-exile,  through Europe, Canada and the US.  The aim was to highlight how Tibet was the  original laboratory for the belt road initiative –  one road that ultimately leads to subjugation  and colonization. The world must learn from Tibet’s tragic experience for China’s “development aid” comes at the steepest possible  price to the people, land, water and air, Sangay has been telling his audiences.  And New Delhi should make Tibet a “core” issue now that China is at India’s doorstep.  China’s financial and political influence is overwhelming all of India’s neighbours. “It’s not  too late for India to declare Tibet a core issue. For the BJP and RSS, Tibet is a sacred 

India Today November 30, 2018 UPDATED: December 3, 2018 Marriott Hotels on Friday announced a massive data breach, saying that its systems have been hacked and data of over 500 million guests has been stolen. So big is the breach that Marriott said that data of almost everyone who has ever stayed at its hotels has been probably stolen or leaked. "Marriott has not finished identifying duplicate information in the database, but believes it contains information on up to approximately 500 million guests who made a reservation at a Starwood property. For approximately 327 million of these guests, the information includes some combination of name, mailing address, phone number, email address, passport number, Starwood Preferred Guest account information, date of birth, gender, arrival and departure information, reservation date, and communication preferences. For some, the information also includes payment card numbers and payment card expiration dates," the company said i