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Times of India, TNN, Feb 06, 2019 NEW DELHI: India’s quiet diplomacy with the UK, including a demarche asking the British government to not allow its soil to be used for propaganda against India, ensured that Pakistan backed events on the so called  Kashmir Solidarity Day   were a non-starter, government sources familiar with the issue said. UK maintained all along that Pakistan foreign minister S M Qureshi was in  London  on a private visit and that no government official was going to interact with him. According to authorities here, Pakistan officials even tried to arrange an “accidental” meeting for Qureshi with senior UK government officials but that too was apparently not granted. Most of the MPs who joined the  Kashmir  conference on British Parliament premises were said to be of Pakistani origin. The conference was attended by former Norway PM Kjell Bondevik who was in news recently for his visit to Srinagar where he hel...

Firstpost, Tyler choi, Feb 06, 2019 TORONTO (Reuters) - About C$180 million ($137.21 million) in cryptocurrencies have been frozen in the user accounts of Canadian digital platform Quadriga after the founder, the only person with the password to gain access, died suddenly in December. Gerald Cotten died aged 30 from complications with Crohn's disease while volunteering at an orphanage in India, according to the Facebook page of Quadriga CX, which announced his death on January 14. The platform, which allows the trading of Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum, filed for creditor protection in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court last week. Quadriga has 363,000 registered users and owes a total of C$250 million to 115,000 affected users, according to an affidavit filed by Cotten's widow Jennifer Robertson on behalf of the company. Robertson said in the affidavit that Cotten's main computer contained a "cold wallet" of cryptocurrencies, which is only accessible phys...

The Indian Express, Feb 06, 2019 A report prepared by the Society for Health Alternatives (SAHAJ) has pointed out “an acute shortage of trained human resources” in the health sector in Gujarat, which according to it “has very serious implications for providing quality healthcare services, especially to women in rural areas”. Advertising The report, which was released by the Vadodara-based outfit here on Tuesday, is a compilation based on field experiences of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA) members along with state and national level data from secondary sources, including Census of India (2011), CAG reports, NFHS-4 (2015-16). “There is an acute shortage of trained human resources — trained doctors, nurses and specialists — (in Gujarat). This has very serious implications for providing quality healthcare services, especially to women in rural areas. Attempts to rope in private partners to improve efficiency of services lack explicit framework for reaching people. Maternal he...

Economic Times, PTI, Feb 06, 2019 Around Rs 3.5 lakh crore or 3.9 percent of the  stressed corporate loans  continue to remain unrecognised on the books of banks and nearly 40 percent of them may become dud assets by September 2020, warns a report. These accounts are part of the total stressed corporate exposure (interest coverage ratio of 1.5x) of 19.3 percent or Rs 13.5-14 lakh crore as of September 2018. "Around 3.9 percent of the stressed corporate exposure of 19.3 percent total stressed corporate accounts are still unrecognised and are standard in banks' books, while around Rs 1.5-2 lakh crore of them may slip into NPAs by H2 of FY20," Jindal Haria, associate director for banking and financial institutions at India Ratings told reporters Tuesday. Of the Rs 13.5-14 lakh crore stressed corporate loans, banks have recognised only Rs 10 lakh crore as of September 2018, he added. Jindal said banks may need an additional f Rs 40,000 crore in provis...

Times Now, Feb 05, 2019 New Delhi:  The finance ministry expects Rs 69,000 crore dividend from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in the next financial year, sources said. The government has projected to mobilise Rs 82,911.56 crore as dividend or surplus from the RBI, nationalised banks and financial institutions during 2019-20. If the central board of the RBI approves the transfer of Rs 28,000 crore requested by the government as interim dividend for the current fiscal, the total surplus transfer by the central bank would be Rs 68,000 crore in 2018-19. The RBI, which follows July-June financial year, has already transferred Rs 40,000 crore in the current fiscal. The receipt from various sources, including RBI dividend, help the government meet the fiscal deficit target. In the Interim Budget 2019-20, the government has projected a fiscal deficit target of 3.4 per cent for the next financial year 2019-20. The government also came out with a road map to reduce the fiscal defi...

Economic Times, Brad Stone,  Feb 05, 2019 A day before it delivered relatively good earnings to Wall Street last week, Amazon.com got roughed up in a New York City Council hearing over the company’s plans to locate half of second headquarters in Long Island City, Queens. “It’s a cold day in New York,” shouted one union organizer at a rowdy protest outside City Hall, “but it’s not as cold as Jeff Bezos’s heart.”  At the same time, 7,000 miles away, Amazon was suffering a more serious setback. In its most promising international market, India, regulators started enforcing new rules that preclude Amazon and its chief rival, the Walmart subsidiary Flipkart, from selling goods directly to customers or investing directly in third-party merchants that sell on its website. The new regulation means Amazon will have to pull over one third of its products—everything from diapers to Alexa speakers.  Amazon thought it had secured a warm welcome in New York and forged ...

The Telegraph, Abdul Gani, NG. Indrakanta Singh, Feb 05, 2019 The film fraternity of the region backed the decision of Manipur filmmaker Aribam Syam Sharma to return his Padma Shri in protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019. Haobam Paban Kumar, a multiple National Award-winning filmmaker of international repute from Manipur, termed it painful. “I support his cause. Every northeasterner should. For the other parts of the country, it’s fine. But for the Northeast, it’s an absolute no,” Haobam, who is working on a documentary on Sharma, told The Telegraph. On Sunday, Sharma, one of the living legends of cinema in the region, had announced that he was returning the Padma Shri. Deep Choudhury, the winner of the Indira Gandhi Award for best debut film of a director for Alifa and the secretary of North East Filmmakers Forum (NEFF), said, “It’s sad for an artiste to refuse the recognition for his lifelong contribution to society…but for one’s motherland, it can be do...

The Telegraph, Pinak Ghosh, Feb 05, 2019 Bengal’s public debt is set to balloon to Rs 4,31,928 crore — more than twice the sum it inherited from the Left Front government. The revised estimate of the outstanding loan in 2018-19 was Rs 3,95,322.57 crore. The burden of past debt is forcing the state government to raise its market borrowings to Rs 53,774 crore from Rs 47,854 crore last year as the state plans to pay off Rs 56,183.16 crore of past debts, which include Rs 25,032 crore of the principal amount and Rs 31,151.16 crore as interest. Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra said the government was set to bear the burden of loans borrowed by the previous government that are now maturing. “This year (2018-19) we have given Rs 49,656.93 crore as total loan repayment. Next year (2019-20) it will go up to Rs 56,183.16 crore. I have informed the Assembly multiple times that our government had inherited debt of around Rs 2 lakh crore,” Mitra said after presenting the state budget f...

Alok Deshpande: The Hindu: February 02, 2019 The Maharashtra government’s attempt to amend the Maharashtra Agriculture Produce Marketing (Development and Regulation) Act, 1963, has hit a roadblock again. It had to withdraw the Bill from the Legislative Council even after it was passed by the Assembly. The amendment Bill has been in the works for over 14 years and owing to its politically and economically important stakeholders, who are farmers, traders and ‘mathadi’ workers (head loaders), the government has struggled to push through the changes. What is the problem? After it was passed in the Assembly last November, the Mumbai and Pune APMCs called a strike, alleging that the proposed amendment severely limited their powers. One of the important amendments the Bill seeks to bring about is to free essential items from the purview of APMCs and allow them to be sold outside. Farmer organisations such as the Shetkari Sanghatana, formerly led by Sharad Joshi, support this...

Financial Tribune: February 05, 2019 The Financial Action Task Force, which is in charge of monitoring money laundering and other financial malpractices worldwide, should take into account Iran’s exhaustive lawmaking process before placing it back on a blacklist, a parliamentarian said.  The government has prepared four bills to bring the country into line with the FATF standards.  The ones that contain articles on the global norms of countering the financing of terrorism and transnational organized crime are yet to receive the final approval.  FATF had set a deadline of October last year for Iran to complete the legal reforms to bring itself in line with its guidelines, which it later extended until February.  Link:  https://financialtribune.com/articles/national/96541/fatf-urged-to-consider-iran-s-legislative-process-before-any-decision

PTI, February 03, 2019 A sessions court here has issued non-bailable warrants against two Pakistan Army officials - Major Abdul Rehman Pasha and Major Iqbal - in connection with the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks case. Both Major Iqbal and Major Pasha are shown as wanted accused in the charge sheet filed by the city police's crime branch in the case. Additional Sessions Judge S V Yarlagadda on January 21 allowed an application filed by special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam. The application was filed before the court which is presently conducting a trial against alleged LeT operative Sayyed Zabiuddin Ansari alias Abu Jundal in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks case. Judge Yarlagadda, after perusing the application, supplementary charge sheet filed by the crime branch and hearing brief arguments from Nikam, said he was allowing the application. "The application filed by the prosecution for the issuance of non-bailable warrant against the two persons (Pasha and Iq...

G.S. Mudhur: The Telegraph: February 04, 2019 A group of Indian researchers has proposed additional therapeutic strategies to treat a string of ailments observed in HIV patients that they say may have a common source. The group from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, believes that the inflammation and illness seen in HIV-infected children and adults even after they have received standard anti-retroviral therapy (ART) may be the result of persistent changes in their gut microbe populations. Their study has revealed a significantly higher abundance of bacteria called Prevotella in the intestines of HIV-infected and ART-treated children, compared with the intestines of uninfected children. It has also identified molecular signatures of inflammation in these children, which the researchers believe were caused by the ballooning populations of the intestinal Prevotella. Multiple studies in adults outside India too have shown that HIV infections change the intestinal microbial popu...

PTI: FIRST POST: February 04, 2019 New Delhi: The troubled Essel Group said on Sunday it has secured a formal consent from lenders, having a pledge on shares held by the promoters in ZEE Entertainment Enterprises Ltd and Dish TV India Ltd, to not declare default till 30 September 2019 due to the movement in the stock price. The consent was achieved during the second round of a detailed meeting between Essel Group Promoters and lending entities, the group said in a statement. "As per the consent, the lenders have agreed that there will not be any event of default declared till 30th September 2019, due to the movement in the stock price of Essel Group's mentioned listed corporate entities," it said. This consent provides the required amount of time to the group's management to complete the strategic sale of its key assets without any compromise on the value, it added. "I am glad that the formal consent with the lenders has been achieved. For u...

Chidanand Rajghatta: Times of India: February 05, 2019 WASHINGTON: By his own account, he is a "stable genius" who is smarter than his intelligence chiefs and his generals, and who knows more about military, defense, war, trade, jobs, banking, taxes, debt, governance, renewables, social media (among other things) than anyone else. But according to his critics and leakers who claim to interact with him, he is dumb as a rock, a doorknob, with a "stubborn disregard" for and "willful ignorance" about any assessment or brief that contradict his own ill-formed beliefs and opinions. In this welter of contradictory assessments comes a nugget that would dismay India’s friendly neighbors Nepal and Bhutan while perhaps pleasing proponents of "Akhand Bharat" who believe in a pan-Indianness that envelops other countries in the neighborhood: Apparently, President Trump believes Nepal and Bhutan are part of India, and he had to be told during a briefing o...