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The Diplomat March 13, 2019 Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan are engaged in showboating again, each side raising the temperature to make the other blink. India hoped that escalating tensions would force Pakistan to punish militant groups based in its territory. The pressure has worked to some degree as Islamabad ordered arrest of 44 Jaish-e-Mohammed members (JeM, meaning “Army of Mohammed”), the group India has accused of carrying out an attack in Indian-administered Kashmir on February 14. The suicide attack took place in Pulwama, just south of state capital Srinagar, killing more than  40  Indian paramilitary troopers. Masood Azhar, who is the leader of JeM and writes a regular column under the pen name  Saadi  in his organization’s weekly journal  Al-Qalam  (“The Pen”) didn’t seem to take India’s upping the ante — demonstrated through a strike on February 26 against one of the JeM madrassas — seriously. He said in the issue of Febr...

Indiana Daily Student  March 6, 2019 Malaria affected 216 million people in 2016, and most of the cases and deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa. While scientists have spent years searching for a vaccine, a lab in Terni, Italy, has taken a different approach: genetic modification. The ultimate goal is to release these genetically modified mosquitoes into areas affected by malaria in order to reduce mosquito populations overall. Certainly, many people have fears about unintended consequences of such an action and are calling for a shutdown to the research altogether. However, that would be exceedingly drastic. Instead, the researchers must proceed with extreme caution, in an open and transparent way, to ensure they are acting ethically and responsibly in this endeavor.   Just last month, the Italian team released a large number of genetically modified male mosquitoes into a high-security lab. They will spend about a year studying how the...

The Economic Times March 13, 2019 Sophos, an endpoint security provider said that 76% of Indian businesses were hit by cyber attacks in the past year, the highest after Mexico and France. In its global survey, 7 Uncomfortable Truths of Endpoint Security, Sophos said that more than 18% threats discovered in India are on mobile devices, almost double than the global average, while only 7.9% were discovered on endpoints. 39% threats were discovered on the organisation’s servers and 34.5% on its networks.  “Server security stakes are at an all-time high with servers being used to store financial, employee, proprietary, and other sensitive data. Today, IT managers need to focus on protecting business-critical servers to stop cyber criminals from getting on to the network. They can’t ignore endpoints because most cyber-attacks start there, yet a higher than expected amount of IT managers still can’t identify how threats are getting into the system and when.” said...

The Indian Express  March 14, 2019 By the time you read this, Masood Azhar, the head of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), may have been listed under the United Nations Security Council resolution 1267 as a “global terrorist”. Or he may have escaped once again. Either way, it hardly matters. India loses too much sleep — and national energy — over 1267. For sure, a listing will provide some satisfaction as a diplomatic victory. China had blocked Azhar’s listing over the years, and if it did not put up an objection this time, something has certainly changed. It will help India claim the shift as the result of the pressure brought to bear on Beijing in the days since the Pulwama attack and the India-Pakistan military standoff that followed. The NDA and  BJP  will use it as evidence of Prime Minister  Narendra Modi ’s diplomatic prowess. In the event he is not, India will rage, mainly through its media, against the country that prevented it. But beyond that, 1...

The Indian Express  March 14, 2019 For the fourth time in 10 years, China Wednesday stalled, at Pakistan’s behest, India’s bid to list Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist at the United Nations Security Council. New Delhi, which had mounted a diplomatic offensive after the Jaish-e-Mohammad owned up the February 14 Pulwama terror attack that left 40 CRPF personnel dead, said it was “disappointed” by the outcome, but would continue to pursue all available avenues to bring terrorist leaders to justice. Barely an hour before the deadline was to expire at 3 pm New York time — 12.30 am IST — China placed a technical hold, sources said. This means that the proposal will be in deep freeze for the next six months, and if there is a hold again for three months. Thereafter, Beijing will have to either lift the hold or block the listing again. In the next nine months, member countries can provide information to the committee for lifting the hold, and Azh...

The Economic Times March 14, 2019 New Delhi: The 9th round of the India-US Strategic Security Dialogue was held in Washington DC on March 13 and two sides reaffirmed to deny Weapons of Mass Destruction to non-state actors and work towards setting up US nuclear plant in India agreement for which was reached few years back.  The Indian delegation was led by Vijay Gokhale, Foreign Secretary, while the U.S. delegation was led by Andrea Thompson, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.  The two sides exchanged views on a wide range of global security and nonproliferation challenges and reaffirmed their commitment to work together to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems and to deny access to such weapons by terrorists and non-state actors, according to a MEA statement.  The two sides committed to strengthen bilateral security and civil nuclear cooperation, inc...

Business Standard  March 13, 2019       The private sector is scaling down on their new capacity expansion plans, but they have stepped up borrowing for the planned phases, a study by the  Reserve Bank of India  (RBI) has showed. A total capex of Rs 1.49 trillion was estimated to have been incurred by the  private corporate sector  in 2017-18, of which Rs 80,200 crore was from fresh sanctions during the year. “The year marked the seventh successive annual contraction in the private corporate sector’s capex plans. However, the envisaged capex from the pipeline projects already under­taken showed an improvement over the previous year’s pipeline,” the  RBI  study showed. The phasing profile of capex of projects sanctioned by banks indicate that around 38% (Rs 65,000 crore) of the proposed expenditure will be spent in 2017-18, 24% (Rs 41,900 crore) in 2018- 19 and 21% (Rs 36,800 crore) in the year beyond. Around 17% of the total c...

The Hindu March 14, 2019 As the fight against the dreaded terrorist group, the   Islamic State (IS) is drawing to a close , issues such as the future of terrorism in West Asia and beyond and concerns about the human rights of those who had been wittingly or unwittingly drawn into the vortex of such movements offer food for thought. Lost sheen Credible reports point to the IS nearing extinction. What was once described as a formidable ‘Caliphate’ of enormous wealth and with huge potential for expansion is now just a dot on the soil of Syria and Iraq. Ever since it lost control last year over two major cities, Raqqa (Syria) and Mosul (Iraq), it has lost its sheen. For once the U.S.’s strategy of forming a coalition of forces, styled the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), seemed to have paid off. Added to this was the master stroke of drawing substantially on the talent of determined and dedicated Kurdish fighters. A small number of hardened IS men is likely to be still ...

Hindustan Times March 11, 2019 China on Monday said it was only through discussions that a “responsible solution” could come out on the issue of listing Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) leader Masood Azhar as a terrorist at the UN Security Council (UNSC). The Chinese foreign ministry’s comment comes in the backdrop of the US, the UK and France moving a fresh proposal at the UNSC to list Azhar as a global terrorist in the aftermath of the JeM claiming responsibility for the suicide attack in Kashmir’s Pulwama on February 14. According to reports, the resolution was expected to be taken up by the 1267 committee of the UNSC on March 13. China has thrice blocked the move by India and other UN members, interpreted by observers as a result of Beijing-Islamabad’s close ties. “First I would like to say that the UNSC as a main body of the UN has strict standards and rules of procedures... China’s position on the designation of a terrorist by the 1267 Sanctions Committee is cons...

Geo Tv March 12, 2019            Q. You were Pakistan’s high commissioner to India at the time of the Uri attack of 2016. How do you see last month’s standoff, between the two adversaries, in comparison to the one in the aftermath of Uri? A. Unlike Mumbai and Pathankot, both Uri and Pulwama are a part of Indian-occupied Kashmir. The Uri attack occurred in the run-up to elections in Uttar Pradesh, the most populous Indian state, in which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was able to clinch an unprecedented victory. While, the Pulwama attack happened just two months before the Lok SabHa elections in India. It remains to be seen how this plays out for the BJP in upcoming elections. In 2016, New Delhi responded to Uri with the so-called surgical strikes, allegedly deep into our side of the Line of Control (LoC), which we denied. Such low-level military actions are commonplace on both sides along the LoC. The difference this time is that the BJP...