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NDTV: July 29, 2019 Link:  https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/iran-says-britains-seizure-of-its-oil-tanker-breaches-nuclear-deal-2076723

Economic Times: PTI: July 30, 2019 Even as more and more crippled banks come out of the dud asset tunnel, the heightening growth slowdown and the lingering crisis at non-banking lenders pose fresh challenges to their asset quality, warns a report.  In a report, which comes months after GDP growth slipped to a five-year low at 5.8 percent for the March quarter, international rating agency Moody's said it expects growth to be "weaker" in the next 12-18 months, without quantifying its growth expectation.  "While banks' operating environment will stay stable, the slowdown poses challenges to their asset quality," Alka Anbarasu, a senior credit analyst at the agency warned Monday.  She said growth moderation can lead to creation of a fresh bad loan mess in the retail, and small and medium enterprise segments.  The agency said the slowdown comes at a time when at a time when banks are recovering from legacy non-performing loans, which at the ...

By Fawaz Shaheen, The Quint Dated: July 28, 2019 On 8 July 2019, Home Minister Amit Shah proposed the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act in parliament and on 24 July it was passed in the Lok Sabha. It is now in the Rajya Sabha where Opposition MPs are demanding that it must be sent to a select committee for review. The bill seeks to amend the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), which is India’s primary anti-terror legislation. The proposed amendment makes three key changes in the law. Two of these are largely technical, having to do with additional powers granted under the act to officers of the National Investigation Agency. Ambiguity Behind the ‘Terrorist’ Tag Section 35 of the UAPA currently empowers the central government to designate any organisation or group as a terrorist organisation if it believes that they are “involved in terrorism.” This effectively means that the organisation is then banned and all its activities become unlawful. Anyone who...

Live Mint, July 29, 2019 With India’s plans for its inaugural overseas bond sale shrouded in confusion, investors are assessing the government’s options for the $10 billion offering. The departure of the official handling the sale and reports of opposition from the prime minister’s office have left investors wondering if India will press ahead with a foreign-currency debt sale, opt for the issuance of rupee-denominated notes known as Masala bonds, or ease foreign ownership limits on local markets instead. On Sunday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was quoted by the Economic Times as saying that her office isn’t reviewing the plan, which has faced criticism from the start. Yields on the benchmark 10-year bond climbed 16 basis points last week, the most since last April, as traders speculated that the government could instead end up selling more local debt. “Investors want clarity, clear communication and better visibility," said Sergey Dergachev, senior portfolio man...

Indian Express, July 29, 2019 An inter-ministerial committee (IMC) that was set up to assess the viability of virtual currencies has recommended that India should ban private cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. The detailed report of the IMC was submitted on February 28 but it was made public only on July 23. It is available on the Department of Economic Affairs’ website. What are virtual currencies? A virtual currency is a digital representation of value that can be digitally traded and functions as (a) a medium of exchange, and/ or (b) a unit of account, and/or (c) a store of value, but, unlike fiat currency like the rupee, it is not legal tender and does not have the backing of a government. A cryptocurrency is a subset of virtual currencies, and is decentralised, and protected by cryptography. What are Distributed Ledger Technologies and Blockchain? Imagine a small group of school friends maintaining a list of transactions among themselves, but with a twist: Instead of h...

The Dawn, July 28, 2019 The Taliban said on Sunday they will not hold direct talks with Afghan government and rejected a statement from a senior minister about plans to hold the meeting within the next two weeks, a senior Taliban official said. "Intra-Afghan talks will start only after a foreign force withdrawal is announced," said Suhail Shaheen, a spokesman for the Taliban's political office in Qatar. On Saturday, Afghanistan's state minister for peace affairs Abdul Salam Rahimi said the government would be represented by a 15-member delegation during direct talks with the Taliban "in the coming two weeks". The Taliban have been holding peace talks with the United States (US) for nearly a year but have refused to meet with the government, which it views as a puppet regime. US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who is currently visiting Kabul, tweeted that another round of "intra-Afghan" talks will occur "after we conclude our own agreemen...

Hindustan Times July 29, 2019 Rio de Janeiro, July 27 (IANS) India along with foreign ministers of BRICS member states expressed concern over the heightened tensions in the Gulf region that has led to Iran and Britain seizing each others’ oil tankers with around 45 Indian sailors on board waiting to be released. The ministers, meeting ahead of the BRICS summit in November in Brasilia that will see Prime Minister Narendra Modi attending, also condemned terrorism including “terror attacks in some BRICS countries”. This was an obvious reference to India that witnessed a terror attack in Pulwama on February 14 this year, orchestrated by the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), that led to the killing of 40 paramilitary personnel. The ministers, who included Gen. V.K. Singh from India who was standing in for External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, Wang Yi of China, Sergey Lavrov of Russia, and Ernesto Araujo of Brazil, and South Africa’s Naledi Pandor, also “reiterated support...

By Arun Mohan Sukumar The Hindu, July 29, 2019 New technologies have a curious history of finding their way into the crosshairs of international politics. ‘5G’ is no different. In many respects, the dilemma facing Prime Minister Narendra Modi — to embrace Huawei and other Chinese purveyors of 5G-enabled telecommunications infrastructure, or to salvage the political relationship with the United States — is similar to the one faced by Rajiv Gandhi in the 1980s. Then, India had sought for itself a “supercomputer” from, among others, Japan. Instead, it was dealt a bad hand by the U.S., and made to settle eventually for an American machine that belonged to an older, slower generation of computers. The lessons from that moment in history are instructive, and Indian policymakers would do well to heed them. The late 1980s saw the waning of Cold War tensions on account of the Soviet Union’s inability to stand toe-to-toe with the military might of the U.S. But U.S. President Ronald Reagan...