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Business Standard January 23, 2020 Slamming Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan for trying to paint an "alarmist" situation in Kashmir and seeking global intervention to de-escalate tension between   nuclear-armed   India and Pakistan, New Delhi on Thursday said his remarks show "growing sense of frustration" and that the world understands Islamabad's "double standards". External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar also categorically ruled out any third party role on the Kashmir issue, asserting that any issue between India and Pakistan should be resolved bilaterally and the onus to create a conducive atmosphere which could lead to meaningful engagement was on Islamabad. Apart from calling for global intervention to de-escalate tension between India and Pakistan, Khan in Davos said that there were no terror groups left in his country and some terror outfits were operating from Afghanistan. "We are hardly surprised by the conte...

The Financial Express January 24, 2020 At a time when foreign investors are dumping Indian rupee bonds, the government is creating room for more foreign portfolio investment in Indian debt. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Thursday doubled the investment limit for FPIs (foreign portfolio investors) in government and corporate bonds to Rs 1.5 lakh crore, via the Voluntary Retention Route and allowed them to invest in exchange-traded funds (ETF) that invest only in debt instruments. The government also plans to launch the second tranche of its Bharat Bond ETF having mopped up Rs 12,400 crore in December 2019 from the first tranche. Apprehensive of a high budget deficit, that could push up government borrowings and yields, FPIs have been selling rupee bonds – sales have crossed $1.5 billion in January so far on the back of sales in November and December. However, the Bhart Bond ETF — with investment in bonds of state-owned firms – could attract FPI money, market experts said...

Financianl Express January 24, 2020 Given how vital cities are for economic growth—in India, cities contribute anywhere between 59% and 70% of the GDP—the Andhra Pradesh government deciding to have three capitals would seem a boost to urbanisation. The legislature, earlier this week, passed the Andhra Pradesh Decentralisation and Equal Development of All Regions Act, under which, Amravati will be the legislative capital; Visakhapatnam and Kurnool will be the executive and judicial capitals, respectively. The decision breathes new life into the Amaravati project—the Jagan Reddy government had all but scrapped this; given how tens of thousands of crores of investment was at stake, any move to even partly resuscitate the project should be welcome. However, the government really needs to take stock of what it stands to gain, and what the costs would be. Decentralisation has been the theme of the recommendations of many past committees—indeed, in 2010, the Justice BN Srikrishna ...

The Financial Express January 24, 2020 India’s economy appears to be shaking off a slump, as activity in the services and manufacturing sectors expanded for a second straight month in December. The needle on a gauge measuring so-called animal spirits signaled the economy may be taking a turn for the better, as five of the eight high-frequency indicators tracked by Bloomberg News came in stronger last month. The dial was last at the current position in August. “Animal spirits” is a term coined by British economist John Maynard Keynes to refer to investors’ confidence in taking action, and the gauge uses the three-month weighted average to smooth out volatility in the single-month numbers. The nascent recovery would need a helping hand, with expectations building that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will provide some stimulus when she presents the budget Feb. 1. Official forecasts show the economy is set to expand at 5% in the year ending March 2020 — the weakest pace...

Hindustan Times January 23, 2020 Microsoft may soon start ‘forcing’ Indian Google Chrome users to move to its own Bing search engine instead of rival Google. And the company plans to do this by using its Office 365 ProPlus installer. Microsoft confirmed this move in one of the support pages titled ‘Microsoft Search in Bing and Office 365 ProPlus’, stating that with the Version 2002 of Office 365 ProPlus, an extension for Microsoft Search in Bing will be installed, which will make Bing as the default search engine for the Chrome browser. For now, this extension will only be installed for Office 365 ProPlus for certain locations and India is one of them. Other regions include Australia, Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom and the United States. “This extension will be installed with new installations of Office 365 ProPlus or when existing installations of Office 365 ProPlus are updated,” added the page. What’s more is that if you already have Bing as the default search en...

Hindustan Times January 24, 2020 The International Court of Justice has ordered the implementation of emergency measures to protect Myanmar’s minority Muslim Rohingya population from genocide, ruling on a request by The Gambia on Thursday. The Muslim-majority African country has accused Myanmar of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention using so-called “clearance operations” that began in earnest in 2017, resulting in the deaths and rapes of thousands of Rohingya living in western Rakhine State. As many as 740,000 Rohingya were forced to flee for their lives across the border to Bangladesh. The president of the United Nation’s highest tribunal, Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf, ordered Myanmar “to take all measures within its powers” to prevent the killings and attacks on its Rohingya minority, adding the group remains “extremely vulnerable.” He instructed the government to ensure the preservation of evidence and that its military, other armed units or government officials do...

Dawn January 24, 2020 MSM Malaysia Holdings Berhad will buy 130,000 tonnes of raw sugar from India worth 200 million ringgit ($49.20 million) in the first quarter, the company told Reuters. It bought around 88,000 tonnes of raw sugar from India in 2019. MSM is the sugar refining arm of the world’s largest palm oil producer, FGV Holdings, which is a unit of Malaysian state-owned Federal Land Development Authority or Felda. The company did not cite the palm oil dispute as a reason for the increase in purchases. But the two sources, who are familiar with discussions between the company and the government on the purchase, said it was a bid to appease India, which has been urging Malaysia to reduce the trade deficit between the countries. India, the world’s largest edible oil buyer, this month effectively halted Malaysian palm oil imports apparently in retaliation to Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s comments criticising New Delhi over its policy on Kashmir...

Dawn January 24, 2020 THE frosty ties between Pakistan and India are a matter of concern for the international community, primarily because of the fact that two nuclear-armed neighbours locking horns spells an imminent threat to world peace. However, while this country has made several peace overtures to its eastern neighbour, these have nearly all gone unanswered. Therefore, perhaps the international community needs to do much more to facilitate a positive dialogue between Islamabad and New Delhi that can help defuse tensions, and usher in an era of amity in South Asia. In the current testy times, these proposals may be far-fetched, but it is in the face of such challenges that true statesmen rise above the din and make efforts for peace. On Wednesday, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Prime Minister Imran Khan discussed the need for the UN and the US to play a greater role in preventing tensions in South Asia. Moreover, while appearing on a local TV show, the amb...

The Hindu January 24, 2020 The viral illness in China that has sickened hundreds of people and prompted Chinese authorities to effectively shut down three cities is not yet a global health emergency, the World Health Organisation said Thursday. The U.N. health agency issued its evaluation after Chinese authorities moved to lock down three cities indefinitely earlier in the day and canceled major public celebrations and gatherings in Beijing during the Lunar New Year holiday period to try to contain the evolving outbreak. During a news conference in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that while the epidemic was clearly a crisis in China, “it has not yet become a global health emergency. It may yet become one.” T he steps taken by China to shut down cities with more than 18 million people are unprecedented in public health, as countries typically shy away from such extreme measures. Tedros said that while WHO’s role is to provide science-base...

The Indian Express' January 24, 2020 The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is planning to set up a data lake project for improving surveillance to monitor and analyse social media posts to keep a tab on possible market manipulations. The regulator is in the process of acquiring the technology and has already floated tenders for the same. Speaking at an event, Sebi chairman Ajay Tyagi said a lot of improvement and efficiency can be brought by using advanced technology and data analytics in surveillance of capital markets. “Sebi has already planned (a) data lake project to augment analytical capability with advanced analytical tools, namely artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), deep learning, big data analytics, pattern recognition, processing of structured and unstructured data, text mining and natural language processing, etc,” said Tyagi. A data lake is a centralised repository that allows anyone to store all structured and unstructured...

The Indian Express January 24, 2020 The changing geopolitical environment, including an imminent ceasefire deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan, has earned Pakistan diplomatic support from the United States and other western countries at a meeting of the Asia Pacific Joint Group of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in Beijing. At the meeting Wednesday, Pakistan defended the country’s compliance report on combating terror-financing networks. Diplomatic sources present at the meeting told The Indian Express: “It was a bit surprising the way US, UK, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and even Japan, all of them favoured Pakistan. There is a strong case against Pakistan, as has been since it was put on the grey list, but it was geopolitics at play…seems the changing geopolitical environment helped Pakistan.” Sources said Pakistan had an important role in brokering a ceasefire deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan, negotiated this week at Doha with a US official tea...

The Indian Express January 24, 2020 The Union Law Ministry responded positively to a request from the Election Commission seeking legal powers to resume linking of voter cards with Aadhaar numbers but asked the EC to “enumerate” the safeguards in place to prevent “theft, interception and hijacking” of data, The Indian Express has learnt. In its response last month, the EC sent a detailed list of safeguards at both the application and infrastructure levels — and said that the electoral roll database system “does not enter” the Aadhaar ecosystem. Last August, in a letter addressed to the Law Secretary, the EC had proposed amendments to the Representation of the People Act, 1950, and the Aadhaar Act, 2016, for powers to collect and use Aadhaar data for “cleaning” voters’ list as a “back-end exercise”. According to the proposed amendment to the Representation of the People Act, the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) may ask those seeking to enter the voters’ list and ...