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The Print February 28,2020 Husain Haqqani The grey list of the Financial Action Task Force is meant to coerce countries into complying with international norms on terror financing and money laundering. No country wishes to join Iran and North Korea on the FATF’s black list, which entails sanctions that cut access to the global financial system. Once they are on the grey list, countries make serious efforts to completely shut down access to funds for terrorist groups. But Pakistan, which has gone on the grey list at least thrice just in the last decade, seems to be striving to do just enough to avoid the black list. When a recent FATF meeting extended Pakistan’s grey listing until June 2020, Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi celebrated the decision, saying that India had failed to push Pakistan into FATF’s black list. The reason Pakistan keeps entering the grey list is because of...

The Print February 28, 2020 India’s production lines are being hurt by extended factory shutdowns in China Shares of TVS Motor Co. tumbled as much as 6.7% on Tuesday after India’s third-biggest two-wheeler maker said that a shortage of some parts imported from China may lead to a drop in production this month. TVS isn’t alone. Swathes of Indian businesses that import raw materials from China are bracing for a hit from the coronavirus outbreak that has shuttered plants that feed the global supply chain with all sorts of industrial components. While India has so far reported only three confirmed cases, compared with over 82,000 globally, prolonged disruption in raw-material supplies can delay a recovery in India’s economy — set for its weakest growth in 11 years. Shifting overnight to suppliers elsewhere in Asia isn’t feasible and airlifting parts for transport will bump up the cost of components, according to ICICI Direct. To be sure, there will also be some w...

The Print February 28, 2020 Sensex plunges over 1100 points as coronavirus fears spark global selloff Domestic investor wealth plummeted by nearly Rs 5 lakh crore on Friday as equity markets crashed tracking global equity selloff amid rising uncertainty over the economic impact of coronavirus outbreak. Market capitalisation (m-cap) of BSE-listed companies saw a massive decline after the 30-share index sank 1,100.27 points, or 2.77 per cent, to 38,645.39, and the NSE Nifty cracked 329.50 points, or 2.83 per cent, to 11,303.80. The carnage in the equity market wiped out investor wealth worth Rs 4,65,915.58 crore, taking the total m-cap to Rs 1,47,74,108.50 crore on the BSE. The m-cap of BSE-listed companies stood at Rs 1,52,40,024.08 crore at the end of trading on Thursday. All Sensex components were trading in the red, led by losses in Tata Steel, Tech Mahindra, Infosys, Mahindra and Mahindra, Bajaj Finance, HCL Tech and Reliance Industries. Traders sa...

CGIAR        CE (February, 2020) Artificial intelligence to track pests and diseases in India When Srikanth Rupavatharam saw hundreds of farmers dumping their tomatoes in front of an abandoned market in rural India, he started to rethink his role as an economist.     “Every day, I watched as farmers jumped out of tuk tuks in the morning with piles of tomatoes, but by evening, dumped them on the ground as there were no buyers or the price was too low.     “This heap of rotting tomatoes highlighted to me that the critical issue here was in delaying the shelf life so that farmers could provide a quality crop at harvest and postharvest, and make enough to cover the cost of reaching distant markets for their tomatoes.” This revelation got him thinking about the importance of extension. And, the role of digital tools in getting better information, like market prices or post-harvest techniques, to farmers....