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Firstpost march 18, 2020 Electric equipment maker Aplab on Wednesday said it will reclassify debt-ridden Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (ZEEL) from promoter category to public category. The company's board is scheduled to meet on 26 March to approve the reclassification process, Aplab said in a regulatory filing.  For the quarter ended 31 December, 2019, stake of ZEEL in Aplab had fallen to 9.50 percent to 475,000 shares.  "We hereby inform you that a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Company will be held on Thursday, 26 March, 2020 to approve the reclassification process of ZEEL from Promoter Category to Public Category and other matters," it said. Presently, the 'Promoter & Promoter Group' holds 58.97 percent stake in Aplab.  Earlier, ZEEL held 13.21 lakh shares, comprising 26.42 percent of the paid-up capital of Aplab.  ZEEL had acquired these share in 2013. Reference :  https://www.firstpost.com/business/aplab-to-remove-de

Hindustan Times March 19, 2020 The Centre on Wednesday issued a gazette notification for the adaptation of 37 central laws in the Concurrent List for the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.  The gazette notification, issued by the Union Home Ministry’s Department of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh Affairs, comes into force with immediate effect. It contains the 37 central laws including the representation of people act, the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, the protection of human rights act, the prevention of corruption act and the Indian Penal Code among others.  On February 26, the Cabinet gave its nod to issue an order which will allow 37 central laws in the Concurrent List to be implemented in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Last August, the Centre announced the abrogation of Article 370 provisions for Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcated the state into two Union territories.  The new territories of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh came into being on Oct

Bussinessline March 18, 2020 The slew of measures being taken by the government to fight the coronavirus pandemic has put textile manufacturers in a spot. While on the one hand the sector is struggling to continue with its production schedule as offtake has almost come to a halt, on the other the pressure to repay its dues to banks is forcing the industry to appeal to the government for a one-year moratorium on repayment of principal and interest on loan. “It is affecting every sphere of life globally, be it manufacturing or business,” said Ashwin Chandran, Chairman, The Southern India Mills’ Association (SIMA).  Stating that the situation is taking a turn for the worse due to closure of malls and retail showrooms, he said, “The textile and clothing sector is labour and capital intensive. A majority of workers are migrant labourers; they have now started to return to their native places. With total disruption in workflow and production schedule, the industry is facing its w

The Hindu March 18, 2020 Joe Biden swept to victory in Florida, Illinois and Arizona on Tuesday, increasingly pulling away with a Democratic presidential primary upended by the coronavirus and building pressure on Bernie Sanders to abandon his campaign. The former vice-president’s third big night in as many weeks came amid tremendous uncertainty as the Democratic contest collides with efforts to slow the spread of the virus that has shut down large swaths of American life. Polls were shuttered in Ohio, and although balloting went ahead as scheduled in the three other States, election workers and voters reported problems. Still, Biden’s quest for his party’s nomination now seems well within reach. His trio of wins doubled his delegate haul over Sanders, giving the former vice-president a nearly insurmountable lead. Top Democratic leaders and donors have also increasingly lined up behind Biden as the best option to square off against President Donald Trump in November.

Millchronicle March 18, 2020 A Muslim Brotherhood activist of Egyptian origin based in New York, United States made a video urging his followers to infect the enemies with coronavirus, and said that God will be helping them if they work properly. Bahgat Saber who has 143,197 followers on Facebook, vowed that if he gets sick with coronavirus, he will go to the Egyptian consulate in New York to infect everyone he can. He then urged his followers who are sick with coronavirus or any flu to purposefully meet the government and intelligence officials, police and military officers to infect them. He made the speech in Arabic for his fellow Brotherhood members, which was later translated in English by The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).  Saber said, “Whoever has flu-like symptoms – cold, fever, sneezing – should pay a visit to his ‘friends’ who work for Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s government. The moment you get flu-like symptoms like a cold or a fever, go to the publ

Hindustan Times March 18, 2020 CanSino Biologics Inc. said it received Chinese regulatory approval to start human trials of a vaccine against the novel coronavirus, another example of a potential weapon against the illness being fast-tracked for testing as the global death toll escalates and nations impose lockdowns on their citizens. The vaccine, co-developed by the Hong Kong-listed company and China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences, will undergo clinical trials in Wuhan, CanSino Biologics said in a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Wednesday. Wuhan is the epicentre for the pandemic that has spread to all corners of the planet, infecting more than 190,000 people and killing more than 7,800. Progress is occurring at unprecedented speed in developing vaccines as the highly infectious pathogen that causes the respiratory ailment known as Covid-19 looks unlikely to be stamped out through containment measures alone. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administrat

Hindustan Times March 19, 2020 Nearly 25 million jobs could be lost worldwide due to the coronavirus pandemic, but an internationally coordinated policy response can help lower the impact on global unemployment, according to a UN agency. In its preliminary assessment report titled “COVID-19 and world of work: Impacts and responses”, the International Labour Organization (ILO) calls for urgent, large-scale and coordinated measures across three pillars - protecting workers in the workplace, stimulating the economy and employment, and supporting jobs and incomes. The ILO said these measures include extending social protection, supporting employment retention (i.e short-time work, paid leave, other subsidies), and financial and tax relief, including for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. It also proposes fiscal and monetary policy measures, and lending and financial support for specific economic sectors. The economic and labour crisis created by the COVID-19 pan

Livemint March 19, 2020 As Yes Bank exits Nifty Indices on 19th March and S&P BSE Indices on 20th March, mutual funds have decided to de facto seggregate their exposure to Yes Bank held through Index Funds and Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). The government reconstruction plan for Yes Bank locks in existing investors with more than 100 shares of Yes Bank for a period of 3 years. Such investors can only sell up to 25% of their shares. However this has placed index funds and ETFs in a quandary because they are mandated to track indices and change their composition when indices change. As Yes Bank exits all indices, they can no longer hold the stock as per their mandate. Fund houses have marked their holdings of Yes Bank to zero on 16th March said a senior executive at a mutual fund who declined to be named. They have decided to address the issue of lock-in by separating out their exposure to Yes Bank. Existing investors will be given the amount realised after selling Yes Ban

The Wire March 17, 2020 The epidemic of the novel coronavirus disease, COVID-19, instils fear and anxiety for four reasons: rapid spread, reports of many deaths, lack of specific treatment and gaps in our knowledge about its spread and behaviour. The current epidemic is unlike all previous ones mighty spreader, moderate killer. Pandemic influenza H1N1 (swine flu) on the other hand was a rapid spreader but weak killer. India has faced several such “new disease” outbreaks in the last three decades. How has India fared against them? What lessons have these outbreaks taught us? In 1984 HIV reached India, unnoticed. While in other countries the public health system was tracking and tackling the epidemic, the lack of public health infrastructure was sorely felt in India. In 1985, the Vellore Christian Medical College’s (CMC) Centre of Excellence in Virology, funded by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), established a cell to investigate the epidemic. HIV infections wer

Businessline March 19, 2020 India needs to gear up its testing facilities and number of beds to deal with pandemics such as the coronavirus, which seem to break out once a decade, if not earlier. At first glance, the extraordinarily low incidence of the novel coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in India, with 147 positive cases and three fatalities so far, would seem reassuring. However, it coincides rather too neatly with a low number of testing facilities. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has, between March 1-15, availed of 51 of its 106 Viral Research Diagnostic Labs (VRDLs) for random testing 20 samples per lab, of patients suffering from Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI) and Influenza Like Illness (ILI).  As 500 tested samples turned out to be negative for Covid-19, the conclusion is that there is no community transmission yet, and the situation in India is way better than China or Italy. The ICMR Director Balram Bhargava has accordingly dismissed WHO

Indian Express March 20, 2020 The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) ON Thursday arrested Rahul Kothari, former director of Rotomac Global and son of Rotomac promoter Vikram Kothari, for his alleged involvement and manipulating bank statements to obtain bank funds. It also arrested the managing director of Frost International Uday Desai and CEO Sujay Desai for fraudulent round tripping of funds and manipulating financial statements to get funds from banks. The Rotomac group has defaulted on loans of around Rs 4,000 crore, while the Frost International group has defaulted on liabilities of Rs 3,500 crore, according to the SFIO. “During the course of investigation, it has been revealed that the companies were indulging in fraudulent round tripping of funds abusing the scheme of Merchanting Trade,” said an official note reviewed by The Indian Express.  Merchanting trade is the activity of shipping products from one foreign country to another foreign country. Bot

Huffpost March 20, 2020  The Telangana state government offered to help the Modi government build an intrusive, searchable system to build and track 360-degree profiles of India’s 1.2 billion residents without having to rely on Aadhaar, documents reviewed by HuffPost India establish. On October 19, 2018, Jayesh Ranjan, Telangana’s Principal Secretary of Department of Information Technology, Electronics and Communications, told his counterpart Ajay Prakash Sawhney, Secretary at the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, that Telangana had already implemented such a system that live-tracked 30 million residents in the state, and was happy to help the Union government scale it into a system that could profile and track lives of each of India’s over 1.2 billion residents.  Telangana’s offer was extended barely three weeks after the Indian Supreme Court had upheld the constitutional validity of Aadhaar, but significantly curtailed its use for applications