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Hindustan Times April 30,2020 In new court filings WhatsApp has alleged that an “Israeli spyware company used US-based servers and was ‘deeply involved’ in carrying out mobile phone hacks of 1,400 WhatsApp users, including senior government officials, journalists, and human rights activists”. New claims emerging about the NSO Group allege that they are responsible for serious human rights violations, including hacking more than a dozen Indian journalists and Rwandan dissidents. NSO Group has maintained for years that its spyware is bought by governments to track down terrorists and criminals and they have no knowledge of who exactly these governments are. Reports have it that Mexico and Saudi Arabia have used NSO’s spyware. The lawsuit filed by WhatsApp last year against NSO Group, first of a kind by any tech company, has revealed more technical details about how Pegasus (the hacking software) is “allegedly deployed against targets”. In court filings last week, What...

Hindustan Times  April 30,2020 US intelligence agencies have concluded that the new coronavirus was “not manmade or genetically modified” but say they are still examining whether the origins of the pandemic trace to contact with infected animals or an accident at a Chinese lab. The statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the clearinghouse for the web ofspy agencies, comes as President Donald Trump and his allies have touted the as-yet-unproven theory that an infectious disease lab in Wuhan, the epicenter of the Chinese outbreak, was the source of the global pandemic that has killed more than 220,000 worldwide. In recent days the Trump administration has sharpened his rhetoric on China, accusing the geopolitical foe and vital trading partner of failing to do act swiftly enough to stop the spread of the virus that causes Covid-19 or sound the alarm to the world about the outbreak. “The Intelligence Community also concurs with the wide scienti...

Hindustan Times May 01, 2020 Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday held a series of meetings to discuss strategies to boost the economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and attract more foreign investments into India as well as promote local investments. He reviewed the state of investments, the defence and aerospace sector and the mine and mineral sector. An official statement said various strategies to bring investments into India on a fast-track mode and to promote Indian domestic sectors were discussed in the first meeting. The high-level meetings come amid the ongoing global backlash against China. Several companies are now looking for new bases to set up their businesses, according to reports. Detailed discussions were also held on guiding states to evolve their strategies and to be more proactive in attracting investments, the statement said. Reform initiatives undertaken by the various ministries should continue unabated and action should be taken in a time-boun...

Hindustan Times  Shishir Gupta May 01, 2020 The decision by Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government to delete nearly 4,000 names from its terror watch list was part of a well-orchestrated effort to scrub its terror record clean not just at home, but also at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), people familiar with the developments told Hindustan Times. Islamabad has told a visiting team of a UNSC monitoring committee that it had been unable to act against numerous individuals listed in its sanctions list because the UN panel had given “insufficient information”. The UNSC 1267 Sanctions List has 130 names from Pakistan. Islamabad, however, acknowledges the presence of only 19 of them including Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Saeed. It has already moved the UNSC to delist 6 terrorists including Matiur Rehman, described in UN records of 2013 as the chief operational commander of terror group Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, a top official in North Block that houses...

Financial Express Sunil Jain  May 01, 2020 If the government continues with an effective lockdown for most parts of the country—the so-called green zones account for under a fifth of all economic activity—chances are the ILO’s estimate that 400 million people in the country could slip into poverty may just turn out to be correct; whether it is momentary or longer-lasting will depend on how long it takes for people to start working again. An analysis by Shweta Saini and Pulkit Khatri in this newspaper yesterday (bit.ly/2VOrJYu) showed that just a 25% fall in incomes could send as many as 354 million Indians below the poverty line. Indeed, in the short run, the impact will be even greater since, thanks to the lockdown, the majority of people are facing much larger income shocks—in many cases, especially in the informal sector, they have lost their jobs. That is the reason why migrant workers thronged the borders in tens of thousands, desperate to go home; with no money comi...

Bloomberg May 1,2020 Bill Gates, whose foundation is focusing  its efforts  to fight the coronavirus, doesn’t think life will return to normal until there’s a viable vaccine that can stop its spread. The good news is that it may take less time than many have been predicting. “Dr. Anthony Fauci has said he thinks it’ll take around eighteen months to develop a coronavirus vaccine,” Gates wrote in a  blog post  published Thursday. “I agree with him, though it could be as little as 9 months or as long as two years.” “I’m particularly excited by two new approaches that some of the candidates are taking: RNA and DNA vaccines,” he wrote. “It might be a bit hard to see right now, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel.” Key Quotes: “For COVID-19, financing development is not an issue. Governments and other organizations (including our foundation and an amazing alliance called the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations) have made i...

The Hindu April 30,2020 COVID-19 patients who took the antiviral remdesivir recovered about 30% faster than those on a placebo, the results of a major clinical trial showed on Wednesday, as the top U.S. epidemiologist hailed the drug’s “clear-cut” benefit. The finding represents the first time any medication has been shown to improve outcomes against the COVID-19 illness, which has claimed more than 2,20,000 lives globally and ground the world economy to a halt. The U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which oversaw the trial, said that patients on the drug made by Gilead Sciences had a 31% faster time to recovery than those on a placebo. “Specifically, the median time to recovery was 11 days for patients treated with remdesivir compared with 15 days for those who received placebo,” it said. For Anthony Fauci, who leads the NIAID and has been one of the government’s point people during the crisis, “the data shows that remdesi...

First Post Apr 30, 2020 New Delhi:  Markets regulator SEBI has penalised two persons after finding them guilty of releasing unpublished price sensitive information related to financial results of Ambuja Cements through WhatsApp messages prior to the official announcement by the company. In an order, the regulator levied a fine of Rs 15 lakh each on Neeraj Kumar Agarwal and Shruti Vishal Vora. Earlier, the regulator penalised them for releasing unpublished price sensitive information (UPSI) related to the financial results of Bajaj Auto through WhatsApp messages. Some news reports had referred to the circulation of UPSI in various private WhatsApp groups about certain companies ahead of their official announcements to the respective stock exchanges. Against this backdrop, SEBI initiated a preliminary examination in the matter during which search and seizure operation for 26 entities of WhatsApp group were conducted and about 190 devices, records, among others, were s...

First Post April 30,2020 New Delhi:  Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), India's largest company, on Thursday said its board has approved hiving off its $75 billion worth oil-to-chemicals business into a separate division to enable the sale of 20 percent stake in the unit to Saudi national oil company Aramco. The hiving off will be subject to the approval of the National Company Law Tribunal. After the approval, the , business will become a separate vertical with independent balance sheet just like the conglomerate's digital arm, Jio Platforms. RIL had organised all its digital businesses including Reliance Jio that has 388 million telecom subscribers, into Jio Platforms. It last week agreed to sell a 9.99 percent stake in Jio Platforms to Facebook Inc for $5.7 billion. RIL Board "approved a Scheme of Arrangement for transfer of O2C Undertaking of the company to Reliance O2C Ltd as a going concern on slump sale basis for a lump sum consideration equal to the income t...