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Times Now Digital June 3, 2020 New Delhi:  Reacting to the United Nations’ report that Pakistan-based terror outfits Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Toiba are engaged in trafficking fighters into Afghanistan, India on Tuesday said that the report vindicates New Delhi's long-standing position that Pakistan remains the epicentre of international terrorism.  “The international community should hold Pakistan accountable and seek sustained, verifiable and irreversible action by Pakistan against terrorism. India will continue to contribute and support all efforts towards securing peace, security and stability in Afghanistan,” Ministry of External Affairs said. External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said that the terrorist groups and their bosses continue to operate from Pakistan with state support. India urged the international community to pressurise Pakistan to take sustained, verifiable and irreversible action against terrorism. "Pakistan has failed in

REUTERS June 3, 2020 Jonathan Stemple (Reuters) - Google was sued on Tuesday in a proposed class action accusing the internet search company of illegally invading the privacy of millions of users by pervasively tracking their internet use through browsers set in “private” mode. The lawsuit seeks at least $5 billion, accusing the Alphabet Inc unit of surreptitiously collecting information about what people view online and where they browse, despite their using what Google calls Incognito mode. According to the complaint filed in the federal court in San Jose, California, Google gathers data through Google Analytics, Google Ad Manager and other applications and website plug-ins, including smartphone apps, regardless of whether users click on Google-supported ads. This helps Google learn about users’ friends, hobbies, favorite foods, shopping habits, and even the “most intimate and potentially embarrassing things” they search for online, the complaint said. Google “c

The Indian Express June 3, 2020 Prabha Raghvan, Aashish Aryan While the Indian industry has been asked to set new targets towards building self-reliance in furniture, footwear and air conditioners, the government has parallelly begun laying the groundwork to achieve this in at least 10 promising sectors. Here, the emphasis is on targeting the quality of domestically made products so that “unnecessary” imports can be reduced in these sectors and the nation can find stronger footing in the global value chain. Sectors already identified by the Department of Promotion for Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) in consultation with other ministries include capital goods and machinery, mobile and electronics, gems and jewellery, pharmaceuticals, textiles and garments. India has a natural advantage in these sectors, which can grow to become a strength for the country, according to DPIIT Secretary Guruprasad Mohapatra. “A lot of work has to be done. Import dependence has to be reduced t

Financial Express June 2, 2020 Samrat Sharma   Though the unemployment rate in May stood at the same as a month ago, the labour participation rate improved from 35.6% to 38.2% and the employment rate improved from 27.2% to 29.2%. The partial lifting of the nationwide lockdown led to crores of people getting their jobs back in the month of May. In May alone, nearly 2.1 crore people got new jobs, however, the unemployment rate is still hanging at 23.5 per cent – much higher than pre-pandemic levels, according to CMIE. The rise in employment has brought cheer in the job market as the previous month saw a steep contraction in jobs. In April, the lockdown was strict and most of the businesses and industries were at a standstill. Consequently, the number of employed persons fell by around 11.4 crore. Though the unemployment rate in May stood at the same as a month ago, the labour participation rate improved from 35.6 per cent to 38.2 per cent and the employment rate improved from

The Print June 2, 2020 ANIRBAN NAG   Mumbai:  Five Indian states contributing nearly 27% of the country’s gross domestic product are leading a recovery in the economy as it slowly emerges from the world’s biggest lockdown, a study by Elara Securities Inc. shows. Kerala, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Haryana and Karnataka have seen a pickup in activity, based on an analysis of indicators such as power consumption, traffic movement, arrival of farm products at wholesale markets and Google mobility data, Garima Kapoor, an economist at Elara Securities in Mumbai, wrote in a note. Some of the most industrialized states such as Maharashtra and Gujarat were trailing because of tough measures still in place to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, she said. India will begin a  phased lifting  of the nationwide lockdown from June 8, allowing shopping malls, restaurants and places of worship to reopen in areas where virus infections are under control. “The best stimulus India can have is resumption

Hindustan Times June 1, 2020 Rhythma Kaul As many as 80% of the health care workers (HCWs) on six or more prophylactic doses of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) were not infected by Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), according to a new pre-print study by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) -- a finding that could establishing the prophylactic properties of the drug against Covid-19, even as several international studies have dismissed its utility as a therapeutic. The study results were one of the driving factors behind India last week expanding the use of HCQ as a prophylactic drug beyond health care workers in Covid-19 hospitals and close contacts of infected people to frontline workers such as surveillance staff deployed in containment zones, and paramilitary or police personnel involved in Covid-19 related activities. The results are based on a case control study for which participants were randomly drawn from

Hindustan Times Dated 01, 2020 Prashasati Singh Police fired tear gas outside the White House late Sunday as major US cities were put under curfew to suppress rioting as anti-racism protestors again took to the streets to voice fury at police brutality. With the Trump administration branding instigators of six nights of rioting as domestic terrorists, there were more confrontations between protestors and police and fresh outbreaks of looting. Violent clashes erupted repeatedly  in a small park next to the White House, with authorities using tear gas, pepper spray and flash bang grenades to disperse crowds who lit several large fires and damaged property. Local US leaders appealed to citizens to give constructive outlet to their rage over the death of an unarmed black man in Minneapolis, while night-time curfews were imposed in cities including Washington, Los Angeles and Houston. One closely watched protest was outside the state capitol in Minneapolis’ twin city of St. Pa

The Hindu June 01, 2020 Published: Rahul Karmakar Foreign experts may be flown in to contain  the blowout at a natural gas-producing well  of Oil India Limited (OIL) near a national park in eastern Assam’s Tinsukia district. This is the second such blowout, or uncontrolled escape of gas, since 2005, when global fire-fighting experts had to be flown in to control a blaze at an abandoned oil well in Dibrugarh district’s Dikom. The 2005 blowout took about 45 days to control. The blowout at the exploration major’s Baghjan well happened at 10:24 a.m. on May 27. “We hope to bring the situation under control by Thursday and would be issuing a public statement every morning from Monday on the progress during the past 24 hours,” an OIL spokesperson said from the company’s headquarters in Dibrugarh district’s Duliajan. He added that OIL had been parallelly consulting three U.S. expert groups for inputs on capping the well from where gas has not stopped blowing out and falling

The Indian Express Dated June 1, 2020 The US will consider rejoining the World Health Organization if it ends corruption and reliance on  China , the White House said on Sunday. President Donald Trump on Friday terminated America’s relationship with the WHO and accused the global health body of being hand in glove with China  in sharing inaccurate information to the world about the  coronavirus   pandemic  that has killed more than 370,000 people globally. “The WHO needs to reform. What the president said, if the WHO reforms and ends the corruption and ends the reliance on China, the US will very seriously consider coming back,”US National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien told ABC News. The US has said that it will spend the money, over USD 400 million which it gives to the WHO, on other international public health bodies. “In the meantime, we’re going to take that USD 400 million that the US spends, compared to the USD 40 million that the Chinese spends on the WHO. And we’

Business Line  June 01, 2020 Proposal allows New Delhi to defer commitment on opening up market Largest trading bloc To urge India back to the negotiations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), its 15 member countries have offered New Delhi the option of deferring commitments related to opening up its market. This means, India would not have to make any commitment on this crucial issue at the time of signing the agreement, according to a diplomat from a member country. “The deferral means that India does not need to worry about RCEP’s impact on the broadening of its trade deficit with China and other member countries when it signs the RCEP agreement,” the diplomat told  BusinessLine . India quit talks with the RCEP — which includes the 10-member ASEAN, China, Japan, Australia, South Korea and New Zealand — in November 2019, as it could not agree on crucial issues including the level of market opening being demanded by the members, especially China