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The Indian Express August 25, 2020 The Assam government on Tuesday said it has extended the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA) in the state for six more months with effect from August 28. The state has been declared a “disturbed area” on account of recent insurgent attacks on security forces in the Northeast and recovery of illegal arms and ammunition from different areas of Assam, an official statement said. Many civil society groups and activists have been demanding the withdrawal of the draconian law from the state. The AFSPA, which empowers security forces to conduct operations, arrest anyone anywhere without prior notice, has been continuing in Assam since November 1990. It is renewed every six months. https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5323661551769063329&useLegacyBlogger=true#editor/target=post;postID=5821161791944181868

The Indian Express August 25, 2020 Responding to an outcry from medical experts, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn on Tuesday apologised for overstating the life-saving benefits of treating COVID-19 patients with convalescent plasma. Scientists and medical experts have been pushing back against the claims about the treatment since President Donald Trump’s announcement on Sunday that the FDA had decided to issue emergency authorisation for convalescent plasma, taken from patients who have recovered from the coronavirus and rich in antibodies. Trump hailed the decision as a historic breakthrough even though the treatment’s value has not been established. The announcement on the eve of Trump’s Republican National Convention raised suspicions that it was politically motivated to offset critics of the president’s handling of the pandemic. Hahn had echoed Trump in saying that 35 more people out of 100 would survive the coronavirus if they were tr

Hindustan Times August 20, 2020 Around the time New Delhi and Islamabad scrambled fighter jets at their borders following India’s airstrike on a terror camp in Balakot in February last year, Pakistani spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) asked Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) operatives in Jammu and Kashmir to find out and pass on information on the location of Indian Air Force (IAF) bases, according to a charge sheet filed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in the Pulwama terror attack case on Tuesday. The audacious February 14 strike by the Jaish in southern Kashmir’s Pulwama killed 40 Indian security personnel, triggered the IAF action against the terror camp deep inside Pakistan 12 days later, resulted in a dogfight between fighter jets of the two nations on February 27, and brought them on the brink of a war. In its 13,500-page charge sheet filed in a special NIA court in Jammu, NIA named 19 people, including Jaish leader Masood Azhar and four of his relatives, f

Hindustan Times August 26, 2020 India hit out at Pakistan for its litany of lies at the United Nations after Islamabad’s UN envoy claimed to have given a statement in a Security Council meeting not open to non-Council members and said that the biggest sponsor of cross-border terrorism against it now tries to “masquerade” itself as a victim of terror. Calling out Pakistan’s lie that it has been a target of cross-border terrorism for decades, India said “a lie repeated a hundred times will not become truth. The biggest sponsor of cross-border terrorism against India now tries to masquerade itself as a victim of terrorism by India,” India’s Permanent Mission to the UN said on Monday. The Pakistan Mission falsely claimed that its UN envoy Munir Akram gave a statement at a Security Council debate on Report of the Secretary General on Threats to International Peace and Security posed by Terrorism Actions. However, the Security Council meeting on threats to international peace and s

Hindustan Times August 26, 2020 A group of more than 2,000 online sellers has filed an antitrust case against Amazon in India, alleging the US. company favours some retailers whose online discounts drive independent vendors out of business, a legal filing seen by Reuters showed. The case presents a new regulatory challenge for Amazon in India, where it has committed $6.5 billion in investment but is battling a complex regulatory environment. In January, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) had ordered an investigation of Amazon and rival Flipkart, owned by Walmart, over alleged violations of competition law and certain discounting practices, which Amazon is challenging, according to court filings. In the latest case, the All India Online Vendors Association, members of which sell goods on Amazon and Flipkart, allege Amazon engages in unfair business practices. Reuters was first to report the case filing on Wednesday. The group alleges that Amazon India’s wholesale

Hindustan Times  August 27, 2020 China’s Alibaba Group has put on hold plans to invest in Indian companies, two sources aware of the plans told Reuters, amid souring business relations and rising political tension between the two nations after a clash on their Himalayan border. Alibaba, which has fuelled the growth of several Indian start-ups, will not put in fresh funds to expand its investments in the country for at least six months, the sources said. However, there are no plans to reduce its stakes or exit investments, they added. The sources declined to be identified as the talks are private. Alibaba did not respond to a request for comment. The Chinese conglomerate and its affiliates Alibaba Capital Partners and Ant Group have invested more than $2 billion in Indian companies since 2015 and participated in funding rounds of at least another $1.8 billion, according to data from PitchBook, which tracks private market financing. Hitting the brakes could slow fundrai

Hindustan Times  August 27, 200 The United States on Wednesday announced restrictions against Chinese individuals and firms involved in the “large-scale reclamation, construction, or militarization of disputed outposts” in the South China Sea (SCS). These are first SCS-centric curbs announced by the Trump administration after a recent shift in policy from indifference to a full-fledged embrace of an international tribunal’s 2016 order rejecting all of China’s claims in the South China Sea. “Today, the Department of State will begin imposing visa restrictions on  People’s Republic of China (PRC) individuals responsible for, or complicit in, either the large-scale reclamation, construction, or militarization of disputed outposts in the South China Sea, or the P RC’s use of coercion against Southeast Asian claimants to inhibit their access to offshore resources,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement. The department of commerce announced it was adding 24 Chinese

Hindustan Times  August 27, 2020 UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres will renew his call to India and other G20 countries to invest in a clean, sustainable transition as they recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, during his virtual address to The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). Guterres will deliver the 19th Darbari Seth Memorial lecture on August 28 organised by TERI, a global think-tank focusing on a broad range of sustainable development and climate-related issues, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters on Wednesday. In his lecture titled ‘The rise of renewables: shining a light on a sustainable future’, Guterres will renew “his call on G20 countries, including India, to invest in a clean, sustainable transition as they recover from the Covid-19 pandemic”. G20 consists of 19 individual countries -- including the US, Russia, China, Japan, Australia, Saudi -- plus the European Union. Dujarric said Guterres is expected to say that as governments mobilise tr

The telegraph Online  August 27, 2020 Former RBI governor D. Subbarao made a strong case for setting up a bad bank, saying it is “not just necessary but unavoidable” in the present circumstances when NPAs are likely to balloon and much of the resolution will have to take place outside the IBC framework. Even Economic Survey 2017 had proposed this idea, suggesting the creation of a bad bank, called Public Sector Asset Rehabilitation Agency, to help the lenders  tide themselves over the problem of stressed assets. “The standard advantage of a bad bank is that the entity taking a decision on the sale price is different from the entity accepting that price. Conflict of interest and corruption are avoided, and importantly, are seen to be avoided. “There are some successful models of bad banks with carefully designed carrots and sticks. Danaharta of Malaysia, for example, is a good model to study in designing our own bad bank,” Subbarao said. The former RBI governor noted tha

The Indian Express August 27, 2020 The Union government has moved a proposal to amend the Representation of the People (RP) Act 1950 to give legality to its March 6 order setting up a Delimitation Commission for Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Assam and Nagaland. The Law Ministry had notified the Delimitation Commission for the four northeast states and Jammu and Kashmir on March 6. Former Supreme Court judge Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai is its chairperson, and Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra is the EC’s representative on the panel. As first reported by  The Indian Express  on July 17, this notification violates Section 8A of the RP Act 1950. SK Mendiratta, who served with the EC for over 50 years, had red-flagged this in a letter to the three election commissioners in June. Section 8A of the RP Act 1950, introduced by Parliament in 2008, states that delimitation in the four northeast states, when held, would fall within the EC’s remit. Hence, any delimitation exercise

The Indian Express  August 27, 2020 India will have to create 90 million non-farm jobs over the next decade which will require an ambitious reform agenda able to deliver 8-8.5 per cent annual  GDP gro wth and productivity gains, consulting firm McKinsey said. In its latest report on India’s economy, McKinsey Global Institute said the country is at a turning point. “It needs to create at least 90 million jobs by 2030 as a new generation reaches working age, millions of workers move from farm work to better-paid jobs in other sectors, and more women participate in labour force,” it said. Creating that many jobs will in turn require a strong boost to GDP growth, which will need to average between 8 and 8.5 per cent every year from 2023 to 2030, it said. This is an ambitious goal, given the slowdown in the year leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the extreme economic uncertainties posed by the crisis itself. Yet, not taking steps to address the growth imperative now could

Deccan Chronicle August 27, 2020 Sri Lanka will adopt an "India first approach" as its new foreign policy plank and protect New Delhi's strategic security interests, the country's Foreign Secretary Jayanath Colombage has said as he sought to allay concerns amid China's growing presence in the island nation. Admiral Colombage became the first-ever foreign secretary from a military background when he was appointed by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to head the Foreign Ministry on August 14. In an interview published by Daily Mirror on Wednesday, Colombage said Sri Lanka is to adopt an ‘India first approach' as its new regional foreign policy plank. "That means Sri Lanka will not do anything harmful to India's strategic security interests," said Colombage, who was the chief of the Sri Lanka Navy between 2012-14 and later became a foreign policy analyst mostly on the Chinese initiatives in Sri Lanka and the immediate region. Colombage sa

The Deccan Chronicle August 26, 2020 The Supreme Court on Wednesday took note of the Centre's alleged inaction and asked it to clarify its stand within a week on the waiver of interest on interest for deferred payments of instalments for loans during the moratorium period announced due to the coronavirus lockdown. A bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan said the Centre had not made its stand clear on the issue despite the fact that ample powers were available with it under the Disaster Management Act and was "hiding behind the RBI". The apex court granted time to the government after Solicitor General Tushar Mehta sought a week's time to file a response. "My Lordships may not say that. We are working in coordination with RBI," Mehta said. The bench, also comprising Justices R Subhash Reddy and Justice M R Shah, asked the solicitor general to clarify stand on the Disaster Management Act and whether additional interest on existing interest coul

First Post August 26, 2020 India and Russia are in conversation to possibly manufacture the Russian COVID-19 vaccine name Sputnik V, as well as a Phase 3 human trial of the vaccine in India. During a press conference, when asked about a possible collaboration between Russia and India on the vaccine, the Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said, "As far as Sputnik V vaccine is concerned, both India and Russia are in communication. Some initial information has been shared while some detailed information is awaited." Another health ministry official was quoted by  the Print  as saying, "the Russian government is keen to collaborate with India on the vaccine....our embassy in Moscow is also trying to get the data and are in touch with the Gamaleya institute." The matter was discussed by a national expert group on vaccine administration for COVID-19 in a meeting held on 22 August, a source told  PTI .  The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) along with the