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Livemint Dated: September 02, 2020 NEW DELHI  : The  moratorium  for repayment of loans can be extended by up to two years, according to a 6 August circular by the Reserve Bank of India, solicitor general Tushar Mehta told the Supreme Court on Tuesday. “We are in the process of identifying the distressed sectors to vary benefits according to the impact of the hit they have taken," Mehta said, representing the Centre. The central government also apprised the bench that it has filed an affidavit stating that the National Disaster Management Authority has taken cognizance of the issues and sent its ‘Views and Recommendations’ to RBI. The affidavit also states that “ex post facto change in the terms and conditions of the offer of moratorium favouring those who availed of it over those who made the extra effort of repaying as per schedule would be grossly inequitable and patently unfair for those who did not avail of the benefits of moratorium initially or gave it up s

Livemint Dated: September 02, 2020 Apple Inc., the US-listed maker of iPhones, crossed $2 trillion in market capitalization recently. The Nasdaq, an index dominated by US technology stocks, is up 50% over the past year and has seen a rise of about 20% over the last decade (excluding dividends). A recent chart tweeted by Sunil Singhania, founder of Abakkus Asset Manager LLP, showed that the share of tech stocks as a percentage of the US equity market is close to what it was during the dotcom peak. The  Financial Times  called it a “K shaped" recovery in an article published on 21 June, with some sectors recovering their previous peaks and others dramatically lower. The India market has seen a similar polarization over the past three years with the top five stocks accounting for a huge 43% of the benchmark Nifty index and the top stock accounting for 14% of it. The information technology sector constitutes 16% of the Nifty 50, but if we consider Reliance Industries Ltd, wi

Hindustan Times  Dated: 02, 2020 In a surprising turn of events, Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, in a very blunt and public statement, criticised Saudi Arabia over its aloofness and inability to conduct a meeting on Kashmir in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Qureshi pushed Riyadh, and the kingdom’s de-facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), to either lead the Muslim  ummah  from the front by standing up for Kashmir after India’s constitutional changes of August 2019, or let those Islamic countries act which are ready to confront New Delhi. A damage control trip to Riyadh by Pakistan Army and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chiefs yielded little results. The gulf between Pakistan and its long-term ally, Saudi Arabia, has been growing for some time. The major blow, arguably, for Islamabad, came when, in March 2019, India was invited as a guest of honour by OIC, and the late former external affairs minister, Sushma Swaraj, gave a

Hindustan Times Dated: September 02, 2020 China’s treatment of Uighur minorities has been widely criticised across the world, and many international bodies have demanded action against the Chinese government. Last week, Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for US presidential election, called the Chinese action a genocide. His campaign said the Biden stands strongly against it in strongest terms. Biden also took the opportunity to lash out at his Reublican rival by questioning President Donald Trump what action his administration is planning to take. Though Trump has criticised Beijing for the coronavirus crisis, and often called the Sars-CoV-2 “China virus”, he has also sought a trade pact. What he got was a mini trade deal last year, and the ties have since soured. So, Biden hose to score a political point in race to White House. China has been widely condemned for setting up complexes in remote Xinjiang region (where Uighurs mostly live) that it describes as “vocational t

The Indian Express  Dated: September 02, 2020 China  likely plans to double its stockpile of nuclear warheads in this decade, including those designed to be carried atop ballistic missiles that can reach the  United States , the Pentagon said in a report released Tuesday. Even with such increases, China’s nuclear force would be far smaller than that of the United States, which has an estimated 3,800 warheads in active status and others in reserve. Unlike the U.S., China has no nuclear air force, but the report said that gap may be filled by developing a nuclear air-launched ballistic missile. The Trump administration has been urging China to join the U.S. and Russia in negotiating a three-way deal to limit strategic nuclear arms, but China has declined. Chinese Foreign Ministry officials have said China’s arsenal is too small to be included in negotiated limits and that by pressing China to join in such talks the Trump administration has created a pretext for walking away f

The Indian Express  Dated: September 02, 2020 With the proportion of non-performing assets (NPAs) in bank loans given to self-help groups (SHGs) seeing a steady rise in the previous financial year, the Union Ministry of Rural Development has asked states to “monitor the status of NPA district-wise” and take “corrective measures” to “recover overdue/ outstanding dues”. In some states, NPAs make up more than a quarter of the loans taken by SHGs, with Uttar Pradesh seeing a 15% jump. The ministry asked state officials to take action during a Performance Review Committee meeting held last week, it is learnt. The issue of NPAs in bank loans to SHGs was one of the important items on the agenda of the meeting, which reviewed the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihoods Mission, under which the government provides support to SHGs, including bank linkages. According to the agenda papers, the outstanding bank loans, to about 54.57 lakh SHGs across the country, amounted

The Indian Express Dated: September 02, 2020 On Saturday night, the Indian Army thwarted an attempt by  China  to change the status quo near the  Line of Actual Control (LAC)  by deploying its troops to a previously un-deployed area on the southern bank of the  Pangong Tso  Lake in eastern Ladakh. The Army said in a statement on Monday morning that Chinese troops “violated the previous consensus arrived at during military and diplomatic engagements during the ongoing standoff in Eastern Ladakh and carried out provocative military movements to change the status quo”. While the  Pangong Lake  has been among the most contentious sectors in the ongoing military standoff in eastern Ladakh for nearly four months now, the activity until now had been restricted to the northern bank. What is Pangong Lake? Who controls Pangong Tso? Coronavirus Explained Covid-19 vaccine tracker: Oxford begins stage-3 trials in the US Behind the unusual consistency in Tamil Nadu's cases

The Indian Express Dated: September 02, 2020 New Delhi and Beijing engaged in a war of words Tuesday and Defence Minister  Rajnath Singh  chaired a meeting of the military brass after Indian troops, thwarting Chinese manoeuvres at  two places in Ladakh   on two different days, occupied “tactical features” for area domination. Indian Army sources confirmed that the pre-emptive moves were undertaken at “more than one location”, largely in the areas mentioned by  China  in its statement: south bank of  Pangong Tso  and near Reqin La, not very far from Rezang La. The Ministry of External Affairs, in a statement Tuesday evening, countered the Chinese protest and said the second incident took place Monday “even as the ground commanders of the two sides were in discussions to de-escalate the situation”. It said “Chinese troops again engaged in provocative action. Due to the timely defensive action, the Indian side was able to prevent these attempts to unilaterally alter the status

Zoom News Dated: September 01, 2020 In just a few hours, Zoom Video Communications Inc. Chief Executive Officer Eric Yuan got $4.2 billion richer. Shares of his virtual-meeting company surged as much as 26 per cent to $410 in late US trading as it reported a jump in quarterly revenue and suggested the explosive growth will continue. Should the stock maintain such a gain on Tuesday, Yuan's fortune would surpass $20 billion. It's been a year filled with eye-popping rallies for the richest names in the tech world -- Amazon.com Inc.'s Jeff Bezos saw his net worth grow by $13 billion in one day in July, and Tesla Inc.'s Elon Musk added $8 billion in 24 hours last month. Both men have reached record levels of wealth, with Bezos crossing $200 billion and Musk surpassing $100 billion last week. Zoom has been one of the clearest beneficiaries of the coronavirus pandemic, with businesses and educational institutions turning to the service to work and teach remotely. T

The News minute Dated: September 01, 2020 As India reported a 23.9% contraction in GDP for the first quarter of FY 2020-21 on Monday, Chief Economic Adviser K.V. Subramanian said the slump in the economy has been in line with the global economy as it is going through a "once in a one and half century" event. Addressing the media after the announcement of the GDP numbers, Subramanian said that the negative growth rate in GDP was in expected lines as India went through a complete lockdown during the April-June quarter as other countries. He attributed the dismal economic performance in the last quarter to "an exogenous shock that has been felt globally", referring to the pandemic and the resultant lockdown. "As the world economic outlook has highlighted the fraction of countries where the GDP per capita would decrease is the highest since 1870. So once in one and a half century event which is what we are going through," the CEA said. "