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The joint parliamentary committee on Personal Data Protection Bill on Wednesday asked Twitter and Amazon to furnish their balance sheets so that it can understand their revenue and business model and their earnings and tax payments in India. The panel also pulled up Twitter for showing Jammu and Kashmir as part of China. It is learnt that Twitter representatives tendered an apology but the panel maintained that an oral apology was not enough and sought a written apology with an affidavit. While Twitter representatives said it respects sensitivities of India, the panel maintained it was not a question of just sensitivities but about India’s sovereignty and integrity. Panel chairman Meenakshi Lekhi said explanations provided by the Twitter representatives were inadequate, according to PTI. The PTI quoted Lekhi as saying that showing Ladakh as part of China amounts to criminal offence which attracts imprisonment of seven years. Those who appeared on behalf of Twitter India included its se...

The Solvent Extractors Association of India (SEA) has alleged that China has been attempting to buy castor seed in a big way from India. “During the last few months, China has been aggressively buying commodities to bolster their state reserves. We understand they are also targeting to buy big quantities of castor seeds from India. Traditionally, China buys castor oil and derivatives from India but this new found interest in looking to buy castor seeds has a huge ramifications for our domestic industry,” the association has stated in a letter to Piyush Goyal, Union minister for commerce & industry “India supplies almost 85-90% of the world’s requirement of castor oil and its derivatives. We have a very well-developed processing industry and our exports of castor oil touch almost Rs 6,000 crore per annum. The processing industry provides employment to large number of persons both directly and indirectly. In case, China starts buying castor seeds aggressively, our processing industry...

With less than a week to go for the Bihar elections, the Centre on Friday reintroduced the stock limit on onions — a move aimed at controlling rising prices, which crossed Rs 80 per kg in many cities on Friday, including nearly Rs 100/kg in Mumbai. Barely a month ago, Parliament had amended the Essential Commodities Act, 1955 to exclude onions — besides potatoes, edible oils, oilseed and pulses — from the list of essential commodities, thus freeing them from stock limits. Since then, possibly with the Bihar elections in mind, the government has acted twice towards controlling onion prices; it relaxed import norms on Wednesday, followed by Friday’s reintroduction of the stock limit. A look at the dynamics of onion prices and the impact of the government intervention: Why have onion prices been rising? They have been rising since the last week of August, as reports started coming in of massive losses to kharif onions caused by heavy rainfall in north Karnataka. This crop was meant to arr...

 Around 17% of deaths due to coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in India could be linked to long-term exposure to air pollution, higher than the 15% seen on average across the world, according to a study published in the journal Cardiovascular Research on Tuesday. The analysis was based on study of air quality data and distribution of fatalities across the world till the third week of June, which the researchers used to calculate a Covid-19 mortality rate attributable to pollution. The highest proportion of these was in Czech Republic (29%), Poland (28%), and China (27%). In terms of global regions, East Asia had the highest proportion of such deaths at 27%, followed by Central Europe and America where nearly 25% of the deaths in each of the regions were attributed to air pollution by the study. The authors say that these are proportion of deaths that could have been avoided if the populations had been exposed to lower levels of air pollution. “...Attributable fraction does not imply a...

Non-generic queries in the online tool Google Trends may yield better insight into health information-seeking behavior, according to a new study by researchers from the George Washington University (GW). Google Trends analyzes the popularity of top Google queries geographically and longitudinally. More recently it has been used as a surveillance and retrospective epidemiological tool to study the impact of COVID-19 around the world. However, studies focusing on the pandemic's impact in the United States have been lacking, according to the researchers. "What's interesting about Google Trends is that it is a free platform that allows researchers like me to assess information-seeking behavior from a big data perspective," said King John Pascual, a third-year MD student at the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS) and first author on the study. "Just like with any big-data platform, if you have the right research questions, it can be a powerful epidemiolog...

Global crude oil supply has taken a hit because of the Covid-19 pandemic, with production trailing by around 10 per cent in 2020 compared to the same month a year ago. The prolonged impact of the Covid-19 pandemic is evident from the International Energy Agency’s move to significantly lower its forecast for 2020. The average production for the period between April and September 2020 stood at 91.58 million barrels per day (mb/d). This is close to the revised IEA forecast of production of 91.7 mb/d for the current year. In January 2020, the IEA has forecast oil production growth to accelerate to 1.2 mb/d (estimated production was 101 mb/d for 2020). This was expected to be supported partly by prices remaining relatively subdued, higher global GDP growth than last year and progress in settling trade disputes between China and the US. Get access to premium Portfolio content for 14 days But this forecast was turned upside down by April 2020 when the IEA had estimated a 10 per cent contracti...

Global foreign direct investment (FDI) plunged by 49% in the first half of 2020 from the same period a year ago and is on course to fall by up to 40% for the year, driven by fears of a deep recession, the United Nations said on Tuesday. FDI flows to European economies turned negative for the first time ever, falling to -$7 billion from $202 billion, while flows to the United States fell by 61% to $51 billion, the U.N. Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said in a report. Global FDI fell as multinationals postponed investments to preserve cash, it said. "Global FDI flows for the first half of this year went down by close to half... It was more drastic than we expected for the whole year," James Zhan, director of UNCTAD's investment and enterprise division, told a news conference. Italy probes Google over abuse of market position Bill Gates 65th Birthday | A look at some of his quotes about leadership and success Donald Trump says 2020 election is a choice between...

Online retailing giant Amazon.com Inc’s attempt to foil Future Retail Ltd’s (FRL’s) decision to sell its retail, wholesale and logistics and some other businesses to Reliance for Rs 24,713 crore throws up many questions about business practices and respect for the rule book. Amazon on October 25, won a temporary injunction from the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) asking Future Group to hold its sell-out plans to Reliance Group until the arbitration court passed its final judgement. Amazon had approached SIAC, arguing that the Reliance-Future deal amounted to a contractual breach as the US-headquartered ecommerce giant held an indirect stake in Future’s brick-and-mortar retail business FRL. At the centre of the dispute is Amazon’s 49 per cent stake in one of Future's unlisted firms, Future Coupons Limited (FCL), which it had bought last year. Future Coupons owns a 7.3 per cent stake in FRL. To the whole world, indeed for India, Amazon is a colossal online market pl...

 India Today,  October 27, 2020 The Income Tax Department has seized cash and jewellery worth over Rs 5 crore after searches across Delhi-NCR, Haryana, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa on data entry operators. The tax department initiated a search and seizure operation on October 26 on a large network of individuals running the data entry racket to generate huge amounts of cash through fake billing. The search operations were conducted on 42 premises across Delhi- NCR, Haryana, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa. “The search has led to seizure of evidence exposing the entire network of the entry operators, intermediaries, cash handlers, the beneficiaries and the firms and companies involved. So far, documents evidencing accommodation entries of more than Rs 500 crore have already been found and seized,” said the officials. According to the probe agency, several shell entities and firms were used by the suspected entry operators for layering of unaccounted money and cash withdrawals agains...

  India and the US on Tuesday signed the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geo-Spatial Cooperation (Beca) that will allow India access to crucial information that will have implications in any potential military conflict, a person familiar with the matter said. These include access to a range of topographical, nautical and aeronautical data considered key to map hostile movements and precise and real-time information on enemy positions accessed from US military satellites during any potential border conflict. The signing of the pact happened after India and the US held their third 2+2 talks. The pact represents a deepening of military ties, a testament to the rapid warming of bilateral relations in a span of two decades. “The new BECA agreement is going to be a landmark event in the US-India relationship and cooperation. Along with Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA), and Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA), BECA will be one of th...

 The State Bank of India (SBI)-led consortium of banks told the Supreme Court on October 26 that around Rs 3,600 crore had been recovered from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya so far. Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi, representing the SBI-led banks consortium, also informed the apex court that Rs 11,000 crore were still needed to be recovered from Mallya, The Times of India reported. The top court dismissed a petition filed by Mallya's United Breweries Holdings Limited (UBHL) challenging a Karnataka High Court order upholding the closing of the company for recovery of dues payable by Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, news reports suggest. Rohatgi argued that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) should not have attached the company’s properties as these were encumbered assets and thus, the banks had the first claim over the assets. Mallya is wanted back in India under charges of financial fraud. He defaulted on repayment of loans taken by the now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines from several Indian ban...

 Labelling India as an extraordinary country growing at an incredible scale, energy supermajor BP Plc on Monday said it is looking to expand its presence in the nation in fuel retailing and mobility solutions, but wanted natural gas to be included in the GST regime. Speaking at the India Energy Forum by CERAWeek, BP Group chief executive Bernard Looney said his firm in partnership with Reliance Industries Ltd will in the next 4-5 years set up 5,500 retail sites that will not just sell petrol and diesel but also offer mobility solutions like EV charging facility. “India is an extraordinary country with an extraordinary history, an extraordinary group of people, and with extraordinary ambition,” he said, adding the country has a growing population, and an ambitious agenda to cut emissions. This, he said, was “very, very compelling”. “Why is India important, because it is India,” he said, adding energy mix in the country could fall from 50 per cent coal to 40 per cent, while gas and r...

 Although strenuous efforts are on across the globe to develop vaccines and drugs to fight Covid-19, the issue of their equitable access remains a major challenge. A formidable barrier to ensuring timely access to vaccines and drugs could be patents or other intellectual property (IP) rights. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), in a 2017 report, documents how patents have hindered the introduction of affordable vaccines in developing countries. The rights of the inventor should be protected through IP laws. Arguably, such protection spurs innovation, overcoming the social costs imposed on the public through limited accessibility of the product. However, in a world living through the worst pandemic in a century, there is a strong case for the collective interests of humanity to trump the individual interests of the inventor. India’s recent proposal at the World Trade Organization (WTO), jointly with South Africa, asking for a temporary waiver of the application of certain provisions of ...

 India and the US will sign the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA), the last of four so-called foundational agreements for sharing sensitive information and sales of advanced military hardware, during the 2+2 ministerial dialogue on Tuesday. The agreement, which will facilitate sharing of classified satellite and sensor data, figured in discussions between defence minister Rajnath Singh and his visiting American counterpart Mark Esper on Monday. The signing of the pact will be one of the key outcomes of the 2+2 dialogue between the foreign and defence ministers of the two sides. “The two ministers expressed satisfaction that agreement of BECA will be signed during the visit,” the defence ministry said in a statement after the meeting between Singh and Esper, who arrived in New Delhi on Monday afternoon along with secretary of state Mike Pompeo. Also Read: India must overcome China syndrome, embrace QUAD | Analysis BECA is considered the last of the foundational agreeme...

 The Indian military is expected to be reorganised under five theatre commands by 2022 with defined areas of operation and a seamless command structure for synchronised operations. With the department of military affairs soon to have additional and joint secretaries after Cabinet clearance, the task of reorganisation of the three services under theatre commands has begun with a China specific Northern Command and Pakistan specific Western command under serious consideration. India’s Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat has been given the mandate by the Narendra Modi government to create theatre commands much like the ones China and the US currently have. Also Watch | 2+2 Meeting: India to get US military satellite data; will China heed warning?   Also Read: China has ramped up military presence across LAC. Ladakh isn’t only target According to military and national security planners, the northern command’s remit will begin from the Karakoram Pass in Ladakh and continue up to...

 Democracy and pluralism are under assault. Dictators are toiling to stamp out the last vestiges of domestic dissent and spread their harmful influence to new corners of the world. At the same time, many freely elected leaders are dramatically narrowing their concerns to a blinkered interpretation of the national interest. In fact, such leaders—including the chief executives of the United States and India, the world’s two largest democracies—are increasingly willing to break down institutional safeguards and disregard the rights of critics and minorities as they pursue their populist agendas. As a result of these and other trends, Freedom House found that 2019 was the 14th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. The gap between setbacks and gains widened compared with 2018, as individuals in 64 countries experienced deterioration in their political rights and civil liberties while those in just 37 experienced improvements. The negative pattern affected all regime types, but ...