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  The Indian Express December 21, 2020 HE MINISTRY of Earth Sciences (MoES) is developing an ‘Early Health Warning System’ which is expected to forecast the possibility of disease outbreaks in the country, officials have told  The Indian Express . While the model currently in development, based on the relationship between weather changes and incidence is expected to predict outbreaks of vector-borne diseases, particularly malaria and diarrhoea, subsequently, it is likely to monitor non-communicable diseases as well, they added. MoES secretary M Rajeevan told The Indian Express, “There are certain diseases where weather patterns play a crucial role. Such as malaria, for which particular temperatures and rainfall patterns can approximately predict whether an area is likely to have an outbreak with fairly reasonable accuracy. What we are looking at is an advance warning of around two weeks.” Changes in rainfall and temperature patterns likely play a major role in the increased incidence o

The Indian Express December 21, 2020 Triggering protests and the resignations of at least seven Cabinet-rank ministers, Prime Minister  K P Sharma Oli  Sunday dissolved the country’s House of Representatives, which is the lower house of Parliament, two years short of its five-year tenure following months of bickering among factions within the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP). With legal experts and political leaders slamming the move as “unconstitutional”, several petitions were filed before the Supreme Court within hours of the House dissolution. The decision was taken at a Cabinet meeting in Oli’s residence after the failure of talks with ruling party co-chairman and dissident leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda. President Bidhya Devi Bhandari approved the move after a no-trust motion was tabled by 91 Parliamentarians of the NCP, signalling that the eight-month internal tusslSenior NCP leaders said the dissolution will “lead to expulsions and counter-expulsions” in the party follow

  The Indian Express December 21, 2020 With farm unions intensifying protests to press their demand for the repeal of the three farm laws, the government on Sunday invited farmer leaders for a new round of talks, and urged them to choose a date according to their convenience. In a five-page letter to Krantikari Kisan Union Punjab state president Dr Darshan Pal, Vivek Aggarwal, joint secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare said: “You are requested to share the details in respect to your doubts after having discussion with farm union leaders invited earlier, and inform the date for punah vaarta (next round of talks) according to your convenience, so that the matter can be resolved by holding a meeting again at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi; so that the current agitation can be ended soon.” The letter, addressed to Pal and copied to 39 other farmer leaders, gives the background of the talks held so far. Aggarwal’s letter has come in response to Pal’s  December 16 email ,

Money  control December 20, 2020 The government is planning to form a working group to explore the possibilities of linking Indian hospitals, wellness centres and Ayurveda clinics with foreign insurance firms to boost medical tourism in the country, Tourism Minister Prahlad Patel has said. He said the aim is to ensure that foreign nationals seeking medical treatment in India can arrive here with their own insurance which would be recognised by all health centres here. "We will form a working group to explore the possibilities to enrol foreign insurance firms with Indian health centres so that people can use these for treatment here. So, when they arrive, they have their insurance in place. This will be especially helpful for those arriving from Iraq or Southeast Asian countries,” the minister told. Officials also said the ministry has recommended that foreign tourists visiting India may be offered attractively priced  COVID-19  insurance covers as part of the ministry's plans

 First Post December 19, 2020 Washington:  Urging the international community to demand transparency from China about the spread of the  coronavirus  pandemic, the US has accused Beijing of "obstructing" a WHO probe into the origin of the deadly virus in the central Chinese city of Wuhan and "peddling" questionable vaccines one year after the disease broke out. The US leads the world with over 17,442,100 confirmed  coronavirus  cases and more than 313,000 deaths. "Even today, nearly a year after the world first learned of the outbreak, the Chinese Communist Party is still spreading disinformation regarding the virus and obstructing a World Health Organisation (WHO) investigation into its origin and spread," US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday. "It is also peddling vaccines that lack essential data on safety and efficacy, due to a fundamental disregard for transparency and accountability regarding results from clinical trials. Both actions

First Post  December 21, 2020 By Christopher Bing, Joseph Menn, Raphael Satter and Jack Stubbs (Reuters) - Speaking at a private dinner for tech security executives at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco in late February, America's top cyber defense chief boasted how well his organizations protect the country from spies. U.S. teams were “understanding the adversary better than the adversary understands themselves,” said General Paul Nakasone, boss of the National Security Agency (NSA) and U.S. Cyber Command, according to a Reuters reporter present at the Feb. 26 dinner. His speech has not been previously reported. Yet even as he spoke, hackers were embedding malicious code into the network of a Texas software company called SolarWinds Corp, according to a timeline published by Microsoft and more than a dozen government and corporate cyber researchers. A little over three weeks after that dinner, the hackers began a sweeping intelligence operation that has penetrated the heart of A

The Indian Express December 21, 2020 Global software and hardware conglomerate  Apple  on Saturday took a stringent action against one of its vendors, Wistron, by acknowledging that the latter had violated supplier code of conduct by “failing to implement proper working hour management processes”. The statement by Apple was preceded by another statement from its vendor Wistron, which also acknowledged the lapses on its behalf at its Narasapura facility in Bengaluru. What happened at Wistron’s Narasapura facility? On December 12, temporary workers employed at Wistron’s Narasapura facility in Bengaluru raised slogans and vandalised vehicles parked inside the factory premises. These workers were protesting against non-payment of regular and overtime dues by the company. The workers started throwing stones, and damaged some vehicles inside the factory. Some iPhones, which had been manufactured at the factory and were kept for export, were also looted by the workers, according to reports. W

 The Indian Express  December 21, 2020 Reliance Industries Ltd and BP (British Petroleum) have announced the start of gas production from the R cluster, the deepest off-shore gas field in Asia. The field is the first of three deepwater gas projects in the KGD6 block jointly developed by RIL and BP to come onstream. RIL has a participating interest of 66.7% in the KG-D6 block and BP has a participating interest of 33.3% in the block. We examine the importance of this field. Why is this important? The R cluster, along with the Satellite Cluster and MJ gas fields in the Krishna Godavari Basin are expected to produce around 30 MMSCMD (Million standard cubic metres per day) of natural gas or about 15% of India’s projected demand for natural gas by 2023. The R cluster field alone is expected to have a peak production of 12.9 MMSCMSD or about 10% of India’s current natural gas output. In FY20, demand for natural gas in India was around 153 MMSCMD around half of which is met through imports. R

The Telegraph December 21, 2020 The Supreme Court on Friday issued directions to states and Union Territories to curb Covid protocol violations, expressing concern over people flouting standard operating procedures issued by the Union health ministry. The following are the directions:  More and more police personnel shall be deployed at places where there is a likelihood of gathering by people, such as food courts, eateries, vegetable markets,  sabzi mandis , bus terminuses, railway stations, street vendors, etc. As far as possible, unless must, permission shall not be granted by the local administration or the collector/DSP for celebrations and gatherings even during the day. Wherever permission is granted, the local administration/DSP/collector/OC shall ensure strict compliance of the guidelines/SOPs. There should be a mechanism to check the number of people attending such programmes and gathering, and the timings. More people will have to be tested for the novel coronavirus infectio

The Print  Published By: Kartik Goyal  Date: 18.12.2020 New Delhi:  Even when viewed in isolation, the $14 billion outflow from India’s bond market in 2020 is remarkable: Foreign investors have never sold so much in a single year. That they did so at a time when Chinese bonds are attracting record foreign inflows underscores just how frustrated some money managers have become with the pace of capital-market reforms by Narendra Modi’s government. While China’s steady progress on bond-market liberalization has earned it a spot in benchmark indexes and helped lure $119 billion of inflows this year, India still has some of Asia’s toughest restrictions on foreign funds. The country’s failure thus far to join China in global debt indexes is adding to investor concerns about meager inflation-adjusted yields and a widening fiscal deficit. That could become a problem for Modi as his government borrows record amounts of money to fight the pandemic. While financing costs have remained subdued thi