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Hindustan Times,  April 28, 2019 Britain’s security forces are on the hunt for so-called “crocodile cells or sleeper cells” of Islamic State (ISIS) operatives plotting terrorist attacks in the UK and Europe, according to a UK media report. The country’s police chiefs are urging churches and mosques in Britain to have counter-terrorism training because of fears of further attacks in the wake of the Sri Lanka terrorist strikes, which claimed hundreds of lives over Easter. “Now that ISIS has been defeated in Syria and Iraq, it will become more violent outside (this area). As its core weakens, its peripheries will become more dangerous,” Charlie Winter, of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College London, told ‘The Sunday Times’. “It’s a grim outlook, but we are likely to see more attempts at attacks, more regularly, for the foreseeable future. Sri Lanka was not a one-off. If anything, it was a test run,” he said. The UK’s intelligence s...

  Forbes India,   Apr 25, 2019 In India, the problem is a little more complicated. Despite the country being one of the leading producers and exporter of vaccines, it has also been home to close to one-third of the world’s unimmunised children. Before the 1990s fewer than half of the children in the country were vaccinated. In 2014, 400 million vaccine doses were administered under the government’s immunisation programme. The number of vaccines was increased from 7 to 12 to include common life-threatening diseases like pneumonia and diarrhoea. While a complete course of vaccines given in scheduled sequence costs anywhere between Rs 200-250, 44% of young children still, do not receive the full schedule of vaccines leading to one million Indian children dying before the age of five every year. Funding & Focus Insufficient government and world funding for many years as well as focussing mainly on the polio vaccine meant that even with positive results from sev...

Dawn,  April 29, 2019 Baqir Sajjad Syed Pakistan and China on Sunday embarked on the new phase of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor by signing memoranda of understanding (MoUs) on the first Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and socio-economic development and a new agreement on free trade. The MoUs and the second stage Free Trade Agreement (FTA) were signed towards the conclusion of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s second trip to China in six months. The prime minister’s latest visit to Beijing was for attending the second Belt and Road Forum and talks with the Chinese leadership on the expanded CPEC. The earlier visit was more about the future course of the CPEC after the change of government in Pakistan and soliciting Beijing’s help for dealing with the balance of payments crisis. PM Khan in his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping assured him of Pakistan’s “unflinching commitment” to the CPEC and hailed its next phase, which includes newer areas like agriculture, in...

The Telegraph April 27, 2019 By    R. Suryamurthy   India is negotiating with Saudi Arabia and the UAE for crude on term contracts to make up for a shortfall in Iranian oil because of the withdrawal of the waivers by the US. “Talks are on with Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and other Opec members to enter into additional term contract to bridge the void left by the non-availability of oil from Tehran,” oil ministry officials said. They said the plan was to buy 15-20 million tonnes (mt) from the two West Asian countries. Iran is a principal source of crude for India, accounting for almost a tenth of its imports in 2017-18. India bought 22.6 mt, in 2017-18 from Iran but brought it down to 15 mt last fiscal as the sanctions against Iran was partially in place. Crude under term contract is preferable to spot purchase as a term contract allows purchases in a fixed price band. Spot prices, on the other hand, are expected to jump amidst tension in West Asia. “The ...

By Atul Aneja, The Hindu Dated: April 28, 2019 South Asia is covered by three major undertakings—the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), the Nepal-China Trans-Himalayan Multi-dimensional Connectivity Network, including Nepal-China cross-border railway, as well as the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). India’s decision to skip the Belt and Road Forum (BRF) may have led to the exclusion of the Bangladesh- China- India- Myanmar (BCIM) Economic corridor from the list of projects covered by the China-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) umbrella. In an annex tagged with the Joint Communiqué of the Leaders' Roundtable of the BRF, which concluded in Beijing on Saturday, the Chinese foreign ministry website has not listed the BCIM as a project covered by the BRI—the giant connectivity initiative speared by China to revive the ancient Silk Road across Eurasia and Africa. Instead, South Asia is covered by three major undertakings—the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor ...

 Scroll.in, April 28, 2019 The United States has unnerved the world oil market by ramping up the pressure in its long-running dispute with Iran. It has announced that, after May 1, it will not renew the exemptions given to eight countries that enable them to buy Iranian oil. Those affected, including China, India, Japan, Italy and South Korea, will face sanctions from Washington if they do not comply. The move will likely squeeze global oil supply at a time when it is already struggling from disruptions in Venezuela, Libya and Nigeria. Indeed, the Brent crude price has already risen on the back of the announcement to $74 per barrel, the highest since last November. President Donald Trump has said he is confident that a supply crunch can be avoided thanks to extra output from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, but traders and Asian petrochemical firms are sceptical that these countries will fully comply. In recent months, Saudi Arabia and other members of the Org...

By Suhasini Haider The Hindu, April 27, 2019 With the government withdrawing a Kashmir-specific confidence building measure, are the chances for peace better or worse? The story so far: On April 18, the government announced suspension of trade from midnight at two designated points along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir, citing concerns about “misuse” by elements from across the border to smuggle weapons, narcotics and fake currency. The Ministry of Home Affairs has said that cross-LoC trade will only be resumed after it puts in place stricter measures and systems. What does the suspension of trade mean for the two countries? When did trade across LoC begin? Trade across the LoC began in October 2008, as part of the Kashmir-specific confidence building measures (CBMs) that had been initiated by former Prime Ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Dr. Manmohan Singh and former Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. The zero-duty trade of goods at the Uri ...

By Salahuddin Shoaib Chaudhary www.weeklyblitz.net Dated: January 11, 2019 According to a Sri Lankan newspaper Ceylon Today, startling new information has been released about a huge narcotics seizure. There are indications the war on drugs has intensified in Sri Lanka over 2018, ending the year with this massive narcotics seizure. On December 31, 2018, the Sri Lankan Police Narcotics Bureau (PNB) conducted a raid on a large, upscale house in Dehiwala, south of Colombo, where the house was being occupied by two men from Bangladesh, ages 35 and 38. During the raid, police seized over 272kg of heroin and 5kg of cocaine, with a combined street value of US$20 million. A police spokesman states this narcotics seizure from Islamic gangs is the largest haul of heroin ever recorded in Sri Lanka. In December 2018, over 500kg of heroin was seized in Sri Lanka, while police say 736kg of heroin was seized over the year of 2018. According to the report, A 23-year-old Bangladeshi woman wa...

Financial Express April 25, 2019 Oil prices dipped on Thursday as record U.S. output and rising crude stockpiles dampened the impact on markets of tighter U.S. sanctions on Iran and producer club OPEC’s continued curbs on supply. Brent crude futures were at $74.53 per barrel at 0241 GMT, down 4 cents from their last close. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $65.75 per barrel, down 14 cents, or 0.2 percent, from their previous settlement. Crude futures rose to 2019 highs earlier in the week after the United States said on Monday it would end all exemptions for sanctions against Iran, demanding countries halt oil imports from Tehran from May or face punitive action from Washington. “Following the U.S. decision to toughen its sanctions on Iran … we have revised up our end-year forecast for Brent crude from $50 to $60 per barrel,” analysts at Capital Economics said in a note. U.S. sanctions against Iran have denied its government more than $10 bi...