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The print, November 4, 2019 Tata Power ties up with Rockefeller Foundation to develop 10,000 microgrids New Delhi:   Tata Power Co. Ltd., in collaboration with the Rockefeller Foundation, plans to develop 10,000 microgrids in India to boost access to affordable and reliable electricity to homes and enterprises across the nation’s vast rural areas. Tata Power will set up a new unit, TP Renewable Microgrid Ltd., to build the microgrids through 2026 that will serve nearly 5 million homes in India’s countryside and impact 25 million people, the two organizations said in a joint statement Monday. The venture will become the world’s largest microgrid developer and operator, they said. The plan “represents important scaling up of efforts to provide access to affordable, reliable and clean electricity in India, and will serve as a model for expanding access to more than 800 million people who are without power worldwide,” they said in the statement. Though the nation of 1....

Hindustan Times, November 4, 2019 BlueKeep mass with WannaCry-like effect attacking vulnerable machines: Report The “BlueKeep” remote code execution vulnerability, which could have an effect similar to the  WannaCry bug  from 2017, is currently attacking vulnerable machines that are apparently compromised for cryptocurrency mining purposes, according to media reports. The BlueKeep vulnerability exists in unpatched versions of Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. According to security researcher Kevin Beaumont, several honeypots in his EternalPot RDP honeypot network started to crash and reboot. They’ve been active for almost half a year and this is the first time they came down. For some reason, the machines in Australia did not crash, the researcher said in a tweet, Bleeping Computer reported on Sunday. Security researchers, including Beaumont who originally named the vulnerability and ...

Hindustan Times, November 5, 2019 US formally starts withdrawal from Paris climate accord The United States on Monday formally notified the United Nations that it was withdrawing from the Paris climate accord, making the world’s largest economy the sole outlier from the agreement. President Donald Trump went ahead with the pullout despite mounting evidence of the reality and impact of climate change, with September the fourth month in the row with near- or record-breaking temperatures. The United States presented its withdrawal letter to the United Nations on the first possible date under the accord negotiated by Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama. It will be officially out of the Paris accord on November 4, 2020, one day after the US election in which Trump is seeking a second term on appeals to the white working-class. Announcing the move, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reiterated Trump’s rationale in 2017 that the accord would disadvantage US businesses. “It...

Hindustan Times, November 4, 2019 India among most vulnerable to rising sea levels, says UN chief Guterres Describing climate change as the biggest threat to sustainability, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has voiced deep concern over the rising level of oceans and said the most vulnerable areas are in Japan, China, Bangladesh and India. Guterres, speaking to reporters in Bangkok where he is attending the ASEAN Summit, said the biggest threat to sustainability today in the world is climate change. He cited a recent report by a research center that said the level of the oceans is rising much faster than what was forecasted because of climate change. The UN Chief stressed that unless nations are able to reverse this trend, because climate change for the moment is running faster than actions being taken by governments, the research forecasted that 300 million people will be flooded by sea water in the world by 2050. “Dramatically, the most vulnerable areas are exactly...

Firstpost, November 4, 2019 India will not join Asian trade deal RCEP: Narendra Modi says agreement doesn't reflect original intent, can't compromise on core interests India has decided not to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement as its key concerns have not been addressed. Sources told ANI said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi stood firm as India's key concerns were not addressed. Sources said there will no compromise on the country's core interests and RCEP agreement does not reflect its original intent and the outcome is not fair or balanced. "India’s stand is a mixture of pragmatism, the urge to safeguard interests of poor and effort to give an advantage to India’s service sector," they said. RCEP is a proposed free trade agreement (FTA) between the ten member states of ASEAN and six FTA partners. In his speech at the RCEP Summit in Thailand, Modi said "India stands for greater regional integrati...

Dawn, November 4, 2019 Amending NAB law The government has promulgated an ordinance through which it has amended the National Accountability Ordinance 1999 so that any person arrested for an offence involving an amount above Rs50m shall be entitled to ‘C’ class or equivalent in prison. This selective amendment in the NAB law, while many controversial elements remain in place, has rightfully elicited concerns that the government is only interested in amendments that affect its political opponents. This is unfortunate because the NAB law in its present shape is a holdover from the Musharraf years and its genesis is rooted in that regime’s intent to persecute and punish politicians on the other side of the divide. Framed with such a purpose in mind, the ordinance was packed with sweeping powers that often bypassed the established due process of law within the ambit of the courts. It is a telling failure of political will and vision that successive governments have refused to ame...

Dawn, November 4, 2019 State of economy The last fiscal year was one of the toughest for Pakistan, and the challenges are far from over. This is the gist of the annual report just released by the State Bank of Pakistan regarding FY2019. Coming almost four months after the fiscal year concluded, the report remains timely for the important lessons it has for the present, particularly the insights it shares on why the investment scenario remains so dismal. Last year’s record high fiscal deficit of 8.9pc of GDP was the result of unrealistic targets set by an outgoing government, according to the bank. A poor revenue mobilisation effort combined with weak expenditure control contributed as well. The unrealistic targets can be attributed to politics, since an outgoing government was hardly incentivised to leave behind a robust revenue plan, although the drafters of that budget will argue that the innovative thinking around which the numbers were built never found acceptance...

Mint, November 4, 2019 Aramco IPO could be world’s biggest. List of some of other biggest IPOs RIYADH : Saudi Aramco on Sunday confirmed it planned to list on the Riyadh stock exchange, describing it as a "milestone" in the history of the energy behemoth. Depending on the size of the sale and Aramco's valuation, it could be the world's largest initial public offering (IPO). Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba still holds the record with a USD 25 billion IPO in New York in 2014. Alibaba is also aiming to raise another USD 20 billion if it goes ahead with plans to list on the Hong Kong stock market. Here is a list of some of the other biggest IPOs to date:- Multinational conglomerate SoftBank raised USD 23.5 billion via the IPO of its mobile unit in 2018, in Japan's largest stock offering. - AgBank (USD 22.1 billion). Agricultural Bank of China made its market debut in 2010 in Hong Kong and Shanghai. - ICBC (USD 21.9 billion). Industrial...

Business Standard, November 3, 2019 CAIT to launch a nation-wide movement against Amazon and Flipkart Traders' body CAIT on Sunday said it will launch a nation-wide movement to protest against e-commerce majors Amazon and Flipkart, alleging that they are flouting FDI policy norms and destroying the country's retail business. In a statement, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) said, "Both Amazon and Flipkart still continue to sell goods on their portal at predatory pricing, deep discounting, controlling inventory, promoting preferential sellers and influencing prices." Union Minister Piyush Goyal had last month said the government was looking into alleged predatory pricing by Walmart-owned Flipkart and Amazon. CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal criticised the attitude of Amazon and Flipkart and said the traders' body is all set to launch a national movement on this issue soon. The traders' body has also convened a me...

The Quint, November 3, 2019 Modi-Merkel Meet: German Chancellor Prioritised Profit Over People October 31 was an eventful Halloween in India. German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in New Delhi with an entourage of 12 of Germany’s 16 cabinet ministers. On the same day a fact finding report was released on Kashmir: just a day after the touring MEPs expressed support for Modi’s scrapping of Article 370 — which granted Kashmir semi-autonomous status — calling it India’s “internal matter.” The majority of the two dozen visiting MEPs had hailed from extreme right-wing political parties, including Germany’s neo-Nazi Alternative für Deutschland — a party which will likely soon be headed by Björn Höcke, who has criticized Germany’s Holocaust commemoration policies and declared as his platform: “We want Germany to remain German.” Facts that EU Delegation May Have Ignored This other, not much publicised fact-finding team — one composed not of politicians from Europe but...