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The Hindu, R. Prasad, January 14, 2020 A novel coronavirus has been identified in 41 people in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China On December 31, 2019, China informed the World Health Organization (WHO) of a cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China. A few patients in Wuhan had been suffering from respiratory illnesses such as pneumonia since December 8, 2019. Besides providing care, Chinese public health officials began carrying out environmental assessments at the wholesale market and trying to identify the microbe causing the outbreak. How was the virus identified as coronavirus? On January 9, 2020, the WHO issued a statement saying Chinese researchers have made “preliminary determination” of the virus as a novel coronavirus in a person with pneumonia. The researchers were able to determine the virus by sequencing the genome of the novel virus using an isolate taken from an infected patient. “Preliminary identification of a ...

The Hindu, Sidharth Yadav, January 15, 2020 The Madhya Pradesh government plans to fight microbial resistance by setting up surveillance systems to track drug use in humans and in agricultural fields, curbing the spread of infections in hospitals, and regulating the poultry industry. The second State after Kerala to develop an action plan, it will assist seven other States in February to chalk out strategies. With a surveillance system for animals up and running, the government is going to rope in 13 government colleges, two divisional laboratories and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Bhopal to track resistance in humans now, said Pankaj Shukla, Joint Director, National Urban Health Mission, one of the authors of the action plan. State-wide database At the hospitals, he explained, microbiologists would perform culture tests on samples taken from patients to single out resistant bacteria, and as a result develop a State-wide database. “Accordingly, ...

The Hindu, Lahore,  January 14, 2020 The Counter Terrorism Department had registered 23 FIRs against Saeed and his accomplices on the charges of terror financing in different cities of Punjab province and arrested him on July 17 Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed on Tuesday pleaded “not guilty” in two terror financing cases against him as the Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) chief finally recorded his statement in a Pakistani anti-terrorism court here. The Counter Terrorism Department had registered 23 FIRs against Saeed and his accomplices on the charges of terror financing in different cities of Punjab province and arrested him on July 17. He is held at the Kot Lakhpat jail in Lahore. Saeed-led JuD is believed to be the front organisation for the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) which is responsible for carrying out the 2008 Mumbai attack that killed 166 people, including six Americans. At a hearing on January 10, a questionnaire was handed over to Saeed by a Pakistani anti-terro...

Bar & Bench, January 14, 2020 The Delhi High Court today directed the Delhi Police to summon and seize mobile phones of the members of the two WhatsApp groups, namely 'Friends of RSS' and 'Unity against Left', who were allegdly involved in planning the attack against the teachers, staff and students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University on January 5. The Court also asked WhatsApp and Google to preserve and provide information related to the violence to the Delhi Police in accordance with their company policies,  NDTV has reported. The JNU Administration was also directed by the Court to provide to provide the CCTV footage of the violence sought by police, at the earliest. The order was passed by a Single Judge Bench of Justice  Brijesh Sethi  in a petition by JNU professors, Ameet Parameswaran, Atul Sood, Shukla Vinayak Sawant, seeking preservation of all relevant material, data, information and evidence pertaining to the violence that ...

Business Standard, Surajeet Das Gupta, January 15, 2020 Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio Infocomm and Delhi-based UV Asset Reconstruction Company (UVARC) are learnt to have emerged the highest bidders for the assets of  Reliance Communications  (RCom) and its subsidiaries, according to banking sources. The combined bid amount is Rs 21,000 crore. The Anil Ambani-run company went through the insolvency process, and was referred to the  National Company Law Tribunal  (NCLT) in May last year after an offer from Reliance Jio to buy its assets did not find favour with the creditors. The conditions imposed by the department of telecommunications too were a hindrance. The resolution professional (RP) was appointed in June. Sources say in a meeting of the committee of creditors (CoC), which ended late in the evening on Monday, Reliance Jio, part of Reliance Industries, agreed to marginally up its earlier offer and is willing to pay about Rs 4,700 crore...

The Hindu: January 15, 2020 The World Health Organisation has endorsed TrueNat, an indigenous molecular diagnostic tool for tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis. The disease remains a threat to public health and is the top infectious cause of death globally. In 2018, an estimated 10 million people developed TB and 1.5 million died of it while at least a million children become ill with it every year. Also about 5,00,000 new cases of multidrug 2 and rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis (MDR/RR-TB) are estimated to emerge annually but only one in three cases was reported by countries to have been diagnosed and treated in 2018. WHO has noted that since the approval of Xpert MTB/RIF in 2010, significant additional evidence has been generated on its use as initial test for the diagnosis and rifampicin-resistant TB. “In recent months new data on the use of Xpert and on the latest version TrueNat MTB and MTB Plus system have also become available. WHO commissioned a systematic review of...

The Hindu: January 15, 2020 Firebrand Iraqi leader Moqtada Sadr called on Tuesday for a peaceful “million-strong march” against US troops in Iraq, days after parliament urged their departure following Washington's killing of an Iranian general in a drone strike. Further upping the pressure on the American deployment, Katyusha rockets on Tuesday night targeted an Iraqi airbase north of Baghdad where US-led coalition forces are based, in the latest attack on American forces in the country. “The skies, land and sovereignty of Iraq are being violated every day by occupying forces,” Mr. Sadr, a populist Shia politician and cleric, wrote on Twitter. He urged Iraqis to hold “a million-strong, peaceful, unified demonstration to condemn the American presence and its violations”, without giving a date. Washington on January 3 killed Iran's revered Quds Force chief Qasem Soleimani in a Baghdad drone strike that also killed a senior Iraqi military official. The ...

The Economic Times:  Dipanjan Roy Chaudhury: January 14, 2020 New Delhi: India and the US are preparing for President Donald Trump’s maiden visit to India in the last week of February, as the two sides look to seal a trade deal with limited scope ahead of US presidential polls. A trade deal with India and China can boost Trump's prospects as he seeks reelection. The two sides are exploring the dates for the big visit in the last week of February. However, the timing of Trump’s visit will depend on the duration of the Senate impeachment trial, which is expected to begin this week. ET had reported in November that Trump could visit India in early 2020, before the presidential election calendar gets underway in the US. The contours of the visit could be discussed when principal deputy assistant secretary of state Alice Wells visits India this week. Other senior State Department officials will visit India in a few weeks. he visits of Indian foreign and defence ministers t...

Firstpost: FP Staff: January 15, 2020 Two decades since the 'Black Cats' — National Security Guard (NSG) commandos — were enlisted for VIP protection duties, the Centre on Monday decided to completely withdraw the elite counter-terror force from the task, and direct the personnel into the counter-terrorism and anti-hijack operations the force had been originally conceptualised to tackle. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) is of the view that the NSG commandos should concentrate on its original charter of handling specific tasks of counter-terrorism and anti-hijack operations and that the task of securing high-risk VIPs was proving to be a "burden" on its limited and special capabilities, PTI reported. "The NSG needs to go back to its original mandate of counter-terror and anti-hijack. That is the reason behind the latest move," a senior official in the security establishment said. The removal of VIP security duties from the NSG will result in f...

First post: Reuters: January 15, 2020 The US Treasury Department on Monday dropped its designation of China as a currency manipulator days before top officials of the world’s two largest economies were due to sign a preliminary trade agreement to ease an 18-month-old tariff war. The widely expected decision came in a long-delayed semi-annual currency report, reversing an unexpected move by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin last August at the height of US-China trade tensions. Mnuchin had accused China of deliberately holding down the value of its yuan currency to create an unfair trade advantage, just hours after President Donald Trump, angered at the lack of progress in trade negotiations, had also accused China of manipulating its currency. The Treasury Department had not labeled China a currency manipulator since 1994. Beijing had recently met just one of the department’s three criteria needed for such a designation - a large bilateral trade surplus with the United...