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The Indian Express Dated: April 03, 2020 By Harikisan Sharma AS THE economy slows down, the demand for work by households under the MGNREGA programme surged to a nine-year high in 2019-20. According to figures uploaded on the MGNREGA official portal, 5.47 crore households sought MGNREGA works, the highest since 2010-11, when the number was 5.5 crore. It was 5.27 crore in 2018-19. More individuals too worked under MGNREGA in 2019-20, with 7.86 crore employed at various sites across the country. This is the highest since 2012-13, when 7.97 crore individuals worked under this programme. The national job guarantee scheme was launched in 2006 from 200 districts. Other data shows that the number of gram panchayats not recording any MGNREGA expenditure has also declined. It stood at 9,144 in the last financial year, from lower than 10,978 in 2018-19. The number of such panchayats was 11,789 in 2017-18; 19,451 in 2016-17; 39,469 in 2015-16; and 39,531 in 2014-15. There are a tota...

The New York Times Dated: April 02, 2020 By Julian E Barnes The C.I.A. has been warning the White House since at least early February that China has vastly understated its coronavirus infections and that its count could not be relied upon as the United States compiles predictive models to fight the virus, according to current and former intelligence officials. The intelligence briefings in recent weeks, based at least in part on information from C.I.A. assets in China, played an important role in President Trump’s  negotiation on Thursday of an apparent détente  with President Xi Jinping of China. Since then, both countries have ratcheted back criticism of each other. Obtaining a more accurate count of the Chinese rate of infection and deaths from the virus has worldwide public health implications at a time of grave uncertainty over the virus, its speed of transmission and other fundamental questions. For American officials, the totals are critical to getting a bette...

The Indian Express Dated : April 03, 2020 T he World Bank on Thursday said it had approved an initial $1.9 billion in emergency funds for  coronavirus  response operations in 25 developing countries, with more than half the aid earmarked to help fight the fast-spreading disease in India. Action on projects in scores of emerging market countries is expected in the coming days and weeks, the World Bank said. In addition, the bank said it was working to redeploy resources in existing World Bank financed projects worth up to $1.7 billion. The bank has said it is prepared to spend up to $160 billion over the next 15 months to combat the  pandemic . World Bank Group President David Malpass said the institutional lender was moving quickly to strengthen the ability of developing countries to respond to the virus, and shorten the time to economic and social recovery. “The poorest and most vulnerable countries will likely be hit the hardest,” he said in a statement. ...

The Indian Express Dated : April 03, 2020 By Karishma Mehrotra A soon-to-be-published mathematical model by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) suggests that while the 21-day lockdown to check the spread of  COVID-19  is expected to bring down daily new cases, instead of extending it, the lockdown needs to be combined with enhanced test-and-quarantine measures. The study, led by Sandip Mandal of the ICMR’s Department of Health Research, estimates that the current 21-day lockdown will reduce epidemic peak (or the highest number of new COVID-19 cases in a single day) by 43 per cent and total mortality (COVID-19-related deaths) by 19 per cent. And that the lockdown, when combined with an aggressive test-and-quarantine strategy, can bring down epidemic peak by 71 per cent and mortality by 40 per cent. Mandal was also the lead author of a February mathematical model of the ICMR, which has largely informed the government’s COVID-19 strategy thus far. The Februa...

THE HINDU APRIL 01, 2020 A mixture of three quasi-subspecies of SARS-CoV-2 is in circulation in India, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said on Tuesday. These imported variants showed no differences from how they behaved in the place of origin. Scientists are yet to classify a SARS-Cov-2 variant as an Indian strain. R. Gangakhedkar, head of the ICMR’s Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases-I Division, said, “India’s COVID-19 cases were mainly from people with travel history and their immediate contacts, which is to say that this virus was brought in from outside. We are not seeing any variation from what is being seen on how this strain is behaving around the world. So there is no difference in its severity. However, in a large country like India, it’s difficult to predict an accurate trend about the progression of COVID-19 because we still don’t have enough time gap between the upswing of cases.” This, he explained, did not change India’s reporting, ...

The Hindu Dated: April 02, 2020 By Suhasini Haider The decision by a Pakistani court in Sindh to acquit Ahmed Omar Sheikh Saeed   of murdering journalist Daniel Pearl will be raised by India at the next meeting of the Financial Action Task Force, where Pakistan’s greylist status will come up for discussion, officials said. The British-born Saeed has been in a Pakistani prison since he was arrested for the kidnapping and killing of the Wall Street Journal’s correspondent in Pakistan in 2002, but was in Indian prisons from 1994-1999. In December 1999, Saeed was released along with Masood Azhar and another alleged terrorist Mushtaq Zargar by the Indian government in exchange for 155 hostages aboard the hijacked IC-814. Also of significance is the fact that Saeed himself surrendered in 2002 (after he was declared a suspect in the Pearl case) to Brig Ijaz Shah, then a State Intelligence Chief, who is now Pakistan's Interior Minister. The next FATF meeting is expected in Jun...

Live Mint Dated April 02, 2020 By Srishti Choudhary In a major breakthrough, a team of Indian scientists have successfully developed a low-cost, paper-strip test which can detect the new coronavirus within an hour and address India’s urgent need for rapid-testing. The test uses the cutting-edge gene-editing tool- Crispr-Cas9 to target and identify the genomic sequences of the novel coronavirus in the samples of suspected individuals. “We have been working on this tool for around two years. But, in late January, when the outbreak hit its peak in China, we began testing it to see if it can work for Covid-19. It took us around two months to come up with these results," said Dr Debjyoti Chakraborty, from the Institute of Genomic and Integrative Biology (IGIB), CSIR’s premier laboratory in New Delhi. The kit is similar to a portable paper-strip test used to confirm pregnancy and does not require any different specialized skill to perform and is relatively less-sophisticat...

 FIRSTPOST. APRIL 01, 2020 Israel has begun testing a COVID-19 vaccine prototype on rodents at its bio-chemical defence laboratory, a source said on Tuesday. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR), in rural Ness Ziona, to join the fight against the coronavirus pandemic on 1 February, prompting an easing of its secrecy as it cooperates with civilian scientists and private firms. In a statement, Netanyahu’s office said IIBR director Shmuel Shapira had informed him of “significant progress” in designing a vaccine prototype and that the institute “is now preparing a model for commencing an animal trial”. A source familiar with IIBR activities told  Reuters  that trials were already underway on rodents. The source declined to identify the kind of rodent. The IIBR is widely assumed to have worked on biological and chemical arms projects. Israel neither confirms nor denies this. In rare public comments, IIB...

FINANCIAL EXPRESS MARCH 30, 2020 Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) has announced to exclude the period of lockdown from any IBC activity proceedings. If an IBC activity was to be carried out during the 21 days of lockdown announced by the centre, it can be dealt after 15 April 2020. The decision is taken after considering the difficulty for the insolvency professionals to continue to conduct the process, for members of the committee of creditors to attend the meetings, and for prospective resolution applicants to prepare and submit resolution plans, during the period of lockdown. Thus, it may be difficult to complete various activities during a corporate insolvency resolution process within the specified timeline in the CIRP Regulations. “To address this difficulty, the IBBI amended the CIRP Regulations to provide that the period of lockdown imposed by the Central Government in the wake of COVID-19 outbreak shall not be counted for the purposes of the time...

Business Standard Dated April 03, 2020 The  coronavirus   pandemic is helping  China   dominate the emerging-market (EM) landscape, making a quick recovery in the world’s second-largest economy crucial if the asset class is to rebound. China’s share in MSCI’s index of developing-nation stocks rose 6 percentage points in the past quarter to a record 36.5 per cent. The country’s weighting in a Bloomberg Barclays gauge of local-currency debt has increased to 35.7 per cent, also an all-time high. Chinese stocks and bonds were the best performers in both measures in the period. This enhanced presence comes at a crucial time for Chinese  markets .  While authorities have unlocked a raft of stimulus measures, investors are concerned  China   lags developed nations in terms of the magnitude of its support. Global money managers may wait for signs these steps are reviving the economy before returning to developing-nation assets....