GOVERNMENT BANS 118 MORE APPS WITH CHINA LINKS

Amidst continuing tensions with China, New Delhi on Wednesday banned 118

apps with Chinese links, citing concerns over threats to India's safety and

sovereignty. The banned apps include PUBG Mobile, one of the world's most

popular e-games, with India accounting for nearly a quarter - the largest

chunk - of its downloads.

Earlier, in June, soon after a faceoff between Indian and Chinese troops at

Galwan Valley in Ladakh left 20 Indian soldiers dead, the government had

banned 59 apps with China links, including TikTok.

The apps banned in this round include utility apps by Beijing-headquartered

APUS Group, popular business card scanning app CamCard, messaging apps like

WeChat Work, search engine Baidu and games such as Game of Sultans and Rise

of Kingdoms. Chinese gaming giant Tencent Holdings developed PUBG.

The biggest impact of this development will be on Tencent Holdings, which

has a number of the banned apps in its portfolio. In addition to WeChat,

which was banned in the first round of action against Chinese apps, and PUBG

Mobile, the Chinese technology conglomerate is behind games such as Ludo

World-Ludo Superstar, Arena of Valor, Chess Rush. Other Tencent apps in the

ban list include utility ones such as iPick, VooV Meeting, Tencent Watchlist

(a stock market app), Tencent Weiyun, Pitu, and WeChat Work.

Tencent incidentally is one of the biggest investors in Indian consumer

Internet ecosystem, having major investments in as many as 15 startups such

as Doubtnut, PolicyBazar, Khatabook, Swiggy, Flipkart, Hike, Practo, and

Dream11, which is the title sponsor for the 2020 edition of the Indian

Premier League. In April 2017, Tencent had invested $700 million in Flipkart

while it has invested close to $1100 million along with Softbank in

homegrown ride hailing service Ola Cabs.

INDIAN MOVES IN CHUSHUL SECTOR AIMED AT FORCING COMPLETE CHINA PULLBACK

Indian and Chinese brigade commanders met for the third consecutive day

Wednesday after Indian troops, thwarting Chinese moves in the Chushul

sector, occupied dominating heights on the south bank of Pangong Tso and

Rechin La near Rezang La.

Troops also moved to strengthen positions at Finger 3 on the Pangong north

bank, occupying heights west of Finger 4 where the Chinese continue to

occupy the ridgeline after coming in 8 km from Finger 8 which India says

marks the Line of Actual Control.

These Indian moves, sources said, will help in military and diplomatic talks

with the Chinese to resolve the border crisis which began early May. The

talks have not made much headway since mid-July because of Chinese

reluctance to complete the disengagement process at Pangong Tso north bank

and Gogra Post. India has been seeking status quo ante - of troops on both

sides returning to their April locations.

A senior Army officer said Wednesday that as tensions mounted on the Pangong

south bank, Indian troops moved quickly on the intervening night of August

29 and August 30 and took over vacant heights to prevent Chinese troops from

taking any vantage position. On the north bank too, the Army readjusted its

positions, the officer said.

By positioning itself on tactically advantageous features, the Indian Army

hopes to dominate the sector and force completion of the disengagement

process.

OPPOSITION'S PART WIN ON QUESTION HOUR, WRITTEN ANSWERS WILL BE GIVEN

After a huge outcry over the scrapping of Question Hour in parliament for

the coming session, the government has said it would allow "unstarred

questions" -- meaning written questions that will receive written responses.

The modification came shortly after the government's claim that that

Question Hour was dropped only after discussions with opposition leaders and

at the time, no one but Trinamool Congress's Derek O' Brien had objected.

The plan to drop Question Hour in the short parliament session that would

begin on September 14 after a five-month gap, triggered a huge row, with

various leaders accusing the government of stifling the voice of the

opposition. The opposition's contention is that such a schedule gives them

no opportunity to raise and discuss matters they consider important.

PM CARES FUND GOT RS 3,076-CR IN JUST FIVE DAYS: ACCOUNT STATEMENT

The PM CARES Fund, set up in March to deal with emergency situations like

the COVID-19 pandemic, received Rs 3,076.62 crore in just five days of its

formation, as per an account statement made public by the fund on Wednesday.

It put the fund's closing balance as on March 31, 2020 at Rs 3,076.62 crore.

According to details posted on the website of the 'Prime Minister's Citizen

Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM CARES Fund)', the

fund consists "entirely of voluntary contributions from

individuals/organisations and does not get any budgetary support".

The fund generated a lot of interest immediately after Prime Minister

Narendra Modi announced its formation in the last week of March after the

COVID-19 outbreak and appealed for donations, prompting several private

firms, government bodies and individuals, including celebrities, to donate

money.

The government has used a part of the money to buy medical equipment,

including ventilators, to boost the battle against the COVID-19 and has also

provided relief to migrants.

Opposition parties have, however, criticised the fund, claiming that its

contributions and expenses are not transparent, a charge denied by the

government.

RAHUL GANDHI TWEETS LIST OF "MODI-MADE DISASTERS"

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi kept up his attack on the government Wednesday

with a list of "Modi-made disasters" to have affected India.

"India is reeling under Modi-made disasters: Historic GDP reduction -23.9%;

Highest Unemployment in 45 years; 12 crore job loss; centre not paying

states GST dues; globally highest COVID-19 daily cases, deaths; external

aggression at our borders," Rahul Gandhi tweeted.

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

======================

CHINA ENGAGED IN CLEAR, INTENSIVE INTENSIFYING PATTERN OF BULLYING

NEIGHBOURS: POMPEO

Hoping for a peaceful resolution of the situation on the India-China border,

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday asserted that the Communist

Party of China is engaged in a "clear and intensive intensifying pattern of

bullying" its neighbours from the Taiwan Strait to the Himalayas.

That bullying is also evident in the South China Sea, he told reporters at

the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the State Department. "We are hoping for a

peaceful resolution of the situation on the India-China border. From the

Taiwan Strait to the Himalayas and beyond, the Chinese Communist Party is

engaged in a clear and intensive intensifying pattern of bullying its

neighbours," Pompeo said.

"Last week, the US imposed sanctions and visa restrictions on Chinese

individuals and entities responsible for the CPC's imperialism and doing

things such as unlawful energy surveillance activities in the economic zones

of our ally the Philippines and other countries," he said.

The US, he said, also remains concerned about the activities of more than

300 Chinese flag vessels near the Galapagos islands, in Pacific Ocean, which

are almost certainly engaged in illegal fishing.

China is the most flagrant violator of the Law of the Sea convention and

nations all across the world are registering their disapproval, the top US

diplomat said.

I WON'T CONDEMN CARTOONS OF PROPHET MOHAMMAD: FRENCH PRESIDENT

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday it was not his place to

pass judgment on the decision by satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to

re-publish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, saying France has freedom of

expression.

But Macron, speaking on a visit to Lebanon, said it was incumbent on French

citizens to show civility and respect for each other, and avoid a "dialogue

of hate."

The magazine re-published the cartoons on the eve of a trial in Paris of

alleged accomplices in a 2015 attack on the magazine's offices by Islamist

terrorists gunmen in which 12 people were killed.

THE REST

========

CABINET APPROVES 'MISSION KARMAYOGI' FOR MAJOR REFORMS IN BUREAUCRACY

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved Mission Karmayogi', dubbed as the

biggest bureaucratic reform initiative, aimed at capacity building of

government employees to make them more "creative, proactive, professional

and technology-enabled".

The core guiding principles of the competency-driven programme will be to

support a transition from rules based to roles based HR management to

prepare the Indian civil servant for the future, according to a government

statement.

The programme will help in overcoming existing impediments like lack of

lifelong & continuous learning environment, evolution of silos at department

level preventing shared understanding of India's development aspirations and

diverse and fragmented training landscape among others.

Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh, who was also present at the

briefing, said the scheme will help end subjective evaluation, and ensure

scientifically-devised, objective and real-time assessment of employees.

Mission Karmayogi is an endeavour "to reincarnate a government servant into

an ideal karmayogi to serve the nation by enabling him to be creative, to be

constructive, to be pro-active and technically empowered", Singh told

reporters.

MAMATA ASKS PM TO INTERVENE IN GST IMPASSE

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has sought Prime Minister

Narendra Modi's intervention in the GST compensation impasse. In a letter to

Prime Minister Modi, Banerjee said the Centre must borrow to meet the GST

shortfall at this critical hour of Covid-19 pandemic.

"I am sure that the states will reciprocate in supporting a resolution that

cess collection continues beyond the five years till the entire debt of the

Centre is totally liquidated, along with the entire interest payment cost,"

she said.

Banerjee also pointed that the government of India had the power to monetise

its debt while the states do not. "Also, government of India gets a much

lower interest on such borrowings by state would be much higher.

Furthermore, government of India can raise the resources to service its

debt, while the states simply cannot service huge additional debts when

their finances are on the verge of collapse," the letter further said.

Banerjee joined chief ministers of five other non-BJP-ruled states that have

written to the centre to remind it of its "constitutional" responsibilities

in the stand-off over the Rs 2.35 lakh crore shortfall in GST compensation

and financial relief (from the pandemic) due to states.

METRO SERVICES TO RESUME FROM SEPT 7, NORMAL OPERATIONS FROM SEPT 12: PURI

Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Wednesday said Metro services will

resume in a graded manner from September 7 across the country and passengers

will have to follow preventive measures against COVID-19 such as maintaining

social distancing and wearing face mask.

Addressing an online media briefing, the Union housing and urban affairs

minister said all Metro lines will become operational by September 12.

According to the ministry, Metro trains will not stop at stations where

passengers are found not maintaining social distancing.

He said in the first stage, Delhi Metro services will operate in two shifts

-- 7-11 am and 4-8 pm. In the second stage, trains will be available from 7

am to 1 pm and from 4 pm to 10 pm, he said, adding that normal operations

will resume from September 12.

500 TRAINS, 10,000 STOPS COULD GO IN 'REIMAGINED' POST-COVID TIMETABLE

Some 500 regular trains will be discontinued and 10,000 stops across the

Indian Railways' network will be erased in a new timetable for operations

that will be adopted once the pandemic ends and services return to normal.

The Railways expect to increase their annual earnings by more than Rs 1,500

crore through this new "zero-based timetable". The new timetable will make

room to run 15 per cent more freight trains on exclusive corridors at higher

speeds. The average speed of passenger trains is projected to increase by

around 10 per cent across the network.

The zero-based timetable, so named because it seeks to re-imagine operations

from scratch, has been developed by the Railways along with experts from

IIT-Bombay. Work started during the nationwide lockdown, when the suspension

of passenger services provided an unprecedented opportunity to rethink

operations without having to run trains at the same time.

SUSHANT CASE: EX-IPS OFFICERS URGE HC TO REIN IN NEWS CHANNELS

Eight former IPS officers have moved the Bombay High Court against the

"unfair, malicious and false media campaign" against Mumbai Police in the

Sushant Singh Rajput death case. The "media trial" should be stopped, the

plea urged the court.

The petitioners are former Maharashtra DGPs M N Singh, PS Pasricha, DK

Sivanandan, Sanjiv Dayal, Satish Mathur and K Subramanyam, former Mumbai

police commissioner DN Jadhav, and former additional DGP KP Raghuvanshi.

The petition said a section of news channels have been trying to influence

the course of investigation which is being carried out by the CBI, ED and

NCB, and airing false propaganda against Mumbai Police. It sought a

direction to media organisations to refrain from publishing or circulating

false, derogatory and scandalous comments which may jeopardize the

reputation of the city police.

It also sought a direction to the concerned authorities to frame the

guidelines to be followed by the media while reporting on such cases.

RESEARCHERS DEVELOP FASTER METHOD TO TEST FOR COVID-19

Researchers from the New Delhi-based Institute of Genomics and Integrative

Biology (IGIB) have developed a new method of coronavirus disease (Covid-19)

testing that is faster, cheaper, and almost as accurate as the Reverse

Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) test, considered the gold

standard of testing for the infection.

The method eliminates the need for a biosafety lab, which makes it possible

for it to be used at airports and railway stations to test passengers before

they board a plane or a train.

"The benefit of this method is that we do not need the viral RNA to be

intact after sample collection because we do not need to amplify the genetic

material. This means, after collecting the swab samples we can directly put

it in a detergent that breaks down the genetic material of the virus leaving

it unable to infect anyone," said Shantanu Sengupta, senior principal

scientist at IGIB.

"For RT-PCR, the sample has to be carefully transported in a medium and

taken to a biosafety lab to prevent those handling it from getting the

infection," added Sengupta, one of the corresponding authors of the paper,

which has been published in the Springer Group's Journal of Proteins and

Proteomics.

The specificity (the measure of a test's ability to correctly generate a

negative result for people who don't have the condition) of the method is

100% and sensitivity (ability of a test to correctly identify those with the

disease) 90.4%, meaning all those who test positive using the method will be

truly positive but there is about a 10% chance that a person might test

negative despite having the infection. This is much better than the

alternative rapid antigen kits, currently in use in India for scaling up

testing, that can throw up 20 to 50% false negatives.

Also, the test is expected to cost as little as a tenth of the price of an

RT-PCR test.

'BAD BOY BILLIONAIRES': SC DECLINES TO ENTERTAIN NETFLIX PLEA AGAINST BIHAR

COURT ORDER

The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to entertain Netflix's petition

against a Bihar court order restraining it from using Sahara Group chairman

Subrata Roy's name in its upcoming web series 'Bad Boy Billionaires'.

A bench headed by Chief Justice of India SA Bobde, however, said Netflix was

free to approach the Patna High Court against the order passed by a district

court at Araria in Bihar.

The web series is promoted by Netflix as: "This investigative docu-series

explores the greed, fraud and corruption that built up - and ultimately

brought down - India's most infamous tycoons."

RICKY PONTING TO R ASHWIN: 'SOME SORT OF A RUN PENALTY' IDEAL FOR

NON-STRIKERS BACKING UP TOO FAR

Ricky Ponting believes a non-striker stealing yards before the bowler has

released the ball is cheating, but he still doesn't think running the

batsman out is the ideal way to keep him in the crease. According to

Ponting, a run penalty on the batsman stealing yards - "found cheating" - is

something that needs to be looked at.

Ponting is the coach of Delhi Capitals, the IPL team which secured for this

year the services of R Ashwin, the biggest proponent of the run-out of the

batsman backing up before the bowler releases the ball. The difference in

opinion became a flashpoint when Ponting said, in the lead-up to this year's

IPL, that he was going to have a "hard conversation" with Aswhin and that

"this is not going to be the way we play our cricket".

Ashwin spoke to the coach about the issue, and they ended up agreeing that

the batsman is cheating if he starts running before a bowler delivers the

ball.

"I think there should be some sort of a run penalty," Ponting said. "If you

are to get to the top of your bowling action and stop, and it shows that the

batsman is cheating and is out of his crease, I think put a run penalty on

them..Imagine taking 10 runs off a team total because you have taken

yards... those sort of things need to be looked at."

Ashwin's run-out of Jos Buttler in the 2019 IPL had sharply divided opinion

in the cricketing world.

INDICATORS

Sensex 39,086 (+185), Nifty 11,535 (+65), Trading Value NSE ,(Rs.crores)

49564.92

Nasdaq 12,056 (+117) Dow 29,100 (+455), S&P 3,581 (+54)

US$-Rs. 73.04 GBP-Rs. 97.50, Euro-Rs. 86.67, UAE Dhm-Rs.19.88, Can$-Rs.

55.90, Aus$- Rs. 53.60

GBP 0.74 /US$, Euro 0.84 /US$, Jap.Yen 106.13 /US$, Aus$ 1.36 /US$, Sing

1.36 /US$, Bang Taka 83.38 /US$, Can$ 1.30 /US$, Mal Ring 4.14 /US$,

Pak Re 165.00 /US$, Phil Peso 48.56 /US$, Russian Rouble 74.48 /US$, NZ$

1.47 /US$, Thai Baht 31.22 /US$, Ukraine Hryvnia 27.49 /US$, Norway NOK 8.80

/US$

Bitcoin - USD 11,424

Dollar Index 92.76 Brent Crude 44.50 BDI 1,445

Gold world Spot Price USD/aoz 1,949 India (Rs. per gm 24k/22k) 5,055 / 4,955

Silver (Rs. Per KG) 67,210

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

But let's put it this way: You got to be willing to change. Once you harden,

the arteries do. - Allan Gurganus

OFF TRACK

A man realized he needed to purchase a hearing aid, but he felt unwilling to

spend much money.

"How much do they cost?" he asked the salesman.

"That depends," said the salesman. "They run from Rs. 100 to a lakh.

"Let's see the cheapest model," he said.

The salesman put the device around the man's neck. "You just stick this

button in your ear and run this little string down to your pocket," he

instructed.

"How does it work?" the customer asked.

"For 100 RS it doesn't work," the salesman replied. "But when people see it

on you, they'll talk louder!"