United Nations, Sep 26 (IANS) External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama have discussed defence cooperation between their countries on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting.

After the meeting on Tuesday, External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said they were “building upon a historical relationship with an important Pacific partner of India”.

They discussed “development assistance, capacity building and defence cooperation,” he tweeted.

In 2017, during Fiji’s Minster for Defence Ratu Inoke Kubuabola’s visit to New Delhi, the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on defence cooperation covering defence industry, military training and humanitarian assistance and disaster management.

The Indian Defence Ministry said at that time Kubuabola and Arun Jaitley, who was holding the defence portfolio then, “discussed expanded defence partnership in maritime security between both the countries, and naval cooperation was identified as an area of promise.”

Sushma Swaraj and Suriname Foreign Minister of Deborah Pollack-Beighle met on Tuesday and discussed cooperation in capacity building, traditional medicine and pharmaceuticals, and followed up to President Ram Nath Kovind’s visit to Suriname in June, Kumar tweeted.

She also met Estonia’s Foreign Minister of Sven Mikser and “had a good exchange of views on intensifying cooperation in IT, trade and investment, culture, education, tourism and multilateral fora,” he tweeted.

On Wednesday, Sushma Swaraj is scheduled to meet with Nepal’s Prime Minister K.P. Sharma and Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.

Sushma Swaraj will be speaking at the High-Level Meeting on Climate Change convened by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and at a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement Ministerial Committee on Palestine.

[IANS]

Mumbai In an unique adventure sports initiative, a group of blind and able-bodied climbers from India and Israel have scaled the world’s fourth highest and Africa’s tallest peak, Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, an organiser said here on Monday.

The climb between September 8-14 was billed as India’s first Inclusive Climb. It included two blind climbers from India and one from Israel, besides 10 others, said the founder of Summitting4Hope (S4H) and expedition leader Anusha Subramanian.

“The climb to the 5885-metre high Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest free-standing mountain in the world, is another victory of inclusion, which is close to the hearts of S4H and Adventures Beyond Barriers Foundation (ABBF).

“It re-evaluated our rigid views about disability and shattered stereotypes that plague persons with disability,” Subramanian, a media professional told news-persons.

She said it is appalling that as a society, we define what ‘they can’ and ‘cannot do’, but combating severe fatigue and acute mountain sickness, all the participants successfully summitted Mt. Kilimanjaro.

The inclusive climb included 14-year old Baepi Donio of Israel — the youngest climber, besides a German teacher, a mother-son duo, two independent filmmakers and six local and three Indian mountain guides in the expedition.

The Pune-based ABBF founder and one of the blind climbers, Divyanshu Ganatra, said that “exclusion is something that persons with disability routinely encounter and with disability, in India, comes ‘invisibility'”, but the real challenge is to understand despite the differences.

“Mountains and nature or outdoors don’t differentiate between anyone, so why is it that we discriminate among people? I believe that to change something, you have to change yourself,” said Subramanian.

Besides Ganatra and Subramanian, the 13-member group included filmmakers Sehran Mohsin and Omkar Potdar, mountain guide Karn Kowshik, IT consultant Prasad Gurav, German teacher Omana Kale, Israelis Uri Basha, Sophie Donio and her 14-year old son Baepi, adventure sports enthusiast Vaishak J.P., motivational speaker Nupur Pittie and consultant Adi Raheja.

The ABBF is said to be the only NGO in the country working with cross-disabilities by providing more opportunities to disabled persons with adaptive adventure and sports activities, marathons, tandem cycling, scuba-diving, paragliding and mountaineering.

S4H, co-founded by Subramanian and Guneet Puri in 2013 with the aim to rehabilitate the flood-ravaged people of Uttarakhand, has supported other causes like Kashmir floods, Nepal earthquake and since last year the disabled persons especially from the economically weaker income groups.

(IANS)

Dubai India dished out another comprehensive performance to thrash Bangladesh by seven wickets in a Super Four stage match of the Asia Cup at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium here on Friday.

Skipper Rohit Sharma led India from the front with a fluent unbeaten half-century to overhaul the paltry target of 174 with more than 13 overs to spare, after the men-in-blue rode on left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja’s magical spell of 4/29 on winning the toss and opting to chase.

The defending champions were off to a brilliant start once again with Rohit (83 not out off 104 balls; 5X4, 6X3) and Shikhar Dhawan (40 off 47; 4X4, 6X1) putting on 61 runs before the southpaw was trapped leg-before by left-armer Shakib Al Hasan in the 15th over.

Thereafter, Rohit and new man Ambati Rayudu (13) added 45 runs for the second wicket before the No.3 batsman was caught behind off pacer Rubel Hossain.

With India cruising to an easy victory, former skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni (33 off 37; 4X3) was promoted up the order and the talismanic wicketkeeper-batsman played the perfect second fiddle to the skipper, who clobbered Shakib for three sixes, one among those to get to his 36th ODI fifty.

Dhoni soon joined the party, belting two consecutive boundaries off skipper Mashrafe Mortaza to raise India’s 150 and also the 50-run stand for the third wicket.

Mortaza, however, avenged the thrashing with the wicket of the stumper, who in an attempt to finish off the innings with a six, gifted his wicket away with India just four runs shy of victory.

Dinesh Karthik (1 not out) then joined his skipper to complete the formalities in style.

Earlier, Jadeja, playing his first ODI since July 2017, wreaked havoc among the Bangladeshi middle-order that comprised the key wickets of Shakib Al Hasan (17), Mushfiqur Rahim (21), Mohammad Mithun (9) and Mosaddek Hossain (12), to help India restrict the opposition for a paltry 173, centred mainly around a 66-run eighth wicket stand between lower-order batsmen Mehidy Hasan (42) and skipper Mashrafe Mortaza (26).

Jadeja was complimented well by the pace duo of Bhuvneshwar Kumar (3/32) and Jasprit Bumrah (3/37).

Put in to bat, Bangladesh immediately found themselves on the backfoot after Bhuvneshwar and Bumrah removed the openers Liton Das (7) and Nazmul Hossain Shanto (7), respectively, with just 16 runs on the board.

Thereafter, Jadeja spun his magic around the Bangladesh batsmen which reduced them to 65/5 by the 18th over, before Mahmudullah (25) and Mosaddek steered the total past the 100-run mark with a brief 36-run sixth wicket stand.

Towards the end, Mehidy and Mashrafe batted sensibly to take the side past the 150-run mark even as the Indian bowlers came back well to restrict them to a below-par score.

Brief Scores

Bangladesh: 173 (Mehidy Hasan 42, Mashrafe Mortaza 26; Ravindra Jadeja 4/29, Bhuvneshwar Kumar 3/32, Jasprit Bumrah 3/37) lose to India: 174/3 (Rohit Sharma 83 not out, Shikhar Dhawan 40, M.S Dhoni 33) by 7 wickets.

(IANS)

New Delhi Even as the French government and Dassault Aviation contradicted former President Francois Hollande’s claim on choosing of Indian industrial partners in the multi-million dollar Rafale jet deal, the Congress party on Saturday said the French government “conceals more than it reveals”. Congress President Rahul Gandhi called it a “surgical strike” on Indian defence forces.

The statement by the French government issued here by the embassy late on Friday came after Hollande claimed in a media report that the Indian government had suggested a particular private firm for the Rafale offset contract.

Hollande was quoted in an article by a French website Mediapart as saying that the Indian government had asked the French government to nominate Reliance Defence as its India partner in the deal.

“We didn’t have any say in this matter,” Hollande was quoted by the website as saying. “It is the Indian government which had proposed this service group and Dassault who negotiated with (Anil) Ambani. We didn’t have the choice, we took the interlocutor who was given to us.”

In response to the claim, the Friday night statement said: “The French government is in no manner involved in the choice of Indian industrial partners who have been, are being or will be selected by French companies.

Dassault Aviation, the makers of the Rafale jets, in a statement, also on Friday night, said: “This offsets contract is delivered in compliance with the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) 2016 regulations. In this framework, and in accordance with the policy of ‘Make in India’, Dassault Aviation has decided to make a partnership with India’s Reliance Group. This is Dassault Aviation’s choice.”

On Saturday, Rahul Gandhi said in a tweet that the “PM and Anil Ambani jointly carried out a One Hundred & Thirty Thousand Crore SURGICAL STRIKE on the Indian Defence forces. Modiji you dishonoured the blood of our martyred soldiers. Shame on you. You betrayed India’s soul.”

The Congress party said that the the French government knows that verbal interactions between former President Hollande and Indian interlocutors were minuted and would emerge.

“Speculation of French Parliamentary hearing into Rafale and access to administration documents under France’s Freedom of Information Law 1978 rife,” Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari tweeted.

“What French government/corporate entity has just ended up doing is making Rafale procurement a veritable domestic issue in French politics also”.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in a tweet in Hindi sought to know from the Indian Prime Minister who “pocketed the money from the Rafale scam, you the BJP or someone else.”

Countering the attack, Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Union Minister Ananth Kumar tweeted: “Nailing the lie on its head — misinformation about Rafale deal, Dassault being called out by the French government.”

The Modi government has repeatedly said it was Dassault that chose its India partner for offsets and that the government had no say in the deal.

The Paris-based Dassault Aviation further said in its statement that “in accordance with India’s acquisition procedure, French companies have the full freedom to choose their Indian partner companies that they consider to be the most relevant, then present for the Indian government’s approval the offset projects that they wish to execute in India with these local partners so as to fulfil their obligations in this regard.”

“Dassault Aviation is very proud that the Indian authorities have selected the Rafale fighter,” it added stating that the partnership “between the two giants” led to the creation of the Dassault Reliance Aerospace Ltd (DRAL) joint venture in February 2017.

The deal to purchase 36 Rafale fighter jets from France was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015 and signed in 2016.

The UPA government was earlier negotiating a deal to procure 126 Rafale jets, with 18 to come in flyaway condition and 108 to be manufactured by HAL under licence.

Mediapart, whose focus of the story was about financing of a film being co-produced by actress Julie Gayet, who is said to be a “personal partner” of Hollande, for which the Ambani group had provided funds of up to $1.6 million.

It interviewed Hollande on phone in which he further said: “I intervened in this affair (Rafale) with the two prime ministers, to say that I was keen for this negotiation. Initially, the deal was supposed to be for 126 planes, then when the government changed the Indians reformulated their proposition, less attractive for us because it was for 36 aircraft only. But the manufacturing was planned to be in France, contrary to the preceding proposition, we lost on the one hand and gained on the other.”

(IANS)

Financial inclusion ranks high on the Indian government’s agenda today. The banking sector, with its legacy infrastructure and outdated modes of operating cannot meet the financial inclusion objectives unless it digitally transforms. Virtualisation and hyperconvergence have to be adopted by the banks to meet the challenges thrust upon them.

Virtualization is the creation of a virtual — rather than actual — version of something, such as an operating system, a server, a storage device or network resources. Hyperconvergence combines storage, computing and networking into a single system in an effort to reduce complexity and increase scalability.

Spurred by financial inclusion policies, the Indian banking sector is facing exponential growth in its customers, accounts and funds. There has also been profusion of payment avenues — both physical and digital.

Over the last couple of years, payment banks and digital wallets have gained wide acceptance, even popularity, with even phone companies and cab agregators jumping in. As this space streamlines, banks are furiously expanding their footprint by launching branches, kiosks and ATMs across India.

The IT departments of banks need to establish strategies and solutions to support this dramatic growth trajectory. While scalability, versatility and agility of IT infrastructure are essential, potentially unpredictable user volumes also need to be addressed. Banks today need to be able to manage multiple branch infrastructure centrally in a seamless manner and provide a secure branch application server.

Additionally, performance and user experience in every branch needs to be monitored to provide improved customer service. Distributed systems grow as retail avenues proliferate and the need for their impeccable security and availability assumes great significance.

Automated management tools powered by intelligent technologies are critical as one false step can irreversibly dent customer trust.

Virtualization and hyperconvergence can support the banking sector’s growth and expansion trajectory. By virtualising all infrastructure elements and delivering them as a service, banks can manage critical functions independent of the physical hardware.

An intelligent software layer added to the IT infrastructure helps to dynamically manage and access all elements with ease. It ensures business continuity and quick and secure data recovery as well, resulting in very little business downtime.

Flexible infrastructure permits workloads to move freely to the optimum resource anywhere, anytime. For the IT organisation, technologies such as virtualisation and hyperconvergence transform a traditionally Capex-centric budget into an Opex-centric. Infrastructure decision is made once annually without having to go through it repeatedly.

Virtualisation can also enable interesting retail business models such as Tab banking and micro-ATMs, often operated by non-banking partners, as part of rural banking. As remote branches grow, a virtualised central pool of servers and storage is crucial so that resources are highly utilised, and attractive cost savings are realised.

The business benefits of virtualised infrastructure architected for growth and managed through software are multi-fold, ranging from less time to set up new branches to lower IT overheads and lesser time to provision/modify infrastructure resources and more.

Design and implementation-readiness of infrastructure are the critical success factors for growing banks. Virtualisation makes it easy for banks to grow, handle sudden peak demands with great customer experience. Automated tools for operations help dramatic growth with stringent security and control. Financial institutions need to embrace these proven methodologies and set the stage for even higher growth in future.

[IANS]

New Delhi Bestselling author Chetan Bhagat, who has had his fair share of criticism by readers and writers of literary novels, says that there is a lot of “elitism” in Indian literary circles. He asserted that “there are no benchmarks in India” and that he doesn’t have to prove his credentials to anybody.

“When I began writing, the entire (publishing) industry was focussed on literary kind of books, books that are seen by literature experts as having a certain elitist language. Those were the kinds of books being published, and were being written to win awards like the Booker Prize. I think homegrown Indian literature has now come into its own as there are ample of books by Indian writers,” Bhagat told IANS in an interview, recalling his tryst with the literary world which began with the publication of “Five Point Someone” in 2004.

His upcoming book “The Girl in Room 105” will be released in October and is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.

“There is a lot of elitism in India. The elites like to look down upon the mere locals, it’s like a colonial kind of hangover that is particularly there in literature. So when it comes to books, the ‘Khan Market books’ are all good and everything else is trash. While they are great, I am not saying they are not, but if I am aspiring to be a pan-India writer, then I must make sure that a reader in Guwahati also understands and relates to my work. They are looking for stories and content that they can relate to,” he elaborated.

Bhagat said he attempts to connect with all readers by including little nuggets of contemporary day-to-day life in his stories.

“For example: Today whole lot of things happen on Instagram and Whatsapp. My new book has a lot of that, this wasn’t there in my previous books. Even in ‘Revolution 2020’, the characters were still using Google chat but the world has moved on and that is what I try to do in my books; write what the readers can relate to,” he quipped.

But his fallout with New Delhi based Rupa publications, which had published all his books so far, sent signals that “Three Mistakes of My Life” writer’s readership was on a decline.

Bhagat refuted the charge saying that he has had “an expansion in readership”. He said that the coming of online bookstores has had a big effect as well.

“It has increased the distribution in tier 2 and tier 3 towns. There were times when my readers used to write to me that they would go to the railway station to buy my books,” the 44-year-old said.

“There are no bookstores that sell novels and general reading books in smaller towns and so I think the e-commerce websites has been the game changer. Having said this, the expansion of online stores has also led to the closing down of many physical bookstores and with the growing spread of internet, people are more and more drawn towards video content than actually reading. Still I am confident that there is ample space for reading. You can have lifts and escalators but there will be always be stairs.”

He maintained that the writers who have become popular have written stories that common people can connect to.

“If a certain elite section looks down upon my books, it speaks for their own insecurity. People who really have credibility, even if they are elite, like my books. Amitabh Ghosh, Shashi Tharoor and even late Leila Seth praised my books. Bill Gates has read my books. I write in a simple way, I add humour, I write about relationships that are similar to relationships that people are having today and I introduce some national issues in it.

“I don’t have to prove my credentials. There was a time when people would always remind me what trolls were telling about me. It used to bother me but I am over it now. If somebody has done well, and has been consistent, then you cannot always dismiss that by insulting him. You can’t take away my achievement,” Bhagat asserted.

(IANS)

Tripunithura (Kerala) The Kerala Police on Thursday began questioning Bishop Franco Mulakkal accused of raping a nun for the second consecutive day.

On Wednesday, the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese in Jalandhar, Punjab, was questioned for seven hours near here at the Crime Branch office. He was asked to return on Thursday for further questioning.

Accompanied by his counsel and a few priests, Mulakkal arrived at the Crime Branch office around 11 a.m., even as demands for his arrest grew. Nuns have been protesting in Kochi for 13 days.

The bishop spent the night at a plush hotel in Kochi.

He dodged a large media contingent waiting outside the hotel as he slipped away in a different car while the vehicle used on Wednesday was kept parked outside the hotel.

Like on Wednesday, Inspector General Vijay Sakhre, Kottayam Superintendent Harishankar and his deputy K. Subhash held a meeting at the IG office in Kochi ahead of the interrogation.

The Kerala High Court has already agreed to hear Mulakkal’s anticipatory bail plea on September 25.

A Kerala nun has accused Mulakkal of repeatedly sexually abusing her between 2014 and 2016.

An FIR was registered against the bishop and a 114-page detailed statement was taken from the nun and other inmates of the convent.

Mulakkal was questioned by the police team led by Subhash in August at his Jalandhar office and has denied all the charges levelled against him by the nun.

(IANS)

New Delhi The Delhi High Court on Wednesday dismissed an application seeking direction to the Centre to disclose the formula on the basis of which daily prices of petroleum and diesel are fixed.

A bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice V. Kameswar Rao refused to interfere with the government policy on fixing petrol prices.

The court was hearing an application, filed by Delhi-based designer Pooja Mahajan. Her advocate A. Maitri sought direction to call the records from the government, including oil companies to disclose the formula and furnish details on the basis of which the daily fuel prices are fixed.

The petitioner said that people were suffering irreparably because these prices were being enhanced on presumption.

Maitri said that the oil manufacturing companies were selling their old stock of petrol and diesel at enhanced prices while admittedly the said stock was purchased at a cheaper rate.

As per official claims, petrol and diesel prices are fixed on account of increase in international prices. Admittedly, international price of crude oil is fixed on barrel basis, the plea said.

The application was filed on the pending public interest litigation by the petitioner in which she has sought direction to the central government to fix a “fair price” of petrol and diesel as it is a policy matter which involved larger economic issues.

The court has asked the government to consider an earlier representation pending before it on price rise of petrol and diesel.

Mahajan had filed a similar plea in July but the high court had then directed the Centre to treat the PIL as a representation.

The petitioner has sought a directive to the Centre to fix a “fair price” of petrol and diesel in line with the Essential Commodities Act.

(IANS)

The US National Cancer Institute has give the “Outstanding Investigator Award” to Professor Arul Chinnaiyan, from the University of Michigan, and $6.5 million in funding over seven years, to identify cancer biomarkers to improve diagnosis and develop new targeted therapies.

“The field of precision oncology continues to evolve with the overarching goal of providing cancer patients with enhanced diagnostic and prognostic capabilities and better treatments,” Chinnaiyan, said in a statement, late on Monday.

“This grant will help us identify new biomarkers and understand their biological roles in cancer progression,” he added.

A pioneer in precision oncology, Chinnaiyan in 2010, launched the Michigan Oncology Sequencing (Mi-ONCOSEQ) programme.

Mi-ONCOSEQ is a research protocol for sequencing the DNA and RNA of metastatic cancers and normal tissue to identify alterations that could help drive treatment.

The programme includes a precision medicine tumour board in which experts discuss each case.

Chinnaiyan’s lab has also analysed the global landscape of a portion of the genome that has not been previously well-explored — long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs).

Earlier, considered as the dark matter, new evidence suggests that lncRNAs may play a role in cancer and that understanding them better could lead to new potential targets for improving cancer diagnosis, prognosis or treatment.

Chinnaiyan’s lab has also identified and explored several lncRNAs that could be promising targets for future therapy.

“We want to further characterise the dark matter of the genome. Some of these lncRNAs will certainly be very useful as cancer biomarkers and we think a subset are important in biological processes,” Chinnaiyan noted.

“We hope to make it commonplace for patients to have a molecular blueprint of their tumour to guide treatment choices.”

With his first three-year term as a Member of Parliament in New Zealand behind him, Mumbai-born Mahesh Bindra is biding his time for the next phase of his engagement in his adopted country’s public life.

“With some luck I might get a second term, but irrespective of that I enjoy being part of politics in a democratically vibrant country,” Bindra told IANS on the sidelines of the recently-concluded World Hindu Congress in Lombard near here where he was a special invitee.

Travelling to New Zealand with his wife and three children in 2002, Bindra has attained a position of political prominence after becoming an MP in 2014. From being a principal correctional officer at the Mount Eden prison, which then had 400 inmates, Bindra’s career took a political turn when he asked a tough question of Winston Peters, leader of the controversial New Zealand First party who is also the country’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister, at a public gathering.

Peters and his party had the reputation for race-baiting and Bindra being an outspoken man wanted to find out the truth for himself. A candid exchange with Peters prompted the latter to invite Bindra to join the party and consider politics. “I come from a political family. My father was an active member of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh. When Peters asked me to consider a political career it seemed like a natural progression,” he said.

He became a member of NZ First in 2006 over cautions of fellow Indian immigrants, many of whom thought Peters and his party were racist. “I studied the party’s policies closely. In fact, Peters even asked me to make policy suggestions over immigration. My many interactions told me that the perceptions of NZ First being racist were unfounded and in fact Peters and others were open to suggestion,” he said.

When he first contested for parliament from the Mount Roskill constituency in the city of Auckland in 2011, he got 419 votes and was placed 21st on the party list. It was only after he began rising steadily that in 2014 he was elected to parliament under New Zealand’s rather complex electoral system. Although his first term ended last year, there are strong expectations that he will return in 2020.

During his term as MP, Bindra was appointed spokesman for Corrections, Customs, Ethnic Affairs and Land Information New Zealand.

In a country where the aboriginal Maori population constitutes about 15 percent of the total of 4.74 million people, Bindra won their hearts when he took his oath in the Maori language apart from English. He said the Maori members were “overcome” by his gesture. “I told them it was my way of respecting and acknowledging the original inhabitants of New Zealand,” he said.

Bindra said he is conscious of the fact that the Maori make up more than 50 per cent of the prison population and wants to continue his engagement to address the often unjust legal system. “Race relations in New Zealand are, by and large, healthy, but we have our own challenges. As an immigrant, I feel it is my duty to play my part in improving them, especially for the Maori people,” he said.

Bindra sees himself as a long-term politician dedicated to represent New Zealand in “the best possible way I can”. He believes that Indians in their adopted countries around the world must get involved in politics at all levels “because that is the best way to assimilate and get heard”.

(IANS)