'Harry Potter' creator JK Rowling dines with Obama in London

President Barack Obama went from Shakespeare to Harry Potter during his visit to London.

The boy wizard’s creator, J.K. Rowling, was among guests who were dining with Mr. Obama at the U.S. ambassador’s London residence on Saturday. Earlier the President visited Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre to mark the 400th anniversary of the playwright’s death.

Ms. Rowling spokeswoman Rebecca Salt confirmed on Sunday that the author attended a private dinner with Mr. Obama. British Prime Minister David Cameron was also among the guests.

If Shakespeare is Britain’s greatest-ever writer, Ms. Rowling is its most successful living one. Her Potter books have sold more than 400 million copies worldwide.

Ms. Rowling has met the President several times, and attended a banquet thrown by Mr. Obama and his wife for Queen Elizabeth II when the U.S. first couple visited Britain in 2011.

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At Windsor Castle, Queen forced Obama to halve his accompanying helicopters

Barack Obama may be the world’s most powerful man but Queen Elizabeth II forced him to slash by half the number of choppers his Secret Service can land on the Windsor Castle lawns when the U.S. President came over for dinner with the 90-year-old monarch.

The Queen called Mr. Obama’s bevy of choppers “over the top,” meaning the Secret Service had to rethink their plans to land about six aircraft in the 300-year-old gardens of her main residence.

“It was a write-off and the Queen was not amused,” Daily Express quoted a royal source as saying.

She was firm

“Her Majesty refused to back down and said, ‘three helicopters only’ The Secret Service had to go away and think about their plan. The President’s officials were told that the Queen regarded Windsor Castle as her family home and the most important of all royal residences,” the report said.

“She rarely imposes her will but when she does people listen — it just took the U.S. Secret Service agents a little time to realise that,” the source said.

No way of a hefty entourage

The Queen, whose 90th birthday was celebrated recently, said there was no chance Mr. Obama’s extensive security backup would be accompanying him to Windsor Castle.

Her insistence came after Mr. Obama’s helicopters damaged the grass when half-a-dozen of them landed during his last visit in 2011.

Grass reeks with history

The engines’ heat scorched the grounds and the wheels left divots in one of U.K.’s oldest lawns, planted during the reign of Queen Anne in the early 1700s.

The Queen said only three helicopters, including the president’s personal aircraft Marine One, could land on the lawn when Mr. Obama (54) and his wife, Ms. Michelle Obama (52) came for dinner with the monarch and Prince Philip to celebrate her 90th birthday, the report said.

Ultimately she had her way

An insider said U.S. aides refused to change their plans on security grounds but came around to the Queen’s wishes eventually.

“They said they needed to be within reach of the President at all times. They also wanted guards posted inside the dining hall when he had lunch with the Queen,” the insider said.

” But Her Majesty refused to back down and said, ‘three helicopters only.’ Eventually the President’s aides accepted her wishes,” the report said.

Mr. Obama visited the U.K. as part of his ongoing three-nation tour which also included Saudi Arabia and Germany.

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CJI Thakur’s emotional appeal to Modi to protect judiciary

Breaking down several times in his half-hour speech addressed directly at Prime Minister Narendra Modi present on the dais at the Annual Chief Ministers and Chief Justices Conference on Sunday, Chief Justice of India, Tirath Singh Thakur, launched a scathing attack on government inaction, squarely blaming the Centre for stalling appointment of judges to the High Courts. He also blamed the Centre of doing nothing to increase the number of courts and judges in the country, thus denying the poor man and under trial prisoners their due of justice.

The Chief Justice asked what the point of ‘Make in India’ was and inviting foreign direct investments when investors are increasingly doubtful about the timely delivery of justice.

“Therefore not only in the name of the litigant… the poor litigant (he pauses as his voice trembles with emotion) languishing in jail but also in the name of the country and progress, I beseech you to realise that it is not enough to criticise the judiciary… you cannot shift the entire burden to the judiciary,” Chief Justice Thakur said in an unprecedented criticism of the government.

“I feel that if nothing else has helped justice, an emotional appeal might,” Chief Justice Thakur told an audience of his fellow Supreme Court judges, High Court Chief Justices, former Chief Justices of India, senior Union Law and Justice Ministry officials, dignitaries and the media at Vigyan Bhawan as the Prime Minister and Union Law Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda watched on.

He said there are 434 judicial vacancies in the High Courts waiting to be filled up as of date.

“This is thanks to the long time the NJAC case took to be decided,” Chief Justice Thakur said, referring to the year-long litigation in the Supreme Court over the government’s attempt to replace the Supreme Court Collegium with the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC). Judges’ appointments to the High Courts and the Supreme Court had remained frozen as the court battle had raged on.

“Once the litigation was over, a concerned collegium cleared pending proposals for judicial appointments in six weeks. We had already appointed 54 High Court judges whose cases were pending with us before the NJAC case. Fifty per cent of the proposals were turned down by us as we did not want the slightest blemish on the name of the judiciary. But 169 proposals are still pending with the government till now… ” Chief Justice Thakur said.

“Now how long will you take to process these proposals? … How long? When jails are overflowing… In Allahabad High Court, 10 lakh cases are pending.”

‘Ratio of no. of judges to the population grossly inadequate’

Chief Justice Thakur, in his scathing criticism of the government’s inaction, said the Centre chose not to lift a finger to help reduce the “impossible burden” judges carry and aid the cause of justice delivery despite a Law Commission report in 1987 warning that the country is slipping into a crisis where the ratio of the number of judges to the population is grossly inadequate.

He read out a letter from his predecessor, Chief Justice of India (now retired) Altamas Kabir, who had to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on February 21, 2013, requesting the latter to take steps to increase judges’ strength over a period of five years to at least 50 judges per million.

Chief Justice Thakur then read out Mr. Singh’s reply, in which the latter acknowledges that judges’ numbers have to be increased manifold, but ends his letter by passing the blame to the State governments for not taking the “initiative.”

“So in 2013, the Government of India commits itself to increase the number of judges, but nothing is done. The Centre says the States should take the lead and the States say Centre should take the lead. As this tug-of-war goes on, judges’ strength remains the same and litigants remain in jail,” Chief Justice Thakur slammed the government.

He said that at least five crore cases are filed every year and judges dispose of only two crore.

“Nobody talks about our disposal rates… there is a limit to what a judge can do, to his or her performance capacity. In the United Supreme Court, nine judges sit together as a Bench and decide only 81 cases in a year. Judges come from abroad and are amazed by what an Indian judge does in a year in a stress-filled atmosphere… Yet we struggle on as the people have faith because we are doing our best,” Chief Justice Thakur said.

He referred to how the Law Commission in 1987 had recommended 40,000 judges in the country to tide over the problem of pendency of that time. Its report had said that there were only 10 judges to a million population when there should be at least 50 judges per 10 lakh population.

Noting that population has increased by over 25 crore since 1987, Chief Justice Thakur said the only solution to this “extraordinary situation” was to bring back proven judges from retirement in a bid to dispose of cases which are more than five years old.

He noted how setting up of Commercial Courts was close to Prime Minister Modi's heart but questioned its viability. He said merely naming an existing court as Commercial Court would only further delay the process of justice for the ordinary litigant.

"Speeches have been made in the past, debates have been held in the Parliament, but I think nothing is moving," Chief Justice Thakur said.

PM makes an unscheduled speech

The Chief Justice’s remarks and appeal that it is “time to protect the judiciary, which is one of the pillars of our Constitution” saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi deliver an unscheduled speech immediately after the former took his seat on the dais.

Mr. Modi recounted how as Gujarat Chief Minister he had attended the same conference several times and heard speeches. He said how speakers in the conference had elbowed aside his suggestion for judges to reduce their annual holidays to help reduce pendency.

The Prime Minister said judges and the government should sit together and work for a more efficient tomorrow rather than dwell in the past and what was said in 1987.

He said the ordinary citizen has full faith in the judiciary and the government would not let that faith in the judges falter. He blamed the flood of archaic laws that fill up the statute books, faulty or vague drafting of laws and their multiple interpretations by various courts as reasons for prolonged litigation.

“Some of these laws date back to 1880s. Somebody wants to do something, he is shown a law drafted in the last century and told to stop doing it,” Mr. Modi said.

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Uddhav targets BJP government over Hardik, Kanhaiya

In a veiled attack on the Narendra Modi government, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray on Sunday said instead of guiding the youth in the right direction, it has “given birth” to Rohith Vemula, Hardik Patel and Kanhaiya Kumar, the youth figures who have been in news in the last few months.

"India has a big population of youths. Instead of giving them proper guidance and directions, the government is misleading them," he said and cited the examples of Rohit Vemula (Dalit scholar who committed suicide in Hyderabad University), Hardik Patel (Gujarat Patel quota stir leader who is in jail) and JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar (who has been charged with sedition).

He, however, did not name BJP or the Modi government.

The Modi government has come under attack over the way it has handled the issues related to these three youths.

When Hardik Patel became popular, he was charged with sedition, and now Kanhaiya Kumar is fighting against the government, Mr. Uddhav said, and asked, “Who gave birth to these youths?”

Youths of the country required proper guidance and direction and it is not wrong to give advice to our friend (BJP) with whom we have an alliance, he told reporters here.

“We will oppose any bifurcation of Maharashtra,” the Sena leader said in the backdrop of ongoing debate on separate Vidarbha.

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50 U.P. districts in the grip of drought

Only two dozen students turned up at the upper-primary school in Kahla village on Saturday. Apart from the scorching April heat, the students had a valid reason for staying away: the only hand pump in the school has been non-operative for four months. This has not only deprived them of drinking water but also rendered the school toilet non-functional. While girls have been discouraged from attending school, boys who turn up are told to use the open space to defecate.

To run the school, which has 130 students, teachers are forced to fetch water from a nearby hand pump. Even that has an erratic supply; dozens of hand pumps in the region have entirely collapsed or are dysfunctional. Attempts to re-bore them have also failed, as the ground water level is critically low.

In Kahla, only a fifth of the hand pumps are operational. “The students are de-motivated as their homes are two kilometres away and they have to walk back in the heat. We had to ask them to get water from home. We are also struggling to prepare the midday meals — the cook has to fetch water from a tubewell 500 metres away,” said assistant teacher V.D. Tripathi. “In spite of several applications, not a single official has visited us to repair the pump,” he said.

Parched countryside

Fifty districts in Uttar Pradesh are reeling under severe drought and swathes of parched land lie unused as the water crisis has devastated the rural economy. Securing potable water has become an ordeal with the worst of summer yet to come.

Seven districts of Bundelkhand — Chitrakoot, Banda, Mahoba, Hamirpur, Lalitpur, Jhansi and Banda — are the worst affected. Kahla is located in the Hateti Purva gram panchayat of Banda, on the edge of the Ken, one of the major rivers in the region and a tributary of the Yamuna. A walk through the village takes one past dozens of dried up hand pumps — even those that are operational can produce not more than a few buckets of water.

It is noon and there is still a steady rush of women, with pots on their head and children by their side, moving towards the Ken. Alongside are many villagers who have brought their buffaloes for bathing. The river is fast drying up. But for a large section of villagers, it is still the only source of water. The same stream is used to bathe, collect drinking water and wash animals. The State government’s tankers are yet to touch Kahla.

“What option do we have? The Ken is our only lifeline — all other sources of water have failed,” said Ramsakhi Nishad, who walked 1.5 kilometres with her young grandchildren to bathe and collect drinking water at the river. All the hand pumps in her dera (locality) have failed and her family now drinks from the river. In solidarity, villagers in other areas have allowed people to use their hand pumps but that has not been enough to meet the needs.

“I run to the river in this sweltering heat each time we run out of water. We cannot arrange even a lota (glass) of water for guests,” Ramsakhi said.

Water fights ahead

Banda District Magistrate Yogesh Kumar says 35 per cent of the 33,000 hand pumps in Banda have been rendered non-functional. The drinking water problem is made worse by the high salinity levels in the region. Since the Ken is drying fast and is expected to become shallow in May, villagers fear the worst, and in recent weeks many water fights have been reported.

“I have never seen the Ken so dry. Its flow will completely break next month. People may not die of thirst but it will surely become a struggle,” said pradhan Om Prakash Nishad, whose community’s traditional methods of growing cantaloupes and watermelon on river beds in summer has somewhat mitigated the loss of a major crop.

As hundreds of ponds, canals and local reservoirs have dried up across Bundelkhand, stray cattle, or “anna janwars,” are dying of thirst. Though no human deaths have been reported of starvation or thirst, Chitrakoot Divisional Commissioner Venkateshwarlu said the situation is grave.

The administration is trying to fight it by introducing tankers in villages and repairing hand pumps, he said. Around 1,950 hand pumps had been re-bored in the Chitrakoot in the past year. Of these, 17 were in Kahla. “We have never needed so many re-bores,” Mr. Nishad said.

The Akhilesh Yadav government has allocated Rs 30 crore for solving the drinking water crisis in Bundelkhand. Over 3,200 hand pumps will be installed in the seven districts, while an additional 440 tankers will cater to areas beyond repair, the government has said.

Man-made crisis

Deficit rainfall — less than 40 per cent — natural scarcity of water and other climatic factors are being cited as the immediate causes of the water problem. But environment activist Ashish Sagar says the encroachment of hundreds of Chandela-era ponds and the overall degradation of the forest cover are to be blamed for the sustained crisis. Through an RTI, Mr. Sagar found that in the past decade, 4,020 ponds have “vanished” in Bundelkhand, primarily due to encroachments by land sharks.

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Solar-powered plane completes journey across Pacific Ocean

A solar-powered airplane landed in California on Saturday, completing a risky, three-day flight across the Pacific Ocean as part of its journey around the world.

Pilot Bertrand Piccard landed the Solar Impulse 2 in Mountain View, in the Silicon Valley south of San Francisco, at 11-45 p.m. following a 62-hour, nonstop solo flight without fuel. The plane taxied into a huge tent erected on Moffett Airfield where Mr. Piccard was greeted by project’s team.

“You know there was a moment in the night, I was watching the reflection of the moon on the ocean and I was thinking ‘I’m completely alone in this tiny cockpit and I feel completely confident.’ And I was really thankful to life for bringing me this experience,” Mr. Piccard said at a news conference after he landed. “It’s maybe this is one of the most fantastic experiences of life I’ve had.”

The landing came several hours after the Mr. Piccard performed a fly-by over the Golden Gate Bridge as spectators watched the narrow aircraft with extra wide wings from below.

“I crossed the bridge. I am officially in America,” he declared as he took in spectacular views of San Francisco Bay.

Mr. Piccard and fellow Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg have been taking turns flying the plane on an around-the-world trip since taking off from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, in March 2015. It made stops in Oman, Myanmar, China, Japan and Hawaii.

The trans-Pacific leg was the riskiest part of the plane’s global travels because of the lack of emergency landing sites.

The aircraft faced a few bumps along the way.

The Solar Impulse 2 landed in Hawaii in July and was forced to stay in the islands after the plane’s battery system sustained heat damage on its trip from Japan. The team was delayed in Asia, as well. When first attempting to fly from Nanjing, China, to Hawaii, the crew had to divert to Japan because of unfavourable weather and a damaged wing.

A month later, when weather conditions were right, the plane departed from Nagoya in central Japan for Hawaii.

The plane’s ideal flight speed is about 28 mph, though that can double during the day when the sun’s rays are strongest. The carbon-fiber aircraft weighs more than 5,000 pounds, or about as much as a midsize truck.

The plane’s wings, which stretch wider than those of a Boeing 747, are equipped with 17,000 solar cells that power propellers and charge batteries. The plane runs on stored energy at night.

Solar Impulse 2 will make three more stops in the United States before crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Europe or Northern Africa, according to the website documenting the journey.

“The adventure continues,” Mr. Piccard said. “The story is not finished.”

The project, which began in 2002 and is estimated to cost more than $100 million, is meant to highlight the importance of renewable energy and the spirit of innovation.

“I think innovation and pioneering must continue,” Mr. Piccard said. “It must continue for better quality of life, for clean technologies, for renewable energy; this is where the pioneers can really express themselves and be successful.”

Solar-powered air travel is not yet commercially practical, however, given the slow travel time, weather and weight constraints of the aircraft.

“Maybe it will be boring in 20 years when all the airplanes will be electric and people will say ‘Oh it’s routine.’ But now, today, an airplane that is electric, with electric engines, that produces its own energy with the sun, it can never be boring,” Mr. Piccard said. “It’s a miracle of technology.”

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Trump mocks Indian call centres

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump used a fake accent to mock a call centre representative in India.

At the same time, he described India as a great place. The billionaire from New York said he called up his credit card company to find out whether their customer support is based in the U.S. or overseas.

“Guess what, you’re talking to a person from India. How the hell does that work?” he told his supporters in Delaware. “So I called up, under the guise I’m checking on my card, I said, ‘Where are you from?’” Mr. Trump said and then he copied the response from the call centre in a fake Indian accent. “We are from India,” Mr. Trump impersonated the response.

Fake accent

“Oh great, that’s wonderful,” he said as he pretended to hang up the phone.

“India is great place. I am not upset with other leaders. I am upset with our leaders for being so stupid,” he said. “I am not angry with China. I am not angry at Japan. I am not angry with Vietnam, India...all these countries.”

Mr. Trump mentioned the fake call to India during his remarks on what he described as “crooked banking”.

Delaware is a hub for America’s banking and credit card industry. The list includes Bank of America, Citibank Delaware, M&T Bank and PNC Financial Services Group.

“They are making a lot of money,” he said. “You can’t allow policies that allow China, Mexico, Japan, Vietnam, India. You can’t allow policies that allow business to be ripped out of the United States like candy from a baby.”

“The manufacturing jobs are being stolen. Our jobs are being taken. We are losing at every front. There is nothing good. Our country does not win anymore. The jobs are being stripped. Factories are closing. We are not going to let this happen anymore,” he said.

Mr. Trump added he has as many as 378 companies registered in Delaware, where the Republican presidential primary is scheduled on April 26 along with several other states. He is leading in polls against his other primary rivals.

In his speech, Mr. Trump praised Delaware’s status as a tax shelter and slammed President Barack Obama for not using the term “radical Islamists” in the fight against terrorism. “I want to run against crooked Hillary,” he said.

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Indian workers worst to understand, says Maine’s Republican Governor

Indian workers are the “worst” and the “hardest” ones to understand, Republican Governor of U.S. State of Maine Paul LePage said, stirring another controversy by his party members in this election cycle.

In his address to the Maine Republican convention, where the party selected its delegates for the July national convention, Mr. Page alleged that foreign workers are being used in local restaurants.
Mr. LePage said workers from India are “hardest” and “the worst ones” to understand and one has to get an interpreter to talk to an Indian. However, he then quickly described Indians as “lovely” people.

Mr. LaPage’s remarks came a day after Donald Trump mocked Indian call centres but described India as a “great place“.

However, both Mr. LePage and Mr. Trump suffered a setback at the Maine Convention, which elected 19 of the 23 delegates who are Ted Cruz supporters.

Maine is a small northeastern State in the U.S.

In his speech, Mr. LePage was highly critical of Mr. Cruz, accusing him of “stabbing us in the back”.

“We reached a deal with Cruz’s national campaign to put up a unity slate that would honour the wishes of the thousands of Mainers who voted at caucus. But Cruz’s Northeast Political Director David Sawyer lied to us and broke the deal. Sawyer stabbed us in the back, reneged on the unity slate and betrayed the people of Maine,” he said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Mr. Cruz notched up more delegates than Mr. Trump on Saturday. He won at least 65 of the 94 delegates up for grabs over the weekend.

As of Saturday, Mr. Trump had 845 delegates against 559 of Mr. Cruz.

A candidate needs to have at least 1,237 delegates to earn the Republican presidential nomination.

Primaries are still to be held in 15 States, with the next round of primaries to be held in Maryland, Delaware, Philadelphia, Rhode Island and Connecticut on Tuesday.

Polls show that Mr. Trump is leading in all these States.

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IT dept launches tax calculator; e-filing begins this week

With the new Income Tax Return (ITR) forms notified recently for assessment year 2016-17, filers can do an easy check and obtain their annual tax liability on a computer-based calculator hosted by the IT department.

The ‘tax calculator’ is an online computer-based programme hosted on the official website of the department and is meant to help taxpayers or filers assess their tax liability.

The calculator works once a filer correctly feeds his basic details and information, as notified for the current assessment year by the government.

Also, the e-filing facility for ITR-1 (for individuals having income from salaries, single house property and other sources) and ITR-4 (for individuals and Hindu Undivided Families (HUFs) having income from a proprietary business or profession) is expected to go online and get enabled this week, the other ITRs will be hosted soon after, a senior IT department officer said.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes had notified the new forms on March 30 and ITRs can be filed till the stipulated deadline of July 31.

Officials said the calculator has been updated and calibrated by the department as per the new announcements made in respect of tax rates in the latest Budget.

The facility can be used by any taxpayer whether individual, corporate or any other entity, to compute their tax liability.

However, there is a word of caution from the tax department that filers should not solely rely on it as complicated cases of ITR have different requirements which may not be addressed by the ‘calculator’

“The calculator is only to enable public to have a quick and an easy access to basic tax calculation and does not purport to give correct tax calculation in all circumstances.

“It is advised that for filing of returns the exact calculation may be made as per the provisions contained in the relevant Acts, Rules etc,” a disclaimer by the department says.

The official said the calculator has been hosted on the website of the department — www.incometaxindia.gov.in —, for the ease of all who either do an e-filing or manual filing of ITR.

The calculator has been enabled to compute the total tax liability of an individual or any other category of taxpayer under various heads like income from house property, capital gains, profits and gains of business or profession and agricultural income, among others.

A total of nine such ITRs have been notified which include the Sahaj (ITR-1), ITR-2, ITR-2A, ITR-3, Sugam (ITR-4S), ITR-4, ITR-5, ITR-6, ITR-7 and an acknowledgement form called the ITR-V.

People with an income of more than Rs. 50 lakh per annum and who own luxury items like yacht, aircraft or valuable jewellery will now have to disclose these costly assets with the IT department in the new ITRs.

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Rail, road connectivity to top Board of Trade agenda

The issue of better rail and road connectivity from export clusters to ports and airports at the state-level is expected to top the agenda during the April 6 meeting of the Board of Trade (BoT), headed by Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, officials said.

The board is meeting to evolve steps to boost India’s exports and will discuss the recent cutback in government aid for export marketing under the Market Access Initiative Scheme and problems faced by exporters in getting refund of duty and taxes from the government.

“Earlier the commerce department was looking at bridging the gaps in export-related infrastructure through the Assistance to States for Infrastructure Development of Exports (ASIDE) Scheme. Now the allocation for the ASIDE Scheme is practically nil and subsequent to higher allocation to the States in the Central taxes (in accordance with the Finance Commission’s suggestion), it has been left to the States to fund such infrastructure projects,” said S C Ralhan, president of the Federation of Indian Export Organisations President, the apex body for exporters.

Many States face shortage of funds or have different priorities and they neglect export-related infrastructure, he said. “This has in turn added to the logistics cost for exporters.”

The BoT was reconstituted on March 23. It comprises representatives from the concerned ministries and from leading companies belonging mainly to export-oriented sectors, besides export promotion councils, industry chambers and trade experts.

The infrastructure-related issues will be taken up especially since the BoT comprises secretaries of the ministries of shipping, aviation and surface transport as well as the heads of National Highways Authority of India, Railway Board and the Container Corporation of India. During the meeting of the (Centre-State) Council for Trade Development and Promotion in January 2016, it was pointed out that ‘poor (export-related) infrastructure’ was the top-most factor hampering exports, and that the role of the states was crucial in addressing this.

Besides, engineering exporters will raise their concern over the Minimum Import Price (MIP) on 173 steel items, which they said has led to a major increase in their raw material costs and was therefore hurting engineering exports. Though the government had said the MIP will not be applicable to imports under the Advance Authorisation Scheme (AAS), EEPC India said the AAS was not used by the small exporters and had sought a price reimbursement mechanism.

Also slated for discussion is a proposal to grant interest subsidy on pre and post-shipment rupee export credit to merchant exporters (who procure goods from manufacturers for exports) from sectors such as handicrafts, carpets and agriculture.

Export Promotion Councils and FIEO have been officially informed that they would be given lesser Market Access Initiative (MAI) Scheme support, a move they said will hurt small exporters who rely on such assistance to participate in reputed international fairs and get more export orders, especially during a global trade slowdown.

Indian exports have declined from $314 billion in FY’14 to $310 billion in FY’15. Exports in FY’16 are expected to shrink further to around $260 billion.

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Revisiting the EPF rollback

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s Budget 2015-16 promised to set up a Public Debt Management Agency to bring the government’s external borrowings and domestic debt under one roof. While the government claims to be committed to creating such an office, in April 2015, while introducing official amendments to the Finance Bill, it withdrew the minister’s promise. A Debt Management Office was first announced in the 2007-08 Budget, but the idea has been floating between the corridors of North Block and Mint Street since.

On March 7, Mr. Jaitley also informed Parliament that two paragraphs from his 2016-17 Budget speech — that sought to nudge the working class into reconsidering their preference for the employees’ provident fund (EPF) as a retirement saving tool — stand deleted. Multiple theories were floated by the Finance Ministry to justify the proposal to tax EPF savings prior to this, such as the need to promote the national pension system (NPS) set up by the Ministry and deprive the well-off from milking tax breaks.

The revenue expected from the tax on EPF savings was just around Rs. 200-300 crore. The larger system-wide implications of the move would have, perhaps, been better thought through had a public debt office been in place and consulted on the proposal. It is unlikely the Middle Office (Debt Management), set up in the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) in 2008 to facilitate the transition to a full-fledged debt office, had a chance to comment. The Middle Office is tasked with formulating strategies for sustainable long-term debt management. And it is precisely here that the plan to tax 60 per cent of EPF savings could have had profound implications on the Centre’s borrowing programme in the years to come.

Cheaper and longer

The DEA has issued the government’s tentative borrowing programme for the first half of 2016-17, according to which it will raise Rs. 3.55 lakh crore of the total annual borrowing target of Rs. 6 lakh crore. Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das said less than a fifth of this would be raised through securities maturing in less than five years. The government would prefer to raise more cash through longer-term securities — anything between Rs. 2.64 lakh crore to Rs. 3.36 lakh crore could be raised via bonds with tenures of ten years or more. The calendar is meant to enable investors ‘to plan their investment efficiently and provide stability’ to the government securities market.

Two hours later, the Ministry notified a new regime of quarterly interest rates on small savings instruments, including the Public Provident Fund, Kisan Vikas Patra and post office savings deposits. The sharpest reduction in returns is on one year time deposits with post offices, which will now earn 7.1 per cent as opposed to 8.4 per cent. This would narrow the gap between returns on one year bank deposits and the competing post office scheme to just 0.35 per cent as opposed to 0.95 per cent at present.

Mr. Jaitley has firmly and rightly defended the move, as high small savings rates make it difficult for banks that compete with them for deposits to lower their lending rates and effectively distort the transmission of monetary policy changes effected by the Central Bank on the ground. The RBI has, for instance, cut one of its benchmark rates (repo rate) by 125 basis points since January 2015, but this hasn’t been passed through by banks.

While industry feels lower interest rates will spur a revival in investments, more immediate relief will come from lower debt servicing burdens for India’s large infrastructure and heavy industry players that are over-leveraged and messing up bank balance sheets. Lower rates would also help the largest borrower — the government — whose interest liabilities on outstanding debt would rise by an estimated Rs. 50,000 crore in 2016-17 from Rs 4.43 lakh crore this year.

Nomura analysts Sonal Varma and Neha Saraf said in a note on March 21 that the small savings rate cuts would pave the way for greater monetary policy transmission (read lower rates). “With small savings schemes offering much higher interest rates relative to bank deposits, their collections have also risen to a ten-year high in 2015-16… lower small savings rates portend a fall in small savings collections,” they said, but added these lower inflows would mean “greater reliance on market borrowings by the government”.

Over the past six months, the government had signalled its intent to lower small savings rates and bring them closer to market-determined rates for its own borrowings over comparable tenures in “the interest of overall economic growth of the country”. This is probably why the outcry over small savings rate cuts was sharp, but short-lived. Plausibly, a similar building up of the case to bring parity in tax treatment for retirement schemes like EPF and NPS could have blunted the outcry over the EPF tax proposal.

Consider this: among the big buyers for government securities are banks, insurers including the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), mutual funds, and foreign portfolio investors. But few have asset-liability profiles that require them to invest as much in long-term debt that the government would like. Some global pension funds have what debt market dealers call a “sticky” appetite for such bonds. But their entry and exit is unpredictable, like that of other entities with active treasury desks trading their holdings according to price and yield movements.

Captive debt financier 

By contrast, India’s largest retirement fund, the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation, with oversight over Rs. 10 lakh crore, is a captive financier of government debt thanks to investment norms set by the Finance Ministry and has the appetite for longer term debt. In 2015-16, it will invest up to 65 per cent of its rising inflows or Rs. 74,500 crore into government securities (g-secs). And unlike other entities, including the NPS, the EPF holds securities till they mature.

The Finance Ministry prodded the EPFO to invest in equities for years so that it acts as a stabilising force against fickle foreign investment flows and EPF savings have made a modest foray into Dalal Street this year. It is unusual that the role of EPFO, and the 3,000-odd company-run PF trusts under its watch, in the g-secs market wasn’t considered similarly.

LIC is a buyer of last resort in disinvestment. The EPF, on the other hand, is a buyer of g-secs with no resort and it doesn’t trade, except when its payouts exceed inflows. In the week after the Budget, HR managers fielded frantic calls from employees urgently seeking to withdraw their EPF balances and stop fresh voluntary contributions from April 1. If the EPF tax had not been rolled back, it would have forced distress sales of g-secs and shut the tap on higher inflows that would have automatically financed fresh public debt.

The Finance Ministry has termed EPF members as hostages that must be freed and questioned the ‘subsidy’ to its members. It may have ended up paying more for its borrowings if it had succeeded. That is, if the idea would have passed muster with a functional Debt Management Office.

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Understanding the Islamic State

After every fresh outrage claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (IS) — like the recent terrorist attacks in Brussels and the suicide bombing of a football stadium near Baghdad, which killed dozens and injured hundreds — a standard debate ensues: does Islam condone these atrocities against civilians? With its extreme violence and nihilistic mindset, the IS seems a death cult bent on senseless destruction. But the group justifies its violence, especially against civilians, with selective interpretations of Islamic texts that are rejected by a majority of the world’s Muslims.

In its slick propaganda, the IS emphasises two major themes: a righteous and idyllic life for “true” Muslims in its self-declared state in parts of Syria and Iraq, and an ideology that sanctifies violence as the only means for Sunni Muslims to achieve power and glory. The group is highly sophisticated in its use of social media and other propaganda to sow fear among its enemies, and to entice alienated Muslims living in the West to “emigrate” to its territory.

Spreading intolerance

But the mastery of those modern tools is underpinned by IS ideologues cherry-picking the sources and thinkers they choose to imitate, so they end up with austere readings of Islamic texts that run counter to a millennium of moderate understandings, including tolerance for other faiths. Like other militant movements, especially al-Qaeda and its offshoots, the IS is inspired by a group of religious scholars across Islam’s history who advocated the idea of declaring other Muslims as infidels or apostates, and justifying their killing. This notion of takfir is central to the ideology of most of today’s Islamist militant groups, who have killed far more Muslims than non-Muslims.

Since the 1960s and 1970s, militant movements and some Islamic regimes have imposed austere interpretations of the Koran and of Islamic law, the Sharia. Contrary to popular perceptions in the West, Sharia is not a monolithic system of medieval codes, set in stone and based on cruelty and punishment. Since Islam was founded in the seventh century, the body of law has co-evolved with different strains of Islamic thought: tolerance versus intolerance, forgiveness versus punishment, innovative versus literalist.

Today’s Islamist militants and repressive regimes — especially Saudi Arabia, which has used its oil wealth to export its Wahhabi doctrine by building mosques and dispatching preachers throughout the Muslim world — are obsessed with literalist interpretations of Sharia and punitive aspects of the Koran, as opposed to strands that emphasise forgiveness. The weight of Islamic history skews toward moderate understandings, but in recent decades these regimes (which also include Iran, Pakistan, and Sudan) and militants have used their influence to breed intolerance.

The Salafi trend

To believers, Sharia is more than a collection of laws — it is infused with higher moral principles and ideals of justice. Sharia literally means “the path to the watering hole”, an important route in the desert societies of pre-Islamic Arabia. Historically, Islamic law is based on four sources: the Koran; the sayings and traditions of the Prophet Muhammad (the Sunnah); analogical reasoning; and the consensus of religious scholars. Most Islamist militant groups favour a literalist reading of only two sources: the Koran and the Sunnah, disregarding most legal reasoning and interpretation developed over 1,400 years. This is the Salafi trend in Islam.

Modern day militants like those of the IS are particularly keen to show that they are following the path set by a group of medieval Islamic authorities respected by most Salafis. In the 13th century, as the Mongols swept across Asia and sacked Baghdad, the Mongol warrior Hulagu, a grandson of Genghis Khan, threatened to overrun the Levant, an area of the eastern Mediterranean centred around modern-day Syria and Lebanon. While many Muslim scholars at the time lined up to support the Mongols, one jurist forcefully rejected the invaders. Ibn Taymiyya, an Islamic scholar from Damascus, issued several fatwas (religious rulings) against the Mongols — and al-Qaeda, IS, and other militants still quote those rulings today.

The Wahhabi strain

After Hulagu, some Mongol leaders nominally converted to Islam, but Ibn Taymiyya considered them infidels. He also argued that it was permissible for believers to kill other Muslims during battle, if those Muslims were fighting alongside the Mongols. Ibn Taymiyya is the intellectual forefather to many modern-day Islamist militants who use his anti-Mongol fatwas — along with his rulings against Shiites and other Muslim minorities — to justify violence against civilians, including fellow Muslims, or to declare them infidels, using the concept of takfir. The IS often quotes Ibn Taymiyya in its Arabic tracts, and occasionally in its English language propaganda, as it did in its magazine, Dabiq, in September 2014.

Ibn Taymiyya also inspired the father of the Wahhabi strain of Islam that is dominant in Saudi Arabia today, the 18th century cleric Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, who decreed that many Muslims had abandoned the practices of their ancestors. Wahhab believed Islamic theology had been corrupted by philosophy and mysticism. He argued that Islamic law should be based on only two sources: the Koran and the Sunnah. He dismissed analogical reasoning and the consensus of scholars, two sources that had helped Islamic law evolve and adapt to new realities over time.

Many of the practices he banned were related to Sufism and Shi’ism, two forms of Islam he particularly abhorred. For Wahhab, visiting any grave sites violated the Muslim tenet of tawhid, or the oneness of God, which was the most important Wahhabi doctrine. To venerate anything other than the one God was shirk, or polytheism, a crime Wahhabis believed should be punishable by death.

Today, Saudi Arabia is built on an alliance between two powers: the ruling House of Saud and clerics who espouse Wahhabi doctrine. Wahhabis seek to return the religion to what they believe was its “pure” form, as practised in seventh century Arabia.

Rise of extremist movements

Of course, radicalism needs more to breed than just rhetorical and religious inspiration. As Arab nationalist leaders and military rulers rose to power in the 1950s and 1960s, they violently suppressed Islamic movements, including peaceful ones. In Egypt, the regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser clamped down on the populist Muslim Brotherhood, and that helped lay the ideological foundations for the emergence of violent Islamic movements in the following decades.

The most militant thinker who emerged from that period was Sayyid Qutb, a Brotherhood leader, and swept up in Nasser’s crackdown. After enduring nine years of prison and torture, Qutb published a manifesto in the 1960s, Milestones Along the Road, in which he argued that the secular Arab nationalism of Nasser and others had led to authoritarianism and a new period of jahiliyya, a term that has particular resonance for Islamists because it refers to the pre-Islamic “dark ages.” Qutb declared that a new Muslim vanguard was needed to restore Islam to its role as “the leader of mankind”, and that all Arab rulers of his time had failed to apply Islamic law and should be removed from power. Qutb argued that it was not only legitimate, but a religious duty for “true” believers, to forcibly remove a leader who had allegedly strayed from Islam.

Nasser’s regime executed Qutb in 1966, and he became a martyr for the cause. His ideas lived on and they inspired a new generation of militant leaders, especially Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is now the leader of al-Qaeda after bin Laden’s death. And while the IS’s ideologues do not quote Qutb as frequently as al-Qaeda’s leaders have, he clearly inspired the group’s rejection of contemporary Arab regimes and its effort to create a transnational state.

Like its predecessors, the IS reads Islam’s history and its foundational texts selectively, choosing the thinkers and parts that fit into its vision of brutality, Sunni dominance, and constant war with pretty much everyone else. It is important to remember that, for a long time, there have been other paths.

Mohamad Bazzi is a journalism professor at New York University and a former Middle East bureau chief at Newsday. He is writing a book on the proxy wars between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

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Death by overwork on rise among Japan's vulnerable workers

Japan is witnessing a record number of compensation claims related to death from overwork, or 'karoshi', a phenomenon previously associated with the long-suffering “salary man” that is increasingly afflicting young and female employees.

Labour demand, with 1.28 jobs per applicant, is the highest since 1991, which should help Prime Minister Shinzo Abe draw more people into the workforce to counter the effect of a shrinking population, but lax enforcement of labour laws means some businesses are simply squeezing more out of employees, sometimes with tragic consequences.

Claims for compensation for 'karoshi' rose to a record high of 1,456 in the year to end-March 2015, according to labour ministry data, with cases concentrated in healthcare, social services, shipping and construction, which are all facing chronic worker shortages.

Hiroshi Kawahito, secretary general of the National Defense Counsel for Victims of 'karoshi', said the real number was probably 10 times higher, as the government is reluctant to recognise such incidents.

“The government hosts a lot of symposiums and makes posters about the problem, but this is propaganda,” he said.

“The real problem is reducing working hours, and the government is not doing enough.”

The labour ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Kawahito, a lawyer who has been dealing with 'karoshi' since the 1980s, said 95 per cent of his cases used to be middle-aged men in white-collar jobs, but now about 20 per cent are women.

Japan has no legal limits on working hours, but the labour ministry recognises two types of 'karoshi': death from cardiovascular illness linked to overwork, and suicide following work-related mental stress.

A cardiovascular death is likely to be considered 'karoshi' if an employee worked 100 hours of overtime in the month beforehand, or 80 hours of overtime in two or more consecutive months in the previous six.

A suicide could qualify if it follows an individual's working 160 hours or more of overtime in one month or more than 100 hours of overtime for three consecutive months.

Work-related suicides are up 45 per cent in the past four years among those 29 and younger, and up 39 per cent among women, labour ministry data show.

Two-tier workforce

The problem has become more acute as Japan's workforce has divided into two distinct categories - regular employees, and those on temporary or non-standard contracts, frequently women and younger people.

In 2015 non-regular employees made up 38 per cent of the workforce, up from 20 per cent in 1990, and 68 per cent of them were women.

Lawyers and academic say unscrupulous employees operate a "bait-and-switch” policy, advertising a full-time position with reasonable working hours, but later offering the successful applicant a non-regular contract with longer hours, sometimes overnight or weekends, with no overtime pay.

Refusing overtime pay and break time are illegal, and the applicant could refuse the job, but activists say companies tell them they will be given regular contracts after six months or so.

They say young applicants often accept due to lack of experience, while women trying to re-enter the workforce after childbirth often feel it would be difficult to get a foothold elsewhere.

Emiko Teranishi, head of the Families Dealing with Karoshi support group, said she hears lots of complaints about hiring tactics, with some companies telling new hires that their salary includes 80 hours of overtime, and they must reimburse the company if they work less.

“Some people don't even make minimum wage under this system,” said Ms. Teranishi, whose own husband committed suicide after working long hours.

Such abuses have become so common in the past 10 years that such companies have been dubbed “black” companies in the media.

Hirokazu Ouchi, a professor at Chukyo University, wrote a book last year about such companies when he realised some of his students were being treated illegally at their part-time jobs.

Mr. Ouchi said their hiring practices typically follow a similar pattern.

“Companies will hire someone for two to three years, but they have no intention of investing the time or the money to nurture that employee,” said Mr. Ouchi.

He added that the labour ministry lacked the manpower to follow up on complaints.

A ministry official working in corporate surveillance acknowledged that his department was somewhat short-staffed but the government was taking steps to recruit more every year. He declined to give his name as he is not authorised to speak to the media.

Japan's working-age population has been falling since the mid-1990s, which would normally lead companies to improve working conditions to attract workers, but Mr. Ouchi said it was not happening because they can get away with bending the rules.

“This is a way for companies to keep labour costs down, but it is also a path that leads to death by overwork,” he said.

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Trump predicts “very massive recession” in U.S.

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump predicted that the United States is on course for a “very massive recession,” warning that a combination of high unemployment and an overvalued stock market had set the stage for another economic slump.

“I think we're sitting on an economic bubble. A financial bubble,” the billionaire businessman said in an interview with The Washington Post published on Saturday.

Coming off a tough week on the campaign trail in which he made a series of missteps, Mr. Trump's latest comments bring him back into the limelight ahead of Tuesday’s important primary in Wisconsin where he trails in the polls.

The former reality TV star said that the real U.S. jobless figure is much higher than five percent number released by the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics.

“We're not at 5 per cent unemployment,” Mr. Trump said.

“We're at a number that's probably into the twenties if you look at the real number,” he said, adding that the official jobless figure is “statistically devised to make politicians - and in particular presidents - look good.”

Mr. Trump said “it's a terrible time right now” to invest in the stock market, offering a more bleak view of the U.S. economy than that held by many mainstream economists.

The interview was bylined by the Post's Robert Costa and famed Watergate reporter Bob Woodward.

A real estate magnate, Trump has made appealing to blue-collar workers a hallmark of his bid for the Republican nomination for the Nov. 8 presidential election, often blaming unemployment on the outsourcing of U.S. jobs and facilities to countries such as China and Mexico.

Mr. Trump vowed in the interview to wipe out the more than $19 trillion national debt “over a period of eight years,” helped by a renegotiation of trade deals.

“I'm renegotiating all of our deals, the big trade deals that we're doing so badly on,” he said.

NATO again

After making controversial statements about abortion last week, Mr. Trump has shown little sign of heeding calls from fellow Republicans to adopt a more presidential tone so as to avoid alienating voters in the November general election if he wins the nomination.

On Saturday, he questioned close U. S. ties to Saudi Arabia and again accused U.S. allies of not pulling their weight in the NATO military alliance.

Mr. Trump told a campaign rally in Racine, Wisconsin that partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization “are not paying their fair share” and called the 28-nation alliance "obsolete.”

“Either they pay up, including for past deficiencies, or they have to get out. And if it breaks up NATO, it breaks up NATO,” Mr. Trump said.

Tuesday's Wisconsin nominating contest could be a turning point in the Republican race. Mr. Trump, 69, trails his leading rival, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, 45, of Texas in the state.

A Cruz win would make it harder for Mr. Trump to reach the number of 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination before the Republican national convention in July. The winner will get to claim all of Wisconsin's 42 delegates.

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‘Human rights concerns should not impair India-EU relations’

Geoffrey Van Orden, a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from the British Conservative Party, said that he would like to see a more practical and realistic relationship between India and the EU, in an interview with The Hindu last week.

“I think many of our [EU] countries view the relationship with India as enormously important and significant.”, Mr. Van Orden said in response to a question on whether India’s relationship with the EU as a bloc had slipped between the cracks because of its strong relationship with several individual countries within the Union.

The Summit of March 30 was an opportunity to continue expanding ties beyond trade and this was reflected in some of the items on the agenda — a water and clean energy partnership and a commitment to cooperate on counter-terrorism issues.

Despite the scope for cooperation, bilateral engagement at the higher levels had become a casualty of irritants between the two governments, such as the banning of some 700 generic drugs from India in 2015 and the issues concerning the Italian marines. The MV Seaman Guard Ohio case, where six Britons and 14 Estonians were among those arrested in 2013 for unauthorised entry into the territorial waters of India with arms and ammunition on board, has also become a pressure point between the two governments.

Mr. Van Orden said they “respect the Indian judicial and legal processes”. He added that it would be a significant goodwill gesture if all those under trial could return to their home countries until the legal proceedings against them conclude.

With regard to the view that the EU talks were partly stalled due to human rights concerns, Mr. Van Orden’s view was that while some MEPs had expressed such concerns, these should not hamper bilateral engagement.

“I think genuine human rights are important, but they shouldn’t necessarily be the predominant motive for the relationships we have with other countries and I would go further and say we have to take great care when we are making judgments about the so-called human rights situations in other countries”, he said. The Indian government has been criticised in international political and civil society circles for its restrictions on free speech and the functioning of several NGOs.

India-Britain relationship


On questions regarding the nature of the India-Britain relationship, Mr. Van Orden said he felt ties had been neglected post-Indian Independence because of a perceived sense of hurt. There was, however, greater scope for engagement, including in security and defence, because of a shared history and the large Indian diaspora there. Britain will deploy a carrier strike force, ‘East of Suez’ in 2020, and this will be a significant opportunity for defence cooperation, he said.

Mr. Van Orden did not foresee a negative impact on trade relations between the countries if Britain chooses to leave the EU, a question that will be settled by a referendum to be held in June this year.

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Panama papers leak: data shows offshore accounts of the rich and the famous

An international coalition of media outlets on Sunday published what it said was an extensive investigation into offshore financial dealings of the rich and famous, based on a vast trove of documents provided by an anonymous source.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalism, a non-profit organisation based in Washington, said the cache of 11.5 million records detailed the offshore holdings of a dozen current and former world leaders, as well as businessmen, criminals, celebrities and sports stars.

In India, The Indian Express was part of the investigation and has reported that many Indian industrialists and celebrities, including actors Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai, DLF owner K.P. Singh and Vinod Adani (Gautam Adani’s elder brother), are named in the documents.

A cache of documents has exposed the secret offshore dealings of aides to Russian president Vladimir Putin, world leaders and celebrities including Barcelona forward Lionel Messi. An investigation into the documents by more than 100 media groups, described as one of the largest such probes in history, revealed the hidden offshore dealings in the assets of around 140 political figures, including 12 current or former heads of states.

'No monetary compensation'

A Munich-based daily, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, was offered the data through an encrypted channel by an anonymous source who requested no monetary compensation and asked only for unspecified security measures, said Bastian Obermayer, a reporter for the paper.

The data concerned internal documents from a Panama—based law firm, Mossack Fonseca. Founded by German—born Juergen Mossack, the firm has offices across the globe and is among the world’s biggest creators of shell companies, the newspaper said.

Ramon Fonseca, a co-founder of Mossack Fonseca, said the firm had no control of how its clients might use offshore vehicles created for them.

“We are not responsible for the actions of a corporation that we set up,” he told Panama’s Channel 2.

Panamanian govt offers to 'vigorously' cooperate

Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela issued a statement saying his government would cooperate “vigorously” with any judicial investigation arising from the leak of the law firm’s documents. He said that the revelations shouldn’t detract from his government’s “zero tolerance” for any illicit activities in Panama’s finance industry.

ICIJ said the law firm’s leaked internal files contain information on 214,488 offshore entities connected to people in more than 200 countries and territories. It said it would release the full list of companies and people linked to them early next month.

Obermayer said that over the course of several months Sueddeutsche Zeitung received about 2.6 terabytes of data more than would fit on 600 DVDs. The newspaper said the amount of data it obtained is several times larger than a previous cache of offshore data published by WikiLeaks in 2013 that exposed the financial dealings of prominent individuals.

“To our knowledge this is the biggest leak that journalists have ever worked on,” Obermayer said.

The newspaper and its partners verified the authenticity of the data by comparing it to public registers, witness testimony and court rulings, he told the AP. A previous cache of Mossack Fonseca documents obtained by German authorities was also used to verify the new material, Obermayer added.

Among the countries with past or present political figures named in the reports are Iceland, Ukraine, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Argentina.

Putin in the list

The Guardian newspaper, which took part in the investigation, published a video on its website late Sunday showing an interview with Iceland’s Prime Minister, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson. During the interview with Sweden’s SVT television, the Prime Minister is asked about a company called Wintris. He responds by insisting that its affairs are above board and calling the question “completely inappropriate,” before breaking off the interview.

In Russia, the Kremlin last week said it was anticipating what it called an upcoming “information attack.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters that the Kremlin had received “a series of questions in a rude manner” from an organisation that he said was trying to smear Putin.

“Journalists and members of other organizations have been actively trying to discredit Putin and this country’s leadership,” Peskov said.

The office of Argentina’s president, Mauricio Macri, confirmed on Sunday that the business group owned by his family set up Fleg Trading Ltd., an offshore company based in the Bahamas. But it said Macri himself had no shares in Fleg and never received income from it.

Macri’s office commented after La Nacion, an Argentine national newspaper, reported that he and his family had links to Fleg.

The ICIJ said the documents included emails, financial spreadsheets, passports and corporate records detailing how powerful figures used banks, law firms and offshore shell companies to hide their assets. The data spanned a time frame of nearly 40 years, from 1977 through the end of 2015, it said.

“It allows a never-before-seen view inside the offshore world providing a day-to-day, decade-by-decade look at how dark money flows through the global financial system, breeding crime and stripping national treasuries of tax revenues,” the ICIJ said.

Global banks hand-in-hand with Mossack Fonseca

According to the media group’s website, global banks including HSBC, UBS, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and others have worked with Mossack Fonseca to create offshore accounts.

“The allegations are historical, in some cases dating back 20 years, predating our significant, well-publicised reforms implemented over the last few years,” HSBC spokesman Rob Sherman said in an emailed response to an AP request for comment.

“We work closely with the authorities to fight financial crime and implement sanctions,” he said.

UBS, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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NIA officer shot dead in Uttar Pradesh

An Inspector of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the counter-terror investigation agency formed after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, was shot dead by unidentified motorcycle-borne assailants in front of his wife and children in Bijnore, western Uttar Pradesh, in the early hours of Sunday.

Tanzil Ahmad, 45, died on the spot, while his wife Farzana was taken to a hospital in Noida, where she is in a critical condition. His daughter (14) and son (12) are unharmed.

Ahmad, an officer of the rank of Deputy Superintendent, who was on deputation from the Border Security Force, had been posted to the NIA as Inspector, when the agency was created in 2009.

Because of his proficiency in Urdu, Ahmad was the key liaison officer during the visit last week of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) from Pakistan to probe the Pathankot attack.

Ahmad joined the BSF in 1991 as a Sub-Inspector and was posted along the western and eastern borders.

“He was returning from his niece’s wedding in nearby Sahaspur village when he was killed barely 300 metres from his ancestral house at Bijnore. The road near his house is potholed, which made him slow down his Wagon R. The two assailants pulled up near his car and shot at him 24 times. It was a planned attack. Two bullets hit his wife. There was no attempt to harm the children,” Daljeet Singh Chaudhary, ADG, Law and Order, Uttar Pradesh, told The Hindu on the phone.

An NIA official said: “It could well be possible that he was targeted because of his anti-terror work. It looks like he was targeted and killed and nothing can be ruled out.”

Mr. Chaudhary said the assailants had covered their faces and were not wearing helmets. “It appears a 9-mm bore prohibited weapon was used; we have sent the empty cartridges for forensic examination.” Six police teams have been formed for investigation .

A key investigator of core team

NIA Director-General S.K. Singh has said Tanzil Ahmad, an NIA Inspector shot dead in western Uttar Pradesh on Sunday, was “one of the best field officers we had”.

“Most of the NIA officers get involved in all the cases we investigate; so was Ahmad. He worked on many cases related to the SIMI, the Indian Mujahideen, the Bardhaman blasts, the recent arrests related to the IS and the fake currency racket,” said Mr. Singh, who has worked with Ahmad since his deputation to the agency six years ago.

His colleagues described him as one of the key investigators of the “core team” of the NIA. The agency has a shortage of staff and he was one of some 20 Inspectors the NIA has at its Delhi headquarters. “He was part of the core team, and since we have a shortage of staff, he worked on almost all the cases registered in Delhi. He travelled a lot as part of his work,” said an NIA official.

Another official said: “He had a good understanding of work. From operations to intelligence-gathering and investigations, he was part of everything.” Home Minister Rajnath Singh told reporters in Lucknow that he had been apprised of the incident. “Whatever is necessary is being done. We are talking [to NIA officials],” he said.

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Tanzil Ahmed: a friendly neighbour, devout Muslim

Mohammed Tanzil Ahmed was always more a friendly neighbour than a cop for them but the timing of and circumstances surrounding the NIA official’s death earned him the title “martyr” from the residents of Shaheen Bagh.

It is in this area where the Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP)-rank officer spent the last two decades of his life which was suddenly cut short in the early hours of Sunday.

In one voice — distant relatives, friends and neighbours who had gathered to pay their last respects — rejected the possibility of the death being the outcome of anything other that the enemies he had made in the line of his work, including the high-profile Pathankot airbase attack.

Mehboob Alam, another neighbour, said Mr. Ahmed would speak to him but had never mentioned if there was any reason for him to feel insecure and the death came as a shock for them. Acquaintances also described Mr. Ahmed as a devout Muslim who never missed his prayers. And his burial procession began exactly as the muezzin from the local mosque raised the azaan for the evening prayers.

Amid protests over his delayed arrival for the State funeral, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced a compensation of Rs. 1 crore and other welfare measures for Mr. Ahmed’s family. While senior officers from the NIA attended the funeral, many pointed out that no Union Minister had attended the funeral.

Mr. Ahmed was laid to rest amidst chants of ‘Hindustan Zindabad’ and ‘Jai Hind.’

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GST will happen soon, Modi tells entrepreneurs in Saudi

Highlighting fast-evolving bilateral priorities, India and Saudi Arabia on Sunday agreed to diversify more bilateral trade and investment into the non-oil sector.

In a bid to boost confidence of Saudi investors in India’s economy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told a select group of Saudi entrepreneurs in Riyadh during the last day of his visit that India will increase ease of doing business and bring in the long awaited Goods and Services Tax (GST).

“Don’t worry....GST will happen. I cannot give a timeframe, but it will happen. It was our commitment and it will happen,” Mr. Modi said.

He also said that India has a stable tax regime and his government has successfully removed the retrospective taxation policy creating ease of doing business.

“Retrospective tax is a matter of the past. My government will continue to work towards establishment of a predictable long-term taxation regime,” the Prime Minister said, highlighting his commitment to a more congenial business climate in India.

To boost the non-oil sector trade, there was agreement on a Framework for Investment Promotion Cooperation between Invest India and the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA).

The assertion of India and Saudi Arabia on Sunday to boost counter-terrorism cooperation was made after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s wide-ranging talks with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz and delegationlevel parleys between the two sides following which five agreements were signed including one on cooperation in the exchange of intelligence related to money laundering and terror financing.

A joint statement issued after the talks called on states to cut off any kind of support and financing to terrorists operating and perpetrating terrorism from their territories against other states and bring perpetrators of acts of terrorism to justice.

The strong views by Saudi Arabia, an ally of Pakistan and one of the most influential countries in the Gulf region, is seen as an unprecedented political endorsement of New Delhi’s concerns over terrorism, extremism and radicalisation. That apart, four other bilateral agreements were signed focused on financial intelligence, handicrafts, labour cooperation and technical cooperation between the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and the Saudi Standards, Meteorology and Quality Organisation.

Apart from the agreements, the bilateral Joint Statement issued at the end of the visit highlighted that both sides are willing to coordinate efforts on countering international terror networks.

While Saudi Arabia briefed India about the grand coalition that it has formed with three dozen predominantly Sunni-majority countries, both sides also agreed to work jointly at the level of the United Nations to deal with terror sponsors.

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Dadri tense as accused demand forensic report

Amid the demands from Dadri village to release the 18 accused, who have been charged with lynching Mohammad Akhlaq, his family on Sunday alleged that the forensic report of the meat recovered from their house might be manipulated to justify the lynching that shook the country.

Family members told The Hindu that they were “apprehensive” about the possibility of the forensic report being tampered with because the “Hindutva brigade was looking for an alibi and a justification for Akhlak's lynching”. The family pointed to a “well-planned conspiracy” in the way the forensic report was being sought by the accused just before the mammoth “Mahapanchayat” of 144 villages, scheduled for mid-April.

Talking to this correspondent, Akhlaq's brother Mohammad Jameel said an atmosphere was being prepared to find justification for the manner in which lynching took place.

“We have enough reasons to be apprehensive about the possibility of the forensic report being manipulated to justify Akhlaq's lynching and then further use that report to communally vitiate the environment of the region before the U.P Assembly polls. In the proposed mahapanchayat of 144 villages, I can see an echo of the mahapanchayat in Muzaffarnagar and how that played a crucial role in polarising the entire State,” he said.

No Holi celebration
Dadri village of Bishahra has been tense since last week when the villagers did not celebrate Holi as a mark of protest against the “one-sided action” by the administration in the case. As the resentment grew over the arrest of 18 youths of Bishahra, villagers intensified their protest demanding a CBI enquiry in the case and release of the accused of Akhlaq's lynching till the completion of the CBI enquiry. They also demanded the forensic report be made public and action be taken against Akhlaq's family for alleged cow slaughter.

Eighteen people from the village, including Vishal Rana, son of the local BJP leader Sanjay Rana and his nephew Shivam, were arrested on charges of murder and assault. It has been six months since Mohammad Akhlaq, 52-year-old resident of the village was lynched by a village mob and his son Danish critically injured at their house, some thirty kilometers away from the national capital in Bishahra village in Dadri subdivision of Gautam Buddh Nagar district in U.P. Danish, who was still recovering from the serious brain injury he suffered in the assault by the village mob which lynched his father, said PAC personnel were deployed in the village “since fresh attempts were made to bring back Dadri in the discourse in a twisted manner and use that to polarise the area.”

“We are extremely disturbed at the way a section of villagers and the accused families have suddenly changed the narrative from murder to alleged cow slaughter. The families of the accused never mentioned the forensic report till now in the case which is that of murder. How come they want it now just before the Mahapanchayat?” asked Danish.

It is important to mention here that the preliminary investigation by veterinary doctors concluded that the meat recovered from Akhlaq's house on the night he was lynched belonged to “goat progeny”. Later, the meat was sent to the forensic lab in Agra for detailed examination.

Last week the local court in Greater Noida asked the police to submit the forensic report in the court on April 7 after the lawyer of the accused objected to the framing of charges against them and asked the police to provide all the documents required to frame the charges. The Deputy Superintendent of Police Anurag Singh said the report would be presented in the court once the police got it. However, Mr Singh also reiterated that the forensic report had no role to play in the ongoing case which was about murder and not cow slaughter.

“We have filed the charge sheet against 18 accused and have time and again clarified that the forensic report remained irrelevant to the case which is about murder and assault and not that of cow slaughter,” he said.

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Cigarette makers threaten to halt production

India’s key tobacco manufacturers have threatened to halt production claiming “ambiguity” over the government’s policy on health warnings displayed on tobacco packs.

The Tobacco Institute of India (TII), a lobby group that represents 98% of India's cigarette industry, said in a statement that they have “unanimously decided to shut all their cigarette factories with effect from April 1 owing to ambiguity on the policy related to revision of Graphic Health Warnings on tobacco product packs.”

However, a spokesperson for ITC, a conglomerate and among India’s biggest cigarette manufacturers, didn’t confirm if ITC would cease production over the weekend. “We wouldn’t like to say anything beyond what the TII has stated,” Nazeeb Arif, Executive vice person, ITC, told The Hindu.

April 1st was to be the day when cigarette manufactures were to ensure that 85% of the surface area of their cigarette packages be covered with warnings on the harm posed by consuming tobacco. However a parliamentary panel, that controversially involved members from the tobacco industry, had said last month that these stipulations were “too harsh.”

That 15-member committee also recommended that pictorial warnings be restricted to only 50 per cent on both the sides of the cigarette packets and in the case of bidis, chewing tobacco and other tobacco products, the warning be restricted 50 per cent of the display area and on only one side of the packet.

The Health Ministry, in the wake of this, confirmed to the Rajasthan High Court that the stricter 85%-ruling would continue to hold. The TII has said ceasing production would mean a daily loss of Rs.350 crore for the tobacco industry and that “the extreme 85% Warnings will promote illegal cigarette trade and adversely affect the livelihood of 45.7 million people dependent on tobacco which included farmers, labour and workers.”

Earlier this week, public health professionals told The Hindu that there ought to be no dilution of the Health Ministry’s stipulations. Monika Arora, Director of Public Health Foundation of India and a leading anti-tobacco member of the Health Ministry’s Technical and Expert Committees on tobacco control said that “there should be no dilution of the commitments India has made”. India’s public health community has spoken strongly against what was contended as weak evidence linking tobacco and cancer, she added.

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Despite military opposition, bill to give Suu Kyi a powerful government role gets parliament nod

Myanmar’s upper house of parliament approved a bill on Friday that gives Aung San Suu Kyi a powerful government role, despite opposition from the military on the second day of her party’s new administration.

The bill creates the post of state counsellor and would allow the Nobel laureate to coordinate Ministers and influence the executive.

It would help Ms. Suu Kyi circumvent a constitution written under the former junta that prevents her leading the country because her two sons are not Myanmar citizens.

Ms. Suu Kyi, who spent years under house arrest because of her push for democracy, has described those constitutional provisions as “silly” and said she would rule regardless after she led her National League for Democracy (NLD) to a landslide election victory in November.

Members of parliament from the military — who under the constitution hold a quarter of seats — opposed the NLD bill, describing it as unconstitutional. They said the state counsellor position concentrated too much power in the hands of one person and lacked checks and balances.

“The provisions in the bill are tantamount to meaning the state counsellor is equal to the president, which is contrary to the constitution,” said Colonel Myint Swe, a military member of the upper house.

Some lawmakers suggested the Constitutional Tribunal should decide on the bill.

Despite military resistance, the bill passed and moved to the lower house for debate on Monday. The NLD has a majority in both houses so does not need military approval to pass bills.

Ms. Suu Kyi’s party would need military approval to change the constitution: amendments require support of more than 75 per cent of lawmakers.

First of many confrontations

The Constitution is the main bone of contention between Ms. Suu Kyi and the military, whose commander-in-chief, Min Aung Hlaing, on Sunday stressed the need for the armed forces to remain a force in politics and warned against amending the charter quickly.

Some NLD lawmakers said the tussle over the state counsellor post would be the first of many between the military members of parliament and the government that took office on Wednesday.

“There will be confrontations between the NLD and military MPs in future,” said Thiri Yadana, an upper house NLD lawmaker. "They have to agree to amend the Constitution.”

The role of state counsellor will add to the list of Ms. Suu Kyi’s jobs — she is already Foreign Minister, Education Minister, Energy Minister, and Minister of the President’s office — and has renewed questions about her willingness to delegate power.

“It will be extremely hard to carry out these roles,” said Richard Horsey, an independent political analyst in Yangon. “The sheer number of people that will want to meet with her will be difficult to manage.”

She has a thin bench of experienced politicians. Her party fought for democracy for more than quarter of a century, but its members are novices in government.

NLD official Win Htein said Ms. Suu Kyi’s roles would not be a burden and the counsellor position would allow her to “work more effectively".

The energy portfolio gives Ms. Suu Kyi oversight of oil and gas production, as well as responsibility for a decision on the $3.6 billion Myitsone Dam project, suspended in 2011. China has invested heavily in it and is keen to see it proceed.

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Trump doesn’t know much about foreign policy: Obama

US President Barack Obama has questioned Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s foreign policy credentials, saying he doesn’t “know much” about the world.

“They tell us the person who made the statements doesn’t know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean Peninsula or the world generally,” Mr. Obama told reporters on Friday at the conclusion of nuclear security summit in Washington.

He said Mr. Trump’s recent statements on U.S. foreign policy, that has unnerved the national security establishment, came up during his interaction with world leaders.

“I’ve said before that people pay attention to American elections. What we do is really important to the rest of the world.

“Even in those countries that are used to a carnival atmosphere in their own politics, want sobriety and clarity when it comes to US elections,” Mr. Obama said.

“They understand President of the United States needs to know what’s going on around the world and has to put in place the kinds of policies that lead not only to our security and prosperity, but will have an impact on everybody else’s security and prosperity,” he added.

Earlier, Mr. Trump had favoured countries like Japan and South Korea developing their own nuclear weapons capabilities to defend themselves rather than the U.S. protecting them.

“America’s alliance with Japan and South Korea is one of the cornerstones of US presence in the Asia- Pacific region.

It is underwritten, the peace and prosperity of that region and has been an enormous boom to American commerce and American influence,” the U.S. President said.

Mr. Obama said it has prevented the possibilities of a nuclear escalation in conflict between countries that in the past and throughout history have been engaged in hugely destructive conflicts and controversies.

He called foreign policies with countries like Japan and South Korea an investment that rests on the sacrifices that American men and women made back in World War II.

“We don’t want somebody in the Oval Office who doesn’t recognize how important that it is,” Mr. Obama said.

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Obama, Xi vow to sign Paris accord

U.S. President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping of China said on Thursday that they would sign the Paris Agreement on climate change on April 22, the first day the UN accord will be open for government signatures.

Officials cast the announcement as a statement of joint resolve by the world’s two largest greenhouse gas polluters, even though there are doubts about whether the U.S. can meet its obligations under the agreement.

In February, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked an Obama administration regulation to curb greenhouse gas pollution from power plants, the centerpiece of Mr. Obama’s climate change policy and the major way for the administration to meet its targets under the Paris accord.

The two world leaders made the announcement on the sidelines of a nuclear security meeting in Washington.

“Our cooperation and our joint statements were critical in arriving at the Paris agreement, and our two countries have agreed that we will not only sign the agreement on the first day possible, but we’re committing to formally join it as soon as possible this year,” Mr. Obama told reporters at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, where he was meeting with Mr. Xi at the nuclear gathering.

Mr. Obama, who spoke across a table from Mr. Xi, added: “And we urge other countries to do the same.”

Mr. Xi, speaking through an interpreter, said: “As the two biggest economies, China and the U.S. have a responsibility to work together.”

The Paris Agreement, reached in December, is the first global accord to commit nearly every nation to take domestic actions to tackle climate change.

To promote the accord, Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, planned the signing ceremony for April 22, Earth Day, although world leaders will have a year afterward to sign. The announcement by Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi is intended to push other countries to sign on, particularly since diplomats say the Supreme Court order has caused some countries to question American climate policy and might cause them to refuse or hesitate to sign the accord.

The Paris Agreement will enter into legal force only when enough countries have signed on: together they have to be responsible for causing 55 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Because of the Supreme Court stay, the regulation curbing greenhouse gas emissions will not be put in place until legal challenges by 29 states and several business organisations have been resolved, which is unlikely to happen before next year. The regulation would help the U.S. cut greenhouse gas emissions between 26 and 28 per cent from 2005 levels by 2025.

Chinese energy experts said China’s pledge to sign the accord was independent of the status of American climate policy.

“The understanding is that China is doing this for its own sake,” said Ranping Song, an expert on China’s climate change policies with the World Resources Institute, a Washington research organisation. “It’s good for their environment; it’s good for their economy.”

Mr. Xi’s administration has endorsed an aggressive expansion of renewable energy sources in China. The country’s latest five-year economic plan calls for the country to generate 15 per cent of its energy from non-fossil fuel sources by 2020.

Combined, the U.S. and China account for about 40 per cent of global emissions.

Mr. Ban has invited world leaders to come to New York for the April signing ceremony, which he hopes will represent the largest single joint signing of a major global accord in history.

“The most important thing is how many signatures we get on that day,” said Laurence Tubiana, France’s chief climate change envoy to the UN.

In the U.S., enactment of Mr. Obama’s climate change commitments under the Paris deal will ultimately fall to the next President.

But that fact also worries some climate diplomats as they watch the 2016 presidential campaign from afar. Although the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, has pledged to enact and strengthen the Paris Agreement, on the Republican side, both Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have questioned or denied the science of human-caused climate change.

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