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21/02/2014

Who Is WhatsApp’s Neeraj Arora? – India Real Time – WSJ

Another renowned alumnus of IIT!  See https://sites.google.com/site/123iitphysics/iitalumni

“As jaws dropped across the globe at the amount Facebook paid to acquire messaging company WhatsApp on Thursday, the media in India was quick to credit the deal to Neeraj Arora, an Indian who describes himself on his website as “all things business at WhatsApp!”

Mr. Arora is the vice-president of business development for the messaging service.

He studied mechanical engineering at one of the country’s most prestigious education establishments, the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, and received his Masters in Business Administration from the Indian School of Business in 2006, made the front page of The Economic Times on Friday with the headline, “This Chat is Laced with Indian Masala.”

Mr. Arora’s success story fits the beloved script of an Indian making a mark in California’s Silicon Valley or anywhere else in the U.S. for that matter.

He spent four years handling corporate development for Google Inc. before joining WhatsApp when it was still a fledgling startup in 2011.

Prior to Google, he was part of the Investments and Corporate Strategy teams at Times Internet Limited, a subsidiary of the Times of India Group, and an engineer and “self learnt hacker” at mobile file sharing company Accellion  Inc., according to his LinkedIn profile.”

via Who Is WhatsApp’s Neeraj Arora? – India Real Time – WSJ.

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21/02/2014

* Even China’s Economists Are Singing the Blues – China Real Time Report – WSJ

It’s all relative.  To any developed nation, a GDP growth of just over 7% would look absolutely marvellous!

“China’s state media have long accused foreign analysts of being too bearish on the Chinese economy. Those analysts looking in from the outside are often said to be too eager to be “chanting decline”—chang shuai—when it comes to the economy’s prospects.

This time around, China’s own economists seem to be chanting a pessimistic tune about growth prospects. Perhaps they are not quite as negative as those pesky foreign counterparts—who according to at least one report China’s state media are being told to avoid—but they are increasingly outspoken about slowing growth and rising financial risk.

“We are now in a painful stage,” economist Wang Luolin told a seminar this week.  “Let’s not try to dress things up,” said the consultant to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank.

Yu Bin, a senior researcher at the influential Development Research Center under the State Council, took a similarly pessimistic view.

“The fact is, China’s economic growth is facing substantial downward pressure,” he said. “I don’t think we should get our hopes up for this year’s growth.”

China’s growth has been slowing amid a recovering global economy coupled with weak domestic demand. The days of double-digit expansion are long gone. Economic growth slipped to 7.7% in the fourth quarter of last year from 7.8% in the third – and many economists see a further slackening ahead.

“We expect the economic growth rate to be just above 7% this year, and that’s about it,” Mr. Yu said. That would be well below the 7.7% expansion in all of 2013.

Mr. Yu added that all three big drivers of China’s growth — investment, consumption and exports— are looking weak.”

via Even China’s Economists Are Singing the Blues – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

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21/02/2014

India doubles Iran oil imports in Jan from Dec -trade | Reuters

India’s oil imports from Iran more than doubled in January from a month earlier, with one state refiner returning from a three-month break as a buyer after sanctions on Tehran were eased due to the interim deal on its nuclear programme.

Yet, the jump may not signify a sudden flood of Iran’s oil to the market as clients bump up imports. India was able to take more of the crude because it earlier cut its buys the most among Tehran’s top clients and more than what was needed under the Western sanctions aimed at Iran’s disputed nuclear ambitions.

India’s oil purchase from Iran in January surged to 412,000 barrels per day (bpd), up from 189,100 bpd in December and 44 percent higher than a year ago, data compiled by Reuters showed.

January shipments from Iran were the highest since February 2012, shortly after new toughened sanctions from the United States and Europe went into effect, the data also showed. Iran was also India’s second biggest supplier for a month for the first time since March 2012, the data showed.

The big jump last month brings India’s imports from Iran over April-January to about 201,000 bpd, still a decline of 26 percent from the same 10 months a year earlier.

That’s below a target of 220,000 bpd for the fiscal year that ends March 31, but if imports are held at close to the January levels, the earlier cuts could be wiped out.

via India doubles Iran oil imports in Jan from Dec -trade | Reuters.

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20/02/2014

China training for ‘short, sharp war’, says senior US naval officer – FT.com

China has been training for a “short, sharp war” against Japan in the East China Sea, a senior US military officer has claimed, in comments that underline the growing military tensions in the western Pacific.

Disputed territory

Captain James Fanell, director of intelligence for the US Pacific Fleet, said that a large-scale Chinese military exercise conducted in 2013 was designed to prepare forces for an operation to seize disputed islands in the East China Sea, which Japan calls the Senkaku and China the Diaoyu.

“We witnessed the massive amphibious and cross military region enterprise – Mission Action 2013,” Capt Fanell said at a navy conference last week in San Diego.

“We concluded that the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] has been given the new task of being able to conduct a short, sharp war to destroy Japanese forces in the East China Sea following with what can only be an expected seizure of the Senkakus,” he added.

Conducting a training exercise is very different from having an actual plan to seize the islands. For years, the Chinese military has staged exercises designed to mimic a possible invasion of Taiwan.

However, the comments about China’s military training plans come at a time of considerable tension surrounding the contested islands. The regular presence of both Chinese and Japanese vessels and aircraft in the region has raised the risk of an accident that could spark a wider confrontation.

In December, China declared an air defence identification zone for the East China Sea, which the US and many other countries in the region interpreted as an attempt to cement its sovereignty claim over the disputed islands.

Although Capt Fanell’s remarks were unusually blunt in their assessment of China’s intentions, they represent a growing tide of anxiety from senior US officials about Beijing’s ambitions in both the East China Sea and South China Sea.

Earlier in February, Danny Russel, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asia, warned “there are growing concerns that this pattern of behaviour in the South China Sea reflects incremental effort by China to assert control over the area”. He said that China’s recent actions had “created uncertainty, insecurity and instability in the region”.

Capt Fanell said that Chinese maritime training had shifted in character in the second half of 2013 to prepare for “realistic maritime combat” that its navy might encounter. Last year, it conducted nine operations in the western Pacific that were designed to “practise striking naval targets”.

“I do not know how Chinese intentions could be more transparent,” he said. When Beijing described its activities as the “protection of maritime rights”, this was really “a Chinese euphemism for the coerced seizure of coastal rights of China’s neighbours”, Capt Fanell said.

via China training for ‘short, sharp war’, says senior US naval officer – FT.com.

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Posted in China alert, Foreign invasion, GeoPolitics, History, Military, Neighbour conflict, PLA, Politics, Territorial dispute | 1 Comment »

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20/02/2014

Indian govt approves Rs 650 crore for Nano mission – The Times of India

Union Cabinet on Thursday gave its approval for continuation of Nano mission – a mission on Nano Science and Technology – in its second phase in the 12th Plan Period (2012-17) and sanctioned Rs 650 crore for the purpose.

Nano Technology is a knowledge-intensive and “enabling technology” which is expected to influence a wide range of products and processes with far-reaching implications for the national economy and development.

“The mission’s programmes will target all scientists, institutions and industry in the country. It will also strengthen activities in nano science and technology by promoting basic research, human resource development, research infrastructure development, international collaborations, orchestration of national dialogues and nano applications and technology development”, said an official statement of the government.

The Nano mission, in this new phase, will also make greater effort to promote application-oriented R&D so that some useful products, processes and technologies also emerge. It will be anchored in the Department of Science and Technology and steered by a Nano Mission Council chaired by an eminent scientist.

The government had launched the Nano mission in May 2007 as an “umbrella capacity-building programme”.

As a result of the efforts led by the Nano mission, India is at present amongst the top five nations in the world in terms of scientific publications in nano science and technology (moving from 4th to the 3rd position).

The Nano mission itself has resulted in about 5000 research papers and about 900 Ph.Ds and also some useful products like nano hydrogel based eye drops, pesticide removal technology for drinking water, water filters for arsenic and fluoride removal and nano silver based antimicrobial textile coating.

Under the mission, Indian scientists have been given access to global state-of-the-art facilities like the Photon Factory at Tsukuba, Japan and PETRA III in Hamburg, Germany.

via Govt approves Rs 650 crore for Nano mission – The Times of India.

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20/02/2014

Indian govt clears plan to create new forest cover – The Hindu

Government on Thursday cleared a plan to create new forest cover and improve the quality of existing forests with an expenditure of Rs. 13,000 crore in the 12th Plan.

File photo of affrostation initiatives taken on mine-spoit lands in Salem. Government has approved Rs. 13,000 crore outlay to increase the tree cover in the nation.

Besides the two components, which are to be implemented through various measures including decentralisation of forest governance, the proposed National Mission for a Green India (GIM) as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme will also strive to achieve increased forest-based livelihood income of households living in and around the forests.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday approved the proposal of the Ministry of Environment and Forests.

The objectives of the Mission during 12th Plan period includes increased forest/tree cover and improved quality of forest cover in two to eight million hectares, along with improved ecosystem services including biodiversity, hydrological services, increased forest-based livelihood income of households, living in and around the forests, and enhanced annual CO2 sequestration (process of capture and long term storage of CO2).

via Govt clears plan to create new forest cover – The Hindu.

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20/02/2014

* Third Front Stokes Fears of Unstable Government: Corporate India – Businessweek

An alliance of regional parties in India is eyeing power in the general election due by May. That’s rattling some of the nation’s companies.

Eleven disparate groups holding 17 percent of parliamentary seats formed a bloc this month to pass legislation, a precursor to a possible alternative to the ruling Congress and the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party. Moody’s Investors Service warned last week that any so-called third front government could lack a common agenda to revive the country’s struggling economy, pressuring both the rupee and India’s credit rating.

“The minimum they can do is to remove the uncertainty on the policy front so that having invested we don’t start regretting,” Debnarayan Bhattacharya, managing director of Hindalco Industries Ltd., said in a Feb. 14 interview, referring to the next government of Asia’s third-largest economy. Otherwise “people will think twice, thrice, four times before investing.” Hindalco is India’s second-largest aluminum maker.

via Third Front Stokes Fears of Unstable Government: Corporate India – Businessweek.

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20/02/2014

A New Way to Measure Poverty in India – India Real Time – WSJ

How should you measure poverty?

It is a question that has generated enormous controversy in India. The country’s government says that since the mid-1990s, the number of people living below the official poverty line has dropped by more than half, hitting 270 million, or 22% of the population, in 2012.

Still, India continues to rank extremely low in United Nations’ measures of well-being. India ranked 136 out of 186 countries in the 2012 U.N. Human Development Index and 94 out 119 in the U.N. World Food Programme’s Global Hunger Index.

The Indian government sets its official poverty line at 816 rupees per person per month in rural areas and 1,000 rupees per person per month for city dwellers. That works out to about 40 cents a day in the countryside and 50 cents a day in the city.

A new study by the McKinsey Global Institute – the research arm of consulting company McKinsey – says that such a gauge of extreme poverty has its place. But it argues India should focus instead on a more comprehensive measure of what it would take to satisfy a person’s basic needs for food, energy, housing, drinking water, sanitation, healthcare, schooling and social security.

McKinsey calls its new measure an “empowerment line.” It is the level where the report’s authors conclude that India’s citizens can get out of poverty and have the resources to build better lives for themselves, rather than scrape along at subsistence levels. McKinsey set its empowerment line at 1,336 rupees a month – roughly 50% above the government poverty line.

“It’s an expanded definition of poverty and aims to calculate the escape velocity needed to get people sustainably out of poverty,” said Anu Madgavkar, a senior fellow at the institute in Mumbai.

According to McKinsey’s calculations, about 680 million people, or 56% of Indians, now live below the empowerment line. Insufficient and ineffective public programs, poor agricultural productivity and a lack of better jobs all conspire to keep people poor.

via A New Way to Measure Poverty in India – India Real Time – WSJ.

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20/02/2014

China, UK discuss setting up yuan clearing bank in London – Osborne | Reuters

The British and Chinese governments are in active discussions about setting up a clearing bank in London for China’s currency, a milestone that will put the city in a leading position to offer yuan trade business in Europe.

British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne listens to a question after his speech during a breakfast meeting held by the British Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong February 20, 2014. REUTERS/Bobby Yip

Taking a leaf out of Hong Kong’s blueprint in being the leading offshore yuan hub after the establishment of Bank of China (Hong Kong) as a clearing bank, the authorities are pressing ahead with having one for the city of London.

The move will help expand the Chinese currency‘s footprint beyond Hong Kong, where more than 80 percent of yuan trade settlement transactions are handled and foster greater confidence among European companies to adopt the yuan, also known as the renminbi, as a currency for trade.

“The UK and Chinese governments are in active discussions now about the appointment of a RMB clearing bank in London, recognising London’s role as the Western centre of offshore RMB

via China, UK discuss setting up yuan clearing bank in London – Osborne | Reuters.

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20/02/2014

China charges former mining magnate with murder, gun-running | Reuters

Prosecutors in central China on Thursday charged the former chairman of Hanlong Mining, which had tried to take over Australia’s Sundance Resources Ltd, with murder, gun-running and other crimes as part of a “mafia-style” gang.

Police last year announced the detention of Liu Han and an investigation into his younger brother Liu Yong – also known as Liu Wei – on suspicion of various criminal activities.

In a report carried by the official Xinhua news agency, prosecutors in the central province of Hubei said the two Lius set up the gang in 1993, along with 34 others, which “carried out a vast number of criminal activities”.

The gang was responsible for nine murders, the report said.

via China charges former mining magnate with murder, gun-running | Reuters.

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