India hit back at Pakistan in the UN Security Council after Islamabad raised the Kashmir issue at the 15-nation Council.
It also assured that the amount of medical insurance coverage under the Ayushman Bharat scheme would be doubled from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said the government is working out a new Bill on cryptocurrency which will be placed in the ongoing session of Parliament after approval of the Union Cabinet. The ongoing winter session is scheduled to end on December 23. Replying to a series of questions in the Rajya Sabha, she said the new Bill takes into account the rapidly changing dimensions in virtual currency space, and incorporate features of the earlier Bill that could not be taken up.
The Congress said the foot march, being led by party leader Rahul Gandhi, will proceed according to its schedule and reach Jammu on Monday afternoon.
'Under this government, tax laws have become more draconian, and the government itself is setting stiff, unrealistic targets for tax officials, who have got more powers to harass us,' points out Debashis Basu.
'A fragile Sri Lanka will have a serious impact on the security of India.'
Singh also said that Indian troops are standing firm braving extreme weather and hostile forces to defend the country's territorial integrity.
In a volte-face, Pakistan's cabinet on Thursday rejected the proposal of a high-powered committee to import cotton and sugar from India, with Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi asserting that there can be no normalisation of ties until New Delhi reverses its decision to revoke the special status of Jammu and Kashmir.
To threaten China and Pakistan, and then to sharply cut back on military funding, bespeaks a remarkable trust in Beijing and Islamabad that is not borne out by anything they say or do, notes Ajai Shukla.
National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and other top officials of the prime minister's office and the security apparatus were present at the meeting.
Pakistan will buy sugar and cotton from India, newly appointed Finance Minister Hammad Azhar announced on Wednesday, lifting a ban on their import from the neighbouring country imposed in the wake of heightened tension over Kashmir in 2019. The decision was taken at the meeting of the economic coordination committee (ECC), which was chaired by Finance Minister Azhar.
In the book 10 Flashpoints: 20 years that is set to be released on December 2, the former union minister has looked back at the security situations that have impacted India in the last two decades.
Learning perhaps from the Kargil debacle, Musharraf tried hard to evolve as a statesman in his dealings with India, recalls Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan desk at RA&W.
Remittances to the developing world are expected to reach $440bn in 2015.
The list in 2018 contained about 7,600 names. It has been reduced to under 3,800 in the past 18 months, according to Castellum.AI, a New York-based regulatory technology company. About 1,800 of the names have been removed since the beginning of March, according to data collected by Castellum.
'The number of STRs received in 2016-17 is 4,73,006 which is more than four times as compared to 2015-16 and this increase is attributed to demonetisaton exercise...,' the Financial Intelligence Unit's report has said.
"We keep hearing that Pakistan is a 'victim of terrorism'. This is the country which is an arsonist disguising itself as a fire-fighter. Pakistan nurtures terrorists in their backyard in the hope that they will only harm their neighbours," India's first secretary Sneha Dubey said in the UN General Assembly on Friday.
The ED claimed that Shah 'only received donations in cash from locals'.
Thailand has prepared a list of 291international terrorists and terrorist organisations to be banned from conducting financial transactions in the country, a senior official said on Tuesday.
Serious lack of funds to carry out its operation has forced the Students Islamic Movement of India and the Indian Mujahideen to adopt a method that was earlier forbidden. Vicky Nanjappa/Rediff.com reports
In 2020 India was compelled by China to change its national security strategy. From counter-insurgency, which the army has been focussed on for years, we shifted to conventional war, observes Aakar Patel.
Assam minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Tuesday claimed that 300-400 BJP workers and their family members have fled their homes in West Bengal amid post-poll violence in the neighbouring state.
The meeting with Xi is being held amid the ongoing trade war between the United States and China.
All Pakistani moves towards peace will be seen as tactical compromises, to be abandoned when the situation changes, observes Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
India on Friday revoked the 'most-favoured nation' status to Pakistan following the Pulwama terror strike.
Opposition leaders urged Modi to use the opportunity for the country's benefit.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday said the Indian economy is on a sustained path of revival and cited rise in GST collections and direct taxes to support her assertion. She further said that the confidence in the Indian stock market is growing as retail and small investors are keenly investing money in the share market. She was addressing the media in New Delhi.
'I condemn terror in all forms. Terror activities end up killing innocent people and hence I feel terror activities should not be carried out.'
Anticipating panic and rush at bank counters, the Reserve Bank of India as well as the government has set up control rooms in Mumbai and the national capital to avoid any crisis, Department of Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das said.
Making a strong case for banning cryptocurrencies, Reserve Bank Deputy Governor T Rabi Sankar on Monday said they are even worse than ponzi schemes and threaten the financial sovereignty of a country. Observing that crypto-technology is underpinned by a philosophy to evade government controls, he said they have been specifically developed to bypass the regulated financial system. More substantially, he added, cryptocurrencies can wreck the currency system, monetary authority, banking system, and in general the government's ability to control the economy.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday invoked Pearl Harbor and 9/11 attacks in appeal to the United States Congress for help against Russia.
The Supreme Court Wednesday flagged the issue of possible misuse of funds received through electoral bonds by political parties for illegal purposes like terrorism and asked the Centre whether there was any 'control' over how these funds were put to use.
Acting Foreign Minister of Afghanistan, Amir Khan Muttaqi, on Wednesday arrived in Islamabad, his first visit to the country, as part of efforts by the two sides to reset their ties in the wake of the Taliban's takeover of Kabul.
The modus operandi is recruitment of Indian youths by LeT and Bangladesh-based Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami for training in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and then sending them back to India.
Seeking to wriggle out of the FATF's grey list, Pakistan has imposed tough financial sanctions on 88 banned terror groups and their leaders, including Hafiz Saeed, Masood Azhar and Dawood Ibrahim, by ordering the seizure of all of their properties and freezing of bank accounts, a media report said.
Jaitley said note ban has compelled people to deposit money into bank accounts.
Special envoys of China, Russia and Pakistan have met the top officials of the Taliban's interim government as well as Afghan leaders Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah in Kabul and discussed the formation of an inclusive government, combating terrorism and humanitarian situation, a top Chinese official said on Wednesday.
The Council adopted the resolution proposed by France, the United Kingdom and the United States with 13 Council members voting in favour and Russia and China abstaining.
The 13th report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team cites a UN Member State as saying that Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), a Deobandi group ideologically closer to the Taliban "maintains eight training camps in Nangarhar, three of which are directly under Taliban control."
Dawood Ibrahim is wanted in India to face the law of the land for carrying out serial blasts in Mumbai in 1993 in which scores of people were killed and injured.
