Your Morning Briefing for 03 September 2020

Good morning Readers, We are covering Indian Army’s moves at Chushul, what PUBG’s poster boy thinks on the latest app ban and why the Gujarati diamond merchants are facing raids in Hong Kong. Big Story It dodged a bullet the first time, but wasn't so lucky in the second round of culling of apps with Chinese links. PUBG Mobile, one of the most popular online multiplayer games, was among the 118 apps banned, citing concerns over threats to India’s safety and sovereignty.   Also read: As the PUBG Army scrambled for the last chicken dinner, the poster boy of the game emphasised that “nothing is bigger than the safety of the country”. From The Front Page The Army has made a few strategic maneuvers in a bid to force China to pull back its troops and restore status quo ante along LAC. Indian troops now have the vantage position on the south bank of Pangong Tso and Rechin La near Rezang La. They also occupied heights on the Finger 3 ridgeline, and strengthened deployment west of Finger 4.  The Government had red-flagged deposits worth Rs 86,673 crore raised by three cooperative societies floated  by the Sahara group, saying they have put depositors’ “hard-earned” money under “serious” risk. At least  Rs 62,643 crore of the money collected was invested in the Aamby Valley, the real-estate project that failed to enthuse buyers last year after multiple attempts to auction it.  While the government has announced a Rs 20 lakh crore stimulus package to counter the economic impact of Covid-19, official data shows that the Centre’s total expenditure in April-July increased by about Rs 1.07 lakh crore. This level of spending may not be enough to pull the economy out of a slump that may get prolonged. ‘Mission Karmayogi’ or National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building (NPCSCB) is here as the Union Cabinet cleared major changes in the way civil services officers will be skilled and trained across the country.

Winged Friends: A child feeds pigeons near Delhi Gate, Wednesday.

Must Read

A dentist and a computer applications graduate working in Saudi Arabia had helped the Bengaluru doctor, who was arrested by the NIA last month for links with the Islamic State, visit Syria in 2013-14, sources have told The Indian Express.

While India and China continue to bump up against each other at the border, the arrest of a Gujarati merchant on charges of diamond smuggling, and the subsequent raids in Hong Kong, have kept their counterparts in Surat and Mumbai on their toes, with some seeking the Centre’s intervention in the case.

As many as 500 regular trains will be discontinued and 10,000 stops will be erased as part of the “zero-based timetable” once the pandemic ends and railway services return to normal.

Now, in some good news, suicides in the farm sector have steadily declined over four years, according to the latest data released by the National Crime Records Bureau. When cultivators and farm labour are taken separately, there is a much steeper decline in suicides among the latter.

ICMYI

• Supreme Court Bar Association president Dushyant Dave has alleged that he was “kept on mute” during the online farewell ceremony for Justice Arun Mishra, who retired on Wednesday.
  
• Facebook India managing director Ajit Mohan answered questions from MPs at the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology’s hearing on Wednesday.
  
• The Union Cabinet Wednesday approved a Bill to introduce Hindi, Kashmiri and Dogri as official languages in Jammu and Kashmir, in addition to Urdu and English.
  
• The US, UK, France, Germany and Belgium on Wednesday decided to block Pakistan’s move to list two Indian nationals as global terrorists under the UNSC 1267 sanctions committee.
• The 46-year-old man, who was arrested for allegedly driving his car over eight people in a Mumbai market, has told the police that he had an epileptic attack at the time of the incident.

And Finally...

“Dua” is all that the Razak Ali household has been living on after it came to light last year that his son Anwar, one of India’s most promising footballers, had a congenital heart disease. While the diagnosis put a fledgling career on pause, within the next 10 days, the country’s football federation will decide if Anwar should ever play again.

Delhi Confidential: Amid the economic contraction and the government pressed for funds, the Finance Ministry on Wednesday decided to cut down on printing calendars, diaries and coffee table books, which each department brought out annually.

In today’s episode of Three Things Podcast, we discuss the three sets of emails between the head of BJP’s IT cell and Facebook executives in 2019 and what they reveal. 

Until tomorrow,

Leela Prasad and Liu Chuen Chen