Junior Digest

Kabul, May 8: Efforts are under way to rescue the five Indian engineers who have been abducted in Afghanistan’s Baghlan province, the Afghan government said on Monday.
Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani spoke to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj over telephone and assured her that security forces are trying to release the abducted Indians from grip of kidnappers and ensure their security, the official Bakhtar news agency said.
Baghlan Governor Abdul Hai Niamati also said security forces were trying to secure the release of the abducted Indians and one Afghan national.
Niamati told Radio Free Afghanistan that armed groups opposed to the Afghan government were behind the kidnapping.
Zabihullah Shuja, a spokesman for the Baghlan police, said the engineers were traveling to a government-run power station in a mini bus when unknown gunmen abducted them and their Afghan driver.
The engineers worked for the Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat that operates power-generating stations.
No group has claimed responsibility for the abduction.
Kidnapping for purposes of extortion is common in Afghanistan amid rampant poverty and rising unemployment.
Earlier in New Delhi, the Ministry of External Affairs in a statement said it was in contact with the Afghan authorities.

New Delhi, May 8: Aiming to build and enhance the capacity of African nations contributing troops for UN peacekeeping missions, India and the US on Monday kicked off the third edition of a programme to train instructors from these countries.

The African military personnel will in turn train troops in their respective countries.

The two-week United Nations Peacekeeping Course for African Partners (UNPCAP) will conclude on May 25 at Manekshaw Centre in Delhi.

The course is aimed to build and enhance the capacity of the African Troop Contributing Countries to the UN and to further train the Trainers from these countries, the Indian Army said in a statement.

The students include officers who are currently employed in their respective peacekeeping training centres in African peacekeeping training institutions.

The first two editions of the course were conducted in English. In order to widen the participation base & include francophone countries, UNPCAP-03 has been planned to be conducted in both English as well as French by using the facility of simultaneous interpretation, it added.

The Inaugural Session of the course was by the Secretary (West) in the Ministry of External Affairs Ruchi Ghanashyam and briefed the audience on the commitment of India towards the UN.

Other eminent speakers to speak on the occasion included Director General Staff Duties Lt Gen Ajae Kumar Sharma and the US Ambassador to India Kenneth Juster.

The course is being seen as a milestone in many ways at the international forum, which also reflect India’s growing stature globally.

India is one of largest troop contributors to the UN.

New Delhi, May 8: The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) on Monday approved extension for one year to the Cabinet Secretary Pradeep Kumar Sinha. His tenure was supposed to end on June 12. He will now hold the post till June 12, 2019.
Mr Sinha is already on one year extension which was given last year.
A 1977 batch Uttar Pradesh cadre IAS officer, Mr Sinha, a Post graduate in Economics, was appointed Cabinet Secretary in the year 2015. Before being elevated to the rank of Cabinet Secretary he had held the post of Secretary in Power and Shipping ministries.

New Delhi, May 8: With an aim to choke financial lifeline of Maoists, the Government has formed a multi disciplinary group comprising of officials of Central agencies and state police to block the Maoist funding in Left Wing Extremist (LWE) affected areas, according to Home Ministry officials here on Monday.
The group is headed by the Additional Secretary (LWE) of the Home Ministry and has representatives of the Intelligence Bureau, National Investigation Agency (NIA), Enforcement Directorate, and Department of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The State intelligence department and Crime Investigation Department (CID) have also been taken on board, officials said.

The Government move comes after the intelligence reports of diversion of ‘huge levy’ collected by the Naxal leaders into their personal wealth whose children are availing best of education and family living in comforts while the misled cadres toil away in forest in the name of a twisted ideology.

New Delhi, May 7:  The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), which declared the final results of UPSC Civil Services Exam 2017 on April 27, has on Sunday released the marks obtained by the successful candidates.
According to UPSC, first rank holder Durishetty Anudeep has secured 55.60 per cent marks. The 28-year old Indian Revenue Service Officer scored 1,126 marks – 950 in the written test and 176 in the interview – out of 2,025, according to the UPSC.
The main exam is of 1,750 marks and the interview 275.
Anu Kumari, who came second, has got 55.50 per cent or 1,124 marks (937 in written and 187 in the interview). Sachin Gupta got 55.40 percent marks and ranked at number third. He got 946 in the written exam and 176 in the interview. Himankshi Bharadwaj got the 990th rank with 40.98 percent marks – 830 (687 in written and 143 in the interview).
The marks obtained by the candidates reflect the tough standards of the highly prestigious test.
The result of the civil services examination 2017 was declared on April 27. The results were made available on the official website of the Commission:upsc.gov.in.
A total of 990 candidates – 750 men and 240 women – were recommended by the Commission for appointment to various central government services on the basis of the test.

Washington, May 5 : Ahead of his much-awaited summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, US President Donald Trump will host his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in at the White House on May 22, according to an official announcement today.

During the meeting, Moon would brief Trump on his recent summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Moon met with Kim Jong-un last week at a Korean border village during last week’s inter-Korea summit. The two leaders agreed to end hostile acts against each other along their tense border, establish a liaison office and resume reunions of separated families.

They also agreed to achieve a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, but failed to produce specific time frames and disarmament steps.

Trump himself is scheduled to have a summit meeting with Kim Jong-un, the date and venue for which “have been decided and will be announced soon”.

May 3: 2018 : Cambridge Analytica, the firm embroiled in a controversy over its handling of Facebook Inc user data, and its British parent SCL Elections Ltd, are shutting down immediately after suffering a sharp drop in business, the company said on Wednesday.

The company will begin bankruptcy proceedings, it said, after losing clients and facing mounting legal fees resulting from the scandal over reports the company harvested personal data about millions of Facebook users beginning in 2014.

“The siege of media coverage has driven away virtually all of the Company’s customers and suppliers,” the statement said.

“As a result, it has been determined that it is no longer viable to continue operating the business, which left Cambridge Analytica with no realistic alternative to placing the company into administration.”

Allegations of the improper use of data for 87 million Facebook users by Cambridge Analytica, which was hired by President Donald Trump’s 2016 U.S. election campaign, has hurt the shares of the world’s biggest social network and prompted multiple official investigations in the United States and Europe.

“Over the past several months, Cambridge Analytica has been the subject of numerous unfounded accusations and, despite the company’s efforts to correct the record, has been vilified for activities that are not only legal, but also widely accepted as a standard component of online advertising in both the political and commercial arenas,” the company’s statement said.

The firm is shutting down effective Wednesday and employees have been told to turn in their computers, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier.

The Cambridge Analytica sign had been removed from the reception area of its London offices on Wednesday. At SCL’s Washington, D.C. office, a man declined to answer questions from a Reuters reporter.

After the announcement, Britain’s data regulator said it would continue civil and criminal investigations of the firm and will pursue “individuals and directors as appropriate” despite the shutdown.

“We will also monitor closely any successor companies using our powers to audit and inspect, to ensure the public is safeguarded,” a spokeswoman for the Information Commissioner’s Office said in a statement.

Kolkata, May 2 : Air pollution levels remain dangerously high in many parts of the world.New data from WHO shows that 9 out of 10 people breathe air containing high levels of pollutants. Updated estimations reveal an alarming death toll of 7 million people every year caused by ambient (outdoor) and household air pollution, a WHO media statement on Wednesday said.

“Air pollution threatens us all, but the poorest and most marginalized people

bear the brunt of the burden,” says Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,

Director-General of WHO. “It is unacceptable that over 3 billion people – most of them women and children– are still breathing deadly smoke every day from using polluting stoves and fuels in their homes. If we don’t take urgent action on air pollution, we will never come close to achieving sustainable development,” he said.WHO estimates that around 7 million people die every year from exposure to fine particles in polluted air that penetrate deep into the lungs and cardiovascular system,causing diseases including stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases and respiratory infections, including pneumonia. Ambient air pollution alone caused some 4.2 million deaths in 2016, while household air pollution from cooking with polluting fuels and technologies caused an estimated 3.8 million deaths in the same period. More than 90 per cent of air pollution-related deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, mainly in Asia and Africa, followed by low- and middle-income countries of the Eastern Mediterranean region, Europe and the Americas. Around 3 billion people – more than 40 per cent of the world’s population – still do not have access to clean cooking fuels and technologies in their homes, the main source of household air pollution. WHO has been monitoring household air pollution for more than a decade . While the rate of access to clean fuels and technologies is increasing everywhere,improvements are not even keeping pace with population growth in many parts of the world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

2 May 2018: Russia’s military spending fell sharply in 2017 for the first time since 1998 as a slew of Western economic sanctions hit government coffers hard, a closely followed review said Wednesday.

Naypyidaw, May 1 : Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi received a UN Security Council delegation on Sunday in the highest-level diplomatic visit since the start of the Rohingya crisis, which will include a brief tour of violence-hit Rakhine state.