Continuing its record-setting spree, the Nifty climbed over the 9,200-mark for the first time and the benchmark Sensex surged 239 points in early hours today, with foreign investors continuing to pump up money.
The broader NSE Nifty crossed the key 9,200-mark by surging 64.70 points, or 0.70 per cent, to trade at an all-time high of 9,218.40.
The 30-share index surged 238.77 points, or 0.80 per cent, to trade at 29,824.62.
The gauge had added 187.74 points in the previous session, tracking firm global markets after the prospects of a gradual approach to US rate hike removed a big uncertainty.
Sectoral indices led by FMCG, realty, metal and power were trading in the positive zone with gains up to 2.97 per cent.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up by 0.32 per cent while Japan’s Nikkei shed 0.34 per cent in early trade today.
Shanghai Composite fell 0.17 per cent.
The US Dow Jones Industrial Average ended marginally lower by 0.07 per cent yesterday.
Washington, Mar 17 : World Bank investments in commercial financial institutions is indirectly allowing land-grabs, evictions and pollution in Southeast Asia, a watchdog group charged in a report today.
By investing in banks and other so-called financial intermediaries, World Bank funds can increase poverty, social strife and promote projects which hasten climate change, according to a report by Inclusive Development International.
These investments by the World Bank’s private financing arm, the International Finance Corporation, violate its own guidelines on environmental and social conditions, the report alleges.
“Once again, we have found that outsourcing the World Bank Group’s development mandate to private financial institutions is a recipe for disaster,” David Pred, the group’s managing director, said in a statement.
Pred’s US-based non-governmental organization, which researches the activities of development agencies like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, issued another report in October saying the IFC’s investments helped finance a “coal boom” across Asia even though the World Bank had pledged to phase out most support coal-fired power.
An IFC spokesman defended the practice of working with private financial firms, saying they were “essential” to poverty reduction and job creation.
“The multiplier effect of FI investments enables us to support far more enterprises critical to development than we would be able to on our own,” IFC spokesman Frederick Jones told AFP.
“We work with our FI clients to improve their environment and social risk management practices.”
In 2016, the IFC poured USD 5 billion into commercial banks, insurance companies, private equity firms and others, representing about half of its new annual long-term commitments, according to an internal IFC watchdog. The investments are aimed at boosting domestic capital and financial markets and supporting development.
But critics have grown increasingly critical of the practice in recent years, saying the financing can support end-users who violate World Bank environmental and social safeguards given the lack of oversight on how the funds are used.
The IFC compliance office said in a report last week that although supervision of these investments was improving, the corporation still lacked a means to assess whether clients met its standards. IFC disputed that report’s findings, saying they did not give an accurate view of its performance.
Friday’s report singled out IFC support for Raiffeisen Bank International of Austria, which the report said had financed the Thai mining firm Earth Energy, the main underwriter of a coal project in Myanmar’s Tanintharyi region that allegedly involved land-grabbing and mining on ancestral lands that could affect as many as 16,000 people.
New Delhi : The Election Commission today rejected as “baseless and wild” the charge of BSP supremo Mayawati that the electronic voting machines (EVMs) were tampered with and asserted these were “fully tamper-proof”.
In a strongly-worded statement, the commission said, “Baseless, speculative and wild allegations are being made which deserve to be rejected.”
The sharp reaction of the poll panel came after Mayawati and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal claimed that the machines were tampered with in recently concluded Assembly elections in five states.
The poll panel said it did not receive specific complaints or concrete material from political parties and candidates about alleged tampering of the EVMs during the election process, asserting that it is “fully satisfied with the integrity of electoral process using EVM”.
It said the BSP’s representation on EVM tampering was without any specific allegation and it had rejected the claim of the party. It did not mention Kejriwal in its statement.
“Such concerns about alleged tamperability of ECI-EVM have been raised earlier also since their introduction including before high court and the Supreme Court.
“These allegations have been dismissed. ECI unequivocally reiterates that given effective technical and administrative safeguards, EVMs are not tamperable and integrity of electoral process is preserved,” it said.
The EC’s rebuttal came a day after Mayawati said she will move court against the alleged tampering of the EVMs.
Kejriwal too had alleged that the EVMs may have been tampered with in Punjab. “It is about the credibility of the Election Commission and the faith of people in the electoral system. We have strong prima facie evidence of foul play,” he had said.
Meanwhile, several former chief election commissioners said losing parties should not blame their loss on the EVMs.
Former CECs M S Gill, V S Sampath and H S Brahma told PTI that the machines are “reliable and tamper-proof” and political parties should not question their reliability if they lose elections.
BSP chief Mayawati decided to move court over alleged tampering of EVMs in the recent Assembly polls, an issue which led Delhi chief minister and AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal to cry conspiracy.
Kejriwal also said that before 2014 Lok Sabha polls even some BJP leaders like L K Advani were not in favour of the EVMs. The move by Mayawati and the comments by Kejriwal evoked derision from the BJP and its ally SAD. As the leaders of BSP and AAP raised their pitch in questioning the reliability of the EVMs, BJP said there are “some defects” in Mayawati and not in the Electronic Voting Machines(EVM).
BSP was decimated in the recent Assembly polls in UP where it finished a distant third winning 19 seats in the 403 -member House while the Aam Aadmi Party(AAP) making a debut in Punjab bagged 20 seats in the 117-member Assembly. The ruling SAD-BJP combine was trounced in Punjab.
Mayawati said the BSP has decided to observe a ‘black day’ every month against the “murder of democracy” by the BJP and charged that the saffron victory in UP smacked of “dishonesty” and “fraud”.
Kejirwal said EVM tampering may have led to AAP’s poor showing in Punjab, alleging it could be part of a conspiracy to keep the party out of power in the state. The AAP chief, whose party won 20 seats in the 117-member Assembly with a vote share of 24.9 per cent, claimed that around 20 to 25 per cent of its votes may have been “transferred” to the SAD-BJP coalition. The poll result is “beyond understanding” and raises a “big question mark” on the reliability of electronic voting machines (EVMs) as political pundits across the spectrum had “predicted a landslide” for AAP, he told a press conference in Delhi.
Kejriwal claimed that tampering with EVMs could have been done “selectively” in significant states like Punjab, where plans were to “keep AAP out of power”. At the same time, the AAP supremo said he takes the “whole responsibility” of party’s performance in the state. The BJP ridiculed Mayawati’s allegations of EVM tampering and asked her to “gracefully accept the people’s mandate”.
“When you win, EVMs are right. When you lose, EVMs are wrong. This shows that there are some defects in you (Mayawati),” Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu told reporters.
The Congress today said the Election Commission should probe into the EVM tampering charges made by some parties to ensure that voters’ confidence is not shattered and there is no blot on India’s democracy.
“If any party has doubts over efficacy of EVMs, it is the Election Commission’s duty to hold a probe. The EC’s first responsibility is the voters should have confidence that the vote cast by them reaches the person they want,” Congress spokesperson Sushmita Dev said.
“India is the largest democracy and we take pride in that. We should not allow any blot on it. The Election Commission should hold an investigation and we do not have any objection,” she said.
Asked if the Congress is ready for a probe in Punjab too where the AAP is alleging EVM tampering, she said her party has the confidence and does not fear any investigation. Besides AAP, the BSP has made similar allegation in Uttar Pradesh and demanded a thorough investigation, even though the EC has debunked the charge.
Yaounde : Cameroon said its troops had rescued 5,000 civilian “hostages” held by Boko Haram Islamists in a cross-border operation that left scores of jihadists dead.
Cameroonian troops carried out “a vast operation all along the Cameroon-Nigeria border and in Nigeria” from February 27 to March 7, government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary said in a statement seen by AFP Wednesday.
The operation, dubbed Thunder 2, “led to the liberation of more than 5,000 people taken hostage by the terrorists”, he said, referring to Boko Haram.
“The freed hostages — most of them women, children and elderly people — were taken to a camp for displaced people in Banki, Nigeria,” he added.
“More than 60 terrorists” were killed, he said, adding that “21 suspects were arrested”.
Boko Haram, which wants to establish a caliphate in northern Nigeria, has been waging an insurgency since 2009.
Though it was born in Nigeria, the Islamic State-affiliated group has also carried out frequent attacks on “soft” targets in neighbouring Cameroon, Chad and Niger, prompting them to form a regional force to fight back.
Some 200,000 Cameroonians from the Far North region near Nigeria have fled their villages in fear of the violence carried out by Boko Haram militants.
The UN Security Council earlier this month vowed to turn the spotlight on a “neglected crisis” affecting 21 million people in the Lake Chad region that straddles Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger.
Dubai, Mar 15 : The ruler of Dubai today ordered three men accused of feeding a cat alive to two dogs and filming it to clean the city’s zoo for three months.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum ordered “those detained for torturing the cat to perform community service by cleaning the Dubai zoo for four hours a day for three months,” a government statement said.
It is not clear if the men will also face prosecution. A recently enacted law on animal cruelty stipulates punishment of up to a year in prison or a fine of up to 200,000 dirhams (USD 54,500).
Emirati newspapers said a Gulf citizen and two Asians had been arrested over the video, which was widely shared on social media.
The video showed a man offering the cat in an open cage to two Rottweilers, encouraging them to devour the terrified feline as punishment for its having eating birds.
“You eat pigeons and chickens?” a man is heard saying to the cat, as it is being mauled by one of the dogs. “Eat the cat, eat it,” he orders.
A picture released by the government showed three men in blue overalls sweeping a path in the Dubai zoo, but it was not clear if they were the accused.
“The crime committed by those negligent men contradicts basic human norms,” the government statement said.
“The cruelty demonstrated in this barbaric act violates our values and the principles of our religion which tell us to be humane with animals,” it added.
New Delhi, Mar 15 : Fifty new Kendriya Vidyalayas (KVs) will be established across the country to provide quality education to around 50,000 students with the Cabinet giving a go ahead to the project.
The schools, which will be set up under the civil/defence sector for classes 1 to 5, will “provide quality education to approximately 50,000 students in addition to around 12 lakh students already studying in present KVs,” an official statement said.
The new KVs for which 650 regular posts will be created, will “address the educational needs of eligible students with high quality standards and will play a role of pace-setting educational institutions in the districts concerned,” it said.
By providing a common syllabus and system of education, the KVs are intended to ensure that the children of government employees do not face education disadvantages while their parents are transferred from one location to another.
The schools have been operational for over fifty years.
At least 4-acre of land is required in a city and beyond that in other areas for setting up of a Kendriya Vidyalaya.
Other norms include concentration of 500 employees in defence or Central government and minimum potential enrollment of 200 children for classes I to IV.
“The school grows every year with addition of one more higher class and, when the school grows upto class XII and becomes a full fledged school with two sections in each class, there shall be a requirement of about 4,000 regular posts of various categories including around 2,900 teaching posts and about 1,100 non-teaching posts,” it said.
The total project cost based on Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS) norms for the proposed 50 new KVs is Rs 1,160 crore.
There are at present 1,142 functional Kendriya Vidyalayas under the KVS including three abroad at Moscow, Kathmandu and Tehran.
London : Britain’s Parliament has passed the ‘Brexit bill’ paving the way for Prime Minister Theresa May to trigger negotiations for the UK’s exit from the European Union.
The House of Commons yesterday rejected amendments by the House of Lords, calling on the government to protect the status of EU nationals within three months of the start of Brexit talks, by 335 votes to 287. They also dismissed calls for Parliament to have a meaningful vote on any Brexit deal by 331 to 286 votes.
This meant that the EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill passed the House of Commons without any changes.
The bill was then passed unamended by the House of Lords after peers voted by 274 votes to 118 not to challenge the Commons again over the issue of whether Parliament should have a veto on the terms of exit.
The House of Lords had already agreed not to reinsert guarantees over the status of EU residents in the UK back into the bill after they were rejected by MPs.
The bill is now expected to receive Royal Assent from Queen Elizabeth II to become a law.
May could then theoretically trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty any time this week, but indications are that she is unlikely to trigger the negotiations until the end of this month.
Opposition Labour party had earlier urged May to consider keeping the “really important” Lords amendments.
“The issue of the rights of EU nationals to remain here is a decent human one and part of our economic success or not,” said Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The bill was passed even as Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she will be seeking the Parliament’s permission to hold a referendum on Scotland’s independence from the UK, a move described as “divisive” by Downing Street.
Sturgeon wants this referendum to be held between the second half of 2018 and first half of 2019 for Scotland to be able to have a say over its relationship with the European Union (EU) post-Brexit.
If it gets parliamentary approval, this will be the second such Scottish independence referendum after 2014, when the region had voted to remain part of the UK.
Britain’s Brexit Secretary David Davis had called on Parliament over the weekend to not block the bill any longer or “tie the prime minister’s hands” over Parliament getting a final vote on the deal and on EU citizens’ rights in the UK.
Ahead of the Commons vote, the heads of 35 Oxford University colleges had pleaded with MPs to allow European Union citizens the right to stay after Brexit.
In a letter to The Times, signed by Louise Richardson, the Oxford vice-chancellor, and the heads of all but three of the colleges, the academics dismiss as insufficient the indications by ministers that European citizens already resident in Britain were likely to be allowed to stay.
May has committed to triggering Article 50 by the end of March.
All limits on savings bank cash withdrawals that were imposed by the central bank post-demonetization ended on Monday, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced.
The weekly withdrawal limit per account had been raised to Rs 50,000 from Rs 24,000 with effect from February 20, and all limits on ATM withdrawals were slated to cease from March 13. The announcement was made by RBI Deputy Governor R Gandhi in the post monetary policy review announcement by the central bank in February – the last policy of the fiscal, when it kept its key interest rate unchanged at 6.25%. The status quo was maintained as the RBI said it awaited data on the full impact of demonetization.
On January 30, the RBI had ended all curbs on withdrawals from current accounts, cash credit accounts and overdraft accounts. The limits were placed following the November 8 demonetization of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes. The upper limit at ATMs was just Rs 2,500 initially and was later raised to Rs 4,500. In January, the RBI had hiked the daily ATM withdrawal limit to Rs 10,000 and doubled the weekly current account withdrawal limit to Rs 1 lakh.
The upper limit for weekly withdrawal from bank accounts had been raised to Rs 24,000 from Rs 20,000 in November. While the curbs on cash withdrawals have now, in effect, ended, it remains to be seen whether most of the ATMs can match up the demand for cash. While certain areas have returned to normalcy, there are some others that are still low on cash.
Algiers, Mar 13 : An archaeological treasure trove on the site of a planned metro station in central Algiers is set to become a museum, opening a window on 2,000 years of history.
The site, close to the Algerian capital’s UNESCO-listed casbah, has yielded remains from the city’s Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and French periods.
“It was spectacular,” said archaeologist Kamel Stiti, co-director of the excavations. “In one look, you could see two millennia of Algiers’ history.”
The remains, on the location of a Roman port town called Icosium, were discovered in 2009 when the ministry of culture ordered surveys along the planned metro line.
Archaeologists have since discovered coins, weapons, a public building paved with 5th century mosaics and a large 7th century Byzantine necropolis containing several dozen graves.
They also found parts of the Ottoman-era Es Sayida mosque, which French authorities flattened in 1831, shortly after their conquest of the North African country.
The colonial government put a public square in its place and called it King’s Square and later, Government Square. It was re-named Martyrs Square after the country’s hard-won independence in 1962.
Experts had believed that few pre-colonial artefacts remained on the site, but many of the ruins turned out to be surprisingly well-preserved, Stiti said.
The 3,000-square-metre (32,300-square-foot) site was deemed so important that the municipality adapted its plans for the metro station, a move Stiti said was a first in Algeria.
The site will now become a museum incorporated into the station, which, in turn, will take up less than half its planned 8,000 square metres.
The tunnel will go as deep as 35 metres (115 feet) in order to work around the remains.
The Martyrs Square station is set to open in November, part of an extension to the main metro line inaugurated in October 2011.
The museum will open shortly afterwards, covering 1,200 square metres and organised chronologically.
Beijing, Mar 13 : China has warned of a trade war with the US if the Trump administration decides to ignore WTO rulings and unilaterally imposes tariffs on its goods.
“If any member ignores WTO rules for its own interests and rejects WTO rulings on trade disputes, multilateral trade mechanisms would become meaningless and the trade wars of the 1930s could even be repeated,” Sun Jiwei, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said, reacting to moves by Washington to ignore the world trade body.
Sun was reacting to annual trade policy agenda sent to Congress by the new US government implying that America is not bound by World Trade Organisation (WTO) decisions.
The new US policy will also strictly enforce its trade laws, which include a “safeguard” provision that allows the Washington to unilaterally impose relief “if increasing imports are substantial cause of serious injury to a domestic industry,” state-run Global Times reported.
US President Donald Trump, who made some tough statements against China before and after his election, branded Beijing as a currency manipulator to gain unfair advantage from exports and even threatened to impose 45 per cent tariffs on Chinese goods.
China’s Commerce Minister Zhong Shan, told media last week that China and the US are interdependent, and bilateral trade relations affect not just the two countries but the world.
“Many Americans and their Western friends think that China has to rely on the US. I think they are partially right. But the US has to rely on China as well,” Zhong said.
The report said the new US document asserts that “Americans are not directly subject to WTO decisions,” and that the US will defend its national sovereignty over trade policy and use all possible sources of leverage to encourage other countries to open their markets to US exports of goods and services.
Zhong said China receives 26 per cent of Boeing airplane orders, 56 per cent of US bean exports, 16 per cent of automobile exports and 15 per cent of integrated circuit exports.
China-US trade reached USD 519.6 billion in 2016, representing 207 times that of the 1979 amount, when diplomatic relations started, he said.
However, the balance of trade is heavily tilted in favour of China as US
exports amount to about USD 100 billion.
“A trade war is not in the best interests of the two countries and peoples because a trade war only does much more harm than good,” Zhong had said.