India strikes back as Army conducts surgical strikes across LoC in Pakistan

Significant casualties inflicted on terrorists; Pakistani DGMO informed of strikes post operation

The Indian Army conducted surgical strikes across the Line of Control (LoC) on Wednesday night on launchpads where terrorists had amassed and positioned themselves to infiltrate into India, Director General Military Operations (DGMO) Lt Gen Ranbir Singh informed the gathered members of the press at the joint briefing following the Cabinet Committee on Security meeting held on Thursday.

According to Times Now, a total of eight surgical strikes were conducted by the Indian Army. There were no Indian casualties during the operation.

Singh said that the strikes were based on credible information and that the terrorists were poised to conduct attacks in Jammu and Kashmir and other major metros in the country. Singh revealed that significant casualties were inflicted on the terrorists in the operation.

The DGMO added that he had contacted his Pakistani counterpart to inform him of the operation conducted by the Indian armed forces on Wednesday night.

"It has been a serious matter of concern that there has been continuing and increasing infiltrations by terrorists across the LoC in Jammu and Kashmir. This is reflected in the terrorist attacks at Poonch and Uri on September 11 and 18, respectively. Almost 20 infiltrations attempts have been foiled by the Indian Army successfully this year. During these attacks and infiltration attempts, we have recovered items, including global positioning systems and stores which have had Pakistani markings," the DGMO added.Read more.

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ICICI Prudential Life Insurance lists below issue price

The stock is listed at Rs 330, 1.2% below its issue price of Rs 334 per share, on the National Stock Exchange

ICICI Prudential Life Insurance has listed at Rs 330, 1.2% below its issue price of Rs 334 per share, on the National Stock Exchange (NSE).

At 10:01 am, the stock was trading at Rs 331.60, after hitting a high of Rs 333.80 post its listing.

ICICI Prudential Life Insurance has raised Rs 6,057-crore through initial public offer (IPO), become the first insurer to list.

The company's public issue was oversubscribed 10.5 times. The quota set aside for qualified institutional buyers was subscribed 11.83 times while for the non-institutional investor category, it was 28.55 times. The retail portion was oversubscribed 1.42 times, the exchange data shows.

The insurer is a venture between banking major ICICI Bank and UK's Prudential Corporation Holdings. Singapore's Temasek and PremjiInvest are also the shareholders.

At the end of financial year 2016 (FY16), ICICI Prudential was the biggest private sector insurer in the Country having a market share of 11.3%. The company has 521 offices with around 10,663 employees and 121,016 advisors all over India as of FY16. ICICI Prudential Life’s total premium and net profit has risen at a CAGR of 8% and 5% in the past four years, respectively.

Article Source: Business Standard

Reliance Jio call drops due to its under-preparedness: Airtel

Reliance Jio call drops due to its under-preparedness: Airtel

Airtel on Tuesday blamed Reliance Jio itself for network connectivity issues and call failures, saying they are due to Jio's own "under-preparedness", insufficient testing efforts and acquiring a large number of customers at the pre-launch stage itself.

In a letter to Reliance Jio, Airtel said: "While RJIO has continued to allege huge call failure on account of insufficient number of PoIs (points of interconnect), however, we believe that the prime reason for such callfailures was on account of acquisition of a large number of subscribers by RJIO even before the declaration of the commercial launch."

The letter, sent on Monday, goes on to say that augmentation of POIs based on actual traffic, necessitates a reciprocal action from the other party also.

"It is important to note, that despite our best efforts, the POIs are still in the process of augmentation due to issues at your end," Airtel said.

Airtel said that despite the prompt and colossal effort on its part, as on date, only 2,484 E1s (interconnect ports) are live out of a total capacity of 3,048 provided, primarily due to various reasons for delay "attributable solely to RJIO's under-preparedness and insufficient testing teams and efforts".

It added: "Even these capacities could be augmented with great persuasion by Airtel teams. During the augmentation exercise, your circles had cited issues with regard to Acceptance Testing, transmission media related concerns and hence the augmentation process took much longer and even till date the complete POI's have not been augmented due to unpreparedness of your teams." Read more

Indian-origin lawyer shoots 9 in US, killed by police

Indian-origin lawyer shoots 9 in US, killed by police

An Indian-origin lawyer with apparent Nazi sympathies went on an early morning rampage in US' Houston city shooting nine people on Monday before he was killed by police, according to authorities.

Nathan Desai was wearing military-style clothing with Nazi symbols during the 20-minute shooting spree when he fired at passing cars.

Police said that they did not know why Desai went on the rampage hitting people at random.

Desai's name was written with the 's' capitalised in media reports in Houston, making it sound European, but his father was identified as Prakash Desai.

All of his victims survived but one person was critically wounded and five others were hospitalised, Houston's Acting Police Chief Martha Montalvo said.

She described the shooter as a lawyer who was having problems at his law firm. When police responded to the shooting, he shot at them and was killed when policereturned fire, Montalvo said.

The shooter's father, 80-year-old Prakash Desai told KPRC TV that his son was "worried" because his law practice was not doing so well.Read full article

US presidential debate: Poll says 62% viewers think Clinton won, only 27% say Trump did better

US presidential debate: Poll says 62% viewers think Clinton won, only 27% say Trump did better

Democrat Hillary Clinton is held to have won the first presidential debate held on Tuesday against her Republican rival Donald Trump, according to a new CNN/ORC poll.

According to the poll of debate watchers, 62 per cent of voters who watched the debate thought Clinton won, while only 27 per cent said that Trump came out on top.

Clinton and Trump took to the stage on Tuesday to begin their first-ever presidential debate and immediately sparred over jobs, taxes, the Islamic State (IS), guns and the former secretary of state's undisclosed emails, media reports said.

Here is what both candidates had to say on various issues:
On prosperity, taxes and jobs

Moderator Leslie Holt of NBC News opened the 90-minute debate at Hofstra University, Long Island, New York, with the first topic being "Achieving Prosperity", where the first question about putting money back into Americans' pockets and creating jobs was directed to Clinton,CNN reported.

Clinton, the first woman to represent a major US party in the presidential race, mentioned her granddaughter's birthday, and talked about everything from gender pay gaps, to paid family leave, to presidential temperament.

She started her speech by defending the idea of creating "an economy for all" and stressed that she intends to do so "by having the wealthy pay their fair share", EFE news reported.

"I also want to see more companies do profit sharing. If you help create the profits, you should be able to share in them, not just the executives at the top," she said, and stressed that "the central question in this election is really what kind of country we want to be in".Read full Article

PM tells BJP cadres how they should view Muslims

PM tells BJP cadres how they should view Muslims

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday gave a definite pro-poverty shift to his government’s policies and programmes for the next one year, even as he finally addressed the elephant in the room — how his party views or should view India’s largest minority, the Muslims.

In the concluding day address of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s National Council meeting, the PM announced that his government would ratify the climate change agreement on October 2, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. “The reason why I have chosen Gandhiji’s birth anniversary is because he led his life with the minimumest of carbon footprint,” Modi said.

The rest of his speech was devoted to the memory of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, the founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the earlier avatar of the BJP. Modi launched the birth centenary celebrations of Upadhyaya, who was elected the Jana Sangh president in this city in December 1967. The city was then known as Calicut. But he died under mysterious circumstances 41 days later.

Invoking Upadhyaya’s call for serving the poorest, Modi said the government at the Centre and in the states would mark the next one year as Garib Kalyan Varsh, the year for the welfare of the downtrodden.Read more

Markets remain subdued on profit taking; L&T Technology Services lists at Rs 920

Markets remain subdued on profit taking; L&T Technology Services lists at Rs 920

Markets are trading in a subdued note tracking mixed global cues on account of booking profits after the recent run-up.

At 9:30 am, the S&P BSE Sensex slipped 48 points at 28,725 and the Nifty50 dipped 9 points to trade at 8,858. Among broader markets, BSE Midcap and Smallcapindices are up 0.3%-0.5%.

“Subdued trading is expected early in the day inside the 8890-8860 region. Breakout beyond the same is expected, but a directional move is less likely. Downsides look limited, but upsides in the near term look more limited, suggesting that bearishness should dominate,” adds Geojit BNP Paribas in a technical note.

ALSO READ: Stock picks from Motilal Oswal Securities; buy HDFC, Aurobindo Pharma

On Thursday, Indian equities surged mirroring strong global markets after the US Federal Reserve kept interest rates at a near-record low, but hinted a hike could come in December.

On the macro-economic front, the government, on Thursday, appointed three academics to the panel. The RBI has already appointed its members to the panel.

The government nominees are Chetan Ghate, professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Pami Dua, director, Delhi School of Economics; and Ravindra H Dholakia, professor, Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A).

Read More

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Refuting claims that it is updating the astrological signs, NASA has said that it did not do it as the space agency studies astronomy not astrology.

"We did not change any Zodiac signs, we just did the math. The Space Place (an educational page for kids run by NASA) article was about how astrology is not astronomy, how it was a relic of ancient history and pointed out the science and math that did come from observations of the night sky," NASA spokesperson Dwayne Brown told Gizmodo.

Last week a news spread that 86 per cent of the people now have a different star sign as NASAhad decided to update the astrological signs for the first time in 2,000 years.

In NASA's educational page for children called Space Place, the agency discussed how, some 3,000 years ago, the ancient Babylonians were keen sky-watchers and thought that the changing positions of constellations throughout the year could be linked to certain behaviours or events on Earth.

As a result of this, those sky-watchers invented the zodiac.

"So, as Earth orbits the Sun, the Sun would appear to pass through each of the 12 parts of the zodiac. Since the Babylonians already had a 12-month calendar (based on the phases of the Moon), each month got a slice of the zodiac all to itself," Science Alert reported on Monday citing the article in Space Place.

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