Current Affairs - 20 September 2014

India, China quietly struggle in Indian Ocean

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   NEW DELHI: At first glance, it looks like a diplomatic love-fest. There was Chinese President Xi Jinping, toasting the birthday of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a quiet dinner earlier this week in Gujarat. There were the two leaders, deep in conversation as they walked along the Sabarmati River, Xi dressed in a Nehru jacket. 
  
  The men are full of praise for one another, and one another's countries. Xi gushes over India as "an enchanting and beautiful land." Modi declares that their pledges to work together "will open big gates for progress and development in the world." Just a few hours into the Xi's three-day visit, Indian newspapers were awash with accomplishments: a joint industrial park, a sister-city pact, ramped up cultural ties, business deals and investment promises from China worth well more than $20 billion. 
  
  Left largely unspoken, though, are the deep worries in India over Chinese maneuvering in the Indian Ocean, where New Delhi's years of dominance is being chipped away by billions of dollars in aid from Beijing and gargantuan Chinese construction projects. 
  
  And while China's recent push for dominance in the South China and East China seas get more attention, the quiet contest for influence in the Indian Ocean is being watched carefully from Tokyo to Washington,DC. More than anything else, the worries are over energy. 
  
  The tankers that move through Indian Ocean carry 80 percent of China's oil, 65 percent of India's and 60 percent of Japan's, making those waters crucially important to three of Asia's great powers. A significant slowdown in tanker traffic — whether from diplomatic standoff, piracy or war — could cripple those countries and send shockwaves around the world.

Modi too shrewd to be derailed by nationalist symbolism, says the man who interviewed him — Fareed Zakaria

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  WASHINGTON: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is "far too shrewd" to be distracted by nationalist symbolism which would derail his growth agenda and embroil him in unwanted controversies, well known Indian-American journalist Fareed Zakaria suggests.
  
  But Zakaria, who interviewed him for CNN last weekend, also wonders in an opinion piece in the Washington Post if the problem with the new Prime Minister "turns out to be not that he is too bold but rather that he is not bold enough."
  
  Modi "radiates confidence", writes Zakaria. "The public lauds him, world leaders court him and the Bombay Stock Exchange continues to soar."
  
  "But will this moment of euphoria translate into lasting gains? Can India become the world's next economic powerhouse?" he asks.
  
  "Modi is extremely intelligent and focused but is different from most leaders," Zakaria writes noting that the Indian leader's "worldview has been shaped almost entirely from experience rather than formal schooling."

This is the man making Bill Gates so rich

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  Bill Gates is worth an astounding $81.6 billion and he keeps getting richer every year.
  
  His secret weapon is a man you have probably never heard of: Michael Larson.
  
  Gates hired Larson 20 years ago, when his net worth was a relatively paltry $5 billion, report Anupreeta Das and Craig Karmin at the Wall Street Journal, who just wrote a profile on the notoriously secretive Larson.
  
  Larson runs Gates' personal investment company Cascade Investment LLC, funded solely by Gates.
  
  At one time, Gates wealth depended solely on Microsoft. But for years he's been selling off his Microsoft stake. The common perception is that he's been using the proceeds from those sales directly for charity. That's not entirely how it works.
  
  Although Gates makes his own investments in tech, it is Larson, through Cascade, who has taken Gate's money and diversified it. Gates now has vast holdings in real estate and non-tech companies like the Canadian National Railway Co., AutoNation Inc., and Republic Services Inc. It is these vast holdings that help fund the Gates' donations.
  
  And although Gates has given an astounding $38 billion to his charitable foundation, thanks to Larson, he's getting richer faster than he can give his money away.
  
  His $81.6 billion is nearly $6 billion more than it was as of March 2014, when he was worth $76 billion, we reported at the time. And $76 billion was $9 billion more than he was worth in March, 2013.
  
  In February, Gates celebrated 20 years of this partnership by throwing a gala to honor Larson at his Seattle mansion, reports the WSJ. It was a rare occasion where the two men socialized with each other. Apparently, they aren't buddies and don't hang out much, sources told the Journal.

ISIS-linked terror group vows to avenge Batla House encounter

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  NEW DELHI: On the sixth anniversary of the 2008 Batla House encounter on Friday, terror group Ansar-ul-Tawhid Fi Bilad Al Hind (AuT) — which recently uploaded a video of ISIS chief Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi with Hindi, Urdu and Tamil subtitles — hailed Indian Mujahideen (IM) operatives who died in the encounter as its "martyrs".
  
  This is the first time any terror group — that too one based in the Af-Pak region — has owned up the victims of the encounter. IM, which sent mails owning up blasts before and after most incidents it was involved in, never sent any mail after this incident. It also did not take responsibility for the killing of decorated police officer Mohan Chand Sharma who died in the encounter.
  
  There has been a dubious air around the encounter with civil rights activists calling it "fake" and the victims to be "innocent".
  
  In a series of messages titled "Batla House — inshallah we will revenge" (sic) that began flowing on AuT's Twitter handle @isabahmedia2 since late on Thursday night, the outfit claimed that IM operatives Atif Ameen and Mohammed Sajid were martyrs and that AuT mujahideen would avenge their death and imprisonment of other IM members.

200 heavily armed militants waiting to cross LoC: Army

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  SRINAGAR: Around 200 heavily armed militants were waiting across the Line of Control to infiltrate into the Indian side even as the security forces foiled several attempts by the ultras to sneak into Kashmir valley following the recent floods. 
  
  "There are around 200 heavily armed terrorists across the Line of Control waiting to infiltrate into the Kashmir valley," Lt Gen Subrata Saha, the general officer commanding of Srinagar-based 15 Corps, said. 
  
  He said that infiltrators from across the border tried to take advantage of the recent floods in the Kashmir valley, but the Army foiled their attempts. 
  
  He said that around 200 militants were still active in the entire valley and the security grid of the Army was in place to "neutralise" them. 
  
  "Even though we too suffered damage in the recent floods as more than 50 per cent of the cantonment area was inundated but we never allowed the security grid to weaken," he said.