Quick notes: Defenseless Yazidis, Modicare's high cost...

• First ISIS, now Erdogan: Yazidis left vulnerable as Kurdish forces pull out of northern Iraq


• India's tech hope: L&T Techology Services develops autonomous vehicle platform



• Modicare's high cost: Govt may borrow Rs 4 lakh crore from market to fulfil budget promises 



• Health sector mess: Without addressing the issue of pricing, Modicare will become unsustainable over the years.



• Pay back: Panel recommends fixing of 'minimum compulsory period' of working within country for doctors  



• Will China stab Qualcomm in the back? Qualcomm's purchase of NXP has received regulatory approval in all jurisdictions except one: China. The decision could hurt America’s sole company (Qualcomm) fighting Huawei for dominance in 5G wireless technologies.



• KKKangress appeasement on overdrive: Karnataka Govt tweaks minority college admission rule

Quick notes: Erdogan's jihad, Startup ranking...

• Hafiz Kazi: Indian behind deadly vehicle crash at Travis Air Force Base



• Erdogan's jihad: When Turkey’s armed forces finally seized control of the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in northern Syria, it was presented as a victory by “Islam’s last army” in a holy war.



• In Erdogan's crosshairs: Kurdish rebels withdraw from Iraq's Sinjar



• English medium kills our originality: India slipping further down the global startup hub rankings
  Rank Region
  1    Silicon Valley
  2    New York
  3    London
  4    Beijing
  5    Boston
  6    Tel Aviv
  7    Berlin
  8    Shanghai
  9    Los Angeles
  10  Seattle
  11  Paris
  12  Singapore
  13  Austin
  14  Stockholm
  15  Vancouver
  16  Toronto
  17  Sydney
  18  Chicago
  19  Amsterdam
  20  Bengaluru



• Indian Army's lack of direction: First invest in human beings – not platforms. As every growing economy has realised it is the soldier, not the machine that wins wars. First they need to get rid of the sahayak system, and over the top perks enjoyed by the officer core, including golf courses and golf carts. Then they need to start investing in serious body armour, and rifles for soldiers, while selling their many priceless properties that they don’t need.



• Indians' love for next East India Company: E-commerce in India is growing faster than other Asian countries. Amazon gains a firm footing against homegrown rival Flipkart.



• #deletefacebook:You are not the customer, you are the product being sold
  
  

Quick notes: Solar parks, Quality of living...

• India's vast solar parks: Unlike in developed nations, the vast majority of solar power in India comes not from decentralized rooftop panels but from expansive parks. Indian authorities have enticed developers by acquiring land, building transmission links and offering up buyers for the new power, usually state-owned companies with low default risk.



• 2018 Quality of Living ranking: "Indian cities are yet to make any marked leaps on the quality of living scale".... Mobility innovations: Unclogging streets could help city dwellers save 125 hours a year — the equivalent of three full work weeks.



• Soul vultures target other Korea: The last Americans in North Korea: Christian missionaries 



• Who’s Afraid of Huawei? Security worries spread beyond the U.S.... China's WeChat banned by Australian defence dept... WeChat: From copycat to Goliath.... And now this: Chinese companies are buying up cash-strapped U.S. colleges



• Absolute Watchfulness:




• Ardhanareeswara nrityam:

@rvaidya2000@vprakash68 @KiranKS
Ardhanareeswara Maranam
Please Watch this Shiva Parvati nritya where in Parvati doesn't lift her right hand & Shiva the left.
Perfect Co- ordination & timing. pic.twitter.com/15lKl45DpS

— नारदमुनि (@NaradaGC) March 18, 2018

Quick notes: Digital tax, Renewable natural gas...

Digital tax on "Big Tech": EU to tax US tech titans not just on their profits but on their overall revenue in the bloc. Tax-avoidance strategies used by the tech giants like Google and Facebook deprives EU of billions of euros.


Natural gas from cow dung: Natural gas is the cleanest-burning fossil fuel.  Extracting methane from cow manure could create fuel without fracking. “The potential is huge.”


China's agricultural miracle: The scale of the project has stunned international scientists. A landmark project to make agriculture more sustainable in China has significantly cut fertilizer use while boosting crop yields on millions of small farms. The study involved some 1,000 researchers and 21 million smallholders.


Lifespan gains: China’s air quality has improved so significantly in recent years that citizens can expect to see their lifespan increase by 2.4 years.


Gabriella Burnel: Pūrṇamadaḥ Pūrṇamidam


Monotheism and its Weapons: Early Christians were much more likely to close down the academies, shut temples, loot and destroy artwork, forbid traditional practices and burn books. They believed that the world we inhabit is a perilous place, crowded with malevolent supernatural beings, who sometimes manifest themselves in the form of fake gods. It's the Christian’s duty to root these out. 'The Christian destruction of the classical world'.

Quick notes: Cellphone chips, Russian help...

• How Cellphone Chips Became a National-Security Concern: The U.S. makes clear that containing China’s growing clout in wireless technology is now a national-security priority.... US fears China winning on 5G: “A shift to Chinese dominance in 5G would have substantial negative national security consequences for the United States.”



• Pakistan is warming up to Russia: Russian engines for JF-17 fighter jets that Pakistan's military assembles on its own soil.



• Some good sense, finally: Ministry invites suggestions from public on move to trim school curriculum



• Flying Officer Avani Chaturvedi: India's first woman to fly a fighter aircraft is a product of vernacular medium.

I've done my schooling from a Hindi medium school. The journey of being a fighter pilot has been about a lot of learning. I'm still in the training phase of being an independent pilot: Flying Officer Avani Chaturvedi. #WomensDay pic.twitter.com/EJff1udyPJ

— ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018




• India’s non-English literature on the internet: Bengaluru-based Pratilipi is building a bridge between writers and readers looking for fiction, non-fiction, poetry and more in Hindi, Gujarati. Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada, and Bengali.



• Study Skills - Spaced Repetition:




• Balkrishna Doshi: The Pritzker Prize finally recognizes the genius of Indian architecture. Balkrishna Doshi, a 90-year old architect and academic is the recipient of this year’s Pritzker Architecture Prize, the “Nobel prize of architecture”



• Hydrogen Train: Britain is the latest on a small but growing list of countries eyeing hydrogen trains.

Quick notes: Next Pakistan, Spaced repetition...

• Betrayal as national policy: Turkey is turning into the next Pakistan 



• “Spaced Repetition”: The scientific, efficient way to learn languages.



• A bear and tiger fight at Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve:




• China dangles carrots to lure foreign talent: The talent pool at Zhongguancun Science Park has over 10,000 foreign hires. The goal is to attract top-notch scientists and their innovation teams from all over the world.



• Right priorities: China is beating back traffic in its most congested cities. More than half of the top 30 most-congested cities in 2016 saw a decline in the time drivers spent in rush hour traffic one year later.



• Chinese Stealth: How China's Geely spent months stealthily building a $9 billion stake in Daimler



• Investigate the RBI: When questions were raised how Harshad Mehta functioned, the RBI blamed everybody except the RBI. If you start an honest investigation, the first stop is the role of the RBI.  If you are not going to investigate the RBI now, we are putting our banking system into turmoil... The system has been designed carefully to ensure this is not audited or even when audited not much comes out and even some one points out something, the officials within the system connive to bury the matter. 



• Neonicotinoids: Pesticides put bees at risk, European watchdog confirms 



• On caste: The religion of the Hindus is divided into two parts: the ceremonial and the spiritual. The spiritual portion is specially studied by the monks. In that there is no caste. A man from the highest caste and a man from the lowest may become a monk in India, and the two castes become equal. In religion there is no caste; caste is simply a social institution --Swami Vivekananda