Quick notes: Mudra loans, Bogota bikes...

• MUDRA loans is another crisis in the making: Raghuram Rajan points out that most of the bad loans were created during 2006-08, a period that coincides with the first term of the UPA.



• China's “Great Green Wall” Fights Expanding Desert: The project’s end date isn’t until 2050; so far, more than 66 billion trees have been planted. ... Jadav Payeng, the man who planted a forest.
  



• "On bicycles, we are all equal": How a Colombian cycling tradition changed the world.... 'A place for bikes, books and coffee'.
  



• Hindu India suppressing its women: Turns out India has the largest number of female pilots in the world.

Flew from NY to Delhi today on Air India with a female pilot and an all female flight crew. Turns out that India has the largest number of female pilots in the world. And yes, we arrived at our destination early after a smooth flight and perfect landing. Jai Hind! pic.twitter.com/wkgdMHMVWD

— Cristine Legare (@CristineLegare) September 10, 2018




• Hanuman Temple, Watsonville, CA:

Trump's Economic War with China

Outlines of Trump's plan to roll back China's economic onslaught:

India Has No Punishment for Foreign Bribery

India doesn't have any protection against bribery from foreigners:

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/india-among-nations-with-no-or-little-enforcement-against-foreign-bribery-report/articleshow/65782892.cms

Google's Attempts at Election-Rigging

Given the creative machinations of India's Left - including Bollywood - some vigilance against similar games in India may be appropriate.
If Indians can create a NAVIC to free themselves from dependence on GPS, then they should be able to create their own version of Google to maintain their information independence as well.

Quick notes: Crude oil bill, Green Sahara...

• Rupee fall: How rupee has been held hostage to a 70% surge in India's crude oil bill



• EVs to the rescue? India can save about Rs 1.2 tn worth of forex by switching to e-2 wheelers... only as  clean as the grid powering them.



• Greening the Sahara: "Large-scale solar and wind farms in the Sahara would more than double the precipitation." 



• How Congress manages the economy:

And @INCIndia left behind unpaid oil bills worth Rs 2 lakh crore. Just as Rajiv Gandhi had a babalog's party and left behind unpaid bills for which India's gold had to be mortgaged. That is how Congress manages the economy. https://t.co/he2pE5GAHd

— Kanchan Gupta (@KanchanGupta) September 10, 2018




• SS-ADT: The Solid State Active Denial Technology is a non-lethal weapon system which disrupts hostile activities and can deny personnel from remaining in specific areas, without causing permanent physical harm or collateral damage.




• Section 377: India’s ancient religions are actually very accepting of gay people

Imran Khan Condemned for Axing Ahmadi Economic Advisor

Imran Khan is being widely condemned for axing an economic advisor for being an Ahmadi Muslim:

https://www.ft.com/content/b1862f06-b4c1-11e8-bbc3-ccd7de085ffe


As could have easily been predicted, Imran Khan's "Naya Pakistan" is nothing but a hollow sham.

Quick notes: Navlekha, LinkedIn spies...

• Google sees gold in Indian languages: Launches Navlekha, a platform to help Indian language publishers get on the web. It will use AI to render any PDF containing Indian language content into editable text. It also added a new feature to Google Go, its search app, that now lets users listen to web pages in 28 Indian languages. In 2016, it launched the tap to translate programme that lets users translate an image or text to their own native language.



• Amazon India unveils Hindi website, app: None of India’s other leading e-commerce portals - Flipkart, Snapdeal or Paytm Mall - currently have a local language version of their apps or websites, and the move to launch a Hindi app and website could give Amazon access to tens of millions of new customers in India’s small towns and villages.



• How cars took over the roads: City streets used to be a public space. Then automakers invented the crime of jaywalking. "In the early days of the automobile, it was drivers' job to avoid you, not your job to avoid them. But under the new model, streets became a place for cars — and as a pedestrian, it's your fault if you get hit."






• Espionage: Chinese spy agencies are using fake LinkedIn accounts to try to recruit Americans with access to govt and commercial secrets



• China Wooing Eastern and Central Europe: Overseen by Premier Li Keqiang, the 16+1 platform convenes an annual summit between China and sixteen Central and Eastern European countries. The initiative will “split the continent” and preclude the EU from adopting a unified stance towards China.



• Coconut  oil:

Step 1: claim coconut oil is poison & kill market
Step 2: sell us some junk substitute
Step 3: patent coconut oil
Step 4: say oops, junk substitute is actually toxic
Step 5: sell us coconut oil

We've seen this kind of cycle before. Wiser now https://t.co/5cgCiPeIjh

— Smita Barooah (@smitabarooah) August 22, 2018




• Yoga for prostate health: Baddha Konasana, Supta Padangushtana I and II 



• Technology: Made in Israel

Quick notes: Afghan base, Blue light...

• China Building Military Base In Afghanistan? The base would host troops from the People’s Liberation Army that would train Afghan troops



• Security concerns: Now Japan considers ban on Huawei and ZTE networking hardware. Huawei is the world's biggest supplier of mobile network infrastructure, ahead of Ericsson and Nokia.



• Blue light has a dark side: Link between exposure to light at night and some types of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. 



• Prof. Scott Galloway on Amazon's unfair advantage:

According to Scott Galloway Amazon is using an unfair advantage in dominating its competitors pic.twitter.com/OlWZvmzmLo

— Business Insider (@businessinsider) August 30, 2018




• Retail giant: Data from states shows thousands of Amazon employees are on food stamps



• Helping the vernacular: Google makes aggressive push in local language adoption in India. Developing a slew of new products that are mostly India-specific. 



• UK Exporting Naan To India? "Selling naan breads in India from a company based in Dunstable would once have been unthinkable".

Chinese Military Training for Airstrikes on US