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Asserting that peace in border regions is vital, both PM Narendra Modi and President Xi agreed to implement a number of confidence-building measures.
Wuhan: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping have agreed to issue specific guidelines to their respective armies in order to maintain and promote peace all along the Indo-China border.
The MEA on Saturday said that both leaders agreed that peace in border areas was a necessary pre-requisite to closer ties between the two countries. “They (PM Modi and President Xi) underscored that it is important to maintain peace along India-China border region and decided that they will issue strategic guidance to their respective militaries to strengthen communications, and to build trust and understanding,” said Foreign Secretary Vijay Keshav Gokhale.
Gokhale also informed that both leaders had a certain comfort level and that they communicated frankly on a number of key issues – having discussions on regional and global issues. “The threat posed by terrorism was recognised by both leaders. They reiterated their resolute opposition to terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. Both committed to cooperate further in counter-terrorism. A number of other challenges – including global warming, were discussed as well.”
On the economic front, Gokhale said that both PM Modi and President Xi recognised that India and China can help each other to develop. He said that while they recognised that economic visions could be different, common interests and goals would define an increased level of co-operation.
PM Modi and President Xi also held talks on greater cultural and sports exchanges while underlining how people-to-people contact can play a crucial role in strengthening bonds.

Pakistani Finance Minister Miftah Ismail set aside 1.1 trillion for the defence budget, increasing it by about 20 percent from the 920 million that the government had budgeted for the military to spend.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Finance Minister Miftah Ismail lauded a resurgent economy and announced a big hike in military spending for the next fiscal year on Friday in a chaotic budget session marred by lawmakers` jeers and scuffles ahead of an expected election. Opposition lawmakers objected to the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) presenting a full-year budget so close to the election, likely in July, and staged a walkout. Others tried to storm the podium to physically disrupt Ismail`s speech, but were blocked by a human chain of PML-N parliamentarians.
Pakistan`s economy has rebounded in recent years due to a drop in militant violence and vast investments by China that have helped alleviate power shortages. Growth is projected to hit a 13-year high of 5.8 percent in 2017/2018 (July-June) before accelerating to 6.2 percent next fiscal year. “Due to historic low interest rates, the business and industry has seen growth, and employment opportunities have been created,” Miftah said, while opposition lawmakers threw papers in the air.
But a widening current account deficit and dwindling foreign currency reserves have taken some shine off the economic outlook, with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warning of risks to the economy.
Ismail said the budget deficit would hit 5.5 percent for the current fiscal year, missing the government`s fiscal deficit target of 4.1 percent. He forecast the budget deficit at 4.9 percent of GDP in 2018/2019.
A government document put the total budget outlay for 2018/2019 at 5.9 trillion Pakistani rupees ($51.06 billion).
“A VERY BIG SUCCESS”
Ismail said tax revenues reached 13.2 percent of GDP in 2017/2018, up from 10.1 percent in 2012/2013. “This unusual increase in tax collection is a very big success,” Ismail said.
A budget document said total tax receipts would reach 4.2 trillion for 2017/2018 – barely missing the official target – and Ismail projected they would jump to 4.43 trillion rupees next fiscal year.
Ismail also set aside 1.1 trillion for the defence budget, increasing it by about 20 percent from the 920 million that the government had budgeted for the military to spend. Revised figures from a budget document suggest military spending will hit 1 trillion this year anyway.
The United States has announced a suspension of military assistance to Pakistan totalling about $2 billion, though it was not clear whether this was why Pakistan`s military budget exceeded its planned outlay. Washington suspended the assistance due to claims that Islamabad was either assisting or turning a blind eye to Islamist militants who use Pakistan`s soil as a launchpad for attacks in Afghanistan.
The huge boost to defence spending comes at a time of fraught relations between the ruling party and the powerful military, which has ruled Pakistan for nearly half its history. Senior PML-N officials have suggested that elements of the military establishment are trying to weaken the party before the polls. The military has denied interfering in politics.

The two students are natives of Baramulla and Anantnag districts of Jammu and Kashmir.
New Delhi: Delhi Police on Friday arrested two Kashmiri students from Punjab who were involved in hacking over 500 Indian websites, including those of the government, police said.
The accused have been identified as Shahid Malla, a CSE student at Aryan Group of College in Punjab`s Rajpura and Adil Hussain Teli, a BCA final year student at St. Soldiers Management and Technical Institute in Jalandhar.
They are natives of Baramulla and Anantnag districts of Jammu and Kashmir.
“Following a tip-off, Shahid Malla and Adil Hussain Teli were arrested on Friday when a team of Cyber Cell of Delhi Police raided their rented accommodation in Punjab,” a senior police officer told IANS on the condition of anonymity.
“During the investigation, it was found that their online activities were part of an anti-national hacking group called `Team Hackers Third Eye` which has hacked more than 500 Indian websites, including some government websites,” the officer said.
The officer said the accused were also involved in educating Kashmiri youth to bypass state-imposed social media ban during April and May in 2017 by using VPN.
“During the investigation, they were found continuously in touch with several Pakistani-based anti-Indian hackers while hacking the websites and sharing the personal information of government websites with them. Some of them are believed to be backed by Pakistani intelligence agencies,” he added.
“Through their seditious social media posts, Malla and Teli were found to be pro-Pakistan and anti-India,” the officer said, adding that some laptops, mobile phones, SIM cards, Internet dongles, memory devices and other instruments were recovered from their rooms.
The officer said the team was trying to ascertain their further plan and also their source of money. “The probe in underway.”

He further said his journey to where he is at this moment in time was not easy.
Anudeep Durishetty, who has topped the UPSC Civil Services 2017 examination, has said he is grateful to all those who supported his bid over the years. Durishetty, who hails from Hyderabad, is already an officer of the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) of the 2014 batch.
“I am really happy to get this result today. I am grateful to all the people who supported me throughout. It wasn’t an easy journey, but I am happy to be here,” Durishetty told news agency ANI.
He is a graduate of BITS, Pilani and has earned a Bachelor of Engineering (Electronics & Instrumentation) from the prestigious institution. He qualified the UPSC examination with Anthropology as his optional subject.
Durishetty seems to have considerable interest in sports, and is clearly a fan of English football club Arsenal FC, as evidenced by his social media profiles. He also claims to be ’emotionally invested’ in tennis legend Roger Federer.
He also seems to be a prolific poster on Twitter, but his handle was protected, meaning no one can view his tweets without his consent.
However, Durishetty’s current cadre lost no time congratulating one of their own through a congratulatory tweet.
Durishetty topped the list of 990 candidates the UPSC recommended for appointments into the various services of the government.

Describing the Congress manifesto as the ‘voice of the people of Karnataka’, Rahul Gandhi promised to create at least 1 crore jobs in the next five years.
MANGALURU: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday released the party’s election manifesto for the Karnataka Assembly Elections 2018 that promises to create one crore jobs over the next five years. While releasing the party manifesto for the poll-bound southern state, Rahul Gandhi described it as the “voice of the people of Karnataka” and not just a document prepared by “three or four people in a closed room”.
Rahu Gandhi took to Twitter and tweeted, ”We released the Congress Manifesto for Karnataka earlier today. It captures the “Mann Ki Baat” of the people of Karnataka and makes very specific commitments that we intend to deliver on, including creating 1 Cr. new jobs over the next 5 yrs.”
Rahul Gandhi used a hashtag #NavaKarnatakaManifesto along with his tweet.
The Gandhi scion also took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said while the latter likes to tell people his “Mann Ki Baat”, this manifesto contained the “Mann Ki Baat” of the people of Karnataka.
Further attacking the ruling BJP dispensation, Rahul Gandhi said the manifesto prepared by the saffron party will not be for the people of Karnataka and reflect the views of the RSS.
Giving vital statistics in his tweet, the Congress president claimed that the incumbent Siddaramaiah government had fulfilled 95 percent of the promises made in the manifesto released ahead of the 2013 polls after coming to power.
Rahul Gandhi and top leaders of the party, including the members of its Karnataka unit, released the ‘Nava Karnataka Manifesto’ for the upcoming Karnataka Assembly Elections 2018, on Friday.
The manifesto was released by Congress president Rahul Gandhi in Mangaluru in the presence of CM Siddaramaiah, KPCC chief Dr GParameshwara and other senior leaders of the party.
The Congress has termed Karnataka as ‘the state of many firsts’ in its manifesto.
In its manifesto, the party has touched upon topics like on Agriculture, education, sports and culture, governance, information technology among several others.
After the release of the ‘Nava Karnataka Manifesto’, Rahul Gandhi thanked Verappa Moily ‘for his effort in going to each district and having meetings with the people of Karnataka.’
Elections to the 225-seat Karnataka Assembly are scheduled for May 12.

Ghulam Shahid, a 34-year-old cleric, has been arrested in connection with the alleged rape of a minor girl at a madrasa in Ghaziabad.
New Delhi: A 34-year-old cleric has been arrested in connection with the alleged rape of a minor girl at a madrasa in Ghaziabad district of Uttar Pradesh.
The minor was allegedly raped by a juvenile at the madrasa after kidnapping her from east Delhi’s Ghazipur.
According to reports, the ‘maulvi’ or Muslim cleric, identified as ‘Ghulam Shahid’, was taken into custody since he was aware of the crime committed on the 10-year-old girl at the madrasa premises, the UP Police said.
The investigation into the incident was transferred to the Crime Branch on Thursday.
The 10-year-old girl was rescued from the madrasa by a Delhi Police team on April 22.
The police took the action after the girl’s father reported to them that his daughter had gone missing after she went to the market on April 21.
Subsequently, the girl was rescued from the madrasa and the juvenile was apprehended, the police said.
On April 23 the statement of the minor girl was recorded in front of a magistrate.
In her statement, the girl said that she was taken to the madrasa by the juvenile accused to meet his friends.
The girl’s parents had also been demanding the arrest of the cleric as they alleged that the man was fully aware of the crime.

Good bet? Kerala earned Rs 8,700 cr last year from lottery schemes; FM Manpreet says Punjab, which earned Rs 55 cr, can replicate model.
Chandigarh : Just as Nirmal Singh, a taxi driver from Patiala, turned a millionaire overnight by winning the Rs 1.5 crore Baisakhi Bumper lottery of the Punjab government on Thursday, the cash-starved state, too, wants to script a rags-to-riches story. And it is looking down south for inspiration.
Citing Kerala’s windfall earnings, finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal says running of lottery trade can be a money-spinner for Punjab. With seven daily and six bumper draws, Kerala’s lottery department has mopped up Rs 8700 crore in 2017-18. Manpreet says that Punjab — its revenue from lottery schemes was Rs 55 crore last year — can make Rs 1,500 crore a year to begin with.
Lottery is Kerala’s biggest cash cow, with thousands of prizes for the seven daily lotteries — one for each day of the week. The first prize goes up to Rs 1 crore, and the second is Rs 10 lakh; but there are several thousand prizes ranging between Rs 100 and 10,000 on a ticket priced at Rs 30 to 50.
The prize for its four festival bumpers (Onam, Vishu, Christmas and Pooja/Dussehra) is Rs 6-8 crore. There are also two seasonal jackpots, the monsoon and summer bumper.
The marquee Thiruvonam Bumper’s first prize is Rs 10 crore! There are 10 second prizes of Rs 5 crore each. The price of tickets for the bumpers range from Rs 100 to 200. The high number of prizes means more chances of winning and more buyers; also, more jobs.
There are nearly 35,000 agents directly buying tickets from Kerala’s government offices and selling them to thousands of vendors on the streets.
The Punjab government’s four festival bumpers, New Year, Baisakhi, Rakhi and Diwali, have two first prizes of Rs 1.5 crore each and a second prize of Rs 10 lakh. Priced at Rs 200 each, 20 lakh tickets are printed for each bumper and distributed by three agents to vendors.
A weekly draw ticket worth Rs 20 carries a first prize of Rs 5 lakh. But ticket sales have been falling, forcing the department to go for more publicity to show that genuine winners are being picked at random.
There is the social cost to this trade too.
Though a good source of income, lottery has been banned by many state governments. Activists have raised concerns over such schemes pushing purportedly gullible poor people into an addiction of gambling.
Manpreet, however, says that, “like Kerala, Punjab can use the lottery revenue to fund social welfare schemes”. “Money from Kerala’s ‘Karunya’ lottery is invested in health schemes for the poor. We too can use the money for health, education and other welfare schemes.”
Punjab’s director of lotteries, Tej Partap Singh Phoolka, told HT, “We are looking at the Kerala model to see how it can be implemented in Punjab.”

Additional Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs A Gitesh Sarma, addressing the ECOSOC Forum on Financing for Development Follow Up, said India is currently implementing a wave of reforms.
United Nations: India has informed the UN that the Goods and Services Tax reform implemented by it, coupled with the demonetisation of high-value currency notes, has brought 1.8 million more people into the income-tax net.
Additional Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs A Gitesh Sarma, addressing the ECOSOC Forum on Financing for Development Follow Up, said India is currently implementing a wave of reforms.
Apart from encouraging digital over cash transactions, India introduced the Goods and Service Tax regime which provides for uniform taxes. He said this has led to a 50 percent increase in the number of indirect taxpayers.
“Coupled with demonetisation of high-value currency notes, the GST brought 1.8 million more people into the income-tax net, he said at the forum here yesterday.
He added that India stands firm on its stand on the fundamental principles of the World Trade , including multilateralism, rule-based consensual decision-making, an independent and credible dispute resolution and appellate process, the centrality of development, which underlies the Doha Development Agenda, and special and differential treatment for all developing countries.
He said the global economic recovery is progressing gradually, with improved resilience and emergence of new sources of growth.
“However, there are concerns that a durable recovery may remain constrained by factors such as the persistence of low productivity and debt overhang problems in advanced economies as well as in some emerging market economies, rising populism and protectionism, and the slow pace of structural reforms, he said.
India has also committed to remaining mindful of new gaps in the domestic resource mobilisation that may result from financial innovations, including digital finance, and the implications of fin-tech and the weightless economy on financial inclusion and access to finance, Sarma said.
Further, stepping up its cooperation with the southern countries in the spirit of solidarity, last year India established the India-UN Development Partnership Fund that supports Southern-owned and led, demand-driven, and transformational sustainable development projects across the developing world, with a focus on Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
“I would like to reiterate that the international community must step up its efforts to fulfill the commitments already undertaken not as a charity but with full realisation that it will be in our collective interest, he said.

During their summit, the two leaders are expected to work out a consensus between the two countries to resolve a host of issues, including the boundary question.
WUHAN: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday met for an informal summit in central China’s Wuhan city. During their summit, the two leaders are expected to work out a consensus between the two countries to resolve a host of issues, including the boundary question. However, no agreement is likely to be signed during the informal talks.
Recalling his earlier visit to China, PM Modi told President Xi Jinping: “When I was the CM of Gujarat, I had the opportunity to visit Wuhan. I had heard a lot about the Three Gorges Dam. The speed with which you constructed it and the scale inspired me. So I came on a study tour, spent a day at the dam.”
The two leaders are expected to hold a series of one-on-one talks after lunch at the Hubei Provincial Museum which has a large number of state-level historic and cultural relics. Before the meeting, the two leaders attended a cultural programme at the museum.
The PM was received by the Chinese President at the guesthouse. PM Modi had arrived in China in the wee hours of Friday for a two-day visit to participate in an unprecedented ‘informal’ summit to re-establish the Sino-India ties, which took a hit post the two-month-long Doklam standoff.
The one-to-one discussions will be followed by talks between the two leaders accompanied by six top officials from each side. The two leaders will have one-on-one dinner at a state guest house by the famous East Lake. They will resume their one-on-one interaction tomorrow at 10 a.M (local time) with walks by the lake side, boat ride and wind up their talks over lunch. The two leaders began their informal meetings way back in 2014 when Xi was hosted by Modi at the Sabarmati Ashram of Mahatma Gandhi in Gujarat. They have met and interacted with each other in about a dozen international meetings since then.
The meeting comes amid efforts made by both India and China to move past the tensions, which rose out of the 73-day Doklam standoff in 2017. The informal talks are likely to be over arching with no specific issues to be discussed. The idea is to open strategic communication channel at the highest level.
Ahead of his visit, the PM tweeted that the priority of the meeting will be national development. “President Xi and I will exchange views on a range of issues of bilateral and global importance. We will discuss our respective visions and priorities for national development, particularly in the context of current and future international situation. We will also review the developments in India-China relations from a strategic and long-term perspective,” he tweeted.

Siddaramaiah has been extremely vocal against Adityanath and PM Modi in his election speeches and even called the duo “North Indian imports”.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is of the opinion that Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will prove to be a liability for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and will have a negative impact on the party if he campaigns in the state for the upcoming Assembly elections.
“If Adityanath comes here, it will be a minus point for BJP. What has he done in UP? In one year he failed miserably. In his own constituency, BJP was defeated. Why should he come here and do anything,” said Siddaramaiah on Thursday while responding to reports of Yogi Adityanath’s plan to address over 35 rallies and road shows in the state.
According to Karnataka BJP leaders, Adityanath’s Nath sect has a considerable following in coastal regions of Karnataka and they are banking on the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister to defeat the Congress in those seats. Uttar Pradesh BJP spokesperson Shalabh Mani Tripathi had on Thursday said in Lucknow that Adityanath’s tour will start on May 3. He had added that Adityanath will address rallies from May 7 to 10 in the state.
Siddaramaiah has been extremely vocal against Adityanath and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his election speeches and even called the duo “North Indian imports”. He had also mocked BJP’s chief ministerial candidate BS Yeddyurappa and called him a “dummy.”
BJP, too, had hit back at Siddaramaiah accusing him of trying to divide North and South India.
“Imports? How much low can you stoop Mr CM? Your attempt at North-South divide is disgusting. But we understand your anxiety. While you are rejected by your own constituents, PM Modi has a pan India appeal. It’s time you learn a thing or “two about leadership when he’s here,” BJP tweeted.
The party had also taken potshots at Sonia Gandhi and asked Siddaramaiah what he had to say about occupants of 10, Janpath.
Karnataka has a 225-member Assembly but voting takes place for 224 seats and one is reserved for the Anglo-Indian community who is nominated by the state governor. Voting for Karnataka Assembly elections 2018 will take place on May 12 while counting of votes and results will be declared on May 15.