5 THINGS FIRST Delhi court to hear Chidambaram's anticipatory bail plea in Aircel Maxis case; Delhi HC to hear bribery case involving CBI's Rakesh Asthana; Indian and Japanese armies to hold their first ever joint exercise; India-West Indies fifth ODI; Apple to report financial results for fourth quarter

1. India may be a better place to do business than world thinks The rank: India has jumped 23 places to 77th rank (out of 190 countries) in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business rankings. Last year India had improved its position by 30 spots to be counted among top 100 countries. The ranking: The ranking evaluates countries on 10 parameters (like ease of paying taxes, resolving insolvency, getting credit, enforcing contracts), and a higher score on each one adds to improvement in overall rankings. India has shown an improvement in 6 of the 10 parameters with the most being on 'construction permits'. The problem: The assessment is based on the feedback from enterprises of only two cities, Delhi and Mumbai. Within India, Maharashtra and Delhi are average performers in terms of ease of doing business. According to an annual ranking done by World Bank for government of India, the top five states in terms of ease of doing business are: Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Haryana, Jharkhand and Gujarat. The solution: India has been asking for inclusion of more Indian cities to be assessed for the ranking to make it more representative of business conditions across India. Inclusion of cities like Bengaluru, Chennai and Ahmedabad would probably have improved this year's rankings by a much higher margin. However, inclusion of more cities, if it happens, will apply to all the countries ranked and may benefit them too.

2. SC knows how Rafale deal was done, it wants to know for how much Rafale case isn't progressing in the Supreme Court the way Centre would like it to. In a nutshell, this is what's happened till now: SC: Submit the decision-making process Centre: Done SC: It should be made public Centre: Oh... SC: Submit the price details next Centre: It's top secret SC: OK. File an affidavit saying it's top secret What it means: SC's approach to the Rafale deal has undergone a visible change between October 10, when it first heard it, and October 31. On October 10, SC had sought only decision-making process about the purchase of the jets 'to satisfy itself in the matter'. But, on October 31, it asked Centre to give details of the process to the petitioners (and put it in public domain in the interest of the nation) as well as the details of induction of Indian offset partners with Dassault, the manufacturer of the jets. On October 10, the court had said that it was not going into pricing or technical details of Rafale, whereas on October 31 it sought details of pricing as well. While for now, Centre has refused to give details of pricing claiming 'most aspects are covered under Official Secrets Act', it could be put in a spot later as the case progresses. Centre had earlier claimed (outside court) that the details couldn't be revealed due to 'contractual obligations'. Meanwhile, when the petitioners who have filed the PIL, sought a court-monitored CBI probe into Rafale deal, the CJI said: “let the CBI put its house in order first.” Read the full story here

3. This massacre had no killers for 30 years; it has 16 now Killers and justice: Delhi High Court on Wednesday sentenced 16 former policemen to life imprisonment for killing 42 people of a minority community in Hashimpura locality of Uttar Pradesh's Meerut in 1987. It termed the massacre 'targeted killing' of unarmed and defenceless people. The convicts have been asked to surrender before November 22. All the 16 convicts have retired from service. Massacre & injustice: 42 men were picked up by the 41st Battalion of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) during a search operation on May 22, 1987 and 35 of them were murdered in cold blood. 19 UP police personnel were accused of the massacre (3 died during trial) and 17 rifles believed to be the weapon of offence also seized. The registered number of the truck used to pick up the victims (URU1493) was also known. Yet after 28 years of trial, a trial court in 2015 ruled (in a 216-page verdict) that no one murdered the 42 people. Fight for justice: Babuddin Ansari, who was 17 when the Hashimpura massacre took place, was the only survivor police found on the night of May 22, 1987 (though there were six in all), near the canal where the cold-blooded killing took place. His fight for justice (400 court appearances in 31 years) was instrumental in bringing the culprits to book. "Every visit to the Delhi court would cost me a day's wage as I had to bear the expenses from my pocket. Still, I was willing to bear the expenses as I believed god had a purpose behind keeping me alive; of letting the world know what had happened," he says. Full story here

4. Why are central banks required to be independent? Boss' message: On Wednesday, there was high speculation about Reserve Bank of India governor Urjit Patel's future plans because of the central bank's tension with the government. The finance minister, however, later acknowledged RBI's autonomy but also reminded it about its obligation to 'national interest'. Yes bank: Reserve Bank of India is not as independent as it is made out to be. The Centre has special powers to direct the central bank to follow its orders (under Section 7 of the RBI Act). The power has always existed before but was never used, until now. If RBI can listen to the Centre once, why can't it function on its orders always? There won't be any disagreements and both RBI and the Centre would be happy. Right? Not quite. There's a reason why most of the world’s central banks try to take decisions without political influence: The mandate: Central banks control the country's currency, money supply and interest rates while also overseeing the country's banking sector (including managing financial crises from time to time). RBI's more focussed primary role is keeping inflation in check. Creator vs spender: Central banks can create reserves or money. Governments have the mandate of spending and earning (through taxation) and borrow if there's a shortfall. An independent central bank ensures that the spender of money (government) doesn't have the power to create it too or dip into reserves at will. This is also meant to act as a constraint on government spending. Long-term vs short-term: Like RBI deputy governor highlighted in his, now controversial, speech: governments tend to play T20 (think of their short-term political interest) while RBI plays a Test match (thinks of the long-term impact of monetary policy on the country). A politically compromised central bank would find it difficult, for instance, to raise interest rates, which is more likely to be politically unpopular. However, keeping interest rates low lead to higher inflation, which is not good for people. A shield from day-to-day politics helps it set long-term goals and take unpopular decisions to get there. It's the pulls and pressures of government's short-term requirement (elections) that is one of the reasons for the current tussle, say some experts. The government of the day has a lot to gain from an unexpected monetary boost that can at least temporarily stimulate economic activity. Money & politics: It's not that central banks are totally unaffected by politics. Governments can (and do) exert pressure through appointments to the bank's board. Pressure also mounts from various quarters (in the form of criticism) if central bankers make mistakes or are seen to have made mistakes. Not just India: Central banks have been under attack in many countries, especially after the 2008 financial crisis. While Donald Trump is critical of US Fed, Recep Tayyip Erdogan thinks the Turkish central bank isn't doing enough to lower borrowing costs. Central banks in Russia, South Africa and Thailand have also been under political pressure in recent years.

NEWS IN CLUES 5. Which actor directed the 2002 movie 'Om Jai Jagdish'? Clue 1: Born in Shimla, he made his Bollywood debut in the 1982 film Aagman. Clue 2: Among civilian honours, he's been awarded the Padma Shri in 2004 and the Padma Bhushan in 2016. Clue 3: He has previously held the post of chairman of the Central Board of Film Certification and director of the National School of Drama. Scroll below for answer

6. Globalisation is not dead — despite Trump It's a deal: An 11-nation trade deal, called Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), will come into effect on December 30 this year after Australia ratified the deal, marking a major milestone in a trade agreement that Donald Trump had pulled out of in one of his first acts as the US President; he had highlighted TPP as the villain in his broader attack on globalisation (as against 'America First') in his election campaign. Without him: Yet, two years on the deal Trump said was dead has been ratified minus the US, as if the international community is saying: 'globalisation will move on without you'. The 11 nations — Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam — pledged to lower barriers to trade of goods and services, as well as protecting intellectual property rights in a region of almost 500 million people accounting for about 13% of global GDP ($10 trillion). India in talks: Mega deals are being discussed in India too. ASEAN, the group of Southeast Asian nations, is driving a trade deal called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) that also includes India, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. ASEAN is hoping to strike a deal by year-end. Besides the ASEAN market (India has a free trade agreement with the bloc already), RCEP will give India greater access to the lucrative markets of Australia, Japan, South Korea and China. But striking a deal is not easy as there is a contrarian view: RCEP could worsen India's trade deficit with China, Japan and Australia. But a senior official of the Confederation of Indian Industry says that necessarily is no barrier — India could demand that products on which China has a dominant or monopolistic share (like steel) be excluded from the deal; besides the deal also give Indian goods such as textiles and pharmaceuticals access to the lucrative Chinese market. Some also say since RCEP also covers services and not just goods, India will benefit from the export of professional services, which is its strength.

7. Who stole the babies' arms in France? Missing limbs: Multiple cases of babies born with missing or malformed arms across France has prompted the government to launch a nationwide probe into, what is being described as, an abnormal rate of birth defects — even though statistically, the number of such births, 25 in the last 15 years, doesn't appear to be very high. Why the fear: 11 additional cases of babies born without arms or with deformities in their upper limbs were made public a couple of days back from the region of Ain, near France's border with Switzerland — these babies were born between 2000 and 2014. The other cases, which were reported from the Brittany and the Loire-Atlantique areas on the west coast of France, have been described as statistically excessive by officials. The reasons are yet to be ascertained, though environmentalists have blamed it on pesticides or other chemicals as the births occurred in rural areas. Past horrors: While the birth defects could also be genetically caused, this is not the first instance of mass deformities in infants — in the 1950s and '60s, thousands of babies around the world were born with missing or stunted limbs linked to the use of the drug thalidomide, which was used to treat nausea in pregnant women and was banned in the 1960s. Closer home: In India, Bhopal, the site of 1984 gas tragedy, has seen over 1,700 children with congenital anomalies. In Kerala's Kasargod, multiple children were born with deformities in the years around 2010, allegedly due to the effects of the controversial pesticide endosulfan; in 2014 India agreed to phase out the chemical by 2017 following a Supreme Court ban.

8. Will the ghost of Bombay House's phantom haunt Tatas? Mistry's mystery deepens: Sacked chairman of Tata Sons Cyrus Mistry — son of Tata Sons' largest individual shareholder, Pallonji Mistry, often called the Phantom of Bombay House for his largely inconspicuous presence — received some good news after an RTI reply by the Registrar of Companies (RoC) revealed that Tata Sons and TCS violated not only the rules of the Companies Act and RBI's directives but also Tata Sons' own Articles of Association (AoA) by the manner in which they sacked Mistry in 2016. Flouting laws: The replies to the RTI query, filed by an investment subsidiary of Shapoorji Pallonji Group, revealed that Tata Sons, being a registered NBFC, needed the RBI's prior approval for any change in its management. Additionally, the RTI reply said Mistry's removal as chairman violated Rule 118 of the AoA, which "prescribes that a chairman can only be removed in the same process as specified for his appointment, i.e. by the selection committee consisting of four members and based on such recommendation of the removal committee only the board is empowered to remove the chairman. In bad company: Mistry's ouster as TCS director was also in violation of Section 169 (4)(b) of the Companies Act which required TCS to send Mistry's representation to all shareholders before his removal, according to the RoC — the rule requires Tata Sons board resolution for issuing a letter to its group company for removal of a director, which in this case was missing, the RoC noted. Instead, TCS adopted a letter written by Tata Sons COO and Company Secretary as a special resolution to sack Mistry. What now: The RoC's stance is opposite to that of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), which dismissed Mistry petition challenging his ouster as Tata Sons chairman — Mistry, meanwhile, has been given 2 days by the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) to submit the specific changes he wants in the Tata Sons' AoA as he seeks a directorship on its board, for the 18.4% stake he and his family holds. Read more here

9. Court set her free, politics won't let go Losing the noose: In an unexpected and landmark verdict in a case that even saw two Popes pitch in, the Pakistan Supreme Court dismissed the blasphemy charge against a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, and quashed the death sentence given to her by a lower court in 2010. Lives lost: In 2009, Bibi was accused of insulting Quran following an altercation when fellow Muslim women farm labourers refused to use a container used by her and charged under the blasphemy law. Criticism of the law had cost the lives of Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer and a government minister Shahbaz Bhatti. Both were gunned down by their respective bodyguards just a couple of months apart in 2011; Taseer's killer, Mumtaz Qadri, was executed in 2016 after being sentenced to death. A threatened life: Bibi's case became a rallying cry for rights activists within and outside Pakistan, with even Pope Benedict calling for her release and his successor, Pope Francis, describing her as a martyr. But she continues to face an uncertain future after protests against the verdict broke out nationwide and one of the most vocal groups leading the protests — the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) — calling for a "mutiny" against the army's top brass following the verdict. That the country has a shrine dedicated to Taseer's assassin, Qadri, and a Prime Minister, cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, who has vowed to defend the blasphemy law raise further concerns on Bibi's safety. A precedent set? But Bibi's acquittal is bound to raise hopes for around 40 others, who, a 2018 report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom says, are on death row or serving a life sentence in Pakistan for blasphemy.

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10. There is a massive black hole at the heart of our galaxy Hurray! The European Southern Observatory's GRAVITY instrument on the aptly-named Very Large Telescope (in Chile) has found further evidence to the long-standing assumption that a supermassive black hole lurks in the centre of the Milky Way. Bending light: New observations show clumps of gas swirling around at about 30% of the speed of light on a circular orbit just outside its event horizon — Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity has predicted that wavelength of light gets stretched out in response to a gravitational field. GRAVITY observed flares of infrared radiation coming from the accretion disc (the edge of the object) around Sagittarius A — the name scientists have given to the massive object at the heart of the Milky Way. What's a black hole? NASA defines a black hole as a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light can not get out. The gravity is so strong because the matter has been squeezed into a tiny space. This can happen when a star is dying. Flares from the edge: The closest point to a black hole that material can orbit without being irresistibly drawn inwards by the immense gravity is known as the innermost stable orbit — in other words, this is how far you can travel to in your trip to a black hole before getting sucked in. And it is from here that the flares observed by GRAVITY originate. Why it matters: The discovery matters beyond the marvel. Additional observations will indicate whether the known laws of physics truly describe what's going on at the edge of where space-time breaks down. Meanwhile, having consumed 3.12 gallons, NASA's revolutionary Kepler space telescope has finally run out of fuel since its initial launch on Mar. 6, 2009. Currently orbiting some 156 million km from Earth, engineers are preparing to turn off the spacecraft's radio transmitters, leaving it to forever orbit around the Sun.

PLUS What should Facebook do when someone live streams suicide? It is the consequence of a tragic concoction: depression, loneliness and social media. Increasing, people — young and old — across the world have been spotted live streaming their suicides on Facebook. What should Facebook do in this case? Should it cut the cord so that such depressing (and violent) videos are not shared and amplified on its medium? No, says Varun Reddy, public policy manager, FB. "Cutting a person [out of their stream] while they are venting or expressing suicidal thoughts, might be detrimental," he says. And this is not his personal opinion but the standard the company has been adopting since a year at least. Facebook uses its artificial intelligence to analyse live streamsand look for instances of possible self-harm, and when it does it notifies a company staffer who can monitor the situation and alert the authorities. After a suicide was live-streaming on its platform in the US last year, FB decided to add 3,000 people over the existing 4,500 to its community operations. By allowing the stream to continue, Facebook says it also lets friends and kin of the suicidal person to contact the person and offer help. "Cutting off the stream too early removes the chance of someone being able to reach out and provide help," a Facebook's lead researcher for suicide prevention told USA Today. "In this way, Live becomes a lifeline. It opens up the opportunity for people to reach out for support and for people to give support at this time that's critically important." As recently as this year, a 15-year-old boy in Bengaluru attempted to commit suicide, while streaming the whole act. Facebook notified authorities in the instance, and friends and family came to know about it through the stream, and together saved the boy.

KEEPING TRACK Dummy trouble: The Supreme Court-appointed forensic auditors to track the diversion of homebuyers' money, amounting to over Rs 2,765 crore by the Amrapali group, revealed that the realty group had set up 200-225 dummy companies for routing funds overseas and to the promoters' personal accounts, with the company's CFO and its statutory auditors acting in cahoots with the promoters. Choked and cut: Chief Istanbul prosecutor Irfan Fidan has stated that the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was strangled as soon as he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, following which his body was cut into pieces before being disposed of. Green & clean: For all those in Delhi-NCR who have already stocked up on their firecrackers, you can either courier them to friends and relatives in other cities, or dump them in the bin, as the Supreme Court has reiterated that only green, or environmentally friendly crackers, will be sold in the national capital and the surrounding satellite towns, while firecrackers already produced may be sold in other parts of the country — but only if they are purchased offline and not through e-commerce sites.

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Answer To NEWS IN CLUES Anupam Kher. The 63-year-old has resigned as the chairman of the Film and Television Institute of India on Wednesday, citing commitments to an international TV show for which he has to be stationed in the US. Kher had replaced Gajendra Chauhan, who had a controversial tenure, as the head of the Pune-based institute in October 2017.