The Government has decided to set up an institutional mechanism for speedy completion of Public - Private Partnership projects. An official statement said adoption of a well defined institutional structure for overseeing contract performance effectively has become necessary. 

The proposal approved by the cabinet today says it will have a two tier mechanism. The project monitoring unit will oversee the performance of public private partnership projects at the Project Authority Level and performance review unit will monitor its implementation at the Ministry or the state government level.

The Cabinet also approved the proposal to provide a special incentive package to promote large-scale manufacturing in the Electronic System Design and Manufacturing sector. According to an official release, it will foster the manufacturing of indigenously designed and manufactured chips creating a more cyber secure ecosystem in the country. The policy is expected to create an indigenous manufacturing eco-system for electronics in the country. 

The scheme provides subsidy for investments in capital expenditure - 20 per cent for investments in Special Economic Zones ,SEZs and 25 per cent in non-SEZs.
The cabinet however defered consideration of a bill to give more powers to commodity market regulator.
The Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure, CCI, approved the proposal for the development of the two laning of Raibarelly - Jaunpur section in Uttar Pradesh. The main objective of the project is to expedite the improvement of infrastructure in Uttar Pradesh and also in reducing the time and cost of travel for traffic, particularly heavy traffic, playing between Raibareilly - Jaunpur.

United Nation ’s Geneva based International Telecommunications Union ,ITU which is responsible to help member nations secure their cyber security said it will issue a warning about the risk of the latest computer virus- Flame.

The Flame. can steal data files, change the settings on computer remotely , turn on PC microphones to record conversations, take screen shots and log instant messaging chats.

It is 20 times more powerful than the Stuxnet and Duaqu viruses and has already infected large number of machines in Iran, Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, ,Egypt and Sudan. The Cyber security coordinator of ITU, Marco Obiso confirmed the move.

The confidential warning will tell member nations that the Flame virus is a dangerous espionage tool that could potentially be used to attack critical infrastructure.

Kaspersky Labs said it found the Computer virus Flame infection after the ITU asked it to investigate recent reports from Tehran that a mysterious virus was responsible for massive data losses on some Iranian computer systems.

Iran has admitted that a data-mining virus dubbed 'Flame' had caused substantial damage and massive amounts of data had been lost in what may be most destructive cyber attack on the nation.



Tehran's reaction came a day after Russia-based Internet security company Kaspersky Lab uncovered the virus 'Flame' which it said attacked computers in Iran and elsewhere in West Asia and may have been designed to collect and delete sensitive information.


New York Times reported that the computers of high-ranking Iranian officials appear to have been penetrated in what it said may be the most destructive cyberattack on Iran.

Cyber Security experts have discovered a new Computer Virus -Flame in Iran and other Middle East countries that they believe was deployed at least five years ago to engage in state-sponsored cyber espionage.  Flame can gather data files, remotely change settings on computers, turn on PC microphones to record conversations, take screen shots and log instant messaging chats.It has about 100 times as much code as a typical virus designed to steal financial information. The virus contains about 20 times as much code as Stuxnet, which caused centrifuges to fail at the Iranian enrichment facility in 2010. Kaspersky Lab, the Russian cyber security software maker who discovered the Flame virus said, the largest number of infected machines are in Iran, followed by Israel and the Palestinian territories, Sudan and Syria.  Kaspersky labs said the Flame may have been built by the same agencies which developed the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran's nuclear program in 2010.