The Evening Wrap Welcome to The Evening Wrap, your guide to the day’s major news developments with concise analysis from The Hindu. Taken to Task An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan has convicted Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed, mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, to 11 years in jail on terror-financing charges. It is the first time that he has been formally convicted of an offence. Significantly, this indicates that Pakistan has acted on a warning issued by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), asking it to deliver on its commitments to curb terror financing and money laundering. Not taking action could have led to severe strictures on foreign investment in the country. India, along with several countries in the 39-member FATF, has been trying to hold Pakistan to account for supporting terror groups. It had led to Pakistan being placed on the ‘grey list’ in June 2018. Our Pakistan Correspondent Mehmal Sarfaraz reports that soon after the verdict, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs Hammad Azhar tweeted: “Pak remains committed to the earliest completion of its FATF Action Plan. FATF Plenary is a technical process. Irrespective of and without speculating on any final decision at the plenary, we look forward to acknowledgment of significant progress that Pak. authorities have made.” Novel Name The World Health Organisation announced that "COVID-19" will be the official name of the deadly viral disease from China. The WHO said that "co" stands for "corona", "vi" for "virus" and "d" for "disease", while "19" was for the year, as the outbreak was first identified on December 31. The name, it said, had been chosen to avoid references to a specific geographical location, animal species, or group of people, in line with international recommendations for naming aimed at preventing stigmatisation. Oil Spurt The price of cooking gas LPG was hiked by a whopping ₹144.5 per cylinder on Wednesday. This is the sixth price hike in as many months. The price of LPG cylinders in India primarily depends on the international benchmark rate of LPG and the exchange rate of US dollar and rupee. This is the steepest hike in rates since January 2014, when prices had gone up by ₹220 per cylinder to ₹1,241. PTI, however, reported that in order to insulate domestic users, the government has almost doubled the subsidy it provides on the fuel. The government subsidy payout to domestic users has been increased from ₹153.86 per cylinder to ₹291.48, while for Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) beneficiaries, the subsidy has increased from ₹174.86 to ₹312.48 per cylinder, PTI reported. Victory Lap Aam Aadmi Party MLAs chose Arvind Kejriwal as the leader of the legislature party and he will be sworn in as chief minister on February 16 in a grand ceremony at Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan. The AAP swept to power in Delhi yesterday, winning 62 out of the 70 seats in the State Assembly. Our analysis of the overall vote shares revealed some interesting trends. For instance, all sitting ministers in AAP’s Delhi government as well as the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly retained their seats and all of them, except Chief Minister Kejriwal and Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, also recorded a rise in their vote share compared with the previous Assembly election. Eight of the nine women candidates fielded by the AAP in this election also emerged victorious. Safe, but Cloudy The Home Ministry was forced to issue an assurance today that the data collected in Assam’s final National Register of Citizens was ‘safe’ and that it was resolving some issues regarding “visibility in cloud storage”. This continues to be a rather mysterious story. The final NRC, which was published on August 31, 2019, was uploaded on the website www.nrcassam.nic.in. IT firm Wipro was given the contract to store the data in its cloud platform. But the contract, which expired in October last year, wasn’t renewed as a new NRC coordinator had not assumed charge by then. The data, already highly controversial, suddenly went offline, causing an uproar as Opposition leaders accused the BJP of being complicit in its disappearance. Honorable mentions: An extraordinary report by The Washington Post and German public broadcaster ZDF published on Tuesday details how the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) read encrypted messages of several countries, including India, for decades through its secretly-owned Switzerland-based company. The Swiss firm was trusted by governments all over the world with the communications of their spies, soldiers, and diplomats. Supreme Court judge Justice Mohan M. Shantanagoudar recused himself from hearing a petition filed by Sara Abdullah Pilot, sister of former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, against the government’s move to charge him under the Public Safety Act. No reason has been provided for the recusal and the case is now listed for Friday. Vermont senator Bernie Sanders narrowly beat Pete Buttiegeg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, to win the New Hamphsire primary in the race to be the Democratic nominee for U.S. President. Businessman Andrew Yang, who was bidding to become the first Asian American nominee, dropped out of the race after a poor showing, while former vice president Joe Biden finished fifth. Puducherry, where the Congress is in power, became the first Union territory to pass a resolution against the Citizenship Amendment Act. That’s it for this edition of the Evening Wrap. We’ll see you tomorrow! | 
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