CORPORATE AFFAIRS, E-COMMERCE, TECHNOLOGY AND CARS
1. The Supreme Court on Tuesday held Vijay Mallya, promoter of the defunct Kingfisher Airlines, guilty of contempt and directed him to appear before it on July 10. Mallya has previously expressed his reluctance to come to India for fear of being made an example of over corporate defaults even though others owe banks more than he does. Mallya was held in contempt by a two-judge bench comprising justices Adarsh Kumar Goel and UU Lalit. He had failed to make a true and faithful disclosure of all his assets as directed by the top court earlier besides having transferred a $40-million Diageo payout on the eve of the order.
2. Dena Bank has become the first lender to classify its Videocon Industries debt as a bad loan, potentially opening a can of worms for the bank ing sector that is burdened with stressed assets. Some estimates put the total banking sector exposure to Videocon at Rs 40,000 crore.
3. UDAN, or Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik, scheme got a major boost on Tuesday when IndiGo announced plans to induct 50 small aircraft for regional routes. The announcement, along with TruJet's decision to add routes and the overwhelming response to Alliance Air's Delhi-Shimla flight, indicate the scheme's popularity.
4. SAIF Partners, an early investor in mobile payments and digital wallet player Paytm, has begun raising its third Indiadedicated fund of about $350-400 million, according to two people aware of the move. These plans come a little over two years after it closed a previous fund and will take its assets under management to over $1 billion.
5. India's passenger vehicle sales in April grew 14.68% from a year ago, boosted by launch of new models and a strong showing by carmaker Maruti Suzuki India.,Automakers sold 2,77,602 units in the month compared with 2,42,060 in April 2016, as per data released by industry body Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) on Tuesday. Car sales grew at their fastest clip in 18 months to 1,90,788 units, up 17.36% from April 2016. The previous high was 21.8% in October 2015.Maruti Suzuki is set to receive 1,50,000 units from Suzuki's Gujarat plant this financial year, which will help it close the pending orders and attain double-digit growth cal 2018. numbers in fiscal 2018. Sales of commercial vehicles, however, continued to be under pressure and declined by 22.9% to 41,490 units in the period under review. Sales of commercial vehicles had taken a dent in the aftermath of the government's demonetisation exercise and because of the ban on BS III-compliant vehicles from April 1. The two-wheeler segment saw sales increasing by 7.34% from a year ago to 16,74,796 units, driven by demand for scooters. While sales of scooters increased by 25.3% to 5,86,886 units last month that of motorcycles remained flat at 10,29,972.Sen said, “In the two-wheeler segment, scooters are doing well.Even in rural areas, consumers have started going for scooters.“ Overall sales of vehicles across categories went up by 6.8% to 20,30,476 units.
6. Believe it or not, there's a waiting period for air-conditioners and refrigerators this summer. Retailers are facing a supply problem for the first time on the back of unanticipated demand, with delays running into two to four days or even more. March and April reported record sales of the two appliances -an over 25% growth year-on-year. In fact, the two months' sales equal almost one-third the total sales made in calendar year 2016, driven by demand from the north, west and south. Last year, air-conditioners and refrigerators grew by 15% and 10%, respectively. LG Electronics air-conditioner sales grew 45% in March-April, while refrigerator sales went up by 20%, including a 40% hike for premium variants of 300 litres and above.Samsung also saw more than 20% growth in these two categories. Voltas grew by 30% and is confident about overtaking the previous fiscal's performance with 25% growth. Voltas president Pradeep Bakshi said almost 65% of air-conditioner buyers are first-time users, reflecting a buoyancy in the economy coupled with brisk rural demand.
7. First came Android.Then came Chrome OS.And now Google is fine tuning its third operating system Fuschia OS. Spotted in August last year, Google's secret OS was still in command line. But Google has made quite a few additions to the user interface which now features a card-based design. The OS, unlike Android and ChromeOS, is not based on a Linux kernel.
8. Smart machines and robots may replace highly-trained professionals in medicine, law and IT sectors by 2022, market research firm Gartner as warned. CIOs have a major role to play in preparing businesses for the impact that artificial intelligence (AI) will have on business strategy and human employment, it added. “The economics of AI and machine learning will lead to many tasks becoming low-cost utilities,“ said Stephen Prentice, VP & Gartner Fellow.
9. Gurugram-based micro-lending platform Aye Finance, that delivers business funding to Indian micro and small enterprises, has raised `20 crore in debt funding from the State Bank of India. Spread across 33 branches in the country as a non-banking financial company, Aye Finance provides mortgage, hypothecation and term-loan services accessible to India's thriving and under-served MSME sector.
10. Chymera VR, a monetisation and advertising platform for virtual reality, has secured undisclosed funding from a clutch of angels, including People Group CEO Anupam Mittal, former head of operations at Airbnb Varsha Rao, former Google executive Surojit Chatterjee and chairman of HHC Holdings Ni rav Choksi. San Franciscoand Bengaluru-based Chymera will use these funds to ramp up product develop ment in Bengaluru and expand publisrtiser-base primarily herand advertiser-base primarily in the US. The company provides technology solutions to advertisers who are keen to leverage VR as a storytelling and brand-building platform. VR developers integrate Chymera ads with their content to earn revenue for each ad served. The startup claims to have generated 60% higher click-through rates (CTR) through VR-based ads as com pared to 2D mobile ads.
11. Health and wellness company GOQii said it has raised Rs 4.7 crore through its karma pro` gramme that encourages users of the company's fitness wearable devices to earn points, which they can convert into money and donate for a charitable cause. For instance, GOQii `players' earn one karma point for every 390 steps taken. A total of 19,497,588 karma points were converted into Rs 4.7 crore towards supporting 25 causes, including Oxfam India, Greensole and Ratna Nidhi Charitable Trust. The company said Benga luru, Chennai and Pune emerged as the most generous cities.
12. Japan's SoftBank is believed to have moved a step closer to securing the consent of co-investor Nexus Venture Partners (NVP) for selling Snapdeal to India's largest ecommerce firm Flipkart. A meeting was held on Tuesday and the impasse over the sale could end soon, people familiar with the matter said. SoftBank -the largest shareholder in Snapdeal -has been making all efforts to get NVP on board for the sale of Snapdeal, and a breakthrough could come as early as this week. They added that while attempts have been going on for the past few weeks, NVP finally seems to be warming up to the idea. A board meeting is expected to take place on Wednesday to deliberate on the issue. Emails sent to Snapdeal, SoftBank and NVP did not elicit any response. A `yes' from NVP is crucial for the deal to go through. The seven-member board of Jas per Infotech (which operates Snapdeal) includes representation from investors SoftBank, Kalaari Capital and NVP, as well as cofounders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal.NVP and Kalaari were early stage investors in Snapdeal.
13. Amazon unveiled the Echo Show on Tuesday, a $229 smart speaker powered by the Alexa virtual assistant with a 7-inch touchscreen, making it the first Amazon Echo of its kind. Like the original-model, the Echo Show is primarily controlled by voice. Its killer feature is voice and video chatting, though that feature will be limited to calling other Alexa devices at launch.
14.Boston Scientific stands to lose millions of dollars on its high-end heart stent in India after a government panel rejected its request to increase a cap on the price that it can charge for the device. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government in February slashed prices of drug-releasing stents, small mesh devices used to pop open blocked arteries, by as much as 75%, setting a price cap of . 29,600. The move was part of an aggressi` ve push by the government to make life-saving drugs and devices more affordable. The panel's rejection comes amid a growing tussle between medical device makers and the Indian government. Indust kers and the India ry is worried that price ceilings could be introdu ced on other medical devices as well, eating into their future profits and growth. In letters sent to government agencies in March and April, Boston Scientific argued that the cap was much lower than what it cost the company to import the device, called Synergy, and would lead to losses of at least $7 million this year.
15. Bharti Airtel blamed “predatory pricing“ by new entrant -Reliance Jio Infocomm -for the nearly 72% year-on-year slump in its fiscal fourthquarter net profit, with both its voice and data suffering from the price war triggered by the Mukesh Ambani-owned telco's free services. India's No. 1 telco's net profit of Rs 373 crore for the three months ended March was sharply lower than the average estimate of about Rs 478 crore. Net profit in the October-December quarter was nearly Rs 504 crore. Revenue fell over 12% to Rs 21,935 crore from a year earlier as data and voice rates fell. The fall in rates, however, arrested the churn of subscribers out of the operator. The telco ended the quarter with almost 356 million customers across India, South Asia and 15 countries in Africa, Bharti Airtel said in a statement Tuesday. In India, which makes up nearly 78% of overall revenue, the company had nearly 274 million mobile subscribers, up 2.9% sequentially. The telco turned profitable in Africa for the first time ever, reporting a net income of $6 million compared with a net loss of $57 million, helped by growth in the data customer base and consumption, with revenue growing 2.6% amid stable currencies in most markets. Airtel's 3% year-on-year revenue fall in the October-December quarter was its first since its initial public offer. “The deteriorating health of the industry was compounded by the tsunami of incoming voice traffic from the new operator as a result of which significant investments had to be made just to carry the incoming traffic on our network. The net result of this was a revenue decline of 7.1% (in India) in Q4 even as EBITDA margins eroded by 2.9%,“ he added. He noted that Airtel's FY16-17 India revenue growth of 3.6% to Rs 73,422 crore was “muted“ compared with the double-digit growth seen in preceding years. Airtel's consolidated net profit for the full fiscal fell 37% year-on-year to nearly Rs 3,800 crore, on revenue of Rs 95,468 crore, down 1%.
16. Karnataka will, in about a month's time, notify the new fare regulations for taxi operators in Bengaluru, including app-based ride-hailing services Uber and Ola. The government will also notify a different fare structure --lower than the one in Bengaluru -for other cities where ride-hailing services are available. Transport minister Ramalinga Reddy told that a three-member committee headed by the additional transport commissioner is in the process of finalising the fare structure.The committee has consulted vehicle dealers, managements of Uber and Ola, and drivers' unions as part of its exercise to work out a fare structure. The last revision happened in 2013, and the government too finds demands for a fare revision valid as all types of luxury vehicles have entered the taxi segment since the last revision, including BMW and Mercedes Benz. The taxi operators have been unhappy that the government's fare regulations caps fares chargeable Rs 19.50 per km for AC vehicles and at Rs 14.50 per km for non-AC vehicles. The new fare structure, according to the transport minister, will have two new features. The operators will be able to apply differential fares according to the type of the vehicle used. The fare chart being evolved, according to Reddy, will have three slabs -one for micro mini cabs (such as Indica), second for premium cabs (includes Innova), and the third one for luxury cabs (those priced ` . 35 lakh plus). The committee is taking into account factors such as price of the vehicle, debt serving, insurance costs, cost of operation etc, for different class of vehicles to arrive at the final fare figures. The government will straightaway notify the final fare chart, and not a draft one as the committee has consulted all stakeholders. The second key feature of the forthcoming fare revision is that it will have a fare band for different class of vehicles. In other words, the fare structure will also include a minimum or floor rate below which a cab cannot charge. “This is aimed at protecting the cab drivers from being forced to collect very low fares,“ the minister said. Uber and Ola, according to the department sources, favoured a marked-based pricing mechanism based on demand and supply for cab services, instead of working within the walls of a fare structure. The government hopes that the new fare regulations will give app-based cab operators enough leeway to rejig fares within the fare-band according to the market demand at the time of a customer hailing a cab. A division bench of the Karnataka High Court, in a recent order, has disallowed surgepricing or dynamic-pricing by app-based hailing services.
17. Karnataka has decided to allow carpool services in Bengaluru and other cities till a clarity emerges on the issue.
18. The Godrej Group, the 120-year-old diversified conglomerate, has elevated Nisaba Godrej, daughter of chairman Adi Godrej, as the executive chairman of the flagship company Godrej Consumer Products (GCPL) sketching out the succession plan for the company. The 75-year-old patriarch Adi Godrej will now be chairman emeritus in group firms and mentor his children and other senior talent while his two daughters and his son will take care of the day-today operations. In February , Godrej's son Pirojsha, who was the managing director of Godrej Properties, was appointed executive chairman. Nisaba, the second of three children, joined GCPL a decade ago when she initiated and led “Project Leapfrog“ to accelerate growth in India through innovation and consolidation. After a string of acquisitions, it expanded to UK, Indonesia, Latin America and Africa and its international business accounts Rs 9,500 crore for nearly half of its revenue.
19. In a bid to curb child pornography on the Internet, the government has asked all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to prevent the distribution and transmission of such content in India by adopting and implementing Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) Resources on or before July 31, 2017. In a statement, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said that containing the spread of online Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) is an important public policy goal for In dia, and the govern ment is taking immediate steps to control this menace. “The publication or transmission of material depicting children in sexually explicit act or conduct in electronic form is a heinous crime, specifically prohibited by Section 67B of the Information Technology Act, 2000.“ The IWF maintains such a list of dynamically updated websitesURLs containing online CSAM. IWF has been adopted by many countries and is already being implemented by leading online service providers in other jurisdictions. IWF resources are available to ISPs on a subscription basis, either individually or collectively.
20. Piramal Enterprises is planning to raise up to Rs 4,000 crore by selling shares to institutional investors as the diversified company looks to fuel growth in its financial services business, according to two people familiar with the matter. Piramal Enterprises, owned by billionaire Ajay Piramal, which has interests in healthcare, financial services and information management businesses, has seen its market value more than double to Rs 42,970.80 crore in the past year.
21. British lender Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) on Tuesday said it was planning to cut over 300 jobs and move a number of others to India as part of its efforts to become a “simpler, smaller UK-focused bank“. RBS informed staff that it would be letting go of 154 contractors by year-end, while 180 permanent roles have been put at risk -with a total of 92 staff positions set to be axed. The cuts are expected to affect tech staff across a number of the bank's departments including risk solutions, digital engineering services, finance solutions, core and payments, and NatWest markets technology. Reacting to the announcement, workers' union Unite called on the state-funded bank to impose a moratorium on the “unjustified“ moving of jobs to India.
22. Agrochemical company PI Industries and global chemicals firm BASF on Tuesday entered into a strategic partnership to offer a broader portfolio of crop protection solutions to farmers. PI Industries will market BASF's fungicide solutions for rice, maize, fruits and vegetables as well as a new herbicide for maize. Following this partnership, both the companies aim to enhance their market partic pation in these crops segments, a joint statement issued here said. PI Industries has built eading brands over the last 60 years with multi-locational manufacturing facilities, ncluding Jambusar SEZ in Gujarat.
23. Tyre maker Ceat on Tuesday reported a 32.5% dip in consolidated net profit at Rs 66.33 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2017 hurt by continued impact of demonetisation and spike in raw material prices. Total income from operations during the quarter under review stood at Rs 1,641.29 crore as compared to Rs 1,563.21 crore in the year-ago period, up 4.99%. For the fiscal ended March 31, 2017, the company's consolidated net profit declined by 17.45% to Rs 361.15 crore from Rs 437.54 crore in the previous year.
24. InterGlobe Aviation, which runs India's biggest airline IndiGo, Tuesday posted a 25% decline in net profit on soaring fuel costs and lower yields. The airline also announced a surprise order for 50 ATR turboprop planes, signalling a likely entry into the civil aviation ministry's regional connectivity scheme UDAN. The company posted a net profit of Rs 440 crore in the January-March quarter, down from `584 crore in the same quarter last year. Total revenue rose 20% to Rs 5,142 crore. But fuel costs, the biggest expense chunk, rose 71% to Rs 1,750 crore. IndiGo's operating performance continued to be weak with revenue per average seat kilometre declining 3.3% compared to last year. For the full year FY17, its net profit dropped 17% to Rs 1,659 crore. In the March quarter, crude oil traded in the range of $55-$56 per barrel as against an average of $35.2 in the corresponding quarter last year. This to a large extent increased the fuel expenses, thus lowering EBIDTAR (earnings before interest, depreciation and rentals) and net profit. Currently , crude is trading at $49.The Indian rupee which has appreciated sharply against the dollar should lower the fuel cost. InterGlobe Aviation's stock has relatively underperformed its peers -SpiceJet and Jet Airways over the past three months given its high valuations.This trend may continue in the short to medium term as the valuation gap still remains high. On Tuesday's closing, InterGlobe Aviation shares traded at 16 times expected FY18 EVEBIDTA while Jet and SpiceJet traded at 11.2 and 10, respectively. IndiGo has a current fleet of 131 Airbus A320 planes which include 19 Neos. The airline's fleet by the end of the ongoing financial year will be 170 planes. The number of Neos would increase to 28.
25. Relaxation of regulatory norms with regard to contribution to the Settlement Guarantee Fund (SGF) by stock exchanges has buoyed the National Stock Exchange (NSE), India's largest market platform as well as the Bombay Stock Exchange. The National Stock Exchange, which is going to launch its initial public offer (IPO), saw net profit jump a whopping 137% for 2016-17 from Rs 436 crore a year ago. NSE's earnings per share (on face value of `1) rose to Rs 20.87 for FY 16-17 to from Rs 8.80 for FY 15-16. For the past few years, capital market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had asked exchanges to contribute 25% of their net profit towards the SGF,a norm relaxed in 2016.
26. S Chand and Company made a tepid debut on the bourses on Tuesday, with the stock trimming gains made during the session to close 0.9% higher at Rs 675.85.Earlier in the day, the stock had debuted at Rs 707, a 5.5% premium to its issue price of Rs 670. The stock had even slipped to a discount to the issue price during the trading session. The tepid listing was in contrast with the strong demand seen during the initial public offering (IPO). The Rs 728.5-crore IPO of S Chand, priced at Rs 660-670 had got subscribed 59.3 times. The portion reserved for qualified institutional buyers and high net worth individuals had got subscribed 44.3 times and 204.6 times, respectively. The retail investor portion was subscribed close to six times. Market sentiment has tapered down after indices hit record high, which may have affected the listing prospects, analysts said. The issue comprised fresh issue of shares up to Rs 325 crore and offer for sale of 60.23 lakh shares by existing shareholders, including Everstone Capital. The company plans to utilise the proceeds from the IPO to repay loans availed by it and some of its subsidiaries and for general corporate purposes. Credit Suisse Securities (India), JM Financial and Axis Capital were the merchant bankers to the offer.
27. The Reserve Bank of India has initiated regulatory action on the struggling IDBI Bank, including freezing of hiring, lending out bigticket loans and opening of branches to prevent it from sliding further. The so called Prompt Corrective Action is aimed at reducing future losses, raise recovery of loans to improve the bank's capital position. The bank had suffered historic loss of Rs 2,255 crore in the December quarter as it had to make huge provisions for bad loans. Within weeks of it reporting huge losses, the government had directed the bank to freeze big-ticket lending and curb expanses. The prompt corrective action is triggered when a bank's bad loan is above 6%, it reports losses for two consecutive years and it falls short of minimum capital prescribed by the regulator.Depending on the severity , RBI prescribes corrective action that banks should take to improve its financial position. IDBI Bank's gross NPA had crossed 15% in quarter ending December 2016 and, according to a report by rating company Icra, its capital adequacy ratio is expected to fall short of the minimum tier1 capital requirements which is stipulated at 6.75% at March 2017. The bank reported a loss of Rs 3,665 crore in March 2016 and is expected to report loss in fiscal year 2016-17 as well. IDBI Bank has been facing challenges in recovering loans given to infrastructure -a sector in which the bank has largest exposure since historically it was in the business of giving loans to this sector. In an attempt to revive the health, the government has recently swapped the CEOs of Indian Bank and IDBI Bank.
28. Bajaj Finance, India's leading consumer and enterprise financing company , is looking to raise $150 million (approximately Rs 1,000 crore) from International Finance Corporation. The non-banking finance company will issue non-convertible debentures which would be subscribed by IFC, the World Bank's financing arm. In a disclosure, IFC said that the fund would be used for on-lending to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME). Bajaj Finance had last month raised another Rs 545 crore in NCDs as it looks to grow its business. The company did not respond to ET's queries on fund raising, saying that it is in a silent period before finalising financial accounts on May 17. IFC's investment would help the company to tap offshore capital and diversify funding sources. The investment proposal is part of IFC's strategic target to finance 10 million MSMEs during FY17-21.
Bajaj Finance has total assets under management of over Rs 57,000 crore at December-end with 43% of its assets being under consumer financing and 42% under SME financing. Commercial business accounts for 12% of loans, and balance 3% comes from rural sector.Its share prices closed 1.8% higher on Tuesday at Rs 1,295.30. Bajaj Finserv, the holding company for the financial services businesses of the Bajaj Group, owns 57.3% in Bajaj Finance, which reported 36% rise in net profit.
29. Banks may have been selling various banking products from treasury , retail or offering special corporate deals on pricing, but the latest universal bank IDFC Bank is selling technology to draw in new customers. It's selling a software -the “Business eXperience Platform“ (BXP) -to rope in clients that combines all corporate banking solutions on one platform which would help companies cut costs and improve efficiency . The bank has already conducted transactions worth `18,000 crore with 40% of its corporate clients already using this platform. Out of the 400 corporates who are currently enrolled on this platform, the bank has posted a 100% growth in payments made through BXP . The private lender has already managed to rope in clients such as Mahindra & Mahindra, Airtel, Indraprastha Gas, NCML among the 400 corporates who have been using this platform.
30. The first sign of government getting a foot into the narrative of large layoffs in the IT sector emerged on Tuesday with the Telangana government calling for a meeting with Cognizant over the terminations.
31. Dell Technologies, the world's largest privately-held tech company, unveiled a slew of product announcements, and pulled its venture practice out of the `stealth' mode. Dell Technologies is the result of the $67-billion merger between Dell and EMC in 2015. Its new venture arm, Dell Technologies Capital, has combined the venture capital operations of both the entities and plans to invest about $100 million a year in startups globally. The company revealed a portfolio of 70 existing and previous investments made by both operations, some of which had not been disclosed earlier. “We've been investing in startups through EMC and Dell ventures. What we are now announcing is the next iteration of the programme,“ Dell Technologies CFO Tom Sweet told.
32. State-owned Power Grid Corporation has been granted unified licence with national long distance and Internet service provider authorisation to provide telecom services. The power transmission utility provides its telecom towers and optical fibre cable infrastructure (for Internet services) to service providers and other firms for commercial use. This is a separate segment of revenue for the company.
33. Toshiba Corp has told Western Digital Corp not to interfere in the sale of its prized chip unit, rejecting claims it has breached a joint venture contract and threatening legal action. The clash between Toshiba and Western Digital -both its business partner and one of the bidders for the chip unit -risks delaying or even quashing an auction that the Japanese conglomerate is depending on to plug a $9-billion hole in its accounts. Although the two companies jointly operate Toshiba's main semiconductor plant, Western Digital is not seen as a favoured bidder for the world's second biggest NAND chip producer, having put in a much lower offer than other suitors, sources with knowledge of the matter, have said. The US firm has argued the Japanese company is violating their contract by transferring their joint venture's rights to the newly formed unit and has asked for exclusive negotiating rights. But in a May 3 letter sent by Toshiba's lawyers, the TVs-tonuclear conglomerate disputed Western Digital's argument and said it would pursue all available remedies if it saw continued interference in the sale process.
34. Bombardier Inc's biggest outside shareholder and a second major investor withdrew support for chairman Pierre Beaudoin, the last executive link to the planemaker's founding family, after he backed a compensation plan that sparked a public furor. The manufacturer's board should be led “by a fully independent director“, Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec said in a letter to Bombardier on Monday. Solidarity Fund QFL, which is backed by a labour union, also declined to back Beaudoin, a member of the family that controls Bombardier. Both shareholders said they voted against the compensation plan -a proposal that fuelled outrage after Bombardier increased executive pay almost 50% despite receiving taxpayer aid and announcing plans to cut more than 14,000 jobs. The Montreal-based company later reduced Beaudoin's pay and delayed some remuneration for leaders including CEO Alain Bellemare. “The board's recent decisions regarding executive compensation fall short of the necessary standard of stewardship,“ Caisse Executive Vice President Kim Thomassin said in the letter.
35. Japan's SoftBank is believed to have moved a step closer to securing the consent of co-investor Nexus Venture Partners (NVP) for selling Snapdeal to India's largest e-commerce firm Flipkart. A meeting was held on Tuesday and the impasse over the sale could end soon, people familiar with the matter said. SoftBank, the largest shareholder in Snapdeal, has been making all efforts to get NVP on board for the sale of Snapdeal, and a breakthrough could come as early as this week.They added that while attempts have been going on for the past few weeks, NVP finally seems to be warming up to the idea. A board meeting is expected to take place on Wednesday to deliberate upon the issue. E-mails sent to Snapdeal, SoftBank and NVP did not elicit any response. A `yes' from NVP is crucial for the deal to go through.
36. Shares of Godrej Consumer Products (GCPL) on Tuesday surged almost 10% after the company reported an over three-fold jump in consolidated net profit for the quarter ended March 31. The stock zoomed 9.7% to settle at Rs 1,929 on BSE.
37. Strong retail interest helped the Rs 1,200-crore IPO for Housing and Urban Development (HUDCO) get oversubscribed more than three times on day 2 of the offer. The IPO, through which the government is divesting 10.2% in HUDCO, will close on May 11. The shares are being offered at a price band of Rs 56-60 per share. Retail investors and employees are eligible for a discount of Rs 2 per share on the final price, a release from the company said.
38. SilverNeedle Hospitality (SNH), a part of Infosys co-founder N S Raghavan's $1-billion Nadathur's Holdings, has bought new media marketing agency Brand Karma for an undisclosed amount.
Brand Karma builds brands through social media, creative storytelling, digital marketing and virtual reality and counts Shangri-La Hotels and Marriott among its clients. The acquisition will help SNH, through its in-house architecture and design agency Virsa, to maximise returns on its real estate assets.SNH also said it its hotel management division would be renamed Next Hotels.
POLITICS, ECONOMY, CRIMES, SPORTS, ENTERTAINMENT & NEWS AROUND THE WORLD
1. Finance and defence minister Arun Jaitley said foreign companies need to be incentivised to set up defence manufacturing bases in India, adding that policies have to be in sync with reality. Companies, he added, will establish manufacturing units only if there is a likelihood that they will get business.
2. India's power sector will slam the door on foreign firms from countries that do not allow Indian companies to invest and make money in their markets, introducing a strong element of reciprocity , power, coal, renewable energy and mines minister Piyush Goyal said. Goyal also said renewable power was central to India's long-term energy security at a low cost and rubbished claims that electricity generated from wind, sun or water was harming the grid or con ventional power. He was also optimistic about the future of electric cars and the country's power situation, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, where the new chief minister was sharply focused on reforming the sector.
3. Sri Lanka has started removing wasp nests in the central hill area of Dickoya ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit later this week to avoid any possible “attack“ by the insects. The security units assigned with the provision of security to Prime Minister Modi is coordinating with the Hatton Superintendents of Police office and have obtained the assistance of the organisation for the protection of such insects. The nests are being currently removed by the Hatton Police Director's Office.
4. UP BJP will hold door-to-door mass contact programme throughout the state for 15 days, starting from Wednesday, during which new members will be enrolled. According to UP BJP general secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak, the party wants to make `Ekaatma Maanavaad' (Integral Humanism), a political philosophy conceived by Jan Sangh stalwart Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay, a household name. “Each BJP worker has been given a target of getting 750 persons enrolled as primary members of party within these 15 days.“
5. Ruling BJP legislators complained to the Assam assembly speaker that ministers never reply to their letters on concerns raised by people. The legislators also sought a mechanism by which ministers would be bound to reply to their letters in a fixed timeframe. Speaker Hitendra Nath Goswami said CM Sarbananda Sonowal should look into the matter. The issue was brought to the notice of the Speaker by BJP MLA Pranab Kalita as a Point of Order.
6. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the nation from Guwahati on May 26, when the NDA government completes three years in office and its state government in Assam completes a year. For the first anniversary of his gov ernment, Modi had visited Nagla Chandrabhan village in Mathura, the birth place of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya.For the second anniversary , Modi addressed a mammoth rally in Saharanpur . This will be the third time the prime minister will attend a programme outside the national capital on his government's anniversary .
Chief minister Sonowal had recently met the prime minister and invited him to attend the inauguration of theDhola-Sadiya Bridge and Global Investors' Summit in November. The 9.15 km Dhola SadiyaBridge over Brahmaputra will be the longest bridge in the country and is expected to improve the connectivity of the region. After Modi confirmed his participation for the first anniversary of the BJP government in Assam, an elated Sonowal said that it indicated the importance the NDA government and the PM gave for the northeast.
7. Akshay Kumar was in the Capital and the actor took the opportunity to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The 49-year-old actor took to Twitter to share a picture with the PM and said they discussed his film `Toilet: Ek Prem Katha'. “Met PM @narendramodi and got the opportunity to tell him about my upcoming `Toilet-Ek Prem Katha',“ wrote Akshay. The National Award-winning actor said he was overjoyed when the title of the film brought a smile on PM Modi's face. “His smile at just the title made my day!“ he continued.
8. Bihar BJP leader Sushil Modi has urged the SC Collegium to take cognisance of the apex court's “strong observations“ against Jharkhand HC judge Rakesh Ranjan Prasad when considering him for elevation. SC had on Monday made “strong observations“ against the judge, who had dropped the conspiracy angle in the fodder scam case against RJD chief Lalu Prasad, while setting aside his 2014 order. Justice Prasad was appointed a judge of Manipur HC in February 2016 and was made its chief justice in September the same year. If he fails to get elevated to SC he will retire on June 30 next, Modi told
9. Twenty-five Muslim leaders, under the umbrella of Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, met PM Modi on Tuesday and appreciated the stand taken by him on the issue of triple talaq, as per a statement issued by the PMO.
10. Outreach to the youth ill be the most important part of JP's campaign as Gujarat gets eady for elections due later this year. The Vijay Rupani-led BJP government is planning to distribute subsidised tablets to 3.75 lakh class XII ass-outs in an attempt to reassure he youth about its performance.CM Rupani would also hold interactive sessions with the youth as part of is Jan Sampark programme and tell hem that Gujarat was the number one state in implementing all the chemes of the Modi government, state government officials said.The Gujarat government, even beore demonetisation, opened maxi um bank accounts under Jan Dhan ojna. We are looking at appealing to he youth to support a government hat delivers,“ an official said. Officials claimed, as promised, the state government had provided 67,000 government jobs across various departments this year. “Also, `50 crore has been allocated for start all the schemes of the Modi government, top officials of the government said. “The youth is most interested in delivery . The Gujarat government, even before demonetization, had maximum bank accounts under Jan dhan yojna which reduced the difficulties that people had to face in the initial days. We are looking at a call to youth to support a government that delivers,“ an official said.
11. Next time you visit the restroom in a mall or a commercial complex and find it unclean, you may be able to lodge a complaint then and there through a government-fitted feedback device inside the toilet. The urban development ministry has written to mission directors of Swachh Bharat in 12 states, including Delhi, Karnataka and Maharashtra, to procure such devices from a government company to be installed in toilets of private establishments such as malls, multiplexes, petrol pumps and district centres, to continuously monitor cleanliness of toilets, as per the community guidelines. The device will have three buttons coloured green, yellow and red with matching emoticons -for example, a smiley on green button and a frown ing face on red. Users can choose the button that best represents their experience, and the feedback goes to the urban local body. In case of continuous negative feedback, the government would send an SMS to the establishment for corrective action. The ministry has also called for installing these devices toilets built by states. The ministry has asked all urban local bodies to enter into a three-year contracts with ITI Ltd, a government of India undertaking, which will provide feedback devices for Rs 945 per month per device. Local bodies can utilise `capacity building fund' allocated under the Swachh Mission to procure and maintain these devices. The toilet monitoring solution is being rolled out in 11 states -Delhi, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat, Andhra, Haryana, Kerala, Odisha, Puducherry, Rajasthan, TN and Telangana -and Puducherry. Each feedback device is fitted with GPRS modem and a data SIM for back-end connectivity to the server. The performance index will be measured on an online dashboard and the urban local body will send an SMS to the caretaker for corrective action if the feedback is bad. An escalation SMS to higher management levels will be sent if feedback does not improve.
12. UP has decided to make six districts, including Noida, Ghaziabad and Meerut, open defecation free (ODF) by the end of July after the state was embarrassed by a recent Swachta survey. The survey listed 52 UP cities among the dirtiest cities in the country, prompting CM Adityanath to announce that Swachh Bharat will be among the “top priority programmes“. “Work has been initiated on a war footing,“ a senior UP official said.
13. The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered Calcutta HC judge CS Karnan to be imprisoned for six months for contempt of court, in an event without parallels in the history of the Indian judiciary .
14. It seems that Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Sabir Ali have buried their differences and closed ranks after PM Modi's appeal. Ali had invited Naqvi as chief guest for Tuesday's indoor rally of backward class Muslims in the national capital. Reason: Modi had asked party workers to reach out to backward Muslims as well after his government decided to grant constitutional status to NCBC. It may be recalled that in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Naqvi had scuttled Ali's induction into the party. Ali is now a BJP member.
15. Ministers like being invited to inauguration programmes. But, recently, a Maharashtra minister was miffed when no other politicians or officials invited for the event turned up. Basically, there wasn't much `crowd' at the function, leading to it being dubbed as a non-event. The miffed minister said henceforth invites for such events should be sent only to those who had confirmed their participation.
16. The culture ministry has decided to tighten screws on the Lalit Kala Akademi. The ministry has now, through an official communication, directed Akademi administrator Krishna Setty to set aside all “irregular and illegal“ decisions taken by Akademi secretary Sudhakar Sharma since Setty's appointment. It is believed that in many such decisions Setty's concurrence was also taken.
17. While HRD grapples with setting UGC right, considerable unrest is brewing at UGC's inter-university centre, the Consortium for Educational Communication (CEC). A number of complaints have been sent by CEC employees to UGC, HRD ministry, PMO and CVC against its director and the matter is set to go to court.
18. An MLA of the Aam Aadmi Party on Tuesday hacked a prototype of the electronic voting machine during a special session of the Delhi assembly, making a case for having voter verifiable paper audit trail in future. However, the Election Commission slammed the AAP demonstration saying it was possible for anyone to make any electronic gadget that looks-like its EVMs to demonstrate `tampering' but that will not influence the intelligent electorate or vilify EVMs the EC uses. The AAP demonstration was given by MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj who said that he had worked as a computer engineer for nine years before joining the party. Bhardwaj rigged a mock poll on a machine similar to an EVM machine and claimed EVMs can be manipulated on the day of polling through use of secret digital codes that can be fed into EVMs by anyone while voting. AAP said the de monstration was to prove EVMs were not tamper proof and can be hacked. “EC had challenged us to rig its voting machines and we have accepted the challenge today,“ said deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia.
19. The rift within AAP widened further on Tuesday with former cabinet minister Kapil Mishra submitting three sets of complaints with Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) against party chief Arvind Kejriwal and other leaders. “The first is in connection with a`. 50-crore land deal of Arvind Kejriwal'' relative,“ Mishra said after filing the report. “The second is against the cash exchange of ` . 2 crore between Kejriwal and Satyendra Jain and the third against five AAP leaders, who misused funds for foreign trips,“ he said after meeting CBI officials on Tuesday morning. AAP leaders in connection with foreign trips include Sanjay Singh, Durgesh Pathak, Satyendra Jain, Ashish Khaitan and Raghav Chaddha. The CBI, which is already investigating AAP in seven different cases, said it will examine the complaints lodged by Mishra. “The complaints will be ex amined and verified,“ CBI spokesperson RK Gaur said.
20.A fast track court on Tuesday pronounced the death sentence for three prime accused in the sensational October 2009 gan grape and murder of a 28-year-old software engineer Nayana Phatak Pujari. Special Judge LL Yenkar, who on Monday convicted Yogesh Ashok Raut, Mahesh Balasaheb Thakur and VH Kadam for kidnap ping robbing, gangraping and then killing the victim, sentenced them to death after a hectic day full of argu ments between the prosecution and defence lawyers.
21. With the Punjab government launching a drive against the drug men ace, the UK today offered technical assistance to the state in the enforcement of drug control measures. Britain also evinced keen interest to scale up business engagement with the state. The issues came up for discussion at a meeting here between Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and British deputy HC Andrew Ayre who invited the CM to visit the UK to meet industrialists.
22. In what could be a shot in arm for India ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Sri Lanka later this week, Colombo has said that it will lease out oil tanks to India under the proposed deal to jointly operate a strategic oil facility in the country's eastern port of Trincomalee. Addressing a gathering in the central town of Welimada over the weekend, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe said the joint working group of the two countries will formulate investment plans for the integrated development of Trincomalee. At least 73 of the 99 storage tanks in Trincomalee are to be managed under a new equity arrangement be For mer President Mahinda Rajapaksa had opposed the oil-related deal, and has now accused the Lankan government of selling state assets. Modi is scheduled to visit Sri Lanka on May 11-12 to take part in the UN `Vesak Day' which commemorates the birth, enlightenment, and death of Buddha. He will also tarvel to Kandy to open a hospital and address plantation Tamils there.
23. Two days after he was sworn-in, UP CM Yogi Adityanath had announced `1 lakh support, the highest by any state, to every pilgrim of Kailash Mansarovar Yatra (KMY). It turns out that his call was heard, as for the first time, the number of registered pilgrims for the yatra has doubled with UP having the maximum number of pilgrims. The yatra is set to begin on June 8. The number of registered yatris this year has reached 4,442, the highest ever, with UP topping the first time with 800 yatris, sources in the government told ET. Last year, 950 of the registered 2,604 persons were able to undertake the pilgrimage. The increase in the number of pilgrims was because of a collective effort various states and the efforts of the ministry of external affairs over the last one year, said BJP leader and former Rajya Sabha member Tarun Vijay who is also the President of Kailash Mansarovar Yatri Sangh, who had started a campaign a year ago for the same purpose. Haryana, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu too have announced special kits and grants for the yatra.
24. The government must formulate a policy that will allow pilgrims to visit Kailash Mansarover without endangering the area. Located in the fragile Himalayan eco-system, climate change has altered the landscape, posing a threat to its continued existence, besides many species of fauna and flora, and the region's diverse agro-biodiversity. The government in consultation with experts must devise a science and evidence-based plan that will set a limit on the number of pilgrims in the region at any given time in a manner that their needs and safety are met while ensuring the ecological integrity of the Kailash-Mansarover landscape.
25. Largely unnoticed months after its soft launch, the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry's online course portal `Swayam', is set to get a legup from India's chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian. He will conduct a 40-hour course on economy , focussing on major economic trends, possibly even the demonetisation issue, which will subsequently be hosted online on Swayam.
26. The jury headed by the vice-president for bestowing the Dr Ambedkar National Award for Social Understanding and Upliftment of Weaker Sections has been unable to find a deserving candidate for 2013. Instituted in 1992 as part of Babasaheb's birth centenary celebrations, the award was to be conferred on a person or organisation working for socio-economic and educational upliftment of weaker sections but was last given in 1998. Wrapping up Dr Ambedkar's 125thbirth anniversary celebrations, the Centre decided to revive the award. The seven-member jury , however, had difficulty finding deserving candidates from the panel of names put forward by the scrutiny and grading committee (SGC) of the social justice and empowerment ministry . While the jury decided to confer the award for 2011 to economist SK Thorat, it could not find a deserving candidate for 2012 or 2013.
27. Freshly elected to the Lok Sabha from Srinagar, National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah crisscrossed the government-opposition divide in Delhi on Tuesday by pitching for a `political solution' to the simmering Jammu and Kashmir problem. He reminded Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Opposition that the autonomy resolution adopted by the J&K legislative assembly was pending, with no follow up action by the Centre since 2000. During his meeting, Abdullah is learnt to have briefed the PM on the seriousness of the situation in the Valley , how it has affected all sections of society and economy including tourism and underlined the need to `politically address' the situation by initiating dialogue with all stakeholders including youth. Abdullah later met CPM leader Sitaram Yechury and extended support to Opposition's efforts to project an `alternative approach' in defusing the simmering tension in J&K.
28. Karnataka is dealing cautiously with a communication with from the union water resources ministry that has suggested the setting up of a Group of Experts to deal with the interstate water dispute on Cauvery that would suggest, among others, a way for equitable distribution in a distress year. Karnataka representatives admit that with severe drought ravaging both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, the Centre has tried to be proactive through this move and prevent a rerun of the slugfest between the two states through the Supreme Court for water that characterised 2016. “We also don't want that to happen, but we are not sure that this Group of Experts is the right solution for it,“ Karnataka's water resources minister M B Patil told.
29. The Reserve Bank of India's US dollar purchases in the forward market hit a threeyear high in March as the central bank added to forex reserves to arrest the rupee's sharp rise. Nevertheless, the domestic currency rose to multi-month highs. The RBI bought $8 billion in the forward market in March as its outstanding net forward purchases rose to $10.8 billion from $2.8 billion in February, according to data published in the central bank's monthly bulletin released on Tuesday .This is the highest forward purchase by the central bank since June 2014. In addition, the central bank bought a net of $3.5 billion from the spot dollar market as gross purchases were $5 billion and gross sales were $1.5 billion.
30. Indonesia has the largest economy in Southeast Asia, but you can't tell from its financial markets, a fraction the size of its neighbours. The nation's regulators have tried to change that. The rupiah's daily trading volume has climbed more than 40% in four years. There's also greater activity in hedging and the central bank has allowed a wider scope of derivatives.The central bank's goal is to grow Indonesia's foreign-exchange market to the equivalent of about 3% of the value of the country's trade by 2020. Indonesia's current ratio is 1.8%. Priorities now include tightening rules on trader conduct, rolling out more complex instruments, and setting up a clearinghouse and electronic trading platform for currency and money market transactions.
31. Currency markets swung back to trading on the diverging outlooks for growth and tighter monetary policy on Tuesday, lifting the dollar and euro against the yen.The dollar and the euro gained around a third of a percent to 113.67 yen and 124.125 yen respectively.
32. The government's ordinance on bad loans is credit posi tive, but does not address the structural issues in the banking sector, Moody's said. Last week, the government through an ordinance provided the RBI with greater powers to intervene in the resolution of NPLs.
33. Benchmark TOCOM rubber futures hit their weakest in nearly three weeks on Tuesday, under pressure from concerns about a global supply glut. The Tokyo Commodity Exchange rubber contract for October delivery had risen 0.2 yen to 206.8 yen per kg by 0025 GMT.
34. Oil prices rose on Tuesday, but faced headwinds from concern over the rise in US crude output that has shaken investors' faith in the ability of Opec to rebalance the market. Brent crude futures were up 20 cents at $49.54 per barrel at 0852 GMT, above a session low of $49.18.
35. Gold prices inched up, but remained near seven-week lows hit in the previous session as safe-haven demand ebbed in the wake of France's election. Spot gold was up 0.2% at $1,228.20 per ounce at 0320 GMT, after touching a seven-week low of $1,224.86 the day before.
36. A slump in prices of crucial food items over the past month has provided some relief to households even as food price inflation in the CPI basket has declined steadily over the year through March. Traders and economists reckon that prices are likely to moderate further. While tomato prices have plunged by 31% at the retail level over the past month, those of spices at the wholesale level have slumped 6-27% between April and now.
37. The government has set up a high-level task force to compute timely data on employment situation in the country, a move that will help it frame policies and take steps to create jobs.
38. The Supreme Court said on Tuesday it is likely to announce a modification order in the second week of July on the plea by hotels and clubs seeking changes in its order banning sale of liquor within 500 meters of national and state highways. Hoteliers and club owners had filed review petitions in the top court seeking modifications and exemption to the March 31 order, which has forced several establishments across the country to stop serving alcohol to guests. The ban was aimed at preventing road accidents due to drunken driving. The court heard the review peti tions from Chennai-based hotels and club associations. States like Arunachal Pradesh had also petitioned the apex court seeking exemptions. It had exempted Sikkim and Meghalaya from the ban in view of their topography and terrain.
39. The process to enroll taxpayers on the Goods and Ser vices Tax Network (GSTN) portal, which was suspended on April 30, will start again in a few weeks, the revenue department said on Tuesday. More than 60 lakh taxpayers enrolled on the GST portal between November 8, 2016 and April 30, 2017.The enrolment process closed with effect from May 1and the data of all those signed the enrolment form would be migrated to the new system. The portal said enrollment window will reopen at a later date for taxpayers who could not enrol themselves as well as for those who enrolled but did not sign the enrolment form.
40. The Netherlands could serve as an “excellent gateway“ to the European market for Indian businesses and the two nations have lots to offer each other, Dutch foreign minister Bert Koenders said at an event here on Tuesday. Observing that the Netherlands does not want protectionism in the world, Koenders pointed out that 80% of India-European Union trade is with countries on the European mainland.
41. State-run insurers need not pare their investments in diversified tobacco companies like ITC, officials have said, arguing that their primary aim is to maximise returns on policyholders' money. Last month, seven persons including two members of the Tata Trusts, had filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Bombay High Court against the government, insurance sector regulator IRDAI, and five state-run insurance companies for investing in tobacco companies, including ITC and VST Industries. The petition said state-run insurers should be directed to divest their shareholding in tobacco companies as staying invested in them thwarts the government's effort to discourage use of tobacco. State-run Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), the country's largest institutional investor, holds 16.29% stake in ITC. The government, through special undertaking of Unit Trust of India (SUUTI), holds 9.10% stake in the firm. State-run general insurers together hold about 5% stake in the company.
42.The Gujarat government has written to the Centre saying the state faces an electricity crisis as Adani Power has told the state that running its imported coal-based power project at Mundra is increasingly becoming unviable. Last month, Supreme Court denied compensation to Adani Power's Mundra power plant for the rise in the price of coal that it imported from Indonesia. Two officials, including one from the finance ministry, confirmed that Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani has written a letter saying that if the issue is not resolved at the earliest, it may lead to an electricity crisis in the state.
43. India's foodgrain production is forecast to hit a record in the crop year ending June 2017, with good monsoon rains last year boosting the estimated output of wheat, rice, coarse cereals, and pulses. The agriculture ministry's third advance estimates of major crops pegged the production at 273.38 million tonnes (MT), 0.51% higher than the second advance estimate.This year's output betters the re cord production of 2013-14 by 3.15%. The first advance estimate was issued in September 2016, followed by the second in February.The final assessment is released in August. As per the second advance estimate for 2016-17, total foodgrain production was pegged at 271.98 MT.
44. A strong earthquake hit southern Japan on Tuesday, though there was no tsunami warning nor immediate reports of damage or injuries. The magnitude 6.0 quake hit at a depth of 10 kilometres in waters off the island of Miyako in the southern Okinawan chain, according to the US Geological Survey. Japan's Meteorological Agency warned of small changes in sea levels but no tsunami. Miyako, with a population of about 55,000, sits some 1,840 km southwest of Tokyo and about 380 km east of Taipei.Japan sits at the junction of four tectonic plates and experiences a number of relatively violent quakes every year, though damage is often slight thanks to rigorous building codes and broad earthquake awareness.But a massive undersea quake on March 11, 2011 sent a tsunami barrelling into Japan's northeast coast.
45. Jakarta's Christian governor was jailed for two years on Tuesday after being found guilty of blasphemy, in a shock decision that has stoked concerns over rising religious intolerance in the world's most populous Muslimmajority nation. Islamic hardliners outside the Jakarta court cheered and shouted “God is greatest!“ as news came through that Basuki Tjahaja Purnama was to be sent to prison, a surprisingly harsh punishment after prosecutors recommended only probation. Purnama, Jakarta's first non-Muslim governor for half a century, looked calm when the verdict was announced and said he would appeal, as some of his supporters in court burst into tears. The governor was taken to a Jakarta prison after the verdict but it was unclear whether he would remain in jail or be released later to allow him to file his appeal.
46. An explosion at a fireworks warehouse in Mexico has killed at least 14 people and wounded 22, an official said on Tuesday. The blast occurred Monday night in a rural area of central Puebla state, Diodoro Carrasco, a senior official in the state government, told radio station Cinco Radio. News reports said 11 of the fatalities were minors but the government did not immediately confirm this. The explosion came during preparations for a religious festival on May 15, the Puebla state government said.
47. Former US attorney general Sally Yates had alerted White House that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn could be `essentially blackmailed by the Russians' Less than a week into the Trump administration, Sally Q Yates, the acting attorney general, hurried to the White House with an urgent concern. The president's national security adviser, she said, had lied to the vice-president about his Russian contacts and was vulnerable to blackmail by Moscow.
48. US President Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated Indian-American Neil Chatterjee to a key administration position in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an agency charged with overseeing America's power grid and de ciding on multibillion-dollar energy projects. The While House said Trump intends to nominate Neil Chatterjee, 40, of Kentucky as a Member of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the term expiring June 30, 2021.
49. The White House has post poned a Tuesday meeting to discuss whether the United States should with draw from the landmark international cli mate deal struck in Paris under the Obama administration. The White House said late Monday that the meeting would be rescheduled. This is the second time a meeting of top aides on the issue has been delayed. Donald Trump pledged during the presidential campaign to renegotiate the accord, but he has wavered on the issue since winning the presidency.
50. US President Donald Trump insisted there is no evidence he colluded with Russia after a Senate hearing that highlighted warnings that his former national security advisor was vulnerable to Russian blackmail.
51. An American hedge fund manager launched legal action against Akzo Nobel on Tuesday to try and oust its head after the world's top paintmaker repeatedly rejected a takeover bid by US rival PPG. Amsterdam-based Akzo Nobel on Monday snubbed a third offer from PPG, saying it “undervalues“ the company.But according to shareholder Elliott Advisors, rejecting the offer -which would have valued the company at $27 billion -was “a flagrant breach“ of Akzo Nobel's duties and “an arrogant dismissal of recognised principles of proper corporate governance“. In a statement, the New York headquartered fund manager said it had filed a petition with the Dutch Enterprise Chamber, asking for an extraordinary meeting to be held where shareholders could vote on whether to dismiss board chairman, Antony Burgmans.
52. Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday ruled out any participation on German soil in a potential Turkish referendum on bringing back the death penalty. Immediately after winning a close vote last month that boosted his powers, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan mooted a second referendum on reinstating capital pu nishment, which wou ld mean an end to t he c ou nt r y 's EU membership prospects. Merkel said Berlin would not make it possible for the 1.4 million Turkish voters living in Germany to participate if the referendum were to be held. “We will not give permission for something we are not obligated to do, and whose content we absolutely reject, for example, the death penalty,“ Merkel said.
53. F rench presidentelect Emmanuel Macron won an offer of support from Socialist expri me mi nister Manuel Va l ls on Tuesday as he and his aides worke d on st r ateg y a he ad of pa rlia ment a r y elections t hat will be crucial to his ambitious reform plans. The 39-year-old centrist's emphatic election victory over the anti-European Union Marine Le Pen of the National Front on Sunday brought relief to France's EU allies and financial markets.
54. In Vivo IPL 2017 Kings XI Punjab won against Kolkata Knight Riders.
55. Eugenie Bouchard pulled off her first win over Maria Sharapova with a 7-5, 2-6, 6-4 triumph in the Madrid Open on Monday in a thrilling contest full of tension after the Canadian had called the Russian a cheater following her doping ban.
56. As outrage grew over a student in Kerala being asked to remove her bra at an NEET test centre, the CBSE on Tuesday suspended four teachers for the “overzealous act“ and also ordered the principal to apologise to the student.
57. Air India is planning a tri weekly non-stop flight from Delhi to Los Angeles from September following the success of its San Francisco non-stop service. The airline will also start flights to Washington, Dallas, Stockholm and Tel Aviv.
58. Concerned over rising vacancies in the judiciary the Supreme Court has in , principle decided to introduce a common test for selection of judges and sought suggestions from states and Union Territories on mode of implementing it.
59. A two-judge Supreme Co urt bench has dismissed a 2013 special leave petition against an HC order in an encroachment case in Belapur filed by former NCP minister Ganesh Naik's nephew Santosh Tandel.
60. Saharanpur in UP witnes sed large-scale violence on Tuesday , the third time in 20 days, when Dalit protesters went on the rampage and attacked police after they tried to disperse a crowd from a city park.
61. Referring to the practice of triple talaq, the Allahabad high court has observed that under the Muslim personal law, marriage is a contract which cannot be rescinded unilaterally . The HC made this observation recently while dismissing a petition by Aaqil Jamil, whose wife had filed a criminal complaint against him alleging that he had tortured her for dowry and when his demands were not met, he gave her triple talaq. The order was uploaded on the HC's website on Tuesday, two days before the Supreme Court begins hearing a clutch of petitions challenging the validity of triple talaq.
62. It is that time of the year when parents are reminded about the cost of a career, and they don't mind spending any amount for their children's future. But this year, medical college admissions, often termed recession-resistant, are a different story . Some institutes are finding it difficult to fill certain categories of post-graduate seats. The most extreme example is of Kashibai Navale Medical College, Pune. Thanks to an astronomical annual fee of Rs 96.6 lakh, all to be paid by cheque, the college has received just 10 students for its 31 management quota seats--a first for the institute, which usually sees a flood of candidates every year. Medical education experts say this is among the highest tuition fees across the country and perhaps the world. With the state's 50% quota undercutting their economics, medical colleges have been forced to hike fees for their management quota seats.Kashibai Navale Medical College, Pune is charging a staggering annual fee of Rs 96.6 lakh for its post-graduate seats. Last year, the college charged Rs 7.9 lakh uniformly for all seats, including for the NRI quota. This year, it has asked the Fee Regulation Authority to allow it to charge Rs 15 lakh under the merit, or state, quota. A decision is yet to be taken. The massive hike in tuition fee for the management (35%) and NRI (15%) quotas in private and deemed universities is because the introduction of the state quota has resulted in the subsidizing of medical education for these merit-based students. So, the fee hike is a cross-subsidy .
63. Administrative wrangling, official apathy, an absent customs commissioner and general ignorance about shooting led to over 15 international Indian shooters being held up for almost 13 hours at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport on Tuesday . Olympic shooters Gurpreet Singh and Kynan Chenai, along with some 15 other colleagues, landed in the capital early in the morning after participating in the Plzen Shooting Grand Prix (in Czech Republic) and shotgun World Cup in Cyprus respectively . They found themselves in a fix as the customs department did not clear their guns till 4.50pm.
64. Business rivalry led to an interior decorator being killed in Thakurli on Tuesday , reports Pradeep Gupta. Kishor Chaudhari was shot 17 times and his business partner grievously wounded in the firing over a Rs 6.5 lakh contract. Police sources said the main accused is Dilip Bhoir, who claimed to have a monopoly in interior decoration and maintenance work in the Balaji Nagar locality.
65. Two Jogeshwari youths drowned in a river in Ratnagiri while they were out swimming during a break from their wedding photography assignment. The deceased were identified as Bantu Zala (19) and Mukesh Makwana (21). Two other youths with them were rescued. “Three of them went deep into the river,“ a police officer said. “An auto driver and another youth rushed to help, but two died.“
66. In a huge relief for India, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has stayed the death sentence awarded to Kulbhushan Jadhav by a Pakistan military court. This was after India instituted proceedings against Pakistan at the court accusing Islamabad of “egregious violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations“ in the detention and trial of Jadhav.
67. The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down the petition of a 35-year-old destitute HIV positive woman, facing complications in her 26-week pregnancy arising from a sexual assault, to abort as a medical report prepared by AIIMS doctors said her life might be in danger if medical termination of the fetus was done at such an advance stage. A bench of Justices Dipak Misra, A M Khanwilkar and M M Shantanagoudar, however, directed Bihar government to provide all medical facilities to the survivor at Patna and also ordered the state to grant compensation of Rs three lakh to her under its scheme for rape survivors. It asked the Centre to make all arrangements to shift the woman to Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Science at Patna where she would be treated.
68. About 1.5km of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) will be deforested to widen the Dahisar-Surat section of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad National Highway 8. Incidentally , this section was also part of the eco-sensitive zone around SGNP that was recently notified by the Union forests ministry . The highway project is am ong several road and railway infrastructure projects that have been proposed through the world's most unique urban forest. The others include the Mumbai-Delhi freight corridor, an elevated road connecting Mumbai and Thane, an underground tunnel also linking Mumbai to Thane and a ropeway . The proposal was sent to the National Wildlife Board directly by the state government.The board has now directed the government to route it through the state wildlife board. The chief minister is the head of the board. Forest officials said it is only a matter of procedure and the deforestation of the 1.5km stretch will be approved.
69. Customs officials at the city airport nabbed a group of 21 people, including a woman, who arrived on a flight from Saudi Arabia on Monday , for smuggling 112 pieces of gold weighing 5.7kg and worth Rs 1.7 crore. The officials intercepted the group and found gold concealed in water bottles, with the yellow metal either stuck to the inside of the caps or to the bottom of the bottles.
70. A sessions court on Tuesday convicted a 44-year-old man for the double murder of his wife and a colleague who attempted to save her, when he attacked her at their home over suspicions that she was having an affair with another of his co-workers in 2013. The wife, Seema Inchal's (30) suspected paramour Mitesh Ghonge (30), who was also present on the scene, survived with injuries and was the key witness in the trial against accused Shyam Inchal. The court will decide the quantum of sentence on Thursday . Inchal was found guilty of murder and voluntarily cau sing hurt. While the maximum sentence is death, the minimum is life imprisonment. Inchal, the murder victim Rajendra Rane (40) and eyewitness Ghonge were working in the marketing department of a Wadala-based club. The incident took place on January 7, 2013.
71. The Maharashtra Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has filed 34 cases against unlicensed manufacturers and suppliers of orthopedic implants in seven cities. “We raided 39 firms since February and found that 34 didn't have a licence to manufacture these implants. Moreover, they claimed they didn't know they had to get a licence to manufacture medical implants,“ said FDA commissioner Dr Harshdeep Kamble. The FDA raids have resulted in unlicensed implants worth Rs 7 crore being seized in this period, added Dr Kamble. Five firms in Mumbai alone had prohibited stocks worth Rs 48 lakh. A press release sent by the FDA showed that the maximum number of firms -nine -were busted in Pune, and implants worth over Rs 1 crore were seized.The highest value was seized from six firms in Konkan at Rs 2.6 crore. Raids were also carried out in Aurangabad (seven firms and Rs 1.89 crore of implants seized), Nashik (six firms and Rs 18 lakh of implants seized), Amravati (three firms and Rs 9 lakh of implants seized) and Nagpur (three firms and Rs 12 lakh of implants seized), said FDA officials. “These raids will continue, but now we have begun the legal action against some of the suppliers and manufacturers,“ said a senior FDA official.
72. The stalemate between the state government and the nine private medical colleges ended on Tuesday with the institutes yielding to the state's diktat. In line with that, the Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER) has decided not to hold the second round of post-graduate admissions and instead opt for a personalised counselling round in Mumbai. Students from across the state, in batches of 200, as per rank, would be asked to travel to the city. The DMER will present a list of seats on the screen and students can select, submit documents and pay fees right there, said DMER head Dr Pravin Shingare. “We will complete admissions to all quotas--me rit list, institution seats and NRI quota--here and complete the admission process.“ Students who completed their admission in the first round, which ended on Tuesday , and do not want an upgrade, could inform the DMER that they did not want to participate in the admission process further. Moreover, seats under the physically challenged quota that have not been taken up yet would also be a part of the personalized counselling round. The nine colleges, which have 225 seats, will also be a part of the personal counselling round, thus taking the total pool of seats up to 2,800 for 6,500 aspirants.
73. Civic health officials have called a meeting to brief private doctors about H1N1 infection even as the city reported five more cases in the last 10 days. Three cases have been reported in the last two days reported in the last two days alone. While two members of a family have been admitted in a south Mumbai hospital, another patient is in a private hospital. “These are random cases and shouldn't be a cause for panic in the city,“ said BMC executive health officer Dr Padmaja Keskar. The rest of Maharashtra, meanwhile, seems to be reeling under an H1N1 epidemic with 900 cases and 178 deaths since January . An 18-month-old child was the city's first H1N1 casualty this year, with 21 cases reported until April end. “Following this death, the health minister wanted BMC to call private doctors for a briefing on preparations to be taken for H1N1 as well as other monsoon ailments,“ said a civic official.
74. A controversy broke out over a circular issued to civic hospital doctors about providing “priority“ treatment to corporators and patients recommended by them. The circular, signed by KEM Hospital dean Dr Avinash Supe, who is also head of medical education in BMC's hospitals, was addressed to doctors, nurses, paramedical and administrative staff and workers in the BMC healthcare pyramid. It exhorts the staff to speak “decently“ to all public representatives, including MPs, MLAs and corporators. More importantly , it also asks them to treat the representatives as well as their patients on a priority basis. It is dated April 29.
75.his is the question the state finance and planning department is considering before approving an accident insurance scheme that promises treatment of up to Rs 30,000 for three days' hospital stay.
The fact that Maharashtra has among the highest number of road accidents in the country has prompted the government to draw up the scheme.The objective is to cover any road accident victim--whether they are from the state or visitors from other states or even countries. Atotal of 1.9 lakh road accidents took place in Maharash tra over the past three years, killing 38,209 people and injuring 1.2 lakh. Called `Balasaheb Thackeray Accident Insurance Scheme', it was mooted by health minister Dr Deepak Sawant last year but failed to get cabinet nod as it was stuck in the finance and planning department headed by BJP minister Sudhir Mungantiwar.
76. A 20-year-old Mumbra woman was arrested for allegedly strangling her husband Mehndi Sayyed (26). The accused, Zahra, a housewife, has been granted police custody till May 15. Sayyed was found dead at his Kausa house on Monday .
77. Early on Monday morning, a team of customs officials at the CSIA airport were waiting anxiously for the flight from Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) to land. If all went well, they were primed for one of their best operations to unearth a gold smuggling racket. Around 8am, when passengers began walking towards the arrival hall, the officials were still unsure what to expect. But when they noticed 20 male passengers, all dressed in white kurtas, pyjamas and skull caps, accompanied by a woman in a black burqa, they heaved a sigh of relief. Their `information' was spot on. The events that followed culminated in the seizure of 112 pieces of gold weighing 5.7kg and worth Rs 1.7 crore.The 21 flyers had concealed gold in water bottles, with the yellow metal either stuck to the inside of the caps or to the bottom of the bottles.
78. Monsoon will be no different this year. With work on around 1,000 roads dragging at snail's pace, Mumbai seems all set for another round of harrowing monsoon travel. The works include repairs, resurfacing, milling and carpentry . Citizens are complaining about several roads having been dug up and at most places, they claim, work is moving very slowly . This year, the BMC has taken up two kinds of repairs: The usual `project works' --roads are fixed from base layer--and resurfacing--only top layer is scrapped and relaid. Resurfacing work is being carried out on roads that report repeated pothole complaints. After the rains retreated in October 2016, the BMC took up 1,004 roads for repairs. Out of these, the BMC again took up 558 under the project works category and has completed repairs on 114, said civic officials.The BMC aims to fix 369 roads under this category , but the task seems uphill as there is a shortage of raw materials. Western suburbs, at 277, has the most number of roads under repairs. Bandra corporator Asif Zakaria said he has got complaints about contractors delaying work.
79. Last Friday at 10.30 am, the city police control room was informed by a caller that an emotionally distraught woman had climbed to the 18th floor of an under-construction building and was threatening to jump. A team reached the spot in minutes, but the task of talking the woman out of it still remained unattended for a few hours. Finally, inspector Shalini Sharma who specialises in Hostage Negotiation and Crisis Management (HNCM) got there at 12.30 pm and spent the next two hours counselling the victim before she agreed to retrace her steps. It was a successful mission, but the response time two hours exposed concerns. Numbers are clearly running low in the HNCM team. And given the prevalence of hostage crises suicide attempts, police is in dire need of reinforcements.
80. Two Mumbai youths drowned in a river in Ratnagiri while bathing in it earlier this week during a break from their wedding photography assignment. The deceased were identified as Bantu Zala (19) and Mukesh Makwana (21) from Janata Colony in Jogeswari (E). Two other youths with them were rescued from the river, Muchkundi, in Kurle village of Lanja taluka. The survivors were Randhir Ray (19), also from Jogeshwari, and Alpesh Parmar (21) from Bhayandar. They said none of them could swim. Havaldar S S Talekar said the four youths arrived on Sunday . “Three of them went deep into the river. An auto driver and a youth rushed to help, but two died,“ he said.
81. The Supreme Court on Tu esday complimented the Haji Ali Dargah trust for removing a major portion of encroachments and asked the BMC to finalise a beautification plan for the shrin
82. The private luxury bus involved in Sunday's accident on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway that left five persons dead was illegally parked in the fast lane, said the Highway Safety Patrol officials.
The vehicle should have been plying on the left lane and stopped only on the road shoulder. The extreme right lane is meant for small vehicles only .e by June 30.
83. All slum redevelopment projects must register with the Real Estate Regulatory Authority by July 31. In a letter to the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA), interim chairman Gautam Chatterjee on Monday said it is mandatory for all slum projects to be registered with RERA. To promote slum redevelopment and to pay for the cost of free housing for slum dwellers, the government offers the land on which a slum is settled for only 25% of the ready reckoner rate as premium. It also offers incentive FSI to the developer who can then build the sale component and make a profit. Slum redevelopment projects in Mumbai are highly lucrative with profit margins varying from 40% to over 100%. Under the RERA Act, a developer cannot sell flats in a project unless it is registered with the authority within three months of the Act coming into force. The RERA Act was implemented from May 1. There are 1,200 SRA projects in the pipeline.
84. Central Railway (CR) will soon make four stations cashless-compliant to popularise digital transactions among passengers. Four stations have been shortlisted: CST, Dadar, Thane and Kalyan. The deadline for the project to be completed is June-end.
85. The police probing a Rs 10-crore cheating case allegedly involving a bank manager, said they were scanning all documents that were used to create an account in a private sector bank at Cuffe Parade. “We have arrested of T M Kishore, manager of a public sector bank's Nashik branch, for connivance, but it is still not clear who opened the account in Mumbai using forged documents,“ said a police officer. The Tribal Development Corporation has an account with a Rs 10-crore fixed deposit in a Nashik bank, but unidentified fraudsters created an account with the nationalised bank's branch at Cuffe Parade bank with same name.Kishore allegedly connived with them to transfer Rs 10crore into the bogus account after the FD matured, the police said.
86. The municipal corporation's plan for a pedestrian pathway from Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) subway to MG Road junction on Hazarimal Somani Marg is in limbo owing to unavailability of land. As a result, the civic body might have to foreclose the road widening work because the period of contract for it ends on May 31. The chief engineer (roads) has written to the local ward office that improving widening of the road cannot be undertaken as the setback portion of the stretch has not been handed over yet.
87. Former encounter specialist and accused in the 2003 Sayyed Khwaja Yunus custodial death case Sachin Vaze was on Monday granted anticipatory bail in an alleged extortion case involving a Vasai doctor. The Palghar crime branch had moved a remand application before the Vasai sessions court naming Vaze as a wanted accused.
88.Delayed hearings by the Maharashtra State Commisison for Protection of Child Rights have upset parents who have filed complaints against schools over issues of fee hikes, corporal punishment etc. The commission last heard cases on January 20.
89. Two days before the Supreme Court begins hearing a clutch of petitions challenging the validity of triple talaq, halala marriages and polygamy , senior cleric Maulana Syed Shahabuddin Salafi Firdausi has denounced triple talaq and halala, calling them un-Islamic and instruments to oppress women. At a press conference on Tuesday activists of Indian Muslims for Secular Democracy (IMSD) hailed Maulana Firdausi's statements as a support to the petitioners who are asking for scrapping of talaq and halala. IMSD's convenor Javed Anand read out Maulana Firdausi's statement: “Instant divorce by uttering talaq thrice is amockery of Islam and an act of cruelty against the daughters of Islam. Halala is like dacoity on the dignity of Muslim women and an assault on their honour and self-esteem.“ Triple talaq is instant divorce while halala is a process where a divorced woman has to marry another man and consum mate the marriage if she wants to remarry her first husband.“This is nothing but prostitution in the name of Islam,“ protested Anand.
90. Two months after a 34-year-old man was arrested for allegedly raping his two stepdaughters, police are awaiting DNA reports from the forensic science lab. The two girls--aged 15 and 17--were pregnant and had to undergo abortions. The case came to light in March when the mother, along with the daughters, planned a outing. “The accused insisted that she leave behind one daughter. When the mother refused, he slit his wrist. He was rushed to hospital and given first aid,“ said Dilip Ugale, senior inspector at Kalachowkie police station.
When the police was called, the mother gave her statement, but the cops found the two girls were scared.“We spoke to them and the girl revealed that they were being raped by their stepfather. Their mother would go for work early in the morning and return by evening.The accused would rape the younger daughter in the morning and the older one in the afternoon. Both were pregnant,“ said the officer.
91. Mumbai is known to get waterlogged every time there is a heavy downpour in the monsoon, and the Shiv Sena-ruled Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has faced a lot of flak earlier for this. On Tuesday , Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray claimed that there will not be any waterlogging in the city during this year's monsoon. Thackeray , along with his son Aaditya and senior civic officials, including civic commissioner Ajoy Mehta, reviewed the desilting works at Mithi river, Vakola river, Irla nullah and Walbhat river in the city on Tuesday .
92. Candidates who took the Sunday's entrance exam have found that the Marathi version of the NEET (National eligibility cum entrance test) was different from the English one. Parents said they want a reexam as the question papers were markedly different. Parents said they were of the opinion that the exam question papers ought to be a translated version of the English paper, but 85% of the questions in the Marathi version were different. The NEET was conducted in 10 languages.
Over 11 lakh MBBS and BDS aspirants on Sunday appeared for the NEET at over 1,900 centres across 103 cities.
93. A day after the BMC's civic markets and garden committee passed the proposal to increase the entry fee to Veermata Jijabai Bhosale Udyan and Zoo in Byculla, BJP has raised objections.The proposal will now be tabled before the standing committee for approval. On Tuesday , city BJP president Ashish Shelar took to Twitter and wrote to the municipal commissioner opposing the plan.
94. Acting on a complaint from an NGO, Hirali Foundation, the Shivaji Nagar police have filed a case against Shiv Sena leader Sahebrao Ahire for violating sound pollution norms during Shiv Mandir Art Festival recently held in Ambernath. While the three-day festival was organised by Shiv Sena MP Shreekant Shinde and all banners and invitations cards had his name, the case was registered against Ahire, who is the party's ward president and had taken police permission on his name. Sarita Khatchandani of Hirali Foundation said, “The event violated decimal limits of sound pollution and on May 5. The music went on till 10.30pm violating the court norms of 10 pm timing.“
95. The Central Railway (CR) has filed a case with the cyber crime cell about a fake post that went viral on social media with its claim of a derailment near Nagothane. CR divisional railway manager Ravinder Goyal said the post falsely claimed to show pictures of the Diva-Sawantwadi Express derailed in a tunnel near Nagothane. The post claimed that four coaches and the engine were derailed but no help was extended to the passengers.
96. Two peddlers, Jayesh Shah (30) and Deepak Gupta (35), were arrested from Kandivli when they were allegedly trying to sell drugs near Damu Nagar on Monday . Drugs including ketamine, ephedrine, methamphetamine and bromozyme, worth Rs 54 lakh were recovered from them. Shah and Gupta, both residents of Samata Nagar, have been booked under Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act and produced before a court. They have been sent to police custody till May 12. The drugs will be sent to the forensic science laboratory for chemical analysis.
97. A 30-year-old man, Nilesh Patel, died after five men beat him up and then one of them ran an ambulance over him. The five men have been arrested on charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. The ambulance belongs to the prime accused, Sachin Modik (23).
98. A gang of thieves broke into a mobile phone store along PanvelMatheran Road on Saturday and fled with cellphones worth Rs 1.15 lakh. The theft came to light on Sunday morning when the store owner found the shutter's central lock broken. Police said they have seen the CCTV footage, but the images were not clear.
99. A nil Kumar Gupta has taken charge as Western Railway's general manager.Prior to this new assignment, Gupta was serving as additional general manager, South Central Railway. Gupta belongs to the 1980 batch of Indian Railway Service of Electrical Engineers.
100. Amid reports that Congress politician Narayan Rane might join the BJP along with his MLA son Neetesh, leader of the Opposition in the assembly Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil on Tuesday asked him to reconsider his decision and lead the Sangharsha Yatra launched by their party for waiver of farmers' loans.
101.The Maharashtra Uni versity of Health Sci ences (MUHS) on Tu esday decided to form a committee to review some references about gender and caste system in the ancient ayurveda reference books.The academic council will decide on the members and the timeframe of the committee later.
This decision came after some activists raised objections over the contents of a textbook of MUHS's Bachelor of Ayurveda, Medicine and Surgery , referring to some techniques to conceive a male child.
102. As Dadar resident Goodicia Vaidya walked into the local municipal office with a cane basket that had a crow's nest, most employees stared in wonder. The nest was dropped on a pavement at Dadar TT circle by workers trimming trees.
103. A Thane sessions court on Tuesday granted interim anticipatory bail of Rs 50,000 each to actress Shilpa Shetty , her husband Raj Kundra and three others in a case of alleged cheating and breach of trust. Ravi Bhalotia, who is a vendor with Best Deal TV (BDTV), an online shopping platform, had alleged in an FIR (filed on April 26) before Kongaon police station in Bhiwandi that BDTV , has duped him of Rs 24 lakh. He alleged that though he had delivered the products (bedsheets), he was yet to receive payment.
104. There will be an elephant in the room when `Gajab Kahani' is staged at G5A Foundation from next week. `Gajab Kahani' is the second of the seven plays being staged at this season's Aadyam, Aditya Birla Group's theatre initiative in association with The Times of India. Set in 1551, `Gajab Kahani' is based on the novel `The Elephant Journey' by Portuguese Nobel laureate late José de Sousa Saramago. It trails the journey of an elephant and his mahout from India to Europe.
105. Frowning on the BMC for changing the reservation of a plot meant for a court building at Kannamwar Nagar in Vikhroli, to a multipurpose community centre, the Bombay HC directed the state to resolve the issue within a month. If the government is unable to do so, it will have to provide an alternative plot of the same size as the one in Vikhroli, the court said. The direction came on a PIL by Shivshankar Joshi on the dilapidated condition of the Vikhroli magistrate court. His petition said the building is unfit to house courts as it is a commercial complex with several shops, including flour mills.
106. Senior clerics and community leaders have appealed for a quiet, peaceful Shab-e-Baraat or Night of Salvation on May 11. Shab-e-Baraat, a fortnight ahead of Ramzan, is believed to be a blessed night that should be spent in prayers. Unfortunately , many youths turn it into a night of revelry and nuisance.
107. Gujarat deputy chief minister Nitin Patel denied on Tuesday reports that his son Jaimin Patel was stop ped from board ing a Qatar Air ways flight to Greece at Sar dar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport on Monday because he was “highly inebriated“. The reports have triggered a political row as Gujarat is a dry state where liquor consumption is a punishable offence unless you have a licensed permit, issued subject to certain conditions.
108. In the wake of restrictions on some US-based voluntary organisations for violation of rules, the US has suggested that India should ensure “consistent and transparent“ application of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act as part of its recommendations at the review of India's rights record. India received 250 recommendations from different countries after the universal period review of India's human rights record during the May 4 meeting in Geneva at the UN Human Rights Council.
109.Concerned at the growing unrest in the Kashmir valley , National Conference leader and for mer Jammu and Kashmir CM Farooq Abdullah met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday to apprise him of the ground situation and urged him to promptly address the issue with a political approach.
“Kashmiris are not Pakistanis... Kashmiris have their own issues that need to addressed by the Centre and they do not want to go with Pakistan,“ Abdullah is learnt to have told the PM during the meeting that lasted about 45 minutes. The former Union minister said it couldn't be seen merely as a law and order issue.
110. Congress president Sonia Gandhi was admitted to Sir Ganga Ram hospital on Sun day following a bout of food poi soning, Dr D S Rana, chair man, board of management of the hospital, said in a statement on Tuesday night.
“She is well now and will be discharged soon,“ Rana said.Gandhi underwent surgery at the same hospital last year after she dislocated a shoulder during a Varanasi rally.
111. Two love-struck youths, whose girlfriends married elsewhere on the same day , hanged themselves from a single rope in Baloda Bazaar on Monday evening.
According to police, 18year-old Ajay Kanwar and 19year-old Murid Sahu of Kasdol region were found hanging from a mango tree, with nooses tied from the same rope. They were best friends and were shattered by what they saw as betrayal by their girlfriends. The girls they loved got married on Sunday. Ajay and Murid were last seen at another wedding on Monday evening. They left together but did not reach home. The next morning, villagers found their bodies hanging. Although no suicide note was recovered, the duo's friends told police that they were depressed because of their girlfriends' wedding.The bodies were later sent for an autopsy.
112. As foreign minister Sushma Swaraj held talks with her Dutch counterpart Bert Koenders on Tuesday , the Netherlands came out in support of India's bid for a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council. Talking to journalists, Koenders said India would be a “prime candidate“ for permanent membership if the UNSC were to be expanded.Swaraj also thanked Koenders for his country's support to India's Nuclear Suppliers Group membership bid.
113. More than 100 turtles of an endangered species were found dead in a pond at Chaddamipur village, nearly 80 km from Agra city . The turtles,identified as Indian flapshells,are protected under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 (Schedule II). Forest rangers and a team of district forest officers rushed to the spot to pull out the dead turtles from the pond. According to the officials, the turtles died due to continuous dumping of garbage in the pond. The Indian flapshell is a relatively small softshell reptile with a carapace length of up to 350 mm. These turtles prefer to live in shallow waters rather than rivers. They can adapt to a variety of aquatic habitats like marshes, ponds, lakes, rice fields, gutters, and even canals in metropolitan areas.
114.From a humble Dalit advocate, doubling up as a political party's booth agent in Tamil Nadu in 2002, to being among a chosen few appointed to a high constitutional post in 2009 and then pushing the self-destruct button to end up in jail in 2017. This is Justice Chinnaswamy Swaminathan Karnan's unenviable roller-coaster 15-year journey and could be the script for a Bollywood film. Described by his ex-colleagues in Madras HC as a loner who gave vent to his persecution mentality , Justice Karnan resorted to wild allegations against judges and successive chief justices of Madras HC almost immediately after he took oath as a judge in March 2009.
He wrote regularly to the President, CJI and the chairperson of SC Commission, accusing other judges of discriminatory behaviour. Nearly two years ago, he threatened contempt proceedings against then Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, forcing Madras HC to rush to the SC for remedy .
115. The National Socialist Council of Nagaland, Isak-Muivah (NSCN-IM), after 37 years of armed struggle and 20 years of negotiations, has finally settled for `co-existing together with shared sovereignty' -a new experiment that a federal India with strong unitary features will embark on with the signing of a peace agreement soon.
116. Nagaland chief minister and Naga People's Front (NPF) supremo Shurhozelie Liezietsu paid a courtesy call to his Manipuri counterpart Nongthombam Biren Singh on Tuesday , and called for peaceful co-existence, putting behind the protracted strained relations between the two neighbouring states. This is the first time that a Nagaland chief minister has come to Imphal to discuss bilateral issues. Shurhozelie's NPF is a coalition partner in the Biren Singh-led government in Manipur. Stating that peaceful coexistence among different ethnic groups would bring about development in the region, Liezietsu underscored the need to live together as good neighbours, according to tradition that has existed since time immemorial. He also said that the Meiteis should play a leading role in fostering peace and friendship among different ethnic communities in the region.
117. The income tax department has issued a show cause notice to AAP and its chief Arvind Kejriwal for alleged falsification of account books and “wilful attempt“ to evade tax on donations received by the party . The I-T department has sought the party's reply for not filing a “true and correct“ contribution report for donations received for 2014-15. An I-T investigation found that the party did not disclose facts related to donations of over Rs 30 crore. The show cause notice asked why prosecution should not be initiated against the party for falsification of records. It sought the party's reply by the first half of this month.The notice, while acknowledging that AAP had accepted that there were “certain errors“ in its first report filed in this regard, added that this admission by the party was itself an evidence that its audit report was fabricated initially but was corrected after the tax department began investigations.
118. Following protests from Pakistan, the Chinese embassy in New Delhi edited out a portion of a recent speech delivered by Chinese ambassador to India Luo Zhaohui about renaming the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to accommodate Indian concerns. The changes were made in the transcript of the speech posted on the Chinese embassy website.
119. India has again emerged as one of the top ODA (official development assistance) donors to Nepal, clawing its way back to the list of top 5 bilateral development partners of the country .India displaced China which was ranked fourth last year as a development partner in terms of ODA disbursement to Nepal. Nepal finance ministry's latest Development Cooperation Report on FY 2015-16 put India at the fifth position behind the US, the UK, Japan and Switzerland in the list of top ODA disbursers. In FY 2014-15, for the first time in five years, India's name had gone missing from the list of top five development partners of Nepal as its ODA disbursement had plummeted by over 50% that year. According to the latest report, India disbursed $35.76 million from July 16, 2015 to July 15, 2016 to claim its place among the top five bilateral development partners of Nepal. This is 3.33% of total ODA received by Nepal in the year. China in the same period accounted for 3.29% of the overall ODA to Nepal. In FY 2014-15, India had disbursed a little over $22 million. China that year disbursed $37.95 million to knock India out of the list of Nepal's top five development partners. China's ascendancy in the list last year, which came at the expense of India, caused a mini controversy here with MEA going all out to prove that the figure of $22 million (India's aid disbursement in FY 2014-15) was misleading.
120. At a time when it is using its consistent opposition to triple talaq to woo Muslim women, BJP has reached out to OBCs in the minority com munity saying the Modi government's `propoor' policies will help them and cautioning them against parties who treat them as mere “vote banks“. Building upon PM Modi's pitch to “ Pasmanda“ or the socially backward among Muslims, the party on Tuesday held a convention of OBC Muslims to claim that the government's policies have been inclusive and beneficial for all communities. “The poor Muslims have been unable to take advantage of the welfare schemes for minorities but Prime Minister Modi's `pro-poor' policies will uplift them,“ minority affairs minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told a rally attended mostly by backward Muslims from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Delhi.
121. Following complaints against quality of books published by CBSE as well as non-availability, the HRD ministry is likely to ask the Board to stop printing textbooks after holding a review meeting, sources said. A senior HRD ministry official said complaints had been received at the centralised public grievance redress and monitoring system regarding books by CBSE. “Organisations need to work as per mandate and a review is under way over publication of books by CBSE,“ said the official.
122. Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) said on Tuesday that it would sue Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the Supreme Court for receiving funds from alQaida chief Osama bin Laden in the 1980s to promote jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan.
123. A shocked Pakistan on Tuesday summoned Iranian ambassador to its foreign office to record a formal protest over the statement by the Iranian army chief threatening to hit terrorist safe havens inside Pakistan if Islamabad failed to stop militants from carrying out cross-border attacks. Relations between Islamabad and Tehran have been complex and full of mistrust since long. The two countries, however, had avoided aggressive posturing through public statements in the past. Hence, Pakistani officials were deeply shocked and disturbed, sources said, over the statement by Iranian military chief, Maj Gen Mohammad Baqeri, vowing his country would hit hi deouts of terrorists in Pakistan if the government does not confront militants who carry out crossborder attacks.
124. A Sikh man, who had sought asylum in the US citing religious persecution in India nearly two decades ago, has been detained by immigration authorities in California after losing his latest appeal over a deportation order. Gurmukh Singh, a 46-year-old taxi driver from Punjab who sneaked into the US without a visa through the border with Mexico in 1998, was taken into custody on Monday after failing to get a stay in his deportation case, amid a clampdown by the Trump administration against undocumented immigrants. A father of two who is married to a US citizen, Singh had applied for asylum in the US in 1999, citing religious persecution.
125. Left-leaning former human rights lawyer Moon Jae-in won South Korea's presidential election by a landslide on Tuesday , according to an exit poll, sweeping to power on a yearning for change after a tumultuous scandal. The ballot was called to choose a new president after Park Geun-hye was ousted and indicted for corruption. Voters were galvanised by anger over the bribery and abuse-of-power controversy that brought down Park, which ca talysed frustrations over jobs and slowing growth. They gave Moon, of the Democratic Party , who backs engagement with the North, 41.4% support, according to the joint survey by three TV stations. Conservative Hong Joonpyo -who dubs Moon a “proPyongyang leftist“ was far behind on 23.3%, with centrist Ahn Cheol-soo third on 21.8%.
126. Pakistan will send back an Indian woman, who said she was sexually abused after her forced marriage with a Pakistani citizen at gunpoint, once all legal requirements in the case are completed, a media report said on Tuesday . Citing sources, Geo TV reported that the Indian high commission has sent a copy of the woman's statement made before the magistrate and other relevant documents to the Pakistani foreign ministry .
127. Father Tom Uzhunnalil, an Indian Catholic priest, abducted by terrorists in strife-torn Yemen, has made a fresh video appeal for urgent help after getting a “poor response“ from authorities, say ing his health was deteriorating quickly and required hospitalisation. Father Tom, 58, who hails from Kerala, was abducted in March last year by a terror group. He had gone missing in Yemen after the Islamic State militant group attacked a care home run by Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity . Gunmen had stormed the refuge for the elderly in April last year. In the video carried by Aden Time news website, a fraillooking priest said, “I am Father Tom Uzhunnalil. My date of birth is August 18, 1958. I received the message of con cern that you sent me my dear family people. I am thankful to you. Thank you very much“. “They (abductors) are tre ating me well to the extent that they are able. My health con dition is deteriorating quick ly and I require hospitalisa tion as early as possible.
128. A grieving husband in the UK has revealed how he slept in the same room as his wife's body for six days after her death to challenge the people's attitudes towards dying. Wendy Davison, 50, died at home in Derby last month on April 21 after a 10-year battle with cervical cancer. Russell Davison, who has been left “heartbroken“, said he did not want her body to go to a mortuary and that he wanted to challenge attitudes towards dying. It is legal to keep a body at home and Derbyshire coroner's court confirmed that Wendy's doctor had reported her death, the BBC reported. Russell said, “I wanted us to take care of her ourselves at our family home.
129. Qantas Airways Ltd chief executive Alan Joyce proved he was no cream puff on Tuesday , keeping his cool after a man smeared a cream pie in his face during a business breakfast in Australia's west. Joyce, the head of Australia's flag carrier, was speaking at the event in Perth, when a man in a business suit walked onto the stage, reached around to rub the pie in his face, and calmly walked away , 7 News television showed. The unidentified man's motive was unclear but he was soon apprehended by security guards.
130. A Swiss court has upheld a 12-month suspended sentence for a man convicted of deliberately removing his condom during sex with an unconsenting partner, a practice known as “stealthing“ that is testing how legal systems can handle such cases. Swiss broadcaster SRF said the couple had met via dating platform Tinder and agreed to have sex at the woman's home. During intercourse the woman refused the man's request to change to unprotected sex, only to discover later he had in fact removed his condom. The appeals court ruled that the sentence was appropriate while changing the crime involved to defilement from rape, as a lower court had found.
131. Bill Clinton might have ho ped to spend this year back in the White House as America's “first gentleman,“ should his wife Hillary have won the 2016 election. Instead, the two-term Democratic president is moving into fiction, writing his first thriller about drama behind the scenes in the White House, his publishers said on Monday . Clinton is collaborating with bestselling US author James Patterson on `The President is Missing' which is to be published in June 2018 by Al fred A Knopf and Little, Brown and Company .
1. The Supreme Court on Tuesday held Vijay Mallya, promoter of the defunct Kingfisher Airlines, guilty of contempt and directed him to appear before it on July 10. Mallya has previously expressed his reluctance to come to India for fear of being made an example of over corporate defaults even though others owe banks more than he does. Mallya was held in contempt by a two-judge bench comprising justices Adarsh Kumar Goel and UU Lalit. He had failed to make a true and faithful disclosure of all his assets as directed by the top court earlier besides having transferred a $40-million Diageo payout on the eve of the order.
2. Dena Bank has become the first lender to classify its Videocon Industries debt as a bad loan, potentially opening a can of worms for the bank ing sector that is burdened with stressed assets. Some estimates put the total banking sector exposure to Videocon at Rs 40,000 crore.
3. UDAN, or Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik, scheme got a major boost on Tuesday when IndiGo announced plans to induct 50 small aircraft for regional routes. The announcement, along with TruJet's decision to add routes and the overwhelming response to Alliance Air's Delhi-Shimla flight, indicate the scheme's popularity.
4. SAIF Partners, an early investor in mobile payments and digital wallet player Paytm, has begun raising its third Indiadedicated fund of about $350-400 million, according to two people aware of the move. These plans come a little over two years after it closed a previous fund and will take its assets under management to over $1 billion.
5. India's passenger vehicle sales in April grew 14.68% from a year ago, boosted by launch of new models and a strong showing by carmaker Maruti Suzuki India.,Automakers sold 2,77,602 units in the month compared with 2,42,060 in April 2016, as per data released by industry body Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) on Tuesday. Car sales grew at their fastest clip in 18 months to 1,90,788 units, up 17.36% from April 2016. The previous high was 21.8% in October 2015.Maruti Suzuki is set to receive 1,50,000 units from Suzuki's Gujarat plant this financial year, which will help it close the pending orders and attain double-digit growth cal 2018. numbers in fiscal 2018. Sales of commercial vehicles, however, continued to be under pressure and declined by 22.9% to 41,490 units in the period under review. Sales of commercial vehicles had taken a dent in the aftermath of the government's demonetisation exercise and because of the ban on BS III-compliant vehicles from April 1. The two-wheeler segment saw sales increasing by 7.34% from a year ago to 16,74,796 units, driven by demand for scooters. While sales of scooters increased by 25.3% to 5,86,886 units last month that of motorcycles remained flat at 10,29,972.Sen said, “In the two-wheeler segment, scooters are doing well.Even in rural areas, consumers have started going for scooters.“ Overall sales of vehicles across categories went up by 6.8% to 20,30,476 units.
6. Believe it or not, there's a waiting period for air-conditioners and refrigerators this summer. Retailers are facing a supply problem for the first time on the back of unanticipated demand, with delays running into two to four days or even more. March and April reported record sales of the two appliances -an over 25% growth year-on-year. In fact, the two months' sales equal almost one-third the total sales made in calendar year 2016, driven by demand from the north, west and south. Last year, air-conditioners and refrigerators grew by 15% and 10%, respectively. LG Electronics air-conditioner sales grew 45% in March-April, while refrigerator sales went up by 20%, including a 40% hike for premium variants of 300 litres and above.Samsung also saw more than 20% growth in these two categories. Voltas grew by 30% and is confident about overtaking the previous fiscal's performance with 25% growth. Voltas president Pradeep Bakshi said almost 65% of air-conditioner buyers are first-time users, reflecting a buoyancy in the economy coupled with brisk rural demand.
7. First came Android.Then came Chrome OS.And now Google is fine tuning its third operating system Fuschia OS. Spotted in August last year, Google's secret OS was still in command line. But Google has made quite a few additions to the user interface which now features a card-based design. The OS, unlike Android and ChromeOS, is not based on a Linux kernel.
8. Smart machines and robots may replace highly-trained professionals in medicine, law and IT sectors by 2022, market research firm Gartner as warned. CIOs have a major role to play in preparing businesses for the impact that artificial intelligence (AI) will have on business strategy and human employment, it added. “The economics of AI and machine learning will lead to many tasks becoming low-cost utilities,“ said Stephen Prentice, VP & Gartner Fellow.
9. Gurugram-based micro-lending platform Aye Finance, that delivers business funding to Indian micro and small enterprises, has raised `20 crore in debt funding from the State Bank of India. Spread across 33 branches in the country as a non-banking financial company, Aye Finance provides mortgage, hypothecation and term-loan services accessible to India's thriving and under-served MSME sector.
10. Chymera VR, a monetisation and advertising platform for virtual reality, has secured undisclosed funding from a clutch of angels, including People Group CEO Anupam Mittal, former head of operations at Airbnb Varsha Rao, former Google executive Surojit Chatterjee and chairman of HHC Holdings Ni rav Choksi. San Franciscoand Bengaluru-based Chymera will use these funds to ramp up product develop ment in Bengaluru and expand publisrtiser-base primarily herand advertiser-base primarily in the US. The company provides technology solutions to advertisers who are keen to leverage VR as a storytelling and brand-building platform. VR developers integrate Chymera ads with their content to earn revenue for each ad served. The startup claims to have generated 60% higher click-through rates (CTR) through VR-based ads as com pared to 2D mobile ads.
11. Health and wellness company GOQii said it has raised Rs 4.7 crore through its karma pro` gramme that encourages users of the company's fitness wearable devices to earn points, which they can convert into money and donate for a charitable cause. For instance, GOQii `players' earn one karma point for every 390 steps taken. A total of 19,497,588 karma points were converted into Rs 4.7 crore towards supporting 25 causes, including Oxfam India, Greensole and Ratna Nidhi Charitable Trust. The company said Benga luru, Chennai and Pune emerged as the most generous cities.
12. Japan's SoftBank is believed to have moved a step closer to securing the consent of co-investor Nexus Venture Partners (NVP) for selling Snapdeal to India's largest ecommerce firm Flipkart. A meeting was held on Tuesday and the impasse over the sale could end soon, people familiar with the matter said. SoftBank -the largest shareholder in Snapdeal -has been making all efforts to get NVP on board for the sale of Snapdeal, and a breakthrough could come as early as this week. They added that while attempts have been going on for the past few weeks, NVP finally seems to be warming up to the idea. A board meeting is expected to take place on Wednesday to deliberate on the issue. Emails sent to Snapdeal, SoftBank and NVP did not elicit any response. A `yes' from NVP is crucial for the deal to go through. The seven-member board of Jas per Infotech (which operates Snapdeal) includes representation from investors SoftBank, Kalaari Capital and NVP, as well as cofounders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal.NVP and Kalaari were early stage investors in Snapdeal.
13. Amazon unveiled the Echo Show on Tuesday, a $229 smart speaker powered by the Alexa virtual assistant with a 7-inch touchscreen, making it the first Amazon Echo of its kind. Like the original-model, the Echo Show is primarily controlled by voice. Its killer feature is voice and video chatting, though that feature will be limited to calling other Alexa devices at launch.
14.Boston Scientific stands to lose millions of dollars on its high-end heart stent in India after a government panel rejected its request to increase a cap on the price that it can charge for the device. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government in February slashed prices of drug-releasing stents, small mesh devices used to pop open blocked arteries, by as much as 75%, setting a price cap of . 29,600. The move was part of an aggressi` ve push by the government to make life-saving drugs and devices more affordable. The panel's rejection comes amid a growing tussle between medical device makers and the Indian government. Indust kers and the India ry is worried that price ceilings could be introdu ced on other medical devices as well, eating into their future profits and growth. In letters sent to government agencies in March and April, Boston Scientific argued that the cap was much lower than what it cost the company to import the device, called Synergy, and would lead to losses of at least $7 million this year.
15. Bharti Airtel blamed “predatory pricing“ by new entrant -Reliance Jio Infocomm -for the nearly 72% year-on-year slump in its fiscal fourthquarter net profit, with both its voice and data suffering from the price war triggered by the Mukesh Ambani-owned telco's free services. India's No. 1 telco's net profit of Rs 373 crore for the three months ended March was sharply lower than the average estimate of about Rs 478 crore. Net profit in the October-December quarter was nearly Rs 504 crore. Revenue fell over 12% to Rs 21,935 crore from a year earlier as data and voice rates fell. The fall in rates, however, arrested the churn of subscribers out of the operator. The telco ended the quarter with almost 356 million customers across India, South Asia and 15 countries in Africa, Bharti Airtel said in a statement Tuesday. In India, which makes up nearly 78% of overall revenue, the company had nearly 274 million mobile subscribers, up 2.9% sequentially. The telco turned profitable in Africa for the first time ever, reporting a net income of $6 million compared with a net loss of $57 million, helped by growth in the data customer base and consumption, with revenue growing 2.6% amid stable currencies in most markets. Airtel's 3% year-on-year revenue fall in the October-December quarter was its first since its initial public offer. “The deteriorating health of the industry was compounded by the tsunami of incoming voice traffic from the new operator as a result of which significant investments had to be made just to carry the incoming traffic on our network. The net result of this was a revenue decline of 7.1% (in India) in Q4 even as EBITDA margins eroded by 2.9%,“ he added. He noted that Airtel's FY16-17 India revenue growth of 3.6% to Rs 73,422 crore was “muted“ compared with the double-digit growth seen in preceding years. Airtel's consolidated net profit for the full fiscal fell 37% year-on-year to nearly Rs 3,800 crore, on revenue of Rs 95,468 crore, down 1%.
16. Karnataka will, in about a month's time, notify the new fare regulations for taxi operators in Bengaluru, including app-based ride-hailing services Uber and Ola. The government will also notify a different fare structure --lower than the one in Bengaluru -for other cities where ride-hailing services are available. Transport minister Ramalinga Reddy told that a three-member committee headed by the additional transport commissioner is in the process of finalising the fare structure.The committee has consulted vehicle dealers, managements of Uber and Ola, and drivers' unions as part of its exercise to work out a fare structure. The last revision happened in 2013, and the government too finds demands for a fare revision valid as all types of luxury vehicles have entered the taxi segment since the last revision, including BMW and Mercedes Benz. The taxi operators have been unhappy that the government's fare regulations caps fares chargeable Rs 19.50 per km for AC vehicles and at Rs 14.50 per km for non-AC vehicles. The new fare structure, according to the transport minister, will have two new features. The operators will be able to apply differential fares according to the type of the vehicle used. The fare chart being evolved, according to Reddy, will have three slabs -one for micro mini cabs (such as Indica), second for premium cabs (includes Innova), and the third one for luxury cabs (those priced ` . 35 lakh plus). The committee is taking into account factors such as price of the vehicle, debt serving, insurance costs, cost of operation etc, for different class of vehicles to arrive at the final fare figures. The government will straightaway notify the final fare chart, and not a draft one as the committee has consulted all stakeholders. The second key feature of the forthcoming fare revision is that it will have a fare band for different class of vehicles. In other words, the fare structure will also include a minimum or floor rate below which a cab cannot charge. “This is aimed at protecting the cab drivers from being forced to collect very low fares,“ the minister said. Uber and Ola, according to the department sources, favoured a marked-based pricing mechanism based on demand and supply for cab services, instead of working within the walls of a fare structure. The government hopes that the new fare regulations will give app-based cab operators enough leeway to rejig fares within the fare-band according to the market demand at the time of a customer hailing a cab. A division bench of the Karnataka High Court, in a recent order, has disallowed surgepricing or dynamic-pricing by app-based hailing services.
17. Karnataka has decided to allow carpool services in Bengaluru and other cities till a clarity emerges on the issue.
18. The Godrej Group, the 120-year-old diversified conglomerate, has elevated Nisaba Godrej, daughter of chairman Adi Godrej, as the executive chairman of the flagship company Godrej Consumer Products (GCPL) sketching out the succession plan for the company. The 75-year-old patriarch Adi Godrej will now be chairman emeritus in group firms and mentor his children and other senior talent while his two daughters and his son will take care of the day-today operations. In February , Godrej's son Pirojsha, who was the managing director of Godrej Properties, was appointed executive chairman. Nisaba, the second of three children, joined GCPL a decade ago when she initiated and led “Project Leapfrog“ to accelerate growth in India through innovation and consolidation. After a string of acquisitions, it expanded to UK, Indonesia, Latin America and Africa and its international business accounts Rs 9,500 crore for nearly half of its revenue.
19. In a bid to curb child pornography on the Internet, the government has asked all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to prevent the distribution and transmission of such content in India by adopting and implementing Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) Resources on or before July 31, 2017. In a statement, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said that containing the spread of online Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) is an important public policy goal for In dia, and the govern ment is taking immediate steps to control this menace. “The publication or transmission of material depicting children in sexually explicit act or conduct in electronic form is a heinous crime, specifically prohibited by Section 67B of the Information Technology Act, 2000.“ The IWF maintains such a list of dynamically updated websitesURLs containing online CSAM. IWF has been adopted by many countries and is already being implemented by leading online service providers in other jurisdictions. IWF resources are available to ISPs on a subscription basis, either individually or collectively.
20. Piramal Enterprises is planning to raise up to Rs 4,000 crore by selling shares to institutional investors as the diversified company looks to fuel growth in its financial services business, according to two people familiar with the matter. Piramal Enterprises, owned by billionaire Ajay Piramal, which has interests in healthcare, financial services and information management businesses, has seen its market value more than double to Rs 42,970.80 crore in the past year.
21. British lender Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) on Tuesday said it was planning to cut over 300 jobs and move a number of others to India as part of its efforts to become a “simpler, smaller UK-focused bank“. RBS informed staff that it would be letting go of 154 contractors by year-end, while 180 permanent roles have been put at risk -with a total of 92 staff positions set to be axed. The cuts are expected to affect tech staff across a number of the bank's departments including risk solutions, digital engineering services, finance solutions, core and payments, and NatWest markets technology. Reacting to the announcement, workers' union Unite called on the state-funded bank to impose a moratorium on the “unjustified“ moving of jobs to India.
22. Agrochemical company PI Industries and global chemicals firm BASF on Tuesday entered into a strategic partnership to offer a broader portfolio of crop protection solutions to farmers. PI Industries will market BASF's fungicide solutions for rice, maize, fruits and vegetables as well as a new herbicide for maize. Following this partnership, both the companies aim to enhance their market partic pation in these crops segments, a joint statement issued here said. PI Industries has built eading brands over the last 60 years with multi-locational manufacturing facilities, ncluding Jambusar SEZ in Gujarat.
23. Tyre maker Ceat on Tuesday reported a 32.5% dip in consolidated net profit at Rs 66.33 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2017 hurt by continued impact of demonetisation and spike in raw material prices. Total income from operations during the quarter under review stood at Rs 1,641.29 crore as compared to Rs 1,563.21 crore in the year-ago period, up 4.99%. For the fiscal ended March 31, 2017, the company's consolidated net profit declined by 17.45% to Rs 361.15 crore from Rs 437.54 crore in the previous year.
24. InterGlobe Aviation, which runs India's biggest airline IndiGo, Tuesday posted a 25% decline in net profit on soaring fuel costs and lower yields. The airline also announced a surprise order for 50 ATR turboprop planes, signalling a likely entry into the civil aviation ministry's regional connectivity scheme UDAN. The company posted a net profit of Rs 440 crore in the January-March quarter, down from `584 crore in the same quarter last year. Total revenue rose 20% to Rs 5,142 crore. But fuel costs, the biggest expense chunk, rose 71% to Rs 1,750 crore. IndiGo's operating performance continued to be weak with revenue per average seat kilometre declining 3.3% compared to last year. For the full year FY17, its net profit dropped 17% to Rs 1,659 crore. In the March quarter, crude oil traded in the range of $55-$56 per barrel as against an average of $35.2 in the corresponding quarter last year. This to a large extent increased the fuel expenses, thus lowering EBIDTAR (earnings before interest, depreciation and rentals) and net profit. Currently , crude is trading at $49.The Indian rupee which has appreciated sharply against the dollar should lower the fuel cost. InterGlobe Aviation's stock has relatively underperformed its peers -SpiceJet and Jet Airways over the past three months given its high valuations.This trend may continue in the short to medium term as the valuation gap still remains high. On Tuesday's closing, InterGlobe Aviation shares traded at 16 times expected FY18 EVEBIDTA while Jet and SpiceJet traded at 11.2 and 10, respectively. IndiGo has a current fleet of 131 Airbus A320 planes which include 19 Neos. The airline's fleet by the end of the ongoing financial year will be 170 planes. The number of Neos would increase to 28.
25. Relaxation of regulatory norms with regard to contribution to the Settlement Guarantee Fund (SGF) by stock exchanges has buoyed the National Stock Exchange (NSE), India's largest market platform as well as the Bombay Stock Exchange. The National Stock Exchange, which is going to launch its initial public offer (IPO), saw net profit jump a whopping 137% for 2016-17 from Rs 436 crore a year ago. NSE's earnings per share (on face value of `1) rose to Rs 20.87 for FY 16-17 to from Rs 8.80 for FY 15-16. For the past few years, capital market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had asked exchanges to contribute 25% of their net profit towards the SGF,a norm relaxed in 2016.
26. S Chand and Company made a tepid debut on the bourses on Tuesday, with the stock trimming gains made during the session to close 0.9% higher at Rs 675.85.Earlier in the day, the stock had debuted at Rs 707, a 5.5% premium to its issue price of Rs 670. The stock had even slipped to a discount to the issue price during the trading session. The tepid listing was in contrast with the strong demand seen during the initial public offering (IPO). The Rs 728.5-crore IPO of S Chand, priced at Rs 660-670 had got subscribed 59.3 times. The portion reserved for qualified institutional buyers and high net worth individuals had got subscribed 44.3 times and 204.6 times, respectively. The retail investor portion was subscribed close to six times. Market sentiment has tapered down after indices hit record high, which may have affected the listing prospects, analysts said. The issue comprised fresh issue of shares up to Rs 325 crore and offer for sale of 60.23 lakh shares by existing shareholders, including Everstone Capital. The company plans to utilise the proceeds from the IPO to repay loans availed by it and some of its subsidiaries and for general corporate purposes. Credit Suisse Securities (India), JM Financial and Axis Capital were the merchant bankers to the offer.
27. The Reserve Bank of India has initiated regulatory action on the struggling IDBI Bank, including freezing of hiring, lending out bigticket loans and opening of branches to prevent it from sliding further. The so called Prompt Corrective Action is aimed at reducing future losses, raise recovery of loans to improve the bank's capital position. The bank had suffered historic loss of Rs 2,255 crore in the December quarter as it had to make huge provisions for bad loans. Within weeks of it reporting huge losses, the government had directed the bank to freeze big-ticket lending and curb expanses. The prompt corrective action is triggered when a bank's bad loan is above 6%, it reports losses for two consecutive years and it falls short of minimum capital prescribed by the regulator.Depending on the severity , RBI prescribes corrective action that banks should take to improve its financial position. IDBI Bank's gross NPA had crossed 15% in quarter ending December 2016 and, according to a report by rating company Icra, its capital adequacy ratio is expected to fall short of the minimum tier1 capital requirements which is stipulated at 6.75% at March 2017. The bank reported a loss of Rs 3,665 crore in March 2016 and is expected to report loss in fiscal year 2016-17 as well. IDBI Bank has been facing challenges in recovering loans given to infrastructure -a sector in which the bank has largest exposure since historically it was in the business of giving loans to this sector. In an attempt to revive the health, the government has recently swapped the CEOs of Indian Bank and IDBI Bank.
28. Bajaj Finance, India's leading consumer and enterprise financing company , is looking to raise $150 million (approximately Rs 1,000 crore) from International Finance Corporation. The non-banking finance company will issue non-convertible debentures which would be subscribed by IFC, the World Bank's financing arm. In a disclosure, IFC said that the fund would be used for on-lending to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME). Bajaj Finance had last month raised another Rs 545 crore in NCDs as it looks to grow its business. The company did not respond to ET's queries on fund raising, saying that it is in a silent period before finalising financial accounts on May 17. IFC's investment would help the company to tap offshore capital and diversify funding sources. The investment proposal is part of IFC's strategic target to finance 10 million MSMEs during FY17-21.
Bajaj Finance has total assets under management of over Rs 57,000 crore at December-end with 43% of its assets being under consumer financing and 42% under SME financing. Commercial business accounts for 12% of loans, and balance 3% comes from rural sector.Its share prices closed 1.8% higher on Tuesday at Rs 1,295.30. Bajaj Finserv, the holding company for the financial services businesses of the Bajaj Group, owns 57.3% in Bajaj Finance, which reported 36% rise in net profit.
29. Banks may have been selling various banking products from treasury , retail or offering special corporate deals on pricing, but the latest universal bank IDFC Bank is selling technology to draw in new customers. It's selling a software -the “Business eXperience Platform“ (BXP) -to rope in clients that combines all corporate banking solutions on one platform which would help companies cut costs and improve efficiency . The bank has already conducted transactions worth `18,000 crore with 40% of its corporate clients already using this platform. Out of the 400 corporates who are currently enrolled on this platform, the bank has posted a 100% growth in payments made through BXP . The private lender has already managed to rope in clients such as Mahindra & Mahindra, Airtel, Indraprastha Gas, NCML among the 400 corporates who have been using this platform.
30. The first sign of government getting a foot into the narrative of large layoffs in the IT sector emerged on Tuesday with the Telangana government calling for a meeting with Cognizant over the terminations.
31. Dell Technologies, the world's largest privately-held tech company, unveiled a slew of product announcements, and pulled its venture practice out of the `stealth' mode. Dell Technologies is the result of the $67-billion merger between Dell and EMC in 2015. Its new venture arm, Dell Technologies Capital, has combined the venture capital operations of both the entities and plans to invest about $100 million a year in startups globally. The company revealed a portfolio of 70 existing and previous investments made by both operations, some of which had not been disclosed earlier. “We've been investing in startups through EMC and Dell ventures. What we are now announcing is the next iteration of the programme,“ Dell Technologies CFO Tom Sweet told.
32. State-owned Power Grid Corporation has been granted unified licence with national long distance and Internet service provider authorisation to provide telecom services. The power transmission utility provides its telecom towers and optical fibre cable infrastructure (for Internet services) to service providers and other firms for commercial use. This is a separate segment of revenue for the company.
33. Toshiba Corp has told Western Digital Corp not to interfere in the sale of its prized chip unit, rejecting claims it has breached a joint venture contract and threatening legal action. The clash between Toshiba and Western Digital -both its business partner and one of the bidders for the chip unit -risks delaying or even quashing an auction that the Japanese conglomerate is depending on to plug a $9-billion hole in its accounts. Although the two companies jointly operate Toshiba's main semiconductor plant, Western Digital is not seen as a favoured bidder for the world's second biggest NAND chip producer, having put in a much lower offer than other suitors, sources with knowledge of the matter, have said. The US firm has argued the Japanese company is violating their contract by transferring their joint venture's rights to the newly formed unit and has asked for exclusive negotiating rights. But in a May 3 letter sent by Toshiba's lawyers, the TVs-tonuclear conglomerate disputed Western Digital's argument and said it would pursue all available remedies if it saw continued interference in the sale process.
34. Bombardier Inc's biggest outside shareholder and a second major investor withdrew support for chairman Pierre Beaudoin, the last executive link to the planemaker's founding family, after he backed a compensation plan that sparked a public furor. The manufacturer's board should be led “by a fully independent director“, Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec said in a letter to Bombardier on Monday. Solidarity Fund QFL, which is backed by a labour union, also declined to back Beaudoin, a member of the family that controls Bombardier. Both shareholders said they voted against the compensation plan -a proposal that fuelled outrage after Bombardier increased executive pay almost 50% despite receiving taxpayer aid and announcing plans to cut more than 14,000 jobs. The Montreal-based company later reduced Beaudoin's pay and delayed some remuneration for leaders including CEO Alain Bellemare. “The board's recent decisions regarding executive compensation fall short of the necessary standard of stewardship,“ Caisse Executive Vice President Kim Thomassin said in the letter.
35. Japan's SoftBank is believed to have moved a step closer to securing the consent of co-investor Nexus Venture Partners (NVP) for selling Snapdeal to India's largest e-commerce firm Flipkart. A meeting was held on Tuesday and the impasse over the sale could end soon, people familiar with the matter said. SoftBank, the largest shareholder in Snapdeal, has been making all efforts to get NVP on board for the sale of Snapdeal, and a breakthrough could come as early as this week.They added that while attempts have been going on for the past few weeks, NVP finally seems to be warming up to the idea. A board meeting is expected to take place on Wednesday to deliberate upon the issue. E-mails sent to Snapdeal, SoftBank and NVP did not elicit any response. A `yes' from NVP is crucial for the deal to go through.
36. Shares of Godrej Consumer Products (GCPL) on Tuesday surged almost 10% after the company reported an over three-fold jump in consolidated net profit for the quarter ended March 31. The stock zoomed 9.7% to settle at Rs 1,929 on BSE.
37. Strong retail interest helped the Rs 1,200-crore IPO for Housing and Urban Development (HUDCO) get oversubscribed more than three times on day 2 of the offer. The IPO, through which the government is divesting 10.2% in HUDCO, will close on May 11. The shares are being offered at a price band of Rs 56-60 per share. Retail investors and employees are eligible for a discount of Rs 2 per share on the final price, a release from the company said.
38. SilverNeedle Hospitality (SNH), a part of Infosys co-founder N S Raghavan's $1-billion Nadathur's Holdings, has bought new media marketing agency Brand Karma for an undisclosed amount.
Brand Karma builds brands through social media, creative storytelling, digital marketing and virtual reality and counts Shangri-La Hotels and Marriott among its clients. The acquisition will help SNH, through its in-house architecture and design agency Virsa, to maximise returns on its real estate assets.SNH also said it its hotel management division would be renamed Next Hotels.
POLITICS, ECONOMY, CRIMES, SPORTS, ENTERTAINMENT & NEWS AROUND THE WORLD
1. Finance and defence minister Arun Jaitley said foreign companies need to be incentivised to set up defence manufacturing bases in India, adding that policies have to be in sync with reality. Companies, he added, will establish manufacturing units only if there is a likelihood that they will get business.
2. India's power sector will slam the door on foreign firms from countries that do not allow Indian companies to invest and make money in their markets, introducing a strong element of reciprocity , power, coal, renewable energy and mines minister Piyush Goyal said. Goyal also said renewable power was central to India's long-term energy security at a low cost and rubbished claims that electricity generated from wind, sun or water was harming the grid or con ventional power. He was also optimistic about the future of electric cars and the country's power situation, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, where the new chief minister was sharply focused on reforming the sector.
3. Sri Lanka has started removing wasp nests in the central hill area of Dickoya ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit later this week to avoid any possible “attack“ by the insects. The security units assigned with the provision of security to Prime Minister Modi is coordinating with the Hatton Superintendents of Police office and have obtained the assistance of the organisation for the protection of such insects. The nests are being currently removed by the Hatton Police Director's Office.
4. UP BJP will hold door-to-door mass contact programme throughout the state for 15 days, starting from Wednesday, during which new members will be enrolled. According to UP BJP general secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak, the party wants to make `Ekaatma Maanavaad' (Integral Humanism), a political philosophy conceived by Jan Sangh stalwart Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay, a household name. “Each BJP worker has been given a target of getting 750 persons enrolled as primary members of party within these 15 days.“
5. Ruling BJP legislators complained to the Assam assembly speaker that ministers never reply to their letters on concerns raised by people. The legislators also sought a mechanism by which ministers would be bound to reply to their letters in a fixed timeframe. Speaker Hitendra Nath Goswami said CM Sarbananda Sonowal should look into the matter. The issue was brought to the notice of the Speaker by BJP MLA Pranab Kalita as a Point of Order.
6. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the nation from Guwahati on May 26, when the NDA government completes three years in office and its state government in Assam completes a year. For the first anniversary of his gov ernment, Modi had visited Nagla Chandrabhan village in Mathura, the birth place of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya.For the second anniversary , Modi addressed a mammoth rally in Saharanpur . This will be the third time the prime minister will attend a programme outside the national capital on his government's anniversary .
Chief minister Sonowal had recently met the prime minister and invited him to attend the inauguration of theDhola-Sadiya Bridge and Global Investors' Summit in November. The 9.15 km Dhola SadiyaBridge over Brahmaputra will be the longest bridge in the country and is expected to improve the connectivity of the region. After Modi confirmed his participation for the first anniversary of the BJP government in Assam, an elated Sonowal said that it indicated the importance the NDA government and the PM gave for the northeast.
7. Akshay Kumar was in the Capital and the actor took the opportunity to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The 49-year-old actor took to Twitter to share a picture with the PM and said they discussed his film `Toilet: Ek Prem Katha'. “Met PM @narendramodi and got the opportunity to tell him about my upcoming `Toilet-Ek Prem Katha',“ wrote Akshay. The National Award-winning actor said he was overjoyed when the title of the film brought a smile on PM Modi's face. “His smile at just the title made my day!“ he continued.
8. Bihar BJP leader Sushil Modi has urged the SC Collegium to take cognisance of the apex court's “strong observations“ against Jharkhand HC judge Rakesh Ranjan Prasad when considering him for elevation. SC had on Monday made “strong observations“ against the judge, who had dropped the conspiracy angle in the fodder scam case against RJD chief Lalu Prasad, while setting aside his 2014 order. Justice Prasad was appointed a judge of Manipur HC in February 2016 and was made its chief justice in September the same year. If he fails to get elevated to SC he will retire on June 30 next, Modi told
9. Twenty-five Muslim leaders, under the umbrella of Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, met PM Modi on Tuesday and appreciated the stand taken by him on the issue of triple talaq, as per a statement issued by the PMO.
10. Outreach to the youth ill be the most important part of JP's campaign as Gujarat gets eady for elections due later this year. The Vijay Rupani-led BJP government is planning to distribute subsidised tablets to 3.75 lakh class XII ass-outs in an attempt to reassure he youth about its performance.CM Rupani would also hold interactive sessions with the youth as part of is Jan Sampark programme and tell hem that Gujarat was the number one state in implementing all the chemes of the Modi government, state government officials said.The Gujarat government, even beore demonetisation, opened maxi um bank accounts under Jan Dhan ojna. We are looking at appealing to he youth to support a government hat delivers,“ an official said. Officials claimed, as promised, the state government had provided 67,000 government jobs across various departments this year. “Also, `50 crore has been allocated for start all the schemes of the Modi government, top officials of the government said. “The youth is most interested in delivery . The Gujarat government, even before demonetization, had maximum bank accounts under Jan dhan yojna which reduced the difficulties that people had to face in the initial days. We are looking at a call to youth to support a government that delivers,“ an official said.
11. Next time you visit the restroom in a mall or a commercial complex and find it unclean, you may be able to lodge a complaint then and there through a government-fitted feedback device inside the toilet. The urban development ministry has written to mission directors of Swachh Bharat in 12 states, including Delhi, Karnataka and Maharashtra, to procure such devices from a government company to be installed in toilets of private establishments such as malls, multiplexes, petrol pumps and district centres, to continuously monitor cleanliness of toilets, as per the community guidelines. The device will have three buttons coloured green, yellow and red with matching emoticons -for example, a smiley on green button and a frown ing face on red. Users can choose the button that best represents their experience, and the feedback goes to the urban local body. In case of continuous negative feedback, the government would send an SMS to the establishment for corrective action. The ministry has also called for installing these devices toilets built by states. The ministry has asked all urban local bodies to enter into a three-year contracts with ITI Ltd, a government of India undertaking, which will provide feedback devices for Rs 945 per month per device. Local bodies can utilise `capacity building fund' allocated under the Swachh Mission to procure and maintain these devices. The toilet monitoring solution is being rolled out in 11 states -Delhi, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat, Andhra, Haryana, Kerala, Odisha, Puducherry, Rajasthan, TN and Telangana -and Puducherry. Each feedback device is fitted with GPRS modem and a data SIM for back-end connectivity to the server. The performance index will be measured on an online dashboard and the urban local body will send an SMS to the caretaker for corrective action if the feedback is bad. An escalation SMS to higher management levels will be sent if feedback does not improve.
12. UP has decided to make six districts, including Noida, Ghaziabad and Meerut, open defecation free (ODF) by the end of July after the state was embarrassed by a recent Swachta survey. The survey listed 52 UP cities among the dirtiest cities in the country, prompting CM Adityanath to announce that Swachh Bharat will be among the “top priority programmes“. “Work has been initiated on a war footing,“ a senior UP official said.
13. The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered Calcutta HC judge CS Karnan to be imprisoned for six months for contempt of court, in an event without parallels in the history of the Indian judiciary .
14. It seems that Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Sabir Ali have buried their differences and closed ranks after PM Modi's appeal. Ali had invited Naqvi as chief guest for Tuesday's indoor rally of backward class Muslims in the national capital. Reason: Modi had asked party workers to reach out to backward Muslims as well after his government decided to grant constitutional status to NCBC. It may be recalled that in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Naqvi had scuttled Ali's induction into the party. Ali is now a BJP member.
15. Ministers like being invited to inauguration programmes. But, recently, a Maharashtra minister was miffed when no other politicians or officials invited for the event turned up. Basically, there wasn't much `crowd' at the function, leading to it being dubbed as a non-event. The miffed minister said henceforth invites for such events should be sent only to those who had confirmed their participation.
16. The culture ministry has decided to tighten screws on the Lalit Kala Akademi. The ministry has now, through an official communication, directed Akademi administrator Krishna Setty to set aside all “irregular and illegal“ decisions taken by Akademi secretary Sudhakar Sharma since Setty's appointment. It is believed that in many such decisions Setty's concurrence was also taken.
17. While HRD grapples with setting UGC right, considerable unrest is brewing at UGC's inter-university centre, the Consortium for Educational Communication (CEC). A number of complaints have been sent by CEC employees to UGC, HRD ministry, PMO and CVC against its director and the matter is set to go to court.
18. An MLA of the Aam Aadmi Party on Tuesday hacked a prototype of the electronic voting machine during a special session of the Delhi assembly, making a case for having voter verifiable paper audit trail in future. However, the Election Commission slammed the AAP demonstration saying it was possible for anyone to make any electronic gadget that looks-like its EVMs to demonstrate `tampering' but that will not influence the intelligent electorate or vilify EVMs the EC uses. The AAP demonstration was given by MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj who said that he had worked as a computer engineer for nine years before joining the party. Bhardwaj rigged a mock poll on a machine similar to an EVM machine and claimed EVMs can be manipulated on the day of polling through use of secret digital codes that can be fed into EVMs by anyone while voting. AAP said the de monstration was to prove EVMs were not tamper proof and can be hacked. “EC had challenged us to rig its voting machines and we have accepted the challenge today,“ said deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia.
19. The rift within AAP widened further on Tuesday with former cabinet minister Kapil Mishra submitting three sets of complaints with Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) against party chief Arvind Kejriwal and other leaders. “The first is in connection with a`. 50-crore land deal of Arvind Kejriwal'' relative,“ Mishra said after filing the report. “The second is against the cash exchange of ` . 2 crore between Kejriwal and Satyendra Jain and the third against five AAP leaders, who misused funds for foreign trips,“ he said after meeting CBI officials on Tuesday morning. AAP leaders in connection with foreign trips include Sanjay Singh, Durgesh Pathak, Satyendra Jain, Ashish Khaitan and Raghav Chaddha. The CBI, which is already investigating AAP in seven different cases, said it will examine the complaints lodged by Mishra. “The complaints will be ex amined and verified,“ CBI spokesperson RK Gaur said.
20.A fast track court on Tuesday pronounced the death sentence for three prime accused in the sensational October 2009 gan grape and murder of a 28-year-old software engineer Nayana Phatak Pujari. Special Judge LL Yenkar, who on Monday convicted Yogesh Ashok Raut, Mahesh Balasaheb Thakur and VH Kadam for kidnap ping robbing, gangraping and then killing the victim, sentenced them to death after a hectic day full of argu ments between the prosecution and defence lawyers.
21. With the Punjab government launching a drive against the drug men ace, the UK today offered technical assistance to the state in the enforcement of drug control measures. Britain also evinced keen interest to scale up business engagement with the state. The issues came up for discussion at a meeting here between Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and British deputy HC Andrew Ayre who invited the CM to visit the UK to meet industrialists.
22. In what could be a shot in arm for India ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Sri Lanka later this week, Colombo has said that it will lease out oil tanks to India under the proposed deal to jointly operate a strategic oil facility in the country's eastern port of Trincomalee. Addressing a gathering in the central town of Welimada over the weekend, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe said the joint working group of the two countries will formulate investment plans for the integrated development of Trincomalee. At least 73 of the 99 storage tanks in Trincomalee are to be managed under a new equity arrangement be For mer President Mahinda Rajapaksa had opposed the oil-related deal, and has now accused the Lankan government of selling state assets. Modi is scheduled to visit Sri Lanka on May 11-12 to take part in the UN `Vesak Day' which commemorates the birth, enlightenment, and death of Buddha. He will also tarvel to Kandy to open a hospital and address plantation Tamils there.
23. Two days after he was sworn-in, UP CM Yogi Adityanath had announced `1 lakh support, the highest by any state, to every pilgrim of Kailash Mansarovar Yatra (KMY). It turns out that his call was heard, as for the first time, the number of registered pilgrims for the yatra has doubled with UP having the maximum number of pilgrims. The yatra is set to begin on June 8. The number of registered yatris this year has reached 4,442, the highest ever, with UP topping the first time with 800 yatris, sources in the government told ET. Last year, 950 of the registered 2,604 persons were able to undertake the pilgrimage. The increase in the number of pilgrims was because of a collective effort various states and the efforts of the ministry of external affairs over the last one year, said BJP leader and former Rajya Sabha member Tarun Vijay who is also the President of Kailash Mansarovar Yatri Sangh, who had started a campaign a year ago for the same purpose. Haryana, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu too have announced special kits and grants for the yatra.
24. The government must formulate a policy that will allow pilgrims to visit Kailash Mansarover without endangering the area. Located in the fragile Himalayan eco-system, climate change has altered the landscape, posing a threat to its continued existence, besides many species of fauna and flora, and the region's diverse agro-biodiversity. The government in consultation with experts must devise a science and evidence-based plan that will set a limit on the number of pilgrims in the region at any given time in a manner that their needs and safety are met while ensuring the ecological integrity of the Kailash-Mansarover landscape.
25. Largely unnoticed months after its soft launch, the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry's online course portal `Swayam', is set to get a legup from India's chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian. He will conduct a 40-hour course on economy , focussing on major economic trends, possibly even the demonetisation issue, which will subsequently be hosted online on Swayam.
26. The jury headed by the vice-president for bestowing the Dr Ambedkar National Award for Social Understanding and Upliftment of Weaker Sections has been unable to find a deserving candidate for 2013. Instituted in 1992 as part of Babasaheb's birth centenary celebrations, the award was to be conferred on a person or organisation working for socio-economic and educational upliftment of weaker sections but was last given in 1998. Wrapping up Dr Ambedkar's 125thbirth anniversary celebrations, the Centre decided to revive the award. The seven-member jury , however, had difficulty finding deserving candidates from the panel of names put forward by the scrutiny and grading committee (SGC) of the social justice and empowerment ministry . While the jury decided to confer the award for 2011 to economist SK Thorat, it could not find a deserving candidate for 2012 or 2013.
27. Freshly elected to the Lok Sabha from Srinagar, National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah crisscrossed the government-opposition divide in Delhi on Tuesday by pitching for a `political solution' to the simmering Jammu and Kashmir problem. He reminded Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Opposition that the autonomy resolution adopted by the J&K legislative assembly was pending, with no follow up action by the Centre since 2000. During his meeting, Abdullah is learnt to have briefed the PM on the seriousness of the situation in the Valley , how it has affected all sections of society and economy including tourism and underlined the need to `politically address' the situation by initiating dialogue with all stakeholders including youth. Abdullah later met CPM leader Sitaram Yechury and extended support to Opposition's efforts to project an `alternative approach' in defusing the simmering tension in J&K.
28. Karnataka is dealing cautiously with a communication with from the union water resources ministry that has suggested the setting up of a Group of Experts to deal with the interstate water dispute on Cauvery that would suggest, among others, a way for equitable distribution in a distress year. Karnataka representatives admit that with severe drought ravaging both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, the Centre has tried to be proactive through this move and prevent a rerun of the slugfest between the two states through the Supreme Court for water that characterised 2016. “We also don't want that to happen, but we are not sure that this Group of Experts is the right solution for it,“ Karnataka's water resources minister M B Patil told.
29. The Reserve Bank of India's US dollar purchases in the forward market hit a threeyear high in March as the central bank added to forex reserves to arrest the rupee's sharp rise. Nevertheless, the domestic currency rose to multi-month highs. The RBI bought $8 billion in the forward market in March as its outstanding net forward purchases rose to $10.8 billion from $2.8 billion in February, according to data published in the central bank's monthly bulletin released on Tuesday .This is the highest forward purchase by the central bank since June 2014. In addition, the central bank bought a net of $3.5 billion from the spot dollar market as gross purchases were $5 billion and gross sales were $1.5 billion.
30. Indonesia has the largest economy in Southeast Asia, but you can't tell from its financial markets, a fraction the size of its neighbours. The nation's regulators have tried to change that. The rupiah's daily trading volume has climbed more than 40% in four years. There's also greater activity in hedging and the central bank has allowed a wider scope of derivatives.The central bank's goal is to grow Indonesia's foreign-exchange market to the equivalent of about 3% of the value of the country's trade by 2020. Indonesia's current ratio is 1.8%. Priorities now include tightening rules on trader conduct, rolling out more complex instruments, and setting up a clearinghouse and electronic trading platform for currency and money market transactions.
31. Currency markets swung back to trading on the diverging outlooks for growth and tighter monetary policy on Tuesday, lifting the dollar and euro against the yen.The dollar and the euro gained around a third of a percent to 113.67 yen and 124.125 yen respectively.
32. The government's ordinance on bad loans is credit posi tive, but does not address the structural issues in the banking sector, Moody's said. Last week, the government through an ordinance provided the RBI with greater powers to intervene in the resolution of NPLs.
33. Benchmark TOCOM rubber futures hit their weakest in nearly three weeks on Tuesday, under pressure from concerns about a global supply glut. The Tokyo Commodity Exchange rubber contract for October delivery had risen 0.2 yen to 206.8 yen per kg by 0025 GMT.
34. Oil prices rose on Tuesday, but faced headwinds from concern over the rise in US crude output that has shaken investors' faith in the ability of Opec to rebalance the market. Brent crude futures were up 20 cents at $49.54 per barrel at 0852 GMT, above a session low of $49.18.
35. Gold prices inched up, but remained near seven-week lows hit in the previous session as safe-haven demand ebbed in the wake of France's election. Spot gold was up 0.2% at $1,228.20 per ounce at 0320 GMT, after touching a seven-week low of $1,224.86 the day before.
36. A slump in prices of crucial food items over the past month has provided some relief to households even as food price inflation in the CPI basket has declined steadily over the year through March. Traders and economists reckon that prices are likely to moderate further. While tomato prices have plunged by 31% at the retail level over the past month, those of spices at the wholesale level have slumped 6-27% between April and now.
37. The government has set up a high-level task force to compute timely data on employment situation in the country, a move that will help it frame policies and take steps to create jobs.
38. The Supreme Court said on Tuesday it is likely to announce a modification order in the second week of July on the plea by hotels and clubs seeking changes in its order banning sale of liquor within 500 meters of national and state highways. Hoteliers and club owners had filed review petitions in the top court seeking modifications and exemption to the March 31 order, which has forced several establishments across the country to stop serving alcohol to guests. The ban was aimed at preventing road accidents due to drunken driving. The court heard the review peti tions from Chennai-based hotels and club associations. States like Arunachal Pradesh had also petitioned the apex court seeking exemptions. It had exempted Sikkim and Meghalaya from the ban in view of their topography and terrain.
39. The process to enroll taxpayers on the Goods and Ser vices Tax Network (GSTN) portal, which was suspended on April 30, will start again in a few weeks, the revenue department said on Tuesday. More than 60 lakh taxpayers enrolled on the GST portal between November 8, 2016 and April 30, 2017.The enrolment process closed with effect from May 1and the data of all those signed the enrolment form would be migrated to the new system. The portal said enrollment window will reopen at a later date for taxpayers who could not enrol themselves as well as for those who enrolled but did not sign the enrolment form.
40. The Netherlands could serve as an “excellent gateway“ to the European market for Indian businesses and the two nations have lots to offer each other, Dutch foreign minister Bert Koenders said at an event here on Tuesday. Observing that the Netherlands does not want protectionism in the world, Koenders pointed out that 80% of India-European Union trade is with countries on the European mainland.
41. State-run insurers need not pare their investments in diversified tobacco companies like ITC, officials have said, arguing that their primary aim is to maximise returns on policyholders' money. Last month, seven persons including two members of the Tata Trusts, had filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Bombay High Court against the government, insurance sector regulator IRDAI, and five state-run insurance companies for investing in tobacco companies, including ITC and VST Industries. The petition said state-run insurers should be directed to divest their shareholding in tobacco companies as staying invested in them thwarts the government's effort to discourage use of tobacco. State-run Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), the country's largest institutional investor, holds 16.29% stake in ITC. The government, through special undertaking of Unit Trust of India (SUUTI), holds 9.10% stake in the firm. State-run general insurers together hold about 5% stake in the company.
42.The Gujarat government has written to the Centre saying the state faces an electricity crisis as Adani Power has told the state that running its imported coal-based power project at Mundra is increasingly becoming unviable. Last month, Supreme Court denied compensation to Adani Power's Mundra power plant for the rise in the price of coal that it imported from Indonesia. Two officials, including one from the finance ministry, confirmed that Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani has written a letter saying that if the issue is not resolved at the earliest, it may lead to an electricity crisis in the state.
43. India's foodgrain production is forecast to hit a record in the crop year ending June 2017, with good monsoon rains last year boosting the estimated output of wheat, rice, coarse cereals, and pulses. The agriculture ministry's third advance estimates of major crops pegged the production at 273.38 million tonnes (MT), 0.51% higher than the second advance estimate.This year's output betters the re cord production of 2013-14 by 3.15%. The first advance estimate was issued in September 2016, followed by the second in February.The final assessment is released in August. As per the second advance estimate for 2016-17, total foodgrain production was pegged at 271.98 MT.
44. A strong earthquake hit southern Japan on Tuesday, though there was no tsunami warning nor immediate reports of damage or injuries. The magnitude 6.0 quake hit at a depth of 10 kilometres in waters off the island of Miyako in the southern Okinawan chain, according to the US Geological Survey. Japan's Meteorological Agency warned of small changes in sea levels but no tsunami. Miyako, with a population of about 55,000, sits some 1,840 km southwest of Tokyo and about 380 km east of Taipei.Japan sits at the junction of four tectonic plates and experiences a number of relatively violent quakes every year, though damage is often slight thanks to rigorous building codes and broad earthquake awareness.But a massive undersea quake on March 11, 2011 sent a tsunami barrelling into Japan's northeast coast.
45. Jakarta's Christian governor was jailed for two years on Tuesday after being found guilty of blasphemy, in a shock decision that has stoked concerns over rising religious intolerance in the world's most populous Muslimmajority nation. Islamic hardliners outside the Jakarta court cheered and shouted “God is greatest!“ as news came through that Basuki Tjahaja Purnama was to be sent to prison, a surprisingly harsh punishment after prosecutors recommended only probation. Purnama, Jakarta's first non-Muslim governor for half a century, looked calm when the verdict was announced and said he would appeal, as some of his supporters in court burst into tears. The governor was taken to a Jakarta prison after the verdict but it was unclear whether he would remain in jail or be released later to allow him to file his appeal.
46. An explosion at a fireworks warehouse in Mexico has killed at least 14 people and wounded 22, an official said on Tuesday. The blast occurred Monday night in a rural area of central Puebla state, Diodoro Carrasco, a senior official in the state government, told radio station Cinco Radio. News reports said 11 of the fatalities were minors but the government did not immediately confirm this. The explosion came during preparations for a religious festival on May 15, the Puebla state government said.
47. Former US attorney general Sally Yates had alerted White House that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn could be `essentially blackmailed by the Russians' Less than a week into the Trump administration, Sally Q Yates, the acting attorney general, hurried to the White House with an urgent concern. The president's national security adviser, she said, had lied to the vice-president about his Russian contacts and was vulnerable to blackmail by Moscow.
48. US President Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated Indian-American Neil Chatterjee to a key administration position in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an agency charged with overseeing America's power grid and de ciding on multibillion-dollar energy projects. The While House said Trump intends to nominate Neil Chatterjee, 40, of Kentucky as a Member of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the term expiring June 30, 2021.
49. The White House has post poned a Tuesday meeting to discuss whether the United States should with draw from the landmark international cli mate deal struck in Paris under the Obama administration. The White House said late Monday that the meeting would be rescheduled. This is the second time a meeting of top aides on the issue has been delayed. Donald Trump pledged during the presidential campaign to renegotiate the accord, but he has wavered on the issue since winning the presidency.
50. US President Donald Trump insisted there is no evidence he colluded with Russia after a Senate hearing that highlighted warnings that his former national security advisor was vulnerable to Russian blackmail.
51. An American hedge fund manager launched legal action against Akzo Nobel on Tuesday to try and oust its head after the world's top paintmaker repeatedly rejected a takeover bid by US rival PPG. Amsterdam-based Akzo Nobel on Monday snubbed a third offer from PPG, saying it “undervalues“ the company.But according to shareholder Elliott Advisors, rejecting the offer -which would have valued the company at $27 billion -was “a flagrant breach“ of Akzo Nobel's duties and “an arrogant dismissal of recognised principles of proper corporate governance“. In a statement, the New York headquartered fund manager said it had filed a petition with the Dutch Enterprise Chamber, asking for an extraordinary meeting to be held where shareholders could vote on whether to dismiss board chairman, Antony Burgmans.
52. Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday ruled out any participation on German soil in a potential Turkish referendum on bringing back the death penalty. Immediately after winning a close vote last month that boosted his powers, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan mooted a second referendum on reinstating capital pu nishment, which wou ld mean an end to t he c ou nt r y 's EU membership prospects. Merkel said Berlin would not make it possible for the 1.4 million Turkish voters living in Germany to participate if the referendum were to be held. “We will not give permission for something we are not obligated to do, and whose content we absolutely reject, for example, the death penalty,“ Merkel said.
53. F rench presidentelect Emmanuel Macron won an offer of support from Socialist expri me mi nister Manuel Va l ls on Tuesday as he and his aides worke d on st r ateg y a he ad of pa rlia ment a r y elections t hat will be crucial to his ambitious reform plans. The 39-year-old centrist's emphatic election victory over the anti-European Union Marine Le Pen of the National Front on Sunday brought relief to France's EU allies and financial markets.
54. In Vivo IPL 2017 Kings XI Punjab won against Kolkata Knight Riders.
55. Eugenie Bouchard pulled off her first win over Maria Sharapova with a 7-5, 2-6, 6-4 triumph in the Madrid Open on Monday in a thrilling contest full of tension after the Canadian had called the Russian a cheater following her doping ban.
56. As outrage grew over a student in Kerala being asked to remove her bra at an NEET test centre, the CBSE on Tuesday suspended four teachers for the “overzealous act“ and also ordered the principal to apologise to the student.
57. Air India is planning a tri weekly non-stop flight from Delhi to Los Angeles from September following the success of its San Francisco non-stop service. The airline will also start flights to Washington, Dallas, Stockholm and Tel Aviv.
58. Concerned over rising vacancies in the judiciary the Supreme Court has in , principle decided to introduce a common test for selection of judges and sought suggestions from states and Union Territories on mode of implementing it.
59. A two-judge Supreme Co urt bench has dismissed a 2013 special leave petition against an HC order in an encroachment case in Belapur filed by former NCP minister Ganesh Naik's nephew Santosh Tandel.
60. Saharanpur in UP witnes sed large-scale violence on Tuesday , the third time in 20 days, when Dalit protesters went on the rampage and attacked police after they tried to disperse a crowd from a city park.
61. Referring to the practice of triple talaq, the Allahabad high court has observed that under the Muslim personal law, marriage is a contract which cannot be rescinded unilaterally . The HC made this observation recently while dismissing a petition by Aaqil Jamil, whose wife had filed a criminal complaint against him alleging that he had tortured her for dowry and when his demands were not met, he gave her triple talaq. The order was uploaded on the HC's website on Tuesday, two days before the Supreme Court begins hearing a clutch of petitions challenging the validity of triple talaq.
62. It is that time of the year when parents are reminded about the cost of a career, and they don't mind spending any amount for their children's future. But this year, medical college admissions, often termed recession-resistant, are a different story . Some institutes are finding it difficult to fill certain categories of post-graduate seats. The most extreme example is of Kashibai Navale Medical College, Pune. Thanks to an astronomical annual fee of Rs 96.6 lakh, all to be paid by cheque, the college has received just 10 students for its 31 management quota seats--a first for the institute, which usually sees a flood of candidates every year. Medical education experts say this is among the highest tuition fees across the country and perhaps the world. With the state's 50% quota undercutting their economics, medical colleges have been forced to hike fees for their management quota seats.Kashibai Navale Medical College, Pune is charging a staggering annual fee of Rs 96.6 lakh for its post-graduate seats. Last year, the college charged Rs 7.9 lakh uniformly for all seats, including for the NRI quota. This year, it has asked the Fee Regulation Authority to allow it to charge Rs 15 lakh under the merit, or state, quota. A decision is yet to be taken. The massive hike in tuition fee for the management (35%) and NRI (15%) quotas in private and deemed universities is because the introduction of the state quota has resulted in the subsidizing of medical education for these merit-based students. So, the fee hike is a cross-subsidy .
63. Administrative wrangling, official apathy, an absent customs commissioner and general ignorance about shooting led to over 15 international Indian shooters being held up for almost 13 hours at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport on Tuesday . Olympic shooters Gurpreet Singh and Kynan Chenai, along with some 15 other colleagues, landed in the capital early in the morning after participating in the Plzen Shooting Grand Prix (in Czech Republic) and shotgun World Cup in Cyprus respectively . They found themselves in a fix as the customs department did not clear their guns till 4.50pm.
64. Business rivalry led to an interior decorator being killed in Thakurli on Tuesday , reports Pradeep Gupta. Kishor Chaudhari was shot 17 times and his business partner grievously wounded in the firing over a Rs 6.5 lakh contract. Police sources said the main accused is Dilip Bhoir, who claimed to have a monopoly in interior decoration and maintenance work in the Balaji Nagar locality.
65. Two Jogeshwari youths drowned in a river in Ratnagiri while they were out swimming during a break from their wedding photography assignment. The deceased were identified as Bantu Zala (19) and Mukesh Makwana (21). Two other youths with them were rescued. “Three of them went deep into the river,“ a police officer said. “An auto driver and another youth rushed to help, but two died.“
66. In a huge relief for India, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has stayed the death sentence awarded to Kulbhushan Jadhav by a Pakistan military court. This was after India instituted proceedings against Pakistan at the court accusing Islamabad of “egregious violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations“ in the detention and trial of Jadhav.
67. The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down the petition of a 35-year-old destitute HIV positive woman, facing complications in her 26-week pregnancy arising from a sexual assault, to abort as a medical report prepared by AIIMS doctors said her life might be in danger if medical termination of the fetus was done at such an advance stage. A bench of Justices Dipak Misra, A M Khanwilkar and M M Shantanagoudar, however, directed Bihar government to provide all medical facilities to the survivor at Patna and also ordered the state to grant compensation of Rs three lakh to her under its scheme for rape survivors. It asked the Centre to make all arrangements to shift the woman to Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Science at Patna where she would be treated.
68. About 1.5km of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) will be deforested to widen the Dahisar-Surat section of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad National Highway 8. Incidentally , this section was also part of the eco-sensitive zone around SGNP that was recently notified by the Union forests ministry . The highway project is am ong several road and railway infrastructure projects that have been proposed through the world's most unique urban forest. The others include the Mumbai-Delhi freight corridor, an elevated road connecting Mumbai and Thane, an underground tunnel also linking Mumbai to Thane and a ropeway . The proposal was sent to the National Wildlife Board directly by the state government.The board has now directed the government to route it through the state wildlife board. The chief minister is the head of the board. Forest officials said it is only a matter of procedure and the deforestation of the 1.5km stretch will be approved.
69. Customs officials at the city airport nabbed a group of 21 people, including a woman, who arrived on a flight from Saudi Arabia on Monday , for smuggling 112 pieces of gold weighing 5.7kg and worth Rs 1.7 crore. The officials intercepted the group and found gold concealed in water bottles, with the yellow metal either stuck to the inside of the caps or to the bottom of the bottles.
70. A sessions court on Tuesday convicted a 44-year-old man for the double murder of his wife and a colleague who attempted to save her, when he attacked her at their home over suspicions that she was having an affair with another of his co-workers in 2013. The wife, Seema Inchal's (30) suspected paramour Mitesh Ghonge (30), who was also present on the scene, survived with injuries and was the key witness in the trial against accused Shyam Inchal. The court will decide the quantum of sentence on Thursday . Inchal was found guilty of murder and voluntarily cau sing hurt. While the maximum sentence is death, the minimum is life imprisonment. Inchal, the murder victim Rajendra Rane (40) and eyewitness Ghonge were working in the marketing department of a Wadala-based club. The incident took place on January 7, 2013.
71. The Maharashtra Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has filed 34 cases against unlicensed manufacturers and suppliers of orthopedic implants in seven cities. “We raided 39 firms since February and found that 34 didn't have a licence to manufacture these implants. Moreover, they claimed they didn't know they had to get a licence to manufacture medical implants,“ said FDA commissioner Dr Harshdeep Kamble. The FDA raids have resulted in unlicensed implants worth Rs 7 crore being seized in this period, added Dr Kamble. Five firms in Mumbai alone had prohibited stocks worth Rs 48 lakh. A press release sent by the FDA showed that the maximum number of firms -nine -were busted in Pune, and implants worth over Rs 1 crore were seized.The highest value was seized from six firms in Konkan at Rs 2.6 crore. Raids were also carried out in Aurangabad (seven firms and Rs 1.89 crore of implants seized), Nashik (six firms and Rs 18 lakh of implants seized), Amravati (three firms and Rs 9 lakh of implants seized) and Nagpur (three firms and Rs 12 lakh of implants seized), said FDA officials. “These raids will continue, but now we have begun the legal action against some of the suppliers and manufacturers,“ said a senior FDA official.
72. The stalemate between the state government and the nine private medical colleges ended on Tuesday with the institutes yielding to the state's diktat. In line with that, the Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER) has decided not to hold the second round of post-graduate admissions and instead opt for a personalised counselling round in Mumbai. Students from across the state, in batches of 200, as per rank, would be asked to travel to the city. The DMER will present a list of seats on the screen and students can select, submit documents and pay fees right there, said DMER head Dr Pravin Shingare. “We will complete admissions to all quotas--me rit list, institution seats and NRI quota--here and complete the admission process.“ Students who completed their admission in the first round, which ended on Tuesday , and do not want an upgrade, could inform the DMER that they did not want to participate in the admission process further. Moreover, seats under the physically challenged quota that have not been taken up yet would also be a part of the personalized counselling round. The nine colleges, which have 225 seats, will also be a part of the personal counselling round, thus taking the total pool of seats up to 2,800 for 6,500 aspirants.
73. Civic health officials have called a meeting to brief private doctors about H1N1 infection even as the city reported five more cases in the last 10 days. Three cases have been reported in the last two days reported in the last two days alone. While two members of a family have been admitted in a south Mumbai hospital, another patient is in a private hospital. “These are random cases and shouldn't be a cause for panic in the city,“ said BMC executive health officer Dr Padmaja Keskar. The rest of Maharashtra, meanwhile, seems to be reeling under an H1N1 epidemic with 900 cases and 178 deaths since January . An 18-month-old child was the city's first H1N1 casualty this year, with 21 cases reported until April end. “Following this death, the health minister wanted BMC to call private doctors for a briefing on preparations to be taken for H1N1 as well as other monsoon ailments,“ said a civic official.
74. A controversy broke out over a circular issued to civic hospital doctors about providing “priority“ treatment to corporators and patients recommended by them. The circular, signed by KEM Hospital dean Dr Avinash Supe, who is also head of medical education in BMC's hospitals, was addressed to doctors, nurses, paramedical and administrative staff and workers in the BMC healthcare pyramid. It exhorts the staff to speak “decently“ to all public representatives, including MPs, MLAs and corporators. More importantly , it also asks them to treat the representatives as well as their patients on a priority basis. It is dated April 29.
75.his is the question the state finance and planning department is considering before approving an accident insurance scheme that promises treatment of up to Rs 30,000 for three days' hospital stay.
The fact that Maharashtra has among the highest number of road accidents in the country has prompted the government to draw up the scheme.The objective is to cover any road accident victim--whether they are from the state or visitors from other states or even countries. Atotal of 1.9 lakh road accidents took place in Maharash tra over the past three years, killing 38,209 people and injuring 1.2 lakh. Called `Balasaheb Thackeray Accident Insurance Scheme', it was mooted by health minister Dr Deepak Sawant last year but failed to get cabinet nod as it was stuck in the finance and planning department headed by BJP minister Sudhir Mungantiwar.
76. A 20-year-old Mumbra woman was arrested for allegedly strangling her husband Mehndi Sayyed (26). The accused, Zahra, a housewife, has been granted police custody till May 15. Sayyed was found dead at his Kausa house on Monday .
77. Early on Monday morning, a team of customs officials at the CSIA airport were waiting anxiously for the flight from Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) to land. If all went well, they were primed for one of their best operations to unearth a gold smuggling racket. Around 8am, when passengers began walking towards the arrival hall, the officials were still unsure what to expect. But when they noticed 20 male passengers, all dressed in white kurtas, pyjamas and skull caps, accompanied by a woman in a black burqa, they heaved a sigh of relief. Their `information' was spot on. The events that followed culminated in the seizure of 112 pieces of gold weighing 5.7kg and worth Rs 1.7 crore.The 21 flyers had concealed gold in water bottles, with the yellow metal either stuck to the inside of the caps or to the bottom of the bottles.
78. Monsoon will be no different this year. With work on around 1,000 roads dragging at snail's pace, Mumbai seems all set for another round of harrowing monsoon travel. The works include repairs, resurfacing, milling and carpentry . Citizens are complaining about several roads having been dug up and at most places, they claim, work is moving very slowly . This year, the BMC has taken up two kinds of repairs: The usual `project works' --roads are fixed from base layer--and resurfacing--only top layer is scrapped and relaid. Resurfacing work is being carried out on roads that report repeated pothole complaints. After the rains retreated in October 2016, the BMC took up 1,004 roads for repairs. Out of these, the BMC again took up 558 under the project works category and has completed repairs on 114, said civic officials.The BMC aims to fix 369 roads under this category , but the task seems uphill as there is a shortage of raw materials. Western suburbs, at 277, has the most number of roads under repairs. Bandra corporator Asif Zakaria said he has got complaints about contractors delaying work.
79. Last Friday at 10.30 am, the city police control room was informed by a caller that an emotionally distraught woman had climbed to the 18th floor of an under-construction building and was threatening to jump. A team reached the spot in minutes, but the task of talking the woman out of it still remained unattended for a few hours. Finally, inspector Shalini Sharma who specialises in Hostage Negotiation and Crisis Management (HNCM) got there at 12.30 pm and spent the next two hours counselling the victim before she agreed to retrace her steps. It was a successful mission, but the response time two hours exposed concerns. Numbers are clearly running low in the HNCM team. And given the prevalence of hostage crises suicide attempts, police is in dire need of reinforcements.
80. Two Mumbai youths drowned in a river in Ratnagiri while bathing in it earlier this week during a break from their wedding photography assignment. The deceased were identified as Bantu Zala (19) and Mukesh Makwana (21) from Janata Colony in Jogeswari (E). Two other youths with them were rescued from the river, Muchkundi, in Kurle village of Lanja taluka. The survivors were Randhir Ray (19), also from Jogeshwari, and Alpesh Parmar (21) from Bhayandar. They said none of them could swim. Havaldar S S Talekar said the four youths arrived on Sunday . “Three of them went deep into the river. An auto driver and a youth rushed to help, but two died,“ he said.
81. The Supreme Court on Tu esday complimented the Haji Ali Dargah trust for removing a major portion of encroachments and asked the BMC to finalise a beautification plan for the shrin
82. The private luxury bus involved in Sunday's accident on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway that left five persons dead was illegally parked in the fast lane, said the Highway Safety Patrol officials.
The vehicle should have been plying on the left lane and stopped only on the road shoulder. The extreme right lane is meant for small vehicles only .e by June 30.
83. All slum redevelopment projects must register with the Real Estate Regulatory Authority by July 31. In a letter to the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA), interim chairman Gautam Chatterjee on Monday said it is mandatory for all slum projects to be registered with RERA. To promote slum redevelopment and to pay for the cost of free housing for slum dwellers, the government offers the land on which a slum is settled for only 25% of the ready reckoner rate as premium. It also offers incentive FSI to the developer who can then build the sale component and make a profit. Slum redevelopment projects in Mumbai are highly lucrative with profit margins varying from 40% to over 100%. Under the RERA Act, a developer cannot sell flats in a project unless it is registered with the authority within three months of the Act coming into force. The RERA Act was implemented from May 1. There are 1,200 SRA projects in the pipeline.
84. Central Railway (CR) will soon make four stations cashless-compliant to popularise digital transactions among passengers. Four stations have been shortlisted: CST, Dadar, Thane and Kalyan. The deadline for the project to be completed is June-end.
85. The police probing a Rs 10-crore cheating case allegedly involving a bank manager, said they were scanning all documents that were used to create an account in a private sector bank at Cuffe Parade. “We have arrested of T M Kishore, manager of a public sector bank's Nashik branch, for connivance, but it is still not clear who opened the account in Mumbai using forged documents,“ said a police officer. The Tribal Development Corporation has an account with a Rs 10-crore fixed deposit in a Nashik bank, but unidentified fraudsters created an account with the nationalised bank's branch at Cuffe Parade bank with same name.Kishore allegedly connived with them to transfer Rs 10crore into the bogus account after the FD matured, the police said.
86. The municipal corporation's plan for a pedestrian pathway from Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) subway to MG Road junction on Hazarimal Somani Marg is in limbo owing to unavailability of land. As a result, the civic body might have to foreclose the road widening work because the period of contract for it ends on May 31. The chief engineer (roads) has written to the local ward office that improving widening of the road cannot be undertaken as the setback portion of the stretch has not been handed over yet.
87. Former encounter specialist and accused in the 2003 Sayyed Khwaja Yunus custodial death case Sachin Vaze was on Monday granted anticipatory bail in an alleged extortion case involving a Vasai doctor. The Palghar crime branch had moved a remand application before the Vasai sessions court naming Vaze as a wanted accused.
88.Delayed hearings by the Maharashtra State Commisison for Protection of Child Rights have upset parents who have filed complaints against schools over issues of fee hikes, corporal punishment etc. The commission last heard cases on January 20.
89. Two days before the Supreme Court begins hearing a clutch of petitions challenging the validity of triple talaq, halala marriages and polygamy , senior cleric Maulana Syed Shahabuddin Salafi Firdausi has denounced triple talaq and halala, calling them un-Islamic and instruments to oppress women. At a press conference on Tuesday activists of Indian Muslims for Secular Democracy (IMSD) hailed Maulana Firdausi's statements as a support to the petitioners who are asking for scrapping of talaq and halala. IMSD's convenor Javed Anand read out Maulana Firdausi's statement: “Instant divorce by uttering talaq thrice is amockery of Islam and an act of cruelty against the daughters of Islam. Halala is like dacoity on the dignity of Muslim women and an assault on their honour and self-esteem.“ Triple talaq is instant divorce while halala is a process where a divorced woman has to marry another man and consum mate the marriage if she wants to remarry her first husband.“This is nothing but prostitution in the name of Islam,“ protested Anand.
90. Two months after a 34-year-old man was arrested for allegedly raping his two stepdaughters, police are awaiting DNA reports from the forensic science lab. The two girls--aged 15 and 17--were pregnant and had to undergo abortions. The case came to light in March when the mother, along with the daughters, planned a outing. “The accused insisted that she leave behind one daughter. When the mother refused, he slit his wrist. He was rushed to hospital and given first aid,“ said Dilip Ugale, senior inspector at Kalachowkie police station.
When the police was called, the mother gave her statement, but the cops found the two girls were scared.“We spoke to them and the girl revealed that they were being raped by their stepfather. Their mother would go for work early in the morning and return by evening.The accused would rape the younger daughter in the morning and the older one in the afternoon. Both were pregnant,“ said the officer.
91. Mumbai is known to get waterlogged every time there is a heavy downpour in the monsoon, and the Shiv Sena-ruled Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has faced a lot of flak earlier for this. On Tuesday , Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray claimed that there will not be any waterlogging in the city during this year's monsoon. Thackeray , along with his son Aaditya and senior civic officials, including civic commissioner Ajoy Mehta, reviewed the desilting works at Mithi river, Vakola river, Irla nullah and Walbhat river in the city on Tuesday .
92. Candidates who took the Sunday's entrance exam have found that the Marathi version of the NEET (National eligibility cum entrance test) was different from the English one. Parents said they want a reexam as the question papers were markedly different. Parents said they were of the opinion that the exam question papers ought to be a translated version of the English paper, but 85% of the questions in the Marathi version were different. The NEET was conducted in 10 languages.
Over 11 lakh MBBS and BDS aspirants on Sunday appeared for the NEET at over 1,900 centres across 103 cities.
93. A day after the BMC's civic markets and garden committee passed the proposal to increase the entry fee to Veermata Jijabai Bhosale Udyan and Zoo in Byculla, BJP has raised objections.The proposal will now be tabled before the standing committee for approval. On Tuesday , city BJP president Ashish Shelar took to Twitter and wrote to the municipal commissioner opposing the plan.
94. Acting on a complaint from an NGO, Hirali Foundation, the Shivaji Nagar police have filed a case against Shiv Sena leader Sahebrao Ahire for violating sound pollution norms during Shiv Mandir Art Festival recently held in Ambernath. While the three-day festival was organised by Shiv Sena MP Shreekant Shinde and all banners and invitations cards had his name, the case was registered against Ahire, who is the party's ward president and had taken police permission on his name. Sarita Khatchandani of Hirali Foundation said, “The event violated decimal limits of sound pollution and on May 5. The music went on till 10.30pm violating the court norms of 10 pm timing.“
95. The Central Railway (CR) has filed a case with the cyber crime cell about a fake post that went viral on social media with its claim of a derailment near Nagothane. CR divisional railway manager Ravinder Goyal said the post falsely claimed to show pictures of the Diva-Sawantwadi Express derailed in a tunnel near Nagothane. The post claimed that four coaches and the engine were derailed but no help was extended to the passengers.
96. Two peddlers, Jayesh Shah (30) and Deepak Gupta (35), were arrested from Kandivli when they were allegedly trying to sell drugs near Damu Nagar on Monday . Drugs including ketamine, ephedrine, methamphetamine and bromozyme, worth Rs 54 lakh were recovered from them. Shah and Gupta, both residents of Samata Nagar, have been booked under Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act and produced before a court. They have been sent to police custody till May 12. The drugs will be sent to the forensic science laboratory for chemical analysis.
97. A 30-year-old man, Nilesh Patel, died after five men beat him up and then one of them ran an ambulance over him. The five men have been arrested on charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. The ambulance belongs to the prime accused, Sachin Modik (23).
98. A gang of thieves broke into a mobile phone store along PanvelMatheran Road on Saturday and fled with cellphones worth Rs 1.15 lakh. The theft came to light on Sunday morning when the store owner found the shutter's central lock broken. Police said they have seen the CCTV footage, but the images were not clear.
99. A nil Kumar Gupta has taken charge as Western Railway's general manager.Prior to this new assignment, Gupta was serving as additional general manager, South Central Railway. Gupta belongs to the 1980 batch of Indian Railway Service of Electrical Engineers.
100. Amid reports that Congress politician Narayan Rane might join the BJP along with his MLA son Neetesh, leader of the Opposition in the assembly Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil on Tuesday asked him to reconsider his decision and lead the Sangharsha Yatra launched by their party for waiver of farmers' loans.
101.The Maharashtra Uni versity of Health Sci ences (MUHS) on Tu esday decided to form a committee to review some references about gender and caste system in the ancient ayurveda reference books.The academic council will decide on the members and the timeframe of the committee later.
This decision came after some activists raised objections over the contents of a textbook of MUHS's Bachelor of Ayurveda, Medicine and Surgery , referring to some techniques to conceive a male child.
102. As Dadar resident Goodicia Vaidya walked into the local municipal office with a cane basket that had a crow's nest, most employees stared in wonder. The nest was dropped on a pavement at Dadar TT circle by workers trimming trees.
103. A Thane sessions court on Tuesday granted interim anticipatory bail of Rs 50,000 each to actress Shilpa Shetty , her husband Raj Kundra and three others in a case of alleged cheating and breach of trust. Ravi Bhalotia, who is a vendor with Best Deal TV (BDTV), an online shopping platform, had alleged in an FIR (filed on April 26) before Kongaon police station in Bhiwandi that BDTV , has duped him of Rs 24 lakh. He alleged that though he had delivered the products (bedsheets), he was yet to receive payment.
104. There will be an elephant in the room when `Gajab Kahani' is staged at G5A Foundation from next week. `Gajab Kahani' is the second of the seven plays being staged at this season's Aadyam, Aditya Birla Group's theatre initiative in association with The Times of India. Set in 1551, `Gajab Kahani' is based on the novel `The Elephant Journey' by Portuguese Nobel laureate late José de Sousa Saramago. It trails the journey of an elephant and his mahout from India to Europe.
105. Frowning on the BMC for changing the reservation of a plot meant for a court building at Kannamwar Nagar in Vikhroli, to a multipurpose community centre, the Bombay HC directed the state to resolve the issue within a month. If the government is unable to do so, it will have to provide an alternative plot of the same size as the one in Vikhroli, the court said. The direction came on a PIL by Shivshankar Joshi on the dilapidated condition of the Vikhroli magistrate court. His petition said the building is unfit to house courts as it is a commercial complex with several shops, including flour mills.
106. Senior clerics and community leaders have appealed for a quiet, peaceful Shab-e-Baraat or Night of Salvation on May 11. Shab-e-Baraat, a fortnight ahead of Ramzan, is believed to be a blessed night that should be spent in prayers. Unfortunately , many youths turn it into a night of revelry and nuisance.
107. Gujarat deputy chief minister Nitin Patel denied on Tuesday reports that his son Jaimin Patel was stop ped from board ing a Qatar Air ways flight to Greece at Sar dar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport on Monday because he was “highly inebriated“. The reports have triggered a political row as Gujarat is a dry state where liquor consumption is a punishable offence unless you have a licensed permit, issued subject to certain conditions.
108. In the wake of restrictions on some US-based voluntary organisations for violation of rules, the US has suggested that India should ensure “consistent and transparent“ application of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act as part of its recommendations at the review of India's rights record. India received 250 recommendations from different countries after the universal period review of India's human rights record during the May 4 meeting in Geneva at the UN Human Rights Council.
109.Concerned at the growing unrest in the Kashmir valley , National Conference leader and for mer Jammu and Kashmir CM Farooq Abdullah met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday to apprise him of the ground situation and urged him to promptly address the issue with a political approach.
“Kashmiris are not Pakistanis... Kashmiris have their own issues that need to addressed by the Centre and they do not want to go with Pakistan,“ Abdullah is learnt to have told the PM during the meeting that lasted about 45 minutes. The former Union minister said it couldn't be seen merely as a law and order issue.
110. Congress president Sonia Gandhi was admitted to Sir Ganga Ram hospital on Sun day following a bout of food poi soning, Dr D S Rana, chair man, board of management of the hospital, said in a statement on Tuesday night.
“She is well now and will be discharged soon,“ Rana said.Gandhi underwent surgery at the same hospital last year after she dislocated a shoulder during a Varanasi rally.
111. Two love-struck youths, whose girlfriends married elsewhere on the same day , hanged themselves from a single rope in Baloda Bazaar on Monday evening.
According to police, 18year-old Ajay Kanwar and 19year-old Murid Sahu of Kasdol region were found hanging from a mango tree, with nooses tied from the same rope. They were best friends and were shattered by what they saw as betrayal by their girlfriends. The girls they loved got married on Sunday. Ajay and Murid were last seen at another wedding on Monday evening. They left together but did not reach home. The next morning, villagers found their bodies hanging. Although no suicide note was recovered, the duo's friends told police that they were depressed because of their girlfriends' wedding.The bodies were later sent for an autopsy.
112. As foreign minister Sushma Swaraj held talks with her Dutch counterpart Bert Koenders on Tuesday , the Netherlands came out in support of India's bid for a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council. Talking to journalists, Koenders said India would be a “prime candidate“ for permanent membership if the UNSC were to be expanded.Swaraj also thanked Koenders for his country's support to India's Nuclear Suppliers Group membership bid.
113. More than 100 turtles of an endangered species were found dead in a pond at Chaddamipur village, nearly 80 km from Agra city . The turtles,identified as Indian flapshells,are protected under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 (Schedule II). Forest rangers and a team of district forest officers rushed to the spot to pull out the dead turtles from the pond. According to the officials, the turtles died due to continuous dumping of garbage in the pond. The Indian flapshell is a relatively small softshell reptile with a carapace length of up to 350 mm. These turtles prefer to live in shallow waters rather than rivers. They can adapt to a variety of aquatic habitats like marshes, ponds, lakes, rice fields, gutters, and even canals in metropolitan areas.
114.From a humble Dalit advocate, doubling up as a political party's booth agent in Tamil Nadu in 2002, to being among a chosen few appointed to a high constitutional post in 2009 and then pushing the self-destruct button to end up in jail in 2017. This is Justice Chinnaswamy Swaminathan Karnan's unenviable roller-coaster 15-year journey and could be the script for a Bollywood film. Described by his ex-colleagues in Madras HC as a loner who gave vent to his persecution mentality , Justice Karnan resorted to wild allegations against judges and successive chief justices of Madras HC almost immediately after he took oath as a judge in March 2009.
He wrote regularly to the President, CJI and the chairperson of SC Commission, accusing other judges of discriminatory behaviour. Nearly two years ago, he threatened contempt proceedings against then Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, forcing Madras HC to rush to the SC for remedy .
115. The National Socialist Council of Nagaland, Isak-Muivah (NSCN-IM), after 37 years of armed struggle and 20 years of negotiations, has finally settled for `co-existing together with shared sovereignty' -a new experiment that a federal India with strong unitary features will embark on with the signing of a peace agreement soon.
116. Nagaland chief minister and Naga People's Front (NPF) supremo Shurhozelie Liezietsu paid a courtesy call to his Manipuri counterpart Nongthombam Biren Singh on Tuesday , and called for peaceful co-existence, putting behind the protracted strained relations between the two neighbouring states. This is the first time that a Nagaland chief minister has come to Imphal to discuss bilateral issues. Shurhozelie's NPF is a coalition partner in the Biren Singh-led government in Manipur. Stating that peaceful coexistence among different ethnic groups would bring about development in the region, Liezietsu underscored the need to live together as good neighbours, according to tradition that has existed since time immemorial. He also said that the Meiteis should play a leading role in fostering peace and friendship among different ethnic communities in the region.
117. The income tax department has issued a show cause notice to AAP and its chief Arvind Kejriwal for alleged falsification of account books and “wilful attempt“ to evade tax on donations received by the party . The I-T department has sought the party's reply for not filing a “true and correct“ contribution report for donations received for 2014-15. An I-T investigation found that the party did not disclose facts related to donations of over Rs 30 crore. The show cause notice asked why prosecution should not be initiated against the party for falsification of records. It sought the party's reply by the first half of this month.The notice, while acknowledging that AAP had accepted that there were “certain errors“ in its first report filed in this regard, added that this admission by the party was itself an evidence that its audit report was fabricated initially but was corrected after the tax department began investigations.
118. Following protests from Pakistan, the Chinese embassy in New Delhi edited out a portion of a recent speech delivered by Chinese ambassador to India Luo Zhaohui about renaming the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to accommodate Indian concerns. The changes were made in the transcript of the speech posted on the Chinese embassy website.
119. India has again emerged as one of the top ODA (official development assistance) donors to Nepal, clawing its way back to the list of top 5 bilateral development partners of the country .India displaced China which was ranked fourth last year as a development partner in terms of ODA disbursement to Nepal. Nepal finance ministry's latest Development Cooperation Report on FY 2015-16 put India at the fifth position behind the US, the UK, Japan and Switzerland in the list of top ODA disbursers. In FY 2014-15, for the first time in five years, India's name had gone missing from the list of top five development partners of Nepal as its ODA disbursement had plummeted by over 50% that year. According to the latest report, India disbursed $35.76 million from July 16, 2015 to July 15, 2016 to claim its place among the top five bilateral development partners of Nepal. This is 3.33% of total ODA received by Nepal in the year. China in the same period accounted for 3.29% of the overall ODA to Nepal. In FY 2014-15, India had disbursed a little over $22 million. China that year disbursed $37.95 million to knock India out of the list of Nepal's top five development partners. China's ascendancy in the list last year, which came at the expense of India, caused a mini controversy here with MEA going all out to prove that the figure of $22 million (India's aid disbursement in FY 2014-15) was misleading.
120. At a time when it is using its consistent opposition to triple talaq to woo Muslim women, BJP has reached out to OBCs in the minority com munity saying the Modi government's `propoor' policies will help them and cautioning them against parties who treat them as mere “vote banks“. Building upon PM Modi's pitch to “ Pasmanda“ or the socially backward among Muslims, the party on Tuesday held a convention of OBC Muslims to claim that the government's policies have been inclusive and beneficial for all communities. “The poor Muslims have been unable to take advantage of the welfare schemes for minorities but Prime Minister Modi's `pro-poor' policies will uplift them,“ minority affairs minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told a rally attended mostly by backward Muslims from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Delhi.
121. Following complaints against quality of books published by CBSE as well as non-availability, the HRD ministry is likely to ask the Board to stop printing textbooks after holding a review meeting, sources said. A senior HRD ministry official said complaints had been received at the centralised public grievance redress and monitoring system regarding books by CBSE. “Organisations need to work as per mandate and a review is under way over publication of books by CBSE,“ said the official.
122. Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) said on Tuesday that it would sue Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the Supreme Court for receiving funds from alQaida chief Osama bin Laden in the 1980s to promote jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan.
123. A shocked Pakistan on Tuesday summoned Iranian ambassador to its foreign office to record a formal protest over the statement by the Iranian army chief threatening to hit terrorist safe havens inside Pakistan if Islamabad failed to stop militants from carrying out cross-border attacks. Relations between Islamabad and Tehran have been complex and full of mistrust since long. The two countries, however, had avoided aggressive posturing through public statements in the past. Hence, Pakistani officials were deeply shocked and disturbed, sources said, over the statement by Iranian military chief, Maj Gen Mohammad Baqeri, vowing his country would hit hi deouts of terrorists in Pakistan if the government does not confront militants who carry out crossborder attacks.
124. A Sikh man, who had sought asylum in the US citing religious persecution in India nearly two decades ago, has been detained by immigration authorities in California after losing his latest appeal over a deportation order. Gurmukh Singh, a 46-year-old taxi driver from Punjab who sneaked into the US without a visa through the border with Mexico in 1998, was taken into custody on Monday after failing to get a stay in his deportation case, amid a clampdown by the Trump administration against undocumented immigrants. A father of two who is married to a US citizen, Singh had applied for asylum in the US in 1999, citing religious persecution.
125. Left-leaning former human rights lawyer Moon Jae-in won South Korea's presidential election by a landslide on Tuesday , according to an exit poll, sweeping to power on a yearning for change after a tumultuous scandal. The ballot was called to choose a new president after Park Geun-hye was ousted and indicted for corruption. Voters were galvanised by anger over the bribery and abuse-of-power controversy that brought down Park, which ca talysed frustrations over jobs and slowing growth. They gave Moon, of the Democratic Party , who backs engagement with the North, 41.4% support, according to the joint survey by three TV stations. Conservative Hong Joonpyo -who dubs Moon a “proPyongyang leftist“ was far behind on 23.3%, with centrist Ahn Cheol-soo third on 21.8%.
126. Pakistan will send back an Indian woman, who said she was sexually abused after her forced marriage with a Pakistani citizen at gunpoint, once all legal requirements in the case are completed, a media report said on Tuesday . Citing sources, Geo TV reported that the Indian high commission has sent a copy of the woman's statement made before the magistrate and other relevant documents to the Pakistani foreign ministry .
127. Father Tom Uzhunnalil, an Indian Catholic priest, abducted by terrorists in strife-torn Yemen, has made a fresh video appeal for urgent help after getting a “poor response“ from authorities, say ing his health was deteriorating quickly and required hospitalisation. Father Tom, 58, who hails from Kerala, was abducted in March last year by a terror group. He had gone missing in Yemen after the Islamic State militant group attacked a care home run by Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity . Gunmen had stormed the refuge for the elderly in April last year. In the video carried by Aden Time news website, a fraillooking priest said, “I am Father Tom Uzhunnalil. My date of birth is August 18, 1958. I received the message of con cern that you sent me my dear family people. I am thankful to you. Thank you very much“. “They (abductors) are tre ating me well to the extent that they are able. My health con dition is deteriorating quick ly and I require hospitalisa tion as early as possible.
128. A grieving husband in the UK has revealed how he slept in the same room as his wife's body for six days after her death to challenge the people's attitudes towards dying. Wendy Davison, 50, died at home in Derby last month on April 21 after a 10-year battle with cervical cancer. Russell Davison, who has been left “heartbroken“, said he did not want her body to go to a mortuary and that he wanted to challenge attitudes towards dying. It is legal to keep a body at home and Derbyshire coroner's court confirmed that Wendy's doctor had reported her death, the BBC reported. Russell said, “I wanted us to take care of her ourselves at our family home.
129. Qantas Airways Ltd chief executive Alan Joyce proved he was no cream puff on Tuesday , keeping his cool after a man smeared a cream pie in his face during a business breakfast in Australia's west. Joyce, the head of Australia's flag carrier, was speaking at the event in Perth, when a man in a business suit walked onto the stage, reached around to rub the pie in his face, and calmly walked away , 7 News television showed. The unidentified man's motive was unclear but he was soon apprehended by security guards.
130. A Swiss court has upheld a 12-month suspended sentence for a man convicted of deliberately removing his condom during sex with an unconsenting partner, a practice known as “stealthing“ that is testing how legal systems can handle such cases. Swiss broadcaster SRF said the couple had met via dating platform Tinder and agreed to have sex at the woman's home. During intercourse the woman refused the man's request to change to unprotected sex, only to discover later he had in fact removed his condom. The appeals court ruled that the sentence was appropriate while changing the crime involved to defilement from rape, as a lower court had found.
131. Bill Clinton might have ho ped to spend this year back in the White House as America's “first gentleman,“ should his wife Hillary have won the 2016 election. Instead, the two-term Democratic president is moving into fiction, writing his first thriller about drama behind the scenes in the White House, his publishers said on Monday . Clinton is collaborating with bestselling US author James Patterson on `The President is Missing' which is to be published in June 2018 by Al fred A Knopf and Little, Brown and Company .
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