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Julia Belluz  27-01-2020 In late December, when China first announced the outbreak of a  mysterious pneumonia , officials in the country were quite clear on a few things. Most of the patients  had been exposed to a food market in Wuhan, the city that’s still the epicenter of the outbreak, according to  local health authorities . The  earliest case  had symptoms just two weeks earlier, on December 12. There was also “no clear evidence” of human-to-human transmission, meaning the virus wasn’t yet spreading from one person to another. That suggested people might have been getting sick directly from animals in the market. Together, the details — while concerning — were somewhat reassuring for global health experts: They suggested that this outbreak of a deadly new coronavirus began very recently and might not spread very far, and that the general population was not at risk of serious illness. Since last week, the case toll has exploded. By Monday, there were more than  

Manjeet Singh Negi     January 28, 2020 Army Vice Chief Lt Gen SK Saini on Tuesday said terrorist launchpads are being reoccupied and their camps are being reactivated across the Line of Control (LoC) in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). "The situation in Jammu and Kashmir on both LoC and the hinterland are under control. The launchpads have been reoccupied and terrorist camps are active. Saini said that ceasefire violations by the Pakistan Army have gone up last year but the Army was "fully geared up to meet challenges that come across". In the last few weeks, there have been reports about the heightened activity of terrorists in PoK backed by the Pakistan Army. Asked about his priorities as Vice Chief, he said, "Removing hollowness in terms of critical deficiencies of equipment, ammunition etc, capability development along the Northern borders." Hollowness in Army preparedness was first highlighted as few years ago when it was brought by the t

Kabir Agarwal  28-01-2020 New Delhi: Less than three in 10 farmers received the Rs 6,000 that was due to them in the first full year of the implementation of the Centre’s flagship PM Kisan scheme, according to government data obtained by The Wire through the Right to Information Act.  In the first full year of implementation of the PM Kisan scheme – between December 1, 2018 and November 30, 2019 – the Narendra Modi government has only been able to spend 41% of the amount that it ought to have spent, as only slightly more than 25% of farmers have received all three instalments under the scheme.  These conclusions come from data obtained by The Wire via the RTI Act as well as an analysis of data provided to parliament by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare.  The data also reveal that the pace of implementation of PM Kisan has slowed considerably since the Lok Sabha elections of 2019. Of the nine crore farmers registered under the scheme, more than half were

Pallavi Pengonda ,  Mobis Philipose  28 Jan 2020  InterGlobe Aviation  Ltd’s shares rose about 3% in early trading on Tuesday, after the company reported a 205% jump in pre-tax profit for the December quarter. InterGlobe runs IndiGo, India’s largest airline. But the company’s shares have since given up most of those gains since, and were trading 1.8% lower at the time of writing. That’s because the skies are looking a bit cloudy from a near-term perspective. In a post earnings conference call, Ronojoy Dutta, chief executive officer,  IndiGo , said, “As we move to the seasonally weak fourth quarter, we will find it difficult to produce year over year improvement in unit revenues because we will be comparing ourselves against a base period when Jet Airways capacity was beginning to decline."Besides, the company is facing some headwinds with regards to employee and maintenance costs. In any case, the huge jump in profits in Q3 came off an extremely low base, and growt

Press Trust of India     January 27, 2020   The Kempegowda International Airport, Bengaluru (KIAB or BLR Airport) welcomed 33.65 million passengers during the calendar year 2019, registering a 4.1 per cent growth, compared to previous years 32.33 million. While international passenger traffic witnessed double-digit growth of 14.0 per cent, an upswing from 4.27 million in CY 2018 to 4.87 million in CY 2019, domestic traffic grew by 2.6 per cent, from 28.05 million to 28.78 million. The year 2019 has been a turbulent year for Indian aviation, mostly impacted by the closure of a large airline and supply-side challenges caused by the grounding of some aircraft types, according to a BLR airport statement. These factors had a ripple effect as the ATMs at BLR Airport were down by 0.1 per cent as against the double-digit CAGR witnessed in the previous five years (CY14 to CY18). The total ATMs during 2019 was 235,058 as compared 235,190 in CY 2018. Notably, inte

Hemani Sheth       January 28, 2020  In recent developments regarding the hacking of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ phone, Facebook has placed the blame on Apple iOS for the data being leaked through the phone. In a recent interview with BBC, Facebook’s Vice President of Global Affairs & Communications, Nick Clegg alleged that it was a fault in the iOS and not Facebook-owned WhatsApp that was infected by the spyware. The Amazon CEO’s phone was allegedly affected by spyware through a 4.4 MB malicious video file sent via WhatsApp by the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, on May 1, 2018, according to reports by  The Guardian  and the  Financial Times . Clegg, in the BBC interview, claimed that it must have been the operating system that was affected when the video was opened and not WhatsApp that led to the hacking. Since WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, it cannot be hacked, he said in the interview. BBC also shared a video clip of the interview on its Twitt

G Balachandar       January 28, 2020     Reputed developers with healthy balance sheets sailed through 2019, while the smaller ones faced extreme financial constraints About five years ago, the managing director of a leading property firm in south India had said at a realty sector convention outside the country that future meetings of developers would take place in boardrooms, and not in ballrooms. He made the remarks after sensing the government’s mood and view about the realty sector at that point in time. His prediction of a lesser number of players in the sector appears to have come true. The real estate industry in the country is seeing a consolidation now. Three major reforms – demonetisation, GST and Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 (RERA) – have had a significant impact on the realty sector, leading to the exit of numerous small players. GST and the stringent regulatory regime RERA marked a paradigm shift for real estate developers. With tra

Published  28.01.20 Drug firm Wockhardt has for the first time in three years reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 19.21 crore for the December 2019 quarter mainly on account of an improvement in operational performance and cost rationalisation. The company had posted a net loss of Rs 76.86 crore a year ago, Wockhardt said in a filing to the BSE. Consolidated revenue from operations stood at Rs 869.15 crore for the quarter under consideration. It was Rs 1,045.86 crore for the same period a year ago. While the company has been reporting steady EBITDA quarter by quarter, for the first time in the past three years, the company has bounced back into profit owing to a marked improvement in operational performance and cost rationalisation, Wockhardt said. Total expenses stood at Rs 869.93 crore for the quarter under consideration. It was Rs 1,168.53 crore for the same period a year ago. DRL loss Dr Reddy’s Laboratories has suffered nearly Rs 570 crore loss for the quarter

Published  28.01.20 Air India is up for sale — for the second time in as many years. On Monday, the Narendra Modi government invited expressions of interest (EoIs) from bidders who were ready to stump up money for a 100 per cent stake in the 87-year-old national carrier along with two other subsidiaries: low-cost carrier Air India Express and Air India SATS Airport Services, in which AI has a 50 per cent stake. Queries can be submitted till February 11 while the last date for submission of EoI is March 17. The qualified bidders would be intimated on March 31. Back in 2018, there were no bidders for Air India when the government had offered to sell a 76 per cent stake. Bidders were wary about how much control they would have and the prospect of taking on a Rs 49,000 crore debt burden. This time the government has sweetened the terms: it has offered the entire stake, cut the minimum networth criteria to Rs 3,500 crore from Rs 5,000 crore earlier and slashed the debt burden