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AFP | Jan 29, 2020, NEW YORK: Boeing reported its first annual loss in more than two decades on Wednesday as the lengthy grounding of the 737 MAX undercut the company's revenues and exploded costs. The aerospace giant reported a $1 billion loss in the fourth-quarter and a loss of $636 million for all of 2019, the company's first year in the red since 1997. Newly-installed chief executive David Calhoun, who took the reins this month to stabilise the situation, pledged to turn the company around even as Boeing disclosed $9.2 billion in new costs connected to the MAX. Some analysts had expected new costs twice as high, and despite the hefty charges, Boeing shares rallied early on Wednesday. The MAX has been grounded since March following two crashes that killed 346 people which opened the doors to intense scrutiny of Boeing's safety practices -- and regulatory oversight of its productions -- as well bruising congressional investigations which have reveale...

Bloomberg | Updated: Jan 30, 2020 NEW DELHI: Wish Town was once a sought-after destination for India’s aspiring middle classes seeking a slice of the “good days” promised by an ambitious Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he swept to power more than five years ago. Now, it’s a symbol of lost hope. A sprawling 1,063-acre property development located in Noida, just outside New Delhi, Wish Town was supposed to give would-be home buyers sparkling shopping malls, pristine golf courses and modern medical clinics. Apartments that should have been delivered by 2012 were billed in the media as “global homes with an Indian address.” Today the area is dotted with unfinished apartment blocks, abandoned part way through construction. Dilapidated buildings stand vacant, with overgrown bushes instead of manicured lawns. Most of the streets are empty of cars and people, aside from a few security guards. Wish Town’s failure tells the story of an economy in distress, a banking system in...

Press Trust of India Jan 29, 2020  The comment by the telecom operator came after the Commerce Ministry put Bharti Airtel in denied entry list (DEL) for non-fulfilment of export obligation under an export promotion scheme The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), which is under the Commerce Ministry, has put the company under the list, commonly known as blacklist, for non-fulfilment of export obligation in respect of certain EPCG authorisation issued to it Bharti Airtel said it has not applied for any such license since April 2018 as there was no operational need for the same New Delhi: Bharti Airtel on Wednesday said it is working to get the company's name removed from 'Denied Entry List', but added that DGFT's latest action does not limit its ability to undertake future imports or exports. The comment by the telecom operator came after the Commerce Ministry put Bharti Airtel in denied entry list (DEL) for non-fulfilment of export obligation un...

PTI, JANUARY 29, 2020 New Delhi: Australia supported the grey-listing of Pakistan by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and will make a fresh assessment as to whether it should be put on the 'Black List', outgoing Australian envoy Harinder Sidhu said on Wednesday. Pakistan was placed on the 'Grey List' in June 2018 by the FATF, an inter-governmental body established in 1989 to combat money laundering, terror financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system. During an interaction with a select group of journalists, the envoy said that "from Australia's perspective, when we say as part of our Indo-Pacific strategy we want to work with strong democracies in the region, one of India's great strengths is its pluralistic democratic tradition". "We welcome that in India, we look to work with India as a partner in the region building on those traditions," she said. When asked about t...

ByBeyond Headlines Posted on January 29, 2020 BeyondHeadlines News Desk Washington, D.C.: The U.S. must oppose the Citizenship (Amendment) Act that aims to deny citizenship to Muslims and render them stateless, subject to detention and deportation, an official with the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has said. The U.S. Government must also consider the “use of targeted sanctions against Indian officials primarily responsible for religious freedom violations,” Harrison Akins, Policy Analyst (South Asia) with USCIRF, said at U.S. Congress on Monday. In conjunction with a potential nationwide National Register of Citizens and National Population Register, this law, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, “could become a weapon to target millions of Indian Muslims, potentially leading to their disenfranchisement. This represents a significant downward turn in religious freedom that no government, including the United States government, can ...

By Paul Cruickshank, CNN Terrorism analyst Updated 1827 GMT (0227 HKT) January 29, 2020 (CNN)ISIS has begun reasserting itself in Iraq and Syria under a new leader assessed to be an Iraqi operative who was a driving force behind the terror group's genocide against the Yazidi people, according to a report submitted to the UN Security Council which was made public on Wednesday. The wide-ranging report, compiled by the UN Monitoring Team that tracks the global jihadi terror threat, refers to the group by its alternate name stating the "Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), following its loss of territory, has begun to reassert itself in both the Syrian Arab Republic and Iraq, mounting increasingly bold insurgent attacks, calling and planning for the breakout of ISIL fighters in detention facilities and exploiting weaknesses in the security environment of both countries." It has been clear for some time that one reason for ISIS's resilience is its dee...

THE ASIAN AG EPublished : Jan 27, 2020 Detroit: The billionaire investor George Soros said on Thursday that the rise of nationalism in India is the biggest enemy of open society. While speaking in the World Economic Forum in Davos, said nationalism was making further headway around the world and the “biggest and most frightening setback,” was in India, as per the report in Indian Express. He said, “Democratically elected Narendra Modi is creating a Hindu nationalist state, imposing punitive measures on Kashmir, a semi-autonomous Muslim region, and threatening to deprive millions of Muslims of their citizenship." We live in a “transformational moment” in history, where the twin challenges of open societies and climate change are “threatening the survival of our civilization,” he said. George Soros feel that the reactions to these challenges by politicians who “exploit” the circumstance for their own purposes are “unlikely to compare to people’s expectations”, an...

Press Trust of India Jan 30, 2020 The agency found that the loans were diverted between 2011 and 2016 and the 79 companies were allegedly associated with the promoters of DHFL The corrupt practice came to ED's notice when the agency inspected the book of accounts of DHFL pertaining to Rs 2,186 crore loan given to five companies The ED found out that Sunblink Real Estate bought three Worli-based properties allegedly belonging to late gangster Iqbal Memon alias Iqbal Mirchi for Rs 225 crore. New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has found diversion of Rs 12,773 crore from Dewan Housing Finance Ltd (DHFL) to the accounts of 79 companies routed through one lakh fictitious retail customers as loans, sources said. The agency found that the loans were diverted between 2011 and 2016 and the 79 companies were allegedly associated with the promoters of DHFL. The corrupt practice came to ED's notice when the agency inspected the book of accounts of DHFL pertain...

Updated: Jan 29, 2020 16:47 IST Indo Asian News Service The funding is part of Google.org’s broader, $10 million commitment to media literacy, in collaboration with the Google News Initiative (GNI). Google on Wednesday announced a $1 million grant for global non-profit organization Internews that will launch a new initiative to promote news literacy among the Indian public. The funding is part of Google.org’s broader, $10 million commitment to media literacy, in collaboration with the Google News Initiative (GNI), the company said in a statement. Internews will select a team of 250 journalists, fact checkers, academics and NGO workers, who will be trained on a curriculum developed by global and Indian experts, adapted to local needs and available in seven Indian languages. The local leaders will then roll out the training to new internet users in non-metro cities in India, enabling them to better navigate the internet and assess the information they find. In...

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY, 29 Jan 2020 Tidewater glaciers, the massive rivers of ice that end in the ocean, may be melting underwater much faster than previously thought, according to a Rutgers co-authored study that used robotic kayaks. The findings, which challenge current frameworks for analyzing ocean-glacier interactions, have implications for the rest of the world's tidewater glaciers, whose rapid retreat is contributing to sea-level rise. The study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, surveyed the ocean in front of 20-mile-long LeConte Glacier in Alaska. The seaborne robots made it possible for the first time to analyze plumes of meltwater, the water released when snow or ice melts, where glaciers meet the ocean. It is a dangerous area for ships because of ice calving - when falling slabs of ice that break from glaciers crash into the water and spawn huge waves. "With the kayaks, we found a surprising signal of melting: Layers of concentrat...

Press Trust of India Jan 29, 2020 Fifteen telecom companies owe the government Rs 92,642 crore in unpaid licence fee and another Rs 55,054 crore in outstanding spectrum usage charges These liabilities arose after the Supreme Court in October last year held that non-core revenues have to be considered for calculating statutory dues from Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) The telecom department has estimated another Rs 2.4 lakh crore in liability for non-telecom companies such as state-owned gas utility GAIL India Ltd and power transmission firm PowerGrid, which had taken licences to trade broadband on optic fibre running along their pipelines and transmission lines New Delhi: Industry body COAI said on Wednesday that AGR formula being applied on mobile operators should be applicable on all other categories of telecom licences and there can be no differential treatment for relevant PSUs in this regard. "The question is are you a telecom licencee and if you are then t...