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Hindustan Times June 05, 2020 Amazon.com is in early-stage talks to buy a stake worth at least $2 billion in mobile operator Bharti Airtel, three sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters, underscoring the growing attraction of India’s digital economy for US tech giants. The planned investment, if completed, would mean Amazon acquiring a roughly 5% stake based on the current market value of Bharti, which is India’s third-largest telecoms company with more than 300 million subscribers. The discussions between Amazon and Bharti come at a time when global players are placing major bets on the digital arm of Reliance Industries, which owns Bharti’s telecom rival Jio. Reliance’s digital unit has raised $10 billion in recent weeks from Facebook, KKR and others. The talks between Bharti and Amazon are at an early stage and the deal terms could change, or an agreement may not be reached, said two of the three sources, all of whom declined to be identified because the disc...

Hindustan Times June 05, 2020 The latest round of talks between the UK and European Union over their future relationship is set to finish without agreement, with both sides stuck after a week of making little progress. Officials are still far apart on crucial issues ahead of a key deadline at the end of the month, and the tense atmosphere hasn’t improved significantly, according to people familiar with the matter. The failure to narrow the gap between the UK and EU positions will add to pressure for Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to intervene directly to break the deadlock when they hold talks later this month. EU officials hope then to persuade Johnson to compromise -- but that may be “wishful thinking” in the words of the prime minister’s spokesman. How Britain and the EU Would Trade Under WTO Rules: QuickTake Clauss warned that the post-Brexit negotiations could still occupy much of the EU’s political attention in Se...

Hindustan Times June 05, 2020 The cash-strappe d Palestinian Authority rejected a monthly tax transfer from Israel, stepping up its protest against the Israeli government’s declared intent to annex land the Palestinians claim for a future state. The authority relies on these funds, which total about 700 million shekels ($200 million) each month, to pay government employees and provide basic services. While Palestinians could be hurt by the move, it is an instrument of pressure the authority has wielded on several occasions to try to push Israel to reverse course on policy decisions. Without these transfers, which account for about 60% of its budget, the authority risks collapsing and forcing Israel to take responsibility for 2.6 million Palestinians. Israel has said it plans to annex some 30% of the West Bank, as provided for in the Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan. Action could be taken as early as July 1, under the new Israeli government’s coalition agreement. ...

Hindustan Times June 05, 2020 Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, the terrorist groups that have been mostly active in Jammu and Kashmir for years, are rapidly mobilising operatives to radicalise, train and fight in Afghanistan on directions of Rawalpindi GHQ over the last few months, people familiar with the development told Hindustan Times on Thursday The two terror groups are estimated to have 1,000 terror operatives in the war-torn country, most of them inducted after the February pact between the Taliban and the United States. And counting. In the last few months alone, about 200 Lashkar operatives had infiltrated into Afghanistan’s Kunar province from Bajaur Agency in Pakistan. In the last week of May, another group of 30 Lashkar-e-Tayyiba terrorists led by an ex-ISI officer Bilal aka Zarqawi slipped into Kunar’s Dangam district. A fortnight earlier, 45 Jaish operatives shepherded by Taliban commander Mullah Nek Mohammad Rabhar had entered Nangarhar’s Sherzad provi...

Seatrade Marytime News June 05, 2020 During the last ten days period of May, the cargo throughput of major Chinese ports kept increasing and posted an increase of 0.9% year-on-year. Ningbo-Zhoushan port is bringing a new 70,000 tonne-class container berth into operation in July. The overall container throughput and international container cargo volume of eight major Chinese ports increased 20% and 18% respectively comparing to middle May, resuming to around 98% and 96% of the volume in the same period of last year. The crude oil shipments at major coastal ports increased 15.43% year-on-year. The iron ore shipments at major ports increased 6% compared year-on-year, among which the growth rate of Ningbo-Zhoushan port and Qingdao port exceeded 10%. Related:   Container volumes at major Chinese ports fell 5.1% in mid-May The port business along Yangtze river continued recovering in late May. The cargo throughput of three major ports, Nanjing, Wuhan and Chongqing, h...

Hindustan Times June 05, 2020 Thousands of people in Hong Kong defied a police ban Thursday evening, breaking through barricades to hold a candlelight vigil on the 31st anniversary of China’s crushing of a democracy movement centered on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. With democracy snuffed out in the mainland, the focus has shifted increasingly to semi-autonomous Hong Kong, where authorities for the first time banned the annual vigil that remembers victims of the 1989 crackdown. Beijing is taking a tougher stance following months of anti-government protests last year, in what activists see as an accelerating erosion of the city’s rights and liberties. Earlier Thursday, the Hong Kong legislature passed a law making it a crime to disrespect China’s national anthem. Pro-democracy lawmakers had disrupted proceedings to try to prevent the vote. Despite the police ban, crowds poured into Victoria Park to light candles and observe a minute of silence at 8:09 p.m. (1209 GMT, 8:09 a.m. ...

Money Control June 05, 2020 Reliance digital unit has raised Rs 87,655 crore from leading tech players and investors. Latest deal comes close on the heels of investments by Facebook, General Atlantic, Silver Lake, Vista Equity Partners and KKR. Abu Dhabi sovereign fund Mubadala Investment Company will inject Rs 9,093.6 crore in Jio Platforms in exchange for 1.85 percent, the sixth investment in the RIL digital unit in as many weeks and underscoring its standing as an irresistible lodestar for some of the world’s biggest tech companies and investors. The investment by Mubadala, which manages about $229 billion in assets, at an equity value of Rs 4.91 lakh crore and an enterprise value of Rs 5.16 lakh crore takes the total amount raised by Jio to an eye-popping Rs 87,655.35 crore, according to a statement by RIL. Jio Platforms, which runs movie, news and music apps as well as the telecom enterprise Jio Infocomm, has now sold a combined stake of 18.97 percent in six massive fu...

ET Prime June 05 2020 Wipro’s growth has failed to match the industry’s. Four CEOs across a decade have struggled to steady the ship. Abidali Neemuchwala, who joined in 2015 to script a turnaround, left earlier this month, midway through the process. The new CEO, Thierry Delaporte, has a tough job of turning around the company during a pandemic and a brutal recession. Neemuchwala may have created a base, but drastic changes will be needed. As Wipro moves on to its fifth CEO in a decade, it becomes necessary to ask: why have successive CEOs struggled? How badly has the company lagged its peers? And when will the “work in progress” reach a satisfactory conclusion? What’s in store for Wipro after Abidali Neemuchwala. More than half of Nifty 500 companies have only one woman director. Although regulatory push has prompted corporate India to go for gender diversity in boardrooms, it looks more an enforced development than the belief that diversity adds value. Indeed, the gla...

Sea Trade Marytime News June  05, 2020 During the last ten days period of May, the cargo throughput of major Chinese ports kept increasing and posted an increase of 0.9% year-on-year. Ningbo-Zhoushan port is bringing a new 70,000 tonne-class container berth into operation in July. ABB reports that it has added Sovcomflot’s Azipod-equipped icebreaking LNG carrier Christophe de Margerie - which last month completed a landmark early-season transit of the Northern Sea Route - to the list of vessels using its ABB Ability remote diagnostics services. The overall container throughput and international container cargo volume of eight major Chinese ports increased 20% and 18% respectively comparing to middle May, resuming to around 98% and 96% of the volume in the same period of last year. The crude oil shipments at major coastal ports increased 15.43% year-on-year. The iron ore shipments at major ports increased 6% compared year-on-year, among which the growth rate o...

Inc June 05, 2020 Take a look at the back of the box from which you unpacked your  iPhone  and you'll see this: "Designed by Apple in California Assembled in China." Reading this tagline might trigger a vision in your mind of  Jonathan Ive , Apple's legendary chief design officer, dropping the drawings and technical specs for the next-generation iPhone into a (highly secure) shared folder that its low-cost suppliers in  China  can access as they manufacture and assemble the product by the millions. But as Apple CEO Tim Cook recently pointed out, this picture wouldn't tell the entire story of how an iPhone actually gets made today, or why Apple prefers to make them in China. At the Fortune Global Forum in Guangzhou in early December (my firm, McKinsey & Company, was the Knowledge Partner), I listened to Cook as he explained why Apple continues to favor China as its central base for manufacturing iPhones: The number one reason why we like t...

The Indian Express June 05, 2020 By: Sanjaya Baru G-12 must include respect for human rights, adherence to international law, multilateralism in trade and security Sanjaya Baru writes: President Trump is not doing India a favour by wanting to invite it into the new group. As the world's largest free market democracy India desThe loud thinking by   United States   President Donald Trump on the need to enlarge the membership of the Group of Seven (G-7), the club of “free market democracies”, is only the most recent of many such initiatives aimed at making an anachronism relevant to a changing world. Formed in 1976, the G-7 no longer dominate the global economy as they did at their founding. It was the French who first flew the kite of membership expansion when they invited heads of government of several “emerging economies” for a meeting of the group at Évian-les-Bains, France, in June 2003. The G-7 became the G-8 in 1997 when Russia was invited to join. In 2014, Russi...

Indian Express June 05, 2020 China long haul: After Trump-Modi call, India briefs Russia After Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed the situation on the India-China border with US President Donald Trump, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla has “updated” Russian Ambassador Nikolay Kudashev on the “recent developments” on the situation along the LAC, The Indian Express has learnt. Ahead of the military-level engagement between India and  China  to de-escalate the situation along the  Line of Actual Control , India has stepped up its diplomacy with major powers. After Prime Minister  Narendra Modi   discussed the situation on the India-China border  with US President Donald Trump, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla has “updated” Russian Ambassador Nikolay Kudashev on the “recent developments” on the situation along the LAC,  The Indian Express  has learnt. Sources said that if the stand-off is “protracted”, Delhi may brief ...