Today's Hot Stories - April 14, 2014
10 Headlines for Today(1) I don't know why Rahul 'enjoys insulting Ambedkar': Modi
(2) Priyanka was keen to fight Modi in Varanasi, but Cong said no
(3) Oil slick detected in flight MH370 search area, mini-sub to be deployed soon: Official
(4) Reliance Communications to move 5,500 staff off rolls
(5) 53,000 demat accounts closed in Feb
(6) Citigroup cuts 200-300 jobs: Report
(7) Stars embrace football through ISL
(8) Golf: Rory McIlroy finishes Masters in top 10
(9) 'Schumi showing small signs of progress'
(10) Fish losing survival instinct in acidic oceans: Study
5 Stories for Today
(1) Baru book smacks of fiction, allegations baseless: PMO
(2) Defying Russia, Ukraine forces clash with militants
(3) State-run banks under watch after a spike in NPAs
(4) Micromax eyes stake in South Korean phone maker Pantech
(5) Finance officials confident of global growth
(1) Baru book smacks of fiction, allegations baseless: PMO
The PMO on Sunday hit out at Sanjaya Baru, former Media Adviser, saying his book contending that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was undermined by Congress Chief Sonia Gandhi smacks of “fiction” and is a “coloured” view and rubbished as “baseless and mischievous that its files were seen by her.
“The statement being attributed to a former Media Adviser to the Prime Minister that PMO files were seen by the Congress President, Smt. Sonia Gandhi is completely baseless and mischievous.
It is categorically denied that any PMO file has ever been shown to Smt. Sonia Gandhi,” the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) spokesman Pankaj Pachauri said in a statement here.
Pachauri was responding to the claims by Mr. Baru in his book ’Accidential Prime Minister — The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh’ and comments to media that the Prime Minister’s Principal Secretary Pulok Chatterjee would seek “instructions” from Ms. Gandhi on important PMO decisions.
Criticising Mr. Baru, the PMO statement said, “The book written by the former media adviser is an attempt to misuse a privileged position and access to high office to gain credibility and to apparently exploit it for commercial gain.
The commentary smacks of fiction and coloured views of a former adviser.”
The statement reiterated that “the question about comments of the former media adviser was raised by senior editors when they met the Prime Minister in October last year.
His answer was “...Do not believe all he is saying“.
The PMO statement came amidst strong attack by the opposition on Ms. Gandhi and the Prime Minister, using the claims by Baru.
Mr. Baru on Sunday claimed that the book is “very balanced” and also highlighted the achievements of UPA but said the media has only focussed on the criticism in it.
“I have said in my introduction that the book says both good and critical things,” he said.
“More than 50 per cent of the book records the facts where he took decisions where he showed resolve...This was a PM(Manmohan) who did a lot and the book records that,” he added.
Senior BJP leaders including L K Advani and Arun Jaitley attacked ruling Congress and Singh in connection with the book, saying it is a confirmation of what the world already knew that he is a “weak” PM and Gandhi had the last word in government matters.
In his book, Mr. Baru has written, “Pulok, who was inducted into the Manmohan Singh PMO at the behest of Sonia Gandhi, had regular, almost daily, meetings with Sonia at which he was said to brief her on the key policy issues of the day and seek her instructions on important files to be cleared by the Prime Minister.
“Indeed, Pulok was the single most point of regular contact between Prime Minister and Sonia. He was also the PMO’s main point of contact with the NAC, a high profile advisory body chaired by Sonia Gandhi, with social activists as members. It was sometimes dubbed the shadow cabinet.”
As the observations created a flutter, Mr. Baru said, “it was not a secret.” He said it was well known that Chatterjee was Sonia Gandhi’s secretary when she was the leader of opposition and had also worked with the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation chaired by her.
“He was very much part of the family ... I was not witness to it, whether she physically saw the files. I knew she was consulted on issues and he was taking her concurrence,” said Mr. Baru, who had resigned from the PMO in 2008 while Chatterjee joined it in 2011.
Source: The Hindu
(2) Defying Russia, Ukraine forces clash with militants
The Ukrainian government on Sunday for the first time sent its security services to confront armed pro-Russian militants in the country's east, defying warnings from Russia. Commandos engaged in gunfights with men who had set up roadblocks and stormed a Ukrainian police station in Slovyansk, and at least one officer was killed, Ukrainian officials said.
Several officers were injured in the operation, as were four locals, the officials said. Russian news media and residents here disputed that account, saying the Ukrainian forces had only briefly engaged one checkpoint.
In either case, the central government in Kiev has turned to force to try to restore its authority in the east, a course of action that the Russian government has repeatedly warned against.
With tens of thousands of Russian troops massed along Ukraine's eastern border near Donetsk, Western leaders have worried that Moscow might use unrest in Ukraine's mainly Russian-speaking areas as a pretext for an invasion.
Both governments intensified their statements on Sunday. Ukraine's interim president, Oleksandr V Turchynov, issued another ultimatum, saying separatists should vacate occupied buildings by Monday or face a "large-scale antiterrorist operation" that would include the Ukrainian military. And Russia claimed that the Ukrainian government was cracking down at the behest of American and European officials.
Ukraine's ousted president, Viktor F Yanukovych, speaking late Sunday in Rostov-on-Don, in Russia, echoed Moscow's charges of American meddling.
Insisting that he remained Ukraine's commander in chief despite having fled to Russia more than a month ago, he ordered Ukrainian troops to defy what he called "criminal orders" for a crackdown and said the country stood "on the brink of civil war."
The police station contested by Ukrainian forces was one of several security centers in the eastern region of Donetsk that were seized on Saturday by masked gunmen in coordinated raids that the Ukrainian authorities denounced as Russian "aggression."
By Sunday afternoon, the government's push to reassert its authority in a vitally important industrial and coal-mining region appeared to have made little headway. Pro-Russian protesters appeared to control not only the police station but also the entire town of Slovyansk, having set up checkpoints at major streets leading into town.
The protesters blocked a major highway in the east, and flags of Russia and their newly declared and unrecognized People's Republic of Donetsk flew over administrative buildings in several other midsize towns. These included Mariupol, where protesters seized a building Sunday.
Roman Svitan, a security adviser to the Ukrainian authorities in Donetsk, said the operation on Sunday was carried out by Alfa, a special services unit of Ukraine's state security service. He gave an upbeat assessment of its progress, saying Ukrainian forces had evicted gunmen from the Slovyansk Police Headquarters, though protesters there said nothing of the sort had happened.
Svitan said most of the expelled gunmen were local pro-Russian extremists, but they had also included Russian operatives.
Residents and men standing by barricades in Slovyansk denied that Ukrainian forces had even entered the town on Sunday. They said one local man who had been out fishing was in a hospital with a wound from a shooting on a highway outside town. Russian television and some locals said the Ukrainian nationalist group Right Sector had attacked protesters at a checkpoint, injuring the fisherman.
Requests to speak to a leader of the armed men produced a man wearing a ski mask who introduced himself as Aleksandr and described himself as a deputy commander of the city of Slovyansk after its merger with the People's Republic of Donetsk.
He gave a different account of the circumstances behind the wounding of the fisherman, saying he was struck by Ukrainian armored personnel carriers that opened fire on a barrier made from a pile of tires on the edge of town, then drove away. "Our guys took cover, and the shooting stopped," he said.
Ukrainian helicopters buzzed over the town around noon, but no soldiers were seen. At one barrier, pro-Russian protesters felled trees across a road into town, guarded by men in ski masks carrying military rifles.
Russia's foreign ministry issued a blistering denunciation of the Ukrainian government. In a statement on the ministry's Facebook page, the Russian government accused the Kiev authorities of threatening violence "against anyone who does not agree with the nationalist-radicals, chauvinistic and anti-Semitic actions" in Kiev that, it said, were being carried out "with direct support from the United States and Europe."
At Russia's request, an emergency meeting of the United Nations security council was held Sunday night. UN security council members traded competing narratives of what was happening in eastern Ukraine, as Russia's envoy, Vitaly I Churkin, echoed the views of the Kremlin and his Western rivals deplored what they called Russian propaganda. Churkin called on world leaders to condemn the "henchmen of the Maidan," a reference to Independence Square in Kiev, where the uprising that led to the president's ouster unfolded. The British ambassador, Mark Lyall Grant, pointed the finger at Moscow. "What we are witnessing is a well-orchestrated campaign to destabilize the country," he said.
In Washington, the US state department took the unusual step of issuing a "fact sheet" alleging that Russian officials had made 10 false claims about the crisis in Ukraine.
"Russia continues to spin a false and dangerous narrative to justify its illegal actions in Ukraine," the US state department said. "We would not be seeing the violence and sad events that we've witnessed this weekend without this relentless stream of disinformation and Russian provocateurs fostering unrest in eastern Ukraine."
According to the state department, more than a dozen Russian intelligence agents have been arrested by the Ukrainian government in recent weeks, contradicting Moscow's assertion that its agents are not active in Ukraine.
Russian news media reported Sunday that the American CIA director, John O Brennan, had arrived in Kiev on a secret visit to advise Ukrainian officials in charge of domestic security and defense. The American Embassy in the Ukrainian capital declined to comment on the reports.
One protester who gave his name only as Ivan said the town had revolted because the new government in Kiev disregarded weeks of what he called peaceful protests demanding a referendum to secure greater local autonomy and establish Russian as a second official language.
The authorities in Kiev offered both last week, but the effort did little to resolve the standoff.
The unrest in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine's most populous region, began April 6 in the regional capital when pro-Russian activists seized government headquarters and declared the People's Republic of Donetsk.
According to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, 400 Makarov handguns and 20 automatic weapons were looted on Saturday from the police station in Slovyansk. "The goal of the takeover was the guns," the ministry said.
By early evening Sunday, the city was gripped by fear after two unexplained shootings of cars, and as men with guns set up improvised checkpoints. The men asserted they were locals, and nothing suggested otherwise: Some wore mismatched camouflage, but most were out in jeans and ski jackets. Some appeared to be drunk.
One of the cars that were shot at, a silver Renault, had veered into a curb after it was struck, with three bullet holes on the driver's side. Older women who had gathered nearby looked on in shock at the scene of mayhem. They said the occupants had tumbled out and tried to run, but were then shot on the sidewalk. One person died and two were injured, these witnesses said.
In the other shooting, a bullet hit a taxicab, but nobody was hurt. The Ukrainian police said at least two people had been wounded in shootings in the city.
Source: The Times of India
(3) State-run banks under watch after a spike in NPAs
The finance ministry has put the lending of state-run banks under close watch after a spike in non-performing assets (NPAs) that has forced many of them to slow down credit.
The ministry has set up a committee to look into the monitoring system of state-run banks for big ticket loans, but the lenders aren't enthused by the idea. The ministry feels this will quickly bring companies not servicing loans in time onto the government's radar. They may even have to pay higher interest rates for fresh loans from other banks.
"Those companies which are perennially in the habit of late servicing of loan payments or are rigging the system through multiple banking should be paying more for credit," said a senior finance ministry official, adding that the government-appointed committee will look into these issues.
The committee, which will include Reserve Bank of India (RBI) representatives, will also take up cases of 'quick mortality' related to loans turning going bad within a matter of months. "We will take RBI and other bankers on board. This should not be (regarded) as interference in the daily operations of banks," said another ministry official, adding that the initiative had been taken by the newly appointed financial services secretary GS Sandhu. "Another working group has been set up to look at treasury practices in PSBs (public sector banks). It is largely an in-house exercise to improve the management system and take on best practices from the industry," said one of the officials cited.
This too hasn't been welcomed by the banks. "There are already defined standards of when a loan becomes non performing," said an executive director at a state-run bank. "Most banks, be they private or public, largely follow a similar system of credit appraisal . If the ministry is so keen then they should themselves start monitoring loans."
Another mid-level banker with State Bank of India said that the government should understand that bad loans of state-run banks have increased on account of their exposure to the infrastructure sector. "The exposure of PSBs towards infrastructure is around 15%, while for private banks is less than 2%. Most bad loans are in the infrastructure sector because of the economic slowdown and policy paralysis. You cannot blame banks for coal linkages not approved or environment clearances not given," he said.
Gross non-performing assets of public sector banks rose to 5.17% of their advances at the end of December 2013, against 4.18% a year before. The highest NPAs, at 7.21% of advances, are in loans to small and medium enterprises, followed by agriculture at 5.99%.
Some experts feel the government's moves will streamline the process. "It has been observed in many cases that there has been diversion of funds by corporates. The increase in NPAs also shows that neither were assets created nor was the promoter's margin found adequate during recovery," said Mukesh Mohan, an independent director with Dena Bank.
The finance ministry had previously defended state-run banks in some respects after the RBI raised concerns about their rising bad loans, management and business practices. It had told RBI that private and foreign banks adopt credit rationing practices that are not conducive to economic growth.
Source: The Economic Times
(4) Micromax eyes stake in South Korean phone maker Pantech
India’s No.2 smartphone maker Micromax Informatics Ltd has expressed interest in buying a stake in South Korean peer Pantech Co Ltd as part of its drive to expand overseas and go upmarket, two sources said on Monday.
Pantech, South Korea’s No.3 smartphone maker, has been under a debt-restructuring programme after suffering six consecutive quarters of losses due to fierce competition.
“Micromax told Pantech that it was interested in a stake in the company,” one of the sources said, declining to elaborate on the size of a potential deal and other details.
Nine creditor banks own a combined 37 percent of Pantech, while Qualcomm Inc has a 12 percent stake and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd holds 10 percent.
“Micromax is among those who are interested in Pantech,” another source said.
The two sources declined to be identified because of the confidentiality of the sales process.
High-end smartphone maker Pantech has struggled against competition from giant rivals Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics Inc in South Korea, where nearly 70 percent of mobile users have smartphones.
Pantech also sells phones in such markets as the United States and Japan.
Micromax has brought smartphones to the masses in India’s price-sensitive market where basic handsets still dominate, with heavy advertising and phones based on Google Inc’s Android software starting at $50 – almost half the price of a comparable Samsung model.
Now the unlisted company backed by private equity firms TA Associates and Sequoia Capital is trying to push into pricier segments dominated by global brands and break into overseas markets.
Source: The Indian Express
(5) Finance officials confident of global growth
An ambitious goal to boost global growth by $2 trillion in the next five years is within reach, finance officials of the world’s major economies believe, despite a variety of threats, including rising political tensions over Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
In a joint statement Friday, finance ministers and central bank governors from rich and developing nations skirted over substantial differences in such areas as central bank interest rate policies and whether to impose tougher sanctions on Russia because of its dealings with Ukraine.
Their talks resume Saturday with meetings of the policymaking committees of the International Monetary Fund and its sister institution, the World Bank.
The final Group of 20 communique pledged to keep working on concrete economic reforms that could boost global growth by 2 per cent over the next five years. But finance officials concede that the economic reforms needed to achieve that goal will in many cases be politically difficult.
“We remain vigilant in the face of important global risks and vulnerabilities,” the statement said. “We are determined to manage these risks and take action to further strengthen the recovery, create jobs and improve medium-term growth prospects.”
Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey said all the finance ministers realized that hard decisions would have to be made in terms of reforming labour market policies and dealing with budget deficits.
“It is hard but that is the only way we are going to grow the economy,” Mr Hockey, who is chairman of the G-20 this year, told reporters at news conference after the group’s two days of discussions.
The finance ministers agreed to develop concrete proposals for each of their countries and present those plans at a September meeting in Australia in preparation for a G-20 leaders’ summit on Nov. 15-16 in Brisbane that will be attended by President Barack Obama and leaders of the other nations.’
The tough language the U.S. has been using threatening “additional significant sanctions” if Russia escalates the Ukraine situation was missing from the statement by the G-20, which includes Russia. Instead, the G-20 finance officials said they were closely monitoring the economic situation in Ukraine, “mindful of any risks to economic and financial stability.”
But at a news conference late Friday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew insisted that there was strong support for tougher sanctions if Russia continues to escalate the situation in Ukraine. Mr Lew said that the Western allies “stand together in asking Russia to step back.”
The G-20 group endorsed the $14 billion to $18 billion loan package that the International Monetary Fund has developed to help Ukraine avoid a financial collapse. IMF officials have said the lending agency’s support programme will likely be approved by the agency’s board of directors by the end of this month or early May.
The United States and various European nations have already imposed an initial round of sanctions aimed at punishing Russia for its annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.
The United States is raising the prospect of tougher penalties if Russia attempts to annex parts of Eastern Ukraine, but European officials have been hesitant to go further, worried about possible economic retaliation by Russia.
Also missing in the G-20 statement was a lengthy section that had been included in the February statement concerning the need for continued low interest rate policies by major central banks.
Asked about that change, British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said, “I wouldn’t read too much into that” and joked “we’re trying to keep the communique much shorter.”
The United States came in for criticism in the G-20 communique for the failure of Congress to approve U.S. funding for the IMF that is needed to implement a reform programme that the 188-nation lending agency adopted in 2010.
That programme would give the IMF more resources to help countries in economic distress and provide greater voting rights to developing economies such as China.
But the measure has stalled in Congress for years and supporters failed again in March to win congressional approval.
The G-20 officials said they were “deeply disappointed” with the continued U.S. delay and said if approval was not obtained by the end of this year, the IMF should explore other options. The statement did not say what options might be available if there is continued U.S. inaction.
Source: Hindustan Times
Disclaimer: All news stories and content sourced from freely available material on the internet. All sources are acknowledged.
No comments:
Post a Comment