New Delhi Automobile major Maruti Suzuki India on Saturday reported a 3.4 per cent dip in sales in August as the car maker sold a total of 158,189 units in the month, compared to 163,701 units sold in the year-ago month.

“Sales during the month were adversely affected due to severe floods in Kerala and heavy rains in other parts of the country,” it said.

In the domestic market, it sold 147,700 units during August, down by 2.8 per cent from 152,000 units sold in the corresponding month in 2017.

The carmaker exported 10,489 units registering a 10.4 per cent drop from 11,701 units shipped out in the year-ago month.

It sold 114,261 units of passenger cars in the August 2018, falling by 1.4 per cent from 115,897 units sold in the corresponding month 2017.

Sales of its utility vehicles dropped by 16.2 per cent to 17,971 units in August, while vans sales were at 13,663 units, decrease by 1.9 per cent over corresponding month 2017.

However, during the first five months of the current fiscal, it posted a 12.4 per cent growth in sales to 813,037 units as compared to 723,618 units sold in the corresponding period of 2017-18.

[IANS]

Reliance Foundation (RF) on Thursday said it had handed over a cheque of Rs 21 crore to the Kerala Chief Ministers Felief Fund and the company has distributed relief material worth Rs 50 crore for the flood-affected people of the state.

In a statement here, the philanthropic arm of Reliance Industries said the cheque was handed over to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan by RF Chairperson Nita Ambani, who is personally spearheading rescue and relief operations in the flood-ravaged state.

Noting how people had come together in an unprecedented manner to help rebuild the devastated state in an interaction with journalists here, Ambani said the Reliance Foundation is trying to help in whatever way it can.

“Today, we are handing over a cheque of Rs 21 crore to the chief minister’s relief fund and we are distributing relief material worth Rs 50 crore, including clothes, dry groceries, medicines, shoes and study material,” she said.

RF had announced the Kerala relief package on August 21.

Since August 14, RF teams are engaged in relief efforts in Ernakulam, Wayanad, Alappuzha, Thrissur, Idukki and Pathanamthitta districts.

High global crude oil prices, along with continuous outflow of foreign funds pulled the Indian rupee to a fresh intra-day and closing low on Thursday.

Analysts pointed out that caution ahead of key macro-economic data, coupled with a rise in demand for US dollars also dragged the rupee lower.

“High crude oil prices have pulled the rupee lower,” Anand Rathi Shares and Stock Brokers’ Research Analyst Rushabh Maru told IANS.

“Most emerging market (EM) currencies were down and this also pressurised the Indian rupee.”

On an intra-day basis, the Indian rupee plunged to 70.85 — the lowest ever mark — against the greenback at the Interbank foreign exchange market. It surpassed the previous record low of 70.65-66 to a greenback made on Wednesday.

It settled at a record closing low of 70.74-75 against the US dollar, weaker 15 by paise from Wednesday’s close of 70.59-60 to a US dollar.

According to Tradebulls’ Director and Chief Operating Officer, Dhruv Desai: “Currently sensitivity of Indian rupee to crude oil prices is very high.”

“In spite of weakening US Dollar since last week, Indian rupee struggled to gain against US dollar as market is pricing in higher current account deficit due to rise in crude prices.”

Apart from high crude oil, outflow of foreign funds from the Indian equity and bond markets has had an adverse impact on the rupee.

Investment-wise, data from the NSDL on Thursday showed that foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) sold scrip worth Rs 1,379.34 crore.

Besides, caution prevailed ahead of the release of India’s GDP and fiscal deficit data. The key macro-economic data points will be released on Friday.

“Rupee needs more support from RBI or some big global positive news. The trend remains weak until some sizeable intervention by RBI verbal or actual. There is a lot of panic buying amongst importers and equity investors as well who want to hedge the currency risk now,” said Sajal Gupta, Head Forex and Rates, Edelweiss Securities.

“Our macros remain robust but panic is the key factor behind current volatility. Everyone is a buyer of dollars in current market.”

The RBI is known to enter the markets via intermediaries to either sell or buy US dollars to keep the rupee in a stable orbit.

India will be hosting the 6th edition of Bengaluru Space Expo in this tech capital from September 6 to 8, a top official said on Wednesday.

“The space expo on September 6-8 brings the industry and space agencies from various countries on one platform allowing to explore business opportunities,” said S. Rakesh, the Managing Director of Antrix Corporation, the commercial arm of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

At a time when the global space industry is growing with increasing number of private players, it is important for the industry to understand the scope of business in the sector, Rakesh told reporters here.

The biennial space expo, which was started in 2008, is held jointly by the ISRO, Antrix and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

The three-day conference over space technologies with the theme “Creating dynamism in Indian space ecosystem” is expected to have about 100 exhibitors, 50 speakers and 600 delegates from various countries including France, Russia and the Middle East region, among others.

“Representatives and heads of space agencies from France, Russia and Taiwan will also take part in the event,” CII vice-president Vikram Kirloskar added.

The expo allows the industry to explore the technologies behind satellite production, design and development of launch vehicles.

With Indian space agency aiming for two launches a month ahead, there is a need for the industry to play a larger role in understanding the business, stressed Rakesh.

The platform will feature panel discussions by the industry and space experts on Indian space ecosystem, launch vehicles — opportunities for industry, space transportation and space infrastructure.

The expo will also have a dedicated zone for India’s proposed maiden manned space mission Gaganyaan, ISRO chairman K. Sivan said.

Of the $330 billion worth global space market, India’s share is only about one per cent, which it aims to increase by stepping up its number of launches, Rakesh added.

(PTI)

Bengaluru, Cybercriminals are moving away from attention-grabbing ransomware attacks to more covert methods intended to steal money and valuable computing resources globally including in India, cyber security leader Trend Micro said on Thursday.

Crypto-jacking — where a hacker steals cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin from digital wallets — attempts are making the biggest impact so far this year, said the report titled “Midyear Security Roundup 2018.”

Trend Micro recorded a 96 per cent increase in cryptocurrency mining detections in the first half of 2018 compared to all of 2017, and a massive 956 per cent increase in detections versus the first half of 2017.

This indicates that cybercriminals are shifting away from the quick payout of ransomware in favour of the slower, behind-the-scenes approach of stealing computing power to mine digital currency.

“In the wake of several breaches over the last few years, the country is reeling under the spate of attacks that have compromised databases belonging to banking institutions, government email servers, and Indian enterprises at large,” said Nilesh Jain, Vice President-South East Asia and India, Trend Micro.

“We have also seen few Public Cloud providers getting compromised this year. Next year, the customers who don’t take adequate measures to their applications or data which are hosted in Public Cloud, might even get compromised,” he added.

Another shift in the first half of the year is toward unusual malware types, such as fileless, macro and small file malware.

Trend Micro recorded a 250 per cent increase in detections of one particular small file malware “TinyPOS” compared to the second half of 2017.

“The recent change in the threat landscape mirrors what we’ve seen for years that cybercriminals will constantly shift their tools, tactics and procedures (TTPs) to improve their infection rates,” said Jon Clay, Director of Global Threat Communications for Trend Micro.

[IANS]

All the 1.55 lakh post offices in the country would be linked to the India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) system by December 31, 2018, Communications Minister Manoj Sinha said on Wednesday.

The India Post Payments Bank is scheduled to be launched nation-wide on September 1.

“On the day of the launch, IPPB would have 650 branches and 3,250 access points spread across the country,” the minister told reporters.

By the end of 2018, the number of access points would increase to 1.55 lakh, of which 1.30 lakh branches would be in rural areas, Sinha said.

Further, account holders of the Post Office Savings Bank would also be able to avail IPPB services by linking their accounts, he added.

The account holders in the payments bank would be provided a QR card and they can authorise transactions with the card and their biometrics, he added.

Meanwhile, the Union cabinet on Wednesday approved for revision of the project outlay for setting up of the payments bank from Rs 800 crore to Rs 1,435 crore.

The additional sum of Rs 635 crore is on account of Rs 400 crore for technology costs and Rs 235 crore for human resource costs, according to an official statement.

The bank would provide services such as current account, savings account, remittances, money transfer, direct benefit transfer, enterprise and merchant payment, the minister informed, adding that the services would be available through multiple channels including counter services, micro ATM, mobile banking applications, SMS and IVR (Interactive Voice Response).

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Wednesday served a notice on the Maharashtra government demanding a report on the arrests of five civil rights activists in a nationwide swoop by the Pune police on Tuesday.

It said the arrests were made in violation of the laid-down procedure and so “amounted to human rights violation”. It asked for a factual report in the matter within four weeks.

Taking suo motu cognisance of media reports, the NHRC said “it appears, the standard operating procedure in connection with these arrests has not been properly followed by the police authorities, which may amount to the violation of their human rights.”

The notice was issued to the Chief Secretary and Maharashtra Director General of Police Datta Padsalgikar.

To prove its point, the Commission referred to the reports in which the Delhi High Court stayed the transit remand for civil liberties activist Gautam Navlakha, observing that police have not been able to satisfactorily explain the offence he had been arrested for.

Citing another instance, the commission reiterated reports on lawyer-activist Sudha Bharadwaj’s case for a transit remand was pending before the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Faridabad.

“The activist has told the court that she had nothing to do with the incident for which she has been arrested. According to her, the FIR did not even name her and she is being harassed and arrested only because of her ideology,” the NHRC said in a statement.

“In the case of activist Gautam Navlakha, reportedly, the court has questioned how Pune police managed to get a transit remand from a Delhi court without any witness. The court has also directed translation of the police documents into English which are in vernacular language,” it added.

It also pointed out that earlier it had received a complaint from a Geneva-based NGO pertaining to the illegal arrests of five rights activists in June, some of whom were also raided in April.

Following those arrests, the NHRC had issued a similar notice to the state government on June 29, but the latter did not submit any report.

Tuesday’s arrest of lawyer-activist Sudha Bharadwaj, civil liberties activists Gautam Navlakha, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Fereira and poet-activist Varavara Rao from different parts of India triggered a massive outcry.

As in June, these arrests were made in connection with the ongoing investigations into the January 1 caste riots in Koregaon-Bhima in the Pune district and a subsequent complaint lodged in the matter.

Besides, police raided another eight activists across the country, including Kranti L.C., Fr. Stan Swami, and Anand Teltumbde, in the major operation as part of the ongoing probe into the involvement of Maoist supporters into the Koregaon-Bhima riots.

Officials described Tuesday’s operations as a ‘follow-up’ to similar action taken in April-June when the Pune police swooped on over half a dozen Dalit activists and those involved with the Kabir Kala Manch, which organised an Elgar Conference in Pune on December 31, 2017.

The next day, on January 1, caste riots erupted in Koregaon-Bhima which left one person dead, culminating in a Maharashtra shutdown on January 3 called by the Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh, headed by Prakash Ambedkar, grandson of B.R. Ambedkar.

After being asked by the central government to take steps to stop the spread of disinformation on its platform, WhatsApp on Wednesday roped in New Delhi-based non-profit Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) to create awareness among its users about the need to verify information.

“Our goal is to help keep people safe by creating greater awareness about fake news and empowering users to help limit its spread,” Ben Supple, Public Policy Manager at WhatsApp, said in a statement.

In a meeting with WhatsApp CEO Chris Daniels on August 21, Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad instructed the Facebook-owned platform to comply with the law of the land and take “suitable” steps to prevent its misuse.

The meeting took place after several lynching incidents were linked to the spread of misinformation on the instant messaging platform which has over 200 million monthly active users in India.

As part of the new partnership with WhatsApp, DEF has committed to holding 40 training sessions for community leaders in 10 states across the country where there have been worrisome cases of violence and where there will be state polls before the end of the year.

DEF said it would help educate government officials, administration representatives, civil society organisations and students to spread the word about this challenge.

The training is expected to enable WhatsApp users to differentiate between opinions and facts, and to inculcate a habit of verifying information through simple checks before forwarding it to their friends and family.

In addition, DEF said it would incorporate this new training as part of their network of over 30,000 grassroots community members in seven states.

“We at WhatsApp and DEF hope these training workshops will help build an empathetic and conscious community of WhatsApp users who learn to respond rather than react to every message they receive,” said Osama Manzar, Founder-Director of DEF.

WhatsApp has already taken several technological measures to curb the problem of disinformation, including the introduction of the “forwarded” tag and limiting forwarding to five chats at once.

“In addition to the steps we are taking within WhatsApp, we believe impacting lives through the power of education is critical to helping achieve the vision of a ‘Digital India’,” Supple added.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday said it has attached properties worth Rs 26.65 crore of senior journalist Upenra Rai in connection with its ongoing probe into a money laundering case.

An ED official told IANS that the attached assets includes a building in south Delhi’s Greater Kailash 1 area and a flat on Hailey Road in the heart of Delhi.

The ED also attached a flat and a penthouse of Rai in Uttar Pradesh’s Gautam Buddha Nagar and a flat each in Gomatinagar and Gokhale Marg in Lucknow.

The agency also attached investment worth Rs 5.62 crore in bank fixed deposits and mutual funds and three luxury cars.

The ED earlier filed a charge sheet in the case alleging that Rai laundered over Rs 29.58 crore by adopting different modus operandi and was involved in “extortion of the huge amount from different companies and corporate houses”.

The agency alleged that Rai took “undue advantage of his connections with several government officials” to gain access to confidential information about the penal proceedings contemplated against various defaulters.

According to the ED, Rai entered into agreement for consultancy services and issued false invoices to give genuine and legal shape to those transactions.

He allegedly received huge amounts of money from shell companies. The individuals and shell companies existed only on paper.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in July arrested a Bureau of Civil Aviation Security official, Rahul Rathore, and the Chairman and Managing Director of aviation firm Air One Aviation Pvt Ltd, Alok Sharma, after it found out about their involvement in the commission of crime committed by Rai, currently lodged in Delhi’s Tihar Jail.

Rai was arrested by the CBI on May 3 for dubious transactions of over Rs 100 crore in his bank accounts during 2017-18 and for using false information to obtain access to sensitive areas through Aerodrome Entry Pass (AEP) for all airports in the country. The ED arrested him on May 8.

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday termed the Congress allegations on the Rafale deal as “complete falsehood” and said the basic aircraft price at which the fighter jets had been bought was 9 per cent cheaper than that negotiated by the UPA government.

In a blogpost, Jaitley accused the Congress of seriously compromising national security by delaying the Rafale deal by over a decade and alleged that it was raising issues to “further delay defence procurement so that India’s defence preparedness further suffers”.

He said the Congress had launched a “false campaign” that the Modi government had paid a higher price for the fighter jets, an industrialist had been favoured and the interests of the public sector were compromised.

“Each one of the above issues is based on complete falsehood. It is expected from national political parties and its responsible leaders to keep themselves informed of the basic facts before they enter a public discourse on defence transactions,” Jaitley said.

“Every fact that Gandhi and the Congress has spoken on pricing and procedure are completely false,” he said.

“The UPA was a government which suffered from a decision-making paralysis. Do you agree that the delay of over one decade was only on account of the incompetence and indecisiveness of the UPA Government?

“Did this delay seriously compromise national security? Is not the medium multi-role combat aircraft required by our forces to identify and strike at targets particularly when two of our neighbours have already enhanced their strength in this area?

“Was this delay and eventual abatement of the purchase by the UPA based on collateral considerations as had been witnessed in earlier transactions such as the purchase of the 155 mm Bofors gun?” Jaitley questioned.

The Minister said the Congress and its President Rahul Gandhi were unaware of the Rafale deal facts.

“How is it that Gandhi quoted a price of Rs 700 crore per aircraft in Delhi and Karnataka in April and May? In Parliament, he reduced it to Rs 520 crore per aircraft, in Raipur he increased it to Rs 540 crore, in Jaipur he used Rs 520 crore and Rs 540 crore in the same speech,” he said.

“Truth has only one version, falsehood has many. Are these allegations being made without any familiarity with the facts of the Rafale purchase?” he asked.

(Ians)