National passenger carrier Air India has invited bids from banks for Rs 500-crore government guarantee-backed “Short Term Loans (STLs)”.

The airline has called for financial bids by September 10.

“Air India is inviting bids for Government Guaranteed INR Short Term Loans (STL) totalling to Rs 500 crore to meet its urgent working capital requirements,” the airline said in a tender document issued on Thursday.

“The tenure of the loan will be for one year (renewable) from the date of availing the STL. The amount of Rs 500 crore will be drawn during September 2018 in one or more tranches.”

(IANS)

As countries over the world including India face elections amid the spread of fake news and political interference on social media platforms, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has asked for some more time to fix his network that has over two billion users.

In a post on Friday, Zuckerberg said that Facebook started on the platform sanitising project in 2017 and “even this work will extend through 2019, I do expect us to end this year on a significantly better trajectory than when we entered it”.

“My personal challenge for 2018 has been to fix the most important issues facing Facebook — whether that’s defending against election interference by nation states, protecting our community from abuse and harm, or making sure people have control of their information,” the Facebook founder wrote.

After his grilling in the US Congress in April over the Cambridge Analytica data scandal and the Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, COO Sheryl Sandberg again testified at the US Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on election security on September 5.

Along with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, she faced the committee which is probing the Russian interference from an angle to publicly hold Facebook and Twitter accountable for allowing Russian operatives on their platforms.

“I’m spending a lot of time on these issues, and as the year winds down I’m going to write a series of notes outlining how I’m thinking about them and the steps we’re taking to address them,” said Zuckerberg.

The first note will be about the steps Facebook is taking to prevent election interference on Facebook, which is timely with the US mid-terms and Brazilian presidential elections approaching.

“I’ll write about privacy, encryption and business models, and then about content governance and enforcement as well in the coming months,” he added.

NASA has launched a sounding rocket from the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia to test a supersonic parachute for landing its next rover on Mars.

The rocket launched on Friday carried the Advanced Supersonic Parachute Inflation Research Experiment (ASPIRE) from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

The payload descended by parachute and splashed-down in the Atlantic Ocean 28 miles from Wallops Island, NASA said.

The parachute was successfully recovered and returned to Wallops for data retrieval and inspection.

The suborbital launch was designed to mimic conditions that the parachute might experience during a Mars landing, Space.com reported.

“This is really a strength test of that Mars 2020 (rover) design,” Jeremy Hill, a mechanical engineer at JPL, was quoted as saying during a webcast of the launch.

“We want to get as close to the Martian environment as we can.”

The payload is a bullet-nosed, cylindrical structure holding a supersonic parachute, the parachute’s deployment mechanism, and the test’s high-definition instrumentation — including cameras — to record data.

The Mars 2020 rover mission is scheduled to launch in July/August 2020 when Earth and Mars are in good positions relative to each other for landing on Mars.

The mission takes the next step in addressing questions about potential for life on Mars by not only seeking signs of habitable conditions on Mars in the ancient past, but also searching for signs of past microbial life itself.

(IANS)

BJP MLA Ram Kadam, under fire over his “will kidnap girl” remarks, was caught on the wrong foot again Friday after he tweeted that Bollywood actor Sonali Bendre was no more, only to retract it after realising that the news was not true and facing massive backlash.

Bendre is currently undergoing treatment for cancer in the US.

Kadam tweeted in Marathi that “Bollywood and Marathi diva” Sonali Bendre “has passed away in America” and condoled her demise.

After he was trolled for believing a baseless rumour, he deleted the message.

He posted another tweet, saying, “About Sonali Bendre ji, it was rumour for the last two days. I pray to god for her good health and speedy recovery.”

Bendre revealed in July that she has been diagnosed with a “high-grade cancer” and is undergoing treatment in the US.

On Monday, Kadam sparked off a storm of protest with his remarks at a Dahi Handi (Janmashtami) celebration in Mumbai. A video clip showed him saying that youngsters often seek his help after girls reject their proposals. “Come with your parents. What will I do if your parents approve? I will kidnap the girl and hand her over to you,” he was heard telling the crowd.

(PTI)

Commercial vehicles major Ashok Leyland Ltd on Friday said it has inaugurated its electric vehicle (EV) facility in its plant at Ennore here.

In a statement issued here the company said it is India’s first integrated facility for design, prototyping, testing, process prototyping and solutions design.

“The in-house facilities include engineering, prototyping and testing for motors, battery modules and packs and a power electronics lab. Keeping in mind the rapidly evolving and changing market and technology, it has been conceived as an in-house start-up facility in order to stay flexible and fast,” the statement said.

“In our 70th year, we are laying the foundation for our future. The EV Centre in Ennore will give us the edge throughout the evolution of eMobility,” Vinod K Dasari, Managing Director was quoted as saying in the statement.

Commenting on this milestone, Ashok Leyland, said, “Besides working on multiple technologies and platforms for our products, we are creating new disruptive products and services that will change the very paradigm of Commercial Vehicle mobility. The focus is on a massive number of internal initiatives for safety, reliability and optimizing total cost of ownership. We are committed to exploit new opportunities in terms of efficiency, energy, geometry and business models which Electric Drive Trains offers.”

“At present, we have a capacity to take care of about 5,000-10,000 vehicles per annum, with different battery and charging options. We have leveraged start-ups in India as well as from abroad, to bring in innovative yet cost-effective solutions that are offered by us on a turnkey basis. The idea is to have a mature and dynamic portfolio of products, services and solutions when the volume market takes off in a few years,” said Karthick Athmanathan, Business Unit Head, EV’s & eMobility.

(IANS)

The Income Tax Department on Thursday raided the residence of senior BJP leader and Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi’s sister, Rekha Modi, who is one of the accused in Rs 1,900 crore Srijan scam, police said.

“A team of the IT Department raided Rekha Modi’s residence — a flat in Saraswati Apartment at posh commercial S.P. Verma road here. The team conducted searches in connection with the Srijan scam,” a district police official said.

According to the police officials, Rekha Modi is accused of purchasing huge jewellery gifts from the kingpin of multi-crore Srijan scam that is being probed by the CBI.

After Rekha Modi’s name surfaced in Srijan scam, opposition RJD attacked Sushil Modi, saying his family had links with those accused in the scam.

Leader of the Opposition in Bihar Legislative Assembly Tejashwi Yadav has repeatedly alleged that Sushil Modi’s family has direct links with the accused in the multi-crore Srijan scam case involving an NGO that allegedly pilfered funds meant for government welfare schemes.

“Sushil Modi’s sister Rekha Modi and niece Urvashi Modi received crores of rupees from Srijan scam,” the former Bihar Deputy Chief Minister had said earlier this year in a series of tweets, attaching the statement of Srijan Mahila Vikas Sahyog Samiti Ltd’s Indian Bank’s Bhagalpur branch account in which few transactions showed the names of Rekha Modi and Urvashi Modi.

However, Sushil Modi had claimed that he had no relation with Rekha Modi.

The Srijan scam involves Bhagalpur-based NGO Srijan Mahila Vikas Sahyog Samiti Ltd, which used to provide vocational training to women. The NGO allegedly pilfered funds meant for government welfare schemes from the bank accounts of the Bhagalpur district administration.

Nitish Kumar had on August 18, 2017 recommended a CBI probe into the scam after RJD chief Lalu Prasad accused him of “murdering democracy” in Bihar.

In August last year, the CBI registered 10 cases related to the scam and filed four fresh cases in June this year.

(IANS)

Twitter said it has permanently banned US conspiracy theorist Alexander Jones and accounts associated with his website Infowars for “abusive behaviour”.

“Today, we permanently suspended @realalexjones and @infowars from Twitter and Periscope,” Twitter said on Thursday on its Safety account, Xinhua news agency reported.

The world leading social media site said it took the action “based on new reports of Tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behaviour policy, in addition to the accounts’ past violations.”

The ban will cut Jones and Infowars from its 1.5 million followers on future interaction on Twitter’s platform, and Twitter vows to “take action” if the latter attempts to circumvent the prohibitive measure.

“We will continue to evaluate reports we receive regarding other accounts potentially associated with @realalexjones or @infowars and will take action if content that violates our rules is reported or if other accounts are utilized in an attempt to circumvent their ban,” @TwitterSafety said in one of its tweets.

The social media firm said it will increase transparency in implementation of its rules and actions, but it declines to “comment on enforcement actions we take against individual accounts, for their privacy.”

Twitter is one of the latest major tech companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple that has permanently banned Jones and his associated accounts. It imposed a week-long ban on Jones as a warning for his bellicose behaviour last month.

In August, Google-owned YouTube, Apple and Facebook removed or restricted Jones’ activities on their platforms for hate speech.

Jones is a controversial American radio show host and conspiracy theorist, who runs the website Infowars.com that is devoted to conspiracy theories and fake news.

He is notorious for accusing the US government of planning the Oklahoma City bombing that killed at least 168 people and wounded more than 680 others in 1995.

Jones also doubted the government’s role in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the US that left 2,996 people dead and over 6,000 injured.

(IANS)

Indian software major Infosys on Friday said it has formed a joint venture (JV) with global investment firm Temasek in Singapore to service it and its clients in the digital domain.

“The JV will integrate our team with that of Temasek’s Singapore subsidiary Trusted Source Pte Ltd, which delivers IT services to it and its clients,” said the city-based IT major in a statement here.

As per an agreement signed by the partners on Thursday night, Infosys will hold 60 per cent in the JV and Temasek 40 per cent.

As governments the world over including in India aim to store data of their people within their boundaries, Facebook on Friday announced to build its first data centre in Asia that will be located in Singapore.

The 170,000-square-metre data centre will be built with more than 1.4 billion Singapore dollars (over $1 billion), opening hundreds of job opportunities.

“We are excited to announce that Facebook’s first custom-built data center in Asia will be located in Singapore. It will support hundreds of jobs and form part of our growing presence in Singapore and across Asia,” Facebook said in a statement.

Facebook’s data centres are currently located across the US and in Europe.

In India, a government panel is currently working on the guidelines to ensure that data generated locally must be stored within the country.

The social media giant said it selected Singapore for robust infrastructure and access to fibre, a talented local workforce, and a great set of community partners, including the Singapore Economic Development Board.

“Singapore has also established policies that foster a business-friendly environment, including measures that support the enforcement of contracts and increase the ease of construction permitting,” Facebook said.

The World Bank recently named Singapore as top country in Asia to do business.

The Singapore data centre will be the first to incorporate the new “StatePoint Liquid Cooling” system.

This technology minimises water and power consumption and can reduce the amount of peak water used by 20 per cent in climates like Singapore’s, said Facebook.

The 11-storey facility will be powered by 100 per cent renewable energy, Facebook added.

(IANS)

The key Indian equity market indices on Thursday opened higher despite a muted trend in global markets.

The Sensitive Index (Sensex) of the BSE, which had closed at 38,018.31 points on Wednesday, opened higher at 38.161.85 points.

Minutes into trading, it was quoting at 38,096 points, up by 77.69 points, or 0.20 per cent.

At the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the broader 51-scrip Nifty, which was quoting at 11,499.60 points, was up by 22.65 points or 0.20 per cent.

On Thursday, Asian indices were showing a mixed trend. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was quoting in red, down by 0.42 per cent, Hang Seng was down by 0.57 per cent, South Korea’s Kospi was up 0.02 per cent and China’s Shanghai Composite index was trading in green, up by 0.21 per cent.

Overnight, Nasdaq closed in red, down by 1.20 per cent while FTSE 100 was also down by 1.01 per cent at the closing on Wednesday.

(IANS)