Ola's global march continues as it eyes UK entry within a month

After marking its entry into Australia earlier this year, Bengalurua-based Ola is now setting its sights on the ride-hailing market in the United Kingdom (UK) and has obtained a licence to operate in South Wales and Greater Manchester regions.

The company plans to start operations in the UK market within the next month, saying it would be the only ride-hailing player there that can legally offer customers both private hire and black cabs on its platform. It plans to further expand its presence across the UK by the end of 2018.

“Ola is excited to announce its plans for the UK, one of the world’s most evolved transportation markets. The UK is a fantastic place to do business and we look forward to providing a responsible, compelling, new service that can help the country meet its ever demanding mobility needs,” said Bhavish Aggarwal, co-founder and CEO of Ola, in a statement.

Just like when it announced its entry into the Australian market in February, Ola seeks to sign up driver partners in cities such as Cardiff, Newport and Vale of Glamorgan, apart from the regions, before opening the platform for customers. The company says it will offer best-in-industry commission rates to its driver partners - 10 per cent for private hire vehicles and 5 per cent for metered taxis.

News digest: RBI policy review, e-way bill, ball tampering row, and more

Number of delisted companies on the rise; bourses may see more exits

Despite a record line-up of debuts on the bourses this year, India’s listed universe is shrinking, and shrinking fast.

Around 1,000 companies were compulsorily delisted in the past two years on the BSE and the National Stock Exchange (NSE). And, by some estimates, another 1,000-2,000 may be shown the door, effectively contracting the universe of listed shares by 30-50 per cent. Read more here

RBI may keep repo rate unchanged at 6% in April policy review: BS Poll

There is a clear consensus that the six-member monetary policy committee of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) would keep the repo rate unchanged at 6 per cent next week.
But surprisingly, there is a narrow chance that the central bank may cut rates in the future, according to a Business Standard poll of 15 economists and treasurers. Read more here 

EU warns of retaliation against any tariff on steel, aluminium by the US

The European Union's trade chief on Friday warned of possible retaliation if U. S. President Donald Trump's plans to impose hefty tariffs on imported steel and aluminium apply to Europe.

Trump said on Thursday the duties, 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminium, would be formally announced next week, although White House officials later said some details still needed to be ironed out.

Speaking in Singapore, EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said any move that would target Europe would be "deeply unfair".

"We are discussing different measures. Everything from bringing the case to the WTO (World Trade Organisation), alone or with partners who are also affected, and also safeguard measures and possible retaliation," Malmstrom said.

Israel PM Netanyahu may be charged with bribery for accepting cigars, gifts

Israeli police on Tuesday recommended that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be indicted in two cases of alleged corruption after a long-running probe in a move set to shake the country's politics.
A decision to press formal charges against the veteran premier now rests with the attorney general's office, which is expected to take weeks or months to decide how to proceed.

Netanyahu, prime minister for nearly 12 years, addressed the nation as news of the recommendations broke, proclaiming his innocence and pledging to continue to lead the country.

"Over the years, I have been the subject of at least 15 enquiries and investigations," Netanyahu said in the televised address.

India strikes a better deal on LNG price with Exxon: Dharmendra Pradhan

India has renegotiated the pricing of liquefied natural gas (LNG) imported from Australia's Gorgon project to make the imported fuel affordable to price-sensitive domestic customers, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Saturday.

India has been trying to leverage its position as one of the biggest energy consumers to strike better bargains for its companies. In 2015 it renegotiated the LNG pricing formula with Qatar's Rasgas to buy the gas at half the original price.

"Indian customers will receive (Gorgon) LNG volumes at an amicable price soon. This is done in a similar way to what we did with LNG from Qatar," Pradhan said in a tweet.

India's top gas importer Petronet LNG signed a deal in 2009 with Exxon Mobil Corp to buy 1.5 million tonnes of LNG annually from Gorgon for 20 years. At that time Petronet agreed to buy LNG at a cost equivalent to 14.5 percent of the oil price and to pay for the shipping freight as well.

Supplies under the deal began from January 2017, with the landed price of gas costing about $11-$13 per million British thermal units (mmBtu), almost double that of Asian spot LNG prices.

The Gorgon gas prices are now linked to about 13-13.5 per cent of the global oil price on a delivered basis, two sources with knowledge of the negotiation said.
READ MORE

UN urges Australia to stop detaining refugees, shut detention centres

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Monday urged Australia to stop detaining refugees and close down its offshore detention centres in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

"Four years on, more than 2,000 people are still languishing in unacceptable circumstances. Families have been separated and many have suffered physical and psychological harm," UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi said in a statement.

According to the statement, around 2,500 refugees and asylum-seekers have been forcibly transferred by Australia for offshore processing of their applications in Papua New Guinea and Nauru since the introduction of the current policy in 2013.

Of these, some 1,100 remain in Nauru and 900 in Papua New Guinea, added the statement.

The statement adds that the Australian government informed the UNHCR it will not accept refugees on its territory and offered the options of either letting them be where they are, or transferring them to Cambodia, with whom it signed an agreement in 2014, or the US, with whom it signed an agreement in 2016, to transfer some of the refugees detained in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

"To avoid prolonging their ordeal, UNHCR has no other choice but to endorse the relocation of all refugees on Papua New Guinea and Nauru to the US, even those with close family members in Australia," the UN High Commissioner said in his statement.

Many of the refugees in these offshore centres have fled strife-torn countries such as Afghanistan, Darfur, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria, and others have escaped discrimination or status as stateless persons such as the Rohingya minorities from Myanmar.
READ MORE

Humans first arrived in Australia 65,000 years ago, study suggests

The timing of the first arrival of humans in Australia has been studied and debated for decades. Now, researchers have found evidence that suggests the ancestors of Aboriginal Australians landed in the northern part of Australia at least 65,000 years ago.

The finding, which was published Wednesday in the journal Nature, pushes back the timing of when people first came to the continent by about 5,000 to 18,000 years. It also suggests that humans coexisted with colossal Australian animals like giant wombats and wallabies long before the megafauna went extinct.

“This is the earliest reliable date for human occupation in Australia,” Peter Hiscock, an archaeologist at the University of Sydney who was not involved in the study, said in an email. “This is indeed a marvelous step forward in our exploration of the human past in Australia.”

Previous archaeological digs and dating had suggested people migrated to Australia between 47,000 and 60,000 years ago. But a new excavation at an aboriginal rock shelter called Madjedbebe revealed human relics that dated back 65,000 years.

“We were gobsmacked by the richness of material that we were finding at the site: fireplaces intact, a ring of grind stones around it, and there were human burials in their graves,” said Chris Clarkson, an archaeologist from the University of Queensland in Australia and lead author of the study. “No one dreamed of a site so rich and so old in Australia.”
READ MORE

What is a ballistic missile - and will it stop a missile from North Korea?

North Korea’s test this week of an intercontinental ballistic missile has reignited interest and debate on the feasibility of ballistic missile defence systems, and whether countries such as Australia should seek to acquire them.

But what are these systems, and how do they work? How effective would they be in providing a defence against a potential missile attack?

How do they work?

All ballistic missile defence systems consist of a network of tracking and guidance radars, and the interceptor launchers.

On detecting a ballistic missile launch, the radars track the missile’s trajectory, fire an interceptor to shoot it down, and prepare further interceptors to be launched if the first one misses.

This is referred to as a “shoot-look-shoot” strategy, as opposed to a strategy of saturation – where the defender simply shoots as many interceptors as possible in the hope of achieving a kill.

Modern defence systems use interceptor missiles carrying kinetic kill vehicles. These are warheads that are non-explosive and designed to destroy incoming ballistic missiles by simply crashing into them.

All of the systems mentioned below are intended to work in conjunction with one another. They are integrated to provide the ability to shoot down ballistic missiles throughout their flight path. However, they are also capable of operating independently, although with less effectiveness than if operated in conjunction with other systems.
READ MORE

Cyberattack hits Ukraine then spreads internationally

Computer systems from Ukraine to the United States were struck on Tuesday in an international cyberattack that was similar to a recent assault that crippled tens of thousands of machines worldwide.

In Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, A.T.M.s stopped working. About 80 miles away, workers were forced to manually monitor radiation at the old Chernobyl nuclear plant when their computers failed. And tech managers at companies around the world — from Maersk, the Danish shipping conglomerate, to Merck, the drug giant in the United States — were scrambling to respond. Even an Australian factory for the chocolate giant Cadbury was affected.

It was unclear who was behind this cyberattack, and the extent of its impact was still hard to gauge Tuesday. It started as an attack on Ukrainian government and business computer systems — an assault that appeared to have been intended to hit the day before a holiday marking the adoption in 1996 of Ukraine’s first Constitution after its break from the Soviet Union. The attack spread from there, causing collateral damage around the world.

The outbreak was the latest and perhaps the most sophisticated in a series of attacks making use of dozens of hacking tools that were stolen from the National Security Agency and leaked online in April by a group called the Shadow Brokers.

Like the WannaCry attacks in May, the latest global hacking took control of computers and demanded digital ransom from their owners to regain access. The new attack used the same National Security Agency hacking tool, Eternal Blue, that was used in the WannaCry episode, as well as two other methods to promote its spread, according to researchers at the computer security company Symantec.

The National Security Agency has not acknowledged its tools were used in WannaCry or other attacks. But computer security specialists are demanding that the agency help the rest of the world defend against the weapons it created.
READ MORE

AirAsia flight 'shaking like washing machine' had technical faults

An AirAsia flight to Malaysia was forced back to Australia on Sunday due to a technical problem, with one passenger saying the plane was "shaking like a washing machine".

The Airbus A330 from Perth to Kuala Lumpur experienced problems about 90 minutes into the journey.

It landed safely, with Perth Airport reporting a "technical issue".

"The pilot identified technical issues, turned around and returned," an airport spokesman told AFP, adding that emergency crews were put on standby but not needed.

The Malaysian low-cost carrier said only that "flight crew are taking precautionary measures to check the aircraft".

It was the second scare involving an Airbus A330 in Australia this month, with a China Eastern plane making an emergency landing in Sydney after a huge hole appeared in one of its engine casings.

Terrified passengers on that flight described a very loud noise soon after it left Sydney for Shanghai. No one was hurt.

The West Australian newspaper cited passengers on Sunday's flight as saying they heard a bang and then the plane started shuddering.

"You could tell by the cabin crew's reaction that it was really bad," said Sophie Nicolas, who said she heard a small explosion from the left wing. "It was terrifying."

Another passenger, Brenton Atkinson, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation the whole plane started shaking, far more than standard turbulence.
READ MORE

What next for US-Australian ties after Malcolm Turnbull mocks Donald Trump?

As has been widely reported, Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull recently lampooned Donald Trump in a stand-up performance at Canberra's Midwinter Ball. The ball is the Aussie equivalent of the White House correspondents dinner that Trump boycotted this year, except that proceedings are supposed to be confidential.

The pair had a bumpy start to their relationship. A phone call in late January between the two was far from harmonious with Trump extremely critical of a refugee resettlement deal negotiated with the Obama administration. He allegedly told the PM that it was “the worst call by far” to a world leader and tweeted:

Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2017

His administration eventually agreed to implement the agreement. Asylum seekers are currently being assessed with extreme vetting.

Audio of the send-up was leaked by veteran Australian political journalist Laurie Oakes. He argued that he did not feel obliged to follow the “off-the-record tradition” as he did not attend the event and thinks the ban is inappropriate. The Guardian's Katharine Murphy agrees:

If the press gallery continues to agree that midwinter ball speeches off the record, we have jumped the bloody shark https://t.co/KFCbpbFf09

— Katharine Murphy (@murpharoo) June 15, 2017

Turnbull's routine involves some impersonation of the president complete with gestures. Politicususa summarised the script:

“The Donald and I … we are winning and winning in the polls. We are winning so much We are winning like we have never done before. We are winning in the polls. We are. Not the fake polls. Not the fake polls. They’re the ones we are not winning in. We are winning in the real polls. You know the online polls. They are so easy to win. I know that, do you know that? I kind of know that. They are so easy to win. I have this Russian guy..”
READ MORE

Rise of 'anti-politics' produces surprise result in the UK election

A little over a week before the 2017 UK general election, the improbable occurred. A poll indicated that Prime Minister Theresa May could lose the Conservative majority. The shadow of a hung parliament was cast over the UK parliament again. It was a claim credible enough to the markets for the sterling to drop. Most political analysts, however, did not take it seriously.

But these are unconventional times. There is an unlikely president in the White House. No pundit predicted Brexit. And now, a Labour Party led by an “anti-politician” in Jeremy Corbyn has delivered a hung parliament.

While Theresa May will soon be on her way to Buckingham Palace to ask the Queen’s permission to form a minority government, the unlikelihood of a stable coalition government means Britons may be heading back to the polls much sooner than they expected.

A win for anti-politics?
“Anti-politics” is often used to describe:

a growing distrust of career politicians;

hatred of partisan politics; and

disaffection with democracy.

Among its causes is complacency in rich Western nations, as well as disinterest in institutions (especially from the young). Many see anti-politics as a tide sweeping away much that was previously taken for granted.

According to leading UK scholars, anti-politics is not a democratic de-alignment as much as the result of political realignment. In other words, it is not that we are turning off democracy – but that we are turning away from political elites and major party politics.

A recent Australian survey found righteous indignation among its citizens. This anger is directed at parties and politicians who are swayed by the quest for power and seem to break promises without impunity.
READ MORE

Asian markets trade lower ahead of ECB meet and UK election

Asian shares wobbled in early Thursday trade as investors braced for any surprises from former FBI director James Comey's congressional appearance, the European Central Bank's policy meeting and the UK general elections.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was down 0.27 percent while Japan's Nikkei rose 0.3 percent thanks to the dollar's rebound against the yen.

Wall Street shares ticked up on Wednesday, despite sharp decline in energy prices, after written testimony from Comey did not add major revelations about an investigation into Russian meddling with last year's US presidential election.

The 10-year US Treasuries yield ticked up to 2.185 percent after having fallen to a seven-month low of 2.129 percent on Tuesday.

Many investors are wary ahead of Comey's Senate appearance later in the day for any hints that President Donald Trump may have been engaged in obstruction of justice - an offence that could lead to impeachment hearings.

"If the hearing does not produce clear-cut evidences of obstruction of justice, uncertainties will remain but for market the issue will likely be put on a back burner," said Hiroko Iwaki, senior fixed income strategist at Mizuho Securities.

"Unless you assume there will be a complete chaos in US politics or a downturn in the U.S. economy, it is hard to see further falls in US bond yields," she said.

In the foreign exchange market, the dollar stayed near its seven-month low against a basket of currencies as doubts over Trump's ability to push through his stimulus plans have eroded the greenback's gains late last year.

The dollar index stood at 96.695, near Wednesday's seven-month low of 96.511.

The euro traded at $1.1258, near its seven-month high of $1.1285 touched earlier this month, ahead of the European Central Bank's policy meeting later in the day.

READ MORE

Adani Group to finalise investment deal for Australian project by June

Indian conglomerate Adani Group plans to begin extracting coal from the $16.5 billion Carmichael project in Australia in 2020-21, its Chairman Gautam Adani has said.

The Group, which has interests from ports to power, would finalise by June an investment decision for the project, which has been delayed due to protests from environmental groups.

In an interview to PTI, Adani said his group is not just investing in coal but also in renewable energy in Australia, seeking to develop 1,500 MW of solar projects by 2022.

"Like in India, we are investing heavily in renewable energy in Australia too," he said.

It has signed pacts to build two solar farms, each with capacity of 100-200 megawatts in Queensland and South Australia.

Adani said the company has scaled down the coal mine capacity in the first phase.

Originally seen producing 60 million tonnes a year from six open-cut pits and five underground mines, a scaled-down first stage is now planned to produce 25 million tonnes a year of coal and will cost over $4 billion. Other phases will come later.

"We will begin work within months of getting final approval from the Australian government," he said.

Projections of a global glut of coal and prolonged low prices notwithstanding, Adani is pushing ahead with plans to build the mine that would produce thermal coal to generate electricity and operate for six decades.

"About 15 million tons of coal produced from the project (in the northern Australian state of Queensland) will be shipped to India for generating electricity," he said.

The group has for more than five years battled opposition from green groups who are opposed to any expansion of the port, saying it will cut into the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. The port is to be used for exporting coal to India.

"A port already exists with capacity to handle phase-one coal," he said adding a rail line will have to be built for transporting coal from the mines to the port.

The group has so far invested Australian dollar 3.4 billion on the Abbot Point port and preparatory work for the Carmichael coal mine. It has applied for an Australian government agency loan to finance the railway line.

Adani said he is expecting Australian federal and state government nods for the coal project soon.

The Adani Group entered Australia in 2010 with the purchase of the greenfield Carmichael coal mine in the Galilee Basin in central Queensland, and the Abbot Point port near Bowen in the north.
read more

Good luck migrants in Australia! You can no longer afford gateway suburbs

The concentration of disadvantaged people in certain parts of cities is almost always seen as undesirable by urban researchers and policymakers. But is this always the case? The Conversation

Our research demonstrates that it isn’t. Concentrations of people who are often classified as “disadvantaged” – namely newly arrived humanitarian refugees and their families – can have significant positive outcomes. This is because such “gateway suburbs”, while housing large numbers of disadvantaged people, are not disadvantaged places.

Auburn is 19km west of the Sydney CBD.
As part of a broader research project, we chose two suburbs that were identified as disadvantaged and characterised by high numbers of immigrants. We spoke with residents and local service providers about their experiences, place changes over time and current settlement opportunities for newly arriving migrants. The suburbs we chose were Auburn in Sydney and Springvale in Melbourne.

Springvale is 23km south-east of the Melbourne CBD.
Auburn and Springvale may have high concentrations of disadvantaged people, as defined by Australian Bureau of Statistics data (in terms of income, employment and language proficiency in particular). But they are not disadvantaged places.

These suburbs are well serviced by public transport and are within reasonable commuting distance of their cities’ CBDs. They have a plethora of social and community services, along with a good selection of shops and services catering to the local community.

Historically, these suburbs have been major hubs for providing resources and support to new and established migrant communities.
READ MORE