Junior Digest

MUMBAI:  Reliance Industries Ltd’s (RELI.NS) telecom arm Jio said on Wednesday it will charge its customers for voice calls made through its network to other operators as it racks up fees to rivals.

The move goes back on a promise Jio made in 2016 to keep all voice calls free. Operators such as Jio have to pay fees when calls are made from one network to another, to cover the use of a rival’s network. Jio’s rivals are Bharti Airtel Ltd (BRTI.NS) and Vodafone Idea Ltd (VODA.NS).

India’s telecom regulator TRAI said in 2016 that it planned to reduce the so-called Interconnect Usage Charge (IUC) to zero from 6 paise (0.13 cents) per minute by January 2020 as it had envisaged that by then most of India’s voice traffic would have moved to 4G, therefore substantially bringing down the cost.

However, as 70% of India’s telecom subscribers are still not on 4G, TRAI is considering continuing the IUC charges, thwarting Reliance’s plans to continue giving customers free voice calls.

“So far, in the last three years Jio has paid nearly Rs.13,500 crore (135 billion rupees) as net IUC charges to the other operators,” Jio said in the statement.

Reliance, led by  Mukesh Ambani, invested some $40 billion to launch Jio three years ago. It was India’s first company to offer free voice calls, chiefly because it was the only company which was offering voice over 4G data.

Ambani’s foray into the telecoms sector shook the industry, leading rivals to cut prices, shut up shop or merge.

Jio has gained 340 million customers by offering cut-throat data prices but has had to pay a high fee to its rivals because they have more customers.

“For all recharges done by Jio customers starting today, calls made to other mobile operators will be charged at the prevailing IUC rate of 6 paise (0.13 cents) per minute,” Jio said in a statement on Wednesday.

Ambani had said at the company’s 2016 annual general meeting (AGM) that he intended to keep all voice calls free.

At the latest AGM in August Asia’s richest man said he intended to make Reliance net debt free by 2021.

Analysts estimate that for the full year ending in March 2020 Jio would have to pay up to 20 billion rupees in IUC charges, denting its operating income.

WARSAW, Poland : Poland’s nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) was on course to keep its ruling majority after a general election on Sunday, an exit poll showed, a victory likely to stoke concern about democratic standards in the largest former Soviet European Union state.

A second term for PiS will also bolster anti-immigration populists in the European Union are who keen to scale back the bloc’s liberal agenda and who cheer Poland’s chafing against Brussels over the rule of law.

The poll by Ipsos gave PiS 43.6% of the vote, with 27.4% of the ballots going to the centrist Civic Coalition, an umbrella group that includes the Civic Platform formerly led by European Union Council President Donald Tusk. A leftist bloc garnered 11.9% of votes in the poll.

Election officials are expected to start announcing partial results on Monday.

Handke’s publisher Lojze Wieser also welcomed the unexpected announcement, admitting: “We had given up hope”.

Tokarczuk and Handke — who both told the Academy they would attend the prize ceremony in Stockholm on December 10 — will each take home a cheque worth nine million kronor ($912,000, 828,000 euros).

Tokarczuk becomes just the 15th woman to win the prestigious distinction, out of 116 literature laureates honoured since 1901.

– Academy rocked by scandal –

Dating back to 1786, the Swedish Academy was shaken by a scandal that saw Frenchman Jean-Claude Arnault, who has close ties to the institution, jailed for rape in 2018.

The Academy was torn apart as its 18 members vehemently disagreed on how to manage their ties to him.

The rift exposed scheming, conflicts of interest, harassment and a culture of silence among its members, long esteemed as the country’s guardians of culture.

Ultimately, seven members quit the Academy. In tatters, it postponed the 2018 prize until this year — the first delay in 70 years.

The Academy has in the past year been revamped with new members and statutes.

“The changes have been very productive and we are hopeful for the future,” the new permanent secretary, Mats Malm, told AFP in an interview just days before the prize announcement.

More than 100,000 rescuers — including 31,000 troops — clawed through debris overnight Sunday to Monday to reach people trapped after torrential rain caused landslides and filled rivers until they burst their banks.

The destruction forced the Rugby World Cup being hosted by Japan to cancel several games, but the “Brave Blossoms”, as the national team is known, lifted spirits with a stunning 28-21 victory over Scotland Sunday that puts them into the quarter-finals of the tournament for the first time.

Military and fire department helicopters winched survivors from roofs and balconies in several locations.

New Delhi , Oct 11 :Chinese President Xi Jinping is arriving in India for his second informal summit with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Mahabalipuram town of Tamil Nadu on Friday.
Xi will be accompanied by China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Politburo members on his visit to India. From the Indian side, National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval and EAM S Jaishankar will accompany the Prime Minister.
The historic coastal town of Mahabalipuram will provide the setting for the meeting between Modi and Xi as the two leaders will have tete-a-tete as also delegation-level talks to strengthen bilateral ties.
The visit comes at a time when China has openly extended its support to Pakistan in raising the matter of abrogation of Article 370. China had criticised India’s decision on Kashmir and its foreign minister raised it at the UN General Assembly last month.
China has used every possible opportunity to criticise India over the Kashmir issue. India has maintained that the abrogation of Article 370 is an internal matter of India.
On Wednesday, a joint statement following the meeting between Xi and Khan in Beijing said that China is “paying close attention to the current situation in Jammu & Kashmir” and that the matter should be “properly and peacefully resolved based on the UN Charter, relevant UN Security Council resolutions and bilateral agreements.”
A report by Xinhua said that Xi told Khan during the meeting that China was paying close attention to the Kashmir situation and the “facts are clear”.
India took exception to references concerning Kashmir following talks between Xi and Khan and said it is not for other countries to comment on “internal affairs of India”.
The forthcoming Chennai Informal Summit will provide an opportunity to the Chinese President and PM Modi to continue their discussions on overarching issues of bilateral, regional and global importance and to exchange views on deepening India-China Closer Development Partnership, the External Affairs Ministry said in a statement. This summit will mostly be similar to the first, held on April 2018 in Wuhan, China.
Xi will arrive at the Chennai International Airport on Friday afternoon, while the Indian Prime Minister will reach the city shortly before noon. The two leaders will meet in Mahabalipuram in the evening and visit some UNESCO world heritage sites.
They will have guided tour of three monuments – Arjuna’s penance, an intricately carved ancient sculpture; Krishna’s Butter Ball – a big round boulder perched on a slope; and Pancha Rathas – a five chariots monument complex.
The historical city also has a China connection and has had ancient maritime links with the country during the Pallava dynasty.
Mahabalipuram was a major port city in the 7th century and served as a gateway for import and export of goods from and to South India.
A cultural programme will be organised in honour of the visiting leader at the Shore Temple on Friday evening. Modi will then host the Chinese President for dinner.
On Saturday, Modi and Xi will have one-to-one meeting followed by delegation-level talks.
No Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs), agreements would be signed or joint communique issued.
Government sources had earlier told ANI that the structure of informal meeting between the two leaders would be similar to the first informal summit between the two leaders in April last year in Wuhan.
The objective of the meeting is likely to be the exchange of views on regional and global issues, finding a broad pathway on bilateral relations, and discussing ways to build better connections between the two countries.
Issues pertaining to trade increased market access for products like soybean and non-basmati rice, as well as terrorism, sourcing, financing, and origins of terror are expected to come up during the talks.
Shortly before Xi’s departure for Nepal, Modi will host lunch in honour of the Chinese President on Saturday afternoon.
This is not the first time that the Prime Minister is hosting Xi outside the national capital. In 2014, Modi had welcomed the Chinese President at Ahmedabad.

The company, whose encrypted messaging program Messenger has some 300 million monthly users worldwide, raised more than $1.7 billion in funds from US and overseas investors.

The SEC said in a complaint filed in US District Court in New York that Telegram had planned for the Grams to be delivered to consumers by the end of October.

Purchasers of the Grams would then be able to resell them on the open market in sales that would be facilitated by Telegram and its affiliates, the SEC said.

“Defendants plan to sell billions of securities that will quickly come to rest in the hands of US investors without providing those investors important information about their business operations, financial condition, risk factors and management,” the SEC complaint said.

The SEC requested an temporary restraining order saying “once Grams reach the public markets, it will be virtually impossible to unwind the Offering, given that many purchasers’ identities will be shrouded in secrecy, and given the variety of unregulated markets where Grams may be sold, including platforms that promise anonymity and encryption capability to mask transactions.”

The SEC in the past year has ramped up its efforts to combat companies raising funds through questionable digital currencies, which it said are ripe for potential fraud.

STOCKHOLM/LONDON : Three scientists won the 2019 Nobel Prize for Chemistry on Wednesday for developing and refining rechargeable lithium-ion batteries which made the global information technology, mobile and fossil-fuel free revolutions possible.

American John Goodenough, at 97, became the oldest winner of a Nobel prize and shares the 9 million Swedish crown ($906,000 award equally with Stanley Whittingham from Britain and Akira Yoshino of Japan, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

“Lithium-ion batteries have revolutionized our lives since they first entered the market in 1991. They have laid the foundation of a wireless, fossil fuel-free society, and are of the greatest benefit to humankind,” the academy’s Nobel committee said.

Whittingham developed the first functional lithium battery in the early 1970s. Goodenough doubled the battery’s potential in the following decade and Yoshino eliminated pure lithium from the battery, making it much safer to use.

Speaking on Japanese TV after hearing of his win, a smiling Yoshino said he was glad to have helped the environment.

“I am happy that Lithium ion battery won the prize in that context,” he said, adding that he also hoped it would inspire others: “I hope this will become an encouragement for young researchers.”

Gregory Offer, an expert in mechanical engineering at Imperial College London, said the scientists’ work had led to “one of the key enabling technologies of the 21st century”.

“They have already underpinned the mobile revolution, and are now essential to help us solve the problem of climate change by electrifying transport and storing renewable electricity generation,” he said in an emailed comment.

Peter Somfai, a professor of organic chemistry and a member of the Nobel committee for chemistry, said it was clear why the three should have won.

“This is a technology we use every day. Most people have a mobile phone, electric vehicles are getting more popular. So… it’s pretty straight forward why it’s an important discovery, he told Reuters.”

STOCKHOLM: U.S.-based economists Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer won the 2019 Nobel Economics Prize on Monday for work fighting poverty that has helped millions of children by favoring practical steps over theory.

French-American Duflo becomes only the second woman to win the economics prize in its 50-year history, as well as the youngest at 46. She shared the award equally with Indian-born American Banerjee and Kremer, also of the United States.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said their work had shown how poverty could be addressed by breaking it down into smaller and more precise questions in areas such as education and healthcare, and then testing solutions in the field.

It said the results of their studies and field experiments had ranged from helping millions of Indian schoolchildren with remedial tutoring to encouraging governments around the world to increase funding for preventative medicine.

“It starts from the idea that the poor are often reduced to caricatures and even the people that try to help them do not actually understand what are the deep roots of (their) problems,” Duflo told reporters in Stockholm by telephone.

“What we try to do in our approach is to say, ‘Look, let’s try to unpack the problems one-by-one and address them as rigorously and scientifically as possible’,” she added.

The team pioneered “randomized controlled trials”, or RCTs, in economics. Long used in fields such as medicine, an RCT could for example take two groups of people and study what difference a treatment makes on one group while the other group is only given a placebo.

Applied to development economics, such field experiments found for example that providing more textbooks and free school meals had only small effects, while targeting help for weak students made a big difference to overall educational levels.

“It’s a prize not just for us but for the whole movement,” Banerjee later told a joint news conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where they both work. Kremer is a researcher at Harvard University.

Citing Banerjee’s methods as having transformed classroom teaching in state schools in New Delhi, the Indian capital’s chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Twitter that it was a “big day for every Indian”.

MALE-DOMINATED

The team have notably been associated with the “Teaching at the right level” (TarL) program which has helped 60 million children in India and Africa and focuses on math and reading skills for primary school pupils.

One project gathered evidence on how an often overlooked measure such as deworming children could help their education. Yet another found that making the renewal of teacher contracts dependent on pupil grades produced better scores, while reducing the pupil-teacher ratio had little impact.

Duflo said the importance of the two most commonly cited approaches to tackling poverty – foreign aid and freeing up trade with poor countries – had often been “overstated”.

While the United Nations estimates that global poverty has been cut by more than half since 2000, it says one in 10 people in developing regions still live on less than $1.90 a day. In sub-Saharan Africa, that proportion rises to 42%.

Duflo said it was clear that better designed policies were having an impact on alleviating poverty worldwide.

But some economists, while saluting their work, said it did not address the bigger inequalities in the global economy which left millions stuck in poverty regardless of local intervention.

“I would congratulate them but still put that caveat that poverty is artificially made by human beings who put up systems that deny others the opportunity to realize their full potential,” said James Shikwati, head of the Nairobi-based Inter Regional Economic Network think tank.

Asked whether Duflo’s award was an attempt to redress the gender imbalance in the prize’s history, Peter Fredriksson, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Economic Sciences, said it showed that women were now more present in economics.

Duflo remarked that it came at an “extremely important and opportune time” for women in a sector that has traditionally been very male-dominated.

“We are at a time when we are starting to realize in the profession that the way that we (treat) each other privately and publicly is not conducive all the time for a very good environment for women,” she said.

The 9 million Swedish crown ($915,300) economics prize is a later addition to the five awards created in the will of industrialist and dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel, established by the Swedish central bank and first awarded in 1969.