Exhausted pro-democracy protesters barricaded inside a Hong Kong university defy warnings to surrender, as a police siege drags into a third day and China sends fresh signals its patience with months of unrest is running out https://t.co/BC9lqikLFBpic.twitter.com/FqMJZtS054
BREAKING: Taliban officials tell @AP that three released Taliban commanders arrived in Qatar for swap for American, Australian hostage. https://t.co/NVbwwtZTub
U.S. aerospace giant Boeing is pitching its guarantee of billions of dollars of work for Canadian companies as well as keeping aircraft maintenance in country as it tries to convince the Liberal government to select a new version of the Super Hornet fighter jet.
Boeing is hoping that new technology on the Super Hornet and its commitment to place as much as $30 billion of work with Canadian firms will result in it winning the competition to build 88 jets.
The move comes as the NDP and aerospace unions are becoming more vocal about the need for Canada's fighter jet replacement project to pay major dividends for the economy.
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said last week he would be pushing that issue when Parliament returns and he hopes to have a discussion with the Liberal's new defence minister about how Canadian jobs can be created and sustained by the program.
Anti-government protesters trapped inside Hong Kong Polytechnic University abseil onto a highway and escape as police besiege the campus, November 18. Dozens of protesters staged a dramatic escape by shimmying down plastic hosing from a bridge and fleeing on waiting motorbikes as the police fired projectiles. A number of them appeared subsequently to have been arrested, a Reuters witness said. HK01/via REUTERS
Beaune, France — Burgundy may be known for its wine, but it's what's nestled between the vines that draws the tourists to this vineyard: The world's largest private fleet of fighter jets, 110 in all. It's not your typical collection, but 87-year-old Michel Pont is not your typical collector.
"I was born passionate," he told CBS News. "And a bit crazy," he said, pointing to his head.
Pont said he caught the collector's bug while in the French Air Force, and started buying the jets 30 years ago to save them from being destroyed.
And that attracts the crowds of tourists interested in wine and war. Military bases in France are closed to the public, so this gives people a chance to see the planes up close.
Baghdad, Iraq (CNN)Senior members of ISIS are plotting mass prison breaks and a resurgence of terror after taking refuge in Turkey, according to the head of Iraqi Military Intelligence.
Lt. Gen. Saad al-Allaq told CNN in an exclusive interview that Iraq had handed dossiers on nine alleged terror leaders to Turkey. The subjects included top financiers with access to "huge" amounts of money to fund operations around the world, he said.
And recent communications from ISIS point to plans to try to break prisoners out of camps and jails across Syria and Iraq, al-Allaq said.
"Huge international efforts should be taken to deal with this issue because these criminals ... are able to leave these camps and go back to their countries and thus they pose great danger in countries like Europe, Asia and northwest Africa," al-Allaq said.
President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with officials and representatives of the Russian business community at the Kremlin, December 26, 2018. Alexander Nemenov/Pool via REUTERS
Paul Manafort, while managing Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign, is accused of passing private polling data to his Russia business partner, a man with alleged ties to Russian intelligence. This new information, revealed in an unsealed court filing, is likely to stoke the case in Congress for increased sanctions against Russia. Equally importantly, the reverberations will be felt in Moscow, where anger and frustration over the impact of U.S. sanctions – and by implication Vladimir Putin's leadership – is increasing. President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with
WNU Editor: When I visit Russia I have no problem paying U.S. dollars. That is more than enough proof enough to me that Russia is not ready to ditch the dollar.
China's ruling Communist Party is struggling with endemic corruption, bureaucratic inertia caused by political purges, and questionable loyalty from the military and police, according to annual commission report to Congress released Thursday.
Additionally, the once-vaunted Chinese economic miracle is flagging as Communist Party (CCP) leaders grapple with a declining economy and aging population, further creating concerns of a future Soviet-style collapse within the world's most populous state.
"The CCP faces significant internal and external challenges that constrain its ability to sustain economic growth, project power, and spread its influence globally," the report of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission concluded. It was the first time the commission detailed internal CCP weaknesses and failings in its annual report that is derived from hearings, intelligence briefings and fact-finding missions.
WNU Editor: Another point that I would add are the growing demands among the many regions and provinces of China for more autonomy and power. We in the West view China as one monolithic state, but in reality it is a state that is made up of diverse regions, provinces, and peoples who have never looked kindly to Beijing. And with the economy slowing down, these demands are only growing.
TBILISI -- Riot police in Tbilisi have used water cannons on protesters who were blocking the entrance to parliament and arrested several people demanding early elections.
The violence broke as hundreds of demonstrators were gathered for a fourth day on November 18 to protest parliament's rejection of constitutional amendments on the transition to a proportional electoral system when riot police moved in.
Live broadcasts from the scene showed demonstrators huddled in large groups as they were sprayed with water.
In mid-October, with unrest swirling in Baghdad, a familiar visitor slipped quietly into the Iraqi capital. The city had been under siege for weeks, as protesters marched in the streets, demanding an end to corruption and calling for the ouster of the prime minister, Adil Abdul-Mahdi. In particular, they denounced the outsize influence of their neighbor Iran in Iraqi politics, burning Iranian flags and attacking an Iranian consulate.
The visitor was there to restore order, but his presence highlighted the protesters' biggest grievance: He was Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, head of Iran's powerful Quds Force, and he had come to persuade an ally in the Iraqi Parliament to help the prime minister hold on to his job.
It was not the first time Suleimani had been dispatched to Baghdad to do damage control. Tehran's efforts to prop up Abdul-Mahdi are part of its long campaign to maintain Iraq as a pliable client state.
While Iranian state media said calm had been restored, videos on social media showed protests had continued.
Authorities have restricted internet access in Iran, the semi-official ISNA news agency said on Sunday, after almost two days of nationwide protests triggered by a petrol price hike.
"Access to the internet has been limited as of last night and for the next 24 hours," an informed source at the information and telecommunications ministry said, as quoted by ISNA.
The decision was made by the Supreme National Security Council of Iran and communicated to internet service providers overnight, the source added, according to AFP.
It came after state television accused "hostile media" of trying to use fake news and videos on social media to exaggerate the protests as "large and extensive".
WNU Editor: One of my side projects is a free ebook library that has been online for over 17 years (Bookyards). We are permitted in every country, with the exception of North Korea. And in the case of Iran we get about 100 visitors each day who enjoy downloading our English classics, but for the past two days we have had nothing. Zero activity/traffic. This is a first from Iran, and it tells me that they do have an internet kill switch that is 100% effective.
At least 12 people have been killed in Iran since protests against fuel price rises erupted three days ago, officials have said, although reports suggest the number of dead is far higher.
The situation on the streets is unclear on account of a nationwide internet shutdown. But demonstrations are reportedly continuing in some cities.
The government said Monday had been "calmer", despite "some minor issues".
Meanwhile, the powerful Revolutionary Guards demanded an end to the unrest.
A statement said Iran's "sworn and evil enemies" had once again attempted to "sow discord", and that the force would "firmly deal with the continuation of any kind of insecurity or actions to disrupt the people's calm and comfort".
....that I testify about the phony Impeachment Witch Hunt. She also said I could do it in writing. Even though I did nothing wrong, and don't like giving credibility to this No Due Process Hoax, I like the idea & will, in order to get Congress focused again, strongly consider it!
* Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed that Donald Trump's actions are worse than disgraced former President Richard Nixon * She and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer dared the president to come to Capitol Hill and testify in his own impeachment inquiry hearings * Trump responded 'I like the idea' and suggested he could show up or respond to written questions * Nixon was the subject of an impeachment investigation for obstruction of justice, abuse of power and contempt of Congress and resigned in 1974 * 'At some point, Richard Nixon cared about the country enough to recognize that this could not continue,' Pelosi said in an interview with CBS
Donald Trump appeared to call Nancy Pelosi's bluff on Monday, suggesting after she dared him to testify in an impeachment hearing that he might do it—either in writing or in person.
The president responded to written questions in April from then-special counsel Robert Mueller, but entering statements for the record in an impeachment inquiry would be an unprecedented move in a game with higher stakes.
Pelosi, Trump tweeted, 'suggested ... that I testify about the phony Impeachment Witch Hunt. She also said I could do it in writing. Even though I did nothing wrong, and don't like giving credibility to this No Due Process Hoax, I like the idea & will, in order to get Congress focused again, strongly consider it!'
The House Intelligence Committee declined comment on Monday.
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Dozens of Hong Kong protesters staged a dramatic escape from a university campus sealed off by police on Monday by shimmying down plastic hosing from a bridge and fleeing on waiting motorbikes as the police fired projectiles.
Many more anti-government protesters remained trapped inside the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and two prominent figures were allowed by police onto the campus late on Monday to mediate, a sign that there is a growing risk of bloodshed.
"The situation is getting more and more dangerous," Jasper Tsang, a pro-Beijing politician who is the former head of Hong Kong's Legislative Council, told Reuters soon after he arrived at the campus.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un poses with sharpshooters of the Air and Anti-Aircraft Force in this undated picture released Monday. KCNA / VIA REUTERS
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has overseen air force drills "under the simulated conditions of real war," state-run media reported Monday, a day after the U.S. and South Korea said they were postponing their joint air exercises in a bid to boost stalled nuclear talks with Pyongyang.
The defense chiefs of the U.S. and South Korea said Sunday they would postpone upcoming military drills in an effort to bolster a stalled peace push with North Korea.
The U.S. denied that the planned drills, which had already been scaled back from previous years, would have amounted to another concession to North Korea. The U.S. has already canceled, postponed or scaled back a number of its joint military exercises with South Korea.
Israeli Phalanx Close-in air defense system (by Raytheon) engaging incoming missiles.
This is part of Israel's "Iron Dome" defense system. There appear to be at least two high speed guns out of view of the camera, maybe more. At least 50cal. or maybe 20mm for the range they are shooting. The white can in the foreground appears to be for close-in fire, in the event the longer range guns do not do the job. All this is radar/computer controlled, no human action except to turn it on. What we are seeing are real shoot-downs, rockets launched probably from Lebanon aimed at Tel Aviv or other populated targets. This is cutting-edge American technology.
WNU Editor: A part of me wonders if this is a CGI video. The way the intercepted rockets "splashed down" looks fake. But it is still a cool video. Hat tip to James for this link.
The future of amphibious assaults lies with drones and unmanned vehicles guided by the "Mother Ship."
Key Point: The Navy's new technology based strategy will save many servicemen's lives.
The future of amphibious attack may consist of thousands of disaggregated manned and unmanned surveillance boats, armor-carrying connectors, minesweepers and small attack vessels operating in tandem as the Navy and Marine Corps refine a new strategic approach and continue their pivot toward a new, great-power threat environment.
The concept is to configure a dispersed, yet "networked" fleet of next-generation connectors and other smaller boats launched from big-deck amphib "mother ships." The larger host ships are intended to operate in a command and control capacity while bringing sensors, long-range fires and 5th-generation air support to the fight.
Police fires a water cannon during clashes with anti-government protesters outside Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) in Hong Kong, November 18, 2019. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
The Hong Kong police have raided several universities, attempted to make arrests, and clashed with student protesters who set up barricades to defend the campus. In particular, the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) was apparently the main focus of the police, and became a literal battleground. Many CUHK students suspect that the real goal of the police is to control the internet, as Hong Kong's internet center which handles 99 percent of the city's internet traffic is located inside the CUHK campus.
The police fired multiple rounds of tear gas, rubber bullets, bean bag rounds and a water cannon on Nov. 12. Students retaliated by throwing bricks and petrol bombs at the police. At least 60 students were injured, several were hit in the head. A reporter at the scene was also hit by rubber bullets in the head and lost consciousness, according to local media.
WNU Editor: I am surprised that this one hub handles all of Hong Kong's internet traffic. I can understand why the government wants to seize it, but do it in a matter to not destroy it. I also doubt that the protesters will want to destroy this hub. It is how they are getting their message out. But if it does become damaged or destroyed, the economic costs to Hong Kong will be staggering.
Russian authorities have returned three Ukrainian military ships from their Crimean port to Ukraine. The navy vessels were seized during a clash in the Kerch Strait last year.
Three Ukrainian ships were returned on Monday almost a year after the Russian navy seized the vessels in the Kerch Strait.
Ukrainian officials confirmed the return, a day after tug boats were seen towing the vessels through the strait that separates Crimea from the Russian mainland. Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs previously announced the handover earlier on Monday.
The move was "in accordance with the agreements reached with the Ukrainian side," sources from Russian intelligence agency FSB's Crimean branch told Russian news agency Interfax.
Worldwide Equipment Identification Cards, released by Army Training and Doctrine Command, helps Soldiers recognize and remember potential adversary vehicles and weapons. (U.S. Army/Gary Sheftick)
Soldiers will soon be getting a new deck of playing cards displaying Iranian and Russian weapons systems, because if you're going to waste time playing cards, you might as well learn something useful.
While training cards picturing Chinese equipment, weaponry and nomenclature have already been disseminated, the Army is still working on decks featuring Russian and Iranian equipment as well, according to Megan Reed, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) spokeswoman.
"TRADOC developed the Equipment Identification Training Cards as an education tool to train the next generation of soldiers and leaders," Reed told Task & Purpose.
At least 600 protesters who had barricaded themselves inside a Hong Kong university have surrendered as of Tuesday, following a dramatic, days-long standoff that involved brazen escapes and some of the most violent confrontations seen in nearly six months of unrest.
Local media reported that half of the remaining people who had bunkered down at Polytechnic University since last week handed themselves in Tuesday morning. Cold, hungry and reportedly running low on supplies, the conceding protesters were transported to various hospitals across the city.
Speaking to the press Tuesday, two days after the campus siege began, Hong Kong’s embattled Chief Executive Carrie Lam said that approximately 100 holdouts remain.
Six hundred people have left Polytechnic University since Monday, 200 of them minors, she said.
She added that she told the city’s new police chief Chris Tang Ping-keung to resolve the standoff peacefully.
“This object can only be achieved with the full cooperation of the protestors including of the rioters, that they have to stop violence, give up their weapons and come out peacefully and take the instructions from the police,” she said.
For days, protesters have kept police from breaching the campus, countering volleys of tear gas and rubber bullets with gasoline bombs, slingshots and bows and arrows. One police officer was stuck in the leg with an arrow, while students said some protesters suffered hypothermia after they were doused by water canons in the night.
On Monday, students tried unsuccessfully to break through a police cordon and flee. Wary of arrest and possible imprisonment on rioting charges, many initially defied orders to drop their weapons and emerge.
Their eventual capitulation comes after some got away in a daring escape staged late Monday night. In videos that circulated widely on social media, protesters were seen abseiling down makeshift ropes, hoses and whatever else they could find to waiting motorcyclists who whisked them away from the police encircled campus.
Outside the besieged university that night, hundreds of sympathetic Hongkongers including office workers, ordinary residents and family of those trapped inside came to the students’ aid. They took to the streets and transformed neighboring districts into battle zones, hoping to draw police away from the besieged institution.
Lawmakers, educators and religious leaders turned out to negotiate the release of the students. Sobbing parents and relatives staged a sit-in near a university entrance after they were blocked by officers from going inside.
Police said they arrested or took down information for 1,100 people Tuesday.
Lam said minors exiting the university were not immediately arrested but could be charged later on. Police collected their data and allowed them to go home, she said.
She also appealed to the public to halt violence so that elections for the city’s district council elections can be carried out as scheduled this coming Sunday. “It is the government’s continued, firm stance that we carry out this important election,” she said.
Police chief Tang, who was appointed Tuesday, said he is “heartbroken” over violence in the city. “I hope in the coming days [I] can protect our colleagues and support them in continuing to enforce the law,” he said.
As protesters and police clashed in pitched battles Monday, the city’s High Court granted demonstrators a major victory, overturning a controversial face mask ban. The court ruled that banning face coverings at all public gatherings violated Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, known as the Basic Law.
But China’s top legislature claimed Hong Kong courts lack the authority to rule on the constitutionality of the ban, which aimed at preventing protesters from hiding their identity to evade arrest.
“Whether the laws of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region comply with the Basic Law of Hong Kong can only be judged and decided by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress,” Yan Tanwei, a spokesperson for the Legislative Affairs Commission of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, said in a statement in China’s state media.
By insisting it has the sole authority to rule on constitutional issues, Beijing feeds into protesters’ fears of encroachment.
Hong Kong, which operates an independent judicial system, retroceded to China in 1997 after more than 150 years as a British Colony. The handover agreement permitted the freewheeling city of 7 million to retain considerable autonomy, but the protest movement was fueled in part by concerns that the city’s unique freedoms are being eroded as Beijing tightens its grip.
Skirmishes in Hong Kong have become particularly violent and disruptive in the past week and a half, galvanized by the death of a university student, who died from complications of a fall near an area where police were dispersing a demonstration. Although the circumstances of his death remain unclear, he has been hailed by some protesters as a martyr.
University students, who have been some of the most active participants in the protests which have convulsed the financial hub since June, began occupying five university campuses across the city last week.
Other protesters have shifted their demonstrations, which have convulsed the territory for 23 consecutive weekends, to key commercial areas during weekdays. Across the city, traffic has been gridlocked and businesses have shuttered. The city’s schools have been closed for more than a week.
LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Residents in several Bolivian cities are reporting food and gasoline shortages because of protests by supporters of President Evo Morales, who resigned and fled to Mexico after a disputed election and nationwide unrest.
Bolivia’s interim government said Monday that its efforts to resupply La Paz faced challenges because demonstrators cut off some transport routes. The new leadership is also struggling to open dialogue with opponents, particularly after the shooting deaths of nine pro-Morales coca growers during a confrontation with security forces Friday in the central town of Sacaba.
On Monday, Morales’ supporters in Sacaba threw rocks at police, who fired back with tear gas trying to disperse the protesters.
Furious over the shootings in Sacaba, backers of Morales demanded the resignation of Jeanine Áñez, Bolivia’s self-proclaimed interim president. She was a Senate vice president thrust into prominence after the resignations of senior leaders in Morales’ administration.
Bolivian church leaders announced plans to begin talks Monday involving U.N. envoy Jean Arnault. They appealed for the participation of Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism party and said topics would include new elections and calls for a new election panel. Former President Carlos Mesa, who finished second to Morales in the disputed Oct.20 election, said he would participate.
The new hydrocarbons minister, Víctor Hugo Zamora, told Bolivia’s ATB television that a gasoline supply convoy was having difficulty reaching the city because of roadblocks and ditches dug by protesters.
Many shops in La Paz were closed and the few that opened were charging double the normal price, resident Guillermina Chura said.
“What are we going to give to our families if things continue this way?” Chura said.
Vendor Ana Gonzáles said she had packed up her vegetable stand in the street because she had nothing to sell.
“What am I going to live from?” Gonzáles said.
She also said Morales should take steps to calm the situation. So far, Morales has remained defiant, condemning the interim government and saying he was ousted in a coup.
Blockades around the major city of Santa Cruz have also disrupted commerce. Producers said fruit and vegetables were rotting on trucks been unable to reach markets.
Bolivia’s pro-Morales faction has set up the blockades as part of a concerted effort to destabilize the interim government, said Alberto Bonadona, an economic analyst and professor at the Higher University of San Andrés.
A total of at least 23 people have been killed in violence that erupted after the presidential election last month, according to the public defender’s office.
Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, claimed victory after the vote, but opponents alleged fraud and mass protests erupted. An international audit concluded there were election irregularities, and Morales resigned Nov. 10 after losing the support of the security forces. He went to Mexico, which gave him asylum.
On Monday, thousands of Morales supporters demonstrated in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires, partly blocking a main thoroughfare as they denounced a “coup d’état” and demanded that the leader be returned to power.
Buenos Aires has a large Bolivian community, and many attended the protest bearing their country’s national flag as well as the wiphala, which represents some indigenous people. Union workers and other left-wing groups also participated.
Bolivia’s crisis has exposed racial, ethnic and geographic divides that some thought had been largely overcome during the nearly 14 years of Morales’ administration as well as the introduction of a more inclusive constitution.
Analysts say the movement to remove Morales was an urban middle-class revolt against the former president’s efforts to hang onto power.
But since his departure, racist discourses and regional rivalries have re-emerged in a nation divided between a wealthier, more European-descended lowland east and a more indigenous, poorer, highland west.
___
Associated Press writer Almudena Calatrava in Buenos Aires, Argentina, contributed to this report.
Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, has found himself at the center of controversy surrounding his relationship with disgraced American financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in an apparent suicide in a New York City federal jail in August. In an exclusive televised interview with the BBC at Buckingham Palace broadcast in the U.K. Saturday, Queen Elizabeth’s son was questioned about his relationship with Epstein and allegations made by a woman who said he had sex with her when she was 17.
Although it is not the first time that Andrew, who currently stands eighth in line to the British throne, has faced controversy, it is undoubtedly the most serious. Here’s what to know about the Duke of York, his past controversies and his links with Epstein.
Who is Prince Andrew’s family?
Now 59 years old, Prince Andrew is the third child and second son of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. In 1986, he married Sarah Ferguson, who came from a well-connected family and was initially well liked by the press and public for her fun and outgoing character. The pair had two daughters, Princess Beatrice in 1988 and Princess Eugenie in 1990, before their divorce in 1996.
Public opinion began to turn against Ferguson after a series of incidents, including an undercover sting in which she was caught on camera offering access to Prince Andrew in return for £500,000 in 2010. In 2011, it was revealed that Ferguson had accepted $15,000 from Epstein in order to pay off her debts. The duchess has tweeted in support of her ex-husband, saying “Andrew is a true and real gentleman and is stoically steadfast to not only his duty but also his kindness and goodness.”
John Shelley Collection/Avalon—Getty ImagesThe wedding of Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey, London, UK, 23rd July 1986.
As is traditional for many male members of the Royal Family, Andrew has had a successful military career, joining the Royal Navy in 1979. He was also a pilot in the Falklands War, where he took part in missions in the conflict from April until September 1982; an experience he raised in his interview with the BBC. Since 2015, he has held the rank of Vice Admiral.
Has Prince Andrew been involved in any previous controversies?
Prince Andrew is no stranger to controversy. His judgment has come under scrutiny several times, including his past meetings with Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s son Saif; his connection to Timur Kulibayev, the son-in-law of the then-president of Kazakhstan who purchased one of Andrew’s properties for £3 million more than its asking price; and his hosting of the son-in-law of Tunisia’s ousted president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali at Buckingham Palace.
In 2011, Andrew stood down as Britain’s “special representative” for trade and investment, amid increasing criticism of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. He had held the post since 2001, with the purpose to promote U.K. trade interests abroad. The numerous foreign trips that Andrew took as part of this role, including trips to the U.S. where he had interacted with Epstein, were heavily criticized for their cost, earning him the moniker “Air Miles Andy.” During his interview with the BBC, Andrew attempted to dispel his reputation as a “Party Prince.” “I was single for quite a long time in the early 1980s, and after I got married I was happy. I’ve never felt the need to go and party,” he said. “Certainly going to Jeffrey’s was not about parties. Absolutely not.”
What are the allegations against Prince Andrew?
Virginia Giuffre (sometimes referred to as Virginia Roberts) has alleged that Epstein “made her” have sex with Andrew “several times.” Giuffre said she had sex with the prince, whom she said she called “Andy,” on three occasions that she detailed in an affidavit from a federal court filing in the Southern District of Florida—including at the London home of Epstein’s former girlfriend and longtime friend Ghislaine Maxwell and at Epstein’s New York City mansion when she was 17 in 2001.
A widely-circulated picture shows a smiling Andrew with his left arm around Giuffre’s waist. Giuffre alleged in court filings that it was taken at Maxwell’s London home shortly before the first time he had sex with her, according to her affidavit.
Maxwell, who was a British socialite for many years, has denied the allegations of wrongdoing.
Andrew has repeatedly denied Giuffre’s allegations, saying that they never engaged in any sexual activity and that he does not recall meeting her.
Andrew is just one of many wealthy and powerful men that Giuffre has said she had sex with at the behest of Epstein or Maxwell. All of her allegations have been denied.
Epstein’s death effectively ended his criminal prosecution but his alleged victims have called for prosecutors to continue investigating potential co-conspirators. Epstein had previously settled several civil lawsuits over alleged abuse.
Jeenah Moon—Bloomberg via Getty ImagesVirginia Giuffre, an alleged victim of Jeffrey Epstein, center, exits from federal court in New York, U.S., on Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2019.
How has Prince Andrew responded?
In response to Giuffre’s allegations, Andrew told the BBC interviewer, “I have no recollection of ever meeting this lady.” He said that on March 10, the day Giuffre said Andrew had sex with her, he had taken one of his children to a party at a popular pizza restaurant and stayed indoors with his children while he was on leave from the Royal Navy.
Part of Giuffre’s description of the night in question also described Prince Andrew as “profusely sweating” while they danced in a nightclub. Andrew responded by saying that it was “almost impossible for me to sweat” at the time due to suffering what he described as “an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War when I was shot at.”
Regarding a photograph of Giuffre and Andrew together that was provided by Giuffre to the press earlier this year, the Duke was unable to explain it and said that he had no memory of the photograph being taken. Andrew said that while it could not be determined whether the photograph was faked, he said that he did not believe the photograph was taken in London due to his choice of attire and said that “public displays of affection are not something that I do.”
Responding to Giuffre’s other allegations, Andrew denied having sex with her in New York at Epstein’s mansion and on Epstein’s private island. Andrew also denied being present in these locations at the times that Giuffre has alleged. “I’ve been through it and through it and through it over and over again, and nothing. It never happened,” said Andrew.
Andrew also said that until 2006 when an arrest warrant was issued against Epstein, he had no idea about allegations that Epstein was involved in alleged sex trafficking.
“At the time, there was no indication to me, or anybody else, that that was what he was doing. Certainly when I saw him in the U.S. or when I was staying in his houses in the U.S., there was absolutely no indication,” Andrew responded. When asked if he would be willing to testify under legal oath, Andrew said he would be duty bound to do so “in the right circumstances. There’s just as much closure for me as there is for everybody else.”
How are Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein connected?
According to Andrew, he met Epstein in 1999 through Maxwell, whom he had known since she was a college student in the U.K. Andrew says that he saw Epstein about twice a year, and if Andrew was in the U.S. on a visit or trip as part of his role representing international trade, Epstein would offer up the use of his houses for him to stay in. Andrew also confirmed that he had traveled on Epstein’s private plane, visited Epstein’s private island and home in Palm Beach, Fla., and visited Maxwell’s house in London’s Belgravia neighborhood.
Andrew invited Maxwell and Epstein to a party hosted by Queen Elizabeth at Windsor Castle in June 2000, at a celebration commemorating four royal birthdays. The pair was also invited that same year to a shooting weekend at Sandringham House, one of the Queen’s country homes, reportedly to celebrate Maxwell’s birthday.
In May 2006, an arrest warrant was issued for Epstein for sexual assault of a minor; two months later in July, Epstein attended Andrew’s daughter Princess Beatrice’s 18th birthday party at Windsor Castle. During the BBC interview, Andrew said that he had invited Maxwell to this event, and that Epstein had come as her plus-one. Andrew also said that he was not aware of Epstein’s arrest warrant in the U.S. at the time the invitation for the party had been sent out.
Stephanie Keith—Getty Images A protest group called “Hot Mess” hold up signs of Jeffrey Epstein in front of the Federal courthouse on July 8, 2019 in New York City.
What has Prince Andrew said about his friendship with Epstein?
“We were friends because of other people,” said Prince Andrew in the BBC interview, referring to Maxwell several times as the main reason for the connection between the two men. “It would be a considerable stretch to say that we were very, very close friends. But he had this extraordinary ability to bring extraordinary people together, and that’s the bit that I remember. Going to the dinner parties where you would meet academics, politicians, people from the United Nations. It was a cosmopolitan group of what I would describe as U.S. eminence.”
Giuffre has accused Maxwell of acting as Epstein’s “madame” and “co-conspirator” in court documents released earlier this year from a 2015 defamation lawsuit she brought against Maxwell. In those documents, Giuffre alleged that Maxwell was “one of the main women” whom Epstein used “to procure under-aged girls for sexual activities.”
Maxwell has denied Giuffre’s allegations in both public statements and legal filings.
Andrew said that he ceased contact with Epstein after he became aware Epstein was under investigation in 2006, and says he was not in touch with the banker until 2010. In December 2010, a few months after Epstein’s release from prison after 13 months, Andrew stayed with him at his house in New York. “I went there with the sole purpose of saying to him that because he had been convicted, it was inappropriate for us to be seen together,” said Andrew. He said that during this visit, he only saw Epstein for a dinner party, a walk in the park during which the two were photographed together and crossing paths in a corridor in the house.
Andrew said that it was during the walk in Central Park that the pair decided they would part company, and that from that day forward, they would not have any contact. Soon after those images surfaced, Giuffre gave an interview in which she alleged Andrew had sex with her.
When asked if he regretted that trip to New York, Andrew said that he did. When asked if he regretted the whole friendship with Epstein, Andrew replied: “Still not, because the people that I met and the opportunities I was given to learn, either by him or because of him, were actually very useful.” Andrew said his initial reaction on hearing of Epstein’s death earlier this year was one of shock.
How has Virginia Giuffre responded?
Giuffre said in her affidavit that Buckingham Palace’s denial that Andrew had any sexual contact with her is “false and hurtful.”
“Given what he knows and has seen, I was hoping that he would simply voluntarily tell the truth about everything,” she said, according to court documents.
Giuffre reiterated her position earlier this year when she said publicly about Andrew that “he knows exactly what he’s done and I hope he comes clean about it.”
Virginia Giuffre, an alleged victim of #JeffreyEpstein, says Prince Andrew “knows exactly what he’s done and I hope he comes clean about it”. He has always strenuously denied any allegations. pic.twitter.com/MEYTL9bA2J
Lawyers who have represented Giuffre did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.
What happens next?
The Duke’s interview has received fierce backlash from observers and commentators both in the U.K. and in the U.S., with one commentator calling it “not so much a car crash but an articulated lorry [semi-truck] crash.”
In the interview, Andrew said he will continue to work with his chosen charities. However, there have been calls for charities associated with the Duke to cut their ties with him.
Lawyers based in the U.S. representing Epstein’s victims have also strongly criticized the interview, with one calling for him to speak to the FBI about his involvement with Epstein.
The banana has been the subject of Andy Warhol’s cover art for the Velvet Underground’s debut album, can arguably be the most devastating item in the Mario Kart video game franchise and is one of the world’s most consumed fruits. And humanity’s love of bananas may still be on the rise, according to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. On average, says Chris Barrett, a professor of agriculture at Cornell University, citing that U.N. data, every person on earth chows down on 130 bananas a year, at a rate of nearly three a week.
But the banana as we know it may also be on the verge of extinction. The situation led Colombia—where the economy relies heavily on the crop, as it does in several other countries including Ecuador, Costa Rica and Guatemala—to declare a national state of emergency in August. Banana experts around the world have raised concerns that it may be too late to reverse the damage.
The reason for the problem comes down to a single disease, but it also has far-reaching implications—and the world is watching. Even if the world’s relationship to bananas may never be the same, the lessons of the fruit can still save us from damage that could hit far beyond the produce aisle.
“The story of the banana is really the story of modern agriculture exemplified in a single fruit,” says Daniel Bebber, who leads the BananEx research group at the University of Exeter. “It has all of the ingredients of equitability and sustainability issues, disease pressure, and climate change impact all in one. It’s a very good lesson for us.”
Ninety-nine percent of exported bananas are a variety called the Cavendish—the attractive, golden-yellow fruit seen in the supermarket today.
But that wasn’t always the case. There are many varieties of banana in the world, and until the later half of the 19th century, the dominant one was called the Gros Michel. It was widely considered tastier than the Cavendish, and more difficult to bruise. But in the 1950s, the crop was swept by a strain of Panama disease, also known as banana wilt, brought on by the spread of a noxious, soil-inhabiting fungus. Desperate for a solution, the world’s banana farmers turned to the Cavendish. The Cavendish was resistant to the disease and fit other market needs: it could stay green for several weeks after being harvested (ideal for shipments to Europe), it had a high yield rate and it looked good in stores. Plus, multinational fruit companies had no other disease-resistant variety available that could be ready quickly for mass exportation.
The switched worked. As the Gros Michel was ravaged by disease, the Cavendish banana took over the world’s markets and kitchens. In fact, the entire banana supply chain is now set up to suit the very specific needs of that variety.
To the people who pay attention to such things, it wasn’t long before a case of banana déjà vu set in: the Cavendish had supplanted the Gros Michel, but—even though it had initially been selected for being disease-resistant—it was still at risk. Almost a decade ago, Dan Koeppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, warned in an NPR interview that Panama Disease would return to the world’s largest banana exporters, and this time with a strain that would hit the Cavendish hard. “[Every] single banana scientist I spoke to—and that was quite a few—says it’s not an ‘if,’ it’s a ‘when,’ and 10 to 30 years,” he said. “It only takes a single clump of contaminated dirt, literally, to get this thing rampaging across entire continents.”
Sure enough, the confirmation of the presence of Tropical Race 4 (TR4), another strain of Panama disease, on banana farms in Colombia, prompted this summer’s declaration of emergency there.
“The situation is very urgent,” says Bebber.
There are any number of ways the problem can spread. When it comes to bananas, everything from truck tires to workers’ boots can be disease carriers. But the bigger problem is how hard it is to stop. Because banana farmers are overwhelmingly growing the same exact crop—the Cavendish—they were all vulnerable to the same diseases.
“A lot of people would agree that we need to move to a more diverse, more sustainable system for bananas and agriculture in general,” says Bebber, “where we don’t put all our hope into a single, genetically identical crop.”
There’s a name for this situation:monoculture, the practice of fostering just one variety of something. Monoculture has its benefits. The entire system is standard, so there’s rarely new production and maintenance processes, and everything is compatible and familiar to users. On the other hand, as banana farmers learned, in a monoculture, all instances are prone to the same set of attacks. If someone or something figures out how to affect just one, the entire system is put at risk.
And as the banana industry has begun to battle the effects of monoculture, someone else has taken notice: the tech world.
The parallel was noticed as early as the late 1990s. Stephanie Forrest, one of the early researchers in this area, commonly cites the banana problem in lectures explaining the importance of diversity in computer systems. Forrest argues that some of the most notorious software attacks in history are comparable to Panama disease’s threat to the Cavendish; uniform software systems lead to uniform vulnerabilities. For example, the 1988 Morris Worm infected an estimated 10% of all computers connected to the Internet within just 24 hours, and, more recently, the 2016 Mirai Botnet, which allowed an outside party to remotely control a network of internet-connected devices, brought down Twitter, Netflix, CNN and more.
“Monocultures are dangerous in almost every facet of life,” echoes Fred B. Schneider, a cybersecurity expert at Cornell University. “With people, of course, populations are stronger and more disease-resistant if there’s more genetic diversity. And with transportation, it’s more effective to have several different options—when a train line is shut down, if you have other choices at your disposal, like a car or another form of transit, you won’t be stuck.”
Schneider points out that software monocultures are common because, without them, using your computer would be a lot harder. Default configuration settings, for example, are the norm to help users who may not be experts in the technology they’re using. Defaults like that can protect people from some problems, but also lead to others, as all the systems using the same default are vulnerable to the same problems. Knowledge of the problem, thanks to understanding of the issues facing crops like bananas, have led technologists to take steps to introduce artificial diversity into their systems. “To make a system artificially diverse, you just rearrange its guts in ways where the differences do not affect functionality in a material way,” Schneider says. Microsoft implemented one of the first large-scale commercial developments of artificial diversity in their Windows OS system, by randomizing the internal locations where important pieces of system data were stored.
For bananas, addressing the problems caused by monoculture may be harder, as market standards and supply chains make it very expensive for fruit companies to cultivate multiple varieties.
Jan Sochor—LatinContent via Getty ImagesA Colombian worker carries crude bananas to a transport car at a banana plantation. (Photo by Jan Sochor/Latincontent/Getty Images)
Existing disease-resistant varieties haven’t made inroads on the international market, but The Honduras Foundation for Agricultural Research (FHIA) has spent more than three years working on developing a disease-resistant variety that is as close as possible to the Cavendish, so that the world’s banana infrastructure doesn’t have to be reshaped from scratch. Still, that’s a process that can take 15 to 20 years, Bebber estimates.
Genetic engineering can lead to the development of new varieties at much faster rates than traditional breeding methods, but it can also turn consumers off. However, it has been the answer to similar problems in the past—for example, when the papaya ringspot virus threatened the papaya supply in the 1990s, “the major supply shock was averted through the development of a transgenic ringspot virus-resistant papaya,” explains Cornell’s Barrett. He believes that consumers’ fears might ease if it becomes one of the only viable answers to the issues created by monoculture production. The UK-based biotech company Tropic Biosciences has received $10 million in funding to use gene-editing technology to research solutions to widespread issues with tropical crops, focusing specially on disease resistance in bananas.
And while even the most Cavendish-like of FHIA’s disease-resistant varieties, a banana known as the FHIA-18, hasn’t yet met the standards of multinational buyers, that may change, according to Adolfo Martinez, director general of FHIA. “It’s still not close enough to the Cavendish,” he says, but he thinks the crisis may convince them. “Maybe now, companies will be more interested in it.”
So, what’s next for the banana? Will it simply disappear from our diets, album covers and video games? Bebber says the banana may change, but hopes are high that it won’t completely vanish. “Science,” he says, “will find a way.” Meanwhile, tech researchers are watching—hoping they can once again learn a lesson from biology, learning how to prevent a crisis before everything goes bananas.
(LONDON) — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson faced new questions Monday about his relationship with an American businesswoman who allegedly received favors and public funds while Johnson was the mayor of London.
Johnson’s speech Monday to U.K. business leaders ahead of Britain’s Dec. 12 general election was overshadowed by tech entrepreneur Jennifer Arcuri, who accused the prime minister of discarding her “like some fleeting one-night stand” amid a media storm about their relationship.
A U.K. police watchdog is investigating claims that Johnson gave special treatment to Arcuri while he was mayor of London between 2008 and 2016. The Sunday Times reported in September that Arcuri was given financial grants and privileged access to trade missions to the United States, Israel and Asia that Johnson led as mayor. Johnson has insisted that “everything was done with full propriety.”
In a series of U.K. media interviews, 34-year-old Arcuri said she had a “very special” relationship with Johnson lasting several years. Johnson, now 55, was married at the time.
“It was not just a sexual intention,” Arcuri told the BBC. “He actually was very intrigued by my energy.”
She accused the prime minister of ignoring her when she tried to contact him about how to handle the media fallout from the allegations. Speaking to broadcaster ITV, Arcuri said Johnson has now cast her aside “like some gremlin.”
“I’ve kept your secrets, and I’ve been your friend,” she said. “And I don’t understand why you’ve blocked me and ignored me as if I was some fleeting one-night stand or some girl that you picked up at a bar because I wasn’t. And you know that.”
The Arcuri allegations erupted again as Johnson and the leaders of two opposition parties made their election pitches to business leaders, who are skeptical of politicians’ promises after years of economic uncertainty over Brexit.
Britain’s stalled departure from the European Union is the overriding issue in campaigning for the Dec. 12 election, which is being held more than two years early because Johnson is seeking to get a majority of lawmakers to pass his divorce deal with the EU. All 650 seats in the House of Commons are up for grabs.
More than three years after the U.K. voted to leave the 28-nation bloc, the terms of the country’s departure and the nature of its future relationship with the EU remain unclear.
The election pits Johnson’s Conservatives — with their promise to “get Brexit done” — against the main opposition Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn, which says it will hold a new referendum on whether to remain in the EU or leave the bloc.
Smaller parties running include the pro-EU Liberal Democrats, who want to cancel Brexit; the Scottish National Party, which seeks Scotland’s independence from the U.K.; and the anti-EU Brexit Party led by Nigel Farage.
On Monday, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP lost a legal attempt to gain a place in a televised election debate between Johnson and Corbyn. The parties argued that their exclusion from Tuesday’s ITV program was unlawful because it breached broadcasting impartiality rules. But two High Court judges ruled that the debate format was a matter of “editorial judgment.”
Addressing a conference of employers’ group the Confederation of British Industry on Monday, Johnson promised to lead Britain out of the EU on the scheduled date of Jan. 31, saying that doing so will end the uncertainty that has weighed on business investment and confidence. “The worst thing now is the continuing economic uncertainty: people waiting to take on new staff, or invest in property, or just to invest in this country,” Johnson told the CBI conference.
He did not mention that Britain’s departure will be followed by many months — and potentially many years — of negotiations with the EU on a future economic relationship.
Johnson also promised to cut a tax paid by businesses with bricks-and-mortar premises but announced plans to postpone a reduction in the corporation tax, which had been due to fall from 19% to 17% next year.
Johnson said putting the cut on hold was “the fiscally responsible thing to do” and would allow more investment in the country’s publicly funded National Health Service.
At the same conference, Corbyn pledged a major expansion of apprenticeships and said a Labour government would crack down on “tax tricks” used by wealthy individuals and corporations.
Some businesses are alarmed by Labour’s economic plans, which call for a greater role for the state in key industries. Last week the party said it backed a plan to part-nationalize telecoms provider BT and provide free internet access to all Britons. Corbyn said he understood businesses’ “caution” about Labour’s plans.
“But your businesses, your workers, your consumers have been failed by rip-off energy bills and very poor rail and bus services in many parts of the country. And I think many of you know that, because you know things can’t go on as they are,” he said.
Swinson, whose party currently holds just 20 seats in the House of Commons, argued that her centrist Liberal Democrats are the “natural party of business” because they want Britain to remain in the EU. That view is shared by many industries eager to retain access to the bloc’s huge single market of over half a billion people.
Businesses, meanwhile, are wary of all sides. CBI Director-General Carolyn Fairbairn criticized both hard-core Brexiteers seeking “the wholesale deregulation of the U.K. economy” and Labour’s left-wing plans to nationalize big chunks of the economy.
“These ideologies from both sides are causing great harm to our economy. Not just in the future but right now,” she said.
(WASHINGTON) — Despite his denials, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was feeling pressure from the Trump administration to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden before his July phone call with President Donald Trump that has led to impeachment hearings.
In early May, staff at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, including then-Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, were briefed on a meeting Zelenskiy held in which he sought advice on how to navigate the difficult position he was in, according to two people with knowledge of the briefings.
He was concerned that Trump and associates were pressing him to take action that could affect the 2020 U.S. presidential race, the people said. They spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic and political sensitivity of the issue.
The briefings show that U.S. officials knew early that Zelensky was feeling pressure to investigate Biden, even though the Ukrainian leader later denied it in a joint news conference with Trump in September. The officials said in their notes circulated internally at the State Department that Zelensky tried to mask the real purpose of the May 7 meeting, which was to talk about political problems with the White House, by saying it was about energy, the two people said.
Congressional Republicans have pointed to that public Zelensky statement to argue that he felt no pressure to open an investigation, and therefore the Democrats’ allegations that led to the impeachment hearings are misplaced.
“Both presidents expressly have stated there was no pressure, no demand, no conditions, no blackmail, no corruption,” one Republican lawmaker, John Ratcliffe of Texas, argued on the first day of public hearings last week.
The central allegation in the impeachment inquiry is that Trump, through his allies, demanded that Ukraine, which is fending off Russian aggression, launch an investigation that would benefit him politically in exchange for crucial military and strategic support. Witnesses have detailed, in closed-door depositions and public impeachment hearings, that allies of Trump pressed Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son while withholding military aid and a coveted meeting between the newly elected Zelensky and Trump.
The U.S. briefings — and contemporaneous notes on Zelensky’s early anxiety about Trump’s interest in an investigation — suggest that Democrats have evidence in reach to contradict Republican arguments that Zelensky never felt pressure to investigate Biden.
The Associated Press reported last month about Zelensky’s meeting on May 7 with, two top aides, as well as Andriy Kobolyev, head of the state-owned natural gas company Naftogaz, and Amos Hochstein, an American who sits on the Ukrainian company’s supervisory board. Ahead of the meeting, Hochstein told Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador, why he was being called in.
He separately briefed two U.S. Embassy officials, Suriya Jayanti and Joseph Pennington, about Zelensky’s concerns, said the two people who spoke to the AP. Jayanti and Pennington took notes on the meeting, the people said.
After the meeting, Hochstein told the embassy officials about Zelensky’s concerns and then traveled to Washington to update Yovanovitch on the meeting. The ambassador, who was facing a smear campaign, had just been called back to Washington, where she was informed that she no longer had the confidence of the president. She was relieved of her duties as ambassador on May 20.
Jayanti was also one of three witnesses to a phone call in which Trump discussed his interest in an investigation of Biden with his ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland. The call occurred while Sondland was having lunch with three embassy officials in Kyiv. David Holmes, political counsel at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, has already detailed to House investigators what he overheard. Jayanti and the third witness, Tara Maher, have not been interviewed.
Hochstein, a former diplomat who advised Biden on Ukraine matters during the Obama administration, has also not been questioned in the impeachment proceedings.
The Republican arguments about Zelensky’s lack of concern stem from a Sept. 25 joint media appearance by the American and Ukrainian leaders in which Zelensky discussed the July call with Trump that effectively launched the impeachment inquiry. The appearance came shortly after Trump released a rough transcript of the call.
“You heard that we had, I think, good phone call. It was normal. We spoke about many things. And I — so I think, and you read it, that nobody pushed — pushed me,” Zelensky said in the appearance with Trump on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York. “In other words, no pressure,” Trump spoke up to add.
In the impeachment hearings, Democrats have countered that Zelensky’s public comments came when he was trying to calm the waters with the U.S. president in the immediate wake of the transcript’s release. The burgeoning scandal has brought further uncertainty for Ukraine with its most important Western partner as the country faces simmering conflict with Russia. Zelensky’s May 7 meeting suggests that he had been concerned about U.S. support from the start.
This is the text of a speech delivered by Ian Bremmer on November 18 at the 2019 GZERO Summit in Tokyo.
China has made its decision. Beijing is building a separate system of Chinese technology—its own standards, infrastructure, and supply chains—to compete with the West.
Make no mistake: this is the single most consequential geopolitical decision taken in the last three decades. It’s also the greatest threat to globalization since the end of World War II.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Globalization has lifted billions of people from poverty around the world. We now live longer, healthier, and more productive lives than ever before. We are better educated and better informed than at any time in history. There has never been a better place and a better time to be alive than right here, right now.
So why are so many people so angry, and why is globalization under unprecedented threat?
Why are citizens in country after country bitterly casting aside both governing and opposition parties in favor of political disruptors?
At this moment in history, why is there so much alarm?
Because this IS a moment of transformation, and uncertainty. In much of the world, the lightning-fast, cross-border flows of ideas, information, people, money, goods and services—the same forces that have created so much opportunity and prosperity—also generate fear.
Fear that the world now becomes more complicated and more dangerous in real time. Fear that the world we knew is gone for good, and fear that no one is willing and able to do anything about it.
I want to talk with you today about why all this is happening, and why it’s so vitally important that we’re having this conversation at this moment—and in the heart of this great country.
Japan is both blessed and burdened by its unique place in this G-Zero world. Japan has the political stability, the foresight, and the technological talent to help lead the world into a brighter future than the one we currently face. We all have reason to hope that Japan’s leaders, its companies, its political will, and its people will help lead the transition toward a new order, one in which human ingenuity, moral imagination, and courage can help all of us meet the challenges to come.
The Geopolitical Recession
When I started Eurasia Group in 1998, our clients were interested almost exclusively in the so-called emerging-markets countries, those that presented both big growth opportunities and unfamiliar political challenges.
I defined an emerging market as “any country where politics matters at least as much as economic fundamentals for market outcomes.” Countries like Japan, the United States, Canada, and the leading nations of Western Europe offered a much more stable and predictable political landscape, but more modest opportunities for growth.
Those days are gone. The financial crisis of 2008 and the turmoil that followed have brought politics directly into the performance of economies and markets in even the world’s richest countries.
We also face a growing number of transnational threats. The U.S.-led global order is finished. So many of the dark clouds now hanging over us—from climate change to cyber-conflict, from terrorism to the post-industrial revolution—move unchecked across borders, leaving national governments much less able to meet the needs of their citizens.
Today, it is not economics but geopolitics that has become the main driver of global economic uncertainty. The world has entered a “geopolitical recession,” a bust cycle for the international system and relations among governments. It’s a time when alliances, institutions, and the values that bind them together are all coming apart.
From an historical perspective, geopolitical recessions are both rarer than economic recessions and longer-lasting. We’ll be living in this geopolitical recession for at least a decade to come.
*****
How did we get here?
Economists tell us that the process of “creative destruction” fuels the engine of growth that builds the future, and history says that’s true. But lives and livelihoods are destroyed in the process, and growing numbers of people say their government is either powerless to help them manage or doesn’t care what happens to them. Resentment of elites is on the rise in every region of the world. The system is rigged against them, they believe; it’s increasingly hard to argue they’re wrong.
This creates opportunities for a new breed of populist who offers scapegoats and promises of protection. These politicians did not invent this problem. They’re just profiting from it.
And the greatest worry is this: All this anger is building in good economic times. What happens when economies start to slow?
History shows that governments that are unpopular at home are more likely to make trouble abroad, especially with their neighbors, to rally public support and divert attention from domestic troubles. That breeds less trust among governments. The risk of misunderstanding rises. Accidents are more likely—and more likely to escalate toward conflict.
There are three implications to consider…
The first centers on “tail risks,” the low-likelihood-but-high-impact events that have become commonplace in a world reshaped by China’s rise, Middle East turmoil, populist Europe, revanchist Russia, divided America, a world-record 71 million displaced people, and the destabilizing effects of technological and climate changes.
Imagine a military accident in the South China Sea, at a time when the U.S. and Chinese presidents are locked in a war of wills over trade and technology, and determined to project strength at home, that spirals out of control.
Turn to the Middle East—the U.S. has confronted Iran. Since President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal and then re-imposed sanctions, Iran has taken bold military action—including a strike on the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure. Washington responded by sending troops to Saudi Arabia, a move which, you might recall, sharply increased the risk of terrorism in the U.S. a generation ago.
What if President Trump is defeated for re-election next year, and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un discovers the next U.S. president won’t accept his phone calls? What provocative action might he take? What accidents might he risk?
What if a debt crisis hits Italy, created when a future Italian government defies EU budget rules and inadvertently creates a financial crisis too large for lenders to manage? Or a miscalculation in Ukraine pulls Russia into a shooting war? Or a US-Russia cyber confrontation hits critical infrastructure, creating a humanitarian crisis inside an American city?
The lack of coordinated leadership in today’s world, our G-zero world, makes all of these crises both more likely to happen and more difficult to manage when they do. Individually, they are long-shots. Collectively, they pose unprecedented danger.
The second implication of the geopolitical recession is the breakdown of international institutions.
The tens of millions of displaced people around the world today create one of the most urgent and expensive problems that the United Nations has to cope with. Yet, even as national governments are less willing to welcome big numbers of refugees, even fewer are willing to invest more to support the UN Refugee Agency.
We also see fragmentation of European institutions as voters send growing numbers of anti-EU politicians to serve in the European parliament. There is no longer consensus among Europeans on the free movement of EU citizens across borders, on how to manage immigrants from outside the EU, or on important questions like how best to manage relations with Russia.
The Trump administration has threatened the coherence of NATO, the most successful military alliance in history (French President Macron certainly seems to agree), and has withdrawn the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty with Russia, the UN Human Rights Council, and the Paris Climate Accord, to name only a few.
The inevitable consequence of all this is a world that has become more unpredictable and much less safe.
There is little chance in this environment to establish new agreements and new institutions to help manage tomorrow’s crises.
Instead, individual governments will adopt their own rules in an attempt to contain challenges that don’t respect borders. They will threaten economic penalties and military retaliation in a world with fewer institutions able to enforce generally accepted rules and practices.
The last implication of the geopolitical recession: The weakness of today’s international system not only leaves the world more vulnerable to crisis, but less resilient when crisis comes. In recent years, we’ve avoided a major international crisis. We’ve seen Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, the growth of populism across Europe, Russia’s bid to undermine Ukraine’s independence, Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power in China, a meltdown in Venezuela, and plenty of individual fires in the Middle East and in democracies across the world. But we have not yet experienced anything during this period that poses a challenge to the entire international system, and the global economy has remained relatively strong.
Our luck can’t last.
There is one superpower in today’s world, one country that can project political, economic, and military power into every region. That superpower is still the United States.
That’s why it matters so much that Americans themselves no longer agree on what role their country should play in the world. Everywhere I travel, including here in Japan, I hear questions and concerns about President Donald Trump. As if he is the source of all this confusion. As if his departure from the political stage, either next year or in five, would set America and the world on a path back toward some idea of normal.
That’s not going to happen, because Donald Trump is a symptom, not a source, of this anxiety and confusion. Yes, it is Trump who questions the value of NATO and whether US troops should be stationed abroad. Trump is the one who suggests Japan and South Korea should develop nuclear weapons of their own to relieve burdens on the United States, the one who has declared a trade war on China, while threatening Europe, Japan, Mexico, and even Canada.
Honestly, who threatens Canada?
But step back a dozen years and think about why Barack Obama was elected president. After eight years of George W. Bush’s war on terror, it was Obama who promised to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—and not to start new ones. Other Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, were tainted in the minds of many Americans by their support for the war on Saddam Hussein.
Step back further. In 1992, Bill Clinton promised that the end of the Cold War meant the end of Cold War burdens. He promised a “peace dividend,” money no longer needed to defeat the Soviets that could instead be invested in strengthening America at home.
Americans don’t want to run the world. They haven’t for a long time.
And with each passing year, there are fewer Americans old enough to remember the Cold War, to say nothing of World War II. In fact, there are now American soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan who were not yet born on September 11, 2001.
The reluctance of the United States as a superpower creates a global vacuum of leadership. But no one is stepping up to take that role in the way that, more than a century ago, America emerged just as the sun began to set on the British Empire.
Europe remains profoundly preoccupied, particularly over economic issues dividing north and south and political issues dividing east and west. And while President Xi Jinping has declared a new era for China in the world, China’s leadership remains fundamentally cautious when it comes to accepting heavy international burdens.
That’s why, when it comes to international leadership, Beijing will not soon become any more reliable a provider of public goods than Washington.
And why a future crisis will be so hard to manage.
Fallout for globalization
Then there is the impact of geopolitical recession on globalization itself.
Globalization has changed our understanding of how things are made and how we might live. Around the world, we celebrate our national holidays with fireworks made in China. The customer service calls we make to fix our computers are answered in India. Our cars are made from parts that come from dozens of countries. We are all globally integrated. It is no longer meaningful to say where our products are produced.
And, until recently, politics hasn’t played a big part in these processes. That’s no longer true.
There is no longer a global free market. China, soon to be the world’s largest economy, practices state capitalism, a system that allows government officials to ensure that economic growth ultimately serves political and national interests.
China’s state capitalist system distorts the traditional workings of a market-driven economy by relying heavily on state-owned enterprises and state-backed national champions to ensure economic—and therefore political—stability. It depends on state subsidies that allow political officials to direct enormous amounts of capital and other resources as they choose. The government picks winners and losers.
The success of this system for China and the Chinese Communist Party is undeniable. The good news for the rest of us is that Chinese growth has supported global growth. Crucially, the hybrid global economy it has created does not end globalization. Both free market and state capitalist systems still enable goods and capital to move around the world.
But the future of globalization is not so simple. Different parts of the global economy are adapting to the end of the US-led global order in different ways.
The marketplace for commodities—especially food, metals, and energy—indeed is only becoming more globalized. US and Chinese tariffs dominate the news, for as long as they last, but the bigger story is the expansion of global commodity markets.
New technologies are making energy production more efficient and lowering costs at a faster pace than politics can drive them higher. That’s why, even after a dramatic missile strike earlier this year at the heart of Saudi oil infrastructure knocked half of Saudi oil production offline, the resulting jump in oil prices left them at levels just half of what they were in 2008.
With more than a billion people entering a global middle class over the past two generations, and the pace of that growth increasing, the globalization of the commodities market will continue.
The market for goods and services, on the other hand, will become less global. That’s in part because the role of labor in production is shrinking dramatically as new technologies bring automation and machine learning into the workplace. Manufacturers want to produce where production is least expensive. That won’t change. What has changed is the search for cheap labor, because the rise of middle classes in China, India, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa has increased wages everywhere, giving producers good reason to automate production.
Further, the growth in populism we’ve seen in so many countries is driven in part by anger over job losses. That means that political officials are more likely to build barriers designed to protect local jobs than to restrict the flow of trade.
These trends will shorten global supply chains for goods and services as each country or company works to reduce its vulnerability to disruption in countries involved in trade disputes. It won’t happen immediately, because CEOs don’t want to make difficult decisions until they believe they have to. But as the global economy tightens, those executives will increasingly produce goods and services where the customers are.
Finally, there is the global market for data and information. This market is breaking in two. It is no longer global. In the beginning, the internet—the Worldwide Web—was driven by a single set of standards and rules. With very few exceptions, one consumer had virtually the same access as another. No longer.
Today, China and the United States are building two distinct online ecosystems. That’s true for the transformation of today’s internet, but also for the construction of the new internet of things. The American tech ecosystem, with all its strengths and shortcomings, is built by the private sector and (loosely) regulated by the government. The Chinese system is dominated by the state. That’s also true for big data collection, for development of artificial intelligence, for the rollout of 5G cellular network technology, and for defense and retaliation against cyberattacks.
This leaves us with a big question: Where exactly will the new Berlin Wall stand? Where will we find the boundary between one technological system and the other? Will Europe align with the United States? Or will the EU fragment into individual decisions within individual European countries? How will India position itself? And South Korea? And Brazil? What pressures will even Japan face?
There is another fundamental question: Will the US-led data and information model continue to be driven by the private sector? Or will future fears for national security allow for the creation of a “tech-based military industrial complex” in the US?
The answers to these questions carry profound implications. In the markets for commodities, goods, and services, global players are both competitors and (potential) partners. Each player wants more market-share, but everyone benefits from an open trading system that creates opportunities for all. Trade wars may be launched to achieve specific goals, but this isn’t a zero-sum competition. Business as usual promises something for everyone. That’s a critical support for global peace and prosperity.
This is no longer true in the data and information economy. Here, much as in the US-Soviet Cold War, the existence of two competing systems limits commercial opportunities and threatens national security. Each side’s hoped-for outcome is elimination of the other system.
America and China
Which means that we now need to talk about China and the United States.
What should the rest of the world want from China? We should want it to succeed. The world needs China to remain stable, productive, and increasingly prosperous to fuel global growth. We need China to play a constructive international role, even if only a limited one. To work with other governments to meet the challenges posed by poverty, conflict, public health risks, lack of education, lack of infrastructure, climate change, and the advance of disruptive new technologies. And, of course, we need these things from the United States too.
The threat China poses to the US is smaller than many in Washington believe. China has even less interest in going to war with the US than the US has in going to war with China. China is a regional, but not a global, military power. Economic interdependence will continue, despite concerted efforts on both sides to reduce economic vulnerabilities.
The greatest source of US-China conflict comes from technology. Here, China is, today, a true superpower. Here, there is a Cold War structure to the relationship that will affect every region of the world. Here, the US does have an interest in seeing China fail, because China’s technological development poses a foundational challenge to the values on which global stability and prosperity depend.
This is a subject on which America’s Democrats and Republicans agree. Imagine that.
The stakes are real. The idea of a Splinternet, the creation of parallel technology ecosystems, isn’t just a threat to globalization. It’s a competition that those who believe in political freedoms might lose.
What should we do?
Allow me to offer two proposals. The first is the creation of an organization equivalent to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body that’s responsible for objectively assessing the world’s vulnerability and responses to climate change. We need a similar group to establish ground rules for our digital world, the data and artificial intelligence that fuel it, and its future development.
My second proposal is this—the world needs a digital WTO, a World Data Organization. As with the WTO, uniting governments that believe in online openness and transparency in an organization that China will ultimately have an economic and security incentive to want to join, especially if it’s the only way Beijing can secure access to developed markets. Carrots will work better than sticks.
America, Europe, Japan, and like-minded willing-and-able partners must work together to set future standards for artificial intelligence, data, privacy, citizens’ rights, and intellectual property. Develop a permanent secretariat to determine these digital norms together, and a judiciary mechanism to enforce them. The Americans have the innovative capacity and startups. The Europeans are the regulatory superpower. Japan is the principle laboratory for a world that needs to see how AI can improve people’s lives.
That’s how we can address the U.S.-China technology cold war.
There is, however, an area where Chinese cooperation with the West is both critical and entirely feasible right now. To combat the advance of climate change and its worst effects, we need to build a “Green Marshall Plan,” a mainly Western-funded project that includes the best ideas of private sector thinkers and state-funded scientists from the West and China on how best to make the policy changes and invent the technologies to clean the world’s air and water and limit the damage inflicted by climate change.
The so-called “Green New Deal” now under scrutiny in the US presupposes that Americans can solve their own climate problems. They can’t. China is now the world’s #1 carbon-emitter, by a wide margin, and China shares an interest with the rest of the world in fighting climate change. It isn’t just New York and Tokyo that face the coming storms and rising seas. It’s Shanghai too.
Japan’s Global Role
Now it’s time to talk about Japan.
I have believed for a long time that the GZERO Summit must take place in the great city of Tokyo. In the international drama I’ve described, the world needs Japan to play a unique role—a leading role.
In a world where politics is driven by partisan grievance, Japan is today the world’s healthiest advanced industrial democracy. It has the strongest political leadership. Despite the many controversies in Japanese life, this is the one country that has defied the global trend toward polarization.
Japan is the fairest and most equal society among major industrialized nations. Its institutions have greater domestic public legitimacy than any other country. Many years of personal experience have taught me that Japan’s private sector is innovative and dynamic. In a world where governments have repeatedly failed to protect the long-term security and prosperity of their citizens, Japan has a social safety net that works. That has never been more important.
Yes, Japan needs the surge of talent, creativity, and hard work that comes from welcoming far more women into the workforce, including in senior positions. And yes, Japan’s challenge of managing unsustainable public debt continues.
But Japan’s undeniable advantages will help this country offer the world much-needed leadership. Prime Minister Abe’s recent engagement with political and business leaders in India, Germany, Iran, and many governments in Africa show the beginnings of what is possible if Japan seizes the chance to help the world meet the challenges I’ve described today. And because Japan has the opportunity, I believe it has an obligation.
There are five areas where I believe Japanese leadership is most badly needed:
Japan can guide the world toward sustainable economic growth. The cost of “growth at all costs,” has become shamefully obvious. The pollution of our air, water, and soil; the advance of climate change; and the failure of governments to protect the social contract that binds them to citizens make clear that the world needs a model of “sustainable capitalism.” Japan’s quest for Society 5.0, one built atop a foundation of machine learning, robotics, and other innovations for enriching human lives provides opportunities for Japan’s government and industry to show the world a way forward that won’t take us over a cliff.
Japan can boost cooperation and limit conflict between China and the United States. These two countries will occupy the center of our future international system, but Japan stands in a unique position to give each side greater incentive to coordinate in areas where their interests coincide and to avoid worst-case confrontations in those where they compete.
Japan can bolster multilateral institutions. I believe that Japan should join the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank and push to make the institution more central to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and therefore the Belt and Road’s financing less opaque. This would be good for Japan and Japanese companies—and good for the world. Japan should persuade its American allies to join too. More broadly, Japan should work with Germany, Canada, and other like-minded governments to defend existing international institutions and to participate fully in global rule-making for trade, data transfer, and innovation policies. The leadership that Japan has already demonstrated in making the Trans-Pacific Partnership a reality proves that these things are possible.
Japan can continue work on a cyber coordination and monitoring center that can promote and direct investment in Research and Development that was cut during its recession. It can accomplish this in cooperation with the countries that are part of the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance plus Germany.
Japan can lead the way in providing and coordinating the distribution of humanitarian aid in a world that badly needs it. As one of the world’s wealthiest countries, Japan has the influence and credibility to coordinate efforts to help people and governments in need. Japan’s industrial sector can offer both leadership and advanced technological solutions to promote sustainable development of global societies, particularly in the areas of healthcare provision, construction of smart cities, and the redesign of the workplace for the 21st
The End of the American Order
As we look toward the future of relations among nations, there is one prediction we can make with certainty: No matter what happens in next year’s U.S. elections, no matter who is president or which party is in power, the American-led international order is finished. It is not coming back.
But it’s just as important to recognize that the aspirations that this order represents for many people remain.
These aspirations, these values, were not invented in the United States. They are not “Western.” They are not simply the product of Europe’s Enlightenment. The drive for liberty, fairness, rule of law, freedom of expression, and the undeniable human drive for openness and exploration are universal.
America can no longer claim to be the primary driving force in defense of these values. Americans have our role to play. So do Europeans. So do the people of Japan. And inside China, Russia, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, inside countries large and small, there are people hungry for the chance to become captains of their fate.
Competition and conflict among nations is inevitable. The warming of the planet and the rise of artificial intelligence will bring existential challenges.
But we live in a G-zero world, a world without leadership that people can trust and count on. It’s up to all of us to fill that void. People in positions of power. People in positions of influence. People in this room right now.
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FRENCH PRESIDENT Emmanuel Macron's hard line immigration plans has been backed by Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen who claimed the current system "doesn't work".
A DECORATED army veteran who was in the thick of the fiercest fighting involved British troops in the Iraq War, only to have his life turned upside down after he was falsely accused of war crime allegations, has said there needs to be a "statute of limitations" to prevent the victimisation of British soldiers.
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AP SBTET Revaluation Results 2019 for Polytechnic C16, C14, C09 | The State Board of Technical Education & Training (SBTET), Andhra Pradesh will soon release the AP SBTET Diploma Revaluation Results for the October/ November 2018 Examination. Students who have applied for the Reverification of Diploma Courses (C16, C14, C09 & ER 91 ) can check your result from the below link. Here we will be updating the latest result link it will activate at the time of the result announcement. So keep track of this page gets the latest result updates.
Latest Update on 19th Nov 2019: AP SBTET Reverification Results will be out At Any Time in November 2019. So all the exam participants keep in touch with this article to know your Result.
AP SBTET Revaluation Results 2019 C09 – Get Here
Students who have applied for the AP SBTET Diploma Revaluation are waiting for the result now. The AP SBTET Diploma Courses (C16, C14, C09 & ER 91 ) Examination was conducted in Oct/ Nov 2019. And, finally, the State Board of Technical Education & Training has finished up the Reverification process. So we are expecting the AP SBTET Revaluation Results 2019 C16, C14, C09 and ER 91 by October month.
AP SBTET Diploma Revaluation Result 2019 (October/ November 2018 Exams)
AP Diploma C16, C14, C09 Recounting Results
Description
Details
Organization Name
State Board of Technical Education & Training (SBTET), Andhra Pradesh
Exam Name
AP SBTET Diploma Exams
Course Name
C16, C14, C09 & ER 91 – Polytechnic Diploma program
Students who have appeared in the Diploma Oct/ Nov 2018 Exam can download their AP SBTET Reverification Results from SBTET official website, once it is released. Also, we will update the latest AP SBTET Diploma Revaluation Results link from the bottom of this page. Applicants can check your results easily by clicking the direct link.
Check AP SBTET Diploma Recounting Result 2019 here
The officials of the State Board of Technical Education and Training (SBTET), Andhra Pradesh are planning to announce the AP SBTET Polytechnic Revaluation Result 2019 for October 2019 (Expected). Those who have applied for the Diploma Revaluation 2019 can check your result here. Also, Students can check AP SBTET Diploma RV Result 2019 for the Even & Odd Semesters. Applicants can check the following details Mentioned on AP SBTET RV Results 2019 (C16, C14, C09 & ER 91 )
Student Name
Enrollment Number
Exam Name
Roll Number
Semester
Subject Name
Course/ Program Name
Institute Name
Grades
Total Marks
Practical Marks
Percentage
Final Result Status
Subject Wise Marks
How to check AP SBTET Diploma Revaluation Result 2019 online?
Initially, applicants can visit the official website of State Board of Technical Education & Training (SBTET), Andhra Pradesh i.e sbtetap.gov.in
On the home page, click on the Examinations tab on the right side
Search for the Results section and click on the Results link
A new page will open, where select the Diploma option
In the Diploma section, The AP SBTET Reverification Results will be displayed on the screen, click on it
Then, Select the Scheme (C16, C14, C09 & ER 91 ), Year, exam and Pin Number
Finally, click the Get report option and check the AP SBTET Revaluation Results 2019 C09
Direct link to download AP SBTET Revaluation Results 2019
TS SBTET Revaluation Results 2019 for C18, C16, C14 & C09 | The State Board Of Technical Education And Training (SBTET), Telangana will soon release the TS SBTET Diploma Revaluation Results for the March/April 2019 Examination. Students who have applied for the Reverification of Diploma Courses (C18, C16, C14, C09) can check your result from the below link. Here we will be updating the latest result link it will activate at the time of the result announcement. So keep track of this page gets the latest result updates.
Latest Update on 19th Nov 2019: TS SBTET Reverification Results will be out At Any Time in November Month. So all the exam participants keep in touch with this article to know your Result.
TS SBTET Revaluation Results 2019 C09 – Get Here
Students who have applied for the TS SBTET Diploma Revaluation are waiting for the result now. The Telangana SBTET Diploma Courses (C18, C16, C14, C09) Examination was conducted in March/ April 2019. And, finally, the State Board Of Technical Education And Training has finished up the Reverification process. So we are expecting the TS SBTET Revaluation Results 2019 C09, C18, C16 and C14 by October month.
TS SBTET Revaluation Result 2019 (March/ April 2019 Exams)
Telangana Diploma C18, C16, C14, and C09 Results
Description
Details
Organization Name
State Board Of Technical Education And Training (SBTET), Telangana
Students who have appeared in the Diploma March/ April 2019 Exam can download their TS SBTET Reverification Results from SBTET official website, once it is released. Also, we will update the latest TS SBTET Diploma Revaluation Result link from the bottom of this page. Applicants can check your results easily by clicking the direct link.
Check TS SBTET Diploma Recounting Result 2019 here
The officials of the State Board of Technical Education and Training (SBTET), Telangana are planning to announce the TS SBTET Polytechnic Revaluation Result 2019 for the November 2019 (Expected). Those who have applied for the Diploma Revaluation 2019 can check your result here. Also, Students can check Telangana SBTET Diploma RV Result 2019 for the Even & Odd Semesters. Applicants can check the following details Mentioned on TS SBTET RV Results 2019 (C18, C16, C14, C09)
Student Name
Enrollment Number
Exam Name
Institute Name
Roll Number
Subject Name
Course/ Program Name
Semester
Practical Marks
Total Marks
Grades
Percentage
Final Result Status
Subject Wise Marks
How to check TS SBTET Diploma Revaluation Result 2019?
Initially, applicants can visit the official website of State Board Of Technical Education And Training i.e sbtet.telangana.gov.in
On the home page, click on the Services tab
Search for the Students section and click on the Results link
A new page will open, where select the Diploma option
In the Diploma section, click the Diploma Results tab
Select the Scheme (C18, C16, C14, C09), Year, exam and Pin Number
Finally, click the Get report option and check the TS SBTET Reverification Results 2019.
Direct link to download TS SBTET Revaluation Results 2019
Indian Post Office Result 2019 – In this home page applicants can get all results depends on the Indian Post Office Result 2019 Punjab, Karnataka, Kerala, Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Himachal Prades, Rajasthan, and Delhi. We have dedicated this page to update all the latest results regarding the Indian Post Office. The result will be declared online and the result is all set to release soon. Registered candidates can download their result from this page directly by visiting this page. Because here we will update the latest Indian Post Office Online Result 2019 link. It will work once the India Post Office GDS Result has been announced officially. The India Post GDS Result 2019 will generate on the basis of marks obtained by the Candidates in the Qualifying Exam.
Punjab GDS Result 2019– @ appost.in |Check Punjab Gramin Dak Sevak (GDS) Result, Merit list here: Punjab Postal Circle is going to announce the result for the post of Gramin Dak Sevak (GDS). Candidates those who have applied for the post can check and download your result from the below link. Here on this page, we will be updating the latest result link and it will activate at the time of result announcement. Punjab GDS Result will be published in the form of a merit list of the candidates who submitted their applications successfully.
Karnataka GDS Result 2019 @ appost.in | Get Direct link for Karanataka GDS Result 2019, Merit list here: Karnataka Postal Circle will soon announce the result for the post of Gramin Dak Sevak (GDS). Candidates those who have applied for the post can check and download your result from the below link. Here we have given a quick link to access your result easily. Candidates can get the complete details from the official website i.e, www.appost.in. On this page, anyone can check the Gramin Dak Sevak (GDS) Result 2019 by using the direct link.
Karnataka Postal Circle GDS Result 2019
Organization Name
India Post, Ministry of Communication, Govt. of India
Kerala GDS Result 2019 – The result for Kerala Gramin Dak Sevak (GDS) 2019 is will be announced soon. Kerala post circle GDS Result will be hosted on the official GDS engagement portal on the scheduled dates. The updates about the Kerala GDS result date and links will be updated on the below table. The Kerala GDS result will be made available as the merit list of the shortlisted candidates. Kerala GDS result for cycle II 2019 will be announced shortly. Those who are waiting for the release of the result are advised to regularly visit this page GDS portal so that they can get all the latest updates.
Kerala GDS Result 2019
Organization Name
India Post, Ministry of Communication, Govt. of India
Assam GDS Result 2019 – @ appost.in |Check Assam GDS Result Merit list 2019 here: Assam Postal Circle is going to announce the result for the post of Gramin Dak Sevak (GDS). Candidates who have applied for the Gramin Dak Sevak (GDS) post can check and download your result from the below link. Here on this page, we will be updating the latest result link and it will activate at the time of result announcement. Assam Circle GDS Result will be published in the form of a merit list of the candidates who submitted their applications successfully.
Bihar GDS Result 2019 – @ appost.in |Check Bihar GDS Result Merit list 2019 here: The Bihar Postal Circle is going to announce the result for the post of Gramin Dak Sevak (GDS). Candidates who have applied for the GDS post can check the Bihar GDS Result 2019 Expected Date from this page. Also, download your Bihar GDS Result Pdf from the below link. Here on this page, we will be updating the latest result link and it will activate at the time of result announcement. Bihar GDS 1063 Result will be published in the form of a merit list of the candidates who submitted their applications successfully.
Gujarat GDS Result 2019 – @ appost.in |Check India Post GDS Gujarat Result 2019 here: The Gujarat Postal Circle is going to announce the result for the post of Gramin Dak Sevak (GDS). Candidates who have applied for the GDS post are eagerly waiting to when Gujarat GDS Result will be declared. Here on this page, we will be updating the latest Gujarat GDS Result Pdf link and it will activate at the time of result announcement. Gujarat Post GDS Result will be published in the form of a merit list of the candidates who submitted their applications successfully.
Jharkhand Postal Circle GDS Result 2019 – Jharkhand Postal Circle has announced the result for the post of Gramin Dak Sevak (GDS) on 05th September 2019. Candidates those who have applied for the post can check and download your result from the below link. Here we have given a quick link to access your result easily. Apart from these candidates can get the complete details from the official website i.e, www.indiapost.gov.in. On this page, anyone can check the Postman & Mail Guard Result Result 2019 by using the direct link.
Jharkhand Postal Circle GDS Result 2019
Organization Name
India Post, Ministry of Communication, Govt. of India
Jharkhand Postal Circle GDS Result 2019 – Click Here
HP Postal Circle GDS Result 2019 – Himachal Pradesh Postal Circle has announced the result for the post of Gramin Dak Sevak (GDS) on 05th September 2019. Candidates those who have applied for the post can check and download your result from the below link. Here we have given a quick link to access your result easily. Apart from these candidates can get the complete details from the official website i.e, www.indiapost.gov.in. In this page, anyone can check the Postman & Mail Guard Result Result 2019 by using the direct link.
HP Postal Circle GDS Result 2019
Organization Name
India Post, Ministry of Communication, Govt. of India
Kerala Postal Circle Postman & Mail Guard Result 2019 – Kerala Postal Circle has announced the result for the post of Postman & Mail Guard. Candidates those who have applied for the post can check and download your result from the below link. Here we have given a quick link to access your result easily. Apart from these candidates can get the complete details from the official website i.e, www.indiapost.gov.in. In this page, anyone can check the Postman & Mail Guard Result Result 2019 by using the direct link.
Kerala Postal Circle Postman & Mail Guard Result 2019
Organization Name
India Post, Ministry of Communication, Govt. of India
Kerala Postal Circle Postman & Mail Guard Result 2019 – Click Here
Rajasthan Postal Circle GDS Result 2019 – Rajasthan Postal Circle has announced the result for the post of Gramin Dak Sevak (GDS) on 05th August 2019. Candidates those who have applied for the post can check and download your result from the below link. Here we have given a quick link to access your result easily. Apart from these candidates can get the complete details from the official website i.e, www.indiapost.gov.in. In this page, anyone can check the GDS Result 2019 by using the direct link.
Rajasthan Postal Circle GDS Result 2019
Organization Name
India Post, Ministry of Communication, Govt. of India
Rajasthan Postal Circle GDS Result 2019 – Click Here
Delhi Gramin Dak Sevak Merit list Pdf 2019 – GDS Result for Delhi GDS Dak Sevak has announced on 05th September 2019. GDS Result has prepared and published only on the basis of marks secured by the candidates in the 10th standard (SSC). Delhi GDS Recruitment 2019 has invited 174 vacancies for Delhi Gramin Dak Sevak (GDS). The GDS Post will select according to the Merit List. The Selection test for the Merit list will announce it soon. Applicants will receive an update regarding the selection list date. Also, Applicants can get the GDS Result date, GDS Selection test date and other latest information from this page.
Delhi GDS Dak Sevak Result
Organization Name
India Post, Ministry of Communication, Govt. of India
The official department will publish the Delhi Post GDS Merit List 2019 soon on the official portal. Candidates, please stay connects with us for the latest updates related to the Delhi Post GDS Merit List 2019. Applicants who have applied for this Recruitment can check Gramin Dak Sevak Merit List 2019 soon from the official website. Also, Applicants can get the zone wise Delhi GDS Result 2019. The result pdf is going to indicate the following information about the result.
Names of the selected candidate (not in merit order)
Registration no./ Application No.
Post name
Branch Office (BO)
Postal circle Division name
Head Office (HO)
Sub Office name (SO)
Marks percentage of the selected candidates
Category
Delhi GDS candidates waiting for the publication of results can check the same by following the given procedure once it will be made available online. Candidates can visit the official page or our site on a regular basis for the latest updates. According to the updates, the Indian Post declares the Delhi GDS Result. The department also releases Delhi Postal Circle GDS Merit List 2019 along with the cut off marks. Delhi Postal Circle department soon confirm Gramin Dak Sevak (GDS), Merit List, & Cut off Marks released Date. The board will be selected qualified candidates in the Delhi Postal Circle GDS Cut off 2019 Category Wise. The Gramin Dak Sevak Cut off Marks release along with GDS Result 2019. We have given the link of the GDS Result 2019 and India Post Office GDS Result from the above table.
Delhi Gramin Dak Sevak Merit List 2019
In the upcoming time, the Delhi Gramin Dak Sevak Merit List 2019 will be released, Participators can get through our site. In the Delhi Gramin Dak Sevak Jobs, Applicants will be selected on the basis of Delhi Postal Circle GDS Result. Here, We will provide you the Delhi Post Office GDS Merit List 2019 link as per the official announcement for your convenience. Applicants will get a higher priority in the Interview, based on the Gramin Dak Sevak Merit List 2019.
Steps to check Gramin Dak Sevak Merit list Pdf
First of all, Candidates need to visit the official site i.e, www.indiapost.gov.in
Then click on the link of the Delhi Postal GDS Result.
Fill complete the required details in the form.
Then click on the submit button.
At last, save the soft copy on your desktop and also take the hard copy of the result.
Direct link to download Gramin Dak Sevak Merit List 2019
FSSAI Result 2019 Announced @ fssai.gov.in | The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) will soon announce the FSSAI Assistant Result in the 16th November 2019. Candidates those who have appeared for the FSSAI Recruitment Written Exam on 24th July to 26th July 2019 can check your result from this article. Here we will be updating the latest result link, link activated now!!!.
Latest Update:FSSAI Exam Result Released on 16th November 2019. So all the exam participants keep track of this page to check your Result.
FSSAI Result 2019 – Available Here
A huge number of candidates have appeared for the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) Recruitment examination. Currently, all those candidates are eagerly waiting for the FSSAI Result 2019 Date. All your waiting is over now, the FSSAI has released the Results on 16th November 2019. So applicants can check your result from the direct link provided below in the table.
FSSAI Technical Officer Results 2019 – Overview
FSSAI Result 2019 Junior Assistant & Other Posts
Description
Details
Organization Name
Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI)
Post Name
Assistant Director, Technical Officer, Central Food Safety Officer, Administrative Officer, Assistant, Junior Assistant Grade – I, Hindi Translator, Personal Assistant, Assistant Manager, IT Assistant, Deputy Manager
All the candidates can check your Written Exam FSSAI Result from the below link or on the official website. Along with the Direct Result link here we have provided some steps to download your FSSAI Results. After checking your result, candidates should monitor the FSSAI Result 2019 Cut off to attend the next round. Applicants who qualified in the written test can attend the Personal Interview.
FSSAI Cut off Marks 2019
The officials of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has announced the FSSAI Technical Officer Result 2019. Those who have applied for the FSSAI Written Exam can check your result here. Also, Applicants can check FSSAI Result 2019 Cut off for various Posts. Candidates can check the following details Mentioned on FSSAI Result 2019 Junior Assistant
Applicants Name
Enrollment Number
Post Name
Roll Number
FSSAI Merit List 2019
All the exam participants can check their roll Numbers and Names in the FSSAI Merit List 2019. Because Merit List contains the candidates' names of who score highest marks in the CBT exam. So all the candidates must download the FSSAI Merit List 2019 from the given below link. Also can check your FSSAI Cut off Marks and FSSAI Merit List from the official website fssai.gov.in.
How to check the FSSAI Exam Result 2019?
Initially, applicants can visit the official website of Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), fssai.gov.in
On the home page, click on the Jobs@FSSAI on the left side tab
Search for the FSSAI Result 2019 Junior Assistant and click on the Results link
A new page will open with FSSAI Results
Finally, check and download your FSSAI Assistant Result.
GJU Result 2019 released. Students those who are studying under the Guru Jambheshwar University, it time to check out your exam results. And here GJU Result is released according to the semester wise for both the main exams along with the reappeared examination. Students can download the complete set of GJU Exam Result 2019-20 at free of cost. The GJU Results 2019 are declared for all the UG, PG, Distance Education Courses & Others.
GJU Hisar Result 2019-20 @ gjust.ac.in
Affiliated colleges and students those who are studying under the Guru Jambheshwar University here comes great news for you people. We are glad to inform you that your semester examination results are released by the University officially on the website. Candidates those who are in search of the GJU Hisar Results 2019-20 can check out our webpage. We people from recruitment.guru we let you know the regular updates about the GJU Semester Exam Result 2019-20. The below table will list out all the updated examination results as soon as released on the official website. Recently the Guru Jambheshwar University has released the few re-appeared examination GJU Results along with the main exam results in May 2019 month. As the GJU Exam Result is released in Pdf format where students can download exam results directly from the official website. Scroll down and get the latest release of Guru Jambheshwar University.
Guru Jambheshwar University of Science and Technology founded in the year 1995 is a non-profit public higher education institution. It is situated within the urban setting of the little town of Hisar in Haryana State. The Guru Jambheshwar University is officially accredited/or recognized by the University Grants Commission (UGC) & NAAC. The Guru Jambheshwar University of Science and Technology is a small coeducational teaching institution. GJ University Hisar offers courses and programs leading to officially recognized higher education degrees like bachelor degrees, master degrees in many areas of study. This 24 years old higher-education institution has a selective admission policy based on entrance examinations. International students can also apply for enrollment for this university.
Regular/ Supplementary Results of GJU Hisar
Checked out your examination results, but still not satisfied with the exam results. Here the Guru Jambheshwar University gives a second chance for the students to pass in their semester examination. Here students should apply for the Revaluation with certain norms given by the university. Once they applied for the Examination, the higher level Examiner will re-check the paper. Within a particular interval of Students can get the revaluation results. Still scored low marks then the supplementary examination will help you out. For each and every semester Students can apply for the revaluation after the announcement of the main examination results. Guru Jambheshwar University will take a week or more to process the exam papers to announce the Revaluation results. Do stay updated with the University to know about the GJU Revaluation Result.
BRLPS Result 2019: Get Community Coordinator, Office Assistant & Other Result, Cut Off Marks, Latest Updates @ brlp.in | BRLPS Jeevika Result. We have a piece of good news for you!! The Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society (BRLPS) has declared the BRLPS qualified candidates list to attend the CBT Exam on 11th October 2019. Candidates who had attended for the Community Coordinator & Other Examination in July 2019, can check and download the Result from the direct link provided below in the table. Aspirants just click on that link and find your results easily.
Latest Update on 16th November 2019Marks of the candidates who have been declared qualified in the additional list for the position of Project Manager is being displayed herewith. Marks in their login window will remain open from 9 pm today to 9 pm Monday.!!!!!.. Get Direct link from below section…..
BRLPS Result 2019 – Check Here @ brlp.in
Applicants who are waiting for your BRLPS Community Coordinator Result 2019 can check and download your result from the below link. In the below table we have mentioned the BRLPS Community Coordinator Sortlist. To download your result applicants should enter the BRLPS Admit Card 2019 details. Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society (BRLPS) has released the BRLPS Office Assistant Result 2019 on the official website. Here on this page applicants can get complete details of BRLPS Cut Off Marks 2019 and BRLPS Merit List 2019. Along with the results we have provided additional information about BRLPS CC Result 2019 in the below table.
BRLPS Community Coordinator Result 2019 – Overview
BRLPS Result 2019 | Community Coordinator & Other Cut Off, Merit List
Description
Details
Organization Name
Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society (BRLPS) (JEEVIKA)
Exam Name
State Project Management Unit Positions, District Project Coordination Unit Positions, Block Project Implementation Unit Positions, State Consultant-MLE & MIS, Accountant, Project Manager (ODF-S Cell), Consultant-SLWM (ODF-S Cell), Consultant-IEC/ CB (ODF-S Cell), Consultant-Technical Sanitation (ODF-S Cell), District Coordinator, District Consultant-CB & IEC, District Consultant-MLE & MIS, District Consultant-SLWM
Applicants can get more details from the above table. Candidates can check the BRLPS Community Coordinator 2019 Results from the official website brlp.in. The BRLPS Community Coordinator list will help the candidates to attend the next round.
On the basis of marks obtained by the candidate in CBT, following roll numbers/application ID has been shortlisted for the next stages of the selection process. Reservation roster of govt. of Bihar has been followed for preparing the list. The date and venue of the next stage of the selection process will be intimated separately. Also, Cutoff Marks of CBT Exam for various positions of BRLPS and LSBA has been published.
Qualified additional list for the position of Project Manager – Click Here
The Shortlisted candidates will be invited for the next round of the Recruitment Process. List of applications received shortlisted applications, dates, and venue of tests for selection, etc. If the applicants’ name will attain into the BRLPS Merit List 2019, they will get more importance at the time of the Interview. All the applicants can get the BRLPS Results, Cut Off Marks, Merit List @ brlp.in.
How to check BRLPS Result 2019?
Initially, click on the official website of the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society (BRLPS) using the URL: http://brlp.in/
Now, you will redirect to the Home Page of the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society.
Applicants can observe the Latest News section on the home page.
Over there, search for the link of BRLPS Community Coordinator Result 2019.
Click on it and enter the required details.
The BRLPS Results appear on the screen.
Direct link to download BRLPS Result 2019
Qualified additional list for the position of Project Manager
OSSSC Junior Clerk Admit Card 2019 will be on the Last Week of November 2019. Hence, the board has announced the exam date as 08th December 2019 on its official website. Therefore, the hall ticket will be available at the bottom of the section. Those who are in search of OSSSC Admit Card can download it from the below table after its release on its official website.
OSSSC Jr Clerk Admit Card 2019-20: Odisha Sub-ordinate Staff Selection Commission has yet to release the admit card for 1746 posts for Junior Assistant and Junior Clerk. Hence, Candidates can download the admit card before the exam date. The exam date will be scheduled in the last week of July 2019. Therefore, Contenders should attend the exam only by carrying the OSSSC Admit Card 2019. Go through the complete article to know more about the OSSSC Hall Ticket.
OSSSC Admit Card 2019
Applicants who have applied for the respective post should download the admit card to appear in the competitive exam. Thus, the OSSSC Hall Ticket contains detailed information about the candidate. The admit card will act as an entrance ticket to enter the exam hall. So, make sure to download the admit card from the official website. Hence, we Recruitment. Guru will help you by providing the direct link to download the admit card.
Candidates can download the admit card by providing sufficient details. Do check with the details in the admit card which are stated below. Moreover, OSSSC Junior Clerk Hall Ticket is an important deed for the candidates who are going to attend the examination. The admit card will be available on the official website. Contenders keep visiting the official website frequently to know the OSSSC Jr Clerk Admit Card status.
Candidate’s Name
Date of Birth
Exam Venue and Address
Exam Timing
Date of examinations
OSSSC Junior Clerk Exam 2019-20
The Odisha Sub Ordinate Staff Selection Commission has will announce the exam date in the month of July 2019. Hence, start your preparations from now onwards. Because the board will release the exam date at any time. Therefore, Candidates who are eligible to write the exam can download the admit card from the below section. Download the exam pattern and syllabus to make your preparation easy.
There will be a written test and also a practical skill test. Get detailed information about the OSSSC Written exam and practical exam.
For Written Examination:
Papers
Subject
Marks
Time
Paper-I
Part-I: Language Test (English & Odia)
85
2.5 Hours
Part-II: Objective General Knowledge
100
Paper-II
Part-I: Objective Mathematics
100
3 Hours
Part-II: Basic Computer Skills (Objective)
100
Total
385 Marks
5.5 Hours
For Practical Skill Exam:
Subject
Maximum Marks
Time Duration
Essay & Letter Writing in Odia
15
30 Minutes
Basic Computer Skills
50
1 Hour
Important Things to Download OSSSC Admit Card 2019
Examiners must carry any of the original document to the exam hall. Details in the admit card should match the details in the ID proof. Let all the contestants note down the importance of the OSSSC Jr Clerk Admit Card and download with the valid instructions. OSSSC Call Letter should be downloaded prior to avoid the last time traffic. Hence, Candidates with mistakable admit card will not be permitted to attend the exam.
Original Photograph
Voter Card
Pan Card
Employee ID
College ID
PAN Card
Passport
Driving License
Any other ID proof issued by a Gazetted Officer
Bank Pass Book with the photograph
How to Download OSSSC Jr Clerk Admit Card 2019-20?
Visit the “OSSSC Jr Clerk Admit Card 2019”
Enter the Login details in OSSSC Jr Clerk Admit Card
Click on to the Submit Button.
A Call Letter page will arise on the screen.
Enter all the valid details in that.
Check once for the clear view of the details you entered.
Now go to the Download option to get the Admit Card.
Take a photocopy of it.
Direct Links to Download OSSC Junior Clerk Admit Card 2019
Telangana High Court Results 2019 @ hc.ts.nic.in | Get TS High Court Results for 1539 Office Subordinate, Junior Assistant, Copyist, Typist, Process Server, Stenographer Gr-III, Field Assistant, Examiner, Record Assistant Posts. Applicants who have appeared for the Telangana High Court Recruitment Written Examination can check your results from this page. The High Court for the State of Telangana will release the Telangana High Court Result in the month of December 2019 tentatively.
Telangana High Court Results 2019 – Check Here
The High Court for the State of Telangana has conducted the Recruitment Examination of 1539 Candidates for various Posts from 4th to 7th November 2019. A large number of candidates have appeared the Examination from the Telangana State at various centers. All the exam participants are eagerly waiting to know their result status. For sure, here we will be updating the latest Telangana High Court Office Subordinate Results link, the link will be activated at the time of the result announcement by officially.
Telangana High Court Office Subordinate Result 2019 – Overview
Organization Name
High Court for the State of Telangana
Exam Name
Stenographer, Junior Assistant, Typists, Field Assistant, Examiner, Copyist, Record Assistant, Process Server & Office Subordinate Posts
Candidates who have attended the written examination can check this page frequently to get all the latest updates. This is the biggest recruitment for job seekers who are looking for Telangana High Court Jobs. Applicants must know their results to attend the next round of Interviews. Candidates can get a direct link for the TS High Court Results 2019 from this page.
TS High Court Merit list 2019
Candidates who are looking for the TS High Court Merit List pdf 2019 can check it from this page. The Merit list will be set on the basis of the written exam marks. After the TS High Court Office Subordinate Results 2019, candidates can get the Merit list. The qualified candidate’s list will select by the Cut off Marks. Applicants whose name appeared in the Merit list can attend the next round of Interview process.
Telangana High Court Cut Off Marks 2019
Applicants should get the minimum or maximum marks in the written examination to achieve the Cut off marks. The Cut off marks list contains the applicant’s name and roll number. All the candidates can check your Telangana High Court Expected Cut off Marks from this page. Here we have provided some steps to download your Telangana High Court Office Subordinate Result 2019 from the official website.
How to check TS High Court Office Subordinate Results 2019?
Initially, Applicants should visit the official website of the High Court for the State of Telangana hc.ts.nic.in
On the home page, Applicants can see the Recruitment section at the bottom of the page
Click on the view all option
A new page will open with various Posts Results
Search the link related to Telangana High Court Office Subordinate Result 2019
Candidates can download the Telangana High Court Office Subordinate Results.
DSSSB Previous Papers for Librarian, LDC, DASS Grade 4, Medical Record Clerk, Dass Grade 2, PGT, TGT, PRT & other vacancies, tier 1 and tier 2 examinations are available here. Applicants of DSSSB recruitment can find the question paper for both teaching and non-teaching vacancies here. Also, find the DSSSB exam pattern and written exam dates for both tier-I and tier-II exams. Hence, go through the article and download the official DSSSB Previous Papers Pdf for free.
DSSSB Previous Papers Pdf
Delhi Subordinate Service Selection Board (DSSSB) is going to conduct the DSSSB exam for Librarian post vacancies. Candidates who clear the exam are only eligible for the interview process. Hence, go through the download the DSSSB previous question paper for Librarian posts and start your preparation today.
DSSSB Previous Question Paper for Librarian, LDC, DASS Grade 4, Medical Record Clerk, PGT, TGT, PRT, JE, lab assistant, pharmacist, nursing teacher & other in Hindi are given in the sections following. Find the respective question paper links and download the pdf. Here is the overview of current examinations conducted by DSSSB. Check the details and find the model paper below.
DSSSB Previous Question Paper Pdf
Description
Details
Board Name
Delhi Subordinate Service Selection Board (DSSSB)
Vacancies Type
Librarian, LDC, DASS Grade 4, Medical Record Clerk, Dass Gr 2, PGT TGT & others
DSSSB Steno, LDC, Grade IV & Medical Record Clerk Exam Date 2019
14th December 2019 to 19th Jan 2020
Official Website
delhi.gov.in
Aspirants can check the complete notification details in our DSSSB notifications page. Get all latest and upcoming recruitment details on recruitment guru page. Also, check the topic wise syllabus in our DSSSB Syllabus page for Librarian & other posts both tier 1 and tier 2 examinations. Here are the respective links for DSSSB Previous Papers.
Delhi Subordinate Service Selection Board (DSSSB) released recruitment notification for 80 Librarian vacancies. Aspirants who are interested in Delhi SSSB Jobs and have applied for DSSSB librarian exam 2019 can start preparing for the exam as soon as possible. Since, the exam date is already released and to be conducted on 3rd November 2019. As there is no much time for preparation of the exam, smart planning is required to have a proper preparation for the exam. To help candidates in this, we have given DSSSB Librarian Previous Year Question Papers Pdf with solution Pdf links that helps to maximum extent in exam preparation. Also, get DSSSB Librarian syllabus & exam pattern details with the link given in below sections of the article.
Selection Process:
Written Test
Interview
Delhi SSSB Librarian Exam Paper Pattern 2019 Pdf
Subjects
No of Questions
Marks
Mental Ability & Reasoning Ability
20
20
English Language & Comprehension
20
20
General Awareness
20
20
Numerical Aptitude & Data Interpretation
20
20
Hindi Language & Comprehension
20
20
Concerned Subject
200
200
Total Marks
300
300
Download DSSSB Librarian Model Question Papers Pdf
Delhi Subordinate Services Selection Board had released DSSSB Recruitment Notification 2019 for various posts like Welfare Officer, Jr Environmental Engineer, LDC, DASS Grade 4, Statistical Asst, Safety Officer, Librarian & Others long time ago. The candidates who had applied for DSSSB exam 2019 & waiting for exam date to get released. Here is the good news for you people.
DSSB has announced exam date for LDC, Dass Grade 4 & other posts. All posts exam will be scheduled within September month only. So, buck up and start your DSSSB exam preparation as early as possible. For this purpose, we have given DSSSB LDC & others exam last year question papers with solutions that help in your exam preparation bit faster. For much more details of DSSSB Jobs 2019 read further sections of the article.
DSSSB DASS Grade 4, 2 & LDC Exam Pattern 2019 Pdf
Topics
No. of Questions
Max. Marks
Exam Duration
General Awareness
40
40
2 Hours
General Intelligence & Reasoning Ability
40
40
Arithmetic & Numerical Ability
40
40
Hindi Lang & Comprehension
40
40
English Lang & Comprehension
40
40
Total
200
200
Delhi DSSSB Previous Year Question Papers with Answers Pdf Download
DSSSB Question Papers, Study Materials – General Hindi
Delhi Subordinate Services Selection Board (DSSSB) – General English
DSSSB Medical Record Clerk Previous Year Papers Pdf
Delhi Subordinate Services Selection Board (DSSSB) released a notification for the recruitment of Medical Record Clerk posts. DSSSB Medical Clerk Exam 2019 will be conducted on 25th & 26th of July 2019. Thus, to help in preparation for the exam in a short duration. Here, we have given the latest DSSSB Medical Clerk (MRC) exam question papers along with syllabus & exam pattern details. For further details check the official website.
Description
Details
Board Name
Delhi Subordinate Service Selection Board (DSSSB)
Post Name
Medical Record Clerk
Vacancies
42
Category
Syllabus
DSSSB Medical Clerk Exam Date 2019
25th & 26th of July 2019
DSSSB Official Website
dsssb.delhi.gov.in
For DSSSB Dass Grade 2 Previous Papers pdf – Click Here
Download DSSSB Medical record Clerk Solved Model Papers Pdf
DSSSB PGT, TGT, Primary Teacher (PRT) Previous Papers Pdf
Aspirants who applied for the DSSSB Teacher posts (PGT, TGT, Primary Teacher) can find the previous papers. Before downloading the previous question paper check the exam pattern details. Knowing the exam pattern for DSSSB TGT, PRT, PGT tier 1 and tier 2 helps the applicants in the preparation. Also, helps in analyzing the old question papers. Hence, we advise the applicants to go through the details and download the pdf below.
Applied for the Delhi Subordinate Service Selection Board Health & Family Welfare depart vacancies, like Nursing Officer, Pharmacist and other posts. Then find the respective posts DSSSB exam paper pdf for free of our page. We have given the direct download links in the tabular section below. Just click on the link and download the pdf. Check the exam pattern and syllabus details before starting preparation. However, find the complete syllabus in our DSSSB syllabus page.
Download DSSSB Question Paper for Nursing Officer & other Pdf
Assistant Teacher Nursing DSSSB Previous Paper Pdf
Applied for the Delhi Subordinate Service Selection Board Junior Engineer and Assistant Engg vacancies. Then you are in a right place in search of DSSSB Question paper for Je and AE examinations. We have given the direct download links in the tabular section below. Just click on the link and download the pdf for free. However, check the exam pattern before starting your preparation. This helps in understanding the question paper pattern and helps in the preparation.
DSSSB Question Paper for JE and AE Tier 1 & Tier 2
Delhi Subordinate Services Selection Board give notifications for various vacancies every year. As listed above those are more frequent vacancies. However, aspirants who applied for the grade 2, grade 3 and grade 4 vacancies in DSSSB can find the previous year question paper here. Direct download links for the papers are given in our DSSSB Previous Year Question Paper page. Hence click on the links given below and download the pdf for free.
Refer all the DSSSB Previous Question Paper given for scoring good marks. These help in understanding the exam paper pattern and also helps in analyzing. Candidates can understand the way questions are going to be. Hence, here is the link for other DSSSB services question paper direct download link.
DSSSB Previous Year Question Papers for LDC, Stenographer, Welfare Officer exams is available here. Find the direct download links for various non-teaching vacancies like Admin Officer, LDC, Fire Operator, DASS Gr 2, Steno, Motor vehicle inspector & other question paper here. Also, find the exam pattern and exam date details in the article below.
DSSSB Previous Year Question Papers Pdf
Delhi Subordinate Service Selection Board (DSSSB) is going to conduct the tier 1 and tier 2 exams for most of its vacancies. Candidates can find the PGT, TGT, Primary Teacher and other teaching vacancies previous year question paper in our other page. Find the direct links for non-teaching tier 1 and tier2 exams in this article below.
DSSSB recruitments announce the vacancies like the head clerk DASS Gr 2, LDC, ALC, JLO, fire operator, warden & other posts. If you are the one who applied for the above vacancies. Then you are in the right place in search of your DSSSB Previous Year Paper with answers pdf. Here is the overview of the board recruitment and exam date details.
Aspirants can check the DSSSB Previous Year Paperfor non teaching vacancies on this page. However, we advise checking the exam pattern and syllabus details for applied vacancies before starting preparation. General exam pattern for non-teaching vacancies is given in the section following. Have a look at tier 1 and tier 2 exam pattern DSSSB below.
DSSSB Steno, LDC, Pharmacist Exam Pattern details
Aspirants who applied for the DSSSB non-teaching, technical and service related vacancies will be having a written test as part of the selection process. We advise the aspirants to refer our DSSSB Syllabus page for more details. Or aspirants can check the question paper given below for understanding the exam pattern for a particular post.
We have given the most repeated exam pattern in this section. This may vary from other posts exam pattern. However, check the exam pattern given below. List out the sections which are important and start your preparation today.
DSSSB Pharmacist Exam Pattern
S.No
Subject
Marks
Time
1
General Awareness
20
2 Hours
2
General Intelligence and Reasoning Ability
20
3
Arithmetical and Numerical Ability
20
4
Test of lang – Hindi
20
5
Test of lang – English
20
6
Based on Relevant Subject
100
Total
200
2 Hours
The Question Paper will be of objective type
The total time duration of the exam is 2 hrs
DASS Grade 2 Tier I Exam Pattern 2019
Subjects
Marks
Total Marks
General Awareness, General Intelligence & Reasoning, Arithmetical & Numerical Ability, Test of Hindi Language & Comprehension, Test of English Language & Comprehension
40 Marks Each
200
DASS Grade 2 Tier II Exam Pattern
Paper
Subject
Questions
Marks
1
General Awareness
75
75
Mental Ability & Reasoning Ability
75
75
2
Numerical Aptitude & Data Interpretation
50
50
English Lang & Comprehension
75
75
General Computer Knowledge
25
25
Total
300
300
The total time duration for the tier 2 exam is 2 hrs.
For complete details visit our DSSSB Syllabus page by clicking on the link given below.
DSSSB Previous Year Question Papers for Tier 1 and Tier 2 Exams Pdf
Aspirants can find the direct download links for the DSSSB Previous Year Question Papers pdf here. The tier 1 and tier 2 exam paper direct links are given in the table below. Just click on the links to download the pdf for free of cost. Also, we advise referring all the Previous year question paper given for scoring good marks. Share the URL with your friends who are looking for DSSSB Previous Year Paper pdf.
Delhi Subordinate Service Selection Board Previous Year Paper Pdf
NEW DELHI: Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, will visit India in January when he is likely to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi. During his visit he will kick off the US retailer's annual event around small and medium enterprises, which are perceived to be hurt by deep-pocketed ecommerce companies.The world's largest online retailer is said to be worried about the changing ecommerce rules in India, where the Seattle-based company has invested more than $5 billion and created one of its largest foreign subsidiaries.Bezos comes calling amid protests by a group of small traders against foreign-funded ecommerce companies. The Amazon founder is expected to highlight that it is generating jobs in India and empowering SMEs and other small businesses, according to two people familiar with the matter. He will also raise aspects such as stable business environment and policy continuity for foreign companies, they said."We do not have any plans to share at present for this," an Amazon spokesperson said in an emailed response to a questionnaire regarding Bezos' upcoming visit.The outcry against ecommerce companies escalated after the Diwali festive season, when small traders accused Flipkart and Amazon of "unfair business practices" and violation of foreign direct investment rules. They blamed the predatory pricing strategies of the two foreign-owned marketplaces for a slump in traditional retail business during Diwali.Flipkart and Amazon generated combined sales of Rs. 31,000 crore ($4.3 billion) during the 15-day festival period in October, according to a report by Red Seer Consulting.The government has been stepping up its scrutiny of Amazon and its India rival Flipkart over their compliance with India's foreign direct investment laws for ecommerce marketplaces. The commerce ministry had asked Amazon and Flipkart to furnish details including their shareholding, subsidiaries, business structure and information on their top sellers and their tax details.Amazon and Flipkart have responded to the questions raised by the government and maintain that they are in full compliance with FDI legislation."It is a huge distraction for us," a senior ecommerce executive said, asking not to be identified. Amazon has reasons to be nervous. The US giant considers India its fastest-growing market with a potential to reach $10 billion in gross merchandise value and outpace the UK, Germany and Japan as its largest overseas subsidiary. In October, Amazon pumped in Rs. 2,800 crore into the flagship Amazon, in marketplace after injecting Rs. 9,450 crore in the unit last year. So far, Amazon has invested more than $5 billion in India. "The various twists and turns in policies and caveats over the years have created ambiguity and room for interpretation as to what is allowed under the ambit of foreign investment," said Devangshu Dutta, CEO of retail consultancy Third Eyesight."If any foreign-owned or foreigninvested entity is operating in the fuzzy zones of policy and law, there is bound to be concern. 'Interpretation' is a double-edged sword — on the plus-side it can give businesses strategy flexibility, but the downside is that government officials can also interpret it strictly."In October, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon had written to Modi, seeking certainty and a predictable business environment in India.Last year, Walmart had purchased Flipkart, India's largest ecommerce entity, for $16 billion, bringing the US adversaries to a direct fight over market share in the nation's burgeoning online retailing market.Following Walmart's acquisition of Flipkart, India amended the FDI rules for online marketplaces in December, plugging many holes that Amazon and Flipkart are alleged to have misused. Opponents of foreign-funded ecommerce accuse both the global titans of virtually running inventory-led ecommerce, which India bars.The legislation called Press Note 2 restricted bulk purchases by any vendor from any entity or group company of marketplace to 25%. The rules banned any financial affiliate of the marketplace operator from selling on such platforms. These changes came as blows to Amazon and Flipkart as they either sold through partner entities or through independent vendors that sourced directly from wholesale units related to the FDI-funded marketplaces.
MUMBAI | NEW DELHI: Maruti Suzuki is witnessing a sudden surge in demand for its diesel models, compelling the maker of the Vitara Brezza and Dzire to ramp up production of some of the variants that it plans to phase out before the new emission standards come into effect in April.Huge discounts and extended warranty that the company is offering to clear the inventory of Bharat Stage-IV variants have attracted consumers looking for value buys.In the past couple of months, retail sales of the Vitara Brezza diesel almost doubled to 13,000-14,000 units from the previous months.The company has now extended the production of Brezza's diesel variants by a month to January, and increased the planned output by 3,000-4,000 units each in November and December to about 12,000 units. 72118322 In fact, including other models, the local subsidiary of Japan's Suzuki Motor will be producing around 30,000 units of diesel vehicles in the next three months, which is almost 30-50% higher than its previous plan. The company has hired back close to 1,000 temporary workers it had previously let go of as the diesel variants of the Brezza and Dzire Tour, and other models like the new WagonR, S-Presso and XL6 have a waiting period for delivery.Maruti Suzuki didn't respond to an email seeking comment until press time Monday.The company has already started manufacturing vehicles conforming to the upcoming Bharat State-VI emission standards. It is now also producing petrol variants of the Brezza, which was previously available only in diesel. Maruti Suzuki had earlier said that it would discontinue production of diesel vehicles once the new rules come into effect, citing cost.A few other automakers, too, have said that they would rethink on their diesel strategy, since the high cost of developing the engines won't make those viable on small cars.Toyota's diesel plans Toyota, which operates in the Indian market through a joint venture with the Kirloskar Group, is among the automakers looking at stopping the production of small diesel vehicles in the country, said industry insiders.While Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) will continue to offer diesel options in utility vehicles Innova and Fortuner, it will discontinue the 1.3-litre diesel engine currently strapped on the Etios, Etios Cross, Liva and the Corolla Altis, they said.Diesel vehicles currently account for 85% of the volume for the company, for which more than 60% of the sales comes from the Innova and Fortuner. N Raja, the deputy managing director at TKM, said the company continued to see demand for diesel."We will continue to be in diesel as long there is a demand from the customers and the next technology innovations begins," he said in response to ET's questions.Prices of diesel vehicles are likely to increase 15-20% due to the implementation of BS-VI, TKM said.Smooth transition Maruti Suzuki has already moved to BS-VI from BS-IV for as many as eight models, as the company is aiming for a smooth transition and avoiding a fire sale ahead of the March 31 deadline.Diesel-powered vehicles accounted for 22% of the total volume for the company in the September quarter, compared with 33% for the industry. The company offered an average discount of Rs. 1.10 lakh on its diesel models in three-month period.That was more than four times the overall discount of Rs. 25,761per vehicle it offered in the quarter. The reason for the sudden spike in demand for Maruti Suzuki's diesel models is the enhanced value proposition it offered with the extended warranty and steep discount, said Gaurav Vangaal, the country lead for production forecasting at IHS Markit."Post BS-VI, with a steep price hike, the diesel demand is likely to fall significantly," he added.
Bengaluru: Technology services companies could shed as many as 40,000 mid-level jobs by next year as India's biggest export industry, battling mounting cost pressures, looks to cut more expensive resources and replace them with headcount at the base of the organisational pyramid.Mid-level resources, with work experience of 10-20 years, account for a fifth of the workforce across IT companies, said analysts. That works out to about 6,00,000 professionals, meaning about 7% of mid-level IT jobs could be axed in the next 12 months.Indian IT firms follow the typical pyramid structure: A wide base employs more but costs less per head, a middle level team has experienced professionals, and the sharp tip at the top includes senior level decision makers. With business slowing, companies are looking to shed flab in the middle, where employees have experience in traditional services that have a shrinking future-demand profile. Instead, they are opting for relatively low-cost resources, with expertise in newer digital skills. 72118451 "I don't think people have the luxury to carry on in a longterm cost structure. Profitability is a concern and everybody is walking a tightrope," said Rituparna Chakraborty, cofounder of TeamLease, a staffing company. "While reduction of people is not the first choice for any organisation, there is little choice for companies than to let go people either not performing or adding value."India's software industry registered $137 billion in exports in FY19, employing over 3 million people. The top six Indian IT services firms clock revenue of more than $60 billion and employ more than a million professionals. These firms are seeing revenue from traditional services, such as application development and maintenance that contribute two-thirds of their business, either drop or remain flat. Only the newer digital services business is growing faster – in double digits."As in all sectors in the west, in India too, when a sector matures, there will be many in the middle level who will not be adding value to the salary they get," former Infosys board member TV Mohandas Pai was quoted as saying in the media.
By Rishikesha T KrishnanThe first time I heard of Infosys was about 30 years ago. I was working in my father's company at that time, and I attended a meeting organised by the Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council at Bangalore to promote software exports. One of the key speakers was a bespectacled man with a professorial air who was relatively unknown at that time, but who would, in the course of time, become one of the icons of Indian business: N R Narayana Murthy.He spoke with a passionate air, was clearly enthused by what he saw as the prospects for India in an emerging industry, but was equally forthright about the policy constraints that at the time held back companies from achieving their full potential.Over the years, Infosys would become symbolic of a new India, earning its reputation and heft through the quality of the services it offered, rather than the wealth and privilege inherited by its owners. It prided itself on the quality of its disclosures and the standards it set for corporate governance. This endeared it to foreign investors. The typical Infosys annual report was twice as thick as that of other companies and filled with tables of data well beyond the requirements of law.With this background, it's indeed a surprise to see Infosys in the news under a corporate governance cloud. While there was an earlier round of governance controversies that resulted in the exit of the first non-founder CEO of the company, and the return of one of the original founders in the nonexecutive chairman's role, this time it is particularly surprising because, after the last round, it seemed clear that the company was committed to get back its mojo.Chairman Nandan Nilekani emphasised on a number of occasions that Infosys was keen to return to its prior status as an otherwise 'dull and boring company', where excitement was created by the quality of performance and results rather than managerial announcements or controversies. As one of the co-founders of Infosys, and the father of India's universal digital identity system, Aadhaar, Nilekani is one of the most respected business leaders in India. How likely is it that egregious violations of basic corporate governance norms could happen under his watch?These thoughts made me give careful consideration to the present controversy. What I discovered was that those who have sought to paint Infosys in a bad light have jumped the gun.Infosys has had a whistle-blower policy in place for years. And it functions as it is designed to. As Nilekani told analysts during a recent meeting, Infosys has received whistle-blower complaints in the past as well, and all such complaints are considered by the board's audit committee. Complaints of a specific nature are, in turn, subject to a preliminary investigation to check whether they really have substance. If they do, then a detailed investigation is undertaken and action taken against those who have violated governance policies. Necessary disclosures are made when a complaint warrants such disclosure.The key point is that a complaint does not imply wrongdoing. Governance violations can only be established after an investigation. Did Infosys consider the whistle-blower complaints promptly? It appears so. The complaints made in end-September were considered by the audit committee in its meeting on October 10. Did this happen suo motu, or did Infosys wait for external pressure to look into the complaints? By all evidence available in the public domain, Infosys acted on its own.Is there substance in the complaints themselves? It's best to leave the determination of this to the investigation that's already underway. However, one point is clear. It is in the interest of all stakeholders that a company appropriately verifies any whistle-blower complaint, prior to making a disclosure. A premature disclosure, without such a first-level verification, goes against the principles of good corporate governance. Policies for recognising revenue, or allocation of costs, are legitimate areas for discussion between management and auditors. It would be unfair to say that the company has indulged in governance violations just because such discussions took place.India's software industry is one of our outstanding success stories. Building such engines of growth is very hard, but pulling them down is relatively easy. We must resist the temptation to get carried away by the cynicism of our times to undermine some of our brightest stars. We must give Nilekani and the board of Infosys a fair chance to have an objective investigation of the whistle-blower complaints undertaken before we pass judgement on the company.The writer is professor of strategy, Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore.
MUMBAI: The Supreme Court's judgement in the Essar Steel case will benefit banks in terms of writebacks but ageing related provisions from old accounts, stress from companies such as DHFL and new stress emerging from sectors like telecom will keep bank provisions elevated, said analysts.On Friday, the SC upheld the committee of creditors (CoC) decision to hand over control of 10 million tonne Essar Steel plant to a joint venture of European ArcelorMittal and Japanese Nippon Steel Corp.The much-awaited order came 830 days after the company was referred to the bankruptcy courts, and will result in financial creditors including banks recovering 92% of their Rs 42,000 crore dues from the company.Since many banks had made a 100% provision on this account, lenders' profits are likely to be boosted from this recovery in the quarter-ended December. But new signs of stress from sectors such as telecom will keep bank profits under check, analysts said. "The Essar judgement is a big positive and will no doubt boost bank bottom lines but in the near to medium term provisions will remain elevated from ageing related provisions from old accounts in power, infrastructure and large corporate segment. There is also new stress emerging from sectors like telecom and there are companies like DHFL where resolution has been stalled and there are allegations of fraud which will need more provisions," said Lalitabh Shrivastawa, VP, research, Sharekhan by BNP Paribas.Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel, two of the top three telecom companies, reported record losses in the quarter ended September hurt by a brutal price war unleashed by Reliance Jio and due to provisions they had to make to pay dues to the government after the Supreme Court upheld the government contention to include revenue from the non-telecom business while calculating the total revenues for these companies. "This has now become a matter of survival for these companies. The government has to urgently step in and prevent them from going under because telecom as a business has social and infrastructural ramifications. For banks, this means a new headache in terms of provisions," said a private sector bank executive.Indeed, the RBI data show that banks have a Rs 1.15 lakh crore exposure to telecommunications as of September 2019, up 25% from Rs 91,946 crore a year ago. "These loans are currently being paid, but the question is given the situation of these companies how long can banks ignore this huge exposure. This is a serious issue and probably needs government intervention to solve it," said Anusha Raheja, analyst at LKP Securities.Besides the old accounts, there's also stress in non-banking finance companies, some media groups and large groups such as Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Group which may need more provisions.
BENGALURU | MUMBAI: Realty developer Prestige Group has picked up 28.99% stake in commercial development of a DB Realty project. The commercial property in Mumbai's Bandra locality has a development potential of over 7 lakh sq ft and is valued at about Rs 2,100 crore, said two persons familiar with the development.The joint venture entity will develop a mixed-use project with total 200 hotel rooms, while the rest will be office space. The deal marks Bangaluru-based Prestige Estates Projects' entry into the Mumbai commercial market."DB Realty has already bought out the stake held by foreign fund Trinity Capital. This was a precursor to the deal between Prestige and DB Realty," said one of the persons mentioned above.The transaction is yet to be completed including the final development potential.This is the second transaction between Prestige and DB Realty. Last month, the Bengaluru- headquartered firm had entered in to a joint venture with DB Realty to develop a hospitality-led mixed use project spread over 7.7 acres land parcel in Delhi's Aerocity.72118410 Prestige Group is planning to build India's largest hotel and convention centre on the same land parcel.In a stock exchange announcement late Monday , Prestige Group stated that Prestige Falcon Realty Ventures, wholly-owned subsidiary of Prestige Estates Projects, has acquired 1,32,854 equity shares representing 28.99% (without considering other convertible instruments in the entity) of the equity share capital of DB (BKC) Realtors from Trinity Capital (Ten) as per the terms and conditions agreed."The investment by Prestige in DB BKC Realtors is strategic. No plans have been firmed up for development yet, as several approvals and regulatory issues need to be resolved before the development can take place. As stated above, the plans are still at a very nascent stage and hence any comment on the above is speculative," said a DB Realty spokesperson.Transaction advisor JLL India declined to comment.
EuroKids, a leading playschool chain in the country controlled by US private equity firm KKR, is in preliminary talks to acquire Asia's largest preschool chain Kidzee from Zee Learn for Rs 1,000–1,200 crore people aware of the development said.The deal, if it goes through, will help Subhas Chandra-promoted Essel Group further deleverage its consolidated balance sheet, sources said.The group that owns broadcaster Zee Entertainment Enterprises, direct-to-home service DishTV and specialty packaging firm Essel Propack is battling with a debt repayment issue of close to Rs 7,500 crore, across its diversified businesses.New York-headquartered KKR — which bought 92 per cent stake in Euro-Kids for about Rs 1,500 crore in September — is believed to have made a non-binding offer to acquire educational portfolio of Zee Learn, particularly Kidzee, and is awaiting a response from the management, people cited earlier said."EuroKids and Kidzee complement each other, so that's the key target," said a person involved in the talks. "Adding Mount Litera into the negotiations could take more time, something the Zee Group can ill-afford at this time." The person requested anonymity because the talks are in private domain. 72118505 The transaction involves demerging the preschool business from the listed parent company Zee Learn and subsequently hiving it off through a slump sale, sources said.An Essel Group spokesperson said both strategic and financial investors have shown interest in its education vertical Zee Learn and that the group is "actively evaluating" those offers."The divestment of Zee Learn Ltd is in line with the overall asset divestment process undertaken by the group," the person said. "Any additional details cannot be shared at this stage due to confidentiality agreements."EuroKids declined to comment.Zee Learn has more than 1,900 Kidzee preschools in more than 750 cities across the country. It also has the country's fastest-growing K-12 school chain, Mount Litera Zee Schools (MLZS), with more than 120 schools in 110 cities in the country, besides Zee Institute of Media Arts, Zee Institute of Creative Art, and Himgiri Zee University, an UGC approved state private university in Dehradun.EuroKids is looking for aggressive expansion of its portfolio.In an investor call in October, Punit Goenka, CEO at Zee Entertainment, had said, "We have been approached by some marquee investors, both strategic and financial, for the Zee Learn stake and we are considering their offers seriously."The group is already selling noncore assets in infrastructure and financial services as part of its efforts to pare debt. It may also sell part of promoters' shares in flagship Zee Entertainment pledged with lenders.Essel Group in an exchange filing in September had said the group is in steady and progressive dialogue with all lenders and had sought an extension of deadline for repayment of debt to few mutual funds and nonbanking institutions.Zee Learn more than doubled its consolidated revenue for the year ended March at Rs 549 crore against Rs 272.50 crore in FY18. Its profit after tax rose to Rs 83 crore from Rs 49 crore in the previous fiscal. Its revenues from educational services and related activities stood at Rs 398 crore in FY19 against Rs 186 crore in FY18. Kidzee's FY19 Ebitda was around Rs 70 crore.The current market capitalisation of Zee Learn is Rs 755 crore. Promoters own 57.17 per cent of the company, of which 82.74 per cent is pledged with lenders.Zee Learn shares have fallen 37.84 per cent in the past one year, significantly underperforming the benchmark Sensex, which gained 12.61 per cent during the same period .In February 2018, Zee Learn had acquired a controlling 44.5 per cent stake in MT Educare, a Mumbai-based firm that runs the popular Mahesh Tutorials coaching classes, for about Rs 200 crore to expand its footprint."The overall financial performance has remained stable keeping in view the acquisition of MT Educare which has supported the revenues and profitability," Brickwork Ratings had said in a note in July. "The total debt has increased to Rs 379 crore in FY19 versus Rs 258 crore in FY18."Zee Learn's Mount Litera Zee School partners with local educational trusts and offer services such as school set up assistance, teacher training, assessment, teaching materials, student learning resources, and branding. It also runs five CBSE company-owned company-operated schools and an IB school at BKC Mumbai.EuroKids is one of India's largest education services providers in the preschool and kindergarten to K-12 segments. Its portfolio brands, including EuroKids, EuroKids DayCare, Kangaroo Kids, EuroSchool and Billabong International, serve more than 120,000 students from 1,115 preschools and 35 K-12 schools across five countries.There is a wide potential for foreign investments in Indian education that is estimated to reach $144 billion by 2020 from $97.8 billion in 2016. The country allows 100 per cent foreign direct investment in this space under automatic route. An estimated investment of $200 billion is required to achieve the government's target of 30 per cent GER for the education sector by 2020, according to Zee Learn annual report.
Oil prices ended higher last week, adding to gains, as the market continued to react to statements about progress on a trade deal between the US and China. American economist Larry Kudlow reported that there are positive signs coming out of the negotiations. Elsewhere, IEA warned the markets that Opec and its allies face a major challenge next year as demand falls sharply in response to accelerating production from rivals. The much-anticipated initial public offering of Saudi Arabia's state oil giant, expected the week after the meeting of ministers, will be one reason why Saudi Arabia has every incentive to keep oil prices higher. Saudi Arabia set a valuation target for Aramco's initial public offering well below Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's goal of $2 trillion and pared back the size of the sale to ensure the world's largest oil producer successfully lists on the Riyadh stock exchange next month. Saudi central bank also relaxed lending limits to boost demand from local investors after bankers were unable to convince many international money managers of the merits of the deal. Aramco will sell just 1.5 per cent of its shares on the local stock exchange, about half the amount that had been considered, and seek a valuation of between $1.6 trillion and $1.71 trillion. Inventories and rigsEIA reported a nearly 2.2 Mbpd weekly climb in US crude oil supplies against forecast for relatively modest increases of 1.5 million barrels. API revealed a 5,41,000 barrel build. Gasoline stockpiles saw a build of 1.9 Mbpd against an expectation for a draw of 2.8 million barrels. Distillates inventories fell 2.5 mbpd compared with forecasts for a drop of about 600,000. Total crude oil stored at 449 million barrels, or 3 per cent higher than the five-year average for this time of year Crude production rose by 200,000 bpd to a weekly record of 12.8 mbpd. Both imports and exports of crude oil were quite low on week, but the rise in domestic production shows that there is no slowdown in the oil patch, despite the falling rig count Stocks at Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery hub for US crude futures fell 1.2 million barrels, their first fall after five weeks of builds, the EIA said, after the main artery for Canadian crude imports, the Keystone pipeline, was forced to shut due to an oil spill. Refinery crude runs rose by 155,000 bpd and utilisation rates increased by 1.8 per cent to 87.8 per cent of total capacity. The number of operating oil and gas drilling rigs in the US fell by 10, bringing the total number of operating rigs to 806, more than 276 fewer rigs than the same week a year ago. Monthly reportMonthly report from IEA reported that global oil demand in the third quarter of 2019 grew by 1.1 Mbpd, more than double the 435,000 bpd in the previous quarter. China demand increased by 640,000 bpd YoY, and IEA is projected acceleration in global growth of 1.9 mbpd for the final quarter of 2019. IEA pointed to sluggish refining activity in the first three quarters of 2019 as contributing to a decline in crude oil demand of 300,000 barrels a day YoY, and the agency expects crude demand in 2019 as a whole to decline for the first time since 2009. Global oil supply rose 1.5 mbpd in October as Saudi Arabian production returned to normal and on increases from Norway, Canada and the US. Opec crude oil production was 29.9 mbpd. At 101 mbpd, world oil supply was 1.2 mbpd below year-ago levels with Opec down 2.5 mppd. Non-Opec output growth is set to increase from 1.8 mbpd this year to 2.3 mbpd in 2020. The call on Opec crude in 2020 is estimated at 28.9 mbpd, 1 mbpd below current production. Natural GasPrices saw a gap down opening on account of warmer weather forecast on Sunday by GFMS stating that most of cold weather is passed on and warmer weather is expected to hit next week. Furthermore, weekly government storage data showed another injection with further delayed the start of demand season. EIA reported a 3 Bcf injection, extending the refill season. The 3 Bcf build was on the higher side of the consensus, but bullish versus the historical comparisons, as last year the EIA recorded a 42 Bcf injection for the period, and the five-year average is a 30 Bcf build. ConclusionPrices can remain sideways to slight positive for the coming weeks on account of expectations toward the "Phase One" of partial trade agreement. Oil market players are looking toward next month's Opec+ meeting where the cartel and its associates are expected to agree to maintain current output levels through 2020 as reports state that Opec will extend its production cuts through the end of 2020 at the upcoming meeting in Vienna, rather than deepening the cuts. Recent trade chatter relates to difficulties in agreeing to monthly targets for Chinese agricultural purchases. China's recent agricultural purchases were mainly an expedient way of dealing with the impacts of African swine fever, not really a trade concession at all. China won't want to be boxed in if it doesn't suit them. But we have heard that many times before and without further detail, the market seems to be largely ignoring that. Reports suggest that the process of getting a Phase One trade deal would be full of uncertainty. It is unfortunate that we are correct. Chinese companies will continue to defer investments if they are in the export business. However, if Chinese companies are involved in building and producing 5G infrastructure, equipment, parts, and final goods and services, they are highly likely to enjoy decent growth, even though they may not be able to export their products to some parts of the world.and with a bunch of contingencies to meet first. Volatility will continue even after a Phase One deal is agreed because the market will then start to question the likelihood of a more comprehensive follow-up agreement. (Investors are advised to consult financial advisers before taking an investment calls based on these observations)
NEW DELHI: WhatsApp has identified a vulnerability that could have been exploited through a malicious MP4 file. India's computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-in) described the vulnerability's severity rating as "high" and has advised users to update to the latest version of WhatsApp. The vulnerability, identified as CVE-2019-11931, affected both Android and iOs systems but it is unclear if any users were impacted. The company has rolled out a security update. "WhatsApp is constantly working to improve the security of our service. We make public reports on potential issues we have fixed consistent with industry best practices. In this instance, there is no reason to believe users were impacted," WhatsApp said in a statement on Sunday. India is WhatsApp's biggest market with 400 million users. The development comes just weeks after WhatsApp sued Israeli company, NSO group, over the alleged misuse of their spyware Pegasus, that was installed in the phones of 1400 users, including at least 120 Indians. Many of those who were spied on were journalists, rights activists and lawyers. In a post on it's securities and advisory page, WhatsApp's parent company Facebook confirmed the vulnerability on November 14. The post describes the vulnerability as "A stack-based buffer overflow could be triggered in WhatsApp by sending a specially crafted MP4 file to a WhatsApp user."Although this description is vague, Cert-in website gives more details. It states that the vulnerability can be "exploited by a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on the target system."
BENGALURU: India's information technology services companies may shed 30,000 to 40,000 middle-level employees this year as growth slows down, IT industry veteran T V Mohandas Pai said Monday.The former Chief Financial Officer of IT major Infosys Ltd termed these job losses as once-in-five-years normal phenomenon with maturing of the industry."As in all sectors in the West, in India too when a sector matures so many people will be there in the middle level who will not be adding value to the salary they get," Pai told PTI.Promotions are okay when companies are growing fast but when it slows down, people getting fat salaries will aggregate at the higher level, prompting companies to periodically reset their pyramids, and shedding people, he said."It's going to happen again and again and again every five years," said Pai, Chairman of Aarin Capital and Manipal Global Education Services."Nobody is entitled to a fat salary and high-paying job unless you perform, right? You have to deliver value"."All across industry, may be 30,000 to 40,000 in a year...," he said when asked about the number of middle-level staff who would lose their jobs.But Pai said about 80 per cent of those who lose jobs would have employment opportunities in industries in general if they are specialists.
Supreme Court stays SAT order that quashed Sebi ban on Price Waterhouse Senior counsel Mukul Rohtagi, appearing for the auditing firm, argued that the firm is being punished for wrongdoings of the two partners. "We have already suffered, how many time will we be killed," he said, adding that it's the ICAI only which can bar auditors and not Sebi.
Bina Modi takes over as chairperson of Modi Enterprises Bina served as board member of Godfrey Phillips India and is also on the CSR committee of the company. Her commitment to social responsibility and her personal zeal drive the CSR programmes with a focus and with the underpinned values of the group.
Urban Ladder's FY19 net profit at Rs 49.40 crore The company had posted losses of over Rs 100 crore in FY18. Revenue from operations jumped 209% to Rs 298.17 crore in FY19. Total expenses stood at Rs 382 crore during the period, the data showed.
NCLAT asks promoters of Sterling Biotech to pay Rs 3,100 crore in a month The three-member NCLAT bench, headed by chairperson Justice SJ Mukhopadhaya, said: "In case the amount does not come within 30 days from the date of the order, the company will go for liquidation." In that event, the appellate tribunal will restore the order of liquidation of the firm, it added.
Bharti Airtel, Vodafone to hike tariffs from December 1 The average revenue per user per month has declined from Rs 174 in FY15 to Rs 113 in FY19. A subscriber on an average uses 10 GB of data and 700 minutes of mobile talk time per month.
JIL lenders to meet again to evaluate bids by NBCC, Suraksha Over 23,000 home buyers, who enjoy the status of financial creditors under the insolvency law, and 13 banks have voting rights in the CoC. The home buyers have nearly 60% shares.
While it’s a bit curious to drop news like this as the first tweet from a brand new account, Valve’s long-established official Steam twitter account retweeted it — so signs are pointing toward it being legit.
Alas, we know next to nothing besides the name — Half-Life: Alyx — until 10 am on Thursday. Will we finally get a proper conclusion for Alyx Vance, whose storyline ended so abruptly when Valve dropped the Half-Life storyline mid-sentence 12 years ago ?
The world is being mapped in 3D — one brick, one bench, one building at a time. For things like hyper-accurate augmented reality, autonomous robots and self-driving cars, 2D maps and GPS only get you so far.
Ubiquity6, a startup that’s spent much of the last two years quietly chipping away at the challenges of building shared augmented reality experiences, is trying something different: a social network, of sorts, for scanning and sharing 3D spaces.
The company’s first publicly launched app, Display.land, started rolling out on iOS and Android over the weekend. Part 3D scanner and part social network, it lets you scan a location or object, edit it (cropping it to just the bits you’re interested in, or adding pre-built digital objects), and share it with the world. Want everyone to see it? You can pin a scan to a map, allowing anyone panning by to explore your scan. Want to keep it to yourself? Flip the privacy toggle accordingly.
The idea: quick and simple 3D scans of real-world spaces, shareable at large or just with the people you choose. Exploring a new city and found some neat art in an alleyway? Scan it and post it for everyone to “walk” around. Renting an apartment and want to give potential tenants some idea of what the space is like? Scan it, put the link in the listing and it’ll open right up in their browser without any downloads.
Starting a new scan is simple: hit the “new” button, find some particularly interesting bit of geometry to focus on and hit “begin.” As you radiate away from the initial focal point, you’ll see your camera view filling with countless colored spheres. Each sphere represents a geometric feature that the camera has captured, helping to highlight the areas that have been sufficiently covered.
As you roam, a bar starts to stretch across the bottom of your screen. Once it seems like you’ve captured enough geometry for a complete mesh, the app will let you know — but if you want your scan to be more true to life, you’re free to continue scanning until the bar is completely full.
Between the point cloud data and all of the photographic textures being captured, these scans can get pretty big. My test scans were coming in at a few hundred megabytes. That’ll eat up your data quick if you’re uploading over a cell network, so you’ve got the option to hold off uploading until you’re back on Wi-Fi. Once uploaded, Ubiquity6 will take a few minutes to process everything, crunching all of the raw data into a model you can fly around and explore.
While the scans it makes are rarely perfect, it’s… really damned wild what they’re pulling off with just your phone’s RGB camera and its assorted built-in sensors. With a bit of practice and sufficient lighting, the scans it can pull off are rather incredible. Check out this scan of Ron Mueck’s Mask II sculpture from the SF MOMA, for example — or this pool from a skatepark in SF’s Mission District. (And note that it’s all rendering live in the browser; you can scroll to zoom, orbit around, etc.)
Scanning/editing/sharing is free. If you’re feeling fancy, you can even open your scan in a browser and download it in a file format (OBJ, PLY, or GLTF) that’s ready to be fiddled with in your desktop 3D modeling software of choice. As for how they’ll make money? The company plans to charge companies that need a bit more than the base offering — if a company wants to 3D scan a space at the highest possible fidelity, for example, they can pay extra for the added processing time.
Meanwhile, they’re laying the groundwork for what seems to be the company’s actual interest: shared, multiplayer augmented reality experiences. For now, these scans are mostly static — you can add cutesy 3D models like treasure chests and floating butterflies to mix it up a bit, but they’re mostly there just to be pretty. In time, though, they’re looking to add gaming elements; think games that automatically unlock when you walk into a certain physical space, with physics and functionality determined by the real-world geometry around you.
Ubiquity6 has raised a little over $37 million to date. It’s backed by KPCB, First Round, Index Ventures, Benchmark and Gradient, and was part of Disney’s fifth accelerator class.
French startup Luko has raised a $22 million Series A round led by Accel (€20 million). Founders Fund and Speedinvest are also participating in today's funding round.
When you rent a place in France, you have to provide a certificate to your landlord saying that you are covered with a home insurance product. And, of course, you might want to insure your place if you own it.
While the market is huge, legacy insurance companies still dominate it. That's why Luko wants to shake things up in three different ways.
First, it's hard to sign up to home insurance in France. It usually involves a lot of emails, a printer, some signatures, etc. It can quickly add up if you want to change your coverage level or add some options.
As expected, Luko's signup process is pretty straightforward. You fill out a form on the company's website and you get an insurance certificate minutes later.
Luko partners with La Parisienne Assurances to issue insurance contracts. So far, 15,000 people have signed up to Luko.
Second, if there's some water damage or a fire, it can take a lot of time to get it fixed. Worse, if somebody breaks into your place, you're not going to get your money back that quickly.
Luko wants to speed things up. You can make a claim via chat, over the phone or with a video call using the mobile app. The company tries its best to detect fraud and pay a claim as quickly as possible. Luko also recently announced an integration with Lydia, a popular peer-to-peer payment app in France, so that your payment is instant.
Third, Luko has a bold vision to make home insurance even more effective. The startup wants to detect issues before it's too late. For instance, you could imagine receiving a water meter from Luko to detect leaks, or a door sensor to detect when somebody is trying to get in. We'll find out if people actually want to put connected objects everywhere.
Finally, Luko has partnered with a handful of nonprofits to redistribute some of its revenue — it has received the BCorp certification. The startup makes revenue by taking a flat fee on your monthly subscription. If there's money left at the end of the year, Luko donates it to charities. Investors signed a pledge so that Luko doesn't trade this model for growth.
NASA has added five companies to the list of vendors that are cleared to bid on contracts for the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. This list, which already includes nine companies from a previous selection process, now adds SpaceX, Blue Origin, Ceres Robotics, Sierra Nevada Corporation and Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems. All of these companies can now place bids on NASA payload delivery to the lunar surface.
This basically means that these companies (which join Astrobotic Technology, Deep Space Systems, Draper Laboratory, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, Lockheed Martin Space, Masten Space Systems, Moon Express and OrbitBeyond) can build and fly lunar landers in service of NASA missions. They’ll compete with one another for these contracts, which will involve lunar surface deliveries of resources and supplies to support NASA’s Artemis program missions, the first major goal of which is to return humans to the surface of the Moon by 2024.
These providers are specifically chosen to support delivery of heavier payloads, including “rovers, power sources, science experiments” and more, like the NASA VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover), which is hunting water on the Moon. All of these will be used both to establish a permanent presence on the lunar surface for astronautics to live and work from, as well as key research that needs to be completed to make getting and staying there a viable reality.
Artist’s concept of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander
NASA has chosen to contract out rides to the Moon instead of running its own as a way to gain cost and speed advantages, and it hopes that these providers will be able to also ferry commercial payloads on the same rides as its own equipment to further defray the overall price tag. The companies will bid on these contracts, worth up to $2.6 billion through November 2028 in total, and NASA will select a vendor for each based on cost, technical feasibility and when they can make it happen.
Uber Chief Product Officer Manik Gupta announced today he is leaving the company. Gupta’s last day will be December 13, he wrote in a note to Uber’s product team today.
“After a few discussions with Dara as well as with my family—and now that we've made it through the IPO and an important year for the company—I've made the tough decision to leave Uber,” Gupta wrote in the note.
In a conversation with TechCrunch, Gupta elaborated that he felt like now was a good time for him to take a break, noting that he’s “leaving the team in very capable hands.” Additionally, he said he’s “very bullish on Uber’s future.”
As for what’s next for Gupta, his plan is to recharge and spend time with his family before jumping into the next thing. During this time, Gupta plans to look at some of the emerging trends in the consumer internet space, which has changed a lot over the last four years, he told TechCrunch. Take TikTok, he said, which didn’t exist four years ago. Meanwhile, there is increased scrutiny surrounding all of these consumer platforms.
“I really want to look at some of these trends,” he said.
Gupta joined Uber from Google in 2015 as a senior director of the maps and marketplace product team. In November 2018, Gupta was promoted to chief product officer. Uber does not have another chief product officer lined up, so the plan is for Gupta to stay on for a bit during this transition and help the company find his replacement. Matt Cohler, general partner at Benchmark, will also help Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi in his search for a chief product officer, according to Uber. In the meantime, all of Gupta’s reports will report directly to Khosrowshahi. In Gupta’s note, he said it will be a good opportunity for Khosrowshahi to get more involved with the product team.
“Over the past four years, Manik has elevated our product strategy and has been the driving force behind some of our most ambitious launches, including Uber Rewards and Uber Pro, Uber Wallet, and our movement towards a 'super app,' ” an Uber spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We're grateful for his leadership and wish him the very best."
This year, Uber has laid off more than 1,000 employees across its marketing, engineering, product, Eats, self-driving and other organizations throughout the company. Gupta was one of the leaders tasked with evaluating his team, identifying duplicate and overlapping roles, as well as individual performance to determine who would be laid off. That process resulted in 170 layoffs from the product team in September.
“Obviously, that was a tough decision we made but it was the right decision,” Gupta said. “We had to take our execution to the next level and look at how we set ourselves up for the future.”
Meanwhile, Uber has unveiled a number of new features and tools over the past few months, including a financial services platform, ads within Eats and rewards programs. Uber Pro, Uber Rewards and Uber Money are three products Gupta pointed to when discussing how Uber has better positioned itself to become the operating system for everyday life. This is a vision Gupta said he’s “very excited about.”
Moving forward, Gupta hopes the company will keep moving faster and “take on more and more bold bets,” he said.
Gupta’s departure comes shortly after Uber reported losses of more than $1 billion in its latest earnings report. Uber’s stock is currently trading at $26.78.
Here’s the entirety of Gupta’s note:
Team,
The end of November marks 4 years for me at Uber, and as we've been planning our strategy for next year, I've been doing my own personal 2020 planning. After a few discussions with Dara as well as with my family—and now that we've made it through the IPO and an important year for the company—I've made the tough decision to leave Uber.
I joined Uber to work on the fascinating problem of building a real-world, real-time marketplace, at global scale. I have had the privilege of being part of an amazing journey as we got to incredible scale across several businesses. I am truly proud of everything we have accomplished as a team. We have a strong product roadmap ahead of us and I continue to be bullish about Uber's future.
I am grateful for this team, who is hard at work building an amazing product experience for our users. This is a great opportunity for Dara to get even more involved in Product and, until he finds my replacement, my leads will report directly to him. Later this afternoon, Dara and I will host a Q&A with all of you to talk about the transition and the plan for the interim.
As for what's next for me, you only get a few moments in your life to take a break, and with the holidays coming up and before my son starts middle school mid-next year, I plan to spend some quality time with family and recharge before my next adventure.
I want to thank Dara for the opportunity to lead the Product team and drive the product vision at one of the most transformational companies of all time. Thanks to all of you as well for your partnership and for teaching me so much—I will always be cheering for you. I'm around until December 13th and hope to catch up with as many of you as possible. Thank you.
Like many things found on today’s social media platforms, Twitter’s Lists feature was introduced without thinking about the impact it could have on marginalized groups, or how it could otherwise be used for abuse or surveillance if put in the hands of bad actors. Today, Twitter is taking a step to address that problem with the launch of a new reporting feature that specifically addresses the abusive use of Twitter Lists.
The feature is launching first on iOS today, and will come soon to Android and the web, Twitter says.
Similar to reporting an abusive tweet, Twitter users will tap on the three-dot icon next to the List in question, and then choose “Report.” From the next screen, you’ll select “It’s abusive or harmful.” Twitter will also ask for additional information at that point and will send an email confirming receipt of the report, along with other recommendations as to how to manage your Twitter experience.
Twitter Lists have been abused for years, as they became another way to target and harass people — particularly women and other minority groups. They were particularly useful as a way to avoid being banned for abusive tweets, as Twitter took no notice of Lists.
If you're a woman with a verified account or a lot of followers, and you've experienced swarms and targeted harassment, here's a reminder to check what lists you're on. Block all list creators you don't know. https://t.co/EYRPP9twJz
Back in 2017, Twitter said it would no longer notify users when they’ve been added to a list — an attempt to cut back on what were very often upsetting notifications. It then reversed the decision after people argued that notifications were how they learned what sort of harmful lists they had been added to in the first place.
Despite Twitter’s understanding of how Lists were abused, there have not been any good tools for getting an abusive list removed from Twitter itself — users could only block the list’s creator.
Twitter has admitted that despite the availability of its reporting tools and the increasing speed with which it handles abuse reports, there’s still too much pressure on people to flag abuse for themselves. The company says it wants to figure out how to be more proactive — today, the majority is not flagged by technology (only 38% is), but by reports from users.
This problem and all the many like it have to do with who has built our social media tools in the first place.
Twitter, like other tech companies, has struggled with a lack of diversity, which means there’s a large lack of understanding about how features could be twisted to be used in ways no one intended. Though Twitter’s diversity metrics have been improving, Twitter as of this spring was 40.2% female, but just 4.5% black, and 3.9% Latinx.
The other issue with Twitter — and social media in general — is that there’s some distance between the abuser and the victim of harassment. The latter is often not seen as a real person, but rather a placeholder meant to absorb someone’s malcontent, outrage or hatred. And thanks to the platform’s anonymity, there are no real-world consequences for bad behavior on Twitter the way there would be if those same hateful things were said in a public place — like in a community setting such as your local church or social group, or in your workplace.
Finally, Twitter’s trend toward pithiness has led to it becoming a place to be sarcastic, cynical and witty-at-others’-expense — a trend that’s driven by a prolific but small crowd of Twitter users. The goal has very much been to “perform” on Twitter, and accumulate likes and retweets along the way.
Twitter says the new feature is rolling out now to iOS.
We've updated our policies regarding Lists, including how to report them. The change is coming to iOS today with Android and Web support coming soon.
Since the election of president Emmanuel Macron in 2017, Paris has experienced a surge of momentum as a startup hub. Investor interest had been building for years, but Macron’s government has aggressively focused on adopting more business-friendly regulations and heavily courted the startup and VC community. In September, he announced a €5 billion initiative to bring more late-stage VC capital into the market.
To get a sense of where France’s investor community sees startup opportunities, I surveyed 10 leading VCs who focus on the Paris ecosystem and asked them to share some of their current interests:
Nicolas Debock (Idinvest)
Marie Brayer (Serena Capital)
Yacine Ghalim (Heartcore Capital)
Romain Lavault (Partech Partners)
Pia d'Iribarne (Stride VC)
Alain Caffi (Ventech)
Philippe Botteri (Accel)
Alice Zagury (TheFamily)
Jean de La Rochebrochard (Kima Ventures)
Benoit Wirz (Brighteye Ventures)
Here are their responses:
Nicolas Debock (Idinvest)
Privacy is a trend I am really excited about. After the years of deployment of the web through different platforms (browser, mobile, TV, objects…) where personal data was just gathered and used in a ruthless way, I believe end users and companies are getting more conscious of the value (and not only the financial value) of their data.
This is creating the emergence of different tools around personal data management: from personal data platform, synthetic data to anonymization tool and encryption there is a wide range of new kind of businesses that could emerge. I believe that the future always emerge from tension between two trends. The web has been all around transparency and data deluge it is maybe time for the opposite trends to build its momentum.
Marie Brayer (Serena Capital)
We’re still big on deeptech startups because we are deeply convinced that France is a great place to start them (not unlike Israel) and there are still huge fields like healthcare, infrastructure and fashion where you can develop relevant and persistent value.
We are more and more focused on positive investing, which is much more than a buzzword: the current generation of entrepreneurs (and returning entrepreneurs as well!) want to dedicate their time to a worthy cause with social and societal impact. At Serena, we already invested in several companies with strong missions such as Lifen for instance (mission: reduce medical errors), Inato (decrease R&D cost of new medicine) or Accenta (reduce carbon footprint), and can see first hand the appeal they have towards tier one talent.
A new strong focus for us is also the gaming and entertainment industry, which will take a larger share of our lives thanks to all the existing solutions already optimizing our work time and our daily mobility.
Just a few months back, Google announced a partnership with a company called CloudSimple to help more enterprise teams move their on-site operations to the cloud. Now Google is outright acquiring them.
So what isCloudSimple? It lets businesses run VMware vSphere workloads on the cloud, allowing them to take their existing on-premises tools and databases and plug them into Google Cloud with minimal re-tooling.
While Google would surely love for all enterprises to move to containers and utilize its Anthos hybrid cloud service, most large companies currently use VMware. They may want to move those workloads to a public cloud, but they aren't ready to give up a tool that has long worked for them.
In addition to Google Cloud, CloudSimple also offered support for Microsoft’s Azure platform. It’s unclear if this support will continue post-acquisition; we’ve reached out to Google for more details. Update: Google has declined to comment, instead linking us to its blog post on the announcement (which makes no mention of Azure.)
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
Sievert, who’s currently T-Mobile’s COO, will become chief executive on May 1, 2020. Legere will remain on the company’s board.
This only adds fuel to speculation that Legere will be taking over as CEO of embattled co-working company WeWork. The initial reports that Legere might be making a move prompted sources to push back and say he had no plans to leave T-Mobile, but it seems clear now that they were misinformed …
SoftBank and Naver, the owner of Line, will each own 50% of a new holding company that will operate Line and Z Holdings (formerly known as Yahoo Japan). By uniting, SoftBank and Naver hope that they will better position search portal Yahoo Japan, Line's messaging app and their other businesses to compete with rivals in the U.S. and China.
TechCrunch sat down with Ken Gabriel, who is regarded as the “godfather” of MEMs — miniaturized and integrated mechanical and electrical technology, which helps phones orient themselves, car airbags know when to fire and biomedical devices save lives. (Extra Crunch Membership required.)
Specifically, Microsoft is accepting greater data protection responsibilities. The changes to contractual terms will apply globally and to all of Microsoft’s commercial cloud customers — whether public or private sector entity, or large or small business.
On the latest episode of Equity, Alex and Kate discuss a new funding round for Docker. And on Original Content, we check out Disney+ and its flagship show “The Mandalorian.”
SpaceX is going to launch a payload for client Nanoracks aboard one of its new rideshare missions, currently targeting late 2020, that will demonstrate a very ambitious piece of tech from the commercial space station company. Nanoracks is sending up a payload platform that will show off how it can use a robot to cut material very similar to the upper stages used in orbital spacecraft — something Nanoracks wants to eventually due to help convert these spent and discarded stages (sometimes called “space tugs” because they generally move payloads from one area of orbit to another) into orbital research stations, habitats and more.
The demonstration mission is part of Nanoracks’ “Space Outpost Program,” which aims to address the future need for in-space orbital commercial platforms by also simultaneously making use of existing vehicles and materials designed specifically for space. Through use of the upper stages of spacecraft left behind in orbit, the company hopes to show how it one day might be able to greatly reduce the costs of setting up in-space stations and habitats, broadening the potential access of these kinds of facilities for commercial space companies.
This will be the first-ever demonstration of structural metal cutting in space, provided the demo goes as planned, and it could be a key technology not just for establishing more permanent research families in Earth’s orbit, but also for setting up infrastructure to help us get to, and stay at, other interstellar destinations like the Moon and Mars.
Nanoracks has a track record of delivering when it comes to space station technology: It’s the first company to own and operate its own hardware on the International Space Station, and it has accomplished a lot since its founding in 2009. This demo mission is also funded via a contract in place with NASA.
Also going up on the same mission is a payload of eight Spire LEMUR-2 CubeSats, which Nanoracks ordered on behalf of the global satellite operator. That late 2020 date is subject to change, as are most of the long-tail SpaceX missions, but whenever it takes place, it’ll be a key moment in commercial space history to watch.
The scale of supercomputing has grown almost too large to comprehend, with millions of compute units performing calculations at rates requiring, for first time, the exa prefix — denoting quadrillions per second. How was this accomplished? With careful planning… and a lot of wires, say two people close to the project.
Having noted the news that Intel and Argonne National Lab were planning to take the wrapper off a new exascale computer called Aurora (one of several being built in the U.S.) earlier this year, I recently got a chance to talk with Trish Damkroger, head of Intel’s Extreme Computing Organization, and Rick Stevens, Argonne’s associate lab director for computing, environment and life sciences.
The two discussed the technical details of the system at the Supercomputing conference in Denver, where, probably, most of the people who can truly say they understand this type of work already were. So while you can read at industry journals and the press release about the nuts and bolts of the system, including Intel’s new Xe architecture and Ponte Vecchio general-purpose compute chip, I tried to get a little more of the big picture from the two.
It should surprise no one that this is a project long in the making — but you might not guess exactly how long: more than a decade. Part of the challenge, then, was to establish computing hardware that was leagues beyond what was possible at the time.
“Exascale was first being started in 2007. At that time we hadn’t even hit the petascale target yet, so we were planning like three to four magnitudes out,” said Stevens. “At that time, if we had exascale, it would have required a gigawatt of power, which is obviously not realistic. So a big part of reaching exascale has been reducing power draw.”
Intel’s supercomputing-focused Xe architecture is based on a 7-nanometer process, pushing the very edge of Newtonian physics — much smaller and quantum effects start coming into play. But the smaller the gates, the less power they take, and microscopic savings add up quickly when you’re talking billions and trillions of them.
But that merely exposes another problem: If you increase the power of a processor by 1000x, you run into a memory bottleneck. The system may be able to think fast, but if it can’t access and store data equally fast, there’s no point.
“By having exascale-level computing, but not exabyte-level bandwidth, you end up with a very lopsided system,” said Stevens.
And once you clear both those obstacles, you run into a third: what’s called concurrency. High performance computing is equally about synchronizing a task between huge numbers of computing units as it is about making those units as powerful as possible. The machine operates as a whole, and as such every part must communicate with every other part — which becomes something of a problem as you scale up.
“These systems have many thousands of nodes, and the nodes have hundreds of cores, and the cores have thousands of computation units, so there’s like, billion-way concurrency,” Stevens explained. “Dealing with that is the core of the architecture.”
How they did it, I, being utterly unfamiliar with the vagaries of high performance computing architecture design, would not even attempt to explain. But they seem to have done it, as these exascale systems are coming online. The solution, I’ll only venture to say, is essentially a major advance on the networking side. The level of sustained bandwidth between all these nodes and units is staggering.
Making exascale accessible
While even in 2007 you could predict that we’d eventually reach such low-power processes and improved memory bandwidth, other trends would have been nearly impossible to predict — for example, the exploding demand for AI and machine learning. Back then it wasn’t even a consideration, and now it would be folly to create any kind of high performance computing system that wasn’t at least partially optimized for machine learning problems.
“By 2023 we expect AI workloads to be a third of the overall HPC server market,” said Damkroger. “This AI-HPC convergence is bringing those two workloads together to solve problems faster and provide greater insight.”
To that end the architecture of the Aurora system is built to be flexible while retaining the ability to accelerate certain common operations, for instance the type of matrix calculations that make up a great deal of certain machine learning tasks.
“But it’s not just about performance, it has to be about programmability,” she continued. “One of the big challenges of an exacale machine is being able to write software to use that machine. oneAPI is going to be a unified programming model — it’s based on an open standard of Open Parallel C++, and that’s key for promoting use in the community.”
Summit, as of this writing the most powerful single computing system in the world, is very dissimilar to many of the systems developers are used working on. If the creators of a new supercomputer want it to have broad appeal, they need to bring it as close to being like a “normal” computer to operate as possible.
“It’s something of a challenge to bring x86-based packages to Summit,” Stevens noted. “The big advantage for us is that, because we have x86 nodes and Intel GPUs, this thing is basically going to run every piece of software that exists. It’ll run standard software, Linux software, literally millions of apps.”
I asked about the costs involved, since it’s something of a mystery with a system like this how that a half-billion dollar budget gets broken down. Really I just thought it would be interesting to know how much of it went to, say, RAM versus processing cores, or how many miles of wire they had to run. Though both Stevens and Damkroger declined to comment, the former did note that “the backlink bandwidth on this machine is many times the total of the entire internet, and that does cost something.” Make of that what you will.
Aurora, unlike its cousin El Capitan at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, will not be used for weapons development.
“Argonne is a science lab, and it’s open, not classified science,” said Stevens. “Our machine is a national user resource; We have people using it from all over the country. A large amount of time is allocated via a process that’s peer reviewed and priced to accommodate the most interesting projects. About two thirds is that, and the other third Department of Energy stuff, but still unclassified problems.”
Initial work will be in climate science, chemistry, and data science, with 15 teams between them signed up for major projects to be run on Aurora — details to be announced soon.
The practice of Chaos Engineering developed at Amazon and Netflix a decade ago to help those web scale companies test their complex systems for worst-case scenarios before they happened. Gremlin was started by a former employee of both these companies to make it easier to perform this type of testing without a team of Site Reliability Engineers (SREs). Today, the company announced that it now supports Chaos Engineering-style testing on Kubernetes clusters.
The company made the announcement at the beginning of KubeCon, the Kubernetes conference taking place in San Diego this week.
Gremlin co-founder and CEO Kolton Andrus says that the idea is to be able to test and configure Kubernetes clusters so they will not fail, or at least reduce the likelihood. He says to do this it’s critical to run chaos testing (tests of mission-critical systems under extreme duress) in live environments, whether you’re testing Kubernetes clusters or anything else, but it’s also a bit dangerous to do be doing this. He says to mitigate the risk, best practices suggest that you limit the experiment to the smallest test possible that gives you the most information.
“We can come in and say I’m going to deal with just these clusters. I want to cause failure here to understand what happens in Kubernetes when these pieces fail. For instance, being able to see what happens when you pause the scheduler. The goal is being able to help people understand this concept of the blast radius, and safely guide them to running an experiment,” Andrus explained.
In addition, Gremlin is helping customers harden their Kubernetes clusters to help prevent failures with a set of best practices. “We clearly have the tooling that people need [to conduct this type of testing], but we’ve also learned through many, many customer interactions and experiments to help them really tune and configure their clusters to be fault tolerant and resilient,” he said.
The Gremlin interface is designed to facilitate this kind of targeted experimentation. You can check the areas you want to apply a test, and you can see graphically which parts of the system are being tested. If things get out of control, there is a kill switch to stop the tests.
Gremlin launched in 2016. Its headquarters are in San Jose. It offers both a freemium and pay product. The company has raised almost $27 million, according to Crunchbase data.
Microsoft’s Xbox Adaptive Controller was a breath of fresh air in a gaming world that has largely failed to consider the needs of people with disabilities. Now Logitech has joined the effort to empower this diverse population with an expanded set of XAC-compatible buttons and triggers.
Logitech’s $100 Adaptive Gaming Kit comes with a dozen buttons in a variety of sizes, two large analog levers to control the triggers, and a Velcro-style pad to which they can all be securely attached. It’s hopefully the start of a hardware ecosystem that will be at least a significant fraction of the diversity available to the able population.
The visibility of gamers with disabilities has grown both as the communities have organized and communicated their needs, and as gaming itself has moved towards the mainstream. Turns out there are millions of people who, for one reason or another, can’t use a controller or mouse and keyboard the way others can — and they want to play games too.
Always one of the more reliably considerate companies when it comes to accessibility issues, Microsoft began developing the XAC a couple years back — though admittedly after years of, like the rest of the gaming hardware community, failing to accommodate disabled gamers.
Logitech was an unwitting partner, having provided joysticks for the project without being told what they were for. But when the XAC was unveiled, Logitech was stunned and chagrined.
“This is something that, shame on us, we didn’t think about,” said Mark Starrett, Logitech G’s senior global product manager. “We’ve been trying to diversify gaming, like getting more girls to play, but we totally did not think about this. But you see the videos Microsoft put out, how excited the kids are — it’s so motivating to see that, it makes you want to continue that work.”
And to their credit, the team got in contact with Microsoft soon after and said they’d like to collaborate on some accessories for the system.
In some ways this wouldn’t be particularly difficult: The XAC uses 3.5mm headphone jacks as its main input, so it can accept signals from a wide range of devices, from its own buttons and sticks to things like blow tubes, so there’s no worries about proprietary connections, for instance. But when it comes to accessible devices and systems like this, there are often other rigorous standards in place that need to be upheld throughout, so it’s necessary to work closely with both the platform provider (Microsoft) and, naturally, the people who will actually be using them.
“This community, you can’t make anything for them without doing it with them,” said Starrett. “When we design a gaming keyboard or mouse, we engage pros, players, all that stuff, right? So with this, it’s absolutely critical to watch them with every piece.”
“The biggest takeaway is that everybody is so different: every challenge, every setup, everyone we talked to,” he continued. “We had a 70, 80 year old guy who plays Destiny and has arthritis — all we really needed to do was put a block on the back of his controller, because he couldn’t pull the trigger. Then we worked with a girl who has a quadstick, she was playing Madden like a pro with something you just puff and blow on. Another guy played everything with his feet. So we spent a lot of time on the site just watching.”
The final set of buttons they arrived at includes three very large ones, four smaller ones (though still big compared with ordinary controller buttons), four “light touch” buttons that can be easily activated by any contact, and two big triggers. Because they knew different gamers would use the sets differently, there’s a set of labels in the box that can be applied however they like.
Then there are two hook and loop (i.e. Velcro) mats to which the buttons can be attached, one rigid and the other flexible, so it can be draped over a leg, the arm of a couch, etc.
Even the packaging the buttons come in is accessible: A single strip of tape pulls out and causes the whole box to unfold, and then everything is in non-sealed reusable bags. The guide is wordless so it can be used in any country, by any player.
It’s nice to see such consideration at work, and no doubt the players who will benefit from these products will be happy to have a variety of options to choose from. I was starting to think I could use a couple of these buttons myself.
Starrett seemed very happy with the results, and also proud that the work had started something new at Logitech.
“The groups we talked to brought a lot of different things to mind for us,” he said. “We’re always updating things, but now we’re updating everything with an eye to accessibility. It’s helped Logitech as a company to learn about this stuff.”
Gett, the ridesharing company backed by Volkswagen and valued at around $1.5 billion, is putting the brakes on a major part of its growth strategy. Today, the company announced that it is closing its operations in New York, which run under the Juno brand, effective today. The company has a substantial business serving enterprise customers globally — with some 15,000 companies overall, many with people in the U.S. — so alongside this news, it’s also entered into a strategic partnership with Lyft to take on those accounts starting next year.
Notably, that 15,000 figure is down on the 20,000 number that Gett shared with me earlier this year when it raised $200 million and talked about going public by Q1 of 2020.
That is not detailed in today’s press release, however, which focuses instead on the reasons for the closure, specifically citing rationalization and blaming the “enactment of misguided regulations in New York City earlier this year.” (New York’s city council voted to cap licenses last year, which it voted then to extend for another 12 months this past August, along with other new rules.)
"This development reinforces Gett's strategy to build a profitable company focused on the corporate transportation sector, a market worth $1 trillion each year,” said Gett CEO Dave Waiser, Gett CEO, in a statement.
We asked Waiser if he can provide more guidance on IPO plans and he noted to me earlier that the company still expects to be operationally profitable by December and that an IPO is still on the horizon, although without a specific date in mind.
“We are focusing on reaching operational profitability globally already next month in December,” he said. “Being a leader in the corporate ground transportation, profitable and global, makes our plans for IPO realistic.”
We’re also asking Gett for more specifics on the strategic aspect of this deal and whether Lyft is giving Gett shares in its company, or indeed vice versa. Gett notes that “Juno drivers will be paid in full by Juno for all rides completed by Juno's service end-date. All Juno riders will be invited to join Lyft.”
The Lyft partnership, Gett said, will mean that when its corporate customers come to the United States, they can continue to use their Gett apps to order Lyft cars. As Gett had never managed to expand beyond New York City, this will give the company overall a larger footprint, while also drastically cutting the margins that it will be able to make per ride.
Gett made a significant move to consolidate its position in the U.S. — specifically the key New York market where it operated — when it acquired Juno, a smaller rival in the New York market, for about $250 million in 2017.
The acquisition spearheaded a big effort to catch up to and potentially even surpass the two biggest ridehailing companies in the market, Uber and Lyft, at a time when many people were starting to question some of Uber’s and Lyft’s practices in the market. Juno (started by the founders of the messaging app Viber) tried to take a different approach to the market by putting drivers and their compensation front and center, thereby hoping both to attract more of them to its platform, and also more riders happier with the ethics of the different approach.
At the same time, Gett took a different approach to its competitors by focusing only on specific markets, to cut down operating expenses and focus on profit. It made it as far as being a “solid number three,” in the words of Waiser earlier this year.
"A year ago, profitability was not a very popular topic," Waiser said to me when Gett raised $200 million earlier this year. "In Uber and Lyft we see two great companies, but even as they grow revenues, their losses are growing. What is really unique for Gett is that our success, and our improvements in revenues, are in parallel with our EBITDA improving."
However, as you can see from the IPOs and subsequent performances of both Uber and Lyft, the economics of ride-hailing have proven to be problematic, and ultimately the company has had to rely on outside investment like the others, while also finding that it couldn’t scale or move into the black as it had hoped it would. The retreat from direct operations in the U.S. underscores that fact.
David Teten is an advisor to emerging investment managers and a Venture Partner with HOF Capital. He was previously a partner for 8 years with HOF Capital and ff Venture Capital. David writes regularly at teten.com and @dteten.
The good news: even if you have a small company and can't afford a banker, you can synthetically and cheaply replicate one. That's part of the value proposition of an institutional VC; I have been the (unpaid) investment banker for many of my portfolio companies.
If you don't have relationships with potential investors, here's how to replicate a banker:
Hire someone who has worked in investment banking or VC, even if only as an analyst.
Her job is to lead a professional outreach campaign to investors, writing highly customized emails to each based on your agreed-upon template. If you don't have a pre-existing relationship, it is critical that you write emails which are palpably customized and of course well written, or else you're just spamming.
The person doing outreach should have a title as senior as possible, e.g., "acting COO." The higher the title, the higher the response rate she will generate. Any good business school will have dozens of current students who fit these criteria. She will get a lower response rate than you (with the CEO title), but likely a higher response rate than an outside banker who does not have an established relationship with the investor you are targeting. You can also have her impersonate you via email, although there's always a risk of that ending in embarrassment if she is not highly responsible and trustworthy.
You as the CEO should handle all the meetings. There’s no need to bring your colleague who's setting up meetings, although I'm sure she will appreciate it.
Raising capital is a time-consuming, arduous, complex task and you will be living with the consequences of your actions for decades. I recommend hiring a professional to help you, if you can afford it. I also recommend doing thorough research before hiring a banker. The wrong decision can cost you millions of dollars, in the form of a broken deal process, a suboptimal valuation, or inappropriate investors.
Venture capitalists often mutter, “I haven’t seen anything I like lately.” Founders frequently complain that “investors are back-seat drivers who won’t get their hands dirty.” A $55 million fund with a fresh approach is aiming to address both those issues.
Steve Jang and Kanyi Maqubela are two exceedingly smart and sweet guys who couldn’t help but come up with ideas for startups. Jang co-founded music apps Imeem and Soundtracking, meanwhile serving as an early Uber advisor and angel investor in Coinbase. Maqubela worked in operations at career network Doostang (acquired by Universum Global) and solar startup One Block Off the Grid (acquired by NRG) before rising to general partner at Collaborative Fund.
Today the pair officially launch Kindred Ventures to form startups as well as fund them.
“We don’t want to wait for people to come around and solve the problems we think matter,” says Jang. “We’d rather proactively assemble an amazing team to go tackle that problem,” Maqubela follows up. But Kindred Ventures will also step up and lead seed rounds, then help startups orchestrate their follow-on fundraises.
Kindred Ventures partner and co-founder Steve Jang
“The ethos is empathy — to take a very adaptive coaching and mentorship model,” Jang tells me. That means partnering with startups, not merely offering arm’s-length investing. By keeping the portfolio size low, Jang and Maqubela plan to turn concentrated conviction and outsized, hands-on effort into big stakes in tomorrow’s top companies.
“I originally wanted to call the fund Kindred Spirits, but it sounds a little too woo-woo,” Jang says with a laugh. From multiple interviews with the team and its portfolio, though, that’s really the vibe Kindred Ventures is going for — to be the first people founders call when they’re in crisis… whether they need answers or just some cheering up.
Techno-optimism
Beyond the warm smiles, Kindred already has a strong track record from its prototype phase under Jang’s solo operation since 2014. He’d made a reputation for himself as a fixer through his advising work during Uber’s scrappy early years starting in 2009. It began with Jang writing Garrett Camp a check for his side-project. As the company blossomed without full-time employees, Jang pitched in wherever he could.
After Imeem’s sale to Myspace and later Soundtracking’s acquisition by Rhapsody, Jang made about 50 angel investments of around $25,000 to $250,000 in companies like Coinbase, Blue Bottle Coffee, Postmates and Zymergen under the name Kindred Ventures. Instead of just throwing money around, “I’d help a co-founder — sit down and work with them on product, their presentation for seed funding, hiring their first employees, finding a co-founder — it was quite different from how VCs operate.” Still, he wanted to lead more investments like his favorite seed funds First Round and True Ventures while remaining a thick-or-thin squire to his startups.
But to pour that kind of sweat into the portfolio, Jang needed the help of someone who could dig deep and become an ally to founders in any vertical. He needed someone like Kanyi.
After his stints in operations, Maqubela went on to work at Collaborative Fund for seven years, rising to partner at the firm looking for the intersection of positive impact and profit. He tells me developed a thesis about “what does it mean to be a techno-optimist?: to believe that technology is amoral but can be oriented towards good.”
Maqubela’s super-power is learning. I knew him from Stanford, and now the same reputation precedes him through his portfolio of angel investments like Earnest and Buffer. He’ll immerse himself in any topic or industry, read and call people until he truly gets it and then wedge his entrepreneurial skill set into the cracks to firm up an idea. Still relatively new to venture, Maqubela was seeking someone with a well-worn process for investing and a big heart for what founders go through. He was looking for Steve.
Kindred Ventures partner and co-founder Kanyi Maqubela
The coincidental co-investors became friends, then deliberately funded startups side by side, and now are taking the leap as Kindred Ventures. Together they want to redefine “What does it mean to invest at t=0?. What do they really need?,” Maqubela says.
The plan is to fund about 25 companies through pre-seed and seed per fund, which they’ll raise every two to three years. Kindred is vertical agnostic, but it has a soft spot for the future of cities, work and living. It’s also keen on marketplaces, material science, food innovation, deep tech, enterprise SAAS and developer tools.
Jang and Maqubela are learning from each other day by day, at home and in the office. They’ve each got their own toddler son to juggle alongside Kindred. Added responsibility seems to have made both of them conscious of how each minute counts, no matter who they’re with. The result is you’ll often hear the word “nicest” whenever people describe the pair.
Get in formation
So far Kindred Ventures has funded nine startups from its $55 million initial fund. It’s helped form two companies and hopes to do four to eight per fund. But Kindred won’t be taking founder-level equity in those. Instead it just wants the opportunity to lead the seed round and own 10% to 20% by the time of the Series A.
That makes Kindred Ventures distinct from most startup studios like Atomic that aim for bigger ~30% stakes. “The Studios are creating whole platform teams, services teams, only work on their own ideas, and own a considerable amount of equity,” Jang notes. By leaving more shares for the real CEO, “We’d be able to work with a stronger profile of founders” while avoiding spending so much time per company that the model becomes unscalable. “We’re there at the formation of the company, but it’s not our company.”
Kindred’s two formations come from the disparate medicine and blockchain worlds. Maqubela became an expert in cardiology to help start Heartbeat, which does in-person and remote heart-health diagnostics. “I have a clear bullshit meter for when non-healthtech people try to get into it,” but Maqubela really figured it out, Heartbeat CEO Jeff Wessler, MD, tells me.
On his experience with Kindred, “It’s ‘we’re there for you when you need us’ rather than ‘we’re there for you when we fund you and then we move on,’ ” Wessler says. “Very quickly this evolved into Steve and Kanyi being my absolute numbers 1 and 2.” The investors gave Wessler Entrepreneurship 101 coaching, provided Heartbeat’s first funding and helped it build a team. With their help, the first-time founder has sidestepped common pitfalls and is already turning patients into customers with its $2.5 million in funding.
Bitski, a blockchain app login platform, has quickly leveraged Kindred’s support with formation into big funding from top investors. Bitski CEO Donnie Dinch tells me, “In the early days, Steve would be in the office with us, late night jamming on ideas around the evolution of the blockchain space, fundamental products that needed to exist, early use cases etc. There's a lot of money available for seed-stage projects, but it can be difficult to find an investor willing to grind with the team through the days of pre product-market fit.”
Bitski actually started as collaborative video production app Riff. But Jang and Maqubela’s advice helped it solidy pivot into developer tools for decentralized apps. It’s since gone on to raise $3.5 million from SV Angel, Coinbase, Galaxy Digital and the Winklevoss twins. “The collaborative tone of the relationship really stands out,” says Dinch of Kindred. “Obviously, operating with a high-touch model can take more of the partners' time, but we haven't noticed any drop in availability or support.”
Plenty of funds talk a lot about getting their hands dirty. Often that means hiring big teams they can assign to help founders, though, while the partners focus elsewhere. With just two support staff, Jang and Maqubela don’t have that luxury. They’re in constant contact with their investments by WhatsApp, phone and email to work through snags directly.
“They’re always super responsive,” says Michael Karnjarnaprakorn, co-founder of collectibles investing startup Otis that was backed by Kindred’s prototype fund. He cites three big value-adds. Strategy: “Anytime I’m thinking through a big decision, I call them to help me think through it,” including fundraising and product launches. Network: “They have an extremely strong network and are usually one to two degrees away from anyone.” And “everything else,” from mentorship on founder psychology to company building.
Undertaking such intense involvement in their whole portfolio would likely surface concerns about a green VC. But “Steve has essentially been doing this for a decade or so not formalized, so I don't see any reason it can't work,” says one of Kindred’s stealth startup founders Brian Norgard. “As companies begin to scale, my sense is they will be less effective because that’s a different game that’s more on the operations side. Still, I see a lot of value that can be created in the early innings.”
Kindred had a sort of grit and passion for early-stage founders and teams that we thought would give us an edge as we started to grow quickly,” says health insurance company Catch‘s co-founder Kristen Tyrrell.” They have been genuinely interested in our mental health. Having Steve fly in to take us to dinner and tell us we’re doing OK is surprisingly meaningful when you’re fighting on every side.”
NEW YORK, NY – MAY 10: Kanyi Maqubela of Collaborative Fund speaks onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2016 at Brooklyn Cruise Terminal on May 10, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images for TechCrunch)
But being high-touch and concerned with entrepreneurs’ well-being doesn’t mean becoming a push-over yes-man. “Founder empathy is not always founder-friendly,” says Maqubela. “It’s being able to disagree with founders, even very passionately, and still constructively working together. To be able to tell them they’re wrong but come out the other side.”
That means Kindred Ventures isn’t for every founder. Those who want their investors firmly belted in the backseat or locked in the trunk may want to look elsewhere for cash. Smart founders will take all the help they can get, and Kindred strives to give the most per dollar. Jang concludes that, “The idea may come from them or come from us, but we want to back amazing founders on a mission. It’s scratching both itches for us.”
BMW just took the wraps off its first purely electric premium mid-size sedan. Appropriately called the i4, the vehicle is powered by the company's fifth-generation eDrive platform and is just part of the company's upcoming onslaught of EVs. But put down the credit card. This car isn't coming until late 2021, at the earliest.
Right now, BMW says the i4 will produce 530 hp, making it more potent on paper than BMW's formidable M3. Combined with the 80 kWh battery, it's good for a 0 to 62 mph sprint in about four seconds and a top speed of 125 mph. The WLTP cycle, which is different from the EPA ratings, clocks in at 600 kilometers, or about 373 miles.
The i4 uses the fifth-generation BMW eDrive, which will be first available in the iX3 in 2020, followed by the iNEXT. BMW says this platform features a brand new electric motor, power electronics, charging unit and high-voltage battery. The battery implementation in the i4 is flat, according to BMW's press release, and weighs 550 kilograms. For reference, the battery pack in the Tesla Model 3 weighs 480 kg.
A lot of questions remain about the i4, including the final design. BMW is showing off the model with camouflage, signaling there could be changes in the sheet metal. The price is still yet to be announced, along with how it will sit within BMW's 4 series lineup. Right now, the i4 looks excellent, but it's still a few years out, and the landscape will likely look different by the time it hits dealers.
On March 3 next year, TechCrunch will host the fourth annual TC Sessions: Robotics + AI at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall. This time around we're adding a new twist to the incredible line-up of speakers, breakout sessions and Q&As: a pitch-off for early-stage companies in the robotics and AI space.
How it works: The night before the event, 10 startups, chosen through an online application process, will pitch at a private event with TechCrunch editors, main-stage speakers and industry experts. A panel of VC judges will select the top five teams to then pitch the next day on the main stage at TC Sessions: Robotics + AI.
It is a once in a lifetime opportunity for founders to get their company in front of the tier-one leaders and investors in the industry, as well as receive video coverage on TechCrunch. We expect 1,500 attendees at the show and tens of thousands online.
Extra treat: Each of the 10 startup team finalists will receive two free tickets to attend the show the next day.
Apply here by February 1. TechCrunch will review applications and notify companies by February 15 so the founders have time to prepare. So, what are you waiting for? Get some spotlight!
Not interested in the pitch-off but want to attend this fantastic, show? Grab your Early-Bird pass here before it’s too late!
Google Maps will soon begin testing a new feature that’s more common to social networks like Facebook, rather than a maps app: the ability to find and follow other users. In Google Maps’ case, it’s specifically rolling out the ability to follow top “Local Guides” — its community members who actively review business and share to Google Maps photos and other knowledge as part of a larger rewards program.
The Local Guides program launched in 2015 as a way to take on Yelp Elites by allowing the most active Maps contributors to earn status as a tastemaker of sorts for their own hometown. Guides write more in-depth business reviews and post photos in order to help other Google Maps users learn about the area.
In exchange, they receive a variety of perks, like early access to new features, exclusive local meetups, free access to Google services, discounts and coupons and more.
Now, Google says, it’s kicking off a pilot program that will allow Google Maps users in select markets to follow top Local Guides by clicking a new “Follow” button on these users’ profile pages. By doing so, the Guides’ recommendations will be surfaced for you when you’re using Google Maps. In a new section on the “For You” tab in the app, you’ll find the area recommendations from the Local Guides.
Google is piloting the program in Bangkok, Delhi, London, Mexico City, New York, Osaka, San Francisco, São Paulo and Tokyo, for the time being. Presumably, if all goes well, it would expand to more markets.
The feature is the latest move by Google Maps to take on Facebook as the first stop for discovering area businesses and keeping up with their news, events, sales and more. Just over a year ago, Google rolled out a “Follow” feature for tracking businesses on the Maps app, which later expanded to iOS. This summer Google launched a host of tools for local businesses that allowed them to update their photos and profiles on Google Maps, claim a short URL and send offers to customers — all features that challenge Facebook Pages.
But until now, Google’s focus has been on getting users to follow and interact with businesses themselves, not other users.
Of course, there’s one big caveat to the Local Guides program in terms of using it as a good source for business information: it’s crowdsourced info from regular people, not professional critics or reviewers. That means the quality of the Local Guides’ reviews can be fairly hit-or-miss. Meanwhile, Google seems more concerned with Local Guides’ engagement and quantity of reviews, rather than review accuracy or quality.
Often, the Local Guides’ reviews lack any criticism, but are simply non-detailed posts about the business in question. For example, many restaurant reviews don’t say much more than “the food is amazing! can’t wait to go back!,” or some variation of this with a few more words. They often read no better (and sometimes much worse) than the other user reviews on the Google Maps app. That’s not to say all Local Guides’ reviews are unhelpful — many do make an effort — but just seeing a review labeled as being from a “Local Guide” is no indication of the review’s quality.
However, the new recommendations feature coming to these nine test markets will focus more on the Local Guides’ photos, rather than their words. On the “For You” tab of Google Maps, their recommendations will be on display in the form of photo collages — only by clicking through will you see what they wrote. The effect is one where there’s a bit of an Instagram-like feel to the Google Maps app.
The new feature was announced at Google’s annual Local Guides summit. Here, Google also shared how its Local Guides community has grown to around 120 million people across 24,000 cities and towns. But this is another confirmation that the company is celebrating user growth, but not necessarily with an eye on review quality. Unfortunately, if Local Guides can’t all be trusted to offer compelling, detailed and fair reviews, people will not consider them of interest, and won’t be compelled to “follow” anyone here for those sorts of recommendations.
Google didn’t say when the “Follow” feature would launch into pilot testing in these markets, just that it would be arriving “soon.”
BBQ legend Weber is getting into the connected cooking game with their new SmokeFire grill, which uses wood pellets for fuel and incorporates technology developed by Weber in partnership with appliance startup June for Wi-Fi-enabled smart cooking.
The SmokeFire grill, which will be available for pre-order in the U.S. starting on Cyber Monday and which will start shipping early next year, is a first in more ways than one for Weber. Yes, it packs in connected smart cooking — but it’s also the first time Weber has made a pellet grill, a style of outdoor cooker popularized by Traeger, and useful for both low and slow smoking, as well as high-heat grilling like a more traditional coal, natural gas or propane BBQ.
Weber may not have a history of building pellet grills, but it does have a very strong reputation when it comes to outdoor cooking appliances. The business introduced its iconic Kettle Grill back in 1952, and consistency racks up top marks for its range of BBQs, known for their even, consistent temperatures and long-term durability.
This legacy cooking industry heavyweight apparently decided to partner with June once word of the startup’s own Smart Oven started circulating around the office. June and Weber teamed up to test thousands of recipes in the development of the Weber Connect smart grilling software, which provides step-by-step directions ranging from prep through the entire cook, as well as an ETA on whatever you’ve got on the grill, delivered to and controlled from your smartphone.
The SmartFire comes in two sizes, with 24″ and 36″ grilling surfaces respectively, for $999 and $1,199 respectively. The design looks like what you’d expect from a pellet grill — with the interesting choice of locating the hopper wherein you feed said pellets to the back of a small prep shelf on the right side of the grill. If you’re new to pellet grills, they feed these processed wood pellets, which produce great smoke but very little ash because of their high-efficiency burn, in a controlled manner that keeps temperature inside the grill consistent where you set it.
Low and slow is a great way to grill, and having intelligent cooking features to guide you along the way should help alleviate rookie mistakes like over and undercooking. Plus, it’s just exciting to imagine what Weber can do with its first pellet grill.
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