The Royal Navy in late 2019 announced the composition of its first-ever aircraft carrier battle group. And it's both good and bad news for the storied fleet.
Good news because the Royal Navy just barely should be able to generate all the ships and planes it need to deploy an entirely British battle group.
Bad news because frequent deployments with the same mix of ships clearly is unsustainable as the Royal Navy shrinks, the inevitable result of decades of declining budgets.
HMS Queen Elizabeth, the lead vessel in a two-ship class of conventionally-fueled carriers, is slated to deploy for the first time in 2021. Fleet officials told reporters the flattop will sail with two Type 45 destroyers including HMS Dragon, two Type 23 frigates including HMS Northumberland, a nuclear-powered attack submarine, the tanker RFA Tideforce and fleet stores ship RFA Fort Victoria.
AP PHOTOS: Auschwitz survivors will return to the former German Nazi death camp next week to mark the 75th anniversary of its liberation by Soviet troops. @AP photographer Markus Schreiber recently visited the site with a panoramic film camera. Full story: https://t.co/skx2zV01BOpic.twitter.com/FWzea9s5my
VIDEO: French army's elite mountaineering team train in the Alps in preparation for a 300 kilometer ski expedition to Greenland in March. There they will have to overcome temperatures of minus 30 degree Celsius for three weeks pic.twitter.com/44LjrqFgma
Working at one of Iceland's four radar stations, which play a key role in NATO's airspace defense of the country, can certainly be a lonely job. But when foul weather last month trapped one worker all by himself in the radar station on top of Gunnólfsvíkurfjall mountain for 12 days, he took a decidedly nonchalant outlook on the situation.
Gunnólfsvíkurfjall has an elevation of about 600 metres, and is located on the edge of northeast Iceland. As can be seen from these photos from the Icelandic Coast Guard, it's an ideal location for people who enjoy working alone.
North Korea has walked away from nuclear talks with the United States, saying a 2019 year-end deadline for the talks had been ignored so it no longer felt bound by commitments, which included a halt to its nuclear testing and the firing of inter-continental ballistic missiles.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had earlier set a December 31 deadline for denuclearisation talks with the US and White House national security adviser Robert O'Brien said at the time the US had opened channels of communication.
Mr O'Brien said he hoped Kim would follow through on denuclearisation commitments he made at summits with US President Donald Trump.
Debris and rubble are seen at the site where an Iranian missile hit at Ain al-Asad air base earlier this month. More US troops are under medical evaluation after showing concussion symptoms
More U.S. service members have been transported out of Iraq for medical treatment and evaluations following Iran's missile attack on military facilities there, the Pentagon said Tuesday, nearly two weeks after President Trump and defense officials initially said no one was hurt.
The Pentagon said Friday that 11 service members required medical treatment outside Iraq. U.S. military officials declined to say Tuesday how many more are receiving care but said "additional" personnel had been sent to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.
The officials left open the possibility that the number could increase in coming days.
U.S. soldiers present in regions under YPG/PKK terror group's occupation in Syria stopped Russian soldiers who wanted to reach oil fields on Jan. 18.
Dispute between the U.S. and Russia about the Rumeylan oil field in northeast Hasakah is ongoing.
According to information Anadolu Agency obtained from reliable local sources, U.S. soldiers blocked a Russian military patrols en route to the oil field.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivers a speech to thousands of Basij members at Azadi stadium in Tehran, Iran October 4, 2018. Khamenei.ir/ Handout via REUTERS
Following Iran's announcement of a three million dollar bounty for the assassination of President Donald Trump, U.S. officials and terrorism experts are warning that Tehran has significantly expanded its terror capabilities in America, potentially allowing the Islamic Republic to conduct a domestic attack.
Iranian lawmakers announced on Tuesday that they would pay a "three million dollar award in cash to whoever kills Trump."
The bounty is the latest in a series of increasingly direct threats by Tehran. It has renewed concerns about the Islamic Republic's vast terrorism network, which stretches into the continental United States, U.S. officials and experts told the Washington Free Beacon.
While Iran has failed to pull off a strike in America, it is seen as having the resources necessary to do so. Several Iranian Americans have been arrested in recent years and charged with surveilling potential terror sites for a strike.
Exclusive: investigation suggests Washington Post owner was targeted five months before murder of Jamal Khashoggi
The Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos had his mobile phone "hacked" in 2018 after receiving a WhatsApp message that had apparently been sent from the personal account of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, sources have told the Guardian.
The encrypted message from the number used by Mohammed bin Salman is believed to have included a malicious file that infiltrated the phone of the world's richest man, according to the results of a digital forensic analysis.
This analysis found it "highly probable" that the intrusion into the phone was triggered by an infected video file sent from the account of the Saudi heir to Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post.
Experts fear latest strain of virus may spread across planet from person to person
What is the virus causing illness in Wuhan?
It is a novel coronavirus – that is to say, a member of the coronavirus family that has never been encountered before. Like other coronaviruses, it has come from animals, or possibly seafood. Many of those infected either worked or frequently shopped in the Huanan seafood wholesale market in the centre of the Chinese city. New and troubling viruses usually originate in animal hosts. Ebola and flu are examples.
An American man with the new coronavirus has been identified in Washington state, CDC officials said on Wednesday, bringing the total number of countries with cases of the deadly virus to five outside of China, including the US, Thailand, Japan South Korea and Taiwan
* An American man in his 30s outside Seattle, Washington who visited Wuhan, China, has been diagnosed with the coronvirus from China * The patient is a resident of Snahomish County and is currently at Providence Regional Medical Center - Everett * His condition is described as 'good' but he is being closely monitored * All passengers coming to the US from Wuhan will now be rerouted to five airports: LAX, San Francisco, JFK, Atlanta and Chicago O'Hare * Chinese officials yesterday confirmed the virus has spread between humans * Fifteen healthcare workers have caught the respiratory virus, figures show * Some 300 people in Asia have now tested positive for the unnamed virus * Five countries outside China have now reported cases - the US, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan and South Korea * Three more deaths have been announced today, taking the death toll to six
An American man in Washington state has been infected with the deadly and contagious coronavirus spreading from China, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials confirmed Tuesday.
The first US patient is a resident of the US in his 30s, located north of Seattle, who is currently hospitalized and in 'good' condition, but being closely monitored in isolation at Providence Regional Medical Center - Everett.
He traveled from Wuhan, but did not visit any of the markets at the epicenter of the outbreak, according to state health officials.
The Russian political class suffered a massive shock from President Vladimir Putin's address to the Federal Assembly last Wednesday (January 15) in which he delivered three unexpected bombshells (see EDM, January 16, 2020). The first was a set of vaguely formulated revisions to the Russian Constitution—even though Putin had pledged in 2005 never to open this fundamental document to changes "under any circumstances" due to unpredictable risks to political stability (Meduza.io, January 16, 2020). The second was the resignation of the government led by Dmitry Medvedev, a loyal lieutenant, who held the position of president in 2008–2011 and then smoothly returned to the role of prime minister (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, January 15, 2020). The third surprise was the appointment of Mikhail Mishustin, heretofore the head of the Tax Service, as the prime minister, which propelled the obscure bureaucrat to the highest level of officialdom (Carnegie.ru, January 16, 2020). Pundits of all persuasions in Moscow have been busy trying to make sense of this uncharacteristic rush by the usually procrastination-prone Putin to reconfigure the country's political arena, but hardly any attention is being paid to the consequences for Russian foreign policy.
WNU Editor: The above writer is correct when he states that the Russian political class were shocked by President Putin's announcement that there will be changes to the constitution. No one expected this. But this shock is slowly changing into anger and (for some) fear. I do not know what is going to happen next, but from what I am hearing, no one is in favour of these changes. As to how this may impact Russia's foreign policy, I predict the first casualty will be the retirement of foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. He will be 70 years old in March and he has been foreign minister since 2004. He will be there until this transition period to a new constitution has been completed, but he wants to retire, and this will be his opportunity to leave. His departure will definitely impact the foreign service, and since many senior diplomats owe their positions to him, they will be concerned on what his replacement may do. I can answer that right now. If history is any indication, many of them will be replaced. And while President Putin does have a good rapport with almost every leader in the world, it is the foreign service and its relationships with the foreign services of other countries that implements his policies and agreements. If key people are replaced and or transferred, which I predict will happen, it is going to take some time before things return to normal.
Image: China's President Xi Jinping (C) attends the bilateral meeting with President of Botswana Mokgweetsi Masisi (not pictured) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, 31 August 2018. Roman Pilipey/Pool via Reuters
China is America's preeminent global adversary. But in recent years, China has been the one scoring most of the wins in this new cold war. Fortunately, January has brought Xi Jinping's Communist regime five small defeats.
The four most recent defeats all came last week.
First, there was the U.S. Senate's introduction of the Utilizing Strategic Allied Telecommunications Act. The bipartisan legislation will provide $1 billion in funding alongside regulatory changes. The intent is to provide cellular providers with new ways of building out their 5G networks. But the strategic effect should be felt in foreign nations finding alternatives to using China's Huawei for their 5G infrastructures. This is critically important because Huawei serves the Communist Party's espionage apparatus. And China will use Huawei's 5G networks to spy on our allies and their citizens. But if the United States can provide allies with an affordable, superior, and safer 5G alternative, they'll be more amenable to rejecting Huawei.
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will appear in a Guantanamo Bay courtroom this week, more than 18 years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks he is alleged to have masterminded and a year before he will finally face a jury.
In the nearly two decades since 19 al Qaeda terrorists crashed hijacked planes into the World Trade Center buildings, the side of the Pentagon, and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people, the five men believed to be responsible have yet to face a trial.
The U.S. government alleges that the plotters carried out a criminal conspiracy in planning and executing the 9/11 plot, listing the names of all 2,977 victims killed on Sept. 11, 2001, in the 90-page 2011 charging sheet. The five, who were arraigned in 2012, were also charged with attacking civilians, hijacking, terrorism, violations of the rules of war, and more.
Mohammed, dubbed "KSM" and described as "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks" in the 9/11 Commission Report, was a close ally of al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and will be on trial alongside Walid bin Attash, Ramzi bin al Shibh, Ammar al Baluchi, and Mustafa al Hawsawi.
* House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's daughter Alexandra handed President Donald Trump a water bottle in the White House without anyone checking it for contamination, according to a new book about the president. * Alexandra Pelosi was directing a film at the White House when the incident happened six weeks after Trump was sworn in, the book, titled "A Very Stable Genius," said, according to an excerpt of it published in Vanity Fair. * Pelosi, who had been to the White House before, said it was highly unusual for her to witness such a lax security system.
The daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was able to hand a bottle of water to President Donald Trump without having anyone check for contamination, according to a new book about the White House.
An excerpt from "A Very Stable Genius," written by the Washington Post journalists Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, highlighted a glaring security lapse in the White House that took place six weeks after Trump's inauguration. Vanity Fair published the excerpt on Monday.
Alexandra Pelosi had been directing the filming of a documentary inside the White House on March 1, 2017, when the president appeared, the book said.
WNU Editor: Was the bottle already opened? President Trump is known to be a "germaphobe". If it was opened, I would be surprised if he took a gulp from it. This is also another event that makes me wonder (and worry) on how good is President Trump's security detail. There are after-all a lot of people who want him dead .... Iranian MP puts $3m bounty on President Donald Trump's head (Al Jazeera).
* French undergrad textbook suggested debunked 9/11 conspiracies were true * History of 20th Century in Flash Cards referenced CIA involvement in attacks * The book said that September 11 was 'undoubtedly orchestrated by the CIA' * Ellipses publisher apologised and said the reference to CIA would be removed
A French publisher has apologised after a history textbook suggested the 9/11 terror attacks were 'undoubtedly orchestrated by the CIA'.
The book called History of the 20th Century in Flash Cards, is aimed at undergraduate students who study at France's elite 'grandes ecoles' universities.
Written by Jean-Pierre Rocher, a teacher of history and geography and a graduate of the Sciences Po university in Paris, the work was published in November last year.
The phrase about the debunked conspiracy theory about the CIA's involvement in the atrocity in New York in 2001 that saw nearly 3,000 people killed only came to light last week.
* President Trump arrived in Switzerland Tuesday morning and will spend two days at the World Economic Forum * During his first appearance, a speech on the main stage, he went after climate activists for their dire warnings about the 'apocalypse' * While Trump spoke, climate activist Greta Thunberg sat in the audience and looked on * She bookended Trump's appearance and participated in two panel discussions at the Davos summit Tuesday * Thunberg shamed world leaders in her opening appearance saying they've done 'basically nothing' to face the climate challenge
President Trump called Greta Thunberg 'very angry' in a new interview, after saying climate activists were out-of-touch 'alarmists' and 'heirs of yesterday's fortune tellers' during his appearance Tuesday morning at the World Economic Forum.
Thunberg had been seated in the audience looking on, but Trump told the Wall Street Journal afterward taht, 'I don't really know anything about her,' before calling her angry.
Portions of Trump's remarks seemed to be aimed at Thunberg and her supporters.
'This is not a time for pessimism. This is a time for optimism,' Trump said, which was in stark constrast to Thunberg and others, who used the conference to warn that the Australian wildfires and other disasters were only the beginning of the climate chaos that lie ahead.
A police officer stands guard near the Congress Center ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland January 20, 2020. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
* Police quizzed two Russian men staying in the upmarket resort last August * They were suspected of posing as plumbers so they could bug the forum * Claimed diplomatic protection but had not registered with Swiss officials
Swiss police believe they foiled an attempt by Russian spies disguised as plumbers to bug the World Economic Forum in Davos where world leaders including Donald Trump are meeting this week.
Detectives questioned two Russian men in the luxury resort last August after they aroused suspicions during their three-week stay.
At least one of the men told police he was a plumber, Swiss paper Tages-Anzeiger reported today.
But suspicions were raised when the pair were found to be carrying diplomatic passports and could not explain how they got them.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to announce this afternoon that the first case of Wuhan coronavirus has been reported in the United States, in Washington state, a federal source outside the CDC tells CNN.
The source is involved in the matter and was made aware of a CDC media briefing scheduled for later today.
The novel virus, which was first identified last month in Wuhan, China, has so far infected more than 300 people and killed six, in an outbreak that has been reported in five countries -- now including the United States.
An artist's conception of DARPA's previousl Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2). The Tactical Boost Glide vehicle is reportedly similar to this design. DARPA
The Operational Fires system is intended to be a tactical weapon for the Army and could help in clearing paths for follow-on air and missile strikes.
A Lockheed Martin job posting has offered new details about the design and development schedule of a tactical, ground-launched hypersonic weapon that the U.S. Army and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are working on together. The company won the contract to proceed to the third phase of this program, known as Operational Fires, or OpFires, two weeks ago.
* Republicans' plan for Senate trial of Donald Trump are revealed hours before it begins at 1pm Tuesday * Mitch McConnell wants each side given 24 hours spread over two days to make their case - the Democrats for impeaching and removing, Trump for acquittal * He will use Tuesday to present his plan and hear the rival Democratic one before the Senate switches off cameras and kicks out reporters to decide on the rules * If he gets his way, Democrats could start spelling out why they want Trump removed at 1pm on Wednesday * Planned schedule could put 'docket rocket' trial on track to end before Trump delivers the State of the Union address * Nobody will be allowed to subpoena witnesses or documents until after each side has made their case and 16 hours of questions have been asked * Exclusion of witnesses and closed session of Senate certain to be used by Democrats to accuse McConnell of cover-up * Plans offer apparent victory for Donald Trump - but will not explicitly allow him to demand instant dismissal of the two articles of impeachment
Democrats and Donald Trump will each have just 24 hours over two days to make their cases at his impeachment trial, a plan outlined by Mitch McConnell revealed Monday evening.
Each side will face presenting their case late into the night as the Republican majority leader plans to slam the case through the Senate, a leaked resolution first reported by CNN and confirmed by DailyMail.com revealed.
But he will allow the possibility of the trial calling witnesses or documents - but not until the third stage of the trial, after Democratic prosecutors and Trump's defense have made their case and senators have had 16 hours to ask questions in writing through the Chief Justice John Roberts.
The plan sets up a fast-moving trial which could sit late into the night as each side tries to get through their 24 hours.
Iran has confirmed the Ukrainian airliner was shot down by two Tor-M1 missiles Confirms video footage appearing to show projectiles being fired at the plane The Ukraine International Airlines plane shot down in error killing 176 people
Iran's civil aviation authority has confirmed two Tor-M1 missiles were fired at a Ukrainian airliner that was brought down earlier this month.
A preliminary report into the disaster which killed all 176 passengers on board the plane was posted on its website late Monday.
'Investigators... discovered that two Tor-M1 missiles... were fired at the aircraft,' it said, adding an investigation was ongoing to assess the bearing their impact had on the accident.
* As the number of people infected on the mainland leapt from 41 to more than 300 this week, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand have all reported cases * The surge has raised concerns over Beijing's transparency and rekindled mistrust generated during the deadly 2003 Sars outbreak
Health authorities across Asia are concerned the outbreak of the mysterious new coronavirus is larger than Chinese authorities have stated, amid a surge in the number of people infected in mainland China and as three other countries in the region confirm cases.
The number of people confirmed to have contracted the disease on the mainland jumped from 41 to more than 300 this week, with six deaths so far, while Thailand has reported two cases and Japan, Taiwan and South Korea have reported one case each of the virus – which is in the same family as the deadly severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers) viruses.
"It is hard to believe [the official number of] cases, but there are all these cases popping up in so many neighbouring countries," said Piotr Chlebicki, an infectious disease expert at Mount Alvernia Hospital in Singapore who worked on the nation's Sars epidemic. "China has a track record of under-reporting cases, so the true picture may be completely different."
WNU Editor: My red flags went up when I read this .... China virus spreads to health workers; six patients dead (Bloomberg). When health workers start to get sick, that is when you know you have a serious disease that is now spreading through the general population. Bottom line. This could quickly escalate into a global pandemic.
* Analysis continues to flood in suggesting that if China continues to insist it will buy US goods according to market conditions, it cannot meet Donald Trump's demands * With 28 per cent of US exports to China not covered by the deal, economist Chad Bown suggests that these exporters could be cut out of the equation
Almost a week after the signing of the phase one trade deal with the United States, scepticism is continuing to mount as to whether China will fulfil its side of an agreement that "may be doomed from the start". Of particular concern is China's commitment to buying an additional US$200 billion of US goods over two years, including a clause that would bring its imports of US farm goods to more than US$40 billion a year.
"A close look at the data shows that the numbers are even more unrealistic than first believed," wrote Chad Bown, a trade specialist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), in a new report. "Even worse, hostilities might renew, leading to a re-escalation of trade tensions currently on hold."
WNU Editor: I am one of those who does not believe that China will be able to meet the terms of its agreement with the US. But I wonder if the US-China trade deal is also one of those agreements where President Trump is asking for the moon, but is really happy to get a least something out of nothing. Currently most Chinese imports are facing US tariffs, so the US is losing nothing there. Where the gains will/should come from is when China starts to focus on buying more US goods and resources. It may be less than what they promised, but it will still be something out of nothing. The agreement also stops the unsustainable growth of greater US trade deficits with China. In my book that is the biggest win for the US in this agreement, and it obliges the Chinese to negotiate a phase 2 trade agreement. Of course this will all change if President Trump losses the Presidential election later this year. But my Chinese contacts are telling me that Beijing is now resigned to a second term victory for President Trump this November.
LEO VARADKAR was dealt a cruel blow after three-quarters of Irish voters polled declared they want to see a change of government at the general election, according to a shock opinion poll.
TAAL VOLCANO could erupt explosively within a matter of hours or days after geologists reported "intense activity" of moving magma and earthquakes around the Philippines volcano.
MEDICAL experts look set to declare a global health emergency after the death toll from the Chinese coronavirus outbreak rose to nine with 440 confirmed cases.
WORLD WAR 3 fears erupted when a US bomber carrying thermonuclear weapons crashed due to bad weather while completing a mission to the Soviet Union's border.
AMAZON founder Jeff Bezos allegedly had his mobile phone hacked after receiving a message from an account belonging to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, according to reports.
CHINA has disclosed the first evidence of "respiratory transmission" of the virus from patient-to-patient in a major development of the coronavirus' outbreak.
Both pensions and Social Security provide an income stream to retirees, but they differ widely on how they're structured and funded. Learn the differences.
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A multiple employer plan (MEP) is a retirement savings plan that covers two or more employers. It enables small companies to offer big-company benefits.
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A defined-contribution retirement plan allows employees to invest pre-tax dollars for use later in life. Company's may also match employee contributions.
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Affluenza is a condition arising from the desire to be wealthy; the inability to understand the consequences of actions because of financial privilege.
Rediscount is the act of discounting a short-term negotiable debt instrument for a second time to cause a shift in the market that has a high demand for loans .
Price risk is the risk of a decline in the value of a security or a portfolio due to a variety of factors, excluding a complete downturn in the market.
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Medicaid is a government-sponsored insurance program for individuals and families whose income is insufficient enough to cover health related services.
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Max out your 401(k) each year, and be sure to get your 401(k) employer match, if you have one. And for you super savers, here are other ways to save for retirement.
Annuitization is the process of converting an annuity investment into a series of periodic income payments, and is often used in life insurance payouts.
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A guaranteed death benefit guarantees that the beneficiary will receive a death benefit if the annuitant dies before the annuity begins paying benefits.
A real-time quote shows actual security prices at that moment in time without a time delay and is imperative in fast markets and high-frequency trades.
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Saving for retirement? The investment strategy you used in your 30s won't work in your 60s. Asset allocation is key. Learn how to invest at any age to win retirement.
A cash or deferred arrangement (CODA) is a specific method of funding a qualified profit-sharing, stock-bonus, pre-ERISA money-purchase pension plan, or rural cooperative plan.
By using one of the common stock probability distribution methods of statistical calculations, an investor and analyst may determine the likelihood of profits from a holding.
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Saving for retirement? Find out how to choose the best retirement plans to build your nest egg, including 401(k) plans, traditional IRAs, and Roth IRAs.
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Mitigation banking is a system where the liability of ecological damage is transferred through a system of credits and debits under regulatory guidelines.
Follow these six late-stage retirement catch-up tactics to help you build up that nest egg. It is not too late, but if you want to retire comfortably you'll have to be aggressive.
Practical advice on saving for financial emergencies, college, and retirement, as well as other goals, such as a new car, a home, or launching a business.
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A funding agreement is a type of investment institutional investors may utilize for its low-risk, fixed-income characteristics. It's an agreement between two parties, offering the investor a return for a lump sum investment paid to the issuer.
Retirement planning can be tricky. These retirement planning tips can help you figure out the best way to save smarter if you're in your mid-60s and beyond.
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Learn why insider and institution stock ownership reveal much information about the stock. Understand what to consider when making well-informed investment decisions.
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Understanding how to calculate cost basis is critical for tracking the gains or losses of an investment, and what the tax consequences on it are. Understanding the total cost basis is critical to understanding if an investment is fruitful, and what the tax consequences on it will be.
Before you file for bankruptcy, you need to learn about how the process works, what you need to do first, and how this last-resort choice will affect your financial and maybe even your employment future.
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The Sick Industrial Companies Act (SICA) was a key piece of legislation introduced in 1985 to deal with the issue of rampant industrial sickness in India.
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With some annuities, payment ends with the death of the annuitant, but others provide for payment to a spouse or other beneficiary for years afterward.
Cashmere is not as exclusive as it once was, allowing the other luxurious wool, alpaca, to gain traction in the luxe wool space. Great clothing investments don't come cheap, but they can last a lifetime.
Real estate companies Keller Williams, Weichert, and Redfin offer new agents the best chance to succeed with some of the best training in the business.
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Other long-term liabilities are debts due beyond one year that are not deemed significant enough to warrant individual identification on the balance sheet.
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A civil authority clause is an insurance provision that outlines whether or not lost income will be reimbursed when a government entity denies access to covered property.
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A generation-skipping trust (GST) is a legally binding agreement in which assets are passed down to the grantor's grandchildren (skipping the children).
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There are a few different ways to go about investing in real estate, the two biggest are through REITs and a newcomer to the game: real estate crowdfunding.
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NTRUHS Results 2020 is updated here. Candidates who have appeared for the Semester Examination conducted by the Dr. NTR University of Health Science can check out the examination results on this page. Students can download the direct Pdf documents from the NTRUHS Exam Results from the below site. Make sure you get the NTRUHS Merit list at the official site.
The NTR University of Health Sciences has released the UG/ PG Courses Exam Results for the BAMS, BUMS, B.Sc Nursing & other courses on its official site. NTRUHS successfully conducted the Semester Exams and released the results. A huge number of candidates who are seeking admissions into Health Science programs have applied and appeared for the NTRUHS Examination. Aspirants who had written the exam are eagerly waiting for the results of NTR University, can check it out here. Our site recruitment.guru is having some updates related to the NTRUHS University Results 2020. Check the NTR University Health Sciences Exam Results 2020.
Latest NTRUHS Examination Results 2020-20How to Download NTRUHS Results 2020?
Visit the Official Website of NTR University @ ntruhs.ap.nic.in
On the home page, find the Results tab.
A new page will take you to the main Results page.
Select the Exam Name and Go for the Enrollment Number.
Then click on the Submit option.
Within a few minutes, the results will be displayed.
Students can take a print out of the displayed results for future use until the mark sheet is given by the University.
About Dr. NTR University of Health ScienceDr. NTR University of Health Science was established in 1986 by the Government of Andhra Pradesh. Headquarters located at Vijayawada. It is a state wide University with the aim of ensuring efficient and systematic education, training and research in allopathic and Indian systems of Medicine, Dentistry and Nursing. Every year NTRUHS releases the Notifications to provide admissions into various PG courses. Like that this year also NTRUHS Released a notification for providing admissions into various Post Graduation Courses. A large number of interested candidates have applied to this announcement. Hence, here is the list of Colleges that affiliate to Dr. NTR University of Health Science. Check it out!!Specialty
Modern Medicine – 40
Dentistry – 21
Ayurveda – 07
Homeopathy – 06
Unani – 02
Nursing – 213
Naturopathy – 02
Physiotherapy – 38
Medical laboratory technology – 54
Regular / Supplementary Results for NTRUHSThose students who have attended the regular examination under NTR University of Health Science and still failed. Here comes one more opportunity to clear the examination. To increase your scoring along with that students to fail in the previous examination will get a chance to clear through Revaluation Exams NTR University of Health Science Results. For each and every semester Students can apply for the revaluation after the announcement of the main examination results. NTR University of Health Science will take a week or more to process the exam papers to announce the Revaluation results. Do stay updated with this webpage to know about the NTRUHS Revaluation Exam Results 2020.
Latest NTR University of Health Science Semester Examination Results
UPPCL JE Admit Card 2020 – Hello Guys !! Here is an answer in search of your queries for the admit card. Candidates can get the hall ticket from 22nd January 2020. Hence, the exam will be held in the month of February 2020. Moreover, Aspirants are suggested to download the UPPCL Hall Ticket from the end of the webpage. Therefore, the admit card is now available on the official portal and the direct link is at the end of the segment.
Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited has released the admit card for the post of Junior Engineer Trainee on its official portal. Make sure to download the admit UPPCL Admit Card before the exam date. Hence, the direct link is available at the bottom of the section. Make sure with the details in the hall ticket before downloading it. The vital information that has to be checked is as follows.
Candidates Name
Name of the Candidate's Father
The venue of the Exam Centre
Date & Time of the Test
Reporting Time to the Exam Hall
Gender (Male/ Female)
Roll Number
Duration of the Online Test
Space for Invigilator's Signature
Registration Number
Name of the Test Centre
Category of the candidates
Space for Applicant's Signature
Name of the Exam Conducting Board
Photograph of the Candidate
Applicant's Date of Birth
Name of the Written Test
Important Guidelines for the Exam Takers
Full Name of the Applicant
Examination Centre Code
Signature of the Board Counselor
UPPCL JE Exam 2020
The board is going to conduct the examination in the month of February 2020. Hence, Aspirants must download the hall ticket to take down the exam. Candidates make sure to get the hall ticket before the last date ends. Thus, Candidates must check to the UPPCL Junior Engineer Exam Pattern and the syllabus from the official site for the exam preparation.
Get the exam venue details after printing the UPPCL JE Hall Ticket 2020. Hence, Aspirants can get the mandated exam details and follow the general instructions which are stated on the admit card. Make sure to download the UPPCL Junior Engineer Admit Card before the last date ends.
Documents along with UPPCL Junior Engineer Admit Card 2020
Contenders have to carry the admit card along with the UPPCL JE Admit Card. Download the hall ticket without making mistakes. So, if any mistakes found with the admit card inform the board immediately. The helpline contact details will be available at the official portal.
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
Direct Links to Download the UPPCL JE Admit Card 2020-21
Indian Navy Syllabus and Exam Pattern for various Join Indian Navy Recruitment 2020 is available here. The Aspirants who applied for the Indian Navy Recruitment 2020 can get the details here. However, we update the latest Indian Navy Syllabus and Exam Pattern details here. So, click on the respective Indian Navy Exam Syllabus link below and check the details. Also, refer to the Official Website for more details and for any queries.
Indian Navy Syllabus 2020
Candidates applying for the various posts under Indian Navy can get here the links for the posts of Chargeman (Mechanic, Ammunition & Explosive), Tradesman Mate, Sailor SSR, AA, MTS, Lascar and various posts. Go through the below sections and prepare well for the examination.
Indian Navy Chargeman Syllabus 2020 is available for download for the post of Chargeman (Mechanic, Ammunition & Explosive). Candidates can get here the complete Indian Navy Chargeman Syllabus Pdf Download Links. Also, get the detailed exam pattern post wise in the below sections.
Recently, the Indian Navy has released the notification for the post of Chargeman. The total number of vacancies released is 172. Interested candidates can go through the Indian Navy Recruitment 2020 Notification for further details.
Indian Navy Chargeman Recruitment Syllabus 2020 – Details
Syllabus for Indian navy 2020 is out now for the posts of Tradesman Mate. Candidates can get here the complete Syllabus Details along with Exam Pattern. Download the Syllabus Pdf from the below links.
Interested candidates can apply now for the 554 Vacancies and get their dream job in Indian Navy. Also, get the detailed Indian Navy Recruitment 2020 Syllabus details here in the below sections.
Great News for candidates who are searching for Indian Navy Jobs 2020. As recently Indian Navy has released the vacancies for the posts of Sailor SSR (Matric Recruit). Candidates can get here the Indian Navy MR Syllabus as well as the Indian Navy Matric Recruit Syllabus Details. Apart from that aspirants can also get the Indian Navy Sailors Previous Paper 2020. Go through the below links mentioned below.
The Selection process for the posts of Sailor SSR and Sailor AA Posts are as follows-
Written Test (CBT Exam)
Physical Fitness Test
Medical Examination
Indian Navy MR Exam Pattern 2020
Name of the Subject
No of Questions
Duration of Exam
General Knowledge
50
30 Minutes
Mathematics
General English
General Hindi
Science
The Question paper will be Computer-Based with a total of 50 Questions and it will carry 1 mark each.
The question paper will be bilingual (Hindi & English).
It will be of Objective Type Questions (Multiple Choice).
Candidates need to pass in all sections and in aggregate.
There will be negative marking of 0.5 marks for every wrong answer.
The standard of question paper will be 10+2 syllabus.
Indian Navy MR Syllabus Pdf 2020
Candidates who apply for the Matric Recruit Posts can get here the complete syllabus details –
Syllabus of Indian Navy MR 2020 – General Knowledge
Culture and Religion
Geography
Sports
Current Affairs
Dance
Languages
Diseases and Nutrition
History
National like birds, animal, sport, etc.
Indian Navy MR Syllabus Pdf Download 2020 – English
Antonyms
Synonyms
Passage
Proposition
Punctuation
Use of pronouns
Use of Adjectives
Determiners
Verbs/ Tense/ Non-Finite etc.
SSR, AA Indian Navy Syllabus – Science
Waves
Kinematics
Laws of Motion
Work, Energy, and Power
Metals and Non-Metals
Optics
Oscillations
Principles of Communications
Organic Chemistry
Electrostatics
Computer Science etc.
Indian Navy Syllabus Pdf 2020 – Mathematics
Set Theory
Relations and Functions
Trigonometry
Matrices
Logarithms
Complex Numbers
Circles
Determinants
Limits and Continuity
Differentiation
Vectors
Statistics etc.
Indian Navy SSR Previous Papers 2020
Get the Indian Navy Previous Year Question Papers for SSR and AA Exam 2020 from the link below. Also, aspirants can download the Indian Navy Previous Papers PDF for free from the given link- Previous Papers for Indian Navy AA
The Join Indian Navy Board announced the Multi Tasking Staff (MTS) Vacancies. However, the Aspirants who applied to the Indian Navy MTS Vacancies can check the Syllabus and Previous Papers details below. Also, check the official Indian Navy Recruitment Notification for MTS. Furthermore, check the Indian Navy MTS Syllabus and Exam Pattern and download the PDF. Also, check out the Indian Navy Previous Papers link at the end of the article.
The Join Indian Navy conducts the written Examination for the Multi-Tasking Staff Recruitment 2020. However, have a look at the latest Indian Navy Exam Pattern for MTS Posts 2020. Also, check out the various subjects and the marks for each section in the table below. Furthermore, check out the link for Indian Navy Syllabus and Exam Pattern Pdf in the section below. For more details, aspirants can check the official join Indian Navy Website.
Part
Subjects
No of Questions
1
General Intelligence/Awareness & Reasoning
20
2
Numerical Aptitude
20
3
General English
20
4
Awareness of relevant Trade/Field
40
Total
100
Each Question carries one Mark.
The Question paper will be having 4 sections
The questions will be of objective type Multiple Choice Questions.
However, check the Indian Navy Previous Year Question Papers for MTS Exam 2020 from the link below. Also, aspirants can download the Indian Navy Previous Papers PDF for free. Furthermore, download Hall ticket in out Indian Navy-Admit Card page.
Welcome to our Indian Navy Syllabus page. Here you can find Various Indian Navy Recruitment Posts Syllabus and Exam pattern. However, Check the Indian Navy Syllabus for Lascar, Master Grade & Others Posts 2020 below. Also, download the Indian Navy Lascar, Master Guard Syllabus 2020 pdf in the section below. Furthermore, if you’re not checked the Official Notification, here is the link below.
Check the Indian Navy Lascar, Master Grade Exam Pattern 2020 from the following mentioned table. Understand the test pattern completely and prepare well for the Indian Navy Examination. By referring to the Indian Navy Lascar, Master Grade & Other Written Exam Pattern, applicants will get to know the topics they want to prepare to crack the Written Test.
Lascar Exam Paper Pattern 2020
Parts
Subject Name
Marks
1
General Intelligence & Reasoning
20
2
Numerical Aptitude
20
3
General English
20
4
General Knowledge
20
5
General Awareness in Related Trade/Field
20
Total
100
The questions will be Objective Type only.
The question paper will be given in the English Language.
Negative Marking will be according to the Board Rules.
Indian Navy Lascar Syllabus PDF Download
The Aspirants can download the Indian Navy Syllabus for Lascar, Master Guard & Other Posts 2020 from the link given below. However, go through the list of detailed topics given for Indian Navy Written Examination 2020. Also, download the Indian Navy Previous Papers for Lascar & Other Posts in the section at the end of the article.
General Intelligence & Reasoning – Indian Navy Lascar Syllabus 2020
Analogies
Similarities & Differences
Space Visualization
Problem Solving
Analysis
Judgment
Decision Making
Visual Memory
Discriminating Observation,
Relation Concepts
Verbal & Figure Classification
Arithmetic Number Series
Non-Verbal Series Etc.
Numerical Aptitude – Indian Navy Master Grade Syllabus 2020
Number Systems
Computations of Whole Numbers
Decimal & fractions
Relationship Between Numbers
Fundamental Arithmetic Operations.
Percentages
Ratios & Proportions
Averages
Interests
Profit & Loss
Discount
Time & distance
Ratio & Time
Work Etc.
www.indiannavy.nic.in Syllabus 2020 – English Language
Vocabulary.
Grammar.
Sentence Structure.
Synonymous.
Antonyms & its Usage Etc.
Indian Navy Syllabus Download – General Knowledge
Questions Related to India & Neighbouring Countries
Sports
History
Culture.
Geography.
Economics Scene.
General Policy.
Indian Constitution & Scientific Research Etc.
Previous Papers Download
Download the Indian Navy Previous Papers from the following link. However, we provide you free material for Indian Navy Lascar, Master Grade & Other Recruitment Written Examination 2020. Also. aspirants can download the Indian Navy Previous Papers for free of Cost. Hope our material will help you in your preparation.
Check the Indian Navy Syllabus 2020 for the Post of Civilian Motor Driver Grade II is available. The candidate who is looking for the Civilian Motor Driver Exam Syllabus can get here. However, the aspirants can download the Indian Navy Civilian Driver Exam Syllabus 2020 for sections below. Also, visit the joinindiannavy.com website for more details on Indian Navy Syllabus for Civilian Driver Exam 2020.
Hence, check the Indian Navy Civilian Driver Grade II Exam Pattern 2020 below.
S.No
Exam Type
Sections
Exam Time
1
Objective Type
General English
2 Hrs
2
General Aptitude
3
General Awareness
4
Reasoning
5
Awareness in Relevant Trades
Check the official Notification for the section Process and other Recruitment details.
Indian Navy Syllabus PDF Download
The Candidates those who are looking for the Indian Navy Exam Syllabus for Civilian Driver 2020, go through the details below. Also, check the Syllabus details and download the Indian Navy Civilian Driver Exam Syllabus PDF from the link below. However, hope our material will help you in preparation for your Indian Navy Civilian Driver Examination 2020.
The Candidates who have applied for the latest Indian Navy Recruitment of Chef, Steward, and Hygenist Vacancies can check the Indian Navy Chef Syllabus and Exam Pattern here. Referring to the Indian Navy Syllabus and Test Pattern can help you to start your exam preparation.
Indian Navy Syllabus for Group C Exam 2020 – Overview
Description
Details
Organization Name
Indian Navy
Total Vacancies
Various
Post Name
Chef, Steward, and Hygenist Vacancies
Apply Mode
Online
Category
Syllabus
Official Website
www.joinindiannavy.gov.in
Selection process
The Indian Navy follows the following recruitment procedure,
Written Test
Physical Fitness Test
Medical Examination
Interview
Indian Navy Syllabus 2020 – Exam Pattern 2020
Here is the exam pattern for the post of Chef, Steward, and Hygenist posts,
Subjects
Questions
Duration
Science & Mathematics
25
30 Minutes
General Knowledge/Awareness
25
The written exam consists of two sections (Science & Mathematics, General Knowledge & Awareness)
There will be 25 questions from each section.
The duration to complete the exam is 30 minutes.
Download Indian Navy Syllabus Pdf
Aspirants who are looking for the Indian Navy Syllabus for the post of Chef, Steward, and Hygenist vacancies can get it here. In the below section, you can get the detailed Indian Navy Syllabus for both the Science & Mathematics, General Knowledge & Awareness). Check it before starting your exam preparation.
Indian Navy Syllabus for Science
Nature of Matter
Universe (Planets/Earth/Satellites/Sun), Electricity and its applications
Force and Gravitation
Newton’s laws of motion
Work
Energy and Power
Heat
Temperature
Metals and Non-metals
Carbon and its compounds
Measurements in Science
Sound & Wave Motion
Atomic Structure
Indian Navy Chef Syllabus for Maths
Mathematical Simplification
Ratio and Proportion
Algebraic Identities
Linear Equations and Polynomials
Simultaneous Equations
Basic Trigonometry
Simple Mensuration
Geometry
Measures of Central Tendency (Average, Median, and Mode)
Interest
Profit
Loss and Percentage
Work
Time
Speed and Distance
Indian Navy Exam Syllabus for General Knowledge/General Awareness
APPSC Result 2020 @psc.ap.gov.in: Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission has conducted the examination for various Posts Successfully.Candidates who have appeared for the APPSC Examination can be waiting for the APPSC Result 2020. Applicants can click the direct link for the latest results provided below in the table. Candidates can check out the APPSC Result Released Dates from this article. However, candidates can find more information about the Upcoming APPSC Result details on this page.
APPSC Assistant Public Relations Officer Result 2020 @ psc.ap.gov.in Declared:Candidates who have attended the Assistant Public Relations Officer Examination on 29th, 30th April 2019 can go through this complete article. The Aspirants appeared for the Examination are now searching for the Result. So, this is the right place where you can the Results easily by just clicking the quick link. Therefore, the Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission has announced the APPSC APRO Result 2020 on 18th January 2020. We will provide the direct link to download the APPSC Assistant Public Relations Officer Result 2020 here. So, aspirants can get the APRO Cut Off, Merit List 2020 on this page.
APPSC Assistant Public Relations Officer Result 2020
APPSC Food Safety Officer Result 2020 @ psc.ap.gov.in Released:Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC) has conducted the Food Safety Officer Examination on 30th July 2019. Many aspirants appeared for the APPSC Food Safety Officer Exam and waiting for the Results. Therefore, the higher authority has declared the APPSC FSO Result 2020 on 18th January 2020. Hence, all the eligible candidates can check and download the Results from this site itself. However, we have updated the direct link to download the APPSC Result and it is activated now. Additionally, candidates can also check the APPSC Food Safety Officer Cut Off Marks 2020 and APPSC FSO Merit List 2020 from this page.
APPSC Assistant Executive Engineer Mains Results 2020 @ psc.ap.gov.in Released:The candidates who are searching for APPSC Assistant Executive Engineer Result 2020 can get their results here. Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC) officials had conducted the APPSC AEE Written examination on 14th & 15th May 2019. Now the Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission authority has declared the Result on 08th January 2020. And also, candidates can download the APPSC AEE Mains Cut Off Marks 2020 and APPSC AEE Mains Merit List Marks 2020 on this page.
APPSC Departmental Test Result 2020: Are you searching for APPSC Department Test Result 2020? If yes, it is the perfect destination to check your results. Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission has conducted the APPSC Departmental Test from 14th to 19th November 2019 successfully. Most of the aspirants have appeared and waiting for the result. Andhra Pradesh PSC will be released the APPSC Department Test Result in February 2020 (Tentatively). Here, we have given a quick link to download the APPSC Department Test Result 2020. The link will be activated at the time of announcement. And, also get the APPSC Department Test Result 2020, Cut Off Marks and Merit List 2020 on this page.
APPSC Fisheries Development Officer Mains Results 2020 @ psc.ap.gov.in. The candidates who are searching for APPSC Fisheries Development Officer Result 2020. Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission officials had conducted the APPSC Fisheries Development Officer Written examination on 28th, 29th May 2019. Now the Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission authority is planning to announce the APPSC FDO Exam Result 2020 in the month of January 2020 (Tentatively). And also can download the APPSC FDO Mains Cut Off Marks 2020 and Merit List Marks 2020 here.
APPSC Forest Section Officer Result 2020 @ psc.ap.gov.in. The candidates who are searching for Andhra Pradesh FSO Result 2020. Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC) officials had conducted the examination on 28th & 29th July 2019 for Forest Section Officer Posts. Now the Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission authority is planning to announce the APPSC Forest Section Officer Result 2020 in the month of January 2020 (Tentatively). Here we will be updating the latest result link. The link will be activated at the time of the result announcement.
APPSC ASO Mains Result 2020: All the applicants who are looking for the AP Assistant Statistical Officer Result 2020 can check here. Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission officials had conducted the examination on 1st August 2019 for ASO Posts. Those candidates who participated in the APPSC Assistant Statistical Officer Examination are waiting for the APPSC ASO Result 2020, Here we will be updating the latest result link. The link will activate at the time of the result announcement.
APPSC AMVI Result 2020: All the aspirants those who are looking for the AP Assistant Motor Vehicle Inspector Result 2020 can check here. Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission officials had conducted the examination on 17th April 2019 for AMVI Posts. Candidates who participated in the exam can download Andhra Pradesh PSC AMVI Result 2020 from the below link.
APPSC Assistant Motor Vehicle Inspector Result 2020
APPSC Hostel Welfare Officer Result 2020: The APPSC Hostel Welfare Officer Result 2020 declared on 5th November 2019 by the officials of the Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC). Candidates who had successfully completed the process of written test for the Hostel Welfare Officer (HWO) Grade II on 11th July 2019 can check the APPSC HWO Exam Result 2020 from this page. Now, this is the time to get the information about the APPSC HWO Result 2020.
APPSC Forest Range Officers Result 2020 Released: Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission has announced the Forest Range Officers Result on 18th September 2019. Candidates who have appeared for the exam can check their results on the official website i.e psc.ap.gov.in. Candidates who have qualified the screening test will have to appear for the main examination. The APPSC 2019 main examination dates will be released soon by the A.P. Public Service Commission on the official website.
APPSC Forest Range Officers Result 2020 – Click Here
APPSC Gazetted Officer Result 2020: Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission has announced the Gazetted Officer Result dates. As that for Gazetted and Non-Gazetted Officer Exam Dates are upcoming. Applicants who have applied for the APPSC Vacancy 2019 can check out the APPSC Gazetted Officer Result 2020 from the below section. The APPSC Results are likely to announce by September 2019. Once the results are officially announced, the links will be activated given below.
APPSC Group 2 Result 2020: Get Group II Result here @ psc.ap.gov.in.Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission, Hyderabad has announced Screening Test Result for Group II Exam. Selected Candidates can attend for Main Exam will be held on 29 & 30th August 2019. Also, candidates can check their result at below link. Candidates who had applied and attended for the APPSC Group 2 Examination are excited to know their APPSC Group II Result 2020 status. Applicants can check this entire article to know all valuable information about the APPSC Group II Result and also others.
Applicants who have completed the Departmental Test can check your results and prepare for the next Round of the Interview. Now candidates can get APPSC Departmental Test Exam Qualifying Marks 2020. Along with these applicants can get an overview of APPSC Result 2020 from the above table. To download APPSC Departmental Test Result 2020 anyone can click the direct link which in the bottom of the table. Also, applicants know the APPSC Result Date, Result link and others here.
APPSC Departmental Test cut off Marks 2020
For all those people we have provided a direct link to download APPSC Departmental Test Cut off marks. Candidates can verify their results now and wait for the APPSC Departmental Test cut off Marks 2020. Because based on the APPSC Result 2020 and some categories, the officials will decide the Cut off marks. So it will take some time to receive the APPSC Departmental Test cut off Marks 2020. All the applicants can check out the psc.ap.gov.in Departmental Test Results from this article.
APPSC Departmental Test Merit List 2020
Here we have dedicated this page to update all the latest result links and APPSC Merit List. Although If the applicants can get the chance to attain the Merit List. The candidates got a secure minimum or maximum Cut off marks, their name will attain in the Merit List 2020. Also, it will be helpful for the candidates, if the candidate gets the top 5 in the Merit List at the time of the Interview. Apart from this, we have included some steps to download APPSC Departmental Test Results 2020.
How to Download APPSC Departmental Test Result 2020?
Visit the official website Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission @ psc.ap.gov.
On the home page, click on the Results Section.
A new page will be opened under the Results Section.
We have to search for APPSC Departmental Test Result 2020 link.
After finding the link we have to click on the link.
The results will be displayed on the screen.
Download and take a print of results for further use.
Direct Links to Download APPSC Departmental Test Result 2020
NRHM Karnataka Recruitment 2020: Apply Online For 253 Nurse MLHPs vacancies @ www.karnataka.gov.in!! National Health Mission Karnataka has recently released its job notification announcing vacancy for the post of Nurse Mid Level Healthcare Provider. There are 253 vacancies for this post. The officials are inviting eligible candidates to apply through the NRHM Karnataka Notification. Interested candidates can read the details below and start applying from 22nd January 2020. The last date to apply for NRHM Karnataka Recruitment is 07th February 2020. All other details are mentioned below. Candidates can start applying immediately.
NRHM Karnataka Recruitment 2020-21
Candidates who wish to apply for NHM Karnataka Recruitment can read all the details in the sections given below. They can also refer tot he official NHM Notification for more details. Once eligibility is decided, candidates can proceed to apply online. The NRHM Karnataka Apply Online link is available below for candidates to start applying now. If you want to know more about National Health Mission Karnataka, you can visit the official website using the link below.
The details of the vacancy as given in the NRHM Karnataka Recruitment 2020 is as below
Name of the Post
Number of Posts
Nurse Mid Level healthcare Provider (MLHPs)
253
Total
253
Eligibility Criteria for NRHM Karnataka Recruitment 2020
Candidates interested in NRHM Karnataka Jobs can check their eligibility with the details below to apply online.
Domicile:
Candidate should be a domicile of Karnataka (10 Years)
The applicant must know to read and write Kannada
Academic Qualification:
Candidate must have passed BSc Nursing/ Post Basic BSc Nursing from a recognized university registered with State Nursing Council recognized by KNC/ INC
Read the official notification for more details on NRHM Karnataka Careers.
Age Limit:
The upper age limit as given in the NRHM Recruitment Notification is:
Maximum Age – 35 Years
Age relaxation is available as below:
SC/ ST/ n Category – I/ Ex-servicemen – 40 Years
Category II (a)/ II (b)/ III (a)/ III (b) candidates of other backward classes of the state – 38 Years
Selection Process:
Written Test
Personal Interview
Document Verification
Pay Scale for NRHM Karnataka Recruitment 2020:
Candidates will be paid a consolidated remuneration of Rs. 24,200/-
Up to Rs. 8,000/- incentive will be paid per month based on performance
NRHM Karnataka Online Application Fee:
General Candidates – Rs. 600/-
Reserved candidates – Rs. 300/-
Kindly refer to the NHM Karnataka Recruitment Notification for more details
How to apply for NRHM Karnataka Recruitment 2020?
Firstly, open the official notification with the link below
Read the details given and confirm if you are eligible
Then, click on the apply online link
Read the instructions given
You can start filling the application form with necessary details
Upload scanned copies of necessary documents
Pay prescribed application fee
Finally, press the submit button to complete your recruitment process.
After the successful submission of the application form, take a print out of it for future use.
Important Dates for NRHM Karnataka Recruitment 2020-21:
Starting Date of Online Application
22nd January 2020
Closing Date of Online Application
07th February 2020 (till 5.00 pm)
Written Test and Result Declaration date
15th February 2020
Original Documents Verification Date – For Selected Candidates Only
17th February 2020 and 18th February 2020
Important Links for NRHM Karnataka Recruitment 2020-21:
NRHM Karnataka Recruitment 2019 – Apply Offline | 19 Doctors, Pharmacist, Assistant vacancies. District Health and Family Welfare Society Davanagere (DHFWS Davanagere) has announced a Job Notification for eligible and interested candidates to fill up Doctors, Pharmacist, Assistant Posts through DHFWS Davanagere official notification December 2019. Applicants who wish to apply for the DHFWS Davanagere Doctors, Pharmacist, Assistant jobs should send the application form on or before the last date by 16th December 2019.
Candidates who are looking for a career in Davanagere – Karnataka Government can make use of this opportunity. The selection of suitable aspirants is done based on written examination and interview. There are 19 openings are left for Doctors, Pharmacist, Assistant & Other Posts. Check the Eligibility details from the below sections.
Eligibility Criteria for National Health Mission Karnataka Recruitment 2019
Below are the set of eligibility conditions to be met by applicants of DHFWS Davanagere Recruitment 2019 – 2020. On successfully satisfying the eligibility criteria you can start applying online for DHFWS Davanagere Jobs 2019 by hitting on the below provided a link.
Educational Qualification:
Name of the Post
Qualification
District Program Coordinator (Community Strengthening)
Post Graduate Degree
District Hospital Quality Managers
MBBS, BDS, Graduate, Master's Degree
MBBS Doctors
MBBS, Degree
Speech Therapist Cum Audiologist
Bachelor's Degree
Optometrist
Bachelor's Degree, Master's Degree
Ophthalmic Assistant/Pharmacist
Diploma, D.Pharma
Asha Supervisors
B.Sc, GNM
Audiometric Assistant
Diploma
Instructor for Hearing and Impaired Children
Diploma
School Sick Team Physicians
MBBS, BAMS
24X7/Primary Health Center/Community Health Center/Public Hospital Ayush Doctors
BAMS, BHMS, BNYS, BUMS
Laboratory Technicians
PUC, SSLC, Diploma
Dental Assistant
SSLC
Age Limit:
As per the DHFWS Davanagere Recruitment Norms, the Applicants can refer to the official notification for more information.
Selection Process:
Written Examination
Personal Interview
Salary Details:
Selected Applicants will get the Salary as per the Organization Norms.
Candidates satisfying the above eligibility conditions please follow the steps given below to Apply Offline:
Firstly, Download the DHFWS Davanagere Vacancy 2019-2020 official notification
Go through the notification carefully
Ensure that candidate fulfills the eligibility criteria – Recruitment link is given below.
Please have correct email Id and mobile number for communication purpose
And keep the documents ready like ID proof, age, educational qualification, recent Photograph, resume if any experience, etc
Download the application from the above link or from official notification and Fill the form in a prescribed format
Pay prescribed application fee (If required)
After the successful submission of the application form, send it to the Regsitederd Postal address given below (in the prescribed manner, through- Register post, Speed post, etc.) on or before 16th December 2019.
Postal Address
Office of the District Health and Family Welfare Officers, Sriramanagar Road, Behind Davanagere S.S Hospital, Opposite to NCC Camp, Davanagere
Important Dates of www.nrhm.gov.in Karnataka Jobs 2019
Starting Date for Submission of Application
Started
Last date for Submission of Application
16th December 2019
NRHM Karnataka:
Launched by the Honorable Prime Minister in April 2005, the National Rural Health Mission has worked to provide universal access to equitable, affordable and quality health services that meet the needs of the population. Initiatives have been taken to reduce infant and maternal mortality, to stabilize the population and to balance the balance between men and women and demography.
The main features of NRHM implementation in Karnataka include: making the public health delivery system fully functional and accountable to the community, missionary work, decentralized planning, delegation of authority, human resource management, community participation, rigorous monitoring and evaluation against standards, the convergence of health-related programs, and flexible funding.
Punjabi University Result 2020 Released: Check out Punjabi University Result New here for B.P.E, B.Voc, B.SC, BCA, M.A, and Other Courses. Students can get Punjabi University Results 2020 with a direct link. And now, PBI UNI has declared the Punjabi University Results 2020 for various Courses under Punjabi University. Recently Punjabi University has published the results of Diploma, UG, PG and other Courses results are available here. We have provided a direct link to the Students to download the Punjabi University Patiala Result 2020 from the below table. Keep in touch with our page to get the latest PU Results 2020.
The Punjabi University released the much-awaited Www Punjabi University Results Ac In online. So, check out the पंजाबी यूनिवर्सिटी रिजल्ट्स २०१९ for Under Graduate and Post Graduate Regular, Supplementary and Revaluation results. Also, Students can get the Punjabi University Semester Wise Exam Result here. So, verify the entire article to download the Punjabi University Results 2020 from here. We have provided direct links to find your results through the links provided here. Also, download the results for Arts, Science, Engineering, Medical, the Management Courses simply by following the steps provided below. In fact, you can get the results for the other Universities in our recruitment.guru webpage.
Punjabi University is a state university located in Patiala, Punjab, India. Punjabi University teaches and researches in science, engineering, and technology, humanities, social sciences, performing arts and sports. It was established on 30 April 1962 and is only the second university in the world to be named after a language. The institution has more than 70 teaching and research departments, covering disciplines in Humanities, Science, Arts, Computer Science, and Business Management. To obtain a doctorate degree from the university one should pass the Punjabi language exam conducted by the university twice a year. Students who study Punjabi as a subject until the 10th standard need not pass the test to qualify.
Punjabi University Reappear Result 2020-21
Students are waiting for the PBI Uni Left Result if they scored well they will lead to next year. But if they will not get more marks they can apply for the Revaluation Results. Once they applied for Revaluation, the higher level Examiner will check the paper again. They can get the revaluation results within the time. Also if they still get fail marks, they can apply for the supplementary examination. Students can apply for the revaluation after the announcement of the main examination results. However, the PBI UNI will take a week or more to process the exam papers to announce the Punjabi University Revaluation Results. Stay updated with Our Page to know about the Punjabi University Revaluation Result 2020.
JDCC Bank Result 2020 @ jdccbank.com: Dear Candidates !!! Aspirants who are eagerly waiting for the JDCC Bank Clerk Result 2020 can get their results on this page. The Officials of Jalgaon District Central Co-operative Bank has conducted the written examination on 22nd September 2019 for recruiting 220 clerk vacancies. Most of the candidates have appeared for the examination and waiting for the results. The Higher Authority of Jalgaon District Central Co-operative Bank is planning to release the JDCC Bank Clerk Result in February 2020 (Tentatively). So, Candidates can go through the entire article to know more about the Jalgaon District Central Co-operative Bank Clerk Result 2020.
JDCC Bank Result 2020 @ jdccbank.com
Candidates who have participated in the Online Examination conducted by the Jalgaon District Central Co-operative Bank can get their results from here. The officials of Jalgaon District Central Co-operative Bank will be released the JDCC Bank Clerk Result in February 2020 (Tentatively). Here, we have provided the direct link to download the JDCC Bank Clerk Result 2020. The link will be activated when the result is released officially. So, candidates can keep in touch with our recruitment.guru webpage to know the day to day updates about the JDCC Bank Clerk Result 2020. Also, Candidates can get the Jalgaon District Central Co-operative Bank Clerk Cut Off Marks and Merit List 2020 on this page.
While checking the results candidates should have their roll number and password along with them. However, the Jalgaon District Central Co-operative Bank releases the Result based on the performance of the candidates in the JDCC Bank Clerk Examination. The higher Authority will declare the Jalgaon District Central Co-operative Bank Clerk Result 2020 in the month of February 2020 (Tentatively). There are three levels of selection process like Online Examination, Interview Process, Document Verification. We have also given information about JDCC Bank Cut Off Marks and Merit List 2020 on this page.
JDCC Bank Clerk Cut Off Marks 2020
All the exam participants should know the JDCC Bank Clerk Cut Off Marks 2020 in order to get the details of minimum qualifying marks. So, candidates can check the category wise the Jalgaon District Central Co-operative Bank Clerk Cut Off Marks 2020 on this page. As the board gives the information about the JDCC Bank Clerk Cut Off Marks 2020 to the categories of SC, ST, BC, OC. The details of cut off marks will be helping the candidates to score good marks and those aspirants who cross the marks will be sent for the next round. Board also checks for the following factors given below while releasing the Jalgaon District Central Co-operative Bank Clerk Cut Off Marks 2020. They are,
Previous Years Cut Off Marks
The hardness level of the paper.
Exam Analysis
Number of candidates appeared for the exam
The number of posts is available.
JDCC Bank Clerk Merit List 2020
JDCC Bank Clerk Merit List 2020 prescribes the final shortlisted candidates. Once the JDCC Bank Clerk Merit List 2020 is released, then we will update on our page immediately. Check it according to the name of the aspirants and Roll Number when the JDCC Bank Clerk Merit List 2020 is available. Therefore the board decides the JDCC Bank Clerk Merit List 2020 according to the highest marks that are scored by the aspirants. So, aspirants can get the Jalgaon District Central Co-operative Bank Clerk Merit List 2020 here.
How To Download JDCC Bank Clerk Result 2020 Online?
Visit the official site of Jalgaon District Central Co-operative Bank @ jdccbank.com.
When the site is given the page gets notified on the screen.
After that, check for the Recruitment section which is on the home page.
Later on under Recruitment check for theJDCC Bank Clerk Result 2020.
After that click on it, the Result PDF will be displayed on the screen.
Enter your Roll Number to check the results.
Download and save it for future purposes.
Direct Links to Download JDCC Bank Clerk Result 2020
JDCC Bank Clerk Result 2020
Click Here [Link Will Be Activated In February 2020 Tentatively]
Dear Folks !!! Kerala University Result 2020 Declaredfor B.SC 2nd year, B.A. /B.A. AFSAL UL ULAMA, B.P.A., MBA and also various Other Courses. The University has declared the results for various courses every day. Currently, The University has released the results of B.SC, B.A. /B.A. AFSAL UL ULAMA, B.P.A., MBA and other courses available here. Students who have appeared for these exams can check the results from the official website i.e, keralauniversity.ac.in. Hence more, Kerala University Results 2020 Student Login here to get the Latest Exam Results 2020 on this web page. Also, our team recruitment.guru provides the Kerala University Revaluation Result here.
If you are in search of the Kerala University Exam Results 2020, then you came to the right place. Here, you can check out the semester wise results of this University regarding all the courses. So, candidates can get their respective scores of the Kerala University Results 2020 on this page. Here, find the results for Kerala University Degree Result, Kerala Technical University Result, Kerala University Distance Education Result along with Kerala University Revaluation Result. All Students can check their exam results from this site now, here we have provided a direct link to get your Result without any confusion.
Latest Updated Kerala University Results 2020
Name of the Exam
Announcement Date
Download Link
SECOND YEAR B.Sc. DEGREE EXAMINATION, APRIL 2019 – HELD IN AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2019 (PART I, PART II & PART III SUBSIDIARY SUBJECTS)
Third Semester Group 2(a) B.A English and Communicative English Degree Examination, June 2019 (Prior to 2013 Admn) 2010, 2011 Mercy Chance, 2012 Admn Supplementary)
The University of Kerala, formerly the University of Travancore, is an affiliating university located in Thiruvananthapuram, capital of the state of Kerala, India. It was established in 1937. Kerala University has sixteen faculties and 41 departments of teaching and research in addition to study centers and other departments. Teaching, Research, and Knowledge extension are the mandate of the Departments. They primarily focus on post-graduate programs, MPhil programs, and doctoral research.
Kerala University Supply/Revaluation Results
Students are waiting for the results if they scored well they will lead to next year. But if they will not get more marks they can apply for the Revaluation Results. Once they applied for the Examination, the higher level Examiner will check the paper again. They can get the revaluation results within the time. Also if they still get fail marks, they can apply for the Supplementary examination. For each and every semester Students can apply for the revaluation after the announcement of the main examination results. The University of Kerala will take a week to process the exam papers to announce the Kerala University Revaluation Results. Do stay updated with the University to know about the Revaluation Exam Results.
RMLAU Results 2020 Declared:Dear Folks !!Students of Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Avadh University its time to check out your examination results. The RMLAU University, Ayodhya has released the semester exam results for the Under Graduate and Post Graduate Courses. Colleges affiliated under the Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Avadh University can check out the semester examination results from the below section. Students can also download the RMLAU Results with Mark Sheet in Pdf format from the Official Website. We have attached the direct links to download for the Results 2020-20.
RMLAU Results 2020 – Download Here
Here is great news for those who are studying under the Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Avadh University, Ayodhya. The University board has released the examination results according to the semester wise. This article is a complete attachment of RMLAU Results with Mark Sheet. Students can download the complete set of 1st, 2nd & 3rd-year-semester exam results from the below section. RMLAU Results 2020 is listed out for M.P.ED, M.B.B.S, M.A, B.C.A, B.B.A and also Various Other Courses. However, Students can check the exam wise latest RMLAU Results 2020 from the below sections of this page.
About Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Avadh University, Ayodhya
Dr. Rammanohar Lohia Avadh University was established in the year 1975 by the government of Uttar Pradesh. It is also known for Avadh or Awadh University. The university is spread over an area of 112.24 acres in the National Highway in Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh. It has a total of 23 buildings including Administrative & others. As per the recent scenes, The university has more than 400 affiliated colleges spread over in the 10 districts of Faizabad, Sultanpur, Pratapgarh, Ambedkarnagar, Barabanki, Baharaich, Balrampur, Shravasti, Amethi and Gonda. The honorable Governor of Uttar Pradesh will act as Chancellor of the University & there are 15000+ students who have been studying in the university.
Regular/Supplementary Results for RMLAU
Students, those who have not cleared/ got low marks the University examinations can apply for the Revaluation. This is is a chance for the students to increase their marks in subjects in which they have scored low marks. If students have written the main exam well and still got a low score or having doubts in the correction of the exam paper it is a choice to increase their marks. Currently, the University has released the revaluation results for UG, PG with all-region Students. So Students can check the Revaluation results from the official website as well as on this recruitment.guru page. Also, we have provided a direct link to get the Supplementary/Revaluation Results.
Durg University Result 2020 Released @ durguniversity.ac.in: BA, B.Ed, B.Lib., M.Lib, B.Sc, B.Com, B.Sc Results. Hello Folks!! Here we have good news for you. Durg University has published the Results for various Courses. It announced by Annual/Semester vice for all the Students who have appeared for the Examination. Students can check the Results from the official website of the University. Moreover, we have provided a direct link from the below table to get the Durg University Result 2020. Moreover, Students can download the Results at the University online web portal.
Durg University Results 2020 @ durguniversity.ac.in
The Durg University UG/PG Results are released on the official website. We update this Durg University Result 2020 page with the latest Result that is released on the official website by the official DUD board. So to know more about the DUD degree Result and other Result candidates must bookmark this page. It announced by annual and Semester wise for all Courses. Students those who have appeared for these Examinations can check this from this page recruitment.guru. Apart from this Students may get the detailed information regarding the Admit Card, Syllabus, Time Table and others. Here applicants can download the Hemchand Yadav University B.A, B.SC, B.Ed, M.SC, M.Com Result 2020 on this recruitment.guru webpage.
The Government of Chhattisgarh, exercising its powers and bringing Chhattisgarh ACT, The Chhattisgarh Vishwavidyalaya Adhiniyam, 2015, dated 24th of April, 2015, an Act further amending the Chhattisgarh Vishwavidyalaya Adhiniyam, 1973, has established Hemchand Yadav Vishwavidyalaya, Durg. The Hemchand Yadav Vishwavidyalaya has come into existence after the division of the existing Pt. Ravishankar Shukla Vishwavidyalaya, Raipur and the jurisdiction of the Vishwavidyalaya comprise 116 affiliated colleges in the districts of Durg, Bemetara, Balod, Rajnandgaon, and Kabirdham.
Durg University Supply/Revaluation Result
Students are waiting for the Results if they scored well they will lead to next year. But if they will not get more marks they can apply for the revaluation Results. Once they applied for the Examination, the higher level Examiner will check the paper again. They can get the revaluation Result within the time. Also if they still get fail marks, they can apply for the supplementary examination. For each and every semester Students can apply for the revaluation after the announcement of the main examination Results. Durg University will take a week to process the exam papers to announce the Durg University Revaluation Results. Do stay updated with this page to know about the Revaluation Results.
NEW DELHI: Religare Enterprises' former promoters Malvinder and Shivinder Mohan Singh had diverted public money from group entity Religare Finvest to shell companies and used it to "square off their personal liabilities", the Delhi Police's Economic Offences Wing (EOW) has said in its charge sheet against the brothers.Executives at Religare Finvest, the group's lending arm, had approved unsecured loans worth hundreds of crores to the shell companies within two hours of getting the proposals, even when these companies themselves had not sought the loans, the EOW said. The Singh brothers had joined the board of Religare Finvest in 2016 with the intention of diverting money to these 19 shell companies, it alleged.The procedure adopted to peruse documents for approving loans was nothing but a "paper formality", said the charge sheet filed last week in a local court, in a funds-misappropriation case filed by Religare Finvest. ET has seen the charge sheet.Malvinder and Shivinder Singh had denied any wrongdoing on their part. 73507763 A "prominent feature" of the entire process was that these "shell/dummy companies" never made any request for loans, the charge sheet said.It noted certain instances where the loan approvals were given almost immediately. On September 1, 2016, a loan of Rs 162 crore to Modland Wears Pvt Ltd was proposed at 3:14 pm and was approved at 4:36 pm — within 82 minutes. On the same day, another loan of Rs 165 crore to Artifice Property Pvt Ltd was approved in 103 minutes, it said.The charge sheet alleged that after the Reserve Bank of India in 2014 redflagged abject lack of rigour deployed by Religare Finvest (RFL) in its corporate loan book, as opposed to strict scrutiny in SME loans, it resorted to "Google check", as well Board of Industrial and Financial Reconstruction, Registrar of Companies, Cibil and KYC checks. "But no assessment of repayment capacity was done," it said.The agency said the only "precaution" it took was that the credit notes used to read "the corporate is known to the promoters of Religare and based on their comfort, we are proposing the deal". The loans were cleared on "verbal instructions" of the promoters, it added.Filing the charge sheets against the Singh brothers, former Religare chairman Sunil Godhwani and two others, the EOW said "despite being a listed company, no corporate governance norms were adhered with respect to the disbursal of loans".The EOW has questioned directors of the 19 shell/dummy companies named by it. Five of the directors told EOW that they were "namesake" directors and that they all were "followers of Radha Soami Satsang Beas and old acquaintance of late Parvinder Singh, father of Singh brothers", the charge sheet said.The "dummy" directors further claimed that they "signed the documents which were sent to their house through a messenger/employee of promoters at the year end and received salaries from the companies", the EOW said. They also said none of them were signatories of the bank accounts of the companies.According to the charge sheet, these directors claimed that all the 19 entities "were controlled and owned/operated by Malvinder and Shivinder Singh through their employees of RHC Holding Pvt Ltd (owned by the brothers) and its subsidiaries", and that the companies were "not separate entities and were operating from the office of RHC Holding…""Malvinder and Shivinder used shell/ dummy entities along with the management of REL (Religare Enterprises) and RFL to divert the money from REL to their holding company, by adopting circuitous transaction to conceal the fake transactions and to make them appear genuine," the EOW said.During his questioning, Malvinder Singh told EOW that "Sunil Godhwani and his team at Religare managed and ran the affairs of RHC and its subsidiaries, decisions of money movement between REL, RFL, Babaji (Radha Soami Satsang chief Gurinder Singh) entities and RHC group entities".Fastening entire responsibility on Godhwani and his team for "mismanagement" of RFL, Malvinder Singh told the EOW that "the management changes at REL in July 2016 were done at the direction and instructions of Babaji".Malvinder Singh has further alleged that "Religare and its subsidiaries owe money to RHC Holdings and not the other way around. Fern Healthcare, Modland (which are described as shell companies by the EOW) owe money to RHC Holdings and its subsidiaries and were fraudulently made part of the RHC Group without any diligence, valuation or any board approval. This was done by Shivinder Singh to shield Babaji and his family members to personally owe over Rs 1,000 crore to these entities," he has alleged.Shivinder Singh, on the other hand, has denied the allegations stating that he took retirement from active life and went to Radha Soami Satsang Beas in 2016. He said he was completely unaware of the operations at REL and RFL.
Mumbai | New Delhi: The Supreme Court will next week hear pleas by Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Tata Teleservices that they be allowed to negotiate terms and timelines for payment of statutory dues with the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). That has given hope to the three phone companies seeking relief on payments aggregating Rs 1.02 lakh crore due Thursday. DoT officials indicated they were open to discussions but said an initial payment had to be made by the deadline.The court, in its order on Tuesday, didn't specifically defer the January 23 deadline. The phone companies expect that the DoT won't force the carriers to pay their entire dues by Thursday and wait until the court decides on the matter."Until the court hears next week, we do not expect DoT to press for payments. We expect DoT to wait for court to clarify the modification petition," said Rajan Mathews, director general of Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), an industry body that represents Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio Infocomm.DoT officials told ET that if the phone companies remit a part of the dues by the deadline, the government is open to discussing a payment schedule for the remainder, possibly over a few years.DoT may Seek Payment Plans"Our stand is clear — we are saying at least show us your intention to pay. If the telecom companies pay some amount on the 23rd, then we can soften our stand," a senior government official told ET. 73508128 Once such an initial payment is made, DoT will likely ask the companies how they propose to spread the payment "before they go to the court, so that we do not oppose their plea to negotiate the timeline with the DoT," said another official.COAI suggested this period could be 15 years.Investors were buoyed by hopes of a positive outcome--Vodafone Idea surged 21.8% to close at Rs5.92 while Bharti Airtel ended 0.4% higher at Rs511.35 on the BSE Tuesday.A bench headed by chief justice of India SA Bobde said on Tuesday that a justice Arun Mishra-led bench will hear the modification pleas next week. Mishra had headed the threemember bench that passed the October 24 verdict widening the definition of adjusted gross revenue (AGR) to include non-core items. This meant 15 telcos had to pay additional licence fees, spectrum usage charges (SUC), interest and penalty dues of more than Rs1.47 lakh crore by January 23. Licence fees and SUC are calculated on the basis of AGR.Mahesh Agrawal of Agrawal and Associates represented Vodafone Idea while Harsh Kaushik and Manali Singhal appeared on behalf of Bharti Airtel and Tata Teleservices."Upon hearing the counsel, the Court made the following order: List next week before the Bench which passed judgment dated 24.10.2019 as per Rules," SC said in its order Tuesday.The court had last week rejected review petitions from the three telcos, prompting them to file the modification applications on Monday, warning of bankruptcies, defaults and job losses if forced to pay the whole amount at one go.Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel face statutory dues of Rs 53,039 crore and Rs 35,586 crore, respectively, as per government disclosures to Parliament. Tata Teleservices, which has sold its consumer mobility business to Bharti Airtel, faces dues of Rs 13,823 crore.Harsh Walia, partner at law firm Khaitan & Co, said the Thursday deadline stands."If the court had the intention of not letting any coercive action happen, then it could have given an order restraining DoT from taking any coercive action till next date of hearing," he said.DoT expects telcos to make initial payments totalling Rs25,000-30,000 crore, most of it coming from Bharti Airtel, officials told ET. "Airtel has just raised money," one said, referring to its $3 billion fundraising exercise. But it's not clear how much or whether the operators will pay up by December 23. ET had reported on January 18 that Vodafone was likely to submit around Rs 4,000 crore as token payment by January 23 while seeking to extend the timeline.DoT hasn't decided on any payment tenure. "We will need to sit down with the telcos and chart out the entire payment plan since there will be an interest component as well. Extension of timeline will come with an interest factor," said the first official cited. Amended payment terms may need to be ratified by the cabinet or approved by a committee of secretaries, he said.DoT should offer a structured debt package of 15 years with a two-year moratorium and recalibrate interest rates to bank borrowing rates, COAI's Mathews said.Vodafone Idea had said in its modification plea to the court that it will have to shut if there's no relaxation on payment terms."If a suitable and appropriate arrangement is not made available, it will lead to immediate closure of one of the oldest and largest telecom companies in India," according to the petition, which ET saw.Bharti Airtel told the court on Monday that the calculations that need to be made are "complex" and cannot be done within the 90 days stipulated by the court. This will "require further interaction with the respondent as it covers licences across 22 circles and a period of over 15 years and post submission of the same to the respondents, the parties will have to reconcile all these calculations," Bharti Airtel said in its modification application, seen by ET.
New Delhi: If you are a working woman, a professional with disabilities or a young working male in the age bracket of 25-35 years, you may be allowed to lower your contribution towards the provident fund kitty by 2-3%.A senior government official told ET that lower contribution rule under PF will not apply to all."It will not be universal... This will be permitted for certain class of workers," the officials said, adding that these class of workers will be decided based on a certain criteria.Working women and professionals with disabilities could be included in the class of workers as per the criteria being discussed.The labour ministry has begun discussions on the proposed criteria to be adopted to classify the category of workers who can be given an exemption of up to 2-3% in their share of contribution, and a decision is expected shortly."Government is seized of the fact that social security is needed at the time of retirement. However, young employees need enough funds at disposal for wedding, housing and other needs in the initial years of their careers and hence the proposal," the official quoted above said.Currently, all employees are mandated to contribute 12% of their basic wage under the Employees Provident Fund Organisation and a matching contribution is made by the employer.As part of the Code on Social Security, 2019, the labour ministry has proposed flexibility in the Employee Provident Fund & Miscellaneous Provisions Act, allowing for different rates of contribution. No change has been proposed in employer's contribution. The bill, tabled in Parliament, is now before the standing committee on labour.The rule defining the criterion for applicability will be notified by the ministry once the Code is approved by the Parliament. The idea is to allow some flexibility to a certain category of workers in a fixed age bracket to reduce their contribution to PF and thus allow them to increase their take home salary.As per the current EPF & MP Act, 12% of basic salary (capped at Rs 15,000) is contributed to an employee's EPF account, with amatching contribution from the employer. Of the employer's contribution, 8.33% goes to Employee Pension Scheme (EPS). Also, the EPS contribution is calculated on a basic pay of Rs 15,000 or actual basic pay, whichever is less. If the basic exceeds Rs 15,000, then EPS contribution is calculated as 8.33% of Rs 15,000, which is Rs 1,250 per month.
On the pages of Gujarat officialdom, Manu Parmar became a footnote in the summer of 2015. The government register that notes births and deaths put Parmar down as a victim of drowning on June 27 at Paroda village, Ahmedabad. A blood examination report from an established pathological lab certified the death as such.But there was a twist in the tale. Of course, Manu was no longer in this world, but his departure from it actually happened four years ago – in 2011. According to an FIR, the insured was covered for Rs 2.60 lakh in 2015, in case of natural death. Jagdish Parmar, the beneficiary, filed claims in May 2017. While the insurance company started investigating the claim, a letter from the sarpanch of the village exposed the fraud, saying that Manu Parmar had died in 2011.This is not an isolated case. There are quite a few in which gram panchayats issued death certificates without doing much due diligence. That creates the dark web of elaborate deception, trapping companies that insure lives."Ghost applications and applications from terminally ill individuals constitute typical life insurance frauds," said Yusuf Pachmariwala, senior vice president and head of operations, Tata AIA Life Insurance. "Usually, they are executed by a coordinated team of racketeers and the sum insured involved is low."73509175 DECEPTION MOST FOULEarlier, frauds were trigger-based and largely relied on intuition. Now that frauds are more organised, insurers can't depend completely on traditional practices to avoid escaping the trap.Bajaj Allianz, for instance, recently got a motor insurance claim from Odisha, wherein a cleaner of a truck died as the truck collided with a tree in the early morning hours. The insurer investigated the claim that the truck driver had escaped the scene while the major damage was on the driver side of the truck.To the company's surprise, the driver didn't have any injury due to the accident and instead the cleaner did. After the accident reconstruction, it was clear that the cleaner was driving the vehicle when the truck met with an accident. The cleaner had injuries on forehead, left femur bone fracture, and right hand laceration that matched with the post-mortem report of the cleaner. The cleaner did not have a valid driving licence, and the company concluded that it was a fraudulent claim.BIG DATA TO THE RESCUEWith financial crimes becoming sophisticated and organised, insurers are contesting claims by adopting a combination of data analytics and forensic science to investigate frauds. Insurance companies have started looking for fraud detection tools, predictive analytics models and credit bureau data to track overall financial behaviour."If credit scores are good, generally the mortality is low. Those with good credit history are seen as reliable insurance seekers," said Pachmariwala.Insurers today sit on a huge data repository that helps them understand customer behaviour and introduce products as per their needs. This database additionally helps in identifying the trends in terms of frauds as well. Many of the private insurers have come together and designed a common investigation portal to help investigate and create a claims probeoutcome repository. Private insurers are also working on creating an insurance data repository, in line with the banking industry, at the policy issuance stage itself.Another nexus of motor insurance fraud was exposed in Rajasthan, which has been among the top 10 states in vehicle theft, government data showed. Bajaj Allianz General Insurance received multiple intimations for motor theft claims of heavy construction vehicles in Bharatpur district. While going through the preliminary investigations of stolen vehicles, their investigation team observed that, though all these vehicles were purchased by different owners just a year ago, the FIRs for stolen vehicles were registered through court by the same advocate.Furthermore, the location of incident and narration of the given intimation were not matching. These findings raised questions and the team decided to meet the insured. Upon visiting the insured's location, Bajaj learnt that they were labourers who worked in the stone-breaking industry. The probability of these people affording such heavy construction machinery and vehicles or even securing loan to purchase such vehicles was low. This triggered a doubt of a huge nexus with the involvement of many people. The team shared the entire case and evidence with police authorities and requested their support for further investigation. The police then arrested the people involved and an FIR was lodged against them.THE MODUS OPERANDIThe masterminds would look for people with low income, give them a lucrative offer in exchange of their details and then purchase a new vehicle using those details. Formalities of loan, RTO registration and insurance were also done by them. The insured had no control over the vehicle, except his name as registered owner. The insured were assured monthly rent of the vehicle and an assurance of repayment of EMI.After a few days of purchase, the new vehicle was sent to a person in J&K and the intermediaries informed the insured that the vehicle was stolen and a claim needs to be registered. With the help of an advocate, the insured would lodge an FIR through court. The culprits further revealed that they had used similar practice with other insurance companies from the same location. The 'stolen' vehicles were then sent to people associated with the nexus in J&K and Mizoram."Accident reconstruction is a branch of forensics which helps determine how and why the accident happened," said Sanjiv Dwivedi, head - investigation & loss mitigation, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance. "It's not always possible that there will be eye witness or images of the accident that will help settle the claim immediately. It helps us analyse the impact of the accident and verify the authenticity of the claim made."TIME LAPSEOn an average, the claim registration time for a motor claim from the date of accident is around 18 months. The more the time gap between the accident and claim registration, the lesser are the chances to get proper evidence about the claim. Insurance companies today share their respective fraud claims data with GIC. This helps them identify fraudsters who are hopping customers and make similar claims with various companies.Insurers are identifying frauds at multiple stages — from underwriting stage to claim intimation — through the use of advanced analytics.Insurers today are also exploring the geotagging option where a customer can send images of the damage or an investigator can click an image of the accident area by geo-tagging it. This increases the authenticity of the image shared with the insurer for claims.
New Delhi | Mumbai: Global payments technology giant Mastercard is in talks to invest in India's largest point-of-sale (PoS) solutions provider Pine Labs as part of a $300 million financing round, said three people aware of the development. The transaction, which would value the Singapore and Noida-based firm at $1.2-1.5 billion, will likely involve a mix of primary and secondary shares and give Mastercard a firm footing in the fast-growing merchant acquiring segment.Venture capital fund Sequoia Capital, the largest stakeholder, could make a partial exit as Pine Labs vaults into the unicorn club of privately-held tech firms with valuation of $1 billion or more. Sequoia has been invested in Pine Labs since 2009 and holds an estimated 68% stake. It could offload 15-25% to the incoming investor, said the people cited above.Investors like Advent Cap may Also JoinMastercard and Pine Labs didn't respond to queries. A spokesperson for Sequoia Capital said, "We have nothing to share at this time."People familiar with the fundraising talks said other investors like Advent Capital may join Mastercard in the latest round.The fundraise, which could close over the next few weeks, will be the first by Pine Labs since it raised $125 million in equity financing in 2018 led by the likes of Temasek, the investment firm backed by the government of Singapore, and US-based online payments company PayPal, valuing it at $800 million.73509564 Prior to that, in March 2018, the company raised $82 million in funding, led by investment firms Actis and Altimeter Capital, according to data collated by Tracxn. Pine Labs was founded by Lokvir Kapoor, Rajul Garg and Tarun Upaday in 1998.This will not be the first time Sequoia Capital is selling Pine Labs shares. In 2017, the venture capital firm had offloaded a stake to Madison Capital as part of a larger $180 million block deal.Pine Labs has been regarded as an attractive acquisition target in the recent past. The Times of India reported In October last year that Naspers-owned PayU was evaluating a majority share purchase in the company, while two other investors — China's Tencent and pension fund CDPQ — were in talks to acquire minority stakes.The company has been broadening its product suite in the past few years. The merchantfocused, last-mile retail transaction technology platform also provides collateral-free business loans, having partnered with top banks and nonbanking finance companies (NBFCs), besides offering equated monthly installment (EMI) solutions at the point of sale.It acquired Bengaluru-based startup Qwikcilver for $110 million in March last year, as it looked to deepen its presence in the loyalty and gifting services segment, funding the transaction from capital raised from its investors and cash reserves.Pine Labs reported total revenue of Rs 503.2 crore in FY19, up from Rs 336.1 crore in the previous fiscal. Losses widened to Rs 13.7 crore in the 12 months ended March 2019 from Rs 2.5 crore in the previous financial year, according to paper.vc.
MUMBAI: Private equity funds and foreign portfolio investors that were looking to get clarity around grandfathering benefit of Singapore and Mauritius tax treaties have hit a roadblock as advance tax ruling authorities have demanded additional details from many of them.Many PE funds and FPIs that had invested in India through Mauritius and Singapore had got a grandfathering benefit whereby they were allowed to pay lower taxes if they had invested before the bilateral tax treaties were amended.However, now the authorities have asked many of these investors to provide details such as last 15 years' minutes of meeting, date of investment, management fees paid over the years, and expenses incurred – some of which might not be even available anymore – tax experts said."Several PE funds and FPIs who had approached the Authority for Advance Rulings (AAR) to confirm benefit of grandfathering under Mauritius tax treaty have been asked to answer a lengthy questionnaire before availing the benefit," said Shefali Goradia, partner at Deloitte India. "They have been asked to furnish minutes of board meetings since incorporation, date of investment, source of funds, group structure, all regulatory filings, management fees paid over the years, salaries paid, expenses incurred among other things. In most cases, this level of historical detail is neither available with the investors nor is it relevant to claim treaty benefit under established principles," she said.Many FPIs are also nervous because, in a separate ruling AAR had last year disallowed grandfathering benefits of tax treaty to a foreign investor that routes its investments in the country through Mauritius. The ruling had denied any benefit of the India-Mauritius tax treaty under which the applicable rates are a bit lower.If investments were made before the amendment of the tax treaty in 2016, benefits were to be grandfathered— that is, income from such investments or capital gains would attract concessional tax rates prevalent before 2016.Industry trackers said the issue was more worrying for several funds that have already filed returns and their cases could be scrutinised and questioned by the tax officers.
Singapore might lose some of its allure for various foreign portfolio investors as a preferred destination to route their investments into India. With the Multi-Lateral Agreement (MLI) between the two countries set to come into force from April 1, fund managers in Singapore, who invest in India, could face a stiffer task of convincing local tax authorities that they have not set up shop in the island nation to avail the tax benefits.Investors based out of Singapore continue to avail several tax benefits for putting money in India. These include exemption from capital gains tax on derivatives and lower capital gains tax rate for equities. But, these exemptions will be applicable only if the Indian taxman are convinced that they are not in Singapore to avoid taxes. While the government has already implemented the General Anti-Avoidance Rules (GAAR) to curb tax avoidance, MLI comes with much stricter provisions and is believed to override GAAR, say experts. GAAR, implemented in 2017, requires foreign investors to prove that they are in a jurisdiction not just to take advantage of the tax treaty.The Indian and Singapore governments ratified the Multi-Lateral Agreement in December 2019 and its provisions come into force from April 1, 2020. MLI, an international tax law under the umbrella of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), comes with strict tax antiavoidance rules. As per the MLI, an entity can be declined treaty tax benefits if one of the reasons for choosing a jurisdiction is tax benefit. 73508160 The move could impact most of the mid and small sized funds that have created investing entities out of Singapore but don't have any business or commercial interest in Singapore. Singapore is the fourthlargest source of FPI inflows with assets under management worth Rs 3.15 lakh crore.The MLI comes with the so-called 'Principal Purpose Test' (PPT) which will be used by tax authorities to determine if an investor has set up shop in Singapore for tax avoidance purposes or not. As per the PPT, even if tax is amongst one of the key reasons for an entity to choose Singapore, then such an entity can be declined tax treaty benefits. GAAR, on the other hand, provides for much liberal interpretation in terms of tax avoidance since it can be invoked only if tax avoidance is the prime purpose for an entity to choose a jurisdiction."While both the Indian GAAR and PPT (of MLI) seek to prevent tax abuse, the scope of PPT is much stricter," said Rajesh Gandhi, partner, Deloitte. "As per the PPT, tax abuse can be triggered even if one of the main or principle purposes of a transaction is tax avoidance. However, GAAR can used only if the main purpose of an arrangement is tax avoidance and also the arrangement does not have commercial substance."For instance, an FPI 'X' chose to set up an intermediary entity in Singapore that invests in India. The main reasons behind X choosing Singapore include availability of efficient manpower, good infrastructure and favorable tax agreement with India. In this scenario, if GAAR was the guiding law then the arrangement adopted by X may not be considered for tax avoidance since tax is not the only reason for choosing Singapore. However, under MLI, this arrangement could be termed for tax avoidance since tax is one of the reasons. The tax authorities will have the power to interpret if an entity has fulfilled conditions of MLI or not."The provisions of MLI in relation to India-Singapore tax treaty seem to be more stringent in comparison to GAAR provisions," said Amit Singhania, partner, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas. "GAAR provisions get invoked if the main purpose is to obtain a tax benefit and one of the four prescribed conditions gets satisfied. However under MLI, PPT is the solitary requirement to negate the treaty benefit."OECD had proposed the introduction of MLIs in order to curb tax avoidance, especially amongst multi-national companies (MNCs) who explore the gaps in the tax laws among different countries. Currently, 87countries including Australia, France, Japan and the United Kingdom are signatories to the initiative.
By Chandan TapariaNifty opened negative and continued its negative momentum for the second consecutive session on Tuesday. It formed a Bearish Candle, as It failed to hold above 12,200 mark and corrected towards the 12,162 mark. The ongoing profit booking started from the strong hurdle of the Rising Trendline on the weekly chart and now the index is approaching the previous gap area between 12,044 and 12,130 levels.We also witnessed a series of negative divergence of the RSI oscillator on the daily scale, which doesn't bode well for the bulls. Going forward, Nifty's immediate support is placed in the 12,130-12,050 zone. While the immediate resistance for Nifty is now shifting lower to 12,250 level, the medium-term resistance is placed in the 12,400-12,430 zone.On the options front, maximum Put open interest was at 12,000 followed by 12,200 levels, while maximum Call OI was at 12,500 followed by 12,300 levels. A good amount of writing was seen in Call options at 12,300 and 12,500, while marginal Put unwinding was seen at strike price 12,200. Options data indicated a trading range between 12,000 and 12,500 levels.India VIX moved up 2.94 per cent to 15.86 level. There is a spike in volatility due to the ongoing earnings season and the forthcoming Union Budget 2020.Bank Nifty opened on a negative note and respected its major support in the 30,800 – 30,900 zone. It consolidated just above the support band and formed a Doji candle on the daily chart, indicating indecisiveness among the market participants. Now, the bulls have to hold above 30,800 level for a pullback move. In the coming days, as it breaches the 30,800 level, we may see a further drop towards 30,500 and then 30,300 levels. On the flipside, immediate resistance is placed at 31,500 and then 32,000 levels.Nifty futures closed negative at 12,200 with a loss of 0.51 per cent. Long buildup was seen in LIC Housing Finance, ZEEL, RBL Bank, Jindal Steel, Aurobindo Pharma; while shorts were seen in PFC, IOC, Tata Steel, BHEL and REC.(Chandan Taparia is Technical & Derivative Analyst at MOFSL. Investors are advised to consult financial advisers before taking an investment calls based on these observations.)
Indian Software-as-a-Service companies are speeding up forays into non-mainstay regions such as Japan and Latin America, as selling business software in advanced economies other than North America becomes increasingly important in taking the battle to market leaders such as Salesforce and Microsoft.North America, which includes Canada, remains the key target market for most companies, but clients have emerged in Singapore, Indonesia and Japan, as well as some countries in Latin America and Africa. The global SaaS business, dominated by the North American market, is slated to grow at a 16% clip to $116 billion this year, according to market research firm Gartner. Indian firms are aiming to diversify focus on the Rest-of-the-World markets. The market expansion coincides with a push towards a platform play – creating a common design and engineering base from which products can be developed to meet a quicker time-tomarket paradigm.At the Sridhar Vembu-led Zoho, organising user events is one way to test new markets. Raju Vegesna, chief evangelist at Zoho, said the company will enter the Brazilian market this year and will expand its team in Colombia, besides bolstering its presence in Chile.In 2019, it had a hectic pace of market evaluation with 33 user conferences across 25 countries.73508604 It is also close to hiring its first set of employees in South Africa.Zoho entered The Netherlands, Singapore, Dubai, Mexico and Australia last year.The broad strokes of Zoho's expansion model, according to Vegesna, were a predictive play on the next wave of growth."If you overlap the GDP growth in a country with the median age, an interesting trend/theme will be noticeable: whenever the median age of a country is between 25 and 40, GDP of that country accelerates, sometimes exponentially. Part of it can be attributed to the acceleration of business formation, and job creation as a result. As the market expands and business formation accelerates, software and other vendors enter those regions...," he said.Chennai-incubated Freshworks entered Japan last year by tying up with regional player OrangeOne Corporation.It seeks to replicate the re-seller model during other possible market entries, too."We had setup a robust partner network before we entered the region in March last year with a regional hub in Singapore," Freshworks' regional spokesperson told ET, adding it would continue to invest in the ASEAN region.The Mathrubootham-founded Freshworks, headquartered in San Mateo, California, is reportedly in a growth push before going public in the United States. SaaS firms, which sell a gamut of products aiding customer relationship management to workflow automation, have also discovered the potential in 'platformising' technology, not dissimilar to the way a basic automotive design is parlayed into different car variants.
Seattle’s Female Founders Alliance, which runs the Ready Set Raise accelerator for women and non-binary founders, has acquired New York’s Monarq, an incubator with similar goals and origins. The latter will be integrated into the former, but it seems to be a happy collaboration rather than a consolidation of necessity.
Monarq was founded three years ago by Irene Ryabaya and Diana Murakhovskaya, and 32 companies have gone through its process. FFA has accepted half that number into its program as of the second cohort, with a third underway for 2020. I covered graduate Give InKind in November when it raised a $1.5 million seed round.
“Monarq and FFA share a common sponsor that introduced us years ago, and we’ve been connected and supportive of each other since,” explained FFA CEO Leslie Feinzaig to TechCrunch. “This year, Diana and Irena’s side gigs started to take off — Diana raised a $20 million VC fund, and Irena’s startup, WarmIntro, started signing up substantial customers. It made strategic sense for FFA to solidify our national expansion and strengthen our network of investors and mentors that are East Coast based.”
Ryabaya and Murakhovskaya will be focusing on The Artemis Fund and WarmIntro respectively, and Monarq’s accelerator will be tucked into the Ready Set Raise brand. The merge will create what FFA claims is the country’s largest network of female and non-binary industry folks, which should prove an asset for those in the program.
It’s possible to see this as consolidation within a specialized branch of the startup industry, but Feinzaig said business is booming.
“The market for women’s leadership is absolutely growing, and creating a lot of opportunities in the process,” she said. “What’s different now is that there is a recognition that this is good business, not a charitable cause.”
The FFA’s stated goal of gender parity among founders only grows more achievable with increased reach. It may be that the increased scale also improves results in an already impressive portfolio.
Publishers hate ad blockers, but millions of internet users embrace them — and many browsers even bake it in as a feature, including Google's own Chrome. At the same time, growing numbers of publishers are walling off free content for visitors who hard-block ads, even asking users directly to be whitelisted.
It’s a fight for attention from two very different sides.
Some form of ad blocking is here to stay, so long as advertisements are irritating and the adtech industry remains deaf to genuine privacy reform. Although the nature of the ad-blocking business is generally closer to filtering than blocking, where is it headed?
We chatted with Till Faida, co-founder and CEO of eyeo, maker of Adblock Plus (ABP), to take the temperature of an evolving space that’s never been a stranger to controversy — including fresh calls for his company to face antitrust scrutiny.
New Delhi is inching closer to recommending regulations that would require social media companies and instant messaging app providers operating in the nation to help law enforcement agencies identify users who have posted content — or sent messages — it deems questionable, two people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.
India will submit the suggested change to the local intermediary liability rules to the nation's apex court later this month. The suggested change, the conditions of which may be altered before it is finalized, currently says that law enforcement agencies will have to produce a court order before exercising such requests, sources who have been briefed on the matter said.
But regardless, asking companies to comply with such a requirement would be "devastating" for international social media companies, a New Delhi-based policy advocate told TechCrunch on the condition of anonymity.
WhatsApp executives have insisted in the past that they would have to compromise end-to-end encryption of every user to meet such a demand — a move they are willing to fight over.
The government did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday evening. Sources spoke under the condition of anonymity as they are not authorized to speak to media.
The Indian government proposed (PDF) a series of changes to its intermediary liability rules in late December 2018 that, if enforced, would require to make significant changes millions of services operated by anyone, from small and medium businesses to large corporate giants such as Facebook and Google.
Among the proposed rules, the government said that intermediaries — which it defines as those services or functions that facilitate communication between two or more users and have five million or more users in India — will have to, among other things, be able to trace the originator of questionable content to avoid assuming full liability for their users’ actions.
At the heart of the changes lies the “safe harbor” laws that technology companies have so far enjoyed in many nations. The laws, currently applicable in the U.S. under the Communications Decency Act and India under its 2000 Information Technology Act, say that tech platforms won't be held liable for the things their users share on the platform.
Many stakeholders have said in recent months that the Indian government was keeping them in the dark by not sharing the changes it was making to the intermediary liability guidelines.
Nobody outside of a small government circle has seen the proposed changes since January of last year, said Shashi Tharoor, one of India’s most influential opposition politicians, in a recent interview with TechCrunch.
Software Freedom and Law Centre, a New Delhi-based digital advocacy organization, recommended last week that the government should consider removing the traceability requirement from the proposed changes to the law as it was “technically impossible to satisfy for many online intermediaries.”
“No country is demanding such a broad level of traceability as envisaged by the Draft Intermediaries Guidelines,” it added.
TechCrunch could not ascertain other changes the government is recommending.
The company says it has 167 million paid memberships worldwide, with more than 100 million outside the United States. It also reported stronger-than-expected financials, with revenue of $5.47 billion and earnings per share of $1.30, compared to analyst estimates of $5.45 billion and EPS of 53 cents.
That’s all despite the launch of two major streaming services, Disney+ and Apple TV+, with more competition coming this year from WarnerMedia’s HBOMax and NBCUniversal’s Peacock.
Netflix addresses the competitive landscape in its letter to shareholders, arguing that there’s “ample room for many services to grow as linear TV wanes,” and noting that during Q4, “our viewing per membership grew both globally and in the US on a year over year basis, consistent with recent quarters.”
That might seem like an unfair comparison, especially since Disney+ is only available in a handful of countries so far, but Netflix argues, “If Disney+ were global we don't think the picture would be much different, to judge from the NL results where Disney+ first launched.”
In fact, Netflix says “The Witcher” is on-track to become “our biggest season one TV series ever,” with 76 million member households choosing to watch the show. It also says 83 million households chose to watch the Michael Bay-directed action film “6 Underground.”
If you’re wondering about the slightly awkward “chose to watch” phrasing — yep, Netflix is switching up the (already controversial) way that it reports viewership. While it previously shared the number of accounts that watched at least 70% of an episode or film, it’s now looking at how many members chose to watch a show or movie, and then actually watched for at least two minutes (“long enough to indicate that the choice was intentional”).
The company says this increases viewer counts by an average of 35%.
“Our new methodology is similar to the BBC iPlayer in their rankings based on ‘requests’ for the title, ‘most popular’ articles on the New York Times which include those who opened the articles, and YouTube view counts,” Netflix says. “This way, short and long titles are treated equally, leveling the playing field for all types of our content including interactive content, which has no fixed length.”
One dark cloud in the earnings report is what appears to be slowing growth, with 7.0 million projected net additions in Q1 of this year, compared to 9.6 million net adds in the first quarter of 2019. Netflix attributes this to “the continued, slightly elevated churn levels we are seeing in the US,” as well as more balance between Q1 and Q2 growth this year, “due in part to the timing of last year's price changes and a strong upcoming Q2 content slate.”
As of 4:51pm Eastern, Netflix shares were up 0.41% in after-hours trading.
Ten months ago, Cruise declared it would hire at least 1,000 engineers by the end of the year, an aggressive target — even for a company with a $7.25 billion war chest — in the cutthroat autonomous vehicle industry, where startups, automakers and tech giants are battling over talent.
What Cruise didn't talk about then — or since — was who it planned to hire. The assumption was that Cruise was aiming for software engineers, the perception, planning and controls, simulation and mapping experts who would help build the "brain" of its self-driving cars. And that has certainly been one objective.
Cruise, a subsidiary of GM that also has backing from SoftBank Vision Fund, automaker Honda and T. Rowe Price & Associates, now employs more than 1,700 people, a considerable chunk of whom are software engineers.
Cruise has embarked on another initiative over the past 18 months that isn’t as well known. The company is building out a team of hardware engineers so large that, if successful, it will get its own building. Today, the first fruits of that missionare toiling away in an ever-expanding lab located in the basement of Cruise's Bryant Street building in San Francisco.
The basement won’t hold them for long — if Cruise gets its way. The company plans to dedicate the Bryant Street location, a 140,000-square-foot building that once served as its headquarters, to the hardware team, according to sources familiar with Cruise’s plans.
Some software engineers will remain at Bryant Street. But the bulk of Cruise’s software team and other employees will move to 333 Brannan Street, the former Dropbox headquarters that the company took over in 2019.
Cruise wouldn't provide specific employment numbers for its hardware or software teams. A glimpse at its current job openings, as well as other resources such as LinkedIn, suggests that it has amassed more than 300 employees dedicated to hardware. At least 10% of those people were hired in the past 90 days, according to a review of LinkedIn’s database.
And it's not done hiring. There are more than 160 open positions posted on Cruise’s website. About 106 are for software-related jobs and 35 are for hardware engineers. The remaining 24 positions are for other departments, including government, communications, office and security.
Hardware HQ
Below the airy, sunlit dining hall and the garage that houses Cruise’s self-driving test vehicles, hundreds of hardware engineers are developing everything from sensors and network systems to the compute and infotainment system for its present and future vehicles.
The upshot: Cruise is developing hardware as aggressively as its software with an eye toward future vehicles. The world will likely get the first glimpse of that future-looking hardware handiwork at Cruise’s “Beyond the Car” event that will be held late Tuesday in San Francisco.
Cruise’s value has largely been wrapped up in its software. Even six years ago, when the company was founded with a plan to develop an aftermarket kit that could be retrofitted to existing cars to give them automated highway driving capabilities, Cruise was a software company.
GM’s venture team had been tracking Cruise since early 2014, according to sources familiar with the company’s early history. But it wouldn’t be until Cruise abandoned its aftermarket kit to focus on developing an autonomous vehicle capable of city driving that the relationship would bloom.
It was then that Cruise realized it needed deeper expertise in integrating hardware and software. By late 2015, talks with GM had progressed beyond fact-finding. GM announced it acquired Cruise in March 2016.
With GM as its parent, Cruise suddenly had access to a manufacturing giant. GM’s Chevrolet Bolt EV would become the platform Cruise would use for its self-driving test vehicles. Today, Cruise has about 180 test vehicles, most of which can be seen on public roads in San Francisco.
Cruise has always employed hardware engineers. But a more focused effort on hardware development and systems integration began in early 2018 after Cruise hired Carl Jenkins as vice president of hardware and Brendan Hermalyn as director of autonomous hardware systems.
Around the same time, GM announced it would build production versions of the Cruise AV — a vehicle that would be built from the ground up to operate on its own with no driver, steering wheel, pedals or manual controls — at its Orion Township assembly plant in Michigan. Roof modules for the self-driving vehicles would be assembled at its Brownstown plant. The automaker said it would invest $100 million in the two Michigan plants to prepare for production. GM’s Orion factory already produces the Chevy Bolt EV and the third-generation test versions of Cruise’s autonomous vehicle.
Six months later, the companies announced that Honda would commit $2.75 billion as part of an exclusive agreement with GM and Cruise to develop and produce a new kind of autonomous vehicle.
Systems approach
Systems integration would become more important than ever. Hermalyn, who previously worked as the camera lead at Waymo, is one of the primary drivers of this pursuit.
To say Hermalyn is passionate about systems integration might be an understatement. In an hour-long interview last year, he frequently leaned on the term, exclaiming at one point, while standing amongst a row of test vehicles, that the “most exciting thing is the integration.” He has also published a blog post that describes Cruise’s philosophy and approach to building a system that can conduct real-time, safety-critical sensing and perception tasks at scale.
The ability to integrate hardware and software is critical for the safe operation of autonomous vehicles, and it is a common pursuit among AV developers. But the scale of Cruise’s effort, along with the fact that the team is developing much of these hardware components in house, illustrates how important this area has become for the company.
Cruise hardware development is focused on the entire AV topology, which includes the sensors, compute, network systems, connectivity, infotainment and UX.
A Cruise autonomous vehicle Saturday, January 12, 2019 in Seattle, Washington. (Photo by Stephen Brashear for Cruise)
While Cruise does some early-stage manufacturing in house, Hermalyn stressed that Cruise isn’t trying to go it alone.
“We’re lucky to have General Motors and Honda as partners,” he said during TechCrunch’s interview with him in October. “We’re able to leverage their expertise in vehicle engineering, and collaborate with them throughout the development process to seamlessly integrate that AV topology into the completed vehicles assembled on the factory production line.”
The baffle on the camera system on Cruise’s vehicle is just one tiny example of this partnership developed with GM. It’s here that a self-cleaning system has been developed and installed. Other hardware development included a bumper that better integrates sensors, mounts and lidar. Cruise acquired lidar startup Strobe in 2017.
“Our goal is to make it the fastest, not to make everything,” Hermalyn later added. “We obviously use a supplier to manufacture them, we don’t want to have the Geppetto problem where we’re stuck making one by one.”
Back in October when TechCrunch visited Cruise’s office, the basement lab was in flux. Certain areas were jammed and preparations to expand had clearly begun.
That lab build-out has continued. The hardware team is particularly focused on sensor development and is conducting some “low volume manufacturing capabilities for rapid maturation of hardware,” he said in a followup email.
“It’s not that different from what the aerospace industry has done,” Hermalyn said of the systems approach. But how you solve that I think is the unique part. With our partners, we’re able to go after these systems problems and be able to address that in the marketplace.”
Shyft is announcing it has raised $15 million in Series A funding to make the moving process less painful — specifically in the situations where your employer is paying for the move.
Other startups are looking to offer concierge-type services for regular moving — I used a service called Moved last year and liked it. But Shyft co-founder and CEO Alex Alpert (who’s spent years in the moving business) told me there are no direct competitors focused on corporate relocation.
“Even at the highest levels, the process is totally jacked up,” Alpert said. “We saw an opportunity to partner with corporations and relocation management companies to build a customized, tech-driven experience with more choices, more flexibility and to be able to navigate the quoting process seamlessly.”
So when a company that uses Shyft decides to relocate you — whether you’re a new hire or just transferring to a new office — you should get an email prompting you to download the Shyft app, where you can chat with a “move coach” who guides you through the process.
You’ll also be able to catalog the items you want to move over a video call and get estimates from movers. And you’ll receive moving-related offers from companies like Airbnb, Wag, Common, Sonder and Home Chef.
And as Alpert noted, Shyft also partners with more traditional relocation companies like Graebel, rather than treating them as competitors.
The company was originally called Crater and focused on building technology for creating accurate moving estimates via video. It changed its name and its business model back in 2018 (Alpert acknowledged, “It wasn't a very popular pitch in the beginning: ‘Hey, we're building estimation software for moving companies.’ “), but the technology remains a crucial differentiator.
“Our technology is within 95% accurate at identifying volume and weight of the move,” he said. “When moving companies know the information is reliable, they can bid very aggressively.”
As a result, Alpert said the employer benefits not just from having happier employees, but lower moving costs.
The new funding, meanwhile, was led by Inovia Capital, with participation from Blumberg Capital and FJ Labs.
“There's a total misalignment between transactional relocation services and the many logistical, social, and lifestyle needs that come with moving to a new city," Inovia partner Todd Simpson said in a statement. "As businesses shift towards more distributed workforces and talent becomes accustomed to personalized experiences, the demand for a curated moving offering will continue to grow.”
Spotify is testing a new Stories feature that will allow select influencers to incorporate video elements into their public playlists, TechCrunch has learned and Spotify confirmed. The first influencer to test the feature is makeup and fashion YouTube star Summer Mckeen, who currently has a social media fan base that includes 2.33 million YouTube subscribers, 2.1 million Instagram followers and 126,455 Spotify followers. Mckeen is using the new feature to introduce a playlist of her all-time favorite songs, which she’s titled her “all time besties.”
Like other Stories’ products found on social media apps, the Spotify version offers a similar experience that includes short video clips that users can tap on to advance to the next screen. There are also horizontal lines at the top that indicate how many screens still await them.
Above: where Stories are found on playlists
Meanwhile, the entry point for the Spotify Story is a circular icon found above the playlist’s title. This has also been designed to catch your attention with an animated preview of the video you’ll see if you tap through.
Above: Mckeen introduces her playlist of favorite songs
Once in the Story, the clips will play and advance automatically and the playlist where you found the Story is featured at the top. You can also tap the “X” to exit at any time.
Spotify’s unique take on the Stories format involves its use of music, of course.
In the new Stories feature, the influencer can also share video clips that contain small song snippets and the album art as a way of previewing the songs in the playlist. In Mckeen’s case, a few of these follow her introduction of the new playlist.
Above: Song clips in Stories
Mckeen is the first influencer to go live on Spotify Stories, but we understand the company is also planning to roll this out to other notable names across the entertainment, lifestyle and music industries in the near future. This initial group of testers is being determined by a variety of factors — including follower count, how engaged their followers are and how active the influencer in question is on Spotify. Mckeen was selected because she’s someone who likes to make playlists on her own and has many user-generated playlists she shares with fans.
Spotify isn’t currently rolling out the feature to its artists, as it’s meant to be more a tool for music discovery, rather than one for promotional purposes. Artists, instead, can reach fans creatively using Canvas — the recently launched looping videos product that can take the place of album art when a song plays. However, the company isn’t ruling out letting artists try the Stories product in the future.
Despite the similarity with other Stories found on apps like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube, Spotify’s goal isn’t to turn its app into another social media platform. Instead, it will rely on the influencers to get the word out to fans themselves using their existing accounts found elsewhere. Mckeen, for example, posted to her Instagram Stories with a deep link directly to the playlist in question.
Above: Mckeen’s IG Story
Currently, the Spotify Stories product can only be seen on iOS and Android, not desktop. (Mckeen’s is here.) And it’s available to all Spotify users — free and paid — although that could one day change. Spotify considers the product just a test for now, but is open to considering a broader rollout in the future.
Spotify confirmed the test to TechCrunch and offered a short statement.
“At Spotify, we routinely conduct a number of tests in an effort to improve our user experience. Some of those tests end up paving the path for our broader user experience and others serve only as an important learning,” a Spotify spokesperson said. “We have no further news to share on future plans at this time,” they added.
This is not the first time Spotify has dabbled with a Stories format, however. Last year, Spotify was spotted testing a Stories-like product called Storyline that was similar to “Behind the Lyrics,” but instead allowed artists to share their own insights, inspiration and other details more directly. This can still be found on Spotify on select songs, but hasn’t become broadly available.
Phones were not the centerpiece at the recently wrapped Consumer Electronics Show; I'll probably repeat this point a few more times over the course of this piece, just so we're clear. This is due, in no small part, to the fact that Mobile World Congress has mostly usurped that role.
There are always a smattering of announcements at CES, however. Some companies like to get out ahead of the MWC rush or just generally use the opportunity to better spread out news over the course of the year. As with other categories, CES's timing positions the show nicely as a kind of sneak preview for the year's biggest trends.
A cursory glance at the biggest smartphone news from the show points to the continuation of a couple of key trends. The first is affordability. Samsung leads the pack here with the introduction of two "Lite" versions of its flagship devices, the Galaxy S10 and Note 10. The addition of the line lent some confusion to Samsung's strategy amongst a handful of tech analysts around where precisely such devices would slot in the company's portfolio.
Apple has scored more big names for its newly launched streaming service, Apple TV+, including “Veep” and “Seinfeld” star Julia Louis-Dreyfus, as well as Meryl Streep, the latter who’s attached to an animated short film about Earth Day, set to premiere on April 17. In addition, Apple has now announced several new series for Apple TV+, plus renewals and premiere dates for others.
The upcoming Earth Day film, titled “Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth,” will also star the voice talents of “Room” actor Jacob Tremblay as a seven-year-old child who learns about the planet, and Chris O’Dowd and Ruth Negga as his parents. Streep will provide the voice-over narration.
Meanwhile, Louis-Dreyfus hasn’t announced specific details of her projects. Apple says she has inked an overall deal with Apple TV+ as both an executive producer and star — her first overall deal with a streaming service. Under the multi-year agreement, Louis-Dreyfus will create multiple new projects exclusively for Apple TV+.
Joked the actress: “I am thrilled about this new partnership with my friends at Apple. Also, many thanks and kudos to my representatives for structuring the deal in such a way that I am paid in AirPods,” she said.
Apple has previously signed other overall deals with names like Alfonso Cuaron, Kerry Ehrin, Jon M. Chu, Justin Lin, Jason Katims, Lee Eisenberg, as well as studios A24 and Imagine Documentaries, and Oprah.
In addition to the big-name talent grabs, Apple also on Friday announced a new documentary series, “Dear…,” from Emmy and Peabody winner R.J. Cutler. Due out this spring, the series will profile internationally known leaders, including Oprah Winfrey, Gloria Steinem, Spike Lee, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Yara Shahidi, Stevie Wonder, Aly Raisman, Misty Copeland, Big Bird (uh, what?) and others.
This is not Apple TV+’s first documentary. It’s currently airing the Peace Award winner “The Elephant Queen,” about a tribe of African elephants. And while not a documentary, per se, the service is also now featuring real life-inspired tales of immigrants in the U.S. in the Apple TV+ anthology series, “Little America” which have a documentary-like vibe. Other documentary series and films in the works include “Visible: Out on Television” “Home,” “Beastie Boys Story” and “Dads.”
Newly announced “Visible…,” exec-produced by Ryan White, Jessica Hargrave, Wanda Sykes and Wilson Cruz, focuses on the LGBTQ movement and its impact on television. Premiering on Valentine’s Day (February 14), the series will also feature narration from Janet Mock, Margaret Cho, Asia Kate Dillon, Neil Patrick Harris and Lena Waithe.
Another new show is “Central Park,” an animated musical comedy from Loren Bouchard (“Bob's Burgers”), executive producer Josh Gad (“Frozen”) and executive producer Nora Smith (“Bob's Burgers”), which will arrive this summer. The show features a family that lives in Central Park, the Tillermans, and includes a voice cast with the talents of Josh Gad, Leslie Odom Jr., Kristen Bell, Kathryn Hahn, Tituss Burgess, Daveed Diggs and Stanley Tucci. The animation style has the distinct look of “Bob’s Burgers,” as well.
Apple’s first original series from the U.K., “Trying,” will premiere on May 1st globally. This series stars Rafe Spall and Esther Smith, hails from BBC Studios and was written by Andy Wolton. As the name hints, the story is about a couple — Jason and Nikki — who are trying to have a baby. But Apple describes the show’s larger theme as one about “growing up, settling down and finding someone to love.”
A new thriller, “Defending Jacob,” based on the 2012 NYT bestseller of the same name, will premiere April 24.
The limited series stars Chris Evans, Michelle Dockery, Jaeden Martell, Cherry Jones, Pablo Schreiber, Betty Gabriel and Sakina Jaffrey, and tells of a shocking crime that rocks a small Massachusetts town. The story follows an assistant district attorney who is torn between duty to uphold justice and his love for his son. Academy Award-winner J.K. Simmons guest stars.
Apple also announced its live-action comedy that follows a team of video game developers, “Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet,” has been renewed for a second season ahead of its global premiere date of February 7.
The show was co-created by Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day and Megan Ganz, and also stars McElhenney as the fictional company’s creative director, Ian Grimm.
Other shows awarded a second season include “Little America,” “Dickinson,” “See,” “Servant,” “For All Mankind,” “The Morning Show” and the soon-to-premiere “Home Before Dark.”
Despite not sharing any sort of viewership data — even with the shows’ stars — the renewals speak to Apple’s confidence in its original programming.
“Home Before Dark” is a dramatic mystery series featuring young investigative journalist Hilde Lysiak, and is exec-produced by Jon M. Chu. Based on the real-life kid reporter of the same name, the series takes Hilde’s story into fictional territory by telling a tale of a young girl who moves from Brooklyn to a small lakeside town where she ends up unearthing a cold case that everyone in town, including her dad, has tried to bury. The real Lysiak, however, runs an online news operation, Orange Street News, which made headlines when the then 11-year-old girl scooped local news outlets by being the first to expose a murder in her hometown of Selinsgrove, Pa.
Steven Spielberg’s “Amazing Stories” has also now been given a premiere date of March 6. The rebooted anthology series is run by Eddy Kitsis and Adam Horowitz (“Lost”), and features episode directors Chris Long (“The Americans,” “The Mentalist”), Mark Mylod (“Succession,” “Game of Thrones”), Michael Dinner (“Unbelievable,” “Sneaky Pete”), Susanna Fogel (“Utopia,” “Play By Play”) and Sylvain White (“Stomp the Yard,” “The Rookie”).
Also previously announced, Apple set a premiere date for the new documentary series “Home,” which will air on April 17. The series offers viewers a look inside some of the world’s most innovative homes around the world.
Though only two months old, Apple TV+ has already landed its first Hollywood industry award, as “The Morning Show” star Jennifer Aniston snagged a SAG Award for best female actor in a drama. Co-star Billy Crudup also won a Critics’ Choice Award for best-supporting actor.
Google’s strategy for bringing new customers to its cloud is to focus on the enterprise and specific verticals like healthcare, energy, financial service and retail, among others. Its healthcare efforts recently experienced a bit of a setback, with Epic now telling its customers that it is not moving forward with its plans to support Google Cloud, but in return, Google now got to announce two new customers in the travel business: Lufthansa Group, the world’s largest airline group by revenue, and Sabre, a company that provides backend services to airlines, hotels and travel aggregators.
For Sabre, Google Cloud is now the preferred cloud provider. Like a lot of companies in the travel (and especially the airline) industry, Sabre runs plenty of legacy systems and is currently in the process of modernizing its infrastructure. To do so, it has now entered a 10-year strategic partnership with Google “to improve operational agility while developing new services and creating a new marketplace for its airline, hospitality and travel agency customers.” The promise, here, too, is that these new technologies will allow the company to offer new travel tools for its customers.
When you hear about airline systems going down, it’s often Sabre’s fault, so just being able to avoid that would already bring a lot of value to its customers.
“At Google we build tools to help others, so a big part of our mission is helping other companies realize theirs. We're so glad that Sabre has chosen to work with us to further their mission of building the future of travel,” said Google CEO Sundar Pichai . “Travelers seek convenience, choice and value. Our capabilities in AI and cloud computing will help Sabre deliver more of what consumers want.”
The same holds true for Google’s deal with Lufthansa Group, which includes German flag carrier Lufthansa itself, but also subsidiaries like Austrian, Swiss, Eurowings and Brussels Airlines, as well as a number of technical and logistics companies that provide services to various airlines.
“By combining Google Cloud’s technology with Lufthansa Group's operational expertise, we are driving the digitization of our operation even further,” said Dr. Detlef Kayser, member of the executive board of the Lufthansa Group. “This will enable us to identify possible flight irregularities even earlier and implement countermeasures at an early stage.”
Lufthansa Group has selected Google as a strategic partner to “optimized its operations performance.” A team from Google will work directly with Lufthansa to bring this project to life. The idea here is to use Google Cloud to build tools that help the company run its operations as smoothly as possible and to provide recommendations when things go awry due to bad weather, airspace congestion or a strike (which seems to happen rather regularly at Lufthansa these days).
Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
Today we’re taking a moment to discuss the amount of money going into startups building OKR software. After covering WorkBoard’s recent round, I’ve noticed OKR software and services everywhere, even in Twitter ads that I somehow can’t avoid.
But surely there can’t be too many startups focused on OKR-related software and services? To answer that, let’s take a moment to detail out some of the startups in the space and their venture history. Leaning on my own research and some work by G2, this should be an entertaining way to spend our morning. Doubly so as several startups that we’ll discuss below (WorkBoard and Gtmhub, among others) are growing their ARR by several hundred percent each year, at the moment.
We’ll start with the world’s fastest definition of what OKRs are, and then dive in.
Losing access to Google software and services understandably threw Huawei for a loop. The Chinese hardware giant has clearly been working on a contingency plan to deal with the loss of access to things like Android and the Play Store, but Google's offering formed so much of the devices' software core — as they do so many of its competitors.
Huawei just lined up a pretty big name in its attempts to rebuild a competitive software suite. Dutch mapping giant TomTom has agreed to provide access to its navigation, mapping and traffic information. The two companies finalized a deal this week, per Reuters, letting Huawei use that information to build its own proprietary apps.
TomTom confirmed the deal, but declined to offer additional information. The move comes as the mapping company has taken a step back from hardware offerings in favor of monetizing its software services. Given Huawei's pretty massive footprint in the global smartphone market, this presents a pretty big deal for TomTom, which had previously provided info for AppleMaps.
Huawei was left reeling from U.S. sanctions that cut off access to U.S.-produced software and components. The company has been working to build its own Android competitor behind the scenes, though what we've seen of HarmonyOS has thus far been fairly muted. Rumors have also swirled around Huawei developing its own Maps competitor, so it’s hard to say how much it views this new deal as a stopgap.
Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, today announced the launch of Anbox Cloud, a new platform that allows enterprises to run Android in the cloud.
On Anbox Cloud, Android becomes the guest operating system that runs containerized applications. This opens up a range of use cases, ranging from bespoke enterprise apps to cloud gaming solutions.
The result is similar to what Google does with Android apps on Chrome OS, though the implementation is quite different and is based on the LXD container manager, as well as a number of Canonical projects like Juju and MAAS for provisioning the containers and automating the deployment. “LXD containers are lightweight, resulting in at least twice the container density compared to Android emulation in virtual machines – depending on streaming quality and/or workload complexity,” the company points out in its announcements.
Anbox itself, it’s worth noting, is an open-source project that came out of Canonical and the wider Ubuntu ecosystem. Launched by Canonical engineer Simon Fels in 2017, Anbox runs the full Android system in a container, which in turn allows you to run Android application on any Linux-based platform.
What’s the point of all of this? Canonical argues that it allows enterprises to offload mobile workloads to the cloud and then stream those applications to their employees’ mobile devices. But Canonical is also betting on 5G to enable more use cases, less because of the available bandwidth but more because of the low latencies it enables.
“Driven by emerging 5G networks and edge computing, millions of users will benefit from access to ultra-rich, on-demand Android applications on a platform of their choice,” said Stephan Fabel, director of Product at Canonical, in today’s announcement. “Enterprises are now empowered to deliver high performance, high density computing to any device remotely, with reduced power consumption and in an economical manner.”
Outside of the enterprise, one of the use cases that Canonical seems to be focusing on is gaming and game streaming. A server in the cloud is generally more powerful than a smartphone, after all, though that gap is closing.
Canonical also cites app testing as another use case, given that the platform would allow developers to test apps on thousands of Android devices in parallel. Most developers, though, prefer to test their apps in real — not emulated — devices, given the fragmentation of the Android ecosystem.
Anbox Cloud can run in the public cloud, though Canonical is specifically partnering with edge computing specialist Packet to host it on the edge or on-premise. Silicon partners for the project are Ampere and Intel .
I'm still going through some of the comments I received on last week's articles about the heightened competition among VCs for the best (typically SaaS) venture deals. Some more notes on whether large funds investing in small rounds causes VC signaling risk in a moment, but first, a fun anecdote about how lame LPs (still) are.
I was catching up with an ambitious founder of a VC firm this weekend, and we were talking about fundraising for VC firms, and, particularly, the process of connecting with limited partners. Like startup founders, investment firms typically submit fund proposal decks and data rooms to potential LPs, who are then supposed to evaluate said material and either move toward an investment, ask for more information or run the hell away.
Unlike VCs, however, LPs have apparently not caught on to the fact that access to this information is much more trackable than it was in the past. VCs now realize that their perusal of a deck on DocSend is being monitored by founders, and I have heard from more than one VC over the years that they have their executive assistants click through a deck in a deliberately slow fashion to make it look like they are putting more thought and attention into reading a founder's fundraise deck than they really are.
LPs, though, have no such inkling that this is going on, apparently. From the VC firm founder this weekend (paraphrasing), "What's amazing is that I get asked for my data room, and then the potential LP will set up a time two weeks in the future to meet again. Fifteen minutes before our meeting, I get an email notification that they finally opened up the data room and started accessing its files."
The best part is where the potential LP then waxes on about how much thought they put into their feedback to the VC.
Founder referenceability
As I explained last week, the paradox of big VC funds today is that they are actually doing more of the smaller startup fundraises as a way to secure access to later-stage deals.
So for many deals today, those later-stage cap tables are essentially locking out new investors, because there is already so much capital sitting around the cap table just salivating to double down.
That gets us straight to the paradox. In order to have access to later-stage rounds, you have to already be on the cap table, which means that you have to do the smaller, earlier-stage rounds. Suddenly, growth investors are coming back to early-stage rounds (including seed) just to have optionality on access to these startups and their fundraises.
One response I heard from a seed VC is that they focus on "founder referenceability." What they mean by that is they use their existing portfolio founders as the key persuasion tool to convince new founders to take their term sheet over other (larger) competitors.
This particular seed investor argued (whether true or not) that they spend copious amounts of time in a concentrated manner with their portfolio companies, helping them with recruiting, business strategy and customer development. That's compared to larger firms, which have dozens (perhaps even hundreds) of seed investments and where founders can easily feel abandoned and without any support. "We win every time when founders talk to our portfolio companies," was the general sentiment.
And yet. For founders living and dying by the ambiguity of their market, their product, their talent and their future, that imprimatur of a big brand-name VC firm — even with paltry founder recommendations — is extremely hard to turn down. As a founder, do you want the VC who is going to work his or her ass off to help build your company, or the VC whose selection of your startup gives you (and likely your employees and your customers) the peace of mind that things are going really, really well?
The sense I get is that the viewpoint is shifting to the former from the latter, but the reality is that most founders can't turn down the allure of the big-name fund, even if they get an abundant set of glowing references about a lesser-known firm. Ultimately, that hard-working VC can help you with key hires and customers, but the reputation of a big firm will grease the wheel of every decision that gets made about your startup.
VC signaling
The other line of responses I got — including an extensive missive from a partner at a top-20 firm — is that VC signaling still limits the impact of a lot of the largest funds to invest earlier. Founders realize, the thinking goes, that taking money from a fund that can lead the next three rounds is bad, since if their investor doesn't lead those rounds, it signals to other VCs that something is wrong with the company.
I increasingly feel VC signaling is a completely phantom pattern these days (disagree? Tell me your story → danny@techcrunch.com). Not only do I think that VCs increasingly ignore these types of signals, I think the VCs who hustle the most aggressively are targeting the early-seed checks of other funds in particular and intercepting their best deals.
Why does this work? For one, large firms haven't really figured out how to manage the information flows from hundreds of portfolio companies simultaneously, so they consistently miss the inflection points of their own startups — points that smart VCs with good noses for opportunity identity faster.
Second, there is indeed something about referenceability and founder abandonment — a number of founders have told me that they send out a multitude of tweaked investor updates that include more or less information based on the relationship they have with an investor. Often their lead investor is getting the least information — and doesn't even realize it. It's a subtle hack for handling what could otherwise be an awkward situation. It also helps to create FOMO around a round that is particularly exploited by startup angels eager to find the largest early uptick in their portfolio.
Third, and finally, as with all good VC investors, seeing an investment with a fresh pair of eyes rather than through the cynical air of experience can often lead to radically different investment decisions. An incumbent investor may have heard all the data and promises from a founder for one, two or three years, and fails to see the slight changes happening at the end, while a new investor without that background can make a new decision based on the best evidence in front of them today.
The lesson to me isn't that investors suddenly decided to ignore signals. It is that with so much competition for startup cap tables, having the right numbers and a great product story and narrative will overcome any other VC signal, positive or negative. And for the VCs themselves, there's nothing quite like snatching the best golden egg from a competitor's nest while they are out flying around searching for the next great deal, which if they had looked a little closer, just happened to be right in front of them.
Last year, Tim Cook-backed shower startup Nebia announced it had raised a Series A led by the faucet-maker Moen. This year, we’re seeing the fruits of the exclusive partnership — the startup’s third-generation shower head. The product, called Nebia by Moen, is launching on Kickstarter for $199 and will retail for $269 for the shower head and wand.
The startup’s latest product is by far its least-expensive offering yet, and after a side-by-side shower test conducted by yours truly, I can say there isn’t a major difference between the Nebia by Moen and the company’s Nebia Spa Shower 2.0, something that may make continued sales of the last-gen shower, which retails for $499, a bit of a challenge.
The new hardware has earned its new price point largely by a simplified design and being routed through Moen’s supply chain. The water droplets are bigger, there are fewer nozzles and it all in all feels a bit more like a traditional shower than previous efforts. The aesthetics of the new offering are more mass-market, but it still feels distinctly similar to the design of the last two generations. The product comes in three colors and users can buy the shower head on its own for $160 during the Kickstarter campaign.
Former CEO Philip Winter has stepped down into the role of CMO and president, while fellow co-founder Gabe Parisi-Amon has taken over the reigns as CEO. I chatted with Winter at length on the broader hardware market and whether consumers were willing to fork over money for a premium shower experience. Check out the interview linked below (Extra Crunch membership required).
One of the big questions I got around the time the Apple Card launched was whether you'd be able to download a file of your transactions to either work with manually or import into a piece of expenses management software. The answer, at the time, was no.
Now Apple is announcing that Apple Card users will be able to export monthly transactions to a downloadable spreadsheet that they can use with their personal budgeting apps or sheets.
When I shot out a request for recommendations for a Mint replacement for my financing and budgeting, a lot of the responses showed just how spreadsheet-oriented many of the tools on the market are. Mint accepts imports, as do others like Clarity Money, YNAB and Lunch Money. As do, of course, personal solutions rolled in Google Sheets or other spreadsheet programs.
The one rec I got the most and which I'm trying out right now, Copilot, does not currently support importing spreadsheets, but founder Andres Ugarte told me it's on their list to add. Ugarte told me that they're happy to see the download feature appear because it lets users monitor their finances on their own terms. "Apple Card support has been a top request from our users, so we are very excited to provide a way for them to import their data into Copilot.”
Here's how to export a spreadsheet of your monthly transactions:
Open Wallet
Tap “Apple Card”
Tap “Card Balance”
Tap on one of the monthly statements
Tap on “Export Transactions”
If you don't yet have a monthly statement, you won't see this feature until you do. The last step brings up a standard share sheet letting you email or send the file however you normally would. The current format is CSV, but in the near future you'll get an OFX option as well.
So if you're using one of the tools (or spreadsheet setups) that would benefit from being able to download a monthly statement of your Apple Card transactions, then you're getting your wish from the Apple Card team today. If you use a tool that requires something more along the lines of API-level access, like something using Plaid or another account linking-centric tool, then you're going to have to wait longer.
No info from Apple on when that will arrive, if at all, but I know that the team is continuing to launch new features, so my guess is that this is coming at some point.
Training an artificial intelligence agent to do something like navigate a complex 3D world is computationally expensive and time-consuming. In order to better create these potentially useful systems, Facebook engineers derived huge efficiency benefits from, essentially, leaving the slowest of the pack behind.
It’s part of the company’s new focus on “embodied AI,” meaning machine learning systems that interact intelligently with their surroundings. That could mean lots of things — responding to a voice command using conversational context, for instance, but also more subtle things like a robot knowing it has entered the wrong room of a house. Exactly why Facebook is so interested in that I’ll leave to your own speculation, but the fact is they’ve recruited and funded serious researchers to look into this and related domains of AI work.
To create such “embodied” systems, you need to train them using a reasonable facsimile of the real world. One can’t expect an AI that’s never seen an actual hallway to know what walls and doors are. And given how slow real robots actually move in real life you can’t expect them to learn their lessons here. That’s what led Facebook to create Habitat, a set of simulated real-world environments meant to be photorealistic enough that what an AI learns by navigating them could also be applied to the real world.
Such simulators, which are common in robotics and AI training, are also useful because, being simulators, you can run many instances of them at the same time — for simple ones, thousands simultaneously, each one with an agent in it attempting to solve a problem and eventually reporting back its findings to the central system that dispatched it.
Unfortunately, photorealistic 3D environments use a lot of computation compared to simpler virtual ones, meaning that researchers are limited to a handful of simultaneous instances, slowing learning to a comparative crawl.
The Facebook researchers, led by Dhruv Batra and Erik Wijmans, the former a professor and the latter a PhD student at Georgia Tech, found a way to speed up this process by an order of magnitude or more. And the result is an AI system that can navigate a 3D environment from a starting point to goal with a 99.9% success rate and few mistakes.
Simple navigation is foundational to a working “embodied AI” or robot, which is why the team chose to pursue it without adding any extra difficulties.
“It’s the first task. Forget the question answering, forget the context — can you just get from point A to point B? When the agent has a map this is easy, but with no map it’s an open problem,” said Batra. “Failing at navigation means whatever stack is built on top of it is going to come tumbling down.”
The problem, they found, was that the training systems were spending too much time waiting on slowpokes. Perhaps it’s unfair to call them that — these are AI agents that for whatever reason are simply unable to complete their task quickly.
“It’s not necessarily that they’re learning slowly,” explained Wijmans. “But if you’re simulating navigating a one-bedroom apartment, it’s much easier to do that than navigate a 10-bedroom mansion.”
The central system is designed to wait for all its dispatched agents to complete their virtual tasks and report back. If a single agent takes 10 times longer than the rest, that means there’s a huge amount of wasted time while the system sits around waiting so it can update its information and send out a new batch.
This little explanatory gif shows how when one agent gets stuck, it delays others learning from its experience.
The innovation of the Facebook team is to intelligently cut off these unfortunate laggards before they finish. After a certain amount of time in simulation, they’re done, and whatever data they’ve collected gets added to the hoard.
“You have all these workers running, and they’re all doing their thing, and they all talk to each other,” said Wijmans. “One will tell the others, ‘okay, I’m almost done,’ and they’ll all report in on their progress. Any ones that see they’re lagging behind the rest will reduce the amount of work that they do before the big synchronization that happens.”
In this case you can see that each worker stops at the same time and shares simultaneously.
If a machine learning agent could feel bad, I’m sure it would at this point, and indeed that agent does get “punished” by the system, in that it doesn’t get as much virtual “reinforcement” as the others. The anthropomorphic terms make this out to be more human than it is — essentially inefficient algorithms or ones placed in difficult circumstances get downgraded in importance. But their contributions are still valuable.
“We leverage all the experience that the workers accumulate, no matter how much, whether it’s a success or failure — we still learn from it,” Wijmans explained.
What this means is that there are no wasted cycles where some workers are waiting for others to finish. Bringing more experience on the task at hand in on time means the next batch of slightly better workers goes out that much earlier, a self-reinforcing cycle that produces serious gains.
In the experiments they ran, the researchers found that the system, catchily named Decentralized Distributed Proximal Policy Optimization or DD-PPO, appeared to scale almost ideally, with performance increasing nearly linearly to more computing power dedicated to the task. That is to say, increasing the computing power 10x resulted in nearly 10x the results. On the other hand, standard algorithms led to very limited scaling, where 10x or 100x the computing power only results in a small boost to results because of how these sophisticated simulators hamstring themselves.
These efficient methods let the Facebook researchers produce agents that could solve a point to point navigation task in a virtual environment within their allotted time with 99.9% reliability. They even demonstrated robustness to mistakes, finding a way to quickly recognize they’d taken a wrong turn and go back the other way.
The researchers speculated that the agents had learned to “exploit the structural regularities,” a phrase that in some circumstances means the AI figured out how to cheat. But Wijmans clarified that it’s more likely that the environments they used have some real-world layout rules.
“These are real houses that we digitized, so they’re learning things about how western-style houses tend to be laid out,” he said. Just as you wouldn’t expect the kitchen to enter directly into a bedroom, the AI has learned to recognize other patterns and make other “assumptions.”
The next goal is to find a way to let these agents accomplish their task with fewer resources. Each agent had a virtual camera it navigated with that provided it ordinary and depth imagery, but also an infallible coordinate system to tell where it traveled and a compass that always pointed toward the goal. If only it were always so easy! But until this experiment, even with those resources the success rate was considerably lower even with far more training time.
Habitat itself is also getting a fresh coat of paint with some interactivity and customizability.
Habitat as seen through a variety of virtualized vision systems.
“Before these improvements, Habitat was a static universe,” explained Wijmans. “The agent can move and bump into walls, but it can’t open a drawer or knock over a table. We built it this way because we wanted fast, large-scale simulation — but if you want to solve tasks like ‘go pick up my laptop from my desk,’ you’d better be able to actually pick up that laptop.”
Therefore, now Habitat lets users add objects to rooms, apply forces to those objects, check for collisions and so on. After all, there’s more to real life than disembodied gliding around a frictionless 3D construct.
The improvements should make Habitat a more robust platform for experimentation, and will also make it possible for agents trained in it to directly transfer their learning to the real world — something the team has already begun work on and will publish a paper on soon.
Finding the right product/market fit is challenging for any company, but it’s just a little harder for hardware startups.
I recently visited the San Francisco offices of Nebia to chat with co-founder and CEO Philip Winter, whose eco-friendly hardware startup has received funding from Apple CEO Tim Cook, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Fitbit CEO James Park. After checking out the company’s latest shower head, we eased into a discussion about the opportunities and challenges facing hardware startups in Silicon Valley today.
TechCrunch: What’s so hard about hardware in 2020?
Philip Winter: The hardware landscape was, at one point, super-hot, at least in Silicon Valley. I would say like three or four years ago. A lot of companies came out with breakout products and a lot of them disappeared over the years since then. A lot of them are our peers — it’s a fairly small community.
Party on, startuppers. We've just printed up a fresh batch of tickets to our 3rd Annual Winter Party at Galvanize in San Francisco on February 7. If you haven't snagged yours yet, don't wait, because tickets to this event fly off the proverbial shelf. Buy your ticket right now.
Our annual winter soiree features 1,000 of Silicon Valley's brightest minds, makers and visionaries relaxing over passed canapes and delightful libations. It's the perfect way to meet your colleagues, expand your network, shake off the winter blues and just have some fun.
Let's face it — networking works better in a relaxed setting. You never know who you'll meet at a TechCrunch party — it might be a relationship that takes your business to new heights. Our parties have a history of creating startup magic.
We're not kidding when we say this is a popular event. Case in point: Our demo table packages sold out in a flash. As you swill and chill, be sure to check out the up-and-coming startups showcasing their tech. We have a limited number of tickets left, and they're going fast.
When: Friday, February 7, 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Where: Galvanize, 44 Tehama St., San Francisco, CA 94105
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In recent years, the retail category has become one of the biggest and best-funded robotics categories — particularly when coupled with connected verticals like warehouse fulfillment and logistics. Berkshire Grey has flown mostly under the radar, but is kicking off 2020 with some pretty sizable funding news.
The Massachusetts-based company just announced a lofty $263 million Series B. The round is led by SoftBank, which has taken a particular interest in robotics of late, along with participation from Khosla Ventures, New Enterprise Associates and Canaan.
In spite of having a name that sounds like a financial holdings company, Berkshire Grey has displayed some pretty sophisticated pick-and-place robots. It's positioned particularly well in the warehouse space, making it a competitor with the likes of Amazon Robotics and Fetch. Like the others, Berkshire's pitch is largely around questions of labor shortages in such high-intensity jobs, while claiming to increase e-commerce operations by 70% to 80%.
"Our customers from leading enterprises in retail, ecommerce, and logistics are selecting Berkshire Grey as a competitive differentiator," founder and CEO Tom Wagner said in a release tied to the news. "With our intelligent robotic automation, our clients see faster and more efficient supply chain operations that enable them to address the wants of today's savvy consumer."
The funding follows recent rounds by companies like Bossa Nova, Osaro Realtime and a $23 million raise by Soft Robotics earlier this week. Berkshire says the money will go toward increased headcount, acquisitions and a push toward international growth.
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