'SP has turned Azamgarh into stronghold of terrorism'

Washington, Jan 2: The number of people killed in large commercial airplane crashes fell by more than 50% in 2019 despite a high-profile Boeing 737 MAX crash in Ethiopia in March, a Dutch consulting firm said on Wednesday. Aviation consulting firm To70 said there were 86 accidents involving large commercial planes - including eight fatal incidents - resulting in 257 fatalities last year. In 2018, there were 160 accidents, including 13 fatal ones, resulting in 534 deaths, the firm said.

To70 said the fatal accident rate for large airplanes in commercial passenger air transport was just 0.18 fatal accident per million flights in 2019, or an average one fatal accident every 5.58 million flights, a significant improvement over 2018. The fatality numbers include passengers, air crew such as flight attendants and any people on the ground killed in a plane accident

Large passenger airplanes in the study are aircraft used by nearly all travelers on airlines worldwide but excludes small commuter airplanes in service, including the Cessna Caravan and some smaller turboprop airplanes, according to To70.

On Dec. 23, Boeing's board said it had fired Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg after a pair of fatal crashes involving the 737 MAX forced it to announce it was halting output of its best-selling jetliner. The 737 MAX has been grounded since March after an October 2018 crash in Indonesia and the crash of a MAX in Ethiopia in March killed a total of 346 people.

To70 said the aviation industry spent significant effort in 2019 "focusing on so-called 'future threats' such as drones." But the MAX crashes "are a reminder that we need to retain our focus on the basics that make civil aviation so safe: well-designed and well-built aircraft flown by fully informed and well-trained crews."

The Aviation Safety Network said on Wednesday that, despite the MAX crash, 2019 "was one of the safest years ever for commercial aviation." The 157 people killed in March on Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 accounted for more than half of all deaths last year worldwide in passenger airline crashes.

Over the last two decades, aviation deaths around the world have been falling dramatically even as travel has increased. As recently as 2005, there were 1,015 deaths aboard commercial passenger flights worldwide, the Aviation Safety Network said.

Last week, 12 people were killed when a Fokker 100 operated by Kazakh carrier Bek Air crashed near Almaty after takeoff. In May, a Russian Sukhoi Superjet 100 aircraft caught fire as it made an emergency landing at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, killing 41 people.

The figures do not include accidents involving military flights, training flights, private flights, cargo operations and helicopters.

Mumbai, May 4: Days after Facebook, private equity firm Silver Lake said it will invest 56.56 billion rupees ($746.74 million) in Reliance Industries's digital arm, giving it a valuation of 4.90 trillion rupees. Silver Lake on Monday agreed to pay Rs 5,655.75 crore to buy 1.15 per cent stake in the firm that houses billionaire Mukesh Ambani's telecom arm Jio.

The investment in Jio Platforms comes within days of Facebook investing USD 5.7 billion to buy a 9.99 per cent stake in Jio Platforms. The investment is at a premium of 12.5 per cent to the Facebook deal.

"This investment values Jio Platforms at an equity value of Rs 4.90 lakh crore and an enterprise value of Rs 5.15 lakh crore and represents a 12.5 per cent premium to the equity valuation of the Facebook investment announced on April 22, 2020," Reliance said in a statement.

New Delhi, Mar 6: After Yes Bank was placed under moratorium, digital payments were impacted as PhonePe, which depends on the cash-strapped lender for its transactions, could not operate.

It can be noted that the bank's own net banking facilities have not been operational since last evening. Other fintech operators who rely on Yes Bank to settle their transactions are also down.  “We sincerely regret the long outage. Our partner bank (Yes Bank) was placed under moratorium by RBI. Entire team's been working all night to get services back up asap (as soon as possible),” the app's chief executive Sameer Nigam tweeted early in the morning.

PhonePe, one of the country's largest digital payment platforms, is dependent on Yes Bank to process its transactions.

He added that the app hopes to be live in a “few hours”.

Yes Bank placed under a moratorium Thursday evening, with the RBI capping deposit withdrawals at Rs 50,000 per account for a month and superseding its board.

Yes Bank will not be able to grant or renew any loan or advance, make any investment, incur any liability or agree to disburse any payment.

For the next month, Yes Bank will led by the RBI-appointed administrator Prashant Kumar, an ex-chief financial officer of SBI.

He added that the app - one of the most popular interfaces for UPI transactions - hopes to be live in a “few hours”.