We are capable of destroying Israel in just 12 minutes: Pak commander

New Delhi, Jul 15: Air India has started the process of identifying employees, based on various factors like efficiency, health and redundancy, who will be sent on compulsory leave without pay (LWP) for up to five years, according to an official order.

The airline's board of directors have authorised its Chairman and Managing Director Rajiv Bansal to send employees on LWP "for six months or for a period of two years extendable upto five years, depending upon the following factors - suitability, efficiency, competence, quality of performance, health of the employee, instance of non-availability of the employee for duty in the past as a result of ill health or otherwise and redundancy", the order said on Tuesday.

The departmental heads in the headquarter as well as regional directors are required to assess each employee "on the above mentioned factors and identify the cases where option of compulsory LWP can be exercised", stated the order dated July 14.

"Names of such employees need to be forwarded to the General Manager (Personnel) in headquarter for obtaining necessary approval of CMD," the order added.

In response to queries regarding this matter, Air India spokesperson said,"We would not like to make any comment on the issue."

Aviation sector has been significantly impacted due to the travel restrictions imposed in India and other countries due to the coronavirus pandemic. All airlines in India have taken cost-cutting measures such as pay cuts, LWP and firings of employees in order to conserve cash flow.

For example, GoAir has put most of its employees on compulsory LWP since April.

India resumed domestic passenger flights from May 25 after a gap of two months due to the coronavirus pandemic.

However, the airlines have been allowed to operate only a maximum of 45 per cent of their pre-COVID domestic flights. Occupancy rate in Indian domestic flights has been around 50-60 per cent since May 25.

Scheduled international passenger flights continue to remain suspended in India since March 23.

The passenger demand for air travel will contract by 49 per cent in 2020 for Indian carriers in comparison to 2019 due to COVID-19 crisis, said global airlines body IATA on Monday.

Washington, Jun 26: The US is reviewing its global deployment of forces to ensure it is postured appropriately to counter the People's Liberation Army, given the increasing threat posed by China to Asian countries like India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday.

Mr Pompeo made those remarks in response to a question during the virtual Brussels Forum 2020 of the German Marshall Fund.

"We're going to make sure we're postured appropriately to counter the PLA. We think that the challenge of our times, and we're going to make sure we have resources in place to do that," Mr Pompeo said.
 
The force posture review is being done at the direction of President Donald Trump, as part of which the US is reducing the number of its troops in Germany from about 52,000 to 25,000, he said.

Mike Pompeo said that the force posture would be dictated by the ground realities.

"In certain places there will be fewer American resources. There'll be other places - I just talked about the threat from the Chinese Communist Party, so now threats to India, threats to Vietnam, threats to Malaysia, Indonesia, South China Sea challenges, the Philippines," he said.

"To the extent that that changed, the difference in what the US decided to do impacts adversely a threat some place, it may be that other nations need to step up and take responsibility for their own defense in ways that they hadn't done previously. So, we want to do this in full consultation with all of our partners all around the world, and certainly our friends in Europe," Mr Pompeo said.

President Trump is being criticised for reducing troops from Germany. His critics say that this will increase the threat from Russia to Europe.

Mike Pompeo, however, did not agree with that argument.

It has been a long time since there has been a strategic review of our force posture all across the world. The US undertook that starting about 2.5 years ago, whether that was our forces in Africa, our forces in Asia, the force we have in the Middle East and in Europe, he said.

"We began to say these are often decisions that were made in a different time. Should we reallocate those a different way? Should we have a different composition of those forces? Everyone always wants to talk about ground troops. I get it. I was a young tank officer. You described that. There's nothing I like as much as a good M1 tank.

"But it's often the case that the capacity to deter Russia or other adversaries isn''t determined any longer by just having a bunch of folks garrisoned someplace. So, we really went to back fundamentally relook, what is the nature of the conflict, what''s the nature of the threat, and how should we allocate our resources, whether that''s our resources in the intelligence community, our resources from the Air Force or the Marines and Army," Mr Pompeo said.

Last week, Mike Pompeo criticised the Chinese Army for "escalating" the border tension with India and militarising the strategic South China Sea. He also described the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) as a "rogue actor".

"Our broad set of allocation of security apparatus, our ability to counter cyber threats, how do we allocate them? What''s the best way to do this? And the decision that you see the president made with respect to Germany is an outcome from a collective set of decisions about how we''re going to posture our resources around the world," said the top American diplomat on Thursday.

Changes in force posture is being taken in consultations with allies and friends, Mr Pompeo said.

"President Trump has spoken to this. (Defense) Secretary (Mark) Esper will be in London today and in Brussels tomorrow. We''ll talk about our plan and how we''re thinking about delivering it," he said.

"But you should understand this, and I hope our European partners will understand this as well. When you see what we ultimately conclude, how we ultimately deliver on the statements of the president made, that they''re aimed squarely at what we believe to be democracies'' fundamental interest and certainly America's most fundamental interest," Mr Pompeo said.

Earlier this month, Mike Pompeo had said that China's actions, be it on the India border, or in Hong Kong or in the South China Sea, were part of the behaviour of the ruling Communist Party in Beijing in the recent past.

China has been fast expanding military and economic influence in the Indo-Pacific region, triggering concern in various countries of the region and beyond.

China is engaged in hotly contested territorial disputes in both the South China Sea and the East China Sea. Beijing has built up and militarised many of the islands and reefs it controls in the region. Both areas are stated to be rich in minerals, oil and other natural resources and are vital to global trade.

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Washington, Jan 10: It is “highly likely” that Iran shot down the civilian Ukrainian jetliner that crashed near Tehran late Tuesday, killing all 176 people on board, U.S., Canadian and British officials declared Thursday.

They said the fiery missile strike could well have been a mistake amid rocket launches and high tension throughout the region.

The crash came just a few hours after Iran launched a ballistic attack against Iraqi military bases housing U.S. troops in its violent confrontation with Washington over the U.S. drone strike that killed an Iranian Revolutionary Guard general. The airliner could have been mistaken for a threat, said four U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, whose country lost at least 63 citizens in the downing, said in Toronto: “We have intelligence from multiple sources including our allies and our own intelligence. The evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile.”

Likewise, U.K. prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian prime minister Scott Morrison offered similar statements. Morrison also said it appeared to be a mistake. “All of the intelligence as presented to us today does not suggest an intentional act,” he said.

The assessment that 176 people were killed as collateral damage in the Iranian-U.S. conflict cast a new pall over what had at first appeared to be a relatively calm aftermath following the U.S. military operation that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

At the White House, U.S. president Donald Trump suggested he believed Iran was responsible for the shootdown and dismissed Iran's initial claim that it was a mechanical issue with the plane.

“Somebody could have made a mistake on the other side.” Trump said, noting the plane was flying in a “pretty rough neighborhood."