Air India limps back to normal after costly strike



NEW DELHI // Flag-carrier Air India's flight operations were gradually returning to normal Saturday after pilots ended a 10-day strike that cost the ailing airline millions of dollars in lost revenues.

Close to 700 pilots working for the domestic service of state-run Air India launched the strike to demand wage parity with colleagues flying international routes.

"The pilots are already reporting back to work," the airline's general manager K. Swaminathan told AFP on Saturday after union leaders announced an end to the walkout late the previous night.

"We are stepping up operations and in the next 48 hours we should be operating at normal capacity," he said.

The strike, which stranded tens of thousands of domestic passengers, further damaged the image of the so-called "Maharajah of the skies" which once monopolised Indian airspace but now has just 15 percent of passenger traffic.

The union claimed victory but Indian media said the pilots emerged empty-handed from the strike at the debt-laden airline, which has received vast infusions of taxpayers' money.

"Pilots win nothing," said the Hindustan Times newspaper in a headline.

The pilots climbed down from demands for immediate pay parity with pilots flying international routes and accepted government promises to look into their complaints.

"The government has assured us it will look into all our demands," said Indian Commercial Pilots' Association president A.S. Bhinder.

The strikers were all from the former state-run domestic carrier Indian Airlines, which was merged in 2007 with international carrier Air India in a bid to create a more cost-efficient national carrier.

But since then, the airline has come close to financial ruin -- blamed by the pilots on corrupt and incompetent government and airline officials.

Union officials allege that the civil aviation ministry took away profitable routes from Air India and handed them to a clutch of private airlines, but the government says the carrier suffers from a bloated cost structure.

Air India posted losses of 34.5 billion rupees ($771 million) in the first half of the last fiscal year on top of a loss of 55.5 billion rupees ($1.23 billion) during the previous 12 months, according to government figures.

Civil Aviation Minister Vayalar Ravi said that a committee headed by Justice D.N. Dharmadhikari, which had already been set up before the strike to examine the pilots' pay demands, would look at all merger-related issues.

The "interests of all sections of employees will be taken care of" by the committee, which would submit its report in four months, he added.

The walkout forced Air India to cancel 70 to 80 percent of its domestic flights, costing it about 150 million rupees ($3.35 million) a day in revenues, Air India's Swaminathan told AFP.

The strike has prompted calls for the carrier to be privatised but critics of such a move say Air India would end up being sold to private airline companies with close links to government officials.

UAE tour of the Netherlands

UAE squad: Rohan Mustafa (captain), Shaiman Anwar, Ghulam Shabber, Mohammed Qasim, Rameez Shahzad, Mohammed Usman, Adnan Mufti, Chirag Suri, Ahmed Raza, Imran Haider, Mohammed Naveed, Amjad Javed, Zahoor Khan, Qadeer Ahmed
Fixtures:
Monday, 1st 50-over match
Wednesday, 2nd 50-over match
Thursday, 3rd 50-over match

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Power: 154bhp

Torque: 250Nm

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The nine articles of the 50-Year Charter

1. Dubai silk road

2.  A geo-economic map for Dubai

3. First virtual commercial city

4. A central education file for every citizen

5. A doctor to every citizen

6. Free economic and creative zones in universities

7. Self-sufficiency in Dubai homes

8. Co-operative companies in various sectors

­9: Annual growth in philanthropy

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Four tips to secure IoT networks

Mohammed Abukhater, vice president at FireEye in the Middle East, said:

- Keep device software up-to-date. Most come with basic operating system, so users should ensure that they always have the latest version

- Besides a strong password, use two-step authentication. There should be a second log-in step like adding a code sent to your mobile number

- Usually smart devices come with many unnecessary features. Users should lock those features that are not required or used frequently

- Always create a different guest network for visitors

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Jigra
Director: Vasan Bala
Starring: Alia Bhatt, Vedang Raina, Manoj Pahwa, Harsh Singh
Rated: 3.5/5
How do Sim card scams work?

Sim swap frauds are a form of identity theft.

They involve criminals conning mobile phone operators into issuing them with replacement Sim cards by claiming to be the victim, often pretending their phone has been lost or stolen in order to secure a new Sim.

They use the victim's personal details - obtained through criminal methods - to convince such companies of their identity.

The criminal can then access any online service that requires security codes to be sent to a user's mobile phone, such as banking services.

How Tesla’s price correction has hit fund managers

Investing in disruptive technology can be a bumpy ride, as investors in Tesla were reminded on Friday, when its stock dropped 7.5 per cent in early trading to $575.

It recovered slightly but still ended the week 15 per cent lower and is down a third from its all-time high of $883 on January 26. The electric car maker’s market cap fell from $834 billion to about $567bn in that time, a drop of an astonishing $267bn, and a blow for those who bought Tesla stock late.

The collapse also hit fund managers that have gone big on Tesla, notably the UK-based Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust and Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation ETF.

Tesla is the top holding in both funds, making up a hefty 10 per cent of total assets under management. Both funds have fallen by a quarter in the past month.

Matt Weller, global head of market research at GAIN Capital, recently warned that Tesla founder Elon Musk had “flown a bit too close to the sun”, after getting carried away by investing $1.5bn of the company’s money in Bitcoin.

He also predicted Tesla’s sales could struggle as traditional auto manufacturers ramp up electric car production, destroying its first mover advantage.

AJ Bell’s Russ Mould warns that many investors buy tech stocks when earnings forecasts are rising, almost regardless of valuation. “When it works, it really works. But when it goes wrong, elevated valuations leave little or no downside protection.”

A Tesla correction was probably baked in after last year’s astonishing share price surge, and many investors will see this as an opportunity to load up at a reduced price.

Dramatic swings are to be expected when investing in disruptive technology, as Ms Wood at ARK makes clear.

Every week, she sends subscribers a commentary listing “stocks in our strategies that have appreciated or dropped more than 15 per cent in a day” during the week.

Her latest commentary, issued on Friday, showed seven stocks displaying extreme volatility, led by ExOne, a leader in binder jetting 3D printing technology. It jumped 24 per cent, boosted by news that fellow 3D printing specialist Stratasys had beaten fourth-quarter revenues and earnings expectations, seen as good news for the sector.

By contrast, computational drug and material discovery company Schrödinger fell 27 per cent after quarterly and full-year results showed its core software sales and drug development pipeline slowing.

Despite that setback, Ms Wood remains positive, arguing that its “medicinal chemistry platform offers a powerful and unique view into chemical space”.

In her weekly video view, she remains bullish, stating that: “We are on the right side of change, and disruptive innovation is going to deliver exponential growth trajectories for many of our companies, in fact, most of them.”

Ms Wood remains committed to Tesla as she expects global electric car sales to compound at an average annual rate of 82 per cent for the next five years.

She said these are so “enormous that some people find them unbelievable”, and argues that this scepticism, especially among institutional investors, “festers” and creates a great opportunity for ARK.

Only you can decide whether you are a believer or a festering sceptic. If it’s the former, then buckle up.

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Developer: Treyarch, Raven Software
Publisher:  Activision
Console: PlayStation 4 & 5, Windows, Xbox One & Series X/S
Rating: 3.5/5

The specs

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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: ARDH Collective
Based: Dubai
Founders: Alhaan Ahmed, Alyina Ahmed and Maximo Tettamanzi
Sector: Sustainability
Total funding: Self funded
Number of employees: 4
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Tree of Hell

Starring: Raed Zeno, Hadi Awada, Dr Mohammad Abdalla

Director: Raed Zeno

Rating: 4/5