February 2020

Even the Good News Is Bad for Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is battling Russian-backed rebels in the east. He’s trying to zigzag around Donald Trump’s impeachment drama. Even what should pass for good news, the country’s flourishing economy, has a catch: The stronger Ukraine’s economic growth, the more an obscure debt derivative could punch a hole in its finances. The source of that trouble is a financial instrument that Ukraine granted in 2015 as it teetered on default. To compensate creditors who agreed to write off part of the country’s debt, the government granted so-called GDP warrants that...

PayU Cofounder Shailaz Nag’s Fintech Startup Dot Raises $8 Mn Seed Funding After months of speculations around the launch of Dot, serial entrepreneur Shailaz Nag has now announced that his new startup has raised $8 Mn in seed funding. Nag, cofounder of PayU India, is leading the offline-to-online (O2O) commerce and fintech platform along with two other former PayU employees— Gyanesh Sharma and Anurag Gupta. The seed round has been led by PayU, the payments and fintech business of Prosus (earlier Naspers), and Fosun RZ Capital with participation from Info Edge Ventures and other angel investors. Source: Inc42

Indian-origin Irish PM Leo Varadkar suffers bruising polls Ireland’s Indian-origin Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has suffered a bruising general election as his liberal-conservative Fine Gael party took a battering in the face of an unprecedented surge in the fortunes of the nationalist party Sinn Fein. As the poll results poured in overnight on Sunday, Varadkar’s party was pushed down to third place with Sinn Fein in the lead, followed by conservative Fianna Fail in second place.  Source: Hindustan Times

‘Glad that India was partitioned… Muslim League wouldn’t have allowed country to function’: Natwar Singh “I am glad that India was partitioned” or else the Muslim League would not have allowed the country to function and there would have been more “Direct Action Days”, veteran politician K Natwar Singh said on Sunday. The former foreign minister was speaking at the launch of Rajya Sabha MP MJ Akbar’s new book “Gandhi’s Hinduism: The Struggle Against Jinnah’s Islam”. It was released by former president Pranab Mukherjee at his residence. Source: The Indian Express

12-year-old Mumbai girl Kaamya Karthikeyan youngest in world to scale Mt. Aconcagua, South America’s highest peak A 12-year old Mumbai student, Kaamya Karthikeyan has set a record of becoming the youngest in the world to summit Mt. Aconcagua, the highest peak of the Andes Mountains in Argentina, South America, an official said here on Sunday. Kaamya is a Class VII student of Navy Children School, achieved the feat atop the 6,962 metres tall mountain on February 1 where she unfurled the Indian Tricolour. No stranger to tall mountains, Kaamya had summited Ladakh’s 6,260 metres Mt. Mentok Kangri II, under extreme...

Oscar winner Taika Waititi says Apple needs to fix its MacBook keyboards Apple’s Monday is going to start on a bad note. At a time when the company is trying to get behind its experiments with the MacBook keyboards this is why the new 16-inch MacBook comes with the older keyboard technology the company faced criticism from Taika Waititi, a celebrated director and writer who won an Oscar for his script of Jojo Rabbit. After his win at the 92nd Academy Awards, Waititi slammed MacBook keyboards, saying that it was impossible to write something on them. ’’Apple needs to fix...

Oscars 2020: Joker star Joaquin Phoenix breaks down on stage. Full speech Joaquin Phoenix has been making headlines with all the awards that he has been taking home for his performance in the film, Joker. His performance in the film is worthy of the awards, but there is something else as well that has been making headlines. His acceptance speeches. Phoenix always gets up on stage and talks about something that needs attention. Even at the 92nd Academy Awards, the actor won the Oscar for the best actor in a leading role but it was his acceptance speech that won...

Barack Obama’s production debut documentary ‘American Factory’ wins Oscar NEW YORK : The Oscar for best feature-length documentary has gone to “American Factory,” the first documentary released by Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company. The Netflix film is about an Ohio auto glass factory that is run by a Chinese investor. It explores many issues, including the rights of workers, globalization and automation. “American Factory” beat out “Honeyland,” “The Cave,” “The Edge of Democracy” and “For Sama.” Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, directors of “American Factory” acknowledged the work of their fellow nominees on Sunday. Source: Livemint

Neha Kakkar And Aditya’s Marriage Rumour is Just to Boost TRPs of Indian Idol: Udit Narayan Of late, Neha Kakkar and Aditya Narayan have been hitting headlines over their marriage rumours ever since the latter’s father, singer Udit Narayan proposed the former to be his daughter-in-law on the sets of Indian Idol 11. Both their parents were on the show recently giving their “acceptance” to the marriage. They even set a date for the marriage, February 14. However, Udit Narayan has now clarified that the link-up was most likely just for TRP. Source: News18

PSU banks may see higher profits, must tap market: CEA Krishnamurthy Subramanian NEW DELHI: The PSU banks may see enhanced profits with write-back of some of the loans provisions in their balance sheets on account of the IBC resolutions and they must now tap the market themselves instead of looking for recapitalisation, Chief Economic Advisor Krishnamurthy Subramanian has said. “The Budget’s decision not to recapitalise the PSU banks is a good move and signals that all the banks are adequately capitalised at this point. The judgement on Essar Steel provides greater clarity on the IBC. Source: The Economic Times