This combination photo of images released by HBO show Kit Harington portraying Jon Snow in "Game of Thrones." The final season of the popular series premieres on April 14. (HBO via AP)
LOS ANGELES – Living in Westeros can really change a person. Those who survived the first seven seasons of "Game of Thrones" have seen their parents, children and even pets stabbed, disemboweled and beheaded. They've been burned and frozen. They've lost essential body parts. Some have been through death and back, others suffered the horrors of puberty. Occasionally, they've been allowed some triumph. Here's a look at the twisted journeys of some of the characters who've managed to make it from 2011's season one to Sunday's premiere of season eight of the HBO series.
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ARYA STARK
From little princess to ruthless assassin, few have had a more transforming trip through the seven seasons of "Game of Thrones" than Arya. Played by Maisie Williams, Arya was a girl of about 11 forced to do needlepoint and other acceptably girlish things while dreaming of swords, war and adventure. Be careful what you wish for in Westeros. She saw her father beheaded in season one, had her brother and mother slaughtered at the Red Wedding in season three and was kidnapped and led through endless, grueling wandering. All of it left her hardened and hungry for vengeance, with a kill list of names she recites like a prayer before bedtime. In season five she went through dignity-draining assassin training that required her to take beatings, go blind for months and beg in the streets for subsistence. Eventually, she began living her dream of offing her family's enemies — baking two of them in a pie — and is getting such a taste for blood that as season eight starts it's hard to know whether she'll ever stop.
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SANSA STARK
While Arya embraced death and struggle, her big sister Sansa — played by Sophie Turner, who has become a star in the "X-Men" film franchise — only wanted the life of tea and tiaras she had as a young teen when the show began. Her initial innocence and optimism and subsequent persistence through humiliations and violations have made her the show's great emotional survivor. She was delighted to be betrothed to the king's son Prince Joffrey in season one, only to learn he was a vile monster. Her beloved pet dire wolf Lady was executed. She was forced into marriages with Tyrion Lannister then Ramsay Bolton, the most sadistic soul on a show full of them. Ramsay raped her on her wedding night in a season five scene that was too much even for many devoted viewers. As season eight begins she's finally in a position of power, in charge of her reclaimed family home of Winterfell. She has matured darker but still with her moral sense intact, and unlike many of the show's characters, has actually gained wisdom through her struggle.
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JON SNOW
"You know nothing, Jon Snow," was a frequent refrain that became a social media meme early in the series. It's spoken by the Wildling woman Ygritte, who takes Jon's virginity and leaves him with some worldly wisdom. (Kit Harington, who plays Snow, and Rose Leslie, who plays Ygritte, later married in real life.) Jon Snow knows a lot more now, and is about to learn a world-shaking truth about his origins as season eight begins. A bastard brought into the noble northern Stark family and raised by a regal woman who refused to love him, he was sent to serve at the great wall that guards the north, along with delinquents and other throwaway children. He would quickly rise to become their commander, and reached out to rival clans to fight the plague of the White Walkers, a growing horde of icy undead. Killed in a mutiny at the end of season five, he was later brought back to life by a priestess. The lords of the region join to declare him the King in the North, but he leaves to seek allies in the growing White Walker war. He found such a partner, and lover, and more in Daenerys Targaryen, who brings her dragons and armies to the fight.
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DAENERYS TARGARYEN
Viewers can tell how far Daenerys has come by the sheer number of names and titles she's amassed: Daenerys Stormborn, Khaleesi, Mhysa, Mother of Dragons, The Unburnt, The Queen Across the Sea, The Princess That Was Promised, and just plain Dany to friends and fans. When the show began she was treated as a piece of currency, a princess-in-exile married off to a barbarian by her calculating brother. Now she is either worshipped, feared or revered by nearly every soul in her world. She brought dragons back from extinction, conquered kingdoms, freed thousands of slaves, and is on the verge of restoring her family's dynasty over the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, but first must fight alongside Jon Snow, and explore their possibly shared destiny. Emilia Clarke, who plays Daenerys, has had some real-life baptisms-by-fire since the show began, suffering two aneurysms and undergoing two brain surgeries.
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BRAN STARK
Bran began the show as a boy barely big enough to use a bow and arrow and is now a seer known as the Three-eyed Crow, who contains the wisdom of millennia, and a secret about Jon Snow that will redefine his family and possibly all of Westeros. His appearance underwent a change nearly as dramatic. Actor Isaac Hempstead Wright, now 19, was 11 when he shot the first season, and had a pubescent growth spurt that rendered him virtually unrecognizable within a few seasons.
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JAIME LANNISTER
Leave it to "Game of Thrones," to take an incestuous, amoral, love-to-loathe-him villain and try to make him genuinely sympathetic. He begins as a legendary fighter known as the "Kingslayer," royal guard of his twin sister Queen Cersei and the secret father of her three children. During a stint as a prisoner he has his right hand cut off, and becomes a warrior unable to use a sword. His humanity, and even hints of kindness, have slowly emerged in the years since, and as season eight begins he has defied his sister to join their enemy Jon Snow in the fight against the White Walkers.
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CERSEI LANNISTER
Cersei was queen when season one began, and is queen as season eight begins. She's barely left the castle in King's Landing during the show's run, but for a naked walk of shame through the streets that became one of the show's most memorable — and most memed — moments. Most of her trials have been internal. All three of her children have died. Her famous long-blond locks are now gone in favor of a cropped cut that evokes maturity. She has refused to change her view of the world however, staying steadfast in the ruthlessness that for most of the series has kept the throne in her control. As season eight starts she's refused to commit her troops to the fight in the north, hoping all her potential rivals will destroy themselves while she waits it out.
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TYRION LANNISTER
Tyrion Lannister, played by Peter Dinklage, has in many ways been the face of the show since Sean Bean's Ned Stark lost his face — along with the rest of head, in season one. At first he was a wisecracking alcoholic who spent most of his time in brothels. Now, he's a wisecracking alcoholic who advises Daenerys Targaryen, would-be queen of the realm. Through constant humiliations and rejections, Tyrion remained loyal to a family that despised him until he couldn't bear it anymore, killing his father, fleeing into exile and finding new life with Daenerys, the biggest threat to the clan he's renounced.
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THEON GREYJOY
The show's other wisecracking prostitute-frequenting rogue when the show began, he has been brutally humiliated and humbled since. After a murderous failed attempt to conquer Winterfell, where he was raised among the Starks, Theon is held prisoner by Ramsay Bolton, who cuts off his private parts, peels off his fingernails, knocks out his teeth and dubs him "Reek," turning him into a sad shadow of a human. He's slowly regained himself in recent seasons and is a survivor who has regained his will to fight.
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SAMWELL TARLY
Sam was a soft, sad, overweight reject from a family of warriors in season one, and he remains all of those things as season eight begins. Sent to the wall to be forged into a real medieval man, he instead finds his calling through his pure heart and studious mind, becoming an essential adviser who helped Jon Snow's rise and has found ancient knowledge to fend off the White Walkers.
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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton .
LAHORE, Pakistan – A Pakistani court has sentenced a 22-year-old Czech model to eight years and eight months in prison on charges of drug trafficking.
The court in the eastern city of Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, sentenced Tereza Hluskova on Wednesday.
According to the court, Hluskova was arrested in possession of 8.5 kilograms, or 19 pounds, of heroin in January 2018 at the Lahore airport from where she was heading to Ireland via Dubai, the United Arab Emirates.
Her lawyer, Sardar Asghar Dogar, says she will appeal.
Hluskova was convicted during a court appearance last week. Her sentence also includes an $800 fine.
John Walker Lindh, a former American Taliban militant, is due to be freed in May following his conviction in 2002 for the support of the Taliban. (AP/Reuters)
John Walker Lindh, a former American Taliban militant convicted in 2002 for supporting the terrorist organization, is due to be freed in May.
The former Islamist fighter, dubbed “Detainee 001 in the war on terror,” was arrested in 2001, just months after the Sept. 11 attacks and the start of the war in Afghanistan. Then just 20 years old, he was among a group of Taliban fighters who were captured by U.S. forces.
Within a year, Walker Lindh was convicted of supporting the Taliban and sentenced to 20 years in prison -- even as some hardliners urged authorities to consider treason charges that could have resulted in the death penalty.
Walker Lindh’s release later this year is likely to be met with headaches for security services across the globe, especially since he has since acquired Irish citizenship and plans to move there -- even though he hasn’t denounced radical Islamic ideology and has even made pro-Isis comments to the media.
The National Counterterrorism Center penned a document dated Jan. 24, 2017 claiming the former Taliban fighter remains as radicalized now as he was in 2001.
“As of May 2016, John Walker Lindh (USPER) — who is scheduled to be released in May 2019 after being convicted of supporting the Taliban — continued to advocate for global jihad and to write and translate violent extremist texts,” the Foreign Policy magazine reported.
The report added Walker Lindh told “a television news producer that he would continue to spread violent extremist Islam upon his release.”
It appears, however, that the Irish government won’t follow the example of the British government -- which rescinded a Jihadi bride’s British citizenship -- and won’t stop Walker Lindh from entering the country.
“Irish citizens are not subject to immigration control,” the spokesman for Ireland’s Department of Justice told the London Times. “Therefore, if a person has Irish citizenship and presents their Irish passport on arrival, they will not be refused entry to the state.”
Walker Lindh confirmed his plans to head to Ireland after his release in remarks he made to CAGE, a London-based organization focused on supporting people impacted by the War on Terror.
“I don’t really know what to expect from the Irish government. I know virtually nothing about them. I think the only reasonable way to present my case to them is to explain my unique circumstances that make my survival in the US practically impossible.
— John Walker Lindh
“I don’t really know what to expect from the Irish government,” he wrote to the group, according to the newspaper. “I know virtually nothing about them. I think the only reasonable way to present my case to them is to explain my unique circumstances that make my survival in the US practically impossible."
He added: “Essentially I am seeking asylum from one country where I am a citizen in another country where I am also a citizen. The worst they can do is decline my request. I figure it is worth at least trying.”
In the U.S., meanwhile, multiple lawmakers have called for the creation of a registry of convicted terrorists, modeled after sex-offender registries, as multiple high-profile releases are set to take place in the next two years.
Michael Cohen is off the hook for misleading the House Oversight Committee about his claim he never asked President Donald Trump for a pardon, The Washington Times reported.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said the president's onetime personal lawyer has now clarified through his own attorney that his testimony "could have been clearer," the news outlet reported.
"Our practice on this committee is to give witnesses an opportunity to clarify their testimony, and that is what Mr. Cohen has done," Cummings said, the news outlet reported. "I do not see the need for further action — at least at this time."
In his Feb. 27 opening statement to the committee, Cohen declared: "I have never asked for, nor would I accept, a pardon from President Trump."
His lawyers say he stands by that statement — but only in reference to after June 2018, when he left a joint defense agreement with Trump, the news outlet reported. They also admit a previous attorney acting on behalf of Cohen did sound out the president's lawyers about a pardon.
The excuse did not fly with Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio and Mark Meadows, R-N.C., who have already asked the Justice Department to investigate if Cohen should face new charges over misleading the committee, the Times reported.
"They're walking back a claim made unequivocally under oath. 'Never' didn't really mean 'never.' Laughable," Meadows tweeted.
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke touted his "Republican" mother during a campaign event in Iowa last week, despite her voting in Democratic primaries since 2000, according to media reports.
The 46-year-old former Texas congressman has been touring Iowa after recently announcing his White House bid. While trying to appeal to voters in the early primary state, O’Rourke spoke of how his mother, Melissa O’Rourke, is a lifelong Republican who crossed party lines during his failed U.S. Senate bid last year.
"This campaign that we ran in Texas produced something far greater and more powerful than the sum of people or parts involved. Folks crossed party lines, and I know that personally because my mom, a Republican, voted for us in that election," O'Rourke told voters in Fort Madison on Thursday, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
But a closer look at Melissa O’Rourke’s voting history shows she has mostly voted in Texas Democratic primaries since 2000 and has donated money to candidates from both major parties.
O’Rourke in the past has acknowledged his mother’s politics were not as red as he describes during campaign events.
"I introduce my mom sometimes, and I kid her a little bit, like ‘My mom's a lifelong Republican, but we got her to vote for us in this race.' One day, she came up to me, and she said, ‘You know, that's just not right: I would describe myself as an independent now, not a Republican,” O'Rourke told BuzzFeed News in an August profile. “Definitely not a Democrat.' I don't know what the size of that universe is, but anecdotally we're meeting a lot of people who have described themselves that way.”
Melissa O'Rourke told CNN that she mostly voted Democratic in regional elections because of the party’s dominance in El Paso, the area her son represented when he served in the House of Representatives. She said she moved away from the Republican Party because of opposition to President Trump, the Free Beacon reported.
CNN noted that she voted in 15 of the last 17 primaries on the Democratic side.
But Chris Evans, communications director for O’Rourke’s Senate campaign, noted that, “Melissa has — with the exception of 2016 — always voted Republican for president.”
Beto O'Rourke also recently offered an apology for joking about "sometimes" helping his wife raise the couple's children.
The New Zealand shooter’s manifesto reveals an ideology more in common with the left than mainstream propaganda may run with.
28-year-old Brenton Tarrant went on an anti-Muslim rampage, targeting two Mosques in the city of Christ Church, New Zealand.
What has been dubbed a terrorist attack by the authorities and described as such by the shooter’s manifesto, has so far claimed the lives of 49 and wounded roughly the same number.
Tarrant was arrested after targeting a second mosque.
Additionally, three other people were arrested in connection with the shooting, but the details of their involvement remain unclear.
Tarrant announced his intent to attack the mosque on 8chan and then live streamed the 17 minutes of terror on Facebook.
The footage quickly spread on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.
Tarrant’s 74-page manifesto titled, “The Great Replacement,” rants on topics regarding mass immigration, low European fertility rates and Tarrant’s explanation for committing the attacks.
For the most part, Tarrant makes it clear that the attack intends on adding fuel to the fire of division in the United States, accelerating the left’s clampdown on Second Amendment rights.
Digging deeper, the manifesto reveals a self-avowed eco-fascist with communist leanings that have more in common with Norway mass shooter Anders Breivick and fascist Oswald Mosley, while referring to Charleston Church shooter Dylan Roof as an apparent means of continuing to troll the left into responding.
FILE PHOTO: Robert Mueller, as FBI director, testifies before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington March 12, 2013. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo/File Photo
April 24, 2019
By Nathan Layne and Ginger Gibson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Many left-leaning Americans regarded Special Counsel Robert Mueller as a paragon of courage and toughness, an unflinching prosecutor who would stop at nothing to ensure justice was served to President Donald Trump.
A decorated Marine platoon commander in the Vietnam War, Mueller burnished his credentials by bringing charges against former Trump aides even while under attack from the White House.
Now, after reading the 448-page report on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, some are asking whether the former FBI director was tough enough.
In interviews with more than 20 Mueller supporters, former prosecutors and legal experts, Reuters found that criticism has centered on two decisions: declining to make a call on whether Trump committed a crime by obstructing justice, which allowed Attorney General William Barr to intercede in Trump’s favor, and failing to compel the president to answer questions under oath.
“The most critical thing is he didn’t insist on an interview with President Trump,” said Melanie Sloan, a senior adviser with the American Oversight, an ethics watchdog which has filed more than 70 public-records lawsuits against the administration since Trump was inaugurated in January 2017.
Trump claimed victory after Barr said last month that Mueller had not established a conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and Russia, and went further by declaring there was no prosecutable crime on obstruction.
Supporters said Mueller’s full report released on Thursday was actually more damaging than Barr’s summary led them to believe, documenting a pattern of lies by Trump and laying the foundation for Congress to take up a possible obstruction case.
And while Mueller adhered to Justice Department policy not to indict a sitting president, he specifically said his investigation “does not exonerate him” and noted that a president could face criminal liability after leaving office.
“What he gave us is a blueprint for a future prosecutor to go to a grand jury and indict,” said Jennifer Taub, a professor at Vermont Law School, though she pointed out that such a move could be subject to a pardon. “I think he did an excellent job.”
A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment.
A LET DOWN?
Still, many Mueller devotees who were sure Mueller’s probe would end Trump’s presidency made it clear they felt let down.
“There was a little flinching at the end of the day,” David Brock, founder of Media Matters for America, a media watchdog known for its criticism of conservative news sites.
In particular, a face-to-face interview could have yielded new evidence on intent and caught Trump lying, some legal experts said.
“If Trump lies and those lies were exposed in the report, I think it would have been much harder for Barr to exonerate him,” said Lawrence Robbins, a Washington-based trial and appellate litigator.
In the report Mueller explained that he was concerned about a lengthy court battle if he subpoenaed Trump, who had declined to be interviewed voluntarily. Mueller also said he had secured substantial information from other sources.
But if time was such a big consideration, he could have sought a subpoena early on, said Nelson Cunningham, a White House lawyer under President Bill Clinton.
In the Whitewater investigation in the 1990s, independent counsel Kenneth Starr obtained a subpoena to compel Bill Clinton’s grand jury testimony about his relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky.
Clinton agreed to testify and was later accused of perjury and obstruction. He was impeached by the House of Representatives but acquitted in the Senate.
“Trump is the central figure in this entire matter and not to have sought his testimony like Starr did in 1998 – it just seems to leave a giant hole in Mueller’s two years of work,” Cunningham said.
Mueller’s failure to declare whether Trump committed the crime of obstructing justice is another key point of contention.
Mueller said in the report that his stance was warranted because Trump would not have the normal recourse of a speedy and public trial to clear his name.
“I think that is why he was appointed – to see if there were crimes – and I think that is a major inexplicable failure,” said Matthew Jacobs, a former federal prosecutor who is now a defense lawyer based in San Francisco.
By declining to make that call, Mueller effectively handed the decision to Barr despite knowing that the future attorney general had argued against the legitimacy of Mueller’s obstruction case in a memo to the Justice Department.
Mueller must have known what the consequences of his inaction would be, said Jimmy Gurule, a former assistant attorney general who served under Barr in the early 1990s.
“Now we are in this legal black hole,” said Gurule, now a law professor at the University of Notre Dame.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne, Ginger Gibson, Andy Sullivan, Katanga Johnson, John Whitesides, Sarah N. Lynch and Noeleen Walder; Editing by Kieran Murray and Sonya Hepinstall)
FILE PHOTO: A worker holds a nozzle to pump petrol into a vehicle at a fuel station in Mumbai, India, May 21, 2018. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas
April 26, 2019
By Manoj Kumar and Nidhi Verma
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Surging global oil prices will pose a first big challenge to India’s new government, whoever wins an election now under way, especially as domestic prices have been allowed to lag, meaning consumers are in for a painful surge as they catch up.
For oil-import dependent India, higher global prices could lead to a weaker rupee, higher inflation, the ruling out of interest rate cuts and could further weigh on twin current account and budget deficits, economists warned.
But compounding the future pain, state-run fuel suppliers and retailers have held off passing on to consumers the higher prices during a staggered general election, which began on April 11 and ends on May 23, according to sources familiar with the situation.
That delay is expected to be unwound once the election is over. And there could be additional price increases to make up for losses or profits missed during the period of delayed increases, the sources said.
In some major Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea, pump prices are adjusted periodically so they move largely in tandem with international crude prices.
That was what was supposed to happen in India but the election means there have been many days when pump prices have been unchanged.
In New Delhi, for example, while crude oil prices have gone up by nearly $9 a barrel, or about 12 percent, in the past six weeks, gasoline prices have only risen by 0.47 rupees a liter, or 0.6 percent.
State-controlled fuel suppliers and retailers declined to say why they had delayed price increases, or discuss whether there has been any pressure from the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
A government spokesman declined to comment.
The opposition Congress party said Modi’s government was violating its own policy of daily price revision by advising the state oil companies to hold prices steady.
“The government should cut fuel taxes otherwise consumers will have to pay much higher oil prices once the elections are over,” said Akhilesh Pratap Singh, a senior leader of the Congress party.
Nitin Goyal, treasurer at the All India Petroleum Dealers Association, representing fuel stations in 25 states, said prices were similarly held down for 19 days in the southern state of Karnataka last year, when it held state assembly elections.
Only for them to surge after the vote.
“Consumers should be ready for a rude shock of a massive jump in retail prices, similar to the level we have seen in the Karnataka state election,” Goyal said.
‘CREDIT NEGATIVE’
Sri Paravaikkarasu, director for Asia oil at Singapore-based consultancy FGE, said retail prices of gasoline and gasoil prices would have been up to 6 percent, or about 4 rupee, higher if they had been allowed to rise in line with global prices.
“Indian pump prices have failed to keep up with the recent uptrend in crude prices,” Paravaikkarasu said.
“With the country’s general elections underway, the incumbent government has been keeping pump prices relatively unchanged.”
India had switched to a daily price revision in June 2017 from a revision every two weeks, as the government allowed retailers to set prices.
But the government faced protests last October when retailers raised prices by up to 10 rupees a liter after the crude oil price went above $80 a barrel, forcing it to cut fuel taxes.
Global prices rose to their highest level in 2019 on Thursday, days after the United States announced all Iran sanction waivers would end by May, pressuring importers including India to stop buying Tehran’s oil. [O/R]
Higher oil prices will mean Asia’s third largest economy is likely to see growth of less than 7 percent rate this fiscal year, economists said. Growth slowed to 6.6 percent in the October-December quarter, the slowest in five quarters.
Rating agency CARE has warned that a 10 percent rise in global oil prices could increase demand for dollars, putting pressure on the rupee and widening the current account deficit.
India’s oil import bill rose by nearly one-third in the fiscal year ending March 31 to $140.5 billion, against $108 billion the previous year.
“The increase in international oil prices is a credit negative for the Indian economy,” ICRA, the Indian arm of the Fitch rating agency, said in a note.
“Every $10/ bbl increase in crude oil prices increases the fiscal deficit by about 0.1 percent of GDP.”
Any big price rise would also build a case for the central bank to keep rates steady, or even raise them.
The Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee, which cut the benchmark policy repo rate by 25 basis points this month, warned that rising oil and food prices could push up inflation.
Policymakers are worried that a sustained increase in the oil price in the range of $70-75/barrel or higher can move the rupee down by 3-4 percent on an annual basis.
The rupee has depreciated by 1.24 percent against the dollar since a year high in mid-March.
($1 = 70.1800 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Manoj Kumar and Nidhi Verma; Editing by Martin Howell and Rob Birsel)
FILE PHOTO: Uber’s logo is displayed on a mobile phone in London, Britain, September 14, 2018. REUTERS/Hannah Mckay/File Photo
April 26, 2019
(Reuters) – Ride-hailing company Uber Technologies Inc unveiled terms for its initial public offering on Friday, telling investors it would seek to sell as much as $10.35 billion in stock at a valuation of up to $91.5 billion.
In a regulatory filing, Uber set a target price range of $44-$50 per share for its IPO. The company will sell 180 million shares in the offering, with a further 27 million sold by insiders.
In the filing, Uber also reported a net loss attributable to the company for the first quarter of 2019 of around $1 billion and revenues of roughly $3 billion.
(Reporting by Joshua Franklin; editing by Patrick Graham)
FILE PHOTO: Jet Airways aircraft are seen parked at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Mumbai, India, April 18, 2019. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas/File Photo
April 26, 2019
By Aditi Shah and Abhirup Roy
NEW DELHI/MUMBAI (Reuters) – The grounding of India’s Jet Airways is turning into a quick windfall and long-term opportunity for international airlines keen to scoop up nearly a million outbound passengers from what was once the nation’s biggest airline.
Jet, which previously had a fleet of around 120 largely Boeing Co planes, was forced to indefinitely halt all flight operations on April 17 after its banks rejected the carrier’s plea for emergency funds.
The carrier’s descent into crisis has benefited international airlines in the form of rising fares and demand, data showed.
Fares from India to cities such as Dubai, London, New York, Singapore and Bali in the first quarter of 2019 rose between 4 percent and 32 percent from a year ago, according to Indian travel portal MakeMyTrip Ltd.
In the peak travel months of May and June, fares to London have spiked as much as 36 percent and tickets to San Francisco are up nearly 20 percent from a year ago, according to data from travel portal Yatra.com.
“For the next three months it’s actually bonanza time for international players,” said Ashish Nainan, a research analyst at CARE Ratings. “At least until the middle of June, the fares are not going to come down.”
Due to rising demand, even before Jet’s lessors grounded planes, carriers such as British Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, Singapore Airlines Ltd and United Airlines saw an up to a 27 percent increase in passenger numbers from India in the last quarter of 2018, data from India’s aviation regulator showed. That is the latest period for which the data is available.
India is one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets, clocking 15-20 percent domestic growth in recent years. It has long had only two full-service long-haul carriers, state-run Air India and Jet.
Jet is now hoping to be bailed out by a new investor, with final bids due on May 10.
INCREASING CAPACITY
Before its grounding, Jet had the biggest share of India’s outbound international air traffic, carrying 12 percent of the 7.8 million passengers headed overseas in the Oct-Dec quarter, down from 14 percent a year earlier, data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation showed.
For an interactive graphic on Jet’s market share, click https://tmsnrt.rs/2WvDQYi
For an interactive graphic on average daily flights by the airline, click https://tmsnrt.rs/2FeFDel
The total number of passengers traveling overseas with Jet fell 10 percent during the last quarter of 2018 even as the outbound travel market grew about 5 percent.
Meanwhile, Singapore Airlines posted a 27 percent increase in passengers from India, Cathay registered 17 percent growth and British Airways saw a 10 percent rise in the same period.
Cathay said the events at Jet combined with increasing demand for travel had led it to deploy larger aircraft with more seats on some Indian routes.
“In the long term we would certainly like to be able to offer more capacity into India, not just on our existing routes but by establishing new services to secondary cities,” Cathay said in a statement.
Singapore Airlines, in an email to Reuters, said the Indian market is “very promising” but declined to give details of airfare levels or demand patterns in the wake of Jet’s exit, citing a quiet period before the release of its annual results.
DOMESTIC GAINS
Jet’s grounding has also had a big impact on the domestic market, with inter-city air fares to major cities such as New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Kolkata soaring more than 20 percent in May and June, according to Yatra.com.
The spike in fares is expected to underpin strong earnings for IndiGo and SpiceJet Ltd, which are set to report results for the quarter ended March 31 in the coming weeks.
“Domestic Indian carriers are the main benefactors, but I suspect if Jet fails to be revived by May 10 then Vistara and other airlines that ply international routes, particularly the lucrative Gulf market, are the main winners,” said Shukor Yusof, the head of aviation consultancy Endau Analytics. Vistara is a joint venture of India’s Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines.
Inadequate bilateral traffic rights between India and other countries, however, could be an impediment to foreign carriers’ hopes of winning business lost by Jet, some analysts said.
“Even before Jet’s operational shutdown, international capacity was significantly constrained,” said Kapil Kaul, CEO for South Asia of consultancy CAPA. “We have now more serious capacity challenge … this is unlikely to be stabilized in the near term.”
A new national government likely to be in place sometime after elections end in May is expected to address the international capacity constraints, and once bilateral agreements are eased airlines including Emirates, Turkish and Qatar would immediately benefit, said Kaul.
“We would love to add more flights but we are at the limit of the allocation granted to us for traffic rights,” Emirates Chief Commercial Officer Thierry Antinori told reporters in Dubai on Wednesday.
(Additional reporting by Alexander Cornwell in Dubai, Jamie Freed in Singapore and Tanvi Mehta in Mumbai; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
FILE PHOTO: The company logo for pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca is displayed on a screen on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., April 8, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
April 26, 2019
By Pushkala Aripaka and Ankur Banerjee
(Reuters) – AstraZeneca Plc beat first-quarter sales and earnings expectations on Friday as the British drugmaker benefited from a push into cancer drugs and emerging markets including China.
Newer treatments such as lung cancer drug Tagrisso, now the company’s top selling medicine, have helped the drugmaker’s return to growth after years of crumbling sales due to patent losses on older drugs.
Sales in China have shown explosive growth, more than doubling since 2012, but AstraZeneca executives on Friday said that may not be sustained.
“The enormous growth you currently see in China, 28 percent, probably is not sustainable, but we feel very bullish that the growth will continue to be at a pace of between 15 percent and 20 percent,” Ruud Dobber, executive vice president, BioPharma, told Reuters.
Shares of the company were down 0.2 percent at 5,878 pence at 1031 GMT.
The turnaround in AstraZeneca’s fortunes has been powered by a push into cancer treatments led by Chief Executive Pascal Soriot, who saw off a 2014 takeover bid from Pfizer in part by promising annual sales of $45 billion by 2023.
In the first quarter, sales from its oncology unit rose 59 percent to $1.89 billion, accounting for 35 percent of total product sales.
The company has moved deeper into cancer therapy market through wide-ranging deals, including those for immunotherapy and targeted therapy. Last month, it agreed a multi-billion dollar oncology deal with Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo Co Ltd.
Interactive graphic on AZN’s top 10 drugs by sales – https://tmsnrt.rs/2W5XIRX
“We’re reaching that point where after years of having to keep faith, we have actually got something tangible to believe in,” Hargreaves Lansdown analyst Nicholas Hyett said.
AstraZeneca also backed its annual sales and earnings forecast and said it has extensively prepared for UK’s anticipated exit from the European Union, even in the event of a no-deal exit.
The company has already spent more than 40 million pounds ($52 million) on Brexit preparations, including stockpiling six weeks’ worth of drugs in the UK and four weeks in continental Europe to guard against shortages.
AstraZeneca said product sales rose 14 percent at constant currency to $5.47 billion in the quarter, led by its lung cancer drug Tagrisso and respiratory treatment Pulmicort.
Interactive graphic on AZN’s quarterly oncology sales – https://tmsnrt.rs/2W9tbCD
China sales increased by 28 percent to $1.24 billion in the quarter, accounting for nearly a quarter of overall product sales.
Core earnings came in at 89 cents per share in the quarter. Analysts on average were expecting core earnings of 85 cents per share and product sales of $5.29 billion, according to a company provided consensus of 19 analysts.
(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka and Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr/Keith Weir)
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