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Whitaker Went Mum on Talks With Trump Over Cohen, Nadler Says

Former Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker declined to repeat denials that President Donald Trump called him after his former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and arranging hush-money payments, according to the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

“Unlike in the hearing room, Mr. Whitaker did not deny that the president called him to discuss the Michael Cohen case and personnel decisions in the Southern District” of New York, Representative Jerrold Nadler told reporters Wednesday after two hours of closed-door questioning.

Nadler had demanded that Whitaker meet with the panel to resolve what the New York Democrat portrayed as contradictions in Whitaker’s public testimony before the committee on Feb. 8. Whitaker left the Justice Department this month after William Barr was confirmed as attorney general.

The lawmaker wouldn’t describe Whitaker’s latest comments beyond saying that he “did not deny” that Trump called him in frustration about Cohen’s guilty plea and agreement to cooperate with the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan.

He also said Whitaker didn’t deny that “while he was acting as attorney general, Mr. Whitaker was directly involved in conversations about whether to fire one or more U.S. Attorneys.'

Representative Doug Collins of Georgia, the Judiciary panel’s top Republican, was also in the room during Wednesday questioning, and challenged Nadler’s account that Whitaker changed his story.

“No, I didn’t have that takeaway at all,” Collins said. “In fact, he said he never talked with the president about Mr. Cohen at all and no conversation with the Southern District of New York either.”

Source: NewsMax Politics

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US Secretary of State visits Venezuelan migrants in Colombia

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is visiting with Venezuelan migrants in Colombia as he wraps up a four-nation tour of South America aimed at pressuring Venezuela's socialist leader, Nicolas Maduro.

Pompeo arrived Sunday at a migrant center in the border town of Cucuta with Colombia President Ivan Duque. Not far away Venezuelan security forces sat on high alert at the Simon Bolivar international bridge separating the two countries.

The migrant center has been the first stop for some of the more than 3 million Venezuelans who have fled hyperinflation and political upheaval in their homeland.

The U.S. was the first of more than 50 nations that in January recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela's interim president. But significant popular support for Guaidó hasn't loosened Maduro's grip on power.

Source: Fox News World

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Brazilian graft probe puts Swedish firm AF under microscope

FILE PHOTO: Brazil's former President Michel Temer is seen at the Federal Police headquarters in Rio de Janeiro
FILE PHOTO: Brazil's former President Michel Temer is seen at the Federal Police headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil March 21, 2019. REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes/File Photo

March 22, 2019

By Christian Plumb

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – The arrest of a former Brazilian president on corruption charges is raising questions about how a Swedish consulting company won a contract to help build a nuclear power plant at the center of what prosecutors say was a massive bribery and kickback scheme.

The company, now known as AF Poyry, on Thursday became the latest in a series of multinationals caught up in Brazil’s sweeping “Car Wash” investigation, which has ensnared politicians as well as executives in businesses from oil trading to engineering and shipping.

In a statement, the company defended its 2011 victory in the bidding contest for work on the Angra 3 nuclear reactor on the Rio de Janeiro coast, saying it had beaten out three international competitors.

The consultancy, which was known as AF before it acquired a smaller Finnish peer, said it has “zero tolerance for fraud, bribery and corruption,” but declined to comment on the Brazilian investigation.

AF has not been formally accused in the probe, but at least two of its executives were cited in court filings on Thursday which accused former Brazilian President Michel Temer of running a scheme to extract some 1.8 billion ($470 million) in bribes related to the Angra nuclear power complex.

Temer, the leader of one of Brazil’s largest political parties before becoming vice president in 2011, took over from former President Dilma Rousseff after her impeachment in 2016. He was succeeded by President Jair Bolsonaro at the beginning of 2019. Temer has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

OTHERS TARGETED

Work on the Angra 3 reactor has advanced in fits and starts since the 1980s amid cost overruns and allegations of politically-driven decisions.

Among those targeted for arrest was Carlos Jorge Zimmermann, AF’s main Brazilian representative when it won the contract for Angra 3, who pushed for the inclusion of a Temer-linked company in the bidding consortium, prosecutors said.

They cited evidence that former Eletronuclear CEO Othon Luiz Pinheiro da Silva, a retired admiral who has previously faced a number of bribery charges, had determined years before the 2011 auction that AF should win the bidding contest.

Pinheiro da Silva, according to a charging document filed by prosecutors, was a political appointee of Temer. A law firm representing Pinheiro da Silva did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

Under pressure from Temer and his allies, the Eletronuclear CEO allegedly pushed for an architectural and engineering firm known as Argeplan with no background in building nuclear plants to be a partner in the AF-led consortium.

Argeplan, whose main experience was building metro stations in Sao Paulo, served as a vehicle for at least 2.4 million reais in cash bribes to Temer, prosecutors said.

Argeplan representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.

AF Consult and its Brazilian unit, which had only three civil engineers on its payroll when it won the Eletronuclear contract, only hired Argeplan to guarantee that it would win the bid, prosecutors said.

“The investigations show that the hiring of AF Consult do Brasil, in partnership with Argeplan, was solely designed to permit the payment of undue advantages to Michel Temer’s group,” they wrote in the court documents.

AF Poyry said independent auditors hired by Eletronuclear, a unit of Brazilian state-controlled utility Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras SA, had “dismissed any wrongdoing in the contract.”

(Reporting by Christian Plumb; Additional reporting by Helena Soderpalm in Stockholm; Editing by Paul Simao)

Source: OANN

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Belarus officials demolish crosses placed in memory of Stalin’s Soviet terror victims

Belarus police arrested 15 protesters Thursday who interfered with the demolition of 70 crosses at an unofficial memorial site where tens of thousands of victims were murdered during Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s communist rule.

Forest workers used bulldozers to remove 70 crosses in the Kurapaty woods, not far from the Belarussian capital of Minsk, at the site where Soviet secret police carried out mass executions during Stalin’s reign of terror.

BELARUS TO MOVE FORWARD WITH CONSTRUCTION OF APARTMENTS AT SITE OF NAZI-ERA MASS GRAVE

Though officials claim 30,000 victims are buried in these woods, historians estimate as many as 200,000 people were shot there by the secret police during the 1930s and 1940s, BBC News reported.

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in charge of the eastern European nation since 1994, criticized political opponents who placed crosses on the site. Lukashenko, dubbed “Europe’s last dictator” by some Western officials, maintained symbols and structures of Stalinist Soviet rule in the country.

Wooden crosses dismantled at the Kuropaty mass grave site of a Soviet-era mass execution, lie in the back of a truck in the Belarus capital Minsk, Thursday, April 4, 2019.

Wooden crosses dismantled at the Kuropaty mass grave site of a Soviet-era mass execution, lie in the back of a truck in the Belarus capital Minsk, Thursday, April 4, 2019. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

"We're going to restore order at Kuropaty, so that there are no demonstrations with crosses around the perimeter," Lukashenko said in a public meeting last month, according to BBC News. Not all the crosses that were part of the unofficial memorial were demolished.

Fifteen activists were taken into custody by Belarusian police for interfering with the removal of some crosses, prompting an outcry from the president’s political rivals. Western leaders and human rights organizations have condemned Lukashenko before for suppressing his opposition.

"It's as if Satan came to Kuropaty. No Christian in the world raises a hand against a holy cross!” MP Anna Kanopatskaya wrote in Russian on Facebook after witnessing the demolition. “All, ALL those who committed this blasphemy today will bring misfortune on themselves."

The Belarussian government has not erected an official memorial in the Kurapaty woods even though the bodies of those shot by the Soviet secret police began to be exhumed after the site’s discovery in 1988, BBC News reported.

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"At the same time we are removing the illegally erected crosses,” a forestry manager, Alexander Mironovich, told the state news agency Belta of the “renovation work” on the property. “They are disappearing in the place where fencing is going up."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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Yum China to open KFC outlets at Chinese gas stations

A man walks past a logo of KFC, outside a restaurant in Shanghai
FILE PHOTO - A man walks past a logo of KFC, outside a restaurant in Shanghai, China, July 30, 2015. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo

March 12, 2019

By Brenda Goh

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Yum China Holdings is partnering with China’s two biggest state oil giants to open franchise fast-food outlets at gas stations in the country, in a bid to tap new growth areas as the domestic economy slows.

More than 100 outlets, likely KFC restaurants, will be opened at gas stations owned by Sinopec Corp and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) over the next three years, Yum China said on Tuesday, without giving any financial details. The two Chinese oil firms collectively operate over 50,000 gas stations in the country.

“It’s something quite new for both of us, we’re going to open some stores and figure out the economics, once we figure out the economics then we can be more specific on the financials,” Yum China’ Chief Executive Joey Wat told Reuters in an interview after an investor day it held in Shanghai.

“We only have a very modest goal in the coming three years,”

The New York-listed firm, spun off from Yum Brands Inc in 2016, owns Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell in China and is the largest fast-food operator there with more than 8,400 outlets, which it intends to expand to 10,000 by 2021.

Wat said the company was adapting to changes in China’s economy, whose growth has slowed to a 28-year-low. For example, the company was rolling out more value promotions to meet demand from customers who were seeking more value-for-money deals.

These promotions and other factors could put pressure on KFC’s restaurant margin in the first half, Yum China said, though it added that it had the capacity to return $1.5 billion to shareholders over the next three years. The company had flagged both the margin pressure and how much it could return to shareholders last month with its quarterly results.

TOUGH SHIP TO TURN

While sales at its KFC chain have largely stabilized after a period of weakness, thanks to upgraded stores and a big push on delivery, Yum China has been trying to revive performance at Pizza Hut, which has posted just three quarters of positive same store sales growth in China since the start of 2014.

In February, Yum China, reported a 6 percent year-on-year rise in total system sales for the fourth quarter, led by KFC, but sales at Pizza Hut dipped 2 percent during that period.

Wat said in 2017 that a turnaround could take up to two years to bear fruit. Towards that goal, the firm has so far rolled out a new store design and a series of promotions. It will introduce a new menu with 15 percent fewer items next week.

She said on Tuesday that while same store sales had yet to recover, the business had hit a milestone in the fourth quarter when traffic growth turned positive.

“When we are turning the ship, when we work hard to get the momentum to turn, it’s not easy, there are many forces at work, but we certainly feel like we are on the right track and doing all the right initiatives,” she said.

“At the time we set out a very aggressive time frame…but management does not have a crystal ball either,” she added. “We still have a little bit of time.”

(Reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Muralikumar Anantharaman)

Source: OANN

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Senator Gillibrand formally launches presidential campaign

FILE PHOTO: Democratic 2020 presidential candidate Gillibrand greets customers at Revelstoke Coffee in Concord
FILE PHOTO: Democratic 2020 U.S. presidential candidate Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) greets customers while campaigning for president at Revelstoke Coffee in Concord, New Hampshire, U.S., February 15, 2019. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo

March 17, 2019

By Ginger Gibson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand formally launched her presidential bid on Sunday morning, announcing she will deliver her first major speech next week in front of Trump International Hotel in New York City.

Gillibrand, who launched an exploratory committee earlier this year as a precursor, joins more than a dozen other Democrats who have already formally entered the contest to win the nomination to challenge Republican President Donald Trump in the November 2020 election.

“We need a leader who makes big, bold, brave choices. Someone who isn’t afraid of progress,” Gillibrand says in a video released Sunday morning to formalize her entry into the campaign. “That’s why I’m running for president. And it’s why I’m asking you for your support.”

Gillibrand, 52, had already been campaigning in key states that hold early primary contests. She has struggled to see her polling numbers increase in the wake of her initial announcement, a benefit some of her other opponents enjoyed after starting their campaigns. Gillibrand remains at 1 percent in most public opinion polls of the Democratic primary.

Gillibrand opted to use a video instead of a speech at a rally, the traditional method, to formally launch her campaign. She will travel on Monday to campaign in Michigan, followed by stops in key early contest states of Iowa and Nevada.

On March 24, Gillibrand will deliver a launch speech in her home state in front of Trump International Hotel in New York City, to take “her positive, brave vision of restoring America’s moral integrity straight to President Trump’s doorstep,” her campaign said.

The launch video released Sunday morning alludes to several policy debates, including immigration, gun control and climate change.

“We launched ourselves into space and landed on the moon. If we can do that, we can definitely achieve universal health care,” Gillibrand said in the video. “We can provide paid family leave for all, end gun violence, pass a Green New Deal, get money out of politics and take back our democracy.”

Gillibrand has sought to position herself as a unifying figure who can appeal to rural voters.

Some in the Democratic party believe an establishment figure who can appeal to centrist voters is the way to victory. Others argue a fresh face, and particularly a diverse one, is needed to energize the party’s increasingly left-leaning base.

Gillibrand was a member of the centrist and fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition while in the House of Representatives. Her positions became more liberal after she was appointed to fill the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton in New York when Clinton became former President Barack Obama’s secretary of state.

Gillibrand then won the seat in a special election and was re-elected to six-year terms in 2012 and 2018. She has attributed the ideology shift to representing a liberal state versus a more conservative district.

As a senator, Gillibrand was outspoken about rape in the military and campus sexual assault years before the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and assault first arose in 2017.

In late 2017, as she pushed for a bill changing how Congress processes and settles sexual harassment allegations made by staffers, some prominent party leaders criticized her for being the first Democratic senator to urge the resignation of Senator Al Franken, who was accused of groping and kissing women without their consent.

During the same period, Gillibrand said Hillary Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, should have resigned from the White House after his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky, which led to his impeachment by the House. Some criticized the senator for attacking the Clintons, who had supported her political career.

(Reporting by Ginger Gibson; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

Source: OANN

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Futures muted with U.S.-China trade negotiations in focus

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) shortly after the opening bell in New York
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) shortly after the opening bell in New York, U.S., March 26, 2019. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

March 28, 2019

By Shreyashi Sanyal

(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures treaded water on Thursday, as investors awaited more details on the progress in U.S.-China trade negotiations amid lingering fears of slowing economic growth.

A Reuters report said China has made unprecedented proposals on a range of issues including forced technology transfer, though sticking points still remained and there was no definite timetable for a deal.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer looked forward to “productive meetings” as they arrived in Beijing leading a delegation for trade talks.

Meanwhile, Wall Street continued to be in the grip of global growth worries in the face of weak economic data and the Federal Reserve’s decision last week to abandon projections for any interest rate hikes this year.

Wall Street’s main indexes came under pressure on Friday when the U.S. Treasury yield curve inverted for the first time since 2007. If it remains inverted for long, it could indicate that a recession is likely in one to two years. [US/]

Treasury prices continued its rally on Thursday, pushing the benchmark 10-year yields to fresh 15-month lows.

At 7:15 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 4 points, or 0.02 percent. S&P 500 e-minis were down 0.25 points, or 0.01 percent and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 0.25 points, or 0 percent.

Credit rating agency S&P Global became the latest to cut its 2019 euro zone growth forecast to 1.1 percent from 1.6 percent.

Investors will look to gauge the pace of economic growth in the United States from the Commerce Department’s final estimate of fourth-quarter gross domestic product. The report is set to be released at 8:30 a.m. ET and is expected to show the economy grew at an annualized rate of 2.4 percent.

Energy stocks fell in premarket trading as crude prices dropped, extending losses into a second consecutive session, following a surprise rise in U.S. crude inventories.

Boeing Co edged up 0.2 percent, extending the previous day’s gains, after the planemaker unveiled software fixes to defend its 737 MAX airliners.

Nielsen Holdings Plc fell 9.9 percent in light volumes after a report that private equity firm Blackstone Group backed out of an auction to buy the ratings company.

Lululemon Athletica Inc rose 12.3 percent after company forecast full-year profit above analysts’ estimates.

(Reporting by Shreyashi Sanyal and Amy Caren Daniel in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)

Source: OANN

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The headquarters of Wirecard AG is seen in Aschheim near Munich
FILE PHOTO: The headquarters of Wirecard AG, an independent provider of outsourcing and white label solutions for electronic payment transactions is seen in Aschheim near Munich, Germany April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Michael Dalder

April 26, 2019

BERLIN (Reuters) – Wulf Matthias will not stand for a second term as Wirecard’s chairman in 2020, German daily Handelsblatt said on Friday, citing sources in the financial industry.

For age reasons alone this would not be an option for Matthias, aged 75, Handelsblatt added.

Matthias will keep his mandate until it ends in 2020, the paper quoted a company spokeswoman as saying.

Wirecard was not immediately available for comment when contacted by Reuters.

(Reporting by Tassilo Hummel; Editing by Thomas Seythal)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: The Credit Suisse logo is pictured on a bank in Geneva
FILE PHOTO: The Credit Suisse logo is pictured on a bank in Geneva, Switzerland, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo

April 26, 2019

ZURICH (Reuters) – Shareholders approved Credit Suisse’s 2018 compensation report with an 82 percent majority on Friday, overriding frustrations expressed at its annual general meeting over jumps in executive pay during a year its share price plummeted.

Three shareholder advisers had recommended investors vote against Switzerland’s second-biggest bank’s remuneration report, while a fourth backed the report but expressed reservations about whether management pay matched performance.

The approval marked a slight increase over the 80.8 percent support garnered for the bank’s 2017 compensation report.

(Reporting by Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi; Editing by Michael Shields)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: Traders work on the trading floor of Barclays Bank at Canary Wharf in London
FILE PHOTO: Traders work on the trading floor of Barclays Bank at Canary Wharf in London, Britain December 7, 2018. REUTERS/Simon Dawson/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Simon Jessop and Sinead Cruise

LONDON (Reuters) – Activist investor Edward Bramson is likely to fail in his attempt to get a board seat at Barclays’ annual meeting next week, even though shareholders are dissatisfied with performance of the group’s investment bank.

New York-based Bramson’s Sherborne Investors and the board of the British bank have been sparring for months over Barclays’ strategy.

Bramson wants to scale back Barclays’ investment bank to reduce risk and boost shareholder returns. Barclays Chief Executive Jes Staley remains staunchly committed to growing the business out of trouble.

After failing to persuade Staley to change course since he began building a 5.5 percent stake in the bank in March last year, Bramson hopes a board seat will rachet up the pressure.

Both sides have written to shareholders pitching their case and Bramson has courted investors in one-on-one meetings, although none have publicly backed him yet.

Interviews by Reuters with five institutional investors in Barclays suggest Bramson has failed to persuade them.

Sherborne declined to comment.

Mirza Baig, head of investment stewardship at top-40 shareholder Aviva Investors, said Bramson was welcome on the bank’s register but the boardroom was a step too far.

“He has created a lot of value at other businesses, but, generally, when he has come in as executive chair and taken full control. This would be a different case where he would just be one lone voice on the board,” he said.

A second Barclays shareholder said he backed Bramson’s goal of improving returns but via an “evolutionary” approach.

“If you look at banks that have tried to restructure their operations in investment banking – you look at Natwest Markets, Deutsche Bank – I struggle to think of an example where a roughshod restructuring has been accretive to shareholder value.”

A third, top-30 investor said he had been impressed by incoming Chairman Nigel Higgins’ grasp of the challenge in hand, and felt investors would give him time.

“Management know they have to execute and deliver improved returns… [Higgins] will continue to re-shape the board but obviously he didn’t feel that having someone with a diametrically opposed view on it would be helpful.”

A fourth, top-30 investor agreed: “We voted for the chairman to come in and it would be crazy to allow an activist to join the board (at this time).”

Jupiter Fund Management, the 24th largest investor, said it also planned to vote against Bramson.

Barclays has nearly 500 institutional shareholders, Refinitiv data showed.

Since Staley joined Barclays in 2015, the investment bank returns relative to capital invested have increased but are still underperforming the overall business.

Barclays’ first-quarter figures showed the investment bank posted a 6 percent drop in income from its markets business and a 17 percent fall in banking advisory fees.

Returns in the investment bank fell to 9.5 percent from 13.2 percent a year ago.

Famed for successful campaigns against smaller British companies in sectors from chemicals to advertising, Bramson’s board seat pitch has been rebuffed by shareholder advisory firms.

Institutional Shareholder Services, the world’s biggest, said Bramson’s proposal “falls short of what can reasonably be expected from a shareholder trying to address issues at a 28 billion pounds, systemically important bank”.

Glass Lewis also flagged concern about Bramson’s lack of banking experience and “questionable” shareholding structure, referring to Sherborne’s use of derivative contracts to hedge losses should its strategy fail.

Critics said the arrangement meant his interests are not truly aligned with those of other long-term shareholders.

British advisory firm Pirc, however, said it recommended that investors abstain in the vote on Bramson’s proposal as a challenge to the board to do better in the year ahead – or face a similar contest in 2020.

(Editing by Jane Merriman)

Source: OANN

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https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2019/04/918/516/02_2.jpg?ve=1&tl=1

After an over 15-month pregnancy, “Akuti,” a 7-year-old Greater One Horned Indian Rhinoceros, gave birth as a result of induced ovulation and artificial insemination at Zoo Miami, April 23, 2019.

Ron Magill/Zoo Miami

https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2019/04/918/516/02_2.jpg?ve=1&tl=1

Source: Fox News World

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FILE PHOTO: File photo of a Chevron gas station sign in Del Mar, California
FILE PHOTO: A Chevron gas station sign is seen in Del Mar, California, in this April 25, 2013 file photo. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – U.S. oil and natural gas producer Chevron Corp reported a 27 percent fall in quarterly earnings on Friday, hit by lower crude prices and weaker margins in its refining and chemicals businesses.

Net income attributable to the company fell to $2.65 billion, or $1.39 per share, for the first quarter ended March 31, from $3.64 billion, or $1.90 per share, a year earlier.

Earlier in the day, larger rival Exxon Mobil Corp reported earnings well below analysts’ estimates, as margins in its refining business were hurt by higher Canadian prices and heavy scheduled maintenance.

(Reporting by Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

Source: OANN

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