Jet Airways Reported First Profit Report Since 2007

New Delhi: India’s second largest airline, according to the capacity of carrying passengers, reported their first ever annual profit on Thursday since 2007. The privately owned airways company also, with the annual report, has scheduled their turnaround plan according to that of 2014.

Reports are that lower fuel costs and higher airplane use had helped Jet Airways to swing into a quality profit in the year ending on March 31. However, the airways company, partly owned by Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways, has ‘warned that growing domestic competition was putting pressure on yields for them.’

The annual profit report of Jet recorded 12.12 billion rupees of profit compared to a loss of 20.97 billion rupees in the previous years. Last year, Jet faced a profit of 4.26 billion rupees for its fourth quarter, compared with a loss of 18.03 billion rupees at the previous third quarter in the same year. However, Jet Airways has not disclosed their latest debt level but have noted that it had lowered the count by 16.8 billion rupees.

Following the release of the annual profit report, Chairman Naresh Goyal said in the statement: The airline would continue to focus on strengthening its balance sheet to sustain growth.  Although competitive and structural challenges will remain.”

UN Report Addresses Chaotic Urbanization as ‘Harm’s Way’ For Cities

Urbanization is accelerating across the world. With a speedy development of urbanization in the cities located in developing countries, a recently released United Nations report has asserted that as chaotic urbanization. The UN report has noted chaotic urbanization also as the primary reason of increasing the risk of man-made and natural disasters taking place in the recent days.

From the massive jungle fire at Uttarakhand, Delhi being the most polluted city to the poorest and most polluted air quality of Beijing- all are prominent examples of urbanization. An unplanned and chaotic version of urbanization of people and cities, the UN Agency for Human Settlements has urged to the national governments to plan and facilitate more the municipal authorities to protect the residents.

With no proper plan of urban plan and urbanization in most of the countries, the UN Summit had said national government officials to be ‘better equipped’ with planning, as most of the cities have no ‘real understanding’ about urban planning.  

Meanwhile, UN-Habitat Executive Director Joan Clos in the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul this week has asserted that accelerating urbanization in the developing countries is diminishing the capacity of a particular city.  Also, the Executive Director addressed specially to the populating growth. The proportion of the global population living in urban areas has risen from half in 2000 to 55 percent now and is predicted to reach 70 percent by 2050, Clos added.

 Noting most of cities as unplanned, Clos, a former Spanish politician noted: “A lot of people are living on unprepared sites, and that means the risk of catastrophe is increasing. If we are not able to change that, be prepared to see bigger numbers of victims.”  

While the developed countries have their facilities and equipments ready to manage natural and man-made disasters, the poor nations and their municipal authorities are mostly struggling with pressures of migration, food and other natural disasters.

Addressing the problems of chaotic urbanization, Members of the Global Alliance for Urban Crises shared their experiences to craft more effective ways of helping people in cities, whether they are flood victims or refugees in the UN Summit. “With 60 percent of refugees living in urban areas, humanitarian actors have begun to realize that the traditional service delivery model focused on camps is not appropriate in towns and cities,” said David Miliband, President of the International Rescue Committee.

The global alliance team, for a better preparation of the chaos in the urban areas, has pushed into a 20-year long development plan, to address the ‘worsening humanitarian problems’ in cities. 

World’s First Surviving Septuplets Graduate High School

Iowa: Seven students threw their caps up in the air on May 22 when America’s most famous septuplets reached their newest milestone — graduating from high school.

Nearly 20 years after their birth made headlines around the world, Nathan, Natalie, Alexis, Brandon, Kelsey, Kenny, and Joel McCaughey, clad in black and red graduation gowns, walked on stage Sunday to accept their diplomas from the Carlisle High School in Iowa

On November 19, 1997, the McCaughey siblings were catapulted into the spotlight when they became the first septuplets to survive infancy in the US. They were born to Bobbi and Kenny McCaughey.

Alexis and Natalie McCaughey were recognized as part of the National Honor Society on Sunday, and they both made the academic top 15 percent of their classes, too. Some of the seven fledglings are getting ready to fly the coop.

Kelsey, who sings in the state choir, wants to keep focused on music, “After graduation, I don’t know where I’m going. All I know is that I want to go into music, musical theater — anything around there,” she said. Whereas Kenny, the first born, aspires to get into the construction industry. “I'm definitely going to miss everybody being so close to everyone. It’s going to be hard just to see us all go, especially my brother Brandon going into the military. Him and I were the closest. I’m going to miss him a lot,” Kenny Jr. said.

Two of the kin are intending to go to Hannibal-LaGrange University, in Missouri, where the septuplets have been offered a free education, and Brandon has enlisted in the army.

Nathan and Alexis, who suffer from cerebral palsy, are celebrating a new physical lease on life. “Me and Lexi are completely done with surgeries and checkups and unless we need something, we’re completely done with it,” Nathan said. “This was my first year getting into the high school cheerleading squad so that was a really big moment for me,” Alexis said.

Nathan, Natalie, Alexis, Brandon, Kelsey, Kenny, and Joel have beaten every odds to breathe and survive, let alone lead a healthy life, when every medical conditions were against them.

Gillian Anderson In The Running To Be The First Female James Bond

Los Angeles: Actor Gillian Anderson’s name has been thrown in the ring as the next James Bond.

Gillian Anderson has been trending on Twitter this whole week, but not because Fox is announcing David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson will back for the eleventh season of X-Files. Nor did it have to do with Gillian Anderson’s off-Broadway role as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. The woman behind one of the most iconic and effortlessly charming detectives has suddenly found her name tied to a very different fictional operative, and her title consists of just two zeros and a seven. That’s right! The 47-year-old actor has emerged as social media’s latest candidate to fill Daniel Craig’s shoes as the MI6 spy. Only now, the character will be a woman. And with Gillian Anderson’s class and personal panache, the pop-culture phenomenon known as James Bond won’t miss a beat.

Anderson herself picked up on the trend when she tweeted a fan-made poster showing the Golden Globe winning actor in front of the famous fading gun barrel looking all mean and decisive. “It’s Bond. Jane Bond,” the 47-year-old actress tweeted alongside the #NextBond.

There’s so much to be said for making the switch to a female Bond after 26 indefatigable installments of preppy white male entitlement – Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig.

What this light-hearted social media campaign is inherently questioning of as to why a dangerously clever and seemingly flawless secret agent must be an unapologetic womanizer to fulfill his profile. In the nineties, Gillian Anderson brought us a new kind of detective: dorky, intelligent, unabashedly skeptical and who wasn’t just a neat-looking foil to her male partner’s fanatic conspiracies, as FBI Special Agent Dana Scully in X-Files.

Zidane Poised To Make History In Champions League On Saturday

Madrid: Zinedine Zidane couldn’t have asked for much more after only five months as Real Madrid’s head coach. The former France great has a chance to end the season celebrating the Champions League title, just like he did 14 years ago as a player for the Spanish powerhouse.

Victory on Saturday against Atletico Madrid would cap a superb start to Zidane’s head-coaching career, joining Miguel Munoz, Giovanni Trapattoni, Johan Cruyff, Carlo Ancelotti, Frank Rijkaard and Pep Guardiola as the only men to have won the European tournament both as a coach and a player.

Zidane would also become one of the few coaches to win European soccer’s most important club competition in his first job as a head coach, along with seven other men, including Guus Hiddink, Vicente del Bosque and Guardiola.

Zidane scored with a remarkable left-foot volley on the edge of the area to give Madrid its ninth title in the 2002 final against Bayer Leverkusen. He also won the tournament as an assistant coach to Ancelotti two years ago – against Atletico.

“I’m lucky to be here and share these moments with the players and fans. I’m very happy,” the 43-year-old Zidane said. “I’m thinking about how lucky I am to be in a final with this great club.”

Zidane led Madrid to the final in Milan after taking over a club in crisis under coach Rafa Benitez. After an up-and-down start, he put the team back on track and it finished the season by winning 15 of its last 17 matches. The setbacks were a 2-0 loss to Wolfsburg in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-finals and a 0-0 draw against Manchester City in the first leg of the tournament’s semi-finals.

Madrid won its last 12 Spanish league matches to finish only one point behind champion Barcelona.

“After he arrived, everybody could see that the team improved,” Madrid midfielder Toni Kroos said. “We didn’t have a good first half of the season but we improved a lot with him.”

Bengal Police Officer Rudra Prasad Haldar Scales Mount Everest

Kolkata: A West Bengal police wireless operator scaled the Mount Everest, bringing cheers to the mountaineering enthusiasts who were distraught by the news of recent deaths while attempting to reach the world’s highest summit.

According to a statement released by the West Bengal Police Directorate, Rudra Prasad Haldar, 39 reached the summit last Saturday at around 5.24 AM.

Halder had set out on his mission to Mount Everest on April 7. He reached the top on May 21 and returned to the base camp two days later, the statement said.

Sponsored by the state government, West Bengal Police and Sonarpur Arohi, this was Halder’s second attempt at scaling Everest after last year’s devastating earthquake in Nepal forced him to stall his expedition after reaching Lobuche (E) (6091 metres).

Rudra trained at Uttarkashi’s Nehru Institute of Mountaineering.

Three Bengal climbers, including a woman, were reported missing last week after beginning their ascent to Mt. Everest. Climber Subhash Pal died during an expedition to Mount Everest after falling ill on Sunday while two others, Goutam Ghosh and Paresh Nath, are still untraceable. Nath and Ghosh were near the summit of the 8,848-metre peak on Saturday when they lost contact with the rest of the four-member team, all of whom were Indians.

The fourth member, Sunita Hazra, was rescued and taken to hospital.

Mount Everest is Earth’s highest mountain. It is located in the Mahalangur mountain range in Nepal and Tibet. It is over 60 million years old. Everest was formed by the movement of the Indian tectonic plate pushing up and against the Asian plate.

Two Refugee Boats Capsize In 24 Hours Off Libyan Coast

Tripoli: Two boats carrying hundreds of passengers were capsized in a 24-hour period in the Mediterranean Sea between Libya and Italy, possibly leaving dozens of refugees dead, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency. 

Barbara Molinario, public information officer at the UNHCR’s Italian branch, said rescue operations are complicated by the large volume of passengers on the vessels carrying refugees and migrants. “Usually nobody really knows the exact number of people on a boat like that,” she said. “We are now waiting for the survivors to come so we can talk to them.  That’s going to be the only way to know there are people missing,” Molinario further added.

The Italian coastguard released images of a shipwreck a day earlier, in which at least five people died when the boat went over off the coast of Libya. 

The blue fishing vessel, its deck heaving with people, tipped over on Wednesday after passengers rushed to one side on spotting a rescue ship. Those on the boat, many of them men, some already wearing orange lifejackets as a precaution, were captured in rare photographs as they clung to the boat’s rails or each other, or dropped into the sea.

Some are seen hanging on to the starboard edge by their fingertips as the trawler rolls, while others tried to balance on the rim.

Pictures taken seconds later show the waters around the boat filled with people trying to get away from the vessel which, now overturned, begins to sink, with people still perched on its upturned hull.

The navy said 562 people had been pulled to safety. The operation wound up late on Wednesday without finding any further survivors or victims. Those on board had sounded the alarm by calling for help using a satellite phone some 18 nautical miles off Libya. The Bettica went on to save another 108 refugees and migrants from their dilapidated vessel in a second rescue operation on Wednesday.