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Essential HuffPost
A 23-year-old daughter of the man who was being flown from Patna to Delhi in the Air Ambulance that crash landed recently, was responsible for saving the life of her father. As soon as she realised that the airplane had landed in a secluded field, she pushed the stretcher out of the plane and deposited her father and the oxygen tank that was keeping him alive under a tree, before looking for further help.
The quality of service offered by Indian banks to its customers is rather lackadaisical and a recent speech by the deputy governor of the RBI pointed out five major areas that needed improvement — identity theft, non-functioning ATMs, misleading third-party products (such as insurance), imposition of extra charges on the non-maintenance of minimum balance in a savings accounts and the unsatisfactory status of the implementation of customer service codes set by BCSBI.
Even though their fans are more than eager to see them on screen together, legendary South-Indian actors Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan have a pact about it. Haasan recently revealed that they have decided that they'll work together only in a film that has been produced by either one (or both) of them.
Main News
As the Modi government completed two years in power, Facebook recently released an analysis on how the NDA ministers have been using the social networking platform to reach out to the people. One of the top posts that got the most shares and likes was the recent on the Prime Minister, when his mother had come to Delhi, to spend a couple of days with him.
Continuing the tradition of sending back foreign terrorists who had served their sentence after being arrested in Kashmir, a recent data shows that India has deported 18 Pakistani and eight Afghan nationals since June 2014. Recently, Shahid Latif, charged by the NIA with organising January’s attack on the airbase in Pathankot, had been repatriated to Pakistan in 2010, after serving 16 years in prison.
Shops of some of the Indians living in Congo have been targeted in reprisal for the brutal murder of a Congolese man in Delhi, said the Ministry of External Affairs. A few Indian nationals have sustained injuries in the attack.
Off The Front Page
A Delhi man who is obsessed with setting Guinness world records got 366 flags tattooed on his body and had all his teeth removed so he could put nearly 500 drinking straws and more than 50 burning candles in his mouth. Har Parkash Rishi, who claims to have set more than 20 records, now calls himself the Guinness Rishi.
In recent times, hospitals in Mumbai have been ending space for film shootings in order to get publicity by their names showcased on the big screen, even for a few seconds. Mumbai's Wockhardt Hospital and Fortis hospitals are the ones who frequently give a room or two for movie shoots.
Indians accounted for the largest number of migrants who had been granted skilled visas to work in the UK and accounted for 57% of the category, UK's Office of National Statistics data revealed. Indian skilled professionals also topped the number of National Insurance registrations issued last year.
Opinion
Today the BJP has become the central force in Indian politics. Can it afford the luxury of hating such a large population, asks JS Bandukwala in his column in The Indian Express. "Many Muslims have joined the BJP in the last two years... And there is a ray of hope that their presence may dilute the hatred towards the community as a whole. But that requires that BJP Muslims must be encouraged to identify with the community," he says.
Barely nine months since the RBI announced the names of the 11 applicants who had won “in-principle” approval to start payments banks, three have backed out, says an editorial in The Hindu. "While it is true that this experimental banking licence would allow licensees limited scope to earn attractive interest spreads since they are prohibited from lending loans, the constraints of the business model were already known. Similarly, given the banking regulator’s focus on extending a remittances and payments network to unbanked and far-flung rural areas, it was understood that this new breed of niche banks would take more than a few years to establish standalone profitability," it says.
After almost a century of making cars and selling them, auto makers get the sense that the automotive transportation business is on the brink of radical change, says Justin Fox in his column in Mint. "Cutting high-profile deals with ride-hailing companies doesn’t exactly fit that model — although maybe it will teach the auto makers lessons they could use in developing future businesses. In the meantime, though, it’s Uber, Gett, Lyft and Didi that will be interacting directly with the consumers of “mobility services” and presumably building brand loyalty and gaining knowledge. Somebody has to build the cars that will shuttle us all around, so there will still be auto makers," he says.
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