Abhishek Nishad

RBI may soon allow interoperability of Post payment bank ATMs

New Delhi: India Post, the world's largest mail delivery network, is carving out a separate vertical to manage banking services, a move that will help it win RBI nod for interoperability of its ATMs with those of PSU banks.

India Posts, which had last year won a licence to operate a payment bank, has not been able to move much on starting operations.

"We wanted interoperability of the ATMs of Post Offices with other banks. RBI said we can allow it only if Post offices create a separate bank vertical because RBI has jurisdiction over only banks. The Postal department has taken a positive approach and created a separate vertical," a finance ministry official said.

The vertical will be based out of Bengaluru

Soon, send or receive money using your 14-digit Aadhaar numbe

Very soon, one would be able to transact - send and receive money - only on the basis of the Aadhaar number irrespective of the fact whether it is linked to a bank account or not.

Currently, over 112 crore Indians who have an Aadhaar number till now .

IndiaPost CEO AP Singh told ET that currently Aadhaar is not a payment address in itself since it is dependent on the bank account, but India Post's payment bank, which plans to start operations from September this year, will change that.

“We will be bringing out a solution to make Aadhaar a payment address with or without a bank account. That means that crores of people who have an Aadhaar should be able to receive payment from any source,“ ET quoted Sing.

Duke’s Grayson Allen on being a villain: ‘I own it now’

Grayson Allen. (Abbie Parr/Getty Images)

PITTSBURGH — Duke’s Grayson Allen could not escape the boos, not even in a neutral arena that was mostly full with Blue Devils fans. They screamed their lungs out during player introductions before Thursday’s first-round NCAA tournament East Region game against 15th-seeded Iona, but those cheers were muffled with boos. The heckling continued after tip-off.

“Hey Grayson, I have my eyes on you!” one Iona fan yelled as the Blue Devils guard prepped for an inbounds pass.

“Grayson Allen! You got knocked down!” another bellowed after a particularly physical defensive possession, but Allen just wiped off his white Blue Devils jersey and knocked down his fourth three-pointer in second-seeded Duke’s 89-76 win. There were five potential lottery picks scheduled to play at PPG Paints Arena on Thursday, all of whom have a fair argument as the best prospect at this site. But there’s no argument about the most divisive player on the floor.

“It’s always something you have to manage, whether you’re the leader or not. For me, it’s just part of the game now,” Allen said.

Russia’s been waging war on the West for years. We just haven’t noticed.

What if they had a war and only one side showed up? Russia has been waging war on the West for at least 10 years, and the West hasn’t bothered to notice. This is not, to be sure, a conventional war, with Russian tanks invading Poland or Russian missiles hitting Pittsburgh. Moscow’s kind of war is more subtle and yet all the more effective — precisely because it does not compel an overwhelming response.

The war arguably began in 2008 when Russia invaded Georgia, a pro-Western country that sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan and was anxious to join NATO. Rather than punishing Vladimir Putin for his aggression, the Obama administration later responded with a “reset” of relations. Putin was emboldened to aggress again: In 2014, his “little green men” — uniformed Russian soldiers with their insignia removed — invaded Ukraine. He annexed Crimea and turned eastern Ukraine into a Russian proxy state. This time the United States and Europe did respond with sanctions — but not strongly enough to dissuade him.

In 2014, a Russian antiaircraft missile shot down a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine, killing 298 people. Instead of apologizing and paying restitution, Putin spread crazy conspiracy theories blaming the shoot-down on Ukraine, the CIA or some other culprit. In 2015, Putin entered the Syrian civil war to help a criminal regime commit war crimes against its own people. Not satisfied with killing Syrians, last month Russian mercenaries attacked a base that held U.S. forces in an apparent attempt to drive the United States out of Syria.

Russia’s been waging war on the West for years. We just haven’t noticed.

Jimmy Buffett’s music comes to Broadway and, well, the beach party’s a dud

NEW YORK — Yes, Jimmy Buffett, it’s your own damn fault.

Oh, I know, you had help in the commission of “Escape to Margaritaville,” the lamely antiseptic musical that had its official Broadway opening Thursday night at the Marquis Theatre. But it’s your songs that book writers Greg Garcia and Mike O’Malley have spun into this insufferably dumb show, about a beach bum guitarist who falls for an environmental scientist while his bartender buddy suffers flashbacks filled with tap-dancing life insurance agents. (Yup, you read that right.)

“Escape to Margaritaville” also features, for reasons that won’t be parsed here, leggy clouds sashaying right out of a discarded Rockettes number; a female sidekick who flies on cables to the cheeseburger station at a Cincinnati wedding rehearsal dinner; and enough bad jokes to stock a late-’60s sitcom. Example: “I was addicted to the hokey pokey,” says the bartender, played by Eric Petersen, “but I turned myself around.”

The musical, directed (inexplicably) by Christopher Ashley, who won a Tony last season for his work on “Come From Away,” is built around the Buffett song that practically everyone knows, the especially catchy one that goes, “Wasted away again in Margaritaville.” It’s deployed as the Act 1 finale, and the lyrics are used as such a literal guideline that one of the characters is actually “nibblin’ on spongecake” as the number begins.