People familiar with the matter said the company levied a penalty of around 50 times the commission paid on several retailers who violated the guidelines for the first time, and removed repeat offenders from the network besides imposing a fine on them.

This is in response to the massive Aadhaar-related fraud that came to light a few weeks ago.

[…] UIDAI imposed a fine of Rs 2.5 crore on Airtel for allegedly opening payment bank accounts for its mobile subscribers without consent. The report also notes that Airtel routed the LPG subsidies of 31 lakh users (payments worth Rs 190 crore) to their Airtel payment bank accounts instead of the beneficiaries’ original bank accounts.

It still boggles my mind all the crazy shit that Aadhaar has enabled to happen, so easily.

Hiroko Tabuchi reporting for The New York Times today:

[…] the bankruptcy would wipe out American Apparel’s current shareholders, including Mr. Charney, whose stake in the retailer that he founded in 1989 was worth about $8.2 million as of Friday. It would instead put the company’s creditors in full control, including Standard General, the little-known hedge fund that is also leading the turnaround at RadioShack, which went bankrupt in February.

I didn’t see that coming.