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Hindustan Times Dated: April 19, 2020 By: Reuters Amazon on Sunday responded to the Ministry of Home Affairs’ decision to prohibit supply of non-essential items during the Covid-19 lockdown. The e-commerce company said that the directive will disappoint consumers as well as thousands of small businesses, sellers, and manufacturers. “We appreciate and are fully committed to the vision of the Government to keep the citizens healthy. The need of the hour is to ensure the safety of our citizens first, serving their needs while they stay at home. The new guideline will disappoint not only the consumers whose list of essentials had expanded to work from home and study from home products but also the thousands of small businesses, sellers and manufacturers across the country, who had geared up in the last 48 hours to provide millions of people with safe access to products. On behalf of consumers and sellers, we hope that this situation is rectified soon so that the urgent...

Firstpost Dated: April 20, 2020 By: Tara Kartha Even as Delhi is channelling all its resources into fighting a fast-spreading virus, another kind of war is being waged across multiple points on the western front. Apart from the recently thwarted infiltration attempts in  Kupwara  where five paratroopers of an elite unit lost their lives, the Line of Control has been on fire. Further inland, the Kashmir Valley has witnessed a proliferation of terrorist groups, all claiming to be represent the true voice of Kashmiris. And to the east, the Punjab border has become active as terror group use modern technology to move weapons and drugs. It's like K-2 all over again, with a heady mix of post 9/11 terrorist methodology. Anyone who follows the turbulent India-Pakistan relations of the 1980s will remember that Pakistan once rather successfully ran a ‘Khalistani’ as well as Kashmiri uprising, putting the Indian establishment into a tailspin. Though that hasn’t been re...

Firstpost Dated; April 21, 2020 By: Press Trust of India Vijay Mallya on Monday lost a UK High Court appeal against his extradition, a major turning point that brings India closer to getting back the embattled liquor tycoon wanted in the alleged fraud and money laundering charges amounting to Rs 9,000 crores. The dismissal of the High Court appeal effectively clears the decks for Mallya's extradition to India to face the charges in the Indian courts, with 14 days for him to apply for permission to appeal to the UK Supreme Court. If he does apply, the UK Home Office would wait for the outcome of that appeal. But if he does not, under the India-UK Extradition Treaty, it would then be expected to formally certify the court order for the 64-year-old Mallya to be extradited to India within 28 days. "We have held there is a prima facie case both of misrepresentation and of conspiracy, and thus there is also a prima facie case of money laundering," the High Cour...

Firstpost Dated: April 20, 2020 By: Reuters For the first time since September 2004, no merger and acquisition deal worth more than $1 billion was announced worldwide last week, according to data provider Refinitiv, as the new coronavirus stifles global M&A. The dearth of mega deals comes as countries across the world have shut down large swathes of their economies as they battle the COVID-19 pandemic that has infected over 2.33 million people and claimed 165,000 lives. Worldwide merger activity so far this year is down 33 percent from a year ago and at $762.6 billion is the lowest year-to-date amount for deal-making since 2013, the data showed. The number of deals also fell 20% year-on-year. “However, where parties have completed underlying due diligence processes and where there remain strong fundamentals, we do expect to see a number of these deals to come back online.” Companies have been walking away from announced transactions amid changed deal conditions an...

Business Line Dated: April 20, 2020 By: Our Bureau Parliamentarians have suggested a proactive and creative collaboration with the Government to design a post-Covid-19 economy with designated panels, in which seasoned MPs, including former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, will be members. The Finance Bill that was passed on March 23, amid the lockdown announcement, needs a relook, given the economic emergency. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance should immediately convene a virtual meeting to address the new challenges, said the MPs. A few members of the Standing Committee on Finance have asked the Centre to come out with a realistic buffer and demands for grants so that the Parliamentary panel can deal with the economic problems effectively. Senior Congress leader Manish Tewari, a member of the Committee, in a letter to the Chairperson for Standing Committee on Finance Jayant Sinha, said in the context of an economic distress, Parliament and Parliamentary panel...

Business Line Dated: April 20, 2020 By: Hemani Sheth Username and passwords of approximately 23 million players of online children’s game Webkinz World managed by Canadian toy company Ganz were leaked by hackers on the dark web, according to a recent report by  ZDNet . Webkinz is an online children’s game launched in 2005, a virtual counterpart of the line of Ganz’s plush toys. Users get a code with their Ganz plush toys which they can then enter into Webkinz and here they could play and manage a version of the toy depicted as a virtual pet. An anonymous hacker last week posted a chunk of the game’s user database on a popular hacking forum a copy of which was obtained by ZDNet with the Under the Breach, a data breach monitoring firm. Hackers had uploaded a 1 GB file containing 22,982,319 pairs of usernames and passwords. The passwords were encrypted with the MD5-Crypt algorithm as per the report. The data breach must have been carried out earlier this month, t...

Business Line Dated: April 19, 2020 By: Palak Shah The Centre's decision to impose restrictions on investments coming in from neighbouring countries especially China could have an impact on the start up segment. Chinese investors have already cornered major stake in 18 out of India’s top 30 Unicorns. A recent report by foreign policy think tank ‘Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations,’ has estimated China linked investments in India’s tech start-up sector alone at $4 billion. These investments could be small, but China via tech sector is embedded in Indian society and holds influence due to the nature of tech investments. Also, China holds control over other widely used foreign apps in India, as per the report published in March 2020. Chinese investments have come under scrutiny recently in the wake of Covid-19 epidemic, which is said to have been originated in China. The companies which have major Chinese investments include Big Basket, Byju’s, Delh...

Business Today Dated: April 21, 2020 By: Nirbhay Kumar Amid chances of China possibly losing its tag of preferred manufacturing hub following coronavirus, around 1,000 foreign companies are engaged in discussions at various levels with the Indian authorities. At least 300 of these companies are actively pursuing production plans in sectors such as mobiles, electronics, medical devices, textiles and synthetic fabric, according to top government sources. These companies see India as an alternate manufacturing hub and have taken up their proposals across various levels of the government, including central government departments, Indian missions abroad and state industry departments. "About 1,000-odd companies are currently engaged in discussion at various levels such as investment promotion cell, central government departments and state governments. Out of these companies, we are targeting 300-odd companies," the official said. "We are hopeful that once coronaviru...

Indian Express Dated: April 21, 2020 By: Syed Ata Hasnain The current focus in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic rightly remains on the medical management, economic fallout and impact on social harmony due to the mass displacement of migrant labour — all aspects of human security. I would not hazard a guess at the final comprehensive impact of the coronavirus on India or the world. Human imagination is finding it difficult to fathom how this will pan out. It’s the post-pandemic strategic environment that will dictate how soon the world recovers from this unexpected shock. It must start with the international geopolitical angle, with many assumptions. With some clarity in this domain, we can prepare ourselves better for the recovery phase of a near post-war situation. In his essay titled “The World after Coronavirus”, Israeli historian and celebrated author Yuval Noah Harari writes: “The decisions people and governments take in the next few week...

Indian Express Dated: April 21, 2020 By: Shubhajit Roy,  Prabha Raghavan Two days after the government tweaked its FDI policy to make its approval mandatory for firms in neighbouring countries to invest in Indian companies, China claimed Monday that this violates the WTO’s “principle of non-discrimination”. And hoped that India will “revise” its decision. The government’s move is seen as aimed at checking “opportunistic takeovers” of Indian firms hit by the ongoing Covid outbreak and lockdown. New Delhi maintains the policy is not aimed at any one country but spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in India Ji Rong made it clear its echo in Beijing. “The impact of the policy on Chinese investors is clear. Chinese investment has driven the development of India’s industries, such as mobile phone, household electrical appliances, infrastructure and automobile, creating a large number of jobs in India.Chinese enterprises actively made donations to help India fight COVID-1...

Indian Express Dated: April 21, 2020 By: Udit Misra The economic disruption due to the spread of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) over the past few months has adversely affected various aspects of the Indian economy. But is the impact on India more than the impact on other economies? There are different ways to answer this question. One could look at the growth rates of gross domestic product and gross value added. Or, in the absence of such data, one could treat other high-frequency data like sales of automobiles etc. as a proxy. In this regard, the exchange rate of the rupee can also be an apt marker on the state of the Indian economy’s competitiveness. What is currency exchange rate? Essentially, a currency’s exchange rate vis-a-vis another currency reflects the relative demand among the holders of the two currencies. This demand, in turn, depends on the relative demand for the goods and services of the two countries. If the US dollar is stronger than the r...