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 India’s economy picked up speed in September as a revival in demand and business activity helped drive the South Asian nation toward recovery from the pandemic-induced slump. Five of the eight high-frequency indicators, including exports, tracked by Bloomberg News improved last month, while three were steady. That helped move the needle on a dial measuring the so-called ‘Animal Spirits’ to 5 from 4 in August -- a level arrived at by using the three-month weighted average to smooth out volatility in the single-month readings. Click here for full Covid-19 coverage Economists, including those at the Reserve Bank of India, attributed the recovery to pent-up demand after a strict lockdown imposed in March to contain the coronavirus outbreak hit the consumption of goods and services. While inventory re-stocking will underpin business activity in the coming months, the improvement might still not be enough to prevent Asia’s third-largest economy from contracting in the financial year to Marc

 Hero MotoCorp Ltd, India’s largest two-wheeler maker, reported a robust recovery in demand in rural and semi-urban markets after the government eased the nationwide lockdown. Net profit rose 8.9% from a year earlier to Rs953 crore for the September quarter. Two-wheeler sales rose 7.7% to 1.82 million units, a more than threefold jump from the 565,000 units sold in the preceding quarter. The New Delhi-based company generates around 60% of its total sales from the rural market, and its performance is considered a proxy for consumption trends in rural India. Hero witnessed a surge in sales of its entry-level motorcycles in the rural and semi-urban markets after the lockdown measures were relaxed, helped by bountiful rain, a good summer crop, increased government spending and a shift towards personal mobility during the pandemic. “The earnings in the second quarter of FY21 reflects a strong performance, signalling a gradual revival from the negative impact of the global pandemic. The chal

 Amazon.com Inc., which won interim relief against Future group in a Singapore court, is likely to move an Indian high court by next week to enforce the verdict if Future declines to pursue arbitration proceedings in the city-state, two people aware of the development said. Amazon and Future have a week’s time to mutually agree on whether to continue with the arbitration proceedings at the Singapore International Arbitration Centre failing which, a long-winding legal tussle between both sides is likely, the people said seeking anonymity.The Singapore court restrained Future from selling its assets to Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) on Sunday. The dispute between the two parties relates to Future’s sale of its retail, wholesale and warehousing assets to Mukesh Ambani’s RIL for Rs24,713 crore. Amazon, which owns a 5% indirect stake in Future Retail Ltd, has contested the sale in the Singapore court, claiming that its 2019 investment agreement bars Future group from selling its assets to RI

 Pakistan is seething at a strong India-US joint statement asking it to take irreversible action to ensure its territory is not used as a launch pad for terrorist attacks, with its foreign ministry calling the document “unwarranted and misleading”. “We take strong exception to Pakistan-related assertions made in the selective and one-sided Joint Statement, devoid of meeting the objectivity criteria,” the country’s foreign office said in a statement on Wednesday. The joint statement issued on Tuesday in New Delhi after the 2+2 ministerial dialogue between foreign and defence ministers of India and the US reiterated their call for Pakistan “to take irreversible action to ensure its territory is not used for terror attacks and to speedily prosecute the perpetrators and planners of the attacks in Mumbai, Uri and Pathankot.” The statement , issued after talks between external affairs minister S Jaishankar and defence minister Rajnath Singh and their US counterparts Mike Pompeo and Mark Espe

 The Justice Department has charged eight people with participating in a covert effort on behalf of the Chinese government that aimed to locate Chinese dissidents and others in the US who were wanted by Beijing and coercing them into returning to China. Five of the eight were arrested Wednesday, accused of participating in a covert Chinese operation that officials say was built on intimidation, bullying and “very disturbing” tactics. The other three are believed to be in China. The arrests are among a series of recent actions the Trump administration has taken against China, a country President Donald Trump regards as a prime adversary. In July, for instance, the Justice Department charged hackers working with the Chinese government with targeting firms developing vaccines for the coronavirus and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of intellectual property and trade secrets from companies across the world. “China is violating laws and norms left and right,” FBI Director Chr

 With next week’s election looming, the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google were scolded by Republicans at a Senate hearing Wednesday for alleged anti-conservative bias in the companies’ social media platforms and received a warning of coming restrictions from Congress. Lawmakers of both parties are assessing the companies’ tremendous power to disseminate speech and ideas, and are looking to challenge their long-enjoyed bedrock legal protections for online speech. The Trump administration, seizing on unfounded accusations of bias against conservative views, has asked Congress to strip some of the protections that have generally shielded the tech companies from legal responsibility for what people post on their platforms. “The time has come for that free pass to end,” said Sen. Roger Wicker, chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. Wicker, R-Miss., said the laws governing online speech must be updated because “the openness and freedom of the internet are u

 An American spirit maker has agreed to pay USD 19.5 million to settle a bribery probe in the US after the Department of Justice alleged that it paid a bribe of Rs 10 lakh to a senior Indian government official for the approval of a license to market and sell its “ready-to-drink” products in India.      According to its admissions, from the time Chicago-based company acquired the Indian business in 2006 through the end of the third quarter of 2012, Beam India paid bribes and made other improper payments to various Indian government officials, including corrupt payments to obtain or retain business in the Indian market.      The Department of Justice (DoJ) alleged that Beam Suntory Inc. (Beam) had a scheme to pay bribes to an Indian government official in exchange for the approval of a license to bottle a line of products that Beam sought to market and sell in India.        This among others included efforts by a then-member of Beam’s legal department to affirmatively avoid uncovering i

 Larsen and Toubro Ltd (L&T), the country’s largest infrastructure and construction conglomerate, said it expects the pandemic to cast a long shadow on its business. After reporting a 12% drop in revenue to Rs31,000 crore in the fiscal second quarter, L&T shied away from giving a definite outlook for the year. Its senior management said it is still playing catch-up with last year’s numbers. “The second quarter has been a road to revival from the depths of Q1,” R. Shankar Raman, whole-time director and chief financial officer of L&T, said. The construction company posted a consolidated net profit of Rs5,520 crore, more than double the Rs2,527 crore it posted a year ago. URL:https://www.hindustantimes.com/business-news/larsen-and-toubro-revival-still-a-work-in-progress/story-KVviaQaBkvYBJDba6Yc0kO.html

 The Arakan Army, an insurgent group whose activities have severely affected the India-backed Kaladan multimodal transport project in Myanmar, has benefited from the clandestine transfer and smuggling of Chinese-made weaponry, people familiar with the developments said on Wednesday. The group, designated a terrorist organisation by Naypyitaw, clashed with Myanmarese troops on nearly 600 occasions last year, and a majority of the skirmishes took place in close proximity to the $480 million Kaladan project. There have also been at least four instances of Arakan Army cadre targeting the shipments of materials for the infrastructure project, or attacking Myanmar troops providing security to the project, the people said on condition of anonymity. In 2019, just as a key phase of the Kaladan project was nearing completion in Rakhine and Chin states, the Arakan Army shifted its area of operations there, they added. “The Arakan Army has always kept its anti-Kaladan activities below a certain th

Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine, which primarily provides protection against tuberculosis (TB), is also beneficial against coronavirus disease (Covid-19) among elderly people, scientists at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) have concluded. The results have been published in a pre-print study. ICMR scientists have been investigating the impact of BCG vaccination on the frequencies of immunity cells--T cell, B cell, monocyte (white blood cells), and dendritic (antigen-presenting) cell subsets -- and total antibody levels in a group of healthy elderly people, who are aged between 60 and 80 years, a month after their vaccination as part of a clinical study to examine its effect on Covid-19 patients. Elderly people, who are aged above 60 years, and those with comorbidities such as diabetes, hypertension, cardiac and kidney diseases etc; are considered as high-risk groups. They tend to develop severe forms of illness, and also have a high mortality rate among Covid-19 pati

The union environment ministry has published “The Commission for Air Quality Management in National Capital Region and Adjoining Area Ordinance” on Thursday for air pollution control in Delhi-NCR. The commission has an objective of implementing a consolidated approach to monitoring, tackling and eliminating causes of air pollution in Delhi-NCR by coordinating with state governments. The commission will be a statutory authority that will replace the 22-year-old Supreme Court-mandated Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA) which has introduced several important interventions to control pollution. Among their most significant intervention was converting all public transport in Delhi to compressed natural gas (CNG) in 1998, phasing out polluting fuels like pet coke and furnace oil from industries and imposing pollution charge on old polluting trucks. The commission will have appropriate powers which can act against air pollution on a war footing and will coordinate with the NCR sta

Deployment of AI could mean a quantum leap for diagnostics—promising developments have already been reported for breast cancer, kidney disease and even Covid-19. But, neuropsychological pathologies have presented a different challenge altogether. A fortnight ago, however, a breakthrough was reported by IBM and Pfizer in the detection of the onset of Alzheimer’s. Using language data from the Framingham Heart Study of 1948, the technique detected speech impairment that is typical of Alzheimer’s. Observing 703 samples of 270 participants, the AI model predicted the probability of a person developing Alzheimer’s. Data from the study highlights that linguistic models had a higher level of accuracy than non-linguistic determinants, demographic variables (age, gender, education, etc) and neuropsychological test results. The accuracy in the case of linguistic models was 73%. In contrast, non-linguistic determinants had an accuracy of 64%, whereas models which combined both linguistic and non-l

Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Wednesday said that in order to provide relief to people in view of the soaring prices of onion, various steps are being taken, including releasing one lakh tonnes of the buffer stock of the key kitchen staple. He told this to reporters after taking part in a rally in Dharampuri town in Indore district ahead of the November 3 bypolls to 28 assembly constituencies in Madhya Pradesh. “The government has already taken cognisance of the issue of rising prices of onions and its one lakh tonnes of buffer stock is being released through NAFED,” Tomar said. “We had imposed a ban on the export of onion from the country well in time and opened routes for its import,” the minister said. Pandey said there is also “misunderstanding” about Indian sugar abroad that it is not as good as Brazilian and Thai sugar, which is not the case.Sugar consumption stagnant in India; need to bust myths about its use: GovtDaga said traders plan to hold a meeting amo

We all know that India is in a precarious position, because of the twin crises of health and the economy. The health crisis is easy to understand, in that there is a single cause, the novel coronavirus. The remedies are also relatively straightforward to conceptualize, if difficult to implement in a consistent, sustained manner. Social distancing, hand washing and early detection and treatment are not a complicated formula for control. Implementation is another matter, and India is like many other countries in its inability to steer government resources towards targeted health investments, and to nudge or direct individual and social behaviour in the right direction. The good news here is that accomplishing these tasks is not financially burdensome, and simply requires better governance and political leadership. The economic crisis is much more complex, and will be more difficult and costlier to turn around. Its roots are quite deep, and the pandemic and lockdown were merely the straw

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the National Informatics Centre have said they do not have any information about the "creation" of the Aarogya Setu application promoted by the government to contain the spread of COVID-19, responses termed as "preposterous" by the Central Information Commission. The transparency panel has issued a show-cause notice to the NIC to explain why a penalty under the Right to Information (RTI) Act not be slapped on it for "prima facie obstruction of information and providing an evasive reply". No information about creation of Aarogya Setu app says MeitY CIC issues show cause notice Information Commissioner Vanaja N Sarna, in a terse order, pointed out that the website of the application mentions that the content on it is "owned, updated and maintained" by MyGov and MeitY and directed the CPIO of the ministry to explain why they didn't have the requisite information. "The CPIO NIC also

 India and the United States on Tuesday (October 27) signed the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA), which, along with the two agreements signed earlier — the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) and the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA) — completes a troika of “foundational pacts” for deep military cooperation between the two countries. What is the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA)? BECA will help India get real-time access to American geospatial intelligence that will enhance the accuracy of automated systems and weapons like missiles and armed drones. Through the sharing of information on maps and satellite images, it will help India access topographical and aeronautical data, and advanced products that will aid in navigation and targeting. This could be key to Air Force-to-Air Force cooperation between India and the US. Just as your radio cab (or the GPS in your smartphone) helps you zero in on the path to your des