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 The Hindu  Sep 23, 2020 PTI The coronavirus pandemic means this year’s General Assembly is a work-from-home production, for the first time in its history. What do you do when Vladimir Putin offers you Russia’s new coronavirus vaccine, for free? United Nations staff in New York and around the world are now facing that choice, after the Russian president offered on Tuesday to provide them the Sputnik-V vaccine in a speech to this year’s General Assembly marking the body’s 75th birthday. Only results from small early studies on Russian vaccine have been published, raising concerns among some scientists that the vaccine isn’t ready yet for widespread use — and prompting worldwide memes about potential bizarre side effects. Also read: The Hindu Explains | What do we know about Russia’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate Sputnik V? “Any one of us could face this dangerous virus. The virus has not spared the staff of the United Nations, its headquarters and regional entities,” Mr. Putin sai...

Scroll.in Date:Aug 05, 2020 Prathamesh Muley States in India – which already have higher debts than states in other BRICS and emerging countries –will be forced to borrow even more this year. The Covid-19-related lockdowns have hit the revenues of Indian states at a time when it will be very hard for the Narendra Modi government to cough out it’s share of income to them. Given the situation, the gross market borrowings of Indian states is estimated to shoot up to Rs 8.25 lakh crore –or $110 billion – in the current financial year as compared to an earlier estimate of Rs 6.09 lakh crore, said research agency India Ratings. “The states have to maintain certain expenditures, such as salaries, important schemes, and increase spending on healthcare to tackle Covid-19. So, a rise in borrowing is inevitable,” said Pulapre Balakrishnan, professor of economics at Ashoka University. In India, the central government accounts for around 43% of the states’ revenues and the remaining 57% is a combin...

Hindustan Times 17 June 2020 Posted by: Shivani Kumar Global oil demand will rebound next year as the world emerges from coronavirus lockdowns, but recovering to pre-crisis levels may take a couple of years, the International Energy Agency said (Bloomberg). Oil dropped in Asia as fears of a resurgence of coronavirus in China cast fresh doubt on the demand outlook, and a report pointed to a further swelling in US crude stockpiles. Futures in New York fell as much as 1.8%, after ending Wednesday’s session up 3.4%. Beijing said Tuesday it was shutting down schools because of the risk of a new wave of infections. A renewed outbreak would jeopardize the recovery in oil prices over the last two months -- spurred by record output cuts and signs that demand is slowly coming back as lockdowns are lifted. The American Petroleum Institute reported US crude stockpiles rose by 3.86 million barrels in the past week, according to people familiar. That follows US governme...

The Hindu- Business Line 13 June 2020 Beijing has shut down several markets, including the largest Xinfadi wholesale food market, and locked down 11 residential communities near it after six new domestically-transmitted coronavirus cases were reported, taking the tally to nine in the capital city in the last three days, while 12 new infections were registered in other parts of China.Officials in Beijing found the coronavirus on a chopping board of imported salmon at the Xinfadi market. China’s National Health Commission, (NHC) said on Saturday that out of the 18 new coronavirus cases, 11 were confirmed cases reported in the country on Friday, including six domestically-transmitted infections in Beijing. Also on Friday, seven new asymptomatic cases were reported, taking the total number of such people in quarantine to 98, it said. Everybody, including customers and meat dealers have undergone nucleic acid tests. In total, six major wholesale markets in Beijing s...

Indian Express 15 June, 2020 Written by: Manish Sabharwal Education reforms are an endeavour of profound optimism but have been stifled by purists, vested interests, and regulators. It is illogical to deny the poorna swaraj that comes with the Institutes of Eminence tag to Ashoka University and Ahmedabad University or pursue regulation-driven standardisation for our 993 universities. A 1968 article about IITs by C Rajagopalan in the Economic and Political Weekly suggested that while no student was intentionally precluded from admission into IIT, many disabling factors ensured that a potential elite was being recruited from the higher strata of society almost to the neglect of the lower strata. Hindsight suggests that IITs were a masterstroke for India’s human capital, but the social mobility goal of higher education highlighted by Rajagopalan is important. The virus lockdown has exposed the urgency of more inclusive employment, employability, and education. Yet skill univer...

By Bloomberg, Known as China’s “bat woman,” the deputy director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology said research into viruses needs scientists and governments to be transparent and cooperative, and that it is “very regrettable” when science is politicized. Shi Zhengli, a virologist renowned for her work on coronavirus in bats, said in an interview on Chinese state television that viruses being discovered now are “just the tip of the iceberg” and called for international cooperation in the fight against epidemics. Known as China’s “bat woman,” the deputy director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology said research into viruses needs scientists and governments to be transparent and cooperative, and that it is “very regrettable” when science is politicized. “If we want to prevent human beings from suffering from the next infectious disease outbreak, we must go in advance to learn of these unknown viruses carried by wild animals in nature and give early warnings,” Shi told CGTN. “...

By :Jacob Koshy and Bindu Shajan Perappadan The Hindu The World Health Organisation’s (WHO)  moratorium on testing hydroxychloroquine  (HCQ), the controversial anti-malarial drug, for treating  COVID-19 , which was announced on Monday, doesn’t imply that India should pause testing the drug as a preventive, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist, WHO, told  The Hindu  in an email. However, she stressed that India ought to be doing stricter trials to test the drug’s efficacy in staving off infection in asymptomatic people at high-risk of contracting the virus. HCQ was one of four drug-combinations being tested in a global clinical trial, called Solidarity Trial, coordinated by the WHO. Hydroxychloroquine  |  Can the anti-malarial drug contain COVID-19?  Four hundred hospitals in 35 countries would be comparing the benefits to COVID patients from taking either Remdesivir; Lopinavir/Ritonavir; Lopinavir/Ritonavir with Interferon beta-1a; and...

Hindustan Times May 25, 2020 India’s trajectory of Covid-19 cases appears to be tracking that of Brazil, according to analysis of latest data. India’s case count on Sunday was where Brazil’s infections stood about 15 days ago. With the highest one-day national surge of 6,634new coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases, India on Sunday overtook Iran to become the 10th biggest hot spot of the pathogen, which has rapidly swept the globe, claiming new epicentres across continents and leaving health care systems overwhelmed in its wake. The number of Covid-19 cases in the country stood at 138,474 on Sunday, nearly doubling over the course of 13days, even as graded relaxations in the fourth phase of the national lockdown were likely to push up the contagion over the coming days. Also read| Covid-19: What you need to know today New Covid-19 cases dropped to zero for the first time on Saturday in China, the country where the pandemic originated, but surged in India and rav...