Three persons, including a Muslim cleric, have been arrested in connection with the killing of 27-year-old man over a Facebook post in Dhandhuka town of Gujarat's Ahmedabad district, a senior police official said on Friday.
The tax authorities may tell banks and crypto exchanges to report transactions of virtual digital assets (VDAs) as the government begins taxing gains from cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens from April 1. So far, the tax department has relied on voluntary disclosures on transactions of VDAs. Once implemented, the sale and purchase of digital assets will reflect in the Annual Information Statement (AIS). The AIS contains details of at least 46 of the financial transactions done by a taxpayer in a financial year.
Messaging platform WhatsApp on Wednesday said it has rolled out a pilot program across 500 villages across Karnataka and Maharashtra, aimed at empowering villagers with access to digital payments through 'payments on WhatsApp'. The announcement was made at Fuel For India 2021 - Meta's annual event in India. WhatsApp India Head Abhijit Bose said the pilot aims to effect a behavioral transformation to digital payments at the grassroots.
Citing people with knowledge of the situation, the report said that some managers were being asked to "draw up lists of employees to cut."
Reserve Bank Governor Shaktikanta Das on Monday said with the country's foreign exchange reserves at $677 billion, it is comfortably placed to deal with any spillover effects and for financing of the current account deficit. Over the last three years, the country's foreign exchange reserves have surged by $270 billion. He said as per the latest data, the foreign exchange reserves are $622 billion.
Making a strong case for banning cryptocurrencies, Reserve Bank Deputy Governor T Rabi Sankar on Monday said they are even worse than ponzi schemes and threaten the financial sovereignty of a country. Observing that crypto-technology is underpinned by a philosophy to evade government controls, he said they have been specifically developed to bypass the regulated financial system. More substantially, he added, cryptocurrencies can wreck the currency system, monetary authority, banking system, and in general the government's ability to control the economy.
Corporate India is more dependent than before on exporters of IT services such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, and Wipro for earning foreign exchange. Such companies account for nearly 43 per cent of the forex revenues of listed firms, up from 22 per cent a decade ago. The listed IT services companies earned nearly Rs 4.2 trillion through exports in FY22, up 15 per cent from the Rs 3.65 trillion a year earlier. In comparison, the forex revenues or exports of the rest of the BSE500 companies were down 11.9 per cent to Rs 5.6 trillion last financial year.
After the massive tax evasion of GST by cryptocurrency service provider WazirX, the Directorate General of GST Intelligence has come down heavily on cryptocurrency exchanges operating in the country, said sources. "Around half a dozen offices of cryptocurrency service providers have been searched and massive Goods and Service Tax (GST) evasion has been detected by DGGI," sources told ANI. Crypto wallet and exchange are platforms where merchants and consumers can transact with digital assets like bitcoin, ethereum, ripple, etc.
Aggarwal, in this role, will define and lead important policy development initiatives for Facebook in India on an agenda that covers user safety, data protection and privacy, inclusion and internet governance, a statement said.
Samsung's connected technology solutions provider Harman on Wednesday said it has started a 5G testing lab in India to help companies test their devices for operating them on the next generation network. The company said its 5G lab enables a holistic, device-to-cloud performance analysis -- enabling chipset conformance testing, pre-certification testing, network operator approval testing, application performance verification and more. Harman Digital Transformation Services (DTS) senior vice president David Owens said advances in technologies like 5G yield significant opportunity to accelerate innovation across nearly every industry -- from healthcare and manufacturing, transportation to consumer device support.
The country's foreign exchange reserves surged to $576.98 billion as on March 31, 2021 from $544.69 billion at September-end last year, an RBI report said. Foreign currency assets (FCA), a major component of the overall reserves, increased to $536.693 billion as at March-end 2021 from $502.162 billion, the report noted. On balance of payments basis (excluding valuation changes), foreign exchange reserves increased by $83.9 billion during April-December 2020 as compared with $40.7 billion in the year-ago period, it said.
The administrators or creators of a WhatsApp group cannot be held vicariously liable for any objectionable content posted on it by any of its members, the Kerala high court has held.
The development comes a day after the Delhi Police's Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations unit which works under the supervision of Special Cell filed a first information report (FIR) against the unknown persons in the matter.
The country's current account deficit is likely to hit a three-year high of 1.8 per cent or $43.81 billion in FY22, as against a surplus of 0.9 per cent or $23.91 billion in FY21, a report said on Thursday. According to an assessment by India Ratings, the Current Account Deficit (CAD) has moderated to $17.3 billion or 1.96 per cent of GDP in the fourth quarter of FY22 as against $8.2 billion or 1.03 per cent in the year-ago period, and massively down from $23.02 billion or 2.74 per cent in Q3, which was a 13-quarter high. The improvement in the key numbers are due to the remarkable improvement in merchandise exports in FY22, when it grew 42.4 per cent as against a negative 7.5 per cent in the pandemic-hit FY121.
The Omicron variant of Covid-19 adds new uncertainties to the global economic outlook but much will depend on its speed of transmission, hospitalisation and death rates, and also the effectiveness of vaccines, Moody's Analytics said on Monday. In its commentary titled 'Much to Learn About Omicronast', Moody's Analytics said although the variant appears to spread "remarkably quickly", it will be at least two more weeks before more will be known about this new variant. "The Omicron variant of COVID-19 adds new measures of uncertainty to the outlook for the global economy, although it is too soon to adequately quantify that risk.
Police has has also sought information from GitHub platform about the 'Bulli Bai' app developer.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in its latest monthly oil market report projected the world's third-biggest energy consumer to add 0.39 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil demand in 2022. India's oil demand rose from 4.51 million barrels per day in 2020 to 4.76 million bpd in 2021, recording a 5.61 per cent growth.
INOX Group has earlier supported various sporting events, teams and leagues in table Tennis, football, badminton, running, basketball and cricket, and building awareness among masses through effective promotional initiatives.
Changes in global oil and gas rates matter more to India's economy than other major economies because the country imports around 87 per cent of its oil, half of its gas in the form of LNG, and over 60 per cent of its LPG.
Around 25,000 total of all paramilitary paramedics and doctors will be vaccinated in the first phase.
"WhatsApp is an industry leader in preventing abuse, among end-to-end encrypted messaging services. Over the years, we have consistently invested in Artificial Intelligence and other state of the art technology, data scientists and experts, and in processes, in order to keep our users safe on our platform," a WhatsApp spokesperson said.
Koo has so far raised $4.1 mn in Series A funding from existing investors Accel, Kalaari Capital, Blume Ventures and 3one4 Capital.
Investments by private equity and venture capital funds doubled to a record high of $9.5 billion in July mainly driven by higher investor interest in the e-commerce sector, a report said on Monday. Private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) investments stood at $4.1 billion in the year-ago period. The activity was higher by 77 per cent when compared to June's $5.4 billion, the report on monthly PE/VC investment activity by industry lobby IVCA and consultancy firm EY said.
Close to $18 billion that Reliance Jio and Reliance Retail mopped up from a slew of private equity transactions in 2020 has pushed up the money inflows through this route by 108 per cent to $33.8 billion, according to an industry report. As per the data collated by Refinitiv, private equity investments increased 108 per cent in 2020 over the previous year, with the number of deals jumping from 665 in 2019 to 791 in 2020 at $33.8 billion, despite the pandemic. In 2019, total PE deals stood at $16.2 billion. Most of the fund inflows were in the third quarter, fetching $24 billion, which, however, tapered off in Q4 to just about $4.57 billion, as per the data from the agency that tracks financial transactions at a global level.
After dropping to a low of Rs 1,298 apiece, the stock finished at Rs 1,380, its lowest level since November 22, the second day of listing.
Social networking giant Facebook on Wednesday said it will now allow users on its platform as well as those on Instagram to hide their public 'like' counts. This is part of the company's efforts to give people control over their experience, a statement said.
The Facebook-owned company said the goal is to make conversations on WhatsApp feel as close to in-person as possible, which means they shouldn't have to stick around forever.
India's widening current account deficit (CAD), driven by the massive spike in commodity prices led by crude oil, is set to put pressure on the fragile recovery, warns a brokerage report that has revised upwards its CAD forecast to $45 billion or 1.4 per cent of GDP by March. According to a report by British brokerage Barclays, the worries arise from the fact that the trade deficit has been jumping continuously since July. From an average monthly trade deficit of $12 billion till June, it has jumped to $16.8 billion in July-October, with September showing the highest-ever trade deficit on record at $22.6 billion, the report said.
Taking advantage of a Russian offer to sell its crude oil cheap and bear the cost of insurance and transportation, India may import as much as 2 million tonnes (mt), or roughly 15 million barrels of crude, from the sanctioned nation in 2022, Business Standard has learnt. This comes after reports that Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) bought 3 million barrels of Russian Urals from trader Vitol for May delivery. This will be on cost, insurance and freight (CIF) model, where the seller incurs the costs and pays the freight, including insurance charges.
Private equity and venture capital investments more than halved to $3.6 billion in May 2021 when compared to the preceding April's $7.5 billion and a third lower than the year-ago period's $5.4 billion, a report said on Monday. However, on a year to date basis, the venture investments by these two categories of investors have doubled to $20 billion for the first five months of 2021, the report by industry lobby IVCA and consultancy firm EY said, stressing that investors continue to remain bullish. It can be noted that the country underwent the ravages of the second wave of the pandemic since April this year.
Gold reserves increased $1.54 billion to $32.68 billion in the reporting week.
Deepika, Ranveer's romantic banter.
A few days back, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman urged the start-up community and public to deal in cryptocurrency with caution because everything that was floating around was not currency. In the first week of August, the country's top nine crypto exchange platforms were summoned by the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) in Hyderabad. The exchanges were questioned for money laundering, especially over a number of Indian non-banking financial companies and their fintech partners for predatory lending practices in violation of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines and by using tele-callers who misuse personal data and use abusive language to extort high interest rates from the loan takers.
The rearranged Tokyo Olympics are likely to be a pared-down version of recent editions of the four-yearly Games, Japanese Olympic Committee chairman Yasuhiro Yamashita said on Tuesday. Japan and the International Olympic Committee postponed the Tokyo Games until 2021 in March because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Social media giant Facebook is planning to rebrand the company with a new name next week. As per The Verge, the company is planning to change its name to reflect its focus on building the metaverse, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter. The name change, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to talk about at the company's annual Connect conference on October 28, but could unveil sooner, is meant to signal the tech giant's ambition to be known for more than social media and all the ills that entail.
E-commerce major Amazon has moved the Supreme Court in a bid to block Future group's Rs 24,713-crore deal with Reliance, according to sources.
The foreign exchange kitty had crossed the half-a-trillion mark for the first time in the week ended June 5, 2020, after it had swelled by $8.223 billion to stand at $501.703 billion.
All athletes who had qualified for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics will keep their spots for the Games next year following their postponement due to the coronavirus pandemic, the International Olympic Committee said on Friday.
Gold reserves in the reporting week increased by $707 million to $33.52 billion.
The malicious extensions had the ability to take screenshots, read the clipboard, harvest authentication cookies or grab user keystrokes to read passwords and other confidential information