The key risks against a fast recovery would include long delays in business travel resumption, delays in commissioning, etc.
Alleging "anti-competitive practices" by Zomato and Swiggy, restaurant industry body National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) on Monday said it has approached fair trade regulator Competition Commission of India (CCI) for a detailed probe against the food aggregators. Keeping the interests of restaurants in mind, NRAI on July 1 had filed information with the CCI, it said in a statement. The main issues highlighted by the association in the submission are bundling of services, data masking, and exorbitant commission charged, price parity agreements, deep discounting, including forcing restaurant partners to give discounts to maintain appropriate listing, exclusivity of listed restaurants, and violation of platform neutrality, vertical integration, and lack of transparency on the food ordering platforms.
The cabinet decided to bring the religious minorities under the EWS category.
"The High Commission categorically denies baseless and speculative media reports that India facilitated the recent reported travel of @gotabayar @Realbrajapaksa out of Sri Lanka," the High Commission of India in Sri Lanka tweeted.
About 56 million Indians may have plunged into extreme poverty in 2020 as a result of the pandemic, increasing the global tally by 71 million and making it the worst year for poverty reduction since World War II, according to fresh estimates by the World Bank. "The global goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 is likely to be missed: By then, about 600 million people will remain in abject poverty. A major course correction is needed," Indermit Gill, chief economist at the World Bank, tweeted. The World Bank in its latest "Poverty and Shared Prosperity" made fresh estimates of poverty using a new extreme poverty line based on the purchasing power parity (PPP) of $2.15, the earlier one being at $1.9.
Ajay Banga was on Wednesday appointed the next president of the World Bank, becoming the first-ever Indian-American to head the global financial institution which said it looks forward to working with him at a time when it's tackling the toughest development challenges facing developing countries. "The executive directors of the World Bank today selected Ajay Banga as president of the World Bank for a five-year term beginning June 2, 2023," the bank said in a press statement. In February, President Joe Biden announced that the US would be nominating Banga, 63, to lead the World Bank because he is "well equipped" to lead the global institution at "this critical moment in history."
The capital of world history will be London on May 6.
Quick commerce startups hope to race towards better days. Can they crack the execution code?
If only you had thought ahead, you would have stocked snacks and biscuits, bread and cake, and vegetables suited for Amma or pondatti to make your favourite bajji and pakoda, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Prime Minister Modi last week called for optimal grain storage, fire audits and mock drills in hospitals as preparations for the harsh summer forecast by the meteorological department.
At the World Bank Banga will be replacing David Malpass, a former Trump treasury official, reports axios.com. Malpass had already announced that he will resign by July, months ahead of his term expired. "Ajay is uniquely equipped to lead the World Bank at this critical moment in history," President Biden said in a statement. Banga, 63, currently serves as vice chairman at General Atlantic.
I suggest we build a Vigyan Mandir (Temple of Science) with the ambience of a place of worship, so that it becomes a destination for pilgrims. We should embed on its walls bronze plaques describing each scientist mentioned here along with about a dozen of our ancient mathematicians, recommends Professor Kalyan Singhal, historian of science and technology.
The Delhi Minorities Commission has issued a show-cause notice to mayors and commissioners of three municipal corporations in the city seeking an explanation on what basis have they decided to ban or shut meat shops during Navratri.
Life on the election campaign trail can be hard!
Greenwashing is making misleading or false environment-friendly claims about a product. Consumers in India currently do not have any way of telling whether a claim is authentic or greenwashing. And one never hears of action against any company for making false claims of being environment-friendly.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday urged the Centre to intervene to ensure that levels of the Yamuna, flowing at an all-time high of 207.55 metres, don't rise further.
Evacuation of people living in low lying areas of the Yamuna floodplains began Monday evening with the river crossing the danger mark due to release of water from Hathnikund barrage in Haryana amid heavy rains in the northern belt of the country.
One of the refugees managed to contact the Rohingya Human Rights Initiative and give the coordinates which showed the ship drifting southeast of the Andaman Islands towards Aceh in Indonesia.
In 1937, a hydrogen-powered German airship flying into New Jersey caught fire and crashed, killing 35 passengers on board. It was sort of a man-made disaster as some 100 people were loaded on to a balloon filled with the most flammable material in the universe. The airship was named Hindenburg. Eight decades later, in 2017, a graduate of international business management from the University of Connecticut founded a "forensic financial research" firm to specialise in spotting wrongdoings and frauds, or what it calls man-made disasters, at companies around the globe and take market bets against them.
By keeping the Sanatana Dharma row alive and adding the Ayodhya temple consecration scheduled for January 22 and adding the free darshan promise from four polled states to the entire country, the BJP may have a self-fulfilling concoction, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
The poll panel also referred to the reported strong oral observations of the top court against it during the last hearing on the PIL on the issue, saying they have "caused irreparable damage to the reputation of this institution built over the years".
Barely days after imposing a 40 per cent export tax on onions to cool down soaring prices, which, in turn, triggered widespread protests across the main growing belts, the Centre on Tuesday sought to mitigate both political and economic tensions gripping parts of Maharashtra. It decided to procure an additional 200,000 tonnes of onions at Rs 2,410 per quintal for its buffer stock from farmers, a rate that is strikingly close to the price at which they were being exported before the 40 per cent duty was levied on August 19. The export price before the imposition of the duty stood at around $320 per tonne free on board (approximately Rs 2,650 per quintal).
The government on Monday asked online food business operators like Swiggy and Zomato to submit a proposal within 15 days on improving their consumer grievance redressal mechanism amid rising complaints from customers. The department of consumer affairs directed e-commerce FBOs "to transparently show consumers the breakup of all charges included in the order amount such as delivery charges, packaging charges, taxes, surge pricing etc." According to an official statement, "The Department of Consumer Affairs has directed major e-commerce Food Business Operators (FBOs) to furnish the current framework as well as a proposal on improving the consumer grievance redressal mechanism within 15 days."
Jiomart B2B is the latest among organised supply-chain companies to bite the bullet, shutting down its warehouses, and asking its employees to leave. Why are companies finding it difficult to sustain the supply-chain business? Experts point out that gross margins in supplying fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs) are very low.
Implementing the Food Ordinance is the bigger challenge and there are many provisions of the National Food Security Bill which need to be expanded and strengthened.
'The central government forces are supporting one group and the state government forces are supporting another group and this is resulting in non-stop cross-firing, which has resulted in the killing of many innocent people.'
The Chinese mainland on Thursday reported 3,472 locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 cases, besides 20,782 asymptomatic cases, according to the National Health Commission.
China reported 17,166 asymptomatic cases with a majority of them in Shanghai, China's business hub of 26 million.
The police said the woman works as a pilot with a private airline while her husband is deployed with the ground staff in another private airline.
'I was put in an anda cell. No window, light or air. Only grills.' 'During the monsoon, water would seep. There were rats running around all the time.' 'We were forced to sleep under bright lights all the time. Those bright lights are never switched off.'
Jayalalithaa was the third chief minister in Tamil Nadu to die in office, after her mentor M G Ramachandran (1987) and before that his mentor C N Annadurai (1969). The state government should have evolved protocols for the medical care of the incumbent, and institutional memory should have guided the government and officials in the matter, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Sri Lanka is going through the worst economic crisis since independence in 1948. A crippling shortage of foreign reserves has led to long queues for fuel, cooking gas and other essentials while power cuts and soaring food prices heaped misery on the people.
The Competition Commission has approved online food delivery platform Zomato's proposed purchase of 9.3 per cent stake in online grocery shopping player Grofers India. Zomato, last month, said it has invested $100 million (around Rs 745 crore) for acquiring a minority stake in Grofers as the company looks to have more exposure to the online grocery segment. The recently-listed Zomato will acquire 9.3 per cent stake in Grofers India Pvt Ltd and Hands on Trades Pvt Ltd (HoT).
The dairy major is transforming into a full-fledged F&B and fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) player, reports Vinay Umarji.
'To summarise, PM Modi's failures in the last nine years can be categorised under 'durniti' (bad policies), 'anyay' (injustice) and - perhaps most importantly - 'badniyat' (ill intention)'
Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi cited a viral video on social media platforms, claiming that in it Modi's voice is heard in a call with BJP rebel Kripal Parmar.
'The Israeli government is saying, "OK, leave northern Gaza, because we're going to fight Hamas there".' 'But Hamas is not stupid. They are going to put militants in southern Gaza too. And then what's Israel going to do?' 'At some point are they going to say, 'Leave southern Gaza too because we want to fight Hamas there? Go across the border to Egypt"'? 'That's what people are worried about. Because they fear that once they cross the border into Egypt there will be no coming back.'
The public relations agency for which the woman worked and the insurance company where her husband was employed announced their termination on Twitter.
Major Ruchi Agarwal is commander of the United Nations Female Engagement Team in the conflict-ridden Democratic Republic of Congo.
Food delivery apps Zomato and Swiggy reported a nationwide outage on Wednesday. Both the platforms witnessed technical glitches and were unresponsive for almost an hour. Downdetector, a platform that collects status reports from a series of sources, recorded about 3,619 reports of outage against Zomato at 2:05 PM and about 771 reports of outage against Swiggy at around 2:21 PM. According to the sources, the outage was caused by Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud-services platform, which runs both platforms. Though Swiggy and Zomato are working now, some customers reported that the issue has not been solved completely and they are not able to place orders and there are payment related issues.
