The International Olympic Committee has set June 29, 2021 as the new deadline for the qualification period of the Tokyo Olympics, which has been rescheduled to next year in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic. According to the letter dated April 2, the revised sport entries deadline has now been set for July 5, 2021.
The central government on Thursday sent a formal letter to the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) agreeing to accept their pending demands and prompting the farmers' body to suspend their over a yearlong agitation.
India's apex drug regulator has granted permission for conducting the phase II/III clinical trial of Bharat Biotech's Covaxin COVID-19 vaccine in the age group of 2 to 18 years, the Union Health Ministry said on Thursday.
Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday kept the benchmark interest rate unchanged at 4 per cent and decided to continue with its accommodative stance despite rising inflation. This is the 11th time in a row that the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) headed by RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das has maintained the status quo. RBI had last revised its policy repo rate or the short-term lending rate on May 22, 2020 in an off-policy cycle to perk up demand by cutting the interest rate to a historic low.
Sherine Xavier, a Sri Lankan Tamil filmmaker from Canada, is happy. After months of struggle with the Indian censor board, she has finally obtained approval to screen her film Muttrupullia?, which deals with the post-war situation in Sri Lanka's Tamil areas.
As many as 34 new drugs were added to and 26 dropped from an updated list of essential medicines on Tuesday, with the government saying this will reduce "patients' out-of-pocket expenditure". The National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM 2022) has 384 drugs, up from 376 in 2015. "Drafting this list is a lengthy process, and around 350 experts from across India have held over 140 consultation meetings to draft the NLEM 2022," Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said.
The Reserve Bank on Wednesday increased the benchmark lending rate by 40 basis points (bps) to 4.40 per cent in a bid to contain inflation, which has remained stubbornly above the target zone of 6 per cent for the last three months. The decision follows an unscheduled meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), with all six members unanimously voting for a rate hike while maintaining the accommodative stance. While the inflation has remained above the targetted 6 per cent since January, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said the inflation print in April is also likely to be high.
The CoS, headed by Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar, has also decided to set up a committee overseen by additional secretary, expenditure, Vilasini Ramachandran, and key finance ministry officials who have been asked to work out a financial package.
Indian frontline benchmarks - the S&P BSE Sensex and the Nifty50 - have rallied around 12 per cent each since June-end and outperformed their global peers by a wide margin. On Thursday, the US Fed hiked interest rates by another 75 basis points (bps) - the third such hike this year - and surprised the markets by projecting further sizable hikes in the coming months. With the latest hike, the Fed fund rate (FFR) now stands in the range of 3 - 3.25 per cent and is highest since January 2008.
India's services sector activity witnessed a sharp upturn in August on the back of stronger gains in new business, ongoing improvements in demand conditions and job creation, a monthly survey said on Monday. The seasonally adjusted S&P Global India Services PMI Business Activity Index rose from July's four-month low of 55.5 to 57.2 in August, amid a quicker upturn in business activity and the sharpest rise in employment for over 14 years. For the thirteenth straight month, the services sector witnessed an expansion in output.
The Dharmadhikari committee on pay fixation and promotion issues in government-owned Air India says minimal pay increments should be given till the airline makes an operating profit.
The trial will take place in 525 subjects at various sites, including AIIMS, Delhi, AIIMS, Patna and Meditrina Institute of Medical Sciences, Nagpur.
The Reserve Bank of India on Friday decided to keep benchmark interest rate unchanged at 4 per cent but maintained an accommodative stance even as the economy is showing signs of recovery after the second Covid wave.
Passengers complained that they had to wait a long time for Ola and Uber cabs, and added that those were available at inflated rates.
Looks like the Udta Maker makes will get no help from the government
The Reserve Bank of India on Wednesday kept the benchmark interest rate unchanged at 4 per cent and decided to continue with its accommodative stance against the backdrop of concerns over the emergence of the new coronavirus variant Omicron.
An expert panel of India's Central Drug Authority on Tuesday recommended granting permission to Serum Institute of India (SII) for conducting phase 2/3 trials of Covid vaccine Covovax on children aged 2 to 17 years with certain conditions, official sources said.
'The collegium system will remove any such doubts from the minds of people and the political parties.'
Sugarcane dues accruing to farmers rose to almost Rs 21,321 crore as of May 2021. Of that Rs 18,820 crore is for the cane supplied in the current season, which will end in September, while the remaining Rs 2,501 crore is from previous years. Of the pending sugarcane dues of 2020-21, almost 63 per cent accrues to the poll-bound state of Uttar Pradesh. The remaining are from Maharashtra and others.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) unions have decided to intensify their stir demanding revision of wages, pending since November 2017, and have called for mass casual leave of employees at the central bank on November 30. However, several sources in the RBI told Business Standard that the unions may not have to go on agitation, as the new contours of the wage pact have been almost finalised and could be announced any time. An email sent to the RBI was not answered. The United Forum of Reserve Bank Officers and Employees had deferred its agitation earlier after it was told that RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das was to hold talks with the human resource management department (HRMD).
'There should be total transparency in the system.'
With a view to removing disparity in minimum wages across the country, the national minimum wage is likely to be raised to Rs 70 per day from Rs 50 at present.
Diya Chitale and Manush Shah had also sought the HC's intervention in the matter.
The victims have "unbridled participatory rights" from the stage of investigation till the culmination of the criminal proceedings and such powers are "totally independent, incomparable" with that of the State, the Supreme Court held on Monday.
The results of the assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh are likely to play out during the winter session of Parliament beginning Wednesday.
Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope said the lowering of rates for the tests would provide a relief to the people.
'They have brought out a provision whereby the medium of education in the Hindi speaking states will be Hindi even in higher education institutions like IIT, IIM, etc.' 'Think about the students from the south who get admission in the IITs in Kanpur or Delhi or the IIMs in various places.'
The panel also recommended giving approval to Bharat Biotech for carrying out a study on interchangeability of its Covaxin and the under-trial adenoviral intranasal vaccine candidate BBV154, but asked the Hyderabad-based firm to remove the word "interchangeability" from the study title and submit a revised protocol for approval.
India, Taiwan and countries with large numbers of Tibetans, Uyghurs and overseas Chinese will be prominent among those that witness elevated United Front activity, notes Jayadeva Ranade, the distinguished China expert and retired RAW officer.
Australia (296 points from 3 series) toppled India (360 points from 4 series) in the standings after the revision with a percentage of 82.22 compared to the latter's 75 per cent.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday posted hearing for a bunch of petitions to January next year, including one filed by BCCI for an amendment in its Constitution which may decide the tenures of president Sourav Ganguly and secretary Jay Shah.
The plans also state that highly suspected cases testing negative on Rapid Antigen Test should be examined again using the gold standard RT-PCR test.
If Kerala wants to sustain its room for independent thinking and talk back to Delhi when needed, it should put its finances in order. Or - if one takes the North East example - Kerala's political posturing may end up commensurate with its financial dependence on others, suggests Shyam G Menon.
Covid deaths at home, on the way to hospital or in private centres are not being counted in Bihar's official list of dead.
China said it took the decision after it found no objection to the listing proposal by the United States, the United Kingdom and France following a careful study of the revised materials
After an all-party meeting in New Delhi, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi also said that some of these 32 bills have already been discussed by standing committees of Parliament.
"There is no doubt that selections to public employment should be on the basis of merit. Appointment of persons with lesser merit ignoring those who have secured more marks would be in violation of the Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution of India," the bench said in last week's judgment.
According to a commerce and industry ministry statement, the growth rate for these eight key sectors for April 2019 has been revised upward to 6.3 per cent from 2.6 per cent reported earlier mainly due to upward revisions in production of coal, crude oil, steel, cement and electricity.
The revision of the consumer price index and GDP base years from 2011-12 and 2012, respectively, were dependent on the outcomes of the consumer expenditure survey of 2017-18 that the government decided to junk recently.