Move over 3D, 4D and 5D. Cinema is now eyeing the metaverse experience. On February 15, Bollywood producer Vashu Bhagnani's production company, Pooja Entertainment, forayed into the metaverse and bought its first piece of virtual land. The space, called Poojaverse, will be a virtual area where the company will create an immersive experience for moviegoers, starting with BadeMiyan ChoteMiyan, starring Akshay Kumar and Tiger Shroff. Promotional events for the film, slated for release on Christmas 2023, will be held in the metaverse, says the company. The metaverse might still be in its infancy, but producers like Deepshikha Deshmukh say, "The ecosystem will only grow from here. "Metaverse will soon be the go-to place for everything virtual related to films."
Ushering in a big wave of reforms by implementing the four labour codes, setting up the national social security fund to cover over 38 crore informal sector workers and improving the ease of doing business will top the agenda of the labour ministry in the New Year. In a major move, the ministry launched the e-Shram portal on August 26, 2021 for creating a national database of over 38 crore informal sector workers. It will help the government to ensure last-mile delivery of benefits of various social security schemes to the informal-sector workers.
India will need to travel back in time and seek inspiration from football greats Tulsidas Balaram and Chuni Goswami to deftly dribble around and sidestep the West-imposed price cap on exports of Russian seaborne crude oil. India depends on imported oil to meet 86 per cent of its needs, of which nearly a quarter now comes from Russia. The copious flows are roughly 10 per cent cheaper than competing suppliers helping India save billions of dollars in fuel costs.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday extended the card-on-file (CoF) tokenisation deadline by three months to September 30, 2022, in view of various representations received from industry bodies. Card-on-file, or CoF, refers to card information stored by payment gateway and merchants to process future transactions. Tokenisation is the process of replacing actual card details with a unique alternate code called 'Token' - thereby enabling more secure transactions.
Railway officials also indicated that possible 'sabotage' and tampering with the electronic interlocking system, which detects the presence of trains, led to the Friday accident.
Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has mandated to reduce the limit of industrially produced trans-fats, to not more than 2 per cent to make the country free from the industrially-produced trans-fats by 2022, a year-ahead of the WHO guidelines, the regulator said in a statement.
The country's leading automobile show, the Auto Expo, which was scheduled to take place in February next year at Greater Noida, has been postponed due to the COVID-19 situation and apprehensions of a possible third wave, industry body SIAM said on Monday. The last edition of the biennial automobile show took place in February 2020. "The magnitude of the risk of spread of infection is extremely high in a business-to-consumer (B2C) show like the Auto Expo which is visited by large crowds and maintaining social distancing would be difficult.
The regulator is also expected to update its board about two high-profile corporate cases -- one involving refund of investors' money by Sahara group and the other about Reliance Industries' appeal against its decision on settlement of cases through consent mechanism.
With the virus mutating, can vaccines be assumed safe and effective in the long run?
The report said that India maintains zero-tolerance standards for certain plant quarantine pests, such as weed seeds and ergot.
The payments industry is at a crossroads with the banking regulator on two pressing issues, neither of which seems headed towards an amicable solution. Depending upon which side accommodates the other, customers in India will have to choose between convenience and ironclad safety. In the end, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which regulates both banks and all payments services providers, will prevail. But the question is: will it do so by bending a little or by sticking to its firm stand? The two issues - one concerning payment facilitators storing customers' card details and the other about auto-renewal of payments - appear similar but aren't.
Syed Abdul Mueed is the third son of the Hizb chief to have been sacked from the government job.
The recent spate of technical glitches in aircraft has prompted the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to issue an order on July 18, making aircraft maintenance engineers (AMEs) with category B1/B2 licences the final authorities in certifying planes. This has put the spotlight on the availability of such personnel. According to the order, airlines were resorting to frequent one-off authorisation by the Category A certifying staff at transit stations, which is not in line with existing regulatory provisions.
Except for laws pertaining to the payment of minimum wages, following safety norms and adequate compensation for workers in case of industrial accidents, no other provisions of the labour law would apply to all new companies that wish to operate in the state for at least 1,200 days, and for those that have already been operational for that period.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday inaugurated the 6th India Mobile Congress at Pragati Maidan in Delhi and launched 5G services. The 5G telecom services seek to provide seamless coverage, high data rate, low latency and highly reliable communications system. The three major telecom operators of the country demonstrated one use case each in front of the prime minister to show the potential of 5G technology in India.
The woman alleged that a 'policeman' standing on the platform did not take any action after she approached him for help following the incident.
'This is about children caring for their parents and helping them with assistance.'
Gujarat and Karnataka have been ranked as the best performers in developing startup ecosystem for budding entrepreneurs, according to the ranking of states and Union territories by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT). Among smaller states having population of less than one crore, Meghalaya has been adjudged as the best performer. The rankings are based on the initiatives taken to develop the startup ecosystem for promoting budding entrepreneurs.
High cost of acquisition due to a variety of reasons, including higher GST than all other major countries, is slowing down car demand in the country and unless the Centre and states take steps to reduce it, the industry is unlikely to experience reasonable growth, according to Maruti Suzuki India Chairman R C Bhargava. Addressing shareholders in the company's Annual Report for 2020-21, he said after the devastating second wave of the coronavirus pandemic hitting the first quarter of FY22, the performance in the next three quarters will largely depend on how effectively people get vaccinated and observe safety protocols.
Passenger vehicle wholesales in India increased by 17 per cent in the second quarter of the current fiscal year as buying sentiment improved and companies stocked up to cater to enhanced demand in the festive season, auto industry body SIAM said on Friday. According to the latest data by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), passenger vehicles sales in the July-September quarter increased to 726,232 units from 620,620 units in the same period last year. Similarly, two-wheeler sales during the September quarter this fiscal rose marginally to 46,90,565 units as compared with 46,82,571 units in the same period last fiscal. However, commercial vehicles sales saw a dip of 20.13 per cent at 133,524 units in the quarter under review as compared with 167,173 units in July-September 2019.
'You have to be a total anti-national bozo to shut down the Nokia plant in Sriperumbudur, which was the first large manufacturing plant for mobile phones in India.' 'Why was the unit shut down? Because of somebody's ego.'
Bharat Biotech recruited 13,000 participants for the Phase-3 clinical trial of Covaxin. This is one of the largest efficacy trials held in the country.
Although the pact would focus mainly on the Pacific and the South China Sea region, any action designed to deter China with or without New Delhi's active participation is a welcome move, notes Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
"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.
The SSLV is designed to be affordable and amenable to industry production and aimed to function as a launch-on-demand platform for mini, micro or nano satellites.
In a rare face off, captains of the auto industry have hit out at the government for not walking the talk. At an industry event in the capital on Wednesday, R C Bhargava, chairman of India's largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki, and Venu Srinivasan, chairman of TVS Motor, questioned the government's intent to support the auto sector. Revenue secretary Tarun Bajaj sat in the audience listening, before his turn came to counter them.
'Safety is my first priority.' 'I need to ensure that any drug or vaccine that our citizens get is first safe.'
In the recent past, Delhi has witnessed several fire incidents that have claimed a substantial number of lives and caused heavy damages.
Homegrown microblogging platform Koo said the new guidelines will help clarify the responsibilities of intermediaries.
The dinner Jill Biden and her husband US President Joe Biden hosted for Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, June 22, at the White House brought together, Indians and Americans from so many firmaments.
Zomato said late on Friday that it was pushing the implementation of the new food quality policy to May 3 from April 18.
'A lot of people are shying away from taking the vaccination.' 'It's high time we started a trust campaign for the vaccination so that those who are suspicious of the vaccine would realise it is completely safe.'
The recent protests by employees of Urban Company and the case of a a Zomato delivery executive who died in a road accident point to the severely straitened condition of gig workers during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Budget 2021 had promised several measures to help the cause of gig economy workers, but most of them are yet to see the light of day. Even after a year, the country's gig workers continue to be without any social security cover or a minimum wage guarantee. "In Budget 2021, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced that the government is looking toward including migrant and gig workers for social security benefits," says Srinivas Kotni, managing partner, Lexport, a consulting firm. Parliament had passed the Code on Wages in 2019 and Code on Industrial Relations, Social Security and Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions in 2020.
The industry is expecting double-digit growth on a year-on-year basis, helped by a possible price correction after softening of raw material inputs and factors such as positive sentiments, pent up demand and improving economic conditions. Besides, a shift in consumer behaviour from price consciousness towards technologically advanced premium products with quality, value proposition and safety aspects leading to a rise in demand for home automation products is making the industry upbeat. With the government's production linked incentive (PLI) scheme for white goods, which has witnessed a committed investment of Rs 4,614 crore, in place, many manufacturers are gearing up to make the most out of the opportunity as well as take steps towards reducing their dependency on imports and make products more affordable.
'Our proactive detection rate for hate speech in India is close to 97 per cent -- which means that of the hate speech content we remove, we detect 97 per cent of it proactively, even before anyone reports it.'
The crime, which took place inside a parked tempo in the wee hours, had sent shockwaves through the city and evoked the memories of the 2012 Delhi gangrape case due to the brutal
Bharat Biotech's Covaxin has demonstrated 77.8 per cent effectiveness against symptomatic COVID-19 and 65.2 per cent protection against the new Delta variant.
Wipro chairman Rishad Premji on Sunday said its leaders will start returning to office from Monday after 18 months of work from home amid the COVID-19 pandemic. "After 18 long months, our leaders @Wipro are coming back to the office starting tomorrow (twice a week). All fully vaccinated, all ready to go - safely and socially distanced," Premji said in a tweet. He also shared a video about the COVID-19-related safety protocols, including temperature checks and QR code scans, that have been put in place at the Wipro office.
In a bid to ensure security of card data, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has enhanced the scope of tokenisation and permitted card issuers to act as token service providers (TSP). Under tokenisation services, a unique alternate code is generated to facilitate transactions through cards. The RBI on Tuesday extended the device-based tokenisation to card-on-file tokenisation (CoFT) services, a move that will bar the merchants from storing actual card data. Card-on-file refers to card information stored by payment gateway and merchants to process future transactions.
The 30-member team will be headed by Malappuram Additional Superintendent of Police G Sabu, a government release said.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances