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Eco/Invest/Demography

S.Korea’s fertility rate falls to lowest in the world

The number of expected babies per South Korean woman fell to 0.84 in 2020, dropping further from the country’s previous record low of 0.92 a year earlier, the official annual reading from the Statistics Korea showed.

That is the lowest among over 180 member countries of the World Bank, and far below 1.73 in the United States and 1.42 in Japan.

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Govt warns states of worsening COVID-19 situation if rules ignored

“Any laxity in implementing stringent measures to curb the spread, especially in view of new strain of virus…could compound the situation,” the health ministry said in a statement that singled out nine states and a federal territory.

India has confirmed the long-time presence of two mutant variants – N440K and E484Q – in addition to those first detected in Brazil, Britain and South Africa. 

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Trading on India’s largest stock exchange halted by telecom breakdown

“The NSE outage is unfortunate, especially for this long. Global exchanges should have adequate backups to ensure that even if there is an outage it’s restored fast,” said Sandip Sabharwal, a Mumbai-based fund manager.

“Asian markets saw a significant crash on Wednesday, and at such times, price discovery real-time becomes even more important.”

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Rajasthan to enact Bill on Right to Health,to bring Universal Health Care scheme worth Rs 3,500 cr: Gehlot

He said that from next year, universal health coverage will be implemented at a cost of Rs 3,500 crore, under which every family in the state will get medical insurance benefit of up to Rs 5 lakh.

”For the first time in the country, we are going to implement universal health coverage in the state in the coming year at the cost of Rs 3,500 crore,” Gehlot said.

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India plans new social media controls after Twitter face-off

The latest draft rules – which would be legally enforcable -say companies should remove content as early as possible, but not later than 36 hours, after a government or legal order.

They must also assist in investigations or other cyber security-related incidents within 72 hours of a request. Further, if a post depicts an individual in any sexual act or conduct, then companies must disable or remove such content within a day of receiving a complaint, the rules added.

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Indian traders face ‘absolute havoc’ as bourse suffers four-hour outage

At 11:40 a.m., the NSE shut down completely for trading, leaving traders wondering what would happen to their open positions.

The incident occurred just ahead of the monthly derivatives expiry on the last Thursday of the month, when traders close or roll over their open positions.

“This was an unmitigated disaster because you need to communicate this proactively. Not one person in the market knew they would shut down the exchange,” Varun Khandelwal, director at Bullero Capital, a New Delhi-based proprietary trading firm.

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Online platforms emerging as preferred marketplace for vehicle buyers: Survey

But the pandemic notwithstanding, more than half the people surveyed (54 per cent) were keen to buy a vehicle in 2021 as against one-third (34 per cent) of the respondents who had decided not to make any such purchases this year, it said, adding, the interest in buying vehicles during the pandemic can be explained by the necessity of personal mobility.

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