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Indian bankers face legal risks as court rulings threaten over $6 billion in loans

Two rulings by India’s Supreme Court that threaten the repayment of loans totalling nearly Rs 50,000 crore ($6.73 billion) to some of India’s largest banks
Any failure to recoup the money adds to stress in the banking sector, which is already dealing with an increased level of bad loans and reduced profits because of the impact of the pandemic.

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Tap water for rural homes: Chattisgarh lagging in 30th position, says Union minister

“Some states have done good work. Telangana, Goa, and two Union Territories have achieved a cent-percent target. Some states have set targets to complete work under the mission by 2021, while some by 2022 and 2023. There are 74 districts and over 1,000 village panchayats in the country where all rural households have a tap water connection,” he said.

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India to Indonesia: Asian economies challenged by Delta Covid variant

Supply chains from Vietnam to Thailand, where outbreaks are surging, have also been interrupted, with factories that make goods for Nike Inc. and Adidas AG shutting down over virus restrictions, potentially missing out on the crucial holiday shopping season. That raises the prospect of Asia’s delta hit reverberating worldwide, if exports are delayed longer term.

“The current delta wave in Asia may snarl production networks further,” said Frederic Neumann, co-head of Asian economic research at HSBC Holdings Plc in Hong Kong. “The risk is that growth scars linger for longer.”

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Did inequality in US increase during pandemic? Wait for more data to get answers

Researchers at the Urban Institute estimated last month that, thanks to big job gains and the benefits included in the American Rescue Plan approved in March and earlier pandemic-aid legislation, the share of Americans below the poverty line would fall to 7.7 per cent this year from what they estimated using the same methodology to have been 13.9 per cent in 2018.
The bottom half did enjoy a bigger percentage wealth gain than the top 1 per cent —30.3 per cent versus 20.7 per cent since the end of 2019 — although because it had so little wealth to start with, that amounted to just $609 billion in new wealth versus $7.1 trillion for the 1 per cent.

Still, the total wealth of the bottom 50 per cent in the first quarter of this year amounted to 6.3 per cent of that of the top 1 per cent, up from 5.8 per cent at the end of 2019 and the highest such percentage since 2007. In that sense, at least, inequality between the top and bottom decreased.

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Depict real picture of job loss: Parliamentary panel to Labour Ministry

It observed that despite Covid-19 pandemic, net EPFO payroll addition for 2020-21 was 77.08 lakh which is almost at par with 2019-20 net payroll addition of 78.58 lakh.”However, the Committee’s attention has been drawn to a study conducted by the Azim Premji University according to which nearly half of the formal salaried workers moved into informal work either as self-employed (30 per cent), casual wage (10 per cent), informal salaried jobs (9 per cent) between late 2019 and late 2020.”

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ICMR study finds mix of Covishield, Covaxin yields better results

These findings have an important implication for the COVID-19 vaccination program wherein heterologous immunisation will pave the way for induction of improved and better protection against the variant strains of SARS-CoV-2.

Such mixed regimens will also help to overcome the challenges of shortfall of particular vaccines and remove hesitancy around vaccines in people’s mind that could have genesis in programmatic ‘errors’ especially in settings where multiple COVID-19 vaccines are being used, the study highlighted.

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