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Eco/Invest/Demography

India’s economic growth picks up before huge COVID-19 wave hit

Gross domestic product grew 1.6% in January-March compared with the same period a year earlier, mainly driven by state spending and manufacturing sector growth, data from the statistics ministry showed on Monday.

Economists said the country faces a slowdown in consumer demand as household incomes and jobs have declined, with limited scope for the government to offer growth stimulus due to its rising debt.

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China-backed projects in Africa face fierce backlash from environmentalists

“There is no doubt that Chinese commercial actors … have tried to evade environmental requirements,” said Yun Sun, director of the China programme at the Stimson Centre in Washington.

Meanwhile, a senior fellow at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute, said Beijing was not unaware of the potential risks involved with private and state-owned firms operating in belt and road countries.

“Reducing these risks requires more uniformly applied standards and practices on environmental and social issues by China’s outbound actors, which is likely to come only via coherent policy requirements from the top down,” he said.

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90 institutional investors sue Nissan over Ghosn’s financial misconduct cases

According to the complaint, the investors who have traded Nissan stocks through financial institutions since June 2011 argue that Nissan stock prices plunged after the company’s then Chairman Ghosn and Greg Kelly, a former Nissan executive, were arrested by Japanese prosecutors in November 2018 for underreporting Ghosn’s remuneration by billions of yen in financial reports over multiple years.

The investors maintain that Nissan could easily have forecast a drop in stock prices due to damaged trust in the company’s accounting and corporate governance if the incident was reported by news media.

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Coronavirus stress increased suicidal thoughts among people: Study

“We can use these findings to target which stressors are the most toxic in terms of driving people towards thoughts of suicide. While some of these may ease as we come out of lockdown, others may persist well into the future,” said Professor Nicola Gray, from Swansea University.

“Many of these stressors are difficult to avoid, so we also need to instill hope for the future in our communities to help people get through these difficult times,” added Professor Robert Snowden from Cardiff University.

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China, in major policy shift, announces families can have three children

“To further optimise the birth policy, (China) will implement a one-married-couple-can-have-three-children policy,” Xinhua said in a report on the meeting.
In 2016, China scrapped its decades-old one-child policy – initially imposed to halt a population explosion – with a two-child limit, which failed to result in a sustained surge in births as the high cost of raising children in Chinese cities deterred many couples from starting families. read more

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