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Non-Life

India’s economic rebound faces rising risk from Delta variant: Reuters poll

“Resurgence in cases and (any) emergence of fresh variants are notable risks for the economy for the rest of the year, particularly at a time when vaccination coverage is short of achieving a critical mass,” said DBS economist Radhika Rao.

“Reinstatement of movement curbs risks deepening the damage inflicted on the informal sector, which contributes to nearly half of the national output and employs a majority.”

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India plans more power islands to counter cyber, terrorist threats

The plan follows a major power outage in India’s financial hub Mumbai last year that brought the city to a halt and prompted speculation about a cyber attack. The year before, the country’s nuclear power monopoly reported computer systems at one of its generation plants had been attacked by malware. Power grids the world over are increasingly digitalized, leaving them vulnerable to such attacks.

Islanding systems feature generation capacity and can isolate automatically from the main grid in the event of an outage. For the new systems, provinces need to submit proposals for setting up generation and storage capacities, power minister Raj Kumar Singh Singh said

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Delta variant forces Silicon Valley giants to rethink office-return plans

Recent court decisions have upheld employers’ rights to require vaccinations, including a ruling that said Houston Methodist Hospital could require health care workers to get shots. On Monday, a federal judge ruled that Indiana University could require students to be vaccinated as well.

“The legal authority continues to line up on the side of employers being allowed to mandate vaccines if they choose to,” said Douglas Brayley, an employment lawyer at the global law firm Ropes & Gray.

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India urges foreign governments to easing travel restrictions for Indians

To a question on when the World Health Organisation (WHO) is expected to recognise Covaxin vaccine, he said its producer Bharat Biotech Limited has submitted the request along with all necessary documentation to the global body earlier this month.

Bagchi also said that more than half of the member states of the European Union have recognised Covishield, the vaccine manufactured by Pune-based Serum Institute of India.

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