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Mental health in the workplace, saved by bots and apps?

Seven in 10 employees say this has been the most stressful year of their working lives, according to a report from Workplace Intelligence and Oracle.

For companies, that means the mental-health issues of employees have rocketed from a secondary concern in years past, to a primary one. But making help available, quickly and at scale, is no easy task.
And 68% say that they would prefer interacting with a robot on issues like stress and anxiety, as opposed to a human manager.

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On World AIDS Day, South Africa finds hope in new treatment

In her World AIDS Day message, UNAIDS executive director Winnie Byanyima lamented the fact that more than 12 million people are still waiting to get on HIV treatment, while 1.7 million people were infected with HIV in 2019 because of lack of access.

She called on companies to “openly share their technology and know-how and to waive their intellectual property rights” so that the world can produce vaccines, including for Covid-19, at the scale required. There is no vaccine for HIV.

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Paytm quashes reports of stake sale by Ant Financial

While reports claimed that Ant Financial is planning to sell its stake in the company, both Paytm and Ant denied them as rumours and called the reports ‘false’ and ‘misleading’.

It has launched new insurance and wealth products which are getting adopted by its users as more people are transacting digitally in India. The progress has helped in instilling more confidence in all its investors and they expect expansion of these services going forward.

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Reliance General Insurance and Reliance Nippon Life Insurance put on block, see large PE bidders

For Reliance General Insurance, which is owned 100 per cent by RCAP, there are 18 bidders and prominent among them are, Chryscap, J.C. Flower, Blackstone, KKR, CVC Capital Partners, and Bain Capital.

For Reliance Nippon Life Insurance, in which RCAP owns 51 per cent controlling stake, has received 16 bids, including Bain Capital, NIIF, Arpwood Partners, Dabur Investments, Bandhan Bank, and Multiples Asset Management among others.

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COVID-19 caseload breaches 95-lakh mark,death toll climbs to 1,38,648 with 526 new fatalities

The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 89,73,373 pushing the national recovery rate to 94.11 per cent, while the COVID-19 case fatality rate stands at 1.45 per cent.

The active COVID-19 caseload continued to remain below 5 lakh.There are 4,22,943 active coronavirus infections in the country which comprises 4.44 per cent of the total caseload, the data stated.

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North American farmers profit as consumers pressure food business to go green

Investments in sustainability remain a tiny part of overall spending by the agriculture sector, which enjoyed healthy profits in 2020. They may help to head off more costly regulations down the road now that Democratic climate advocate Joe Biden was elected U.S. president.
Sustainable techniques farmers are adopting include refraining from tilling soil at times to preserve carbon. Some are adding an off-season cover crop of rye or grass to restore soil nutrients instead of applying heavy fertilizer loads over the winter that can contaminate local water supplies.

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When and how will COVID-19 vaccines become available?

Essential workers, a group of 87 million people who do crucial jobs that cannot be done from home, are the likely next group. This includes firefighters, police, school employees, transport workers, food and agriculture workers and food service employees.

Around 100 million adults with high-risk medical conditions and 53 million adults over the age of 65, also considered at higher risk of severe disease, are the next priority.

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