Welcome to My Blog

Here is a masonry blog layout with no sidebar

UK in early stages of 3rd wave of coronavirus, warns Indian-origin scientist

Professor Ravi Gupta of the University of Cambridge, who is a member of the government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), said although new cases were “relatively low” the B.1.617 variant of the COVID-19 had fuelled “exponential growth”, the BBC reported.

On Sunday, the UK reported more than 3,000 new COVID infections for a fifth day in a row. Prior to this, the UK had not surpassed that number since April 12.

Biden budget sets aside $750 mln for SolarWinds response

The money comes on top of a $500 million fund for federal cybersecurity as the U.S. government recovers from the cyber attack that hit nine agencies including the State Department and Treasury.
The hack of information technology company SolarWinds, which was identified in December, gave access to thousands of companies and government offices that used its products. Microsoft President Brad Smith described the attack as “the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen”.

India’s active COVID caseload below 20-lakh mark, 1,27,510 new cases reported

India recorded nearly 90.3 lakh Covid cases in May, by far the highest monthly count reported in any country so far. Although infections steadily declined through the second half of the month, the numbers overall were so high that the case count in May was 30% higher than the previous record of 69.4 lakh, also reported in India in the month of April.

‘Covid-19 has no credible natural ancestor’: Explosive study claims Chinese scientists created virus in lab

The new research claims that scientists took a natural coronavirus “backbone” found in Chinese cave bats and spliced onto it a new “spike”, turning it into the deadly and highly transmissible Covid-19.

The paper also quotes that researchers found “unique fingerprints” in Covid-19 samples that they say could only have arisen from manipulation in a laboratory.Authors Dalgleish and Sorensen wrote in their paper that they had prima facie evidence of retro-engineering in China’ for a year, but were ignored by academics and major journals, reported DailyMail.com.

India’s Mahindra expects car sales to take two years to rebound after COVID shock

Car sales had started to pick up in the January-March period but a second, more deadly wave of infections forced lockdowns again. This time consumer sentiment has taken a hit and discretionary spending is likely to take longer to recover.

The virus is also spreading to rural India, which was relatively protected during the first wave and had offset the low demand automakers saw in urban centres.

Carmakers in ‘India’s Detroit’ allowed to operate as workers protest COVID risk

Tamil Nadu government order issued on Saturday said so-called continuous process industries, which include auto factories, would be allowed to function in accordance with measures such as social distancing to stem the virus’s spread.

It also urged vehicle manufacturers to initiate immediate action to vaccinate all their employees within a month.

Only 30% of firms in US, Europe to embrace full return-to-office model

“By shifting conversations to focus on the working environments that best suit employees’ needs moving forward, organisations can ensure that their employees feel they are being heard and that they have the autonomy and tools to do their jobs effectively,” said Keith Johnston, VP and group research director at Forrester.

Vaccine inequality, wily variants: Covid’s deadliest phase may be here soon

In countries with widespread vaccination, like the United States and Britain, we can expect that Covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths will continue to decline or stay low, especially because lab tests and real world experience show that vaccines appear to defend recipients well against the severe effects of both variants.

For much of the rest of the world, though, this even more transmissible new variant could be catastrophic.

Petitions filed in SC seeking contempt of court proceedings against the RBI Governor, others

The respondents, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor, Shaktikant Das, Chief Executive of Indian Banks Association (IBA) were duty-bound to promulgate and ensure the compliance of the order of this court throughout the country but they deliberately didn’t, the petition said.
The Supreme Court’s order, dated September 3, 2020, was operational on all lending institutions/banks throughout the country and was passed in favour of all borrowers accounts to grant relief from financial stress during the COVID-19 pandemic, said the petition.

COVID impact: Digital recruitment process to continue, say experts

There was a rush towards new-age technology-aided recruitment/HR tools in 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic and new-age recruitment tools will continue to be leveraged extensively and increasingly in the future too.

“Corporates want to have data-based and analysis-driven inputs to make recruitment decisions and they employ various modern tools to ensure candidates cultural and job role fitment,” said Siddhartha Gupta, CEO, Mercer – Mettl.