Beyond Financial News

British royal family — have been strutting their stuff on that iconic Buckingham Palace balcony for centuries, waving at the plebs below like they're auditioning for a role in 'The Crown'. But starting today, July 15, commoners will be allowed to do their own waving from the Buck balc as part of the new palace tour. The head of the family, Charles — three years junior to the other real estate baron Donald Trump — gave his go-ahead to making his family's residence a bit more available to commoners.

Melania Trump, the wife of former US President Donald Trump, has issued a statement on the attack on his husband. «When I watched that violent bullet strike my husband, Donald, I realized my life, and Barron's life, were on the brink of devastating change. I am grateful to the brave secret service agents and law enforcement officials who risked their own lives to protect my husband,» she said in the statement. «To the families of the innocent victims who are now suffering from this heinous act, I humbly offer my sincerest sympathy. Your need to summon your inner strength for such a terrible reason saddens me. The winds of change have arrived. For those of you who cry in support, I thank you. I commend those of you who have reached out beyond the political divide — thank you for remembering that every single politician is a man or a woman with a loving family,» the statement added.

Also read: Samsung Galaxy Unpacked Event Highlights: Galaxy Ultra Watch & Watch 7 launched Beyond the tech sector, the threat of AI to livelihoods brought Hollywood production to a standstill last year as actors and writers went on a high-profile strike. It’s not unheard of for tech companies to team up with labour unions. Industry leader Microsoft announced late last year that it was forming a historic alliance with a coalition of 60 unions to discuss how AI will impact workers.

Puerto Rico’s professional basketball league is experiencing a renaissance thanks to reggaeton stars like Bad Bunny, Ozuna and Anuel AA

Fazilka district administration in Punjab has launched a 'bag-free day' initiative in government primary schools to foster creativity and provide stress-free learning experience for students, officials said on Sunday. Under this initiative, students need not bring school bags on the last Saturday of every month, they said. Fazilka District Education Officer Shiv Pal said there will be no regular classes on 'bag-free' days and co-curricular activities such as rafting, storytelling, class discussions and yoga, will be conducted instead of traditional classes, the officials said. The initiative is aimed at providing a stress-free learning experience, enhance creativity and skills and for holistic development of children, they added.

SIM-swapping is a growing form of identity theft that goes beyond hacking into an email or social media account

The misery of Houston’s lasting power outages extend beyond the big city and onto surrounding farms and ranches, where everything from animal bedding to feed is harder to come by since Hurricane Beryl turned off the lights

government has named senior telecom department official Robert Jerard Ravi as chairman and managing director (CMD) of Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL), along with Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL) and Bharat Broadband Network (BBNL) for a period of six months. According to an order issued by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet, the government has decided to not extend the tenure of Pravin Kumar Purwar, current CMD of BSNL beyond July 14. «Entrustment of additional charge of the post of CMD, BSNL along with CMD, MTNL and CMD, BBNL to Ravi A Robert Jerard, DDG (SRl), DoT for a period of six months w.e.f. July 15, 2024, till January 14, 2025, or until further orders, whichever is earlier,» the order said.

EEPC India has suggested restoring the interest subvention to 3% for the specified 410 tariff lines besides raising the subvention rate to 5% for MSME manufacturers exporting under any tariff line. «Considering the rise in the repo rate from 4.4% to 6.5%, we have requested to restore the interest subvention rate to 3% for the specified 410 tariff lines. We also requested that for Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSME) manufacturers exporting under any tariff line, the interest subvention rate be increased to 5%. Merchant exporters have low-profit margins, and the cost of credit affects their viability significantly. Therefore, we have requested to extend the Interest Equalisation Scheme to merchant exporters with a 3% subvention rate,» EEPC India chairman Arun Kumar Garodia said. According to Trade Notice No 07/ 2024-25, the Interest Equalization Scheme has been extended for two months but only for MSMEs. It also says that the claims from non-MSME exporters will not be accepted beyond 30th June 2024.

credit cards, and the latest data on delinquencies and expenditures showed they remain relative stragglers in a revenue stream dominated by privately owned banks. But, at the same time, the state-run players are learning the tricks of the trade — and have a very limited value at risk. For PSU banks, non-performing assets (NPAs) of credit cards outstanding are the highest among all retail sub-sectors — at 11.3% — as of March 2024. The comparative figure is about 2% for private sector and foreign banks, Reserve Bank of India data showed.

revenue secretary Sanjay Malhotra will initiate the process of selection and appointment of judicial and technical members for the Goods and Services Tax Appellate Tribunal (GSTAT) after the presentation of the budget, officials said. The central government is aiming to make the tribunal functional by the end of November and has already initiated the process of shifting anti-profiteering cases to the GSTAT principal bench from the Competition Commission of India (CCI). «We are putting all efforts to make the principal bench operational by the end of November and the process of selection and appointment will start immediately after the budget,» a senior government official told ET. Separately, a technical team is working on a dedicated online portal for electronic filing of appeals, officials said, adding that the portal will be ready by September.

economic policy towards 2047 with an emphasis on job creation through labour-intensive manufacturing, credit for MSMEs and continued focus on services exports by expanding GCCs, according to Goldman Sachs. “We expect the general government to stick to the announced fiscal deficit target of 5.1% of GDP for FY25 (or even slightly lower) and announce further consolidation to a deficit of below 4.5% of GDP by FY26”, Goldman Sachs said in a note Monday. Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the full budget for FY25 on July 23. In her interim budget, presented in February, she had pegged fiscal deficit at 5.1% of GDP

Union Budget 2024: Share of agriculture in India’s economy has declined over a period of time to less than 15% mainly due to high growth rate of the industry and services sectors. However, agriculture sector’s importance in India’s economy goes well beyond this mainly because more than 70% of India’s population depends on rural incomes and about 70% of poor people are found in rural areas.

intelligence capital of the world powered by accelerated computing and its skilled manpower, said Vishal Dhupar, managing director for South Asia at Nvidia. The global AI chip giant aims to help bring the required AI infrastructure to the country enabling it to build AI in a sovereign manner, which could even make India a net exporter of intelligence rather than an importer, Dhupar said.

Construction is booming in states like Arizona, California, Florida and Texas.

A new challenger has entered the RIA space, and it’s focusing its efforts on the unique needs of advisors looking to break away from captive broker-dealers.

vegetable prices soar. Prices of staples like onions and tomatoes have gone up and restaurants are looking at the last report of hiking prices, reported TOI. Discounts are out of question as well, so either way, costumes will have to spend more on enjoying a meal outside. While such sudden and steep prices are typically seasonal, this time they're beyond «digestible levels», Anjan Chatterjee, founder of Speciality Restaurants, which owns brands like Oh! Calcutta and Mainland China, told TOI. «It has been pinching us across. Our bottom lines are shrinking,» Chatterjee said, suggesting that a price review is underway. «Price increases are being absorbed as of now but we do not know what tomorrow holds,» he added.

₹1,253 crore-1,670 crore) in India’s burgeoning startup ecosystem, a top executive told Mint. The Mumbai-based firm, which has invested in MobiKwik, PharmEasy, and Country Delight, among others, is open to all sectors including software-as-a-service (SaaS), agritech, and healthtech, as it doubles down on early-stage startups with cheque sizes of $1-2 million, Sukhmani Bedi, a partner at Orios, said in an interview. So far, almost half of the $150 million fourth fund has been invested in startups including climate-tech firm Varaha and fixed-income lender Lendbox.

Nifty reversed sharply from the lifetime highs in Wednesday's trading session, however, the recovery was good enough from the lower levels which helped Nifty to recover more than 150 points from its day's low. The rise so far appears to be a 3-wave rising structure on the hourly charts indicating that until the all-time high levels are not taken off there can be selling pressure at the higher levels.

Feeling financially secure is a goal that many aspire to, but getting there is likely to be a challenge for most according to a new survey.

This is in sharp contrast to the last two years, when fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies such as ITC, Dabur, Marico, Britannia, Parle Products, Emami and Hindustan Unilever had been focused mainly on premiumisation with demand turning sluggish in villages as the rise in prices of daily essentials, vegetables and fuel had forced consumers to cut down on spending. In the last two years, more than 60% of launches by large FMCG companies have been in the premium segment. The companies are also investing in “consumer activation” efforts to increase engagement with rural buyers, the executives said. Apart from the expectations of an above-normal monsoon that could bolster farm incomes, companies are expecting policy measures in the July 23 budget to strengthen the revival of demand in rural India.