COST Financial News

pothole free by December 2023 with construction focus shifting from the engineering, procurement and construction (EPF) model to build-operate-transfer (BOT) model and the hybrid annuity model (HAM) for government projects under the ministry of road transport and highways. “Under BOT mode, the maintenance of the highways lies with the contractor and hence good quality roads are made which minimises their maintenance cost,” road transport minister Nitin Gadkari said on Thursday.

By Marc Jones

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the tech giant’s Connect developer conference on Wednesday with a focus on virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence

roads and railways worth Rs 52,000 crore have been recommended for approval under the PM Gati Shakti initiative, an official statement said on Thursday. This takes the total number of projects assessed by NPG to 112 with a total value of about Rs 11.53 lakh crore, since the launch of PM Gati Shakti, it said. These six projects were assessed in the 56th Network Planning Group (NPG) meeting on September 27.

Supreme Court has held that a condition imposed by the Government that the land owner should handover a part of land free of cost for public utility purposes in return of the permission granted for converting the nature of the use of the land cannot be held illegal. The top court remark came while setting aside a Bombay High Court judgement. «It can be noticed that this Court in the case of Narayanrao Jagobaji Gowande Public Trust vs State of Maharashtra and others7 has held that if a Government gives the benefit of development of land concerned with permission to sub-divide the same and uses it for commercial purpose and it, in turn, requires the landowner to handover part of land free of cost for public utility purpose, such a clause cannot be held to be illegal. As such, we find that the High Court has grossly erred in allowing the writ petitions,» the top court said citing its earlier judgement. «We, therefore, allow the appeals and quash and set aside the impugned common judgment and order dated 4th July 2019 passed by the High Court.

Wordle is a globally popular web based game owned by The New York Times and designed by Engineer Josh Wardle. Josh Wardle earlier designed the puzzle for his wife who loved word games. Later on, it was made publicly accessible when NYT bought it for six figures. Wordle is a word puzzle game with limited chances to crack the puzzle. It resets every midnight and brings new word puzzle challenges every day. Wordle is free to play and is globally accessible. It is available at The NYT website. It does not require any fishy log ins or sign ups. Earlier, a previously played Wordle dictionary was available at the website. However, it has been taken down. Wordle is loved by millions of people for its unique play of words. People across the globe play Wordle and maitain their winning streaks.

The shortage of new housing is worse than forecast, but a backlog of construction work will support a rebound in profits at bricks and roofing producer Brickworks, says managing director Lindsay Partridge.

«We would like to sustain this growth in asset under management and we intend to touch the figure of Rs 5 lakh crore in the current financial year,» says Vivek Kumar Dewangan, CMD, REC. Now, firstly, you have signed many project-level MOUs as we understand and now this Rs 5,000 crore co-finance plan with PNB as well. What is the realistic visibility of disbursements that you foresee for both FY24 and FY25? Yes, in fact, when we had organised this Green Finance Summit on the sideline of G20 event at Goa, we got a huge response from the renewable energy developers, technology providers and the manufacturers and we were able to sign MOUs worth 2,86,000 crore. And Government of India has also allowed us to diversify into infrastructure and logistics, that is another area where we are focussing and government has allowed us that 33% of our loan book could be from infrastructure and logistics. So, we are joining, we are having collaboration with a number of financial institutions like PNB also and SBI and others.

This question is playing out in households around the world as they face shortages of essential foods like rice, cooking oil and onions. That is because countries have imposed restrictions on the food they export to protect their own supplies from the combined effect of the war in Ukraine, El Nino’s threat to food production and increasing damage from climate change. For Caroline Kyalo, a 28-year-old who works in a salon in Kenya's capital of Nairobi, it was a question of trying to figure out how to cook for her two children without onions.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) — Singapore's finance ministry on Thursday announced an additional S$1.1 billion ($801.98 million) to help households handle increases in the cost of living.

Investing.com-- Australian retail spending grew less than expected in August, barely expanding as consumers further cut back on spending amid continued pressure from historically high interest rates and sticky inflation.

Siddhartha Khemka, V-P, Head of Research (Retail), MOFSL, says “Reliance Industry’s core business which is facing headwinds, will not see recovery in the near term. Jio Financial post listing has not seen much excitement. The telecom business has been pretty stable though. All put together, we would not see a huge upside but I would expect it to remain steady in terms of share price movement for the next couple of weeks.” Do you think the triggers are in place for a meaningful up move from Reliance from these levels? In Reliance, there have been multiple headwinds. If we look at their last few AGMs, they have heavily invested into new-age or the alternate fuels where a few years back, they were talking about net debt-free and cash surplus. Again, with the investment cycle coming up, the core business is getting some pressure. The Singapore GRMs have come off from their highs and that is also hurting the oil business. If you put together all the pieces, the core business where there are headwinds, will not see recovery in the near term. We saw the Jio Financial listing but post listing, there has not been much excitement there. The telecom business has been pretty stable though. All put together, we would not see a huge upside but I would expect it to remain steady in terms of share price movement for the next couple of weeks.

Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation (GMC) has given the green light to an updated pet dog policy, addressing issues related to dog-human conflicts. This decision came during a board meeting in Ghaziabad. The newly introduced guidelines under this policy can be summarized as follows: Limit on Pet Dogs: Residents living in a 182-square-meter private unit are now allowed to have a maximum of two pet dogs.

Oil prices scaled one-year highs on Thursday, while world stocks eyed their longest losing streak in two years as worries deepened about persistently high interest rates, sending investors to shelter in the safety of a surging U.S. dollar. A surprisingly big drop in crude stocks at Cushing, Oklahoma, stoked concern that fuel demand is outstripping production right when markets least needed another supply-side shock. U.S.

Gold edged up on Thursday but hovered near a more than six-month low hit in the last session, as the dollar and Treasury yields held at elevated levels, with markets awaiting U.S. economic data for clues on the Federal Reserve's interest rate path. FUNDAMENTALS * Spot gold was up 0.1% to $1,876.89 per ounce by 0040 GMT, after shedding 1.4%, its biggest daily decline in two months, on Wednesday.

Apple expanding local manufacturing operations in India at the cost of China has triggered scores of reactions on social media platforms such as Weibo and X (formerly known as Twitter) questioning the quality of the latest iPhone 15s being made in the South Asian nation. Indian users and industry executives have, however, been quick to rebuff the comments, pointing to how the locally made devices were as good as any manufactured elsewhere. For the first time, India-made iPhone 15 and 15 Plus devices were made available on the first day of sale on September 22, along with China units, across the world, underlining the US smartphone maker's rapid expansion of its manufacturing operations in the world's second largest smartphone market. India is now easily the second largest assembler of iPhones globally. The launch of the latest India-made iPhones though sparked an adverse reaction in China, marked by social media posts and reactions on Chinese state media. One post on Weibo alleged that the India-made iPhone 15 units are being diverted to China after being rejected in Europe for having quality issues. State media in China denied claims of diversion.

By Sam Nussey

KX Systems is planning to enter the India market and set up sales and research & development offices in Bengaluru and Mumbai, a top executive at the software firm said. The company wants to target Indian developers, IT firms and other enterprises as it plans to capture the country’s artificial intelligence market that is expected to touch $4.2 billion by 2030, chief executive Ashok Reddy said.

Nickel explorer Chalice Mining is smarting from a 55.5 per cent slump in its share price since the release of last month’s scoping study, but its strategic partner search is ticking along.