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VFS Global, which manages visa applications for more than 50 countries, says it has from January to June 2023 processed well over 30 lakh visa applications in India as opposed to 60 lakh in all of 2019 which had faced none of the challenges currently being seen. The travel momentum continues even after two major tourism destination — the US and Europe — have longer interview wait time, appointment count capping, etc. Incidentally, 2019 was a record year for visa lodgments in India which 2023 is now all set to better. The numbers would have been higher had it not been for the processing limitations being faced by the US and Schengen States, say several travel industry veterans. “We are expecting to surpass pre-pandemic visa applications volumes by this calendar year end. There has been a robust rebound in outbound travel sentiments. Despite initial skepticism, the level of bounce back has resulted in a demand-supply gap,” VFS Global COO (South Asia) Prabuddha Sen told TOI. US B1 (business) and B2 (visitor) visa applicants are facing a current wait time of 1.5 year long for the interview. According to the leading travel agents, all the Schengen countries — barring Norway and Sweden — have an visa appointment count capping which means only about half of the number of Indians desiring to travel are able to secure an appointment.

China’s giant housing industry is lurching into a new crisis that threatens to be the country’s worst yet. Two years ago, the debt-laden developer China Evergrande Group spiraled into insolvency, bursting the country’s real-estate bubble and setting off a chain of developer defaults and business losses. The industry’s troubles have dragged down China’s economy.

competition regulator proposed principles to govern new artificial intelligence (AI) models on Monday, including accountability, access and transparency, as it seeks to foster competitive growth in the fast-moving technology. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) started looking at the impact of generative AI applications such as ChatGPT in May to try to ensure the technology benefited businesses and consumers.

The degree of breaching of the safe boundary levels is caused by human-driven activities impacting the components, they said. The planetary boundaries framework applies the newest scientific understanding of the functioning of the Earth system to identify a «safe operating space» for humanity. It proposes limits for the extent to which human activities can be allowed to impact critical processes without risk of potentially triggering irreversible changes in the Earth conditions that support us. The resaerchers noted that, for the first time, metrics for all boundaries are presented.

Reuters. Currently, ISRO training four astronauts and looking to expand the cohort. The Gaganyaan mission is aimed at developing a human-habitable space capsule that will carry a three-member crew into an orbit of 400 km (250 miles) for three days, before returning to safety in a planned splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

HDFC Bank, Reliance Industries and Infosys. The domestic market ended lower, mirroring weak global sentiment ahead of key central bank meetings while concerns over global economic growth persisted.

Torrent Pharmaceuticals is in talks with private equity funds CVC Capital Partners and Bain Capital. The Indian pharmaceutical is planning to raise up to $1.5 billion to bid for Cipla, reported Reuters citing sources familiar with the matter. Torrent and Blackstone are among those interested to acquire a stake in Cipla, India's third-biggest drugmaker by sales, in what could be the largest pharma deal in India ever.

Narendra Modi to Chinese revolutionary Deng Xiaoping, the leader often credited with revolutionising the country’s economy. Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, was speaking at the All-In Summit 2023 at Royce Hall on UCLA's campus in Los Angeles, USA. He emphasised that - just as Deng catalysed China's economic surge, Modi could be the driving force behind India's development.

Ray Dalio, during his address at the All-In Summit 2023 held at Royce Hall on UCLA's campus in Los Angeles, has expressed his belief that India holds the highest potential for growth among the top 20 countries globally. Drawing parallels between India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, and China's legendary leader Deng Xiaoping, Dalio emphasized the significance of India's substantial reforms in translating into robust economic progress. «We have 10-year growth rate estimates for India and the top 20 countries of the world.

Railway Board has stressed on the need for dedicated coal corridors to meet the growing power demand in the country. The majority of the coal flows from the states of Odisha, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh to the north, west, and southeast of the country, there is a need to develop tracks exclusively for coal movement on these routes, the report on estimation of coal transportation by Rail-2030 said. “It is necessary to create coal corridors in these routes in line with Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFC),” the report said adding that the East-Coast DFC corridors as well as the eastern part of the East-West DFC corridors have to be developed on priority to provide access to coal mainly from Talacher to Ports dotting the eastern coastline. According to the estimation, energy requirements of India will annually increase to approximately 3000 billion units (BU) by 2030.

Orios Venture Partners (VP) on Monday had two of its managing partners, Anup Jain and Rajeev Suri, step down in back-to-back announcements on professionals networking platform LinkedIn. Jain and Suri are set out to launch a fund independently, sources in the know told ET. “Rajeev Suri who was heading investor relations and Anup Jain who was part of the investing team have departed. Rehan Yar Khan, the founding partner, continues to head fund investments along with a nine member team,” a spokesperson from Orios VP said in a statement. The Mumbai-based firm said it will continue to look to make eight to ten investments a year.

Iran and the United States will exchange prisoners on Monday after some USD 6 billion once frozen in South Korea reached Qatar, a key element of the planned swap, officials said. The planned exchange comes just ahead of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where Iran's hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi will speak.

special session of Parliament and decided to participate in the discussions and raise people's issues, sources said. The leaders during the meeting of INDIA alliance in the morning decided to continue with the floor coordination among the parties during the five-day session and corner the government on issues of price rise, unemployment, Manipur violence and Chinese transgressions on the border. They also decided to press the government to allow discussions on issues related to Adani firms, farmers distress, economic situation in the country, and the caste census. Sources said the alliance decided to oppose the CEC and other ECs appointment bill which has already been introduced in the Rajya Sabha. Leaders of the Congress, TMC, RJD, NCP, left parties, JMM, Samajwadi Party, DM and VCK were among those who attended the meeting at the office of leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge at around 10 AM. Former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi has already written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the absence of agenda for the special Parliament session, and proposing a list of issues she wanted a discussion on. Gandhi listed nine issues for discussion in her letter which included price rise and violence in Manipur, Centre-state relations, rise in cases of communal tension, border transgressions by China, and the demand for a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) to investigate the transactions of the Adani business group in light of several revelations. «I must point out that this special session has been convened without any consultation with other political parties.

A London executive earning £1 million ($1.9 million) a year is suing his investment firm, claiming it gave him such an unreasonable amount of work he fell into a deep depression and has been unable to work for three years.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday traced the nearly eight-decade-long journey of the old Parliament building that has also been the country’s journey following its independence from British rule.

run of very hot days should happen in July is, by itself, perhaps unsurprising. Two-thirds of the Earth’s land is in the northern hemisphere, and land warms up faster than water does, so northern summers are the hottest times of year for the planet as a whole. But the highest temperatures tend to come later in the season.

Countries that don’t emulate the US and provide financial incentives to kick-start renewable energy projects risk missing out on billions of dollars of investment, the global boss of UK-listed engineering group John Wood has warned.

Ashwini Vaishnaw on Monday said the government was «fully committed» to Foxconn's plans to expand its manufacturing footprint in the country. «Fully committed to support and facilitate,» Vaishnaw said on X (formerly Twitter) and quoted the Foxconn India representative V Lee's LinkedIn post on Sunday where he had wished Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the occasion of his birthday and said the Taiwanese contract manufacturer was “aiming for another doubling of employment, FDI (foreign direct investment), and business size in India” by this time next year.

NavIC, India's homegrown GPS alternative, is the story of how India changed from a country that depended on others for its crucial needs to the one that is confident of creating a place of its own in the global power hierarchy. With Apple agreeing to incorporate NavIC, or Navigation with Indian Constellation, in its latest iPhone15 smartphones, India has taken an important step towards ‘atmanirbharta’, replacing the GPS (Global Positioning System) of the US which smartphone makers in India mostly use.

Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has started a nationwide surveillance study on milk and milk products this month, in a bid to curb adulteration of such items, an official of the country's apex food regulator said on Monday. The exercise will continue till October, and the regulator is expected to submit its report to the health ministry by December, FSSAI Advisor (Quality Assurance) Satyen K Panda said. «The surveillance survey will cover 766 districts across the country and over 10,000 samples will be collected during the exercise.

climate action, the Asia-Pacific needs to start delivering on ambitious emissions targets. The Asia-Pacific's greenhouse gas emissions keep rising and in some respects the region is going backwards. Climate action was the only Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 13) in which outcomes went backwards in the Asia-Pacific between 2015 and 2023. Progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 13, taking «urgent action to address climate change», has been a case of two steps forward, one step back in the Asia-Pacific. Over the past two years, countries in the Asia-Pacific have made strides: China and Indonesia have undertaken to transition their economies to net zero by 2060, Australia and most Southeast Asian countries by 2050. China has massively invested in renewable energy.