Country Financial News

Austrian utility OMV says supplies from Russia’s state-owned natural gas company Gazprom stopped early Saturday after the company said it would stop payments for the gas following an arbitration award

Global capability centers (GCCs), once seen as mere back-office support for large corporations, have evolved into significant players in India's tech industry. Indian GCCs have showcased India's tech talent pool to global companies, leading to increased job opportunities. As per the latest Nasscom-Zinnov India GCC landscape report, the number of GCCs set up in India has increased to 1,700 in FY24, generating $64.6 billion in export revenue and employing over 1.9 million people. Sangeeta Gupta, senior VP and chief strategy officer at Nasscom, had told ET that the country's talent pool is the key driver of GCC growth. «GCCs are increasingly important to their parent enterprises, focusing on moving up the value chain, creating opportunities for future leadership, and enhancing their overall impact,» she said.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. “IT WAS RETRO style," laughs Ruta Kaziliunaite, the co-ordinator of Lithuania’s Special Investigation Service (STT), the country’s anti-corruption police. Last November the former leader of the Liberal Movement party was convicted of taking bribes from an executive at MG Baltic, a trading and real-estate conglomerate.

COP officials facilitating discussions about fossil fuel deals, a group of prominent scientists, advocates and policy leaders including Ban Ki-Moon, former secretary-general of the United nations, Christiana Figueres, former chief of the UN climate change body, and Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, have called for urgent overhaul of the UN climate process saying it needs “a shift from negotiation to implementation” as the existing approach is no longer fit for purpose. “28 COPs have delivered us with the policy framework to achieve this. However, its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity. This is what compels our call for a fundamental overhaul of the COP,” they said in an open letter to UN secretary-general António Guterres and executive secretary of the UN climate change secretariat, Simon Stiell. They, while calling for “COP reform”, said the shift is needed to enable the COP to deliver on agreed commitments and ensure the urgent energy transition and phase-out of fossil energy.

lithium-ion battery demand in India is set to grow exponentially to 54 gigawatt hours (GWh) by FY27 and 127 GWh by FY30, as the country sets an ambitious target to meet 50% of its primary energy requirement from renewable energy by 2030. Currently, domestic lithium-ion battery storage demand of 15 GWh is being almost entirely met through imports of lithium-ion cells and batteries. India imports almost its entire requirement of Li-ion batteries. However, CareEdge Ratings expects India's import dependency to decline to 20 per cent by FY27, despite significant growth in demand due to large-scale integrated capacities being built for Li-ion battery storage.

chip design giant MediaTek is planning to significantly expand its workforce in India, ToI reported on November 16. This announcement comes as the company secures its position as the leading chip supplier for smartphone makers in the country. MediaTek surpassed American competitor Qualcomm by providing chips for both budget-friendly and high-end smartphones, according to Counterpoint data. The company now aims to leverage India's growing technology sector by recruiting more engineers and designers, said ToI's report (by Pankaj Doval). «There are a lot of exciting opportunities that we see in India. First and foremost are smartphones. We're going through a massive 4G to 5G transition. It's happening very quickly here,» ToI's report said quoting MediaTek's global VP for corporate marketing, Finbarr Moynihan.

Political leaders in Alaska have welcomed President-elect Donald Trump's pledges to expand oil production

Oil prices settled down more than 2% on Friday as investors fretted about weaker Chinese demand and a potential slowing in the pace of U.S. Federal Reserve interest rate cuts. Brent crude futures settled down $1.52, or 2.09%, to $71.04 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures (WTI) settled down $1.68, or 2.45%, at $67.02.

Netflix being unavailable at the peak of the outage.

Vivek Ramaswamy, along with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has announced plans for a major reduction in U.S. federal government jobs. Both have been appointed in charge of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which aims to streamline government operations. At an event in Mar-a-Lago, Florida on Thursday, Ramaswamy expressed confidence in making significant cuts to the federal bureaucracy.

Narendra Modi's historic visit to Nigeria from November 16-17 can open investment opportunities for Indian companies in the mining, infrastructure and defence sectors in the African nation. This would be the first visit by an Indian PM to resource-rich West Africa in 17 years. Modi’s visit will also seek to boost security, counter-terror, defence industry and energy partnership, ET has learnt. The previous visit by an Indian PM to Nigeria was by Manmohan Singh in Oct 2007. During that visit, both countries elevated the status of their bilateral relationship to a “Strategic Partnership’.

«I decided on Baku because I am getting a Baku Marriott Hotel Boulevard at ₹58,000 for four nights for two adults and a child,» she said. «In contrast, rates for some properties in Kovalam, Udaipur and Rishikesh are steeper than this for a night.» She's not alone. Rates for the Christmas-New Year period at many popular leisure destinations such as Varanasi are turning out to be much higher than international locations such as Danang in Vietnam, persuading many to look overseas.

Austria's chancellor says Russia’s state-owned natural gas company Gazrom will cut off supplies early Saturday to Austrian utility OMV

A battery manufacturer has selected Kentucky for a nearly $712 million project to produce industrial-sized batteries used to store and distribute energy

Leaders of Pacific Rim countries including the U.S. and China have gathered in Peru for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting, the first major global summit since U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory

retail sales growth in eight months and indicating Beijing's latest round of stimulus has boosted some key sectors. Retail sales increased 4.8% from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said Friday, up from September's gain of 3.2% and beating the median forecast of 3.8% by economists in a Bloomberg survey. It marked the best reading since February. Industrial output rose 5.3% from a year earlier, slightly slower than the previous month and lower than a forecast growth of 5.6%.

energy efficiency is the central pillar of its plan to achieve Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement, which aims for a 45% reduction in carbon intensity and a 1 bn t reduction in GHG emissions by 2030. Hitting these targets is indispensable to its long-term goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2070. Bottlenecks that hinder adoption of energy-efficient technologies — finance, sustainable supply chains and policies — must be identified and addressed. For emerging markets, energy demand is essential for development. The developing world must look to sustainable progress through improved energy efficiency, integration of RE, and adoption of innovative technologies that promote cleaner and more efficient-energy systems. To do this, financing, supportive policy frameworks and continued international collaboration are required to ensure access to necessary resources, supply chains and expertise. One such critical area for collaboration is sharing best practices among developing countries like Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia. These nations often face similar challenges in enhancing energy efficiency. Working together can lead to significant advancements. For example, India can champion initiatives that facilitate access to investments and technologies, particularly for manufacturing countries.

BJP president JP Nadda on Friday said Congress leader Rahul Gandhi does not understand the «ABC of the Constitution» and flaunts a copy of it at political gatherings while not knowing that Dr B R Ambedkar did not subscribe to job reservations on religious lines. The Union minister said the Congress wants to give quotas meant for SCs, STs and OBCs to minorities in Karnataka and Telangana, where the party is in power. «Gandhi does not know that the Constitution does not allow reservations on religious lines. He does not understand the ABC of the Constitution. He sells materials of hatred in his 'mohabbat ki dukan' (shop of love)',» Nadda remarked, hitting out at the Raebareli Lok Sabha MP.

Croatia’s health minister and several others were detained on Friday on suspicion of corruption as part of an investigation launched by the European prosecutor’s office

The economy of the European Union is headed for only modest growth in coming months as consumers regain some of the purchasing power they lost to inflation, the bloc's executive commission said Friday

Cypriot authorities are in talks with major energy companies from Persian Gulf states over potential natural gas reserves off the Mediterranean country's southern coastline, President Nikos Christodoulides told an energy conference Friday