Country Financial News

– By HDFC Asset Management Company Limited 

Investors are facing a myriad of uncertainties that pose substantial risks to the stability and performance of global markets – but as ever where there are risks, there are also significant opportunities.

businesses, payments and API banking company Cashfree Payments has launched a self-hosted payments orchestration platform, FlowWise. The platform’s self-hosting feature claims to eliminate safety concerns, making it a secure solution for merchants. Akash Sinha, Co-founder & CEO, Cashfree Payments, says FlowWise is a single-point payments management solution for India’s digital-first businesses.

Covid cases registered a rise in the country towards the end of 2023 with sub-variant JN.1 on the radar while the Delhi government planned to step up genome surveillance to tackle the issue going forward. As the new threat looms on the horizon with an uptick in Covid cases amid the festive season, doctors in Delhi have advised people to wear masks, avoid gatherings and maintain a healthy diet. The devastating third wave of the Covid pandemic driven by the Omicron variant had resulted in a record surge of infections in Delhi in early 2022, and the second one driven by the Delta variant had wreaked havoc in the national capital, as at other places, in 2021.

Christmas had begun his journey with an out-of-this-world first stop, according to NORAD: the International Space Station orbiting Earth. The reindeer-pulled sleigh was also seen traversing Israel as well as flying over southern Gaza, crisscrossing Africa, and venturing southward to Palmer Station, a research facility in Antarctica.

Ajit Banerjee, Chief Investment Officer of Shriram Life Insurance Company says he is positive about the domestic market for 2024 and expects the foreign capital inflow to continue. Edited excerpts: Indian markets have undisputedly been one of the best-performing markets in the world in the calendar year 2023 (CY23).

Justin Trudeau says he knows young people are frustrated with him, and chief among those frustrations is the high cost of housing, which has left many young people feeling home ownership is out of reach.However, Trudeau denies critics who suggest the federal government only began taking the housing file seriously in the last few months.“We’ve actually made commitments that are adding up to about 300,000 new units over the coming decade. These are the kinds of things we need to accelerate, and there’s no one way of doing it.

menopause becoming more mainstream this year, advocates in Canada are hopeful this shift could drive progress in health care and workplaces to better support women in what can be a very difficult stage in their life.In an aging population, more women in their 40s and 50s are openly talking about their own experience with menopause on social media and elsewhere.Gen X women truly have had enough. We're a different generation who demand more & we're not afraid to stand up for ourselves.Thanks to everybody who has watched, commented and liked my TEDx – sitting at 6k views & growing!! https://t.co/glXlTm4ge2#menopause #perimenopause pic.twitter.com/Gyv5FccisP— Amanda Thebe (@amandathebex) December 18, 2023 #periomenopause was tough.

Himachal Pradesh, particularly on Christmas and in anticipation of the approaching new year. The state experienced a substantial influx of visitors at its tourist destinations, which are facing heavy traffic jams and slow vehicular movement owing to the spirit of festive fervour on Christmas. Also Read: Merry Christmas 2023: Top 20 wishes and messages for Christmas Day; what to write on cards Local residents of Himachal Pradesh encountered comparable disruptions as tourists from various parts of the country began converging on the well-liked hill stations of Shimla and Manali in anticipation of Christmas and New Year celebrations.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) bigwigs led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the 'Sadaiv Atal' memorial in New Delhi on Monday to offer floral tributes on the 99th birth anniversary of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. President Droupadi Murmu and Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar were also present at the memorial. Leaders like Former President Ram Nath Kovind, BJP National President JP Nadda, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman Harivansh, and others paid their respects by offering floral tributes on the occasion.

wealth management race for leveraging the maximum out of UHNIs/family offices' investments, the entity that often loses the most is the investor. To understand this misaligned thesis better and identify the path towards a more investor-aligned process, it is imperative to observe the entire ecosystem and study its evolution over time. India, a developing economy, has only recently started witnessing a splurge in the population of the wealthy, and thus, the industry that manages this population’s wealth is also at its very nascent stage, hardly 30 years old. This implies that the value chain of wealth management is still far from reaching its most efficient state.

Ishan John Chatterjee, Director,YouTube India, says “in terms of the trends, as I mentioned before, short form video, lots of casual creation is happening there; longer form consumption happening on connected TV and screens and lots of consumption happening from non-urban, non-metro places and languages other than English and Hindi.” So, YouTube recently completed 15 years of being in India. Which categories did really well over the past few years and especially in 2023, the kind of geographies that particularly stood out for you, the genre, languages, overall what did Indians watch in 2023? Ishan John Chatterjee: This is an important year. As you said, we have completed 15 years in the country and YouTube's journey in many ways has mirrored India's own digital transformation. Now to your point about what has happened in this year, I think there are some very interesting trends that we have been seeing over the last couple of years, which have only been reinforced. So, I would say the first one is the growth of short form video as a category.

Amit Shah on Monday paid tributes to former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on his birth anniversary and said he made the world realise the power of emerging India through the nuclear tests and the Kargil War. Shah also paid homage to noted educationist and social reformer Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya. The home minister said Vajpayee served the society selflessly and the country will always remember his immense contributions.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee at the ‘Sadaiv Atal’ memorial, on his birth anniversary. December 25 marks the birth anniversary of the late Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a former Prime Minister and prominent leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday, December 25 greeted people on the occasion of Christmas and wished them joy, peace and prosperity. PM Narendra Modi said on X, “Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas! May this festive season bring joy, peace and prosperity to all." “Let’s celebrate the spirit of harmony and compassion that Christmas symbolizes, and work towards a world where everyone is happy and healthy. We also recall the noble teachings of Lord Christ," he added.

2024 Lok Sabha elections. The party which was unable to repeat its government in Karnataka, was able to wrest power from Congress in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh and comprehensively retain power in Madhya Pradesh. BJP deployed its 'Modi ki Guarantee' tactic which ensured a sweep in Hindi Heartland states.

It matters when electricity is produced. A barrel of oil may be a barrel of oil whether it is pumped at midday or midnight, but a megawatt hour (mwh) of electricity is worth a great deal less when you are sleeping than during the middle of the day or, indeed, during moments when everyone decides to boil the kettle. The difficulty of bottling electricity makes its economics unusual: it is a question not just of “how much" but also “when".

China and brought blizzards in its wake, sending temperatures towards historic lows. 1)The temperature recorded at Beijing's Nanjiao weather station rose to above zero degrees Celsius on Sunday afternoon for the first time in days, state media Beijing Daily reported. 2)According to Beijing Daily, since the temperature first dropped to below zero degrees on December 11, the temperature has remained below that line for more than 300 hours.

killed over 19,000 people and left tens of thousands injured in Turkey and Syria. An earthquake of magnitude 7.8 centered in the Pazarcik district jolted Kahramanmaras and hit several provinces, including Gaziantep, Sanliurfa, Diyarbakir, Adana, Adiyaman, Malatya, Osmaniye, Hatay, and Kilis. Later in the day, an earthquake of 7.6 magnitude centred in Kahramanmaras's Elbistan district jolted the region.

Fresh inflows under FCNR(B) which eliminates currency risk for NRIs, touched $2 billion in April-October, compared with an outflow of $841 million in the same period a year ago, showed the latest Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data published in its monthly Bulletin. Overall, fresh NRI deposits doubled to $6 billion during the April-October of 2023, from $3 billion in the same period a year ago. «Relatively higher interest rates happen to be one of the driving factors,» said Madan Sabnavis, chief economist at Bank of Baroda.

New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi extended greetings to the people of the country on the occasion of Christmas. Taking to his official social media account, X, the Congress leader, said, "Merry Christmas! May your hearts be filled with love, your homes with happiness, and your lives with peace." The Congress party posted on X, «The Congress family wishes you all a Merry Christmas and a season filled with love and togetherness. Let us cherish the spirit of unity and compassion during this holiday season!» People across the country celebrated Christmas Eve with mass midnight prayers taking place in different states.