Country Financial News

crude oil purchases from Venezuela as the South American nation no longer faces sanctions from the US, oil minister Hardeep Puri said on Friday. “We have always bought stuff from Venezuela. It was when Venezuela came under sanction that they were not able to supply.

The Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (PMMY) is one of the flagship schemes of the Union government to encourage self-employment. Under PMMY, collateral-free institutional credit up to ₹10 lakh is provided by Member Lending Institutions (MLIs) i.e. Scheduled Commercial Banks (SCBs), Regional Rural Banks (RRBs), Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) and Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs). 

On Thursday, the Maldivian government announced it would terminate a hydrography agreement signed with India in 2019. The decision came shortly after the newly elected administration of Mohamed Muizzu asked India to withdraw its troops from the island country–a day after he took charge. The two countries have mostly had cordial relations, with India providing administrative and infrastructure support.

BERLIN—Soon after payment-processing giant Wirecard reported in June 2020 that nearly $2 billion had gone missing from its balance sheet, its chief operating officer Jan Marsalek boarded a private jet out of Austria. After a landing in Belarus, he was whisked by car to Moscow, where he got a Russian passport under an assumed name. Western intelligence and security officials now say they have reached the unsettling conclusion that Marsalek had likely been a Russian agent for nearly a decade.

Asian shares have churned higher after the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed to another record high

By Mike Dolan

Venezuelan oil as some refiners in the country have the capability to process heavy crude oil, Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Friday. Indian refiners have already resumed Venezuelan oil purchases, with Reliance Industries, Indian Oil Corp and HPCL-Mittal Energy securing cargoes of Venezuelan oil after the United States lifted sanctions in October. India last imported Venezuelan crude in 2020. «Many of our refineries, including Paradip, (are) capable of using that heavy Venezuelan oil.

media deals in India are giving the likes of Unilever Plc and Procter & Gamble Co. a reason to worry: If entertainment goes the way of telecom and ends up effectively as a duopoly, will it become costlier for large consumer brands to reach 1.4 billion people? The first of these two transactions may come as early as Monday and would see Walt Disney Co. enter into a non-bidding agreement with Mukesh Ambani to merge their media businesses in the country.

Taliban stronghold in northwest Pakistan before dawn Friday, triggering firefights that killed two police officers and three insurgents, security officials said. The attack in the town of Tank in Dera Ismail Khan came three days after a suicide bomber in the same region rammed his car into a police station’s main gate and five others opened fire, killing 23 officers in this year's worst attack on troops. Local police chief Iftikhar Shah said two police officers were “martyred” and three others were wounded in Friday's attack on the police headquarters, while two of the attackers died. He said a third militant was killed by soldiers during the assault on a nearby army post. No one immediately claimed responsibility, but suspicion was likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. The group is separate from Afghanistan's Taliban though it is allied with the Afghan movement, which seized power in the neighboring country in August 2021 as U.S.

Let him cast the first stone, he who has not sinned, said Jesus Christ. He was admonishing a crowd gathered to stone a woman of sin, one Mary Magdalene. He might have said the same thing at the Dubai climate summit, addressing the delegates from the rich world hollering for an early elimination of fossil fuels.

Bill Clinton-- were impeached. Fourth Richard Nixon had resigned before his impeachment was put to vote. Now, Joe Biden faces the axe of a probable impeachment right before the Democratic leader would begin his election campaign for the US Presidential Poll 2024.

Two months into its military campaign in Gaza, Israel seems to be fighting a losing battle for international support. It has lost key votes at the United Nations and even supportive powers like the United States have voiced their discontent with Israel’s conduct of the war. Mint looks at Israel’s position.

India Today report. “The opposition misleads the country. Now the Hindus of the country have woken up, now Hindus will not be divided.

China's video games market returned to growth this year as domestic revenue rose 13% to 303 billion yuan ($42.6 billion), putting Beijing's 8-month crackdown two years ago in the rear-view mirror. Industry association CGIGC said at a conference in Guangzhou on Friday the industry's domestic revenue this year reached over 300 billion yuan for the first time. It also said the number of gamers in China grew 0.61% to a record 668 million, which is more than North America's entire population.

Dubai, US special envoy John Kerry admitted that he thought it might never happen. The seasoned international negotiator recalled a conversation with one minister who worried about a deal that would signal the end of fossil fuels. «One minister from one of those countries involved said, 'John, you can't ask us to commit economic suicide',» Kerry said. He did not name the country but Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, led the charge against any strong language against fossil fuels. Kuwait and Iraq were also staunch opponents. In the end, nearly 200 countries adopted on Wednesday a deal stating that the world will be «transitioning away from fossil fuels» in order to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. It was the first time in the 28-year history of the Conference of the Parties that all fossil fuels were mentioned in an accord. «I never thought we were going to have the kind of breadth that we have today, to be honest with you,» Kerry said on Wednesday.

global textile and apparel value chain, Union Minister Darshana Vikram Jardosh said on Thursday. The minister also noted that the global textiles and apparel trade has gone through various ups and downs in the last decade due to social and geographical factors. India has unique advantages due to raw material availability, huge labour pool, mature and well-established textile and apparel industry and strong domestic market, she said.

excavation at Kunal in Haryana's Fatehabad district has revealed the remains of «three successive occupational phases of the pre, early and mature Saraswati-Indus civilisation» which had a large expanse, the Centre informed Parliament on Thursday. Union Culture Minister G Kishan Reddy, in a written response to a query in Rajya Sabha, also said the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) conducts archaeological excavations «regularly» in different parts of the country as an ongoing exercise.

Anil Kothuri, MD & CEO, Fedbank Financial Services, says: “We intend opening 50 branches this year and most of which are done. And all the branches we open this year are focused on selling small mortgages. So, that branch count is slated to go from 130 to 180 okay. Now, every year we will continue to open branches and expand. Our norm is to open something like 50-60 branches every year. So, our branch count will increase by roughly 8% from here on every year for the foreseeable future. That will help us expand our presence in places where we are not there. We will enrich our presence in northern India and then foray eastwards.” You have reached an AUM of around Rs 10,000 crore and the growth was also strong at 38% on a year-on-year basis. But going forward, do you think the base effect will come into picture or do you expect this pace of 35-40% AUM growth to continue in the coming years? What we are guiding is that our AUM will grow by at least 25% year-on-year from here on.

By Laura Sanicola and Andrew Hayley

artificial intelligence rules aimed at establishing guardrails for the rapid development of AI and setting a global standard in technology regulation. The long road to the EU AI Act started in early 2021, with multiple drafts passing between the bloc's three political arms. It will take many more months before it becomes law and two more years before its impact will be felt by industry.

quantum mechanics — the theory in physics that describes the behavior of matter and energy at the level of atoms and subatomic particles. Quantum science has also been explained by a U.S. government scientist as the «rules that describe how really small things behave.» This field is full of surprises, even for the experts. Richard Feynman, the late theoretical physicist, Nobel laureate and pioneer of quantum computing, described the field as «peculiar and mysterious to everyone — both to the novice and the experienced physicist,» because it is so different to how people experience and perceive the behavior and properties of larger objects.