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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%.

air purifiers (for those who can afford them), face masks and inhalers. Never in its long and storied history has Delhi and the current grand-sounding National Capital Region (NCR) felt quite so wretched and neglected as in the 21st century. Time was when emperors and mystics, conquerors and courtesans, poets and plebeians arrived and thrived in these very plains and Aravalli outcrops. Now it is permanently blighted by unrestrained 'development' activity and seasonally masked in thick pollutants as a consequence, with no recourse in sight. Most Delhiwallas have grown up hearing that the region is a sort of natural bowl, making it ideal for any sort of particulate matter, whether dust, sand, soot or pollutants, to hover indefinitely overhead unless pushed away by beneficial winds. That is why we GenXers resigned ourselves to spells of dusty skies, particularly during the pre-monsoon period. Winter brought fog but that was mostly water vapour, utterly unlike today's dust-and-chemical fug.

Dom Perignon hosted a party at the Brant Foundation in New York City's East Village, thousands of miles from its home in the Champagne region of France. At the party, which celebrated Dom Perignon's partnership with the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, actresses Zoe Kravitz and Natasha Lyonne, model Evan Mock and Raul Lopez, the designer of the subversive Luar fashion label, sipped Dom as they swayed to music from the Mudd Club habitue DJ Justin Strauss. The Basquiat painting «In Italian,» a neo-expressionist work filled with gestural scribbles and stark images-faces, coins, dark creatures and cryptic words like «teeth» and «crown of thorns»-hung on one wall. Throughout the room were bottles of a limited-edition release culled from a 2015 Dom Perignon vintage with labels that mirrored Basquiat motifs, including his signature crown in yellow overlaid in a way to suggest a connection between the artist's work and Dom Perignon's own shield-shaped tag. «I think people are looking for more than just the experience of consuming,» said Jacques Giraco, MD at Dom Perignon, speaking of his company's decision to evoke the image of an artist synonymous with the gritty downtown scene in 1980s New York. «It becomes a total experience. It conjures emotion, and that creates a stronger link with the brand.»

Before Altman's brief exit, there were two competing visions of AI. One, where it was a tool like electricity, drastically improving productivity and bringing even more prosperity for humanity. The other was of a new kind of super-intelligence, which, if harnessed with maturity, could usher in a new era of world peace, universal income and societal good. OpenAI was set up to achieve the latter. After the Altman 'blip', it took a sharp turn towards the former.

Swiggy piloted a services marketplace, Yello, for astrologers, therapists, etc, as well as Rare, a premium ticketing service for events and restaurants. While patently unrelated to Swiggy's core ensemble, the new entities are systematically attracting existing customers with newer offerings. Such next-gen business growth strategies, joysticked by scalable technology, can be classified as 'momentum diversification' (MD). Historically, brand diversifications were based on existing competencies, 'line' or 'imagery' driven. Line extensions are amply defined by the never-ending variety of aerated drinks in Coca-Cola's and PepsiCo's portfolios, not to mention the innumerable iPhone iterations. Imagery extensions originate from category-agnostic customer associations, such as couturier Giorgio Armani launching perfumes, or Porsche designing mobile phones. Line-ups scarcely conceal legacy connectivity, whether competency-based or appeal-driven, and are invariably subject to the scathing scrutiny of the boardroom and armchair marketers. MD is the outcome of a booming alliance of personal technology and customer-centricity. An established trust-cum-convenience equation with a substantial consuming class can be the foundation for unlimited opportunities, undeterred by draconian filters of brand suitability. Here, trust is the consistent delivery of measurable value, and convenience, a smooth process that facilitates access and choice.

The Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) is among India's most polluted regions, and air quality across northern India has worsened this past week. Flight disruptions were inevitable.

quality control regime for electrical goods to allow testing and certification at laboratories owned by equipment manufacturers, officials said. These equipment- like circuit breakers — can now be covered under a modified quality control regime. This relaxation in norm will benefit companies wanting to shift electrical equipment manufacturing out from China, they told ET, since these products can be conveniently tested at more facilities. «Effectively, India has doubled the number of labs where quality of electrical goods like circuit breakers can be vetted. These certifications are valid under Scheme X of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS),» a senior official told ET, adding that the heavy industries ministry is the first to allow testing under this scheme. With this, enforcement of the Electrical Equipment (Quality Control) Order, 2020 (EEQCO, 2020) can now begin. «The domestic industry was concerned since there is inadequate testing infrastructure to certify products for compliance with the QCO,» the official said.

fire personnel, besides the special fire vehicles. The state-of-the-art equipment, including AI-powered fire detection cameras to monitor potential fire outbreaks, will be also put into service. The government has worked out a plan to station firefighters in each sector. The response time has been now set as two minutes to quickly control any fire incident. The government wants to hold Mahakumbh 2025 as a zero-fire event. The Fire department is working tirelessly to achieve this objective. As a part of its preparations, the focus is on the deployment of advanced rescue tenders and 200 specially trained rescue teams. To control fire incidents in the akhadas, 5,000 special fire extinguishers are being provided.

Madhya Pradesh High Court said while allowing a woman's divorce plea. The 33-year-old woman works as a manager with a Central government undertaking. She moved the HC after the Family Court dismissed her divorce plea, which claimed her husband was mentally harassing her to leave her job and live with him in Bhopal. In its order of November 13, a division bench of MP High Court comprising Chief Justice Suresh Kumar Kait and Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari overturned the family court's decision and allowed the woman's plea for divorce. «Whether husband or wife wants to live together, it is their wish. Neither husband nor wife can force the other side not to do a job or do any job as per the choice of the spouse. In the present case, the husband compelled his wife to leave the government job till he gets a job. In this manner, forcing the wife to leave her job and live as per his wish and style amounts to cruelty,» the bench said.

«Today's final agreement with TSMC — the world's leading manufacturer of advanced semiconductors — will spur $65 billion dollars of private investment to build three state-of-the-art facilities in Arizona,» said President Joe Biden in a statement. The Biden administration's announcement comes shortly before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Trump has recently criticized the CHIPS Act, a major law passed during Biden's tenure aimed at strengthening the US semiconductor industry.

General Motors is laying off about 1,000 workers worldwide, shedding costs as it tries to compete in a crowded global automobile market

SlateStone Wealth chief market strategist Kenny Polcari discusses Fed Chair Powells job performance and the steps Trump will take to expand the economy on Varney & Co.

With just six weeks to go before Dec. 31, now is the perfect time to begin your year-end tax planning. Here’s a few things to consider, which are unique to 2024.

Shami, GT’s leading wicket-taker in their 2022 title-winning campaign with 20 scalps, was let go due to recurring injury concerns. The right-arm pacer missed the 2024 IPL season as he was recovering from an ankle injury sustained during the ICC ODI World Cup 2023. Despite his recent setbacks, Shami remains a formidable force in T20 cricket, having bagged 79 wickets in 77 IPL matches at an economy of 8.63.

Air India Express on Friday announced that is is expanding the number of weekly flights in its winter schedule from Kolkata to Bagdogra by 37 per cent. The Tata-owned airline will now operate over 230 weekly flights from Kolkata and Bagdogra, up from 168 during the previous winter season. This expansion includes new direct routes that will significantly improve travel options for passengers. For Kolkata, Air India Express is introducing new direct flights connecting the city to Sri Vijaya Puram (Port Blair) and Indore, while Bagdogra will see a new connection to Chennai.

Arctic and Offshore Patrol Vessels (AOPV) to join the country’s Pacific fleet.HMCS Max Bernays was in Vancouver on Thursday and took media on a day sail to show off the new vessel’s capabilities.The 103-metre, ice-capable ship is the fourth of six planned Harry DeWolf-class AOPVs to join the Royal Canadian Navy under the National Shipbuilding Strategy.“The commander of our fleet in the Pacific has actually described us as a ‘pickup truck’ — we have a lot of capabilities, we can do a lot of things,” HMCS Max Bernays’ commanding officer Cmdr. Nadia Sheilds told Global News.The vessel can be deployed with multiple payloads, including shipping containers, underwater survey equipment and landing craft.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. A Federal Reserve official said the central bank could eventually need to slow down the pace at which it is lowering rates and said it was too soon to say whether that should happen at the central bank’s meeting next month. Another rate cut in December is “certainly on the table, but it’s not a done deal," said Boston Fed President Susan Collins in an interview Thursday.

The quarterly gross domestic product figure published by the Office for National Statistics today (15 November) compared with an expansion of 0.5% in the second quarter and came in below economist consensus for 0.2% growth. Production fell by 0.5% in September, mostly as a result of a decline in manufacturing output. This marked a significant departure from August, when that figure stood at 0.5%. Overall, the sector recorded a 0.2% decline over the three months to September. Similarly, services output notched up just 0.1% in the third quarter, but monthly figures for September showed ...

Hardeep Singh Puri said on Friday. Speaking at the Geo India 2024 conference in Greater Noida, on the outskirts of the national capital, the minister said the government's reforms agenda to make it easier to find and produce crude oil (which is refined into fuels like petrol and diesel) and natural gas (which is used to generate power, make fertilizer or turned into cooking gas and CNG) will continue. He promised interference-free administration. «If you have a private sector company which is family owned, you still have interference. But if you have well run state oil companies as our oil firms are, and you have a minister like me, you will have zero interference. I have said that repeatedly,» he said.

N Chandrababu Naidu on Friday said that a debt of Rs 9.74 lakh crore borrowed under the erstwhile YSRCP government has been identified so far, and wondered if it could rise on further digging up the account books. Listing the components of the debt, the chief minister said it includes Rs 4.3 lakh crore state debt, Rs 80,914 crore Public Account Liabilities (PAL), Rs 2.47 lakh crore corporations debt, civil supplies debt of Rs 36,000 crore, power sector debt of Rs 34,267 crore, outstanding dues to vendors Rs 1.13 lakh crore, dues to employees Rs 21,980 crore, and non-contribution of syncing fund Rs 1,191 crore. «We don't know how much more debt will be found on digging further,» said Naidu in the Assembly.

Remo D'Souza. A bench comprising Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan sought responses of the state government and the businessman and ordered that the notices be served through 'dasti' mode. The case dates back to 2016 when an FIR was lodged against D'Souza by Tyagi. The FIR alleged that D'Souza persuaded Tyagi to invest Rs 5 crore in his upcoming film 'Amar Must Die' with a promise of doubling the invested amount after its release.