India’s factory activity picked up marginally in January after slipping to a two-year low the previous month. The sector was helped by strong inflows of new orders, even as sentiment among manufacturers weakened sharply, a monthly survey showed on Monday. The seasonally adjusted HSBC India Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) rose to 55.4 in January…
Road out of troubled waters The Finance Commission has proposed a targeted push to accelerate and make India’s urban growth more orderly, focusing on strengthening mid-sized cities and bringing rapidly urbanising fringes of cities into municipal corporations.In its recommendations on urban local body (ULB) grants, the 16th Finance Commission has outlined two key priorities: integrating…
Trump H-1B Visa Overhaul: Impact on Indian Professionals and US Tech Sector A once-strategic partnership between the United States and India, long built on mutual economic benefit, innovation and people-to-people ties, is now straining under sweeping immigration and trade policies implemented under former President Donald Trump’s administration. Policies such as the drastic H-1B visa fee…
In a major ruling on how High Courts should deal with chronic delays in delivering judgments, the Supreme Court has repeated and intensified its previous instructions on how such delays should be timely eliminated to bring about timely delivery of the reserved judgment. The Court placed special emphasis on the importance of ensuring that the…
Sunday’s Budget had no allocation for Chabahar port in Iran under the ‘aid to countries and projects abroad’ outlay. This could be significant, coming amid looming threats of US sanctions over the port, which – in the absence of any direct land access – was meant to be India’s gateway to Afghanistan and central Asia.The…
To ensure persons with disabilities (PwDs) get dignified livelihood opportunities and timely access to assistive devices, the govt on Sunday announced the ‘Divyangjan Kaushal Yojana’ and the ‘Divyang Sahara Yojana’.Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the ‘kaushal yojana’ for livelihood and the ‘sahara yojana’ for assistive devices are “fundamental needs” for PwDs.Noting that IT, animation, visual…
Shares of brokerage-linked and exchange-related companies fell sharply by up to nearly 12 per cent after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed an increase in the Securities Transaction Tax (STT) on derivatives in the Union Budget 2026-27, according to PTI.In her Budget speech, Sitharaman announced that STT on futures contracts would be increased to 0.05 per…
Of 30 Index Stocks, 26 Close In Red At a time when global markets are witnessing high volatility due to geopolitical uncertainties, the hike in securities transaction tax (STT) on derivatives trades hit investor sentiment on Dalal Street on the Budget day. This in turn led to a sharp sell-off that pulled the sensex down…
After the new excise duty regime kicked in, cigarette prices have gone up, with a pack of 10 sticks now costing at least Rs 22–25 more than before.This follows the government’s decision to raise taxes on cigarettes for the first time in nearly seven years, bringing India’s tobacco taxation closer to global public health norms….
What Would $1 Invested in Bitcoin in 2009 Be Worth Today, 17 Years Later? The question resurfaces every time Bitcoin hits another high: what would your money look like now if you’d bought in at the beginning? With the cryptocurrency trading at $78,693.76 per coin as of early February 2026, the arithmetic of Bitcoin’s earliest…
