ASIA: China’s official index of manufacturing purchasing managers slipped to 50.8 in April from 52.0 in March, the National Bureau of Statistics said. Pandemic triggered recessions around the world have made Chinese manufacturers pessimistic about export demand. Cui Tiankai, China’s ambassador to the United States, has said the two countries need to look beyond […]

ASIA: India’s sovereign rating could come under pressure if its fiscal outlook deteriorates further as the government tries to steer the country through the coronavirus crisis, rating agency Fitch said on Tuesday. Fitch currently rates India at BBB-, with a stable outlook, but any downgrade would consign its sovereign debt to junk bond territory. The […]

ASIA: India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will open a special liquidity window of approximately 6.6 billion USD to ease pressure on mutual funds, which are facing liquidity strains due to heightened volatility in capital markets in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. The scheme is available from April 27, 2020, until […]

ASIA: India’s Nifty 50 index could soon see Bharti Infratel, Vedanta Ltd, Zee Entertainment, Tata Motors, and GAIL India exit from the index owing to the low average free-float market capitalization, and replaced with other heavyweights. Top contenders to replace these shares in the Nifty 50 index include Radhakishan Damani’s Avenue Supermarts, API manufacturer Divi’s […]

ASIA: The Indian government has announced a new policy on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from border sharing countries. The new law came into effect after the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) notification which was released late night on April 22. This law mandated prior government approvals for FDI from India’s neighbors such as Pakistan, China, […]

ASIA: Facebook will buy a 10% stake in the digital business of Reliance Industries for 5.7 billion USD, as the social media firm looks to leverage its highly popular WhatsApp chat service to offer digital payment services. The deal will help the Reliance Industries cut debt that has piled up in its expensive push to […]

Everywhere we look, all our civil rights, human rights, and freedom of speech have been under assault and are not likely to return the way they were before the coronavirus. Some countries are toying with imprisoning people who dare to post anything that questions the coronavirus, but we are witnessing the same trend around the […]

ASIA: India’s market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), temporarily eased some fund-raising regulations for listed entities to give them easier and faster access to capital markets. To allow more companies to avail fast-track rights issuances, SEBI reduced the required average market capitalization of public shareholding required to 1 billion rupees from […]

ASIA: India has pitched for enhancing the emergency assistance of the National Development Bank to $10 billion from $1 billion. The issue was flagged by union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman at the annual meeting of the board of governors of the National Development Bank (NDB) via video conference on Monday. NDB has so far approved […]

COMMENT: Marty; you are right. William Kristol is a very dangerous neocon who is only intent on wasting American lives to defend Israel in the Middle East. He has become not conservative but ruthlessly a warmonger. He put out an open letter against Trump because he wanted to pull troops out of the Middle East. […]