ALI IMRAN

India on Friday became the third country in the world to record more than one million cases of the new coronavirus, behind only the United States and Brazil, as infections spread further into the countryside and smaller towns. Given India's population of around 1.3 billion, experts say, one million is relatively low — but the number will rise significantly in the coming months as testing increases, further straining a healthcare system already pushed to the brink. The pandemic has surged in the country in recent weeks as it spread beyond the biggest cities, pushing India past Russia as the third most infected country last week. Authorities imposed fresh lockdowns and designated new containment zones in several states this week, including the largely rural Bihar state in the east and the southern tech hub Bengaluru, where cases have spiked. But officials have struggled to enforce the lockdowns and keep people indoors. India recorded 34,956 new infections on Friday, taking ...

DUBAI: An oil tanker sought by the US over allegedly circumventing sanctions on Iran was hijacked on July 5 off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, a seafarers welfare organisation said on Wednesday. Satellite photos showed the vessel in Iranian waters on Tuesday and two of its sailors remained in the Iranian capital. It wasn’t immediately clear what happened aboard the Dominica-flagged MT Gulf Sky, though its reported hijacking comes after months of tensions between Iran and the US. David Hammond, the CEO of the United Kingdom-based group Human Rights at Sea, said he took a witness statement from the captain of the MT Gulf Sky, confirming the ship had been hijacked. Hammond said that 26 of the Indian sailors on board had made it back to India, while two remained in Tehran, without elaborating. We are delighted to hear that the crew are safe and well, which has been our fundamental concern from the outset,” Hammond told The Associated Press. Hammond said that he had no o...

US tech giant Google is investing in a $10 billion fund to help accelerate India’s transition to a digital economy in the next five to seven years. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc’s Google, said on Monday that the project will focus on building products that are relevant to India’s needs and empowering businesses for their “digital transformation”. “Our goal is to ensure India not only benefits from the next wave of innovation, but leads it,” Pichai said in a digital keynote at a Google for India event. The company also announced it will invest $1 million to support digital education in India. It said the fund will enable one million teachers in 22,000 schools across the country to use Google services that can facilitate online learning. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made digitisation a major priority for India, his government says. He envisions a “Digital India” where high-speed Internet access will empower entrepreneurs to build software and other technology products ...

China became the first major economy to grow since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, recording an unexpectedly strong 3.2 per cent expansion in the latest quarter after anti-virus lockdowns were lifted and factories and stores reopened. Growth reported on Thursday for the three months ending in June was a dramatic improvement over the previous quarter’s 6.8pc contraction — China’s worst performance since at least the mid-1960s. But it still was the weakest positive figure since China started reporting quarterly growth in the early 1990s. “We expect to see continuous improvement in the upcoming quarters,” Marcella Chow of JP Morgan Asset Management said in a report. China, where the coronavirus pandemic began in December, was the first economy to shut down and the first to start the drawn-out process of recovery in March after the ruling Communist Party declared the disease under control. “The national economy shifted from slowing down to rising in the first half of 2020,” ...

The Trump administration said on Wednesday that it will impose travel bans on employees of the Chinese technology giant Huawei and other Chinese companies the United States determines are assisting authoritarian governments in cracking down on human rights, including in China's western Xinjiang province. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also said the administration is finalising plans to minimise data theft from the popular Chinese video streaming app TikTok, although he stopped short of saying it would be banned outright. Pompeo made the announcements a day after the British government said it would ban Huawei  from its 5G networks over concerns that sensitive data could be compromised by the Chinese Communist Party. Pompeo told reporters at a State Department news conference that Huawei employees found to be providing "material support to regimes engaging in human rights violations and abuses globally” would be hit with sanctions. “Companies impacted by today’s act...

Novartis said it would provide medicines ranging for low- and lower-middle income nations. Novartis said it would provide medicines ranging from antibiotics and steroids to diarrhea pills to 79 countries on the World Bank’s list of low- and lower-middle income nations. The Basel-based drugmaker plans to maintain the zero-profit programme until the pandemic ends or a vaccine or cure is found, Novartis Global Health Chief Operating Officer Lutz Hegemann said in an interview. While Novartis has not seen supply-chain shortages despite increasing demands for Covid-19 medicines, Hegemann said this new programme aimed to help to keep vulnerable healthcare systems in Africa, Asia, South America and European countries Ukraine and Moldova from becoming overloaded. “We shouldn’t underestimate the stress that Covid puts particularly on fragile health systems,” Hegemann told Reuters, adding Novartis hopes to work with health authorities, faith-based organisations and NGOs to eliminate big...

WASHINGTON: Presi­dent Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered an end to Hong Kong’s special status under US law to punish China for what he called “oppressive actions” against the former British colony, prompting Beijing to warn of retaliatory sanctions. Citing China’s decision to enact a new national security law for Hong Kong, Trump signed an executive order that he said would end the preferential economic treatment for the city. “No special privileges, no special economic treatment and no export of sensitive technologies,” he told a news conference. Acting on a Tuesday deadline, he also signed a bill approved by the US Congress to penalise banks doing business with Chinese officials who implement the new security law. “Today I signed legislation, and an executive order to hold China accountable for its aggressive actions against the people of Hong Kong,” Trump said. “Hong Kong will now be treated the same as mainland China,” he added. Under the executive order, US property woul...