The first firing which killed six civilians, occurred when army personnel mistook coal mine workers returning home in a pick-up van singing songs on Saturday evening, to be insurgents belonging to the Yung Aung faction of the banned outfit National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang (NSCN-K), about whose movements they had been tipped-off.

The economic impact of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 on emerging economies will depend on a mix of government restrictions, public comfort with social interactions, and capacity of governments and central banks to provide additional policy support to the private sector, Moody's Investors Service said on Wednesday. The emergence of the new variant poses new risks to the global economic growth and inflation outlook, as concerns mount about the variant's health risks and several countries have imposed new travel restrictions in recent days. These restrictions will likely increase over the coming weeks until scientists learn more about the variant, it said.

Australia is considering not sending any government officials to the Winter Olympics to be held in Beijing next year amid growing calls from lawmakers for an official diplomatic boycott, the Sydney Morning Herald said in a report on Thursday.

When the Indian brunost bravely ventured into the international cheese arena in Spain, along with 4,000 others from 45 countries, before 230 judges, its sterling desi pedigree spoke for itself, winning a silver in the brown cheese category and giving India a berth on the global cheese map.

A traumatic medical emergency drove physician Dr Devi, of General Hospital soap fame, to run for public office in New York.

There should have been a focus on sanitation and not on littering or garbage. Absence of sanitation affects the health of children, explains Aakar Patel.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2021 with one half to David Card "for his empirical contributions to labour economics" and the other half jointly to Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens "for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships". Card is the Class of 1950 Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley and Director of the Labor Studies Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Angrist is an Israeli American economist and Ford Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Imbens is Professor of Economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business since 2012. After earning his Ph.D. from Brown University in 1991, he taught at Harvard University, UCLA, and UC Berkeley.

Walmart, the world's largest retailer, is tripling its sourcing from India to about $10 billion a year by 2027, said Judith McKenna, president, and chief executive officer of Walmart International, the segment which includes the company's operations outside the US. "To achieve this, we are growing our sourcing team in India," said McKenna, during a fireside chat with YourStory founder Shradha Sharma at Converge@Walmart, the flagship event of Walmart Global Tech India. "Walmart has a 20-year history of sourcing from India and already exports more than $3 billion worth of Made-in-India goods each year to 14 markets worldwide." McKenna said the company has expertise in processes such as international standards and demand forecasting that businesses need to get ready to export.

The United States has so far allocated only 7.5 million doses of Covid vaccines to India, which is not enough, a top Indian-American Congressman said while urging the Biden Administration to do more.

Not to say that India couldn't have handled the situation better, but on average, it didn't do anywhere near as badly as the naysayers make it out argues Rajeev Srinivasan.

With automation taking place at a much faster pace across industries especially in the tech space, domestic software firms that employee over 16 million are set to slash headcounts by a massive 3 million by 2022, which will help them save a whopping $100 billion mostly in salaries annually, says a report. The domestic IT sector employs around 16 million, of them around 9 million are employed in low-skilled services and BPO roles, according to Nasscom. Of these 9 million low-skilled services and BPO roles, 30 per cent or around 3 million will be lost by 2022, principally driven by the impact of robot process automation or RPA. Roughly 0.7 million roles are expected to be replaced by RPA alone and the rest due to other technological upgrades and upskilling by the domestic IT players, while it the RPA will have the worst impact in the US with a loss of almost 1 million jobs, according to a Bank of America report on Wednesday.

The 'terrible' surge of the coronavirus cases in India has severely impacted COVAX's vaccine supply in the second quarter of this year to the extent that there will be a shortfall of 190 million doses by the end of June, according to a joint statement by the WHO, UNICEF, GAVI and CEPI.

The US government has removed a regulation proposed by former president Donald Trump's administration that sought to narrow the definition of "specialty occupation" under the H-1B visa regime. The change comes as a relief for Indian information technology firms, which are among the largest users of such visas. "The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has formally vacated a regulation that would have redefined the H-1B specialty occupation, restricted off site placement of H-1B employees, and otherwise increased employer compliance obligations. "The vacatur follows a federal court ruling that set aside the regulation because the agency did not have good cause to bypass notice and comment rulemaking, in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act," explained immigration law firm Fragomen.

Gynecologist Dr Archana Dhawan Bajaj tells you how to have a safe and healthy pregnancy in your 30s.

'People are just putting the mask below their nose.' 'They are only protecting the mouth, but not the nose.' 'People need to understand that it is the nose which has to be protected.'

There is growing alarm at the inexorable rise of China, both of its military prowess and its aggressive bullying of other countries plus its subjugation of whole portions of its own population.

If you are an expert in programming languages, statistics and algebra, then a career in AI and ML is worth a shot in 2021.

Here's the full text of President Ram Nath Kovind's customary address to the joining sitting of Parliament on the first day of the budget session.

Two of the US Cabinet members -- Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Transport Secretary Elaine Chao -- have resigned over the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters. US Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund has also announced that he would resign this month after he faced criticism for failing to prevent Trump supporters from storming the building.

These 10 images prove that it's an odd, odd world out there...

'This election might be the most significant for the community and indicates the possibility of greater engagement.'

United States polls, coronavirus lockdowns and protests... Here's a look at the best images from October.

Trump has repeatedly blamed countries like India and China for not doing enough on climate change, labelling them as regions with air that is impossible to breathe.

Several individuals and organisations, including the US Chambers of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration's recent rules related to the H-1B visa, terming them "arbitrary" and "haphazard" regulations that will undermine high skilled immigration into America. Early this month, the Trump administration announced new restrictions on H-1B non-immigrant visa programme which it said is aimed at protecting American workers, restoring integrity and to better guarantee that H-1B petitions are approved only for qualified beneficiaries and petitioners, a move which is likely to affect thousands of Indian IT professionals.

In sectors like IT, cybersecurity, advanced manufacturing, and transportation, the H-1B One Workforce grant programme would be used to upskill the present workforce and train a new generation of workers.

The country has reported more than 94,000 recoveries for two successive days, the ministry said.

A total of 94,612 people recovered from coronavirus in a span of 24 hours, taking the national recovery rate to 79.68 per cent, while 92,605 people tested positive for the disease during the period, taking the total COVID-19 cases to 54,00,619.

It also advised testing on demand for 'all individuals undertaking travel to countries or Indian states mandating a negative COVID-19 test at the point of entry'.

'There shall be no change in India-Japan ties,' predicts Rajaram Panda.

The lawsuit seeks to overturn these sweeping and unlawful immigration restrictions that are an unequivocal not welcome sign to the engineers, executives, IT experts, doctors, nurses, and other critical workers who help drive the American economy.

The lawsuit seeks an order declaring the presidential proclamation restriction on issuing new H-1B or H4 visas or admitting new H-1B or H-4 visa holders as unlawful.

According to the bill, Indians should not exceed 15 per cent of the population.

But, the Wall Street Journal said that the US labour market is operating with millions fewer jobs than in February, the month before the coronavirus pandemic struck the country's economy.

Under these reforms, the H-1B programme will prioritise those workers who are offered the highest wage, ensuring that the highest-skilled applicants are admitted, the White House said.

The proclamation that comes into effect on June 24, is expected to impact a large number of Indian IT professionals and several American and Indian companies who were issued H-1B visas by the US government for the fiscal year 2021 beginning October 1.

'Salman Khan family is the head of this venomous serpent.'

Nomura Group Study found that in 2019, out of the fifty-six companies which shifted their production out of China, only three of these invested in India; while 26 went to Vietnam, 11 to Taiwan, and 08 to Thailand. In April 2020, Nikkei noted that out of the 1,000 firms which were planning to leave China and invest in Asian countries, only 300 of them were seriously thinking of investing in India.

Trump also announced that the US will end special treatment of Hong Kong in response to Chinese imposition of new controls.

Researches reveal that many firms that employ H-1B workers directly, including some of the biggest names in the technology industry such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Qualcomm, Salesforce and Uber, pay a large share of their H-1B workers at one of the two lowest wage levels, Level 1 or Level 2.

The senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader had made the allegation in a tweet on Sunday wherein he had also launched a veiled attack on a sitting Congress MLA, who had shot off a letter to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, seeking return of Rs 50 lakh released from his local area development fund.