Google blocks Chinese app TikTok in India after court order

Jan 6: Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy on Sunday said the country's economy is not showing good signs though Prime Minister Narendra Modi has manifested tremendous leadership skills in fighting terror and in social welfare projects.

The fiscal decisions of the government have not yielded the desired results, the Rajya Sabha MP said here.

"Modi had shown tremendous leadership skill in fighting terror, in several social areas, micro areas like bringing toilets to every village home. But the economy is a complex system...," he said while taking part in a discussion.

While every minister is talking about a 5 trillion dollar economy by 2024, but the current GDP growth has to be multiplied in four years to achieve that, the former Union minister said.

He said, if wages are slashed as a measure to cope with the situation, labor will become cheap but that will also cut down the people's purchasing power triggering dip in demand, closing down factories and rise in unemployment.

"This is one problem for which you really need an economist," he said.

Swamy said in jest, "I think Modi has one problem with me. Not only I am an economist but also a politician."

New Delhi, Jan 17: E-commerce major Amazon on Friday said it plans to create one million new jobs in India over the next five years through investments in technology, infrastructure and its logistics network.

These jobs are in addition to the seven lakh jobs Amazon's investments have enabled over the last six years in the country.

"Amazon plans to create one million new jobs in India by 2025," the company said in a statement, adding that the jobs - created both directly and indirectly - will be across industries, including information technology, skill development, content creation, retail, logistics, and manufacturing.

Amazon.com Inc chief Jeff Bezos had on Wednesday announced USD 1 billion (over Rs 7,000 crore) investment in India to help bring small and medium businesses online and committed to exporting USD 10 billion worth of India-made goods by 2025.

"We are investing to create a million new jobs here in India over the next five years," Bezos said.

"We’ve seen huge contributions from our employees, extraordinary creativity from the small businesses we've partnered with, and great enthusiasm from the customers who shop with us—and we’re excited about what lies ahead," Bezos added.

India has prioritised job creation and skilling initiatives – including the training of more than 400 million people by 2022 – in rural and urban areas.

"Amazon’s job creation commitment and investment in traders and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) complement this social inclusion and social mobility efforts by creating more opportunities for people in India to find employment, build skills, and expand entrepreneurship opportunities," the statement said.

The new investments will help to hire talent to fill roles across Amazon in India, including software development engineering, cloud computing, content creation, and customer support.

Since 2014, Amazon has grown its employee base more than four times, and last year inaugurated its new campus building in Hyderabad – Amazon’s first fully-owned campus outside the United States and the largest building globally in terms of employees (15,000) and space (9.5 acres).

The investments will also help in expanding growth opportunities for the more than 5,50,000 traders and micro, small, and medium-sized businesses – including local shops – through programs like Saheli, Karigar, and “I Have Space”.

New Delhi, Jan 31: The Supreme Court Friday dismissed the plea filed by one of the four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case, Pawan Gupta, seeking review of its order rejecting his juvenility claim.

The review plea filed earlier in the day was taken up for consideration in-chamber by a bench comprising Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and A S Bopanna. 

On January 20, the apex court had rejected the plea by Pawan who had challenged the Delhi High Court's order dismissing his juvenility claim.

Advocate A P Singh, who is representing Pawan in the case, said he filed a petition on his behalf seeking review of the top court's January 20 order on Friday.

While dismissing the plea, the top court had said there was no ground to interfere with the high court order that rejected Pawan's plea and his claim was rightly rejected by the trial court as also the high court.

It had said the matter was raised earlier in the review petition before the apex court which rejected plea of juvenility taken by Pawan and another co-accused Vinay Kumar Sharma and that order has attained finality.

Singh had argued that as per his school leaving certificate, he was a minor at the time of the offence and none of the courts, including trial court and high court, ever considered his documents.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Delhi Police, had said Pawan's claim of juvenility was considered at each and every judicial forum and it will be a travesty of justice if the convict is allowed to raise the claim of juvenility repeatedly and at this point of time.

The trial court on January 17 issued black warrants for the second time for the execution of all the four convicts in the case -- Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Pawan (25), Vinay (26) and Akshay (31) -- in Tihar jail at 6 am on February 1. Earlier, on January 7, the court had fixed January 22 as the hanging date.

As of now, only Mukesh has exhausted all his legal remedies including the clemency plea which was dismissed by President Ram Nath Kovind on January 17 and the appeal against the rejection was thrown out by the Supreme Court on January 29.

Convict Akshay's curative petition was dismissed by the top court on January 30. Another death row convict Vinay moved mercy plea before President on January 29, which is pending.

Singh has also approached the trial court seeking stay on the execution scheduled on February 1, saying the legal remedies of some of the convicts are yet to be availed.

A 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya, was gang-raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012, in a moving bus in south Delhi by six people before she was thrown out on the road.