Not all money kept abroad is black money: Pranab

New Delhi, May 15: With an increase of 3,967 COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, India's tally of coronavirus cases reached 81,970 cases, according to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Friday.

According to the latest figures, 51,401 patients are active coronavirus cases while 27,919 patients have been cured/discharged and one patient has been migrated.

With a rise in 100 deaths due to COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, the number of deaths now stands at 2,649.

According to the Health Ministry, Maharashtra is the worst-hit state with regard to the number of COVID-19 cases with 27,524 cases of which, 6,059 patients have been cured/discharged and 1,019 succumbing to the virus.

Tamil Nadu has a tally of 9,674 cases inclusive of 2,240 patients cured/discharged and 66 fatalities.

Gujarat has a total of 9,591 cases which include 3,753 patients cured/discharged while 586 have lost their lives due to coronavirus.

Delhi has a tally of 8,470 cases of which 3,045 patients cured/discharged and 115 fatalities.

Kochi, Jan 21: A special court here on Tuesday sent two students, who were arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) case in Kozhikode last November, to the custody of National Investigation Agency (NIA) for a day.

The NIA court ordered that the duo, who were in judicial custody till now, to be produced before it tomorrow.

In its application, the NIA had said that the accused must be interrogated on the basis of digital records and sought custody of the duo for a week.

However, the defendant argued that no new evidence had been found against the accused and therefore no custody should be granted.

During an earlier hearing, the two had told the court, "We are not Maoists. We are CPI (M) activists. The Chief Minister, who says we are Maoists, should bring proof of whom we killed and where we bombed. In the last election, we have served as CPI (M), booth agents. We are the ones who went out to vote and pasted posters for the party."

The two were charged under Sections 20 (punishment for being a member of terrorist gang or organisation), 38 (offence relating to membership of a terrorist organisation) and 39 (offence relating to support given to a terrorist organisation) of the UAPA.

Allen and Thaha, students of law and journalism respectively of Kannur University, were taken into custody by the police from Pantheerankavu in Kozhikode on November 1 last year.

Feb 28: The best economic tonic for the coronavirus shock is to contain its spread and worry about stimulus later, said Raghuram Rajan, former head of the Reserve Bank of India.

There’s little central banks can do, and while more government spending would help, the priority should be on convincing companies and households that the virus is under control, he said.

“People want to have a sense that there is a limit to the spread of this virus perhaps because of containment measures or because there is hope that some kind of viral solution can be found,” Rajan told Bloomberg Television’s Haidi Stroud Watts and Shery Ahn.

“At this point I would say the best thing that governments can do is to really fight the epidemic rather than worry about stimulus measures that comes later,” said Rajan, who is currently a professor at the Chicago Booth School of Business.

The spread of coronavirus is pushing the world economy toward its worst performance since the financial crisis more than a decade ago.

Bank of America Corp. economists warned clients Thursday that they now expect 2.8% global growth this year, the weakest since 2009.

“We have moved from extreme confidence in markets to extreme panic, all in the space of one week,” said Rajan, who previously was chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.

The virus outbreak will force companies to rethink supply chains and overseas production facilities, he said.

“I think we will see a lot of rethinking on this, coming on the back of the trade disruption, now we have this,” Rajan said. “Globalization in production is going to be hit quite badly.”