Nirbhaya Case: SC Dismisses Convict Pawan Gupta's Plea Seeking Review of Order Rejecting Juvenility Claim

Apr 23: Mukesh Ambani is again Asia's richest person after a deal with Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook Inc. sent his conglomerate's stock surging.

Ambani's fortune rose about $4.7 billion to $49.2 billion on Wednesday, after Reliance Industries Ltd. gained 10%. The jump put Ambani about $3.2 billion ahead of China's Jack Ma, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The ranking updates after the close of each trading day in the U.S.

Facebook Inc. will invest $5.7 billion in the U.S. social-networking giant's biggest deal since the 2014 purchase of WhatsApp as it seeks a broader foothold in its biggest global market. The U.S. company will buy about 10% of Jio Platforms, which brings together digital apps and a wireless platform under one umbrella, the Mumbai-based company said in a statement Wednesday.

Before Wednesday, Ambani -- who owns the world's largest oil refinery -- had declined by $14 billion on the index in 2020, the biggest dollar fall of anyone in Asia. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s Ma, whose foundation this week donated 100 million masks to the World Health Organization to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, had lost almost $1 billion through Tuesday.

"At the core of our partnership is the commitment that Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, and I share for the all-around digital transformation of India," Ambani said in a web video posted on Jio's Facebook page, adding that Facebook's brands have become household names in India. "WhatsApp in particular, has entered our people's daily vocabulary in all the 23 official languages of India."

The partnership with Jio would allow Zuckerberg to step up his expansion in a country that is rapidly embracing online payment and e-commerce as more people get smartphones. Jio Infocomm quickly moved into a position of dominance by offering free plans and undercutting wireless market rivals.

With its half-billion internet users, the South Asian country is a key market for the world's largest technology companies, including Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google. In India, Facebook has about 250 million users, while WhatsApp has more than 400 million.

That should help Jio bolster its reach, according to James Crabtree, author of 'The Billionaire Raj,' a book on the country's wealthiest people. But the transaction also shows the extent of Ambani's own influence, he said.

"This deal clearly shows that if you want to play big in Indian tech, you need to play nice with Mukesh Ambani."

Ambani's fortune rose about $4.7 billion to $49.2 billion on Wednesday, after Reliance Industries Ltd. gained 10%. The jump put Ambani about $3.2 billion ahead of China's Jack Ma, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The ranking updates after the close of each trading day in the U.S.

Facebook Inc. will invest $5.7 billion in the U.S. social-networking giant's biggest deal since the 2014 purchase of WhatsApp as it seeks a broader foothold in its biggest global market. The U.S. company will buy about 10% of Jio Platforms, which brings together digital apps and a wireless platform under one umbrella, the Mumbai-based company said in a statement Wednesday.

Before Wednesday, Ambani -- who owns the world's largest oil refinery -- had declined by $14 billion on the index in 2020, the biggest dollar fall of anyone in Asia. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s Ma, whose foundation this week donated 100 million masks to the World Health Organization to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, had lost almost $1 billion through Tuesday.

"At the core of our partnership is the commitment that Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, and I share for the all-around digital transformation of India," Ambani said in a web video posted on Jio's Facebook page, adding that Facebook's brands have become household names in India. "WhatsApp in particular, has entered our people's daily vocabulary in all the 23 official languages of India."

The partnership with Jio would allow Zuckerberg to step up his expansion in a country that is rapidly embracing online payment and e-commerce as more people get smartphones. Jio Infocomm quickly moved into a position of dominance by offering free plans and undercutting wireless market rivals.

With its half-billion internet users, the South Asian country is a key market for the world's largest technology companies, including Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google. In India, Facebook has about 250 million users, while WhatsApp has more than 400 million.

That should help Jio bolster its reach, according to James Crabtree, author of 'The Billionaire Raj,' a book on the country's wealthiest people. But the transaction also shows the extent of Ambani's own influence, he said.

"This deal clearly shows that if you want to play big in Indian tech, you need to play nice with Mukesh Ambani."

Mumbai, Jan 3: The Shiv Sena on Friday targeted the Centre by questioning the "efficacy" of the 2016 surgical strike and said the perception that it would demoralise Pakistani terrorists remained an "illusion" as Indian soldiers continue to get killed in terror attacks in Kashmir.

Accusing the Modi government of boasting about how Pakistan was straightened out after the surgical strike, the Sena sought to know whether it has really happened.

It also observed that troubled borders were not good for the country's well-being.

The Sena's remarks come in the wake of the death of an Army soldier from Maharashtra, Naik Sandip Raghunath Sawant, who was killed during a counter-insurgency operation in Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday.

"The New Year did not begin on a positive note in Kashmir. Our jawan from Satara, Sandip Sawant, attained martyrdom in Kashmir along with two other soldiers. In the last one month, seven to eight jawans from Maharashtra were killed in the line of duty. The Maha Vikas Aghadi government in Maharashtra is not responsible for this," the Sena said in an editorial in party mouthpiece 'Saamana'.

The party also questioned whether the situation in Kashmir has improved after the surgical strike and abrogation of Article 370 provisions.

The party, however, maintained that scrapping Article 370 was a good move.

India had conducted the surgical strike on September 29, 2016, across the Line of Control (LoC) as a response to a terrorist attack on an Indian Army base in Uri sector of Jammu and Kashmir earlier that month.

Without naming the Centre, the Sena alleged, "Circulating news that only the Pakistanis were getting killed in Kashmir will not change the reality as tricolour-draped bodies of Indian soldiers, like Sawant, are reaching their respective villages."

"There is a bloodshed along the Kashmir border and mounting anger among the families of martyred jawans. The perception that surgical strike will demoralise Pakistani terrorists has turned out to be an illusion. In fact, the (terror) attacks have increased," it added.

The Uddhav Thackeray-led party accused the ruling BJP of boasting about straightening out Pakistan after the surgical strike.

"But has Pakistan been really straightened out? Rather Pakistan has been indulging in ceasefire violations along the LoC every day," it added.

The Shiv Sena also questioned the government's claim that the situation in Kashmir was under control after the nullification of Article 370.

"It is good that Article 370 was scrapped. Before that, surgical strike was carried out in Pakistan. But has the situation in Kashmir improved? The terror attacks continue. It's only that there is a control in reporting (these incidents)," it said.

The Sena also alleged that there was no clarity as to what was transpiring in Kashmir after the scrapping of Article 370 and only the media reports of soldiers sacrificing their lives have been coming out from that state

In a veiled attack on the BJP, its erstwhile ally, the Sena, also accused it of exploiting the surgical strike for political gains.

Beijing, Feb 24: The lockdown of Guo Jing's neighbourhood in Wuhan -- the city at the heart of China's new coronavirus epidemic -- came suddenly and without warning.

Unable to go out, the 29-year-old is now sealed inside her compound where she has to depend on online group-buying services to get food.

"Living for at least another month isn't an issue," Guo told news agency, explaining that she had her own stash of pickled vegetables and salted eggs.

But what scares her most is the lack of control -- first, the entire city was sealed off, and then residents were limited to exiting their compound once every three days.

Now even that has been taken away.

Guo is among some 11 million residents in Wuhan, a city in central Hubei province that has been under effective quarantine since January 23 as Chinese authorities race to contain the epidemic.

Since then, its people have faced a number of tightening controls over daily life as the death toll from the virus swelled to over 2,500 in China alone.

But the new rules this month barring residents from leaving their neighbourhoods are the most restrictive yet -- and for some, threaten their livelihoods.

"I still don't know where to buy things once we've finished eating what we have at home," said Pan Hongsheng, who lives with his wife and two children.

Some neighbourhoods have organised group-buying services, where supermarkets deliver orders in bulk.

But in Pan's community, "no one cares".

"The three-year-old doesn't even have any milk powder left," Pan told news agency, adding that he has been unable to send medicine to his in-laws -- both in their eighties -- as they live in a different area.

"I feel like a refugee."

The "closed management of neighbourhoods is bound to bring some inconvenience to the lives of the people", Qian Yuankun, vice secretary of Hubei's Communist Party committee, said at a press briefing last week.

Authorities on Monday allowed healthy non-residents of the city to leave if they never had contact with patients, but restrictions remained on those who live in Wuhan.

Demand for group-buying food delivery services has rocketed with the new restrictions, with supermarkets and neighbourhood committees scrambling to fill orders.

Most group-buying services operate through Chinese messaging app WeChat, which has ad-hoc chat groups for meat, vegetables, milk -- even "hot dry noodles", a famous Wuhan dish.

More sophisticated shops and compounds have their own mini-app inside WeChat, where residents can choose packages priced by weight before orders are sent in bulk to grocery stores.

In Guo's neighbourhood, for instance, a 6.5-kilogramme (14.3-pound) set of five vegetables, including potatoes and baby cabbage, costs 50 yuan ($7.11).

"You have no way to choose what you like to eat," Guo said. "You cannot have personal preferences anymore."

The group-buying model is also more difficult for smaller communities to adopt, as supermarkets have minimum order requirements for delivery.

"To be honest, there's nothing we can do," said Yang Nan, manager of Lao Cun Zhang supermarket, which requires a minimum of 30 orders.

"We only have four cars," she said, explaining that the store did not have the staff to handle smaller orders.

Another supermarket told AFP it capped its daily delivery load to 1,000 orders per day.

"Hiring staff is difficult," said Wang Xiuwen, who works at the store's logistics division, adding that they are wary about hiring too many outsiders for fear of infection.

Closing off communities has split the city into silos, with different neighbourhoods rolling out controls of varying intensity.

In some compounds, residents have easier access to food -- albeit a smaller selection than normal -- and one woman said her family pays delivery drivers to run grocery errands.

Her compound has not been sealed off either, the 24-year-old told AFP under condition of anonymity, though they are limited to one person leaving at a time.

Some districts have implemented their own rules, such as prohibiting supermarkets from selling to individuals, forcing neighbourhoods to buy in bulk or not at all.

"In the neighbourhood where I live, the reality is really terrible," said David Dai, who is based on the outskirts of Wuhan.

Though his apartment complex has organised group-buying, Dai said residents were unhappy with price and quality.

"A lot of tomatoes, a lot of onions -- they were already rotten," he told , estimating over a third of the food had to be thrown away.

His family must "totally depend" on themselves, added the 49-year-old, who has resorted to saving and drying turnip skins to add nutrients to future meals.

The uncertainty of not knowing when the controls will be lifted is also frustrating, said Ma Chen, a man in his 30s who lives alone.

"I have no way of knowing how much (food) I should buy."