Tata Group patriarch Ratan Tata on Thursday said layoffs by Indian companies amid the Covid-19 pandemic was a knee-jerk reaction and show lack of empathy among the top leadership.

“These are the people that have worked for you. These are the people who have served you all their careers. You send them out to live in the rain. Is that your definition of ethics when you treat your labour force that way?” asked Tata in an interview to news website YourStory.

While Tata Group has not laid off any employee, several Indian companies have retrenched staff due to lack of cash flow after the nationwide lockdown. The Tata group, however, has cut salaries of its top management by up to 20 per cent. Several Tata Group companies, including its airlines, hotels, financial services, and auto business, are severely hit, but have not laid off employees to date.

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Chinese smartphone maker Huawei’s digital brand Honor is set to introduce its MagicBook 15 notebook in India on July 31. Along with it, the company will also bring its Honor 9A and Honor 9S smartphones to the country, as it prepares to go aggressive on its ‘1+8+N’ product strategy announced late last year.

The MagicBook 15’s India model will be similar to the notebook’s global model, powered by American chipmaker AMD’s Ryzen 3-series processors and Microsoft Windows 10 Home operating system. It would be the first Honor-branded laptop in India, and the company would also bring its other notebooks, including the Intel processor-powered notebooks, to the country, said Honor India President Charles Peng in an interaction with Business Standard.

  “Honor MagicBook 15 was unveiled globally and it witnessed a promising response from consumers worldwide. We are bringing the Magicbook 15 global variant to India and we are confident of repeating our success in India as well,” Peng added.

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E-commerce company Flipkart has acquired 100 per cent stake in Walmart India Private Limited, which operates the Best Price cash-and-carry business.

Flipkart said it would leverage the strong wholesale capabilities of the company and enable growth for kiranas and MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises).

  With this acquisition, the Bengaluru-based firm announced the launch of Flipkart Wholesale, a new digital marketplace that will help transform the kirana retail ecosystem in India by leveraging cutting-edge and locally developed technology.

“As the e-commerce pioneer in India, the Flipkart Group has transformed the shopping experience for millions of Indian consumers. With the launch of Flipkart Wholesale, we will now extend our capabilities across technology, logistics and finance to small businesses across the country,” said Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Chief Executive Officer, Flipkart Group.

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An Indian applicant for a US Green Card may have to wait 195 years for a decision, a top Republican senator has said, urging his Senate colleagues to come out with a legislative resolution to end the backlog.

A Green Card, known officially as a Permanent Resident Card, is a document issued to immigrants to the US as evidence that the bearer has allwed to reside permanently.

 Senator Mike Lee said on Wednesday that the current Green Card policy did nothing for the child of an immigrant whose dead parent’s Green Card application was ultimately denied because his or her job was no longer available.

“Someone from India entering the backlog today would have to wait 195 years to receive an EB-3 green card. Even if we give their children this limbo status, none of them will have a prayer of becoming a US citizen,” Lee said on the Senator floor.

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Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami on Thursday said he has ordered cancellation of semester exams and allow the students to proceed to the next academic year in view of the coronavirus pandemic.

In a statement, Palaniswami said a high level committee set up to examine the possibility of holding semester exams for college students has said owing to Covid-19 pandemic exams cannot be held.

Palaniswami said based on the guidance of University Grants Commission and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) under graduate and post graduate students of arts, science, engineering, computer science courses are exempted from exams for this semester only.

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Facebook on Wednesday announced new privacy and security features for Messenger including App lock, which enables users to add “another layer of security”.

With App lock, users can lock Messenger and it will require an authentication method like Face ID or Touch ID to open it.

  “App Lock lets you add another layer of security to your private messages and helps prevent other people from accessing them,” said Jay Sullivan, Director of Product Management, Messenger Privacy and Safety, in a statement.

“…App Lock uses your device’s privacy settings like fingerprint or face authentication to unlock the Messenger app, and your touch or face ID is not transmitted to or stored by Facebook,” Sullivan added.

However, as of now, the feature is only available on iPhone and iPad. It will come to Android in the “next few months”.

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CARE Rating has downgraded rating for debentures of Morgan Credit Private Ltd (MPCL), a Rana Kapoor family owned firm, from “BB” to “D” grade as it failed to make payments to investors of non-convertible debentures.

The revision in the rating of the instrument is on account of company’s inability to repay post exercise of the put option by the investor on account of stretched liquidity, CARE said in a statement.

Rating revision journey began in the second quarter of last financial year (Fy20). In September 2019, it was downgraded from “A-“ to “BBB-“ and later from “BBB-“ to “BB” in March 2020.

 MCPL is a holding company having investments in various non-financial businesses. The directors of the Company are Radha K Khanna, Raakhe K Tandon and Roshini Kapoor. They collectively hold 100 per cent equity stake (split equally between the three) in MCPL, CARE said.

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In a major breakthrough, the early-stage human trial data has revealed that the coronavirus vaccine candidate developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University is safe. German biotech firm BioNTech and US drugmaker Pfizer also reported that their experimental Covid-19 vaccine was safe and induced an immune response in patients. The latest developments raise hope as these could contribute to ending the pandemic, which has infected over 14.7 million people worldwide and claimed over 600,000 lives so far. More than 150 possible vaccines are being developed and tested around the world, including in India, Britain, China, the US, Russia and Israel to try to stop the pandemic. At present, 23 vaccine candidates are in human clinical trials. These include those of Moderna, AstraZeneca Plc, BioNTech, Novavax, Sinovac, CanSino Biologics and Inovio Pharmaceuticals.

Coronavirus treatment: Updates on coronavirus vaccine/drug development:

1. Russia claims its coronavirus vaccine is ready for use

A Covid-19 vaccine developed with the Russian Defense Ministry completed Phase 2 trials, leading First Deputy Defense Minister Ruslan Tsalikov to say the first domestic inoculation is ready for use.

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In a jolt to India’s Olympic preparations, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has extended the suspension of the country’s National Dope Testing Laboratory (NDTL) by another six months citing non-conformation to international standards.

The WADA first suspended NDTL in August last year for a period of six months. A fresh round of inspection by the world body, much to the embarrassment of country’s sporting establishment, showed that non-conformities still existed.

“The World Anti-Doping Agency has suspended the accreditation of the National Dope Testing Laboratory in New Delhi, India, for a second period of up to six months,” WADA said in a statement.

The suspension prohibits the NDTL from carrying out any anti-doping activities, including all analyses of urine and blood samples.

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Asus ROG Phone 3 is set to launch on July 22 through an online event, which would broadcast live on Asus’ social media channels and YouTube. The gaming-centric smartphone will debut the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865+ system-on-chip, which brings up to 10 per cent improvement in computing and graphics performance over the predecessor. Therefore, the ROG Phone 3 is expected to bring more than just seasonal upgrades with regard to specifications, features and performance.

Asus ROG Phone 3 specifications (expected)

Besides Qualcomm Snapdragon 865+ SoC, the ROG Phone 3 is expected to come with up to 16GB RAM and 512GB internal storage – according to phone’s listing on Chinese regulatory body TENAA. The listing also hints that it will be a LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.0 storage. Moreover, the listing states a 6.59-inch AMOLED screen of fullHD+ resolution.

  Though the screen’s refresh rate information is not available, it is believed that the phone would either continue with the 120Hz refresh rate panel of the predecessor, or get a new panel of 144Hz refresh rate. Important to note, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865+ SoC support up to 144 fps screen and true 10-bit HDR gaming, and both these factors could add up over the already seamless gaming experience of the ROG Phone 2.

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