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The surprising festive bonanza doled out by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to India Inc has already created widespread enthusiasm in Indian industry. The grappling business sectors are terming it as much-needed oxygen amidst slowdown, with a hope that they will sail through the low tide of Indian market seeing declining domestic demands. But one of the most positive impacts of the tax cut is that it boosts India’s prospects to become a major player in the global supply chain, provided other issues of Ease of Doing Business can be managed effectively. A tax reduction from for any new manufacturing entity which will commence production by 2023 has slashed more than 12 per cent with effective tax rate 17.01 per cent with no Minimum Alternative Tax (MAT).

Within two months, Asian Development Bank has to make a downward revision to its economic forecast for India for the current financial year by about 0.5 per cent. Asian Development Outlook 2019 update sees some silver lining on the horizon, but did not forget to mention the downside risks on the ground, indicating the sailing Indian economy through the troubled waters to remain tough.

The key to creating fundamental change is to create a movement broad enough, diverse enough, powerful enough, and sophisticated enough to embrace billions of people the world over.

The nuclear powers have conducted more than 2,000 nuclear test explosions. Out of this 1054 have been done by the United States of America. The last US nuclear weapons test took place 26 years ago on Sept. 23, 1992, at the Nevada Test Site. It was the 1,030th such experiment, the most conducted by any country since the first US atom bomb was exploded in 1945. Tim Fernholz in an article dated 23rd September 2018 points out that ‘the unintended consequences of testing are still being felt today: Fallout from the Nevada experiments was likely responsible for the deaths of as many as 690,000 American civilians, according to new research into the radioactive contamination’.

Just a fortnight ahead of culmination of highly acclaimed Swachh Bharat Abhiyan of prime minister launched on 2 October 2014 on Gandhi Jayanti, to eradicate open defecation by 2 October 2019, the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, two Dalit children were lynched by the protagonists of the scheme, the vigilantes, for defecating in public.

With the explosive whistleblower revelation that Trump allegedly threatened to withhold military aid from Ukraine to get dirt on the family of Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced the launching of a formal impeachment inquiry against the President of the United States. Speaking at the Capitol Tuesday evening, Pelosi said that Trump’s “enlistment of a foreign power to intervene in a U.S. election” amounts to a “betrayal of his oath of office, of our national security, and of the integrity of our elections.”

BHOPAL: In the last 24 hours, three significant developments have happened relating to the honey-trap scandal, currently rocking Madhya Pradesh. The most important and sensational development is the disclosure that more than a dozen IAS officers are involved in the scandal. Top police sources indicated that soon the names of those IAS officers will be disclosed by the SIT, which has been entrusted the inquiry. The second important development relates to the change in the head of SIT. Initially, Srinivas Verma was appointed as the head of the SIT, but within 24 hours, for reasons known to the government, Sanjeev Shami, a senior IPS officer, was given the assignment. Shami is regarded as a tough and professionally sound officer. Immediately after his appointment, he visited Indore.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Election time sees the Congress leaders in Kerala at their bickering best.

Racism in the United States has two fundamental aspects. One is systemic, the other ideological. The systemic aspect has numerous and pervasive forms, including unequal wages, working conditions, access to financing, education, housing, medical care, and environmental protection, where the capitalists impose harsher conditions on African Americans and other people of colour than on white people.

Jeremy Corbyn accused Boris Johnson of disdain for democracy and called on the Prime Minister to quit now after the Supreme Court ruled today that his attempt to suspend Parliament for five weeks was illegal.