Month: October 2022

Oil OMCs to cut petrol, diesel prices by 40 paisa from November 1

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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State-owned oil marketing companies (OMCs) are likely to reduce the prices of petroleum products such as petrol and diesel by 40 paise a litre from November 1, 2022, as the price of international crude oil fell.

According to the report by CNBC Awaaz, the reduction in prices by 40 paisa daily is likely to continue for the next five days and a total reduction of Rs 2 in petrol and diesel prices in installments, sources privy to the developments told CNBC-TV18.

Global oil benchmark Brent crude fell more than $1 today on expectations that US production could rise even as weaker economic data out of China and the country’s widening COVID-19 curbs weighed on demand.

Brent crude futures dropped $1.22, or 1.3 percent, to $94.55 a barrel. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude fell $2.41 to $85.49 a barrel, a 2.7 percent loss. Both benchmarks, however, are on track for their first monthly gains since May.

Also Read: Indian Oil reports lower Q2 loss on government cash support

State-owned fuel retailers Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) are supposed to adjust petrol and diesel prices daily in line with the cost, but they have been since November 2021 moderating pump rates.

India is 85 percent dependent on imports to meet its oil needs and so local pump rates are benchmarked against international prices. Fuel prices, particularly diesel, have a cascading effect on inflation as an elevated price will lead to higher transportation costs, spiking prices across the board, including essentials like vegetables.

Petrol and diesel prices were last revised to align with the cost on April 6 and have been on freeze since then. In May, rates were reduced after the government cut the excise duty on petrol by Rs 8 per litre and that on diesel by Rs 6.

Despite a surge in oil prices, the three state fuel retailers first froze petrol and diesel rates for a record 137 days beginning in early November 2021 when five states, including Uttar Pradesh, went to the polls and then went into a hiatus again in April.

Also Read: Nervous November up ahead for new-age companies

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Recron FS polyester to get a sustainable edge & enhanced fire retardant properties with Nofia technology

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) will use the Nofia technology of FRX Innovations to provide a sustainable edge to its fire-resistant polyester Recron FS. RIL is the largest producer of polyester in the world as well as filament yarns and staple fibers.

With its unique polymeric phosphorus-based chemistry, Nofia will help make Recron FS technically superior for textile polyester applications as well as more sustainable.

The Nofia technology meets the global standards of safety and sustainability such as its additives are certified by OEKO-TEX Standard 100 as well it holds other certifications such as ChemForward, TCO-accreditation and Green Screen.

“Recron FS is manufactured at state-of-the-art facilities, having one of the most environment-friendly conditions and is a part of the responsible care products that RIL offers,” said Hemant D. Sharma, sector head at polyester business, RIL, adding that the company is proud in bolstering Recron FS on safety and technical parameters with FRX’s Nofia technology.

“We are committed to deliver exceptional fire safety without compromising health, environment, and aesthetics,” he said.

Sharing similar sentiments, the CEO of FRX Innovations Marc Lebel said the company is proud to be selected by the world’s largest polyester fiber and filament yarn producer. He said consumer interest in sustainability has been increasing for years now.

“It is rewarding to see Nofia being deployed in such high-visibility consumer products. With ever-increasing pressure to deliver sustainable products to the market, we believe that FRX Innovations is well positioned to grow with sustainably minded customers around the world such as Reliance,” he said.

Last month, it was reported that RIL would acquire the polyester business of Shubhalakshmi Polyesters Ltd. and Shubhlaxmi Polytex Ltd. The acquisition would be done through RIL’s wholly-owned subsidiary Reliance Petroleum Retail Ltd., which now operates as Reliance Polyester Ltd.

Disclaimer: Network18, the parent company of CNBCTV18.com, is controlled by Independent Media Trust, of which Reliance Industries is the sole beneficiary.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Morbi bridge collapse: Search for the last missing person on, says district administration

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The rescue teams were searching for the last missing person in the Morbi bridge collapse case, the district administration said on Monday. 

The nearly a century-old suspension bridge collapsed on Sunday evening, taking the death toll to 134 as of Monday evening. The bridge had reopened just five days ago after extensive renovations and repairs.

“Nine arrests have been made so far, including two managers of Oreva group, two contractors, two ticket clerks and three security guards,” Rajkot IG Ashok Yadav later in the day,

Mohan Kundariya, a Lok Sabha member from Rajkot, said 12 of his relatives were among those killed in the Morbi bridge collapse in Gujarat. They were visiting the picnic spot on Sunday when the tragedy occurred, the BJP MP told news agency PTI.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi also chaired a high-level meeting to review the situation in Morbi, at Raj Bhavan, Gandhinagar earlier in the day.

He was briefed about the ongoing rescue operations at the site. He also emphasised on ensuring that the affected persons get all the possible assistance. The high-level meeting was attended by Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, minister of state for home Harsh Sanghavi, the Chief Secretary and DGP of Gujarat, along with other top officials including those from the Home Department as well as the Gujarat State Disaster Management Authority.

PM Modi will also be visiting the Morbi bridge collapse site on Tuesday afternoon.

The Chief Minister also said that on Wednesday Gujarat will observe a state-wide mourning on for the ones who lost their lives in the incident. He said the Indian flag would fly at half-mast on government buildings and no social functions would be held.

Oreva group was the firm that was given the contract to repair the bridge. The repair work took around six months, following which the bridge was opened on October 26.

Municipal Chief Officer Sandeep Singh said only 25 people were allowed on the bridge at a time. He added that the municipal body didn’t conduct the final inspection as the private company failed to provide information about the bridge reopening.

Also Read: Five reasons that might have led to the Morbi bridge collapse in Gujarat

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Instagram looking into issues after user complaints

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Meta Platforms Inc’s Instagram said on Monday it was looking into an issue preventing thousands of its users from accessing the photo-sharing application.

The outage in some cases led to the suspension of users’ Instagram accounts. One user said the application had asked for their email and phone number to get the suspended account to work again.

“We’re aware that some of you are having issues accessing your Instagram account. We’re looking into it and apologize for the inconvenience,” Instagram said on its Twitter account.

The company did not immediately respond to questions on suspensions.

Nearly 7,000 users of Instagram were impacted, according to outage-tracking website Downdetector, which collates status reports from a number of sources including user-submitted errors on its platform. The outage may be affecting a much larger number of users.

Also Read: Apple to Verizon — Top 10 most valuable brands in 2022

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

A look at KLAY, a token that doubled in value over seven days

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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With the crypto market suffering from one of its worst bear runs ever, the chances of a token doubling its value in a week seemed slim. However, this is exactly what has happened with the native cryptocurrency of the South Korean blockchain, Klaytn. The KLAY token jumped from $0.1242 on October 21 to $0.2555 in seven days, a 100 percent increase.

But what is Klaytn, and what’s causing its native cryptocurrency to shoot for the moon? Let’s find out.

What is the Klaytn Network?

Klaytn is an open-source, public blockchain that is designed for enterprises, the metaverse, gaming, and the creator economy. It was launched in June 2019 and enables businesses and project developers to build and customise their blockchains atop the Klaytn Network. The project was initially developed by GroundX, a subsidiary of South Korea’s largest mobile platform, Kakao.

Kakao started as a messaging app more than a decade ago. Since then, it has snowballed into Korea’s app for everything. Today, the company offers services that cover banking, payments, ride-hailing, maps, games and more. In fact, some studies show that up to 90 percent of Koreans use Kakao services.

Therefore, it was almost a given that the Klaytn blockchain would do well in South Korea, which it did. In its first year alone, the blockchain brought on board more than 40 service partners. This number has grown to over 150 today. And now, to accelerate the blockchain’s global presence and develop its ecosystem, a non-profit called the Klayn Foundation was formed.

This foundation oversees the Klaytn Growth Fund and has also done a bit of course correction, moving the network’s focus towards web3 and the metaverse. This new phase of the blockchain is referred to as Klaytn 2.0. As per its website, the renewed aim of the Klaytn network is to be “the metaverse blockchain for all” and bring users their “favourite games, entertainment, and artistes into the metaverse.”

How does the Klaytn blockchain work?

Klaytn combines the features of a public blockchain (decentralised data and distributed governance) with the characteristics of a private blockchain (low latency and high scalability). This is done through the Istanbul Byzantine Fault Tolerance (IBFT) consensus mechanism, which enables transactions to be completed within one second.

The projects built on the Klaytn network are known as mini chains. They enjoy all the features of the hybrid mainnet, such as high performance, scalability, and productivity. Klaytn also offers projects a whole suite of tools for building these mini chains, including customised layer-2 solutions, smart contract libraries, cross-chain bridges, data oracles and more.

Also Read: Everything you need to know about mining crypto on a smartphone

Additionally, the network provides other supporting services such as blockchain explorers, crypto wallets, NFT marketplaces, stablecoin integration, etc. Therefore, the blockchain lends itself perfectly to any web service, from entertainment and e-commerce to healthcare and finance. The only platforms not allowed on the Klaytn blockchain are those that facilitate gambling or financial speculation.

Why did KLAY spiked over seven days?

The main reason for KLAY’s recent spike seems to be a newly-introduced governance proposal for reducing Klaytn’s block reward. As per its October 23 announcement, the proposal aims to lower the block rewards from 9.6 KLAY to 6.4 KLAY per newly minted block. This one-third reduction of the block reward seeks to create sustainable tokenomics and reduce the annual inflation of circulating KLAY from 10 percent to 6.48 percent.

The next day, the Klayn Foundation also announced a buyback drive to minimise market volatility. As per the official announcement on Medium, stablecoin reserves held by the Klayn Foundation will be used to purchase KLAY from centralised exchanges, and the purchased KLAY will then be burnt. On the same day, FTX also announced it would list Klaytn (KLAY) perpetual futures.

All these events occurred around the same time the crypto market, in general, also experienced a significant breakout. Most coins have been in the green, with some registering double-digit gains over the last week. This uptick has been linked to the falling US Dollar Index and positive Q3 earnings reports from crypto-centric companies like Coinbase and MicroStrategy. All these factors have created a buoyant mood for the KLAY token.

Conclusion

KLAY’s recent spike is still a far cry from the token’s all-time high (ATH) of $4.25 in March 2021. Will KLAY continue its upward trend and reach its ATH levels once again, that only time will tell.

Also Read: A look at how Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter could influence the crypto world

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Elon Musk likely to lay off 25% Twitter workforce in first round of job cuts: Report

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Twitter, taken over by billionaire Elon Musk last week, plans to fire a quarter of its staff as part of what is anticipated to be the first wave of layoffs at the social media giant, according to a new report.

According to a person cited by the Washington Post in its report, the discussions concerning layoffs were spearheaded by celebrity attorney Alex Spiro, who has a longtime legal counsel for new boss Musk.

As per a regulatory filing, Twitter had over 7,000 workers by the end of 2021, with roughly 2,000 people making up a quarter of the total.

Also read: A look at how Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter could influence the crypto world

Musk had earlier refuted a New York Times report about firing Twitter staff at a date earlier than November 1 to dodge stock grants that were due on that day. Musk tweeted, “This is false,” responding to a Twitter user who had inquired about layoffs.

This is false

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 30, 2022

Reports suggest Musk already sacked Twitter Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, and Chief Legal Affairs and Policy Officer Vijaya Gadde on Thursday after a six-month $44 billion purchase saga of the social media network was concluded.

Musk claimed that they misled him and Twitter’s investors over the prevalence of fraudulent accounts on the site. The executives had the potential to receive separation payouts totaling almost $122 million, according to research company Equilar.

Also read: Elon Musk says Twitter will revise how it verifies users

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

India-UAE CEPA will serve as template for probable India-GCC Free Trade Agreement: Says FIEO

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

Director General of the Federation of Indian Exporters Organisation (FIEO), Ajay Sahai told CNBC TV18 that the presence of a customs union amongst the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member countries as well as India’s existing trade ties will aid talks of a probable Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between India and GCC.

Stating that the India-UAE CEPA (Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement) will serve as a template for FTA talks between India and the GCC members due to the commonality between oil-driven economies, he opined that petroleum and petrochemical trade will be the likely priority in the probable FTA for the GCC members while goods and services will be the likely priority for India.

Pointing out that GCC member countries are collectively a huge market for Indian products, he added that India’s complementary economy with the UAE and Oman’s expertise in logistics will further aid talks.

Also read: UN, Turkey, Ukraine press ahead with Black Sea grain deal despite Russian pullout

The GCC comprises of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain. Data from the Commerce Ministry has stated that India’s exports to GCC member countries has risen by 58.26 percent; from $27.8 billion in 2020-21 to $44 billion in 2021-22.

A framework agreement on economic cooperation between India and GCC was signed in August 2004, which provided that both sides should consider ways to extend and liberalise trade relations as well as initiate discussions on feasibility of an FTA. After 2 rounds of negotiations held in 2006 and 2008 respectively, GCC had deferred negotiations.

Expressing optimism that the India-UK FTA may get inked before 2023, Sahai said that the Indian and Canadian trade ministers had met on the sidelines of the G20 summit and the FTA talks between both the Commonwealth nations were on fast track, with many rounds already concluded.

He pointed out that trade bodies of both India as well as Canada are being consulted on the possible list of goods and services to be included in the FTA, even as tariff and non-tariff issues are also being looked at.

Also read: In Delhi Declaration, top UN Security Council body calls for ‘zero tolerance’ towards terrorism

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow