The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has kept India’s growth forecast unchanged at 7 per cent in 2024-25 as it sees the country as the fastest growing economy with robust growth in the industrial sector and a rebound in agriculture due to a better monsoon.

The ADB projected India’s economy to grow faster at 7.2 per cent in 2025-26, in its report released on Wednesday.

“The outlook for India, the region’s fastest-growing economy, is unchanged at 7.0 per cent for fiscal year 2024-25. India’s industrial sector is projected to grow robustly, driven by manufacturing and strong demand in construction. Agriculture is expected to rebound amid forecasts for an above-normal monsoon, while investment demand remains strong, led by public investment,” the ADB report states.

The announcement comes close on the heels of the International Monetary Fund’s upgrade for the growth of the Indian economy to 7 per cent from 6.8 per cent projected in April.

ADB has also raised its economic growth forecast for developing Asia and the Pacific this year slightly to 5.0 per cent from a previous projection of 4.9 per cent, as rising regional exports complement resilient domestic demand. The growth outlook for next year is maintained at 4.9 per cent.

The growth forecast for China, the region’s largest economy, is maintained at 4.8 per cent this year. A continued recovery in services consumption and stronger-than-expected exports and industrial activity are supporting the expansion, even as China’s struggling property sector has yet to stabilise. The government introduced additional policy measures in May to support the property market.

Inflation is forecast to slow to 2.9 per cent in Asia this year amid easing global food prices and the lingering effects of higher interest rates, according to the latest edition of Asian Development Outlook (ADO), released on Wednesday.

After a post-pandemic recovery that was driven mainly by domestic demand, exports are rebounding and helping propel the region’s economic growth. Strong global demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors used for high-technology and artificial intelligence applications, is boosting exports from several Asian economies.

“Most of Asia and the Pacific are seeing faster economic growth compared with the second half of last year,” said ADB Chief Economist Albert Park. “The region’s fundamentals remain strong, but policymakers still need to pay attention to a number of risks that could affect the outlook, from uncertainty related to election outcomes in major economies to interest rate decisions and geopolitical tensions.”

While inflation is moderating towards pre-pandemic levels in the region as a whole, price pressures remain elevated in some economies. Food inflation is still high in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific, in part due to adverse weather and food export restrictions in some economies.

For Southeast Asia, the growth forecast is maintained at 4.6 per cent this year amid solid improvements in both domestic and external demand. This year’s outlook for the Caucasus and Central Asia is raised to 4.5 per cent from a previous projection of 4.3 per cent, driven in part by stronger-than-expected growth in Azerbaijan and the Kyrgyz Republic. In the Pacific, the outlook for 2024 is maintained at 3.3 per cent growth, driven by tourism and infrastructure spending, along with revived mining activity in Papua New Guinea. AGENCIES

The Australian state government of New South Wales (NSW) said on Wednesday that actions have been taken to halt the affiliation of  the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU) Construction and General Division with the NSW Labor Party after “appalling” revelations about the union’s state secretary’s alleged bribery deeds.

The announcement came after major media outlets, including The Australian Financial Review, The Age, and The Sydney Morning Herald, revealed that a hidden camera captured CFMEU NSW Secretary Darren Greenfield being passed a 5,000 Australian-dollar bundle of cash (about $ 3,369) as part of a suspected kickback deal, Xinhua news agency reported.

According to local media, the video was filmed during a joint NSW Police and Australian Federal Police operation, which resulted in him being charged with corruption offences in September 2021.

Despite anticipations that he would step aside as the CFMEU’s NSW boss, Greenfield has continued to retain his official position at the union, with his offences yet to be tested before a jury.

“The revelations that have come to light this morning are appalling. There is absolutely no tolerance for criminal or corrupt behaviour in the building industry, in unions or anywhere. It is clear the CFMEU Construction and General Division will not and cannot clean itself up,” the NSW government said in a statement.

The CFMEU, also known as The Construction, Forestry, and Maritime Employees Union, represents more than 100,000 workers nationwide spanning industries like building, construction, shipping, diving, timber, textile, clothing, and footwear.

Given Wednesday’s revelations, the NSW government has written to the state’s Labor Party General Secretary, calling for necessary steps to immediately suspend the union’s affiliation with the NSW Labor Party and stop any donations or affiliation fees.

“We will also ask the Commonwealth Government to review Enterprise Bargaining Agreements in NSW which the CFMEU is party to. Further, the NSW Construction Compliance Unit will work with federal regulatory bodies and act on any allegations,” the state government added. AGENCIES

 Google on Wednesday said it is working with MeitY ‘Startup Hub’ to train 10,000 startups in artificial intelligence (AI), as the tech giant expanded access to its AI models and introduced new language tools for the developers in the country.

At its ‘I/O Connect’ event here, the company unveiled a range of tools, programmes and partnerships to empower Indian developers and startups to be at the forefront of the global AI revolution.

The company said that developers in India now have expanded access to Google’s powerful AI models with the two million token context window in Gemini 1.5 Pro and Gemma 2, the next generation of open models.

“We’re committed to empowering Indian innovators to harness AI’s full potential, creating solutions that not only address India’s unique needs but also shape the future of AI globally,” said Ambharish Kenghe, Vice President, Google.

The opportunities with multimodal, mobile, and multilingual AI are immense, and we’re thrilled to be a part of India’s AI journey, he added.

“The fastest way to build with Gemini is through its developer platform Google AI Studio, and India has one of the largest developer bases on Google AI Studio today,” said the company.

The Google DeepMind India team has expanded Project Vaani, in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), which provides developers with over 14,000 hours of speech data across 58 languages, collected from 80,000 speakers in 80 districts.

The team also introduced IndicGenBench, a comprehensive benchmark to evaluate the generation capabilities of LLMs on Indic languages, and open-sourced CALM (Composition of Language Models).

The company said it is introducing Google Wallet APIs to simplify the integration of loyalty programs, tickets, and gift cards.

For developers using the Google Maps Platform, India-specific pricing is being introduced with up to 70 per cent lower costs on most APIs.

Google is also collaborating with the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), offering developers building for ONDC up to 90 per cent off on select Google Maps Platform APIs.

“From consumer experiences to agriculture, to social enterprises, AI has the power to address some of the biggest challenges of our time across many sectors and industries,” said Seshu Ajjarapu, Senior Director, Google DeepMind.

The company will also soon launch the Agricultural Landscape Understanding (ALU) Research API, a limited availability tool designed to make agricultural practices more data-driven and efficient. AGENCIES

As millions of people remain concerned about the safety of their data when they browse the web, Apple has revealed how data tracking is still all-pervasive and browsers can expose users to it without their permission — tracking their behaviour for advertising purposes.

The threats are multiple — data companies can track you across multiple websites, your location data can be collected without your permission, web extensions can violate your privacy and even if you go into private mode, your protections are limited.

In contrast, according to Apple which has released a new film on browser safety, Safari prevents cross-site tracking; helps you protect your location data; has privacy-preserving web extensions; and a state-of-the-art Private Browsing mode with real protections.

Some websites include 100 or more trackers from different companies on a single page.

Data companies are also constantly evolving new techniques to track people, so Apple has gone beyond just blocking cookies by creating ‘Intelligent Tracking Prevention’.

The company uses machine learning to learn which domains are used to track you, and then it immediately isolates and purges the tracking data from your device.

“If you want to see what Intelligent Tracking Prevention is protecting you from, you can look at the Safari Privacy Report,” according to the tech giant.

Safari also hides IP address from known trackers.

“This is important, because your IP address can be used to identify you across websites and sessions, and it can reveal your precise location,” according to Apple.

However, new techniques known as fingerprinting even go so far as to track your system configuration, your fonts and your plug-ins that have been installed.

Even your screen resolution can be used as part of a fingerprint.

This allows them to combine these characteristics of your device to create a “fingerprint” to track you online.

To combat fingerprinting, Safari presents a simplified version of the system configuration to trackers so more devices look identical, making it harder to single one out, Apple informed.

Safari also supports the official WebExtensions standard, so it’s easy for developers to offer extensions from other browsers.

“With Safari, users are informed about the information the extension can access before they enable it. And they can restrict the access an extension has to just a day or to just specific websites,” said the company.

Safari was the first browser to introduce a Private Browsing mode, back in 2005.

The additional privacy protections of Private Browsing in Safari 17.0, Safari 17.2 and Safari 17.5 set a new bar for user protection. AGENCIES

Indian exports remained resilient in the first quarter of current fiscal (FY25), as core export goods such as drugs and pharmaceuticals, engineering goods, organic and inorganic chemicals and readymade garments exhibited positive growth, a report showed on Wednesday.

In the labour-intensive exports category, growth in carpets, handloom products, man-made products, plastic and linoleum and readymade garments was positive, but slower than the previous month, according to a Crisil report.

Other categories such as handmade carpets, and jute manufacturing, including floor covering, leather and leather products recorded contraction.

Petroleum exports fell 18.3 per cent on-year and 18.5 per cent on-month in June.

While oil exports fell, oil imports were positive to meet domestic demand at a time when local refineries are operating above their capacity.

Oil imports rose 19.6 per cent in June compared with 28 per cent in May.

Among imports, fruits and vegetables, non-ferrous metals, project goods, textiles, yarn fabric made-up articles and wood and wood products saw an increase in growth compared with the previous month. AGENCIES

India’s domestic air passenger traffic rose by 5.8 per cent to 1.32 crore in June this year from 1.24 crore in the same month last year, according to the latest data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

Low-cost airline IndiGo flew 80.86 lakh passengers during the month to register a market share of 60.5 per cent, followed by Tata Group’s Air India with 17.47 lakh flyers accounting for 13.1 per cent share of the market pie.

Vistara, a 51:49 per cent joint venture between Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines, was ranked third with 12.84 lakh passengers and a market share of 9.6 per cent during the month. The third Tata Group airline IX Connect (erstwhile AirAsia India) carried 7.70 lakh passengers in June to clock a market share of 5.8 per cent.

The three Tata Group airlines cumulatively clocked a 28.5 per cent market share.

Ajay Singh-led SpiceJet carried 7.02 lakh passengers during the month while Akasa Air, which was launched two years ago, flew 5.9 lakh passengers during the month with a 4.4 per cent market share.

The data also show that Akasa Air led its competitors with the highest on-time performance (OTP) — 79.5 per cent — at Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad airports during June 2024, while SpiceJet recorded the lowest OTP at 46.1 per cent among the major airlines.

AGENCIES

 Meta on Wednesday introduced verified subscription plans for businesses on Facebook and Instagram in India.

The Meta Verified for businesses will offer them with a verified badge, enhanced account support, impersonation protection, and additional features to support discovery and connection.

The plan starts at as little as Rs 639 for a single app per month and goes up to Rs 21,000, which is an introductory discounted rate for two apps per month, said the company.

Meta Verified now offers four subscription plans to give businesses increased options for selecting a plan that’s best suited to their needs.

The subscription plans in India are available for purchase only via iOS or Android at this time for businesses on Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp.

“Businesses have an option to either purchase Meta Verified for Facebook or Instagram or WhatsApp or do a bundled purchase for Facebook and Instagram,” said the company.

Meta last year began with a small test to learn how it can offer the most valuable subscription toolkit to help businesses achieve their goals on its apps.

Earlier this year, Meta also announced the expansion of the initial test from one subscription plan to four.

Last month, the company followed it up with the launch of Meta Verified for businesses on WhatsApp.

The expanded Meta Verified business offering on Facebook and Instagram includes the verified badge along with enhanced account support, impersonation protection, and additional features to support discovery and connection. AGENCIES

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu will be meeting Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday to press his case for a bigger allocation of funds for the state in the Union Budget which will be presented in Parliament on July 23.

Naidu, who is on a two-day visit to the national capital, met Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday and discussed the issue of a larger share of funds for Andhra Pradesh on the ground that the state was in dire financial straits.

In a post on X, Naidu said: “I met with the Hon’ble Union Home Minister, Shri @AmitShah Ji, to apprise him of the devastating condition of finances that Andhra Pradesh had slipped into over the past five years. I also discussed the findings of the four White Papers released, outlining the staggering debt accumulated between FY 2019-24 that spiralled our State’s finances out of control. Economic incompetence, gross mismanagement, and rampant corruption by the previous government have caused irreparable damage to our State.”

During the meeting at Amit Shah’s residence, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) president emphasised that Andhra Pradesh continues to face the aftermath of the “unjust bifurcation” in 2014 and the previous administration’s “miserable governance,” according to sources.

Naidu is also likely to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as per the sources.

This is Naidu’s second trip to Delhi in nearly a fortnight. On July 4, he presented a seven-point development agenda to the Prime Minister, aimed at addressing the state’s post-bifurcation challenges.

Naidu’s advocacy for increased funding comes on the heels of a similar move by JD(U) national working president Sanjay Kumar Jha, who met the Finance Minister on Monday seeking a higher allocation of funds for Bihar in the forthcoming Union Budget.

Both TDP and JD(U) are key partners of the BJP-led NDA and are keen to leverage their alliance for a bigger financial package for their states in the Union Budget 2024-25. AGENCIES

The landscape of wearable technology is undergoing a transformative shift, fueled by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).

While wearables initially gained popularity for features like fitness tracking and notifications, consumer interest waned as these became commonplace. This sparked a demand for more advanced capabilities, paving the way for AI to revolutionise the industry.

This mirrors a larger trend across the business world: AI is no longer a futuristic concept but a vital asset for tech brands to remain competitive.

The AI wearable market is experiencing significant growth, projected to reach $62.7 billion in 2024. This surge is driven by increasing consumer interest in health, fitness, and personalised technology. Forward-thinking brands are recognising this shift and investing in intuitive AI solutions to meet evolving consumer demands and capture market share.

However, the term “AI” is often used loosely, with many wearables incorporating only basic algorithms rather than true artificial intelligence. To truly evolve, AI in wearables needs to transcend its current form and offer genuinely intelligent interaction.

This means moving beyond simple data collection and analysis towards providing personalised insights, predictive capabilities, and seamless integration with our lives. Brands that can successfully implement truly AI-driven solutions early on stand to gain a significant advantage in this rapidly evolving landscape.

realme recognises the need for true AI integration in wearable technology and is taking a significant leap forward with its upcoming realme Watch S2.

Known for disrupting the tech industry with its smartphones and AIoT products, realme has a history of making cutting-edge technology accessible to all. The brand’s latest endeavour embodies this spirit, aiming to provide users with a seamlessly connected and intelligent lifestyle.

Building upon its success in integrating AI into smartphones, realme is now expanding its AI ecosystem to encompass the AIoT segment, starting with the Watch S2.

The brand plans to go beyond simply incorporating AI features and instead build a robust AI ecosystem across all its devices.

This means integrating advanced AI capabilities into more product plans, allowing for seamless interconnection and intelligent experiences across the realme ecosystem.

The Watch S2 will serve as a key stepping stone in this strategy, showcasing the potential of realme’s AI vision to democratise AI and make it accessible to a wider audience.

The realme Watch S2 is poised to be more than just a smartwatch; it’s designed to be a distinctive smart personal assistant powered by a robust AI engine.

The Super AI Engine makes interacting with the Watch S2 incredibly intuitive, allowing users to converse with the watch directly using their voice or engage with the realme Link app for text-based queries.

This innovative approach to AI integration, coupled with realme’s commitment to a connected ecosystem, positions the Watch S2 as a paradigm shift in wearable technology. It’s not just about fitness tracking or notifications; it’s about harnessing the power of true AI to create a personalised, intuitive, and stylish companion for the wrist, offering a glimpse into the future of AI-powered living.

Be on the lookout for this new smartwatch as it launches on July 30th. AGENCIES

Samsung has launched an energy management service for Tesla electric vehicles in the United States as part of their strategic partnership aimed at enhancing connectivity at home, industry sources said on Wednesday.

Samsung’s ‘SmartThings Energy’ platform is now available for Tesla drivers in the U.S., allowing them to monitor and control the charging status of their EV batteries and the power generated by solar panels, according to the sources.

Synced with the Tesla app’s Powerwall “Storm Watch” function, the AI-powered SmartThings connectivity platform alerts users on their connected Samsung TVs and mobile devices in case of extreme weather conditions, such as hurricanes and heavy snowfall.

The new service is part of the new alliance between the South Korean and U.S. tech giants, which was announced at CES 2024, a global IT exhibition, earlier this year.

The Samsung-Tesla collaboration focuses on integrating Samsung Electronics’ SmartThings Energy with Tesla’s energy product lineup, including the Powerwall home battery, Solar Inverter, Wall Connector charging solutions and electric vehicles.

Samsung Electronics said it plans to expand the service outside the US in the future. AGENCIES