Directing officials to ensure that nobody walks back home, chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday said that the government was making all efforts in deploying buses and trains to bring back stranded migrant workers.

Chinese authorities are clamping down as grieving relatives, along with activists, press the ruling Communist Party for an accounting of what went wrong in Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus killed thousands before spreading to the rest of China and the world. Lawyers have been warned not to file suit against the government.

As China limps back to normalcy after COVID-19 outbreak, job prospects in the country seem to be truly bleak especially for the nine million students or so who are due to graduate in June.

China's Hong Kong affairs office on Wednesday condemned Hong Kong protesters as a "political virus" who seek independence, warning that the city will never be calm unless what it said were violent black-clad protesters were all removed.

China on Wednesday dared US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to show "enormous evidence" he claimed to have to prove Covid-19 originated from a lab in Wuhan. "Pompeo cannot present any evidence because he does not have any," Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said. "This matter should be handled by scientists..instead of politicians," Hua said.

North Korea says leader Kim Jong Un sent a personal message to Chinese President Xi Jinping praising what he described as China's success in getting its coronavirus epidemic under control. The report by North Korea's state media followed an assessment by South Korea's spy agency that the pandemic is hurting the North's economy.

Taiwan will fail in its bid to take part in a key meeting of the World Health Organization (WHO) as its efforts are not based on concern for the health of Taiwan's people but are "political manipulation", China said on Friday.

The coronavirus outbreak exposed "shortcomings" in China's public healthcare system, a top health official admitted Saturday, saying that reforms are underway to improve the country's disease prevention and control mechanisms.

Five prominent labour activists have returned to their homes more than a year after they were arrested in coordinated raids in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, according to people close to them and a Hong Kong-based rights group.

The country's largest lender, State Bank of India (SBI), is offering emergency loans to its customers amid coronavirus lockdown under its 'Emergency Loan Scheme'. SBI users can get up to Rs 5 lakh as loan within "45 minutes". The interest rate of the loan is at 10.5 per cent and EMIs will start after a period of six months.

Moody's Investors Service on Friday projected India's growth at zero per cent for the current fiscal and said the negative outlook on sovereign rating reflects increasing risks that GDP growth will remain significantly lower than in the past. The outlook also partly shows weaker policy effectiveness to address economic and institutional issues.

Franklin Templeton Mutual Fund on Friday issued an unconditional apology to market regulator Sebi (Securities and Exchange Board of India) for remarks made by its president and CEO Jennifer M Johnson that new regulatory guidelines led to shutting down of its six debt funds last month.

Air India crew members, widely hailed as corona warriors for operating rescue flights during the Covid pandemic, are reaching a “breaking point” with their salaries due for the last three months now. As they embark on the Vande Bharat Mission, AI pilots have told aviation minister H S Puri that only “lip service” is being done for the airline.

Aarogya Setu, a government app developed for tracking Covid-19 patients, has become the most downloaded healthcare application and also featured among the top 10 downloaded apps in the world in April, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said on Friday. Close to nine crore users had downloaded the Aarogya Setu mobile application till May 4.

The govt on Friday said it will borrow about Rs 12 lakh crore from the market in fiscal year 2020-21, an increase of Rs 4.2 lakh crore, or 54% jump over the Budget estimate of Rs 7.8 lakh crore. This, the economists said will push the fiscal deficit from 3.5% for 2020-21 to 5.5%. The decision for higher borrowing has also been prompted by severe loss of govt revenues.

Students bound for the US are the latest lot of passengers to find themselves caught in the maze of confusing guidelines that decide whether they will be allowed to travel to the US or not. In the wee hours of Saturday, Air India issued a note, listing three conditions under which students with an F or M US visa may not be allowed to fly to the US under Vande Bharat Mission.

The Vande Bharat Mission gained momentum, with two flights — one from Singapore and another from Riyadh — landing in Delhi and Kairapur airport in Kerala. The Operation Samudra Setu by the Indian Navy to evacuate Indians stranded abroad using naval ships kicked off from the Maldives on Friday. ​​The ship of the Eastern Naval Command is scheduled to reach Kochi by Sunday.

Many have argued that while India’s lockdown has been the harshest, its stimulus package is one of the smallest — so far. To fund bigger public spending programme, the govt can either ask the RBI to print more money or raise money through borrowing. Former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan has explained how the two paths work and why ‘monetisation’ is a good option.

Three promoters of Ram Dev International, recently booked by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for allegedly cheating a consortium of six banks to the tune of Rs 411 crore, have already fled the country before the State Bank of India (SBI) reached the agency with the complaint, officials said on Saturday.