Australia has called for an inquiry into the origin of the coronavirus. Germany and Britain are hesitating anew about inviting in Chinese tech giant Huawei. President Trump has blamed China for the contagion and is seeking to punish it. Some govts want to sue Beijing. Across the globe, a backlash is building against China for its initial mishandling of the crisis.

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.

China reported one new case of coronavirus on Tuesday and no deaths, marking three weeks since it recorded a Covid-19 fatality. The National Health Commission said 395 people remained under treatment in the hospital, while 949 were under isolation and observation for suspected cases or after testing positive despite showing no symptoms.

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.

Senior school students in 121 institutions were back in front of chalk boards and digital displays for the first time since their city -- the ground zero of the coronavirus pandemic -- shut down in January.

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.

For Air India officials and passengers, a major cause of concern with the ongoing repatriation flights to and from different countries are the visa regulations and immigration policies of different lands. Late on Thursday night, Air India was informed by an official from an Indian ministry that US visa rules have changed to restrict passengers with student visa and Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card holders from entering the US.

The deal will make Vista the largest shareholder of Jio after Facebook (9.99%) and parent RIL (86.54%). With this, RIL has raised a total of Rs 60,596 crore ($7.9 billion), boosting its efforts to pare debt.

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.

Reliance Jio has come up with new top-up plans to support extra data usage at up to 75 per cent lower rates and also made annual recharge plans 33 per cent cheaper compared to rivals by enhancing data usage limit at 4G speed to 2 GB per day.

The finance ministry on Friday announced relief to those who have been facing difficulty with the status of their residency in India under Income Tax Act, 1961 due to suspension of international flights owing to the Covid-19, as they were required to prolong their stay. Several people expressed concerns that they will have to file tax returns as Indian residents.

Cognizant Technology Solutions’ revenue in the quarter ended March rose by 3.5% in constant currency, better than TCS and Wipro, but lower than HCL and Infosys. Revenue stood at $4.2 billion, including a $23 million headwind from their decision to exit content related services.

The Pune labour commissioner’s office recently issued a notice to technology giant Wipro after receiving complaints of the alleged benching of 300 employees, and salary cuts of an undisclosed number of entry-level staffers, most of whom are BPO employees. The May 1 notice of labour office told the company to “refrain from laying off any employee or face legal action.

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.

ICICI Bank on Saturday reported a 26 per cent rise in standalone net profit at Rs 1,221 crore for the quarter ended March 2020. The bank had posted a net profit of Rs 969 crore in the corresponding January-March period of 2018-19.

Anecdotally, it is often said that engineers tend to lean rightwards in their politics. In their new book, Engineers of Jihad, sociologist Diego Gambetta and political scientist Steffen Hertog back up that gut sense with data. They find that Islamist radicalism and other far-right movements are dominated by engineers, doctors and those with tech backgrounds, while left-wing movements draw people from the humanities and social sciences. They tell TOI why this may be the case