China will take "necessary measures" to safeguard the interests of its companies after the New York Stock Exchange began delisting three Chinese telecom firms that Washington says have military ties, the country's commerce ministry said on Saturday. The NYSE said on Thursday that it would delist China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom following President Donald Trump's move.

While celebrating New Year’s Eve, people across the world decided to leverage technology and connect with their near and dear ones. As a result, a surge was witnessed in the number of calls made via social media platforms and WhatsApp turned out to be one of the most used among Facebook applications. Over 1.4 billion voice and video calls were made on WhatsApp on 31st December.

Power Finance Corporation (PFC) has raised its borrowing limit to Rs 1.18 lakh crore for the ongoing financial year. The company now plans to raise a maximum of Rs 83,000 crore from long-term borrowing, Rs 15,000 crore from long-term foreign currency borrowing, Rs 5,000 crore from short-term borrowing and Rs 15,000 crore from commercial papers, a statement issued by PFC said.

Huawei added Tencent Games back to its app store after negotiations between 2 firms. Tencent was first removed after it made a “big change" on December 31. However, the firm did not elaborate on what the changes were. While most android phones operating in China run on Google's system, they do not have access to the Play Store. Instead, users have to opt for apps sold by mainland manufacturers.

After Jio's purported allegations that channel partners of rival telcos were inciting and provoking agitators involved in tower disruption, Airtel has shot-off a letter to the telecom department slamming the charges as baseless and outrageous. Airtel has told the Department of Telecom that Jio's allegations against it did not demonstrate any evidence that Bharti had any hand in this ongoing issue.

The Department of Promotions of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) asked the RBI and Enforcement Directorate to take “necessary actions” against e-commerce giants Amazon and Flipkart for allegedly flouting Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) rules and India’s foreign direct investment (FDI) policy. Amazon had earlier denied these allegations, emphasising that they comply with FDI laws.

Investors are enthusiastic about QuantumScape, developer of an electric-vehicle battery that promises more power for less cost. If the company succeeds, Tesla could face new challenges. One of the wildest plotlines in the great 2020 electric-vehicle rally was the late-year rise of the firm. Though QuantumScape is yet to report any revenue, it shares are soaring since it went public in November.

Over 50% of mobile recharges in India were completed online in 2020 as people refrained from moving out of their homes due to the coronavirus pandemic and the trend is likely to continue, according to a report by The Economic Times. For the first time, Bharti Airtel in 2020 saw 50% of its recharge revenue coming from online and digital platforms.

After touching a record 2 Bn transactions in October 2020, UPI has now recorded 2.23 Bn in December 2020, a slight growth from 2.21 Bn in November last year, as per the latest data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). Overall, the UPI platform processed transactions worth over INR 4.16 Lakh Cr in December 2020, compared to over INR 3.9 Lakh Cr in the previous month.

Gold prices edged higher to settle at Rs 50,244 per 10 gram on January 1 as participants trimmed their position as seen by the open interest. The precious metal ended the week with a gain of Rs 171 or 0.34 percent for the week. The yellow metal has kept range-bound trading during the week on lack of important economic data and mixed global cues.

The move by the NYSE, which will limit US investor access, follows global index providers MSCI Inc, S&P Dow Jones Indices and FTSE Russell and Nasdaq deleting various Chinese companies from their indexes. The NYSE initiated this process of delisting securities of three Chinese telecom companies, after President Donald Trump last month barred US investments in Chinese firms.

Normally, this quarter is seasonally weak for technology companies due to furloughs. However, this year brokerages believe there will be an aberration to this trend. "We expect IT companies to report healthy revenue growth in this quarter led by lower furloughs, improvement in demand post Covid-19 and ramp up of deals won in the previous quarters," says Devang Bhatt, Research Analyst, ICICI Sec.

Tech company Amazon recently revealed that it has signed a deal to acquire podcast production firm Wondery. As per Mashable, the blog states that this new deal is a pivotal moment for the e-commerce giant to boost its Amazon Music expansion by offering a lot more services beyond music. Amazon said this move will help people "to find, discover, and listen to the creators and artists they enjoy".

The country’s exports declined marginally by 0.8% to $26.89 billion in December 2020, due to contraction in sectors like petroleum, leather and marine products, according to preliminary data released by the commerce ministry on Saturday. The trade deficit in December widened to $15.71 billion, as imports grew by 7.6% to $42.6 billion. The exports in December 2019 stood at $27.11 billion.

The Labour Ministry on January 1 published its draft standing orders on work from home for the mining, manufacturing and service sectors, under the new Industrial Relations Code. It is aimed at formalising service-related matters in an amicable manner. Under the model standing orders drafted for the services sector, decision on work hours for employees in the IT sector is left to employees.