INDIA India reported over 83 thousand fresh Covid infections yesterday as the case tally rose to 49.3 lakh including 38.5 lakh recoveries, 9.9 lakh active cases and 80 thousand plus deaths. Bill Gates said he hopes that that covid vaccine will be rolled out from India next year. “It's very likely that roll-out of COVID-19 vaccine will take place in fairly big volume (in India) sometime next year,” he said. Indian women are at 2.7 times more risk of dying of covid-19 compared to white women, indicated a provisional analysis done by the UN Women and United Nations Development Programme. India and China border issue remain unresolved and there has been no mutually acceptable solution so far, said Defence Minister Rajnath Singh regarding the standoff between the two countries in eastern Ladakh. Civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri said that the country's flag carrier Air India will either have to be privatised or it will have to be closed down by the Indian government due to its sky-high ₹60,000 debt. The Indian government is considering dropping its debt clause in its Air India sale, as just about nobody wants to buy the airline. Further, foreign direct inflow (FDI) into the country from China has declined for the last 3 years, said Thakur. 2019-20 brought in only $163 million compared to $350 million in 2017-18. The Union ministry for MSME said it was written to the country’s top 500 private companies asking them to quickly clear the dues toward small payments. As Bihar is about to head into elections, Prime Minister Modi continued his star campaign in the state. Yesterday, he laid the foundations for seven urban infrastructure projects worth over five hundred crores in the state. Tamil Nadu cleared a new bill to provide a 7.5% quota for government school students in the medical admission for undergraduate students. Walmart owned Flipkart announced that its Big Billion Days sale will lead to 70 thousand direct jobs this festive season along with over 50 thousand kiranas being added on for last-mile delivery. Amazon partnered with actor Amitabh Bachchan to bring his voice to its digital assistant Alexa. We should be able to hear him by the end of this year. AROUND THE WORLD University of Pittsburgh scientists said that they were able to isolate a molecule that “completely and specifically neutralizes” SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. They discovered a tiny antibody component that can prevent and treat the infection. Coronavirus vaccines being developed in China may be ready for use by the general public as early as November, said a China Centre for Disease Control and Prevention official. Developing Asia’s coronavirus-battered economy will shrink for the first time since the early 1960s, with the level of output next year still seen below pre-pandemic projections even as growth recovers, according to the Asian Development Bank. The biggest economy though, China will buck the trend. Reported Bloomberg. Germany claimed that laboratories in France and Sweden have independently confirmed that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with the Soviet-style nerve agent Novichok. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the West of using the incident as a pretext to impose additional sanctions on Russia. Reported Reuters. Pringles is being reimagined. As environmentalists deem its iconic tube the “number one recycling villain” in the UK. “We are eager to play our part and reduce our impact on the planet,” said its VP. A lock of Abraham Lincoln's hair along with a blood-stained telegram about his 1865 assassination has been sold at auction for more than $81,000. Reported AP. AGING The number of people aged 100 or older in Japan has surpassed 80,000 for the first time amid the rapid ageing of the country’s population. 88% are women. Reported Japan Times. Kane Tanaka, recognized as the world's oldest living person by Guinness World Records, receives a birthday cake for her 117th birthday at a nu