NEW DELHI: India, Afghanistan and Iran Tuesday held their first trilateral meeting on Chabahar port project during which they reviewed its implementation. The meeting assumes significance as the strategically-located port on the energy-rich Iran's southern coast was coming under the ambit of US sanctions on Tehran.

"Detailed discussions were held between the three sides on full operationalisation of the trilateral Agreement for international transit and transport through Chabahar port, ..

United Nations: Invest India has received the top UN Investment Promotion Award in recognition of its efforts to boost investments in the renewable energy sector in India.

The award was presented by Armenian President Armen Sarkissian to Deepak Bagla, the CEO of Invest India, on Monday in Geneva at the inaugurations of the World Investment Forum organised by the UN Convention on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Tata Consultancy Services is the only Indian company among top 10 firms to get foreign labour certification for the H-1B visas for the fiscal year 2018, according to data from the US Department of Labour.

The H-1B visas are the most sought-after among Indian IT professionals.

The visa programme allows employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in the US on a non-immigrant basis in speciality occupations or as fashion models of distinguished merit and ability.

London-headquartered Earnest and Young, a multinational professional services firm, has emerged as the top employer to have received the certification.

In fact, Ernest and Young with 151,164 H-1B specialist occupation labour certifications accounted for the 12.4 per cent of all foreign labour certification for the H-1B work visas for the fiscal year 2018 ending on September 30, according to the latest annual report released by the Department of Labour early this month.

Ernest and Young is followed by Deloitte Consulting which received 69,869 H-1B specialty occupations labour conditions programme.

Indian-American owned Cognizant Technology Corp comes at number three with 47,732 specialty occupations labour conditions programme, the Department of Labour said in its latest annual report.

Cognizant is followed by HCL America (42,820), K Force Inc (32,996), and Apple (26,833).

India’s Tata Consultancy Services or TCS is the only Indian company in top 10 for the year 2018.

Uzbekistan Ambassador to India Farhod Arziev will Sunday inaugurate a four-day international dance festival titled "Udbhav Utsav" here.

Dance troupes from Bulgaria, Turkey and Sri Lanka, apart from 25 teams from India, will participate while a team from South Korea dropped out at the last minute, organising committee president Keshav Pandey told PTI Saturday.

He said that the inaugural session will be held in Jiwaji Club here.

The dance festival, sponsored by the Greenwood group of schools, is in its 15th year, he added.

New Delhi: Paytm, run by One 97 Communications Ltd, has launched a barcode-based smartphone payment service called PayPay in Japan, in a joint venture with SoftBank Corporation and Yahoo Japan Corporation, the company said in a statement on Monday.

Mint reported on July 27 that Softbank had tapped Paytm, India’s largest payments service provider, to set up mobile payments in Japan by November.

SoftBank Group is one of the largest investors in Paytm. PayPay Corp., established in June, will help SoftBank build and expand its payment system in the country.

Incepted in October 2018, PayPay allows users to store money from a bank account in their “PayPay” wallet and aims to promote the use of cashless payment in Japan, which is heavily dependent on cash for payments. Japan accounts for only 20% of overall cashless transactions in the country.

With the launch of “PayPay,” Yahoo Japan will terminate “Yahoo! Wallet”—its current smartphone settlement function.

The first India-China high-level meeting on bilateral security cooperation held in New Delhi on Monday.

During the meeting, the two sides discussed issues of mutual interest including bilateral cooperation on counter-terrorism and welcomed increased cooperation between India and China in the area of security.

An Agreement on security cooperation was also signed by Home Minister Rajnath Singh and State Councilor and Minister of Public Security of China, Zhao Kezhi.

It will further strengthen and consolidate discussions and cooperation in the areas of counter-terrorism, organized crimes, drug control and other such relevant areas.

Bajrang Punia entered the history books as he won silver and became the first Indian wrestler to win two medals at the World Wrestling Championships on Monday. Punia had won a bronze medal in the 2013 edition.

Punia lost 9-16 to Takuto Otoguro of Japan in the final of the 65 kg freestyle event.

The Japanese raced into a 5-0 lead at the start of the match and although Bajrang did cut Otoguro’s lead to one pointa at one stage he was always fighting an uphill battle against an opponent who had injury issues later in the match.

“It was so near and yet so far,” was how the 24-year-old reacted, speaking from Budapest. “Having reached the final, I expected to win gold but I will have to be satisfied with a silver medal. I am happy to have bettered my bronze medal effort, achieved five years ago at the same venue,” added Punia.

Environment Ministry has launched Harit Diwali, Swasth Diwali campaign. This campaign was initiated in 2017-18 wherein large number of school children participated and took pledge to minimize bursting of crackers.

The Ministry has initiated the campaign on the similar lines but extended to a pan-India.

The Harit Diwali-Swasth Diwali campaign is now merged with “Green Good Deed” movement that has been initiated as a social mobilization for conservation and protection of environment. The Ministry is encouraging all schools and colleges to be part of this campaign.

Air pollution is a serious health issue in the country especially in the northern parts during winter seasons. It is attributed to dust, burning of crops in certain states, burning of garbage construction and prevailing climatic conditions. Diwali falls during the same period.

India and Croatia on Monday signed two agreements to facilitate cultural exchange and diplomatic cooperation.

The agreements were signed and exchanged by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and her Croatian counterpart Marija Pejcinovic Buric.

Continuing the practice of placing key statistics relating to direct tax collections and administration in public domain, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has further released time-series data as updated up to FY 2017-18 and income-distribution data for AY 2016-17 and AY 2017-18. The key highlights of these statistics are as under:

There is a constant growth in direct tax-GDP ratio over last three years and the ratio of 5.98% in FY 2017-18 is the best DT-GDP ratio in last 10 years.
There is a growth of more than 80% in the number of returns filed in the last four financial years from 3.79 crore in FY 2013-14 (base year) to 6.85 crore in FY 2017-18.
The number of persons filing return of income has also increased by about 65% during this period from 3.31 crore in FY 2013-14 to 5.44 crore in FY 2017-18.
There has been continuous increase in the amount of income declared in the returns filed by all categories of taxpayers over the last three Assessment Years (AYs). For AY 2014-15, corresponding to FY 2013-14 (base year), the return filers had declared gross total income of Rs.26.92 lakh crore, which has increased by 67% to Rs.44.88 lakh crore for AY 2017-18, showing higher level of compliance resulting from various legislative and administrative measures taken by the Government, including effective enforcement measures against tax evasion.

The total number of taxpayers (including corporates, firms, HUFs, etc.) showing income of above Rs. 1 crore has also registered sharp increase over the three-year horizon. While 88,649 taxpayers disclosed income above Rs. 1 crore in AY 2014-15, the figure was 1,40,139 for AY 2017-18 (growth of about 60%). Similarly, the number of individual taxpayers disclosing income above Rs. 1 crore increased during the period under reference from 48,416 to 81,344, which translates into a growth of 68%.