News you need to know before starting your day: 24 September 2021

News:

1. Ahead of the stubble burning season, Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav Thursday chaired a meeting to assess the preparedness of Delhi-NCR states to manage the practice.
2. The government has made it clear in the Supreme Court that a caste census of the Backward Classes is “administratively difficult and cumbersome”. “It has suffered, and will suffer, both on account of completeness and accuracy of the data,” an affidavit filed by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in the Supreme Court said.
3. The Indian economy was facing a prolonged slowdown even before the pandemic hit. Then it faced its largest-ever contraction of 7.3% in 2020-21. The sequential recovery which followed was interrupted once again by the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, which peaked on May 9 if a seven-day moving average of daily new cases is taken as an indicator.
4. E-commerce firm Amazon said that it has created more than 110,000 seasonal job opportunities across its operations network, ahead of the festive season. These opportunities include direct and indirect jobs across India in cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow and Chennai, among others.
5. Acknowledging that some users continued to experience difficulties on the Income Tax e-filing portal, IT major Infosys on Thursday said it was working “expeditiously” with the I-T department to further streamline end-user experience.

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1. India on Thursday said that the transition of power in Afghanistan has been without negotiation and in a non-inclusive manner, raising questions on its acceptability.
2. Taxpayers will pay towards the operating costs of a major US-owned fertiliser manufacturer to ensure the supply of CO2 for the food sector continues amid the ongoing energy crisis.
3. The defence ministry on Thursday placed an order worth ₹7,523 crore with Heavy Vehicles Factory, Avadi, for 118 locally made Arjun Mk-1A tanks to sharpen the army’s combat edge
4. Freshworks started with a small idea for a ‘fresh’ helpdesk in 2010, Mr Mathrubootham said in a blogpost on Thursday. With 52,500 customers, the company saw its revenue grow in the first six months of 2021 to $169 million, up from $110 million in the first half of 2020.
5. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said that US Vice President Kamala Harris is a “source of inspiration” for so many people around the world, as he expressed gratitude to her for being so warm and natural during their conversation when India was going through a devastating second wave of COVID-19.