Latest Developments

Asia
The Hindu BusinessLine

Kia India July sales up 27.4% at 28,200 units

Automaker Kia India on Saturday reported a 27.4 per cent rise in wholesale dispatches at 28,200 units in July 2026 as compared to 22,135 units in the same month last year. This marks Kia India's best-ever July wholesale performance since inception, the company said in a statement. "Our best-ever July wholesale performance reflects the continued trust of our customers and the strong acceptance of Kia's diverse product portfolio. Building on our record H1 performance, we have maintained healthy momentum across key segments," Kia India Senior Vice President, Sales & Marketing, Atul Sood, said. The company said July sales were on the back of continued momentum driven by Seltos and Sonet, supported by sustained demand for Carens Clavis, Clavis EV, and MY26 Syros. Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments. We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.

Kia India July sales up 27.4% at 28,200 units
Asia
The Hindu BusinessLine

Coal India production rises 8% to 50.36 MT in July

State-owned CIL on Saturday said its production grew 8.4 per cent to 50.36 million tonnes (MT) in July. Despite challenges posed by the rains, the company recorded healthy growth in coal production. Simultaneously, it has sustained strong momentum in coal supplies through a demand-responsive inventory optimisation strategy, enabling it to maintain a comfortable balance between production and supplies. "Coal India Ltd recorded a robust operational performance in July 26-27, registering an 8.44 per cent growth in coal production," it said in a statement. Coal supplies also increased 18.38 per cent to 64.19 MT during July, over the year-ago period. "Coal supplied in July FY27 marks the highest-ever coal offtake for the month in any financial year. The previous highest July supply stood at 60.5 MT, achieved in FY 24-25," the statement said. The strong operational momentum follows another record performance in June FY27, when CIL supplied 65.95 MT of coal, its highest-ever supply for June. Consequently, the company's cumulative coal supplies during the first four months of FY27 (April-July) rose 6.9 per cent at 262.04 MT, the highest-ever volume supplied for the corresponding period. Coal supplies to the power sector -- the company's largest consumer segment -- also grew 18 per cent, increasing to 49.77 MT in July from 42.35 MT in the corresponding month of the previous year. Supplies to the non-regulated sector also registered healthy growth, rising 21 per cent to 14.42 MT from 11.89 MT during the same period. CIL also recorded a significant improvement in overburden (OB) removal, a key mining activity that supports sustained coal production. During July, overburden removal increased 21.11 per cent to 120.35 million cubic meters (MCuM) from 99.36 MCuM in July FY26. On a cumulative basis, overburden removal during April-July FY27 stood at 625.02 MCuM, registering a growth of 2.85 per cent over the corresponding period of the previous fiscal year.

Coal India production rises 8% to 50.36 MT in July
North America
CNBC Finance

Nike to cut off thousands of online distributors in China, restructure digital footprint

Nike is planning to cut off thousands of online distributors in China beginning in January as the sneaker giant looks to clean up what's become a messy digital marketplace and get the region back to growth, the company said Tuesday. Starting next year, Nike's online footprint will shift primarily to the retailer's official website and app, and the storefronts it operates on Tmall, JD.com and Douyin, some of China's largest online marketplaces and social platforms. Currently, consumers can shop Nike through all of those channels as well as thousands of other online storefronts powered by Nike's brick-and-mortar partners in the region and a network of secondary distributors. While the vast digital network has led to widespread consumer access to Nike's products, it's also created an inconsistent branding and pricing experience and hampered the company's efforts to reverse a sales decline in the region. "These new flagships will serve as the single, elevated destination for Nike within these ecosystems, with clearer product presentation, stronger storytelling and more connected consumer journeys," Cathy Sparks, Nike's new vice president and general manager of Greater China, wrote in a letter. "This is about strengthening the platforms where consumers already begin and end their shopping journey, making sure those experiences are direct, consistent and unmistakably Nike." "This is not about reducing access. It is about reducing fragmentation and strengthening the consumer journey," she said. "When the experience is consistent, the brand becomes stronger." Nike's plans to pare back its online footprint are designed to create a better, more consistent experience for the consumer and allow it to take back pricing control online. However, there are also concerns it could lead to a material drop in revenue in a region that's already shrunk about 30% in the last five years. News about Nike's plans to cut off online distributors first came to light late last month in a local Chinese media report. It prompted a note from BNP Paribas equity analyst Laurent Vasilescu, who wrote the move is reminiscent of Nike's ill-fated decision to cut off wholesalers in North America, which contributed to its collapse of market dominance in the region, as well as steep declines in sales and margins. "This strategy opened up shelf space for competitors and the strategy ended poorly for Nike. We believe the same could happen if it takes the same approach in China," Vasilescu wrote last month, adding that BNP was sticking with its underperform rating for the company. "We don't think Nike has a distributor problem but rather a product problem which also applies in other markets." The change is also expected to hurt Nike's brick-and-mortar partners in the region, which have expanded their online presence in recent years to grow their own businesses. Still, Topsports, Nike's largest distributor in mainland China, said it supports the company's decision. "Topsports has worked with Nike for 27 years based on the principle of mutual benefit and shared growth," Topsports CEO Yu Wu said in a statement. "This adjustment will bring some short-term pressure to our business. But we firmly believe that, over the medium- to long-term, this direction will help promote a healthier, more orderly, and more sustainable retail ecosystem in China, while further improving consumer experience and product appeal." "Looking ahead, we will continue to work closely with Nike, leveraging our strengths in offline retail operations, local consumer service, and deep market development across city tiers," Wu said. "Through new concept sport stores and high-quality physical retail experiences, we will bring Chinese consumers richer and more meaningful sport experiences."

Nike to cut off thousands of online distributors in China, restructure digital footprint
Europe
BBC Business

Warning shot or publicity stunt - how worried should we be about the OpenAI hack?

Image source, Getty ImagesByJoe TidyCyber correspondent, BBC World ServicePublished25 July 2026This week the tech world was gripped by a story that has it all - and which started like a sci-fi thriller. Hugging Face - a kind of app store for artificial intelligence tools - announced on 16 July it had been hacked by a cyber criminal wielding enormously powerful AI. The bombshell announcement was full of scary, highly technical terms: "a swarm of sandboxes", "agentic attacker", and "self-migrating command and control". Hugging Face said the hack was different from anything it had handled before because it was done at superhuman speed by an AI with little or no human guidance. The AI performed 17,000 actions in less than two days, successfully breaching the large wealthy tech company to steal secrets. Hugging Face researchers guessed the mysterious attackers had used one of the big AI models but they had no idea who or where the criminals were. Commentators and analysts took to their podcasts and social media accounts to guess which cyber crime group or nation state hacker might be behind it. Then on Wednesday, nearly a week after Hugging Face raised the alarm, the true culprit was unmasked. The Scooby-Doo-style reveal was made even more bizarre - and worrying - because OpenAI said its bot did the whole thing on its own, without permission. Two new versions of ChatGPT, designed to be master hackers, broke out of a supposedly secure test environment and gained access to the internet. They then attacked Hugging Face to get access to the information to help them ace their exam. OpenAI issued a press release explaining what had happened and said it was "partnering with Hugging Face" to address the security incident and share lessons learned.

Warning shot or publicity stunt - how worried should we be about the OpenAI hack?
Europe
BBC Business

Long overdue, life-changing or frivolous? Your thoughts on wedding rule changes

The day Sam and Courtney Scholey became husband and wife didn't feel like their wedding day. There was no walking down the aisle, no rings exchanged, no wedding dress, and no music. That all came several days later, when the pair had a bespoke ceremony led by a celebrant who knew them, at a venue in the Oxfordshire countryside. It was their dream wedding - but it wasn't legal in England and Wales. And so in April, they forked out hundreds of pounds to quietly sign papers at a library in Buckingham. "For us, that day was as insignificant as possible," Courtney told the BBC. "It was just the words we had to say to make it legally binding." The Scholeys are one of a growing number of couples who feel the rigid rules around weddings are making getting married more stressful, more expensive and less meaningful. But under new proposals announced this month - described by the government as the biggest shake-up of wedding laws in 200 years - couples in England and Wales could have the freedom to hold official marriage ceremonies in a wider array of unconventional locations, from forests to beaches, as long as the location is approved by a registered officiant. It's welcome news for Nicky Brown, who said she wants to exchange vows in a wildly picturesque corner of Wales, with just her mum and her partner's mum as witnesses. "I'd be quite happy to get married in a field full of sheep," the 57-year-old told the BBC. Currently, a marriage or civil partnership ceremony in England or Wales must take place at an approved venue to be legally binding – and many exert control on elements of the wedding such as vows, headcounts or music. There are also tight restrictions on who can officiate a wedding and how. Authorised religious figures can, but – with few exceptions – only in places of worship. Registrars can conduct a wedding, but it can't have any religious content. And celebrants can't legally marry people at all.

Long overdue, life-changing or frivolous? Your thoughts on wedding rule changes
Europe
BBC Business

Trump slaps 50% tariffs on Canada and Carney vows to 'intensify' trade talks

Image source, ReutersByNadine Yousif, Toronto, Francisco Velasquez and Peter Hoskins, Business reportersPublished20 July 2026Updated 17 minutes agoUS President Donald Trump has imposed a 50% tariff on a wide range of goods imported from Canada, in retaliation for what he called "unequal treatment" of US cars, dairy and alcohol. Everyday consumer items like wine and hockey sticks and industrial goods such as cement are among the goods targeted. However, several key exports will be spared, such as energy, potash, critical minerals and fish. Prime Minister Mark Carney responded by saying Canada stood ready to "intensify" trade talks with the US in the coming weeks. The White House said the duties would take effect in 30 days. It marks a major escalation in trade tensions between the North American neighbours. These tensions have been simmering since Trump returned to office in January 2025 and unleashed a wide-ranging global programme of tariffs, sometimes to pursue objectives not directly linked to trade. Tariffs are taxes on imported goods that are paid to the government by companies bringing in the foreign products. The US Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that many of Trump's tariffs imposed globally under emergency powers were illegally enacted. But Trump has recently sought other legal avenues through which to enact his agenda, and his latest action on Monday night uses a different, obscure law that is untested in court. Canada, which is one of the US's closest trading partners, was one of the few countries to retaliate last year against Trump's tariffs. It placed a 25% levy of its own on about C$30bn (£16bn; $21.7bn) worth of US goods being brought into Canada. Carney later dropped some of them. A White House fact sheet published on Monday discussing the new tariffs said they applied regardless of whether the product was included under the existing free trade agreement between Canada, the US and Mexico, known as the USMCA. The US has been maintaining active tariffs ranging from 15% to 50% on Canadian steel, aluminium and copper. It also charges a 35% tariff on Canadian softwood lumber, alongside a 25% tax on non-US parts in cars.

Trump slaps 50% tariffs on Canada and Carney vows to 'intensify' trade talks
North America
CNBC Finance

Novo Nordisk sues Eli Lilly, alleging misleading GLP-1 advertising

Novo Nordisk on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against Eli Lilly, alleging that its advertising campaigns for its blockbuster obesity and diabetes drugs are designed to mislead consumers about their superior efficacy relative to the Danish drugmaker's rival injections. Novo is specifically taking issue with nationwide ads that cite what it called "outdated" clinical trials to compare the highest doses of Lilly's medicines to lower doses of Novo's drugs. For example, those campaigns don't include new evidence about Novo's recently approved high-dose version of its obesity injection, Wegovy, which entered the market in March and brings weight loss that's more comparable to Lilly's products. That "leaves them with the inevitable conclusion that Lilly's medicines are superior to Novo's, and that's not accurate," said John Kuckelman, Novo's group general counsel, in an interview on Monday. He said the suit comes after Lilly refused to pull down or correct certain ads despite a formal cease-and-desist request from Novo back in April. In the suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, Novo asked the court to permanently stop Lilly from running the ads and require the drugmaker to issue corrective advertising. Novo is also seeking financial damages, though it's unclear how much. The company said it has also warned Lilly that if the ads are not removed voluntarily, it plans to seek a preliminary injunction in the coming days to block them immediately while the case proceeds. The suit comes as Novo wages an aggressive battle against Lilly to regain market share in the GLP-1 space, positioning its new obesity pill, strategic price cuts and the new high-dose Wegovy to compete with its rival's top-selling obesity injection Zepbound and diabetes counterpart Mounjaro. In recent years, Lilly's medications have become the preferred treatments in the space among many providers and patients due to their high efficacy. But high-dose Wegovy, which showed an average weight loss of around 19%, is a direct answer to that. Novo said it is specifically bringing federal and state unfair competition and false advertising claims, including under the Lanham Act, which pharmaceutical companies have relied on in the past to hold competitors accountable for deceptive advertising. The suit alleges that Lilly's campaigns across television and social media are harmful because consumers often rely on advertising to form their understanding of GLP-1s, unlike healthcare professionals, who have access to the full scientific evidence available. "Lilly's advertising campaign deprives consumers of the truthful, current, and complete information they need to make informed decisions about their available treatment options," the suit said. The lawsuit cites a TV commercial presenting Zepbound and Wegovy in a direct side-by-side comparison, stating visually and verbally that patients on Lilly's drug lose 50 pounds on average compared to 33 pounds on the 2.4-milligram dose of Novo's treatment. That's based on a previous head-to-head clinical trial comparing the highest doses of Zepbound to the 1.7- and 2.4-milligram doses of Wegovy. But Novo said in the suit that a more recent study shows that the high-dose 7.2-milligram dose of Wegovy helped patients lose 47 pounds on average, which is "clinically consistent" with Zepbound's weight loss in Lilly's most recent rigorous trial on the drug. Novo said Lilly acknowledges the existence of that high-dose Wegovy in a "small footnote," but called it "ambiguous, confusing, virtually illegible, and wholly inadequate," as it does not communicate that it is significantly more effective than the lower doses of the drug.

Novo Nordisk sues Eli Lilly, alleging misleading GLP-1 advertising
North America
CNBC Finance

JetBlue wins Spirit slots at LaGuardia Airport, eyes move to Marine Air Terminal as airlines fight for space

JetBlue Airways has won Spirit Airlines slots at New York's LaGuardia Airport and is looking to move back into the failed budget carrier's old home, a major reshuffling at the congested airport less than three months after the discounter collapsed in the biggest U.S. airline failure in decades. The slots at the tightly controlled airport are for 12 round-trip flights and are still subject to final court and regulatory approvals, JetBlue said. Slots and gates are valuable in congested airports like LaGuardia because tight airspace restrictions and crowded airports in a big city like New York cap airline growth. Carriers have turned to using larger planes that fit more passengers to boost their capacity in some cases because infrastructure is so limited. JetBlue told staff in a note Monday, which was seen by CNBC, that it's now turning to "evaluating our plans for the slots as we consider opportunities for our network strategy" noting that any expansion won't happen until 2027. According to the note, JetBlue wants to move to Terminal A, also known as the Marine Air Terminal, an Art Deco facility that Spirit operated out of until it shut down in early May. JetBlue previously operated out of the space before relocating to a newer terminal years ago. "It's a convenient terminal travelers love," JetBlue said of the Marine Air Terminal. The New York-based airline, which is in the midst of a big expansion at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida, last month said it would reduce its staffing footprint at LaGuardia and Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey and ramp up service in Fort Lauderdale. Spirit's airport assets are now winding their way through U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. Get this delivered to your inbox, and more info about our products and services. Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes. Global Business and Financial News, Stock Quotes, and Market Data and Analysis.

JetBlue wins Spirit slots at LaGuardia Airport, eyes move to Marine Air Terminal as airlines fight for space
North America
CNBC Finance

What to know about testosterone replacement therapy as the U.S. military plans to test troops

Testosterone replacement therapy has shifted from the doctor's office to the center of a massive cultural phenomenon focused on performance, longevity and men's health. Now, the treatment is back in the spotlight after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced last week that the U.S. military will begin testing service members' testosterone levels and make replacement therapy available to those who qualify, saying the goal is to help troops operate at their "absolute best." The effort also builds on a larger push by the Trump administration to promote and expand public access to testosterone replacement therapies, which are made by pharmaceutical companies such as AbbVie, Pfizer and Marius Pharmaceuticals. The announcement puts a new focus on a treatment that has grown increasingly popular in recent years, fueled by men's health clinics, telehealth companies and online influencers, who promote testosterone, or "T-maxxing," as a way to address fatigue, aging and declining performance. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has also touted testosterone therapy as part of his anti-aging regimen. Prescriptions rose from 7.3 million in 2019 to more than 11 million in 2024, according to healthcare research firm IQVIA. But there has long been a debate around the safety of taking synthetic forms of testosterone, the hormone that affects sex drive, mood and other health factors. While some research has shown benefits for patients who qualify, including improvements in bone density and muscle mass, questions remain about the therapy's long-term risks and its use among men without a clear medical need. The concern is significant: up to a third of men taking testosterone have never been formally diagnosed with testosterone deficiency and may not benefit from treatment, according to the American Urological Association. Physicians also stress that testosterone therapy is not a universal solution for low energy or normal aging. It is generally intended for men with clinically confirmed testosterone deficiency, and experts say determining who qualifies requires more than a single blood test — which appears to be the military's plan. Excess testosterone can also carry risks, including reduced sperm production. "I'm not saying that testosterone is bad. It is good for people that need it," said Dr. Adrian Sandra Dobs, an endocrinologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. "But to overreplace it – we have to be very careful about that." As testosterone therapy enters a new national conversation, here's what doctors say we know – and don't know – about its benefits, risks and who should consider treatment. Testosterone replacement therapy, which is commonly administered through injections, gels, implantable pellets and oral medications, is intended for a more narrow population than social media may suggest. Physicians say it's generally reserved for men with clinically diagnosed hypogonadism – a condition in which the body does not produce enough testosterone. That generally means persistently low testosterone levels alongside symptoms such as reduced sex drive, fatigue, erectile dysfunction, depressed mood, low bone density, or loss of muscle mass and strength.

What to know about testosterone replacement therapy as the U.S. military plans to test troops