1.Foxconn Asks Chinese Workers to Leave India and Go Home: Bloomberg

Foxconn Technology Group has asked hundreds of Chinese engineers and technicians to return home from its iPhone factories in India, dealing a blow to Apple Inc.’s manufacturing push in the South Asian country.

The bulk of Foxconn’s Chinese staff at iPhone plants in southern India have been told to fly back in a move that began about two months ago, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named as the information is private. More than 300 Chinese workers have left, and mostly support staff from Taiwan remain in India, one of the people said.

It’s not immediately clear why Apple’s biggest iPhone assembler sent the workers home. Earlier this year, officials in Beijing verbally encouraged regulatory agencies and local governments to curb technology transfers and equipment exports to India and Southeast Asia in what is a potential attempt to prevent companies from shifting manufacturing elsewhere, Bloomberg News has reported.

2.India's M&A deals touch $45.4 bn in H1 as PEs, firms eye healthcare, infra: Business Standard

India’s mergers and acquisitions (M&As) market recorded deals worth $45.44 billion in the first half of 2025, up nearly 3.3 per cent from a year ago, even as ultra large-ticket transactions remained subdued.

During the first half, the 7.1 per cent rise in deal count to 1,614 signals continuing appetite among domestic conglomerates and private equity (PE) funds for mid-sized and smaller assets.

The healthcare, infrastructure, and financial services sectors emerged as key drivers.

3.Creta can’t carry Hyundai forever; Korean giant risks losing No. 2 spot in India: Mint

Long, long ago, it had the Santro. And now it has the Creta. But aside from this mid-size SUV, none of Hyundai’s vehicles is making much headway in India today. And that has pushed it down the rankings this year. Can the carmaker make a comeback?

“The mood at Hyundai Motor India Ltd’s office in Gurugram isn’t exactly upbeat today. Passenger vehicle sales data for June were released on 1 July. And for the South Korean carmaker, once the No. 2 in India by some distance, it once again made for dismal reading.

While most automakers struggled in June, the company has finished behind Mahindra and Mahindra four out of six months this calendar year. Indeed, it has trailed the Indian company every month this fiscal year.

Hyundai’s top management has made it clear that India was a priority market for the company.

Although the Indian unit, led by managing director Unsoo Kim, has worked hard to regain lost ground, things haven’t quite gone according to plan. But why exactly is Hyundai struggling today?” Read on.

4.US to levy 1% remittance tax: What it means for NRIs and students: Business Standard

The US Senate on Tuesday passed President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”, bringing with it a new tax on overseas money transfers by non-citizens. The legislation, which takes effect on July 4, 2025, introduces a 1 per cent levy on remittances made through cash, money orders, or cashier’s cheques.

The rule will apply to anyone who isn’t a US citizen—including Green Card holders, people on temporary visas such as H-1B or H-2A and foreign students.

Remittances play a key role in India’s foreign income. According to the World Bank, India received $129 Billion in international remittances in 2024—the highest in the world. Mexico was second with just over $68 Billion. Nearly 28 per cent of India’s remittance inflows in 2023-24 came from the United States alone.

Several Indian states, including Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar, rely heavily on these funds for household income.

5. The Dalai Lama announced his succession plan: Financial Times and others

The spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism turns 90 on Sunday: He has been in exile in India since 1959, following a failed uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet. According to tradition, the incumbent chooses his successor, and is then — so adherents believe — reincarnated in that person’s body. But the 14th Lama has been ambiguous over whether there would be a new one at all. He has now, however, said that the institution will continue, and that he would choose his successor. He has long angered Beijing by saying that the next Lama, if there is one, would be born outside China.

6.The suspension of Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra is raising fresh doubts about the country’s economy: Bloomberg

The future of a Shinawatra dynasty that has loomed over the Southeast Asian nation for decades is also at risk.

The developments couldn’t come at a worse time for Thailand: Once feted as an “Asian Tiger” economy, the country is mired in slow growth relative to its peers, with households burdened by debt, a budget bill pending and the imminent threat of Trump’s tariffs. Investors remain wary about the country’s prospects and market outlook as the latest upheaval adds to risk-off sentiment in the world’s performing benchmark this year.

7.USAID cuts threaten 14mn extra deaths by 2030, warns study: Lancet and others

Washington’s foreign aid cuts could lead to an additional 14 million deaths by 2030 as countries scramble to make up for the sudden, massive shortfall. According to a report in The Lancet, up to a third of those premature deaths would be of children, with sub-Saharan Africa likely to be hardest hit.

US humanitarian assistance has plunged by around 80% since billionaire Elon Musk — who as a White House aide oversaw drastic budget cuts — boasted of feeding aid agency USAID “into the wood clipper.”

The abrupt cuts have already led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, according to one estimate, with one expert telling the BBC that further reductions would wipe out “ two decades of progress in health among vulnerable population.”

8.The war in Ukraine has sparked a revolution in off-the-grid clean energy: Fast Company

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Russia has persistently targeted attacks on power grids and energy infrastructure, often leaving whole communities in the dark. In response, a transformation is happening across the country, as war has forced Ukrainian society to quickly pivot to—and start innovating in—finding renewable energy solutions that can keep the power on in the face of continued infrastructure bombings. 

Communities across Ukraine are becoming energy secure and energy independent: adding solar power stations to schools, hospitals, and homes; backing up that solar with battery storage capacity; and switching to more energy efficient heating and cooling with heat pumps and insulation. This is happening across Ukraine in response to the war and the years of large-scale attacks on power grids and energy infrastructure, which Russia continues to this day.

Cities and communities across Ukraine—from Kyiv and Horenka to Rivne and Zviahel to Lviv and Sheptytskyi—are scaling up this energy-secure trifecta wherever possible. And it’s paying off both in energy independence and economic savings; in many cases, these critical upgrades are cutting annual energy bills in half or more.

9.The deepfake economy is spiralling out of control: Business Insider

Generative AI's potential to bolster business is staggering. According to one 2023 estimate from McKinsey, in the coming years it's expected to add more value to the global economy annually than the entire GDP of the United Kingdom. At the same time, GenAI's ability to almost instantaneously produce authentic-seeming content at mass scale has created the equally staggering potential to harm businesses.

Since ChatGPT's debut in 2022, online businesses have had to navigate a rapidly expanding deepfake economy, where it's increasingly difficult to discern whether any text, call, or email is real or a scam. In the past year alone, GenAI-enabled scams have quadrupled, according to the scam reporting platform Chainabuse. In a Nationwide insurance survey of small business owners last fall, a quarter reported having faced at least one AI scam in the past year. Microsoft says it now shuts down nearly 1.6 million bot-based signup attempts every hour. Renée DiResta, who researches online adversarial abuse at Georgetown University, tells me she calls the GenAI boom the "industrial revolution for scams" — as it automates frauds, lowers barriers to entry, reduces costs, and increases access to targets. Read on.

10.Scientists Can Tell How Fast You’re Aging From a Single Brain Scan: Duke Today

Now, scientists at Duke, Harvard and the University of Otago in New Zealand have developed a freely available tool that can tell how fast someone is aging, and while they’re still reasonably healthy — by looking at a snapshot of their brain.

From a single MRI brain scan, the tool can estimate your risk in midlife for chronic diseases that typically emerge decades later. That information could help motivate lifestyle and dietary changes that improve health.

In older people, the tool can predict whether someone will develop dementia or other age-related diseases years before symptoms appear, when they might have a better shot at slowing the course of disease.