Arvind's Newsletter

1.Indian drug manufacturers benefit from Big Pharma interest beyond China, reported Reuters

Drugmakers are seeking to limit their reliance on Chinese contractors who produce drugs used in clinical trials and early-stage manufacturing, a move that is benefiting rivals in India, according to interviews with 10 industry executives and experts.

China has for nearly 20 years been the preferred location for a range of pharmaceutical research and manufacturing services due to the low cost and speed offered by contract drugmakers there.

That relationship largely held firm despite a U.S.-China trade war under the Trump administration and supply chain havoc experienced by other industries during the COVID-19 pandemic. But increasing tensions with China have prompted more Western governments to recommend that companies "de-risk" supply chains from exposure to the Asian superpower.

That is leading some biotech companies to consider using manufacturers in India to produce active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) for clinical trials or other outsourced work.

2.Bengaluru airport to be first in India to phase out gadgets-in-tray security check system

Passengers using Terminal 2  (T2) of Bengaluru's Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) will soon no longer need to remove personal electronic devices, like mobile phones and laptops, from handbags at pre-embarkation security checkpoints.

Bengaluru International Airport Limited (BIAL), the operator of KIA, said that a trial run for the CTX (Computer Tomography X-ray) machine at T2 will commence within the next few weeks. To begin with, the new system is meant only for domestic passengers, and is likely to be operational in December 2023.

3.Amazon is beating out UPS and FedEx in package deliveries. 
The company now runs the biggest parcel delivery business in the US, and the gap between it and other carriers is only growing.

The Seattle e-commerce giant delivered more packages to U.S. homes in 2022 than UPS, after eclipsing FedEx in 2020, and it is on track to widen the gap this year, according to internal Amazon data and people familiar with the matter. The U.S. Postal Service is still the biggest parcel service by volume; it handles hundreds of millions of packages for all three companies.

A decade ago Amazon was a major customer for UPS and FedEx, and some executives from the incumbents and analysts mocked the notion that it could someday supplant them. Amazon’s outsize growth combined with strategy shifts at FedEx and UPS have changed the balance.

4.Electric and hybrid vehicles hit a record 18% of total U.S. sales in the third quarter of 2023.

 In the year to date,15.8% of cars sold have been electric or hybrid, compared to 12.3% in 2022 and 8.5% in 2021, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

 The split is pretty even between the two categories: Tesla has backed EVs entirely, while its chief rival Toyota went all-in on hybrids since launching the Prius 20 years ago. The clash between the two auto giants is the “new hot battle in cars,” The Wall Street Journal reported. It had seemed as though Tesla had won, but a recent slowdown in EV growth and a surge in hybrid sales has revived Toyota’s fortunes.

5.Merriam-Webster's word of the year: Authentic.

Merriam-Webster said it saw a "substantial increase" in online searches for it this year.

The interest was "driven by stories and conversations about AI [artificial intelligence], celebrity culture, identity, and social media", the dictionary publisher said.

One reason many people search for the word is because it has a number of meanings, including "not false or imitation" and also "true to one's own personality, spirit, or character".

The publisher added that the popularity of the word, which had been highly searched in the US in the past, grew this year as "the line between 'real' and 'fake'" became increasingly blurred.

Earlier this year, the Cambridge Dictionary announced "hallucinate" as its Word of the Year 2023. The announcement was followed by the tagline, "When an artificial intelligence hallucinates, it produces false information."

Another lexicon, Collins English Dictionary, went a step further and announced "AI" as its Word of the Year 2023. The announcement said that the use of the word (strictly an initialism) has quadrupled over the past year.