Arvind's Newsletter

1.India overtook Hong Kong this week as the world’s fourth-largest stock market, reported Bloomberg

India’s stock market capitalisation has overtaken Hong Kong’s for the first time as the former’s growth prospects and policy reforms make it an investor darling just as global capital pours out of China. 

The combined value of shares listed on Indian exchanges reached $4.33 trillion as of Monday’s close, versus $4.29 trillion for Hong Kong, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. 

That makes India the fourth-biggest equity market globally.

2.New York is the world’s best city to live in right now, followed by Cape Town, which took the No. 2 spot in TimeOut’s annual ranking

Only one Asian city, Tokyo, made it into TimeOut’s top 10, but other places in the region, including Mumbai (the only Indian city at No 12), Singapore, and Bangkok, placed in the top 50.

3.Cameroon kicked off the world’s first mass malaria vaccine campaign for children.

Cameroon initiated the world's first routine malaria vaccination program for children yesterday amid a resurgence of the mosquito-borne disease in recent years. More than 250,000 children over the age of 5 months are expected to receive the four-dose vaccine this year, as 19 other African countries make plans to follow suit. 

Over 200 million people are diagnosed annually, and roughly 600,000 die as a result, nearly 80% of whom are children. Almost all cases arise in sub-Saharan Africa, though the US recorded its first local cases in decades last year.

4.Apple and Google are both looking to integrate artificial intelligence with their consumer products, following similar moves by Microsoft and Samsung. 

The latest Chrome browser update includes an “Experimental AI” mode which can, among other things, automatically organise your tabs into similar groups. It will soon also generate first drafts of emails or any other text you want to input into a window, The Verge reported.

Meanwhile, Apple has quietly made a series of changes — hiring, acquisitions, and hardware updates— apparently designed to bring generative AI to the next generation of iPhones. Apple has been secretive about its AI goals, the Financial Times reported, but appears to be aiming to provide AI chatbots through the phones’ hardware rather than via cloud services.

5.Smart watch wars

Samsung is looking to topple Apple from its dominance in the health tech business. The company’s reportedly looking to add health features like noninvasive glucose monitoring and continuous blood pressure measurement to its current stable of devices. 

 In its recently-concluded Samsung Unpacked event, the company had teased the launch of a new smart ring. As per The Verge, the ring could herald a new era for non-obtrusive wearable devices. The underside of a finger is much more suitable for acutely tracking blood oxygen and heart rate. However, Samsung would have to contend with entrenched players like Oura, which pioneered the idea of a smart ring.

Apple has recently lost its long-standing battle with Masimo and has now removed blood oxygen sensors from its watches. The iPhone-maker will reportedly introduce hypertension detection features for this year’s edition of watches.

6.Toyota Motor Corp. Chairman Akio Toyoda says he believes battery electric vehicles will reach at most 30% market share, with the rest taken up by hybrids, hydrogen fuel cell and fuel-burning cars.

With a billion people in the world living without electricity, limiting their choices and ability to travel by making expensive cars isn’t the answer, he said. “Customers—not regulations or politics—should make that decision,” Toyoda said.

7.Turkey’s parliament approved Sweden’s accession to NATO on Tuesday, ensuring the military alliance will soon cover the entire Baltic coast. 

Stockholm’s membership, now only dependent on Hungary’s expected approval, cements a strategic shift triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: Sweden and Finland, which had long sought to maintain military neutrality, applied for NATO membership shortly after the war began, their joining only delayed by Ankara demanding concessions over Kurdish separatists and Hungary’s ties to Moscow.

Sweden, which has the world’s fifth-largest navy, would particularly help transform the Baltic Sea into a “Nato Lake,” as an Atlantic Council expert put it.