From GST Council meet to Brazil prison riot: 5 key developments

In other news, SP feud reaches Election Commission over party symbol

Business Standard brings to you a list of five key developments across the country.

GST Council to meet Sitharaman
 

The GST Council will meet Commerce and Industry minister Nirmala Sitharaman and representatives of IT, telecom, heavy industry, road transport, banking and insurance sectors on Tuesday to assess the implementation hurdles under the new goods and services tax regime. Representatives of civil aviation and railway sectors will make a presentation at the two-day meeting of the GST Council, comprising Union finance minister, minister of state for revenue, and state representatives mainly finance ministers.

Demonetisation takes toll on manufacturing

Ahead of Advance Estimates for 2016-17, on which assumptions for the Budget 2017-18 would be based, manufacturing activities showed some signs of weakness due to cash crunch in the wake of demonetisation. While the softness was sharp in the widely-tracked Nikkei Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), it was somewhat moderated in the official data for crucial eight core sector industries. Manufacturing activities contracted for the first time in a year, as PMI slipped to 49.6 points in December, down from 52.3 in November.

Bitcoin prices tops $1,000 in three-year high

Digital currency bitcoin kicked off the new year by jumping above $1,000 for the first time in three years late on Sunday, having outperformed all central-bank-issued currencies with a 125 percent climb in 2016. Bitcoin — a web-based “cryptocurrency” that has no central authority, relying instead on thousands of computers across the world that validate transactions and add new bitcoins to the system — jumped 2.5% to $1,022 on the Europe-based Bitstamp exchange, its highest since December 2013.

Samajwadi Party's war moves to EC for symbol

The Samajwadi Party feud reached the Election Commission’s door on Monday with party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav meeting officials to lay claim over party’s election symbol ‘bicycle’. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and his supporters are likely to knock at the doors of the EC on Tuesday with a similar request, which could then lead to the freezing of the symbol and the dispute likely to be decided after the state Assembly polls.

Brazil prison riot

The fight between rival gangs over the weekend at the Anisio Jobim penitentiary in Manaus, the capital of Brazil's Amazonas state, left at least 60 people dead, officials said on Monday. The brawl started on Sunday afternoon when members of the Familia do Norte (FDN), the gang that controls the prison, picked a fight with members of the First Capital Command (PCC), a criminal organisation based in Sao Paulo, EFE news reported.