News in Short

• India dispatched four Naval ships to Maldives and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as part of the first phase of evacuation to bring back Indians stranded due to COVID-19 restrictions and lockdown.
• Amphibious vessels INS Jalashwa and INS Magar are headed to Maldives while INS Shardul and INS Airavat set sail to the UAE. INS Jalashwa is set to reach Maldives on May 8 and INS Magar is scheduled to reach on May 10.
• About 700-1,000 people would be brought back on May 8 which is about a quarter of those needing to return from Maldives.

• In order to tackle the economic fallout of the coronavirus outbreak, the government on May 5 hiked excise duty on petrol and diesel by ? 10 and ? 13 respectively.
• The hike in duty has taken away gains from falling global crude oil prices.However, the move will not impact consumers as the price hike will be absorbed by OMCs.
• The revenue generated from these duties shall be used for infrastructure and other developmental item of expenditure.

• Reliance Industries’ Chairman Mukesh Ambani retained the top spot on the Forbes India billionaires list with an estimated net worth of $36.8 billion.
• He was followed by the retail tycoon and founder of Avenue Supermarts (DMart supermarkets chain) Radhakishan Damani with an estimated net worth of $13.8 billion, making him India’s second-richest person for the very first time.
• Shiv Nadar, co-founder of HCL Group, took the third spot with an estimated net worth of $11.9 billion.With an estimated net worth of $1.8 billion, Byju Raveendran of Byju's became India’s youngest billionaire to be on the coveted list.
• As far as Asia-Pacific is concerned, the most billionaires comes from this part of the world at 778, followed by the US at 614 and Europe at 511.

• IT major Wipro said it had recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Maharashtra government to repurpose one of its campuses in the Hinjewadi area into a 450-bed intermediary care COVID-19 hospital.
• The 450-bed hospital will be ready by the month end and will be equipped to treat moderate cases. The hospital will have 12 beds to stabilise critical patients before shifting them to a tertiary care facility.
• Wipro has said that it will be providing the physical infrastructure, medical furniture and equipment besides appointing an administrator and skeletal support staff to help operationalise the hospital quickly with the required medical professionals.

• Amid suspended economic activity to counter the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, India’s unemployment rate surged to 27.11 per cent for the week ended May 3 from the level of 6.74 per cent in the week ended March 15, the data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) showed.
• Unemployment rate had moderated to 21.05 per cent in the previous week (which ended April 26) from 26.19 per cent in the week before.
• The rate of unemployment was the highest in the urban areas, which include the majority of the red zones due to the COVID-19 cases, at 29.22 per cent, as against 26.16 per cent for the rural areas.