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Europe
BBC Business

Why students are being paid £2,000 to play computer games

As parents across the country prepare to wave their children off to university, conversations about family finances and the cost of living are growing ever more frequent - and fervent. Yet every year, millions of pounds worth of scholarships and bursary funding goes unclaimed by students - with many unaware the extra help exists. So roll up the next generation of gamers, who this year can apply for as esports scholarship from the University of Roehampton - with more than 100 handed out so far. But can the students balance their studies and their esports? And is the scholarship set to catch on? It is different from standard video gaming as esports includes spectators, much like traditional sports. Gamers compete against one another in high-stakes tournaments for cash prizes and trophies. Roehampton is offering esports scholarships to undergraduate and postgraduate students who show that they can balance academic progress and video-gaming excellence. "This scholarship is about recognising talent in a field that has a growing popularity both around the world and among our students," University of Roehampton registrar Mark Ellul said. Scholars are expected to compete in weekly university tournaments as well as representing the university at in-person events. Roehampton requires minimum rankings in major games for the scholarship, but will consider applications from those close to the threshold who meet other criteria, such as having large followings on streaming platforms like Twitch. Former esports scholar Cameron Dray found out about Roehampton through the esports scholarship. Inspired by similar initiatives at American universities, he looked into whether anything similar was on offer in the UK. Initially, the university was offering just £1,500, but due to the team's performance and rise in popularity, the amount was raised to £2,000.

Why students are being paid £2,000 to play computer games
Asia
The Hindu BusinessLine

Billion-dollar baskets, half-capacity lives: The blind spot in Indian agricultural policies

As India aggressively structures its next-generation trade frameworks to scale global markets, the nation’s agricultural export identity is undergoing a profound transformation. The state is rapidly shifting away from a traditional reliance on raw bulk staples toward an agile, high-value basket of processed foods and fresh horticulture. Recent official data marks a historic milestone in this trajectory: India’s total agricultural trade has consolidated at $97.92 billion, with outward shipments scaling $52.26 billion. Within this expanding matrix, mass-market commodities have provided powerful volumetric momentum, with non-Basmati rice peaking at 17.79 million tonnes (mt) and buffalo meat stabilising at 4.34 mt. Yet, as the state pivots toward delicate, high-value horticultural items—such as mango pulp, table grapes, pomegranates, and processed gherkins—the overarching trade strategy faces a glaring microeconomic paradox. Current agricultural policies remain heavily focused on post-harvest cold-chain logistics, while largely ignoring the most fragile element of this changing basket: depreciating Farmers’ Health Capital (FHC). Moving up the global agricultural value chain fundamentally changes the rules of production. While raw grain staples can be managed under highly mechanised, macro-level trade frameworks, an export basket focused on premium fresh produce is intensely time-sensitive and labour-dependent. Meeting strict international sanitary and phytosanitary barriers requires precise, hyper-focused manual intervention at the field level. Cultivators must execute meticulous residue monitoring programs, harvest delicate fruits at exact maturity hours, and oversee rapid sorting to prevent rapid post-harvest deterioration. A technical audit of India’s current export competitiveness reveals a sharp divide between international price benchmarks and domestic field realities. Standard trade metrics show that key commodities maintain a Nominal Protection Coefficient (NPC) below unity, indicating that domestic farm-gate prices remain highly competitive against world reference prices. Correspondingly, metrics tracking India’s Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) reflect robust structural pricing power across mass commodities. Yet, this advantage fails to translate efficiently into optimal global value. International benchmarking indicates that India’s export unit value realisation remains severely bottlenecked compared to rival exporting nations; for instance, India realises an average mango unit value of just $1.44 per kg, lagging significantly behind competitors like Thailand at $1.59 and Egypt at $2.65. This pricing gap stems directly from deep productivity deficits on the ground. India’s average mango productivity languishes at 6.50 tonnes per hectare, far below the global benchmark of 15.83 tonnes. While traditional diagnostics blame this gap on a 99.6% national deficit in modern pack-houses and an 85 per cent gap in refrigerated transport, the true systemic ceiling is not physical infrastructure, but human exhaustion. A groundbreaking bioeconomic framework submitted to the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library brings this invisible structural variable to light. By evaluating physical pain scores, work-to-sleep dynamics, systemic debt anxiety, and institutional healthcare access, researchers constructed a multi-dimensional FHC Index. The diagnostic outcome introduces a sobering dimension to India’s trade ambitions: the average commercial cultivator operates at an FHC score of just 0.479 out of 1. This human capital deficit acts as a direct, hidden tax on farmer income and global market competitiveness. Chronic musculoskeletal pain from gruelling harvest labour destroys field efficiency, while systemic debt anxiety over volatile global markets degrades operational focus. When human biological capacity operates at less than half its optimal endowment, farm-level labour efficiency plummets. This productivity loss drives up marginal production costs, directly eroding the razor-thin border price advantages that Indian produce relies on to compete with rival exporting nations. Furthermore, the policy framework historically treats rural healthcare as a post-harvest afterthought. Micro-level survey data from sugarcane-cultivating households in Maharashtra reveals that a single family health crisis forces an average out-of-pocket medical expenditure of ₹23,233. This shock drains vital working capital from high-quality agronomic inputs, while creating a recurring ₹12,000 downstream crisis-management liability per household that the public treasury must cover through state subsidies. Bioeconomic simulation models demonstrate that a proactive policy shift yields superior macroeconomic returns. Allocating a targeted, preventative farm-gate wellness investment of ₹5,000 per cultivator per season—a modest 1.88% asset-maintenance allocation derived from average seasonal revenues—systematically lowers marginal costs by stabilising yield efficiency. By institutionalising healthcare as a direct agricultural production input, the state can simultaneously expand farm incomes, secure crop quality, and clear the public exchequer of emergency hospital liabilities. If India wants to scale its changing export basket toward the US$ 100 billion threshold, it must move away from a purely volumetric, production-centric model. District-level export clusters and Transport and Marketing Assistance (TMA) schemes are highly useful mechanisms, but they only preserve a product after it leaves the field. True global trade dominance cannot be built on the backs of an exhausted, unprotected labor force. Integrating proactive rural welfare and health metrics into the state’s new trade framework is no longer a social welfare option; it is a microeconomic necessity to protect farmer income and secure India’s export future. Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments. We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.

Billion-dollar baskets, half-capacity lives: The blind spot in Indian agricultural policies
Asia
The Hindu BusinessLine

Modi’s developed-nation dream strains against India’s growth gap

India likely grew at more than 7 per cent last quarter, a pace most major economies would envy. Yet, that may still be too slow to deliver on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dream of a developed nation. Modi wants India to achieve that status by 2047, the centenary year of its independence from British rule. Getting there would require the world’s sixth-largest economy to grow at 9.25 per cent annually for 21 years, according to Ashok Lahiri, a senior official at the country’s apex government-run think-tank. The ambition, branded Viksit Bharat — or Developed India— has become a centerpiece of Modi’s third term. However, assuming the current rate of growth, India’s economy would fall short of his vision, according to several economists. Growth averaged 6.3 per cent between 2000 and 2024, well below the current potential rate of 7.5 per cent-8 per cent. The economy has grown at or above 9.25 per cent just three times over the past 50 years — 1975, 1988 and 2021. Achieving the target “would require an exceptionally strong and sustained acceleration in growth,” which will “become increasingly difficult as the economy expands and the base becomes larger,” said Alexandra Hermann Prasad, a London-based economist with Oxford Economics. Data Monday will likely show the economy expanded 7.3 per cent last quarter from a year ago, slowing from 7.8 per cent in the previous three months. Growth below 8 per cent could leave India vulnerable to the so-called middle-income trap, where rising wages erode a country’s low-cost advantage before productivity and skills improve enough to compete with richer economies. And the distance to high-income status is stark. India’s per-capita income was $2,813 in 2025 and would need to rise more than sixfold to around $18,000 by 2047 to cross that threshold, according to NITI Aayog’s Lahiri. There are “significant vulnerabilities,” in India’s economy, said Lavanya Venkateswaran, economist at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. She pointed to the country’s current-account and budget gaps as well as reliance on volatile capital inflows to finance its external balance as risks. That’s partly why the nation’s appeal among foreign investors is waning, with the Indian rupee the worst-performing currency in Asia this year so far. India replaced Indonesia as Asia’s least-preferred stock market in an August survey of fund managers by Bank of America Corp. One solution is expanding manufacturing, economists say. And, that’s on the Modi government’s agenda too, though the sector has stayed stagnant at around 16 per cent-17 per cent as a share of India’s gross domestic product for more than a decade. That’s compares with Modi’s 25 per cent aim. Economists say boosting high-tech exports, encouraging more private investment and reducing reliance on imported energy are other ways to accelerate economic momentum.

Modi’s developed-nation dream strains against India’s growth gap
Asia
The Hindu BusinessLine

Chasing global AI stocks is getting riskier by the day

The RBI Bulletin released last week revealed an interesting factoid — that outward remittances by resident individuals for overseas investments reached $457 million in June — the highest ever. Given the scale and the lure of AI trade in overseas markets, it should be a safe guess that a good part of these remittances might have been channelled into AI themed bets in the US. Clearly, AI FOMO is keeping some Indian investors up at night. After all FOMO can unnerve not just retail investors, but even large institutional investors. Take the case of GQG Capital which became famous amongst investors in India after buying into Adani Group stocks in 2023. Recently, the AMC made a complete about turn by going overweight on AI stocks after warning for around two years that AI stocks were in a mega bubble and publishing multiple reports titled calling AI bubble as ‘Dotcom on Steroids’. Its shares hitting three-year lows and investors pulling out around $15 billion from its funds due to underperformance after underweighting AI stocks in recent years could have been the last straw. Other investors feeling the pull, must take note of some important data in this context. For most American banks and insurers in the first half of 2000s, 2006 was the peak year for earnings. In the four years between 2002 and 2006, the profit of the 10 largest financial stocks by earnings (as of 2006), grew at a staggering 24 per cent CAGR—and their combined earnings accounted for about 15 per cent of the aggregate profit of S&P 500 companies for 2006. These 2 per cent stocks (10/500) were worth about 11 per cent of S&P 500 companies’ market cap then. In the backdrop of loose regulations, banks had thrown caution to the wind and took on risky, leveraged bets in the US housing market. Based on analysis of historical data the entire financial system worked on an assumption that the property market will never fall across all sates in the country at the same time. Under this assumption, the risk to mortgage bonds was deemed manageable. But when this assumption was proved wrong in 2007, everything broke loose culminating in GFC. Financials went from about 20 per cent weightage in S&P 500 at the peak before GFC (Oct 2007) to 11 per cent at the trough following the crash (March 2009). The combined earnings of top 10 financial companies declined from $118 billion in CY26 to losses adding up to $143 billion in CY28. Wachovia was folded into Wells Fargo. Cut to today, the AI trade also shows signs of an earnings bubble — only larger in scale than 2007-08. The 10 largest AI-related companies of 2026 by earnings, are estimated to post a combined profit CAGR of a whopping 44 per cent for the four-year period ending CY26. The 2 per cent of companies this time, will likely account for about 30 per cent each of the index’s profit pool for CY26 and 30 per cent of its market-cap, respectively. Here is an interesting data to note. During the 2007 market peak, the PE of S&P 500 was just 17 times, yet the index fell by more that 50 per cent as the earnings bubble burst. Today, the S&P 500’s P/E multiple now stands at a 26x – valuation level that compares with valuation at the peak of dotcom bubble of 29 times. While in the event of any stumbling block in the AI theme, the earnings may not crash like it did for the financials in 2008, it is still likely to be significant given the scorching pace at which related capex has inflated earnings for semiconductor companies. The Buffett indicator, too, is at a record high of 2.5x GDP now versus 1.3x before the GFC. It went close to 2x at the peak of the dotcom bubble. “How cash rich are the earnings?” In its results for Q2 FY27 (released last Wednesday), though Nvidia delivered a beat on earnings, its free cash flows came in a lot lower at $21.4 billion versus consensus estimate of $47.2 billion. In fact, Nvidia’s case is just an illustration of a deeper trend. Based on consensus estimates of net profit and free cash flows for 2026, the combined free cash flows of the said 10 AI stocks stand at a mere 30 per cent of their combined net profit. This ratio has significantly grown thin from about 80 per cent as of 2022 and around 100 per cent over 2018-22 on average. Saddled with over $2.5 trillion in lease obligations (yet to commence) and purchase commitments for data centre gear, the prized cash flow machines of the tech boom since 2010 are making an 180-degree turn on cash generation. Further per a Barclays analysis, OpenAI and Anthropic, together constitute 73 per cent of Amazon’s AI revenue. Similarly, they make 69 per cent of Microsoft’s AI revenue, per a Wells Fargo report. OpenAI and Anthropic are still cash burning AI labs whose moats are increasingly under threat from cheaper open weight models. The two labs also comfortably make up over 40 per cent of the revenue backlog of the hyperscalers (see graphic). In what critics of the boom call as ‘circular financing’, Nvidia and the hyperscalers infuse cash into companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, with an expectation that the money finds its way back to them, in the form of orders for GPUs or contracts for compute. Thus, while the trailing returns in AI stocks might be alluring, history has good enough lessons which if understood well will help investors not fall into the FOMO trap. An earnings bubble which is becoming more cashless amid a valuation bubble is not a difficult lesson to fathom.

Chasing global AI stocks is getting riskier by the day
Europe
BBC Business

Trump threatens 'tremendous economic consequences' on any country helping Iran

He wrote in all capital letters on Truth Social that he was launching "the most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country!" He gave no further details, and did not name any other nation. It comes after a 60-day ceasefire with Iran expired on Monday, with no sign of a diplomatic or military off-ramp to the conflict that the US and Israel began at the end of February. Trump's latest move appears to extend the pressure campaign of Operation Economic Fury, launched in April to sanction foreign banks or firms that do business with Tehran. In Wednesday evening's social media post, Trump said he was launching "economic D-Day" on Iran because the Islamic Republic had failed to make a deal with the US. "ANY country that allows its financial institutions, businesses, airports, or government entities to provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences," Trump said. Trump continued: "Oil smuggling, swap lines, cash transfers, exchange houses, ship registries, front companies - It all needs to stop NOW. You know who you are." It comes a day after the United Arab Emirates, a US ally, announced it would be severing all financial and economic ties with Iran, following a new missile threat from the country. The UAE's defence ministry said it had detected two ballistic missiles launched from Iran targeting maritime traffic, both of which landed in the sea. Iranian entities have long used Dubai's financial system to transfer money through exchange houses and shell companies. Following the UAE's decision, Iran's armed forces warned neighbouring Gulf countries against providing support to the US military, saying any assistance given to US forces would be considered collusion. While China was not named in the post, businesses there are the biggest buyers of oil from Iran, a key source of Tehran's funding. Since the start of the war, Washington has sanctioned several so-called teapot refineries - privately owned oil processing plants, mostly based in Shandong province, eastern China.

Trump threatens 'tremendous economic consequences' on any country helping Iran
Asia
The Hindu BusinessLine

When age matters

Income returns arise from dividends received from the firm whose stocks you directly hold. | Photo Credit: iStockphoto In recent times, several stocks have traded at prices that offer good dividend yield. This leads to the question: Are individuals interested in earning a dividend income? Should source of returns matter? Here, we discuss how your age determines your preference for source of returns, especially from equity investments. Equity investments, like bonds and real estate, offer two sources of returns — income returns and capital appreciation. Income returns arise from dividends received from the firm whose stocks you directly hold. You can also earn dividend income indirectly via net asset value if you invest in mutual funds. Note, this dividend income is reinvested and realised as capital appreciation if you invest in the growth option of a fund. The choice of returns depends on age. If you are a working executive, your main objective is to accumulate wealth to achieve life goals such as funding child’s education and buying a house. This tilts your preference towards capital appreciation and is tax efficient; you pay taxes only when you sell a stock in direct investments or when you redeem mutual fund units. Now, goal-based investments are typically held for more than 12 months. So, if you have earmarked these investments for a life goal, the gains are likely to be taxed at 12.5 per cent above ₹1.25 lakh in a year. This is because these equity investments will be taxed as long-term capital asset. What if you are retired? Your active income would have stopped and you now depend on passive income to meet post-retirement expenses. This means you need monthly income to support lifestyle expenses. Also, most mass-affluent retirees are conservative investors viz. they prefer to conserve capital and consume income. In such cases, they prefer to invest in monthly income bank deposits. Investing in dividend yield stocks may be preferred by some as an additional source of income. If taxes were the only consideration, then earning dividend income may not be an economical source of returns. This is because dividend income is taxed at your marginal tax rate. Yet, retirees may prefer dividend as a supplement to their interest income to meet their post-retirement expenses. In such cases, think of taxes as the cost retirees are willing to incur to consume income without drawing down their investment capital — selling shares or mutual fund units to generate cash flows. Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments. We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.

When age matters
Asia
The Hindu BusinessLine

Which Nifty is right for you?

Imagine you decide to invest in equity via an index fund. But which market are you actually buying? The 50 biggest firms? The next 50 waiting in the wings? Or, a much broader basket of 500 firms? All three are called Nifty indices, but they can give your money very different rides. So, it’s worth asking a simple question: Which one to choose? It matters because choosing an index fund is not simply a question of picking the one with more number of firms or the one with ‘bluechips’. Instead, you are choosing between how much of the market to own and where that exposure comes from. The Nifty 50 may give you exposure to 50 large firms but as of July 31, 2026 financial services alone accounted for 36.18 per cent, healthcare 4.82 per cent and power just 2.63 per cent of the index. So, the real question for an investor is: Do you want the largest firms, the next tier of firms, a broader slice of market or a sector mix you are comfortable with? What if you don’t want to bet on which part of the market will win? The Nifty 50 gives you exposure to 50 of the market’s largest firms. So, for an investor who wants to keep equity investing simple, it can be a ‘perfectly reasonable’ one-index approach. But there is an important question hiding beneath: are you comfortable owning mainly the firms that have already turned the market’s biggest or also firms that could become tomorrow’s ‘giants’? That is where the Nifty Next 50 enters the picture. If the Nifty 50 represents the established ‘giants’, the Nifty Next 50 takes you one step down the ladder, bringing in the next 50 companies outside the Nifty 50. That makes it an interesting middle ground: you are still investing in relatively large companies but moving beyond the market’s biggest names. For an investor who feels the Nifty 50 is too concentrated in today’s ‘giants’ but who does not want to straddle across the entire market, the Next 50 offers a different proposition. The next query is whether you want exposure to the next set of companies in the market-cap hierarchy or prefer the wider spread offered by the Nifty 500. What if you don’t want to pick a winner? This is where the Nifty 500 changes the scenario altogether. Instead of deciding whether the market’s biggest companies or the next tier will do better, you are spreading your exposure much further across the Indian equity market. That can appeal to an investor who does not want to make a call on which segment of the market will lead over the next 10 or 20 years. The trade-off is equally important: you are also accepting exposure to companies beyond the large-cap universe, which can make the ride different from a Nifty 50 fund. In simple terms, Nifty 50 asks you to back the ‘giants’; Nifty Next 50 gives you the ‘climbers’; Nifty 500 lets you own a much larger part of the race. There is no single universally “best” index. However, history offers a useful reality check: diversification does not automatically mean lower risk. In NSE Indices’ February 2026 Riskometer assessment, all three indices were classified as “Very High” risk, but the scores rose from 5.33 for Nifty 50 to 5.43 for Nifty Next 50 and 5.60 for Nifty 500. So, while Nifty 500 gives you a much wider slice of the market, it has not been the least risky of the three by this measure. The choice, therefore, is less about finding a “safe” index and more about deciding how much market breadth and volatility you are prepared to accept. Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments. We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.

Which Nifty is right for you?
North America
CNBC Finance

Lowe's gives muted outlook as it sees 'pressure' in home improvement spending

Lowe's on Wednesday reported mixed results as the home improvement retailer said it saw "pressure" in spending on projects. Though the company did not cut its full-year guidance, it updated its outlook to the bottom end of its prior guidance. It now expects total sales of $92 billion, compared to $92 billion to $94 billion previously, and comparable sales to be flat, versus flat to up 2%. It expects adjusted earnings per share for the year of $12.25, versus $12.25 to $12.75 previously. For the quarter, Lowe's reported net income of $2.4 billion, or $4.27 per share, roughly the same as the year-ago period. Excluding one-time factors and including tariff refund benefits, the company reported adjusted earnings of $4.40 per share. Lowe's also said tariff refunds provided an 11 cent boost to its earnings per share this quarter. The company reported total sales of $25.96 billion for the quarter, up from $23.96 billion the year prior. Comparable sales were up 0.2%, due in part to strong performance in its pro and home services sales, according to the company. Lowe's also saw a 15.7% increase in online sales, though it added that performance was partially offset by macroeconomic pressures for the do-it-yourself customers. "While the near-term remains dynamic, our teams are executing at a high level, advancing our Total Home strategy and investing to drive growth and profitability," CEO Marvin Ellison said in a statement. The earnings come as the home improvement retailer grapples with a slower housing market and a more cautious consumer. Lowe's rival Home Depot said in its earnings report on Tuesday that the company did not see customers returning to big projects and continues to operate in "frozen housing market conditions." Get this delivered to your inbox, and more info about our products and services. Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes. Global Business and Financial News, Stock Quotes, and Market Data and Analysis.

Lowe's gives muted outlook as it sees 'pressure' in home improvement spending
Europe
BBC Business

CrossCountry cancels UK services after power cut

Trains across the UK have been cancelled by rail operator CrossCountry after a power cut at its control centre. The power outage started in Birmingham on Saturday and as a result, many of the systems used to manage the railway are unavailable, the operator said. Cancellations are affecting most routes, from Glasgow to Penzance and Leeds to Manchester, until further notice because of "significant and unforeseen disruption", said CrossCountry, ranked Britain's worst rail operator, in June. Passengers are venting their anger on social media, saying the situation is the "worst case scenario" at the weekend, with some taking coaches before continuing their train journey with another operator. Major routes between Manchester and Birmingham, which passes through Stoke-on-Trent, Coventry and Wolverhampton, along with routes from Leeds to York, Cheltenham to Cardiff and Glasgow to Edinburgh, are all affected. Fans travelling to football fixtures have been warned that services to and from Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle might be "extremely busy". One passenger, posting on X, said: "A massive thank you to Cross Country Trains for cancelling my train this morning to Birmingham. You are truly not fit for service. You have also cancelled my train coming back but that is immaterial. Useless. Utterly useless." Services to Plymouth and Penzance are also disrupted with customers relying on Great Western Railway operators as a replacement. "We are working closely with relevant partners and will provide further updates as soon as possible," a CrossCountry spokesperson said. At New Street station, the barriers to all platforms are open and there are regular announcements to passengers about the disruption. The digital boards in the concourse are carrying a Special Notice to warn passengers of the cancellation to CrossCountry services. While the operator usually calls at more than 100 stations, it said that the only route expecting a "near-normal" service was between Peterborough, Cambridge and Stansted Airport.

CrossCountry cancels UK services after power cut