Donald Trump said he believes his strategy of personal insults against Vice President Kamala Harris is boosting his campaign, despite pleas from his own party to focus on policy as polls show he is losing ground in the race for the White House. “I think I’m entitled to personal attacks,” Trump said at a press conference at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. “I don’t have a lot of respect for her. I don’t have a lot of respect for her intelligence, and I think she’ll be a terrible president,” the former President was quoted in a Bloomberg report.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. posted an anemic 4% rise in revenue after its Chinese commerce business shrank for the first time in at least a year, driving home the malaise plaguing the world’s No. 2 economy and its leading online retailer. The company’s profit plunged 27%, dispelling hopes of a quick turnaround at the company that pioneered Chinese e-commerce two decades ago. Alibaba’s American depositary receipts dropped at the start of trading in New York before rising about 2% with a broad market rally. Investors worry that Alibaba’s drive to win market share back from Temu-owner PDD Holdings Inc. and JD.com in China will compress margins. The company’s operating margin fell to 15% in the most recent quarter from 18% a year earlier.

AST SpaceMobile Inc. jumped more than 50% to close at a record high after the satellite communication company confirmed an early September window for its inaugural commercial launch of a network in low-Earth orbit. The Midland, Texas-based company is working with partners including AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. on a plan to provide wireless service from space to regular consumer smartphones, a market also being targeted by SpaceX’s Starlink. The stock surge places AST SpaceMobile’s market value at more than $8 billion.

Meta Platforms Inc. on Wednesday shuttered CrowdTangle, a popular social media analysis tool that journalists, civic groups and researchers used to monitor trending posts on platforms like Facebook and Instagram in real time. The timing of the tool’s shutdown, months ahead of a major US presidential election, has drawn concern from groups that relied on CrowdTangle to track the flow of information on social media, including viral falsehoods that have led to real-world harm. Using CrowdTangle, journalists and researchers could show how many users engaged with a piece of content, which groups supercharged the spread of a post and just how often political and medical misinformation went viral on Facebook and Instagram.

Indian markets resume trading after the Independence Day Holiday on Thursday. The Nifty and Nifty Bank are down 0.8% and 1.5% so far for this truncated week and the Nifty has not seen a three-week losing streak since August last year. The GIFT Nifty currently is indicating a gap-up start for our own markets but the question remains, will that gap-up sustain at higher levels.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech addressed crimes against women, and said the ones executing these monstruous deeds must be awarded strict punishment at the earliest. His comments come in view of the recent rape and murder case of a doctor in Kolkata, which is now being probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged all levels of the government, from panchayat to the central government, to work on improving ease of living in a mission mode on August 15. “I appeal to all to work on the ease of living in mission mode. We will have to increase focus on governance reforms and delivery systems. We want to reduce compliance even at the panchayat level,” PM Modi said in his address to the nation from the Red Fort on the occasion of India’s 78th Independence Day.

Ola Electric has forayed into the electric motorcycle space with the launch of its first set of electric motorcycles, the Roadster Series, on Thursday, August 15, at its annual event ‘Sankalp 2024’ at the company’s FutureFactory in Tamil Nadu. The first bike in the series will be the Roadster Pro with an introductory pricing of ₹1.99 lakh, ₹2.49 lakh. The deliveries will start from Diwali 2025. For the June quarter, the company’s net loss widened to ₹347 crore.

Unidentified miscreants entered the premises of state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata shortly after midnight on Thursday (August 15) and vandalised portions of the medical facility, where the body of a woman doctor was found last week, police said. The incident took place amid midnight protests by women against the horrific rape-murder of the doctor at the hospital. According to the police, a group of nearly 40 people, allegedly disguised as protestors, entered the hospital premises, vandalised property and pelted stones at police personnel prompting them to fire teargas to disperse the mob.

Hindustan Zinc’s promoter Vedanta will sell a 3.17% stake in the company via an Offer for Sale (OFS) from August 16-19, 2024. The OFS includes a base size of 1.22% and an oversubscription option of 1.95%. The floor price for the offer is set at ₹486 per share. The offer will be open for non-retail investors on August 16 and for retail investors on August 19. The floor price is a 15% discount to HZL’s closing price on Wednesday. Vedanta had earlier planned a 2.6% stake sale before increasing it to 3.17%.