Shares of cigarette companies have rallied over the past one month, with the three leading cigarette makers ITC, Godfrey Philips and VST Industries hitting record highs. All the three stocks have posted robust returns in the past one year, significantly outperforming the benchmark Sensex, helped by favourable taxation and increase in cost of competing tobacco products.

Unlike previous years, the central government has not increased excise duty on cigarettes in the budget for this fiscal, though states have varyingly raised value added tax (VAT). While northern states such as Rajasthan have significantly raised VAT on cigarettes, all the southern states have spared the sector from a major increase. In contrast, competing tobacco products such as ‘pan masala’ and chewing tobacco have witnessed cost increases in the form of higher taxation and a rise in raw material cost.

Also, prices of tobacco have remained benign compared with higher prices of ‘tendu’ leaves that are used for manufacturing ‘beedis’. The cigarette industry has cashed in on the rise in beedi prices by competitively pricing low-end and micro filter cigarettes to lure ‘beedi’ smokers to cheaper cigarettes. Also, contrary to its earlier plans the government decided to issue less gory pictorial warnings on cigarette packets, which has aided sentiment in the stocks.
In the quarter ended June, VST Industries reported a 90% year-on-year jump in net profit. ITC, which is yet to declare its first quarter earnings, is expected to have witnessed a pick-up in cigarette volumes despite price increases in some of its products. Going forward, the rally in cigarette companies is likely to continue as all factors seem to be positive for the sector.
Analysts expect cigarette companies to report strong earnings growth driven by higher volumes, price increases and lower expenses.

NEW DELHI: The poor financial health of state electricity boards could pose significant business risks for power traders in the country, says rating agency Fitch.

In a report released today, Fitch Ratings said the credit risk of power traders has become “riskier” due to profitability and liquidity constraints faced by state power utilities.

“If these utilities are having liquidity problems which are leading to delays or defaults in their obligation to power traders, then this in turn increases the business risk for power traders,” it noted.

This could lead investors in power trading companies to either seek higher return on the investments or seek alternate avenues for investment.

Leading power traders include PTC India and Tata Power Trading Company.

Going by estimates, over the past four years, the top five trading licensees have controlled over 80 per cent of the market in terms of volumes.
Some of the large loss making state power utilities come from the states for Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh. These are also largest buyers of short-term electricity through power traders, Fitch Ratings said.”The financial health of state power utilities, the major customers of power traders, has deteriorated with aggregate annual book losses widening to Rs 295 billion (Rs 29,500 crore) in FY 10 from Rs 70 billion (Rs 7,000 crore) in FY 06, leading to an increase in counterparty risk,” the report said.

As per Planning Commission‘s estimates, electricity distribution losses totalled a whopping Rs 70,000 crore in 2010-11.

According to Fitch, the biggest short-term buyers — SPUs in Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan — face huge energy deficits with largest cash losses on a revenue and subsidy-realised basis.

“Hence, these states will remain net-buyers on short-term power markets and continue to act as major counterparties for power traders. This increases the risk for undiversified power traders significantly,” it added.

The report pointed out that traders with strong equity base and high cash balance are better placed since they have the buffer to absorb any increase in the working capital cycle in the event of delays or defaults by SPUs.

Director in Fitch’s Asia Pacific Utilities team Salil Garg said the agency expects larger traders to face low business risk due to many factors, including economies of scale and diversified customer base.

Vizio users across the country reported difficulty using their smart televisions Saturday morning, after outage-tracking service Downdetector recorded a sharp spike in complaints beginning around 10 a.m. Eastern time.

Downdetector’s official social media account flagged the surge in reports shortly after the issues began, posting under the hashtag “#VizioDown” and asking affected users to share how the disruption was impacting them. As of the most recent available information, Vizio had not issued a public statement confirming a company-wide outage or detailing its specific cause, though the company has a history of responding to similar disruptions affecting its SmartCast platform, which powers the interface and app functionality on Vizio’s connected televisions.

Users experiencing problems with Vizio devices have historically reported a range of specific symptoms during past SmartCast disruptions, including televisions displaying a persistent loading or spinning icon without ever fully booting into the smart interface, streaming apps failing to load or unexpectedly cutting off mid-broadcast, and difficulty logging into or accessing account-linked features. During a previous SmartCast outage, Vizio confirmed the disruption directly through its official social media account, telling affected customers at the time, “Currently, there is an outage impacting SmartCast TV. We’re working on this right now. You’ll still be able to use the quick buttons on the TV’s remote control and you can cast to the TV. We hope to have this resolved soon but we don’t have a timeframe.”

That kind of company acknowledgment has typically included practical guidance for customers looking for workarounds during an active SmartCast disruption. In past incidents, Vizio has noted that even when the smart interface itself becomes unavailable, physical quick-access buttons on the television’s remote control generally continue to function independently of the SmartCast software layer, allowing users to jump directly to preset streaming apps. Casting content to the television from a separate device, such as a smartphone or tablet, has also historically remained available as an alternative during outages affecting the smart TV’s built-in interface.

Downdetector, the platform used to track and aggregate Saturday morning’s complaints, monitors self-reported user issues across thousands of websites and connected services rather than directly accessing the internal systems of the companies it tracks. Owned by Ookla and launched in 2012, the service currently tracks more than 12,000 services internationally and maintains separate country-specific outage-tracking pages across 45 countries. Because Downdetector relies on aggregated, self-reported complaints rather than direct server-side monitoring, spikes in reported issues can sometimes reflect a genuine, widespread service disruption, while other spikes may instead result from more localized problems affecting specific devices, firmware versions, regions or internet service providers rather than a broader, company-wide outage.

Separate independent monitoring services checking Vizio’s website and related services around the same general timeframe reported mixed results, with some tools indicating the company’s main website was functioning normally while still noting that individual failures remained possible, consistent with the pattern of a disruption concentrated specifically in Vizio’s SmartCast television platform rather than its broader web presence.

Vizio, one of the largest sellers of smart televisions in the United States, has built its business model substantially around SmartCast, the proprietary operating system that powers the streaming and app functionality on its television lineup. The company also generates significant revenue through its Platform+ advertising and data business, which relies on SmartCast’s connectivity to deliver targeted advertising and content recommendations to users, meaning outages affecting the platform can disrupt both the viewing experience for customers and the underlying data and advertising infrastructure the company depends on for a meaningful share of its revenue.

For users experiencing difficulty with their Vizio televisions during the reported disruption, common troubleshooting steps recommended for smart TV connectivity issues include restarting the television by unplugging it from its power source for approximately 30 seconds before plugging it back in, verifying that the television’s Wi-Fi or ethernet connection is functioning properly by testing other connected devices on the same network, and checking for any available software updates once the device successfully reconnects. If the underlying disruption proves to be a service-side issue affecting Vizio’s SmartCast servers rather than a problem specific to an individual user’s television or home network, however, these troubleshooting steps are unlikely to resolve the problem until the company restores normal service on its end.

As of the most recent available information, Vizio had not provided a public timeline for resolving Saturday’s reported issues, and the company had not responded publicly to the elevated volume of complaints registered through Downdetector throughout the morning. Users continuing to experience problems with their Vizio televisions or the SmartCast platform are encouraged to monitor the company’s official social media channels for updates, given the absence of confirmed information directly from Vizio as of Saturday morning.

NEW DELHI: Fitch on Friday said it has withdrawn the ratings on Reliance Capital as the company has decided to stop participating in the agency’s rating process.

“The ratings have been withdrawn as Reliance Capital has chosen to stop participating in the rating process. Therefore, Fitch will no longer have sufficient information to provide ratings or analytical coverage of Reliance Capital,” Fitch Ratings said in a statement.

A leading financial services company Reliance Capital, an Anil Ambani group firm, has interests in diverse areas including asset management, mutual funds, portfolio management services, life and general insurance.

Google pulled a new artificial intelligence image-generation feature from Google Earth on Friday, just one day after launching it globally, after users demonstrated that the tool could be used to fabricate realistic-looking satellite-style imagery superimposed over real, named locations.

The feature, called “Create Image,” used Google’s Nano Banana 2 model, technically known as Gemini 3.1 Flash Image, to generate AI images grounded in actual satellite, aerial and 3D terrain data for any location a user selected within Google Earth’s web platform. Google framed the launch as a creative tool that could let users visualize how a historical landmark once looked, brainstorm urban planning concepts for a vacant lot, or preview real estate development ideas before construction began, distinguishing it from general-purpose AI image generators that start only from a blank text prompt rather than a real, mapped location.

The feature rolled out globally at no additional charge on Thursday, available exclusively through Google Earth’s web version at earth.google.com rather than through the mobile apps, which together account for more than 500 million downloads on the Google Play Store alone. Generated images were watermarked, both visibly and with an embedded invisible marker, and could only be saved within Google Earth projects, without the ability to be directly exported or shared outside the platform, according to Google’s developer documentation.

Those safeguards proved insufficient to prevent misuse once the tool became widely accessible. Digital investigator Henk van Ess demonstrated the feature’s potential for generating misleading content by producing images depicting refugees near the Mexican border, a nuclear facility in Iran, a fatal crash scene in Amsterdam, and a bomb crater near a hospital in Gaza, all superimposed onto real, identifiable map locations within Google Earth’s interface.

The specific interaction model underlying the tool, allowing users to type a text description and have the resulting AI-generated image dropped directly onto a real satellite map location, drew particularly sharp criticism given Google Earth’s established reputation as a widely trusted source of geospatial reference imagery. Journalists routinely use the platform to geolocate conflict footage and verify the authenticity of on-the-ground reporting, human rights investigators use it to corroborate witness accounts of specific events, and academics rely on it as a baseline dataset for geographic and historical research. Layering a generative AI tool directly inside that same interface effectively collapsed the visual distinction between genuine, recorded satellite imagery and synthetic, AI-fabricated imagery within a single trusted platform, a concern critics raised almost immediately after the feature’s rollout.

Google confirmed it was rolling back the feature after becoming aware of screenshots showing generated imagery that the company said appeared to violate its policies. The company said it plans to rebuild the tool with stronger safeguards before any future relaunch, though it has not provided a specific timeline for when a revised version might become available again.

Prior to the rollback, Google had highlighted a range of intended use cases for the tool through its official launch materials, including visualizing historical scenes at real-world landmarks, generating easy-to-read historical infographics tied to specific locations, and exploring conceptual redesigns of public spaces or vacant lots. The company positioned the feature as adding a new creative layer to Google Earth, transforming the platform from a tool that primarily shows users the world as it currently exists into one that also lets them imagine what a given location could become in the future.

Nano Banana 2 sits within a broader family of Google image-generation models of varying capability tiers. It occupies a mid-tier position between the lighter-weight Nano Banana 2 Lite, which can generate standalone images in roughly four seconds through Google’s developer API at a cost of $0.034 per image, and the more capable Nano Banana Pro, which Google has reserved for more complex, professional-grade image rendering tasks.

The rapid rollback comes just days after Google had separately touted the growing role of artificial intelligence within its broader product ecosystem, crediting AI tools with helping identify and fix significantly more bugs within its Chrome browser in June than the company had resolved across the prior two years combined, according to reporting on the company’s recent AI-related announcements.

The Google Earth incident adds to a broader, ongoing debate across the technology industry about how to responsibly deploy increasingly capable generative AI image tools within platforms that carry an established reputation for accuracy and trustworthiness. Watermarking and export restrictions, the two primary safeguards Google built into the initial version of the Nano Banana 2 Earth integration, proved insufficient on their own to prevent the creation of convincing, potentially misleading fabricated imagery tied to real, sensitive locations, underscoring the difficulty technology companies continue to face in balancing creative AI features against the risk of enabling visual misinformation.

With the feature now pulled less than 24 hours after its global debut, Google has not specified what additional guardrails it intends to implement before considering a future relaunch, leaving open questions about whether the underlying tension between creative flexibility and misinformation risk can be fully resolved for a feature integrated directly into one of the world’s most widely used and trusted geospatial reference platforms.

This article was written by

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