CORPORATE AFFAIRS, TECHNOLOGY, E-COMMERCE & CARS
1. Japan's SoftBank Group -the biggest investor in troubled Indian online marketplace Snapdeal -said it has incurred a loss of over Rs 9,000 crore (160.42 billion yen or $1.41 billion) from its investments in the country's Internet commerce sector. The Masayoshi Son-led telecom and media conglomerate on Wednesday attributed a large part of the overall loss to its investments in Snapdeal, besides ride-hailing app Ola. The disclosure -a part of its full-year results -comes even as SoftBank is negotiating the sale of Snapdeal to bigger rival Flipkart and seeking separate buyers for its payments arm FreeCharge. Market share positions of both Snapdeal and FreeCharge have suffered over the past few months as the company has initiated cost cuts and layoffs.The Gurgaon-based company, valued at a high of $6.5 billion in February last year, is estimated to be seeking a sale price of about $1 billion. “(The) highly competitive ecommerce market in India has made a trend of the company's business performance lower than initially anticipated,“ SoftBank said in an official statement. The special loss of ¥114.059 billion, or about $1 billion, represented impairments on its investments in subsidiaries and associates, including Starfish I Pte Ltd, through which it owns 33% in Snapdeal, the Tokyo-headquartered group said. Starfish I, an intermediate holding company, owns preferred shares in Jasper Infotech, which owns and operates Snapdeal. Snapdeal's weaker performance had led to “a material decrease in net asset value of Starfish I Pte Ltd as of March 31, 2017, and therefore, SBG impaired the carrying amo unt of its shares in the company, to the amount equivalent to its net asset value“, the statement said. Ola suffered a drop in valuation last year from the peak of $5 billion in November 2015 to $3 billion late last year, when it raised $250 million from SoftBank. But since then the Bengaluru-based startup, which competes with Uber, has managed to raise capital from Ratan Tata's RNT Capital and New York-based hedge fund Falcon Edge at a higher valuation. SoftBank is one of the biggest investors in India's digital commerce market, having sunk in nearly $2 billion across companies such as Snapdeal -in which it has invested $900 million -as well as Ola, grocery delivery app Grofers and hotel room aggregator Oyo.
2. Alibaba Group-backed Paytm has signed a non-exclusive term sheet to acquire rival FreeCharge, the digital payments platform owned and operated by beleaguered online marketplace Snapdeal, in what is expected to be an all-cash deal in the range of $45-90 million.
3. Carlsberg said its India business dragged down volume growth in Asia. But for India, volumes would have grown 2%, the Danish brewer said. This is the first instance of a global liquor firm commenting on the impact of the highway liquor ban.
4. Hero MotoCorp posted a nearly 14% fall in fourthquarter net profit, hurt by sluggish demand for two-wheelers post demonetisation.
5. The base variant of French carmaker Renault's popular SUV Duster sold in India has failed crash test conducted by vehicle safety group Global NCAP . The crash tests conducted by UK-based Global NCAP revealed that the model recorded zero stars for adult occupant protection. The crash test showed that due to the lack of airbags the driver injuries would have been “unacceptably high“. The second set of crash test results conducted on Renault Duster SUV by Global New Car Assessment Programme (NCAP) found the basic variant of the SUV (STD variant) which is sold without airbags, recording an abysmal zero stars for adult occupant protection. The crash test showed that due to the lack of airbags the driver injuries would have been unacceptably high. The same variant of the Duster scored 2 stars for rear seat child occupant rear seat child occupant protection.
6. Myntra.com said that its parent company , Flipkart, had hiked its annual budget by a quarter in a bid to bolster Myntra's position as the country's largest online fashion retailer. The hike comes amid reports earlier this year that Flipkart intends to cut its annual outlay for Myntra. “This year we got 25% extra money from the Flipkart board,“ said Ananth Narayanan, chief executive of Myntra that was acquired by Flipkart for $300 million in 2014. He declined to specify Myntra's total annual budget. Narayanan said Myntra would use the additional money to upgrade technology and to also invest in 3-4 small to medium ethnic brands to ramp up the company's ethnic offerings.
7. Automakers are expected to invest $8-10 billion Rs 51,600-64,500 crore) in India over the (` next three-four years to set up factories and expand production in a market that is set to become the third-largest for passenger vehicles by the turn of the decade. The investment will boost production of cars, utility vehicles and vans in India by 1.3-1.5 million units a year and generate employment for 20,00025,000 people, said industry insiders and experts. India market leader Maruti Suzuki and parent Suzuki, Korea-based Hyundai Motor and unit Kia Motors, Chinese manufactures SAIC, Changan and Beiqi Foton, as well as Italy's Fiat are among companies that are expected to drive the investment. These will be in addition to more than `1 lakh crore that automakers are set to spend on upgrading vehicles to meet new safety and emission standards. Annual passenger vehicle sales in India, currently the fifth-largest market, topped the three-million mark for the first time in fiscal year ended March 31, growing in the double digits. With a fast expanding economy, rising disposable income and increasing need for mobility, India is fore cast to post annual passenger vehicles sales of more than five million by the end of the decade. The passenger vehicles industry currently has a production capacity of more than 5.5 million, according to industry sources. While a few facilities are running below capacity, some companies are utilising India as a base for exporting vehicles. Japan's Suzuki Motor is particularly aggressive with its investment plans, encouraged by the solid performance of Maruti, which has single-handedly driven growth in the industry in the past five years. Suzuki is likely to infuse $780 million in a third factory in Gujarat by 2020, taking its cumulative investment in the state to more than $1.5 billion. Maruti, which accounts for almost half the Indian market, will sell the vehicles manufactured by its parent in India, as the local entity aims to double sales. “We have taken 35 years to reach annual sales mark of 1.5 million units. I do not think it will take as long to sell another 1.5 million vehicles, may be not even 10 years,“ said Maruti chairman RC Bhargava. Separately, Maruti will be investing Rs 1,900 crore for its second phase of expansion at an R&D centre in Rohtak, Haryana, which will be commissioned in early 2019. The company has a capital expenditure plan of Rs 4,500 crore for the current fiscal year. Maruti is sitting on cash reserves of Rs 23,000 crore. The company has said it will invest aggressively to procure land for doubling its sales and service network by 2020. With Suzuki investing in the Gujarat facility, Maruti is free to put its own resources in rapidly expanding the sales and service network. Kia, the Hyundai subsidiary, last month announced a $1.1billion investment to set up a factory in Andhra Pradesh. Hyundai Motor India plans to invest $2 billion on products alone and is eyeing output of one-million units out of India by 2020-2021. The company, which is operating at 95% capacity, may utilise the Kia factory to meet increased volume requirement in the near future, but people in the know said it has already given feelers to the Tamil Nadu government for the next phase of expansion. Its current facility is situated near Chennai. The automotive industry, including component manufacturing, is estimated to grow to Rs 16.16-18.18 lakh crore by 2026, according to estimates by industry body Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers Association.
8. Walmart Stores is preparing to pay roughly $300 million to resolve a long-running US investigation into allegations of bribery by its employees, according to people familiar with the matter.
9. Air India Express is in discussions with Dubai-based flydubai for collaboration opportuni ties, including code share among their flights. The move comes at a time when AI Express, which operates a significant number of flights to Gulf nations, is working on ways to spread its wings further. Part of the Air India group, the carrier has plans to fly to new destinations. An official said the airline is discussing ways to collaborate with flydubai for possible sales and marketing beyond Dubai.Various options, including code share of flights and interline agreement, are being looked at, the official added.
10. Hotel room aggregator Oyo has plans to add 200 `townhouse hotels' across the country by December. “We have plans to add over 200 town house hotels across the country, including 60 hotels across seven cities in the South by end of 2017,“ Oyo founder and CEO Ritesh Agarwal told reporters here. He also said 25 of these 60 will come up in Telangana. Oyo on Wednesday launched a townhouse hotel in upmarket Jubilee Hills area here making it the fifth hotel in the portfolio which was launched in January.
11. Zee Group's direct-to-home (DTH) service arm Dish TV has got clearance from the Competition Commission of India for its proposed merger with Videocon d2h. “The CCI has intimated the company that it in its meeting held on May 4, 2017, considered the proposed combination and has accorded its approval to the said combination,“ the company said in a statement. It has already received approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India, NSE and BSE for the merger. Dish TV, as per directions of the National Company Law Tribunal, has convened shareholders' meeting on May 12 to secure their approval.
12. A new Samsung patent appears to indicate that the company is working on a Bixbyequipped smart speaker in the vein of the Amazon Echo. The filing shows a screen mounted above a slimline tripod suggesting the device will be equipped with a display much like the recently announced Amazon Echo Show and Apple's rumored Siri speaker.
13. 3 m miles Total miles logged by self-driving car firm Waymo on public roads.
14. International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private investment arm of World Bank, is making an equity investment of $10 million in Stellaris Venture Partners' maiden fund, it announced in a disclosure. This is the third funding commitment by IFC in an India-focused VC fund this year. The commitment comes a few months after Stellaris, which was started by former top executives at Helion Venture Partners, made the first close of its $100-million fund earlier this year. Stellaris raised $50 million from the likes of the Small Industries Development Bank of India (Sidbi) and Infosys among several individual investors, institutional investors and family offices. The next close is expected by June, IFC said in its disclosure. IFC had recently committed an equity investment of $3 million in pi Ventures, a fund focused on startups working on artificial intelligence and Internet of Things, through its IFC Startup Catalyst programme. In January, it had proposed a $20-million investment in IDG Ventures India's third fund, which recently made a final close of its $200-million fund. Even while VC funding in the Indian startup space slowed down last year, venture funds dedicated to India raised $2.2 billion in 2016, compared with $1.5 billion the year before, as per data from Venture Intelligence.
15. Bengaluru-based IT firm Happiest Minds Technologies announced the acquisition of Cupola Technology -a specialised IoT (internet of things) services company. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed. The company had been scouting for acquisitions in the IoT domain after it hit profitability last year.This is the company's first acquisition, while a second acquisition is close in pipeline and most likely to be announced this year.
Cupola Technology was founded in 2011 by Ajay Agrawal and Huzefa Saifee. It's 100-member team is now a part of Happiest Minds Technology. Founded by former Mindtree Chairman Ashok Soota in 2011, Happiest Minds has a revenue run rate of $75 million. Early this year, Soota had announced that the company is scouting for acquisitions that comple ment their business. He said the these will be up to $10 million in size as the company wants to utilise its own cash for acquisitions.
16. PayU, the Naspersowned global payments company, has invested $120 million in German alternative lending startup Kreditech, and the deal will see the Peter Thiel and IFC-backed startup entering India and working with PayU India on launching its credit product in the country. Kreditech gives long-duration, large-ticket loans to consumers with lower purchasing power and uses its own technology to underwrite loans. It was launched in 2012 and has so far raised funding from JC Flowers, Peter Thiel, Rakuten and the World Bank's IFC. The PayU investment is an extension of the company's Series-C round. The startup has been focused on European markets and is present in Netherlands, Poland, Spain, as well as Russia. With this investment, the company will further focus on international expansion starting with India, Alexander Graubner-Müller, CEO of Kreditech, told ET. Kreditech has earlier worked with PayU in Poland, where it developed point-of-sale products and online cardless EMI products.
17.Fintech startup EarlySalary has raised $4 million in a Series-A round from IDG Ventures India and Dewan Housing Finance (DHFL), a non-banking financial company. The Pune-based startup offers salary advance loans to young, salaried professionals.
EarlySalary CEO Akshay Meh rotra said the funds will be used to achieve 50,000 loans a month by the year-end compared to 4,000 loans processed a month at present. The firm had earlier ra ised $1.5 million in a seed round from Ashok Agarwal of Trans corp Group in 2015. This is IDG's second investment in the digital lending space after CreditMantri and its 63rd investment overall, according to Karthik Prabhakar, director and head of fundraising at IDG Ventures India.
18. ION Energy, an energy storage startup, has received an undisclosed amount of angel funding from a clutch of investors. Sushil Jiwarajka, chairman of OMC Power, Aakrit Vaish and Swapan Rajdev, cofounders of Haptik, and executives from Times Internet, Dentsu Aegis, Salesforce and Credit Suisse, among others who participated in this funding round. ION Energy specialises in creating a layer of infrastructure to enable the adoption of electric vehicles in India. It leverages proprietary enhancements to the Lithiumion tech in its energy storage systems. The funds will be used for product development and taking the product towards its formal manufacturing.
ION is looking to deliver a better price per kilometre, five-six times better acceleration, 10-12 times longer life and faster charging time, compared to existing options, according to a release from the startup.
19. Novelis, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hindalco Industries, sold a 50% stake in its Ulsan facility in South Korea to Kobe Steel for $315 million (Rs 2,033 crore), creating an equally owned joint venture with the Japanese producer of aluminium roll. The transaction is expected to close by September this year. The Ulsan plant employs around 600 people.
20. Novelis posted a net income of $47 million, compared with $29 million a year earlier, helped in part by lower interest expense brought about by long-term debt refinancing actions taken during fiscal 2017.
21. Bharti Airtel will be focused on cost controls and cornering a majority share of all 4G devices entering the Indian market to its data network and spend $2.5 billion in capex in a bid to stave off the stiff challenge posed by new entrant Reliance Jio Infocomm.
22. A war of words has broken out between handset makers and telecom players over call quality. Handset makers have rejected allegations by carriers that the poor quality of mobile phones was responsible for call drops. The Indian Cellular Association has written to telecom department to refrain from further regulating the already `over-regulated' sector, ad ding that phones sold in India followed laid down norms. “We would like to reiterate the handset industry is already over-regulated and should not be subject to any more regulations,“ ICA said, adding that inadequate infrastructure set up by carriers was causing call drops. The Cellular Operators Association of India had asked the government to chalk out a mechanism to control the quality of mobile handsets in India as it had not considered the role of devices in service quality and call drops.
23. Tata Chemicals announced on Wednesday it will acquire a facility of Unnati Inorganics for Rs 34.20 crore on a slump sale basis. The acquisition is a part Rs 295 crore investment approved by of the ` the Tata Chemicals' board earlier in February 2017, it said in a BSE filing. “Tata Chemicals has on May 9, 2017, signed a business transfer agreement with Unnati lnorganics to acquire their undertaking of precipitated silica operation, on a slump sale basis, for the consideration of Rs 34.20 crore,“ the company said.
24. Drug firm Zydus Cadila said on Wednesday it has received a favourable judgement from a US federal court in a patent infringement case paving the way for company to launch its generic product in the American market. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has affirmed judgement in favour of Zydus Pharmaceuticals (USA) Inc, holding that its proposed generic version of Lialda does not infringe a US Patent, the company said in a statement.
25. Tata Motors said ex-SBI chairman O P Bhatt has been appointed as an additional and independent director on its board. The board of directors yesterday approved the appointment of O P Bhatt as an additional and independent director with effect from May 9, 2017 for a tenure of five years, Tata Motors said in a BSE filing. Bhatt also serves as director on the boards of group firms Tata Consultancy Services and Tata Steel. Last year in November, he briefly served as Chairman of Tata Steel after Cyrus Mistry was ousted as Chairman of Tata Sons.
26. Sounding a note of caution on the MCI move asking doctors to prescribe only generic medicines, CII president Shobana Kamineni has said poor quality of drugs could be dangerous for patients.Kamineni, who is also executive vice chairperson of Apollo Hospitals Enterprises, pitched for making India a major medical tourism destination to “heal the world“. During an interaction with PTI, she also made a strong case for promoting traditional medicines like Ayurveda.
27. Bolstered by predictions of a normal monsoon by the India Meteorological Department, stocks of consumer companies like Hindustan Unilever, Emami closed between 2% and 4.6% higher on Wednesday, while the BSE FMCG index rose 1.81%. Analysts said though consumer companies with a broad rural focus will benefit from increased rural spending power given a healthy monsoon, valuations of these companies do not offer comfort. Traders, however, expect the bullishness in FMCG stocks to continue.
28. HDFC Bank, India's largest bank by market capitalisation, has raised about Rs7,500-8,000 crore by selling perpetual bonds to institutional investors through the electronic bidding process on NSE. With this bond sale, it has perhaps become the largest ever issuance of perpetual bonds, dealers said. The bank was earlier planning to raise only Rs 5,000 crore, reported a few weeks ago. The bonds have offered 8.85% interest rate with a fiveyear call option, an exit route for investors. Perpetual bonds, known as additional tier-I papers in market parlance, do not have any fixed maturity.
29. Union Bank of India (UBI) plans to raise a total of Rs 6,350 crore by selling bonds and shares in FY18 as it looks to shore up capital to be ready for an acquisition if the government decides to merge small public sector banks with itself, chairman Arun Tiwari said.
30. Natco Pharma on Wednesday said it has launched a blood cancer drug in the Indian market priced between Rs 5,000-20,000, a 98% discount compared to what it is sold at in the US. It has launched a generic version of pomalidomide 1 mg, 2 mg, and 4 mg capsules in India, it said in a filing to the BSE here. Pomalidomide is for patients with multiple myeloma . It has priced the medicine of 1 mg, 2 mg, and 4 mg apsules at Rs 5,000, Rs 10,000 Rs 20,000 respectively for a capsules at Rs 5,000, Rs 10,000 Rs 20,000 respectively for a monthly pack of 21 capsules. Natco will market generic pomalidomide capsules under its brand name Pomalid in India.
31. Indians could soon have Tata Group's ready-to-eat food on its plate as India's largest conglomerate may soon be entering the market dominated by the likes of ITC, MTR and Patanjali. Tata Industries, a holding company for new-age businesses, formed a division for the same in March.It will look at manufacturing and marketing vegetarian, non-vegetarian, non-alcoholic, carbonated and non-carbonated food products.
The company confirmed the development but said the project right now is in experimental stages, which may or may not evolve into a business in the future.
32. Policybazaar, an online and digital platform to sell insurance policies, is looking to raise around Rs 400 crore, largely from existing investors such as PremjiInvest, Tiger Global, Ribbit Capital and Temasek. The company expects to complete the process in six weeks. Policybazaar has turned profitable in the financial year ended March 31, 2017, and is expected to turn in net profit of about Rs 50 crore during the financial year ended March 31, 2018. Policybazaar was valued at over Rs 2,200 crore, according to the last ` deal, when Temasek bought a sta ke and Intel exited. In the last financial year, the company had revenues of Rs 210 crore.In 2016, Intel Capital had exited Policybazaar by selling its stake to , Tiger Global, which is the single largest investor, with more than 30% stake. Info Edge owns 18%. In April 2015, the company had raised Rs 300 crore from PremjiInvest, Steadview Capital, Ribbit Capital, and Tiger Global.Dahiya has explored listing the company in the current financial year. “We will be listing ready by October this year from the compliances point of view,“ said Dahiya.
33. India has for the first time signed a contract to import LPG from Iran as it looks at additional sources of cooking fuel to meet rising domestic demand. State-owned oil firms will import one very large gas carrier (VLGC), or 44,000 tonnes, per month for an initial sixmonth period, industry sources said. India imports almost a million tonnes of LPG every month to meet rising demand. LPG consumption in 2016-17 rose 9.8% to 21.55 million tonnes. Of this, 11million tonnes came from imports.
34. Boosted by pickup in demand, India's 12 major ports saw cargo traffic increase by 6.27% to 55.75 million tonnes (MT) in April, the first month of the current fiscal. These top ports under the Centre had handled 52.46 MT cargo in April 2016. Increased demand from sectors like iron ore, coking coal and container traffic resulted in higher movement of cargo last month to 55.75 MT, as per the Indian Ports Association. Iron ore traffic volumes were up 40% to 5.37 MT during the month as against 3.82 MT in April 2016 while coking coal volumes surged by 15% to 4.61 MT.
35. Volkswagen on Wednesday rejected investor calls for the carmaker to publish the results of a key inves-tigation into its diesel emissions cheating scandal, saying it was unable to do so for legal reasons.Investment advi-sory firm Hermes EOS said on Tuesday the findings of a company-commissioned probe by US law firm Jones Day should be disclosed, and would allow Volkswagen to move on from its biggest-ever corporate crisis. “There is no written concluding report by Jones Day and there will not be one,“ VW chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch said at the company's annual shareholder meeting. “I ask for your understanding that VW for legal reasons is prevented from publishing such a final report,“ he told the gathering of about 3,000 shareholders. VW initially pledged to inform shareholders about the findings of the Jones Day report, but has since abandoned this plan.
36. SAP said on Wednesday its executive pay system was reasonable, defending management bonuses against the criticism of some shareholders.“Our executive payment must be seen in comparison with other soft-ware companies and must be competitive,“ SAP's co-founder and supervisory board Chairman Hasso Plattner told the company's annual shareholders' meeting.“We think we have a reasonable system,“ he added. Leading shareholder advisors have called on SAP investors to oppose the supervisory board of Europe's largest technology com-pany on the issue of executive pay.
37. Apple Inc became the first US company with a market value of more $800 billion as investors bet the next iPhone will spur a resurgence in sales. The stock rose 1% on Tuesday to close at $153.99 in New York, giving it a market capitalisation of about $803 billion. The shares have gained 33% since the start of the year, helped by a buyback programme that CEO Tim Cook extended to total $210 billion last week, from $175 billion last year. Apple's rise to the top of the world's largest equity market highlights the emergence of mobile technology and the relative decline of the oil industry in recent years.Exxon Mobil Corp's value peaked in the fall of 2007, when oil prices climbed toward $100 a barrel. In November of that year, PetroChina Co briefly became the first global company with a market capitalisation of more than $1 trillion.
38. Toyota on Wednesday reported its first drop in annual net profit for five years, while the Japanese car giant unexpectedly warned that the cost of customer incentives and a further pickup in the yen threatened to dig further into its bottom line. The downbeat forecast underscores how Japan's automakers, including rivals Nissan and Honda, have benefited heavily from a slump in the currency in recent years. But sharp yen gains at the start of the past fiscal year -largely driven by Brexit and tumbling world equity markets -took a bite out of Toyota's latest results. On Wednesday, the Corolla and Prius hybrid maker warned it expected more currency pain this business year, while incentives in the lucrative North American market pushed operating profit in the region down about 35%. Overall, Toyota posted a net profit of 1.83 trillion yen ($16 billion) on slightly lower revenue of 27.6 trillion yen in the recently ended year to March -more than 20% down from a record 2.31 trillion yen net profit the previous year. Toyota, which lost its crown last year to Volkswagen as the world's top-selling automaker, warned it expects a net profit of 1.5 trillion yen in the current year to March 2018 -way off market expectations of around 1.9 trillion yen. Vehicle sales in the past fiscal year ticked up to 10.25 million units from 10.09 million a year earlier.
39. Tech Mahindra is set to let go of about 1,500 employees, or close to 1.2% of its workforce, following in the footsteps of bigger rivals such as Infosys, Wipro and Cognizant, all of which are in the process of doing big layoffs as protectionist policies in the US and new technologies shake up the $150-billion Indian IT sector. Tech Mahindra, the country's fifth largest IT services provider, had 117,095 employees across 90 countries till the third quarter, which ended December 31. The company , which will announce its fourth quarter results this month, has a majority of its employees in India.
40. US apparel chain GAP will manufacture and sell locally in India to counter mounting competition from its European rivals Zara and Hennes & Mauritz (H&M).
41. Video intelligence startup Vidooly has bagged a funding of $1.4 million (Rs 8.9 crore) from GVFL and Times Internet in a series A round. Founded by Nishant Radia, Subrat Kar and Ajay Mishra, Vidooly is an online video intelligence software platform for content creators, brands, multi-channel networks, agencies & media companies. Since its inception, over 20,000 video-content creators globally have signed up on its platform. Everyday , Vidooly's big data engine analyses the engagement of over 500 million viewers and tracks 250 million videos. Some of its clients include Fine Brothers, TVF, OML, VideoGyan, GroupM, Mindshare, Thoughtful Media and WebTV Asia, among others.
42. At a time when critical financial services firms across the globe are facing cyber security threats almost on a daily basis, Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and global technology major IBM have signed a multimillion dollar agreement to boost the bourse's IT security. Under this five-year contract, IBM will use its global expertise to secure trading engine, data and hardware for all of BSE's current trading platforms like stocks, bonds, derivatives, mutual funds and also the planned ones like commodities.
POLITICS, ECONOMY, CRIMES, SPORTS, ENTERTAINMENT & NEWS AROUND THE WORLD
1. The new ordinance that empowers RBI to nudge banks to deal with stressed assets will improve transparency and provide higher assurance when dealing with bad loans, said Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairman, State Bank of India (SBI).India's largest lender had lobbied to involve government agencies in dealing with bad loans.
2. India is fast-tracking a project to connect Kashmir valley with the rest of the country by rail, which will enable trains to operate between New Delhi and Srinagar in 14 hours flat. The railway line could become functional in four years.
3. The defence ministry has finalised the road map for selection of private sector companies for mega military production orders, with an elaborate procedure spelt out in a new policy to be unveiled this week.
4. Banks can initiate loan recovery proceedings without waiting for an account to be formally classified as nonperforming, as the latest amendments to banking rules allow for faster resolution.
5. Terrorists abducted and shot dead Ummer Fayaz Parray, a 22-year-old Army lieutenant, in Shopian district of south Kashmir on Tuesday night.Parray was abducted from a family wedding.
6. In a top-level bureaucratic reshuffle, the government appointed Sanjay Mitra as defence secretary and gave IT secretary Aruna Sundararajan additional charge of the telecom department.
7. Stocks continued their record-setting pace on Wednesday with the Nifty closing above the psychologically crucial 9,400 mark after the Met department upped its forecast for a normal monsoon this year. The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Tuesday that the monsoon this year could be normal and 100% of the long-period average (LPA), up from its earlier forecast of `near normal' and 96% of the LPA. The chances of the dreaded El Nino, which caused two consecutive droughts in 2014 and 2015, returning this year are not very high, IMD said. The Nifty jumped at the news, ending up 90.45 points at 9,407.30 after scaling an all-time high of 9,414.75 during the day. The Sensex gained the most since March 14, ending up 314.92 points at 30,248.17 off a fresh life high of 30,271.60 during the session.
8. India had no other legal option but to approach the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to get reprieve for Kulbhushan Jadhav as all other legal means in Pakistan to save him had dried up, said persons familiar with the case and legal processes between the two countries. Jadhav, who had been sentenced to death by a Pakistan military court for charges of spying, had been finding it difficult to get any kind of justice in Pakistan, and had not been able to find a lawyer to fight his case there. The Lahore High Court Bar Association, ostensibly under pressure from the Pakistani Army , had even threatened to cancel the membership of any lawyer who extended his services to Jadhav .
9. Vendors in Assam's Joniya constituency have found a new place to sell their vegetables in All India United Democratic Front's office. After last year's electoral drubbing, hardly any party leaders visited the office, following which vendors turned the office itself into a shop.
10. While almost every other campus in Kashmir erupted with sudden student protests in April, NIT Srinagar maintained complete calm. The institute, which ran into a student conflict and had to be shut down last year amid considerable unrest, managed to keep peace and calm and continued to hold classes.
11. Working during the summer recess of the court has made a section of lawyers unhappy. “The heat is killing this time,“ they complained. The lawyers feel SC should have taken this into account before listing important matters for hearing in the first half of the vacation beginning May 11.The court has over the years whittled down its holidays in response to public criticism. That wasn't resented, but the heat this time appeared to have made all the difference.
12. Meghalaya's arts and culture minister Ronnie Lyngdoh recently set an example on punctuality.As a chief guest of a programme -to mark the 156th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore -the minister reached U Soso Tham auditorium five minutes before schedule. But left it soon as the organisers failed to start the programme on time. Some lesson for the organisers on time management.
13. After staging a `live' demonstration in Delhi Assembly on Tuesday to show that Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) could be easily rigged, AAP has now decided to initiate a campaign seeking the use of machines equipped with voterverifiable paper audit trail or VVPAT in all future elections. Party leaders said the campaign called `Save Democracy Movement' will begin from May 11.Despite the Election Commission's assertions that its EVMs are tamperproof, the first protest will be held by AAP workers right at the the door step of the Election Commission on Thursday . AAP's newly appointed Delhi conve nor Gopal Rai added that the party would participate in the all-party meeting called by the EC on the issue on May 12 and will decide the next course of action based on its outcome.
14. A pan-India homebuyers' pressure group, `Fight for RERA', has reached out to the Maharashtra government over the issue of dilution in the state's rules under Real Estate Regulatory Act (RERA). The group has sought Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis' intervention to revoke the Maharashtra Real Estate Rules and notify fresh rules similar to the ones notified on October 31, 2016, by the Ministry of HUPA for Union Territories without legislatures. The RERA rules notified for Union Territories are being viewed as undiluted version of central rules aimed at protecting homebuyers' interest as envisioned by the Act.
15. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which till recently was keen on holding mid-term polls in Maharashtra, is now having second thoughts on the issue because of altered political equations in the state, especially because of the coming closer of Congress, NCP and Shiv Sena, which might make the going a bit tough for the BJP. BJP leaders reckon that midterm polls may not be such a good idea now.
16. Dalits and Muslims in Saharanpur have traditionally voted for BSP, however, in the recently held polls BJP won 4 of the 7 seats in the district. Charge of district given to top minister SP Shahi.
17. The BSP has expelled its Muslim face Naseemuddin Siddiqui and his son from the party for carrying out “anti-party“ activities, prompting the sacked MLC to hit back at party supremo Mayawati. Hours after he and his son Afzal were shown the door, Naseemuddin said, “Whatever charges have been levelled against me, applies to her (Mayawati) and I can prove those with evidence“. BSP General Secretary and Rajya Sabha member S C Mishra said, “Naseemuddin and his son Afzal have been expelled from the party .He has a partnership in a number of slaughter houses and `benami' properties in his name. He also took money during assembly polls due to which party had to suffer defeat“. He also alleged that Naseemuddin used to “accept money“ from people in return for work and added that the “BSP will not tolerate such indiscipline“. Naseemuddin, who hails from Banda, was earlier removed as the party in-charge of UP and was ap pointed as MP unit in-charge after the assembly poll debacle.
18. Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday spoke to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and both agreed to meet in Delhi early next week, as part of Gandhi's efforts to forge a broader unity among Opposition parties against BJP and field a joint Opposition presidential candidate.
19. Chief Justice of India JS Khehar on Wednesday held out hope for a manipulation-free digital case-filing process, shortly after Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Integrated Case Management Information System (ICMIS) to help the apex court go paperless. . Though e-fling is already permitted and in use despite resistance from certain sections of lawyers, the new digital filing takes it to the next level, obviating the need to file any litigation papers except at the entry level and then back it up with additional information as the case goes forward to the appellate stages. Additionally , it will make it difficult for anyone, including court staff and lawyers to tamper with the process or manipulate filing dates. The CJI held out this promise to all, promising to this first to the high courts and later the district courts. The PM endorsed the judiciary's massive digital push to make the justice delivery mechanism more transparent, efficient and economical. The new system would now be available on the Supreme Court website.
20. Trinamoool Congress and CPM are likely to vote for a common presidential candidate of Opposition parties although they are rivals in West Bengal.Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee indicated this recently to party insiders. She reportedly told partymen that her sole intention was to thwart BJP's growth in Bengal and fight the party politically at the national level.
21. A proposal by India's food regulator to tax all packaged foods with high fat, sugar and salt content isn't going down well with companies and restaurants. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) proposed the tax on Monday . Although a rate hasn't been specified, it would bring almost all processed food items under the ambit of the proposed levy if implemented. Some companies were sceptical about the move.
22. The new fiscal year began on a sour note for bank credit growth, which slipped to 4.32%in the fortnight to April 28, much lower than the 63-year low level of 5.08% in fiscal 2017, the latest RBI data showed. In the reporting fortnight, credit grew at an anaemic 4.32% to Rs 75.45 trillion as against the Rs 72.32 trillion in the same period. For the fiscal ending March 2017, credit growth had plunged to a multi decadal low of 5.08% with an outstanding loans at Rs 78.81 trillion as against Rs 75.01 trillion on Arpil 1, 2016.
23. The National Green Tribunal has directed an inspection team headed by Central Pollution Control Board to inform it about the mechanism of e-waste collection and transport at the premises of power distribution companies here. The inspection committee has ben directed to see whether electronic waste from their premises have been removed. During the hearing, the joint committee filed the inspection report which said in most of the premises of discoms, e-waste was not found stored anywhere except the premises of Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited at Mangolpuri here.
24. President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey amid the agency's investigation of Russian interference in last year's election, saying the bureau needed new leadership to restore “public trust and confidence“. Trump's decision on Tuesday means that he will get to nominate Comey's successor while the agency is deep into the Russia inquiry, including whether any of Trump's associates colluded with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election.Democrats condemned Comey's dismissal, calling it an effort to cut short the Russia probe and demanding the appointment of a special prosecutor to carry it forward.
25. At least seven civilians, including two women and three children, were killed in a roadside bomb blast in Af-ghanistan's western Herat province, police said on Wednesday. The blast occurred in Adraskan district on Tuesday when a vehicle running along a main road touched off an IED and the explosion killed all the people aboard the vehicle, provincial police spokesman Abdul Ahad Walizada said.The victims were members of the same family, Tolo News reported. Walizada blamed Taliban militants for planting the IED in the district, south of provincial capital Herat city, 640 kilometres west of the Afghan capital.However, no group has claimed responsibility for the bombing so far.
26. President Trump described an Oval Office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as “very, very good“ on Wednesday, claiming progress on ending the conflict in Syria. “We had a very, very good meeting“ Trump said shortly after the meeting.“We're going to stop the killing and the death (in Syria).“ Lavrov on Wednesday became the most senior Russian official to meet Trump since he came to office, and the most high-profile Kremlin official to visit the White House in years. It is rare for a foreign minister -or any non-head of state representing a foreign country -to be given a meeting in the Oval Office.
27. South Korea's new president was sworn in on Wednesday, just a day after a landslide election victory, and immediately declared his willingness to visit Pyongyang amid high tensions with the nuclear-armed North. Left-leaning Moon Jae-In, a former human rights lawyer, backs engagement with North Korea in the quest for peace -in contrast to the threatening rhetoric from the Trump administration in recent weeks. “I will also go to Beijing and Tokyo and even Pyongyang in the right circumstances.“
28. Solar power tariffs in India reached another historic low of `2.62 per kwH, becoming cheaper than those at many coal-fired plants, at the latest auction at the Adani Renewable Energy Park in Rajasthan. The winners of the 250-MW projects auctioned by the Solar Energy Corp of India (SECI) was Phelan Energy Group of South Africa, which won 50 MW at `2.62 per unit, Avaada Power that won 100 MW at `2.62, and SBG Cleantech, which was awarded the remaining 100 MW at a tariff one paisa higher at `2.63 per kwH. Avaada Power was set up by Vineet Mittal, who formerly headed Welspun's renewables business before it was sold to Tata Power. SBG Cleantech is the joint venture of Japan's Softbank, Taiwan's Foxcomm, and Bharti Airtel. Formed in June 2015, SBG Cleantech is already building 350 MW in Andhra Pradesh, which it won through an NTPC conducted auction in December 2015. South African solar energy major Phelan Energy Group makes its debut in India with this project. It has commissioned a 175 MW solar project in South Africa, and through its subsidiary Solar Capital, is building numerous other plants across five continents. The winning bid was considerably below the lowest bid so far of `3.15 per kwH, at an NTPC auction of 250 MW at the Kadapa Solar Park in Andhra Pradesh on April 13 this year. Before that, the lowest achieved was `2.97 per kwH in the first year, followed by five paise tariff escalation for the next 15 years, which worked out to a mean tariff of `3.30 per kwH over 25 years.This was at a 750 MW auction at Rewa Solar Park, Madhya Pradesh, in February , conducted by the state government. There were 14 bidders in all, with bids ranging from `2.62 to `3.59 per kwH. None of the bidders sought viability gap funding (VGF), a concession the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy gives to developers of renewable energy . The Adani Renewable Energy Park is located at Bhadla, a site that enjoys the highest solar radiation in the country .The capacity utilisation factor (CUF) of solar projects located in this region is relatively high, because of which tariffs for projects here have been setting progressively lower records.
29. The uncertainty looming large over Shashank Manohar's tenure as ICC chairman ended today after the former BCCI president made it clear that he will complete his term which runs till June 2018. “The International Cricket Council (ICC) today confirmed Shashank Manohar will continue to function as the Independent Chairman of ICC until the end of his elected term which is June 2018,“ ICC stated. Last March, Manohar had decided to step down from chairman's post citing “personal reasons“ only to be persuaded by the ICC directors -both Full Members and Associates -to stay. Initially, Manohar wanted to stay only till ICC Annual Conference in June this year but very recently he has had a change of heart.
30. In Vivo IPL 2017 Delhi Daredevils Won against Gujarat Lions.
31. On the back of a normal monsoon forecast, both the Nifty and sensex rallied to new all-time highs on Wednesday . The sensex jumped 315 points, to close at 30,248, while the Nifty , too, closed higher at 9,407. The day's gains added about Rs 1.1lakh crore to investors' wealth.
32. A four-month-old baby from Kalyan born with a major heart defect is all set to go home after a two-month stay at the Parel hospital where she underwent a 12-hour surgery and survived six heart attacks. She was diagnosed with a condition called transposition of great arteries.
33. The 23-year-old son of Andhra Pradesh minister P Narayana died after his Mercedes Benz SUV rammed into a Metro pier in Hyderabad on Wednesday. Nishith was returning home with a friend when he lost control of the car.
34. The two-wheeler population in Mumbai will cross the four million mark in a few weeks having already crossed 39.2 lakh, a senior transport official has said.This comes as India taken over from China as the biggest two-wheeler market.
35. A marriage celebration in Rajasthan turned tragic late on Wednesday when a portion of a marriage hall collapsed killing at least 23 people, including four children. The toll may rise as several were still trapped when reports last came in.
36.Uttar Pradesh has seen the maximum count of candidates who have made the cut this year to take the gruelling JEE (Advanced) exams. Maharashtra has moved up one spot, from third last year to second, and Rajasthan, which was second, is now a close third. Interestingly, of the 2.2 lakh candidates who cleared the first barrier of the JEE (Main), 19% were girls, and the largest chunk hail from Maharashtra, followed by Telangana (see box). Like the past few years, what hasn't altered is the high success rate of high school graduates from the CBSE board. “Many CBSE students always managed to crack the JEE. But we see that each year, the dynamics of the other state boards change,“ said an IIT director.“Even among the top rankers, we see a kind of shift after each exam,“ he added. From among the Maharashtra students, those from Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur and Latur have been doing well in the overall JEE results and more have been eventually getting selected at the Indian Institutes of Technology . The integrated approach where students are trained for entrance tests in their junior colleges is showing a good success rate among our students. Several students from interior Maharashtra too migrate to the city for the two years of their preparation,” said Praveen Tyagi, chairman, Pace Junior Science Colleges. Moreover, girl enrolment for coaching in Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur has risen, and most of them stay back instead of travelling to Kota or the southern states that are coaching hubs as parents prefer to have them closer home, added Tyagi. Bihar, which was at number four in 2016, has slipped two spots this time. But students from Kerala have upp ed their game—while that state did not figure in the top 15 positions last year, it is up at the ninth rank this year. Data from the IITs which conduct the JEE (Advanced) exams shows that students from the five southern states of AP, Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu account for 35% share of the student pool. Telangana and AP together would have made it to pole position.
In all, of those who made the mark and registered, 1.74 lakh students will take the IIT-JEE Advanced exams on May 21. “Some may not have registered as they may have felt they are not cut out for the IITs, some may want to pursue another discipline like medicine or go abroad, and some others may want to join an engineering college in their state,” said a JEE official.
37. Even two days after the Supreme Court ordered the arrest of Calcutta high court judge Justice C S Karnan, police teams from two states (WB and TN) were unable to locate him, report A Subramani and Daniel George. There were rumours that he had left for the temple town of Kalahasthi in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, and that his mobile phone signals indicated his presence near a picnic location during the day. Karnan, who was staying at the Tamil Nadu government state house in Chennai till Tuesday afternoon, went missing after the import of the apex court ruling dawned on everyone.
38. A shipload of tramadol, a synthetic opioidlike drug used as a painkiller, sent from India to be sold to IS terrorists in Libya to give them greater resilience has been seized by the Italian police, according to media reports on Wednesday . News agency PTI, quoting a report in The Times, said 37 million tramadol pills, worth $75 million, were found packed in three containers at the port of Genoa, labelled as blankets and shampoo to be loaded on a freighter bound for Libya. The report said Italian investigators traced the shipment to an Indian pharmaceutical company that allegedly sold the pills for $250,000 to a Dubai-based importer.
39. The Armed Forces Tribunal in Mumbai has directed `notional' reinstatement of a naval commander removed from service in May 2013 for allegedly having a “philandering lifestyle“ and “breaching security“ . The government said his actions amounted to “gross misconduct“. But the tribunal held that the case against the commander, Lijo Chacko, was “grossly overstated“. The tribunal said a punishment disproportionate to the misconduct would amount to discrimination under right to equality and hence set aside his removal. The commander would have completed 20 years of pensionable service last March. The tribunal made it clear he should now get his pension as commander.
40. A unique combination of five Supreme Court judges belonging to different faiths will start hearing final arguments on the constitutional validity of the `triple talaq' mode of divorce practised by the Muslim community from Thursday , the first day of the apex court's summer vacation. For a sensitive issue like this, the lead petition is aptly titled `Quest for Equality vs Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind'. Hearing the case will be five judges from five different communities--Chief Justice of India J S Khehar (Sikh) and Justices Kurian Joseph (Christian), R F Nariman (Parsi), U U Lalit (Hindu) and Abdul Nazeer (Muslim).
41. In a bizarre twist to the brutal murder of interior decorator Kishor Chaudhari (37) who was pumped with 17 bullets in Thakurli on Tuesday over an alleged business rivalry, it has come to light that his elder brother, too, was killed 10 years ago when he was the same age. Mukund Chaudhari, a real estate agent, was beaten to death with an iron rod. Dinesh Patil, a rival real estate broker, was arrested in the case along with nine others; all were acquitted after witnesses turned hostile. The Dombivli-based Chaudhari family has demanded security for all the eyewitnesses in the killing of the younger son, citing how witnesses in Mukund’s murder case had turned hostile. Their mother Bebi Chaudhari said the family suspects the same broker, Patil’s hand in Kishor’s killing too. Kishor was allegedly killed by four men of the Bhoir family on Tuesday over a fight for a Rs 6.5 lakh interior decoration contract for a Thakurli flat. Crime branch officials said they are probing the family’s al legations. A police team visited Patil’s residence on Wednesday and found that he was missing and his mobile phone was switched off, said sources. Bebi Chaudhari told TOI: “The Bhoir family did not have any enmity with us. We therefore suspect Patil's involvement in the killing.“ Mukund's son Bhavesh added, “If the police had acted on my uncle's compla int filed against the threats made by the Bhoir family on Monday , this incident would never have happened.“
42.Forty hours after a four-year-old girl went missing from Aarey Colony in Goreagon (East), remains of her body were discovered on Wednesday afternoon by a police search team and locals. Cops said they suspect the girl was attacked and killed by a leopard.
43. The auction of the first of 13 attached properties belonging to the Yash Birla Group was finalised before a special court on Wednesday . The economic offences wing (EOW), probing a Rs 284-crore case of non-payment to investors had in 2014 attached the properties, collectively worth Rs 1,100 crore. The first property , a 4,000 sq m plot in Oshiwara, was put up for auction on April 28 with a base price of Rs 19 crore. A private firm, Ralco, which submitted the highest bid, Rs 20 crore, was declared the winner. But another firm, Vir Savarkar Projects, challenged the auction in court, claiming it to be illegal on the grounds that the firm had already bought the property from a Yash Birla group company in 2015 by paying Rs 1crore as token amount. The firm stated before a court under the Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors Act that the deal was finalised for Rs 23 crore. It said it was ready to deposit Rs 24 crore (above the Rs 1crore token money). The court on Wednesday allowed Vir Savarkar Projects to deposit a demand draft and ordered that documentation be completed. The EOW alleged that 19,065 people lost their investments in schemes by Birla Power Solutions. The FIR said that in February 2012, the victims invested in a fixed deposit scheme in which they were promised a return of 10.75% after a year. They alleged that the promise was never kept.A chargesheet was filed against Birla and nine others in the case.The police said the competent authority handling the auction and refund to victims is an officer of deputy collector rank appointed by the state government. In December 2013, the Marine Drive police registered a case against Birla Power Solutions for allegedly not repaying a Rs 1-crore fixed deposit investment of a Worli businessman on maturity . The case was later transferred to the EOW . “The police found Rs 44 crore in bank accounts belonging to the accused.This was used to partly refund the investors,“ an officer said.
44. If the day-time heat in April this year sucked the ener gy out of you, the night temperatures for the month made matters worse. Data released by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) reveals that nights in April warmed faster than the days, making the average night-time temperature for the month the third highest in the country's history since record-keeping began in 1901. The average night temperature rose by a significant 1.02 degrees Celsius in April against a base of 22.38 degrees Celsius. In April 2010, the rise was 1.9 degrees Celsius and in April 2016,1.4 degrees Celsius. The data also revealed that the mean temperature this April rose around 1.04 degrees Celsius, making it the fourth hottest April since 1901. The hottest April ever was in 2010, followed by 2016 and 1973. This time, it is really the night temperature rise that has got scientists thinking.They said the increase in pollutants and greenhouse gases seemed to hinder the earth's outgoing long-wave radiation at night, leading to an increase in temperature. AK Srivastava, senior scientist and head of climate monitoring and analysis group at IMD, Pune, said that past data had shown that nights had been warming more rapidly than days.
45. A 24-year-old tempo driver has been arrested for allegedly assaulting an on-duty traffic policeman at Kalwa junction in Thane on Tuesday evening. According to a complaint lodged by constable Ajay Shirsat, who was manning traffic at Shivaji chowk around 6 pm, tempo driver Yogesh Shinde hit him after being told to pull over. Even after being told to stop, Shinde drove past the constable thus causing a traffic jam, stated the complaint. As Shirsat asked Shinde why he had moved on despite being told to halt, it led to a heated argument between them. A police officer said that Shirsat’s complaint says that Shinde had pushed and slapped him in public. However, a shopkeeper from the locality, who claimed to have witnessed the incident, said that the “constable had beat up the driver more than the driver having assaulted the cop”.
46. Vile Parle (east) locals were inconvenienced after power was shut around 10.30 am on Wednesday . Power had not been restored till 10.30 pm when this report was filed. A resident said they had no clue when power would be restored. “We can't contact the company helpline.“ A Reliance official said there were multiple faults... “One fault has been restored, the rest will be restored after midnight.“
47. The Nehru Nagar police arrested a 35-year-old man for sexually harassing a 17-yearold boy and demanding that he marry him.
Police arrested Shadab Dalvi for also attempting to kiss the minor and showing him porn videos on his mobile phone. The victim, a diesel mechanic diploma student at a south Mumbai college, narrated the incident to his parents, who approached police. The victim told police he met Dalvi at a gym and later they became friends. “One day , Dalvi sent me a message on my Facebook account asking if I was interested in going to an Ajmer shrine. We both went in April. On reaching there, Dalvi took me to a small lodge and booked a room. Once we entered, he tried to kiss me, he removed my trousers and showed me porn videos. I got scared and ran outside but as I did not know anyone, I returned,“ the boy told police. He told police that when they went to the market the next day , Dalvi teased him, saying he should buy and wear female clothes and he would look nice in them. Dalvi also allegedly told him that he wanted to marry him. The victim told Dalvi he had to appear for exams and they returned to Mumbai. Last week, Dalvi called him near the railway tracks and again tried to kiss him and insisted on marriage. Dalvi was held under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
48. Four-month-old Vidisha is being called a “miracle baby“ in the Parel hospital that has been her home for the last two months. She was not only born with a major heart defect that needed a 12-hour surgery , but she suffered six heart attacks thereafter. Vidisha, who was born to Kalyan residents Vishaka and Vi nod Waghmare, is likely to be discharged from B J Wadia Hospital within the next couple of days. Her parents could barely manage Rs 25,000 for the Rs 5lakh bill that was paid by various donors of the hospital.
49. The Kalyan RPF found an unclaimed box containing Rs 37 lakh cash in a three-tier air-conditioned coach of Udyan Express at Kalyan railway station on Wednesday evening. The RPF officials said that they had received information from control room about an unclaimed box in Udyan Express, (11301) which was heading to Mumbai. When the train halted at Kalyan, the RPF ran a check and opened the box and found bundles of Rs 2,000 notes and Rs 500 notes, totalling Rs 37 lakh. The officials said that passengers travelling in the B1 compartment from Bengaluru first noticed the box when the train reached Gulbarga in Karnataka. When no one claimed it till Karjat, a few passeng ers went to other coaches to ask it if belonged to anyone. However, when no one came forward, they informed the ticket checker, who, inturn, alerted informed the control room. An official said that the box has been handed over to Kalyan station manager.
50. The BMC has started a massive action against street food vendors across the city after it stumbled upon E. coli bacteria in the food and ice that it had tested recently . So far the civic body has cracked the whip on around 5,000 street food vendors across the city. Around 2,000 kgs of swe ets, 11,000 litres cold drinks and 5,000 kg of fruits and vegetables have been destroyed in this action which is still underway . Over 20,000 kg of contaminated ice was destroyed in various parts of the city by officials of the BMC and food and drug administration (FDA) over the last four days. The presence of the bacteria is known to cause serious health issues.
51. Roughly one in three flights departing from or arriving at Mumbai airport in the afternoon in April was delayed. The main runway was shut down between 9am and 5pm for three months from February 1 onwards for surface repairs.The shorter secondary runway was available for flight operations during this time, but as it isn't equipped with taxiways like the main runway , aircraft spent longer time on the runway during take-off or landing. The delays had a cascad ing effect on airline schedules, affecting afternoon and evening peak-hour flyers the most. Out of 3,683 flights operated between 3pm and 11pm in the period under consideration, a total of 1,295 departures, or 35 %, were de layed, with Jet having the highest number of delayed flights at 490. About 36% of arrival flights too were behind schedule, by 15 minutes or more. Similarly, 35% of arrivals between 11pm and 3am, mostly international, were delayed. But only 5% departures that took place during this time were behind schedule. The best time to board a flight continued to be early morning. Between 3am and 9am, only 8 % departures and 6% arrivals were delayed. Of the total 8,831 departures from Mumbai airport in April, 78% were on-time and of the 8,841 arrivals, 72% were on-time. The airline with the best on-time performance was Spice Jet, which operated a total of 691 departures, out of which 571 were on-time, giving it an OTP of 83% for departures. Close on heels was Vistara, which operated 278 departures and had an OTP of 82%. In the arrivals category, Spice Jet topped the list, with an 84% on-time rate. It was followed by IndiGo at 81%.
52. A day after Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray visited the ongoing nullah-cleaning works across Mumbai, BJP leaders and corporators were seen making the rounds of city drains. But unlike the Sena, which claimed it was satisfied with the desilting works being done, the BJP raised a stink, saying it was 100% dissatisfied and adding that despite the action taken in the desilting scam which came to light in 2015, nothing seems to have changed on the ground. The Mumbai BJP president Ashish Shelar, along with BJP corporators like Manoj Kotak and Makarand Narwekar, visited various drains in the western suburbs. They once again claimed to have found bogus documents submitted by contractors.
53. Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray has instructed party MLAs to prepare for mid-term polls in the state, it is learnt. In such a scenario, the party would contest the assembly election on its own strength. Given the current composition of the legislative assembly, which leaves the Shiv Sena with no other choice but to extend support to Devendra Fadnavis’s government, Thackeray has begun to veer round to the view that assembly polls would rejig the political equations in the state, said a senior party functionary on Wednesday.
54. The wife of a passport officer from Thane was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly cheating people of Rs 3.5 crore. Sunita Sharma (46) had lured her acquaintances by promising high returns on investment, said an official from the economic offences wing of the Mumbai police. A criminal offence had been lodged on January 25 this year after one of the investors, Krushi Bhutani, who lost Rs 7.5 lakh, lodged a complaint, saying that Sharma had lured him with the promise of returns ranging from 10% to 15%. The police said that Sharma worked for a company in Bandra-Kurla Complex and some of her victims were from that office. So far, 25 investors have complained against Sharma.
55. Adrenaline in teenagers can be hard to tame and Justin Bieber’s fanbase is a passionate bunch. The energy levels of 45,000 shrieking attendees at D Y Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai remained undimmed for 90odd minutes on Wednesday. For Mumbai, it was the manifestation of the hysteria that defines ‘Bieber Fever’. Uncharacteristically on time, the 23-year-old Canadian pop rage emerged from a glass cage illusion singing ‘Mark My Words’ and ‘Where Are U Now?’ with a flash of holograms, lasers, fireworks and gymnasts, making it difficult to spot where Bieber actually was at times. Bieber, on his maiden gig in India, made Mumbai the host for his Purpose Tour, which has raked in close to $200 million since its 2016 launch. The tour is to promote his fourth studio album. Beliebers had their share of glory too at the event. In a first for an Indian concert, fans were flown on choppers from Juhu. Fans pushed against the barriers or collapsing from dizzy spells had the security worried. But Bieber himself remained unflappable. Flailing his hands, he wooed the audience made up of tweens and teens, and a smattering of men and women over 45, mostly parents of the same tweens and teens.
56. Maharashtra chief secretary Sumit Mullick has called a meeting of over 10 central agencies to discuss slum rehabilition scheme for the slums on Government of India land in Mumbai and Thane. In a letter to these agencies, Mullick said the state government has undertaken to make Mumbai slum free by 2022 in line with the Centre’s Housing for All-2022. The state has proposed rehabilitation of all slum-dwellers on central government land on 400 acres of salt pan land. In 2015, the state had taken up the task of preparing a master plan but in December 2016, a Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority report established that barely 25 acres of salt pan land is developable. The letter states that the various central government agencies have neither surveyed nor framed any policy for rehabilitation of slums on their land.
57. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has readied a formal request for an Interpol red-corner notice against controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik and is likely to give it to the CBI, which is the Interpol’s office in India, on Thursday. Once an RCN is issued by the global police body, any international agency can arrest Naik wherever he is spotted and hand him over to India. Naik, who is facing probes for provocative speeches, inciting violence, spreading hatred, funding terrorists and money laundering, is said to be hiding in Saudi Arabia. Sources said he frequently travels to Malaysia and Indonesia. Sources said the RCN request against Naik was prepared with detailed evidence after procuring a non-bailable warrant against him from court and it was approved by NIA chief Sharad Kumar.
58. Bringing to book a man who suppressed his first marriage and remarried, a magistrate’s court ordered him to pay a compensation of Rs 3 lakh to the second wife for causing her mental and physical cruelty. “The respondent (husband) has suppressed his first marriage from the applicant and got married with her by taking disadvantage of the personal law, which permitted him to marry four times. This is nothing but domestic violence with applicant,” the court said. The court added that the husband was to pay the second wife a monthly maintenance of Rs 8,000 under the provisions of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, in addition to Rs 5,000 towards costs of the proceedings. The man is facing criminal proceedings under Section 498A (husband or relative of husband subjecting wife to cruelty) of the Indian Penal Code. On August 21, 2014, the woman moved the court under the Act seeking protection and relief. She said that when she got married to the man October 13, 2010, her family was told that he was a bachelor who ran a spare parts business. The woman said that within six months, he started abusing her and demanded she arrange for a separate residence for both of them. She said that her widowed mother and maternal uncle had jointly purchased a house and her husband insisted they transfer it to his name. She further alleged that even after she was allowed to reside there with her husband, he continued to assault her and taunt her about her caste. She said that he even forced her to get a share in the Rs 12 lakh insurance claim received by her family after her father’s death. Fearing for her life, the woman moved back to her mother’s house in August 2012. The woman said on one occasion, he came over when she was alone at home and insisted on physical relations. She alleged that when she refused, he poured kerosene on her and threatened to set her ablaze. The husband denied all allegations and said that the complainant was aware of his first wife and two daughters and had consented to the marriage. The man said she got upset with him as he went on a 17-day pilgrimage with his family members in 2013 and threatened to tell his first wife about their marriage. He alleged that she filed the police complaint only to seek revenge. The court pointed out that the man had stated that though his first wife had suspected that he had remarried, he had handled the situation calmly. “This evidence of respondent goes to suggest that he has suppressed his second marriage from the first wife. Thus, it seems that he has a habit to tell false to wives. Therefore, his evidence is not trustworthy, believable and acceptable,” the court said. It further held that the man had even obtained talaq from the woman without following the customs and procedure of the Muslim personal laws.
59. A 25-year-old lifeguard of the Mumbai Fire Brigade rescued three Malwani youths from drowning off Aksa beach on Wednesday morning. The three men—Altaf Mohammad Iqbal (30), Sarfaraz Rahim Sheikh (24) and Suraj Prajapati (25)—had gone for a walk on Aksa beach early in the morning and sat down to chat on the rocks, almost 200m inside the sea. The men failed to notice the rising water levels owing to high tide and started shouting for help as none of them could swim. Lifeguard Nathuram Suryavanshi, who reported for duty at 9am, noticed the three youths frantically signalling for help around 10.25am.
60. Bracing themselves for the oncoming lean season, most airlines have put out discounted domestic fares for June-September travel. The fares begin to drop from June 20 and hit extreme lows through July, August and September, except for certain days like the ones around the Independence Day weekend when they rise a bit. A Mumbai-Delhi return ticket booked this week for travel in July can be had for Rs 4,300, all-inclusive. A one-way fare on the route started at Rs 2,100 on IndiGo, taxes included. Routes on which ticket costs remain high through the year, like Mumbai-Kolkata or Mumbai-Kochi, also showed a cooling of fares. An indicator of changing booking behaviour of the Indian market was the slight increase in fares around the Independence Day weekend. August 15 falls on a Tuesday and so August 14, a Monday, is likely to see many vacant seats in offices.
61. Two minor boys from Nepal, who had gone for a swim, drowned in a pond in Ghansoli in Navi Mumbai on Tuesday evening. The boys — Hitesh Premkumar Chatri (12) and Yuvraj Dilbahadur Thapa (15) — had gone to the pond along Palm Beach Road with two other minor boys. The police said that the children were frolicking in the waters abutting mangroves during high tide when water level in the pond rose.
62 There are 39 more junior colleges in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) now. While this means an increase in seats, teachers do not feel it will help reduce the demand-supply gap as only a few institutes are popular among students. The office of the deputy director of education, Mumbai, which conducts online FYJC admissions in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) has received registrations for 778 colleges this year compared to 739 in 2016. The colleges concluded their registration process after several deadline extensions last week.
1. Japan's SoftBank Group -the biggest investor in troubled Indian online marketplace Snapdeal -said it has incurred a loss of over Rs 9,000 crore (160.42 billion yen or $1.41 billion) from its investments in the country's Internet commerce sector. The Masayoshi Son-led telecom and media conglomerate on Wednesday attributed a large part of the overall loss to its investments in Snapdeal, besides ride-hailing app Ola. The disclosure -a part of its full-year results -comes even as SoftBank is negotiating the sale of Snapdeal to bigger rival Flipkart and seeking separate buyers for its payments arm FreeCharge. Market share positions of both Snapdeal and FreeCharge have suffered over the past few months as the company has initiated cost cuts and layoffs.The Gurgaon-based company, valued at a high of $6.5 billion in February last year, is estimated to be seeking a sale price of about $1 billion. “(The) highly competitive ecommerce market in India has made a trend of the company's business performance lower than initially anticipated,“ SoftBank said in an official statement. The special loss of ¥114.059 billion, or about $1 billion, represented impairments on its investments in subsidiaries and associates, including Starfish I Pte Ltd, through which it owns 33% in Snapdeal, the Tokyo-headquartered group said. Starfish I, an intermediate holding company, owns preferred shares in Jasper Infotech, which owns and operates Snapdeal. Snapdeal's weaker performance had led to “a material decrease in net asset value of Starfish I Pte Ltd as of March 31, 2017, and therefore, SBG impaired the carrying amo unt of its shares in the company, to the amount equivalent to its net asset value“, the statement said. Ola suffered a drop in valuation last year from the peak of $5 billion in November 2015 to $3 billion late last year, when it raised $250 million from SoftBank. But since then the Bengaluru-based startup, which competes with Uber, has managed to raise capital from Ratan Tata's RNT Capital and New York-based hedge fund Falcon Edge at a higher valuation. SoftBank is one of the biggest investors in India's digital commerce market, having sunk in nearly $2 billion across companies such as Snapdeal -in which it has invested $900 million -as well as Ola, grocery delivery app Grofers and hotel room aggregator Oyo.
2. Alibaba Group-backed Paytm has signed a non-exclusive term sheet to acquire rival FreeCharge, the digital payments platform owned and operated by beleaguered online marketplace Snapdeal, in what is expected to be an all-cash deal in the range of $45-90 million.
3. Carlsberg said its India business dragged down volume growth in Asia. But for India, volumes would have grown 2%, the Danish brewer said. This is the first instance of a global liquor firm commenting on the impact of the highway liquor ban.
4. Hero MotoCorp posted a nearly 14% fall in fourthquarter net profit, hurt by sluggish demand for two-wheelers post demonetisation.
5. The base variant of French carmaker Renault's popular SUV Duster sold in India has failed crash test conducted by vehicle safety group Global NCAP . The crash tests conducted by UK-based Global NCAP revealed that the model recorded zero stars for adult occupant protection. The crash test showed that due to the lack of airbags the driver injuries would have been “unacceptably high“. The second set of crash test results conducted on Renault Duster SUV by Global New Car Assessment Programme (NCAP) found the basic variant of the SUV (STD variant) which is sold without airbags, recording an abysmal zero stars for adult occupant protection. The crash test showed that due to the lack of airbags the driver injuries would have been unacceptably high. The same variant of the Duster scored 2 stars for rear seat child occupant rear seat child occupant protection.
6. Myntra.com said that its parent company , Flipkart, had hiked its annual budget by a quarter in a bid to bolster Myntra's position as the country's largest online fashion retailer. The hike comes amid reports earlier this year that Flipkart intends to cut its annual outlay for Myntra. “This year we got 25% extra money from the Flipkart board,“ said Ananth Narayanan, chief executive of Myntra that was acquired by Flipkart for $300 million in 2014. He declined to specify Myntra's total annual budget. Narayanan said Myntra would use the additional money to upgrade technology and to also invest in 3-4 small to medium ethnic brands to ramp up the company's ethnic offerings.
7. Automakers are expected to invest $8-10 billion Rs 51,600-64,500 crore) in India over the (` next three-four years to set up factories and expand production in a market that is set to become the third-largest for passenger vehicles by the turn of the decade. The investment will boost production of cars, utility vehicles and vans in India by 1.3-1.5 million units a year and generate employment for 20,00025,000 people, said industry insiders and experts. India market leader Maruti Suzuki and parent Suzuki, Korea-based Hyundai Motor and unit Kia Motors, Chinese manufactures SAIC, Changan and Beiqi Foton, as well as Italy's Fiat are among companies that are expected to drive the investment. These will be in addition to more than `1 lakh crore that automakers are set to spend on upgrading vehicles to meet new safety and emission standards. Annual passenger vehicle sales in India, currently the fifth-largest market, topped the three-million mark for the first time in fiscal year ended March 31, growing in the double digits. With a fast expanding economy, rising disposable income and increasing need for mobility, India is fore cast to post annual passenger vehicles sales of more than five million by the end of the decade. The passenger vehicles industry currently has a production capacity of more than 5.5 million, according to industry sources. While a few facilities are running below capacity, some companies are utilising India as a base for exporting vehicles. Japan's Suzuki Motor is particularly aggressive with its investment plans, encouraged by the solid performance of Maruti, which has single-handedly driven growth in the industry in the past five years. Suzuki is likely to infuse $780 million in a third factory in Gujarat by 2020, taking its cumulative investment in the state to more than $1.5 billion. Maruti, which accounts for almost half the Indian market, will sell the vehicles manufactured by its parent in India, as the local entity aims to double sales. “We have taken 35 years to reach annual sales mark of 1.5 million units. I do not think it will take as long to sell another 1.5 million vehicles, may be not even 10 years,“ said Maruti chairman RC Bhargava. Separately, Maruti will be investing Rs 1,900 crore for its second phase of expansion at an R&D centre in Rohtak, Haryana, which will be commissioned in early 2019. The company has a capital expenditure plan of Rs 4,500 crore for the current fiscal year. Maruti is sitting on cash reserves of Rs 23,000 crore. The company has said it will invest aggressively to procure land for doubling its sales and service network by 2020. With Suzuki investing in the Gujarat facility, Maruti is free to put its own resources in rapidly expanding the sales and service network. Kia, the Hyundai subsidiary, last month announced a $1.1billion investment to set up a factory in Andhra Pradesh. Hyundai Motor India plans to invest $2 billion on products alone and is eyeing output of one-million units out of India by 2020-2021. The company, which is operating at 95% capacity, may utilise the Kia factory to meet increased volume requirement in the near future, but people in the know said it has already given feelers to the Tamil Nadu government for the next phase of expansion. Its current facility is situated near Chennai. The automotive industry, including component manufacturing, is estimated to grow to Rs 16.16-18.18 lakh crore by 2026, according to estimates by industry body Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers Association.
8. Walmart Stores is preparing to pay roughly $300 million to resolve a long-running US investigation into allegations of bribery by its employees, according to people familiar with the matter.
9. Air India Express is in discussions with Dubai-based flydubai for collaboration opportuni ties, including code share among their flights. The move comes at a time when AI Express, which operates a significant number of flights to Gulf nations, is working on ways to spread its wings further. Part of the Air India group, the carrier has plans to fly to new destinations. An official said the airline is discussing ways to collaborate with flydubai for possible sales and marketing beyond Dubai.Various options, including code share of flights and interline agreement, are being looked at, the official added.
10. Hotel room aggregator Oyo has plans to add 200 `townhouse hotels' across the country by December. “We have plans to add over 200 town house hotels across the country, including 60 hotels across seven cities in the South by end of 2017,“ Oyo founder and CEO Ritesh Agarwal told reporters here. He also said 25 of these 60 will come up in Telangana. Oyo on Wednesday launched a townhouse hotel in upmarket Jubilee Hills area here making it the fifth hotel in the portfolio which was launched in January.
11. Zee Group's direct-to-home (DTH) service arm Dish TV has got clearance from the Competition Commission of India for its proposed merger with Videocon d2h. “The CCI has intimated the company that it in its meeting held on May 4, 2017, considered the proposed combination and has accorded its approval to the said combination,“ the company said in a statement. It has already received approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India, NSE and BSE for the merger. Dish TV, as per directions of the National Company Law Tribunal, has convened shareholders' meeting on May 12 to secure their approval.
12. A new Samsung patent appears to indicate that the company is working on a Bixbyequipped smart speaker in the vein of the Amazon Echo. The filing shows a screen mounted above a slimline tripod suggesting the device will be equipped with a display much like the recently announced Amazon Echo Show and Apple's rumored Siri speaker.
13. 3 m miles Total miles logged by self-driving car firm Waymo on public roads.
14. International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private investment arm of World Bank, is making an equity investment of $10 million in Stellaris Venture Partners' maiden fund, it announced in a disclosure. This is the third funding commitment by IFC in an India-focused VC fund this year. The commitment comes a few months after Stellaris, which was started by former top executives at Helion Venture Partners, made the first close of its $100-million fund earlier this year. Stellaris raised $50 million from the likes of the Small Industries Development Bank of India (Sidbi) and Infosys among several individual investors, institutional investors and family offices. The next close is expected by June, IFC said in its disclosure. IFC had recently committed an equity investment of $3 million in pi Ventures, a fund focused on startups working on artificial intelligence and Internet of Things, through its IFC Startup Catalyst programme. In January, it had proposed a $20-million investment in IDG Ventures India's third fund, which recently made a final close of its $200-million fund. Even while VC funding in the Indian startup space slowed down last year, venture funds dedicated to India raised $2.2 billion in 2016, compared with $1.5 billion the year before, as per data from Venture Intelligence.
15. Bengaluru-based IT firm Happiest Minds Technologies announced the acquisition of Cupola Technology -a specialised IoT (internet of things) services company. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed. The company had been scouting for acquisitions in the IoT domain after it hit profitability last year.This is the company's first acquisition, while a second acquisition is close in pipeline and most likely to be announced this year.
Cupola Technology was founded in 2011 by Ajay Agrawal and Huzefa Saifee. It's 100-member team is now a part of Happiest Minds Technology. Founded by former Mindtree Chairman Ashok Soota in 2011, Happiest Minds has a revenue run rate of $75 million. Early this year, Soota had announced that the company is scouting for acquisitions that comple ment their business. He said the these will be up to $10 million in size as the company wants to utilise its own cash for acquisitions.
16. PayU, the Naspersowned global payments company, has invested $120 million in German alternative lending startup Kreditech, and the deal will see the Peter Thiel and IFC-backed startup entering India and working with PayU India on launching its credit product in the country. Kreditech gives long-duration, large-ticket loans to consumers with lower purchasing power and uses its own technology to underwrite loans. It was launched in 2012 and has so far raised funding from JC Flowers, Peter Thiel, Rakuten and the World Bank's IFC. The PayU investment is an extension of the company's Series-C round. The startup has been focused on European markets and is present in Netherlands, Poland, Spain, as well as Russia. With this investment, the company will further focus on international expansion starting with India, Alexander Graubner-Müller, CEO of Kreditech, told ET. Kreditech has earlier worked with PayU in Poland, where it developed point-of-sale products and online cardless EMI products.
17.Fintech startup EarlySalary has raised $4 million in a Series-A round from IDG Ventures India and Dewan Housing Finance (DHFL), a non-banking financial company. The Pune-based startup offers salary advance loans to young, salaried professionals.
EarlySalary CEO Akshay Meh rotra said the funds will be used to achieve 50,000 loans a month by the year-end compared to 4,000 loans processed a month at present. The firm had earlier ra ised $1.5 million in a seed round from Ashok Agarwal of Trans corp Group in 2015. This is IDG's second investment in the digital lending space after CreditMantri and its 63rd investment overall, according to Karthik Prabhakar, director and head of fundraising at IDG Ventures India.
18. ION Energy, an energy storage startup, has received an undisclosed amount of angel funding from a clutch of investors. Sushil Jiwarajka, chairman of OMC Power, Aakrit Vaish and Swapan Rajdev, cofounders of Haptik, and executives from Times Internet, Dentsu Aegis, Salesforce and Credit Suisse, among others who participated in this funding round. ION Energy specialises in creating a layer of infrastructure to enable the adoption of electric vehicles in India. It leverages proprietary enhancements to the Lithiumion tech in its energy storage systems. The funds will be used for product development and taking the product towards its formal manufacturing.
ION is looking to deliver a better price per kilometre, five-six times better acceleration, 10-12 times longer life and faster charging time, compared to existing options, according to a release from the startup.
19. Novelis, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hindalco Industries, sold a 50% stake in its Ulsan facility in South Korea to Kobe Steel for $315 million (Rs 2,033 crore), creating an equally owned joint venture with the Japanese producer of aluminium roll. The transaction is expected to close by September this year. The Ulsan plant employs around 600 people.
20. Novelis posted a net income of $47 million, compared with $29 million a year earlier, helped in part by lower interest expense brought about by long-term debt refinancing actions taken during fiscal 2017.
21. Bharti Airtel will be focused on cost controls and cornering a majority share of all 4G devices entering the Indian market to its data network and spend $2.5 billion in capex in a bid to stave off the stiff challenge posed by new entrant Reliance Jio Infocomm.
22. A war of words has broken out between handset makers and telecom players over call quality. Handset makers have rejected allegations by carriers that the poor quality of mobile phones was responsible for call drops. The Indian Cellular Association has written to telecom department to refrain from further regulating the already `over-regulated' sector, ad ding that phones sold in India followed laid down norms. “We would like to reiterate the handset industry is already over-regulated and should not be subject to any more regulations,“ ICA said, adding that inadequate infrastructure set up by carriers was causing call drops. The Cellular Operators Association of India had asked the government to chalk out a mechanism to control the quality of mobile handsets in India as it had not considered the role of devices in service quality and call drops.
23. Tata Chemicals announced on Wednesday it will acquire a facility of Unnati Inorganics for Rs 34.20 crore on a slump sale basis. The acquisition is a part Rs 295 crore investment approved by of the ` the Tata Chemicals' board earlier in February 2017, it said in a BSE filing. “Tata Chemicals has on May 9, 2017, signed a business transfer agreement with Unnati lnorganics to acquire their undertaking of precipitated silica operation, on a slump sale basis, for the consideration of Rs 34.20 crore,“ the company said.
24. Drug firm Zydus Cadila said on Wednesday it has received a favourable judgement from a US federal court in a patent infringement case paving the way for company to launch its generic product in the American market. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has affirmed judgement in favour of Zydus Pharmaceuticals (USA) Inc, holding that its proposed generic version of Lialda does not infringe a US Patent, the company said in a statement.
25. Tata Motors said ex-SBI chairman O P Bhatt has been appointed as an additional and independent director on its board. The board of directors yesterday approved the appointment of O P Bhatt as an additional and independent director with effect from May 9, 2017 for a tenure of five years, Tata Motors said in a BSE filing. Bhatt also serves as director on the boards of group firms Tata Consultancy Services and Tata Steel. Last year in November, he briefly served as Chairman of Tata Steel after Cyrus Mistry was ousted as Chairman of Tata Sons.
26. Sounding a note of caution on the MCI move asking doctors to prescribe only generic medicines, CII president Shobana Kamineni has said poor quality of drugs could be dangerous for patients.Kamineni, who is also executive vice chairperson of Apollo Hospitals Enterprises, pitched for making India a major medical tourism destination to “heal the world“. During an interaction with PTI, she also made a strong case for promoting traditional medicines like Ayurveda.
27. Bolstered by predictions of a normal monsoon by the India Meteorological Department, stocks of consumer companies like Hindustan Unilever, Emami closed between 2% and 4.6% higher on Wednesday, while the BSE FMCG index rose 1.81%. Analysts said though consumer companies with a broad rural focus will benefit from increased rural spending power given a healthy monsoon, valuations of these companies do not offer comfort. Traders, however, expect the bullishness in FMCG stocks to continue.
28. HDFC Bank, India's largest bank by market capitalisation, has raised about Rs7,500-8,000 crore by selling perpetual bonds to institutional investors through the electronic bidding process on NSE. With this bond sale, it has perhaps become the largest ever issuance of perpetual bonds, dealers said. The bank was earlier planning to raise only Rs 5,000 crore, reported a few weeks ago. The bonds have offered 8.85% interest rate with a fiveyear call option, an exit route for investors. Perpetual bonds, known as additional tier-I papers in market parlance, do not have any fixed maturity.
29. Union Bank of India (UBI) plans to raise a total of Rs 6,350 crore by selling bonds and shares in FY18 as it looks to shore up capital to be ready for an acquisition if the government decides to merge small public sector banks with itself, chairman Arun Tiwari said.
30. Natco Pharma on Wednesday said it has launched a blood cancer drug in the Indian market priced between Rs 5,000-20,000, a 98% discount compared to what it is sold at in the US. It has launched a generic version of pomalidomide 1 mg, 2 mg, and 4 mg capsules in India, it said in a filing to the BSE here. Pomalidomide is for patients with multiple myeloma . It has priced the medicine of 1 mg, 2 mg, and 4 mg apsules at Rs 5,000, Rs 10,000 Rs 20,000 respectively for a capsules at Rs 5,000, Rs 10,000 Rs 20,000 respectively for a monthly pack of 21 capsules. Natco will market generic pomalidomide capsules under its brand name Pomalid in India.
31. Indians could soon have Tata Group's ready-to-eat food on its plate as India's largest conglomerate may soon be entering the market dominated by the likes of ITC, MTR and Patanjali. Tata Industries, a holding company for new-age businesses, formed a division for the same in March.It will look at manufacturing and marketing vegetarian, non-vegetarian, non-alcoholic, carbonated and non-carbonated food products.
The company confirmed the development but said the project right now is in experimental stages, which may or may not evolve into a business in the future.
32. Policybazaar, an online and digital platform to sell insurance policies, is looking to raise around Rs 400 crore, largely from existing investors such as PremjiInvest, Tiger Global, Ribbit Capital and Temasek. The company expects to complete the process in six weeks. Policybazaar has turned profitable in the financial year ended March 31, 2017, and is expected to turn in net profit of about Rs 50 crore during the financial year ended March 31, 2018. Policybazaar was valued at over Rs 2,200 crore, according to the last ` deal, when Temasek bought a sta ke and Intel exited. In the last financial year, the company had revenues of Rs 210 crore.In 2016, Intel Capital had exited Policybazaar by selling its stake to , Tiger Global, which is the single largest investor, with more than 30% stake. Info Edge owns 18%. In April 2015, the company had raised Rs 300 crore from PremjiInvest, Steadview Capital, Ribbit Capital, and Tiger Global.Dahiya has explored listing the company in the current financial year. “We will be listing ready by October this year from the compliances point of view,“ said Dahiya.
33. India has for the first time signed a contract to import LPG from Iran as it looks at additional sources of cooking fuel to meet rising domestic demand. State-owned oil firms will import one very large gas carrier (VLGC), or 44,000 tonnes, per month for an initial sixmonth period, industry sources said. India imports almost a million tonnes of LPG every month to meet rising demand. LPG consumption in 2016-17 rose 9.8% to 21.55 million tonnes. Of this, 11million tonnes came from imports.
34. Boosted by pickup in demand, India's 12 major ports saw cargo traffic increase by 6.27% to 55.75 million tonnes (MT) in April, the first month of the current fiscal. These top ports under the Centre had handled 52.46 MT cargo in April 2016. Increased demand from sectors like iron ore, coking coal and container traffic resulted in higher movement of cargo last month to 55.75 MT, as per the Indian Ports Association. Iron ore traffic volumes were up 40% to 5.37 MT during the month as against 3.82 MT in April 2016 while coking coal volumes surged by 15% to 4.61 MT.
35. Volkswagen on Wednesday rejected investor calls for the carmaker to publish the results of a key inves-tigation into its diesel emissions cheating scandal, saying it was unable to do so for legal reasons.Investment advi-sory firm Hermes EOS said on Tuesday the findings of a company-commissioned probe by US law firm Jones Day should be disclosed, and would allow Volkswagen to move on from its biggest-ever corporate crisis. “There is no written concluding report by Jones Day and there will not be one,“ VW chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch said at the company's annual shareholder meeting. “I ask for your understanding that VW for legal reasons is prevented from publishing such a final report,“ he told the gathering of about 3,000 shareholders. VW initially pledged to inform shareholders about the findings of the Jones Day report, but has since abandoned this plan.
36. SAP said on Wednesday its executive pay system was reasonable, defending management bonuses against the criticism of some shareholders.“Our executive payment must be seen in comparison with other soft-ware companies and must be competitive,“ SAP's co-founder and supervisory board Chairman Hasso Plattner told the company's annual shareholders' meeting.“We think we have a reasonable system,“ he added. Leading shareholder advisors have called on SAP investors to oppose the supervisory board of Europe's largest technology com-pany on the issue of executive pay.
37. Apple Inc became the first US company with a market value of more $800 billion as investors bet the next iPhone will spur a resurgence in sales. The stock rose 1% on Tuesday to close at $153.99 in New York, giving it a market capitalisation of about $803 billion. The shares have gained 33% since the start of the year, helped by a buyback programme that CEO Tim Cook extended to total $210 billion last week, from $175 billion last year. Apple's rise to the top of the world's largest equity market highlights the emergence of mobile technology and the relative decline of the oil industry in recent years.Exxon Mobil Corp's value peaked in the fall of 2007, when oil prices climbed toward $100 a barrel. In November of that year, PetroChina Co briefly became the first global company with a market capitalisation of more than $1 trillion.
38. Toyota on Wednesday reported its first drop in annual net profit for five years, while the Japanese car giant unexpectedly warned that the cost of customer incentives and a further pickup in the yen threatened to dig further into its bottom line. The downbeat forecast underscores how Japan's automakers, including rivals Nissan and Honda, have benefited heavily from a slump in the currency in recent years. But sharp yen gains at the start of the past fiscal year -largely driven by Brexit and tumbling world equity markets -took a bite out of Toyota's latest results. On Wednesday, the Corolla and Prius hybrid maker warned it expected more currency pain this business year, while incentives in the lucrative North American market pushed operating profit in the region down about 35%. Overall, Toyota posted a net profit of 1.83 trillion yen ($16 billion) on slightly lower revenue of 27.6 trillion yen in the recently ended year to March -more than 20% down from a record 2.31 trillion yen net profit the previous year. Toyota, which lost its crown last year to Volkswagen as the world's top-selling automaker, warned it expects a net profit of 1.5 trillion yen in the current year to March 2018 -way off market expectations of around 1.9 trillion yen. Vehicle sales in the past fiscal year ticked up to 10.25 million units from 10.09 million a year earlier.
39. Tech Mahindra is set to let go of about 1,500 employees, or close to 1.2% of its workforce, following in the footsteps of bigger rivals such as Infosys, Wipro and Cognizant, all of which are in the process of doing big layoffs as protectionist policies in the US and new technologies shake up the $150-billion Indian IT sector. Tech Mahindra, the country's fifth largest IT services provider, had 117,095 employees across 90 countries till the third quarter, which ended December 31. The company , which will announce its fourth quarter results this month, has a majority of its employees in India.
40. US apparel chain GAP will manufacture and sell locally in India to counter mounting competition from its European rivals Zara and Hennes & Mauritz (H&M).
41. Video intelligence startup Vidooly has bagged a funding of $1.4 million (Rs 8.9 crore) from GVFL and Times Internet in a series A round. Founded by Nishant Radia, Subrat Kar and Ajay Mishra, Vidooly is an online video intelligence software platform for content creators, brands, multi-channel networks, agencies & media companies. Since its inception, over 20,000 video-content creators globally have signed up on its platform. Everyday , Vidooly's big data engine analyses the engagement of over 500 million viewers and tracks 250 million videos. Some of its clients include Fine Brothers, TVF, OML, VideoGyan, GroupM, Mindshare, Thoughtful Media and WebTV Asia, among others.
42. At a time when critical financial services firms across the globe are facing cyber security threats almost on a daily basis, Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and global technology major IBM have signed a multimillion dollar agreement to boost the bourse's IT security. Under this five-year contract, IBM will use its global expertise to secure trading engine, data and hardware for all of BSE's current trading platforms like stocks, bonds, derivatives, mutual funds and also the planned ones like commodities.
1. The new ordinance that empowers RBI to nudge banks to deal with stressed assets will improve transparency and provide higher assurance when dealing with bad loans, said Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairman, State Bank of India (SBI).India's largest lender had lobbied to involve government agencies in dealing with bad loans.
2. India is fast-tracking a project to connect Kashmir valley with the rest of the country by rail, which will enable trains to operate between New Delhi and Srinagar in 14 hours flat. The railway line could become functional in four years.
3. The defence ministry has finalised the road map for selection of private sector companies for mega military production orders, with an elaborate procedure spelt out in a new policy to be unveiled this week.
4. Banks can initiate loan recovery proceedings without waiting for an account to be formally classified as nonperforming, as the latest amendments to banking rules allow for faster resolution.
5. Terrorists abducted and shot dead Ummer Fayaz Parray, a 22-year-old Army lieutenant, in Shopian district of south Kashmir on Tuesday night.Parray was abducted from a family wedding.
6. In a top-level bureaucratic reshuffle, the government appointed Sanjay Mitra as defence secretary and gave IT secretary Aruna Sundararajan additional charge of the telecom department.
7. Stocks continued their record-setting pace on Wednesday with the Nifty closing above the psychologically crucial 9,400 mark after the Met department upped its forecast for a normal monsoon this year. The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Tuesday that the monsoon this year could be normal and 100% of the long-period average (LPA), up from its earlier forecast of `near normal' and 96% of the LPA. The chances of the dreaded El Nino, which caused two consecutive droughts in 2014 and 2015, returning this year are not very high, IMD said. The Nifty jumped at the news, ending up 90.45 points at 9,407.30 after scaling an all-time high of 9,414.75 during the day. The Sensex gained the most since March 14, ending up 314.92 points at 30,248.17 off a fresh life high of 30,271.60 during the session.
8. India had no other legal option but to approach the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to get reprieve for Kulbhushan Jadhav as all other legal means in Pakistan to save him had dried up, said persons familiar with the case and legal processes between the two countries. Jadhav, who had been sentenced to death by a Pakistan military court for charges of spying, had been finding it difficult to get any kind of justice in Pakistan, and had not been able to find a lawyer to fight his case there. The Lahore High Court Bar Association, ostensibly under pressure from the Pakistani Army , had even threatened to cancel the membership of any lawyer who extended his services to Jadhav .
9. Vendors in Assam's Joniya constituency have found a new place to sell their vegetables in All India United Democratic Front's office. After last year's electoral drubbing, hardly any party leaders visited the office, following which vendors turned the office itself into a shop.
10. While almost every other campus in Kashmir erupted with sudden student protests in April, NIT Srinagar maintained complete calm. The institute, which ran into a student conflict and had to be shut down last year amid considerable unrest, managed to keep peace and calm and continued to hold classes.
11. Working during the summer recess of the court has made a section of lawyers unhappy. “The heat is killing this time,“ they complained. The lawyers feel SC should have taken this into account before listing important matters for hearing in the first half of the vacation beginning May 11.The court has over the years whittled down its holidays in response to public criticism. That wasn't resented, but the heat this time appeared to have made all the difference.
12. Meghalaya's arts and culture minister Ronnie Lyngdoh recently set an example on punctuality.As a chief guest of a programme -to mark the 156th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore -the minister reached U Soso Tham auditorium five minutes before schedule. But left it soon as the organisers failed to start the programme on time. Some lesson for the organisers on time management.
13. After staging a `live' demonstration in Delhi Assembly on Tuesday to show that Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) could be easily rigged, AAP has now decided to initiate a campaign seeking the use of machines equipped with voterverifiable paper audit trail or VVPAT in all future elections. Party leaders said the campaign called `Save Democracy Movement' will begin from May 11.Despite the Election Commission's assertions that its EVMs are tamperproof, the first protest will be held by AAP workers right at the the door step of the Election Commission on Thursday . AAP's newly appointed Delhi conve nor Gopal Rai added that the party would participate in the all-party meeting called by the EC on the issue on May 12 and will decide the next course of action based on its outcome.
14. A pan-India homebuyers' pressure group, `Fight for RERA', has reached out to the Maharashtra government over the issue of dilution in the state's rules under Real Estate Regulatory Act (RERA). The group has sought Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis' intervention to revoke the Maharashtra Real Estate Rules and notify fresh rules similar to the ones notified on October 31, 2016, by the Ministry of HUPA for Union Territories without legislatures. The RERA rules notified for Union Territories are being viewed as undiluted version of central rules aimed at protecting homebuyers' interest as envisioned by the Act.
15. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which till recently was keen on holding mid-term polls in Maharashtra, is now having second thoughts on the issue because of altered political equations in the state, especially because of the coming closer of Congress, NCP and Shiv Sena, which might make the going a bit tough for the BJP. BJP leaders reckon that midterm polls may not be such a good idea now.
16. Dalits and Muslims in Saharanpur have traditionally voted for BSP, however, in the recently held polls BJP won 4 of the 7 seats in the district. Charge of district given to top minister SP Shahi.
17. The BSP has expelled its Muslim face Naseemuddin Siddiqui and his son from the party for carrying out “anti-party“ activities, prompting the sacked MLC to hit back at party supremo Mayawati. Hours after he and his son Afzal were shown the door, Naseemuddin said, “Whatever charges have been levelled against me, applies to her (Mayawati) and I can prove those with evidence“. BSP General Secretary and Rajya Sabha member S C Mishra said, “Naseemuddin and his son Afzal have been expelled from the party .He has a partnership in a number of slaughter houses and `benami' properties in his name. He also took money during assembly polls due to which party had to suffer defeat“. He also alleged that Naseemuddin used to “accept money“ from people in return for work and added that the “BSP will not tolerate such indiscipline“. Naseemuddin, who hails from Banda, was earlier removed as the party in-charge of UP and was ap pointed as MP unit in-charge after the assembly poll debacle.
18. Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday spoke to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and both agreed to meet in Delhi early next week, as part of Gandhi's efforts to forge a broader unity among Opposition parties against BJP and field a joint Opposition presidential candidate.
19. Chief Justice of India JS Khehar on Wednesday held out hope for a manipulation-free digital case-filing process, shortly after Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Integrated Case Management Information System (ICMIS) to help the apex court go paperless. . Though e-fling is already permitted and in use despite resistance from certain sections of lawyers, the new digital filing takes it to the next level, obviating the need to file any litigation papers except at the entry level and then back it up with additional information as the case goes forward to the appellate stages. Additionally , it will make it difficult for anyone, including court staff and lawyers to tamper with the process or manipulate filing dates. The CJI held out this promise to all, promising to this first to the high courts and later the district courts. The PM endorsed the judiciary's massive digital push to make the justice delivery mechanism more transparent, efficient and economical. The new system would now be available on the Supreme Court website.
20. Trinamoool Congress and CPM are likely to vote for a common presidential candidate of Opposition parties although they are rivals in West Bengal.Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee indicated this recently to party insiders. She reportedly told partymen that her sole intention was to thwart BJP's growth in Bengal and fight the party politically at the national level.
21. A proposal by India's food regulator to tax all packaged foods with high fat, sugar and salt content isn't going down well with companies and restaurants. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) proposed the tax on Monday . Although a rate hasn't been specified, it would bring almost all processed food items under the ambit of the proposed levy if implemented. Some companies were sceptical about the move.
22. The new fiscal year began on a sour note for bank credit growth, which slipped to 4.32%in the fortnight to April 28, much lower than the 63-year low level of 5.08% in fiscal 2017, the latest RBI data showed. In the reporting fortnight, credit grew at an anaemic 4.32% to Rs 75.45 trillion as against the Rs 72.32 trillion in the same period. For the fiscal ending March 2017, credit growth had plunged to a multi decadal low of 5.08% with an outstanding loans at Rs 78.81 trillion as against Rs 75.01 trillion on Arpil 1, 2016.
23. The National Green Tribunal has directed an inspection team headed by Central Pollution Control Board to inform it about the mechanism of e-waste collection and transport at the premises of power distribution companies here. The inspection committee has ben directed to see whether electronic waste from their premises have been removed. During the hearing, the joint committee filed the inspection report which said in most of the premises of discoms, e-waste was not found stored anywhere except the premises of Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited at Mangolpuri here.
24. President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey amid the agency's investigation of Russian interference in last year's election, saying the bureau needed new leadership to restore “public trust and confidence“. Trump's decision on Tuesday means that he will get to nominate Comey's successor while the agency is deep into the Russia inquiry, including whether any of Trump's associates colluded with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election.Democrats condemned Comey's dismissal, calling it an effort to cut short the Russia probe and demanding the appointment of a special prosecutor to carry it forward.
25. At least seven civilians, including two women and three children, were killed in a roadside bomb blast in Af-ghanistan's western Herat province, police said on Wednesday. The blast occurred in Adraskan district on Tuesday when a vehicle running along a main road touched off an IED and the explosion killed all the people aboard the vehicle, provincial police spokesman Abdul Ahad Walizada said.The victims were members of the same family, Tolo News reported. Walizada blamed Taliban militants for planting the IED in the district, south of provincial capital Herat city, 640 kilometres west of the Afghan capital.However, no group has claimed responsibility for the bombing so far.
26. President Trump described an Oval Office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as “very, very good“ on Wednesday, claiming progress on ending the conflict in Syria. “We had a very, very good meeting“ Trump said shortly after the meeting.“We're going to stop the killing and the death (in Syria).“ Lavrov on Wednesday became the most senior Russian official to meet Trump since he came to office, and the most high-profile Kremlin official to visit the White House in years. It is rare for a foreign minister -or any non-head of state representing a foreign country -to be given a meeting in the Oval Office.
27. South Korea's new president was sworn in on Wednesday, just a day after a landslide election victory, and immediately declared his willingness to visit Pyongyang amid high tensions with the nuclear-armed North. Left-leaning Moon Jae-In, a former human rights lawyer, backs engagement with North Korea in the quest for peace -in contrast to the threatening rhetoric from the Trump administration in recent weeks. “I will also go to Beijing and Tokyo and even Pyongyang in the right circumstances.“
28. Solar power tariffs in India reached another historic low of `2.62 per kwH, becoming cheaper than those at many coal-fired plants, at the latest auction at the Adani Renewable Energy Park in Rajasthan. The winners of the 250-MW projects auctioned by the Solar Energy Corp of India (SECI) was Phelan Energy Group of South Africa, which won 50 MW at `2.62 per unit, Avaada Power that won 100 MW at `2.62, and SBG Cleantech, which was awarded the remaining 100 MW at a tariff one paisa higher at `2.63 per kwH. Avaada Power was set up by Vineet Mittal, who formerly headed Welspun's renewables business before it was sold to Tata Power. SBG Cleantech is the joint venture of Japan's Softbank, Taiwan's Foxcomm, and Bharti Airtel. Formed in June 2015, SBG Cleantech is already building 350 MW in Andhra Pradesh, which it won through an NTPC conducted auction in December 2015. South African solar energy major Phelan Energy Group makes its debut in India with this project. It has commissioned a 175 MW solar project in South Africa, and through its subsidiary Solar Capital, is building numerous other plants across five continents. The winning bid was considerably below the lowest bid so far of `3.15 per kwH, at an NTPC auction of 250 MW at the Kadapa Solar Park in Andhra Pradesh on April 13 this year. Before that, the lowest achieved was `2.97 per kwH in the first year, followed by five paise tariff escalation for the next 15 years, which worked out to a mean tariff of `3.30 per kwH over 25 years.This was at a 750 MW auction at Rewa Solar Park, Madhya Pradesh, in February , conducted by the state government. There were 14 bidders in all, with bids ranging from `2.62 to `3.59 per kwH. None of the bidders sought viability gap funding (VGF), a concession the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy gives to developers of renewable energy . The Adani Renewable Energy Park is located at Bhadla, a site that enjoys the highest solar radiation in the country .The capacity utilisation factor (CUF) of solar projects located in this region is relatively high, because of which tariffs for projects here have been setting progressively lower records.
29. The uncertainty looming large over Shashank Manohar's tenure as ICC chairman ended today after the former BCCI president made it clear that he will complete his term which runs till June 2018. “The International Cricket Council (ICC) today confirmed Shashank Manohar will continue to function as the Independent Chairman of ICC until the end of his elected term which is June 2018,“ ICC stated. Last March, Manohar had decided to step down from chairman's post citing “personal reasons“ only to be persuaded by the ICC directors -both Full Members and Associates -to stay. Initially, Manohar wanted to stay only till ICC Annual Conference in June this year but very recently he has had a change of heart.
30. In Vivo IPL 2017 Delhi Daredevils Won against Gujarat Lions.
31. On the back of a normal monsoon forecast, both the Nifty and sensex rallied to new all-time highs on Wednesday . The sensex jumped 315 points, to close at 30,248, while the Nifty , too, closed higher at 9,407. The day's gains added about Rs 1.1lakh crore to investors' wealth.
32. A four-month-old baby from Kalyan born with a major heart defect is all set to go home after a two-month stay at the Parel hospital where she underwent a 12-hour surgery and survived six heart attacks. She was diagnosed with a condition called transposition of great arteries.
33. The 23-year-old son of Andhra Pradesh minister P Narayana died after his Mercedes Benz SUV rammed into a Metro pier in Hyderabad on Wednesday. Nishith was returning home with a friend when he lost control of the car.
34. The two-wheeler population in Mumbai will cross the four million mark in a few weeks having already crossed 39.2 lakh, a senior transport official has said.This comes as India taken over from China as the biggest two-wheeler market.
35. A marriage celebration in Rajasthan turned tragic late on Wednesday when a portion of a marriage hall collapsed killing at least 23 people, including four children. The toll may rise as several were still trapped when reports last came in.
36.Uttar Pradesh has seen the maximum count of candidates who have made the cut this year to take the gruelling JEE (Advanced) exams. Maharashtra has moved up one spot, from third last year to second, and Rajasthan, which was second, is now a close third. Interestingly, of the 2.2 lakh candidates who cleared the first barrier of the JEE (Main), 19% were girls, and the largest chunk hail from Maharashtra, followed by Telangana (see box). Like the past few years, what hasn't altered is the high success rate of high school graduates from the CBSE board. “Many CBSE students always managed to crack the JEE. But we see that each year, the dynamics of the other state boards change,“ said an IIT director.“Even among the top rankers, we see a kind of shift after each exam,“ he added. From among the Maharashtra students, those from Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur and Latur have been doing well in the overall JEE results and more have been eventually getting selected at the Indian Institutes of Technology . The integrated approach where students are trained for entrance tests in their junior colleges is showing a good success rate among our students. Several students from interior Maharashtra too migrate to the city for the two years of their preparation,” said Praveen Tyagi, chairman, Pace Junior Science Colleges. Moreover, girl enrolment for coaching in Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur has risen, and most of them stay back instead of travelling to Kota or the southern states that are coaching hubs as parents prefer to have them closer home, added Tyagi. Bihar, which was at number four in 2016, has slipped two spots this time. But students from Kerala have upp ed their game—while that state did not figure in the top 15 positions last year, it is up at the ninth rank this year. Data from the IITs which conduct the JEE (Advanced) exams shows that students from the five southern states of AP, Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu account for 35% share of the student pool. Telangana and AP together would have made it to pole position.
In all, of those who made the mark and registered, 1.74 lakh students will take the IIT-JEE Advanced exams on May 21. “Some may not have registered as they may have felt they are not cut out for the IITs, some may want to pursue another discipline like medicine or go abroad, and some others may want to join an engineering college in their state,” said a JEE official.
37. Even two days after the Supreme Court ordered the arrest of Calcutta high court judge Justice C S Karnan, police teams from two states (WB and TN) were unable to locate him, report A Subramani and Daniel George. There were rumours that he had left for the temple town of Kalahasthi in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, and that his mobile phone signals indicated his presence near a picnic location during the day. Karnan, who was staying at the Tamil Nadu government state house in Chennai till Tuesday afternoon, went missing after the import of the apex court ruling dawned on everyone.
38. A shipload of tramadol, a synthetic opioidlike drug used as a painkiller, sent from India to be sold to IS terrorists in Libya to give them greater resilience has been seized by the Italian police, according to media reports on Wednesday . News agency PTI, quoting a report in The Times, said 37 million tramadol pills, worth $75 million, were found packed in three containers at the port of Genoa, labelled as blankets and shampoo to be loaded on a freighter bound for Libya. The report said Italian investigators traced the shipment to an Indian pharmaceutical company that allegedly sold the pills for $250,000 to a Dubai-based importer.
39. The Armed Forces Tribunal in Mumbai has directed `notional' reinstatement of a naval commander removed from service in May 2013 for allegedly having a “philandering lifestyle“ and “breaching security“ . The government said his actions amounted to “gross misconduct“. But the tribunal held that the case against the commander, Lijo Chacko, was “grossly overstated“. The tribunal said a punishment disproportionate to the misconduct would amount to discrimination under right to equality and hence set aside his removal. The commander would have completed 20 years of pensionable service last March. The tribunal made it clear he should now get his pension as commander.
40. A unique combination of five Supreme Court judges belonging to different faiths will start hearing final arguments on the constitutional validity of the `triple talaq' mode of divorce practised by the Muslim community from Thursday , the first day of the apex court's summer vacation. For a sensitive issue like this, the lead petition is aptly titled `Quest for Equality vs Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind'. Hearing the case will be five judges from five different communities--Chief Justice of India J S Khehar (Sikh) and Justices Kurian Joseph (Christian), R F Nariman (Parsi), U U Lalit (Hindu) and Abdul Nazeer (Muslim).
41. In a bizarre twist to the brutal murder of interior decorator Kishor Chaudhari (37) who was pumped with 17 bullets in Thakurli on Tuesday over an alleged business rivalry, it has come to light that his elder brother, too, was killed 10 years ago when he was the same age. Mukund Chaudhari, a real estate agent, was beaten to death with an iron rod. Dinesh Patil, a rival real estate broker, was arrested in the case along with nine others; all were acquitted after witnesses turned hostile. The Dombivli-based Chaudhari family has demanded security for all the eyewitnesses in the killing of the younger son, citing how witnesses in Mukund’s murder case had turned hostile. Their mother Bebi Chaudhari said the family suspects the same broker, Patil’s hand in Kishor’s killing too. Kishor was allegedly killed by four men of the Bhoir family on Tuesday over a fight for a Rs 6.5 lakh interior decoration contract for a Thakurli flat. Crime branch officials said they are probing the family’s al legations. A police team visited Patil’s residence on Wednesday and found that he was missing and his mobile phone was switched off, said sources. Bebi Chaudhari told TOI: “The Bhoir family did not have any enmity with us. We therefore suspect Patil's involvement in the killing.“ Mukund's son Bhavesh added, “If the police had acted on my uncle's compla int filed against the threats made by the Bhoir family on Monday , this incident would never have happened.“
42.Forty hours after a four-year-old girl went missing from Aarey Colony in Goreagon (East), remains of her body were discovered on Wednesday afternoon by a police search team and locals. Cops said they suspect the girl was attacked and killed by a leopard.
43. The auction of the first of 13 attached properties belonging to the Yash Birla Group was finalised before a special court on Wednesday . The economic offences wing (EOW), probing a Rs 284-crore case of non-payment to investors had in 2014 attached the properties, collectively worth Rs 1,100 crore. The first property , a 4,000 sq m plot in Oshiwara, was put up for auction on April 28 with a base price of Rs 19 crore. A private firm, Ralco, which submitted the highest bid, Rs 20 crore, was declared the winner. But another firm, Vir Savarkar Projects, challenged the auction in court, claiming it to be illegal on the grounds that the firm had already bought the property from a Yash Birla group company in 2015 by paying Rs 1crore as token amount. The firm stated before a court under the Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors Act that the deal was finalised for Rs 23 crore. It said it was ready to deposit Rs 24 crore (above the Rs 1crore token money). The court on Wednesday allowed Vir Savarkar Projects to deposit a demand draft and ordered that documentation be completed. The EOW alleged that 19,065 people lost their investments in schemes by Birla Power Solutions. The FIR said that in February 2012, the victims invested in a fixed deposit scheme in which they were promised a return of 10.75% after a year. They alleged that the promise was never kept.A chargesheet was filed against Birla and nine others in the case.The police said the competent authority handling the auction and refund to victims is an officer of deputy collector rank appointed by the state government. In December 2013, the Marine Drive police registered a case against Birla Power Solutions for allegedly not repaying a Rs 1-crore fixed deposit investment of a Worli businessman on maturity . The case was later transferred to the EOW . “The police found Rs 44 crore in bank accounts belonging to the accused.This was used to partly refund the investors,“ an officer said.
44. If the day-time heat in April this year sucked the ener gy out of you, the night temperatures for the month made matters worse. Data released by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) reveals that nights in April warmed faster than the days, making the average night-time temperature for the month the third highest in the country's history since record-keeping began in 1901. The average night temperature rose by a significant 1.02 degrees Celsius in April against a base of 22.38 degrees Celsius. In April 2010, the rise was 1.9 degrees Celsius and in April 2016,1.4 degrees Celsius. The data also revealed that the mean temperature this April rose around 1.04 degrees Celsius, making it the fourth hottest April since 1901. The hottest April ever was in 2010, followed by 2016 and 1973. This time, it is really the night temperature rise that has got scientists thinking.They said the increase in pollutants and greenhouse gases seemed to hinder the earth's outgoing long-wave radiation at night, leading to an increase in temperature. AK Srivastava, senior scientist and head of climate monitoring and analysis group at IMD, Pune, said that past data had shown that nights had been warming more rapidly than days.
45. A 24-year-old tempo driver has been arrested for allegedly assaulting an on-duty traffic policeman at Kalwa junction in Thane on Tuesday evening. According to a complaint lodged by constable Ajay Shirsat, who was manning traffic at Shivaji chowk around 6 pm, tempo driver Yogesh Shinde hit him after being told to pull over. Even after being told to stop, Shinde drove past the constable thus causing a traffic jam, stated the complaint. As Shirsat asked Shinde why he had moved on despite being told to halt, it led to a heated argument between them. A police officer said that Shirsat’s complaint says that Shinde had pushed and slapped him in public. However, a shopkeeper from the locality, who claimed to have witnessed the incident, said that the “constable had beat up the driver more than the driver having assaulted the cop”.
46. Vile Parle (east) locals were inconvenienced after power was shut around 10.30 am on Wednesday . Power had not been restored till 10.30 pm when this report was filed. A resident said they had no clue when power would be restored. “We can't contact the company helpline.“ A Reliance official said there were multiple faults... “One fault has been restored, the rest will be restored after midnight.“
47. The Nehru Nagar police arrested a 35-year-old man for sexually harassing a 17-yearold boy and demanding that he marry him.
Police arrested Shadab Dalvi for also attempting to kiss the minor and showing him porn videos on his mobile phone. The victim, a diesel mechanic diploma student at a south Mumbai college, narrated the incident to his parents, who approached police. The victim told police he met Dalvi at a gym and later they became friends. “One day , Dalvi sent me a message on my Facebook account asking if I was interested in going to an Ajmer shrine. We both went in April. On reaching there, Dalvi took me to a small lodge and booked a room. Once we entered, he tried to kiss me, he removed my trousers and showed me porn videos. I got scared and ran outside but as I did not know anyone, I returned,“ the boy told police. He told police that when they went to the market the next day , Dalvi teased him, saying he should buy and wear female clothes and he would look nice in them. Dalvi also allegedly told him that he wanted to marry him. The victim told Dalvi he had to appear for exams and they returned to Mumbai. Last week, Dalvi called him near the railway tracks and again tried to kiss him and insisted on marriage. Dalvi was held under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
48. Four-month-old Vidisha is being called a “miracle baby“ in the Parel hospital that has been her home for the last two months. She was not only born with a major heart defect that needed a 12-hour surgery , but she suffered six heart attacks thereafter. Vidisha, who was born to Kalyan residents Vishaka and Vi nod Waghmare, is likely to be discharged from B J Wadia Hospital within the next couple of days. Her parents could barely manage Rs 25,000 for the Rs 5lakh bill that was paid by various donors of the hospital.
49. The Kalyan RPF found an unclaimed box containing Rs 37 lakh cash in a three-tier air-conditioned coach of Udyan Express at Kalyan railway station on Wednesday evening. The RPF officials said that they had received information from control room about an unclaimed box in Udyan Express, (11301) which was heading to Mumbai. When the train halted at Kalyan, the RPF ran a check and opened the box and found bundles of Rs 2,000 notes and Rs 500 notes, totalling Rs 37 lakh. The officials said that passengers travelling in the B1 compartment from Bengaluru first noticed the box when the train reached Gulbarga in Karnataka. When no one claimed it till Karjat, a few passeng ers went to other coaches to ask it if belonged to anyone. However, when no one came forward, they informed the ticket checker, who, inturn, alerted informed the control room. An official said that the box has been handed over to Kalyan station manager.
50. The BMC has started a massive action against street food vendors across the city after it stumbled upon E. coli bacteria in the food and ice that it had tested recently . So far the civic body has cracked the whip on around 5,000 street food vendors across the city. Around 2,000 kgs of swe ets, 11,000 litres cold drinks and 5,000 kg of fruits and vegetables have been destroyed in this action which is still underway . Over 20,000 kg of contaminated ice was destroyed in various parts of the city by officials of the BMC and food and drug administration (FDA) over the last four days. The presence of the bacteria is known to cause serious health issues.
51. Roughly one in three flights departing from or arriving at Mumbai airport in the afternoon in April was delayed. The main runway was shut down between 9am and 5pm for three months from February 1 onwards for surface repairs.The shorter secondary runway was available for flight operations during this time, but as it isn't equipped with taxiways like the main runway , aircraft spent longer time on the runway during take-off or landing. The delays had a cascad ing effect on airline schedules, affecting afternoon and evening peak-hour flyers the most. Out of 3,683 flights operated between 3pm and 11pm in the period under consideration, a total of 1,295 departures, or 35 %, were de layed, with Jet having the highest number of delayed flights at 490. About 36% of arrival flights too were behind schedule, by 15 minutes or more. Similarly, 35% of arrivals between 11pm and 3am, mostly international, were delayed. But only 5% departures that took place during this time were behind schedule. The best time to board a flight continued to be early morning. Between 3am and 9am, only 8 % departures and 6% arrivals were delayed. Of the total 8,831 departures from Mumbai airport in April, 78% were on-time and of the 8,841 arrivals, 72% were on-time. The airline with the best on-time performance was Spice Jet, which operated a total of 691 departures, out of which 571 were on-time, giving it an OTP of 83% for departures. Close on heels was Vistara, which operated 278 departures and had an OTP of 82%. In the arrivals category, Spice Jet topped the list, with an 84% on-time rate. It was followed by IndiGo at 81%.
52. A day after Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray visited the ongoing nullah-cleaning works across Mumbai, BJP leaders and corporators were seen making the rounds of city drains. But unlike the Sena, which claimed it was satisfied with the desilting works being done, the BJP raised a stink, saying it was 100% dissatisfied and adding that despite the action taken in the desilting scam which came to light in 2015, nothing seems to have changed on the ground. The Mumbai BJP president Ashish Shelar, along with BJP corporators like Manoj Kotak and Makarand Narwekar, visited various drains in the western suburbs. They once again claimed to have found bogus documents submitted by contractors.
53. Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray has instructed party MLAs to prepare for mid-term polls in the state, it is learnt. In such a scenario, the party would contest the assembly election on its own strength. Given the current composition of the legislative assembly, which leaves the Shiv Sena with no other choice but to extend support to Devendra Fadnavis’s government, Thackeray has begun to veer round to the view that assembly polls would rejig the political equations in the state, said a senior party functionary on Wednesday.
54. The wife of a passport officer from Thane was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly cheating people of Rs 3.5 crore. Sunita Sharma (46) had lured her acquaintances by promising high returns on investment, said an official from the economic offences wing of the Mumbai police. A criminal offence had been lodged on January 25 this year after one of the investors, Krushi Bhutani, who lost Rs 7.5 lakh, lodged a complaint, saying that Sharma had lured him with the promise of returns ranging from 10% to 15%. The police said that Sharma worked for a company in Bandra-Kurla Complex and some of her victims were from that office. So far, 25 investors have complained against Sharma.
55. Adrenaline in teenagers can be hard to tame and Justin Bieber’s fanbase is a passionate bunch. The energy levels of 45,000 shrieking attendees at D Y Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai remained undimmed for 90odd minutes on Wednesday. For Mumbai, it was the manifestation of the hysteria that defines ‘Bieber Fever’. Uncharacteristically on time, the 23-year-old Canadian pop rage emerged from a glass cage illusion singing ‘Mark My Words’ and ‘Where Are U Now?’ with a flash of holograms, lasers, fireworks and gymnasts, making it difficult to spot where Bieber actually was at times. Bieber, on his maiden gig in India, made Mumbai the host for his Purpose Tour, which has raked in close to $200 million since its 2016 launch. The tour is to promote his fourth studio album. Beliebers had their share of glory too at the event. In a first for an Indian concert, fans were flown on choppers from Juhu. Fans pushed against the barriers or collapsing from dizzy spells had the security worried. But Bieber himself remained unflappable. Flailing his hands, he wooed the audience made up of tweens and teens, and a smattering of men and women over 45, mostly parents of the same tweens and teens.
56. Maharashtra chief secretary Sumit Mullick has called a meeting of over 10 central agencies to discuss slum rehabilition scheme for the slums on Government of India land in Mumbai and Thane. In a letter to these agencies, Mullick said the state government has undertaken to make Mumbai slum free by 2022 in line with the Centre’s Housing for All-2022. The state has proposed rehabilitation of all slum-dwellers on central government land on 400 acres of salt pan land. In 2015, the state had taken up the task of preparing a master plan but in December 2016, a Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority report established that barely 25 acres of salt pan land is developable. The letter states that the various central government agencies have neither surveyed nor framed any policy for rehabilitation of slums on their land.
57. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has readied a formal request for an Interpol red-corner notice against controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik and is likely to give it to the CBI, which is the Interpol’s office in India, on Thursday. Once an RCN is issued by the global police body, any international agency can arrest Naik wherever he is spotted and hand him over to India. Naik, who is facing probes for provocative speeches, inciting violence, spreading hatred, funding terrorists and money laundering, is said to be hiding in Saudi Arabia. Sources said he frequently travels to Malaysia and Indonesia. Sources said the RCN request against Naik was prepared with detailed evidence after procuring a non-bailable warrant against him from court and it was approved by NIA chief Sharad Kumar.
58. Bringing to book a man who suppressed his first marriage and remarried, a magistrate’s court ordered him to pay a compensation of Rs 3 lakh to the second wife for causing her mental and physical cruelty. “The respondent (husband) has suppressed his first marriage from the applicant and got married with her by taking disadvantage of the personal law, which permitted him to marry four times. This is nothing but domestic violence with applicant,” the court said. The court added that the husband was to pay the second wife a monthly maintenance of Rs 8,000 under the provisions of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, in addition to Rs 5,000 towards costs of the proceedings. The man is facing criminal proceedings under Section 498A (husband or relative of husband subjecting wife to cruelty) of the Indian Penal Code. On August 21, 2014, the woman moved the court under the Act seeking protection and relief. She said that when she got married to the man October 13, 2010, her family was told that he was a bachelor who ran a spare parts business. The woman said that within six months, he started abusing her and demanded she arrange for a separate residence for both of them. She said that her widowed mother and maternal uncle had jointly purchased a house and her husband insisted they transfer it to his name. She further alleged that even after she was allowed to reside there with her husband, he continued to assault her and taunt her about her caste. She said that he even forced her to get a share in the Rs 12 lakh insurance claim received by her family after her father’s death. Fearing for her life, the woman moved back to her mother’s house in August 2012. The woman said on one occasion, he came over when she was alone at home and insisted on physical relations. She alleged that when she refused, he poured kerosene on her and threatened to set her ablaze. The husband denied all allegations and said that the complainant was aware of his first wife and two daughters and had consented to the marriage. The man said she got upset with him as he went on a 17-day pilgrimage with his family members in 2013 and threatened to tell his first wife about their marriage. He alleged that she filed the police complaint only to seek revenge. The court pointed out that the man had stated that though his first wife had suspected that he had remarried, he had handled the situation calmly. “This evidence of respondent goes to suggest that he has suppressed his second marriage from the first wife. Thus, it seems that he has a habit to tell false to wives. Therefore, his evidence is not trustworthy, believable and acceptable,” the court said. It further held that the man had even obtained talaq from the woman without following the customs and procedure of the Muslim personal laws.
59. A 25-year-old lifeguard of the Mumbai Fire Brigade rescued three Malwani youths from drowning off Aksa beach on Wednesday morning. The three men—Altaf Mohammad Iqbal (30), Sarfaraz Rahim Sheikh (24) and Suraj Prajapati (25)—had gone for a walk on Aksa beach early in the morning and sat down to chat on the rocks, almost 200m inside the sea. The men failed to notice the rising water levels owing to high tide and started shouting for help as none of them could swim. Lifeguard Nathuram Suryavanshi, who reported for duty at 9am, noticed the three youths frantically signalling for help around 10.25am.
60. Bracing themselves for the oncoming lean season, most airlines have put out discounted domestic fares for June-September travel. The fares begin to drop from June 20 and hit extreme lows through July, August and September, except for certain days like the ones around the Independence Day weekend when they rise a bit. A Mumbai-Delhi return ticket booked this week for travel in July can be had for Rs 4,300, all-inclusive. A one-way fare on the route started at Rs 2,100 on IndiGo, taxes included. Routes on which ticket costs remain high through the year, like Mumbai-Kolkata or Mumbai-Kochi, also showed a cooling of fares. An indicator of changing booking behaviour of the Indian market was the slight increase in fares around the Independence Day weekend. August 15 falls on a Tuesday and so August 14, a Monday, is likely to see many vacant seats in offices.
61. Two minor boys from Nepal, who had gone for a swim, drowned in a pond in Ghansoli in Navi Mumbai on Tuesday evening. The boys — Hitesh Premkumar Chatri (12) and Yuvraj Dilbahadur Thapa (15) — had gone to the pond along Palm Beach Road with two other minor boys. The police said that the children were frolicking in the waters abutting mangroves during high tide when water level in the pond rose.
62 There are 39 more junior colleges in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) now. While this means an increase in seats, teachers do not feel it will help reduce the demand-supply gap as only a few institutes are popular among students. The office of the deputy director of education, Mumbai, which conducts online FYJC admissions in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) has received registrations for 778 colleges this year compared to 739 in 2016. The colleges concluded their registration process after several deadline extensions last week.
63. A 34-year-old man was arrested from Uttar Pradesh for allegedly killing his lover's husband in Vasai and dumping his body in the Tungareshwar jungle n March. Rajesh Gupta confessed to having killed Dhanshyam Singh (39) with whose wife, Babli, he had an affair. Gupta was staying as paying guest at Singh's Boidapada home since September last year.
64. A Virar man was arrested for allegedly raping, murdering and disposing of a woman's body ast month. On April 18, the Arnala police found a woman's body in a secluded spot in Y K Nagar, Virar (W). They managed to identify the body and zero in on Abdulla Shaikh, who has reportedly confessed to the crime.
65.Petrol pump owners observed `no-purchase' of fuel on Wednesday and sent an ultimatum letter to oil marketing companies to look into their demands for a hike in dealer commission. If the oil firms fail to hold a dialogue with them, pump owners have threatened a shutdown on Sunday.
66.Thursday will see lakhs of class XII graduates battle it out for admission to engineering and pharmacy colleges. The state's common entrance test (MHT-CET) has seen registrations from a total of 3.9 lakh candidates. Of these, the lion's share is of the undecided lot that will be taking the test for both engineering and pharmacy (1.5 lakh).
The rest (1.44 lakh) are sitting for physics, chemistry and math for a seat in engineering, up from last year's 1.3 lakh, and 95,545 are registered for pharmacy. This is the first year that the state has asked for details on transgender candidates in this entrance test and has received 25 registrations.
67. A routine anti-encroachment drive took an ugly turn at Naupada's Gaondevi ground on Wednesday evening when deputy municipal commissioner Sandeep Malvi was assaulted by hawkers. Naupada police are investigating the incident.
Police said Malvi, who was heading the drive near Thane station, was allegedly roped into a heated argument with the owner of Ekvira Poli Bhaji Kendra, Pravesh Deshpande, at 7.30pm, about an encroachment in front of the shop. The argument, within minutes, attracted a mob, which attacked the official.
68. A day after businessman Raj Kundra and his actor wife Shilpa Shetty got interim relief from a Thane sessions court in a cheating case, Kundra was asked to appear before Kongaon police (Bhiwandi) for inquiry on Wednesday . Kundra was quizzed by police in presence of his lawyer Aniket Nikam. Sources from Kongaon police said that he has been asked to come to the police station for questioning on Thursday and day after too. Businessman Ravi Bhalotia from Bhiwandi had filed a case against Shetty , Kundra and three others on April 27. Bhalotia had alleged that Best Deal TV Pvt Ltd (BDTV), an online shopping channel, headed by them had duped him of Rs 24 lakh. He said that he was a vendor with the channel through which he sold bedsheets and it was to collect money on his behalf, howver, he never got any money from the channel.
69. The state is pulling out all the stops for the launch of Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari's pet project in Nagpur. The country's first electric taxi service, aimed at combating pollution, is due for a May 26 inauguration to coincide with the third anniversary of the Modi government. An initiative to showcase the effort to curb vehicular emissions, the pilot project is expected to take off in Gadkari's hometown with 100 e-taxis, officials said. Based on the response, the scheme is likely to be extended to more cities. However, the launch has run into a last-minute bureaucratic hurdle due to archaic rules. Under the state's permit rules, only vehicles of more than 980cc (cubic centimetres) engine capacity can be registered for commercial operation and these have to be of at least 1,400cc for high-end services.But electric vehicles don't fall under the cc category since they have no internal combustion engines and their capacity is defined in kilowatts (kw). The norm blocking the rollout of electric taxis is an unex pected obstacle at a time when the Centre is promoting use of e-vehicles to check air pollution and reduce India's dependence on crude oil import. CC is a unit of volume; for example, 1,500cc is essentially 1.5 litres. “Each taxi shall have an engine capacity of not less than 980cc with seating capacity not exceeding seven, including driver; provided that at least 50% taxis attached to any aggregator shall have an engine capacity of 1,400cc or more,“ the state's taxi rules state. Atransport official said the department was working on the technicalities to overcome the restriction. Officials may revise motor requirements for taxis in a few days and the state transport authority is likely to take a final call. “There have been several meetings. Even Union minister Nitin Gadkari is very keen on them,“ said a state official.Transport minister Diwakar Raote told TOI, “The launch of the electric taxis has been announced by Union minister Gadkari. Nothing has reached me. So, I can't comment.“ Union transport ministry has already given the go-ahead to test these taxis and trial runs may begin soon, sources said.Another hurdle the scheme faces is availability of power and the need for a network of charging stations for the vehicles.
70. Overgrown bushes have been trimmed and walls whitewashed at kabrastans ahead of Thursday's festival of Shab-e-Baraat. Through the night till the wee hours of Friday , throngs of men and boys will arrive at graveyards to pray for their departed relatives. Shab-e-Baraat occurs 15 days before the advent of Ramzan, which falls on May 28 this year. “This occasion is doubly significant. Allah showers reward and blessings on those who offer Esaal E' Sawaab (gifts of prayer or charity) for the deceased,“ says Maulana Sajid Shaikh of Nagpada. “ Also, on this day Allah opens the annual book of deeds for each Muslim and determines his income as well as key life events like marriage, birth and death during the course of the year. What better way to spend this night than in remembrance of Allah and his Prophet.“ Andheri Muslim Kabrastan Masjid at Four Bungalows has whitewashed its walls and strung fairy lights and overhanging drapes to welcome around 5,000 worshippers. “Shab-eBaraat is also a night for the living to seek pardon for their sins. Allah descends to the lowest heaven and calls out to ask if there is anyone who seeks blessings, health, livelihood or prosperity , and rewards those who ask. However, a few Muslims, including those who associate partners with Allah, disobey their parents and drink alcohol, are not forgiven,“ said Maulana Mohammed Shahid Nadwi of the Andheri masjid. Bada Kabrastan at Marine Lines will receive over 10,000 people at the 4,000 graves located in its 4-acre precinct, said chairman Nazir Tungekar. “We have a heavy police presence as well as CCTV cameras and barricades to manage the crowd,“ Tungekar said. The Baqar trust of Bandra (E) kabrastan, which has 800 graves, will also come alive with prayer and speeches, said spokesperson Afzal Fakih.Special prayers are held all night and families distribute food, especially halwa, as charity .Several people observe roza (fast) on one or both days.
71. Smart city Tel Aviv has joined hands with Thane to replicate the civic transformation it underwent, using digital technologies, in Thane . Israel Ambassador Daniel Carmon said this after inaugurating his country's pavilion at the third Smart Cities India-2017 Expo at the Pragati Maidan in Delhi. “ A few days ago, Tel Aviv municipality and Thane municipal corporation joined hands as part of India's `Smart City' initiative,“ said Carmon. As part of the cooperation, the two civic bodies, alongside an private technology major from Israel with an Indian partner, will work on replicating the `DigiTel Aviv' project, as `DigiThane', said a senior official of the Tel Aviv Municipality . The ambassador said that the smart city cooperation is the result of visit of a delegation led by the Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis in 2015. Carmon said, “A meeting of all stakeholders from both the countries was held to discuss challenges and solutions related to water, from recycling to desalination and more.“
72. Officers of Enforcement Directorate's (ED) subzonal office in Surat raided premises of liquor smuggler Ramesh Patel alias Michael in Daman and seized more than 1.91 lakh liquor bottles worth Rs2.54 crore on Wednesday .They also seized three luxury cars, Land Rover Evoque and two Audis worth Rs2 crore and Rs9 lakh cash. The ED officials also discovered details of bank deposits to the tune of Rs223.47 crore during the raid.Patel is wanted in more than 30 cases in Gujarat under Gujarat Prohibition Act, 1949. The searches were launched against Ramesh Patel alias Michael, his wife Bhanu Patel and others for allegedly smuggling liquor from Da man to Gujarat, where liquor consumption is prohibited under law, sources said. Patel was not at his residence during the searches. Investigations were initiated based on the case filed by Surat police against after seizure of 21,750 bottles of IMFL and beer valued at Rs22.98 lakh near Olpaadrecently . ED officials found a shortage of 38,000 cases amounting to Rs7.10 crore, which they suspect has been diverted illegally to Gujarat. Investigation revealed Patel and his wife are main suppliers of IMFL through local bootleggers. Patel had a 3,000 sq ft illegal warehouse for his liquor business. He used to forge invoices of genuine manufacturing entries to camouflage illicit IMFL's passage through Daman check-post. Bootleggers would place orders through WhatsApp. It was revealed that Patel's wine shops had not been maintaining any sales records and the restaurant and other business premises were used for paper transactions only .
73. The condition of Congress President Sonia Gandhi, who is under treatment at Sir Ganga Ram hospital for food poisoning, is stable. On Wednesday, sources said, her son Rahul Gandhi and daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra visited the hospital. “The patient is stable.She is likely to be discharged soon,“ a doctor said.
74. Congress has asked the Modi government if it had thought through its decision to approach the ICJ about the Kulbhushan Jadhav case and was not falling in the Pakistani trap to internationalise bilateral issues, including J&K. The opposition party also lashed out at the Centre for the deteriorating situation in J&K in the wake of the killing of a young Kashmiri Army officer by terrorists.
75. India on Wednesday strongly justified its decision to move the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the case of Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav, sentenced to death in Pakistan for alleged spying, saying he had been subjected to a sham trial and that his life was in danger. India took the step 46 years after it had last approached the ICJ to resolve a dispute with Pakistan. Foreign ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said the decision was well considered and meant to ensure justice as Pakistan had not responded to India's 16 requests for access to Jadhav . The ICJ, which had stayed the hanging, is to hear the case on Monday and could issue an interim order. India argued that continuo us denial of consular access was a violation of Jadhav's rights under the Vienna Protocol and Baglay said the applica tion of his parents, who wanted to visit Pakistan, had gone unanswered. He said foreign minister Sushma Swaraj had written to Pakistan's Sartaj Aziz on April 27, asking him to facilitate visas for Jadhav's parents.
76. The government, on Wednesday , announced that Sanjay Mitra, a 1982 batch West Bengal cadre IAS officer posted as secretary of the road transport and highways ministry, will be the next defence secretary for a fixed two-year tenure after G Mohan Kumar retires on May 24. Mitra, who served a sevenyear stint in the Manmohan Singh PMO, will take over at a time when the defence ministry is trying to embark on farreaching reforms to boost the country's defence industrial base, while also dwelling upon the crucial post of a chief of the defence staff in the shortterm as well as integrated theatre commands in the long term.
77. A day after Dalit protesters went on a violent spree in Saharanpur, 12 FIRs have been filed while 24 persons have been taken into police custody . The state government also transferred two additional superintendents of police, who have been attached to Lucknow headquarters. Congress Rajya Sabha member PL Punia, who is former chairman of National Commission of Scheduled Castes, was reportedly denied permission to visit the violence-hit areas owing to `sensitive environment'. However, he eventually visited the city and interacted with the SSP and DM to take stock of the situation.
78. Senior SP leader and UP legislative council chairman Ramesh Yadav's nephew was, on Wednesday , arrested for attempt to murder, robbery and other grievous offences in Etah. Police said Mohit Yadav , who was armed with a country-made pistol and was accompanied by his aides, stormed into the district hospital and assaulted two lab technicians after an argument. The highhanded youth, believed to be in his late twenties, did not even spare cops and manhandled the station in-charge and a constable on being taken to the police station. SP's Etah district president Ashraf Hussain admitted the accused is senior leader Ramesh Yadav's nephew, but claimed the youth was not associated with the party.
79. Further tightening the rules for NGOs, the home ministry has asked 5,845 organisations to open their accounts in banks having core banking facilities and furnish details for real time access to security agencies in case of any discrepancy. The move comes after the government found that many NGOs had accounts in cooperative banks. The government has asked NGOs to have accounts in proper banks as part of steps taken by the NDA government aimed at checking “errant“ NGOs, especially those receiving foreign funding. In the last three years, the government has cancelled registration of more than 10,000 NGOs, while over 1,300 have been denied renewal of licence. In a communication, 3,768 NGOs were told that their bank accounts were not available as per core banking formatl, while 2,077 NGOs were asked to furnish bank accounts details as no such data was available with the home ministry . The move came after it was de tected that many NGOs had bank accounts in cooperative banks or state government-owned apex banks, or banks which did not have core banking facilities, official sources said. The home ministry wants all NGOs registered under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act to mandatorily have their accounts in either nationalised banks or in a few private banks which have core banking facilities. Under core banking system, all the branches of the networked banks are interconnected. This would allow the security agencies to access the accounts of the NGOs on real time basis, the sources said.
80. Jamiat Ulama-IHind president Maulana Syed Arshad Madani has urged the BJP led NDA gov ernment to consider de claring cow as the `national animal', as he expressed concern over the `atmosphere of fear' in the wake of attacks by vigilante groups.Madani also reminded PM Narendra Modi about his assurance to take action against criminals who acted in the garb of `gau raksha'. Madani, as the head of the influential minority organization that represents a large number of Islamic scholars, demanded that the Centre explore making a common law on cow protection to end the ambiguity and prevent attacks on innocent people from minority community . “The government should give national animal status to the cow and we will support it,“ Madani told a press conference.
80. The body of a 27-year-old software engineer, an IIT-Powai alumnus who worked with e-commerce company Myntra in Bengaluru, was found near the railway tracks in Greater Noida's Chhapraula village, around 6km from his home in Bisrakh, on Monday . A boarding pass stub and printout of a flight ticket found on him suggest Rajeev Kumar Verma had flown into Delhi from Bengaluru on Sunday evening (they showed his flight departed the IT city at 3.10pm, May 7). Verma's family, however, claimed they had spoken to him on Sunday evening and were unaware of his plan of travelling home.
81. A top Jet Airways pilot allegedly did not report a heavy landing made by a wide body aircraft due to which the plane was not subjected to mandatory structural safety checks and kept flying without the same. The alleged non-reporting happened on April 28, 2017, while operating a flight on a Boeing 777 (VT-JEQ) from Delhi to Hong Kong. The commander was also acting as the designated examiner, doing the tenth and final route check of a co-pilot who would have been promoted to the rank of captain, had he operated this flight perfectly. However, due to some reportedly incorrect procedures like “inadequate flare“ the aircraft touched down before the touch down point and made a heavy landing -in technical terms it made a 3.2 G landing while according to Boeing, the B-777 should not have over 2G landing. Since such heavy landings can damage aircraft structure, it is mandatory to get the plane checked to ensure it is not stressed or damaged before being released for flights again. But in this ca se, the crew did not report the heavy landing due to which the aircraft has been flying unchecked.
82. At its 84th national convention in Bareilly where participants from 22 states were present, leaders of All India Jamiatul Quresh said gau rakshaks were liars and that cows die as there is no one to take care of them. In order to solve this problem, the organisation has decided to open `gau niketans' (cow shelter homes) across the state where abandoned cows will be taken care of. The association claims to represents 50 million Qureshi Muslims, who have traditionally been engaged in the meat trade.
83. At HotBlack Coffee, a cafe in Toronto, Canada you can get walnut but ter squares, lemon poppy seed muffins, biscotti and, o course, coffee. But one thing you can't: Wi-Fi. Jimson Bienenstock, the president of HotBlack, said the shop opened last year without Wi-Fi with the ex press intent of getting cus tomers to -gasp! -talk to one another instead of bury ing their faces in laptops. “It's about creating a socia vibe,“ he said. “We're a vehicle for human interaction, other wise it's just a commodity .“ At many coffee outlets, workers set up makeshift offices and rely on the stores' Wi-Fi, which has come to be considered a given -if not a right. While HotBlack is not the first cafe to withhold WiFi, industry experts said such shops are in the minority and risk alienating customers. Bienenstock said he did not see his approach as revolutionary but as a response to society's deep immersion into all things digital that leads people to seldom communicate face to face. Customers initially were aghast at the decision, but Bienenstock said the camps are divided between those who love it and those who loathe it.(Only four of 28 reviews on Yelp noted the shop's lack of Wi-Fi.) To promote conviviality , other shops have adopted a noWi-Fi policy and gone a step further: doing away with some comfy furniture and narrowing counters to make them less accommodating for laptops. Caroline Bell of Café Grumpy said it offers Wi-Fi only at one location in NYC, and not at the seven others. Alex M Susskind, an asso ciate professor of food and beverage management at the School of Hotel Administration, Cornell University , said he saw the lack of Wi-Fi as a detriment. “That kind of bucks the trend of what most people go to coffeehouses for,“ he said. A 2015 thesis by Rose K Pozos about the “urban sociability“ of coffee shops posited that sitting alone with a laptop in a cafe was not necessarily antisocial. “People still chose to go there instead of being alone at home or work,“ wrote Pozos, who was a student at the time.In an email, she added that other businesses, such as the Blue Bottle Coffee, are known for lacking Wi-Fi, but that does not stop people from coming with laptops. To really get people to stop, some coffee shops enforce laptop-free zones, she wrote. Jordan Michelman, a founder of Sprudge Media Network, which writes about coffee news and culture, said that while Wi-Fi was not an essential amenity for coffee shops, “it's nice... and makes customers happy“.
83. Norway plans to launch the first autonomous and fully electric cargo ship next year that the project's backers said on Wednesday will save 40,000 truck journeys per year. Fertiliser company Yara International has teamed up with industrial group Kongsberg to build the Yara Birkeland, which will haul fertilisers between three ports in southern Norway . With a range of more than 65 nautical miles, the ship will be able to haul roughly 100 containers at a speed of 12 to 15 knots, according to the project's director, Bjorn Tore Orvik. Initially the ship will be manned, but remote operation is expected to begin in 2019 and fully autonomous operation in 2020, the companies said. The switch is expected to reduce CO2 emissions by 678 tonnes per year, according to Yara, with the electricity used to charge the ship's batteries coming almost exclusively from hydro plants.
84. China has lodged a protest with the US against the recent meeting of members of the US congress with the Dalai Lama at Dharamshala in India. The bipartisan delegation led by Democratic congresswoman Nancy Pelosi raised the issue of human rights violations in Tibet. Chinese foreign ministry objected to the meeting on Wednesday saying that it amounted to giving political support to the Tibetan leader, whom Beijing regards as a dangerous separatist.
85. A top Democratic senator on Wednesday recommended US President Donald Trump that IndianAmerican Rohit Chopra be selected to serve as a commissioner in the Federal Trade Commission.
86. Pakistan said on Wednesday that a joint border commission has been set up with Iran to address bilateral issues, a day after it summoned the Iranian envoy to express concern over Iran's assertion that it will hit terror “safe havens“ in its neighbouring country . Pakistan PM's adviser on foreign affairs Sartaj Aziz said that both countries set up a commission to ensure better border management. Relations between the neighbours have been tense due to the killing of Iranian border guards in a clash with militants. Pakistan on Tuesday summoned the Iranian ambassador to express its concern over Iran army chief 's remarks that Tehran will hit “safe havens“ of terrorists in Pakistan until Islamabad takes steps to stop militants from carrying out cross-border attacks. Aziz, while giving details of the joint border commission to the media, said, “Four members from each side will be its members and it will be soon functional.“ He said apart from militants, smugglers and other elements were also present along the Pak-Iran border.
87. A woman in Pakistan's Punjab province has chopped off a 13-year-old boy's right hand with a fodder cutting machine for allegedly demanding salary . Irfan was employed at Shafqat Bibi's house in Safdarabad at a salary of Rs 3,000, his mother Jannat Bibi told the police. “Last week Shafqat Bibi got furious with Irfan when he demanded salary . She cut his right hand with a fodder cutting machine to teach him a lesson that he demands salary but doesn't complete his job of feeding the cattle,“ she said. The incident took place in Sheikhupura village, 50km from Lahore. He was shifted to a hospital where his condition is said to be critical.
88. UK Prime Minister Theresa May faced flak on Wednesday for making what has been labelled as a “sexist“ remark by social media users during a television interview in which she said her husband handled “traditional boy jobs“ at home. In her first TV interview alongside husband Philip May on Tuesday , 60-yearold May light-heartedly told the BBC that “there's boy jobs and girls jobs.“ But many TV viewers took to social media soon after to express outrage. Asked by the host if his wife was a tough negotiator, Philip, 59, said, “Well, there's give and take in every marriage. I get to decide when I take the bins out. Not if I take them out.“ Theresa jumped in and said, “There's boy jobs and girls jobs, you see.“
89. Everyone saw the hackers coming. The National Security Agency in Washington picked up the signs.So did Emmanuel Macron's bare-bones technology team.And mindful of what happened in the American presidential campaign, the team created dozens of false email accounts, complete with phony documents, to confuse the attackers.
90. Times Centre for Learning (TCLL), and XLRIXavier School of Management, Jamshedpur have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to collaborate for promoting quality executive education in India. Working professionals looking to upgrade their skillset and move up the corporate ladder can choose from the newly launched and upcoming programmes to be delivered in different modes. The Executive Certificate Programme on Building Leadership Competencies focuses on creating space for learning around essential competencies and values for leaders to be successful.
64. A Virar man was arrested for allegedly raping, murdering and disposing of a woman's body ast month. On April 18, the Arnala police found a woman's body in a secluded spot in Y K Nagar, Virar (W). They managed to identify the body and zero in on Abdulla Shaikh, who has reportedly confessed to the crime.
65.Petrol pump owners observed `no-purchase' of fuel on Wednesday and sent an ultimatum letter to oil marketing companies to look into their demands for a hike in dealer commission. If the oil firms fail to hold a dialogue with them, pump owners have threatened a shutdown on Sunday.
66.Thursday will see lakhs of class XII graduates battle it out for admission to engineering and pharmacy colleges. The state's common entrance test (MHT-CET) has seen registrations from a total of 3.9 lakh candidates. Of these, the lion's share is of the undecided lot that will be taking the test for both engineering and pharmacy (1.5 lakh).
The rest (1.44 lakh) are sitting for physics, chemistry and math for a seat in engineering, up from last year's 1.3 lakh, and 95,545 are registered for pharmacy. This is the first year that the state has asked for details on transgender candidates in this entrance test and has received 25 registrations.
67. A routine anti-encroachment drive took an ugly turn at Naupada's Gaondevi ground on Wednesday evening when deputy municipal commissioner Sandeep Malvi was assaulted by hawkers. Naupada police are investigating the incident.
Police said Malvi, who was heading the drive near Thane station, was allegedly roped into a heated argument with the owner of Ekvira Poli Bhaji Kendra, Pravesh Deshpande, at 7.30pm, about an encroachment in front of the shop. The argument, within minutes, attracted a mob, which attacked the official.
68. A day after businessman Raj Kundra and his actor wife Shilpa Shetty got interim relief from a Thane sessions court in a cheating case, Kundra was asked to appear before Kongaon police (Bhiwandi) for inquiry on Wednesday . Kundra was quizzed by police in presence of his lawyer Aniket Nikam. Sources from Kongaon police said that he has been asked to come to the police station for questioning on Thursday and day after too. Businessman Ravi Bhalotia from Bhiwandi had filed a case against Shetty , Kundra and three others on April 27. Bhalotia had alleged that Best Deal TV Pvt Ltd (BDTV), an online shopping channel, headed by them had duped him of Rs 24 lakh. He said that he was a vendor with the channel through which he sold bedsheets and it was to collect money on his behalf, howver, he never got any money from the channel.
69. The state is pulling out all the stops for the launch of Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari's pet project in Nagpur. The country's first electric taxi service, aimed at combating pollution, is due for a May 26 inauguration to coincide with the third anniversary of the Modi government. An initiative to showcase the effort to curb vehicular emissions, the pilot project is expected to take off in Gadkari's hometown with 100 e-taxis, officials said. Based on the response, the scheme is likely to be extended to more cities. However, the launch has run into a last-minute bureaucratic hurdle due to archaic rules. Under the state's permit rules, only vehicles of more than 980cc (cubic centimetres) engine capacity can be registered for commercial operation and these have to be of at least 1,400cc for high-end services.But electric vehicles don't fall under the cc category since they have no internal combustion engines and their capacity is defined in kilowatts (kw). The norm blocking the rollout of electric taxis is an unex pected obstacle at a time when the Centre is promoting use of e-vehicles to check air pollution and reduce India's dependence on crude oil import. CC is a unit of volume; for example, 1,500cc is essentially 1.5 litres. “Each taxi shall have an engine capacity of not less than 980cc with seating capacity not exceeding seven, including driver; provided that at least 50% taxis attached to any aggregator shall have an engine capacity of 1,400cc or more,“ the state's taxi rules state. Atransport official said the department was working on the technicalities to overcome the restriction. Officials may revise motor requirements for taxis in a few days and the state transport authority is likely to take a final call. “There have been several meetings. Even Union minister Nitin Gadkari is very keen on them,“ said a state official.Transport minister Diwakar Raote told TOI, “The launch of the electric taxis has been announced by Union minister Gadkari. Nothing has reached me. So, I can't comment.“ Union transport ministry has already given the go-ahead to test these taxis and trial runs may begin soon, sources said.Another hurdle the scheme faces is availability of power and the need for a network of charging stations for the vehicles.
70. Overgrown bushes have been trimmed and walls whitewashed at kabrastans ahead of Thursday's festival of Shab-e-Baraat. Through the night till the wee hours of Friday , throngs of men and boys will arrive at graveyards to pray for their departed relatives. Shab-e-Baraat occurs 15 days before the advent of Ramzan, which falls on May 28 this year. “This occasion is doubly significant. Allah showers reward and blessings on those who offer Esaal E' Sawaab (gifts of prayer or charity) for the deceased,“ says Maulana Sajid Shaikh of Nagpada. “ Also, on this day Allah opens the annual book of deeds for each Muslim and determines his income as well as key life events like marriage, birth and death during the course of the year. What better way to spend this night than in remembrance of Allah and his Prophet.“ Andheri Muslim Kabrastan Masjid at Four Bungalows has whitewashed its walls and strung fairy lights and overhanging drapes to welcome around 5,000 worshippers. “Shab-eBaraat is also a night for the living to seek pardon for their sins. Allah descends to the lowest heaven and calls out to ask if there is anyone who seeks blessings, health, livelihood or prosperity , and rewards those who ask. However, a few Muslims, including those who associate partners with Allah, disobey their parents and drink alcohol, are not forgiven,“ said Maulana Mohammed Shahid Nadwi of the Andheri masjid. Bada Kabrastan at Marine Lines will receive over 10,000 people at the 4,000 graves located in its 4-acre precinct, said chairman Nazir Tungekar. “We have a heavy police presence as well as CCTV cameras and barricades to manage the crowd,“ Tungekar said. The Baqar trust of Bandra (E) kabrastan, which has 800 graves, will also come alive with prayer and speeches, said spokesperson Afzal Fakih.Special prayers are held all night and families distribute food, especially halwa, as charity .Several people observe roza (fast) on one or both days.
71. Smart city Tel Aviv has joined hands with Thane to replicate the civic transformation it underwent, using digital technologies, in Thane . Israel Ambassador Daniel Carmon said this after inaugurating his country's pavilion at the third Smart Cities India-2017 Expo at the Pragati Maidan in Delhi. “ A few days ago, Tel Aviv municipality and Thane municipal corporation joined hands as part of India's `Smart City' initiative,“ said Carmon. As part of the cooperation, the two civic bodies, alongside an private technology major from Israel with an Indian partner, will work on replicating the `DigiTel Aviv' project, as `DigiThane', said a senior official of the Tel Aviv Municipality . The ambassador said that the smart city cooperation is the result of visit of a delegation led by the Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis in 2015. Carmon said, “A meeting of all stakeholders from both the countries was held to discuss challenges and solutions related to water, from recycling to desalination and more.“
72. Officers of Enforcement Directorate's (ED) subzonal office in Surat raided premises of liquor smuggler Ramesh Patel alias Michael in Daman and seized more than 1.91 lakh liquor bottles worth Rs2.54 crore on Wednesday .They also seized three luxury cars, Land Rover Evoque and two Audis worth Rs2 crore and Rs9 lakh cash. The ED officials also discovered details of bank deposits to the tune of Rs223.47 crore during the raid.Patel is wanted in more than 30 cases in Gujarat under Gujarat Prohibition Act, 1949. The searches were launched against Ramesh Patel alias Michael, his wife Bhanu Patel and others for allegedly smuggling liquor from Da man to Gujarat, where liquor consumption is prohibited under law, sources said. Patel was not at his residence during the searches. Investigations were initiated based on the case filed by Surat police against after seizure of 21,750 bottles of IMFL and beer valued at Rs22.98 lakh near Olpaadrecently . ED officials found a shortage of 38,000 cases amounting to Rs7.10 crore, which they suspect has been diverted illegally to Gujarat. Investigation revealed Patel and his wife are main suppliers of IMFL through local bootleggers. Patel had a 3,000 sq ft illegal warehouse for his liquor business. He used to forge invoices of genuine manufacturing entries to camouflage illicit IMFL's passage through Daman check-post. Bootleggers would place orders through WhatsApp. It was revealed that Patel's wine shops had not been maintaining any sales records and the restaurant and other business premises were used for paper transactions only .
73. The condition of Congress President Sonia Gandhi, who is under treatment at Sir Ganga Ram hospital for food poisoning, is stable. On Wednesday, sources said, her son Rahul Gandhi and daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra visited the hospital. “The patient is stable.She is likely to be discharged soon,“ a doctor said.
74. Congress has asked the Modi government if it had thought through its decision to approach the ICJ about the Kulbhushan Jadhav case and was not falling in the Pakistani trap to internationalise bilateral issues, including J&K. The opposition party also lashed out at the Centre for the deteriorating situation in J&K in the wake of the killing of a young Kashmiri Army officer by terrorists.
75. India on Wednesday strongly justified its decision to move the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the case of Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav, sentenced to death in Pakistan for alleged spying, saying he had been subjected to a sham trial and that his life was in danger. India took the step 46 years after it had last approached the ICJ to resolve a dispute with Pakistan. Foreign ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said the decision was well considered and meant to ensure justice as Pakistan had not responded to India's 16 requests for access to Jadhav . The ICJ, which had stayed the hanging, is to hear the case on Monday and could issue an interim order. India argued that continuo us denial of consular access was a violation of Jadhav's rights under the Vienna Protocol and Baglay said the applica tion of his parents, who wanted to visit Pakistan, had gone unanswered. He said foreign minister Sushma Swaraj had written to Pakistan's Sartaj Aziz on April 27, asking him to facilitate visas for Jadhav's parents.
76. The government, on Wednesday , announced that Sanjay Mitra, a 1982 batch West Bengal cadre IAS officer posted as secretary of the road transport and highways ministry, will be the next defence secretary for a fixed two-year tenure after G Mohan Kumar retires on May 24. Mitra, who served a sevenyear stint in the Manmohan Singh PMO, will take over at a time when the defence ministry is trying to embark on farreaching reforms to boost the country's defence industrial base, while also dwelling upon the crucial post of a chief of the defence staff in the shortterm as well as integrated theatre commands in the long term.
77. A day after Dalit protesters went on a violent spree in Saharanpur, 12 FIRs have been filed while 24 persons have been taken into police custody . The state government also transferred two additional superintendents of police, who have been attached to Lucknow headquarters. Congress Rajya Sabha member PL Punia, who is former chairman of National Commission of Scheduled Castes, was reportedly denied permission to visit the violence-hit areas owing to `sensitive environment'. However, he eventually visited the city and interacted with the SSP and DM to take stock of the situation.
78. Senior SP leader and UP legislative council chairman Ramesh Yadav's nephew was, on Wednesday , arrested for attempt to murder, robbery and other grievous offences in Etah. Police said Mohit Yadav , who was armed with a country-made pistol and was accompanied by his aides, stormed into the district hospital and assaulted two lab technicians after an argument. The highhanded youth, believed to be in his late twenties, did not even spare cops and manhandled the station in-charge and a constable on being taken to the police station. SP's Etah district president Ashraf Hussain admitted the accused is senior leader Ramesh Yadav's nephew, but claimed the youth was not associated with the party.
79. Further tightening the rules for NGOs, the home ministry has asked 5,845 organisations to open their accounts in banks having core banking facilities and furnish details for real time access to security agencies in case of any discrepancy. The move comes after the government found that many NGOs had accounts in cooperative banks. The government has asked NGOs to have accounts in proper banks as part of steps taken by the NDA government aimed at checking “errant“ NGOs, especially those receiving foreign funding. In the last three years, the government has cancelled registration of more than 10,000 NGOs, while over 1,300 have been denied renewal of licence. In a communication, 3,768 NGOs were told that their bank accounts were not available as per core banking formatl, while 2,077 NGOs were asked to furnish bank accounts details as no such data was available with the home ministry . The move came after it was de tected that many NGOs had bank accounts in cooperative banks or state government-owned apex banks, or banks which did not have core banking facilities, official sources said. The home ministry wants all NGOs registered under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act to mandatorily have their accounts in either nationalised banks or in a few private banks which have core banking facilities. Under core banking system, all the branches of the networked banks are interconnected. This would allow the security agencies to access the accounts of the NGOs on real time basis, the sources said.
80. Jamiat Ulama-IHind president Maulana Syed Arshad Madani has urged the BJP led NDA gov ernment to consider de claring cow as the `national animal', as he expressed concern over the `atmosphere of fear' in the wake of attacks by vigilante groups.Madani also reminded PM Narendra Modi about his assurance to take action against criminals who acted in the garb of `gau raksha'. Madani, as the head of the influential minority organization that represents a large number of Islamic scholars, demanded that the Centre explore making a common law on cow protection to end the ambiguity and prevent attacks on innocent people from minority community . “The government should give national animal status to the cow and we will support it,“ Madani told a press conference.
80. The body of a 27-year-old software engineer, an IIT-Powai alumnus who worked with e-commerce company Myntra in Bengaluru, was found near the railway tracks in Greater Noida's Chhapraula village, around 6km from his home in Bisrakh, on Monday . A boarding pass stub and printout of a flight ticket found on him suggest Rajeev Kumar Verma had flown into Delhi from Bengaluru on Sunday evening (they showed his flight departed the IT city at 3.10pm, May 7). Verma's family, however, claimed they had spoken to him on Sunday evening and were unaware of his plan of travelling home.
81. A top Jet Airways pilot allegedly did not report a heavy landing made by a wide body aircraft due to which the plane was not subjected to mandatory structural safety checks and kept flying without the same. The alleged non-reporting happened on April 28, 2017, while operating a flight on a Boeing 777 (VT-JEQ) from Delhi to Hong Kong. The commander was also acting as the designated examiner, doing the tenth and final route check of a co-pilot who would have been promoted to the rank of captain, had he operated this flight perfectly. However, due to some reportedly incorrect procedures like “inadequate flare“ the aircraft touched down before the touch down point and made a heavy landing -in technical terms it made a 3.2 G landing while according to Boeing, the B-777 should not have over 2G landing. Since such heavy landings can damage aircraft structure, it is mandatory to get the plane checked to ensure it is not stressed or damaged before being released for flights again. But in this ca se, the crew did not report the heavy landing due to which the aircraft has been flying unchecked.
82. At its 84th national convention in Bareilly where participants from 22 states were present, leaders of All India Jamiatul Quresh said gau rakshaks were liars and that cows die as there is no one to take care of them. In order to solve this problem, the organisation has decided to open `gau niketans' (cow shelter homes) across the state where abandoned cows will be taken care of. The association claims to represents 50 million Qureshi Muslims, who have traditionally been engaged in the meat trade.
83. At HotBlack Coffee, a cafe in Toronto, Canada you can get walnut but ter squares, lemon poppy seed muffins, biscotti and, o course, coffee. But one thing you can't: Wi-Fi. Jimson Bienenstock, the president of HotBlack, said the shop opened last year without Wi-Fi with the ex press intent of getting cus tomers to -gasp! -talk to one another instead of bury ing their faces in laptops. “It's about creating a socia vibe,“ he said. “We're a vehicle for human interaction, other wise it's just a commodity .“ At many coffee outlets, workers set up makeshift offices and rely on the stores' Wi-Fi, which has come to be considered a given -if not a right. While HotBlack is not the first cafe to withhold WiFi, industry experts said such shops are in the minority and risk alienating customers. Bienenstock said he did not see his approach as revolutionary but as a response to society's deep immersion into all things digital that leads people to seldom communicate face to face. Customers initially were aghast at the decision, but Bienenstock said the camps are divided between those who love it and those who loathe it.(Only four of 28 reviews on Yelp noted the shop's lack of Wi-Fi.) To promote conviviality , other shops have adopted a noWi-Fi policy and gone a step further: doing away with some comfy furniture and narrowing counters to make them less accommodating for laptops. Caroline Bell of Café Grumpy said it offers Wi-Fi only at one location in NYC, and not at the seven others. Alex M Susskind, an asso ciate professor of food and beverage management at the School of Hotel Administration, Cornell University , said he saw the lack of Wi-Fi as a detriment. “That kind of bucks the trend of what most people go to coffeehouses for,“ he said. A 2015 thesis by Rose K Pozos about the “urban sociability“ of coffee shops posited that sitting alone with a laptop in a cafe was not necessarily antisocial. “People still chose to go there instead of being alone at home or work,“ wrote Pozos, who was a student at the time.In an email, she added that other businesses, such as the Blue Bottle Coffee, are known for lacking Wi-Fi, but that does not stop people from coming with laptops. To really get people to stop, some coffee shops enforce laptop-free zones, she wrote. Jordan Michelman, a founder of Sprudge Media Network, which writes about coffee news and culture, said that while Wi-Fi was not an essential amenity for coffee shops, “it's nice... and makes customers happy“.
83. Norway plans to launch the first autonomous and fully electric cargo ship next year that the project's backers said on Wednesday will save 40,000 truck journeys per year. Fertiliser company Yara International has teamed up with industrial group Kongsberg to build the Yara Birkeland, which will haul fertilisers between three ports in southern Norway . With a range of more than 65 nautical miles, the ship will be able to haul roughly 100 containers at a speed of 12 to 15 knots, according to the project's director, Bjorn Tore Orvik. Initially the ship will be manned, but remote operation is expected to begin in 2019 and fully autonomous operation in 2020, the companies said. The switch is expected to reduce CO2 emissions by 678 tonnes per year, according to Yara, with the electricity used to charge the ship's batteries coming almost exclusively from hydro plants.
84. China has lodged a protest with the US against the recent meeting of members of the US congress with the Dalai Lama at Dharamshala in India. The bipartisan delegation led by Democratic congresswoman Nancy Pelosi raised the issue of human rights violations in Tibet. Chinese foreign ministry objected to the meeting on Wednesday saying that it amounted to giving political support to the Tibetan leader, whom Beijing regards as a dangerous separatist.
85. A top Democratic senator on Wednesday recommended US President Donald Trump that IndianAmerican Rohit Chopra be selected to serve as a commissioner in the Federal Trade Commission.
86. Pakistan said on Wednesday that a joint border commission has been set up with Iran to address bilateral issues, a day after it summoned the Iranian envoy to express concern over Iran's assertion that it will hit terror “safe havens“ in its neighbouring country . Pakistan PM's adviser on foreign affairs Sartaj Aziz said that both countries set up a commission to ensure better border management. Relations between the neighbours have been tense due to the killing of Iranian border guards in a clash with militants. Pakistan on Tuesday summoned the Iranian ambassador to express its concern over Iran army chief 's remarks that Tehran will hit “safe havens“ of terrorists in Pakistan until Islamabad takes steps to stop militants from carrying out cross-border attacks. Aziz, while giving details of the joint border commission to the media, said, “Four members from each side will be its members and it will be soon functional.“ He said apart from militants, smugglers and other elements were also present along the Pak-Iran border.
87. A woman in Pakistan's Punjab province has chopped off a 13-year-old boy's right hand with a fodder cutting machine for allegedly demanding salary . Irfan was employed at Shafqat Bibi's house in Safdarabad at a salary of Rs 3,000, his mother Jannat Bibi told the police. “Last week Shafqat Bibi got furious with Irfan when he demanded salary . She cut his right hand with a fodder cutting machine to teach him a lesson that he demands salary but doesn't complete his job of feeding the cattle,“ she said. The incident took place in Sheikhupura village, 50km from Lahore. He was shifted to a hospital where his condition is said to be critical.
88. UK Prime Minister Theresa May faced flak on Wednesday for making what has been labelled as a “sexist“ remark by social media users during a television interview in which she said her husband handled “traditional boy jobs“ at home. In her first TV interview alongside husband Philip May on Tuesday , 60-yearold May light-heartedly told the BBC that “there's boy jobs and girls jobs.“ But many TV viewers took to social media soon after to express outrage. Asked by the host if his wife was a tough negotiator, Philip, 59, said, “Well, there's give and take in every marriage. I get to decide when I take the bins out. Not if I take them out.“ Theresa jumped in and said, “There's boy jobs and girls jobs, you see.“
89. Everyone saw the hackers coming. The National Security Agency in Washington picked up the signs.So did Emmanuel Macron's bare-bones technology team.And mindful of what happened in the American presidential campaign, the team created dozens of false email accounts, complete with phony documents, to confuse the attackers.
90. Times Centre for Learning (TCLL), and XLRIXavier School of Management, Jamshedpur have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to collaborate for promoting quality executive education in India. Working professionals looking to upgrade their skillset and move up the corporate ladder can choose from the newly launched and upcoming programmes to be delivered in different modes. The Executive Certificate Programme on Building Leadership Competencies focuses on creating space for learning around essential competencies and values for leaders to be successful.
No comments:
Post a Comment