CORPORATE AFFAIRS, TECHNOLOGY, E-COMMERCE AND CARS
1. Fast-moving consumer goods company Patanjali's aim to outclass multinational rivals in the domestic market appears well on course, according to numbers disclosed by it on Thursday. The Baba Ramdev-led company clocked revenue of Rs 10,561 crore in FY17, making it the second-largest pure-play FMCG player after market leader Hindustan Unilever. What's even more impressive is that Patanjali's revenue put in the shade the combined sales of MNC giants Colgate-Palmolive, GSK Consumer Healthcare and P&G Hygiene and Healthcare. Ghee is the bestseller for Patanjali, contributing 14% to total revenues, followed by toothpaste (9%) and hair oil (8%). Its Divya pharmacy store contributed 8%. At Rs 825 crore, Patanjali's hair oil sales are higher than that of key player Bajaj Corp. And adding a smile to Patanjali's revenues are its toothpaste sales at Rs 940 crore, a segment where the home-bred player has captured 14% market share. Profits are galloping too, and have increased 100%, though actual numbers have not been disclosed yet.
2. Flipkart and Amazon are at it again, much to the delight of shoppers! The country's two biggest online marketplaces have lined up nearsimultaneous sales this month that will offer consumers another discount bonanza well ahead of the festive season, when such mega-events typically take place. For sellers on these online platforms, this is an opportunity to make up for business lost following the cash crunch caused by demonetisation. Flipkart's sale from May 14 to May 18 will be called the `Big 10' sale to mark its 10th anniversary.Discounts of up to 80% will be offered across products and leading brands. India's largest online marketplace informed sellers that it expects a three-to-four-fold rise in revenue during the sale. Not to be outdone, rival Amazon announced the return of its `Great India Sale' from May 11 to May 14, which will “witness thousands of blockbuster deals at never-seenbefore prices“.
3. Come June, the new owners of Nokia and BlackBerry will invest Rs 200 crore each to re-enter the ` Indian smartphone market trying to cash in on the nostalgia factor, said two senior industry executives.
4. Dubai-based DP World has committed fresh investment of $1billion in India in sectors such as logistics, inland waterways, dry ports and various projects under government's Sagarmala initiative.
5. Patanjali will double its turnover this financial year from the current Rs 10,561crore and within two years will be come India's biggest swadeshi brand. It is also in the process of setting up a restaurant chain.
6. The Central Information Commission is the latest entity to jump on the mobile app bandwagon. The transparency watchdog has recently awarded contract to a firm to develop a mobile app so that any applicant can file an RTI application in CIC, go for second appeal and check status of his case at the click of a button.The app is likely to be launched in July.
7. Mori Building Company, one of Japan's largest real estate developers, is planning to enter India this year, two people close to the development said. The $2.25-billion Tokyo-based property investment firm is planning to develop and manage commercial properties in India and could even tie up with a domestic player.
8. Reliance Jio Infocomm could become the first telecom operator in the country to lease fibre being laid by the government under the BharatNet initiative. The government's BharatNet programme, under which 250,000 gram panchayats are to be connected by broadband by end of 2018, has not evoked interest on expected lines.
9. IT services firm Cogni zant is extending a “voluntary separation incentive“, offering up to nine months of salary, to some of its top-level executives. The US-based firm, which has a large part of its 2.6 lakh-strong workforce in India, has written to top executives in director and senior vice president roles. The company has given the top-rung executives an option to exit the organisation by accepting either six (for Senior VPs) or nine (for Directors) months' salary as severance pay.
10.L&T Infotech, a subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro, reported a fourth quarter profit of Rs 254.5 crore, up 2.6% from Rs 248 crore in the sequential quarter, helped by growth in its banking and financial services, consumer packages goods and media and entertainment segments, reports Our Bureau. Revenue at the IT services company grew 0.6% to Rs 1,677.2 crore for the quarter ended March. Revenue Rs 6,500 crore. The for the year rose 11.2% to company declared a final dividend of Rs.9.70 per equity share.
11. Drug firm Wockhardt on Thursday reported widening of its consolidated net loss to ` . 174.7 crore during the fourth quarter ended March 31, mainly on account of Brexit and subdued business in the US, UK markets.The company had posted a net loss after taxes, non controlling interest and share of profit (loss) of associates of Rs 5.38 crore, Wockhardt said in a filing to BSE. Consolidated net sales of the company's stood at Rs 863.5crore for the quarter under consideration. It was Rs 1,010.3 crore for the same period year ago. For the fiscal year ended March 2017, the company posted a consolidated net loss of Rs 195.7crore.It had posted a net profit of Rs 250.7 crore for the same period year ago. Consolidated net sales of the company stood at Rs 4,014.60 crore for the fiscal year ended March 2017. It was Rs 4,453.2crore for the previous fiscal.
12. Daughters of billionaire Rana Kapoor are banking on startups to grow their money rather than following their father's footsteps on Mint Street. They will invest $150 million, or about `965 crore, to incubate and fund new businesses. The Three Sisters, the family office that manages family wealth of the banking billionaire, has identified education, tourism, family entertainment centres, and agri-logistics among sectors where the family's personal wealth will be deployed. The Three Sisters derives its name from a reference to Kapoor's three daughters -Radha, Raakhe and Roshini.
13. India may auction its future airport contracts to private operators after setting fixed tariffs, potentially enhancing the number of serious bidders and cushioning passengers against arbitrary increases in user fees.
14. Dubai-based DP World, one of the leading global operators of marine and inland terminals, has committed a fresh investment of $1 billion in India in sectors such as logistics, inland waterways, cold chains, dry ports and various projects under the government's Sagarmala initiative.
15. Punj Lloyd and Israeli firearms maker Israel Weapon Industries (IWI) have launched India's first private small arms unit, which hopes . 5,000 croto get orders of upto two to three in two to three years.
16. The CBI on Thursday arrested the chairman of REI Agro along with a promoter of the company in connection with an alleged bank loan fraud of `3,871 crore. Chairman Sanjay Jhunjhunwala, who was facing a red corner notice issued by the UAE, was arrested after he returned from abroad
17. Vistara on Thursday said they have registered a year-on-year growth of 80% in passengers flown during the first four months of 2017. Vistara flew 1.15 million passengers between January and April 2017, compared to 640,000 during the same period the previous year, on the back of a 44% increase in fleet.
18. Net profit of FMCG company Emami declined 1.98% at Rs 68.65 crore during the fourth quarter of last fiscal.Turnover also declined marginally by 2.1% at Rs 527 crore as against Rs 539 crore in the previous corresponding quarter, the company said in a statement.
19. India's largest oil-marketing company Indian Oil Corporation, Federal Bank, Rural electrification Corporation and Petronet LNG are likely to be included in MSCI emerging market index, while weights of ICICI Bank and Grasim could go up in the forthcoming rebalancing, according to Morgan Stanley estimates. This rebalancing will result in foreign fund flow of nearly Rs 3,850 crore into these stocks in the coming weeks.
20. Housing Finance Development Corporation said March quarter net profit rose 14% adjusted for one-off gains the previous year when it sold stake in its insurance venture, and said the best on interest rates and property prices may be behind and buyers should grab the opportunity before they climb.
21. State Bank of India sees a “positive turnaround“ in the nation's bad loans after the government implements a new ordinance aimed at resolving the problem, according to the chairman of India's biggest bank.
22. European banks had mixed fortunes in fixed income, currency and commodity (FICC) trading in the first quarter, but aggregate results reveal the big players were not far behind US rivals. While total FICC revenue at Wall Street's top five banks rose by almost a quarter in the period, seven of Europe's top banks together delivered 20% growth, data compiled by Reuters shows.
23. After a spate of defaults from micro borrowers in the past few months, banks that lend to the bottom of the pyramid customers are joining hands with microfinance practitioners like Bharat Financial Inclusion and Satin Creditcare Network to cut the risk of non repayment. Banks such as Axis Bank and RBL Bank have in principle agreed to a proposal which says that a micro loan borrower can't be served by more than three lenders and his her total exposure can't be more than Rs 60,000 under joint liability group model, three people familiar with the development said. For individual loans, the cap would be RS 1 lakh.
24. Mutual fund houses added over 77 lakh investor accounts in 2016-17, taking the total tally to a record 5.54 crore.
25. India's largest general insurer, New India Assurance, which is preparing for an IPO in the next 6-8 months, has recorded a 22% growth in profit after tax in the last financial year, aided by growth in investment income.
26. The Hinduja family has acquired a stake in UACTIV .com, a social networking and discovery platform for sports and fitness enthusiasts.
27. Online real estate portal Square Yards is steadily cementing its growth story, adding new revenue streams -two at a time. The firm, which is backed by the private equity arm of the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group, is widening its business with the introduction of its broker aggregation platform (Square Connect) and residential property management services (Square Care).
28. Technology solutions firm Altimetrik on Thursday announced the launch of its global tech and innovation platform Playground in Pune, the second in the country after Bengaluru.
29. Bank of Maharashtra (BoM), the first public sector bank to announce its results for the fourth quarter, posted a historic loss of Rs 455 crore, indicating that the troubles of such banks due to mounting bad loans are far from over. Rise in bad loans and lower income from lending led to the bank's losses as its top management asserted that the bank will now focus on retail loans and bad loan recovery.
30. Realty developer Godrej Properties is planning to raise up to `500 crore through an issue of non-convertible debentures (NCDs) or other debt instruments through private placement, the company said in a notification to stock exchanges on Thursday.
31. Facebook has tied up with Bharti Airtel to deploy 20,000 Wi-Fi hotspots across the country to offer affordable internet services through the social networking major's Express Wi-Fi service over the next few months.
32.Google accused rival Uber of a “cover up scheme“ to steal its self-driving car technology, lobbing a bombshell claim into a high-profile court hearing on Wednesday.
According to Google, the selfdriving truck startup company that Uber acquired was part of a ruse concocted by Uber and Antghony Levandowski, the former star Google engineer who now works at Uber. In fact, Levandowski and Uber had already pre-negotiated the terms for Uber to acquire the startup, lawyers for Google's self-driving car spinout Waymo said in court on Wednesday.
33. The founder and chairman of Liberty House, the industrials and commodities group that has been snapping up troubled steel plants around the world, plans to list some of its multibillion-dollar businesses, probably in 2018.
34. Nokia plans to cut up to 200 more jobs in Finland because of weak demand for its telecom network equipment. The Finnish company said on Thursday that the cuts are part of a 1.2 billion euro ($1.3 billion) global cost-savings plan which was announced after its 2016 acquisition of FrancoAmerican rival Alcatel-Lucent.
35. Apple Inc plans to create a $1 billion fund to invest in US companies that perform advanced manufacturing, chief executive officer Tim Cook said on Wednesday, the iPhone maker's latest effort to show how it is creating US jobs.
36. India's largest nonlife insurer New India Assurance (NIA) has increased premium on health insurance by an average of 25% for individuals. Along with the revision in rates the company has done away with the rate differential based on region and has introduced a uniform rate across the country .
37. Alphabet Inc warned its users to beware of emails from known contacts asking them to click on a link to Google Docs after a large number of people turned to social media to complain that their accounts had been hacked.
38. The humble television is no more an idiot box -it has become smart. Buoyed by a fall in data prices and faster internet speeds, TVs are getting `smarter' as more and more Indians opt for flatpanels that offer a web browser and a host of net-streaming applications such as Facebook, Netflix and YouTube.
39. Amazon India's largest sel ler, Cloudtail, a joint ven ture between N R Narayana Murthy's Catamaran Venture and Amazon, has brought in a senior level executive from the etailer as its new CEO. The JV partners have done an interesting swap of executives wherein Cloudtail has roped in Sumit Sahay , who was previously Amazon's director for category management, as its CEO, while Madhu M, the erstwhile chief of Cloudtail, has taken over Sahay's role at Amazon, people aware of the development told.
40. Inditex, owner of Zara and Massimo Dutti, said that India is one of the fastest growing markets for the Spanish fashion retailer in Asia. For fiscal 2016, the local unit, which is a joint venture with Trent, clocked 17% growth in sales at Rs 842 crore. The figures for fiscal 2017 are not out yet.
41. The Enforcement Directorate has frozen 87.47 lakh shares of Balasore Alloys with a market value of Rs 62 crore, held by Pradeep Kumar Mittal of Global Steel Holding and associated companies, for defrauding the State Trading Corporation (STC). The ED had registered a case of money laundering against Global Steel Holding after the CBI filed a case, too.
42. Usually , every year mutual fund houses reward their most prolific distributors with sponsored trips to popular tourist destinations across the globe.Motilal Oswal Mutual Fund, however, is rewarding their biggest distributors by taking them to Omaha in the US. And not for any farm trip, but to listen to the Oracle of investment managers, Warren Buffett himself. Ideated by Raamdeo Agrawal, co-founder, Motilal Oswal Financial Services, the sponsors of the fund house, about 50 distributors are travelling to Omaha to attend the annual shareholders' meet of Buffett's company Berkshire Hathaway , scheduled on Saturday . They will also attend the Value Investor Conference there.These distributors will get a chance to listen to Buffett at the shareholders' meet and also get to interact with top fund managers globally , who together manage assets worth more than $1 tril lion, Agrawal said.
43. India's largest nonlife insurer New India Assurance (NIA) has increased premium on health insurance by an average of 25% for individuals. Along with the revision in rates the company has done away with the rate differential based on region and has introduced a uniform rate across the country .
2. Flipkart and Amazon are at it again, much to the delight of shoppers! The country's two biggest online marketplaces have lined up nearsimultaneous sales this month that will offer consumers another discount bonanza well ahead of the festive season, when such mega-events typically take place. For sellers on these online platforms, this is an opportunity to make up for business lost following the cash crunch caused by demonetisation. Flipkart's sale from May 14 to May 18 will be called the `Big 10' sale to mark its 10th anniversary.Discounts of up to 80% will be offered across products and leading brands. India's largest online marketplace informed sellers that it expects a three-to-four-fold rise in revenue during the sale. Not to be outdone, rival Amazon announced the return of its `Great India Sale' from May 11 to May 14, which will “witness thousands of blockbuster deals at never-seenbefore prices“.
3. Come June, the new owners of Nokia and BlackBerry will invest Rs 200 crore each to re-enter the ` Indian smartphone market trying to cash in on the nostalgia factor, said two senior industry executives.
4. Dubai-based DP World has committed fresh investment of $1billion in India in sectors such as logistics, inland waterways, dry ports and various projects under government's Sagarmala initiative.
5. Patanjali will double its turnover this financial year from the current Rs 10,561crore and within two years will be come India's biggest swadeshi brand. It is also in the process of setting up a restaurant chain.
6. The Central Information Commission is the latest entity to jump on the mobile app bandwagon. The transparency watchdog has recently awarded contract to a firm to develop a mobile app so that any applicant can file an RTI application in CIC, go for second appeal and check status of his case at the click of a button.The app is likely to be launched in July.
7. Mori Building Company, one of Japan's largest real estate developers, is planning to enter India this year, two people close to the development said. The $2.25-billion Tokyo-based property investment firm is planning to develop and manage commercial properties in India and could even tie up with a domestic player.
8. Reliance Jio Infocomm could become the first telecom operator in the country to lease fibre being laid by the government under the BharatNet initiative. The government's BharatNet programme, under which 250,000 gram panchayats are to be connected by broadband by end of 2018, has not evoked interest on expected lines.
9. IT services firm Cogni zant is extending a “voluntary separation incentive“, offering up to nine months of salary, to some of its top-level executives. The US-based firm, which has a large part of its 2.6 lakh-strong workforce in India, has written to top executives in director and senior vice president roles. The company has given the top-rung executives an option to exit the organisation by accepting either six (for Senior VPs) or nine (for Directors) months' salary as severance pay.
10.L&T Infotech, a subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro, reported a fourth quarter profit of Rs 254.5 crore, up 2.6% from Rs 248 crore in the sequential quarter, helped by growth in its banking and financial services, consumer packages goods and media and entertainment segments, reports Our Bureau. Revenue at the IT services company grew 0.6% to Rs 1,677.2 crore for the quarter ended March. Revenue Rs 6,500 crore. The for the year rose 11.2% to company declared a final dividend of Rs.9.70 per equity share.
11. Drug firm Wockhardt on Thursday reported widening of its consolidated net loss to ` . 174.7 crore during the fourth quarter ended March 31, mainly on account of Brexit and subdued business in the US, UK markets.The company had posted a net loss after taxes, non controlling interest and share of profit (loss) of associates of Rs 5.38 crore, Wockhardt said in a filing to BSE. Consolidated net sales of the company's stood at Rs 863.5crore for the quarter under consideration. It was Rs 1,010.3 crore for the same period year ago. For the fiscal year ended March 2017, the company posted a consolidated net loss of Rs 195.7crore.It had posted a net profit of Rs 250.7 crore for the same period year ago. Consolidated net sales of the company stood at Rs 4,014.60 crore for the fiscal year ended March 2017. It was Rs 4,453.2crore for the previous fiscal.
12. Daughters of billionaire Rana Kapoor are banking on startups to grow their money rather than following their father's footsteps on Mint Street. They will invest $150 million, or about `965 crore, to incubate and fund new businesses. The Three Sisters, the family office that manages family wealth of the banking billionaire, has identified education, tourism, family entertainment centres, and agri-logistics among sectors where the family's personal wealth will be deployed. The Three Sisters derives its name from a reference to Kapoor's three daughters -Radha, Raakhe and Roshini.
13. India may auction its future airport contracts to private operators after setting fixed tariffs, potentially enhancing the number of serious bidders and cushioning passengers against arbitrary increases in user fees.
14. Dubai-based DP World, one of the leading global operators of marine and inland terminals, has committed a fresh investment of $1 billion in India in sectors such as logistics, inland waterways, cold chains, dry ports and various projects under the government's Sagarmala initiative.
15. Punj Lloyd and Israeli firearms maker Israel Weapon Industries (IWI) have launched India's first private small arms unit, which hopes . 5,000 croto get orders of upto two to three in two to three years.
16. The CBI on Thursday arrested the chairman of REI Agro along with a promoter of the company in connection with an alleged bank loan fraud of `3,871 crore. Chairman Sanjay Jhunjhunwala, who was facing a red corner notice issued by the UAE, was arrested after he returned from abroad
17. Vistara on Thursday said they have registered a year-on-year growth of 80% in passengers flown during the first four months of 2017. Vistara flew 1.15 million passengers between January and April 2017, compared to 640,000 during the same period the previous year, on the back of a 44% increase in fleet.
18. Net profit of FMCG company Emami declined 1.98% at Rs 68.65 crore during the fourth quarter of last fiscal.Turnover also declined marginally by 2.1% at Rs 527 crore as against Rs 539 crore in the previous corresponding quarter, the company said in a statement.
19. India's largest oil-marketing company Indian Oil Corporation, Federal Bank, Rural electrification Corporation and Petronet LNG are likely to be included in MSCI emerging market index, while weights of ICICI Bank and Grasim could go up in the forthcoming rebalancing, according to Morgan Stanley estimates. This rebalancing will result in foreign fund flow of nearly Rs 3,850 crore into these stocks in the coming weeks.
20. Housing Finance Development Corporation said March quarter net profit rose 14% adjusted for one-off gains the previous year when it sold stake in its insurance venture, and said the best on interest rates and property prices may be behind and buyers should grab the opportunity before they climb.
21. State Bank of India sees a “positive turnaround“ in the nation's bad loans after the government implements a new ordinance aimed at resolving the problem, according to the chairman of India's biggest bank.
22. European banks had mixed fortunes in fixed income, currency and commodity (FICC) trading in the first quarter, but aggregate results reveal the big players were not far behind US rivals. While total FICC revenue at Wall Street's top five banks rose by almost a quarter in the period, seven of Europe's top banks together delivered 20% growth, data compiled by Reuters shows.
23. After a spate of defaults from micro borrowers in the past few months, banks that lend to the bottom of the pyramid customers are joining hands with microfinance practitioners like Bharat Financial Inclusion and Satin Creditcare Network to cut the risk of non repayment. Banks such as Axis Bank and RBL Bank have in principle agreed to a proposal which says that a micro loan borrower can't be served by more than three lenders and his her total exposure can't be more than Rs 60,000 under joint liability group model, three people familiar with the development said. For individual loans, the cap would be RS 1 lakh.
24. Mutual fund houses added over 77 lakh investor accounts in 2016-17, taking the total tally to a record 5.54 crore.
25. India's largest general insurer, New India Assurance, which is preparing for an IPO in the next 6-8 months, has recorded a 22% growth in profit after tax in the last financial year, aided by growth in investment income.
26. The Hinduja family has acquired a stake in UACTIV .com, a social networking and discovery platform for sports and fitness enthusiasts.
27. Online real estate portal Square Yards is steadily cementing its growth story, adding new revenue streams -two at a time. The firm, which is backed by the private equity arm of the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group, is widening its business with the introduction of its broker aggregation platform (Square Connect) and residential property management services (Square Care).
28. Technology solutions firm Altimetrik on Thursday announced the launch of its global tech and innovation platform Playground in Pune, the second in the country after Bengaluru.
29. Bank of Maharashtra (BoM), the first public sector bank to announce its results for the fourth quarter, posted a historic loss of Rs 455 crore, indicating that the troubles of such banks due to mounting bad loans are far from over. Rise in bad loans and lower income from lending led to the bank's losses as its top management asserted that the bank will now focus on retail loans and bad loan recovery.
30. Realty developer Godrej Properties is planning to raise up to `500 crore through an issue of non-convertible debentures (NCDs) or other debt instruments through private placement, the company said in a notification to stock exchanges on Thursday.
31. Facebook has tied up with Bharti Airtel to deploy 20,000 Wi-Fi hotspots across the country to offer affordable internet services through the social networking major's Express Wi-Fi service over the next few months.
32.Google accused rival Uber of a “cover up scheme“ to steal its self-driving car technology, lobbing a bombshell claim into a high-profile court hearing on Wednesday.
According to Google, the selfdriving truck startup company that Uber acquired was part of a ruse concocted by Uber and Antghony Levandowski, the former star Google engineer who now works at Uber. In fact, Levandowski and Uber had already pre-negotiated the terms for Uber to acquire the startup, lawyers for Google's self-driving car spinout Waymo said in court on Wednesday.
33. The founder and chairman of Liberty House, the industrials and commodities group that has been snapping up troubled steel plants around the world, plans to list some of its multibillion-dollar businesses, probably in 2018.
34. Nokia plans to cut up to 200 more jobs in Finland because of weak demand for its telecom network equipment. The Finnish company said on Thursday that the cuts are part of a 1.2 billion euro ($1.3 billion) global cost-savings plan which was announced after its 2016 acquisition of FrancoAmerican rival Alcatel-Lucent.
35. Apple Inc plans to create a $1 billion fund to invest in US companies that perform advanced manufacturing, chief executive officer Tim Cook said on Wednesday, the iPhone maker's latest effort to show how it is creating US jobs.
36. India's largest nonlife insurer New India Assurance (NIA) has increased premium on health insurance by an average of 25% for individuals. Along with the revision in rates the company has done away with the rate differential based on region and has introduced a uniform rate across the country .
37. Alphabet Inc warned its users to beware of emails from known contacts asking them to click on a link to Google Docs after a large number of people turned to social media to complain that their accounts had been hacked.
38. The humble television is no more an idiot box -it has become smart. Buoyed by a fall in data prices and faster internet speeds, TVs are getting `smarter' as more and more Indians opt for flatpanels that offer a web browser and a host of net-streaming applications such as Facebook, Netflix and YouTube.
39. Amazon India's largest sel ler, Cloudtail, a joint ven ture between N R Narayana Murthy's Catamaran Venture and Amazon, has brought in a senior level executive from the etailer as its new CEO. The JV partners have done an interesting swap of executives wherein Cloudtail has roped in Sumit Sahay , who was previously Amazon's director for category management, as its CEO, while Madhu M, the erstwhile chief of Cloudtail, has taken over Sahay's role at Amazon, people aware of the development told.
40. Inditex, owner of Zara and Massimo Dutti, said that India is one of the fastest growing markets for the Spanish fashion retailer in Asia. For fiscal 2016, the local unit, which is a joint venture with Trent, clocked 17% growth in sales at Rs 842 crore. The figures for fiscal 2017 are not out yet.
41. The Enforcement Directorate has frozen 87.47 lakh shares of Balasore Alloys with a market value of Rs 62 crore, held by Pradeep Kumar Mittal of Global Steel Holding and associated companies, for defrauding the State Trading Corporation (STC). The ED had registered a case of money laundering against Global Steel Holding after the CBI filed a case, too.
42. Usually , every year mutual fund houses reward their most prolific distributors with sponsored trips to popular tourist destinations across the globe.Motilal Oswal Mutual Fund, however, is rewarding their biggest distributors by taking them to Omaha in the US. And not for any farm trip, but to listen to the Oracle of investment managers, Warren Buffett himself. Ideated by Raamdeo Agrawal, co-founder, Motilal Oswal Financial Services, the sponsors of the fund house, about 50 distributors are travelling to Omaha to attend the annual shareholders' meet of Buffett's company Berkshire Hathaway , scheduled on Saturday . They will also attend the Value Investor Conference there.These distributors will get a chance to listen to Buffett at the shareholders' meet and also get to interact with top fund managers globally , who together manage assets worth more than $1 tril lion, Agrawal said.
43. India's largest nonlife insurer New India Assurance (NIA) has increased premium on health insurance by an average of 25% for individuals. Along with the revision in rates the company has done away with the rate differential based on region and has introduced a uniform rate across the country .
POLITICS, ECONOMY, CRIMES, SPORTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND NEWS AROUND THE WORLD
1. The Nifty closed at an all-time high on Thursday while the Sensex ended above the 30,000 mark, a day after the country's biggest private sector lender by assets ICICI Bank posted a threefold jump in quarterly profits and the government decided to change the law to help resolve the bad loan problem. ICICI Bank shares posted the biggest single day gain since September 5, 2013.
2. The Reserve Bank of India and the government may soon initiate a joint action plan to resolve stressed assets in the banking sector that involves pushing state-run firms to take over some failing assets and allowing banks to take necessary haircuts through overseeing committees (OCs).
3. Terrorists attacked an Army patrol leaving a civilan dead and three personnel injured during a massive search and combing operation involving 4,000 troops, initiated on Thursday by the security forces in South Kashmir.
4. CBI will petition the Delhi High Court against the discharge of former telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran, his brother Kalanithi Maran and others in the Aircel-Maxis deal case. The premier investigative agency will file a revision petition against the order of the special CBI court which had discharged all the accused on February 2.
5. The SC-appointed Committee of Administrators on Thursday instructed BCCI not to send any notice to the International Cricket Council before the crucial special general meeting on May 7 where BCCI will decide on the next plan of action. In its letter to BCCI, the CoA asked the board to convene a meeting of the selection committee to pick the Indian side for the upcoming Champions Trophy.
6. Indore is India's cleanest city. The Swachh Survekshan 2017 has found cities hailing from BJP-ruled states of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh as the best performing in the annual survey conducted in 434 cities and towns. The first two spots in the cleanliness survey have gone to Madhya Pradesh cities. The other cities in top 10 include Visakhapatnam, Mysuru, Surat and Chandigarh.
7. India on Thursday urged UK to expedite extradition of Vijay Mallya and other fugitives besides raising the issue of visa-related difficulties faced by Indian students and skilled professionals at the maiden home secretary-level talks, reports Dipanjan Chaudhury.Both the countries also stressed the need for co-operation on anti-terror mechanism and checking cyber crimes.
8. Operational performance of state power distribution companies has improved with a decline in commercial losses of electricity and marginally better coverage of costs in fiscal 2016.
9. India's services sector expanded at the slowest pace in three months in April. The Nikkei India Services PMI slipped to 50.2 from 51.5 in the previous month.
10. Terrorists attacked an Army patrol leaving a civilan dead and three personnel injured during a massive search and combing operation involving 4,000 troops, initiated on Thursday by the security forces in South Kashmir. Security forces, comprising Army , police and CRPF personnel, marched into more than a dozen villages in Shopian district, about 55 km from here, for `Operation Clean Up' on Thursday morning, while helicopters and drones hovered over the area. The operation, launched after a spate of terrorist attacks in the region, was perhaps the biggest in more than a decade in the Kashmir Valley , an Army official said on the condition of anonymity . After a 12-hour dawn-to-dusk operation, the terrorists struck when Army troops were carrying out a “reverse sweep“ of Chowdari Gund and Kellar area of Shopian on Thursday evening, government sources said. Reverse sweep is a term used by Army in which they carry out a surprise check of a location after having combed it earlier in the day.
11. While senior lawyer Ram Jethmalani appeared on behalf of Arvind Kejriwal and questioned finance minister Arun Jaitley in the defamation case against the Delhi CM, the veteran lawyer was now questioning another BJP leader in a case pertaining to his own expulsion from the party.This time, it was BJP general secretary Bhupender Yadav who faced questioning in court from Jethmalani, who had approached court against his expulsion by BJP in 2013.
12. Mamata has suggested a new diet for her state -the Aadhaar diet. Ridiculing the way Aadhaar was being made compulsory at most places, the West Bengal CM suggested at a public meeting in Malda that people should wake up in the morning, worship their Aadhaar card and have it for breakfast, lunch, high tea and dinner. Didi also recommended an evening prayer for Aadhaar devata.
13. “Plant a tree to get free education.“ This is Assam education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma's unique idea to promote plantation. The minister has asked students getting free education in Class XI and degree courses to plant a tree and show photographic proof of its growth.“Get free admission in the subsequent year,“
14. Shopian operation was in the works for quite some time, but it couldn't be executed earlier because security forces were on duty for byelections in the state.Thursday's operation was made possible only after the Anantnag bypoll was countermanded, freeing up critical police and paramilitary units for the cordon and search duties.. The upswing in homegrown terrorism in south Kashmir necessitated a show of strength but the byelection had tied down forces, especially the women police squad which were vital for such door-to-door search operations, government insiders said.
15.India on Thursday affirmed at the UN that it was a secular state with no state religion and safeguarding the rights of minorities formed an essential core of its polity. Speaking at the 27th session of the Universal Periodic Review Working Group at the UN Human Rights Council at Geneva, attorney general Mukul Rohatgi said India makes no distinction between caste, creed, colour or religion of a citizen. “India is a secular state with no state religion,“ he said.
16. Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya's message will now be taken to every house in Uttar Pradesh. BJP is launching a sixmonth public connect programme in the RSS ideologue's home state in his birth centenary year. As part of the programme, the ruling party will felicitate non-governmental organisations that are doing “real social work with true dedication and sacrifice“ in the state, a departure of sorts for the party which has mostly made headlines for its crackdown on NGOs violating rules.
17. Continuing with the organisation reshuffle, Congress has appointed AICC secretary Avinash Pande as AICC general secretary in charge of Rajasthan.Pande hails from Maharashtra and is known to be close to Congress vicepresident Rahul Gandhi. Pritam Singh, `Thakur', who represents a constituency reserved for STs in the Jaunsara area, will be the new PCC chief in Uttrakhand, replacing Kishore Upadhyay.
18. The anti-terrorism squad of Uttar Pradesh in a joint exercise with Maharashtra Police carried out overnight raids and nabbed a suspected ISI operative in Mumbai, who was part of an espionage racket linked to the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi. A total of three ISI suspects have been arrested.
19. If Muslims do not want a compromise on the Ram temple issue, the court is there to resolve the land dispute in Ayodhya, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy on Thursday said, drawing sharp retort from the Babri Masjid Action Committee.
20. SC is likely to pronounce its verdict on Friday on the appeals by four accused in the December 16, 2012, Delhi gangrape case challenging the Delhi HC verdict upholding their death sentence. The HC had upheld the conviction and death sentence of Mukesh, Pawan, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Thakur who were accused of brutal gangrape and assault on a 23-year-old paramedical student.
21. Yoga guru Baba Ramdev has said that India should adopt Israel's policy and it was time to teach Pakistan a tough lesson. “If they (Pakistan) behead one of ours, we should behead at least a hundred of theirs. But no innocent should be harmed,“ Ramdev told. Baba Ramdev demands beheading of Azhar, Dawood and Hafiz Saeed.
22. Uttar Pradesh police has said in a press statement that “5-6 Hindu Yuva Vahini members“ are involved in the murder of a 60-year-old man in Bulandshahr after a Muslim youth had eloped with a Hindu girl.
23. The Modi government has taken the first step towards a major electoral reform, reversing its stance on a longstanding demand of the Election Commission of India to grant it permanent powers to cancel elections on grounds of political parties or candidates bribing voters. Officials told ET that the Centre has started circulating a draft amendment to the law to the states, seeking their views on the matter. The proposal involves amendment to Section 58 (A) of the Representation of People Act, 1951, along with introduction of a new section, 58 (B).
24. After initial rounds of discussions on the presidential poll, Opposition leaders have concluded that they will be forced to back off from the resolve to field a joint Opposition candidate only if the government `persuades' incumbent Pranab Mukherjee for a second ter m at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, many leaders involved in the deliberations have said. The deliberations noted the fact that the NDA government and BJP , to the best of their knowledge, have not communicated to partners or the Opposition on its choice.Incidentally, media reports have said that a bungalow “is being readied as retirement House“ for Mukherjee, whose current term ends in July , leading to interpretation that Mukherjee may not be interested in another term.
25. India and Russia are looking to expand cooperation to inland waterways, railways, IT and civilian aircraft production when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits St. Petersburg, from June 1-3, for the next edition of the annual summit, taking the relationship beyond traditional areas of partnership in defence and hydrocarbon.
26. The Centre has identified illegal mining, poppy cultivation, extortion among the activities funding the Maoists and on May 8, the government, after consultation with stakeholders, is expected to come up with ways to choke their funding. The Centre has identified and is studying 3.72 lakh cases of illegal mining reported from three states over the last few years.
27. Several politicians, including Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, have taken a jibe at the Centre over its claim that demonetisation has led to a decrease in Naxal ism. In February, the Centre had informed Parliament that note ban has directly impacted the terrorists and Naxalites and post demonetisation drive, around 700 Maoists have surrendered and it has also choked the funds that were used by the terrorists.
28. Cyber Hub in Gurgaon, one of the biggest and most premium liquor and food destinations the country, has been granted permission to serve liquor once again starting Thursday evening, more than a month after it was banned following a Supreme Court order.
29. The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority has clarified that NPS accounts of investors who have not submitted the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) self certification will not be blocked. The clarification, sent to the registered email addresses of NPS investors on Thursday, comes as a relief to some 40 lakh NPS investors.
30. The Cabinet's decision to make it mandatory to use domestic steel for all government projects aims at fostering growth of value added steel products used in defence, nuclear and power applications, and which cost two-three times the regular steel products. However, in the short to medium term, it may not have any major gain for domestic steel companies as the imported steel used in government projects is limited.
31. Taxi aggregators have been a significant factor in driving car volumes over the past three years. While their demand for passenger cars remains intact, that from cab drivers working for these companies is waning, according to car makers and analysts. However, this may not affect car companies as much since the proportion of cab drivers in total sales volume is low and consumer demand is upbeat following new product launches.
32. Banks may be floundering in a pool of bad loans, but banking funds are the star performers in mutual fund investments with the sector fund returning a whopping 41.8% in the past one year outpacing many other segments, be it the evergreen large-cap or infrastructure funds.
33. Foreign broking firm Nomura initiated coverage on Kishore Biyani-controlled Future Retail with a `buy' and price target of Rs 476 citing better earnings prospects and improvement in returns ratios as key reasons. The target price is 36% higher than the stock's closing price of Rs 350.25 on Thursday .
34.The Nifty50 made a strong rally on Thursday, but stopped just 2 points short of its alltime high of 9,367. In the process, the index formed a `Dragon Fly Doji' pattern on the daily chart, which suggests that the forces of demand and supply were balancing each other. The formation of this candle pattern is generally seen as a potential turning point. While some analysts now say fresh upside towards 9,400 level from here on will be vulnerable unless followed by sustained buying, others see Nifty eventually hitting this level.
35. Amendments to the banking act would help in effectively resolving the bad loans problem, Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa said. The Cabinet on May 3 approved promulgation of an ordinance to amend the Banking Regulation Act for resolution of the NPA crisis.
36. The asset base of equity ETFs on the NSE has grown nearly three times to Rs 43,234 crore at the end of last fiscal, mainly on account of increasing popularity of such products among retail investors.The AUM stood at Rs 15,066 crore for ETFs at the end of March 2016, as per NSE data.
37. Copper fell on Thursday, extending losses after its biggest one-day drop in 20 months to head back towards its April lows, as rising inventories weighed.Inventories of the metal in LME warehouses rose nearly 33,000 tonnes on Wednesday, exchange data showed.
38. The US dollar rallied broadly on Wednesday and hit more than six-week highs against the yen after the Fed signalled it was still on track for two more interest rate hikes this year. The dollar rose by as much as 0.7% against the yen, and hit 112.69 yen, the highest level since March 21.
39. A coal mine explosion that struck northern Iran killed at least 35 people, semi-official news agencies reported on Thursday, as rescuers worked a second day to reach those trapped inside after the blast.
40. US President Donald Trump will meet Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in New York on Thursday for their first face-to-face talks since an acrimonious phone call about refugees early in Trump's term.
41. China vowed to remain a good neighbour to North Korea on Thursday, despite a rare and stinging critique in Pyongyang's state media of its main diplomatic protector and economic benefactor.
42. US President Donald Trump is planning to sign an executive order on Thursday that could allow churches and other religious organisations to become more active politically, according to administration officials. The order will direct the government's Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to exercise “maximum enforcement discretion“ over the Johnson Amendment, which prevents churches and other tax-exempt religious organisations from endorsing or opposing political candidates,
43. The EU fired a fresh salvo at Britain on Thursday, proposing fresh rules that would require a huge slice of London's banking business to leave the UK after Brexit.
44. French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron accused his far-right rival Marine Le Pen on Thursday of spreading lies by suggesting he had an undisclosed offshore fund. Macron's party said it was tak ing legal action after an internet campaign suggested shortly before a televised debate between the two candidates on Wednesday night that Macron had concealed funds in a foreign tax haven.
45. Republicans in the US House of Representatives predicted victory in a planned vote on Thursday to repeal Obamacare that would take a step toward achieving their seven-year quest to re-place the healthcare law and hand President Donald Trump a major legislative victory.
46. At a cricket match in Mumbai in the ongoing Indian Premier League, where Vodafone is one of the official partners, Reliance Jio pulled off what could be called an `ambush marketing' stunt to grab eyeballs. The telco got a large bunch of folks dressed in T-shirts emblazoned with its brand to sit together in the stands and create a larger-than-life Jio brand wave.
47. Several major foreign investors including DBS have lined up to buy and operate government-owned national highway projects for 30 years, road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari told
48. The Reserve Bank of India and the government may soon initiate a joint action plan to resolve stressed assets in the banking sector that involves pushing state-run firms to take over some failing assets and allowing banks to take necessary haircuts through overseeing committees (OCs).
49. Among the top ten cleanest cities of the country last year, Mumbai has dropped to the 29th place in Swachh Survekshan 2017, though Thane is much worse at 116. The only bright spot in the region is Navi Mumbai, which stood 8th in the cleanliness survey . Other municipal areas in MMR, like Mira-Bhayander (130) and Vasai-Virar (139), are behind Thane.
50. The Centre is moving ahead with the proposal to provide reservation in promotion for SC and ST employees in government jobs with a key official report saying underprivileged sections needed affirmative action.
51. Responding to the spate of suicides being livestreamed, social media giant Facebook has announced it will add another 3,000 people to its 4,500strong review team that moderates content. The team will also work with law enforcement agencies on this issue.
52. Assam health and education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Thursday the state government would provide pension and skill development training to Muslim women who are `victims' of triple talaq.
53.The Bombay high court held five policemen from Gujarat guilty on Thursday in a rare conviction of government servants in a post-Godhra riots case.
54. Delays and drama marked Egyptian patient Eman Ahmed's departure from India on Thursday after 83 days.Her flight to Abu Dhabi was delayed by 90 minutes before taking off at 7.41pm.
55. The state government has revoked its decision to de-notify state highways passing through Jalgaon municipal corporation areas, so 45-odd liquor shops and bars will be closed now.
56. Maharashtra's first toll post at Bhiwandi bypass on the Nashik highway , built in 1998, will close operations on May 13, as per a 2002 gazette notification issued by the Centre.
1. The Nifty closed at an all-time high on Thursday while the Sensex ended above the 30,000 mark, a day after the country's biggest private sector lender by assets ICICI Bank posted a threefold jump in quarterly profits and the government decided to change the law to help resolve the bad loan problem. ICICI Bank shares posted the biggest single day gain since September 5, 2013.
2. The Reserve Bank of India and the government may soon initiate a joint action plan to resolve stressed assets in the banking sector that involves pushing state-run firms to take over some failing assets and allowing banks to take necessary haircuts through overseeing committees (OCs).
3. Terrorists attacked an Army patrol leaving a civilan dead and three personnel injured during a massive search and combing operation involving 4,000 troops, initiated on Thursday by the security forces in South Kashmir.
4. CBI will petition the Delhi High Court against the discharge of former telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran, his brother Kalanithi Maran and others in the Aircel-Maxis deal case. The premier investigative agency will file a revision petition against the order of the special CBI court which had discharged all the accused on February 2.
5. The SC-appointed Committee of Administrators on Thursday instructed BCCI not to send any notice to the International Cricket Council before the crucial special general meeting on May 7 where BCCI will decide on the next plan of action. In its letter to BCCI, the CoA asked the board to convene a meeting of the selection committee to pick the Indian side for the upcoming Champions Trophy.
6. Indore is India's cleanest city. The Swachh Survekshan 2017 has found cities hailing from BJP-ruled states of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh as the best performing in the annual survey conducted in 434 cities and towns. The first two spots in the cleanliness survey have gone to Madhya Pradesh cities. The other cities in top 10 include Visakhapatnam, Mysuru, Surat and Chandigarh.
7. India on Thursday urged UK to expedite extradition of Vijay Mallya and other fugitives besides raising the issue of visa-related difficulties faced by Indian students and skilled professionals at the maiden home secretary-level talks, reports Dipanjan Chaudhury.Both the countries also stressed the need for co-operation on anti-terror mechanism and checking cyber crimes.
8. Operational performance of state power distribution companies has improved with a decline in commercial losses of electricity and marginally better coverage of costs in fiscal 2016.
9. India's services sector expanded at the slowest pace in three months in April. The Nikkei India Services PMI slipped to 50.2 from 51.5 in the previous month.
10. Terrorists attacked an Army patrol leaving a civilan dead and three personnel injured during a massive search and combing operation involving 4,000 troops, initiated on Thursday by the security forces in South Kashmir. Security forces, comprising Army , police and CRPF personnel, marched into more than a dozen villages in Shopian district, about 55 km from here, for `Operation Clean Up' on Thursday morning, while helicopters and drones hovered over the area. The operation, launched after a spate of terrorist attacks in the region, was perhaps the biggest in more than a decade in the Kashmir Valley , an Army official said on the condition of anonymity . After a 12-hour dawn-to-dusk operation, the terrorists struck when Army troops were carrying out a “reverse sweep“ of Chowdari Gund and Kellar area of Shopian on Thursday evening, government sources said. Reverse sweep is a term used by Army in which they carry out a surprise check of a location after having combed it earlier in the day.
11. While senior lawyer Ram Jethmalani appeared on behalf of Arvind Kejriwal and questioned finance minister Arun Jaitley in the defamation case against the Delhi CM, the veteran lawyer was now questioning another BJP leader in a case pertaining to his own expulsion from the party.This time, it was BJP general secretary Bhupender Yadav who faced questioning in court from Jethmalani, who had approached court against his expulsion by BJP in 2013.
12. Mamata has suggested a new diet for her state -the Aadhaar diet. Ridiculing the way Aadhaar was being made compulsory at most places, the West Bengal CM suggested at a public meeting in Malda that people should wake up in the morning, worship their Aadhaar card and have it for breakfast, lunch, high tea and dinner. Didi also recommended an evening prayer for Aadhaar devata.
13. “Plant a tree to get free education.“ This is Assam education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma's unique idea to promote plantation. The minister has asked students getting free education in Class XI and degree courses to plant a tree and show photographic proof of its growth.“Get free admission in the subsequent year,“
14. Shopian operation was in the works for quite some time, but it couldn't be executed earlier because security forces were on duty for byelections in the state.Thursday's operation was made possible only after the Anantnag bypoll was countermanded, freeing up critical police and paramilitary units for the cordon and search duties.. The upswing in homegrown terrorism in south Kashmir necessitated a show of strength but the byelection had tied down forces, especially the women police squad which were vital for such door-to-door search operations, government insiders said.
15.India on Thursday affirmed at the UN that it was a secular state with no state religion and safeguarding the rights of minorities formed an essential core of its polity. Speaking at the 27th session of the Universal Periodic Review Working Group at the UN Human Rights Council at Geneva, attorney general Mukul Rohatgi said India makes no distinction between caste, creed, colour or religion of a citizen. “India is a secular state with no state religion,“ he said.
16. Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya's message will now be taken to every house in Uttar Pradesh. BJP is launching a sixmonth public connect programme in the RSS ideologue's home state in his birth centenary year. As part of the programme, the ruling party will felicitate non-governmental organisations that are doing “real social work with true dedication and sacrifice“ in the state, a departure of sorts for the party which has mostly made headlines for its crackdown on NGOs violating rules.
17. Continuing with the organisation reshuffle, Congress has appointed AICC secretary Avinash Pande as AICC general secretary in charge of Rajasthan.Pande hails from Maharashtra and is known to be close to Congress vicepresident Rahul Gandhi. Pritam Singh, `Thakur', who represents a constituency reserved for STs in the Jaunsara area, will be the new PCC chief in Uttrakhand, replacing Kishore Upadhyay.
18. The anti-terrorism squad of Uttar Pradesh in a joint exercise with Maharashtra Police carried out overnight raids and nabbed a suspected ISI operative in Mumbai, who was part of an espionage racket linked to the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi. A total of three ISI suspects have been arrested.
19. If Muslims do not want a compromise on the Ram temple issue, the court is there to resolve the land dispute in Ayodhya, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy on Thursday said, drawing sharp retort from the Babri Masjid Action Committee.
20. SC is likely to pronounce its verdict on Friday on the appeals by four accused in the December 16, 2012, Delhi gangrape case challenging the Delhi HC verdict upholding their death sentence. The HC had upheld the conviction and death sentence of Mukesh, Pawan, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Thakur who were accused of brutal gangrape and assault on a 23-year-old paramedical student.
21. Yoga guru Baba Ramdev has said that India should adopt Israel's policy and it was time to teach Pakistan a tough lesson. “If they (Pakistan) behead one of ours, we should behead at least a hundred of theirs. But no innocent should be harmed,“ Ramdev told. Baba Ramdev demands beheading of Azhar, Dawood and Hafiz Saeed.
22. Uttar Pradesh police has said in a press statement that “5-6 Hindu Yuva Vahini members“ are involved in the murder of a 60-year-old man in Bulandshahr after a Muslim youth had eloped with a Hindu girl.
23. The Modi government has taken the first step towards a major electoral reform, reversing its stance on a longstanding demand of the Election Commission of India to grant it permanent powers to cancel elections on grounds of political parties or candidates bribing voters. Officials told ET that the Centre has started circulating a draft amendment to the law to the states, seeking their views on the matter. The proposal involves amendment to Section 58 (A) of the Representation of People Act, 1951, along with introduction of a new section, 58 (B).
24. After initial rounds of discussions on the presidential poll, Opposition leaders have concluded that they will be forced to back off from the resolve to field a joint Opposition candidate only if the government `persuades' incumbent Pranab Mukherjee for a second ter m at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, many leaders involved in the deliberations have said. The deliberations noted the fact that the NDA government and BJP , to the best of their knowledge, have not communicated to partners or the Opposition on its choice.Incidentally, media reports have said that a bungalow “is being readied as retirement House“ for Mukherjee, whose current term ends in July , leading to interpretation that Mukherjee may not be interested in another term.
25. India and Russia are looking to expand cooperation to inland waterways, railways, IT and civilian aircraft production when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits St. Petersburg, from June 1-3, for the next edition of the annual summit, taking the relationship beyond traditional areas of partnership in defence and hydrocarbon.
26. The Centre has identified illegal mining, poppy cultivation, extortion among the activities funding the Maoists and on May 8, the government, after consultation with stakeholders, is expected to come up with ways to choke their funding. The Centre has identified and is studying 3.72 lakh cases of illegal mining reported from three states over the last few years.
27. Several politicians, including Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, have taken a jibe at the Centre over its claim that demonetisation has led to a decrease in Naxal ism. In February, the Centre had informed Parliament that note ban has directly impacted the terrorists and Naxalites and post demonetisation drive, around 700 Maoists have surrendered and it has also choked the funds that were used by the terrorists.
28. Cyber Hub in Gurgaon, one of the biggest and most premium liquor and food destinations the country, has been granted permission to serve liquor once again starting Thursday evening, more than a month after it was banned following a Supreme Court order.
29. The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority has clarified that NPS accounts of investors who have not submitted the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) self certification will not be blocked. The clarification, sent to the registered email addresses of NPS investors on Thursday, comes as a relief to some 40 lakh NPS investors.
30. The Cabinet's decision to make it mandatory to use domestic steel for all government projects aims at fostering growth of value added steel products used in defence, nuclear and power applications, and which cost two-three times the regular steel products. However, in the short to medium term, it may not have any major gain for domestic steel companies as the imported steel used in government projects is limited.
31. Taxi aggregators have been a significant factor in driving car volumes over the past three years. While their demand for passenger cars remains intact, that from cab drivers working for these companies is waning, according to car makers and analysts. However, this may not affect car companies as much since the proportion of cab drivers in total sales volume is low and consumer demand is upbeat following new product launches.
32. Banks may be floundering in a pool of bad loans, but banking funds are the star performers in mutual fund investments with the sector fund returning a whopping 41.8% in the past one year outpacing many other segments, be it the evergreen large-cap or infrastructure funds.
33. Foreign broking firm Nomura initiated coverage on Kishore Biyani-controlled Future Retail with a `buy' and price target of Rs 476 citing better earnings prospects and improvement in returns ratios as key reasons. The target price is 36% higher than the stock's closing price of Rs 350.25 on Thursday .
34.The Nifty50 made a strong rally on Thursday, but stopped just 2 points short of its alltime high of 9,367. In the process, the index formed a `Dragon Fly Doji' pattern on the daily chart, which suggests that the forces of demand and supply were balancing each other. The formation of this candle pattern is generally seen as a potential turning point. While some analysts now say fresh upside towards 9,400 level from here on will be vulnerable unless followed by sustained buying, others see Nifty eventually hitting this level.
35. Amendments to the banking act would help in effectively resolving the bad loans problem, Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa said. The Cabinet on May 3 approved promulgation of an ordinance to amend the Banking Regulation Act for resolution of the NPA crisis.
36. The asset base of equity ETFs on the NSE has grown nearly three times to Rs 43,234 crore at the end of last fiscal, mainly on account of increasing popularity of such products among retail investors.The AUM stood at Rs 15,066 crore for ETFs at the end of March 2016, as per NSE data.
37. Copper fell on Thursday, extending losses after its biggest one-day drop in 20 months to head back towards its April lows, as rising inventories weighed.Inventories of the metal in LME warehouses rose nearly 33,000 tonnes on Wednesday, exchange data showed.
38. The US dollar rallied broadly on Wednesday and hit more than six-week highs against the yen after the Fed signalled it was still on track for two more interest rate hikes this year. The dollar rose by as much as 0.7% against the yen, and hit 112.69 yen, the highest level since March 21.
39. A coal mine explosion that struck northern Iran killed at least 35 people, semi-official news agencies reported on Thursday, as rescuers worked a second day to reach those trapped inside after the blast.
40. US President Donald Trump will meet Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in New York on Thursday for their first face-to-face talks since an acrimonious phone call about refugees early in Trump's term.
41. China vowed to remain a good neighbour to North Korea on Thursday, despite a rare and stinging critique in Pyongyang's state media of its main diplomatic protector and economic benefactor.
42. US President Donald Trump is planning to sign an executive order on Thursday that could allow churches and other religious organisations to become more active politically, according to administration officials. The order will direct the government's Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to exercise “maximum enforcement discretion“ over the Johnson Amendment, which prevents churches and other tax-exempt religious organisations from endorsing or opposing political candidates,
43. The EU fired a fresh salvo at Britain on Thursday, proposing fresh rules that would require a huge slice of London's banking business to leave the UK after Brexit.
44. French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron accused his far-right rival Marine Le Pen on Thursday of spreading lies by suggesting he had an undisclosed offshore fund. Macron's party said it was tak ing legal action after an internet campaign suggested shortly before a televised debate between the two candidates on Wednesday night that Macron had concealed funds in a foreign tax haven.
45. Republicans in the US House of Representatives predicted victory in a planned vote on Thursday to repeal Obamacare that would take a step toward achieving their seven-year quest to re-place the healthcare law and hand President Donald Trump a major legislative victory.
46. At a cricket match in Mumbai in the ongoing Indian Premier League, where Vodafone is one of the official partners, Reliance Jio pulled off what could be called an `ambush marketing' stunt to grab eyeballs. The telco got a large bunch of folks dressed in T-shirts emblazoned with its brand to sit together in the stands and create a larger-than-life Jio brand wave.
47. Several major foreign investors including DBS have lined up to buy and operate government-owned national highway projects for 30 years, road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari told
48. The Reserve Bank of India and the government may soon initiate a joint action plan to resolve stressed assets in the banking sector that involves pushing state-run firms to take over some failing assets and allowing banks to take necessary haircuts through overseeing committees (OCs).
49. Among the top ten cleanest cities of the country last year, Mumbai has dropped to the 29th place in Swachh Survekshan 2017, though Thane is much worse at 116. The only bright spot in the region is Navi Mumbai, which stood 8th in the cleanliness survey . Other municipal areas in MMR, like Mira-Bhayander (130) and Vasai-Virar (139), are behind Thane.
50. The Centre is moving ahead with the proposal to provide reservation in promotion for SC and ST employees in government jobs with a key official report saying underprivileged sections needed affirmative action.
51. Responding to the spate of suicides being livestreamed, social media giant Facebook has announced it will add another 3,000 people to its 4,500strong review team that moderates content. The team will also work with law enforcement agencies on this issue.
52. Assam health and education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Thursday the state government would provide pension and skill development training to Muslim women who are `victims' of triple talaq.
53.The Bombay high court held five policemen from Gujarat guilty on Thursday in a rare conviction of government servants in a post-Godhra riots case.
54. Delays and drama marked Egyptian patient Eman Ahmed's departure from India on Thursday after 83 days.Her flight to Abu Dhabi was delayed by 90 minutes before taking off at 7.41pm.
55. The state government has revoked its decision to de-notify state highways passing through Jalgaon municipal corporation areas, so 45-odd liquor shops and bars will be closed now.
56. Maharashtra's first toll post at Bhiwandi bypass on the Nashik highway , built in 1998, will close operations on May 13, as per a 2002 gazette notification issued by the Centre.
57. The city crime branch on Wednesday busted a unique online racket with the arrest of a former call centre employee who allegedly duped 34 customers of a total amount of Rs1.85 lakh. Kisan Singh (26), a former employee of a call centre, was charged on Thursday under Indian Penal Code sections for cheating, forgery and breach of turst, and remanded in police custody till May 8. The case came to light after ShopCJ TV , an oneline shopping store, began to receive abusive calls from customers who complained their delivery packages contained stones, chappals and scrap.
58. A member of the sta te cabinet pro tested against his own government on Thursday . Mi nister of state for agriculture and marketing, Sadabhau Khot, joined a stir against the state government in Kolhapur, demanding loan waiver to farmers, higher price for cane crop and implementation of the Swaminathan committee's recommendations.
59. Thieves drilled a hole into the wall of a jewellery shop and escaped with valuables worth Rs 65 lakh, including gold and cash, on Wednesday . The incident came to light at 9.30am on Thursday when Vimal Dave opened his Mataji Jewellery shop, in Hanuman Nagar area, Kalyan (East) and found the locker broken and all jewellery missing. He then saw athree-foot hole in the wall and informed the Kolsewadi police. The thieves used gas cylinders and cutter machines to drill a hole in the wall of a vacant flat which shared a common wall with the shop and also cut through its locker, taking away 2 kg of gold jewellery and Rs 5 lakh in cash.
60. The school education department has clarified that though the simpler General Mathematics option will be discontinued from the next academic year for all students, children with special needs can continue to opt for Class VII Arithmetic for board examinations. The statement follows anxious queries from parents and educators. So far, they could opt for either General Maths or Class VII Arithmatic.
61. Teachers on various academic bodies of state's public universities are now required to have a PhD and at least two students who have been awarded PhD under them as guides. PhD, however, will no longer be mandatory for election to the senate for teachers. These are some of the new eligibility criteria for representatives in academic bodies who will be soon elected or nominated. Qualifications required to be fulfilled by principals, teachers and representatives on various academic and administrative bodies including the senate, board of studies, examinations have been modified under statutes of the new Maharashtra Public Universities' Act, 2016, released on Wednesday .
62. Bombay high court on Thursday said BMC and police will have to take action on complaints of illegal sale of exotic birds and animals from across the city, and not restrict it to Crawford Market.
63. The Shiv Sena will oppose the Goods and Services Tax (GST) if it threatens BMC's financial autonomy , Uddhav Thackeray said on Thursday .
64. A National Achievement Survey (NAS) will be done every year for classes I, III and VIII. It will be held for students of government and government-aided schools. Y Sreekanth, head of educational survey division at NCERT, said, “Till now, NAS was a 3-year cycle. From this year, it will be yearly.“ The assessment may be done in October and feedback assessment by December. Based on students' performance, they will be taught to improve in the last quarter between January and March.
65. The first-ever train service in the world exclusively for women completes 25 years on Friday . Western Railway will celebrate the silver jubilee of its ladies special trains with roses and chocolates for its patrons. “It was a historic moment 25 years back when the first ladies special was introduced between Churchgate and Borivli on May 5, 1992, and the route was further extended to Virar in 1993,“ said WR chief public relations officer Ravinder Bhakar. “The ladies special was a boon for working women who struggled to board ladies compartments in regular trains. De dicating an entire train to women meant they could travel more comfortably ,“ he said.
66. DCP Rajiv Jain, who investigated the irrigation scam in Nagpur, will now head Zone V , which also covers Dharavi. He is among the DCPs reshuffled in the city.
67. Post-graduate medical aspirants from the state who are awaiting the final verdict on the domicile issue in the Supreme Court are worried about the approaching admission deadline. The last date for completing admissions in PG medical courses prescribed by the SC is May 7, while the students allotted seats in the all-India quota elsewhere in the country are expected to surrender their seats by May 9. If the court verdict is not out before these dates and the state does not release the merit list, the students will have to risk the seats they have been allotted.
68. Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) police, on a tip-off from the US Consulate, on Thursday busted a major racket of human-trafficking, with the arrest of a couple, trying to fly on bogus documents.
69. Following a complaint made to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) about 2,234 people reportedly contracting HIV due to blood transfusions between October 2014 and March 2016, the union health ministry has set up a 21-member committee to review the working and manpower norms of blood banks.
70. 21% Of Eligible Students Opt Out Of It Again. Around 500 foreign nationals have registered for JEE (Advanced) 2017 for admissions to the IITs compared with 19 last year. This year, for the first time, the test to enter India's premier engineering institutions will be conducted in six countries, including Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Singapore, Ethiopia and the UAE, which had hosted the exam last year as well. This year, too, around 21% of the 2.2 lakh candidates who qualified to appear for JEE (Advanced) in JEE (Main) opted out of the test. Although this year, 22,000 more candidates were shortlisted compared with the previous year, the percentage of students giving the IIT entrance test a miss remained unchanged.
71. A junior railway engineer was knocked down by a speeding local while on track electrification duty between Jogeshwari and Ram Mandir Road stations early on Thursday. The incident once again brought into focus the need for safety of those working on tracks late at night. Last year, an engineer died after being run over by a goods train near Kopar station, while more than a dozen gangmen have died on duty in the past three years.
72. After it pulled out flights from Mumbai five years ago citing steep costs, low-cost carrier Air Asia is all set to return to the city's congested airport with daily flights to Kuala Lumpur scheduled to begin in afortnight. The Mumbai-Kuala Lumpur flights will be operated by Air Asia X Indonesia (code XT).The airline has started marketing Mumbai-Bali flights (stopover at Kuala Lumpur, total flight time: 9 hours, 25 minutes) with a one-way , promo fare of Rs 7,900, taxes included. A Malaysian visa is not required for this quick stopover and Indian nationals can travel visa-free to Bali for up to 30 days, said an Air Asia Official.
73.A special Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSOA) court on Thursday convicted and sentenced a 35-year-old man to seven years' imprisonment for raping an 11-year-old girl in his neighbourhood. The complaint was lodged with the police by the victim's mother in June 2014.
74. A 25-year-old unemployed man, Danesh Dangda, from Saphale in Palghar district, on Saturday, stabbed himself to death as his wife, Anjali (20), filed a case of physical and mental harassment against him last month.
75. Mumbai Grahak Panchayat has organized a public meeting with state RERA chairman Gautam Chatterjee on Saturday, May 6, at Kishanchand Walecha Hall in Juhu, between 4pm and 6.30 pm.
76. The anti-narcotics cell on Thursday arrested a 41-year-old man, Haroon Rashid, for possession of 500gm of mephadrone worth Rs 10 lakh from Sewri Port. Rashid was convicted in a robbery case in the past.
77. A private tutor, Yeshwant Vetale (37), committed suicide by jumping into a pond from a skywalk at Virar on Wednesday. He was a resident of Phoolpada in Virar (east).
78. Unidentified people stole cash and valuables worth Rs 8 lakh from a bungalow in Ambernath, while the family was away at a wedding in Dombivli.
79.A thief, Changla Basu Patro, who broke into a house and stole three mobile phones in Wagle Esate in 2016, was convicted and sentenced to three years' rigourous imprisonment by a court.
80. The three-day Shivmandir Art Festival starts today at Ambernath Shiv temple. The event will have live performances, paintings and photography exhibition and games.
81. The state will soon send data it had collected last year to bolster its case for 16% reservation for the Maratha community in education and public sector jobs to the Maharashtra State Backward Class Commission for analysis. On Thursday , the state informed the Bombay high court that the commission had not scrutinized data collected by the Narayan Rane committee to study the socio-economic conditions of Marathas and make recommendations about reservations, and said the data now available is “multi-dimensional and extensive, touching various aspects like socio-cultural, socio-economic, socio-political, historical, geographical and merits a detailed examination“.
82. The city police has sought sanction from the district sessions court to dispose of 20 tonnes of the seized ephedrine stock approximately worth Rs 2,000 crore. The drug is a stimulant used by the international cartel to make psychotropic drugs. The cartel was busted last year.
83. Several parts of the state will face `rotational' loadshedding from Friday morning due to a shortfall of nearly 4,000 MW in power generation for MSEDCL consumers. This could include parts of Navi Mumbai, Thane, Kalyan where load-shedding will occur in phases. MSEDCL officials said on Thursday night that the problem could continue for two to three days and power cuts may be “for a few hours“.
84. The Bombay high court on Thursday ordered the unsealing of Dighi Port after the port company undertook to supply 100 water tankers, with 5,000 litre capacity each, daily to four villages--Dighi, Nanavali, Maneri and Karlas.
85. Three days after a 26year-old Kopri resident was reported missing by his mother, the Thane police have arrested four of his friends--including three minors--for his murder and disposing of the body in a creek last Saturday.
86. The prosecution has opposed a plea filed by Lt Col Prasad Purohit, an accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast, who sought his transfer to military custody. Purohit was a serving officer at the time of his arrest in November 2008.
87.Only in India, authorities throw caution to the winds and are unconcerned about air passenger safety norms, the Bombay high court said on Thursday . A bench, headed by Justice Vidyasagar Kanade, made the oral observations while it declined to stay the collector's order to remove a 90-ft chimney of a sugar factory , Siddheshwar Sahakari Sakhar Karkhana, which is in the approach of the runway at the Solapur airport. “There can be no compromise.What has to go, has to go,“ said Justice Kanade.
88. The Bombay high court has refused relief to a standard X student of Delhi Public School, Nerul, who used white ink to correct his answers in the National Talent Search (NTS) Examinations. The student, who failed the exam, had approached the court asking it to direct the authorities to consider the corrected answers which will help him in passing the NTS examination.
89. The students of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) have demanded that the letters of termination issued to 18 teachers on March 24 be withdrawn and a democratic conversation be held between all stakeholders to create a sense of trust and respect.
90.The Bombay high court held five policemen from Gujarat guilty on Thursday in a rare conviction of government servants in a post-Godhra riots case. The HC set aside their acquittal by a trial court and convicted them, along with two doctors, on charges of destroying evidence and attempting to shield the accused. The order came in the case of the gangrape of Bilkis Bano and the murder of eight members of her family, including two children, amid communal violence in 2002 after `kar sevaks' were killed in a fire on the Sabarmati express.
91. A four-member medical board from the state-run Calcutta Pavlov Hospital reached Justice CS Karnan's home on Thursday but had to come back without as sessing his mental he alth, a job ent rusted to it by the Supreme Court, after the Calcutta HC judge asserted they could not do so in the absence of a legal guardian -in his case, either his “wife or son“ -and he was in perfect mental condition.
92.Punjab police's controversial superintendent of police (SP) Salwinder Singh, whose official vehicle was waylaid and used by Pakistan's Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists to reach the Indian Air Force base at Pathankot on January 2, 2016, and orchestrate one of the deadliest attacks on Indian armed forces in recent years, is set to be dismissed from service.
93. In a first for India, the government will on Friday come out with the draft rules for a no-fly list that may have varying periods of grounding for unruly flyers depending on their actions.The draft civil aviation requirement (CAR, or rules for aviation) is a result of a demand from all Indian airlines for a no-fly list here after Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad had thrashed an Air India employee on March 23.
94. Bilkis Bano and her family expressed their relief on Thursday at the Mumbai high court, upholding life term for 11 persons accused of raping her and massacring eight of her family members. However, the family plans to continue its legal fight to ensure that the three main accused -Sailesh Bhatt, Jaswant Nai and Govind Nai -are given the death penalty .
95.In a first case of its kind, the public works department led by senior BJP leader Chandrakant Patil on Thursday revoked a crucial decision to denotify 22-km state highways passing through Jalgaon Municipal Corporation. As a result, 45odd liquor shops, permit rooms and bars on these roads will be closed with immediate effect. The decision will result in a revenue loss of Rs 1.25 crore per year.
96. Settling a doubt which has troubled crime investigators for long, the Supreme Court has ruled that asking an accused to give fingerprints or footprints for investigation purposes did not violate his fundamental right to protect himself from becoming a witness against himself.
97. After strongly contested arguments amid a raging public debate, the Supreme Court on Thursday reserved its verdict on the constitutional validity of a law, making it mandatory for citizens to link their Permanent Account Number with Aadhaar unique identity.
98. Indore has replaced Mysuru as the cleanest among 434 cities while Gonda in Uttar Pradesh has been ranked as the dirtiest, according to government's sanitation ranking released on Thursday . PM Narendra Modi's constituency Varanasi was announced as the cleanest city in UP while Lutyens' Delhi slipped to number seven this year in comparison to its fourth rank in 2016.
99.Eleven cities from Madhya Pradesh making it to the list of top 50 cleanest cities this year may have stumped many , but it happened because of the state government's efforts to bring acomplete turnaround across its 378 cities and towns in a span of a few months.
100. Seven youngsters, including two siblings, were killed on the spot after the Toyota Innova they were travelling in rear-ended a truck laden with logs Wednesday night, on NH-206 near Shivamogga, 290km from Bengaluru. The men, all long-time friends, were headed from Bengaluru to Sagar, 70km from Shivamogga, to participate in the wedding celebrations of a friend. While six of them were killed instantly, the seventh breathed his last minutes before an ambulance arrived from Shivamogga.
101. Police found the decomposed bodies of a 61-year-old software consultant and his 18-year-old daughter from their flat at Pisoli, located 12km from Pune, on Thursday. Police faced difficulties in sending the bodies to Sassoon General Hospital as two ambulances refused to carry the corpses because of the stench.
102. Eight persons were booked in a village in Bathinda on Wednesday on charges of cow slaughter. Police filed an FIR against the suspects after they recovered 20 kg of meat, suspected to be beef, from the house of one of the accused.
103. Amidst tight security , the final 28-hour countdown for the launch of 2,230kg South Asian Satellite kicked off at 12.57pm on Thursday . The lift off will be at 5pm on Friday at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota. The satellite, which will cater to various communication needs of the six Saarc countries--India, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, Bangladesh and Afghanistan--is expected to become fully operational in about a fortnight when it enters the geostationary orbit at 36,000km above the equator.
104. Buyers of delayed housing projects will get interest on the invested amount for the delay period at Real Estate Regulatory Authority's (RERA) prescribed rate as against Rs 5-10 per sq feet contracted in sales agreement, said chairman of MP RERA Anthony de Sa. RERA 's prescribed rate comes out to be 10% at present. Developers have not been barred from advertising and marketing existing projects, said regulators and officials of MP , Punjab, Haryana and Delhi. Officials said builders need to apply for registration for ongoing projects only by July 31.
105. The Supreme Court will deliver its verdict on Friday on the plea of four death convicts challenging their conviction and sentence in the Nirbhaya rape-cum-murder case. A bench of Justices Dipak Misra, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan, which had reserved its order on March 27 after holding a marathon hearing for more than 44 days, will deliver the verdict at 2pm. The convicts -Vinay Sharma (23), Akshay Thakur (31), Mukesh (29) and Pawan Gupta (22) -were awarded death sentence by a trial court in September 2013. On March 13, 2014, the Delhi high court upheld their conviction and sentence. All the convicts then approached the SC which stayed their execution in 2014 and the matter was pending in the top court since then.
106. The Election Commission has convened a meeting with all seven national parties and 48 recognised state parties here on May 12 to discuss issues related to electronic voting machines and voter-verfiable paper audit trail (VVPAT), besides seeking their suggestions regarding its upcoming EVM “hackathon“ challenge. The commission has written to the chiefs of all national and state recognised parties, attaching a status paper on EVMVVPAT. It has also sought their views on proposed electoral reforms such as making bribery in elections a cognisable offence.
107. A Himachal-based couple has decided to `adopt' the 12-year-old daughter of an Army jawan, who was beheaded by Pakistan in the Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir on May 1. They have offered to bear the child's expenses from school till marriage, to ensure a good future for her.
108. Saudi clerics and Pakistani news anchors are being beamed direct to Kashmiri homes, and are stoking cries for `azadi' in the Valley. Over 50 Saudi and Pakistani channels, including Zakir Naik's banned Peace TV preaching Salafist Islam, and others indulging in anti-India propaganda are running without necessary clearances via private cable networks in Kashmir. All this is happening under the nose of the PDP-BJP government, which even subscribes to these cable services in some of its offices. Although satellite TV service providers like Ta ta Sky, Airtel digital TV and Dish TV , are available in Kashmir, most people subscribe to private cable. A cable operator, who did not want to be named, said there are 50,000 private cable connections in Srinagar alone, and only because these broadcast Pakistani and Saudi channels. Besides Zakir Naik's Peace TV Urdu and English channels, private oper ators air Saudi and Pakistani channels like Saudi Sunnah, Saudi Quran, Al Arabia, Paigham, Hidayat, Noor, Madani, Sehar, Karbala, Hadi, Sehar, Ary QTV , Bethat, Ahlibat, Message, Falak, Geo News, Ary News, Dawn News, and many others, which cannot be accessed through satellite television service providers. None of these channels are permitted to air in the rest of the country by the I&Bministry .
109. A senior administrative officer has created a flutter among top bureaucrats and law enforcement agencies in Madhya Pradesh by seeking permission to spend a month with underworld don Abu Salem in Taloja jail, Navi Mumbai, so that he can write a book on the Salem-Monica Bedi affair. Niyaz Ahmed Khan's request is quite unprecedented, say officials. He is posted as additional district magistrate in Guna and has finalized the title for his book: `Love demands blood'. He submitted his application to the general administration department (GAD), which has sent it to chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
110. Chin implants, otherwise known as `chinplants' have taken over breast augmentations as the fastest growing procedure among image-conscious Brits. Dr De Silva, a leading surgeon from the Centre of Advanced Facial Cosmetic and Plastic Surgery in London says there has been a 60% rise in the cosmetic procedure in the last few years; a growth he attributes to selfie celebrity culture. The new wave of surgeries is favoured by both sexes with around 60% of enquiries coming from women and 40% from men. And while Scarlet Johansson's heart shaped chin is the most asked for by women, La La Land actor Ryan Gosling's chin is the pick for men.
111. Ketamine and Botox appear to reduce rates of depression, according to a new study . Researchers in California studied a US database in which adverse effects of drugs were reported, and found that depression, among more than 41,000 people who took ketamine to relieve pain, was half as common as among those who took other painkillers. Those who used Botox, an antibiotic called minocycline, and a painkiller diclofenac, also had lower rates of depression than might be expected.
112. There is a growing trend of crematoriums offering live-streaming of funeral services in the UK with millennials more open to the idea of attending the last rites of loved ones `online' than older people, according to a survey in the UK.
113. The remains of one of the last dinosaurs living in Africa before their extinction 66 million years ago has been discovered in a Moroccan mine, scientists said on Thursday. Researchers from the University of Bath in the UK studied a rare fragment of a jaw bone discovered in the phosphate mines at Sidi Chennane. They identified it as belonging to an abelisaur. Abelisaurs were two-legged predators like the dreaded T-Rex and other tyrannosaurs, but with a shorter, blunter snout and even tinier arms.
114.Scientists say they have switched on the world's biggest x-ray laser, designed to capture images of structures and processes at the atomic level. The DESY research centre near Hamburg, Germany, said it “marks a new era of research in Europe“. Operators say the first laser pulse lasted one second, a frequency that will be increased to 27,000 flashes per second by September, when it officially opens for research.Scientists hope the project will open up new areas of research, such as mapping the molecular structure of drugs and seeing biochemical reactions in real time. Institutions from Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland are involved in the project.
115. Stanford scientists have developed an ultrathin, flexible electronic device that is biodegradable, an advance that may help tackle the problem of mounting electronic waste.
116. Scientists have developed a bionic hand that `sees' objects and allows amputees to grasp things ten times faster than current prosthetics. The bionic hand is fitted with a camera which instantly takes a picture of an object, assesses its shape and size and triggers movements in the hand.
117.A second Sikh candidate was confirmed by opposition Labour party on Thursday , a move welcomed by British Sikhs who lauded the party's effort for increasing the representation of the community in UK parliament. Kuldip Singh Sahota, a former councillor, will fight to overturn a small Conservative party majority of 730 (1.8%) and regain the Telford constituency in the West Midlands region in the June 8 election.
118. Prince Philip, the 95year-old husband of Britain's queen Elizabeth, joked on Thursday about no longer being able to “stand up much“ as Buck ingham Palace announced he would retire later this year from active public life. Philip, who is also known as the duke of Edinburgh and has sometimes drawn attention with headline-grabbing gaffes, has been by the queen's side throughout her 65 years on the throne and she has described him as “my strength and stay“.
119. Former Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar returned to Kabul on Thursday after two decades in hiding, calling for peace with Taliban insurgents and criticising the Westernbacked government, which he said was not working. Hekmatyar's comments in a ceremony at the presidential palace highlighted the complications likely to face President Ashraf Ghani, who signed a peace deal with Hekmatyar last year.
120. Michelle was not the only women in Barack Obama's life and he had been in a serious relationship before he met his future wife, according to an upcoming biography of the former US president. The book -“Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama“ written by David J Garrow -shares for the first time the story of Sheila Miyoshi Jager, his love interest, with whom Obama lived in Chicago, The Washington Post said in a review.
121. A woman swallowed $7,000 US dollars in a desperate attempt to hide the cash during a fight with her husband, it was reported. The 30-year-old woman swallowed rolls of $100 bills, according to surgeons who removed the money from her body.
122. A komodo dragon, one of the world's largest lizards, attacked a tourist in Indonesia who was trying to photograph the giant creatures feasting on a goat, police said on Thursday.Singaporean Loh Lee Aik, 67, was rushed to hospital with leg injuries after being pounced on by the venomous creature.
123. Canada has launched a nationwide recall of Bombay Sapphire gin after bottles containing nearly double the advertised amount of alcohol were discovered. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said the bottles were found to contain 77% alcohol by volume rather than the typical 40%.
124. Danish police say a small plane with an entangled skydiver hanging under the aircraft for about an hour was able to land safely, and that the jumper only sustained bruises. Police said the Cessna 182 landed on Wednesday on foam spread out by firefighters to cushion a grassy area at an airfield near Copenhagen.
125.An unattended bag at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport in Cleveland, US, that led to a temporary shutdown turned out to be a guitar left behind by a man who couldn't afford the luggage fee for it.
126. The humble television is no more an idiot box -it has become smart. Buoyed by a fall in data prices and faster internet speeds, TVs are getting `smarter' as more and more Indians opt for flatpanels that offer a web browser and a host of net-streaming applications such as Facebook, Netflix and YouTube.
127. The movie Bahubali 2: The Conclusion, which has set cash registers ringing at the box office, has been good for insurers as well. The big-budget movie was insured for over Rs 200 crore by Future Generali, and the cover has concluded without any major claim. The Rs 250-crore movie -an epic historical fiction, directed by S S Rajamouli and produced by Shobu Yarlagadda and Prasad Devineni -has involved major investments in elaborate sets and is touted to be the most expensive film in India till date. There are reports that the yet-to-release Rajnikanth's Enthiran 2 (Robot), which has a budget of Rs 450 crore, is insured for Rs 300 crore by state-owned insurers, which makes it the largest film cover.
128. Eight states have passed the state goods and services tax (SGST) act in their respective assemblies in less than a month's time bolstering prospects for rollout of the most ambitious indirect tax reform in decades. The government has said it will implement GST from July 1 and preparations are underway for the rollout.
129. The Income Tax department on Thursday activated the e-filing facility for all categories of Income Tax Returns (ITRs) for the assessment year 2017-18. The new ITRs have been made available for filing on the e-portal of the department -https:incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in.
130. Rajya Sabha member and BJP functionary Subramanian Swamy has shot off a letter to Justice RM Lodha, the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India and the man who came up with the re forms in Indian crick et to firmly consider “e-tender“ or “e-auction“ as the way forward when the time comes for the cricket board to conduct the Indian Premier League (IPL) media rights auction.
131. In Vivo IPL 2017 Delhi Daredevils won against Sunrisers Hyderabad.
58. A member of the sta te cabinet pro tested against his own government on Thursday . Mi nister of state for agriculture and marketing, Sadabhau Khot, joined a stir against the state government in Kolhapur, demanding loan waiver to farmers, higher price for cane crop and implementation of the Swaminathan committee's recommendations.
59. Thieves drilled a hole into the wall of a jewellery shop and escaped with valuables worth Rs 65 lakh, including gold and cash, on Wednesday . The incident came to light at 9.30am on Thursday when Vimal Dave opened his Mataji Jewellery shop, in Hanuman Nagar area, Kalyan (East) and found the locker broken and all jewellery missing. He then saw athree-foot hole in the wall and informed the Kolsewadi police. The thieves used gas cylinders and cutter machines to drill a hole in the wall of a vacant flat which shared a common wall with the shop and also cut through its locker, taking away 2 kg of gold jewellery and Rs 5 lakh in cash.
60. The school education department has clarified that though the simpler General Mathematics option will be discontinued from the next academic year for all students, children with special needs can continue to opt for Class VII Arithmetic for board examinations. The statement follows anxious queries from parents and educators. So far, they could opt for either General Maths or Class VII Arithmatic.
61. Teachers on various academic bodies of state's public universities are now required to have a PhD and at least two students who have been awarded PhD under them as guides. PhD, however, will no longer be mandatory for election to the senate for teachers. These are some of the new eligibility criteria for representatives in academic bodies who will be soon elected or nominated. Qualifications required to be fulfilled by principals, teachers and representatives on various academic and administrative bodies including the senate, board of studies, examinations have been modified under statutes of the new Maharashtra Public Universities' Act, 2016, released on Wednesday .
62. Bombay high court on Thursday said BMC and police will have to take action on complaints of illegal sale of exotic birds and animals from across the city, and not restrict it to Crawford Market.
63. The Shiv Sena will oppose the Goods and Services Tax (GST) if it threatens BMC's financial autonomy , Uddhav Thackeray said on Thursday .
64. A National Achievement Survey (NAS) will be done every year for classes I, III and VIII. It will be held for students of government and government-aided schools. Y Sreekanth, head of educational survey division at NCERT, said, “Till now, NAS was a 3-year cycle. From this year, it will be yearly.“ The assessment may be done in October and feedback assessment by December. Based on students' performance, they will be taught to improve in the last quarter between January and March.
65. The first-ever train service in the world exclusively for women completes 25 years on Friday . Western Railway will celebrate the silver jubilee of its ladies special trains with roses and chocolates for its patrons. “It was a historic moment 25 years back when the first ladies special was introduced between Churchgate and Borivli on May 5, 1992, and the route was further extended to Virar in 1993,“ said WR chief public relations officer Ravinder Bhakar. “The ladies special was a boon for working women who struggled to board ladies compartments in regular trains. De dicating an entire train to women meant they could travel more comfortably ,“ he said.
66. DCP Rajiv Jain, who investigated the irrigation scam in Nagpur, will now head Zone V , which also covers Dharavi. He is among the DCPs reshuffled in the city.
67. Post-graduate medical aspirants from the state who are awaiting the final verdict on the domicile issue in the Supreme Court are worried about the approaching admission deadline. The last date for completing admissions in PG medical courses prescribed by the SC is May 7, while the students allotted seats in the all-India quota elsewhere in the country are expected to surrender their seats by May 9. If the court verdict is not out before these dates and the state does not release the merit list, the students will have to risk the seats they have been allotted.
68. Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) police, on a tip-off from the US Consulate, on Thursday busted a major racket of human-trafficking, with the arrest of a couple, trying to fly on bogus documents.
69. Following a complaint made to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) about 2,234 people reportedly contracting HIV due to blood transfusions between October 2014 and March 2016, the union health ministry has set up a 21-member committee to review the working and manpower norms of blood banks.
70. 21% Of Eligible Students Opt Out Of It Again. Around 500 foreign nationals have registered for JEE (Advanced) 2017 for admissions to the IITs compared with 19 last year. This year, for the first time, the test to enter India's premier engineering institutions will be conducted in six countries, including Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Singapore, Ethiopia and the UAE, which had hosted the exam last year as well. This year, too, around 21% of the 2.2 lakh candidates who qualified to appear for JEE (Advanced) in JEE (Main) opted out of the test. Although this year, 22,000 more candidates were shortlisted compared with the previous year, the percentage of students giving the IIT entrance test a miss remained unchanged.
71. A junior railway engineer was knocked down by a speeding local while on track electrification duty between Jogeshwari and Ram Mandir Road stations early on Thursday. The incident once again brought into focus the need for safety of those working on tracks late at night. Last year, an engineer died after being run over by a goods train near Kopar station, while more than a dozen gangmen have died on duty in the past three years.
72. After it pulled out flights from Mumbai five years ago citing steep costs, low-cost carrier Air Asia is all set to return to the city's congested airport with daily flights to Kuala Lumpur scheduled to begin in afortnight. The Mumbai-Kuala Lumpur flights will be operated by Air Asia X Indonesia (code XT).The airline has started marketing Mumbai-Bali flights (stopover at Kuala Lumpur, total flight time: 9 hours, 25 minutes) with a one-way , promo fare of Rs 7,900, taxes included. A Malaysian visa is not required for this quick stopover and Indian nationals can travel visa-free to Bali for up to 30 days, said an Air Asia Official.
73.A special Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSOA) court on Thursday convicted and sentenced a 35-year-old man to seven years' imprisonment for raping an 11-year-old girl in his neighbourhood. The complaint was lodged with the police by the victim's mother in June 2014.
74. A 25-year-old unemployed man, Danesh Dangda, from Saphale in Palghar district, on Saturday, stabbed himself to death as his wife, Anjali (20), filed a case of physical and mental harassment against him last month.
75. Mumbai Grahak Panchayat has organized a public meeting with state RERA chairman Gautam Chatterjee on Saturday, May 6, at Kishanchand Walecha Hall in Juhu, between 4pm and 6.30 pm.
76. The anti-narcotics cell on Thursday arrested a 41-year-old man, Haroon Rashid, for possession of 500gm of mephadrone worth Rs 10 lakh from Sewri Port. Rashid was convicted in a robbery case in the past.
77. A private tutor, Yeshwant Vetale (37), committed suicide by jumping into a pond from a skywalk at Virar on Wednesday. He was a resident of Phoolpada in Virar (east).
78. Unidentified people stole cash and valuables worth Rs 8 lakh from a bungalow in Ambernath, while the family was away at a wedding in Dombivli.
79.A thief, Changla Basu Patro, who broke into a house and stole three mobile phones in Wagle Esate in 2016, was convicted and sentenced to three years' rigourous imprisonment by a court.
80. The three-day Shivmandir Art Festival starts today at Ambernath Shiv temple. The event will have live performances, paintings and photography exhibition and games.
81. The state will soon send data it had collected last year to bolster its case for 16% reservation for the Maratha community in education and public sector jobs to the Maharashtra State Backward Class Commission for analysis. On Thursday , the state informed the Bombay high court that the commission had not scrutinized data collected by the Narayan Rane committee to study the socio-economic conditions of Marathas and make recommendations about reservations, and said the data now available is “multi-dimensional and extensive, touching various aspects like socio-cultural, socio-economic, socio-political, historical, geographical and merits a detailed examination“.
82. The city police has sought sanction from the district sessions court to dispose of 20 tonnes of the seized ephedrine stock approximately worth Rs 2,000 crore. The drug is a stimulant used by the international cartel to make psychotropic drugs. The cartel was busted last year.
83. Several parts of the state will face `rotational' loadshedding from Friday morning due to a shortfall of nearly 4,000 MW in power generation for MSEDCL consumers. This could include parts of Navi Mumbai, Thane, Kalyan where load-shedding will occur in phases. MSEDCL officials said on Thursday night that the problem could continue for two to three days and power cuts may be “for a few hours“.
84. The Bombay high court on Thursday ordered the unsealing of Dighi Port after the port company undertook to supply 100 water tankers, with 5,000 litre capacity each, daily to four villages--Dighi, Nanavali, Maneri and Karlas.
85. Three days after a 26year-old Kopri resident was reported missing by his mother, the Thane police have arrested four of his friends--including three minors--for his murder and disposing of the body in a creek last Saturday.
86. The prosecution has opposed a plea filed by Lt Col Prasad Purohit, an accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast, who sought his transfer to military custody. Purohit was a serving officer at the time of his arrest in November 2008.
87.Only in India, authorities throw caution to the winds and are unconcerned about air passenger safety norms, the Bombay high court said on Thursday . A bench, headed by Justice Vidyasagar Kanade, made the oral observations while it declined to stay the collector's order to remove a 90-ft chimney of a sugar factory , Siddheshwar Sahakari Sakhar Karkhana, which is in the approach of the runway at the Solapur airport. “There can be no compromise.What has to go, has to go,“ said Justice Kanade.
88. The Bombay high court has refused relief to a standard X student of Delhi Public School, Nerul, who used white ink to correct his answers in the National Talent Search (NTS) Examinations. The student, who failed the exam, had approached the court asking it to direct the authorities to consider the corrected answers which will help him in passing the NTS examination.
89. The students of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) have demanded that the letters of termination issued to 18 teachers on March 24 be withdrawn and a democratic conversation be held between all stakeholders to create a sense of trust and respect.
90.The Bombay high court held five policemen from Gujarat guilty on Thursday in a rare conviction of government servants in a post-Godhra riots case. The HC set aside their acquittal by a trial court and convicted them, along with two doctors, on charges of destroying evidence and attempting to shield the accused. The order came in the case of the gangrape of Bilkis Bano and the murder of eight members of her family, including two children, amid communal violence in 2002 after `kar sevaks' were killed in a fire on the Sabarmati express.
91. A four-member medical board from the state-run Calcutta Pavlov Hospital reached Justice CS Karnan's home on Thursday but had to come back without as sessing his mental he alth, a job ent rusted to it by the Supreme Court, after the Calcutta HC judge asserted they could not do so in the absence of a legal guardian -in his case, either his “wife or son“ -and he was in perfect mental condition.
92.Punjab police's controversial superintendent of police (SP) Salwinder Singh, whose official vehicle was waylaid and used by Pakistan's Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists to reach the Indian Air Force base at Pathankot on January 2, 2016, and orchestrate one of the deadliest attacks on Indian armed forces in recent years, is set to be dismissed from service.
93. In a first for India, the government will on Friday come out with the draft rules for a no-fly list that may have varying periods of grounding for unruly flyers depending on their actions.The draft civil aviation requirement (CAR, or rules for aviation) is a result of a demand from all Indian airlines for a no-fly list here after Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad had thrashed an Air India employee on March 23.
94. Bilkis Bano and her family expressed their relief on Thursday at the Mumbai high court, upholding life term for 11 persons accused of raping her and massacring eight of her family members. However, the family plans to continue its legal fight to ensure that the three main accused -Sailesh Bhatt, Jaswant Nai and Govind Nai -are given the death penalty .
95.In a first case of its kind, the public works department led by senior BJP leader Chandrakant Patil on Thursday revoked a crucial decision to denotify 22-km state highways passing through Jalgaon Municipal Corporation. As a result, 45odd liquor shops, permit rooms and bars on these roads will be closed with immediate effect. The decision will result in a revenue loss of Rs 1.25 crore per year.
96. Settling a doubt which has troubled crime investigators for long, the Supreme Court has ruled that asking an accused to give fingerprints or footprints for investigation purposes did not violate his fundamental right to protect himself from becoming a witness against himself.
97. After strongly contested arguments amid a raging public debate, the Supreme Court on Thursday reserved its verdict on the constitutional validity of a law, making it mandatory for citizens to link their Permanent Account Number with Aadhaar unique identity.
98. Indore has replaced Mysuru as the cleanest among 434 cities while Gonda in Uttar Pradesh has been ranked as the dirtiest, according to government's sanitation ranking released on Thursday . PM Narendra Modi's constituency Varanasi was announced as the cleanest city in UP while Lutyens' Delhi slipped to number seven this year in comparison to its fourth rank in 2016.
99.Eleven cities from Madhya Pradesh making it to the list of top 50 cleanest cities this year may have stumped many , but it happened because of the state government's efforts to bring acomplete turnaround across its 378 cities and towns in a span of a few months.
100. Seven youngsters, including two siblings, were killed on the spot after the Toyota Innova they were travelling in rear-ended a truck laden with logs Wednesday night, on NH-206 near Shivamogga, 290km from Bengaluru. The men, all long-time friends, were headed from Bengaluru to Sagar, 70km from Shivamogga, to participate in the wedding celebrations of a friend. While six of them were killed instantly, the seventh breathed his last minutes before an ambulance arrived from Shivamogga.
101. Police found the decomposed bodies of a 61-year-old software consultant and his 18-year-old daughter from their flat at Pisoli, located 12km from Pune, on Thursday. Police faced difficulties in sending the bodies to Sassoon General Hospital as two ambulances refused to carry the corpses because of the stench.
102. Eight persons were booked in a village in Bathinda on Wednesday on charges of cow slaughter. Police filed an FIR against the suspects after they recovered 20 kg of meat, suspected to be beef, from the house of one of the accused.
103. Amidst tight security , the final 28-hour countdown for the launch of 2,230kg South Asian Satellite kicked off at 12.57pm on Thursday . The lift off will be at 5pm on Friday at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota. The satellite, which will cater to various communication needs of the six Saarc countries--India, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, Bangladesh and Afghanistan--is expected to become fully operational in about a fortnight when it enters the geostationary orbit at 36,000km above the equator.
104. Buyers of delayed housing projects will get interest on the invested amount for the delay period at Real Estate Regulatory Authority's (RERA) prescribed rate as against Rs 5-10 per sq feet contracted in sales agreement, said chairman of MP RERA Anthony de Sa. RERA 's prescribed rate comes out to be 10% at present. Developers have not been barred from advertising and marketing existing projects, said regulators and officials of MP , Punjab, Haryana and Delhi. Officials said builders need to apply for registration for ongoing projects only by July 31.
105. The Supreme Court will deliver its verdict on Friday on the plea of four death convicts challenging their conviction and sentence in the Nirbhaya rape-cum-murder case. A bench of Justices Dipak Misra, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan, which had reserved its order on March 27 after holding a marathon hearing for more than 44 days, will deliver the verdict at 2pm. The convicts -Vinay Sharma (23), Akshay Thakur (31), Mukesh (29) and Pawan Gupta (22) -were awarded death sentence by a trial court in September 2013. On March 13, 2014, the Delhi high court upheld their conviction and sentence. All the convicts then approached the SC which stayed their execution in 2014 and the matter was pending in the top court since then.
106. The Election Commission has convened a meeting with all seven national parties and 48 recognised state parties here on May 12 to discuss issues related to electronic voting machines and voter-verfiable paper audit trail (VVPAT), besides seeking their suggestions regarding its upcoming EVM “hackathon“ challenge. The commission has written to the chiefs of all national and state recognised parties, attaching a status paper on EVMVVPAT. It has also sought their views on proposed electoral reforms such as making bribery in elections a cognisable offence.
107. A Himachal-based couple has decided to `adopt' the 12-year-old daughter of an Army jawan, who was beheaded by Pakistan in the Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir on May 1. They have offered to bear the child's expenses from school till marriage, to ensure a good future for her.
108. Saudi clerics and Pakistani news anchors are being beamed direct to Kashmiri homes, and are stoking cries for `azadi' in the Valley. Over 50 Saudi and Pakistani channels, including Zakir Naik's banned Peace TV preaching Salafist Islam, and others indulging in anti-India propaganda are running without necessary clearances via private cable networks in Kashmir. All this is happening under the nose of the PDP-BJP government, which even subscribes to these cable services in some of its offices. Although satellite TV service providers like Ta ta Sky, Airtel digital TV and Dish TV , are available in Kashmir, most people subscribe to private cable. A cable operator, who did not want to be named, said there are 50,000 private cable connections in Srinagar alone, and only because these broadcast Pakistani and Saudi channels. Besides Zakir Naik's Peace TV Urdu and English channels, private oper ators air Saudi and Pakistani channels like Saudi Sunnah, Saudi Quran, Al Arabia, Paigham, Hidayat, Noor, Madani, Sehar, Karbala, Hadi, Sehar, Ary QTV , Bethat, Ahlibat, Message, Falak, Geo News, Ary News, Dawn News, and many others, which cannot be accessed through satellite television service providers. None of these channels are permitted to air in the rest of the country by the I&Bministry .
109. A senior administrative officer has created a flutter among top bureaucrats and law enforcement agencies in Madhya Pradesh by seeking permission to spend a month with underworld don Abu Salem in Taloja jail, Navi Mumbai, so that he can write a book on the Salem-Monica Bedi affair. Niyaz Ahmed Khan's request is quite unprecedented, say officials. He is posted as additional district magistrate in Guna and has finalized the title for his book: `Love demands blood'. He submitted his application to the general administration department (GAD), which has sent it to chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
110. Chin implants, otherwise known as `chinplants' have taken over breast augmentations as the fastest growing procedure among image-conscious Brits. Dr De Silva, a leading surgeon from the Centre of Advanced Facial Cosmetic and Plastic Surgery in London says there has been a 60% rise in the cosmetic procedure in the last few years; a growth he attributes to selfie celebrity culture. The new wave of surgeries is favoured by both sexes with around 60% of enquiries coming from women and 40% from men. And while Scarlet Johansson's heart shaped chin is the most asked for by women, La La Land actor Ryan Gosling's chin is the pick for men.
111. Ketamine and Botox appear to reduce rates of depression, according to a new study . Researchers in California studied a US database in which adverse effects of drugs were reported, and found that depression, among more than 41,000 people who took ketamine to relieve pain, was half as common as among those who took other painkillers. Those who used Botox, an antibiotic called minocycline, and a painkiller diclofenac, also had lower rates of depression than might be expected.
112. There is a growing trend of crematoriums offering live-streaming of funeral services in the UK with millennials more open to the idea of attending the last rites of loved ones `online' than older people, according to a survey in the UK.
113. The remains of one of the last dinosaurs living in Africa before their extinction 66 million years ago has been discovered in a Moroccan mine, scientists said on Thursday. Researchers from the University of Bath in the UK studied a rare fragment of a jaw bone discovered in the phosphate mines at Sidi Chennane. They identified it as belonging to an abelisaur. Abelisaurs were two-legged predators like the dreaded T-Rex and other tyrannosaurs, but with a shorter, blunter snout and even tinier arms.
114.Scientists say they have switched on the world's biggest x-ray laser, designed to capture images of structures and processes at the atomic level. The DESY research centre near Hamburg, Germany, said it “marks a new era of research in Europe“. Operators say the first laser pulse lasted one second, a frequency that will be increased to 27,000 flashes per second by September, when it officially opens for research.Scientists hope the project will open up new areas of research, such as mapping the molecular structure of drugs and seeing biochemical reactions in real time. Institutions from Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland are involved in the project.
115. Stanford scientists have developed an ultrathin, flexible electronic device that is biodegradable, an advance that may help tackle the problem of mounting electronic waste.
116. Scientists have developed a bionic hand that `sees' objects and allows amputees to grasp things ten times faster than current prosthetics. The bionic hand is fitted with a camera which instantly takes a picture of an object, assesses its shape and size and triggers movements in the hand.
117.A second Sikh candidate was confirmed by opposition Labour party on Thursday , a move welcomed by British Sikhs who lauded the party's effort for increasing the representation of the community in UK parliament. Kuldip Singh Sahota, a former councillor, will fight to overturn a small Conservative party majority of 730 (1.8%) and regain the Telford constituency in the West Midlands region in the June 8 election.
118. Prince Philip, the 95year-old husband of Britain's queen Elizabeth, joked on Thursday about no longer being able to “stand up much“ as Buck ingham Palace announced he would retire later this year from active public life. Philip, who is also known as the duke of Edinburgh and has sometimes drawn attention with headline-grabbing gaffes, has been by the queen's side throughout her 65 years on the throne and she has described him as “my strength and stay“.
119. Former Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar returned to Kabul on Thursday after two decades in hiding, calling for peace with Taliban insurgents and criticising the Westernbacked government, which he said was not working. Hekmatyar's comments in a ceremony at the presidential palace highlighted the complications likely to face President Ashraf Ghani, who signed a peace deal with Hekmatyar last year.
120. Michelle was not the only women in Barack Obama's life and he had been in a serious relationship before he met his future wife, according to an upcoming biography of the former US president. The book -“Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama“ written by David J Garrow -shares for the first time the story of Sheila Miyoshi Jager, his love interest, with whom Obama lived in Chicago, The Washington Post said in a review.
121. A woman swallowed $7,000 US dollars in a desperate attempt to hide the cash during a fight with her husband, it was reported. The 30-year-old woman swallowed rolls of $100 bills, according to surgeons who removed the money from her body.
122. A komodo dragon, one of the world's largest lizards, attacked a tourist in Indonesia who was trying to photograph the giant creatures feasting on a goat, police said on Thursday.Singaporean Loh Lee Aik, 67, was rushed to hospital with leg injuries after being pounced on by the venomous creature.
123. Canada has launched a nationwide recall of Bombay Sapphire gin after bottles containing nearly double the advertised amount of alcohol were discovered. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said the bottles were found to contain 77% alcohol by volume rather than the typical 40%.
124. Danish police say a small plane with an entangled skydiver hanging under the aircraft for about an hour was able to land safely, and that the jumper only sustained bruises. Police said the Cessna 182 landed on Wednesday on foam spread out by firefighters to cushion a grassy area at an airfield near Copenhagen.
125.An unattended bag at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport in Cleveland, US, that led to a temporary shutdown turned out to be a guitar left behind by a man who couldn't afford the luggage fee for it.
126. The humble television is no more an idiot box -it has become smart. Buoyed by a fall in data prices and faster internet speeds, TVs are getting `smarter' as more and more Indians opt for flatpanels that offer a web browser and a host of net-streaming applications such as Facebook, Netflix and YouTube.
127. The movie Bahubali 2: The Conclusion, which has set cash registers ringing at the box office, has been good for insurers as well. The big-budget movie was insured for over Rs 200 crore by Future Generali, and the cover has concluded without any major claim. The Rs 250-crore movie -an epic historical fiction, directed by S S Rajamouli and produced by Shobu Yarlagadda and Prasad Devineni -has involved major investments in elaborate sets and is touted to be the most expensive film in India till date. There are reports that the yet-to-release Rajnikanth's Enthiran 2 (Robot), which has a budget of Rs 450 crore, is insured for Rs 300 crore by state-owned insurers, which makes it the largest film cover.
128. Eight states have passed the state goods and services tax (SGST) act in their respective assemblies in less than a month's time bolstering prospects for rollout of the most ambitious indirect tax reform in decades. The government has said it will implement GST from July 1 and preparations are underway for the rollout.
129. The Income Tax department on Thursday activated the e-filing facility for all categories of Income Tax Returns (ITRs) for the assessment year 2017-18. The new ITRs have been made available for filing on the e-portal of the department -https:incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in.
130. Rajya Sabha member and BJP functionary Subramanian Swamy has shot off a letter to Justice RM Lodha, the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India and the man who came up with the re forms in Indian crick et to firmly consider “e-tender“ or “e-auction“ as the way forward when the time comes for the cricket board to conduct the Indian Premier League (IPL) media rights auction.
131. In Vivo IPL 2017 Delhi Daredevils won against Sunrisers Hyderabad.
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