The Election Commission (EC) is likely to announce on Saturday the dates for the upcoming assembly elections in Haryana and Maharashtra today.

Haryana is currently led by Chief Minister of Haryana Manohar Lal Khattar, whose term of the current BJP-led state assembly will expire on November 2, 2019. There are 90 seats in the Haryana Legislative Assembly, of which a party would need to win 45 for a majority.

Amit Panghal on Friday became the first Indian boxer to enter the final of the Men's World Boxing Championships. Panghal defeated Saken Bibossinov 3-2 in the semi-finals in the 52 kg weight category.

The Sports Authority of India (SAI) tweeted about Panghal's achievement. "Amit 1st Indian to reach final! Our #TOPSAthlete@Boxerpanghal beat #SakenBibossinov 3-2 in 52 kg to become 1st Indian ever to reach the final at Men's World #Boxing C'ships. He'll play Uzbekistan's #ShakhobidinZoirov for the gold tomorrow. We wish him the best! #Go4Gold".

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Friday floated a consultation paper for developing a unified numbering plan for fixed line and mobile services.

The consultation paper analyses the changes that affect the national numbering plan and identifies the ways in which numbering resource management and allocation policy might be managed for ensuring adequate numbering resources.

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council on Friday more than doubled the GST rate for caffeinated beverages such as Thums Up Charged and Red Bull from 18 per cent to 40 per cent while giving relief for hotels and outdoor catering services.

Despite the strong demand from industry to cut the rates for automobiles, the only reduction announced was for 11- to 13-seater mini bus and the cess component at that.

Some public sector bank (PSB) executives had expressed reservations on Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s proposals of holding public camps for distributing loans in 400 districts of the country, in a meeting held on Thursday.

In fact, PSB executives were not too sure if they would be able to not classify all the stressed loans of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) as non-performing assets (NPAs) till March 2020, two PSB executives said, requesting anonymity.

Alexa has learnt to converse in Hindi. The efforts of more than 50,000 engineers, data scientists, language experts — who worked from India and abroad over the past 18 months — to make Alexa talk in Hindi, have finally borne fruit.

If things go as planned, Alexa will speak in Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, among a host of other Indian languages, over the next few years.

Life Insurance Corporation of India's (LIC) acquisition of IDBI Bank has led to unintended consequences. The market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has partially frozen LIC’s voting rights in the National Stock Exchange (NSE). The reason being the 5-per cent shareholding cap on trading members. While LIC is not a trading member, following its acquisition of IDBI Bank — a trading member of NSE — it is deemed as one.

New Delhi: The telecom regulator has floated a fresh consultation paper seeking to deliberate with stakeholders on reforms needed to simply and fast track merger and acquisition norms.

Written comments have been invited by 18 October and counter comments by 1 November, the regulator said late on Thursday.

DLF Ltd’s sale of a nine-acre land parcel in Gurugram to multinational bank American Express (India) Pvt. Ltd (Amex) is positive for its commercial property business. The timing of the ₹300 crore deal is right too as the stage was set for DLF’s next phase of growth after it resurrected itself from the huge debt stranglehold.

WASHINGTON : Amazon.com Inc Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos on Thursday committed the company to being carbon neutral by 2040 and said part of that pledge is an order for 100,000 electric delivery vans from a start-up the online retailer has invested in.

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