More than 500 hikers and their guides have been successfully evacuated from an Indonesian volcano after a deadly earthquake triggered landslides that trapped them on the mountain, officials said on Tuesday.

Tonnes of rock and mud were dislodged on Mount Rinjani in the 6.4-magnitude quake, which struck early on Sunday and was followed by scores of aftershocks, blocking the hiking routes that crisscross the mountain.

NTPC may not go ahead with the construction of the upcoming 1,980-MW Nabinagar-2 and 1,600-MW Katwa thermal power generating units in Bihar and West Bengal, respectively, until it receives “re-confirmation” from the beneficiary states if they still require power from these projects.

Power purchase agreements (PPAs) for these projects were signed with West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Sikkim and Jharkhand in 2010.

In its last financial result before merger with Vodafone India, Aditya Birla Group firm Idea Cellular today reported total comprehensive income of Rs 263.6 crore in the June quarter, mainly on account of one time gain from sale of mobile towers.

Blows from turbulent tariff war was, however, visible on its operational performance.

Though oil refiner-retailer Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) was taken over by Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) in January this year, the former is yet to recognise the upstream major as its promoter in the mandatory quarterly filings with the stock exchanges.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has, for more than three weeks, been checking for stressed assets on banks’ books to ensure no “weak” account goes unnoticed in the current round of resolutions, bankers told FE.

According to a senior public sector banker, the exercise, while similar to the central bank’s annual inspection of accounts, is far more thorough.

The stand-off between Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) and Apple over allowing the “Do Not Disturb” (DND) app on the company’s App Store and iPhone devices may take a while to get resolved because there’s still no meeting ground between the two with both parties adamant on their stand.

Mumbai: Axis Bank could potentially rise 5 per cent or more to Rs 600 after the private lender reported substantially lower slippages and provisioning in Q1 on Monday. At Rs 569 Monday, the stock already trades at the upper end of the Rs 500-600 trading range for the August series. The GDR traded up 3.9 per cent at $41.75 at time of writing Monday.

The swift way in which the Idea-Vodafone merger is progressing under a year shows the improvement in ease of doing business in India.”

That was Vittorio Colao at the World Economic Forum (WEF) governors’ meeting in Davos earlier this year. Though a vocal critic of the labyrinthian regulations and bureaucracy of the world’s largest democracy

On the first day of a three-day meeting of the monetary policy committee (MPC), the country’s largest lender, State Bank of India (SBI), moved to hike its long-term deposit rates, albeit marginally.

SBI also slashed its shorter term bulk deposit rates (Rs 10 million to Rs 100 million) by 25-45 basis points (bps), while increasing the longer term bulk deposit rates by 5 bps to 60 bps.

The head of one of India’s largest state-run banks says the government needs to ease its grip over the lenders or risk slowly killing off the sector.

Tight government control makes it hard to attract talent or take the tough decisions needed to address the bad debts weighing down the banks, according to Ravi Venkatesan, the outgoing chairman of Bank of Baroda.

Inviting Real Estate Agents, Job Placements Agents, Educational Institutes, Software Service Providers, Real Estate Builders, Marriage Bureaus, Travel Agents, Restaurant Owners, Health & Fitness Centers and other Local Businesses to Post a FREE Classified Advertisement on Cootera.com Classifieds Website.