A demand to frame a strict law to discourage begging was made in the Rajya Sabha today.

Shwait Malik (BJP), through a Zero Hour mention, said begging has become a menace, with visitors also being hounded.

A strict law should be framed to discourage begging, he said, adding that those indulging in begging and were healthy, should take up jobs of labourers or guards and not beg.

Pakistan-based international terrorist Hafiz Saeed has openly called for Jihad against the US and even urged the Pakistani authorities to use the country’s nuclear bombs for this purpose. Saeed’s threats came on a day when US president Donald Trump denounced Pakistan’s years of “lies and Deceit” openly on the social media. “The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools.

Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland were trading higher by 3% each, recovering from their respective intra-day lows, after they reported a strong set of sales numbers in December 2017.

Tata Motors was up 3% at Rs 439, its highest level since November 10, 2017 on the BSE, after the company’s commercial and passenger vehicles domestic sales grew 52% at 54,627 units in December.

Oil prices posted their strongest opening to a year since 2014 on Tuesday, with crude rising to mid-2015 highs amid large anti-government rallies in Iran and ongoing supply cuts led by OPEC and Russia.

US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $60.61 a barrel at 0423 GMT, up 19 cents, or 0.3 per cent, after hitting $60.73 earlier in the day, the highest since June 2015.

Rejecting the reports that the subscription for the eight percent Savings Bonds Scheme will be closed on Tuesday, the Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg on Tuesday said the government will not end the existing scheme but replace it with 7.75 percent Savings Bonds Scheme.

Shares of two Larsen & Toubro (L&T) Group companies - L&T Infotech (LTI) and L&T Technology Services (LTTS) – hit their respective 52-week highs by rallying 7% each on the BSE in intra-day trade in an otherwise subdued market.

LTI, a global technology consulting and digital solutions company, rallied 7% to Rs 1,229, while LTTS which focuses on engineering and R&D (ER&D) services, too surged 7% to Rs 1,141 on the BSE. At 11:08 AM; the S&P BSE Sensex was up marginally by 0.05% at 33,829 points.

State Bank of India, the country’s largest lender, made a whopping Rs 17.7 billion in charges levied on customers failing to maintain their minimum monthly average balance during the April-November 2017 period, according to media reports quoting finance ministry data.

Annual growth in the bank’s revenue on this count cannot be arrived at as SBI had collected no money from customers for not maintaining average balance during the comparable period in 2016.

India's factory activity expanded at the fastest pace in five years in December, a private sector survey showed on Tuesday, buoyed by a rise in output and new orders, which allowed firms to raise prices.

Tuesday's data firms up views that business in Asia's third-largest economy continues to recover but also highlights risks that rising price pressures will keep the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) from slashing interest rates further.

In a surprising move at the start of the year, State Bank of India (SBI) reduced its base rate and benchmark prime lending rates (BPLR) for existing customers by 30 basis points each effective from January 1.

One basis point is a hundredth of a percentage point.

TVS Motor Company hit a new high of Rs 795, up 4% on the BSE in early morning trade, after the company registered 39% growth in sales at 256,909 units in the month of December 2017. It had sold 184,944 units in December 2016.

TVS Motor Company had registered a sales growth of 12% at 251,965 units in November 2017.

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