Dozens of companies, including Alphabet Inc’s Google, Microsoft Corp, CBS Corp and Viacom Inc urged a federal appeals court on Monday to rule that a law banning sex discrimination in the workplace offers protections to gay employees. The brief submitted by 50 companies to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan marks the first time such a large group of businesses has backed arguments about employment discrimination that LGBT groups and the administration of former President Barack Obama have made for years.

Power minister Piyush Goyal on Monday said the country is set to lose Rs 25 lakh crore over the next 25 years as imported coal mandated for power plants could have been easily substituted with domestic coal if we had stayed away from the mindset of India being a land of perennial shortages. Around 83,100 MW of power plants based on imported coal were awarded in India on assumptions that the country will not be able to meet its coal requirement, the minister said at an event organised by Loksatta in Mumbai. This one decision will lead to a loss of Rs 1 lakh crore every year for the next 25 years to the exchequer, he said. “It was the mindset in India that we can never improve and will remain crippled forever,” Goyal said.

State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) has received environmental clearance for drilling five wells to explore shale gas and oil in the KG basin of Andhra Pradesh at an estimated cost of Rs 217 crore. ONGC has been operating in the Krishna-Godavari (KG) basin for the past more than 35 years. The exploratory efforts so far have led to the discovery of 65 small-to-medium sized hydrocarbon fields with about 356 million tonnes (oil and oil equivalent gas) of initial in-place on-land reserves.

NEW DELHI: Air India's subsidiary Alliance Air today announced the launch of new flights connecting Lucknow with the capitals of Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

The move is aimed at developing Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, as a regional hub of Alliance Air, an airline official said.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to pass any interim order against the Centre's notification making Aadhaar mandatory for availing benefits of various social welfare schemes.

A vacation bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar and Navin Sinha said that no interim order can be passed at this stage on the "mere apprehension" of petitioners that government may deprive people from availing benefits of various social welfare schemes due to lack of Aadhaar.

With concerns still looming over Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation’s (IRCTC's) service charge, the listing plans of three railway public sector undertakings – Indian Railway Finance Corporation (IRFC), IRCON, and IRCTC – are on track. According to sources close to the development, bid managers have been appointed for all three companies and the government is likely to take a call on IRCTC's service charge by June 30. Service charges on online train tickets were exempted from November 23, 2016, to March 31 this year in order to boost digital mode of transactions among passengers. This was later extended to June 30.

The BCCI's decision to form a committee for implementing the Lodha Panel reforms was specifically done to foil former president N Srinivasan's attempts to maintain 'status quo' in the board after he rejected the adoption of a resolution at the SGM.

Apart from Srinivasan, it was learnt that another former BCCI president who is currently out of favour, was also frantically calling state units and advising them against forming a committee for implementing the Supreme Court- appointed Lodha panel reforms.

As it looks to take on Reliance Jio, country's top mobile operator Bharti Airtel, which is currently undergoing trials for voice over LTE (VoLTE) in some cities including Mumbai, plans to launch commercial services in the next quarter.

Although Airtel has not shared an exact timeline but people aware of the plans said the Sunil Bharti Mittal-owned firm is likely to launch VoLTE services in next quarter. Also, Airtel's 4G footprint will cover all the towns and cities by end of 2017 financial year.

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) plans to raise Rs 25,000 crore through privately placed debentures as the energy-to-retail conglomerate seeks to replace existing high-cost borrowings as well as build a war chest for its aggressive expansion strategy in the telecom space.

The Mukesh Ambani-led firm sought shareholders' nod to issue redeemable non-convertible debentures (NCDs) on private placement.

WASHINGTON: On the eve of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's US visit, the Trump administration has dismissed reports that it has been ignoring India, saying President Trump realises that the country has been a "force for good" in the world and ties with it were important.

"I think that it would be wrong to say that this administration has been ignoring or not focused on India," a senior administration official told reporters ahead of the two-day Modi visit from June 25.

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