A Taliban suicide bomber today struck a police team near residence-cum-office of Pakistan's Punjab province Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif here, killing at least 26 people, including policemen, and wounding 58 others.

Lahore police chief Capt (R) Amin Wains confirmed that it was a suicide attack and the "target was police".

Homegrown utility vehicles (UV) maker Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) has some new vehicle launches in the pipeline that may help the company to regain its market share. According to the company, a vehicle codenamed U321 MPV is scheduled for launch this year. Other news reports suggest that the company will be launching two more new UVs by the end of this financial year.

The U321 will be positioned below XUV 5OO in their product line up, and is expected to compete with the likes of Tata Hexa and Toyota Innova. The car is likely to use the same engines that power the XUV 5OO. Second, Mahindra is planning to launch a sports utility vehicle (SUV) based on Tivoli platform to rival the likes of premium SUVs like Toyota Fortuner and Ford Endeavour.

The country's crude oil output rose 0.24 per cent and natural gas production was up 4.04 per cent in the June quarter of 2017 due to a push from state-run companies like Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India (OIL).

Cumulative crude oil production by ONGC in Q1 was 5,640.77 thousand metric tonne (tmt), which is 0.22 per cent lower than the period's target but 2.71 per cent higher than production during the year-ago period. OIL produced 839.86 tmt, about 5.22 per cent higher than the last year's corresponding period.

ITC has raised prices of select cigarette brands to pass on the 6-7 per cent hike in the additional cess on cigarettes.

Sameer Deshmukh, a research analyst with Reliance Securities, said the price hikes were 6-15 per cent across brands with the average hike coinciding with the 6-7 per cent rise in effective taxes under the goods and services tax.

The Delhi state consumer panel has directed the State Bank of India to refund Rs 1.29 lakh to a customer for not taking effective steps to block her stolen ATM card in 2006. The state commission also imposed a cost of Rs one lakh on the bank for filing a “frivolous” appeal before it. The commission, while dismissing the appeal filed by the SBI against the district forum order asking it to return the money, said that the bank “failed to take effective steps for blocking of the stolen ATM card” which was a clear case of “deficiency in service”. “It was the bank who failed to take effective steps for blocking of the ATM card.

Markets regulator Sebi has notified stricter participatory notes (P-Notes) norms stipulating a fee of USD 1,000 that will be levied on each instrument to check any misuse for channelising black money. The new measures, which follow a slew of other steps taken by Sebi in the recent past, come at a time when the value of foreign investments through participatory notes or offshore derivative instruments (ODIs) has surged to a seven- month high of about Rs 1.81 lakh crore at May-end.

KOLKATA: State-run Coal IndiaBSE -0.34 % Ltd (CIL) has invited applications from independent power producers to take part in the auction of coal linkages under the Scheme for Harnessing and Allocating Koyala Transparently in India (Shakti), a notice said on Monday.

The miner asked "interested entities" to register on the website of auction firm MSTC Ltd "on or before August 7, 2017".

When the central banks start tightening their easy monetary policies, the rupee is expected to remain unscathed. Forex experts do not see a repeat of the taper tantrums of 2013 that plunged the rupee to an all-time low of 68.08 to the dollar on August 28, 2013, when central banks including the US Federal Reserve start normalising their balance-sheets. This time around they say rupee is all new story. Foreign exchange reserves is at an all-time high close to $386.37 billion as on July 14, 2017, according to the latest available data from Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The current account deficit (CAD) is narrowing and inflation is at a record low.

Private sector lender HDFC Bank on Monday reported 20.22 percent increase in net profit to Rs 3,893.84 crore for the quarter ended on June 30, 2017, compared to the same period last year. The bank had earned a profit of Rs 3,238.91 crore in the April-June quarter of last fiscal.

Total income rose to Rs 22,185.38 crore during the quarter under review, up 14.81 percent against Rs 19,322.63 crore in the same period last year, HDFC Bank said in a BSE filing.

After Tata Group and IndiGo, Air India’s privatisation bid has received yet another boost as private equity players KKR and Co and Warbug Pincus have expressed interest in acquiring the national carrier’s businesses, reported Live Mint.

The two buyout firms separately sought details of the proposed privatisation process cleared by the Union Cabinet in June 2017, two people aware of the development said.

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