Armed with Intelligent Cloud and Edge capabilities, Microsoft will give a renewed thrust to nurturing unicorn firms and the start-up community in India next year, Anant Maheshwari, the companys India President, said here on Thursday.

"For us, the growth verticals will clearly be banking and finance, manufacturing and IT/ITeS sectors. But the next goal we have added to our focus areas for 2018 is to empower unicorn companies and the start-up community," Maheshwari told IANS.

Food regulator FSSAI has ordered safety audits of canteens at 10 large educational institutes, including IITs, IIMs and AIIMS, in light of complaints with regard to food safety and hygiene standards.

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) said the audit will be done by empanelled 15 agencies, which will be given one month to submit their report.

HDFC Bank hit a new high of Rs 1,887, up 2.7% on the BSE, after the private sector lender announced that its board will meet on Wednesday, December 20, 2017 to consider a proposal for raising of funds.

The stock surpassed its previous high of Rs 1,876.95 touched on October 24, 2017 in intra-day trade.

A solar system with as many planets as our own has been discovered with the help of NASA's Kepler space telescope and artificial intelligence, the US space agency said.

"Our solar system now is tied for most number of planets around a single star," NASA said in a statement yesterday.

Divergence is a dirty word for investors who have put money into banks and indeed, lenders have been punished in the past ever since the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) told them to come clean on these differences in deciding which loans are to be classified as bad.

A Vijaywada-bound Air India flight carrying 100 passengers and civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju was delayed by over an hour on Wednesday at Delhi airport. The airline later suspended three AI employees and issued a warning letter to the pilot for arriving late.

“Yesterday Air India AI 459 Delhi to Vijaywada flight was delayed by around 1.30 hours with over 100 passengers including minister of civil aviation P Ashok Gajapati Raju onboard,” Air India spokesperson GP Rao told ANI.

Banks would need to set aside an additional Rs 10,000 crore as provisions for accounts in the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) second list that are set to be referred to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT). However, these provisions are likely to spread over the December and March quarters, as the central bank has allowed banks time till the end of the financial year to provide for them. Two senior public sector bankers said that all but five of the 28 accounts in the second list would likely be referred to the NCLT in the absence of any resolution or requisite buyer interest.

Microsoft has rolled out new features on its Bing search engine powered by artificial intelligence. One update announced Wednesday answers search queries by summarizing two opposing sides of contentious questions. Another measures how many reputable sources are behind a given answer.

MUMBAI: Non-banking finance company L&T Finance Holdings has extended a loan of Rs 300 crore towards three projects of realty developer Satellite Group. The funding for nearly a million sq ft of development potential has been made at around 15% with a total tenure of up to 7 years, said two persons familiar with the development.

The funds will be used for construction of the developer's 5-lakh-sq-ft low-cost housing project in Mumbai's western suburb Malad, a mid-income group project in Goregaon suburb, and a premium project in South Mumbai.

The December 31 deadline for linking Aadhaar to bank accounts has been extended ahead of Friday's hearing of the matter in the Supreme Court. The new date to link the Unique Identification number and the PAN to accounts more than six months old is March 31, 2018.

A government statement said the rule under the 2002 Prevention of Money Laundering Act, had been amended. For accounts opened after June 1, 2017, Aadhaar, Permanent Account Number or PAN and Form 60 will have to be submitted within six months of opening or by March 31, 2018 -- the later date will be the deadline. For older accounts, the deadline is March 31, 2018.

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