The Blue Whale Challenge has claimed its first victim in Tamil Nadu in a 19-year-old college student, who hanged himself at his house, police said today.

Vigesh in a suicide note said "the game was a devastating one... Once you enter it, you would not be able to come out", they said.

Skipper Virat Kohli today described India's 168-run win over Sri Lanka in the fourth ODI as a clinical performance and said he would continue to experiment with the team's line-up in the fifth and final one-dayer.

Batting first, India posted a huge 375-5 in the fourth ODI with Kohli (131 off 96 balls) and opener Rohit Sharma (104 off 88 balls) scoring sublime centuries.

Automobile manufacturer Hyundai Motor India (HMIL) on Thursday said it has received an "overwhelming response" for the "Next Gen Verna" sedan.

According to the company, it has received more than 7,000 bookings since the launch of the sedan in India on August 22, 2017.

Mumbai: A general restraint prevailed in the stock market on Thursday with all eyes on GDP data for the June quarter as the Sensex and the Nifty both closed positive for the second day, aided by supporting overseas trend.

The indices were on their toes ahead of release of the growth numbers slated for post-market hours on Thursday. Since it was the last day for August derivatives contracts, speculators went about covering their short bets in the last lap, which kept the positivity going.

The Finance Ministry on Thursday ruled out opening another window for depositing the scrapped Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, with the government now saying that it had expected all the annulled currency to be returned, in line with the latest RBI data.

While the Reserve Bank on Wednesday revealed that 99% of the Rs 15.44 lakh crore currency junked on November 8 last year had come back, some had pleaded with the government for another window to deposit their small holding old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000.

Punjab National Bank has cut marginal cost based lending rates by up to 0.25 per cent for select maturities, effective tomorrow. The state-owned lender has also slashed its base rate by 0.20 per cent to 9.15 per cent. “The bank has reduced marginal cost of funds based lending rate (MCLR) by 20-25 basis points with effect from September 1, 2017,” PNB said in a regulatory filing.

It has trimmed the MCLR by 0.25 per cent each for overnight to 7.75 per cent.

In a rare collaboration, Microsoft and Amazon have come to an agreement wherein Cortana users will have access to Alexa and vice-versa. According to a report in the New York Times, the two rival tech firms have been coordinating behind the scenes for the past year to make artificial intelligent assistants Alexa and Cortana communicate with each other. The partnership will allow people to summon Cortana using Alexa, and vice versa, by the end of the year. In simpler words, someone using an Alexa device will have to say “Alexa, open Cortana” to get to talk to Microsoft’s digital assistant, and someone using Cortana will have to say “Cortana, open Alexa” to talk to Amazon’s.

Shares of NTPC slipped over 2% on Thursday following a dull response from the retail investors to its planned Rs 14,000 offer for sale. The government’s stake sale of up to Rs 14,000 crore in the India’s biggest power producer NTPC was subscribed for only 73% by the retail investors of the quota allocated to them of the extended issue including greenshoe option. Initially, the government was intended to sell over 41.22 to 82.44 crore shares which can raise up to Rs 7,000 to Rs 14,000 crore at a floor price of Rs 168 per share, through the two-day offer for sale (OFS), including a greenshoe option to sell a further 5% equity in case of over-subscription.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plan to spend a record $60 billion on infrastructure this fiscal year has started trickling into company earnings, giving analysts a reason to turn optimistic about Indian construction stocks. Larsen & Toubro Ltd., the nation’s largest engineering firm, has rallied 27 percent this year, beating the benchmark gauge which has risen 19 percent. Gayatri Projects Ltd. and KNR Constructions Ltd., which build roads, and Simplex Infrastructures Ltd. have also surged.

Demonetisation has caused net loss to RBI’s seigniorage — the profit accruing from currency issuances and liquidity operations — besides increasing the cost of printing notes, says an SBI Research report. On November 8 last year, the government had banned old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in an attempt to weed out black money in the country. The old notes were allowed to be deposited in banks, with unusual deposits coming under income tax scrutiny.

“The demonetisation exercise has resulted in net loss of seigniorage to the RBI,” SBI’s research report Ecowrap said.

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