Beijing: A powerful blast at a prefabricated house in northwestern China on Monday killed at least 14 people and injured 147, state news agency Xinhua said.

The explosion occurred in the early afternoon in the town of Xinmin in Shaanxi province, damaging dozens of buildings including the local hospital, Xinhua said.

Indian telecom companies added more subscribers in September than their six-month average despite the launch of Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, which was expected to make major inroads into their market shares. Bharti Airtel pulled in the most subscribers.

Reliance Industries Ltd had last week said it would infuse as much as Rs1 trillion in its telecom arm, which had a total of 16 million subscribers at the end of September.

Idea Cellular shares slipped as much as 3.83 per cent in morning trade on Tuesday after the company reported 88 per cent fall in its consolidated net profit after tax of Rs 91.46 crore for the quarter ended September 30, 2016 as compared to Rs 762.28 crore for the same quarter in the previous year. However, total income of the company increased by 8.13 per cent at Rs 9,429.30 crore for quarter under review as compared to Rs 8,720.45 crore for the quarter ended September 30, 2015.

Maruti Suzuki India hit a new high of Rs 5,775, up 1% on BSE in intra-day trade on BSE, ahead of its July-September quarter (Q2FY17) earnings on Thursday, October 27, 2016.

In past three-months, post April-June quarter (Q1FY17) results, the stock outperformed the market by gaining 27% as compared to 0.18% decline in the S&P BSE Sensex. The S&P BSE Auto index was up 7% during the same period.

HDFC Bank reported net profit of Rs 3,455 crore, 20.4 per cent year-on-year growth in quarter ended September’16. This was in line with Bloomberg estimates of Rs 3,456 crore. Net interest income (interest earned less interest expended) at Rs 7,994 crore grew by 19.7 per cent year-on-year, while net revenue at Rs 9,233 crore expanded by 18 per cent year-on-year, slightly below Bloomberg estimates at Rs 10,144 crore.

In a dramatic development, Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103-billion (around Rs 6.88 lakh crore) Tata group, said its board of directors had removed Cyrus Pallonji Mistry, 48, as chairman of the conglomerate and named Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Trusts, the largest shareholder in Tata Sons, as interim chairman for four months.

In a letter to group employees, Tata said the board has requested him to perform the role of chairman and he has agreed to do so “in the interest of stability of and reassurance to the Tata group”.

The board of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) will on Thursday consider issuing a bonus share to increase liquidity ahead of government disinvestment.

With all of its about Rs 14,000 crore cash committed in future projects and capital expenditure, the company is considering issuing bonus shares rather than cash dividends as a method of providing income to shareholders.

Mahindra First Choice Wheels Ltd (MFCWL) today announced the launch of a platform that allows buyers to participate in traditional ‘on the ground’ used-car auctions via internet in real-time.

The platform, True Time Bids (www.truetimebids.com) will significantly improve efficiency of how vehicle auctions are conducted in India today, the company said in a statement.

Social media giant Facebook has updated its Messenger as well as WhatsApp apps for Windows 10 and the most notable feature that has been incorporated is the voice and video calling. Now users will not have to close the app and then open the browser to call friends on the Facebook and WhatsApp lists. Now the Windows apps will work similar to the Android apps with full functionality.

Paying heed to the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) advice to improve operational efficiency of companies whose loan accounts have gone sticky through induction of new owners or managers, the government has lined up a plan under which cash-rich public sector undertakings like NTPC, Coal India, Power Finance Corpn and Rural Electrification Corpn will buy equity stakes in stranded power plants.

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