SAN FRANCISCO :Microsoft is reportedly acquiring speech-recognition company Nuance Communications for nearly $16 billion and the deal could be announced on Monday (US time), the media reported.

BENGALURU: Flipkart on Monday announced a strategic and commercial partnership with the Adani Group.In this two-pronged partnership, Flipkart will work with Adani Logistics Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone Limited, to strengthen Flipkart's supply chain infrastructure and further enhance its ability to serve its rapidly growing base of customers, said a statement.

HYDERABAD: Nagarjuna Sagar Assembly constituency is all set to witness a triangular fight among ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and opposition Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the April 17 bypoll.

NEW DELHI: The Jammu and Kashmir administration is taking major steps to open up the healthcare and services sector in the union territory for investments. Speaking to IANS here, state Principal Secretary, Commerce and Industry Ranjan Prakash Thakur said that the services sector, production sector and Agri Business are the major highlights of the investment proposal.

LONDON: Facebook has removed 16,000 groups in the UK that were dealing in fake and misleading reviews on its platform.
The social network has also made further changes to its systems for identifying, removing and preventing such content on its social media platforms to ensure it is fulfilling its previous commitments, according to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

KOLKATA: Hours after the death of four people in the firing by central forces at Sitalkuch in Cooch Behar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressing condolences over the deaths said that inciting people against the central forces and creating hindrances in the poll process won't be able to save you Didi (Mamata). Modi said this while addressing a rally at Jalpaiguri in North Bengal on Saturday.

CHANDIGARH: Wheat procurement kicked off in Punjab on Saturday with the Arhtiyas calling off their proposed strike after Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh ordered various steps to ensure their continued involvement in the process and immediate release of their pending payments of Rs. 131 crores without waiting for dues to come from FCI.

MUMBAI: A Mumbai special court on Friday sent suspended Mumbai cop Sachin Vaze, nabbed in connection with the SUV case, to judicial custody till April 23.

BENGALURU: Karnataka's decision to announce a 10-day night curfew in Bengaluru, starting Saturday, has triggered concerns in the local bar and restaurant and eatery industry.

KAPURTHALA: Rana Gurjit Singh, MLA Kapurthala today reviewed the ongoing work of renovation of ponds under the pilot project. It may be recalled that Kapurthala constituency was selected by the Punjab government for the use of pond water for irrigation in Kapurthala constituency under which a special grant of Rs. 7.37 crore was released.

CHANDIGARH: Benefiting at the grassroots by gaining economic independence and turning into a changemaker in agriculture, Baljinder Kaur, in her late thirties, is the wife of a marginal farmer who owns two-and-a-half acre of land in the Hulka village in Mohali district.

NEW DELHI: The night curfew imposed in the national capital amid resurgence of Covid-19 is not only hampering the shops, restaurants and others rather it is adding on to the woes of the banquet hall operators as people have started postponing the weddings and cancelling the bookings. A lot of people are even asking the banquet hall operators to change the time of the bookings too.

GUWAHATI: The anti-talk ULFA-I on Thursday demanded Kolkata-based Amalgamated Plantation Pvt Ltd relocate its administrative offices to Assam and recruit only indigenous people of the state in various positions, otherwise it would take action.

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday declined to entertain petitions by the Maharashtra government and former state Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, challenging the Bombay High Court order directing a preliminary enquiry by the CBI into corruption allegations levelled by former Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh.

NEW DELHI: Express Stores plans to expand its network both in tier 1 and 2 cities along with a growth in revenue in 2021.Apoorv Jain, Co-Founder & CEO at Express Stores said that the company plans to strengthen its presence across the National Capital Region (NCR).

MUMBAI:The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday questioned arrested Mumbai Police officer Sachin Vaze, former city Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh and two others in connection with the preliminary enquiry it registered for the probe into allegations of corruption against former state Home Minister Anil Deshmukh.

NEW DELHI: As small businesses around the world still struggle to cope with the ongoing pandemic amid vaccine roll-out, small and medium businesses (SMBs) in India have reported higher rates of closure, with SMB leaders being least confident in their ability to continue for at least six months, a new Facebook global report revealed on Thursday.

BRASILIA: Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro stood firm in his opposition against a nationwide lockdown despite a surge in Covid-19 cases and deaths.
There will be no nationwide lockdown," Bolsonaro said on Wednesday in Chapeco, a city in the southern state of Santa Catarina where, like many other parts of Brazil, hospital service has collapsed since February due to a new wave of the pandemic.

MUMBAI: Actor Emraan Hashmi says despite his years in the industry, he is very apprehensive before starting a new film. The actor says that he is nervous about matching up to the demands of his character.

NEW DELHI: As the second Covid wave begins to haunt us, a new report said on Thursday that apart from the IT-software industry, retail sector that was severely impacted by the pandemic has seen robust revival in hiring that saw an uptick of more than 15 per cent in March.

NEW DELHI: With the first night curfew of the year being imposed in the national capital, the shops at various places here are being closed at 8 p.m. while the workers are fearing job loss.

CHANDIGARH: The electricity employees of UT Chandigarh under the banner of UT Power men union held a massive demonstration outside sector 17 office and marched towards governor house to submit a memorandum against the privatization of UT Electricity Department. The protest march was stopped by the police by putting barricades in sector 17 and the employees were manhandled by the police . The employees continued to protest on the road.

CHANDIGARH: The electricity employees of UT Chandigarh under the banner ofUT Power men union held a massive demonstration outside sector office and marched towards governor house to submit a memorandum against the privatization of UT Electricity Department. The protest march was stopped by the police by putting barricades in sector 17 and the employees were manhandled by the police . The employees continued to protest on the road.

MUMBAI: Actress Shilpa Shetty Kundra took to Instagram to dole out a motivational message for her fans.She posted a picture doing a Yoga Asana and tagged it as #ShilpaKaMantra. The picture had this text: "The price of discipline is always less than the pain of regret."

NEW DELHI: Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani topped the Forbes list of India's 10 richest billionaires with a net worth of $84.5 billion, followed by Adani Group chief Gautam Adani.

CHANDIGARH: Even as the state’s telecom infrastructure density was already almost double than the national average, the Punjab Government has decided to increase it further to ensure fast track growth of digital communication network and provide affordable and universal access of broadband for all in the border state.

LONDON: A group of scientists which advise the UK government over the handling of the coronavirus outbreak have warned against lifting restrictions as the coming weeks "may lead to a small surge of cases and deaths".

MUMBAI: As the hiring scenario improves in India after the pandemic-hit 2020, many employers are still not keen to hire for jobs requiring customer interfacing across the country, a new report said on Tuesday.

DHAKA: At least one person was killed and several others were wounded after a protest against Covid-19 restrictions turned violent in Bangladesh, police said on Tuesday.

BENGALURU: Iron ore miners have urged the Karnataka government to remove the trade barriers, which are preventing them from doing business and export the raw material, an industry body official said on Monday.

NEW DELHI: Online food delivery platform Swiggy is close to raising $800 million (about Rs 5,862 crore) in funding, with Falcon Edge Capital, Amansa Capital, Think Investments, Carmignac and Goldman Sachs joining as new investors, that will take its valuation to nearly $5 billion.

NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Monday granted bail to businessman Anoop Kumar Gupta, accused in the alleged Rs 3,600-crore AgustaWestland VVIP chopper deal case.

CHANDIGARH: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) accused Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal of taking money from the liquor and cigarette manufacturing company to fund the party.

CHANDIGARH: Continuing with its endeavour to promote trade and industry besides improving ‘ease of doing business’ in the state, the Punjab Government has done away with 479 compliances that were earlier required for seeking various approvals and renewals by the industrialists.

NEW DELHI: The success of Vijay Shekhar Sharma-run digital payments leader Paytm in India has reached the US, and a team from Harvard Business School, led by a US Army veteran, is currently working on a similar app for a wider launch later this spring.