Twenty six years ago, the panel of judges were so unsure who should win the Man Booker in 1992 that they ended up with a tie: Michael Ondaatje and Barry Unsworth. But on Sunday evening Ondaatje edged ahead, with his bestselling novel The English Patient being named the best winner of the Booker prize of the last 50 years, in a public vote.

The Golden Booker was held this year to mark a half-century of the prize. A panel of judges read all 52 former winners of the award, with each assigned a decade from the Booker’s history. The Observer’s Robert McCrum, taking on the 1970s, chose VS Naipaul’s In a Free State; poet Lemn Sissay, reading the titles from the 1980s, went for Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger; The English Patient was novelist Kamila Shamsie’s selection from the 1990s; Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall was nominated as the best of the 2000s by broadcaster Simon Mayo, and George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo topped poet Hollie McNish’s reading of the 2010s Booker winners. The five books were then put to a public vote.

Punjab National Bank (PNB) has put on sale three non-performing assets to recover Rs 136 crore dues from the borrowers. "We intend to place these accounts for sale to ARCs/ NBFCs/other banks/FIs on the terms and conditions stipulated in the bank's policy, in line with the regulatory guidelines," PNB said in the invite for expression.

The three non-performing accounts (NPAs) or bad loans that have been put on sale are Gwalior Jhansi Expressways with an outstanding of Rs 55 crore; SVS Buildcon Pvt Ltd Rs 50 crore and Shiva Texfabs Ltd Rs 31.06 crore.

The process of e-bidding for the sale of these accounts will happen on July 7, 2018, the bank said.

All the public sector lenders (PSBs), who account for the highest amount of bad loans of the banking industry, have stepped up measures to recover dues from bad assets.

Pakistan and the Maldives have signed a Memorandum of Understanding or MoU to support the island nation's infrastructure development in the power sector. The move is seen as another snub to India after it recently scrapped a helicopter deal with New Delhi.

"A four-member delegation of Maldives State Electric Company (STELCO), headed by its chairman Ahmed Aiman, was on a six-day state visit to Pakistan to learn from the experience of the country's Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) and benefit from its technical and human capabilities," according to the local media reports.

The delegation met Muzammil Hussain, the chairman of Pakistan's Water and Power Development Authority, at Wapda House in Lahore in Pakistan's Punjab province.

Investors are loving the social network more than ever that saw its stocks dipping earlier in 2018 when it was under an intense probe over data breach from the US and European governments, Fortune reported.

Investors are also happy at the news that Facebook has grabbed its biggest sports streaming deal yet with the Premier League. The Times reported that Facebook has won exclusive rights to show all 380 live matches in parts of Asia such as Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, from 2019 until 2022, in a deal worth about $264 million.

Since going public in 2012, Facebook has seen its stock rise more than 400 percent.

In the latest privacy goof-up, Facebook admitted that over 800,000 users were affected by a bug on its platform and Messenger that unblocked some people the users had blocked.

Supreme Court judge Adarsh Kumar Goel, who retired on Friday, was appointed as the chairperson of National Green Tribunal. He is best remembered for passing the controversial judgment on diluting provisions of the SC/ST Act.

The post of the chairperson of the green tribunal, which disposes cases relating to environmental protection and conservation of forests and other natural resources, had been vacant for the past eight months after Justice Swatanter Kumar retired on December 19 after completing his five-year tenure.

Goel, who was elevated to Supreme Court on July 7, 2014, had previously served as Chief Justice of the Orissa High Court and prior to that, he was the Chief Justice of the Gauhati High Court. Born on July 7, 1953, Justice Goel had also held the position of executive chairman of the Haryana State Legal Services Authority. With the retirement of Goel, the strength of the Supreme Court goes down to 22 against a maximum of 31 judges.

The Supreme Court today rules that the Chief Justice of India is the ‘Master of Roster’ and that he alone has the power to assign cases.

This is the third time in eight months that the top court reiterated that Chief Justice of India is first among equal. The ruling came during the hearing of a petition filed by senior lawyer Shanti Bhushan in connection with the judge roster system. The court rejected the plea and said that the CJI is the roster boss.

The judgment was passed by Justices AK Sikri and Ashok Bhushan. It should be noted that the apex court also stated at the outset that it is not treating Shanti Bhushan’s petition as an adversarial litigation, and is not doubting the bonafides of the petitioner.

The ruling comes months after a Supreme Court Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra reasserted his own authority, in the face of criticism from fellow judges, and said he is the first among equals and cannot be distrusted.

MUMBAI: China, UAE, Cyprus and significantly, Mauritius, along with 21other countries have been tagged as “high-risk jurisdictions” by global banks acting as custodians for foreign funds which comprise the largest group of investors in the Indian stock market. 

Large investors and beneficial owners of these funds entering India through these high-risk jurisdictions will face close scrutiny while non-resident Indians and persons of Indian origin will run into new hurdles in participating in funds set up in these countries for trading on Indian exchanges. 

A week ago, the main custodian banks shared a list of 25 countries with the capital markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), two persons aware of the development told ET. HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Citi, Standard Chartered and JP Morgan are among the banks that compiled the list. 

The Indian Space Research Organisation on Thursday successfully carried out a flight test for a newly-designed Crew Escape System, meant for saving lives of astronauts in an exigency. The space agency said it was the first in a series of tests to ascertain the trustworthiness and efficiency of the Crew Escape System.

The system is an emergency measure designed to quickly pull away the crew module along with the astronauts to a safe distance from the launch vehicle if the mission gets aborted. The first ‘Pad Abort Test’ demonstrated the safe recovery of the crew module in case of any exigency at the launch pad, the Indian Space Research Organisation said in a release.

After a smooth five-hour countdown, the Crew Escape System along with the simulated crew module lifted off at 7.00 am from its pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota today, it said. The test was over in 259 seconds, during which the Escape System and the module soared skyward, before arching out over the Bay of Bengal and floating back to earth using its parachutes, about 2.9 km from Sriharikota, it added.

Payments Council of India (PCI), an apex body representing the companies in the payments and settlement system, has announced the appointment of Vishwas Patel,CEO of Infibeam Avenues, as its new chairman.

It has also announced the appointment of Loney Antony, Managing Director, Hitachi Payment Services, as its new co-chairman.

He has been associated with PCI ever since its inception in 2013 and was serving as the co-chairman of PCI. He takes over from Naveen Surya, who has been elevated to the post of Chairman Emeritus.