I n what may turn out to be the first big consolidation move in the tech-backed cab services market, Olacabs is close to buying out TaxiForSure for $200-250 million, sources told TOI. The deal is already sealed and a formal announcement could be made in the next few weeks. Backed by Japan’s SoftBank Corp, Ola’s acquisition of the four-year-old startup will make the combined entity a clear leader in India’s fast-growing...

Scientists have discovered a planet with a ring around it that is 200 times larger than that of Saturn. Astronomers at the Leiden Observatory, The Netherlands, and the University of Rochester discovered the ring system 420 light years away. The system was spotted circling brown dwarf J1407b — a planet orbiting star J1407 — because of the unusual, unsteady light observed during a 52 day eclipse. The ring system likely contains...

Sensex jumped 292 points  to end close to the 30,000-mark at 29,571, extending its winning run to the eighth straight session, Nifty surpassed the 8,900-mark for the first time on optimism over the Indo-US nuclear deal amid sustained foreign fund inflows. EC warning to Kejriwal: vThe EC has warned Arvind Kejriwal from asking voters to accept bribes during his Delhi poll campaign. BJP’s CM candidate, Kiran Bedi, has sent a legal...

Kolkata is set to become India’s first fully WiFi-enabled metro city with a private operator launching the service from Park Street on February 5 and then rolling it out in a phased manner across 144 municipal wards over the next couple of months. The whole of Kolkata is expected to come under Wi-Fi coverage by Bengali New Year in mid-April. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee made the surprise announcement at the inauguration...

Three militants claiming allegiance to the Islamic State stormed a luxury Mediterranean-front hotel housing several embassies on Tuesday and killed eight people, including five foreigners, before blowing themselves up along with a hostage they had taken. In October 2013, then PM Ali Zeidan was seized by gunmen from the hotel. He was released after several hours.British PM David Cameron and then French President Nicolas Sarkozy had stayed at the hotel in...

  R K Laxman, who joined The Times of India the year India gained Independence and chronicled its ups and downs for over half a century, drew his last breath in Pune as the sun set on our 66th Republic Day. The creator of the Common Man made millions of our readers smile every morning, but more importantly he captured the mood of a nation in the space of a small...