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Year 2009 will be 'a really bad year': IMF ChiefInternational Monetary Fund Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has said the level of debt in the UK is "disturbing" but more government borrowing is necessary.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:47 pm Obama expands stimulus package targetNew York: Amid worsening economic situation, President elect Barack Obama has expanded his goals for a federal stimulus package that will aim to create or preserve at least 3 million jobs, says a media report. President elect Barack Obama has expanded his goals for a massive federal stimulus package to keep pace with the increasingly grim economic outlook, aiming to create or preserve at least three million jobs over the next two years, the Washington Post said. The move comes after a four-hour meeting last week in which Obama’s top economic advisers told him the economy is now expected to lose as many as 3.5 million jobs over the next year, the daily added. The more aggressive target of 3 million jobs over the next two years up from 2.5 million jobs set a month ago was after recent projections suggested that recession is likely to deepen further. Obama was told that the worsening downturn could drive unemployment, currently at 6.7%, above 9% a figure not seen since the recession of early 1980s, the report added. With increasing recessionary fears Obama’s proposal for economic stimulus has soared from $175 billion during the campaign to nearly $800 billion. Washington Post further said that given the gloomy forecast, Obama last week presented congressional democrats with a proposal to dedicate $675 billion to $775 billion over the next two years to middle class tax cuts — a package designed to jolt the economy while deferring further layoffs and putting people back to work. Meanwhile, more than 2.1 million individuals have become jobless in the US ever since the world’s largest economy entered into recession last December, with more number of employers resorting to mass layoff actions. According to a statement of the Bureau of Labour Statistics, on a seasonally adjusted basis: “From the start of the recession in December 2007 through November 2008, the total number of mass layoff events was 20,712, and the number of initial (jobless) claims was 21,08,743.” In the wake of the worsening financial turmoil, companies worldwide are cutting jobs to cut down costs and more than one-third of the layoffs happened in America. Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:37 pm Empower Sebi to regulate corporate funding for polls: AssochamNew Delhi: Industry chamber Assocham has called for a legislation to make provisions for funding of elections through budgetary allocation and make corporate donations transparent regulated by Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi). Assocham has suggested that election funding by corporate should be made ‘legal’ and transparent and the whole process be regulated by Sebi. In the paper ‘Funding of the Political Parties for election Purposes,´ which was submitted to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the industry body has emphasised the need for a legislation to ensure cleaner, freer and transparent elections. Assocham said in a statement that market regulator Sebi should impose a certain ceiling on corporate’s net profits for extension of such donations to political parties of their choices to prevent them exceed the prescribed limit for any motive. Pointing out that listed corporations should inform the Sebi about the donations they intend to make, Assocham has said that all such funding should be approved by their respective corporate boards. In the case of unlisted companies and partnerships, the funding moves should be approved by the IT Department. Political parties must be compelled by law to publish week-by-week the donations they receive from corporates and the public. They should also give a consolidated list of donors within three months of the end of election process, the statement noted. Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:36 pm Gujarat govt to develop Dwarka as pilgrimage centreVadodara: Gujarat government has invited private companies to develop an airport at Dwarka, a historical city believed to be the capital of Lord Krishna’s kingdom on earth, to turn the it into a centre of pilgrimage. “Chief Minister Narendra Modi has expressed his desire of an airport there,” state tourism minister Jaynarayan Vyas said. “The government has chalked out a master plan of Rs50 crore for developing amenities and facilities to make Dwarka a centre of pilgrimage,” Vyas said, adding that that developing amenities and facilities around the temple premises will be the priority of the project. The temple here, dedicated to Dwarka in honour of Lord Krishna, attracts thousands of pilgrims and devotees from different parts of the country and abroad. Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:36 pm Obama expands stimulus package target; ups jobs goalThe move comes after a four-hour meeting last week in which Obama's economic advisers told him the economy is now expected to lose about 3.5 million jobs over the next year.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:35 pm BSNL to DoT: Q1 revenue is up y-o-y!State-run telecom operator BSNL has told the Department of Telecom that its quarterly revenue ended June this year and said that its revenue should not be compared sequentially.Source: Zee News : Business | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:33 pm CII wants govt to help industry in land acquisition!Industry body CII on Sunday said it wants the government to reconsider the Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill 2007 which if passed would leave the private sector `fend for itself` in land acquisition for industrial projects.Source: Zee News : Business | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:33 pm DHL bullish on India growth story amid global downturn!Global express and logistics business major DHL believes that the Indian growth trajectory has ample scope for business expansion, amid promising outlook forecast by the emerging nations.Source: Zee News : Business | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:33 pm US economy in danger: Biden!US Vice President-elect Joe Biden warns that US economy is in danger of "absolutely tanking."Source: Zee News : Business | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:33 pm Top 10 firms gain Rs 1 tln in a week; MMTC stages comeback !Country`s 10 most valued firms added a whopping Rs 1,00,000 crore to their market capitalisation in a week, which witnessed an uptrend in the stock market, as state-run MMTC staged a comeback to the elite club.Source: Zee News : Business | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:33 pm FIIs in currency futures might increase volatility: Analyst!The likely entry of Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) in currency futures will make the currency futures segment more speculative and volatile, a top industry official said.Source: Zee News : Business | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:33 pm DoT to send note on 3G auction!The Department of Telecom will send a note by Tuesday on higher annual 3G spectrum charges and number of blocks to be auctioned to the Cabinet Secretariat.Source: Zee News : Business | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:33 pm Indian ADRs gain $2 bn in a week; Satyam`s slides $1.6 bn!Indian companies listed on American bourses saw their market value climb two billion dollars in just one week even as software exporter Satyam Computer Services lost 1.62 billion dollars after the Maytas-buyout fiasco.Source: Zee News : Business | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:33 pm Developers unlikely to reduce prices voluntarily: FICCI !Despite talks of recent downturn in property prices, developers are unlikely to reduce prices, as the realty players feel that their properties are well- priced, says industry body FICCI.Source: Zee News : Business | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:33 pm Over 21 lakh jobs lost in US since Dec 2007!More than 21 lakh individuals have become jobless in the US ever since the world`s largest economy entered into recession last December, with more number of employers resorting to mass layoff actions.Source: Zee News : Business | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:33 pm Kerala to involve small investors in infrastructure developmentKerala Finance Minister Thomas Isaac Sunday said the state will adopt a new business model where savings of small investors as well as cash-rich non-resident Keralites (NRK) could be used to build infrastructure.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:31 pm Terror-struck Taj, Trident hotels reopen with prayers, resolveAmid prayers and resolve to fight terrorism, two sea-facing hotels in India's commercial and entertainment capital opened their doors to guests here Sunday barely three weeks after terrorists ravaged the properties in one of the worst attacks on the country's soil.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:30 pm BSNL losing Rs 400 cr a year for telegraph servicesThe PSU, which delivers telegram messages to people, carries crores of messages a year and since the service is offered much below cost, the losses mount as the volume goes up.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 21 Dec 2008 | 11:57 am BSNL losing Rs400 crore a year for telegraph servicesNew Delhi: State-run BSNL is losing about Rs400 crore a year for fulfilling yet another social obligation - telegram service. The PSU, which delivers the telegram messages to people, carries crores of messages a year and since the service is offered much below cost, the losses mount as the volume goes up, sources in the PSU said. As per an estimate, the losses could be around Rs400 crore a year from such heavily subsidised service, sources said. When contacted, BSNL chairman and managing director Kuldeep Goyal told PTI, “Telegram service of BSNL is a loss making proposition. We would like to have USO subsidy from the Government to cover this service”. Even in an age of internet, SMS and instant messaging, the importance of telegram has not diminished as the message sent through it is admissible in court as proof making it a sound mechanism for Government offices to use this process. Sources said even if tariffs could be revised in anytime, it would not match the huge gap between the cost of sending a telegram for BSNL and the consumer tariffs. Unlisted BSNL, which has seen its marketshare eroding in mobile services due to heavy competition, also suffers huge losses due to its legacy operations of giving telecom facilities to rural and remote parts of the country. Though it gets most of the USO Fund at a later stage through bidding, it does have to pay for USO Fund like private players first. With more and more private players going for rural areas, its share on the USO kitty has also gone down over the last one year. Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 11:38 am Satyam-Maytas deal fiasco puts focus on independent directors - Economic Times
Source: Google News India - Business | 21 Dec 2008 | 11:35 am FIIs in currency futures might increase volatility: AnalystThe likely entry of Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) in currency futures will make the segment more speculative and volatile, an industry officer said.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 21 Dec 2008 | 11:33 am Undersea cables breakdown to hit BPO, telecom servicesNew Delhi: The IT, BPO and telecom services in the country will be affected on Monday when they will resume operations as three undersea cables have broken down. The undersea cables in the Mediterranean Sea, which link Europe to West Asia, broke down on Friday evening. Its impact was not felt in the last two days since it was the week-end. The impact could be felt on Monday with the start of the week. “IT and BPO companies will experience very slow internet access connectivity and telecom companies will have to keep back-up to carry on ISD calls particularly to and fro calls from the Middle East, the east coast of the US and Europe, Internet Service Providers Association President Rajesh Chharia said. Most of India’s internet traffic is routed through the US and consequently the Pacific link is more important for India than the Mediterranean link, Chharia said. However, from tomorrow the Pacific link will have to carry most of the traffic, voice and data, causing the slow speed and call drops. Individual internet connections, which have been almost normal in the last two days, are unlikely to face any problem. A communication from France Telecom said the cut in the three undersea cables have greatly disturbed the traffic between Europe and Asia. The immediate appraisal was that 82% of India’s voice traffic was out of service. “By 25 December, one of the cables SMW-4 could be operating and by December-end the situation should be back to normal, it said. The three Indian telecom companies Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications and Tata Communications, which own fully or partially through consortium the undersea cables, said they have started repair work on the damaged portion to avoid major inconveniences to the customers. Source: Tech News - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 11:31 am Undersea cables breakdown to hit BPO, telecom servicesNew Delhi: The IT, BPO and telecom services in the country will be affected on Monday when they will resume operations as three undersea cables have broken down. The undersea cables in the Mediterranean Sea, which link Europe to West Asia, broke down on Friday evening. Its impact was not felt in the last two days since it was the week-end. The impact could be felt on Monday with the start of the week. “IT and BPO companies will experience very slow internet access connectivity and telecom companies will have to keep back-up to carry on ISD calls particularly to and fro calls from the Middle East, the east coast of the US and Europe, Internet Service Providers Association President Rajesh Chharia said. Most of India’s internet traffic is routed through the US and consequently the Pacific link is more important for India than the Mediterranean link, Chharia said. However, from tomorrow the Pacific link will have to carry most of the traffic, voice and data, causing the slow speed and call drops. Individual internet connections, which have been almost normal in the last two days, are unlikely to face any problem. A communication from France Telecom said the cut in the three undersea cables have greatly disturbed the traffic between Europe and Asia. The immediate appraisal was that 82% of India’s voice traffic was out of service. “By 25 December, one of the cables SMW-4 could be operating and by December-end the situation should be back to normal, it said. The three Indian telecom companies Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications and Tata Communications, which own fully or partially through consortium the undersea cables, said they have started repair work on the damaged portion to avoid major inconveniences to the customers. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 11:31 am Oberoi hotel reopens with prayersMumbai: Tight security and hopeful prayers were part of a multi-faith prayer ceremony held on Sunday to mark the reopening of the Mumbai’s Oberoi hotel three weeks after it was targeted in a militant attacks . The simple ceremony, held in the lobby of the hotel, included Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Sikh, Parsi, Buddhist and Jain religious leaders and was attended by the entire staff of the hotel as well as guests. Security around the hotel was beefed up, with sniffer dogs patrolling the grounds and armed policemen standing watch from behind sandbag bunkers near the entrance to the Trident Hotel section of the Oberoi complex. The Trident opened 100 rooms to guests on Sunday. “There is no fear. We see the courage of the people and the staff,” said Kritika Srinivasan, 28, a regular guest at the hotel who went inside to congratulate the staff. “We have to show them (the attackers) that they can’t break our courage and solidarity”, she said. Inside the Oberoi, private security guards manned all lobby entrances, passing bags through metal detectors and x-ray scanners. ID cards were checked and everyone entering the building was patted down by hand as part of new security rules installed in the wake of the attacks. The reopening comes three weeks after 10 militants stormed sites across India’s financial capital on 26 November. Terrorists from the banned Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba are accused of staging the attacks that killed 164 people over the course of a 3-day siege and paralyzed much of the Mumbai. Nine of the alleged gunmen were killed, and one is in police custody. Two of the most high-profile buildings targeted were the sleek, sea-front Oberoi and another luxury hotel, the majestic, 105-year-old historic Taj Mahal Palace and Tower. The main areas of both hotels, severely damaged in the shooting sprees and a 60-hour standoff with police, are expected to remain closed for months. ***** Taj likely to be fully functional by end-2009 Taj Mahal Palace is partially expected to be opened in February and the entire hotel by end of 2009, said Indian Hotels on Sunday. “The north block of the Heritage wing of the hotel is expected to be ready by February 2009 while the south block will be ready by end of next year,” Indian Hotels Vice Chairman RK Krishna Kumar told reporters in Mumbai. “The tower wing which opened for guests on Sunday has been cleansed of evil among other things. All the rooms and the kitchen have been fully cleaned and sanitised by an international agency,” Kumar said. Religious rites of various faiths have been performed inside the hotel, he said. On November 26, terrorists attacked Taj hotel and occupied the 5th and 6th floor of the Heritage wing. The south side of the Taj hotel came under heavy fire. “The 5th and 6th floor have been damaged by the attack. The Wasabi and Harbour Bar have been completely gutted,” said Kumar. —(PTI) Source: Home - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 11:27 am Vaghul had big image when Kamath took charge: Chanda KochharChanda Kochhar, the chosen successor to head India's largest private lender ICICI bank, said on Sunday that she would not like to be compared with her mentor.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 21 Dec 2008 | 11:13 am Kochhar's endeavour: To take ICICI Bank to the top in 2 yrsICICI Bank's CEO-designate Chanda Kochhar said on Sunday that her endeavour would be to take the bank to the top slot in two years.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 21 Dec 2008 | 11:08 am Tata empire's weakness begins to show; JLR wants rescueAs the UK dilly dallies on a loan lifeline to India's Tata-owned Jaguar Land Rover, the British media feels that the once venerable conglomerate is not so invincible.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 21 Dec 2008 | 11:03 am Is slowdown forcing staff down-sizing, cost-cutting in RIL?Reliance Industries, which is carrying out major cost cutting measures, including downsizing of the staff, and has apparently put on hold mega investment plans.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 21 Dec 2008 | 10:58 am US music industry ends mass piracy lawsuitsLos Angeles: The Recording Industry Association of America said on Friday it had abandoned mass lawsuits against Internet users who steal music, and instead would work with Internet service providers to discourage piracy. The RIAA, which represents major US record labels, will have the ISPs send warning notices to users who illegally download music files. Since 2003, the music industry has sued about 35,000 Internet users for music piracy. “We think this is going to be a different form of stick, but we absolutely think this will be a meaningful alternative approach that will have a significant impact,” said Cara Duckworth, a spokeswoman for the RIAA. Other measures will be taken against Internet users who ignore their first warning notice to stop illegally downloading music, and if those users continue they could find their Internet connections disconnected, the RIAA said. The RIAA declined to say which ISPs had signed on for the initiative, and it said it reserved the right to sue Internet users who ignored the warning notices. The RIAA said it would pursue lawsuits already pending against Internet users accused of illegal downloads. The RIAA’s change in strategy comes as Internet users have become increasingly aware that downloading pirated songs is illegal. The group Arts+Labs, a collaborative between technology companies and creative artists, said in a statement that it was “encouraged by this new effort by the record companies.” Major record labels include Warner Music Group Corp, Universal Music Group owned by Vivendi SA, EMI and Sony Music Entertainment, part of Sony Corp. Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 10:55 am Islamabad must act, says Pranab MukherjeeKolkata: Taking a tough stance, external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday said that Pakistan had been given enough evidence regarding the Mumbai terror attacks and “Islamabad must act”. “Pakistan has been contradicting its statements. Enough evidence has been given to Pakistan. Pakistan must cooperate and not contradict us. Mere talk is not enough. Pakistan has to act,” Mukherjee told a conference at the Bengal Chamber of Commerce here. “Instead of contradiction and denial, they will have to take action,” Mukherjee added. “We can deal only with the government of the day. Therefore, all arguments which are coming from the other side (Pakistan) are not really convincing”, Mukherjee said. The first reaction from Islamabad was that non-state actors were involved in the attacks, he recalled. “Non-state actors do not come from heaven, nor do they operate from another planet,” he said. “But from wherever they are operating, it is the responsibility of the incumbent government to deal with them,” he said, adding that “we cannot chase the so-called non-state actors in another country. They will have to take the action”. “I have never used the word Pakistan government but I have deliberately used the word that some elements in Pakistan. Evidence clearly indicate (their involvement),” the minister said. “We have the evidence, including intercepts of the conversation via satellite. Yesterday I described the conversation as a chilling account. The captured living terrorist (Amir Ajmal Kasab) gave the chilling account of what transpired between him and the controller from that side. They were monitoring Indian television. We have this type of information,” he said. Pakistan must pursue these evidence and take action, he said, noting that “words must be followed up by action”. ‘It’s sinister to link Islam with terror’ External affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee has said there was a sinister design to link Islam with terrorism. “There are some scholars who had coined the term Islamic terrorism. Islam is a religion of love and compassion. There is a sinister ploy to link terrorism with Islam,” the minister said here at a seminar organised by a city-based trade body. There may be some socio-economic indicators which may lead to some frustration among some Muslim youths who had gone astray. “These are exceptions,” he said. He described terrorists as the “biggest violators of human rights having no religion or boundary.” The minister also strongly endorsed the view of founder president of the trade body Feroze Ali that India was not a ‘soft state’ and was determined to fight the menace of terrorism. Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 10:43 am Gaza truce recedes as rockets hit IsraelJerusalem: Barrages of rockets fired from Gaza hit Israeli towns on Sunday and the Israeli air force responded with a missile strike as violence surged following the official expiry date of a shaky truce. Israeli rescue services said one rocket scored a direct hit on a house in the town of Sderot. No one was injured in that attack, but the Israeli military said a worker at a farming community near Gaza was lightly wounded by shrapnel in a separate rocket hit. The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad took responsibility for Sunday’s rocket fire. An Israeli aircraft launched a missile at a rocket launcher that had been preparing to fire in northern Gaza, the military said. Militants typically prepare rockets for launch and then fire them from cover a safe distance away. There were no reports of casualties in the strike. A truce between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers expired on Friday, six months after it began. The truce had frayed since early November, and rocket fire at Israeli towns has been increasing steadily in recent days. On Saturday, militants fired more than 30 rockets and mortar shells into Israel, and the Israeli air force killed one militant who was launching rockets. Israel has said it wants to preserve the truce and will not take military action if the militants hold their fire, but has threatened to carry out a broad military operation in Gaza if the barrages persist. “The scenarios are clear, the plans are clear, the determination is clear, and so are the ramifications of each of the steps. A responsible government is not happy to go to war, but does not evade it,” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said at his Cabinet’s weekly meeting. Israel has largely kept the crossings into Gaza closed in response to the rocket fire, a move that has caused shortages of fuel and basic goods in the territory of 1.4 million Palestinians. Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 10:42 am Austere New Year celebrations in hotels across Uttar PradeshNo lavish, big-budget parties. No live music and dance with drinks flowing throughout the night. New year celebrations, this time will be a mild affair in posh hotels across Uttar Pradesh.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 21 Dec 2008 | 10:32 am Amartya Sen for quota in technical institutionsNobel Laureate Amartya Sen Sunday supported reservation during admission into Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) for the under privileged sections as the step would benefit the society in the long run.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 21 Dec 2008 | 10:31 am Over 22,000 poultry culled in bird flu-hit MaldaOver 22,000 poultry birds have been culled since Tuesday in West Bengal's bird flu-hit Malda district, a state minister said Sunday.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 21 Dec 2008 | 10:30 am Indian American makes breakthrough in ovarian cancer researchHouston: In a major breakthrough, which can dramatically increase survival chances of ovarian cancer patients, an Indian American scientist has identified two proteins whose presence increases the median survival rate by 11 years in patients with the disease. A study of nearly 250 ovarian cancer patients by Dr Anil Sood, MD, professor in the departments of Gynecologic Oncology and Cancer Biology at M D Anderson, along with other researchers, found that woman with high levels of two proteins named Dicer and Drosha in their tumor cells had a median survival rate of 11 years. While, in patients with low levels of one or both proteins about 40% of those studied had a median survival of less than three years. Sood’s discovery marks a significant advance for an emerging area of basic science called RNA interference, which one day may transform medicine. “What’s important is that Dicer and Drosha are critical to the process of RNA interference,” Anil Sood said. “RNA interference has only been known for about a decade. The components of the machinery, what it does in cancer, and how it affects outcomes and therapy are not fully known,” Sood said. Potential clinical applications include using levels of the proteins as prognostic indicators to guide treatment decisions and eventually to exploit RNA interference to attack tumors, Sood said. Interfering with gene expression the team measured expression levels of Dicer and Drosha in 111 invasive ovarian cancer tumors and then compared the results to the patients’ clinical outcomes. The initial findings were supported by a second analysis of gene expression in a different group of 132 ovarian cancer patients. Analysis of 91 patients with lung cancer and 129 breast cancer patients reached similar conclusions, however, only Dicer levels were found to affect survival. The mechanism has powerful therapeutic potential, because it affords scientists a new biological lever with which to stop genes from producing proteins inside cells. This is critical, because the cause of many diseases can be traced to the errant production of those proteins. As part of the new study, Sood and his colleagues found that Dicer and Drosha play a critical part in the body’s RNA interference processes and that they appear to help suppress tumors. Low levels of the proteins likely permit genes to continue functioning when they should be silenced. The study findings help scientists better understand the biological details of the RNA interference process. By understanding this, they can better tailor drugs to impair the ability of tumor cells to multiply. The researchers are working with M D Anderson and anticipate beginning clinical trials of those drugs within a few years. Source: Tech News - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 10:29 am Indian American makes breakthrough in ovarian cancer researchHouston: In a major breakthrough, which can dramatically increase survival chances of ovarian cancer patients, an Indian American scientist has identified two proteins whose presence increases the median survival rate by 11 years in patients with the disease. A study of nearly 250 ovarian cancer patients by Dr Anil Sood, MD, professor in the departments of Gynecologic Oncology and Cancer Biology at M D Anderson, along with other researchers, found that woman with high levels of two proteins named Dicer and Drosha in their tumor cells had a median survival rate of 11 years. While, in patients with low levels of one or both proteins about 40% of those studied had a median survival of less than three years. Sood’s discovery marks a significant advance for an emerging area of basic science called RNA interference, which one day may transform medicine. “What’s important is that Dicer and Drosha are critical to the process of RNA interference,” Anil Sood said. “RNA interference has only been known for about a decade. The components of the machinery, what it does in cancer, and how it affects outcomes and therapy are not fully known,” Sood said. Potential clinical applications include using levels of the proteins as prognostic indicators to guide treatment decisions and eventually to exploit RNA interference to attack tumors, Sood said. Interfering with gene expression the team measured expression levels of Dicer and Drosha in 111 invasive ovarian cancer tumors and then compared the results to the patients’ clinical outcomes. The initial findings were supported by a second analysis of gene expression in a different group of 132 ovarian cancer patients. Analysis of 91 patients with lung cancer and 129 breast cancer patients reached similar conclusions, however, only Dicer levels were found to affect survival. The mechanism has powerful therapeutic potential, because it affords scientists a new biological lever with which to stop genes from producing proteins inside cells. This is critical, because the cause of many diseases can be traced to the errant production of those proteins. As part of the new study, Sood and his colleagues found that Dicer and Drosha play a critical part in the body’s RNA interference processes and that they appear to help suppress tumors. Low levels of the proteins likely permit genes to continue functioning when they should be silenced. The study findings help scientists better understand the biological details of the RNA interference process. By understanding this, they can better tailor drugs to impair the ability of tumor cells to multiply. The researchers are working with M D Anderson and anticipate beginning clinical trials of those drugs within a few years. Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 10:29 am Increase production of orthodox variety of tea: Minister - Hindu
Source: Google News India - Business | 21 Dec 2008 | 10:15 am Income-tax department to investigate frozen demat accountsNew Delhi: The income-tax department will start investigation into lakhs of frozen demat accounts to unearth black money and undisclosed transactions in them. Department sources said that the money in these accounts could run into thousands of crores. Certain preliminary checks have revealed undisclosed transactions and accounts that have not been disclosed, to hide black money, a tax department source said. The accounts were frozen by the two depositories, National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) and Central Securities Depository Services Ltd (CDSL), on January 1, 2007. This move came after lakhs of investors failed to comply with the government’s directive to furnish details of their Permanent Account Number (PAN) while transacting in the financial markets. “We have received a list of suspicious accounts and investigation (into those) will start,” the source said. Tax department sources said that with the help of the unique PAN numbers they have been able to track down shareholders who are not running their accounts. In certain cases the account-holder may have died, and some may have changed addresses and did not inform the department, a source said. Even after the accounts were frozen, some investors are receiving money in the form of allotment of shares in IPOs and certain other ways, they said. Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 9:47 am Tata must arrange own resources for JLR: MandelsonLondon: The Tata group, which owns Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), has been told by Lord Mandelson, business secretary in the British government, to ‘look to their own resources´ instead of the British government to tide over the current economic downturn. The company, which is seeking financial help from the government, has been backed by unions, which say that the car industry needs support ‘within days´. However, lowering hopes of a speedy intervention by the government, business secretary Lord Mandelson said on Sunday that the state would act only as a ‘lender of last resort´. He told The Observer that the Tata Group must ‘look to their own resources ... The government cannot be the first call for help in these circumstances´. “If there is anything the government can appropriately do for any such company, then they will have to meet, and pass, some pretty tough tests”, he added. He also told The Observer that he was not indifferent to the plight of the car industry and that the government might be required to help companies vital to employment in the UK. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 9:47 am CBEC keeps fingers crossed over budget targetNew Delhi: The Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) is keeping fingers crossed over meeting the budget target of around Rs3.2 lakh crore as the customs and excise collections together are expected to take a hit of over Rs40,000 crore due to post-budget tax cuts. “Customs duty collections will take a hit of Rs27,885 crore and excise duty by Rs12,590 crore due to tax cuts announced after the budget. This is certainly a difficult year. But this is too early to say about meeting the target,” said CBEC chairman PC Jha. While excise collections are not good, customs duty mop-up is fairly good till November this fiscal and service tax collections are above the targeted growth rate till October, he said. Exise duty collections nosedived to register a negative growth of 15% at Rs8,556 crore in November, 2008 from Rs10,065 crore a year ago. Customs duty collections also dipped by 0.8% to touch Rs8,931 crore from Rs9,005 crore during the period. Despite a dip, customs duty mop-up was 13% higher at Rs75,551 crore till November this fiscal from Rs66,838 crore a year earlier. However, service tax growth recorded a growth of around 30% at Rs34,958 crore till October this year against Rs26,971 crore a year ago against a target of 30% growth. Information about service tax collections come a month after excise and customs duty collections figures were released. Fall in excise duty should be seen in the overall context as the industry is in the need of sops at this time to boost growth, said CBEC chairman. Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 9:44 am IMF worried about lack of fiscal stimulusLondon: International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said insufficient fiscal stimulus by governments to tackle the global slowdown may make a bad 2009 even worse, according to an interview released on Sunday. Strauss-Kahn told BBC radio that the IMF may need to cut its next economic growth forecasts, due in January, referring to “2009 as really being a bad year”. “I’m specially concerned by the fact that our forecast, already very dark ... will be even darker if not enough fiscal stimulus is implemented,” he said in an interview. The IMF has called for higher government spending and temporary tax cuts worth $120 trillion, or 2% of global annual economic output, to fill the gap caused by slumping private demand following the credit crunch. Britain has announced fiscal stimulus worth around 1% of output, and despite “disturbing” level of public debt, Strauss-Kahn said more public borrowing would be the lesser of two evils. “The question of having social unrest has been highlighted by journalists and I can understand that, but it’s only part of the problem,” he said. “The problem is that the whole society is going to suffer.” Source: Home - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 9:36 am Tripura, Mizoram ban import of poultry productsTripura and Mizoram Sunday banned the import of poultry from the bird flu-hit states of Assam and West Bengal, besides adjoining Bangladesh, officials said.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 21 Dec 2008 | 9:30 am Man from Bihar invents silencer for generatorsMotihari: A person hailing from East Champaran district of Bihar has invented a generator silencer which would not only help in decreasing the sound level but will also reduce the level of carbon emission. Virendra Kumar Sinha, a resident of Belbanwa colony of the Motihari town, has invented the silencer-cum-exhaust filter for the generator set after a hard work of six years. Sinha said his product was put under test in three stages in the laboratory of Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), Ranchi, where it was proved that the product was capable of reducing about 60 to 70 per cent of the harmful carbon-dioxide and carbon-monoxide gases emitted by generators. After the lab test at BIT, Sinha got his product patented by Indian Patent Office, Kolkata. The invention would help in checking the global warming also, Sinha said, adding that the exhaust silencer was capable of sucking the carbon gases inside its drum reducing the level of carbon emission into the environment to the level of 70%. The idea to go for such invention came first when the people of his colony complained that his generator set emits polluted air and makes too much sound, Sinha added. Source: Tech News - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 9:29 am Tata empire’s weakness begins to showLondon: As the UK dilly dallies on a loan lifeline to India’s Tata-owned Jaguar Land Rover, the British media is putting out stories that the once venerable conglomerate is after all not so invincible. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has so far ignored calls for assistance to car makers, saying “there is no promise that we’ve made of any support”. But this hasn’t stopped reports of assistance in all possible combinations. The Sunday Times reported that ministers are considering a direct government loan of perhaps £500 million to Jaguar Land Rover, the Midlands carmaker, whose sales have been wiped out by the credit crunch. JLR’s deep-pocketed Indian owner is facing similar woes back home. Tata Motors has seen lorry sales fall by 50% and its high-profile project to build the world’s cheapest car ‘Nano´ was hit by scandal and delay, noted a columnist in The Independent while likening the Tatas to a giant with a begging bowl. With UK car production down by a massive 33% last month, JLR might be expected to turn to the Tatas for help, the paper said adding that the trouble is that JLR is not the Tatas’ only problem child. JLR, acquired by the Tatas early this year for £1.5 billion, was in talks with the government for a £1 billion loan guarantee. The Independent report further said that “Tata Steel, one of the empire’s original businesses, is also reeling. With steel prices dropping through the floor, it has axed 500 UK jobs at Corus, the Anglo-Dutch steel giant, it bought for £6.2 billion last year and is looking for state aid from the Dutch and UK governments to avoid further redundancies.” Source: Home - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 9:18 am IMF head worried about lack of fiscal stimulusLONDON (Reuters) - International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said insufficient fiscal stimulus by governments to tackle the global slowdown may make a bad 2009 even worse, according to an interview released on Sunday.Source: Reuters: Money News | 21 Dec 2008 | 8:52 am Wkly Tech: Sensex looks overbought - Business Standard
Source: Google News India - Business | 21 Dec 2008 | 8:36 am Affordable housing next focus for developers: FicciThe slowdown in property market will see developers focusing more on mid-range and affordable housing with a considerable correction in prices of existing residential projects, says a recent survey by an industry lobby.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 21 Dec 2008 | 8:31 am Industry wants law on corporate funding of electionsThere should be a legislation for funding elections through budgetary allocations and making corporate and individual donations legal and transparent, the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) has said.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 21 Dec 2008 | 8:30 am Telesoct Tech to launch fraud detection solution in IndiaNew Delhi: UK-based Telesoft Technologies, which manufactures equipment for monitoring fixed and mobile telephony networks, will launch a solution in the country to help telecom companies pin down frauds in their networks. “We are in talks with clients to provide the telecom operators passive monitoring probe,” Telesoft Technologies director, sales and marketing, Andy Evripides said. The probe solution can be connected to any mobile network and it provides the signaling information related to location of a subscriber within 100-500 meters. Besides, the company plans to invest £2-3 million over a couple of years to customise their products for the Indian market. “We expect in two years the revenue from our India operations will double the European operations. To fuel the growth we will continue investing in India,” he said. The actual location-based applications are provided by SIs and OEMs, who access the information using Telesoft’s probe technology. Typical applications include directing mobile subscribers to the nearest cash machine or providing weather report of a geographic area. The solution can help in fraud detection in telephony networks such as finding spoof numbers that cannot be billed and network abuse. The signaling information in a mobile network contains location information such as cell ID and area information that allows location-based services. Source: Tech News - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 7:17 am Is slowdown forcing staff down-sizing, cost-cutting in RIL? - Economic Times
Source: Google News India - Business | 21 Dec 2008 | 7:14 am Thick fog blankets Delhi, hits flight, train schedulesA heavy blanket of fog engulfed the capital Sunday morning, reducing visibility levels and disrupting several flight and train schedules. Met officials said the foggy conditions would continue in the coming days.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 21 Dec 2008 | 7:00 am Tim O’ Reilly, the tech guru talks about Web 2.0This is Kamla Bhatt. Today my guest is Tim O’Reilly, who is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media based in Sebastapol in Northern California. He also publishes O’Reilly Network and hosts conferences on technology topics. Tim is an activist for open source and open standard. Tim’s mantra is spreading technology change by capturing and transmitting the knowledge of “Alpha Geeks” and other innovators. Labeled as a trend spotter and technology evangelist Steven Levy famously described Tim as a scone baking publisher in a Wired magazine article. By his own admission, Tim loves making jams. Tim has a BA in classics from Harvard University.  Tim: Hi! Glad to be with you. Kamla: Before we talk about technology, I am very curious to know what was this tension that you explored between mysticism and logic? Tim: One of the ideas that has really shaped my life is the idea that the experience of the people, who are first wrestling with a hard problem is very different than the experience of the people who come along later and are rehearsing and replaying that same experience. So in Plato there was a lot of discussion around the idea that there seem to be some kind of tension between the ideas of logic and then these mystical images that are associated with it. And you would see people making arguments and say this was the influence of Orphix or the incluence of the Pythagoreans. I said no, no this is what it was like when people were first thinking about these abstract concepts like justice. These had numenous power. I mean it was a mystical experience. Logic was mysticism then. Now it is dry. But it was not back then. And that was kind of talk that I gave today at the DevLearn conference. I tried to highlight that by showing the progression from the Wright Brothers and their joy and excitement of just invention and then the banality of Airport Security today with people with all their toothpaste in a plastic bag. It was not always banal, and that was really the point I was trying to make in my thesis. If you are rooted your thinking in human experience in how people actually work you would say Oh this is not a conflict. This is actually how those world changing ideas felt to the people who were first exploring. Kamla: So switch to the 21st century, what is the tension you are trying to explore today? Tim: Well, I think there are a lot of tensions that we all need to explore. Probably the biggest one is the tension between the individual and the collective that is expressed and mediated through our new technological tools. This boom that that I have dubbed as Web 2.0 is really about the way that computers now allow us to aggregate data from millions of people and turn it into useful applications. Lot of people when they think of Web 2.0 they think about light weight advertising driven web applications or they think may be about social media. All those things are certainly part of the movement, but at the very heart of it is the idea that once applications live on the network, they are able to do things that a standalone computer application can’t do. What evidence showed us particularly the name Web 2.0 was not a version name, it was really a testament to our belief that the web was coming back after the dot com bust. It was really saying hey you know you guys all think that the web is dead but it is coming back and that was the real meaning of the term. We were looking at what distinguished the companies that had succeeded from the ones that had failed. It seemed to us that all of the ones that succeeded had in one way or another learned to do what I later came to call harnessing collective intelligence. They were building services that literally got better when more people used them, they were data driven services and mastery of the data gave them competitive advantage. So I always considered Google to be the pre-eminent Web 2.0 company and it is always amused me when I see people say well Google is not participatory and I say hey wait a minute first of all the very basic technology on which they rely, the web is all user contributed we open it up on our websites. Secondly, the basic technology web crawling is also they are going out there and harvesting all the user contribution. But then the break through Google introduced in 1998 with Page Rank was a very very powerful idea. Up to that time everybody, who was building a web search engine simply searched the content of the pages, whereas Google realized that there was meaning hidden in the structure of the links. Some links mattered more than others. That a link by an expert on a subject for example meant something that a link by casual consumer or a spammer didn’t mean. So this analysis of a link structure and the relative importance, who was linking was the extraction of the meaning that was hidden in the data. The second big breakthrough, which again shows Google as a contribution engine better at harnessing data from their users was their economic engine, their ad auction. Many people believed that Overture, which was later acquired by Yahoo, invented the ad auction that Google uses. Yes, they did bring to us the business model of putting search key words, I mean advertisements next to search results. But Google did something profoundly different that shows once again their deep understanding of the power of user contribution on the network. Yahoo sold ads to the highest bidder. Google realized that they can actually predict ads, which are most likely to be clicked on, and therefore they could sell not to the highest bidder but to the best combination of a price and likelihood of click. So if somebody says oh yes I will pay you $15, somebody else says I will pay you $10, but they are twice as likely to be clicked on then it will say $20 to you, and that is why Google ad option was more efficient. And in the course that set in motion the virtuous network effect that has made Google so dominant. Ads were more effective therefore more advertisers, therefore more ads, more searchers. You look at how all that works, and you say oh my Gosh! Google has succeeded because they understood better than their competitors what it means to harness the intelligence of their users. Every click goes into their collective intelligence engine and I think we saw that in the news where they announced their flu trends site, where literally they are able to make predictions about where there are outbreaks of flu simply by collecting the data from where people are searching for information about the flu. And this really is the heart of Web 2.0. This idea that there is so much data being generated on the network by our collective activity, and we can learn from it. In some sense we are building a global brand and we are present in some sense at the birth of that global brand. So back to your question. The tension that we face between our proud experience of individuality and these powerful new applications, which are an expression of our collective knowledge or collective thinking. Everything from Wikipedia, which is sort of explicitly you know let us get into our best thinking to other explicit things like Digg like services where people vote up new stories to what I have been talking about with Google. These make a very powerful statement about the power of data mining against collective information and yet the individual still matters. Infact we see one of the big trends that the internet has highlighted is the power of small companies to make a difference. The power of individuals to be noticed, whether it is through blogging or Twitter or new kinds of social media. The ability of people to create their own small associations. So we have one of the most powerful centripetal forces ever where we are seeing massive sites getting more and more data, getting better and better because more people use them in this virtuous circle that is going to lead to enormous powerful monopolies. And then at the same time we are seeing this network that so many other people celebrate, which is this decentralized network, where power belongs out in the edge, where anybody can trip you. And I think we have to understand both of the statements are true you know the internet is... I should not be saying the internet I should be very clear where I am not just referring to the internet on computers. The internet solution definition was the network of networks and I increasingly see that the cell phone network becoming part of that broader network because of course any cell phone is connected and is a host for connected applications as well. So the same principles apply, perhaps even more so because our cell phones are actually sensors gathering data even when we don’t type anything at all. They are sending their location when we take pictures with them those pictures are now being used for to build 3D models. So it’s all kinds of interesting things, there it even the applications used in the cell phones as a sensor. There is a start up called IMMMI, trying to compete with Nielsen, trying to measure television watching. The cell phone just literally wakes up every 30 seconds listens for 5 seconds of ambience sound and matches it against database saying did I hear a commercial and if so which one. Oh my Gosh! You are giving ears to the global brand. Kamla: So you mentioned very, very interesting concepts on that answer I had asked. Tim: Yes, short question long answer. Kamla: That is ok. But it throws out two other questions. One was the privacy concern, which for instance the location aware phone and how it eavesdrops if you will, even if I gave it permission on what I am doing. The second is also the lack of transparency, and this is where you said that some people feel Google is not participatory. That could maybe stem from the fact that Google’s Page Rank is still not transparent. We still don’t know what is the secret sauce that Google has. So the lack of transparency and privacy- would not those be two issues that will come into play when we talk about the internet and Web 2.0? Tim: Let me talk about lack of transparency first. There are a lot of people who think that particularly because of the roots of the technology community particularly in today’s technology community in open standard and open source software. They take almost as an article of faith that openness is this trump card that really drives innovation. What we see looking at the history of technology is that again and again early innovated markets are open. Once players get competitive advantage they become less open and they start to extract more value from the eco-system and there is this almost a Hegelian thesis-synthesis-antithesis kind of thing that happens in the industry, where we see this recycling. The early PC was this open platform, a rebellion against the dominance of IBM and yet within 10-15 years we saw a new giants emerge with Microsoft taking IBM’s place as the closed dominator of the industry. Now, we are watching about the same thing and worrying about where is Google heading in that direction, open source software, new openness, open standards of the internet and yet we see the re-emergence of big centralized players, who are not necessarily transparent and who are doing they can to cement their leadership and some people see this as evil, I see this as the natural progression of technology. This is no more wrong than the fact that we start as a baby, we grow up to be a child, then a teenager and then an adolescent and then we grow old. This is the natural progression of technology business. So, what we have to do if we celebrate openness is we say ok, what is open now? We don’t worry about what used to be open and now closed. We do find that areas where still innovation is happening and we try to accelerate that process. So I guess this hasn’t entirely addressed transparency and I do think transparency is a good thing. But, overall in my world view I just kind of accept it all. This is great line by Lao Tsu, the Chinese philosopher, who says, “The sanest man sets up no deed, lays down no law, takes everything that happens as it comes, is something to animate not to appropriate, to earn not to own.” I think that if we just look on the panoply of the world as it passes by, we see there is this technology alternation. There is also a great line also from Pope John Paul-II, who said something wonderful. He said, “See everything, ignore a lot, improve a little”, and that is certainly part of my attitude towards technology. I am a crusader for openness, but I also get the world is the way it is, and we do what we can and we try to see it with an unjaundiced eye. We try to ignore a lot of things that are wrong we cannot fix and then we try to fix the things that we can. So over to your other question privacy- I feel like the standards of privacy are changed and they have to change. I do not think we have found the right balance yet. But if you look with that kind of open line that I was just describing you see that...say take Facebook, when they introduced the mini feed everyone was saying Oh my Gosh! This is big invasion of privacy, but in a few weeks they were saying this is incredibly useful. And Facebook then had to introduce new features to make it possible for people to be more private. Or, Flicker when they made that breakthrough by saying our photo is going to be to the world by default and they created a mechanism, where privacy can be brought back into the picture. So I think this arc right now will explore benefits that come from giving out privacy, from sharing information from letting other people build services with our data. We are going to figure out really great things as a result from that. Those location based applications that know where you are and your phone and therefore are able to give you much more intelligent search results or make recommendations to you. Fantastic! And then we are going to say oh! this is too much and we are going to come back and we are going to say ok how we get those benefits, while protecting our necessary privacy. If we start with the idea that sharing this information is wrong, and we try to block things from happening. We never get the benefits in the first place. Whereas if we are willing to allow it will get a bit out of whack and we want to go back and recover and fix it we are in a much better position. You were listening to Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media, tune back in for part 2 of our conversation. This is Kamla Bhatt and this interview is brought to you in association with Live Mint Radio. And as always thank you for tuning in. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 6:46 am Sonia, Shahrukh in Newsweek’s powerful-50 listNew York: Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan have been ranked among the 50 most powerful people in the world by the prestigious US-based magazine Newsweek magazine in a list topped by President- elect Barack Obama. Pakistan army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who controls the the country’s nuclear weapons, is placed 20th on the list of the global “power elite” at the beginning of 2009 in the magazine’s January issue. Obama, who scripted history by becoming the first black-American to be voted to the White House, is followed by Chinese President Hu Jintao, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, German Chancellor Angela Markel and powerful Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. A surprise inclusion in the list, which the magazine admits is subjective, is Osama bin Laden, whom the Newsweek describes as “global terrorist.” North Korean dictator Jim Jong II also finds a place in the list. Placing Sonia Gandhi at 17th spot, the magazine says though Indian political scene is riven by factions, Congress remains the strongest national force and rules unchallenged. “In the world’s largest democracy, she is the queen.” The magazine describes Shahrukh Khan, who occupies 41st spot, as the ‘King of Bollywood.’ “It’s not just that his (Shahrukh Khan’s) romantic flicks make gazillions it’s where those gazillions come from. Khan is huge in the Muslim world, even in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the mullahs ban his films. (The movies thrive on the black market.) “Their main appeal is certainly the song-and-dance numbers, but Khan (a Muslim married to a Hindu) makes devoutly secular films where love trounces bigotry,” the magazine says, adding that Sonia Gandhi gives Khan’s DVDs to visitors, especially Muslim ones. “Here’s hoping tolerance will leap from reel life to real life.” On Kayani, it says, that in theory this mumbling chain-smoking Pakistan army chief answers to President Asif Ali Zardari. But Kayani and his troops remain the dominant power in what could be the most dangerous country in the world, it adds. “He’s responsible for Pakistan’s nukes; for the battle against Al-Qaeda and its tribal allies along the Afghan border; and for managing tensions with neighbour India,” the magazine stresses, noting that so far, his army has kept itself out of politics and seems focused on the battle against ‘jihadists´. “In the wake of the November terrorist attacks in Mumbai, Kayani stood firm on Pakistan’s sovereignty while also taking measures against the alleged sponsors of the outrage,” it says. About 47-year-old Obama, it says the presidency of the “intensely charismatic” Democrat, who will be inaugurated on 20 January, will be judged on how he handles the economic crisis that now envelops the US and the world. “For Obama to be remembered as a great President, he has to do nothing less than rescue capitalism.” For bin Laden, who finds 42nd spot, the magazine says the manhunt may not have been successful, but it has driven him far underground. Once a glutton for publicity, he has not shot a new video since September 2007, and no audio message from him has been heard since May 2008, it says. The magazine quotes knowledgeable Taliban sources as saying that “the Sheikh” - as acolytes call bin Laden - rarely has contact with even his top lieutenants, who are steadily being eliminated: in 2008, at least eight of the 20 most wanted Al-Qaeda operatives died in Predator attacks along the Afghan border. Awarding Chinese President Hu second place after Obama, Newsweek says he is a guy “you wouldn’t think twice about cautious, colourless and corporate and in the past, he has lost spotlight to other world leaders with bigger egos and sharper elbows.” “But to underestimate Hu would be a monumental error. His position as China’s president makes him CEO of a financial juggernaut that’s projected to post $280 billion trade surplus this year. “While the rest of the world plunges deeper into recession, Hu the Humble is emerging as the one who is holding the lifeline,” it says. The economic crisis and market meltdown has got “Economic Triumvirate” a place among the top ten. They are central bankers: Ben Bernanke of the US Federal Reserve; Jean-Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank (ECB); Masaaki Shirakawa of the Bank of Japan; and, to a lesser extent, counterparts in China, India, Brazil, Mexico and elsewhere. “They are enormously powerful, and in 2009 they may determine whether the global economy avoids calamity,” the magazine notes. “Not since the early 1980s, when high inflation plagued many advanced economies, or perhaps the 1930s, has their role been so crucial as global economic growth is slowing to a standstill.” “Economists at Deutsche Bank forecast that the world economy will expand a meager 0.2% in 2009 the worst year since at least 1950. In 2007, growth was almost 5%. Without stronger growth, the slump might feed on itself and fuel economic nationalism,“ the magazine warns. Giving reasons for placing Kim on the list, Newsweek notes that he is in bad shape after suffering a stroke but still presides over a handful of nuclear weapons, an arsenal of long range missiles and a million-man army. A weakened leader could in fact feel compelled to prove his toughness by threatening outside world. And in recent weeks Pyongyang has halted its rapprochement with South Korea and “torpedoed” talks aimed at getting it to give up its nuclear weapons. “Whether strong or weak, he’s still dangerous,” it observes. Others on the list include the Dalai Lama, former US President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary, Iranian strongman Ayatollah Ali Khemenei, Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, American General David Petraeus, Iraqi leader Nuri al-Maliki, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Pope Benedict XVI, Media Mogul Rupert Murdoch and popular show host Oprah Winfrey. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 6:42 am NRI buyers accuse Kolkata realtor of breaking promisesHaving shelled out huge amounts for a nest back home, non-resident Indian (NRI) buyers of Kolkata's tallest apartment building are now left complaining that the developer has not provided the promised amenities.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 21 Dec 2008 | 6:32 am US bankruptcies surge 30% with 10.4 lakh casesNew York: The world’s largest economy, the US, has seen a spurt in bankruptcy cases, with such filings jumping as much as 30% for 12 months ended 30 September compared to the year-ago period. According to the Administrative Office of the US Courts, as much as 10.4 lakh bankruptcy cases were filed in federal courts across the country for the year ending 30 September. The figure represents a 30% surge in comparison with just eight lakh filings in the same period a year ago. For the nation’s Federal Judiciary, the fiscal year ends on 30 September. The latest bankruptcy data are for 1 October, 2007 to 30 September, 2008. Interestingly, September was the month in which “the highest of any 12-month period” bankruptcy cases were filed after the implementation of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act in 2006. It was September, when the Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the largest bankruptcy filing in the US history with the Wall Street company holding over $600 billion in assets. Washington Mutual having more than $300 billion holdings had also filed for bankruptcy under chapter 11 in the same month after it failed to save itself from the ongoing financial downturn. As per the statistics as much as 757 bankruptcy cases were filed in the month of September under Chapter 11 in business category filing before the US federal courts located across the country. Chapter 11 is a chapter of the United States Bankruptcy Code, which permits reorganisation under the bankruptcy laws of the country. Bankruptcy under this chapter is available to any business, whether organised as a corporation or sole proprietorship, and to individuals, although it is most prominently used by corporate entities. While, for year ended 30 September total business filing touched 38,651, a growth of 49% from 25,925 cases in September 2007. In past times, the ongoing global financial crisis has forced so many big firms to seek protection from the government by way of filing bankruptcy cases before the courts. In December itself newspaper industry in the US has seen the biggest victim when Tribune Compnay filed for bankruptcy protection. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 6:16 am US bankruptcies surge 30% with 10.4 lakh casesNew York: The world’s largest economy, the US, has seen a spurt in bankruptcy cases, with such filings jumping as much as 30% for 12 months ended 30 September compared to the year-ago period. According to the Administrative Office of the US Courts, as much as 10.4 lakh bankruptcy cases were filed in federal courts across the country for the year ending 30 September. The figure represents a 30% surge in comparison with just eight lakh filings in the same period a year ago. For the nation’s Federal Judiciary, the fiscal year ends on 30 September. The latest bankruptcy data are for 1 October, 2007 to 30 September, 2008. Interestingly, September was the month in which “the highest of any 12-month period” bankruptcy cases were filed after the implementation of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act in 2006. It was September, when the Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the largest bankruptcy filing in the US history with the Wall Street company holding over $600 billion in assets. Washington Mutual having more than $300 billion holdings had also filed for bankruptcy under chapter 11 in the same month after it failed to save itself from the ongoing financial downturn. As per the statistics as much as 757 bankruptcy cases were filed in the month of September under Chapter 11 in business category filing before the US federal courts located across the country. Chapter 11 is a chapter of the United States Bankruptcy Code, which permits reorganisation under the bankruptcy laws of the country. Bankruptcy under this chapter is available to any business, whether organised as a corporation or sole proprietorship, and to individuals, although it is most prominently used by corporate entities. While, for year ended 30 September total business filing touched 38,651, a growth of 49% from 25,925 cases in September 2007. In past times, the ongoing global financial crisis has forced so many big firms to seek protection from the government by way of filing bankruptcy cases before the courts. In December itself newspaper industry in the US has seen the biggest victim when Tribune Compnay filed for bankruptcy protection. Source: World Business - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 6:16 am Kochhar's Endeavour: To take ICICI Bank to top slot in 2 yrs - Press Trust of India
Source: Google News India - Business | 21 Dec 2008 | 5:39 am Top 10 firms gain Rs1 trillion in a weekMumbai: Country’s 10 most valued firms added a whopping Rs1,00,000 crore to their market capitalisation in a week, which witnessed an uptrend in the stock market, as state-run MMTC staged a comeback to the elite club. MMTC, after nearly a month, regained its lost turf and grabbed the fifth spot in the top 10 valued club’s list after adding Rs47,639 crore to its market capitalisation. PSU mining giant MMTC saw its valuation surging to Rs95,838 crore, from Rs48,198 crore in the week-ago period. Shares of MMTC skyrocketed 98% in the week to settle at Rs19,167.50 on Friday last. Since 28 November, when the firm had first slipped out of the elite club, it has gained about 92% in its share price. The total market capitalisation of the top 10 firms - comprising six public sector and four private sector entities - rose for second straight week gaining Rs1,03,780 crore. At the end of Friday’s trade last week, the combined valuation of the elite club stood at Rs11,02,154 crore, against Rs9,98,375 crore a week ago. Country’s most valued firm Reliance Industries added Rs6,777 crore to its valuation in a week. RIL, which regained its Rs2 trillion mark in market capitalisation last week, was the numero uno in the list at the end of the Friday’s trade. Mukesh Ambani-led RIL saw its valuation rising to Rs2,12,345 crore at the end of Friday’s trade, from Rs2,05,568.45 crore a week ago. However, cellular giant Bharti Airtel dropped to the fourth place, after losing Rs142.37 crore in a week. The Sunil Mittal-led company saw its market capitalisation dropping to Rs1,36,965 crore at the end of Friday’s trade. Country’s largest lender State Bank of India dropped to sixth position even after witnessing an addition of Rs4,635 crore in its valuations. The market capitalisation of SBI stood at Rs81,750 crore at the end of Friday’s trade. State-run power utility NTPC rose to the third spot after gaining Rs14,100 crore. Its market capitalisation at the end of trade last week was at Rs1,50,150 crore. Similarly, Bhel slipped one place to seventh despite adding Rs3,828 crore to its valuation. Also, ITC dropped three places to the 10th spot despite adding Rs 2,225 crore. On the other hand, the biggest private sector lender ICICI Bank witnessed its valuation surging to Rs52,540 crore at the end of Friday’s trade, a gain of Rs6,735 crore over the week ago period. Also, HDFC Bank saw its valuation rising to Rs44,699.22 crore, after adding Rs5,579.96 crore during the week. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 21 Dec 2008 | 5:26 am HC pulls up MCD for poor state of city roads - Press Trust of India
Source: Google News India - Business | 21 Dec 2008 | 4:28 am SBI cuts lending, deposit ratesMUMBAI (Reuters) - State Bank of India, the country's biggest bank will slash its lending rate by 75 basis points, with effect from Jan. 1, the bank said in a e-mailed statement issued late on Saturday.Source: Reuters: Money News | 21 Dec 2008 | 4:08 am Japan, Canada unveil economic aid; Belgian govt fallsLONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Japan, Germany and Canada pledged new measures on Saturday to confront a financial crisis that has toppled banks, endangered the global auto industry and now played a part in the demise of Belgium's government.Source: Reuters: Money News | 21 Dec 2008 | 3:58 am China's Wen reassures students on jobs amid crisisBEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, in a surprise visit to a Beijing university, tried reassuring students they would be able to find jobs amid the current global economic woes, and promised more unspecified steps to help the economy.Source: Reuters: Money News | 21 Dec 2008 | 3:55 am Bush: auto plan only way to stave off collapseWASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Saturday said offering government loans to U.S. automakers was the only option left to prevent the industry from collapsing after alternatives were ruled out or failed.Source: Reuters: Money News | 21 Dec 2008 | 3:53 am Cable breaks cut Internet in Mideast, South AsiaCAIRO (Reuters) - Breaks in submarine cables which link Europe and the Middle East disrupted Internet and international telephone services in parts of the Middle East and South Asia, officials said on Saturday.Source: Reuters: Money News | 21 Dec 2008 | 3:06 am Undersea cable damage: BPOs switch to back-upNew Delhi, Dec. 20 Business process outsourcing (BPOs) companies in India switched to back-up routes and circuits to serve overseas clients, after three undersea cables damaged in the Mediterranean disrupted internet and communication linksSource: Business Line - Home Page | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:00 am Income uncertainty turning potential car buyers awayNew Delhi, Dec. 20 Till a few weeks ago, it was high interest rates and lack of financing that were cited as the major reasons for declining car sales. But now, with many manufacturing sectors witnessing job cuts, several potential car buyers areSource: Business Line - Home Page | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:00 am Trident Hotel to roll out red-carpet todayMumbai, Dec. 20 The warm smiles, piped music and greetings with folded hands were back at The Trident lobby on Saturday, as it prepared to roll out its red-carpet to the public on Sunday — just weeks after the hotel witnessed a two-daySource: Business Line - Home Page | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:00 am Weekly News Round-upSource: Business Line - Home Page | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:00 am State Bank to offer cheaper loans from New YearMumbai, Dec. 20 Come New Year, State Bank of India’s borrowers, both retail and corporate, will have something to cheer about. India’s biggest bank has decided to slash its benchmark prime lending rate (BPLR) by 75 basis points toSource: Business Line - Home Page | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:00 am P&G looks to enter more product categoriesChennai, Dec. 20 Consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble, which is present in eight product categories in India, will look to increase its presence in the local market by picking more brands from P&G’s stable of 21 categories that itSource: Business Line - Home Page | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:00 am Govt gives nod for radar coverage of coastlineNew Delhi, Dec. 20 In an effort to enhance coastal security, the Government has not only approved a proposal to provide radar coverage of the entire coastline but also asked the Coast Guards to lease or hire ships from the global market in theSource: Business Line - Home Page | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:00 am Re appreciation boosts FII returnsIf the year-end rally has made the domestic equity investors cheerful, foreign institutional investors (FII) have a greater reason to celebrate.Source: Business Line - Home Page | 21 Dec 2008 | 12:00 am Crude oil hits four-year lows - Economic Times
Source: Google News India - Business | 20 Dec 2008 | 8:58 pm Common board is bee in IIM's bonnet - Times of India
Source: Google News India - Business | 20 Dec 2008 | 7:19 pm RBI not done with cutsPrime Minister Manmohan Singh today met Reserve Bank of India Governor D Subbarao and Finance Secretary Arun Ramanathan in New Delhi to discuss the macroeconomic situation.Source: Business Standard | Front Page Headlines | 20 Dec 2008 | 7:14 pm SBI cuts rates, pressure on othersThe countrys largest lender, State Bank of India, today announced a 75-basis-point cut in its benchmark prime lending rate, bringing it down to 12.25 per cent from January 1.??In addition, itSource: Business Standard | Front Page Headlines | 20 Dec 2008 | 7:13 pm Pyramid Saimira promoters told to make open offerPromoter Saminathan has acquired more than 5 per cent equity in 2008.??Securities & Exchange Board of India, or Sebi, has directed Indias largest theatre chain, Pyramid Saimira Theatre, toSource: Business Standard | Front Page Headlines | 20 Dec 2008 | 7:12 pm Taj, Trident insurance claims pegged at Rs 500 crInsurance companies estimate the claims of Mumbais Taj Mahal Hotel and Tower at Rs 400 crore and of Oberoi-Trident at Rs 100 crore.Source: Business Standard | Front Page Headlines | 20 Dec 2008 | 7:12 pm Govt seeks Satyam report in 3 weeks - Business Standard
Source: Google News India - Business | 20 Dec 2008 | 7:01 pm SBI cuts PLR by .75%, deposit rates by 1% - Economic Times
Source: Google News India - Business | 20 Dec 2008 | 6:43 pm Tourism ind grapples with eco slowdown, not security issuesBritish tourists are not deterred by the Mumbai attacks and are packing off for their planned India holidays. Tour operators say its not security concerns, but economic recession that the industry is still grappling with. Bargain holidays seem to be the order of the day.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 20 Dec 2008 | 1:51 pm Canadian economy heading towards recessionAs the Canadian economy heads towards recession, the positive growth momentum is expected to slow down during the first quarter of 2009.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 20 Dec 2008 | 1:39 pm Reliance Power invests 79% of IPO proceeds in FMPsWhen 50 lakh individuals invested in Reliance Power\'s IPO in January, they would have hardly imagined they were in effect putting their money in a mutual fund investment. In fact, the 40 lakh investors that still hold shares of the company have seen Rs 7,500 crore of their proceeds are invested in fixed maturity plans, or FMPs.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 20 Dec 2008 | 1:31 pm Wait for DDA\'s affordable housing continuesThe muchhailed allotment of affordable houses by the Delhi Development Authority or the DDA may have started, but over 25,000 people are still holding a 27year old vigil for allotment of their homes.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 20 Dec 2008 | 12:47 pm Tatas acquires 300 acres for TN\'s titaniumdioxide projectThe Tata Group\'s titanium dioxide project in Tamil Nadu, which had been called off earlier this year, now seems to be making some headway. The group has acquired 300 acres for the project.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 20 Dec 2008 | 12:28 pm EIH Ltd says occupancy at hotels falls after attacksMUMBAI (Reuters) - India's EIH Ltd, said on Saturday cancellation of rooms has risen at its hotels in the country and sees occupancy rates at one of its key property fall by a third after the terror attacks in Mumbai that left 179 dead.Source: Reuters: Money News | 20 Dec 2008 | 12:27 pm Maruti to set up driving training centre in UttarakhandMaruti Suzuki on Saturday said it will set up a motor driving institute in Uttarakhand for imparting training and awareness on road safety.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 20 Dec 2008 | 12:17 pm Tata Tele restructures equity ahead of NTTDoCoMo dealTata Teleservices has restructured equity structure ahead of the NTTDocomo deal. TTSL submitted scheme of arrangement of equity before Delhi High Court on September 13. Delhi High Court approved the scheme of arrangement on November 7. Upon restructuring, 317.35 crore shares stand cancelled.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 20 Dec 2008 | 12:14 pm
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