14 November 2008

Corporate Headlines

Stocks end 151 points lower
Rupee off 2-week lows
'India may face a slowdown in FDI'
FX reserves at $251.364 bn on Nov 7
Oil slips below $58 despite stock rally
Citi lowers India growth forecast
D&B expects RBI to cut rates by 0.50%

'Accumulate' Reliance Petro: Analysts
Religare Hichens sees Rs 1,229 on Titan

Recession spreads ahead of G20 summitThe worst financial crisis in 80 years has weakened the world's major economies and euro zone economy had shrunk by 0.2%.
Sun to cut up to 6K jobs Brazil's Sao Paulo loses 10K jobs
US teetering on $14 trillion debt Oct budget deficit at $237 bn
More >>

RIL-RNRL case: Govt says it will finalise gas price
DoCoMo makes Rs 949 cr open offer for 20% in TTML
Sun Microsystems to cut up to 6,000 jobs
Investing in realty a good hedge against inflation
No Indian company in world's 100 most accountable

Earnings of Sensex cos grow by 10.1% in Q2
MetLife plans expansion; to hire 33,000
TTML open offer at Rs 24.70 a share
RCom adds 1.76 mn mobile users in Oct
Shree Renuka Sugars Q4 net jump two folds

Source:ET,BS,BL etc

Indian tricolour finally lands on the moon

Indian tricolour finally lands on the moon

The Indian tricolour marked its presence on the moon tonight (at 8.31 pm IST) after having flown 3,86,000 km from the earth. The timing of


this proud moment has been specially designed to coincide with Children's Day. The United States, the former Soviet Union and the European Space Agency comprising 17 countries already have their flags on the moon. The Indian tricolour is painted on all sides of the 29-kg Moon Impact Probe which is attached to the main orbiting spacecraft, Chandrayaan-1, which was launched on October 22. The inclusion of the MIP as part of the Chandrayaan mission came at the suggestion of former President A P J Abdul Kalam, a former rocket scientist, during the International Lunar Exploration Working Group conference held at Udaipur in November 2004. The Indian tricolour has been hoisted on Mount Everest and Antarctica. And now it is on the moon though it was not hoisted. The flight of the MIP on Friday is expected to be a forerunner to the second Indian moon mission, Chandrayaan-2, which will carry a Russian rover and alander slated for lift-off between 2010 and 2012. The crash landing of MIP will help in assessing future soft-landing technologies.


Chandrayaan project director Mylaswamy Annadurai explained to TOI on Friday that at about 8 pm on Friday, a command will be flashed to the MIP from Isro's telemetry, tracking and command network (Istrac) at Bangalore for it to detach from the orbiter. "The MIP will separate and with its three instruments, zoom towards the lunar south pole at a velocity of 1.5km per second," he said. "At Istrac's mission control room, we will immediately come to know that the MIP has separated from the orbiter. The MIP's flight path will first take it over the Malapert crater for about nine seconds and then crashland near the Shackleton Crater about 25 minutes after its detachment from the orbiter. Malapert Crater is not far from the Shackleton crater," he added. Annadurai said that after this, the orbiter will fly in the opposite side and thus data will not be immediately available. "The downloading of data from the MIP to the orbiting Chandrayaan and then to the ground station will start once the spacecraft comes over the north pole of the moon. It will take a couple of hours for the data from the MIP to be downloaded and processed," Annadurai said. He said that once the MIP crashlands on the moon, its own survivability and that of the three instruments will be in question. The probe uses solid propellants. "India's physical presence on the moon with the tricolour will be assured," he said.

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ISRO to launch Chandrayaan-II by 2012


Source:ET

Stocks end 151 points lower

Stocks end 151 points lower

Volatility was at its peak Friday as gloomy global economic outlook eclipsed the euphoria over a rally in overseas markets and cool-off in domestic inflation. Equity benchmarks opened on a firm footing but lost ground after the first half-hour of trade. After see-sawing through the day, key indices finally surrendered to losses. “Global worries continue to haunt market sentiment. Even though inflation eased to single digit, it failed to cheer investors. Given the current pessimistic scenario, it looks like the market is not willing to accept any positive news,” said Ajay Parmar, head of research at Emkay Global Financial Services. More so, investors were unwilling to take any bets ahead of the crucial G-20 summit underway in Washington. The G20 summit of industrialised and emerging economies will explore ways to deal with the world's biggest financial crisis. “Investors are not at all confident of carrying positions overnight, which is why there is unwinding happening at higher levels,” Parmar added.

Bombay Stock Exchange's Sensex ended 1.58 per cent or 150.91 points lower at 9,385.42. The index fell to a low of 9,267.49 from a high of 9,836.11. National Stock Exchange's Nifty slipped 1.34 per cent or 38.1 points to 2810.35. The index swung in a range of 2778.80 and 2938.80.

BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices were down 1.99 per cent and 1.27 per cent respectively. Biggest losers in the Sensex pack were ACC (-8.95%), Tata Motors (8.49%), Tata Steel (-6.4%), HDFC (4.86%), Jaiprakash Associates (-4.67%) and Larsen & Toubro (-4.36%). Reliance Industries, the heaviest among Sensex stocks, fell for the fourth straight day, losing 1.17 per cent at Rs 1,148.55. Intra-day, the stock fell to a low of Rs 1088.65. In the last four days, RIL has declined by 5.69 per cent. Bharti Airtel (2.99%), Reliance Communications (1.88%), Tata Power (2.02%), HDFC Bank (0.37%) and Hindustan Unilever (0.3%) ended with decent gains. Market breadth remained negative with 1594 declines against 924 advances on BSE. Adding to the gloom, investors were worried about the state of the country's economy after economists lowered their forecasts for India. Many now expect growth to slow to 7 per cent or less in the year to March 2009, sharply slower than 9 per cent and higher growth clocked up in the past three fiscal years. Elsewhere, the Euro zone slipped into recession, third-quarter data confirmed. The quarterly decline was prompted mainly by a technical recession in the Euro zone's biggest economy, Germany, and the third-biggest, Italy. However, the second-biggest, France defied market expectations of a similar fate, growing by 0.1 per cent in the third quarter.


Source:ET