10.09.2008

• RBI Governor pegs growth at 8%:
• New RBI Governor, Duvvuri Subbarao sounded positive on growth and a little less hawkish than his predecessor on inflation. He said the central bank was sticking to its earlier estimate of 8% growth, describing the imminent drop in the headline rate as a ‘mathematical inevitability’
• Origins of inflation lie in prices largely of food, metals and crude. Food is an annual if not a biannual phenomenon and responses have already kicked in. The recent movement in crude prices has been in response to the supply-demand factors and the US situation
• Central bank would continue to monitor credit growth since the transmission of the tightening measures taken by RBI earlier would be felt only over a period of time
• The new RBI governor, who is perceived to have the mandate to push reforms, said financial sector reforms would have to follow reforms in the real sector
• Reports available with RBI: Patil Committee report on bond markets, the Percy Mistry committee report on Mumbai as an international financial centre and the Raghuram Rajan committee on financial sector reforms
• Good answer in interviews regarding inflation: Sustained rise in prices would require policy intervention, while monetary measures can take care of temporary rises
• Mysterious Mauritian company buys 17% in BPL mobile:
• In the past one year, an unknown Mauritius entity has picked up as much as 17% stake in BPL Mobile, a Mumbai mobile operator over which Vodafone Essar (VEL) and the Ruias of the Essar Group are locked in arbitration. Details of these transactions emerged in the course of arbitration proceedings earlier this month.
• In proceedings before the arbitration panel, Vodafone has raised questions about the ownership and background of the Mauritius-based entity called Gytsy Rover. The arbitration panel has frozen any further transactions of BPL Mobile shares.
• BPL Mobile had issued fresh equity shares to Gytsy Rover to raise money for operations of Loop Telecom, its telecom subsidiary. The transaction involved a much higher amount, possibly in the region of Rs 800 crore-Rs 1,000 crore rather than the $80 million (around Rs 320 crore) mentioned in the BPL statement.
• BPL believes that the capital issuance was not in violation of the operative interim order of the arbitrators
• The cracks in the partnership between Vodafone Group Plc and the Ruias of the Essar Group, its JV partner in India, are likely to widen in the wake of these disclosures
• Hunt for the Origin of Universe begins; Indian Scientists contribution impressive
• WHEN the 27-km long Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator, goes live on Wednesday in the Alps along the Swiss-French border, it will kick off one of the largest man-made experiments in history
• The LHC accelerator, which is accurate to a nanosecond, will be used to slam particles into each other to try to recreate the conditions at the beginning of time — as in the Big Bang.
• No collisions will take place today. September 10 simply marks the launch wherein two beams will be sent in the tunnel, one clockwise and the other anti-clockwise. The particle smashing at close to speed of light (about 300,000 km per second) will start on October 21.
• Around 200 of the 2,000 scientists doing the experiment are from India. The entire system is sitting on precision motion positioning systems developed, among other places, at the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT), Indore, by the Electronics Corporation of India. Indian institutes like Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Trombay, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, RRCAT, Indore, Banaras Hindu University and varsities of Delhi, Jaipur, Punjab have contributed significantly to the experiment.
• CERN is a French acronym for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research
• Check out this page for details
• Graft cases knock SC door
• The Uttar Pradesh police has identified 34 sitting judges, including one in the Supreme Court, as among those allegedly involved in the embezzlement of provident fund money of class IV employees of the Ghaziabad court
• The development extends the crisis of credibility facing government institutions to the judiciary as well and could perhaps jolt it into reconsidering whether to persist with the immunity that the judges enjoy.
• Besides an apex court judge, those under the scanner include eight judges in the Allahabad high court, one each in the Uttarakhand and Calcutta HCs and 23 lower court judges.
• The case involves fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 23 crore from the PF deposits of class IV employees of the courts in Ghaziabad by the treasury officer, Ashutosh Asthana. The treasury officer took out the money by forging applications of employees which were approved by the district judges concerned, many of whom have since been elevated to High Courts and the Supreme Court.
• The preliminary findings of the police in Ghaziabad has forced the Supreme Court to recognise the necessity of handing over the case to the CBI
• Smoking on Roads only ??
• Directive issued by the Union health ministry under its Prohibition of Smoking in Public Places Rules, 2008 ban tobacco consumption in government and private buildings from October 2
• According to the directive, cafes, restaurants, schools, pubs or discotheques, stadia, airports, hospitals and bus stands are classified as public places while roads and parks do not come under the definition of a public place
• Also those caught smoking in these “public places’’ will be fined Rs 200. The amount will be increased to Rs 1,000 in the future. Organisations that allow employees to smoke within their building premises will have shell out Rs 5,000 for every employee caught smoking
• 250-300 million Indians consume tobacco in various forms while around 14.1% schoolgoing children smoke. Research has shown that smoking will kill 10 lakh people in India annually from 2010
• Tobacco packets will begin to carry pictoral warnings from December 1 and will have to cover 40% of all tobacco packs
• Other news:
• Corporate India is expected to continue employing people in the next four months, putting India in the No 1 spot among 33 countries in terms of hiring, the latest Manpower Employment Outlook survey has revealed
• The race to induct a strategic partner in Tata Teleservices (TTSL) seems to have narrowed down to Japan’s NTT DoCoMo and European telecom giant France Telecom. The Tata Group is close to diluting its stake for around Rs 5,000 crore in the country’s sixth largest telecom operator
• Unitech likely to sell 26% stake of telecom slice to Telenor in Unitech’s telecom arm for around $500 million. The likely deal is understood to have valued the startup at $2 billion