Finance & Market

One should be careful when taking advice from experts, and not suspend one's own judgment.

Banks and security researchers are working to use physical gadgets to block digital thieves.

Projecting a whopping Rs 10,000 crore (Rs 100 billion) economic engagement with Bhutan in areas like telecom, infrastructure and education, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday unveiled a mega plan for cooperation in the power sector.

Premier British carrier Virgin Atlantic took the lead in introducing day time flights out of Delhi. British Airways followed suit by introducing its additional flight during day time. German carrier Lufthansa now also operates day time flights to Munich out of Delhi and Mumbai, apart from its night services to Frankfurt.

That panic has set in among policy makers is suggestive of the worst being over in global inflation.

Private partners like GMR and GVR, humiliated from time to time, have good reason to shrug their shoulders and argue that matters are outside their control.

With inflation rising to 44-month high, Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Friday warned steel and cement manufacturers of administrative steps price cuts announced by them were not enough to cool prices.

"There are multiple reasons for the current food crisis, primarily because of recent cyclones in Bangladesh and Myanmar, which destroyed the entire rice crops in these countries, also exporters of rice. Now they have to import rice instead of exporting it," External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said during the deliberations on the issue at the ministerial meet in Yekaterinburg (Russia).

Many a time, investors get carried away by the high returns offered by a particular offering. Out of sheer ignorance most investors do not bother to question the authenticity or the transparency of the examples/illustrations that have been used to project the high returns.

India imports 73 per cent of its crude oil import needs and the cost of imports would spiral after crude inched closer to a record $125 per barrel, while rupee touched its 13-month low, official sources said. The basket of crude oil India imports was at $120.65 per barrel on Thursday, a 91 per cent jump over the last fiscal's lowest price of 62.91 dollars recorded on May 9, 2007, official sources said.

If we want to accelerate the recent trend of reducing waste, it may be time to consider the radical step of, well, relaxing more, consuming less, and living fuller lives.

Fresh buying in banking stocks helped the index rebound into the positive zone. The index touched a high of 17,497 - up 182 points from day's low. The Sensex finally ended with a gain of 81 points at 17,435. The NSE Nifty moved up 42 points to close at 5,158.

Poor bandwidth availability and last-mile connectivity might have slowed the use of unified communications as a technology, but now it's emerging as a strategic tool with corporations for employee retention and going green. Corporations are encouraging the use of UC, helping them to curtail business travel. This, they believe, results in lowering carbon dioxide emission into the atmosphere.

Technology start-ups in India garnered an estimated $6-10 million in 2007, but most are struggling to break-even on their initial Reserach & Development investments. Does the problem lie with what are supposed to have developed as the seedbeds of innovation -India's universities?

An analysis by Business Standard suggests that for the week ended May 10, for which data will be released next Friday, the inflation rate will range between 7.67 per cent and 8.05 per cent, depending on how the index moves.