The partially convertible rupee ended at 50.02/03 per dollar, 0.7 per cent weaker than 49.66/67 at Tuesday’s close. It hit a low of 50.03 in late trade, its weakest since Oct 27 when it hit a record low of 50.29.

“I still feel there is very good room for the dollar-rupee to go up to 52,” said V. Kumar, chief dealer with State Bank of Travancore.

Doctors in Germany say a patient appears to have been cured of HIV by a bone marrow transplant from a donor who had a genetic resistance to the virus.
The researchers in Berlin said the man, who suffered from leukaemia and HIV, had shown no sign of either disease since the transplant two years ago.
But they stressed it was an unusual case which needed further investigation.
Experts said the result may boost interest in gene therapy for HIV.
Berlin’s Charite clinic said the 42-year-old patient was an American living in Berlin, but the man has not been identified.

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I am so like freaking happy for people who can actually get cure to this terrible, horrible, obnoxious disease. Its amazing, I praise to the scientists, lab workers, chemists, biologists, they truly work very very hard their whole lives to find cures to the terrible disease. Some people including me say Docs get a lot of money, but if you really look at it, they kill their social lives and study until the age of 40 to reach their potential. By then they are tired, but they go into discovering more for us. Doctors really give up a lot of them for us.

Obama in a statement announced that Pete Rouse will serve as senior advisor, while Mona Sutphen and Jim Messina will serve as deputy chief of staff.

“These individuals are important additions to a team with the experience and ability to help our nation overcome pressing challenges at home and around the world,” Obama said in a statement.

The INS Tabar opened fire on a pirate “mother ship” after it came under attack, a government statement said.

“The Moon Impact Probe (MIP) is expected to be detached (from Chandrayaan-1) at around 10pm tomorrow,” Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) spokesperson S Satish said. Miniature Indian flags are painted on four sides of MIP. “It will signify the entry of India on Moon,” Satish said. “During its 20-minute descent to the moon’s surface, MIP will take pictures and transmit these back to the ground,” he said. MIP is one of the 11 scientific instruments (payloads) onboard Chandrayaan-1, India’s first unmanned spacecraft mission to Moon launched on October 22.

The spacecraft yesterday reached its final orbital home, about 100 kms over the moon surface after ISRO scientists successfully carried out the last critical orbit lowering operation.

Chairman of NSFA said that all crew members are safe.

Seema Goyal, wife of captain Prabhat Goyal onboard the ship, is said to have received the information from the company which owns the ship.

Initial reports suggested that the demands of the pirates were met after prolonged negotiations. The Japanese company reportedly paid the ransom to the pirates.

Meeting
under the banner of G20, convened by US President George W Bush, the leaders warned that “economic momentum is slowing substantially in major economies and the global outlook has weakened”.

While the Summit pledged to help emerging and developing economies gain access to finance in current difficult conditions, Bush told reporters that the Summit had rejected protectionism and backed an action plan to reform the multilateral financial institutions.

National capital Delhi has 10 billionaires having a cumulative networth of USD 29.53 billion, next only to Mumbai. The city boasts of country’s fourth richest man—telecom czar Sunil Mittal and the richest women—Savitri Jindal— with fortunes worth USD 7.9 billion and USD 2.9 billion, respectively. Apart from Mittal, Delhi houses one more billionaire – Kushal Pal Singh – who has found a place in the top 10, with a networth of USD 7.8 billion.

Meanwhile, pharma major Cipla’s Yusuf Hamied—who is placed at the 26th spot with a net worth of USD 1.06 billion— resides both in Mumbai and London. Further, another city Pune is home to four billionaires, while the country’s IT hub Bangalore houses three. However, when it comes to networth, Bangalore takes the lead with USD 9.43 billion, whereas Pune’s billionaires’ are together worth just USD 4.22 billion.

Others billionaires residing in Mumbai includes Dilip Shanghvi (11), Uday Kotak (19),Chandru Raheja (20), Venugopal Dhoot (25), Subhash Chandra (28), Rajan Raheja (30), Niranjan Hiranandani (35), Hemant Shah (37), Gracias Saldanha (38)and Anand Jain (39). Billionaires from Delhi includes Malvinder and Shivinder Singh (13), Shiv Nadar (15), Indu Jain (17) and Ramesh Chandra (27).

India is officially on the moon. After a couple of tense moments, the Lunar Impact Probe which was launched by the Chandrayaan planted the Tricolour on the moon at 8.31pm.

http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/nov/14chandrayaans-mip-lands-on-moon.htm

It had been exploring other sources of funds in order to avoid stringent IMF conditions but failed to find a deal. Speaking at a news conference in Karachi, Mr Tarin said Pakistan would apply formally for the loan next week. The government stands to receive $4bn this year as part of the 23-month IMF deal, the AFP news agency reports. It will start repaying the loan in 2011.

Akram felt that Hayden’s comments were a result of Aussies’ old habit of bad-mouthing their opponents whenever they lose.

“The thing about the Aussies is that they are sore losers. They get personal when they get beaten. It is all a matter of sour grapes and after going home, they’ve started calling India a third-world country,” Akram was quoted as saying by Mobile ESPN.

Hayden complained it was the host batsmen’s reluctance to face problems with people around the sight screen that led to the Aussies falling behind the over rate.

The comments came at a time when several top Australian cricketers, including Hayden, turned to India to make a quick buck from the cash-rich Indian Premier league (IPL).

“India is a superpower now; it is a hundred years ahead of Australia, which is no more than a village, as compared to India. You don’t blame sight screens for poor over rates. Even Allan Border was critical of Australian tactics on the pitch,” Akram said.

“If there is a major strike on this country (the US), it will bear the fingerprints of Al Qaeda,” he warned. Gen Hayden, however, depicted Al Qaeda chief as an extremely frustrated man who spent all his time trying to survive and had no time for guiding his militants. “[Bin Laden] is putting a lot of energy into his own survival, a lot of energy into his own security,” the CIA chief said. “He appears to be largely isolated from the day-to-day operations of the organization he nominally heads.” Capturing Bin Laden, however, remained the US government’s top priority, he added. “His death or capture clearly would have a significant impact on the confidence of his followers – both core Al Qaeda and unaffiliated extremists throughout the world,” he said.

After depicting Pakistan as the hub of all major terrorist activities in the world, the CIA chief also conceded that Pakistan faced a complex situation. “While the problem looks easy from thousands of miles away, it’s extremely difficult up close because of the tribal issues,” he said. “We’ve killed and captured more top Al Qaeda operatives with the support of the Pakistani security forces than anywhere else in the world. What remains unclear is what the end game is,” he added.

In an image makeover to the cutoff procedure, IITs have also changed the nomenclature: the subject cutoff will hereafter be called the “minimum qualifying mark for ranking (MQMR)”. The new procedure announced last week however smacks of adhocism as, far from being a systemic change based on a coherent policy, it seems to be more a frantic attempt to break out of the single-digit syndrome of the last two years.

The application of the MQMR formula to the data of the two years in which JEE had single-digit cutoffs does indicate that the cutoffs in JEE 2009 could just about enter double figures.

The bombs, kept in four gunny bags, were found concealed in a bush at Maliyad Kunnu under the Kolavalloor police station limits by a raiding police party led by Thalassery DySP Prakashan, a senior police official said. Top police officials have rushed to the spot.

Police had intensified raids in the area following the death of two RSS activists in a bomb explosion at nearby Cheruvanchery on Nov 10 as the youth were suspected to have been engaged in either making or shifting the crude bombs.

Read More : http://www.desihotmasala.com/2008/11/top-10-most-expensive-accidents-in.html

The Food and Drug Administration is requiring importers of the halted shipments to test for the chemical, which is used to make plastic and fertilizer but has been added to human and animal food to boost protein readings. The types of products likely to be waylaid are cookies, candies, and other goods made with milk or milk powder.

We also came up with a list of “Unlikely Events,” things that our editors thought would realistically never happen. They were longshots —at best— and meant mostly to be funny. The unlikely events included:

“Wal-Mart will file for federal bankruptcy protection.”
“Ralph Nader will be elected president of the United States.”
“Dane Cook will win the Academy Award for Best Actor.”
“A Michael Jackson comeback record will reach No. 1 on the Billboard charts.”

Asked whether Sarabjit would be freed in exchange for some Pakistani prisoners being held in India, Foreign Office spokesman Mohammad Sadiq said “status quo was being maintained in the case of the Indian prisoner”.

He declined to give further details. Sadiq’s comments came three days after reports that Sarabjit had been shifted from death row cell to one for political prisoners in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail.

According to Isro officials, Chandrayaan’s liquid engine was fired for 817 seconds when the spacecraft passed at a distance of about 500 km from the moon to reduce its velocity to enable the lunar gravity to capture it around the moon. Chandrayaan’s speed was reduced to 366 metres per second when it flew into the moon’s orbit.

Experts said it was a significant feat because India’s moonshot was successful in the very first attempt — something that even major space powers like the US and Russia could not achieve. The man who launched the Indian moon mission, Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, had said, “It’s undoubtedly a great moment for India because nearly 50% of the moon missions of other countries have not been successful.”

To avail of welfare schemes, a certificate of having a toilet in the house will be needed, Pune collector Chandrakant Dalvi told reporters. A joint meeting of district officials, Zilla Parishad office bearers and police authorities headed by the Pune collector Chandrakant Dalvi told reporters that it was also decided not to issue the land ownership certification of revenue department under section 7/12 to those villagers who failed to comply with the directive on having a toilet in the premises.

Dalvi who said it was a question of “changing the mindset” of villagers who were apathetic in having toilets for their houses despite various schemes to facilitate them.

The biggest incentive was a Rs 9,570 crore soft loan over 20 years — close to 25 per cent of Gujarat’s annual budget.

Tata Motors will repay the loan in 20 years, at 0.1 per cent interest rate and will repay the land price in eight equal annual installments.

The government will also provide a four-lane road connectivity and also exempt Tatas from electricity duty, registration and transfer charges of land.

Ahmed Rashid, an acknowledged authority on the Taliban and Afghanistan, and Shuja Nawaz, author of a book on the Pakistan army, have been named “consultants” at the classified review starting in Florida this weekend. The aim is to review the war plans in Afghanistan and Iraq as the Barack Obama administration considers the wisdom of a troop surge in Afghanistan.

About 100 military specialists, known as the Joint Strategic Assessment Team, will help with the wide-ranging assessment and are expected to report in February. They will be helped by policy officials from the participating countries.

India’s concern stems from the possibility that Rashid’s latest recommendation of the “grand bargain” to solve Afghanistan’s mammoth problems of security and terrorism may have found fertile ground in the Obama set. Certainly, the central argument in the article draws the same connections between “solving” terrorism in Afghanistan and “solving” Kashmir that Obama has been advocating for a while, including in the same journal some time ago.

The two-stage missile, which can carry a payload up to 1 tonne, has a range of 700 km. It has earlier undergone four tests from the underwater platform.

The missile had been test-fired in the past from a pontoon (replica of a submarine) placed inside sea off the Andhra Pradesh coast and once from Orissa coast.

“The preliminary exams were to begin in December. This had scared the girl as she had failed to clear her class X exams earlier too,” said police officials investigating the case.

Anjana hung herself from a metal hook at her home with a saree when her parents went to visit some friends.

But Teach India — an initiative of TOI — seems to have answered that prayer. Over 500 people in this city, from all walks of life, have volunteered to give a few hours of their precious time to help spread education among the masses. Even better. Given the response from volunteers, some NGOs here have felt motivated to expand to newer venues.

The blast, which killed two persons while wounding five others, was reportedly targeted on the VIPs attending the event in the stadium, including North West Frontier Province Governor Owais Ahmed Ghani and other senior provincial ministers. However, Ghani and the other ministers had left the venue a short while before the attack and the explosion occurred minutes after the event in the stadium had ended.

Several vehicles parked outside the stadium was damaged while the site was covered with blood and body parts lay scattered on the ground which caused panic among passer-bys.

“This timely and successful intervention led to the pirates aborting their attempt. The naval ship thereafter closed in on the Indian merchant ship to escort her to safety,” said a statement from the Defence Ministry. All crew on board the Indian merchant vessel are safe.

MV Jag Arnav is a 38,000 tonne bulk carrier owned by the Great Eastern Shipping Company. The ship was eastward bound after transiting through the Suez Canal a few days ago. It is now being escorted out of the piracy-prone area by the warship. Commenting on the rescue mission, Navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta said: “Piracy is a crime which all men of war are required to combat at all times.

“Diplomatic endeavours and a strong presence by the Bangladesh navy resulted in the suspension of exploration by Myanmar in the disputed waters,” a statement issued by the Inter-Service Public Relations office of the country’s Defence Ministry said.