13,000 may turn out lucky for gold and Sensex

The mood is sombre. Dark clouds have gathered on the horizon. The future looks bleak. No, this is not a new novel, just your typical market analyst commentary. The experts are concurring these days that the scenario is one of gloom and doom. In fact, there is wide choice of options to worry about, so pick the one you want to start with: inflation, fiscal deficit, oil prices, elections, industrial growth, corporate earnings, restrictive government policies, and many more. All the homilies-buy when the market dips, buy good companies, buy value, buy growth-have disappeared from analyst verbiage. Warren Buffett is forgotten.

Is this "gloom and doom" scenario for real? The recent performances of all portfolios seem to reinforce this outlook. Stock prices have been battered in recent weeks, reflecting this new perception of reality. Some of India’s largest companies have been battered by the recent fall-Reliance and Bharati Airtel are down 25% over the last two months, L&T is down 35%, ICICI Bank is down 40%, and SBI is down by a whopping 45%. Even mutual funds have not been spared, with most funds falling faster than the indices. Analysts have been revising Sensex targets to 12,500 or even as low as 10,500. What’s an investor to do? Run for cover, or brave the tide? Buying in this market would be a brave decision indeed. Or perhaps it would be foolish?

Let us try to make sense of the current worries. Are they as overwhelming as feared, or will they just be footnotes on the pages of history within a year or two? Most of the current worries are short-term in nature. Worries about a global slowdown have already started to weigh on commodity prices. And as infrastructure bottlenecks are resolved and additional supplies flow into the market, commodity prices look set to head downward. Most commodity stocks have already corrected sharply from their respective peaks.

Countries dependent on commodities have also seen a sharp drop in their markets over the last two months, due to worries about global growth rates. Brazil’s Bovespa is down 20% and Australia’s All Ordinaries down 15% in just two months. Any cooling off of commodity prices will put India back on the growth track.

This time around, India is likely to be one of the few markets offering growth opportunities as credit-induced growth seizes up in most other economies. The domestic growth potential and attractive valuations should put India back on the buy list over the next few months. But isn’t that a long time? The analysts are predicting the worst, and it could happen immediately, they say? What should you do?

Investors should forget about analysts’ commentary, projections and targets . Their accuracy leaves much to be desired. Don’t forget, these were the same fellows foretelling index targets of 20,000 to 25,000 just six months ago. There are worries galore, of course. But they only explain why the Sensex is at 13,000, and not at 23,000. They tell us very little about where the markets will be next year.

So what advice should investors follow? Don’t try to outguess the market. It has always been futile to try and guess market movements. And it’s impossible to pick the bottom or the top. Then, how does one invest? Or (a common question nowadays) should one invest at all? Equity remains the best asset for long-term capital growth. Despite current worries, returns from the stock market will be linked to long-term growth in corporate profits, which will in turn depend on the growth and prospects of the Indian economy. If you believe that India will do well over the long term, then the corporate sector will follow suit and so will the stock prices. Though indices have fallen by 40% from the peak, the long-term prospects of the Indian economy and the corporate sector are unlikely to have deteriorated to that extent. The demographic profile and infrastructure investment that analysts were raving about just six months ago are still in place. This decline thus gives long-term investors an excellent entry point.

Perhaps, like many investors, you are asking: should I buy now? If so, how much? Do not decide on the quantum of investments based on current market sentiment. Draw up an asset allocation that is appropriate for your age and risk profile. Decide your equity investments based on your asset allocation model, not on levels of the Sensex or targets bandied about by your friends or analysts. Don’t let optimistic targets based on mantras like "India Shining" tempt you into increasing your allocation to equity. Conversely, don’t let "India Sinking" fears scare you into opting out of your equity investments or allocation. Let your asset allocation decide your equity exposure, and stick with that allocation plan through bull and bear markets.

That’s the smart way to invest. It will help you filter out the "noise" on TV, and focus your investments on your long-term goals.

Chew this to eat less

You could crush that 3 p.m cookie craving just by chewing a little of this: gum. That’s right. A study found that chewing gum can really put the kibosh on your afternoon appetite in a big way.

Countering the Snack Attack
People who chew either sweetened or sugar-free gum after lunch feel full longer, have fewer hunger pangs, have fewer cravings for sweets, and eat fewer afternoon snacks — compared with people who don’t chew gum.

Tickled Tastebuds Signal “Full”
How does chomping gum suppress hunger? It’s simple. When you eat, your taste buds are stimulated by the food. But the cool thing is that exposure to the tastes and smells of food also lessens how good it tastes. That, in turn, is one of the cues that signal your brain that you’re full, so cravings go away. Chewing gum may have this same effect — but without all the calories! So skipping meals increases cravings for the wrong foods.

Mindful Consumption
You can make the gum trick work even better by thinking about how many snacks you’ve eaten. Then, try these other tips for better snack management: Grab a tall drink of water before every snack. So you will eat less.
Get support in your effort to eat smart. Friends will help you to eat the right foods.

The Eggsentials

Being an egg-lover, myself, I’d like to crack the subject...by giving you a few tried and tested tips... Before eating that egg, please check it for freshness (fresh ones sink in cool water) Drinking orange juice while eating an egg increases the body’s absorption of the yolk’s iron. Never wash an egg before storing it.

Having done that, here’s a quick introduction to the triple personality of an egg. An egg is actually three different foods — white, yolk and whole egg and each has its own distinct nutritional profile.

The proteins in the whole egg are considered “complete” with a rating of 100 given by the World Health Organisation, and also considered the most useful available for human beings. The much praised white, you’ll be happy to know is high in protein, low in fat, has virtually no cholesterol and only 13 per cent of the calories in an equal amount of egg yolk. It even has some amount of vitamin B2.

That brings us to the luscious golden eye — the egg yolk. Abused and despised for the huge amounts of cholesterol and fatty acids. But lets be fair and look at it’s goodies too — protein, phosphorous, calcium, iron, Vitamin D, B 1 and B 2. Together, the yolk and egg white make a high protein food.

The down-sides are plenty. Not particularly heart friendly, the egg is much maligned for it’s cholesterol content and rightly too. The yolk’s high cholesterol levels may make yours take off. Cholesterol is crucial for every cell in the body.
Eggs are also notorious for causing symptoms of food allergy, abdominal pain, nausea, vomitting, hives, angiodemia (swollen lips) and eczema. Raw eggs and egg-rich foods such as custards are excellent media for microorganisms, including those that cause food poisoning.

My solution?

First of all raw eggs should always be refrigerated. Egg-rich dishes should always be thoroughly cooked, stored in the refrigerator and served very hot or very cold. A healthy approach would be to include eggs in your eating plan, but use common sense to avoid getting too much cholesterol in your diet. After many a discussion with doctors and experts and nutritionists and my own experiences, here are some suggestions: Eat two egg whites with one egg yolk in your scrambled eggs. Replace half the eggs in recipes with egg substitutes or egg whites. Eat eggs no more than twice a week if you have elevated cholesterol in your blood. Use oils rich in vitamin E, such as safflower, sunflower, or olive oil, to prepare cooked eggs or omelettes.

The antioxidant effects of vitamin E will help reduce the risk for heart disease. Keep total fat intake down by selecting low fat alternatives such as skim milk, lean meats, and low-fat cheese. This is the most important dietary change you can make to bring your cholesterol down.

Dread talking to your kids about sex?

No matter how “cool” parents are with their kids, they dread the idea of discussing ‘sex’. If you too are in the same situation, then here’s something that offers help - parenting programmes at the workplace can significantly improve your ability to talk to kids about sexual health, suggests a new study.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, the research may provide a unique way of promoting healthy adolescent sexual behaviour. Research shows that parents can significantly influence adolescents’ sexual health and risk behaviour through parenting practices and talking about sex. For example, previous studies have found that adolescents whose parents talk to them about sex are more likely to delay intercourse, use contraception and have fewer partners.

But many parents and adolescents feel uncomfortable talking about sex because they are embarrassed or unsure of what to say or how to begin.

Researchers from Children’s Hospital at Boston, Harvard Medical School and the UCLA/RAND Center for Adolescent Health Promotion, report a randomised trial to assess if a parenting programme at the workplace, to help parents become more comfortable and skilled at communicating with adolescents about sexual health, has an effect on parents’ ability to communicate with their children.

569 parents of adolescents aged 11-16 years were randomised to attend the parenting programme. The programme consisted of 8 weekly one hour sessions at 13 workplaces in California. Parents and adolescents were sent follow-up surveys after 1 week, 3 months and 9 months. The authors found that the work-based approach had immediate significant and ongoing effects on parent-adolescent communication.

Parents attending the programme were more likely to discuss new sexual topics, had more conversations about topics they had previously discussed and were more open to communicate about sex. "We’d teach them some skills one week, and they’d come back the next week bubbling over with excitement that they’d talked with their teen about relationships, love, or sex...their teen had actually engaged in a real conversation with them, or role-played a topic like how to say no to unwanted sexual advances", the British Medical Journal quoted Mark Schuster, the study’s lead researcher, as saying.

The authors also note that before the programme few parents had taught their children how to use condoms, but one week after completion of the programme, 18 per cent of adolescents in the intervention group and 3 per cent in the control group said their parents had reviewed how to use a condom, this increased to 25 per cent vs 5 per cent after nine months.

Well-planned is half done

Waking up early in the morning, readying a wholesome breakfast, cooking and packing a delicious lunch, then getting ready to office, taking care of sundry household requirements — these are some of the daily chores of an average working woman .

And after all these and a hurried bath, if you rush to office, things are not easy on the work front either. Even the modern workplace comes with its own share of tensions.

The multiple-roles that women find themselves compelled to play these days, often bring about a major dip in energy level. If you are a person who does things in the last minute, then things may not be that easy.
A little bit of planning and time management may help a great deal to get rid of stress at home. The thumb rule is — do not put away things for the next day.

Judicious use of weekends or holidays is important in a working woman’s life. Not only must you plan for the next day, but also plan for the week ahead.

Do the laundry and iron the clothes. If you can decide clothes for each day of the ensuing week and keep the accessories along with it ready, you have half won your battle. Otherwise choosing a dress and finding the accessories will take away a major chunk of your precious time in the mornings.

Similarly, encourage your husband to arrange his wardrobe for a week. If you have school-going children, it is important that you keep not only their uniforms and shoes ready, but also their casual clothes for after-school hours.

Buy vegetables for a week, sort and keep them in the refrigerator. Keeping onions and garlic peeled and chopped will surely save time. Grinding ginger-garlic paste and keeping it in the fridge is also good. Storing boiled potatoes is always helpful. If you are in the habit of using only home made spices or mixes, grinding and keeping them in air-tight containers will save time.

For a south Indian household no breakfast is complete without idli or dosa. Grind the batter in advance and refrigerate. It will come to your rescue, if you are late from office in the evenings or you have some unexpected visitors or guests.

Fixing a varying menu on a daily basis will be interesting for the family members too. But plan it ahead. For example, if you are making idli or pongal, keep sambhar so that you need not have to make another side dish.
Dedicate at least one day in a week for mixed rice varieties. Vegetable rice, biryani, lemon rice, tomato rice, tamarind rice, sambhar rice and curd rice, you have any number of options to try out. So at least for one day you will be saved from cooking a full-meal.

Try to finish off your beauty treatments on holidays. From shampooing hair to doing a pedicure, manicure or facial, doing it on a holiday in a relaxed manner will refresh you. If all is set, then you will be able to handle working days
just like that.

HSBC Bank tops Banker magazine's survey

Financial services major, HSBC Bank, has topped the list of the world’s 1,000 banks in the latest annual Banker magazine survey.

HSBC is the first non-US company to lead the survey since 1999 and tops the rankings by virtue of its Tier-1 capital and profit before tax, which last year reached a new height, a company press release said in Mumbai.

The survey found that US banks now account for just 14 per cent of the aggregate top 1,000 pre-tax profits, down from 24 per cent last year, the release said.

On the other hand, Asian banks now account for 19 per cent from the 12 per cent earlier.

The survey, however, found that European bank profits remained flat at 41 per cent.

Will MTN go back to Bharti?

The South African media has started speculating that the country’s telecom giant MTN could look at a "less controversial" deal with Bharti Airtel instead of RCOM, a group firm of Anil Ambani because of his feud with elder brother Mukesh.

The reports about such speculations are surfacing in South African and London media even after MTN and RCOM extended their exclusivity agreement for negotiations from July 8 till July 21.

"The original, less controversial merger with Bharti Airtel could be back on the cards," a report in South African daily The Times said, adding that this could be due to MTN wanting a "clean deal".

"Media frenzy surrounding MTN’s proposed merger with Reliance Communications is probably creating a useful smokescreen to allow it explore opportunities in other countries well away from the spotlight," another South African daily Business Day reported.

RCOM and MTN had first announced the start of their exclusive talks on May 26 after the South African firm’s talks fell apart for a possible deal with Sunil Mittal-led Bharti Airtel, RCOM’s rival telecom operator in India.

The Times, in its report, said that MTN’s board, which met last week, might "well conclude that the deal (with RCOM) has become too complicated and decide that it does not want its shareholders held hostage to an unwieldy legal battle in another jurisdiction".

The report quoted a Vunani Securities analyst as saying that MTN would want to take on a "clean" deal.

"MTN does not want to take on baggage. If this deal goes through, they will want another extension. Another possibility is that this extension is just a strategy to buy time to limit the damage already done," the analyst told the Times.

Noting that a withdrawal from the talks might not be "straightforward", the report quoted unnamed sources close to the development as saying that "Bharti is likely to be more flexible than Reliance (Communications)".

The Times report added that "MTN will definitely strike a deal -- not necessarily with Reliance -- because the SA company is on the acquisition trail."

The daily further quoted a Renaissance Asset Management director as saying that Reliance deal would "crumble" and "only if the Ambani brothers sort out their issues in good time will a deal be possible".

Govt bars new fuel pumps by state firms

The government has stopped state firms from building new fuel stations for two years to cut costs at companies losing heavily from having to sell fuel at prices far below market rates, an oil ministry source said on Monday.

In June, the government raised petrol and diesel prices by about 10 percent, its biggest increase in 12 years, but the hike lagged far behind the the recent rally in crude oil prices, which soared to a record above $147 a barrel on Friday.

"The petroleum secretary has asked (state) oil firms to immediately stop setting up new retail outlets for two years," the official, who did not wish to be identified, said.

Only those new stations in an advanced state of construction could be completed, he added.

Indian Oil Corp, Bharat Petroleum Corp and Hindustan Petroleum Corp are losing millions of dollars a day, as they sell fuels at low prices set by the government to help protect the poor and fight inflation.

Upstream companies and the government partly subsidise their losses, adding to the strain on public finances.

The official said state-firms had expanded their retail network to compete with private firms like Reliance Industries and Essar Oil, but the latter have a negligible market share as they have to sell at sharply higher prices.

SEBI looking into over 3,500 corporate frauds

Market regulator SEBI on Friday said it is looking into over 3,500 corporate frauds allegedly held at stock exchanges and said it could set up a committee of IT experts to develop a mechanism to curb such activities taking place using skills acquired from information and communication technologies.

"SEBI is looking to 3,656 cases of corporte frauds at stock exchanges. In 2007, the regulator received complaints of 169 corporate frauds, majority of which were of market manipulation," SEBI Whole Time member T C Nair said.

He said the regulator was examining to the set up a committee of experts drawn from IT and communications field to examine ways to prevent corporate frauds.

At an Assocham conference on corporate fraud, Nair said the Securities and Exchange Board of India would come out with a circular within a month making it mandatory for stock exchanges to audit all transactions annually.

He said, "Lot of corporate frauds are feared to be happening through information and communication technologies. Sometimes fraudsters are ahead of regulator".

The success rate of the market regulator in detecting unfair trade practices in the capital market is about 80 per cent and currently SEBI is disposing off 3,656 cases of either corporate frauds or unfair trade practices, Nair said.

He said SEBI has decided to make it mandatory for stock exchanges and depositories to annually audit all their transactions as per new code of conduct.

SEBI would ensure that stock exchanges and depositories are safeguarded from unfair trade practices through this circular so that investors are not misled or deceived and disclosures of business transactions are recorded in a transparent manner in books of accounts, said Nair.

Addicted to first love!

Rekindling your first love can have irreversible consequences on your present relationships. Many adults find it difficult to resist when the sparks fly and they fall again for childhood sweethearts. First loves are indelibly etched into our minds, scientists say, but they warn that rekindling that old flame could have lasting, irreversible consequences, tearing apart marriages and leaving a trail of devastation.

"It’s not your average affair" said Nancy Kalish, a California State University-Sacramento psychologist, who has studied such relationships for 14 years. "It goes from the phone to the hotel. It’s that quick." Jeannie T. knows the feeling. "It was like lightning struck when we saw each other" she said, after bumping into sweetheart Ben at a 40th school reunion in Joplin, Missouri some months ago.

They hadn’t seen each other since Ben waved goodbye on a train platform in 1965 as he shipped off to Vietnam, but as soon as they saw each other again, the sparks flew. "He knelt down at my side and told me that leaving me was the hardest thing he had ever done," said Jeannie, now a Florida real estate agent.

A kind of panic set in, said 60-year-old Jeannie. "I needed to tell him what he meant to me. "However, she missed her chance at the reunion, when Ben’s wife of 37 years strolled in on their confession. That’s where the Internet came in. Mike T., Jeannie’s husband of 13 years, says as soon as his wife returned from the reunion, she and Ben were burning up the Internet, first by email and then via text messaging.

Researchers say their experiences are typical of adolescent sweethearts who fall head-over-heels in love again decades later. Adolescent hormones carve those first loves into our brains, said Rutgers University anthropologist Helen Fisher, author of the book “Why We Love". The lost love’s voice or touch triggers wanting, needing, craving in the same spots in the brain as those affected by cocaine.

Sounds like addiction? "It is more powerful than addiction," said Helen. Donna Hanover knows the feeling. After being dumped by her husband Rudolph Giuliani, she found another love, rekindling an adolescent romance after 30 years. She says," I felt an immediate chemistry between us, just as there had been when we were kids". She has published her story with 49 others, including clothing designer Nicole Miller, actors Carol Channing and Suzanne Pleshette in "My Boyfriend’s Back".

How to tide over high inflation

As Indian investors were getting used to the benefits of a growing economy, global oil prices decided to play spoilsport. Inflation, fuelled by high oil and commodity prices, is slowing down our economic growth. Attempts to control inflation are pinching consumers’ pockets.

Avoiding high interest rates on loans and reducing monthly household budgets looks impossible. Stock markets, which usually give good returns, are down, too. Still, with strategic investments, you can tide over a tough period. And prudent investments can cushion the rise in equated monthly instalments (EMIs) on loans. Here’s how.

Fixed deposits:

Better returns on bank fixed deposits are the positive fallout of Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) recent rate hikes. Most FDs will now yield 10% to 11% a year. But that’s little comfort to investors, as inflation is expected to touch 12% and eat into returns.

Your strategy should be to encash at least part of your FDs and pay off loans, or make part prepayments, if their interest rates are being hiked. Topping your list should be expensive debt, like consumer durable loans and credit cards.

Shares:

A likely economic slowdown is worrying our markets. Rising crude prices and political uncertainty over the Indo-US nuclear deal have made markets jittery. Mutual funds’ net asset values (NAVs) have plunged, as have the number of corporates announcing dividends and bonuses for the first half of 2008. Experts are not ruling out a further fall in stock markets.

The most strategic stock investments now would be in sectors which would suffer the least from an interest rate hike. Sectors like pharmaceuticals and information technology (IT) benefit from rupee depreciation (due to rising oil prices and the weakening domestic fiscal situation). Using the same logic, interest-sensitive sectors like banking, real estate, automobiles, and infrastructure are expected to underperform in the near term.

On the flip side of the stock market decline are the bargains: good stocks may not be available at current prices in the future. For instance, despite the interest rate hike and the bleak outlook for the banking sector in the near term, several stocks are still being recommended.

“Although banks will remain under tremendous pressure for the next six months, interest rates will eventually come down in the medium term. Valuations of some of these interest rate-sensitive stocks are attractive now. These stocks can be expected to give above average returns in the next two to three years,” says Hitesh Agarwal, Head, Research, Angel Broking.

If you can study the fundamentals of individual stocks, investing directly is better than investing in mutual funds whose NAVs are falling. If you must invest in mutual funds, go for diversified rather than thematic schemes. A fund manager dealing with diversified funds can switch sectors if one is underperforming. In thematic funds, performance depends on a particular sector.

Also, with falling NAVs, you’d need to keep revisiting your investments and switch schemes if necessary. Gold has long been touted as a hedge against inflation. But neither gold nor any other commodity have been able to beat stocks where returns are concerned. This is in keeping with the logic that higher risks means higher returns.

If you still believe that commodity markets are the place to be in, heed the experts. “Timing will be crucial here,” says Prasad Baji, commodity analyst at Edelweiss Capital. “Investors would have to watch inflation and interest rates closely, as any cooling off could lead to a switch from commodities to equities. So, they’d have to exit commodities before equity prices firm up.”

Whatever strategies you use, don’t expect to make a quick buck. Get into stocks only if you’re willing to take a long-term and vigilant view.

Home loans:

Since RBI hiked interest rates, banks have raised rates by 50 to 75 basis points for existing and new home loan customers. Borrowers have three options. One, encash investments or use savings to pay off some of the principal loan. Two, opt for a higher EMI if you have the disposable income.

And three, extend the loan tenure. Paying off part of the principal is the best option, if you have enough money, as your EMI could remain the same. If you can’t pay a large amount immediately , but are sure of maintaining a higher disposable income each month, you can get your loan restructured and pay a higher EMI each month (this is in addition to what the interest rate hike has added).

By managing to pay an extra amount now you can avoid the option of increasing the loan tenure. Though prepayment looks tempting, using a personal loan or credit card loan to prepay a home loan can be expensive. Home loans will always be cheaper than other loans. An often repeated advice is to avoid increasing the tenure of a long-term home loan (15 years and above).

But if you have already used your savings, this may be the only option left to keep your monthly expenses within the limit. An extension in the tenure period will ensure a lower or at least the same EMI being paid each month. Also, hope the government works out means to ease the inflationary and interest rate pressures.

Budgeting:

Drawing up a monthly budget that maintains a fine balance between savings and expenses was never an easy task. With inflation climbing this task has become even more difficult. Your strategy should be to add some amount to the savings pool. After this, if you still have surplus money for investments, go for schemes that give compounded growth.

Brace yourself to cut expenses on all fronts. While buying essentials, pay cash and avoid credit cards. This will help you get a better deal. RBI Governor YV Reddy is confident that inflation will stabilise by September-October 2008.

Until that happens, Indian consumers and investors have no option but to match the rising costs with their budgets. Prudent fiscal management can help you get through these tough times.

Courtesy: www.timesofindia.com

Beijing 2008: China invites Sonia, not PM or Prez

Eighty heads of state and government will grace the Beijing Olympics in August but PM Manmohan Singh will not be among them.

Not because he is too busy, but because he was not invited. In fact, neither India’s head of state nor government have been invited, with the invitation going to its most important politician, Sonia Gandhi.

The Congress chief is unlikely to attend, leaving that job to sports minister M S Gill. But even if you are really charitable, it can’t be denied that it’s yet another Chinese snub of pretty large proportions, and no amount of earnest protestations from government functionaries about the wonderful state of Sino-Indian relations will change that.

In October 2007, when Sonia visited Beijing, she received a welcome fit for a head of state. It raised eyebrows in India because it showed where the Chinese government was focusing its attention. It was then that the Chinese leadership first extended an invitation to her to attend the Bejing Olympic Games.

Although the government was the first to deny it, the scale of Sonia’s visit prompted a delay in the prime minister’s visit to Beijing. He was initially supposed to make his summit visit at the end of 2007, but this had to be pushed to the new calendar year. In 2008, the Beijing Olympics acquiring a distinct political hue with the Tibetan protests. Consequently, India-China ties took on a strained look, made worse by China’s repeated incursions in Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim.

China’s internal troubles did not stop it from keeping the Indian government is a state of permanent squirm — first with repeated claims to Arunachal and then by incursions into Sikkim. In fact, foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee was faced with a sudden cancellation of his meeting with Chinese premier Wen Jiabao.

Also by this time, China had invited pretty much every world leader to the Olympics, but maintained a silence on India. India wasn’t on the first list, or the second. While the Chinese government has invited the who’s who in terms of heads of government to the Games, in the case of India, it made a clear distinction between the head of government and the most powerful political leader in the ruling combine. When Mukherjee visited Beijing in June, the formal invitation was finally made — to Sonia. Officials, when questioned, evaded the issue.

The PM would not have gone, said officials trying to defend the lack of an invitation. In October, Singh will be in Beijing for the ASEM summit, which officials say will be his second visit there this year. So a third visit during the Olympics was not on his radar. But as with much of India-China thorny issues, this too is looking more and more like a post-facto justification. Sources requesting anonymity said the Chinese leadership, which also derives its strength from the party, merely looked at the Indian leadership through that perspective.

However, seen in almost any light, the Chinese decision is little short of a snub to the PM personally and his office.

Smoking can boost memory

Scientists attempting to create a nicotine pill to treat Alzheimer’s disease have suggested that smoking can help boost memory and concentration.

Nicotine has long been known to have a stimulating effect on the brain. However, the deadly side effects of cancer, stroke and heart disease, mean its benefits have been largely set aside by medical research.

Now researchers, who hope to develop drugs which copy the active ingredients in tobacco without causing heart disease, cancer, stroke or addiction, discovered that nicotine can boost the intelligence and recall ability of animals in laboratory experiments.

The researchers, who plan to present their latest findings at the Forum of European Neuroscience in Geneva, hope that the new drugs, which will be available in five years, may have fewer side effects than existing medicines for dementia.

However, the scientists stressed the new treatment at best will only give patients a few extra months of independent life instead of fully freeing them of Alzheimer’s disease.

"The substances that we call drugs have, in the majority of cases, do have a mixture of beneficial and harmful effects and nicotine no exception to this," Professor Ian Stoleman of Britain’s King’s College was quoted as saying by the Mail online.

Researchers led by Prof Stolerman studied how nicotine alters the brain’s circuitry to boost concentration and memory. In his study, he showed that the concentration power in rats went up by 5 per cent when injected with nicotine, the report said.