Yahoo! partners with MTNL, Idea Cellular

Yahoo! the leader in mobile advertising and mobile Internet services, on Tuesday announced partnerships with two Indian mobile operators MTNL and Idea Cellular as part of a series of initiatives in Asia. While in case of MTNL it is for Yahoo! oneSearch, the mobile search engine, in the case of Idea Cellular, the partnership is for mobile advertising.

The Sunnyvale, California based company on Tuesday announced several new mobile initiatives for the Asia Pacific region, including five new Yahoo! oneSearch partnerships with leading mobile operators including MTNL, Hong Kong CSL Limited (CSL), Smart Communications Inc (Smart, Philippines), Digital Mobile Phlis, Inc (SUN Cellular, Philippines) and Vibo Telecom Inc (Vibo, Taiwan).

It has also forged strategic mobile advertising partnerships with Idea Cellular Ltd and Maxis Communications Bhd (Malaysia), the company said in a statement distributed via Businesswire.

Yahoo! also announced localised versions of Yahoo! Go 3.0 for India, Australia and Southeast Asia, including a local language version for Indonesia, and an English version of Yahoo! oneSearch with voice that recognises regional accents.

The company also announced the launch of new mobile widgets for the Asia Pacific region including Yahoo! Cricket, Yahoo! Answers and Showtimes (Yahoo! India Movies), as well as a MTV Asia mobile widget featuring news updates and music charts.

These announcements further demonstrate Yahoo!’s global momentum and unveil the next phase of the company’s mobile strategy for the Asia Pacific region, said the release.

Today’s Yahoo! oneSearch partnerships announcement brings the total number of mobile search deals signed by Yahoo! worldwide in the last 18 months to over 60.

Coffee drinkers may live longer

Here’s some good news for coffee buffs -- drinking large amounts of the caffeinated concoction does not increase the risk of an early death, and, if you are a woman, it may protect you from developing heart disease.

A new research has revealed that drinking up to six cups of coffee a day has no negative effect on the health of a person and it could reduce the risk of women dying from fatal heart attacks and stroke by almost a quarter.

Researchers have based their findings on an analysis of 84,000 women and 41,000 men who were tracked for 20 years. The participants completed questionnaires every two to four years about their coffee intake and habits like diet, smoking.

According to study’s author Esther Lopez-Garcia of the School of Medicine at Universidad Autonoma de Madrid in Spain, "Coffee consumption was not associated with a higher risk of mortality in middle-aged men and women.

"(However) The possibility of a modest benefit of coffee consumption on heart disease, cancer, and other causes of death needs to be further investigated.

Market full of oil, price trend fake: Iran

The market is full of oil and the rising price trend is "fake and imposed", Iran’s president said on Tuesday, partly blaming a weak US dollar which he said was being pushed lower on purpose. "At a time when the growth of consumption is lower than the growth of production and the market is full of oil, prices are rising and this trend is completely fake and imposed," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a televised speech.

"It is very clear that visible and invisible hands are controlling prices in a fake way with political and economic aims," he said when opening a meeting of the OPEC Fund for International Development in the central Iranian city of Isfahan.

Iran, the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter, has repeatedly said the market is well-supplied with crude and blames rising prices on speculation, a weak US currency and geopolitical factors.

"As you know the decrease in the dollar’s value and the increase in energy prices are two sides of the same coin which are being introduced as factors behind the recent instability," Ahmadinejad said.

Oil steadied on Tuesday after touching a record near $140 the previous day, with traders caught between a weaker dollar and expectations that top exporter Saudi Arabia will ramp up output to its highest rate in decades.

Iran has often said it sees no need for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to boost output.

"EVER-INCREASING DECREASE"

Ahmadinejad reiterated his view that oil should be sold in a basket of currencies rather than US dollars, an idea which has failed to win over other OPEC members, except Venezuela.

"The ever-increasing decrease in the dollar’s value is one of the world’s major problems," he said.

"A combination of the world’s valid currencies should become a basis for oil transactions or (OPEC) member countries should determine a new currency for oil transactions," he said.

Iran, embroiled in a standoff with the West over its nuclear programme, has for more than two years been increasing its sales of oil for currencies other than the dollar, saying the weak US currency is eroding its purchasing power.

Ahmadinejad, who in the past has called the dollar a "worthless piece of paper", suggested "some big powers" were driving it lower on purpose:

"The planners for some big powers are acting to decrease the dollar’s value," he said. "For years they imposed inflation and their own economic problems to other nations by injecting the dollar without any support to the global Economy."

Foes since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, Tehran and Washington are also at odds over Tehran’s disputed nuclear activities as well as over policy in Iraq. Iran says its atomic work is peaceful.

India inflation to head up, ease by end-2008

India’s headline inflation rate is likely to hover at 8 to 9 percent for some time and will hit double digits before declining in the last quarter of calendar 2008, its chief statistician said on Tuesday.India’s most widely watched inflation measure, the wholesale price index (WPI), is already at a seven-year high of 8.75 percent and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) unexpectedly raised its key lending rate last week to 8.0 percent in an effort to calm prices.

Economists expect the impact of a hike in government-set fuel prices early in June will push the WPI to a 13-year peak above 9 percent this month. The early June data is due this Friday.

Pronab Sen, secretary at the ministry of statistics and programme implementation, told Reuters in an interview primary price increases had been factored in but second-round increases were now coming through into the inflation numbers.

"Numerically, I suspect it’s going to hang around at somewhere between the 8 and 9 percent mark for a while," Sen said.

Asked if inflation would reach double digits, he replied: "It will touch it but it’s not likely to stay there for very long."

Rising costs of raw materials, food and energy worldwide have stoked prices in Asia’s third-largest economy, prompting the government to ban some exports and slash some import duties to keep supplies up and prices down.

Inflation is well above the RBI’s comfort zone of 5.5 percent and is posing a major policy headache for the communist-backed ruling coalition in the run-up to key state and federal polls later this year and in 2009, as rising prices hit the poorer members of the population the hardest.

BACK TO TREND

India’s economy grew 9 percent in the fiscal year which ended in March and Sen said growth was moderating.

"Now we are starting to taper down to the trend and the trend would be somewhere between 8 and 8.5 percent. So I suspect we’ll be there somewhere."

But he added that with inflation and efforts to control it, as well as a global slowdown, growth might drop below trend.

"We might actually overshoot on the downward trajectory a little bit, so we might dip slightly below 8 percent but eventually we’ll catch up."

The economy has averaged 8.8 percent in the past four years. The RBI expects it will expand at 8-8.5 percent this fiscal year to March, while some economists and policymakers say it could be lower.

On prices, Sen said the peak would depend on how soon demand was compressed and when new industrial capacity came on stream.

"So I’m really looking at the last quarter of the calendar for it to start coming down."

Demand was hard to gauge because of lack of data but there was some evidence of moderation in fast-moving consumer goods and white goods, he said.

Except for steel, capacity was being created across sectors, including pharmaceuticals, auto components, autos and cement, while capital goods, such as engineering plant and machinery, had gained in strength after a late start to capacity addition in 2006.

Inflation eased quickly in late 2007, dropping to just above 3 percent, and Sen said that base effect would give the headline rate an artificial "push-up" at the same time this year.

Where it ended the fiscal year next March would depend on the government’s policy on domestic fuel prices, he said.

"A lot depends on what is done on oil prices and that’s a policy matter," he said.

Rising FD rates bring cheer to depositors

There is some good news for retired persons and those dependent on the interest income as banks have started increasing their fixed deposit rates following the decision of the RBI to hike the short term lending rate by 0.25 per cent.Oriental Bank of Commerce on Monday revised their fixed deposit rates for various maturities and raised the rates for its special deposit scheme Asha Kiran (FDs for 400 days) to 9.75 for senior citizens.

This is probably the highest interest rate being offered by the city based public sector lender on 13-month deposit.

Though the senior citizens would get a rate of 9.75 per cent, others will receive 9.25 per cent for 400-day fixed deposit from OBC.

Even the new generation private sector lender Yes Bank increased the deposit rates by 0.5 per cent across all maturities.

After the recent revision of interest rates by Yes Bank, senior citizens would get a maximum of 10 per cent on fixed deposits with a maturity of one year to 18 months. The others would receive a return of 9.5 per cent.

Country’s largest public sector lender, State Bank of India, also revised fixed deposit rates upward by up to 0.5 per cent for selected tenures effective June 1.

SBI increased fixed deposits rate for 5-10 years by 0.5 per cent to 9 per cent while 3-5 years tenure was hiked by 0.35 per cent. Senior citizens will get 0.5 per cent more.

Another Mumbai-based lender Bank of India also increased deposit rates up to 0.5 per cent for various maturities.

For deposits having a maturity of one year to less than two years, the revised rates stands at 9.15 per cent, against the earlier rate of 8.50 per cent, while for deposits ranging from two to three years, the new rate is 9.25 per cent as against earlier rate of 8.75 per cent.

Similarly, fixed deposits of Bank of India having a maturity of three to five years will earn 9.50 per cent interest, against the earlier 8.75 per cent.

"The rates have been revised with a view to mobilize funds from deposits in the beginning of the financial year. We will review our rates by June 30, after which they might be revised again," the BOI official had said.

There would be a case for further upward revision of fixed deposit rates in case the inflation, as projected by many analysts, goes up to 10 per cent.

Moreover, the banks would have to raise fixed deposit rates to retain the deposit base, says brokerage firm Edelweiss Capital in its recent analysis on impact of repo rate hike on the banking sector.

The study further pointed out that following recent hike in repo rate, bottomline of those banks which are dependent on wholesale money market for funds would come under pressure.

Mkts cheer, Sensex ends 300 pts up

The Markets were on an upswing on Tuesday with the Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex posting a gain of over 300 points on buying support in banking, realty and capital goods segments.The BSE baormeter gained 301.08 points, or 1.96 per cent, at 15,696.90, after touching the day’s high of 15,732.75 and a low of 15,357.98 poiints.

The wide-based National Stock Exchange index Nifty rose by 80.50 points at 4,653.00. It rose to a high of 4,664.05 and dipped to a low of 4,561.75 points during the day.

"Interest rate sensitive stocks are attracting a fair amount of buying by domestic funds, which in turn are lending support to banking shares," said a Delhi-based NSE broker Rajiv Malik.

He said realty stocks were bolstered by Unitech-Lehman deal as well.

Banking stocks surged the maximum and the sectoral index gained 311.54 points at 7,567.17, as most of the banking stocks led by ICICI Bank, State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, Yes Bank, Kotak Baank, Axis Bank and Punjab National Bank witnessed good buying support.

Capital goods index also gained 260.07 points at 12,363.27 followed by realty sector index by 226.32 points at 6,099.19.

This MLA picks up garbage, cleans drains

PUDUCHERRY N Anand, fondly called "Bussy" Anand, is a busy man. A first-time MLA, he was elected from the Bussy assembly constituency in the Union territory in 2006 and hence the prefix. And when the 44-year-old legislator of Puducherry Munnetra Congress is not pushing for schemes, meeting voters or discussing local politics over a cuppa, he’s clearing garbage, cleaning clogged drains and spraying mosquito repellent across the town.

And he does this with his own money, spending Rs 75,000 to Rs 85,000 every month from his earnings.

Anand’s dual role began nine years ago when, disappointed with the government’s slack conservancy work, he started a garbage collection unit of his own.

Since then, he has been going to the ’field’ himself, assisting a small team in spraying mosquito repellent, clearing blocks in drains and undertaking door-to-door collection of garbage from all households in his constituency.

When his nine-year-old unit launched an intensive cleaning campaign last week, the MLA was spotted going around in a spotless white shirt and pants with a mosquito repellent kit on his back, covering the thoroughfares of Puducherry.

And he doesn’t do it for publicity: for long, he was neither given a party post nor a ticket while he was in Congress.

But Anand plodded on with garbage-clearing, not letting the mess in the Congress stop him from cleaning the city.

"The government is not effectively undertaking garbage clearance work," he says, as he expertly sprays repellent on an open sewage drain. Anand’s unit, which started with a single tricycle and two men in 1999, has 14 members today, equipped with four tricycles and gadgets "to carry out our mission".

So much so that residents refuse to hand over garbage to the government conservancy staff and wait for Anand’s unit every morning. The members visit all households daily, barring Sundays, from 6am to 12 noon, and from 4pm to 6pm and collect segregated garbage.

"People appreciated my work and rewarded me by electing me in 2006. I am grateful to them, but my garbage collection campaign will continue forever," said the first-time MLA. "The workers engaged by the municipality haven’t got their salaries for the past 11 months. They staged a token protest and are now threatening to go on indefinite strike. It is high time the municipality evolved a long-term plan for clearing garbage," says the MLA.