Fog envelops Kashmir

Vehicles move under snow-covered trees during heavy snowfall in Srinagar

Beatles guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi dies

• Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Indian guru to the Beatles and millions of meditators, has died at his home in the Dutch town of Vlodrop, in the Netherlands. He was believed to be around 91 years old.
• Born between 1911 and 1919, the maharishi, whose real name was Mahesh Prasad Varma, was a physics graduate from Allahabad University before rejecting materiality and becoming a devotee of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati or "Guru Dev".
• In 1955 the maharishi began publicly teaching a traditional meditation technique which he later renamed Transcendental Meditation.
  Within three years, the maharishi had begun the first of a number of worldwide tours which lead to his fame and global recognition.
  It is estimated that there are some 5 million practitioners of Transcendental Meditation.
• The most celebrated and famous of the 1960s spiritual gurus, the Maharishi drew in many high profile celebrities to his Transcendental Meditation movement. These included the Beach Boys, singer-songwriter Donovan, Clint Eastwood and avant-garde film maker, David Lynch.
  But the most high profile followers were the Beatles, who spent time on a retreat in India in the late 1960s.

TCS: 500 staff resigned

• Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, India's largest software services exporter, said about 500 of its staff had resigned after their performance was rated poorly.
  "Those who cannot meet the performance requirements of our company are asked to look for another job commensurate with their abilities," said a spokesman for Mumbai-headquartered Tata Consultancy . "This (financial) year so far about 500 people have resigned voluntarily."
  "It's not an exceptional thing, it happens every year and it's a part of our annual performance exercise. "
  Last year also similar number of people left the company.
  India's export-driven software services companies have been winning large outsourcing contracts from western clients, but recession fears in the United States, a strong rupee, soaring wages and a skills shortage are major worries.

Accel Transmatic

• Accel Transmatic, listed on the BSE, was promoted by Accel Frontline Ltd — a joint venture of Accel Ltd owned by Mr Panicker and Frontline Technologies of Singapore. Now, with Frontline Technologies being taken over by British Telecom, Accel Frontline is set to become a subsidiary of the British telecommunications major.
• The Rs 40-crore company has other divisions too — embedded software and hardware products such as ticket vending machines, both inherited from takeovers, and IT training.
  The Chennai-based animation company Accel Transmatic Ltd is upgrading its infrastructure. Recently, the company has created a motion capture facility at Thiruvananthapuram and is now building an animation facility in Chennai, with an estimated cost of Rs 50 crore.

BrahMos-2 missile

• India, Russia teams working on designing different versions of BrahMos.
• The project launched jointly with Russia, under BrahMos, will see more than 20 Russian institutes and industry and a bigger number of Indian industry participating.
  The hypersonic missiles, will fly at Mach 5-7 speeds.
• One Mach is equivalent to velocity of sound or 1230km/h 330 metres per second.
• Already joint teams from India and Russia have started working on designing different versions of the missiles. The project will be of five-year duration.
  Both the Indian and the Russian Government have assured adequate funding and support.
• The initiative has come in the wake of the superb success of the BrahMos project, launched in 1999. The supersonic BrahMos missile developed with speeds of Mach 2.8 has already got orders from the Indian Navy and Army.
• BrahMos missile is now available for launch from multiple platforms which include ship to ship, land to ship and land to land.

India-Australia-Srilanka Tri Series 2008 Fixtures

Australia vs India, 1st ODIBrisbane, 08:45 AM, Sun, 3 Feb 2008

India vs Sri Lanka, 2nd ODIBrisbane, 08:45 AM, Tue, 5 Feb 2008

Australia vs Sri Lanka, 3rd ODISydney, 08:45 AM, Fri, 8 Feb 2008

Australia vs India, 4th ODIMelbourne, 08:45 AM, Sun, 10 Feb 2008

India vs Sri Lanka, 5th ODICanberra, 04:30 AM, Tue, 12 Feb 2008

Australia vs Sri Lanka, 6th ODIPerth, 08:00 AM, Fri, 15 Feb 2008

Australia vs India, 7th ODIAdelaide, 08:45 AM, Sun, 17 Feb 2008

India vs Sri Lanka, 8th ODIAdelaide, 08:45 AM, Tue, 19 Feb 2008

Australia vs Sri Lanka, 9th ODIMelbourne, 08:45 AM, Fri, 22 Feb 2008

Australia vs India, 10th ODISydney, 08:45 AM, Sun, 24 Feb 2008

India vs Sri Lanka, 11th ODIHobart, 04:30 AM, Tue, 26 Feb 2008

Australia vs Sri Lanka, 12th ODIMelbourne, 08:45 AM, Fri, 29 Feb 2008

Google quarterly results disappoint

• Google Inc on 31st January reported disappointing quarterly results on rising capital spending and costs for acquiring advertising customers, unnerving investors who sent its shares down 6.5 per cent. Revenue rose 51 per cent to $4.827 billion, just shy of the $4.83 billion.
• It was only the third time in 14 quarters as a public company that Google failed to top Wall Street profit forecasts. But Google executives underscored their belief that there were no signs that a weakening US economy so far was hurting its own results and that they expect advertisers to maintain spending with Google even if they slash overall ad budgets.
• Immediately following the results, the stock fell to around $510, down 9.5 per cent. The stock fell 24 per cent in January. A 2007 darling among technology stocks, it has fallen from near $750 in November, when analysts raced to boost price targets as high as $900.