Strasbourg, France - The European Parliament on Thursday awarded its prestigious Sakharov Prize to Hu Jia, a Chinese civil rights activist, rejecting warnings from Beijing.

Hu Jia was picked from a shortlist of candidates that also comprised Aleksandr Kozulin, a former presidential candidate in Belarus, and Apollinaire Malu Malu, who chairs the Independent Electoral Commission of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The decision was designed to send a strong signal to China on the day in which European Union officials were meeting their Asian counterparts in Beijing.

Shortly before the announcement, the Chinese authorities reportedly sent a letter to the European Parliament cautioning it against choosing Hu Jia.

Mumbai-headquartered Tara Ultimo, a company manufacturing and retailing jewellery, plans to come up with 50 outlets across India in the next two years.

In what is a surprising finding, a new study on babies shows that those cute and cuddly bundles of joy, exhibit signs of jealousy even as young as three months old.

Prof. Maria Legerstee, Department of Psychology, York University and her team studied 50-babies aged 3-months and 6-months with their mothers on hand.  They found interacting with the babies that if the babies were not responded to, they looked sad and looked away.  However, when she took a drink and didn’t engage with them, they didn’t seem to mind, indicating that even babies can sense the reason behind uncommunicative behaviour.

India’s state-run power generator NTPC Ltd has revealed its plans to raise up to Rs 4,500 crore from domestic as well as international markets for meeting its expansion plans in the current financial year.

The company intends to raise up to $500 million from the global market by March, to support their expansion plan.

The company also plans to raise Rs 2,000 crore from the domestic market through private placement of bonds.

NTPC stock ended the day at Rs 144, down 5% compared to its previous close of Rs 152.

Paris - French shares were mixed in early Thursday trading in the wake of overnight losses on Wall Street and Asian markets.

(PDL), India’s leading real estate company, has informed that it would build a five-star hotel comprising
152 rooms in Ahmedabad.

Parsvnath Hotels, a subsidiary of Parsvnath Developers, has undertaken construction of hotel at Vejalpur, Ahmedabad, which has received five-star category approval from the Ministry of Tourism. The project is located just 14 kms away from the airport and mere 9 kms away from the railway station.