Ashok Chavan, Industry minister in the Vilasrao Deshmukh government and son of former Maharashtra chief minister SB Chavan seems to be the frontrunner in the race to the CM post in Maharashtra.

He is believed to have outrun revenue minister Narayan Rane even though Rane, who was the CM during the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance government in the late nineties, lobbied hard in a spirit of do-or-die.

Other contenders comprised Balasaheb Vikhe-Patil, MP and sugar baron and Union ministers Sushilkumar Shinde and Prithviraj Chavan.

The Japanese have invented the first space beer, in hi

New rules have been introduced by the Google-owned YouTube in order to control access to entries that have nudity or a sexual theme but do not constitute pornography.

These videos can only be viewed by people who are above 18 or adults. It should be noticed that the videos might be adult but fall short of containing sexually explicit material, which is banned.

The company blog said, “We've been thinking a lot lately about how to make the collective YouTube experience even better, particularly on our most visited pages.”

On Wednesday, U.S. researchers confirmed that a new dry wipe can clean up chemical agents such as mustard gas. This can give soldiers an easier way to deal with toxic materials on the battlefield.

The researchers at Texas Tech University in Lubbock developed the wipe as a reply to a call by the U.S. military for better ways to decontaminate military personnel and equipment.

Seshadri Ramkumar of Texas Tech, who developed the wipe, reported in a telephonic interview, “This is the first time this kind of wipe has been developed and it has been tested against a real chemical agent.”

The World Economic Forum (WEF) announced that Nivio has been awarded the Technology Pioneer Award for 2009.  

Nivio joins an elite group of visionary companies selected for conceptions that will have a world-changing impact on society as well as businesses.

Previous Technology Pioneers Awardees, which have today turned into multi-billion dollar organizations include Google, Infosys, Mozilla Corporation and Nanosolar among others.

The Sensex slipped below 9,000-mark on account of continued buying action witnessed across board.

IT, consumer durable, oil & gas and metal stocks were hammered badly.
 
BSE Midcap and Smallcap index lost 0.75% and 0.08% respectively.

Among the sectoral indices, BSE IT declined 4.72%, Consumer durables plunged 4.16%, Oil & gas fipped 3.67% and Metal lost 3.42%.

The 30-share index, BSE Sensex, today (Dec 05, 2008), belled the day with a loss of 25.06 points at 9,204.69.