The USD is under pressure this morning after starting a holiday-shortened week about flat in Asia. Tokyo had a holiday today leaving a lot of Asian players on the sidelines making for slow and thinner trade; traders report that stops are building on both sides of the market after last week's neutral close and Friday's USD retreat. Equities provided a bit of lift to the majors as follow-on buying of Asian markets and Europe holding firm ahead of US trade. DJOA futures are called to open higher on Wall street which is no doubt keeping the majors on the offensive to start the day. USD/JPY rallied higher with equities as expected but was unable to clear above the 96.00 handle with any conviction; high prints at 96.09 were offered to cap the rate before heading lower.

From being the alcoholic bar dancer in ‘Gangster’, the Himachali beauty Kangana Ranaut has come a long way.

According to web reports, Technology giant Microsoft has decided to rebrand and relaunch its search engine ‘Live Search’.

There are rumors that Microsoft will rebrand the Live Search as ‘Kumo’ by early next year (2009).

The report also said that the new name ‘Kumo’ was already transferred from registrar to Microsoft, and now Kumo.com points to a Microsoft’s internal test site.

A new study has disclosed that eating an egg daily can increase the risk of having diabetes.

Moreover, the study also said that intake of more than a couple of eggs during a week can worsen the condition in those who already have diabetes.

The study conducted by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard Medical School in Boston studied the egg-eating habits of almost 57,000 men and women over two decades.

Reportedly in the latest People magazine issue, splashy Karan Johar opened up his desire of working with ace Bollywood superstar Salman Khan.

Karan also said that he doesn’t rule out an opportunity of working with him.

“If there is an opportunity, a film and a screenplay that needs his presence, I think I would,” he said.

At the same time, Karan called Shahrukh his ‘older brother’, Gauri Khan his  ’soulmate’  and Aditya Chopra, Uday Chopra and Manish Malhotra his close friends.

After a depressing start and a subsequent sharp fall, Indian equities made a smart recovery this morning on the back of some spirited buying action in some of the frontline stocks.

IT, power and consumer goods gained ground, whereas realty and banking stocks went down due to the expected rate cut not happening during the last weekend.

BSE Midcap and Smallcap index gained 0.11% and 0.31% respectively.  

At 11:00 a.m., the 30-share index BSE Sensex, which tumbled to a low of 8708.85 after opening at 8840.53, rallied to 8,961.14, up 45.93 points.