Mumbai: Indian rupee recorded the historic low 50-mark against the US dollar as the greenback gained against most currencies globally.

The domestic currency closed the day (Friday) a little lower at 49.95/96 after suspected intervention by the RBI in the inter-bank foreign exchange (forex) market.

Earlier, on October 10, the domestic currency touched its all-time low of 49.26 against the US dollar. The rupee is among the biggest losers against the dollar so far this year, peeling around 20 per cent.

After Adam Gilchrist's remarks over Sachin Tendulkar's honesty on the famous ''Monkeygate'' issue provoked angry reactions from Indian cricketing fraternity, the Indian batting maestro said the Australian called him up to clarify the whole issue and added that the matter was blown out of proportion.

Speaking with Times Now, Tendulkar said, “Gilchrist called me up and clarified the whole matter.”

“He said his comments have been taken out of context,” added Tendulkar. However, the master-blaster batsman refused to comment any further on the issue.

New Delhi: It’s certainly not a good news for those who wanted to purchase Maruti this Diwali. India’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki has announced an increase in prices of its selected models by upto Rs 6,000 just ahead of Diwali. The price hike on select models would range between Rs 2,000 and Rs 6,000.

In a press release, the company said, “'The company has announced a marginal price hike of between 0.7 per cent to 1.1 per cent (between Rs 2000 to Rs 60000) in the ex-showroom prices of its cars.”

The price of the entry model ‘800cc’car have been hiked by Rs 2,000, while ‘Alto’ will cost Rs 2,500 more.

Nokia has come up with its new N85 multimedia phone collection for the Indian consumers. Nokia N85 is a dual slider phone which promises to give its buyers a whole new package that one looks for in a ‘smart phone’.  

Devinder Kishore, the Director- Marketing of Nokia India said, “The Nokia N85 was created to be more than the sum of its parts, offering a complete mobile entertainment package. Combined with landscape gaming and dedicated gaming keys for additional comfort, the Nokia N85 breaks the boundaries of mobile gameplay,”

Apple has come up with its new Macbooks, a consumer notebook family which was already launched a week ago in the U.S. The product offers seven models in three categories, all of them being made from a new mechanical design using ‘unibody’ ultra light aluminium chasis making it the lightest and thinnest from its counterparts.

The three categories are MacBook, MacBookPro and MacBook Air where the 13.3 inch Mac books are priced at Rs. 96,500 and Rs. 79,700, the 15.4 inches MacBook Pro will cost the consumers around Rs. 1.20 lakh to Rs. 1.45 lakh. The Pro machine is laden with a ‘stepney’ graphics chip from NVIDIA giving it a high rendering and editing speeds for the professionals in visual computing.

According to White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, the reigning first couple of the country, President Bush and Mrs. Bush, cast their ballots Friday for the 2008 election, using Texas’ early voting process. In the three elections, Bush voted in Crawford, Texas, where he owns a 1,600 acre ranch.

Saying that the President and his wife, Laura, would be at the White House for election night, Perino said the ballots will be mailed back to Texas.

The reporters, of course, are leaving no stone unturned to know which of the two presidential candidates – Republican McCain and Democratic Obama – got the present President’s vote.