Vijay Mallya owned air carrier, Kingfisher Airlines announced 20 per cent cut in the salaries of its pilots, clearly to mitigate the impact of global slowdown on its business. The salaries have been cut in the range of Rs 50,000 and Rs 80,000 per month according to some unofficial reports.

However, Kingfisher spokesperson said that the company had introduced a production-linked compensation structure (PLCS) after November, 2008 and pilots would get equal scale as that of pilots of Air Deccan, adhering norms followed by all international airlines.

Low demand due to decline in construction activities, high freight charges and rising input costs caused Ambuja Cement to post decline of 25 per cent in the net profit for the financial year ended December 31, 2008.

The company's net profit declined to Rs 1,390 crore in the reporting period as compared to Rs 1,846 crore in the financial year 2007. The company posted 9.5% increase in net sales during the period which stood at Rs 6,261 crore as compared to Rs 5,718 crore in the same period last year.

Vodafone Essa

Country’s second largest public sector lender, Punjab National Bank, has launched a global credit card.

While speaking during the commercial launch of the cards, PNB Chairman K C Chakrabarty said, “To start with we are launching two varieties of credit cards Global Gold and Global Classic, which will meet the needs of its customers and will cater to the requirement of different income groups.”

Mr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission was also present at the occasion.

A new study has revealed that teen girls with higher levels of key nutrient Vitamin D may be able to jump higher and faster as compared to their peers with lower levels.
 
The research, which will be published in The Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM), discovered that Vitamin D deficiency has been shown to have a significant negative impact on muscle as well as bone health that causes conditions like osteoporosis and rickets.

Country’s premier software industry, Sun Microsystems is all set to organize its global annual developer conference at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC), Hyderabad February 18-20 for the third time in a row.

Apart from Hyderabad, the conference would also have its supporting sessions in Pune and Chennai.

In its press release, the company said that the three day event is fundamentally designed to display how developers can leverage Sun technologies, services and products to drive the next generation of technology innovation.