When the U.S. senate failed on Thursday to pass a $14 billion rescue package for Detroit's three major car manufacturers, it took on the role of Christmas Grinch for autoworkers.

On Thursday, the senate got only a few ‘yes’ votes short of the 60 needed to block a filibuster on the bailout bill, effectively killing any chance of Congress providing a lifeline to the financially drowning automakers this year.

Following when the news was out, markets across the Asia-Pacific region were down more than 3 percent and Japan's Nikkei average and Hong Kong's Hang Seng were both down by more than 5 percent.

A Japanese study has put forward a fact that high resting heart rates may be linked to the development of obesity and diabetes.

The sympathetic nervous system (SNS), which is basically a network of neurons in the body, regulates the heart rate without conscious thought. Furthermore, it is also believed to control the large intestine, blood vessels, pupil dilation, perspiration and blood pressure.

A process to separate the oil out of used coffee grounds and convert it into biofuel, creating cheap biodiesel from what was once trash has been created by the researchers at the University of Nevada-Reno.

It has been learnt that waste coffee contains between 11% and 20% percent oil by weight, which is about as much as virgin biofuel oils like palm and soybean.

A whopping 8 million barrels of biodiesel annually could be created via all of the spent coffee grounds generated worldwide, or roughly a third of the daily oil consumption of the U.S.  

In the month of October, India's industrial output fell for the first time in many years by 0.4 per cent.

For the month of September 2007, output had grown by 5.45% and for October 2007, it was 12.2%.

A year ago; the Index for Industrial Production numbers for the seven-month period ended October, was 4.1% against 9.9%.

Furthermore, in the year ago period, manufacturing sector, which accounts for 80% of the index, declined 1.2% from 13.8%.

The government sought to rescue the manufacturers earlier this month, by announcing an across-the-board (barring petroleum goods) four per cent cut in excise duty.