Being a motoring journalist, you do get to drive some powerful machines around, even those with six-cylinder engines. But yesterday I drove for a little bit a turbocharged V6-engined behemoth that could out-Phantom the Phantom. And it was a Mercedes too! This machine had all of 12,000cc to play with, and 394 horsepower and about 186 kgm of torque too. As also 16 - yes, 16 - forward gears. Okay, enough playing around. It was not a passenger car, but a truck. DaimlerChrysler India launched two variants of their Mercedes-Benz Actros tipper in the country for mining applications. (more…)

To all you people out there…
We at Business Standard know that you’ll all have opinions on many issues and would like to be heard, so what better way than to post on our Blog. So if you’ve got an opinion about a subject and want the world to know, just email us at guestblogs AT business-standard DOT com and we’ll give you the platform to voice it.

It is always nice to hear from a reader. And if the reader happens to be an aviation enthusiast who would like to contribute to Open Sky (the two month old BS magazine on aviation) then it is even nicer. Sanjeev Mehta saw the first issue in an airplane (where else) and wrote back to us saying that he wants to be part of the action. His job takes him to various parts of the world but it is the journeys and not the destinations that gives him a high. Today, he filed a route check for the August issue of Open Sky - a well written one on his Jet Airways flight to LHR (London to most of us) with great attention for detail . Here is a sample: Sector :BOM LHR BOM Flights : Jet Airways 9W 0118 / 9W 0117 on June 19 and June 26 respectively Aircraft : Airbus A340-300E ( VT-JWA / VT-JWC). In case you didn’t know, VT-JWC is the third A 340 that Jet Airways has acquired! And in case you want to know, seat number 3K is equidistant to toilets on either side of Club Premiere in the Jet A340.

And he wants to share 10,000 odd airline post cards with Open Sky. Better off asking him to write than trying to satisfy him with our writing, right?

Believe it or not: Palm and RIM to merge? A buzz is starting to build around the possibility that Palm and RIM might announce plans to merge when both companies plan to announce their quarterly earnings on Thursday. The two well-known mobile computing companies do complement each other. Palm has been searching for ways to connect with enterprise customers for years, finally agreeing to use Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system on one of its Treo phones to improve its corporate chances. (more…)

It’s about 20 hours since Italy walked into the quarter-finals of the 2006 FIFA World Cup. But they could be the most undeserving teams to reach the final eight. Did Italy’s Fabio Grosso deliberately trip over Australian defender, Lucas Neill, to earn that match-saving penalty? If Grosso could keep the ball away from the sliding defender, he could have as well jumped over him. The debate could go on. But after last night, pizza or pasta do not taste as good. (more…)

The new  pharma policy ie granting of patents and exclusive marketing rights keeps in mind that a patent lasts for 20 years and a molecule fetches 40 times 4 patents 80 years. The expected return is 3200 times 320,000 per cent for 4 patent molecules for 20 years. Whose sales are just two times the cost of its research.

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Charanjit Singh was India’s captain. And Harbinder Singh scored that brilliantly conceived field goal. Or was it the other way round? Doesn’t really matter.  The more important point: It was India’s moment of glory.

The year was 1964.  And you guessed it right. I am talking about the hockey final India played against Pakistan at the Tokyo Olympics. That solitary goal won the country its only gold medal in the 1964 Olympics.  The victory also reclaimed for the country the hockey gold that it lost to Pakistan at the previous Olympics in Rome. Schools in Delhi declared a holiday the following day in celebration of the India victory. (more…)

I am so curious to know what goes on in Sardaarji’s mind. Does an inflation rate of 5.24 per cent give him sleepless nights, or is WPI not his flavour of inflation indices? Does he think about the implications of the 10-year bond yield stomping away to 9 per cent? Is he concerned about what Ben Bernanke is saying or does he totally outsource those kind of worries to YV Reddy…or Chidambaram. Does he miss Greenspan? (more…)

Are Blogs liberating? On our way back home the other day, we had a lively debate. The participants : Bijoy, the “boss-man” of Motoring and Open Sky, his man-everyday, Srini,  and the man who points North, our Compass Editor, Niraj. (more…)

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From Delhi (98117XXXXX)