Slumdog Millionaire, directors Danny Boyle’s 10 nominations film starts favorites for the 81^st academy awards in Los Angeles on Sunday. Powered by a winning streak in other international awards, the story of a Mumbai slum boy from regs to riches is likely to win the Oscars for the Best Picture. Slumdog has also been nominated for best director, cinematography, film and sound editing, original scoring, songs, sound mixing and screenplay adaption.

“It would be the biggest upset in modern Oscar history to see Slumdog Millionaire lose”, said Pete Hammond, an awards season expert and Hollywood film critic. Music Maestro A.R. Rahman, who has three nominations for slumdog, was in Los Angeles preparing to perform at the ceremony. He said “it would be a great honor”, about performing at the ceremony. He did not have an acceptance speech ready and was concentrating on his performance of “Jai Ho”.

The film has won rave reviews and some sharp reactions for its slum and poverty plot, competes for bets picture with The Curios Case of Benjamin Button, The Reader, Frost/Nixon and the biopic MILK. With Danny Boyle and his film heavily favored to win the Oscars for Best Picture suspense rises as we wait for the awarding ceremony.

India’s rupee fell for a fifth day, the longest losing streak in more than eight months, on speculation refiners stepped up purchases of crude oil. The rupee weakened 0.5% to 43.29 per dollar.

Grasim Industries (down 4.96% to Rs 1,954.45), Ambuja Cements (down 2.72% to Rs 82.40), ACC (down 1.98% to Rs 597.70), Sterlite Industries (down 1.75% to Rs 609.35) edged lower from the Sensex pack.

Hindustan Unilever (up 1.63% to Rs 242.80), Bharat Heavy Electricals (up 1.21% to Rs 1,729.50), Larsen & Toubro (up 1.19% to Rs 2,692), Jaiprakash Associates (up 0.61% to Rs 173.35) edged higher from the Sensex pack.

India’s largest aluminum producer by sales Hindalco Industries fell 2.95% to Rs 131.80. The company has fixed the price of its rights issue at Rs 96 per share, at a premium of Rs 95 per share. The equity shares are of a face value of Rs 1 per share. The board of directors of the company at its meeting on Thursday fixed the ratio of rights entitlement at three equity shares for every seven equity shares held by the shareholders. The record date for the rights issue has been fixed as 5 September 2008, a company release said.

India’s second largest telecom services provider by sales Reliance Communications was down 1.45% to Rs 417.95. The company added 1.75 million wireless users in July 2008, taking its total user base to 52.5 million, the company said on Thursday, 14 August 2008.

Bartronics India rose 2.35% to Rs 180.45 after company won a contract worth over Rs 400 crore from the Employees State Insurance Corporation for providing smart cards

Inflation is expected to accelerate further after the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s cabinet on 14 August 2008 approved an average 21% salary increase for about 50 lakh government employees. The higher wages will cost the government Rs 3.38 lakh crore this year.

The Prime Minister added that various steps are being taken to bring inflation under reasonable control. He blamed the surge in prices to a 16-year high this month to higher global costs of fuel and food.

Meanwhile the Finance Ministry allowing private sector managed provident fund and superannuation trusts to have greater exposure in the stock markets, may boost the market sentiment. They can invest up to 15% of their investible funds in shares on which derivatives are available in the BSE or NSE.

Asian markets were trading lower today, 18 August 2008. China’s Shanghai Composite, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng, Taiwan’s Taiwan Weighted, Singapore’s Straits Times, South Korea’s Seoul Composite were down by between 0.28% to 4.06%. However, Japan’s Nikkei rose 1.12%.

US markets ended mixed on Friday, 15 August 2008. The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 43.97 points, or 0.38%, to 11,659.90. The S&P 500 index gained 5.26 points, or 0.41%, to 1,298.20. However the Nasdaq Composite index declined 1.15 points, or 0.0

In an initiative of keeping the sea front and its surroundings free from filth and pollution, the Chennai Corporation proposes to ban plastics at the Marina, Elliot’s and Thiruvanmiyur beaches. Mayor M. Subramanian made this announcement in his speech ahead of the civic body’s budget for 2009-10. He said that the civic body would take measures to ban use of plastics by the shopkeepers on beaches and also boards would be put to ensure that plastic will not be used.

The estimated cost for the beach beautification program was estimated cost of Rs.28 crore. A scheme to recycle waste would be set at Perungudi and Kodungaiyur garbage dump on a design, build, operate, maintain and transfer basis. As an attempt to make the city greener, the corporation would launch a new scheme to plant a sapling for every child born in the city. The sapling would be planted near the child’s residence and the child’s parents would be urged to look after the sapling.

The budget also said that the tanks of Kapaleeshwarar temple in Mylapore, Parthasarathy temple in Triplicane and Karaneeswarar temple in Saidapet would be used to store rainwater by linking them with storm water drain network.

Astronomers have discovered the “strongest ever” gamma ray explosion, exceeding the power of 9000 exploding stars in the deep space constellation Carina. The blast was discovered by the Fermi Gamma ray space telescope, a collaboration among the NASA,, the U.S Department of Energy and other international partners and its other instrument Gamma ray burst monitor together recorded the event.

Together, the instruments have provided a view of the blast’s energies ranging from 3000 to more than five billion times that of visible light. Subsequently, a team lead by the Max Plank Institute of Extra Terrestrial Physics in Germany reported that the blast took 12.2 billion light years away using the European Southern Observatory telescope in LaSilla, Chile.

“Already this was an exciting event and with the team’s distance it went from exciting to extraordinary”, the media quoted Julie McEnery, Fermi Deputy Project Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Slimmer, lighter, greener and more capable than its fore runners, the Apple’s new unibody MacBook junks the plasticky design of its predecessors and redefines Notebook design. Check out the new 13 inch MacBook with all qualities of a next gen notebook but slightly overpriced. The new MacBook is built from a single aluminum piece and Apple calls this “unibody”. A shiny metal body worn to impress and an all glass, all gloss face that reflects just about anything: the new MacBook is designed to charm whether its turn on of off. Though it’s not as light as its plasticky predecessors, its shiny yet subtle look makes it an aesthetic piece of technology. This with a brilliant LED backlit display, a spacious glass Multi-Touch glass track pad and thus it becomes clear that the new MacBook is clearly nex-gen. As far as core specifications you can choose between 2.0 and 2.4 GHz processors. The 2.0 GHz Mac comes with a 160GB 5400 rpm hard drive and the 2.4 GHz comes with a 250 GB 5400 rpm hard drive. Both features 2 GB of DDR3 memory running at 1066MHz and is upgradable to 4 GB. MacBook has set a new standard for environmental responsibility. The MacBook is toxic free: the display incorporates mercury free LED backlight technology and arsenic free glass interface, making MacBook highly recyclable notebook. To be short MacBook unibody is one real stuff for entertainment. COST: MacBook 2.0v: Rs.72, 910. MacBook 2.4v: Rs.88, 280.