Rupee to test 47-level vs USD, GDP growth 6% by year-end'

Continuing flight of foreign capital from Indian equity markets and the persisting global financial crisis, hit by surging crude oil prices, are likely to send the domestic currency crashing to 47-level against the US dollar in the coming months, the experts have warned.

Since the beginning of 2008, the rupee has depreciated by over 8 per cent against the US dollar in a downward rally, which started after a sharp appreciation of over 11 per cent in the Indian currency spanning over a year-long period.

During its last appreciation leg, the rupee rose from about 45-level to a high of close to 39 per dollar mark, while it is currently inching towards 43-level amid continuing pull- out of foreign capital from India and surge in oil price.

Global brokerage and equity research major CLSA's analyst and a renowned portfolio manager Christopher Wood has said in the latest June edition of his famed "Greed and Fear" report that further rise in oil price would continue to be particularly bad news for India.

"This is both despite and because of the Reserve Bank of India's increasingly pre-emptive monetary tightening stance. The RBI raised on Tuesday the repo rate and the cash reserve ratio (CRR) by 50 bps each to 8.5 per cent and 8.75 per cent, respectively.

"Certainly, a re-test of the 12,000 level on the Sensex cannot be ruled out in these circumstances. And that will be accompanied by a further weakening in the rupee," Wood wrote.

Separately, research and analytics firm Evalueserve's Chairman Alok Aggarwal has written in a whitepaper that the rupee is expected to fall to 47 against the US dollar and GDP growth could slow down to six per cent by the fourth quarter of this fiscal.

"Should the present global financial crisis not subside, crude oil continue to trade upwards, FII outflow from India continues unabated, and the Indian government do more harm than good to the country's fiscal health in an election year, we are revising down our earlier forecasts.

"We now believe that the Sensex could drop to 12,000 in the near term, the Rupee could depreciate by another five to six per cent against the US dollar, and the GDP growth could slow to approximately six per cent by the fourth quarter of this fiscal year," Aggarwal wrote.

He also pointed out that deterioration of external and internal factors have thrown obstacles in the country's growth story.

"We also believe that the Indian government's hands are tied in an election year and it is likely to be a net negative contributor," he said.

Noting that the Indian economy is in a tight spot in the short term, the whitepaper said a number of external and internal factors are likely to create pressure on economic growth, corporate earnings and the stock market.

Further, it added that as the country's financial markets are relatively immature, small capital inflows and outflows tend to have an exaggerated impact.

Here’s your reminder

Want to be alerted about mail or card you need to send next Thursday? Turn to these services.

Feeling rushed off your feet all the time, what with meeting needs of the present and trying to plan for future commitments? You could be wishing you had an online Jeeves of sorts, somebody who could do the groundwork, organising your schedules for you, and better still, reminding you at the right moment – send so and so this card, prepare for important meeting, and so on.

Just turn to the Internet and you might start breathing easy on this front. The Web has self-organiser tools, or e-mail scheduling services, that will act as your virtual personal assistant. Using these, you can send e-mails and files in the future — once or periodically, using flexible schedules — something our regular e-mail services don’t offer.

With such a reminder utility, we can send e-mail messages/reminders to ourselves or to others about the commitments — such as an important appointment with the boss, a business meet, interviews, your family members’ birthdays, other to-do lists.

Go on, try the following e-mail scheduling services :

www.Lettermelater.com : With this Web service, you can send e-mails to anyone you wish, with the ability to have them sent at any future date and time you decide.

Most Web-based email services don’t offer the convenience to schedule e-mail messages. If you click ‘send’, the mail is delivered instantly and a feature missing from these regular services is the ability to schedule e-mail delivery.

With this Web site, you can write e-mails with your existing e-mail address, and they will get sent at the exact date/time that you specify.

Once you get registered with the Web site, you can schedule and send reminders/e-mails by logging on to the site. The messages can be sent in ‘txt’ or ‘html’ formats.

Apart from the above, you can also send scheduled messages directly from your primary e-mail program (GMail, Outlook, Thunderbird, etc) by simply e-mailing it to ‘ me@lettermelater.com’. The Web site clearly explains the steps you need to follow to send scheduled messages from your e-mail program that has an account with LetterMeLater.

By using ‘cc’ and ‘bcc’ options, you can forward scheduled e-mails to as many people as you wish.

You can also track and manage scheduled e-mails online. Your e-mail will be the return address on the e-mails you send. Your recipient can see your e-mail address and reply.

For those averse to sign-up/registration formalities, the Web site has another user-friendly feature called ‘Quick Send’. Here, there are no sign-up procedures, you can directly go to the ‘Quick Send’ option and send scheduled messages/reminders instantly.

But the e-mails you send with this format will have the return address of webuser (at) lettermelater.com.

According to the Web site, the time zone has been auto detected. If the time given does not match your local time when the page was last loaded, you must make the necessary adjustment. It has a flexible date format. You can also enter specifications such as ‘now’, ‘next week’, or ‘tomorrow at 2 p.m.’

www.timecave.com: Want to make sure you don’t forget something, whether it’s an important date or appointment? Use Time Cave, a free reminder service, to meet your commitments.

The Web site does scheduling of your e-mail delivery, like the other one we saw.

All you have to do is get signed-up with the Web site to access this service. Just drop an e-mail message or reminder into Time Cave and instruct it when to come out. It provides options such as days, weeks, months, or even years to schedule your e-mail delivery.

The neatly-designed Time Cave will hold onto your message. Once the message’s time comes, it will be delivered to your e-mail or whomever you addressed it to. According to the Web site, all messages you send to any e-mail address, other than your own, will appear to come from your e-mail ID, not from Time Cave’s. Only messages you send to yourself appear to come from Time Cave.

Jesus ‘bleeds’ in Mumbai church

Christians, Hindus and Muslims from across Maharashtra continue to descend on St Michael's Church in Mahim to witness — what they believe — is a miracle.

The dark red patch around the heart on a painting of Jesus Christ has grown since it was discovered on Friday afternoon, and so has the queue around Mahim's packed streets. Hundreds of people visited the church by Saturday night.

Almost euphoric, people queued for up to six hours to spend just two seconds in front of the painting. They were allowed to touch and kiss the protective glass before being moved along. Many broke down after seeing the 'miracle', some wept and several fainted.

However, the Catholic Church in India denied this miracle. “The Church is cautious about declaring something a miracle," said Cardinal Oswald Gracias, Archbishop of Mumbai. “God can work miracles, but it is too early to say that this is a miracle. It’s probably due to climate conditions from the monsoon. People should not get euphoric about this, but if it brings them closer to God, it is a good thing. I’ll visit the church soon to see it for myself.”

Clearly flustered by the unprecedented attention and a sleepless night, Parish Priest Father Raphael, stated that this was no miracle. “People can interpret it as they want to, but the picture is not bleeding and this is no miracle,” he said. Despite early chaos — when a stampede entered the church after the mark was first discovered — volunteers and police controlled the crowd and 500 metres long queue was formed. Ambulance crews were also on hand.

News of the ‘miracle’ spread fast and believers from Goa, Karnataka and Gujarat have made the pilgrimage to see the 3 by 4 foot painting. Several local schools gave children the day off to visit the church.

“It is a sign from God that Jesus has returned in this time of violence, sin and evil to give the message that he is dying for us again,” said David Serrao, a pastor at St Michael’s. “The blood started as a small red drop and was discovered by children playing in the church. It has now spread as Christ’s heart bleeds.” It is not just Christians that are flocking to Mahim. Large numbers of Hindus and Muslims are also coming to witness the image.

Maryam Shah travelled with her husband and three children from Malad. “I cried when I saw the blood,” she said. “We are Muslims but that does not matter when something like this happens. People of all faiths should appreciate the message.”

How even fallen trees help curb global warming

A 14,000-year-old oak tree has provided evidence that submerged trees store carbon far longer than trees that fall in forests.

Researchers came across the tree in Missouri in the US, possibly the oldest discovered in the world, when they were studying the ability of trees to store carbon.

While a tree is alive, it has a great ability to store carbon, thus keeping it out of the atmosphere. When it begins to decay, the carbon is released back into the atmosphere.

Discovering that certain conditions slow this process reveals the importance of proper tree disposal as well as the benefits of riparian forests, or forests through which water flows.

“If a tree falls in a forest, that number is reduced to an average of 20 years. In firewood, carbon is only stored for a year,” said Richard Guyette of Missouri University who led the study. “Carbon plays a huge role in climate change, and information about where it goes will be very important someday soon,” said Michael C Stambaugh, a co-author of the study. Findings of the study have been published in the latest issue of the journal Ecosystems.

Girl in hospital after TV reality show

The hospitalisation of a teenage girl, who had fallen ill after participating in a dance show on television, has sparked a fierce debate about reality shows and their impact on a young impressionable mind.

The 16-year-old Shinjini Sengupta is now at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, (NIMHANS) Bangalore, where she was shifted from a city private hospital after she seemingly lost her ability to speak or move her limbs freely.

According to family sources, she developed these symptoms once she got eliminated after dancing her way to the hearts of the three judges in two earlier rounds. The comments made by the judges, which included celebrities, were being linked as possible triggers along with rising parental aspirations, which were always pushing the single-child to become achievers in every field.

While doctors attending on her here made an early diagnosis of an infection in her nervous system, she was shifted to NIMHANS for more detailed tests . The doe-eyed high-school girl participated in two rounds of the dance show on a TV channel and started showing first signs of depression in a tele-serial where she had won an audition.

Gear up for polls, Sonia tells party

Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Saturday asked party office-bearers to prepare for elections. She set a deadline of August 31 for them to come up with specific programmes, strategies and a proposed list of candidates.

At a meeting with party leaders here, Ms. Gandhi took feedback from general secretaries in charge of the poll-going States on their preparedness for elections and asked them to involve State, district and block-level functionaries in setting in place organisation structures. She wanted simultaneous preparation for Lok Sabha elections as part of an aggressive strategy to re-energise the party in the run-up to the polls.

In answer to a question, chairman of the AICC media committee M. Veerappa Moily who attended the meeting said, “Yes, there was a sense of urgency to the meeting.”

The States scheduled to go to the polls in November-December include Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir, Mizoram and the National Capital Region of Delhi.

Ms. Gandhi told the meeting that she had received the A.K. Antony panel’s report on revitalising the party and sought the views of the leaders on it.

Passports under Tatkal service to be ready in a day

The project, launched in December last year and to be completed within 19 months, will also ensure that an applicant gets his passport within three days of application if police verification is not required.

Highlighting these aspects of the new passport issuance system in Amritsar, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said on Saturday the steps are being taken to make the system applicant-friendly while balancing the needs of security.

Mukerjee said verification will be expedited through electronic linkage of the Passport Facilitation Centres with the police authorities in state capitals.

The minister, who inaugurated a Passport Centre, also said that e-passports with biometric information will be issued to the general public beginning September next year.

He said ''about 50 lakh passports were issued last year all over India by the Central Passport Organisation, compared to 22 lakh seven years ago. The total demand for passports is expected to grow to over 80 lakhs in 2010.