Standard Chartered makes large deals. Nearly 70,000 currency contracts were traded on the National Stock Exchange on Friday, the first day of trading in currency futures...

A Palestinian-born doctor imprisoned in Libya on charges of infecting children with AIDS has offered new and harrowing details of his incarceration, according to judicial testimony.

In his account to French judges, Doctor Ashraf al-Hajuj describes being raped by a German Shepherd, having his nails ripped off and being given electric shocks.

He was held for more than eight years along with five Bulgarian nurses in a Libyan jail -- mostly on death row -- on charges of infecting 438 children with AIDS-tainted blood.

\"I admitted under torture that I had contaminated the children that I had collaborated with the CIA and the Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency). I was ready to admit everything. That was after the episode with the dog,\" al-Hajuj said, according to an account of his April hearing before Paris judges Philippe Jourdan et Yves Madre.

The plight of the six medics sparked international outcry, forcing Libya to commute the death sentences to life imprisonment.

Frantic last-minute negotiations, led by former French first lady Cecilia Sarkozy and European External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, secured their final transfer home in July 2007.

Al-Hajuj told the judges he was blindfolded during the torture sessions, which mostly took place during the beginning of his imprisonment. He was also present when the other medics were being tortured.

All six returned to Bulgaria after being released -- al-Hajuj had been given a Bulgarian passport to secure his freedom. -toi
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Is it the end of the road for Tata Motors at Singur? Frustrated with unending turmoil over the company\'s upcoming Nano car plant, the company appears to have \"run out of patience\" and is making a \"final assessment\" of the situation, highly placed company sources told TOI.

The company, which has been made \"more or less a hostage\" in the state because of continued protests led by Mamata Banerjee\'s Trinamul Congress, is close to taking a final call over its continuation, sources said. \"We are contemplating whether to walk the talk,\" the sources said, referring to the threat issued by Ratan Tata a few days back of withdrawing from the state if the tensions — giving a security threat to the company\'s employees — continue.

-toi--
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Indian doctor Mohamed Haneef, who was wrongly accused in Australia of involvement in the failed UK car bombings, will seek compensation for the \"immense damage\" to his career, reputation and family.

As the Australian police dropped its 13-month probe into the bungled case on Friday, Haneef said the investigation had left his entire family \"in darkness\" and his reputation destroyed.

\"It has left the whole family in darkness, this episode. Just because of some, I don\'t know, some foolish mistakes from some person,\" 28-year-old Haneef told \'The Weekend Australian\' from a town outside Dubai, where he now lives with his wife and daughter.

Haneef, who was arrested on July 2 last year and spent nearly a month in custody, said the Australian Federal Police had taken too long to clear his name. The investigation had \"shattered\" his family, he said.

The doctor said he was sceptical that Australian police had been seriously investigating him since dropping the charge against him in July last year as he had not been contacted by the AFP since leaving Australia upon his release.

The Indian doctor\'s Australian lawyer Rod Hodgson said Haneef will be seeking compensation.

\"I have spoken to Dr Haneef and he is obviously concerned that his reputation has been impugned over the last 13 months by the Australian Federal Police continuing to refer to him as a suspect,\" Hodgson was quoted as saying by ABC News.

\"And we have made no secret of the fact that he will be seeking compensation for the immense damage to his career, his family and his reputation.\" -TOI...

A broken heart really does hurt, just as poets claim, for a study has revealed that pain caused by emotional distress is more deeply felt and longer lasting than that caused by physical injuries.

For decades, it is believed that \"sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you\". But, now an international team has showed that the reverse is actually true in most cases.

\"While both types of pain can hurt very much at the time they occur, social pain has the unique ability to come back over and over again, whereas physical pain lingers only as an awareness that it was indeed at one time painful.

\"Why aren\'t we always suffering pain by recollections of social betrayal and other forms of social pain? Because we are pretty good at keeping these memories at bay,\" lead author Kip Williams was quoted by the Daily Telegraph as saying.

Williams of Purdue University in the US and colleagues at Macquarie University and the University of New South Wales in Australia have based their findings on an analysis of four experiments.

For their study, published in the latest edition of the Psychological Science, the researchers recruited volunteers who were asked to relieve their past painful experiences just by writing in detail what had happened and how they had felt. -toi...

The long oil/short dollar bet may be off the table for now as energy prices ease and the US currency rises, but inflation and inherent risks in commodities supply could bring this popular trade back.

For over a year, one of the main themes in currency and commodity markets has been to short -- or sell -- the dollar as US economic health looked suspect, and go long -- or buy -- oil as an insurance against inflation and uncertainties in raw materials supply.
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'Reliance Capital will become a holding firm'
-BS...

hey man, atleast post a courtsey note if you lift a story from somewhere, word to word, courtsey, ecomomictimes!...