Showing posts with label April 2009. Show all posts
Showing posts with label April 2009. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

ISRO PSLV C-16 Rocket Launch Successful

ISRO or Indian Space Research Organisation PSLV C-16 was successfully launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota at 10.12 am on Wednesday morning. The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is carrying a remote sensing satellite Resourcesat-2 and two mini spacecraft.

The countdown, which began at 0342 hours today, was progressing smoothly, ISRO sources said.

Apart from Resourcesat-2, the PSLV-C16 will also launch two other satellites, Youthsat and X-Sat. The 1206 kg Resourcesat-2, the primary satellite, has been built by ISRO for facilitating the study and management of natural resources.

The 92 kg Youthsat is a joint Indo-Russian satellite for stellar and atmospheric studies. X-Sat, weighing 106 kg, is a microsatellite for imaging applications built by Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.

However, it still waits to be seen if ISRO's scientists can taste success even on the GSLV that it still needs to perfect.

Await more news...

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Has US companies cut 4,91,000 jobs during April 2009?

In a possible sign that the worst may be over for the country's labour market, a new report shows that American private companies slashed as many as 4,91,000 jobs in April, much less than expected.

The latest ADP National Employment Report showed that non-farm private employment fell 4,91,000 from "March to April 2009 on a seasonally adjusted basis".

Experts were expecting that the decline would be more than 6,00,000.

"The estimated change of employment from February to March was revised by 34,000, from a decline of 742,000 to a decline of 7,08,000," ADP said in a statement on Wednesday.

According to the report, private employment in the service-providing sector plunged by 2,29,000 in April. During the same period, jobs in the goods-producing segment decreased 2,62,000 while that in the manufacturing sector dropped by 1,59,000.

Last month, construction employment dropped 95,000, which was also the "smallest" in nearly six months.

"This was its twenty-seventh consecutive monthly decline, and brings the total decline in construction jobs since the peak in January 2007 to 1,261,000. April's decline, however, was the smallest since November of 2008," the statement said.

Large businesses, defined as those with 500 or more workers, witnessed their employment decline by 77,000 whereas medium-size businesses -- having between 50 and 499 workers -- skid by 2,31,000.

Further, small-size entities, which have less than 50 workers, saw a fall of 1,83,000 in employment.

"The employment declines among medium-and small-size businesses
indicate that the recession continues to spread beyond manufacturing and housing-related activities to almost every area of the economy," it noted.

The report sponsored by ADP is maintained by Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC and it is a measure of employment derived from an anonymous subset of roughly 5,00,000 US business clients.

In the last six months of 2008, the subset represented nearly 4,00,000 US business clients representing nearly 24 million American employees working in all private industrial sectors, ADP said.

Agencies

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Are Satyam employees set to join BoA?

About 250-300 employees at fraud-hit Satyam Computer Services are joining Bank of America, a newspaper said on Wednesday.

The employees were working on a Satyam project for Merrill Lynch, which was taken over by the US bank after it was hit by the subprime crisis last year, it said.

The project was not renewed by Merrill after Satyam was caught in country's biggest corporate scandal and the work of managing its database and providing infrastructure support would now be done in-house, the paper said.

The first of these employees will join Bank of America between April 2 and 8, it said, adding they have been given salary increases of around 10 per cent and joining bonuses.

A spokeswoman for Satyam said, "The report is speculative." An official at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch in India said she could not immediately comment.

Satyam, whose market value has slid to $505.6 million from $7 billion last May, is in the midst of a bidding process to find a new buyer. It plunged into a crisis in January after its founder quit as chairman revealing profits had been falsified for years.

Engineering conglomerate Larsen & Toubro and mid-sized outsourcer Tech Mahindra are among the suitors, and local media have said US private equity WL Ross & Co was also among the bidders.

Agencies

Monday, March 23, 2009

Sony freezes salaries, compensations, hikes of employees'

Sony Corp has decided to freeze its workers' salaries for the year starting in April to improve profitability, the financial daily Nikkei said in its Thursday edition.

The paper said workers' bonuses will also be lowered to four months' pay from six months, and annual compensation for managers will be dropped 10 to 20 per cent through wage cuts and 35 to 40 per cent bonus reductions.

"Executives will also be slugged with huge cuts to bonuses and salaries," Nikkei said. Due to the global economic downtown and the strength of the yen, Sony is expected to report a group operating loss of 260 billion yen ($2.65 billion) for the year ending March 31, the paper said.

Agencies

Has HP cut salaries of EDS employees?

Hewlett-Packard Co said it will cut the base salaries of some employees in its EDS business by 10 per cent for the month of April.

The temporary salary reduction is in addition to a company-wide pay cut HP instituted last month.

The salary cut impacts only EDS workers based in the United States and Puerto Rico and will not affect those making less than $40,000.

A company spokeswoman said in a statement via email that the move is a "temporary cost action to keep the organization strong while increasing financial flexibility."

HP bought EDS last year for $13.2 billion. Last month, after the company cut its full-year outlook and posted weaker-than expected quarterly revenue, HP moved to reduce base pay for all its employees, including a 5 per cent cut for most salaried workers.

HP Chief Executive Mark Hurd has stressed the company's commitment to lowering costs. HP is the world's largest maker of personal computers, and second-largest technology services company.

Agencies

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