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The Indian rupee <INR=IN> could make bigger this week’s wounded to fresh 8-month low on Wednesday as record oil prices pump up dollar demand from refiners and heighten concern about a widen trade deficit and rising inflation.* Oil CLc1 rose to a record high of $122.73 a tub on Tuesday [O/R]. India imports 70 percent of its oil wants, and crude refiners such as HPCL (HPCL.BO: Quote, Profile, Research) and BPCL (BPCL.BO: Quote, Profile, Research) are among the main Indian buyer of dollars.* The partly convertible rupee ended at 40.95/96 per dollar on Tuesday, 0.8 percent lower from Monday’s shut of 40.61/62. The rupee fell as far as 41 per dollar throughout trade, its lowly since not on time August 2007, according to Reuters information. (Reporting by Anurag Joshi)

shut on the heels of President George W Bush’s comments linking Indians’ foodstuff habits to increasing worldwide price of merchandise, the joint States has now partially credited the surge in oil futures to the greater than before insist in India and China.”There are a lot of different habits that we can decrease our reliance, but we have additional to do and it’s just — and also I would point out that, clearly, the insist for oil is rising around the earth,” White House Deputy orator Scott Stanzel supposed in a meeting.”Many developing nation like India or China are having greatly greater than before demand, which obviously is having an crash on price,” the senior White House official said respond to a question on the basic oil price journey USD 120-mark.The senior White House official harassed that it was significant for the United States to become fewer dependent on overseas sources of power.

stress the need for “home exploration”, he said “We also have to do additional in terms of structure refinery. We haven’t built refinery in about 30 years”.Stanzel also beam regarding Bush’s comments, which have haggard a lot of criticism from every part in India, saying the United States saw “higher living standards” of people there as a “good thing”.”We think that it is a good thing that countries are developing; that more and more populace have higher and higher main beliefs of living,” he said.though, he it seems that did not go back on Bush’s point that Indian foodstuff habits were causal to spiralling price of merchandise, which in twist, were deterioration the worldwide food disaster.

It’s Friday night and still no word from the Microsoft or Yahoo bunkers. The headline for today tell the account (see Techmeme).The Wall Street Journal, which appears to be a conduit for the talks, has a story, “Microsoft, Yahoo meeting make stronger In Push to Reach a welcoming Deal,” and another one, “Yahoo-Google Pact May Be shut.” It doesn’t seem that a Yahoo-Google mating on publicity would lead to a friendly Microsoft-Yahoo conversation this weekend. It’s an attractive pastime of chicken, with many issue, such as narrow approval, up in the air for any variation of a deal with the triangle.Of course, Ballmer has other option. He could take the antagonistic takeover route, or saunter away for now and perhaps approach back later if Yahoo goes into plummet, even with Google filling its treasury.

Whatever the result, it doesn’t alter the reality that Microsoft older organization powerfully believes that it has to do something theatrical to vie with Google. The information that Google has insert itself into the procedure has to be galling to Microsoft, which could guide to the hostile way.

For a prompt, here is the shed of characters and social chart.

The government has attained the revised indirect tax collection target of Rs 2, 79,000 crore for 2007-08, said P.C. Jha, chairman of the Central Board of Excise and Customs. Total indirect tax mopup included customs collections of Rs 1,04,000 crore, excise collections of Rs 1,25,000 crore and service taxes of over Rs 50,000 crore as on March 31, 2008, he said. The direct tax collection target of Rs 3,05,000 crore has by now been achieved at Rs 3,12,000 crore. Total tax collected stood at Rs 5, 91,000 crore for the fiscal.

Referring to the budget estimates of Rs 3, 22,000 crore for indirect tax collections in 2008-09, Jha said, “We are hopeful of attain the target considering the continuing high increase of the economy.” He said the final service tax set figures were still due as data for about 5.5 lakh taxpayers were being collected, but the targets had been achieved. This is despite the cut in excise duty from 16 to 14 per cent and the decrease in customs responsibility on various items after the budget.

Jha said there was a minor shortfall in remove duty collections next to the revised target of Rs 1,27,947 crore for 2007-08, but it was more than met by the increase in customs and service tax collections.