Mumbai, Feb 1 (IANS) India’s largest car manufacturer Maruti Suzuki Monday reported a 33.3 percent rise in sales in January at 95,649 vehicles compared to the like month last year.

The company exported 14,562 units during the month under review, it said in a regulatory filing.

For April-January, sales grew 31.8 percent to 826,592 units over the like period in last fiscal.

Maruti’s sales in the compact car (A2) segment comprising Alto, Wagon-R, Zen, Swift, Ritz and A-Star grew 24.8 percent at 58,540 units over January 2009.

Sale of models in its mid-sized (A3) segment comprising SX4 and D’Zire rose 36.5 percent to 8,995 cars in January this year.

Los Angeles, Feb 1 (IANS) Indian music maestro A.R. Rahman, who won two awards at the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards ceremony here, says he never dreamt of winning honours of this stature.

“Insane eh? I never even dreamt about winning all these awards,” Rahman posted on his Twitter page after receiving the award.

He was honoured for his compositions in Danny Boyle’s fairytale drama “Slumdog Millionaire” – he won for the best compilation soundtrack for a motion picture and the best motion picture song for “Jai ho”, which he shares with lyricist Gulzar and Tanvi Shah.

The composition in the film has won Rahman the most prestigious international awards including two Oscars, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), Critics Choice Award and the Golden Globe.

The singer-composer has thanked a string of people through the micro-blogging site.

“I once again want to thank the Almighty, my spiritual Sufi teachers – Ameen Peerullah Malik Sahib, Danny Boyle, Fox, the whole ‘Slumdog…’ creative team, all the awesome actors in the movie and Resul Pookutty. My whole team, Gulzarji, Sukhvinder Singh, Tanvi Shah, Vijay Prakash, my friend and sound engineer the late H. Sridhar….

“My agents Sam Schwartz and Amos Newman, my mentors Mani Ratnam, Shekhar Kapur and Subhash Ghai, and mentor in the west, Andrew Lloyd Webber, folks at id-PR, Allison and Courtney… extraordinary musicians from Chennai and Mumbai, my mother, my father, my sisters and my lovely wife and children… And all my well wishers from the world who keep me going… Jai ho India!” he posted.

Rahman started his career with director Mani Ratnam’s 1992 Tamil film “Roja” and has never looked back since.

London, Feb 1 (IANS) No fashion magazines for Hollywood actress Anne Hathaway, rather she spends free time studying books on physics to enhance her knowledge on the universe.

The “Devil Wears Prada” star admits she shuns fashion magazines and instead stocks up on books by scientist Albert Einstein and physics textbooks in a bid to better understand the universe, reported contactmusic.com.

“I’m interested in elementary particles. What I like thinking about is how time and space exist in the universe and how we understand it. Any spare time I have, I bury my head in a physics textbook. I’m reading a lot about Einstein. I like theories and I want to understand string theory,” she said.

Port-au-Prince (Haiti), Feb 1 (DPA) The UN World Food Programme Sunday began giving food to victims of Haiti’s devastating earthquake at special distribution points only for women.

Soldiers from the UN peacekeeping mission MINUSTAH, the US military and Haitian police are supervising the distribution, which is designed to prevent violence and ensure food reaches the greatest number of needy Haitians.

Strong groups of young men have overwhelmed some past efforts, carrying off most of the food, and troops have occasionally had to fire warning shots at aid drops.

Sixteen such distribution points have been set up around the capital Port-au-Prince. Coupons are given to women and are good for 25-kg sacks of rice. Some two million people are to be fed through the effort.

Some Haitians have criticised the heavy security presence at food distribution points, saying it aggravates the crowd.

Also Sunday, the White House said US military evacuation flights of wounded Haitians to the US would resume.

“Having received assurances that additional capacity exists both here and among our international partners, we determined that we can resume these critical flights,” spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement.

The flights were suspended Wednesday over concerns about strain on hospitals in Florida, coordination and who would pay for the medical care of evacuated Haitians in state hospitals.

The Haitian government has confirmed 180,000 deaths in the Jan 12 quake and as many as 200,000 injured.

Mumbai, Feb 1(IANS) A benchmark index for Indian equities made up for most of its opening session losses Monday and was ruling about 22 points in the red about two hours after opening bell.

The 30-scrip sensitive index (Sensex) of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), which opened at 16,339.32 points, was at 16,335.38 points, down 22.58 points or 0.13 percent from its previous close at 16,357.96 points.

It had slipped over 197 points soon after opening bell.

At 10.40 a.m., at the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the broader 50-share S&P CNX Nifty was at 4,885.85 points, against the previous close at 4,882.05 points, a gain of 0.08 percent.

Broader markets were however doing better, with the BSE midcap index up 1.33 percent and the BSE small cap index trading 2.34 percent higher.

Among gainers on the Sensex were M&M, up 2.12 percent at Rs.1,041; Maruti Suzuki, up 1.86 percent at Rs.1,416; Graism, up 1.69 percent at Rs.2,638; and Tata Steel, up 1.82 percent at Rs.579.35.

Top losers included Infosys 2.57 percent down at Rs.2,413; HUL, down 2.54 percent at Rs.237.90; HDFC Bank, down 1.28 percent at Rs.1,610; and SBI, down 1.18 percent at Rs.2,033.

Other major Asian markets too were in the red, with the benchmark Japanese index, Nikkei, trading 0.06 percent lower at 10,192.22 points, and the Hang Seng of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange 0.55 percent down at 20,012.1 points.

The Chinese Shanghai composite index too was in the negative terrain, at 2,926.35 points, 2.11 percent down.

However, the Korean Kospi was up 0.2 percent at 1,605.56 points.

Batala (Punjab), Feb 1 (IANS) A 12-year-old boy was seriously injured after he was hit by a bullet at a marriage function here in this Punjab town, police said Monday.

The incident occurred Sunday night.

According to the police the victim was identified as Deepak Kumar, a resident of Gaunspura village here. At the time of the incident he was collecting money scattered on the dance floor.

Kumar has been admitted to a private hospital in Amritsar, around 30 km from here.

“The accused is Mohan Singh, who lives in the nearby village of Vernangal. He was under the influence of alcohol and was firing to celebrate the marriage of his friend,” said a police official.

He added: “We have registered a case and started our investigation. The accused is absconding and we are raiding his possible hideouts in the area to nab him.”

Batala town is around 250 km from state capital Chandigarh.

London, Feb 1 (IANS) Australian pop star Dannii Minogue has dismissed rumours that she will marry her boyfriend after the birth of their first child later this year. She says she is too scared to walk down the aisle.

Minogue, 38, was previously married to actor Julian McMahon, but they divorced in 1995 after less than two years of marriage, dailystar.co.uk. She is now dating British rugby player Kris Smith and they are expecting their first baby in July.

“I wanted to have kids with someone I totally love and that’s him. But marriage really scares me. I wouldn’t rule it out, but my divorce was really emotional for me. When something is wrapped up in these bad memories, you don’t want to go hurtling back,” she said.

Lusaka (Zambia), Feb 1 (IANS) On the ground floor of a squat building in downtown Lusaka, tellers sit inside tiny wooden cabins, counting out money. The busy scene is as ordinary as at any other bank, but the provenance of this financial firm is a rather unique experiment, beginning nearly 6,600 km away – in India.

The Indo-Zambia bank, as is evident from its nomenclature, was born of a mixed parentage of three Indian state banks and the Zambian government in 1984.

Or as 57-year-old Satish Shukla, the bank’s managing director, described, “it is a joint venture of four cultures”. It is also the first ever project in which three Indian banks – Bank of India, Bank of Baroda and Central Bank of India – came together on an overseas platform, each contributing 20 percent towards the share capital, with the rest held by the government of Zambia.

This bank came into existence during the heyday of the Non Aligned Movement, when Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda and India’s Indira Gandhi were striding the global stage propounding South-South cooperation.

Twenty-five years on, the bank still exists and thrives, with 12 branches, 260 local employees, nine Indian chief managers, one Indian managing director and a Zambian chairperson.

Fluorescent lights illuminate the high-ceiling hall, which is filled with employees working and flitting between scores of desks, piled with files, while clients sit on recessed window seats or stand patiently in a queue.

Not that it has always been easy. It survived the crisis in banking industry in Zambia during 1995-97, when eight banks folded up.

Their secret – “We have been running the bank in a typical conservative Indian manner,” Shukla told a visiting IANS correspondent.

While the global recession did not impact Zambia in the last two years because of its small economy , it did go through a turbulent time in 2008 due to the sharp drop in the price of copper – the county’s life blood.

With profitability under strain, plans to open new branches were shelved for 2009-10. But, with copper prices having relatively bounced back, “next year we would definitely aim to open two-three more branches”.

Shukla was quick to emphasise that financial fundamentals were strong. “We have been pretty aggressive in expanding credit. In the last three years, credit has grown by 50 percent, deposits have grown by 30 percent and capital adequacy ratio is 40 percent,” he said. The total deposits are now 679,764 million Kvacha (Rs.679.76 crore/about Rs. 6.8 billion/US$130 million).

In fact, it has perhaps the lowest proportion of gross non-performing assets (NPA) to gross advance among banks in Zambia. “Here, the banking sector NPA to gross advances is 13 percent, which has in fact increased from eight percent two years ago… Ours is less than one percent. I think it is the best rate among the banks here,” said Shukla, a native of Mumbai, who has been in Lusaka since September 2008.

The increase in NPA in the Zambian banking industry was due to the aggressiveness in giving personal loans. “They were even sitting in malls and giving loans. And here once you lose your job, it is difficult to repay the personal loans,” explained Shukla.

With Indian companies increasingly coming to Africa and Zambia for investment opportunities, there is scope to further expand bank operations. “All the Indians who want to set up any business here, naturally the tendency is to come here directly,” said Shukla.

With Indian bankers, all of them on deputation for four years, working closely with local employees it is not surprising that some of their ways have rubbed on to them.

G.H.R. Haminza, the bank’s senior-most Zambian employee, who joined in 1989, got trained in the Central Bank of India. He was on attachment to the Bank of Baroda and is currently general manager.

He even sports a steel bangle, known as kara, on his right wrist. “I saw an Indian working with me trying to open a bottle of coke with this, instead of a bottle opener. So I said give it to me. Now I wear it,” Haminza told IANS.

With one out of four board meetings held in India, Haminza considers himself well-travelled in the sub-continent, having visited remote places like the Andaman Islands and the Himalayan state of Sikkim. “I have seen more of India than most Indians,” Haminza, said, adding, “I am perhaps more Indian than most.”

(Devirupa Mitra can be contacted at devirupa.m@ians.in)

New Delhi, Feb 1 (IANS) Leading Indian-American fusion musician Karsh Kale, who has set the background score for Farhan Akhtar’s movie “Karthik Calling Karthik”, wants to continue his brush with Bollywood because “he loves cinematic music”.

“‘Karthik Calling Karthik’ has allowed me to experiment with different styles of music though the score is more Hollywood than Bollywood. This is the first time I have composed music for an 80-piece string orchestra and peppered it with electronica and rock. The songs are about life, documenting a cultural journey,” Kale told IANS in an interview.

The musician, who grew up in New York’s Stony Brook, said he “went through Quentin Tarantino’s movie soundtracks, the music of the ‘Requiem For a Dream’, a Darren Aronofsky movie whose background score was composed by Clint Mansell and was performed by the Kronos Quartet for ‘Karthik…’”

“I was also influenced by the kind of temp (temporary) music they used in Denzel Washington’s ‘Inside Man’,” Kale said.

“Karthik Calling Karthik” is releasing Feb 26.

“I am fond of grand cinematic music – the kind used in movies like ‘Star Wars’, ‘Superman’ and ‘Jaws’,” said Kale, who leads fusion jazz band ‘Realize Band’ in the US and plays with the Delhi-based Medieval Pundits in India.

Kale, who divides his time between Delhi, Mumbai and the US, is working on a new album, which he expects to complete by February-end.

“The album is about how life plays out in cinema – and features electronica, rock and ambient music. The songs are about movies and I have composed several orchestra symphony for it,” he said.

The album, whose name he refused to disclose, is a debut by the Mighty Junn Production owned by Kale. “The production company is named after a moniker Mighty Junn that my friends in school coined for me after a railway engine,” the musician said.

Hindi does not come easily to Kale, who spent all his early years abroad. “I wrote a song for ‘Karthik…’in English and took it to Javed Akhtar, who transcribed it in Hindi,” Kale said.

But music, as Kale says, flows in his blood. “Music started for me when I was a child in London, where I was born. My mother was an old Hindi film music aficionado – especially those from Raj Kapoor’s movies and my father was a Hindustani classical music fan. My brother listened to rock and my sister was fond of pop,” he said.

“I remember sitting at the back of a station wagon – touring America with family – and falling asleep listening to Lata Mangeshkar and waking up to Lionel Richie. My father made me sit through a 50-minute ‘alaap’ by Hariprasad Chaurasia as a boy,” he said.

Kale walked down the memory lane of childhood to describe his “musical legacy”.

“My brother was a member of the Columbia Home Tape Club which sent 12 new cassettes to its members every month. I listened to Billy Joel and Led Zeppelin. As an eight-year-old, I studied their albums and later moved to progressive rock bands like Yes and Genesis. I also played percussion for several local bands,” Kale said.

The meeting of eastern and western influences fanned Kale’s passion for fusion music.

“Fusion music is not just polite conversations every day, but getting into each other’s situations and cultures. For example, Shakti – the band put together by Zakir Hussain featuring John Mclaughlin on the guitar, Zakir Hussain, U. Shrinivas and V. Selvaganesh – managed to do what others could not. Not only did they exchange music but also swapped clothes and cultures. They spoke in each other’s voices in interviews. Fusion, for me, is bringing different conversations together in a musical way,” Kale said.

Kale is known for his Six Degree music series – a series of six CD fusion compilations.

(Madhusree Chatterjee can be contacted at madhu.c@ians.in)

Sydney, Feb 1 (IANS) Sleep deprived new mothers are at considerable risk of crashing when they get behind the wheel, says a new study

Kerry Armstrong and Simon Smith, from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), studied mothers aged 22 to 39 years to examine the impact fatigue has on new mums’ everyday life functioning.

Armstrong said contrary to previous research which indicated post-partum fatigue should disappear after six weeks, new mums still felt exhausted 12 weeks after giving birth.

The study found lifestyle changes, interrupted sleep, lack of routine and high levels of unpredictability, cumulatively led to fatigue which could at times be overwhelming.

“The mothers reported debilitating physical and mental effects, likening their experience to ‘operating in a constant mental haze’ feeling ‘flu-like symptoms’ and ‘moving through the day like you’re on autopilot’,” Armstrong said.

Armstrong said while most people accepted women with babies would be exhausted, up until now no-one had looked at what this meant for their safety on and off the road.

“To put the danger of fatigue into some sort of perspective; if someone is awake for 17 hours they have a driving performance similar to that of a person with a blood alcohol level of 0.05 percent, and if they have been awake for 24 hours it is 0.1 percent, or two times the legal driving limit,” she said.

“This has serious implications for mothers suffering from interrupted sleep patterns, night after night and sometimes for several years.”

Armstrong said fatigue was a very real danger on our roads with tiredness contributing to one in three crashes, said a QUT release.

“Instead of resting, the mothers often ‘pushed on’ because tasks still needed to be done and the baby’s needs still had to be met.”