NEWS ON DEMAND 59

MOST AWAITED CAR AT AUTO EXPO

The new year kicks off with the Auto Expo on January 5, which celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2010.

1. Maruti Suzuki will launch a new family car 'Eeco' with a 1,200cc petrol engine in the under-Rs 4 lakh segment.

2.Honda will unveil the "New Small Concept" vehicle, which has been developed especially for India and other emerging nations.

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3.Toyota will be unveiling the concept of its new, and only, mini car for India that hits the roads towards the end of 2010. Company officials said this concept was a nearfinal design of the company's small car.

>>Toyota's low-cost compact car is codenamed the "Entry Family Car" or "EFC" and is expected to be priced at well under 10,000 dollars.

4.General Motors would unveil the Chevrolet Beat with its 1.2-litre petrol engine.

The Beat, which could emerge as a compelling choice in the segment, will compete with Maruti Suzuki's Ritz and Swift and Hyundai's i10.

5.Volkswagen Polo, the first small car for the Indian market from the European numero uno, will also debut at the expo.

News On Demand 58

.1 Narayan Murthy sold eight lakh shares, some 0.13% of the company on October 21 and 22, raising around Rs 174.30 crore to fund his venture capital firm ‘Catamaran’, and will help entrepreneurs across sectors such as healthcare, retail, technology with early stage investments

2.Bollywood Actor Aamir Khan turned designer with the launch '3 idiots' T-shirt collection this year. Also, Aamir launched an 'Alternative Reality Game' for 3 Idiots and 'disappeared' for the next two weeks for the same. The actor will travel incognito across parts of India and will give clues which would help in finding which city Khan is located in.

BIG PERSONS WITH BIG NEWS: INDIA A BIG DECADE

v Tamil Nadu-born Venkatraman Ramakrishnan , one of the three winners of this year's Nobel in Chemistry, received the prize at a gala ceremony on December 7, 2009 along with other recipients. Born in 1952 at Chidambaram, Dr. Ramakrishnan, a senior scientist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge, shared the Nobel with Thomas A Steitz (US) and Ada E. Yonath (Israel) for their study of the structure and function of the ribosome

v India's Arvind Adiga created history by winning the Man Booker Prize 2008 for his much-publicized debut novel "The white Tiger". Adiga's book is all about poverty in India and the wealth gap between rich and poor.

v Master blaster Sachin Tendulkar created history in the year 2008 in the Mohali Test against Australia, When he surpassed Brian Lara's 11,953 runs to become the highest run-getter in the Test cricket. Tendulkar achieved this milestone in his 152nd Test match.

v Sister Alphonsa , a nun form Kottayam, Kerala became the first-ever woman saint from India in the year 2008. She is the second from Indian Roman Catholic church to get canonised.

Sunil R@th

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