Amsterdam - Dutch electrical giant Philips announced a first quarter loss of 57 million euros (76 million dollars) on Tuesday, admitting a "further significant deterioration in our markets."The first quarter profit for 2008, by comparison, was 294 million euros.

Chief Executive Officer Gerard Kleisterlee said "our medical- division sales are also now affected. In our first quarter, like-on- like sales from last year fell from 5.97 to 5.08 billion euros."

Bank of Rajasthan, one of the oldest, fastest growing, technology driven and customer friendly private sector bank, has informed that it has tied up an alliance with DBS Cholamandalam Asset Management Ltd, to qualitatively enhance its reach in the category of mutual fund investors across the country.

According to a senior official, the tie-up is intended to fulfill the investment needs of Bank of Rajasthan customers, by helping them to reach their financial goals.

New York  - Shrinking demand for furs is translating into a loss of income for Canada's seal hunters.

They can expect to be paid 15 to 30 Canadian dollars (12 to 24 US dollars) per pelt, compared with a price of 100 dollars two years ago, leading many hunters to consider whether it was worth it to head out onto the pack ice in the traditional seal hunt at the end of winter in eastern Canada, Canadian media reported.

Tokyo  - Sharp Corp on Wednesday enlarged its expected losses for the fiscal year that ended March 31 in its third downward earnings revision.

The Japanese electronics company said it expected its net loss to expand to 130 billion yen (1.3 billion dollars) from a February forecast of 100 billion yen and its operating loss to worsen to 60 billion yen from 30 billion yen.

Sharp was to suffer its first annual operating loss since 1977 as demand for digital products dwindled amid harsh price competition and the global economic downturn, it said.

Taipei  - Taiwan's mobile phone sales were forecast to drop 9.3 per cent in 2009 because of weakened replacement demand and an extended replacement cycle, an industry report said Wednesday.

Sales were estimated at 6.39 million units by Taiwan's Market Intelligence and Consulting Institute, which called 2009 a crucial year for Taiwan mobile phone operators in terms of strengthening their share in the mobile internet market.

San Francisco  - The internet was buzzing with chatter Friday following a report on an influential technology blog that Google was in talks to purchase cellphone blogging site Twitter.

The report on Techcruch. om said that the internet search giant was in late stage of negotiations to buy Twitter for a cash and stock deal which could be the company's biggest acquisition since it snapped up YouTube for 1.65 billion dollars three years ago.