Oil PSUs hiked the prices of jet fuels by 3% on Thursdat, and consequently the domestic airlines Jet and Kingfisher-Deccan decided to increase their basic fares from Friday. The hike in the air fare has been on constant increase from past some time now, due to basic reason of rise in the crude oil prices.

Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC), a well known Global automobile giant, will soon be introducing its newly designed compact car in the Indian market, for which it laid the foundation stone for a Rs 14,00 crore new factory near Bangalore on Thursday. The top company officials reported that the compact new car is expected to hit the Indian roads by the mid-2010 and is currently being developed by Toyota engineers with inputs from Indian engineers.

The Karnataka Chief Minister, B S Yeddyurappa laid the foundation stone at Bidadi, in the presence of Akira Okabe, Senior Managing Director, TMC, Ryoichi Sasaki, Chairman, Vikram Kirloskar, Vice Chairman and Hiroshi Nakagawa, managing director, Toyota Kirloskar Motor Pvt Ltd.

Engineering design services firm Tata Elxsi Limited, has signed a partnership deal with Japanese firm Proassist, for establishment of a Proassist Global Development Centre (PGDC) in the country.

Houston, Texas- Soaring oil prices have pushed Exxon Mobil to a record profit for the second quarter of 2008, with the world's largest publicly-traded oil company on Thursday posting a 14-per-cent rise in net income to 11.7 billion dollars.

Representing the largest-ever quarterly profit for a US company, the rise mirrors strong quarterly performances by European competitors BP and Shell.

Revenue meanwhile climbed to 138.1 billion dollars for the period, up 40 per cent on Q2 2007, the Houston-based energy giant said in a statement.

The figures however come in below analysts' expectations, with Exxon shares remaining under pressure.