New Delhi - Communist allies of India's United Progressive Alliance Wednesday formally withdrew their support to the ruling coalition over a civilian nuclear deal with the US and demanded a trust vote in the Indian parliament.

Leaders of the four left parties that have provided the Congress-party led UPA with its parliamentary majority since May 2004 met President Pratibha Patil to hand over letters of withdrawal of support.

"We have met the president and all four of our left parties have submitted letters withdrawing support from the UPA government," Prakash Karat, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), told reporters in the forecourt of the Presidential Palace after meeting Patil.

Singapore - Singapore is launching a mercantile exchange to facilitate the trading of commodity derivatives in the Asia time zone, a financial market conference was told on Wednesday.

The Singapore Mercantile Exchange (SMX) will offer trading in metals, base metals, energy, agricultural goods, currency pairs, carbon credits and commodity indices, said Ministry of Trade and Industry Lim Hng Kiang.

It will be the first in Asia to offer such a diversified range of products on a single platform, analysts said.

SMX is backed by India-based Financial Technologies.

Lim said the involvement of Financial Technologies, which operates seven exchanges, "underscores Singapore's position as a key commodities trading hub."

New Delhi - India's Reliance Communications and South Africa's largest mobile phone network operator MTN on Wednesday said they were extending exclusive talks until July 21 to discuss a potential combination of their businesses.

MTN and Reliance Communications, India's second largest telecom company, started talks on May 26, that could create a 70-billion-dollar global wireless group with more than 115 million subscribers operating in about two dozen countries.

The 45-day deadline to work out details of a merger ended on July 8.

"RCOM and MTN have agreed to continue their negotiations in relation to such potential business combination, and have extended the period of exclusivity until 21st July

With the intention to swell cheap health care in rustic regions, President

New Delhi - India's benchmark Sensex posted a substantial gain of 4.3 per cent in early trade Wednesday on funds and investors buying in blue-chip stocks.

Toyako, Japan - US President George W Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signalled Wednesday that they were making progress on a controversial agreement to sell US nuclear technology to India.

"We talked about the India-US nuclear deal, and how important that is for our respective countries," Bush told reporters.

"We talked about common opportunities, world problems, and we did it in a spirit of respect. And it was easy for me to do because I respect the prime minister a lot. I also respect India a lot," Bush added.

Bush and Singh met on the sidelines of a Group of Eight summit in Japan.

Singh said the relationship between their two countries had "never been in such good shape as it is today," highlighting "progress in nuclear cooperation."