Munich - BMW will make its new luxury 7-Series available in a hybrid drive version with a concept vehicle to be unveiled at the Paris Motor Show, the car maker has announced.

First versions of the 7-Series hybrid drive serial-production version will be presented in 2009, said a BMW spokesman.

The Concept 7 Series ActiveHybrid combines a 300 kW/407 hp combustion engine with a 15 kW electric motor that reduces fuel consumption by 15 per cent compared to a standard model, according to the car maker.

The unpredicted events which occurred as a protest against setting up of Nano Plant at Singur really disappointed the Institute of Indian Foundrymen (IIF), since this ‘Rs 1 lakh car’ project taken up by Tata motors had given immense hope to foundry industry located at West Bengal, to develop a correlation with Tata motors. 

With the aim to display and exhibit the abilities and capacity of foundry industry and its suppliers, IIF would soon be holding an exhibition along with IFEX-2009, titled the 57th Indian Foundry Congress.

Stockholm - Swedish heavy-vehicle maker Volvo Trucks said Tuesday it planned to cut some 1,400 jobs in its workforce, citing the need to reduce production capacity over "declining demand for trucks in the European market."

The measures planned for the coming months included cancelling evening shifts and were to affect plants in the Swedish towns of Gothenburg and Umea, and in Ghent in Belgium, Volvo Trucks chief executive Staffan Jufors said in a statement.

New York  - Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group will acquire a 21-per-cent stake in Morgan Stanley as the financial crisis has hurt confidence in US banks and hampered liquidity, the firms announced Monday.

The largest Japanese financial group will pay 9 billion dollars to become the primary shareholder. The cash infusion comes amid a credit crunch that has brought turmoil to world financial markets and prompted a 700-billion-dollar bailout deal making its way through the US Congress.

Belgrade - Serbia and the Italian carmaker Fiat on Monday signed a joint-venture deal expected to bring almost 1 billion euros (1.3 billion dollars) in investment and revive the moribund Serbian car industry. 

Fiat would pour 700 million euros and Serbia another 200 million euros into the Zastava factory in Kragujevac, which once made the infamous Yugo car.