Rate falls back to open Asia but rallies to trade better on the day after MPC Blanchflower comments fail to depress the rate; light stops seen on the move over the 1.3700 area as late shorts get squeezed. Aggressive bids seen and the rate recovers as New York puts on weight.

The USD gave back overnight gains as the Greenback failed to follow through during New York trade; at the close the majors are all better on the day but off their highs suggesting lots of two-way action and a potential short-squeeze underway. US data was better-than-expected this morning as existing home sales showed a gain suggesting that the housing crisis might be ending but savvy traders note that it will take more than one month of gains to suggest the housing problem is mitigating.

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) on Friday said that the sophisticated camera on board Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter has picked up the first X-ray signal from the moon.

The space agency said, “The first X-ray signature was detected from a region near the Apollo landing sites Dec 12 at 02:36 universal time. The solar flare that caused the X-ray fluorescence was exceedingly weak, about 20 times smaller than the minimum the CIXS imaging spectrometer was designed to detect.”

After a disappointing week, which saw the release of Chandni Chowk To China (CC2C), Bhatt’s Raaz - The Mystery Continues and Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire have brought smile back to viewers’ faces on Friday.

The audiences welcomed both the films with open arms.

At several cinema halls, Raaz - TMC got 70-80% start that was almost double of Hashmi’s last hit ‘Jannat’, and much bigger than last week’s release ‘CC2C’.

The film Raaz, which cost just 1/3rd of CC2C, received much bigger response than that film.

UK’s fourth major food retailer Morrisons has joined hands with Bangalore-based IT company Wipro Technologies for development of its subsisting IT systems and applications in order to support future growth plans.

Wipro Retail, a specialist division of Wipro Technologies, will deliver an operating model, which supports the strategic and commercial objectives of Morrisons, with 375 stores and annual turnover of £13 billion.

Both the companies have not disclosed the details regarding the size of the deal.

India equities opened the week on a firm note