Satyam appoints new boss for ANZ

September 12th, 2009 MELBOURNE - Australia's Victoria province faces a 175 million dollars loss following the cancellation of a Mahindra Satyam-led IT project that was set to create 2000 jobs in Geelong. Victorian Premier John Brumby, who promised Geelong residents a gold chest at the end of the rainbow, launched the scheme in April 2008.

September 1st, 2009 SINGAPORE - Singapore's DBS Group Holdings Ltd, the biggest bank in South-East Asia, said Tuesday that it has appointed Piyush Gupta from Citibank Inc as its chief executive officer, about five months after the death of its previous CEO. Gupta, 49, is currently Citibank's chief executive for South-East Asia and the Pacific and is to join the DBS Group in November, the bank said in a statement.

August 25th, 2009 UNITED NATIONS - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has appointed French UN ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert as the first Special Envoy in charge of humanitarian affairs for Pakistan. Ban's spokeswoman, Michele Montas, said Ripert would assist the Pakistan Government and the international community to respond to the current humanitarian crisis in the country.

August 23rd, 2009 LONDON - A curry house boss, who is under investigation for supplying illegal immigrants as staff for restaurants in Britain, has revealed that he charged 10,000 pounds from his clients for recruiting a person of Bangladeshi origin, as opposed to 20 or 30 pounds a day for a person of East European origin. "From Bangladesh I charge 10,000 pounds.

August 14th, 2009 BEIJING - Deputy director of China's National Energy Administration Sun Qin has been appointed as the country's nuclear agency chief. Sun replaced Kang Rixin, general manager of the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), after he was sacked following alleged "grave violations of discipline", sources with the Central Committee of China's Communist Party said Friday.

July 28th, 2009 LONDON - US octuplets mom Nadya Suleman will now have a guardian to look after the financial interests of her children, born in January, after a ruling by a judge in California. The appointment came after an announcement was made that Suleman had signed a deal allowing her children to appear in a reality TV show, which will allow the 14 youngsters to collectively earn 250,000 dollars, the BBC reports.

July 25th, 2009 NEW DELHI - A court recently ordered a Japanese businessman to publicly apologise to one of the woman employee he had wrongly accused of stealing his trousers in Wuhan, Hubei province.. The businessman has also been ordered to pay "spiritual damages" to the tune of 1,000 yuan to the woman.

July 18th, 2009 PARIS - France has named Thierry Mariani as its special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, a media report said Saturday. The 50-year-old diplomat, a member of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's right-wing ruling party, will replace Pierre Lellouche, who was elevated to become minister for Europe last month, the Online news agency reported.

July 13th, 2009 LONDON - Several MPs of the Labour Party have claimed that Prime Minister Gordon Brown is as ruthless and intimidating as a mafia boss. A senior Labour women has even claimed that Brown sends in brutal hitmen to 'bump off' colleagues standing in his way.

June 24th, 2009 LONDON - A British Muslim cop has complained to an employment tribunal that his boss allegedly said that he looked like terror mastermind Osama bin Laden. PC Tariq Dost, 40, said force recruitment manager Darren Yates compared his beard to the al-Qaeda leader's, and referred to Muslim prayers as "shouting and wailing".

June 23rd, 2009 GENEVA - The World Trade Organisation (WTO) Tuesday announced the appointment of two new members to its seven-member dispute settlement body. The new appointees, Ricardo Ramirez and Peter Van den Bossche, will replace Luiz Olavo Baptista and Giorgio Sacerdoti in the appellate body, which is responsible for hearing appeals on disputes between governments and the organisation, a WTO statement said.

June 10th, 2009 LONDON - In yet another example of the hard-line approach towards sex in United Arab Emirates (UAE), the daughter of a British engineer has been jailed for allegedly sleeping with her boss. Roxanne Hillier, a diving instructor, was asleep in a room above the dive shop where she worked in the emirate of Sharjah, when police broke down the locked door and arrested her.

May 27th, 2009 MELBOURNE - The E head of Satyam Computer Services in Australia, Deepak Nangia, has resigned. Nangia told The Australian he left the company around three weeks ago to pursue other opportunities.

May 26th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Sol Trujillo, former boss of telecommunications company Telstra, has said that being in Australia was like "stepping back in time" as it was a racist country. According to a report in The Daily Telegraph, after a four-year stint as Telstra CEO which earnt him about 31 million dollars, Trujillo has been quick to pour scorn on the Rudd Government since leaving Australia 10 days ago.

January 19th, 2009 MELBOURNE - Andy Roddick says he's impressed with new ATP boss Adam Helfant, after meeting his fellow American at the Australian Open. 'I actually was lucky enough to have dinner with him the other night.