Reliance Industries (RIL) recently announced that it had completed the sale of a 30 per cent stake in 21 oil and gas blocks in the country to BP Plc.

The deal was struck in February and was cleared by the Centre on August 9.

From in.finance.yahoo.com:

RIL will get $7.2 billion for the stake sale in 21 blocks and could get an additional $1.2 billion as performance payments based on exploration success resulting in the development of commercial deliveries.

Reliance has already received $2 billion from BP. The rest is expected to flow in over a period of time, sources said. Some reports have said that RIL will receive the remaining amount by the end of this month.

An RIL statement said the two companies would also form a 50:50 joint venture for the sourcing and marketing of gas in India. This is expected to accelerate the creation of infrastructure for receiving, transporting and marketing natural gas.

With the completion of the stake sale, the two partners will operate across the gas value chain in India from exploration and production to distribution and marketing.

“The alliance with BP will boost our efforts to realise the true potential of India’s hydrocarbon reserves. The globally renowned expertise of BP and the in-depth domestic experience of Reliance make for a formidable alliance which will deliver unparalleled value for the country in its pursuit of energy security,” said RIL chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani.

Google Inc. has announced a $12.5 billion cash acquisition of mobile phone maker Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. to set its sights on rival, Apple Inc.

The biggest foray of Google into hardware comes weeks after a failed attempt to buy patents from bankrupt Nortel.

From in.news.yahoo.com:

But in buying Motorola, the Internet giant risks alienating the hardware partners that license its free Android software. Google CEO Larry Page sought to calm the jitters by stressing on Monday that Android will remain open to all.

“The danger is that other handset makers feel disenfranchised,” said Nomura Securities global technology specialist Richard Windsor.

“Motorola is the weaker player. This could actually collapse the entire community.”

Shares of Motorola Mobility jumped 59 percent, while Nokia’s stock gained more than 10 percent on speculation the Finnish mobile company is now an acquisition target.

The deal — which took Wall Street by surprise — appears to mark a shift in strategy for a company that had focused on shoring up its Internet search and advertising empire with forays into video and social networking.

The acquisition will give Google an intellectual property library in wireless telephony to wage war on Apple and Microsoft Corp.

Sanford Wallace, known as the “Spam King,” has turned himself in to U.S. authorities after being indicted of masterminding a scheme that sent more than 7 million unsolicited junk messages through servers of Facebook, the popular social networking site.

The Las Vegas man has surrendered to FBI agents for facing 11 counts of fraud, intentional damage to a protected computer, and criminal contempt for violating previous orders to stay off the social networking sites Facebook and MySpace.

From Reuters.com:

Wallace, 43, developed a program that evaded Facebook’s spam filters and posted messages encouraging account holders to visit a website, purportedly from a friend, according to the indictment unsealed on Thursday.

Instead, unsuspecting users were prompted to enter their email addresses and passwords and then were redirected to an affiliate website that earned Wallace “substantial revenue” for directing the traffic, the indictment said.

Wallace’s program scooped up their information, including their lists of friends, and sent spam messages to them.

Accounts of about 500,000 Facebook users were compromised between November 2008 and March 2009, leading to more than 27 million spam messages being sent, federal prosecutors said.

“We will continue to pursue and support both civil and criminal consequences for spammers and others who attempt to harm Facebook or the people who use our service,” Chris Sonderby, a lawyer for the company, said in a statement.

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An Indian automobile body has remarked that demand for cars in the country is believed to skid more than expectations.

This would be primarily because of rising interest rates and fuel prices “forcing” consumers to tighten budget in the Indian auto market.

From in.finance.yahoo.com:

Car sales, which grew at a breakneck 30 percent in the fiscal year that ended in April, are now expected to grow by just 10 to 12 percent this fiscal year, down from an earlier forecast of 16 to 18 percent, the industry group forecast.

Car sales in Asia’s third largest economy, which in June saw their slowest pace of growth since March 2009, are driven by a burgeoning middle class that relies on bank loans for purchases.

But the Reserve Bank has raised interest rates ten times since March last year in an effort to battle stubbornly high inflation, a move that has hurt credit-based purchases.

“Policy rates are changing beyond what we had expected three months ago … if there is any further increase, it will have a devastating effect on the industry,” Pawan Goenka, president of the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), said on Monday.

“We have seen slowing sales for three months now and with rising interest rates and negative sentiment among buyers, this trend will prevail for another three months,” said Vineet Hetamasaria, auto analyst at PINC Research.

If you have been looking for vehicle and life safety quotations, this compilation of safety quotes would surely be of interest to you.

I hooked up my accelerator pedal in my car to my brake lights.  I hit the gas, people behind me stop, and I’m gone. -Steven Wright

The car has become a secular sanctuary for the individual, his shrine to the self, his mobile Walden Pond. -Edward McDonagh

A commuter tie-up consists of you – and people who for some reason won’t use public transit. -Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive. -Author Unknown

Consider the man on horseback, and I have been a man on horseback for most of my life.  Well, mostly he is a good man, but there is a change in him as soon as he mounts.  Every man on horseback is an arrogant man, however gentle he may be on foot.  The man in the automobile is one thousand times as dangerous.  I tell you, it will engender absolute selfishness in mankind if the driving of automobiles becomes common.  It will breed violence on a scale never seen before.  It will mark the end of the family as we know it, the three or four generations living happily in one home.  It will destroy the sense of neighborhood and the true sense of Nation.  It will create giantized cankers of cities, false opulence of suburbs, ruinized countryside, and unhealthy conglomerations of specialized farming and manufacturing.  It will make every man a tyrant. -R.A. Lafferty, “Interurban Queen,” 1970, a short story set in the late 1800s  (Thanks, Sam!)

Automobiles are not ferocious…. it is man who is to be feared. -Robbins B. Stoeckel