India and Japan have agreed to sign a basic bilateral agreement on currency swap, which will add to a regional network of such accords designed to provide emergency financial liquidity to either or both parties in times of currency market or other turbulence.

"A basic agreement has been reached on bilateral currency swap in response to short term liquidity crunch," Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in New Delhi on Wednesday, while speaking at an interactive session with business leaders from the two countries organised by apex industry chambers.

Though he did not elaborate on the issue, sources said as per the agreement, India and Japan will help each other if their currencies were to come under the attack of speculators.

It will also enable both countries to swap foreign currencies like US dollar or Euro to maintain the value of Rupee and Yen in foreign exchange markets.

Sources said the Reserve Bank of India and Bank of Japan would be the nodal agencies, going by such agreements that Japan has entered into with other countries.

Japan has swap deals with other Asian countries like Thailand, Korea, China, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Indonesia. In some cases, the swap is one way, while in some others it is two-way.

Japan and Thailand signed such an agreement in July, under which Bangkok can swap up to 6 billion dollars while Tokyo can swap up to USD 3 billion in case there is need for short-term liquidity.

Courtesy : Expressindia.com

US Internet giant Google is to begin running advertisements along with video clips on its popular sharing website YouTube, according to a statement on the YouTube official blog.

The ads will run as "animated overlays that appear on the bottom 20 per cent of a video," said Google on Tuesday night, 10 months after the company bought YouTube for USD 1.65 billion.

Although YouTube attracts nearly 190 million visitors per month, it has until now remained nearly free of advertising, and also revenue.

Internet users can ignore the overlay ads, close them or click on them to go to the advertiser's page.

The ads, which automatically pause the video, will appear within the first 15 seconds of the launch of a video clip and end 10 seconds later.

Google said that it plans to post ads only on videos supplied by its official content suppliers, not on the amateur home videos which dominate the site.

Eileen Naughton, Google's director for media platforms, told the New York Times that Google would charge advertisers USD 20 for every 1,000 times the ads were displayed.

The ads were to begin appearing from Tuesday throughout the site.


Courtesy : Expressindia.com