ValueLabs, a Hyderabad-based software development firm, has teamed up with NDTV Ltd and Astro, a Malaysian media firm, to acquire the three FM radio stations owned by Living Media Ltd, ValueLabs CEO Arjun Rao said in Hyderabad on Wednesday.

"The associate companies of ValueLabs and Astro of Malaysia, through their existing Indian joint ventures, have partnered NDTV News (a subsidiary of NDTV) to acquire Radio Today (Mumbai) Broadcasting Ltd, Radio Today (Delhi) Broadcasting Ltd and Radio Today (Kolkata) Broadcasting Ltd from the Living Media," Mr Rao said. The three radio companies hold licences for FM radio broadcasting in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata respectively, under the brand name of Red FM. "We have had a long association with Astro, which in turn has been associated with NDTV. We decided to buy out the three FM radio assets, because we believe the time is right to invest in FM radio properties in India. Radio will be a big business in India in the future," Mr Rao said.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.Mr Rao said the managment team of Red FM would be retained. "Only the ownership of the stations has changed, and we believe the current management team should continue," he said. Asked who among the three owners had a majority stake in Red FM, Mr Rao declined comment.

Tennis star Sania Mirza will soon endorse Coca-Cola and will be the company’s latest brand ambassador. A source close to the developments said, "Coca-Cola is still in the midst of ironing out the finer details but in all probabilities Sania will be the company’s brand ambassador and will be introduced by a completely new advertising campaign. The actual size of the deal that will be signed between the two will be confidential as Coca-Cola, as a policy, never discloses the exact amount that it pays its ambassadors."

A source close to the Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd who had signed Sania on recently said, "When we signed her for Rs 1 crore, we got a good deal as till then Sania was not as popular and had not proven her sporting prowess like now." Sania will join a long line of celebrities, including cricketers such as Srinath, Sourav Ganguly, Virendra Sehwag and actors like Karisma Kapoor, Aamir Khan, Aishwarya Rai, Vivek Oberoi and Mona Singh of Jassi Jaissi Koi Nahin fame.

Discussing the fate of Coca-Cola’s Plachimada plant in Kerala, the source said, "Top executives of soft drink major Coca-Cola held talks with the Kerala government officials on the prospects of re-opening the Coke plant at Plachimada in Palakkad district, which is currently facing charges of over-exploitation of groundwater and causing environmental pollution. Officials of the state pollution control board, general manager of Palakkad Industrial Estate and representatives of Perumatty panchayat attended the meeting, convened by principal secretary, industries, Mr T. Balakrishnan."

The source added that, "The company has asked that they be given licence to continue in Perumatty as they had complied with all the requirements of the authorities. The company also put forward the option of shifting to any other location in Kerala if the government provided all infrastructural facilities like power and water." Commenting on the public interest litigation filed against the company in the Rajasthan court, the source said, "February 6, 2006 is the next date set for a hearing."

Microsoft was hustling on Tuesday to fix a flaw that left its Windows operating platform vulnerable to attacks from hackers, the company announced. "It is even worse than a critical flaw," Mr Rob Helm, Director of research at Directions on Microsoft in the state of Washington, said."This one is particularly nasty because is allows people to take control of your computer from over the Internet." A software "patch" was in the final phases of testing and Microsoft intended to simultaneously release it worldwide in 23 languages on January 10, according to the US-based company. "Microsoft has been carefully monitoring the attempted exploitation of the Windows Meta File (WMF) vulnerability since it became public last week," the company said in a written release.

"Although the issue is serious and the attacks are being attempted, Microsoft’s intelligence sources indicate that the scope of attacks is limited." Microsoft began working on the patch after getting word December 27 of attacks on Windows operating platform users, the company said. "There have been real attacks; this is not theoretical," Mr Helm said. "All you have to do is go to an evil website or click on a link in an email and some hacker dude owns your computer."

The WMF flaw evidently went undetected and unexploited for several generations of Windows operation platforms, according to analyst Michael Cherry at Directions, a private research firm focused on Microsoft.The vulnerability allows malicious code to be slipped into an unsuspecting user’s computer via graphics files, analysts explained.

"I don’t know if panic is the right word, but computer users shouldn’t take this lightly," Mr Cherry said. "You need to be protecting your system from all these kinds of outbreaks." People should have the latest software patches on their computers and be using anti-spy and anti-virus programs updated with the latest "signatures", or threat information. To minimise the risk of hacker attack, avoid "dodgy" websites and don’t click on links in emails, even those from friends, Mr Helm advised. (AP)