The Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha passed a number of bills, which included the Banking, Insurance and Companies Amendment Bills. Markets were doing quite well for themselves until Friday, when concerns about the ‘fiscal cliff' in the US saw markets turning weak and surrendering all the gains over four days and closing negative for last week. The BSE SENSEX lost 75.25 points or 0.39 per cent to close at 19,242 points. The NSE NIFTY lost 31.90 points or 0.54 per cent to close at 5,847.70 points. The BSE100, BSE200 and BSE500 lost 0.30 per cent, 0.27 per cent and 0.26 per cent. BSE MIDCAP was almost flat losing a mere 0.02 per cent, while BSE SMALLCAP lost 0.38 per cent. The sectoral gainers included BSE METAL up 4.44 per cent, BSE HEALTH up 0.97 per cent, BSE AUTO up 0.81 per cent and BSE IT up 0.59 per cent. The losers included BSE CAPITAL down 1.95 per cent, BSE OIL down 1.23 per cent and BSE REALTY down 0.90 per cent. RBI kept interest rates unchanged at the credit review and BSE BANEX lost 0.80 per cent.

Athens, GREECE: Volunteers collect bags with items and food at Central Athens Syntagma Square to be given to the poor, all in the spirit of Christmas. Thousands of Athenians donated food, clothes, toys and home accessories after a call for action by a Greek TV channel and the municipality of Athens to donate whatever they do not need anymore, to the poor. Pic/AFPu00a0