Category: Miscellanea

A stressor is a
situation, thought or stimulus that triggers your stress response. We all need a
little stress in our lives. Good stress makes us feel alert and stimulated. But
chronic, acute stress can cause anxiety, depression and disease. Different
people may respond differently to the same stressor. It’s important to identify
what stressors cause you distress. The more you learn about your stressors, the
more likely you are to diminish, control or eliminate them.

When you’re
stressed, you lose sleep. When you lose sleep, you feel more stressed. Sleep
deprivation doesn’t just make you tired. It interferes with the natural pattern
of stress hormone production . . . . Exercise protects the body against the
effects of physical and psychological stress. But there are some caveats. First,
to reap anti-stress benefits, exercise should be aerobic. Weight training has
important health benefits, but it’s not a great stressbuster. Second, you will
get more benefits if you exercise in bouts of at least 30 minutes. This is how
long it takes for the brain to produce endorphins — those natural opiates that
give you the ‘jogger’s high’.

Third, you might
not benefit if you don’t want to exercise. When animals are forced to exercise,
they become more — not less — stressed. Take a deep breath. This is one of the
oldest stress management tips around. Take a deep breath and exhale — slowly.
When you inhale, you speed up your sympathetic nervous system. When you exhale,
you slow it down — a minitress reducer.

(Source : The Economic Times, dated 31-7-2010)

India-born Gururaj
Deshpande, chairman of Tejas Networks, A123 and Akshaya Patra, has been
appointed co-chairman of US President Barack Obama’s National Advisory Council
on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He will support Obama’s
innovation strategy by helping develop policies that foster entrepreneurship,
create jobs and drive economic growth.

Popularly known as
‘Desh’, Deshpande is one of the 26 members of the council which includes serial
entrepreneurs, university presidents, investors and non-profit leaders. Steve
Case and Mary Sue Coleman will serve as the other co-chairs.

(Source : Business Standard, dated 23-7-2010)

(Source : The Economic Times, dated 28-7-2010)

Many top US law
firms are hiring Indian lawyers to edit and make grammatical and syntax
corrections in legal drafts/contracts prepared by their lawyers. A Fortune 100
client of a US law firm, Smith Dehn LLP, has specifically requested that legal
research, analysis, writing, editing exercises that cost millions of dollars in
the US be done by Indian attorneys.

A recent American
bar council journal article compared the scenario to a man bites dog story. It
says highly-trained LPO (legal process outsourcing) attorneys in India have been
assigned the task of correcting grammatical and other mistakes of partners and
associates at some of the top 100 law firms in the US. It further said,
high-quality and effective English writing has been out of fashion in the US for
several decades.

Till some time
ago, Indian lawyers were seen to use lofty English British-style pomposity, a
vestige of colonial rule. Their sentences were long and
winding. There were too many usages of passive and indirect speech. Today, they
are good with plain, crispy, clear and clean English writing. In fact, LPO has
made them think global and grow global. American lawyers are liking it, a
high-quality second look at the draft, said Russell.

(Source : The Times of India, dated 26-7-2010)

US :
Asbestos-related suits

India : Bhopal Gas
tragedy

Damage :
US : 700,000 people affected

India : 20,000
dead, 570,000 injured with possible generational impacts

(Source : The Times of India, 3-7-2010)

Engineering
students pursuing their PhDs needn’t fret over errors in their results anymore.
The Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) has introduced online evaluation
of answerscripts for its PhD students from 2010-11.

On a pilot basis,
VTU has already scanned the 750 PhD answerscripts. If all goes well, it’ll be
extended to MTech and MBA courses, too.

Manual evaluation
leaves multiple scope for errors. In case of multiple solutions, the evaluator
will have the freedom to decide. The process take only a few minutes and the
scripts get stored in the system. A software developed exclusively for digital
evaluation helps the evaluator open the answer booklet with just a mouse-click.
Next, the screen displays a series of register numbers. The evaluator can have
his pick. The question for the particular answer is displayed on the screen,
along with the scheme of evaluation. This also allows two evaluators to check
the same answerscript simultaneously. The final evaluator draws an average. In
case of a difference of 15 marks or more, the third evaluator reassesses the
script.

(Source : The Times of India, dated 15-8-2010)

Mandatory auditor
rotation makes no sense, according to International Federation of Accountants
president Robert Bunting.

“While firm
rotation might seem to remove any bias that may be attached to past decisions,
it makes no sense at all,” Bunting said.

“In most parts of
the world there are not enough choices to allow for this without forcing
companies to choose audit firms that have no expertise in their industry.”

Bunting said a
number of countries have experimented with mandatory rotation before abandoning
it as almost impossible to implement. Yet, it is still being considered as a
remedy to the Satyam scandal in India.

It would not be a
pragmatic solution and would set the country apart from nearly all of its
trading partners, Bunting said.

(Source : www.ifac.org)

In what could give new meaning to the phrase — “If you see something, say
something” — a clause within the financial reform legislation is offering big
cash rewards to whistleblowers who report fraud and other wrongdoing at
U.S.-listed companies and Wall Street banks.

Under the program,
which is already live, anyone who provides a tip that leads to a successful
Securities and Exchange Commission action will be able to collect between 10%
and 30% of the amount recovered — as long as the total amount exceeds $1
million. This means the minimum payout is $ 100,000. The whistle blower could be
a company insider or a private investor, if they’re able to offer information or
analysis that leads to an action. And with potential payoffs netting millions —
or even tens of millions — of dollars, experts are bracing for a surge in
tipoffs.

The program also
protects squealers against company retaliation. Any whistleblower who is fired,
demoted, suspended, threatened, harassed or discriminated against by a company
for providing info or testifying in an SEC investigation, can file an action in
the U.S. District Court. If they succeed in proving their case, the legislation
guarantees the person’s reinstatement, two times the amount of backpay owed, and
coverage of all court and attorney fees — so long as the action is filed within
a certain time period.

Even a mid-cap
company could wind up with a consent order or suit in the millions of dollars,
says Daniel Karson, executive managing director and counsel at Kroll, a risk
consulting company. “So 10% for making a phone call is a pretty good payday,” he
says.

(Source : TIME.COM, 19-8-2010)

44. Vodafone deal : Tax burden draws flak

The
Government’s attempt to change its tax laws in order to slap a $ 2 billion tax
bill on Vodafone for its roughly $ 11.1 billion purchase of Hutch Essar in
2007, is meeting with stiff resistance from powerful US investors. Claiming
that the move has killed investment appetite in India, US investors have
written to the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, asking for a review of the
Revenue authorities decision to tax cross-border investments with
retrospective tax legislation enacted in 2008.

The strongly
worded letter, expressing concerns about India’s investment climate has also
been sent to principal secretary to PM, T. K. A. Nair, Cabinet Secretary K. M.
Chandrasekhar, Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia
and the Commerce Ministry. The letter has been written by the National Foreign
Trade Council (NFTC), an association of 300 US business enterprises engaged in
all aspects of international trade and investment.

According to
the NFTC, any necessary changes made to the laws should be with prospective
effect only, rather than through retrospective changes in interpretation of
current law or application of withholding tax provisions.

The NFTC
warns that the move “creates an impression among foreign investors that
investing in India brings with it a significant risk of tax liabilities
arising from unforeseen new interpretations of tax laws and retrospective tax
changes’’. ‘‘Our members will have limited funds to invest overseas and this
new interpretation may cause several of them to reconsider investing in India,
looking instead to other countries which have not taken this position and
which act in a perceived less arbitrary manner in taxing foreign investors,’’
it added.

Pointing out
that US-based MNCs have a history of robust investment in India, NFTC said ‘‘
Indian Revenue authorities have begun to argue that India is entitled to tax
certain capital gains on global M&As taking place outside of India.’’

(Source :
Internet & Media Reports, 8-8-2009)

43. Right to education becomes law, puts India in
    select league

India on Tuesday joined a select global club with the passage of the Right to
Free and Compulsory Education Bill, setting in motion an ambitious, if
much-delayed, scheme of providing education to every child between 6 and 14
years.

The law is unique as, while providing compulsory education, it would not fail
any student till Class VIII. It also enjoins all Government and private
schools to provide 25% quota to ‘disadvantaged’ kids. The law provides for
building neighbourhood schools in three years whose definition and location
will be decided by states.

The legislation, which has already been passed by the Rajya Sabha, will soon
be enacted after getting the assent from President Pratibha Patil. The RTE
would empower the seven-year-old 86th Constitutional amendment that made free
and compulsory education a fundamental right. The Bill sets down guidelines
for States and the Centre to execute and enforce this right. Earlier,
education was part of the directive principles.

(Source :
The Times of India, 5-8-2009)

 

India is planning amendments to the Double
Taxation Avoidance treaty with Mauritius to prevent its misuse for avoiding
taxes. “Amendments to the Indo-Mauritius DTAC (Double Taxation Avoidance
Convention) to prevent its misuse and enhance exchange of information,
including banking information, are being pursued . . .,” Minister of State for
Finance S. S. Palanimanickam said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha.

The changes in the treaty are being worked upon
through a joint working group constituted for this purpose, he added. Many
companies route their investments into India through tax havens to avoid
paying taxes.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) has said that all countries should permit access to bank
information for all tax purposes, so that tax authorities could fully
discharge their revenue raising responsibilities, the Minister said.

(Source : Business Standard, 5-8-2009)

The automatic right for non-EU citizens,
including Indians, to apply for a British passport after working in the UK for
five years has been ended with the introduction of ‘probationary citizenship’,
under which they must demonstrate commitment to the country through voluntary
work and integration.

There is a double benefit in the requirements to
demonstrate a commitment to Britain and a willingness to play a part in
community life. These allow the authorities to judge a person’s economic
potential and contribution to society. Crucially, migrants will be helped to
settle in, a particular challenge for people learning a new culture. Points
could also be removed for ‘bad’ behaviour.

Under the new system, applicants for citizenship
require a total of 20 points to gain probationary citizenship either through
the work route — meeting the immigration rules (10 points) and passing
knowledge of life in the UK or the English language test (10 points).

To gain full citizenship applicants must pass
knowledge of life in the UK or an English language test. Those who have failed
either test will have to retake it.

(Source : Business Standard, 5-8-2009)

The Government is mulling new laws to bring into the tax
net domestic companies which deliberately route their overseas investments
through tax havens to avoid paying taxes at home.

The inclusion of new provisions in the existing tax laws,
called Controlled Foreign Corporation (CFC) laws, was also suggested by the
Kelkar Task Force on tax reforms.

India, however, is still debating on the modality of the
CFC, though the Kelkar report, submitted to the Government six years ago, had
recommended “introduction of anti-abuse provisions in the domestic law,
enacting of CFC regulations and the law relating to thin capitalisation”.

The advantage of having CFC laws is that it will not be
affected by the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA). Currently, the
profits of subsidiaries of Indian companies are not taxable in India, as there
are no laws to bring them under the tax net. In fact, foreign subsidiaries do
not declare their dividends to avoid being taxed in India.

(Source : Business Standard, 3-8-2009)

More than 600 years of British history and tradition ended
when Parliament’s upper chamber, the unelected House of Lords, ceased to also
be the nation’s highest court.

The 12 ‘Law Lords’ convened in their debating chamber and
delivered the institution’s final seven judgments. The Lords of Appeal in
Ordinary, as they’re formally known, are moving to the Supreme Court of the UK
on October 1.

The House of Lords has been operating as a court since
1399. Prior to that the full Parliament could weigh cases. While the House of
Lords has kept separate judicial and legislative functions since 1876, the two
weren’t physically divided. After hundreds of years it looks ‘unusual’ for
lawmakers to be involved in judicial affairs, and the Supreme Court is a ‘nice
symbol’ of modernity.

The new court will be located in a refurbished building
overlooking Parliament Square. It will be made up of 11 of the 12 Judges that
worked in the House of Lords. Anthony Clarke will be the 12th Justice, and the
first to be appointed directly to the Supreme Court. Nicholas Phillips, now
senior law lord, will be the first President of the UK Supreme Court.

While ‘constitutionally nothing will change,’ the symbolic
importance of physically separating the Legislature and the judiciary is
significant, head of Justice, a UK human rights and law reform organisation.

(Source : The Times of India, 31-7-2009)

The first challenge is managing the balance between the
short-term compulsions of providing ample liquidity to the market and the
potential for an inflationary pressure.

The second challenge is to manage “the Government’s large
borrowing programme without crowding out present or potential private credit
demand’’. Despite active liquidity management by the central bank, Government
borrowing has led to hardening of yields. The third challenge is to maintain
policy rates and liquidity conditions that could spur private investment
demand. Having a fiscal consolidation process with a concrete roadmap was also
a challenge before the RBI.

“Large fiscal deficits, if continued strictly beyond the
recovery period, can crowd out private investment and trigger inflationary
pressures”. “It is also necessary to focus on the quality of fiscal adjustment
while pursuing quantitative targets’’.

For the medium-term, the challenge was to improve the
country’s investment climate to move forward with financial sector reforms “to
promote financial inclusion, further widen and deepen financial markets and
strengthen financial institutions’’.

(Source : The Times of India, 22-7-2009)

The Government is working on a proposal to
introduce a new legislation relating to foreign investment aimed at removing
the distinction between various categories of overseas capital, a move
intended to ensure stability in policy and help Indian firms attract long-term
capital.

The new Foreign Direct Investment Act would seek
to remove the distinction between various categories of overseas fund flows
such as portfolio investment, venture capital, private equity and direct
investment. Rules on external investment in Indian companies make a
distinction between portfolio investment, in which an investor buys shares of
a company from the secondary market, and foreign direct investment (FDI), in
which the investor normally acquires a relatively larger holding directly.
The new legislation would involve major changes to the existing Foreign
Exchange Management Act, or FEMA, which deals with both inbound and outbound
foreign investment.

The new legislation would remove all confusion
and provide stability in terms of policy. The Finance Ministry has already
started work on the new legislation and would seek inputs from the Reserve
Bank (RBI) on it, the official said. The new Act will also give clearer
guidelines on convertibility.

The RBI has consistently been of the view that in
the hierarchy of preferred capital flows, FDI ought to be at the top. The
current policy is largely ad hoc. It is governed by several rules that
are changed through so-called ‘Press Notes’ issued from time to time by the
Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and FIPB. Interestingly,
the official said the Press Notes issued by the DIPP have no legal sanctity
since changes to guidelines on foreign investment require changes to FEMA
rules, which rarely gets done.

(Source : The Times of India, 8-8-2009)

UK-based British Airways has been slapped a service tax
notice by the Revenue Department asking it to pay the balance of Rs.143.5 crore
(Rs.1.44 billion) liability on sale of tickets in India between May 2006 and
November 2007.

“We have issued a notice to the British Airways on July 25
intimating the company of its service tax liability,” a senior Excise and
Customs Department official said. He, however, clarified that the company has
already paid Rs.117 crore (Rs.1.17 billion) tax, although after a delay.

(Source : Internet News, 29-7-2008)

Its nickname, CrackBerry, says it all. There is no
recreational use of Research in Motion’s BlackBerry. It is a compulsive
addiction, or you’re not a user.

Academic studies back up the notion. It found that
a third of BlackBerry users show signs of addiction ‘similar to alcoholics’. The
BlackBerry found its first big pool of users in corporate America. Helping with
productivity and collaboration at work, it lets employees keep up with
colleagues, customers and suppliers even while away from the office.

(Source : Internet Newswires)

This is a download manager. It uses MHT
(Multi-server Hyper-threading Transportation) technique, supports various
protocols such as HTTP, FTP, BT, MMS, RTSP and has document management features.

This is file recovery software that allows the user
to recover accidentally deleted files, even files removed from the Recycle Bin,
network drive, compact flash card, portable drives, in a DOS window, or from
Windows Explorer. Download from

http://www.download.com/Recover-Files/3000-2094_4-10715455.html

Stickies is a PC utility to try to cut down on the
number of Post-It notes you leave stuck to your monitor. It is a computerised
version of those notes.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download5501.html

FDI from Mauritius, jumped from Rs.28,759 crore in
2006-07 to Rs.44,483 crore in F.Y. 2008, registering a 55% growth, whereas FDI
inflows from Singapore rose by whopping 362% during the same period, an analysis
based on FDI data reveals. FDI from Cyprus rose over 12 times from Rs.266 crore
in F.Y. 2007 to Rs.3,385 crore.

(Source : The Economic Times, 20-7-2008)

Pakistan investors stormed out of the Karachi Stock
Exchange, smashed windows and cursed regulators after the benchmark index fell
for 15th day, the worst losing streak in at least 18 years. The index has
plunged 35% from the record of 15,676.34 on April 18.

(Source : The Economic Times, 18-7-2008)

Ernst & Young LLP, one of the so-called Big Four
accounting firms, agreed to forfeit more than US $ 2.9-million to settle U.S.
regulatory claims that it compromised its independence while auditing three
companies.

The firm “engaged in improper professional conduct”
after agreeing in 2002 to create an audio series of recorded interviews with
industry leaders in collaboration with Mark Thompson, a board member for three
of its clients, the Securities and Exchange Commission said in a statement on
Wednesday. It didn’t identify the companies.

(Source : Internet Newswire, 6-8-2008)

Sources said a certificate from Assessing Officer (AO)
prescribing the rate at which withholding tax is to be deducted would be
required. This regulation existed some years ago, but was done away with to make
the process less cumbersome. However, with increase in remittances, both
corporate and individual, there is a growing feeling in the Department that tax
could be escaping the Department’s eye.

Tax experts feel this condition would create an unnecessary
roadblock. They feel the Department should specify a threshold or exempt
requirement of NOC in cases where no tax is payable.

(Source : The Economic Times, 8-8-2008)

[Compilers’ Note : Bureaucrats always want to gain and
regain controls. Does the Department have the time and requisite resources to
scrutinise even the Remittance Certificates issued by CAs u/s.195 ?]

First-quarter results of several big companies such
as Reliance Industries, Reliance Communications, Bharti Airtel and Jet Airways
would have been a lot worse had they followed the Accounting Standards (AS) 11
rules prescribed by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI).

Most of these companies, however, chose to comply
with Schedule 6 of the Companies Act, which is at variance with the treatment
prescribed in AS-11 for the exchange loss incurred on foreign
currency-denominated liabilities for acquiring fixed assets.

(Source : Business Standard, 6-8-2008)

In its latest batch of disciplinary orders and
regulatory decisions, the ICAEW has found KPMG at fault for its work on the 2000
audit of Independent Insurance Group.

The firm “accepted that loss could be turned to
profit by using stop loss insurance which was too good to be true”. KPMG’s audit
partner, named as a Mr. Sayers, was advised by the firm’s concurring partner to
confirm the stop loss terms directly with the reinsurers. No reason was provided
for why the audit partner failed to do this. Independent’s actuaries, Watson
Wyatt, told Sayers that they “did not understand why the reinsurers were writing
these contracts when they appear to be obviously loss making.”

(Source : Internet Newswires, 8-8-2008)

Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings of machines are
uncannily similar to Chinese originals and were undoubtedly derived from them, a
British amateur historian says in a newly-published book.

Gavin Menzies sparked headlines across the globe in
2002 with the claim that Chinese sailors reached America 70 years before
Christopher Columbus.

(Source : The Times of India, 30-7-2008)