Today's Hot Stories - February 15, 2013 - PT education

Today's Hot Stories - February 15, 2013

10 Headlines for Today

(1) Telecom firms with cancelled permit to stop operations: SC
(2) Pranab Mukherjee may turn down 5 more mercy pleas
(3) Maldives slams 'mediator' India
(4) KFA lenders seek legal view on Mallya’s assets
(5) TCS overtakes RIL, becomes most valued company
(6) Airbus to drop lithium-ion batteries in A350
(7) Arman Jaffer cracks 473 to break record
(8) Smooth Federer into Rotterdam quarters
(9) Sahara wants PWI to be based in Kanpur
(10) Kitchen, not bathroom, most unhygienic place

5 Stories for Today

(1) Hectic lobbying to ensure UK delegation meets Modi
(2) Obama says public deserves to know more on drones
(3) Bollywood loses out on 150 new multiplex screens due to slowdown in real estate sector
(4) Euro zone economy falls deeper into recession
(5) Finance ministry to seek cabinet nod for tax talks with Vodafone

(1) Hectic lobbying to ensure UK delegation meets Modi

Will Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi meet British Prime Minister David Cameron when he visits India next week?

There is hectic lobbying from within the business delegation that DC is heading, that he must meet Narendra Modi, the prime ministerial contender.

A 10 Downing Street announcement on Thursday had said that Cameron would be visiting India between February 18 and 20, during which he will be in Mumbai and New Delhi.

His main engagements are, of course, with UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Modi's supporters in London want a last-minute change in Cameron's itinerary for a one-on-one meeting with the chief minister, possibly in New Delhi.

Even if the meeting does not take place, they want an invitation to be extended by Cameron personally to Modi to visit London before the next Indian general elections.

Cameron's government had partnered last month's Vibrant Gujarat summit, a sign of departure from the earlier position when the UK had endorsed the US visa ban on Modi in 2005.

The ban was imposed in the backdrop of the 2002 communal riots, but since then Modi has emerged as a politician who needs to be engaged with now, rather than being left red-faced if he were to become PM. Cameron is coming with a business delegation, for whom it makes sense to do business with an investment-friendly Gujarat.

Cameron will lead a delegation of British business leaders as part of his bid to make the UK and India "one of the great partnerships of the 21st century." In interviews with Asian media ahead of the visit, Cameron said he wants to double UK's trade with India by 2015.

When Modi last visited London in August 2003, he was not given diplomatic cover, amid protests from human rights groups wherever he went. Since then, there has been a thaw in relations because of intense lobbying by the Gujarati expats in the UK who adore Modi.

Source: The Times of India

(2) Obama says public deserves to know more on drones

President Barack Obama said on Thursday that Americans needed more than just his word to be assured he was not misusing his powers in waging a secret drone war overseas.

The president was asked about the debate over the deadly tactic, a backbone of the US campaign against Al-Qaeda, and whether the Constitution allows the use of drones against Americans who have turned against their country.

"It is not sufficient for citizens to just take my word for it that we are doing the right thing," Obama told an online forum sponsored by Google.

The president, who has said he is working with Congress to provide more oversight of the clandestine drone war against Al-Qaeda, was also asked what was to stop the US government from using unmanned aerial vehicles at home.

"There has never been a drone used on an American citizen on American soil," Obama said in the Google Plus "Fireside Hangout."

"The rules outside the United States are going to be different than the rules inside of the United States in part because our capacity, for example, to capture terrorists in the United States is going to be very different than in the foothills or mountains of Afghanistan or Pakistan.

Debate about the use of drones has slowly been mounting following the September 2011 killing in Yemen of cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a senior Al-Qaeda operative who was an American citizen.

The president said that he was working with Congress to ensure that the public was also able to understand the constraints and legal rationales of the US drone war.

"I am not somebody who believes that the president has the authority to do whatever he wants, or whatever she wants, whenever they want, just under the guise of counter terrorism," he added.

"There have to be checks and balances on it."

Some observers, including prominent senators, are considering whether a special court should monitor the secret drone war.

Missiles fired from unmanned aircraft have become the Obama administration's weapons of choice in its war against Al-Qaeda.

The administration's legal rationale for the targeted killings was leaked to the media ahead of Senate hearings last week on the nomination of Obama's top counterterrorism adviser John Brennan to head the CIA.

The guidelines allow the use of drone strikes against US citizens suspected of being senior Al-Qaeda operatives, even if there is no evidence they are actively plotting an attack.

Some administration critics have questioned the legality of drone strikes against US citizens, while others fear that raining death from the skies may do more harm than good in increasing anti-US sentiment.

Source: The Times of India

(3) Bollywood loses out on 150 new multiplex screens due to slowdown in real estate sector

The slowdown in the real estate sector has cast a shadow on Bollywood as fewer multiplexes are available for distribution of films, indirectly affecting the box office collection of new releases.

Multiplexes rake in a major share of a film's total collection and almost 90 per cent of these multiplexes are housed in malls, attracting huge footfalls. With the delivery of 25-30 malls across the country being delayed by a couple of years, Bollywood lost out on at least 150 additional multiplex screens which could have garnered more revenue to the industry.

"Growth in multiplex screens does make a significant difference to the collections of movies today. For example, the average collection from multiplex screens for our two blockbusters last year was Rs 5 lakh per screen for Rowdy Rathore and Rs 6.5 lakh per screen for Barfi.

So, if another 50 or 100 screens were available, one can safely assume that collections would have jumped by Rs 1.5 crore for Barfi and Rs 3 crore for Rathore, even if 60 per cent of these screens were allocated to one of these films," says Siddharth Roy Kapur, MD, Studios, Disney UTV.

The delay in construction of malls, for instance, could be the main reason why PVR chose to buy Cinemax with its 138 screens last year to emerge as the largest player. "From PVR's perspective, about 30-35 screens more could have been added had the malls been delivered on time, which would have resulted in an additional turnover of about Rs 50 crore, of which the box office would have contributed about Rs 33 crore.

Luckily, none of our signed developments have been dropped and they are getting delivered for sure, though delayed by six to eight months," says Pramod Arora, group president of PVR. The malls have been hit the hardest as builders have shifted focus to the residential sector, where the returns are better.

"Developers are not constructing malls as they are not economically viable and have longer gestation periods. Residential prices, on the other hand, rise faster.

Though rentals for multiplexes are highest in Bangalore, since they can screen movies in six languages, the average occupancy at multiplexes has dropped to around 28-30 per cent from 38 per cent a decade ago as there were very few multiplexes earlier," says Shubhranshu Pani, MD, retail services, Jones Lang LaSalle India, adding that supply of multiplexes is going be one of the biggest constraints.

This means that for multiplex players, land or rentals which constitute 10-15 per cent of their costs may also rise. Currently, about four players — PVR, Inox, Big Cinemas and Fun — control close to 950 multiplex screens of the total 1,200 operational, post the two big acquisitions of Fame and Cinemax.

Indeed, the real estate slowdown has affected the expansion plans of foreign players like Imax, whose MD, Asia Pacific, Don Savant says the real estate situation in India is far more critical compared with North America. Other foreign players like Mexican chain Cinepolis, are operating at 50 per cent capacity because of lack of multiplexes. "India has the possibility of opening 100 screens a year, but only 20-30 per cent of that is happening, which is why we are still at 49 screens," says Milan Saini, MD of Cinepolis.

Even players in South India like Sathyam Cinemas' Swaroop Reddy, who runs 27 screens across the South, says both viability and growth have been hampered because many properties they had signed have not become operational. While players like Inox say they are on schedule, others agree that with only few malls expected to come up over the next three years, things will become tough for the multiplex.

"Builders have put on hold a number of large malls across the country due to a rising costs and dwindling demand. Construction and borrowing costs have risen for developers. Further, the returns from shopping malls are less in comparison with residential properties," says Anshuman Magazine, chairman and MD, CBRE South Asia.

Developers like RMZ, Ozone, Landmark, Embassy Property Developers and K Raheja have also deferred their projects by a year or put them on hold until the retail market revives. They are now building 2-6 lakh square-feet malls each compared with their earlier plans of over 10 lakh sq ft. Also, many retailers have deferred their expansion plans.

The average rentals a year ago for a multiplex was around Rs 30 per square feet, while it is around Rs 40 per square feet now. The more serious issue is in the smaller towns and B cities where the slowdown has impacted business far more, which in turn, will affect the plans of multiplexes since they would have liked to tap the potential of these small towns. It is a bit of an irony that films are now ready to be released on a wider platform, thanks to digitisation efforts, but the availability of quality cinemas to screen these films has been impacted by the slow growth of malls.

Source: The Times of India

(4) Euro zone economy falls deeper into recession

The euro zone slipped deeper into recession in the last three months of 2012 after its largest economies, Germany and France, shrank markedly at the end of the year.

It marked the currency bloc's first full year in which no quarter produced growth, extending back to 1995. Economic output in the 17-country region fell by 0.6% in the fourth quarter, the EU's statistics office Eurostat said on Thursday, following a 0.1% drop in output in the third quarter.

The drop was the steepest since the first quarter of 2009 and more severe than the average forecast of a 0.4% drop in a Reuters poll of 61 economists.

For the year as a whole, gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.5%. Within the zone, only Estonia and Slovakia grew in the last quarter of the year, although there are no figures available yet for Ireland, Greece, Luxembourg, Malta and Slovenia. The big economies set the tone. Germany contracted by 0.6% on the quarter , official data showed, marking its worst performance since the global financial crisis was raging in 2009.

France's 0.3% fall was also slightly worse than expectations. Worryingly for Berlin , it was export performance - the motor of its economy - that did most of the damage although economists expect it to bounce back quickly.

"In the final quarter of 2012 exports of goods declined significantly more than imports of goods," the German Statistics Office said in a statement.

The euro hit a session low against the dollar after the weaker than forecast German reading and dropped again after the release of full euro zone figures. Back revisions to the French figures showed its output fell by 0.1% in each of the first and second quarters of 2012, meaning the country has already experienced one bout of recession in the last twelve months..

Source: The Times of India

(5) Finance ministry to seek cabinet nod for tax talks with Vodafone

The finance ministry is likely to seek permission from the Cabinet to enter into discussions with Vodafone Plc to settle the long-running $2-billion tax dispute between the Indian government and British telecom giant, according to sources familiar with the matter.

A top finance ministry official said the Cabinet is likely to authorise finance minister P Chidambaram to work out a settlement. The ministry will approach the Cabinet in the next two weeks, ministry sources said.

The sources also said a formal nod from the Cabinet was essential since any settlement through negotiations may appear to be improper in view of the controversial retrospective amendment to the tax laws in last year's budget. The amendment sought to tax overseas deals in which Indian assets changed hands.

The development comes days ahead of British Prime Minister David Cameron's visit, where he is expected to discuss the Vodafone dispute with PM Manmohan Singh. Vodafone has threatened to initiate arbitration proceedings against the government, but both sides are keen to resolve the matter amicably, the sources said.

The retrospective law, which has angered investors, might be repealed once the matter was settled, the sources said. The details of the possible settlement would be formulated once the Cabinet gave its nod.

Source: The Times of India

Disclaimer: All news stories and content sourced from freely available material on the internet. All sources are acknowledged.