Today's Hot Stories - March 04, 2014
10 Headlines for Today(1) India's Muslims wary of Narendra Modi
(2) Govt ends two-finger test on rape victims
(3) US moves to expel Russia from G8
(4) AI sacks 10 flight attendants for reporting late
(5) SBI, Axis MFs file papers for inflation indexed funds
(6) Etihad posts biggest annual profit yet
(7) AIBA terminates Indian Amateur Boxing Federation
(8) Graeme Smith to retire from all international cricket
(9) Racing: Hamilton shines as Red Bull struggle
(10) Bill Gates reclaims top of Forbes billionaire list
5 Stories for Today
(1) India among most dangerous places in the world
(2) Ukraine crisis: Putin tightens grip on Crimea, Russian markets plunge
(3) Natco wins Indian patent dispute case
(4) KPMG arm named in Reebok chargesheet
(5) FM can easily meet 4.6% deficit target: Economists
(1) India among most dangerous places in the world
You are more likely to die in a bomb blast in India than in Afghanistan. Strange as it may sound, government data show that India is among the most dangerous places in the world as far as bomb blasts per year are concerned - next only to Iraq and Pakistan, with even war-torn Afghanistan and Syria doing better.
Latest data from National Bomb Data Centre (NBDC) show that India suffered 212 bomb blasts in 2013 — more than double of what Afghanistan (with 108 blasts) suffered. Facing internal strife, Bangladesh with 75 blasts and Syria with 36 blasts have done better.
While the number of blasts in India decreased from 241 in 2012 to 212 in 2013, casualties went up with 130 deaths and 466 injuries last year as compared to 113 deaths and 419 injuries in 2012.
Analyzing the frequency of IED blasts in the country over the past decade, the document says between 2004 and 2013 "there have been an average of 298 blasts and 1,337 casualties in India". This is again higher than Afghanistan which in the past five years witnessed a maximum of 209 such attacks in 2010, according to the data.
In fact, along with Pakistan and Iraq, India accounts for almost 75% of bomb blasts in the world. However, India has done slightly better than the rest of the world in terms of the share of attacks targeted at common public. While in the rest of the world, 69% of attacks are directed towards public, India registered 58% in this category with the rest being targeted at the security forces and government property.
Source: The Times of India
(2) Ukraine crisis: Putin tightens grip on Crimea, Russian markets plunge
Russia paid a heavy financial price on Monday for its military intervention in neighboring Ukraine, with stocks, bonds and the ruble plunging as President Vladimir Putin's forces tightened their grip on the Russian-speaking Crimea region.
The Moscow stock market fell 10.8 per cent, wiping nearly $60 billion off the value of Russian companies, more than the $51 billion Russia spent on the Winter Olympics in Sochi last month.
The central bank spent as much as $12 billion of its reserves to prop up the ruble as investors reacted to tensions with the West over the former Soviet republic.
Putin declared at the weekend he had the right to invade Ukraine to protect Russian interests and citizens.
Moscow's UN envoy told a stormy meeting of the Security Council on Monday that Ukraine's ousted leader Viktor Yanukovich had sent a letter to Putin requesting he use Russia's military to restore law and order in Ukraine.
The United States began spelling out its response to Russia's incursion, announcing on Monday night it had suspended all military engagements with Russia over the crisis in Ukraine, including military exercises and port visits, and had put trade and investment talks with Moscow on hold.
President Barack Obama met for over two hours on Monday with his national security advisers to discuss what steps the United States and its allies could take to "further isolate" Russia, a White House official said.
"Over time this will be a costly proposition for Russia. And now is the time for them to consider whether they can serve their interests in a way that resorts to diplomacy as opposed to force," Obama told reporters earlier.
The State Department said the United States was preparing to impose sanctions on Russia over the intervention, although no decisions had yet been made. Members of the US Congress are looking at options including sanctions on Russia's banks and freezing assets of Russian public institutions and private investors, but they said they wanted European countries to step up their involvement.
Secretary of state John Kerry will propose ways in which a negotiation between Russia and Ukraine can be overseen by a multilateral organization when he goes to Kiev on Tuesday, Obama said.
The European Union threatened unspecified "targeted measures" unless Russia returns its forces to their bases and opens talks with Ukraine's new government.
Western leaders have sent a barrage of warnings to Putin against armed action, threatening economic and diplomatic consequences, but are not considering a military response.
Show of strength?
In his first public appearance for nearly a week, Putin flew to watch military maneuvers in western Russia in what appeared designed as a show of strength.
Russia's Black Sea fleet denied reports it had given Ukrainian forces in Crimea an ultimatum to surrender by early Tuesday or face attack, Interfax news agency said. The United States said any such threat would be a dangerous escalation.
Ukraine's acting president said Russia's military presence in Crimea was growing. Ukrainian officials said Russia was building up armor on its side of the 4.5km (2.7 mile) wide Kerch strait between the Crimean peninsula and southern Russia.
Russian forces later began shipping truckloads of troops by ferry into the Crimea region after seizing the border post on the Ukrainian side, Ukraine's border guards spokesman said.
A Reuters reporting crew at the ferry terminal in Crimea later on Monday saw no sign of unusual activity.
Kiev's UN ambassador, Yuriy Sergeyev, said Russia had deployed roughly 16,000 troops to Crimea since last week.
Both sides have so far avoided bloodshed, but the market turmoil highlighted damage the crisis could wreak on Russia's vulnerable economy, making it harder to balance the budget and potentially undermining business and public support for Putin.
Russian deputy economy minister Andrei Klepach said market "hysteria" would subside but that strains with Brussels and Washington would continue to weigh on the economy.
On the ground in Perevalnoye, halfway between the Crimean capital, Simferopol, and the Black Sea, hundreds of Russian troops in trucks and armored vehicles were surrounding two military compounds. The troops, who had no national insignia on their uniforms, were confining Ukrainian soldiers, who have refused to surrender, as virtual prisoners.
Ukraine called up reservists on Sunday after Putin's action provoked what British foreign secretary William Hague called "the biggest crisis in Europe in the twenty-first century".
The US Defense Department said that although it found value in military-to-military relations with Russia, "we have, in light of recent events in Ukraine, put on hold all military-to-military engagements."
Rear Admiral John Kirby added that despite media speculation about possible ship movements in the region, "there has been no change to our military posture in Europe or the Mediterranean."
Nato allies will hold emergency talks on the crisis on Tuesday, for the second time in three days, following a request from Poland, a neighbor of Ukraine.
European Union foreign ministers held out the threat of sanctions against Russia on Monday if Moscow fails to withdraw its troops from Ukraine, while offering to mediate between the two, alongside other international bodies. EU leaders will hold an emergency summit on Thursday.
But possible divisions emerged, with the BBC citing a document, inadvertently shown to a photographer that said Britain opposes trade sanctions on Russia and does not want to shut London's financial capital to Russians in response to the Kremlin's intervention in Ukraine.
A spokeswoman for British Prime Minister David Cameron's office said it did not comment on leaked documents. But she added, "The Prime Minister is clear that continuing to violate Ukraine's sovereignty will have costs and consequences."
Observer mission
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, said it was trying to convene an international contact group to help defuse the crisis after Germany said Chancellor Angela Merkel had persuaded Putin to accept such an initiative.
Switzerland, which chairs the pan-European security body, said the group could discuss sending observers to Ukraine to monitor the rights of national minorities.
"There will be very, very broad consensus for that monitoring mission. We call on Russia to join that consensus, make the right choice and pull back its forces," US assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland told OSCE envoys in Vienna.
The Russian central bank raised its key lending rate by 1.5 per centage points after the ruble fell to all-time lows.
Tension over Ukraine also knocked 2 to 3 per cent off European stock markets and 1 per cent off Wall Street, and sent safe haven gold to a four-month high.
Chicago wheat futures rose more than 5 per cent and corn about 4 per cent amid fears of disruption to shipments from the Black Sea, a major grain-exporting zone.
Russian gas monopoly Gazprom, which supplies Europe through Ukraine, was down nearly 14 per cent.
Gazprom's finance chief warned Ukraine that it may raise gas prices from next month, accusing Kiev of a patchy payments record, but said gas transit to Europe was normal. Ukraine has been stocking up on gas imports in the past few days to beat a feared rise, a spokesman for its gas transit monopoly said.
Ukraine's pro-Western prime minister, Arseny Yatseniuk, whose government took power when Yanukovich, a Russian ally, fled on February 21 after three months of street protests, said Putin had effectively declared war on his nation.
Yatseniuk said the government planned to cut spending by 14 to 16 per cent as Ukraine prepared for talks on Tuesday with the International Monetary Fund to avert the danger of default.
Russian flags flying
Russian forces seized Crimea, an isolated Black Sea peninsula with an ethnic Russian majority, without firing a shot. All eyes are now on whether Russia makes a military move in predominantly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine, where pro-Moscow demonstrators have marched and raised Russian flags over public buildings in several cities in the last three days.
Pro-Russian protesters besieged lawmakers inside the regional government building in the eastern city of Donetsk, Yanukovich's hometown, on Monday in the latest such action.
Russia has staged war games with 150,000 troops along the land border, but so far they have not crossed. Kiev says Moscow is orchestrating the protests to justify a wider invasion.
At an emergency Security Council meeting, Russia's UN ambassador and Western envoys hurled allegations at each other for 2-1/2 hours.
"Under the influence of Western countries, there are open acts of terror and violence," Russian envoy Vitaly Churkin quoted the letter from Yanukovich as saying, brandishing a copy of it. "People are being persecuted for language and political reasons."
Churkin repeated Moscow's view that Yanukovich was Ukraine's legitimate leader, not interim President Oleksander Turchinov.
US envoy Samantha Power said there was no evidence ethnic Russians or Russian-speakers in Ukraine were under threat.
Power said there was "no legal basis" for Russia to justify its military deployments in Ukraine through an invitation from the regional prime minister of the Crimea, adding only Ukraine's parliament could do that.
Churkin shot back that Power appeared to have gotten all her information about Ukraine "from US TV."
A German spokesman said Merkel believed it was not too late to resolve the Ukrainian crisis by political means.
The German leader, who speaks fluent Russian, has had several long telephone calls with the German-speaking Putin since the crisis erupted with mass protests in Kiev, creating a major policy dilemma for Berlin, which is heavily dependent on Russian gas and has close economic ties.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov met his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in Geneva on Monday, a Russian diplomat said. Lavrov will meet EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton in Madrid on Tuesday, RIA Novosti agency said.
On Kiev's Independence Square, or Maidan, where anti-Yanukovich protesters manned barricades for three months, crowds were smaller than in recent days as people returned to work.
"Crimea, we are with you!" read one placard. "Putin - Hitler of the 21st century," read another.
Source: The Economic Times
(3) Natco wins Indian patent dispute case
Natco Pharmaceuticals, the Hyderabad-based drug manufacturer, has won a patent case against Teva Pharmaceuticals of Israel.
The New Delhi High Court, on February 28, dismissed Teva’s suit seeking an injunction over the marketing of a generic version of multiple sclerosis drug, copaxone (glatiramer acetate) in the U.S. While Teva does not have a patent on the drug in India, the injunction sought to prevent Natco exporting it.
The decision could allow Natco to launch generic version of Teva’s Copaxone in the U.S., subject to approval from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (USFDA).
The patent on the $4 billion sales drug, expires in the U.S. on May 24, 2014.
“We are still awaiting USFDA approval, and our plans in the U.S. depend on that,” M. Adi Narayana, Company Secretary & Vice President-Legal & Corporate Affairs, Natco Pharma, told The Hindu. Natco has been selling it in India since 2007, and plans to market it with partner U.S.-based pharma giant Mylan with whom it has a global marketing alliance since 2008.
Teva sued Natco, seeking an injunction as it alleged Natco’s move infringed on its process patent. Mr. Narayana said, “We are very pleased with the decision by the New Delhi High Court to dismiss and take no action in this matter. We continue to believe that the sole Indian process patent is invalid, as reinforced by the outcomes of numerous other legal proceedings. We are also pursuing other challenges against this patent”. Natco took on big global pharma in the past having won a case against Novartis for its blood cancer drug, Glivec last year and also receiving India’s first compulsory license (CL) on the kidney cancer drug Nexavar made by Bayer.
Mr. Narayana said Natco successfully completed a preferential issue to CX Securities for Rs.153 crore to retire old debt and had shareholder approval to raise capital to set up a facility in Mehbubnagar, Andhra Pradesh, to cater to Mylan’s requirements.
Source: The Hindu
(4) KPMG arm named in Reebok chargesheet
The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), the investigating arm of the corporate affairs ministry, has named KPMG India affiliate and its auditing arm BSR & Co along with the sacked top executives of Reebok India, Subhinder Singh Prem and Vishnu Bhagat, in its chargesheet filed in the court of first class magistrate in Gurgaon.
The charges against the auditors include “criminal breach of trust” as they helped the then top management of the firm “to falsify the accounts and financial statements of the company”. The SFIO chargesheet comes about two years after the ministry of corporate affairs ordered an investigation into the Reebok case in May 2012. After the Satyam case in 2009, this is the second major case where an arm of one of the big four audit firms has got involved in a brush with the law. In the Satyam case, the government agencies had named an arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers for abetting the accounting fraud.
The chargesheet has also included the company’s statutory auditor, Delhi-based N Narasimhan & Co, for “pervasive failure ... to detect material falsification of financial statements (and) weaknesses in control and consequent fraud perpetrated for years”.
A spokesperson for BSR & Co denied the charges to The Indian Express. In response to an e-mail the firm said it was “not the statutory auditors for the years 2008 to 2011 and accordingly, have no statutory reporting obligation in India”. While BSR is an affiliate of KPMG India, in the case of Reebok, it was assigned the audit function of Indian subsidiaries of Adidas Group, including Reebok India by KPMG Germany. KPMG India declined to comment on the issue, while Narasimhan & Co, too, declined comment.
According to the chargesheet, a copy of which has been seen by The Indian Express, “BSR has been criminally negligent as an auditor and criminally misled (among others) the public and shareholders, including Adidas AG, and other stakeholders. They have falsely issued clean audit opinions on the financial statements of Reebok India for the years 2008 to 2011”.
Reebok India’s former MD Subhinder Singh Prem and chief operating officer Vishnu Bhagat were allegedly involved in a Rs 870-crore fraud. They apparently over-invoiced their channel partners to show higher sales to meet their annual targets. Without sending the goods to these franchisees they would bill them and instead store the goods in “secret” warehouses and reverse the sales later.
To finance the operations they also took loans from banks by using fake invoices and raised deposits from high net-worth individuals. The issues came to light when Adidas, which had bought Reebok International, inquired into their Indian operations in 2011. The forensic arm of KPMG India was hired by Adidas to investigate the suspected irregularities.
But the SFIO noted that even this “forensic audit/ review was not adequately designed and supervised. In fact, the forensic audit should have been more in-depth, comprehensive and investigative in nature.... This again points to lack of professional skepticism and due care at an organisational level within KPMG, India and its affiliate auditing arm BSR”.
In May 2012, Reebok India’s director (finance), Shahin Padath, had filed a complaint with the Gurgaon Police alleging the fraud.
Source: The Times of India
(5) FM can easily meet 4.6% deficit target: Economists
Higher revenue inflows towards the end of 2013-14 will help the government meet the revised fiscal deficit target of 4.6 per cent despite its having overshot the full-year borrowing target two months before the end of the fiscal, say economists.
Fiscal deficit crossed the full-year target at the end of January by 1.6 per cent and stood at Rs.5.32 lakh crore or 101.6 per cent of the estimate of Rs.5.24 lakh crore, which is 4.6 per cent of GDP.
Finance minister P Chidambaram's Interim Budget revised down the fiscal deficit target at 4.6 per cent below the redline of 4.8 per cent or Rs.5.42 lakh crore for the fiscal.
Economists believe that inflows from advance tax, 2G spectrum auction fees, dividend and proceeds from disinvestment would help.
"Revenue inflows coming from the spectrum auctions, divestment, dividends and advance tax payment will help in meeting the 4.6-per cent deficit target," said Axis Bank chief economist Saugata Bhattacharya.
Care Rating chief economist Madan Sabnavis also said: "There are lot of revenues which have not come in. March 15 is the date of fourth quarter advance tax payment. Also, of the spectrum revenue, one-third will come in by March-end."
Corporates will make the last payout of advance tax for this fiscal by March 15, which, because of the last quarter, is the biggest chunk normally.
In the recently concluded spectrum auction in which eight telcos participated, the government received Rs. 61,162 crore.
Of it, a minimum of Rs. 18,296.36 crore will come to the government in the current financial year, ending March 31.
As per the Interim Budget, public sector enterprises, including banks, are expected to contribute Rs. 88,188 crore in the form of dividend and profit to the government this fiscal.
In January, Coal India was asked to declare an interim dividend of Rs.29 per share amounting to Rs.18,317 crore, or a record 290 per cent, for 2013-14. Also, Three CIL arms would chip in with close to Rs.3,000 crore in special dividends.
Source: Hindustan Times
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