Today's Hot Stories - March 14, 2014
10 Headlines for Today(1) Maoists torch BJP MLA’s petrol pump, attack his home in Bihar
(2) BJP still bickering over U.P.
(3) MH 370: Search shifts to Indian Ocean
(4) Coal India executives call off strike
(5) FTIL, MCX shares plunge on stock exchange probe
(6) US FDA bans imports from Sun Pharma’s Gujarat facility
(7) Alonso sets fastest time at Australian GP
(8) Federer beats Anderson to reach Indian Wells semis
(9) England win last T20, lose series to Windies 2-1
(10) A disposable microscope for as little as $1
5 Stories for Today
(1) Black money in polls: 700 IRS officers to be deployed for vigil
(2) Zuckerberg calls Obama to protest surveillance practices
(3) Muthoot Finance launches white-label ATM in Kerala
(4) Bank of America back in court over $2.1 billion fraud penalties
(5) Indian economy: 5.2 per cent growth in Q4 achievable, says C. Rangarajan
(1) Black money in polls: 700 IRS officers to be deployed for vigil
700 IRS officers would be deployed by the Election Commission as observers in ‘expenditure sensitive’ constituencies during the Lok Sabha polls.
The EC has asked the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) and the Central Board of Excise and Customs to finalise the names of suitable officials and send to it for final deployment.
The final briefing of these officials will take place this week in Delhi where they will be told about their authority and role in the elections, both for countrywide Lok Sabha seats and for the state Legislative Assemblies of Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Odisha.
Sources said the officers will be posted as ‘Election Expenditure Observers’ in various constituencies and Assembly segments and they will supervise anti-black money procedures being conducted by the EC appointed flying squads and monitoring teams.
The EC has formulated a number of measures for curbing the use of illegal money power and luring of voters in the run up to the polls, the first voting day of the polls being April 7.
The EC, sources said, will formally allot the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officers their respective constituencies in the next few days and observers for all these seats will start touring their respective areas soon.
The IT department has pooled in and compiled a list of its officers from its various wings of tax collection, TDS, investigations and others to be sent on deputation to the EC for this task while the Customs will also depute a team of senior officials from its various formations.
“The officials will remain with the EC for some more time after the results are announced on May 16 after the final expenditure reports would be finalised,” a senior official said.
Keywords: Lok Sabha polls 2014, Lok Sabha elections 2014, IRS officers, general elections 2014, black money issue, Central Board of Direct Taxes, Central Board of Excise and Customs
Source: The Hindu
(2) Zuckerberg calls Obama to protest surveillance practices
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg blasted U.S. government surveillance measures on Thursday and said he had personally called President Barack Obama to protest.
Mr. Zuckerberg’s rant on his personal Facebook page came a day after reports that the National Security Agency (NSA) had impersonated Facebook servers to infect targeted computers with malware. The NSA has in recent months been implicated by whistleblower Edward Snowden in a massive range of digital surveillance programs.
“I’ve been so confused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behaviour of the U.S. government,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote. “When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we’re protecting you against criminals, not our own government.” “I’ve called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future.” he continued. “Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform.”
Mr. Zuckerberg’s protest coincided with a more nuanced approach by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates who decried Snowden’s actions and maintained that some government surveillance capability was needed over the web.
“I think he broke the law, so I certainly wouldn’t characterise him as a hero,” Mr. Gates said in Rolling Stone magazine.
“You won’t find much admiration from me,” Mr. Gates said, adding that Snowden’s actions had compromised those necessary security capabilities, and that he would have had greater support for Snowden “if he wanted to raise the issues and stay in the country and engage in civil disobedience or something of that kind, or if he had been careful in terms of what he had released.”
“The debate needs to be about the general notion of under what circumstances should they be allowed to do things,” he said. “The people who say that sometimes having this information is valuable — they’re not being very articulate right now.
Source: The Economic Times
(3) Muthoot Finance launches white-label ATM in Kerala
Muthoot Finance on Thursday launched its first white-label ATM in Kochi and said it will open 9,000 such machines in the next three years.
The Muthoot group company has partnered with FIS Payment Solutions & Services India, which will act as the technical partner for the project and Federal Bank Ltd, which is the sponsor bank for this venture, it said in a statement.
A white-label ATM is similar to a normal bank ATM with facilities of cash withdrawal and balance enquiry.
Former Kerala governor Nikhil Kumar inaugurated the ATM at a function in Kochi.
Muthoot Group chairman MG George Muthoot said they would be able to further empower their rural customers with the ATM services.
"Foray into white-label ATMs is indeed a big step for Muthoot Finance and it only reiterates our commitment towards making finance easily accessible in the rural hinterland.
"We have gone an extra mile by challenging ourselves to set up 9,000 WLAs within three years with first 100 ATMs in the month of March itself," Muthoot finance managing director George Alexander Muthoot said.
Muthoot Finance would see about 1,000 WLAs set up in the first year itself, followed by 2,000 in the second year and a significant ramp up by about 6,000 in the third year, he added.
Source: The Times of India
(4) Bank of America back in court over $2.1 billion fraud penalties
A US judge wrestled on Thursday with a US justice department request that Bank of America Corp pay $2.1 billion in penalties after being found liable for fraud over defective mortgages sold by its Countrywide unit.
In a second hearing on the penalties to be imposed on the bank, US district judge Jed Rakoff in New York said he had not yet decided how to rule in what was one of the few cases to go to trial stemming from the financial crisis.
But he tested the government's arguments that it should be awarded penalties based on revenue Countrywide Financial Corp earned selling loans to government-sponsored mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Rakoff even asked why the government had not sought even more in penalties, based on the $4.8 billion paid by Fannie and Freddie, rather than seeking just $2.1 billion based on revenue earned only on the defective portion of the loans sold by Countrywide.
"I'm interested in the logic," Rakoff said. "It may be there is logic to the $2.1 billion, but at least to me there is logic under your theory of the case that would lead you to claim a gross gain of $5 billion."
Assistant US attorney Pierre Armand, meanwhile, suggested the government would increase its request for penalties from Rebecca Mairone, a former Countrywide executive, from $1.1 million to $1.6 million based on a $487,000 bonus she recently earned from her employer, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
The hearing followed a verdict by a federal jury in New York in October finding Bank of America and Mairone each liable for fraud in a civil lawsuit centered on a mortgage lending process at Countrywide called the "High Speed Swim Lane," also called "HSSL" or "Hustle."
Countrywide, which became a poster child for the US mortgage meltdown, was acquired by Bank of America in July 2008.
The justice department contends that the Countrywide program, which began in 2007 and which the government says Mairone oversaw, emphasized quantity rather than the quality of loans produced, paying employees based on volume and speed and eliminating loan-quality checkpoints.
Bank of America and Mairone deny wrongdoing. The executive is referred to as Mairone in court papers but now goes by her maiden name, Rebecca Steele, according to Marc Mukasey, her lawyer.
Rakoff initially heard arguments on penalties in December, when the government was seeking $863.6 million based on the gross loss incurred on the loans by Fannie and Freddie.
A request by Rakoff for briefing on an alternative way to calculate the penalty prompted lawyers working in the office of Manhattan US attorney Preet Bharara to seek the even bigger sum of $2.1 billion based on Countrywide's gross gains.
"The government believes the penalties need to be severe enough to deter financial institutions and executives from engaging in like conduct in the future," Armand said.
But Kenneth Smurzynski, a lawyer for Bank of America, said the government's request for $2.1 billion failed to reflect the costs involved in generating the loans. When costs were factored in, Countrywide actually lost money selling the loans, he said.
"The loans didn't just fall out of the sky," he said.
Mukasey, Mairone's lawyer, urged Rakoff to impose no penalties against his client, calling her a divorced mother of two who has suffered enough from the "nuclear" effect of the verdict.
"She is currently looking for a new job or at least thinking about it and having a hard time because of the negative publicity of this case," he said.
Rakoff, though, called it a "difficult argument to accept," saying it seemed "far fetched" that any punishment should be eliminated in the case of someone who commits fraud.
The case is US ex rel. O'Donnell v. Bank of America Corp et al, US District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-01422.
Source: The Times of India
(5) Indian economy: 5.2 per cent growth in Q4 achievable, says C. Rangarajan
The economy can grow an annual 5.2 per cent in the quarter to end-March on higher farm output growth, the chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) said on Friday.
C. Rangarajan also said he expects the economic growth to pick up to 5.5-6 per cent in the fiscal year that begins on April 1.
Contracting industrial output and an investment slowdown dragged India's economic growth to a worse-than-expected 4.7 per cent in the three months to December, making it tougher for the economy to hit the government's growth forecast of 4.9 per cent in the fiscal year that ends in March.
Source: The Indian Express
Disclaimer: All news stories and content sourced from freely available material on the internet. All sources are acknowledged.
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