Infosys settles visa case; agrees to pay $34 million: just a small cost of doing business the visabuse way

Infosys settles visa case; agrees to pay $34 million - The Hindu: "Leading software services exporter Infosys Ltd. announced on Wednesday that it has agreed to pay $34 million dollars to settle allegations about its alleged violations of U.S. visa regulations. The settlement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Texas “resolves all issues with the U.S. Department of State, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security,” the company said in a statement.

Infosys said allegations and investigations pertaining to I-9 “paperwork errors and visa matters” were the subject of investigation by the U.S. Federal agencies, the company said. The I-9 Form is used to ensure that employers “verify” employees’ identity and eligibility to work in the U.S. The company said the “errors” pertained to 2010-11. It claimed that the company started correcting the “errors” before the investigation commenced in 2011."

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Not Waist-ed, but McSized

Cultural hang-ups about food are making us fatter - Life & Style | Trends, Tips, News & Advice | The Irish Times - Wed, Oct 30, 2013: "Somewhere between the McLibel Trial and Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me, McDonald’s became a shorthand for all sorts of societal ills: obesity, bad parenting, food poverty, corporate greed. But while it’s always nice to have a billion dollar company to blame for our children’s expanding waistlines, our obesity crisis isn’t all about fast food.
Yes, it’s hard to make the case for fast food as a nutritious alternative to baby rice. McDonald’s fries contain 15 ingredients, including salt and sugar, which is sprayed on to make the colour look more appetising. Some chicken nuggets are about half muscle, with the rest a mixture of fat, blood vessels and nerves, according to a recent study in the American Journal of Medicine."

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Caterpillar out of the bag

Caterpillar’s unsettling track record in Northern Ireland - Economic News | Ireland & World Economy Headlines |The Irish Times - Tue, Oct 29, 2013: "Forget for a moment that the 100 new jobs may have the potential to generate salaries of around £2.2 million and remember just how hard the loss of 750 jobs has hit local communities such as Larne, Springvale in Belfast and Monkstown.
Because Caterpillar is diversifying its production capabilities in the North into a new line of manufacturing, there is the hope that it will in time bring other new work to Northern Ireland, which will ultimately create more jobs.
But in the meantime, the
fact that Invest NI has offered Caterpillar £1.087 million of financial support and the North’s Department for Employment and Learning has also agreed to give it £220,000 towards the cost of the investment project just doesn’t sit right. Should you reward a global organisation for pulling out manufacturing jobs and relocating them, as Caterpillar moved those Northern jobs
to China?"

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Starbucks- can't buck the Chinese press

Starbucks Is Expensive in China. Who Cares? - Bloomberg: "What did Starbucks Corp. ever do to the Chinese Communist Party?

That’s the question China’s latte-sipping set is asking in the wake of a now-notorious investigation, first aired on national television Sunday, that revealed -- among other examples of allegedly shameless profiteering -- that a tall latte costs about 45 cents more at a Starbucks in Beijing than it does at one in London, and that Starbucks’s profit margins in the Asia-Pacific region exceed those of any other in which the company operates.

The story has dominated China, with major international news media outlets subsequently picking up on it. The global interest is understandable: Starbucks claims to have more than 1,000 stores in China, and the company’s chief executive officer expects China to one day be Starbucks’s second-largest market."

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Rules of the Trade, retail Trade

Call to prevent retailers using Republic as secret ‘honey pot’ - Consumer News & Advice | Pricewatch, Money Advice | The Irish Time - Wed, Oct 23, 2013: "The committee accused large multiples and wholesalers of “exerting undue pressure on pricing” on producers and said that some were being coerced and bullied into funding promotions and discounts but were afraid to reveal how they were being “squeezed out of the market” by big retail chains out of concern that their products would be delisted.
“There are serious concerns that the current imbalance of power between suppliers and retailers is unsustainable in the long term and that the family farm structure and primary producers are being squeezed out of the market,” the reports says.
The committee expressed “serious concern” over “hidden costs arising from additional fees and market support initiatives” and said such practices should “not be tolerated” and called for heavy penalties to be introduced on a statutory basis for retailers “found to be engaging in illegal practices”."

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Let's drink tap water and celebrate this- a law which should have been implemented decades ago

Coalition to introduce minimum alcohol pricing in bid to fight abuse - Political News | Irish & International Politics | The Irish Times - Wed, Oct 23, 2013: "The introduction of a minimum price for alcohol will be the centrepiece of the Government’s national substance misuse strategy to be announced tomorrow.
Minimum pricing is one of a range of measures that will be unveiled by Minister of State at the Department of Health Alex White following agreement at the Cabinet yesterday.
One of the most controversial elements of the plan, a proposed ban on the sponsorship of sporting events by drinks companies from 2020, has been postponed after a battle between Mr White and key Fine Gael Ministers."

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C Class in Brazil

Brazilians prepare to rage against state failures in World Cup summer | World news | The Observer:  "There was a growth of people's income above the growth of GDP. Last year it was 7.9%, and the GDP grew 0.9%," Neri said. "So life inside people's houses is getting better, and outside is not getting better at the same velocity."

Class C now makes up more than half of the Brazilian population. The demographic group once marginalised as "the poor" now plays a confident and central role in Brazilian culture, with its own pop stars, like singer Anitta, and even a hit soap opera on Globo called Brazil Avenue, which for the first time celebrated its brash, colourful suburban style on primetime television and was a nationwide hit.

"Globo soap operas used to be a magic eye, for the poorer people to see the rich," said Antonio Prata, one of the soap's scriptwriters. "Brazil Avenue did the opposite … Class C didn't want to see the rich, they wanted to see themselves reflected."

But what Class C members can buy in terms of consumer goods – often on credit – does not make up for the failing social services around them, particularly in health, education, sanitation and transport. Many live in tiny breezeblock houses, in endless, gritty suburbs, hours away from city centres by bus. Transport was the spark that lit June's protests: an increase in bus fares in São Paulo and Rio.

"These Brazilians are consumers without citizenship, without civil rights. They are not citizens," said celebrated novelist Milton Hatoum. "There is consumerism but no citizenship. The schools for their children are terrible. Education is terrible. Often there is no sanitation.

..."

The Flight of Excess, Cisco Style

The CEO Of Cisco Bills The Company When He Flies In His Own Private Jet - Yahoo Finance: "Many big tech companies, like HP and IBM, keep fleets of private jets to fly their executives around in convenience, safety and style. But at Cisco, CEO John Chambers works it in reverse.
He owns his own jet and then he sends Cisco a bill when he uses it for work, which he presumably does a lot.
In 2013, he billed Cisco $2.8 million in jet expenses, according to forms filed with the SEC. Unlike car mileage, there doesn't seem to be an IRS standard when reimbursing for your private jet. Chambers just has to make sure that his expense rate isn't higher than what it would cost to hire a private chartered jet.
That's not hard to do. It will cost you $21,000 to charter a 4-passenger plane for an hour to fly from San Jose to L.A. on a JetSuite private charter (non-member rate).
Blogger Brad Reese calculates that since 2009, Chambers has billed Cisco $11.1 million in private jet expenses."

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Protesting - is in itself a great value

Do protest films like Project Wild Thing change anything? | Film | The Guardian: "In the past month we've already had films on bees (More Than Honey), the internet and children (InRealLife), and climate change denial (Greedy Lying Bastards), not to mention WikiLeaks dramatisation The Fifth Estate – for those who didn't get enough from recent WikiLeaks documentary We Steal Secrets. Next week's issue doc is Project Wild Thing, in which film-maker David Bond embarks on a crusade to market "nature" to the iPad-fixated, outdoors-phobic youth of Britain. The irony of making a film to encourage kids to get outside more instead of watching films is not lost on Bond, and there is a sense that many other films in this category, in effect, do the same thing with grownups: gluing us to our seats with a pressing issue, then chiding us for not getting out of those seats and doing something. Could it be that documentaries are the problem as much as the solution? Are any of these films actually affecting the issues they're championing? And are any of us really watching them anyway?"

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Boehn(er)-headed definition of a good fight

Congress Set to End Fiscal Impasse as Boehner Concedes - Bloomberg: "House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement that Republicans won’t block the compromise.
“We fought the good fight,” Boehner, a Republican, said today on WLW, a radio station in his home state of Ohio. “We just didn’t win.”"

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English- Irish and American

The war of the words - Book News | Literature & Books Reviews & Headlines |The Irish Time - Wed, Oct 16, 2013: "Proceeding from the premise that Irish was vastly underacknowledged as a source of English words, he mined the mother tongue for a whole quarry-load of derivations: those of “dig”, and even “jazz” (from “teas”, meaning “heat”, he suggested)
included.
He was like a frontiersman, staking claims to the linguistic wilderness. And like many frontiersmen, he was soon under fire from counter claimants, his death in 2008 not entirely ending the conflict.
His book’s premise, at least, was beyond argument. Almost a century earlier, HL Mencken had expressed puzzlement at the paucity of acknowledged Irish loan words in English. “Perhaps shillelah, colleen, spalpeen, smithereens, and poteen exhaust the unmistakably Gaelic list”, Mencken wrote, exaggerating only a little."

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Forced student labour is central to the Chinese economic miracle | Aditya Chakrabortty | Comment is free | The Guardian

Forced student labour is central to the Chinese economic miracle | Aditya Chakrabortty | Comment is free | The Guardian: "You'll hear a lot of pieties about China this week. As George Osborne and Boris Johnson schlep from Shanghai to Shenzhen, they'll give the usual sales spiel about trade and investment and the global race. What they won't talk much about is Zhang Lintong. Yet the 16-year-old's story tells you more about the human collateral in the relationship between China and the west than any number of ministerial platitudes.

In June 2011, Zhang and his teenage classmates were taken out of their family homes and dispatched to a factory making electronic gadgets. The pupils were away for a six-month internship at a giant Foxconn plant in the southern city of Shenzhen, a 20-hour train ride from their home in central China. He had no say in the matter, he told researchers. "Unless we could present a medical report certified by the city hospital that we were very ill, we had to go immediately.""

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Poor Literacy Rates...great article

Are poor literacy rates caused by laziness … or bad film titles? | Bridget Christie | Comment is free | The Guardian: According to a really expensive study carried out by Noel Edmonds' Sky1 quiz programme Are You Smarter Than a 10 Year Old?, millions of English adults cannot read, write or add up better than primary-school children. Furthermore, one in six adults can only just about decipher a menu (the type you find in a greasy-spoon cafe, not one of Heston Blumenthal's – even Heston can't read those). But even if they can order an egg, because it only has three letters in it, they still don't understand quantities. Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, asked Edmonds if this was why we were all so fat and a drain on the NHS, and Noel said it was, yes. Hunt smirked, and then they went off to bounce on the trampoline for a bit because all the swings were taken.

Poverty and social inequality have been blamed for the results of the survey, which – back in the real world – was carried out by the OECD and put England close to the bottom in literacy and numeracy among 16- to 24-year-olds in developed nations. This is despite Michael Gove, the education secretary, and his badminton partner Toby Young doing all they can to improve literacy and numeracy for their own children, and the children of all their friends. But this problem pre‑exists Gove. It doesn't pre-exist Young though, who has been around since the first school opened here in 597. That's why he feels qualified to keep going on Newsnight to talk about education. It also explains why he has a painting of a really old-looking baby in his attic, and his silly, old-fashioned views on women.

Professor Chris Husbands, director of the Institute of Education, said: "Even after 150 years, we still haven't worked out how to educate the masses in this country." How old is Prof Husbands? Perhaps he needs a break, at his age. Anyway, I don't agree with Husbands, in theory. Or the professor, for that matter. I think the elite has worked out exactly how to educate the masses in this country. Don't! Keep us illiterate! Like the pope did in the good old days before that pesky reformer Tyndale ruined everything! Don't dilute the elite! What will we call ourselves if we allow the masses to infiltrate us? The Massite? A fair and equal society? Look at the state of Scandinavia! It will never work. Besides, there are only so many cabinet positions to go round.

Anyway, I'm not convinced we needed an survey to find out how illiterate we all are. Apparently it cost £567,000,231,089,222,785.21 just to get the numeracy figures. Couldn't Edmonds have just popped down the high street and looked at some shop signs that will have presumably been checked by a number of people, including a professional signwriter, and still ended up as "Bobs's Fish and, Chip's"? Edmonds could also have watched something about "real people" on Channel 4 (not the news), read a trendy children's book that includes double negatives to be cool, kooky and cute, or gone to the cinema to see The Pursuit of Happyness, Inglourious Basterds or Biutiful. These Hollywood movies are of course misspelt on purpose to be amusing, but with the US coming out in the lower half of these literacy tables, it's not helpful.

The survey also doesn't tell us how many of these illiterate 16- to 24-year-olds are genuinely illiterate, or how many of them just pretend to be illiterate as an affectation to be more popular, or to give the impression of being less dangerous than they are. Like George W Bush, Katie Price and Boris Johnson do.

Our illiteracy may also be down to laziness generally. I notice it all the time. Drivers don't indicate any more (can't be bothered, I know where I'm going); we drag our heels along the ground when we walk (I'm still getting to where I need to go, why bother picking my feet up?). Perhaps poor grammar is just another part of this general apathy. We're all guilty of this to some degree. I went to France recently and instead of learning how to say "Excuse me, is this fish boneless?" to a lady selling fish, I just pointed at my two children then mimed having a choking fit. She knew immediately what I meant.

I left school at 15 with two CSEs. One in drama and one in typing, in case the acting didn't work out. It didn't, by the way, and I must say the typing has come in very handy for these columns, so I'm not as stupid as all those teachers told me I was after all. Anyway, this was in the mid-1980s, when even a school dropout like me could watch University Challengewithout glazing over, and even manage to get one or two questions right. I don't think this is the case today. But that's more down to Paxman's confidence-sapping impatience than our failing state schools.

The disparity in our education system between the rich and the poor is a national disgrace, and begins even before our children are born – by elective caesarean section in the first week of the month in order to get a place in a top London prep school. (This story ran in the Daily Mail so may or may not be true, but it sounds feasible.)

I took my education for granted, which shames me now, especially when I think of the lengths Pakistani schoolgirls go to for theirs. But this isn't Pakistan. Girls have the same educational rights as boys here. It's not gender that divides our children's opportunities to learn and better themselves here, but their social backgrounds.

Improvement in Irish Economy: Depends on who you ask

ECB president praises Ireland’s efforts to repair public finances - Irish Economy News & Headlines | The Irish Times - Sat, Oct 12, 2013: "European Central Bank president Mario Draghi has praised Ireland’s efforts to repair its public finances and banking sector saying that the country has improved “on all fronts” since the financial crisis.
Mr Draghi declined to comment on whether Ireland would require a precautionary credit line, similar to an overdraft facility, when it exits the EU-IMF bailout programme at the end of the year.
“I don’t want to comment on this specific issue because it just being discussed by the relevant authorities,” he told reporters at the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Washington."

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Taking government hostage- Note the "Right" angle

Republican Hostage Game Has Only Just Begun - Bloomberg: "Meanwhile, there is no reason to believe Republicans will be chastened by the debacle they have brought on themselves. The party appears to have no expectation of seeing the inside of the White House anytime soon, as evidenced by its hunkering down into a congressional and regional resistance. The political dynamics that encourage Republican extremism aren't abating, and have deep roots. Congressional Republicans, wrote Ron Brownstein, are channeling "the bottomless alienation coursing through much of the GOP's base."
In an essay on the same theme, Tom Edsall wrote, "The depth and strength of voters’ conviction that their opponents are determined to destroy their way of life has rarely been matched, perhaps only by the mood of the South in the years leading up to the Civil War."
Republicans are too dysfunctional and splintered to produce much viable legislation, and the next presidential election is not only three years away but potentially out of reach to all but Hillary Clinton. For a party blistered by grassroots rage and struggling to achieve parity under traditional political norms, political extortion will remain a tempting shortcut to power."

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EU Migration, more for jobs, less for benefits

Jobs not ‘benefit tourism’ the reason migrants move around EU, says report - European News | Latest News from Across Europe | The Irish Times - Fri, Oct 11, 2013: "There is no evidence EU citizens who move to another member state are “more intensive users” of social welfare than nationals of that member state, a study commissioned by the European Commission has found.
The report, which will be published in the coming days and has been seen by The Irish Times, is likely to reignite the debate about so-called “benefit tourism” – people moving to another country to receive social benefits rather than to work.
The UK has raised concerns about migrants’ access to benefits, with David Cameron pledging to put the issue at the heart of his planned “renegotiation” of the relationship with the EU. "

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Dumb or <> ?

Are Americans dumb? No, it's the inequality, stupid | Sadhbh Walshe | Comment is free | theguardian.com: "Are Americans dumb? This is a question that has been debated by philosophers, begrudging foreigners and late night TV talk show hosts for decades. Anyone who has ever watched the Tonight Show's "Jaywalking" segment in which host Jay Leno stops random passersby and asks them rudimentary questions like "What is Julius Caesar famous for?" (Answer: "Um, is it the salad?") might already have made their minds up on this issue. But for those of you who prefer to reserve judgement until definitive proof is on hand, then I'm afraid I have some depressing news. America does indeed have a problem in the smarts department and it appears to be getting worse, not better.

On Tuesday, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released the results of a two-year study in which thousands of adults in 23 countries were tested for their skills in literacy, basic math and technology. The US fared badly in all three fields, ranking somewhere in the middle for literacy but way down at the bottom for technology and math."

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Reform is not abstract: misgovernment does real, tangible harm to our citizens - Oireachtas News Updates | The Irish Times - Tue, Oct 08, 2013

Reform is not abstract: misgovernment does real, tangible harm to our citizens - Oireachtas News Updates | The Irish Times - Tue, Oct 08, 2013: "These three vignettes point to an executive that is both sloppy and arrogant; a system of delivery of public services and of public administration that struggles with basic ideas of responsibility and accountability; and a justice system that has repeatedly failed to ensure that wealthy people who wreak havoc with other people’s lives do not enjoy impunity. We can add the acknowledged failure of parliament to be, in the Government’s own words, more than “an observer of the political process”. These multiple levels of misgovernment inflict immense, tangible damage on citizens. Only a genuine, coherent, multi-layered “democratic revolution” that puts citizens in charge of their own republic can prevent that harm from continuing."

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Congress and President: Crooks, Liars and Gamblers

It is amazing to see the shenanigans in politics. First, the Congress and President create a crisis over the funding of the budget, leading to a furlough. Of course, the MOCs (Members of Congress) and Pres. are collecting their paychecks and getting their health insurace, no questions asked.
Now, these blighters want to pay the furloughed workers when they have not been working. So the policy is- first make people jobless, then pay them for taking their jobs away. Neither party is concerned that this adds to the deficit, just like the Congressional salaries.
If a federal worker knows that he/she will get her pay retroactively, what is the incentive to work? Much better if the furlough lasts long and extends widely, no work and money for free.


US House passes bill to retroactively reimburse furloughed workers | World news | theguardian.com: "The House of Representatives on Saturday passed another piecemeal bill, to make sure federal workers furloughed under the current government shutdown will be reimbursed for lost pay once government reopens.

The White House backs the bill and the Senate is expected to approve it too, though the timing is unclear. The 407-0 vote in the House was uniquely bipartisan, even as lawmakers continued their partisan rhetoric.

"This is not their fault and they should not suffer as a result," Elijah Cummings, a Democrat representative from Maryland, said of federal workers. "This bill is the least we should do. Our hard-working public servants should not become collateral damage in the political games and ideological wars that Republicans are waging.""

Sugar high- prices, that is...Holding the sugar drink vendors responsible for the health problems they create

Doctors seek 20% hike in tax on sugary drinks - Health News | Irish Medical News | The Irish Times - Sun, Oct 06, 2013: "Doctors have demanded a 20 per cent tax hike on sugar sweetened drinks in the upcoming budget to tackle the obesity epidemic.
The Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) also called for a review of how sugary drinks are promoted and the effect their consumption has, particularly by children.
Professor Donal O’Shea warned they provide no nutritional benefits but are linked with weight gain.
“With one in four Irish schoolchildren classified as overweight or obese, we have an epidemic and the Government must take action,” said the hospital consultant."

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Lessons to be learnt from the Irish

Tough financial times for colleges and Universities in the U.S. ELmhurst College, where this author works, has been running a deficit for nearly five years.
Ireland has many problems, but it is refreshing to see the obvious being stated publicly.



‘Ireland has too many universities’ - Glen Dimplex chairman - Education News | Primary, Secondary & Third Level | The Irish Time - Sat, Oct 05, 2013: "Ireland has too many universities and needs a more disruptive approach to education, the chairman and CEO of Glen Dimplex has said.
Speaking today at the Global Irish Economic Forum, Sean O’Driscoll also said Ireland needs to redefine the role Institutes of Technology play in education.
“We have too many universities and we need to pick the winners and the losers.”
“We need to redefine the role of ITs. They should not be quasi-universities. ITs should be about apprenticeships and internships.”

Giving the recommendations of a working group, Mr O’Driscoll also said the Transition Year programme needs to be redefined at second-level.

“What is it – a holiday or a life-changing experience in one’s life?”

“ There needs to be disruptive reform in the education sector.”

Aer Lingus chief executive Christoph Mueller criticised the notion that in Ireland, everything but a university education is seen as inferior.

“We have to promote non-academic education as something equal to academic training, if not better.”

He said colleges such as the Institutes of Technology are often seen as places for people who didn’t get into university, a view that needs to be moved away from.

“We need to incentivise employers to offer apprenticeships and internships. Irish graduates are not necessarily fit for their jobs. There should be on the job training as part of academic education.”

Natus managing director and co-founder of the Farmleigh Fellowship, Fred Combe, said almost 20,000 international students come to Ireland to study every year, but nearly all of them leave straight after.

He said visa extensions should be given to entrepreneurial students from abroad to encourage them to set up businesses here.

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore said all ideas and recommendations from the forum would be taken away and examined.

“I’ll bring a memo to government about how we are going to bring them forward.”

Guardian- a paper that guards our future, needs to be guarded

At The Guardian, Signs That Free Online News Can Pay - Bloomberg: "As rival U.K. newspapers start charging for content -- in effect giving up on a big chunk of readers in exchange for money from a smaller number of devoted fans -- The Guardian's latest financials provide some hope that a free online news model can be good for business as well as consumers.
It's far from clear whether charging for content offers more sustainable profits than giving it away and earning more from ad sales. If The Guardian, whose first front page featured an ad for a lost dog, can sustain its digital growth, it will offer a strong argument in favor of free news.
One advantage the paper has is its strong ties to the public sector. For years, the print version earned much of its profit from classified job listings by government agencies, according to investment bank Panmure Gordon. Following years of government spending cuts since the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition came to power in 2010, there are signs of a revival."

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The Most Valuable Brands in America, 2000 to 2013 - Businessweek

The Most Valuable Brands in America, 2000 to 2013 - Businessweek: "Coca-Cola (KO) has been dethroned by Apple (AAPL) from its long-running position as the world’s most valuable brand, according to the closely watched Interbrand Best Global Brands survey. The soft drink giant had held the No. 1 ranking for 13 consecutive years but fell to No. 3 in this year’s study by the consulting firm. Interbrand (OMC) values the Apple brand at about $98 billion, and other tech companies such as Google (GOOG), IBM (IBM), and Microsoft (MSFT) finished in the top five.

Here’s a look at the twists and turns of the top 10 brands in the Interbrand study, which analyzes a brand’s financial strength and influence, going back to 2000:

"

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Reform - the need of the hour

Say No to Seanad abolition and the Coalition’s reform charade - Oireachtas News Updates | The Irish Times - Tue, Oct 01, 2013: "In itself, the abolition of an absurd second chamber can be seen as an act of political slum clearance. But in the larger context we are being asked to agree that the space thus cleared – the space where real democratic renewal should be – should be left vacant.
For myself, I will be doing what Breda O’Brien has suggested: putting an X beside the No box and writing the single word “Reform” neatly on the bottom of the paper.
If a returning officer decides that this is a spoiled vote, so be it. That, in itself, would be an eloquent and honest statement: reform is an impermissible word."

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