vishu is a famous hindu festival celebrated mostly in kerala vishu will celebrated on 15th apr 2015 celebration begin at early morning where people in kerala wake up to see the best vishu kani vishukainettam,vishukanji,vishupakshi,kanikonna,vishu crackers are all importent part of vishu
Bring peace to your home and heart on vishu and always... Happy vishu..
Friday 10 April 2015
A call to action
Master Class - Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013
The growing concern for women’s safety and the need for a specific legislation that addresses sexual harassment of women at the workplace, led to the passage of the Sexual Harassment of Women at the Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act 2013 (hereafter referred to as the “Act”).
The Act has been a clear game changer and has raised many questions around harassment in the Indian workplace culture. The provisions of the Act aim to protect the interest of women employees and further fuel the adoption of good governance practices.
Providence through practical insights
The Act lays greater accountability on the employer with respect to providing a safe working environment. It mandates institutionalisation of capacity and skill building programs for the ICC, implementation of awareness programmes for all employees, and listing of penalties and fines. The Act’s detailing has set the tone for organizations to re-evaluate their governance frameworks and implement robust compliance programs, thereby driving instrumental change in operational ethics and integrity.
Are you POSH ready?
It has been a year since the Act and its rules were enforced and we at EY have been asked various questions relating to complying with its mandate. Although the Act provides instruction, there are several challenges that organisations face during the course of its implementation.
It is therefore imperative for organisations to understand the implications of the Act and the penalty for non-compliance with its provisions.
A few questions to ponder:
According to the Act, who is the “employer”?
Can the presiding officer be the same across locations?
What are the considerations for deducting compensation?
What are the specific investigative tools the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) can use for its inquiry into relevant cases?
Do ICC members need specialised training?
Has the ICC submitted its annual report for 2014?
A defining moment
This is a specially designed program for the capacity and skill building enablement of the ICC and persons responsible for implementation of the Act; which the Act mandates as the employer’s responsibility. The workshop shall help participants understand the intricacies and variations of dealing with sensitive cases and they shall be made aware of their enhanced responsibility in ensuring timely recording and reporting of information, and investigative procedures
A bird’s eye view of the program
The program is designed, based on our experience in helping several large Indian and multinational companies implement the Act and guiding them on creating and enforcing robust frameworks.
The program will include a set of vital learnings on how to conduct enquiries, with a strong focus on the roles and responsibilities of ICC members. It will also provide a more intrinsic take on the Act, and shall deal with practical implications and discussion on the Act’s implementation and capacity with regard to investigation into cases.
Keeping in mind the principles of adult learning, we will use a delivery methodology that includes facilitator-led presentations, group discussions and activities, scenarios presented on video and an interactive session with experts.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is planning to impose a major new regulation on offshore oil and gas drilling to try to prevent the kind of explosions that caused the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, administration officials said Friday.
The announcement of the Interior Department regulation, which could be made as soon as Monday, is timed to coincide with the five-year anniversary of the disaster, which killed 11 men and sent millions of barrels of oil spewing into the gulf. The regulation is being introduced as the Obama administration is taking steps to open up vast new areas of federal waters off the southeast Atlantic Coast to drilling, a decision that has infuriated environmentalists.
The rule is expected to tighten safety requirements on blowout preventers, the industry-standard devices that are the last line of protection to stop explosions in undersea oil and gas wells. The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20, 2010, was caused in part when the buckling of a section of drill pipe led to the malfunction of a supposedly fail-safe blowout preventer on a BP well called Macondo.
It will be the third and biggest new drilling-equipment regulation put forth by the Obama administration in response to the disaster. In 2010, the Interior Department announced new regulations on drilling well casings, and in 2012, it announced new regulations on the cementing of wells.
The latest regulation, a result of several years of study, will be imposed on all future offshore drilling equipment and will be used by the administration to make the case that it can prevent a BP-like disaster as oil exploration expands in the Atlantic. The Interior Department is also reviewing a proposal from Royal Dutch Shell to drill in the Arctic’s Chukchi Sea, off the coast of Alaska.
“We’re coming on five years, and we’ve been working tirelessly in the regulation division since it happened,” said Allyson Anderson, associate director of strategic engagement in the Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. “We’ve doubled down on building a culture of safety,”
But environmentalists remained highly skeptical.
“Making sure the design, operation and maintenance of the blowout preventer is the best it can possibly be is imperative, no question,” said Bob Deans, a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council and co-author of the book “In Deep Water,” an investigation of the cause of the spill. “Industry and government have taken measures over the past five years to reduce some of the risk in what is an inherently dangerous operation at sea. That’s a far cry from saying it’s safe. And the last thing we need is to expose Atlantic or Arctic waters to a BP-style blowout.”
Environmentalists also noted that a panel appointed by President Obama to investigate the spill concluded that the chief cause of the disaster, which left the Gulf Coast soaked in black tar, was not the blowout preventer but a broad systemic failure of oversight by the companies involved in drilling the well and the government regulators assigned to police them.
Five years after the spill, the number of accidents and injuries per oil-producing well has increased, according to Interior Department statistics. Between 2009 and 2014, the overall number of oil- and gas-producing wells dropped about 20 percent, and accidents and incidents associated with drilling in the Gulf of Mexico dropped 14 percent. But during that period, accidents and injuries per producing well increased by about 7 percent.
A report last year by the Chemical Safety Board concluded that the blowout preventer’s blind shear ram, an emergency hydraulic device with two cutting blades, punctured the pipe and sent oil and gas gushing to the surface. The study found that the drill pipe had buckled under the tremendous pressure of the oil and gas rising from the well from the initial blowout.
That report warned that another disastrous offshore oil well blowout could happen despite regulatory improvements in the four years since the BP well explosion.
“The new regulation is important,” said William K. Reilly, a co-chairman of the presidential panel that investigated the spill, and the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under the first President George Bush. “The signal from the department that it is attending to each of the systems is more important. The blowout preventer is the last-ditch preventer. It was activated too late in Macondo. If you get to the point where it’s all you’ve got, it better be good. But the system process we identified — attention to management, process design, adherence to the system — those are really vital long before you ever get to the point where you have an emergency.”
Mr. Reilly blamed Congress for some of the continued systemic problems, saying that lawmakers should have appropriated funds to increase programs for safety training and inspection.
Administration officials say that since the spill, the Interior Department has initiated the most aggressive and comprehensive offshore oil and gas regulation and oversight in history. The agency has nearly doubled the number of safety inspectors in the Gulf of Mexico, from 55 at the time of the spill to 92 today. After the accident, the Interior Department was restructured, separating the agency charged with overseeing safety from the one charged with overseeing the collection of revenue.
The agency has also put in place a requirement that any company performing deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico must have access to containment dome technology — essentially, a dome that can be put over an exploded well to contain gushing oil. At least two ports in the Gulf of Mexico now store containment domes that can be used in emergencies.
While the oil industry typically opposes regulations, it has followed some of the recommendations made by the presidential panel. The big oil companies created and funded the Center for Offshore Safety, an institute intended to promote and disseminate best practices in drilling.
“The industry’s overall safety record was strong before Macondo, and the co-chairs of President Obama’s national spill commission were absolutely right when they said that offshore drilling is now even safer,” said Jack N. Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies for the oil industry. “We will continue to build on these achievements because our goal is zero accidents and zero spills.”
News Corp. and Fox Said to Consider Move to World Trade Center Site
Photo
The News Corporation building, which houses The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, at 1211 Avenue of the Americas.CreditMichael Appleton for The New York Times
News Corporation and 21st Century Fox, two giant media companies controlled by Rupert Murdoch, are considering building a joint headquarters in a new 88-story skyscraper at the World Trade Center, real estate executives and government officials said this week.
If a deal is struck, the move by the companies from Midtown Manhattan to a new tower downtown would complete the rebuilding of the office complex destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001. It would also solidify the transformation of Lower Manhattan into a technology and media hub and a lively residential community.
The companies, which include Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, have been in discussions for months with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site and the developer Larry A. Silverstein, who has the rights to build the fourth and last office tower at the site, known as 2 World Trade Center, according to the real estate executives and government officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deal had not been made final.
“This move would establish media hegemony in Lower Manhattan,” said Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban planning at New York University. “News Corp. and Fox are in everyone’s living room. It removes any uncertainty that the new trade center would be a major economic engine, and it validates the 15-year effort to rebuild the World Trade Center.”
News Corporation and 21st Century Fox would require a substantial revision to the long-planned 2 World Trade Center, at Vesey and Greenwich Streets, which the British architect Norman Foster designed. The companies want the base of what is now a cruciform-shape tower with a diamond crown to accommodate television studios.
Earlier in the year, Mr. Murdoch’s companies looked and passed on the Related Companies’ Hudson Yards project on the Far West Side of Manhattan. Mr. Murdoch’s companies are now housed at 1211 and 1185 Avenue of the Americas.
The discussions on the trade center are shrouded in a confidentiality agreement, but several executives who have been briefed on the plans say both sides are spending an enormous amount of time and money assessing the feasibility of the project.
Nathaniel Brown, a spokesman for 21st Century Fox, said on Friday that it and News Corporation “are each exploring options for their New York headquarters, and the process is ongoing.”
The tallest tower at the site, the 104-story 1 World Trade Center, opened last year. Mr. Silverstein completed the 72-story 4 World Trade Center in 2013 and is now building 3 World Trade Center, an 80-story tower. But 2 World Trade Center, which is intended to have 3.1 million square feet, remained in the planning stages, without an anchor tenant to get the project off the ground.
Even as the new trade center has taken shape, the surrounding neighborhood in Lower Manhattan has undergone a major transformation. The area, which 20 years ago often looked like a ghost town at the end of the work day, is now home to upscale restaurants, luxury retailers and more than 60,000 residents.
The financial industry, which lent the neighborhood its name, still has a strong presence. The New York Stock Exchange remains on Wall Street. The Federal Reserve Bank is on Liberty Street, and Goldman Sachs is an important downtown firm.
Photo
In a rendering, 2 World Trade Center is the second tower from the left.CreditDBOX
But the industry’s footprint has been shrinking steadily. One Wall Street, the Art Deco home of Irving Trust and Bank of New York Mellon, is being converted into luxury apartments, as are many other older downtown office towers. Chase Manhattan Plaza was sold to a Chinese company.
Time Inc., and its stable of magazines and digital media properties, is moving to the five-building office complex that was once known as the World Financial Center. Merrill Lynch and Nomura, a Japanese financial firm, are gone from the complex, and its owners have renamed it Brookfield Place.
Mr. Murdoch is not unacquainted with life downtown. HarperCollins, the publishing division of News Corporation, is already in Lower Manhattan, at 195 Broadway. In 2013, News Corporation spun off 21st Century Fox, which includes television studios, Fox Entertainment Group and various broadcast units.
The two companies have about 4,000 employees at their offices on Avenue of the Americas.
Yet there are logistical issues at 2 World Trade Center, and the companies have a history of failing to pull the trigger on major real estate moves.
In 2008, News Corporation was a partner and anchor tenant in a bid by the Related Companies to buy the West Side railyards for a 26-acre residential and commercial complex. Related effectively dropped out of the bidding a month before the final selection after a shaky economy led Mr. Murdoch’s company to abandon the deal. Ultimately, Related did gain control of the railyards after the winning bidder refused to sign the deal.
Even earlier, News Corporation negotiated for six months in 1989 with the developer David Solomon to be the anchor tenant for a 42-story tower under construction at the north end of Times Square. The two sides failed to come to terms; Mr. Solomon tumbled into bankruptcy and lost his building.
The talks at the trade center began earlier this year. Initially, Mr. Murdoch’s companies had wanted to gain control of the site from Mr. Silverstein and build a smaller tower designed by their own architect. That proved undoable for various reasons.
The companies are now talking about taking about half of the building — 1.5 million square feet — designed by Mr. Foster, but they still may bring in their own architect for the changes.
Given that the foundation has been built, the two sides are assessing whether the structure can accommodate the changes they want for television studios.
If it proves possible, it is still unclear what kind of subsidy deal News Corporation and 21st Century Fox would want from the Port Authority, the city and the state. Generous sales tax breaks are available downtown, but there are no more tax-free Liberty Bonds, which were used to finance the other office towers at the trade center.
Correction: April 10, 2015
An earlier version of this article misstated the year that the building at 4 World Trade Center was completed. It was finished in 2013, not last year.
The Austrian Times does have on an occasional basis throughout the year vacancies for our editorial team and for special projects.
It is worthwhile sending in your CV which will be kept on file to be considered when a vacancy becomes available.
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More Than Twenty 100,000 GBP Motors Used In Bridal Convoy
A Chinese couple who wanted to have the most expensive wedding convoy possible arranged for a convoy of top of the range cars including a stretch Hummer followed by Lamborghinis, Porsches and other VIP motors.
And to make sure that the crowds lining the street were suitably large, they also hired a team of volunteers to give away tiny sealed envelopes containing various amounts of cash to passers-by who queued to watch what was going on.
Pictures show the convoy of cars stretching down the street in the city of Dongguan in central China's Guangdong province, with the enthusiastic waving crowd clutching the envelopes containing the cash and wishing the happy couple good luck.
Chinese media that reported extensively about the procession said the pair were both in their mid-20s, and decided they wanted to have an eye-catching ceremony so that everyone else could share in their happy day.
The couple were not named but the husband is reportedly the multimillionaire owner and manager of an e-commerce company that apparently only started trading a year ago.
In an interview with local media the unnamed groom said: "I only started trading recently and we had a huge financial windfall, and I wanted to make everyone shared in my good fortune to bring luck for me and my bride in our future life together."
The envelopes contained amounts ranging between the equivalent of 1 GBP and 10 GBP, a relatively large amount by Chinese standards and guaranteeing an enthusiastic reception for the bride and groom.
It also guaranteed extensive local coverage, sparking rumours that the couple were not getting married at all, and in fact it was just an elaborate PR stunt for a local company looking to grab headlines and promote their name.
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