09.08.2007

• What do we need to know about the Novartis case decided by the Madras High Court? Take a look what I noted for us in today’s Discover It blog here.
• What is Tata Steels CARS offer?
• It is the Foreign Currency Convertible Alternative Reference Securities offer from them to finance their Corus acquisition.
• The ‘Cars’ will be convertible at an initial conversion price of Rs. 876.6225 per share, which is at a premium of 35% to the company’s closing share price on the National Stock Exchange.
• ‘Cars’ carry a 1% coupon and the effective YTM (Yield To Maturity) is 5.15%. Outstanding ‘Cars’, if any, at maturity will be redeemable at a premium of 23.3419% of the principal amount.
• Shyam Benegal gets Dada Saheb Phalke award
• This is Indian film industry’s highest honour. It is given for one’s outstanding contribution to the field of cinema.
• He is awarded for the year 2005.
• The award comprises a prize of Rs. 200,000, a Swarna Kamal trophy and a shawl. He will be presented with the award by the President of India.
• Indian banks’ compliance with Basel II
• It is estimated that our banks need a capital infusion of about Rs. 50,000 crores to comply with Basel II norms.
• National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS)
• It is headed by noted economist Arjun Sengupta.
• It has asked the government to set up a National Security Scheme and create a new national fund with an initial corpus of Rs. 5,000 crores for the 34 crore unorganized workers in the country.
• It has asked the government to notify a National Minimum Social Security Scheme for all unorganized sector workers. This scheme should encompass hospitalization benefit of Rs. 15,000 per year, sickness allowance for 15 days at the rate of Rs. 50 per day and a maternity cover of Rs. 1000 to the worker or the eligible spouse.
• Regulator for the shipping sector
• One more regulator – this time to check the arbitrariness in shipping charges by the shipping companies – is being contemplated by the government.
• An interesting statistic about India’s population
• Currently about 50% of our population is below 35 years of age.
• AS-15
• It is Accounting Standard 15. It is recently revised by the ICAI – Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.
• It mandates the funding and reporting requirement of the retirement benefits liability for the corporate sector.
• What is a captcha?
• A captcha (an acronym for "completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart") is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human. The term was coined in 2000 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, and Nicholas J. Hopper of Carnegie Mellon University, and John Langford of IBM.
• It is a bit confusing; isn’t it? Let me put it this way. Did you ever something like this on a web site? Asking you to key in exactly what you have seen in the box?

• Automated programs cannot recognize what is written in such an image. So it ensures that only humans are genuinely filling up the page or furnishing the data on the web site. Gotcha about captcha!!