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New Delhi: The controversy about the 15th finance commission’s mandate allegedly not favouring states that did well in controlling population growth is a “needless" one as the Commission’s charter has no inherent bias against states that performed well in this count, finance minister Arun Jaitley said in his blog on Tuesday.
Jaitley’s statement coincided with a meeting of southern states in Kerala earlier in the day convened to express their apprehensions about the terms of reference of the 15th finance commission, which they fear offered no incentive for achieving progress in controlling population. The terms of reference of the Commission chaired by former revenue secretary N.K. Singh suggested use of census data of 2011 for allocation of resources, against 1971 census data used earlier.
“There is no inherent bias or mandate in the terms of reference of 15th finance commission which can be construed as discriminatory against the states which made good progress in population control," said the minister’s post.
Dismissing worries about the Commission’s mandate being loaded against any particular region, Jaitley said that nothing could be further from the truth.
The finance minister said that devolution of centre’s divisible pool of taxes to help states offer a minimum standard of services to people calls for assessing their needs on rational and equitable basis. Finance commissions use appropriate criteria to assess the true needs of states.
“Population proxies very well for the needs of the people in quantitative sense. Another criterion, the income distance, which captures very well relative poverty of people in the states, is used to assess qualitative needs. These two parameters allocate more resources to the populous and poorer states, which need additional funds for providing education, health and other services to the people," said the minister.
Jaitley said even though the 14th finance commission had no specific mandate for using 2011 census, it rightly used the 2011 census population data to capture the demographic changes since 1971 to make realistic assessment of the needs of the states. It allocated 10% weight to 2011 population.
The minister’s post said that in the case of 15th finance commission, there is specific inclusion of another reference—efforts and progress made in moving towards replacement rate of population growth. This, he said, recognizes the efforts of all the states which have done well in population control. It will allow the Commission to propose a specific incentive scheme to reward the states which have achieved replacement level of population growth. Also, if the 15th finance commission wishes to do so, it could assign appropriate weight to the progress made in population control while allocating resources, said the post.
“The terms of reference of 15th finance commission rightly balance both the ‘needs’ represented by latest population and “progress towards population control" very well", said Jaitley.
Mint reported on 16 January quoting 2011 census that population growth rates in states like Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are among the lowest in the country and that north Indian states such as Bihar and Chhattisgarh with higher rates of population growth may become relative winners in 15th finance commission’s award.
Centre County PAWS Director of Operations Lisa Bahr holds Simon in the cat room. Soon the shelter will be adding an addition to the cat area so it can help more cats like Simon in the future.
STATE COLLEGE — For some time, the folks over at Centre County PAWs have dreamed of having more space to for their large number of recue cats. After all, said director of operation Lisa Bahr, they receive many calls every day from people who have cats that need rescued.
Holland wanted to make a donation in order to have something named to honor his sister, Cherene Holland, and her love of animals. Cherene had adopted a cat from PAWS and he felt it would be a good fit for the honor. The problem was that all of the rooms in the facility had already been named after donors. This presented PAWS with an opportunity to get the extra space they had been hoping for, and with his donation, the group was halfway to the goal.
Now, after receiving another large donation from an anonymous donor, PAWS is set to soon start construction of an addition to their feline area, named in honor of Cherene.
The 550 square-foot addition will provide two new communal cat rooms and one new meet-and-greet room where people get to know a cat they might like to adopt. The new additions will allow PAWS to take in potentially 20 to 30 more cats.
PAWS encourages people to call about cats that they find. If their cat area is full, they work with other shelters, such as Pets Come First, to find space for cats in needs of shelter. They will also work with the people who found the cats to keep kittens with the mom as long as possible. Sometimes they receive orphan kittens as young as a day old without moms, and the many dedicated volunteers who work at PAWS have to bottle feed the young ones.
Many of the cats at PAWS head to foster homes at times during the week, and with the upcoming addition, the shelter is going to need more volunteers and foster homes to help with the new cats. Of course all cats get spayed or neutered that come to the shelter, in order to help prevent more strays in the future. With more space, they can help more cats, but it will add up to more work for PAWS.
Last year PAWS, which works with cats and dogs, saved 180 orphans kittens and 82 puppies. The non-profit saw 476 cats and 393 dogs get adopted. The organization spayed or neutered 1,720 cats and dogs helping control animal overpopulation.
The addition for the cat area is still in the planning stages, but once all plans are approved, construction should only take six to eight weeks. PAWS will need volunteers to help save even more cats. Those who are interested in donating, volunteering or fostering pets can find information at www.centrecountypaws.org.
The latest two-in-one device from Samsung Electronics Canada, the Galaxy TabPro S may look like a consumer product but it’s built for the business user.
Samsung Canada already has a large base of enterprise users and the company found that this group is highly mobile and require their devices to be extremely productive. The design team at Samsung made the Galaxy TabPro S to be a lightweight tablet in support of mobile workers such as field sales, customer agents and those executives who travel extensively for work.
Market research firm IDC has found that mobile labour will account for roughly 75 per cent of Canadian labour by 2018, totalling more than 14 million people.
“With so many Canadians working away from the office, it’s important for enterprise users to have access to devices like the Galaxy TabPro S so that they can be productive, no matter where they’re working from,” said Mary Peterson, VP of IT & Enterprise Solutions at Samsung Electronics Canada.
Key to the Galaxy TabPro S is its two-in-one design as Samsung developed the unit to work with business people’s work day as well as for personal time.
“We have seen increasing demand for two-in-one devices, and that’s why we continue to expand our offerings in this area, most recently by adding Windows 10 Pro OS to our Galaxy family with the TabPro S. Canadians need their tablets to possess the necessary power and speed to handle heavy workloads, but they also love the convenience of having a full size keyboard and 12” Super AMOLED display that makes it easier to get things done and be productive anywhere,” Peterson said.
Part of Samsung’s overall strategy is to meet the differing needs and requirements of all customers. The company recognizes it needs to adapt to the times and have produces a variety of products to serve a diverse set of lifestyles. The Galaxy TabPro S fits inside that product strategy and is targeted at Canadian business users who want the unprecedented functionality of a Windows 10 Pro device without compromising design.
Thoreau said that if a pine couldn’t be a tree, then poetry was its highest and best use. St. Teresa’s congregation outgrew their lovely old church, but a performance hall is surely the highest and best use now.
Brewery Arts Center threw a big gala at their new performance hall on Saturday night. We anticipated a perfect night to end that perfect windless day. Master of Ceremonies Tim Morsani said it well when he told the packed crowd that the building had been serving “soul food” for 140 years. The opening of the performance hall is an important step for Brewery Arts and for all of us. Many of us human souls do need art in the same way we need love and literature and companionship. Nothing touches us like a live performance or an exquisite sculpture, poem, or painting.
When we recruit new businesses or host guests, they have no trouble detecting the pride we have in our arts community. Brewery Arts epitomizes that pride and inspires us with their vision. The campus master plan developed for the space between the Brewery Arts Center and the performance hall — across Minnesota Avenue — is something to anticipate.
This project helps us imagine the future of this area and downtown. This hopeful future has more pedestrian spaces, lovely plazas, even more shopping and restaurants, and visitors from far and wide drawn to downtown. It is the true soul of the city. The arts community can be a catalyst to a great future.
The night was, as expected, perfect. Piano, opera, ballet, tap, musical theater, dance, and poetry were all performed by and for community members. The acoustics were wonderful for even our back row seat. The perfect symmetry of the windows and inspiring art on the high ceilings added much to the experience.
If Brewery Arts intended to strut their stuff in the new venue, they did so perfectly. St. Teresa’s encore performance revealed her highest and best use for our time. We hope each of you will attend a performance in the newly reinvigorated hall, support the good people of Brewery Arts, and feed your soul.
But while drivers may think the No. 1 oil company is exploiting their pain, Wall Street is actually a little disappointed.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - A whopping $8.4 billion? Or only $8.4 billion?
Exxon Mobil's first-quarter profit was nearly a billion dollars more than the same quarter a year earlier. Not as much as Wall Street wanted, but still an awful lot of money - especially to people paying $3 a gallon or more to fill their gas tanks. They're wondering why oil companies don't feel their pain.
Whether or not it's any consolation, feeling a little pain Wednesday were Exxon Mobil (Research) shareholders, who saw their stock fall as much as 3.3 percent in morning trading because the $1.37 income per share on revenue of nearly $89 billion was a dime below analysts' forecasts.
Although it missed estimates, Exxon's earnings were no small number. The $8.4 billion first quarter profit means the company made $1,080 a second. That per-second profit is enough to pay for gas for the average American vehicle to be driven 7,750 miles at current gasoline prices, or from Seattle to Miami and back again.
Fadel Gheit, an energy analyst at Oppenheimer, attributed the fall in profit from the $10.7 billion - a record for any U.S. company - posted in the fourth quarter of 2005 to higher production costs, higher taxes and royalties, and a 41 percent boost in capital investment and exploration projects.
Gheit noted that the company is now producing at its highest level in five years.
"They have to go on the offensive to withstand this avalanche of criticism," he said.
The decline in quarter-to-quarter profit came despite a 14 percent increase in oil prices since the start of the year.
Exxon isn't the only one showing surging profits. ConocoPhillips (Research) reported a 13 percent jump in its earnings, and even stronger results are expected from Chevron (Research) when it reports Friday.
Record gas prices, and oil company profits, have sparked public outrage and talk of action by lawmakers in recent months.
There are currently bills moving through the Senate to either limit future oil company mergers or skim off some of their earnings in a "windfall profits" tax.
The oil industry has responded by saying they need to remain consolidated in order to compete in a global energy market with foreign nationalized oil companies, many of which are bigger than Exxon Mobil, which has run its own ads in newspapers defending its profits.
The companies also say they're invested heavily in new energy technologies.
But they've also returned lots of the profits to shareholders.
Exxon returned $7 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends and share buybacks in the first quarter of 2006, a 67 percent increase from the prior year.
The company said Wednesday that it would keep its dividend at 32 cents a share for a the second quarter, unchanged from the first quarter but up from 29 cents in the fourth quarter of 2005. The company has increased its dividend for 29 consecutive years.
In its earnings statement, the company said it spent $4.8 billion on capital investment and exploration projects this quarter.
"Obviously, they can see investment opportunities," said Gheit. He added that an increase in exploration, production and not posting yet another record profit certainly didn't hurt the company's image.
The Adamawa State House of Assembly on Tuesday impeached Governor Murtala Nyako shortly after the Deputy Governor, Bala Ngilari resigned.
After deliberating on three volumes of report of the Investigative Panel headed by Buba Kaigama, 18 out of the 25 members in the Assembly opted to remove Nyako.
The Assembly needed the consent of 17 members to remove the governor.
Shortly after the impeachment, the Assembly wrote a letter ADHA/GEN/S/108 to the acting Chief Judge of the state to inaugurate the Speaker, Ahmadu Umaru as the acting governor.
The letter, signed by the Clerk to the House, Francis Gbanisenso, reads: “The Honourable House during its sitting on Tuesday, 15th July 2014 resolved and directed you to swear in the Speaker, Rt. Hon. Ahmadu Umaru as the Acting Governor of Adamawa State today 15th day of July 2014.
In his July 15, 2014 resignation letter referenced as DGO/GHY/PER/60/75, Ngilari said: “Pursuant to Section 306(5) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (As Amended), I kindly notify you of my resignation from the office of the Deputy Governor of Adamawa State forthwith on personal grounds.
The State Assembly had raised a seven-man panel to probe Nyako and his erstwhile deputy, Bala Ngilari.
Home A & E Stage A kinesthetic, steampunk "Midsummer"
Malkia Stampley, who plays Titania, rehearses with woodland fairies.
It's going to be a Midsummer unlike any other, a reimagining of an old tale. Opening March 7, this A Midsummer Night's Dream is the result of a surprising collaboration between Children's Theater of Madison, a 50-year-old theater company, and Theatre LILA, which relocated from New York to Madison just last year.
The idea for the partnership came after Jessica Lanius, co-artistic director of Theatre LILA, directed Anne of Green Gables for CTM in fall 2013. Before becoming artistic director at CTM in 2007, Roseann Sheridan had spent 17 years working on Shakespeare productions at American Players Theatre. She was intrigued when Lanius suggested tackling Midsummer.
The play is one of Shakespeare's most popular works, featuring the adventures of four young Athenian lovers on the eve of the marriage of Theseus, the Duke, to the Amazon queen Hippolyta. Woodland fairies administer love potions to the hapless humans, wreaking havoc on the wedding plans.
The creators of the upcoming production say the show represents a departure from traditional staging of the classic because of multiracial and multigenerational casting and the exploratory process the creative team used to develop the dark, steampunk visuals.
Theatre LILA strives to represent Madison's diverse population on stage, and Midsummer features two African American actors as leads, DiMonte Henning as Puck and Malkia Stampley as Titania. Lanius says Madison students will see the show as part of the public schools' partnership with CTM, so it's critical that "kids in the audience see themselves on stage."
Theater companies have found representative casting to be challenging in Madison, but LILA strives to bring in professional actors of color. "In Madison -- even in New York City -- kids from diverse backgrounds are not relating to actors on stage because the majority are white and the majority of the audience is white," she says. "They need to see that theater can be a platform for their voice. Then maybe later we will have more playwrights of color, more voices, writing for the stage."
The production features local young people in its cast: High school students play three of the four young lovers, Helena (Sydney Kleinholz), Hermia (Kateri Klingele) and Demetrius (Andrew Turner), as well as fairies and two of the mechanicals (the six characters that perform the "play within a play").
But older professional actors also have roles. Michael Huftile, who plays Bottom, is a seasoned Equity actor who has appeared many times at APT, on Chicago stages and on TV shows like Chicago Fire. Lanius says the mix has been good for all the performers because they learn from each other. "I think it's awesome for the LILA actors to be around these young kids," says Lanius.
To prepare for the show, CTM crafted an artist-in-residency program for Lanius as well as LILA's voice and speech coach Clare Haden and teaching artist Karen Olivo. The three have been working with CTM actors ranging in age from fourth grade to seniors in high school since October. The artists began by exploring the text with the young actors, familiarizing them with iambic pentameter and discussing images evoked by the lines. Actors physically explored images through movement exercises based on Lanius' highly physical approach to theater. Lanius says that process helped the cast unearth important details or "nuggets," such as varied characteristics of a flower, which audiences will see during the performances.
Lanius -- who moved back to Madison in 2014 after living in New York -- began to explore the intersection of theater and movement while attending UW-Stevens Point, where she majored in acting and minored in dance. "The program had an emphasis on modern dance. It started my love of merging theater and storytelling with physicality," Lanius says.
As a result, Midsummer offers alternatives to static staging, where characters simply stand and recite lines.
"We're playing with physical comedy to find the humor and fun any which way we can for this production. It never gets heavy," Lanius says.
Lanius steered away from traditional pastel-frocked fairies with gauzy wings. Her vision is darker and more organic. "I was really drawn to the idea that the fairies are coming from the Earth, almost like Mother Earth, and they are the woods themselves rather than being these perfect pretty little sprites," says Lanius.
In the director's world, woodland creatures are menacing, and the mechanicals are dressed in steampunk-inspired designs.
The dramatic set, designed by Mike Lawler, is made up of thousands of flower petals and a circular metal creation Lanius sees as representing the moon.
Sheridan says the fresh take on Midsummer is bound to appeal to young audiences. "There are two Shakespeare plays grounded in the young love experience. Romeo and Juliet on the tragic side, and Midsummer on the romantic comedy side," says Sheridan. "Any time I pick a show, the young person's experience is at the heart of it."
Lanius agrees: "The show is all about love and all the many ways we can be in love and how love can drive us mad and crazy," she says. "You've got a husband and wife, the king and queen of the fairy world, fighting, and as a result the whole world is imbalanced. The fairies are like their children dealing with their marital problems."
Sheridan says the show makes Shakespearean language accessible. "In my years at APT, one of the things I always enjoyed was how many times I heard people say, 'did you change the language, was that Shakespeare? It sounds so normal. It was so easy to understand.' The answer is yes, yes, yes, it is Shakespeare," laughs Sheridan.
Sheridan says the many fresh takes on this 400-year-old play will be something audiences of all ages and backgrounds will connect with. "Young people watching Midsummer will feel like it could be them up there. It could be their story, their friends and their crush. It's all very relatable."
A Midsummer Night's Dream will be performed at the Playhouse at the Overture Center, March 7-29.
In our new series, Pay Attention, we're looking at the role technology plays in our lives in a different way: its impact on our ability to focus and how we can recapture our attention from the devices that distract us. By the end of our series we hope to find the happy medium between the two.
Yes, you should probably delete Instagram, says Catherine Price, author of "How To Break Up With Your Phone." That's one of the many steps she suggests in her book, which offers a "30-day plan to take back your life" from your digital devices. Price told "CBS This Morning" it's not about going on a "digital diet" but rather about "finding balance."
"CBS This Morning" co-host John Dickerson spends a day without technology and gets "itchy"
"It's a gift to yourself," she said. "It's not about less time on your phone, it's about more time on your life, basically."
Price and other experts contend that the addiction to your phone isn't just a habit; there's an underlying physical component in the brain.
"The reason it makes you twitchy not to have your phone is that it's causing your brain to go into this reward cycle similar to a slot machine when you pull the slot machine lever and you want to keep doing it compulsively. That's exactly what you're doing on your phone. I mean, even to the degree of actually swiping down to see what's gonna be waiting for you. And the fact that it's unpredictable makes us want to do it even more," she said.
"So one thing that people do that messes them up when they try to change their relationship with their phone is that they jump in to making these little changes, like turning it to grayscale, without having a broader vision of what they want out of their relationship and also what they want to spend their newfound time on," Price said.
"Week two is where you get concrete changes. Getting a real alarm clock instead of sleeping with your phone next to your bed. [If] your phone's your alarm clock, you're going touch it first thing in the morning. So it's really about practical steps in a broader context," Price said.
"Our phones are basically inhibiting our abilities to focus, form new memories....So things like meditation and mindfulness, those are exercises that can help you regain abilities and undo some of those effects," Price said.
"It's an assessment of what you've done and go forward with a plan to make it stick," Price said.
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We live in a world in which innovation drives economies, and universities and research centres are playing a pivotal role in the transformation of nations. You can hang an elephant on a strand of ‘graphene’ that is 150 times thinner than a human hair and the strand will not break since it is 200 times stronger than steel. It has become a multi-million dollar product, though discovered just five years ago.
Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility is now a reality by the discovery of meta-materials that have the ability to bend light and hence make objects covered by them invisible. They are now being employed by the arms industry for stealth purposes to cloak tanks, submarines etc. The field of genomics is expanding very rapidly and soon it should be possible to grow genetically modified food crops with salt tolerant genes using seawater.
Super-fast gene sequencing under development should allow the entire human genome to be sequenced in minutes, opening the way for personalised medicine. Paper made from stones is already in the market and bulletproof paper has been developed from nanocellulose through application of nanotechnology. Anti-ageing compounds have been discovered. Stem cells promise to cure damaged organs and may change the manner in which medicine will be practiced tomorrow. The blind can, amazingly, today see with their tongue, a device commercialised in Wisconsin http://www.wicab.com/media/Wicab%20Press%20Release%203-19-2013.pdf. Science today presents a myriad such opportunities and countries investing in research and innovation are making billions of dollars through such technologies.
Most top universities in the world have integrated technology parks within their fold, so that new ideas can be incubated and emerge as tangible new and innovative products and processes. While not a single Nobel Prize in science has been awarded to anyone from the Islamic world for work carried out with an Islamic country, by comparison 90 Nobel Prizes have been awarded to faculty members and affiliates of just one university in the UK: Cambridge University. These include 29 Nobel prizes in Physics, 26 in Medicine, 21 in Chemistry, nine in Economics, two in Literature and two in Peace. Just one college in Cambridge, Trinity College, has produced 32 Nobel Prize winners. Fred Sanger at Kings College, Cambridge has won two Nobel Prizes. Similarly according to a study carried out by Kauffman Foundation, ‘Entrepreneurial Impact: The Role of MIT’, it was stated that MIT alumni had founded thousands of companies that employ over a million professionals and have annual world sales of about $2 trillion, producing the equivalent of the 11th largest economy in the world (http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2009/kauffman-study-0217).
Universities such as Cambridge and MIT are transforming national economies in a major way today. The world stands divided into two broad groups of nations: countries that are producers and exporters of technology and those that are dependent on others on their technological needs. This represents the ‘knowledge divide’ between the haves and have nots.
Even small countries in Asia with no natural resources can follow this path to a knowledge economy. All it needs is a visionary government. Singapore with a population that is quarter to that of Karachi has annual exports of over $450 billion, 15 times those of Pakistan. The per capita income in Singapore is well above those of Germany, Japan, UK, or US. The National University of Singapore, ranked among the top 25 universities of the world, has a budget of $1.6 billion (Rs160 billion), whereas the budgets of all public sector universities in Pakistan added together amounts to only Rs78 billion.
Pakistan made significant improvements in its higher education sector from 2003 to 2008 and within five years of the establishment of the Higher Education Commission, five of its universities were internationally ranked among the top 300-500 of the world. This progress even alarmed India (http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-9-106682-Higher-education-in-India). Unfortunately, it was short-lived as the previous government with 200 parliamentarians with forged degrees went about systematically destroying all the good work that had been done. The result: in the recent Shanghai rankings of world universities, there is not a single Pakistani university ranked among the top 500 of the world. What a shame.

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