Survey shows rise in optimism among Indian businesses for 2013 ...

Increased revenue, greater employment opportunities and higher profitability are three key factors which have bolstered the optimism of Indian businesses going into the new year.

The International Business Report (IBR) put out by global consulting firm Grant Thornton shows that India has seen a smart 13 percent increase in optimism compared to the previous year.

The global results, however, are in sharp contrast to that of India with global business leaders . Allen Sima/Flickr

The IBR is a survey of 3,200 business leaders in 44 economies. The global results, however, are in sharp contrast to that of India with global business leaders displaying uncertainty caused by concerns of the US ?fiscal cliff? and ongoing fears over the long-term viability of the eurozone.

The IBR, significantly, shows that global business optimism stands at just net 4 percent heading into 2013. This halts a rally in confidence seen in the first half of 2012, when global business optimism reached 23 percent, and brings it nearer to the 0 percent level observed this time last year.

Optimism among Indian business owners, on the other hand, remains well ahead of the global average in terms of optimism with a balance of 71 percent compared to 4 percent globally. Increased revenue is the key indicator for increased optimism (85 percent) among Indian businesses followed by employment opportunities (84 percent) and profitability (71 percent), Grant Thornton said.

Clearly, several other factors, including policy pronouncements and the hope of a lowering of interest rates in the near future, also played their part in making Indian business leaders optimistic.

Munesh Khanna, Partner, Grant Thornton in India said, ?The global economic scenario and certain inherent domestic risks notwithstanding, the Indian economy, on the back of positive measures such as policy changes, mega project clearances, regulation implementation and anticipated interest rate reduction is poised to grow at an accelerated growth trajectory. This is reflected in the increased optimism levels among Indian businesses.?

Optimism most volatile in mature markets

Regionally, the IBR reveals a more mixed picture. Business optimism in the emerging markets of Latin America remained relatively stable over the last year, and actually increased to 69 percent in Q4, up from 61 percent this time last year. The BRIC economies (34 percent to 39 percent) also remained consistently optimistic, while Asia Pacific (excluding Japan ) has seen a rise from 23 percent to 28 percent over the same period.

By comparison, optimism in North America swung from 6 percent in Q4 2011 to 52 percent in Q2 2012, before falling back to just 1 percent in Q4 2012. The G7 economies have seen similar swings, while European businesses have reported a slow decline in business optimism, the consulting firm said.

Ed Nusbaum, CEO of Grant Thornton International, said: ?The upswing in mature economy business optimism we saw in the first half of 2012 followed pronouncements by the ECB and the Federal Reserve on the level of support they were prepared to provide their respective economies. However, this confidence has dissipated over the second half of the year. By contrast, emerging economies have remained far less volatile. It?s a fascinating trend which drives home where the major problems in the global economy lie at present.?

Source: http://www.firstpost.com/business/survey-shows-rise-in-optimism-among-indian-businesses-for-2013-577411.html

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ArcelorMittal to sell $1.1billion stake in Canadian unit

SEOUL/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - ArcelorMittal , the world's biggest steelmaker, will sell a 15 percent stake in one of its Canadian iron ore operations, raising $1.1 billion to help pay off debt at a time of sluggish demand.

The group, which makes about 6-7 percent of the world's steel, will sell the stake in ArcelorMittal Mines Canada to a consortium including South Korean steelmaker POSCO and Taiwan-listed China Steel , it said on Wednesday.

It is the latest in a series of steps to raise funds as slow global economic growth and spending cuts in Europe dampen demand for steel used in the car and construction industry.

"It's one of the more readily disposable parts of the business, and given they need to reduce debt I don't think it's a massive surprise they are selling it," said Nomura analyst Neil Sampat.

ArcelorMittal wrote down the value of its European business by $4.3 billion last month and has had its credit rating cut to non-investment grade by all credit rating agencies.

Its net debt rose by $1.2 billion during the third quarter to $23.2 billion at the end of September.

The World Steel Association in October forecast steel demand would rise 2.1 percent in 2012, down from 6.2 percent in 2011.

ArcelorMittal Mines Canada operates two large open-pit mines in the province of Quebec, where it also owns the Port-Cartier industrial complex that includes a pellet plant, storage areas and port facilities for shipping.

ArcelorMittal also owns the huge Mary River iron ore project in Canada's arctic, in which it sold a 20 percent stake to joint venture partner Nunavut last month.

As part of the deal announced on Wednesday POSCO, China Steel and ArcelorMittal Mines Canada will enter into long-term iron ore supply agreements, ArcelorMittal said.

EUROPEAN TROUBLES

ArcelorMittal's shares rose 3.7 percent in early Wednesday trading after the deal was announced, while POSCO shares were up 2.6 percent and China Steel rose 0.9 percent.

The group needs the funds to help compensate a slump in Europe, where demand is estimated to have fallen about 8 percent in 2012 and 29 percent since the start of the financial crisis in 2007.

ArcelorMittal has already announced the closure of blast furnaces in Belgium and France, with other operations on the continent also being temporarily idled due to overcapacity.

The Canadian deal will give POSCO, the world's fourth-biggest steelmaker, increased access to iron ore. POSCO currently imports nearly all of its key raw materials and owns a 12.5 percent stake in Australia's $10 billion Roy Hill project.

Earlier on Wednesday, a South Korean wire service Yonhap Infomax reported China Steel and POSCO would jointly contribute $540 million, while the remainder was expected to be paid by financial investors including South Korea's National Pension Service.

A POSCO spokeswoman confirmed a consortium involving POSCO signed a stock purchase agreement to acquire a stake in the iron ore mine operator, but declined to give details.

ArcelorMittal is one of Canada's top exporters of iron ore to steel markets around the world and its operations account for about 40 percent of Canada's iron ore output.

The transaction is subject to approval from the Taiwanese government, and is expected to close in two installments in the first and second quarters of 2013.

Goldman Sachs and RBC Capital Markets were advising ArcelorMittal on the deal, while Morgan Stanley is advising the POSCO consortium.

(Reporting by Joyce Lee in Seoul, Robert-Jan Bartunek in Brussels and Denny Thomas in Hong Kong; Editing by Michael Perry and Anna Willard)

(This story was corrected to remove extraneous euros in the fifth paragraph)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/posco-consortium-buys-1-1-billion-stake-arcelormittal-001629581--finance.html

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Ruins of Forgotten Byzantine Port Yield Some Answers, Yet Mysteries Remain [Slide Show]

After a drought revealed the seawall of an Byzantine Empire harbor town near Istanbul, archeologists excavated what was a thriving ancient center. But how does it fit into the city's 1,600-year history?

By Jennifer Pinkowski

Hidden for a millennium, it took a 21st-century drought to reveal the ruins of a long-lost port city. Five years after archaeologists discovered its four-kilometer-long seawall on a polluted lake 20 kilometers from Istanbul, they continue to unearth Bathonea, which is yielding a wealth of rare artifacts and architecture spanning a thousand years of the Byzantine era.

Excavations this year have essentially doubled Bathonea's known size, bolstering the idea that it was a well-connected, wealthy, fully outfitted harbor city that thrived from the fourth to 11th century, when a massive earthquake leveled much of it.

Bathonea is a rare and important find because little remains in Byzantium proper (now the modern city of Istanbul) of the first few centuries of the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman, Empire. The ancient urban center has been built over too many times in its 1,600-year history to leave much behind.

? View the Bathonea Slide Show

Located on a long-farmed peninsula on Lake Kucukcekmece, once an inlet on the Marmara Sea, Bathonea reappeared in 2007 after a drought lowered the lake's water table, exposing portions of the seawall. It turned out to be almost half the length of the wall that once surrounded Constantinople (as Byzantium had been renamed for Constantine the Great).

The wall's substantial size suggested Bathonea was a significant safe harbor for ships on their way to Constantinople beginning in the fourth century, just as the city became the seat of power for the Eastern Roman Empire.

In previous years archaeologists, led by Kocaeli University's Seng?l Ayding?n, have unearthed some of the seawall, a multistory villa or palace, an enormous cistern, the round foundations of a Greek temple, and the toppled remains of a Byzantine church and cemetery. Nearby, stone roads crisscross each other and 1,500 years of history.

This year they discovered a large multistory building and a series of smaller rooms adjacent to the villa that artifacts indicate was a monastery with workshops for making metal, jewelry and glass that began production in the fourth century. The jewelry molds they discovered may be the first archaeological evidence for jewelry production in Constantinople, a tradition known from historical sources.

Another key find is the exceptionally preserved, two-part network of underground water channels hundreds of meters long that kept Bathonea's cistern and buildings supplied with freshwater. They also found a Hellenistic building hiding in plain sight among 19th-century structures and a road connecting it to a second-century B.C. harbor, providing more evidence of Bathonea's earliest days.

A massive earthquake in the 11th century seems to have largely destroyed Bathonea. Archaeologists continue to find toppled walls (including one that killed the three men found beneath the rubble) from all the buildings. Yet judging from the pottery found, some residents eked out a life at Bathonea as late as the 12th century.

Many questions remain: What was Bathonea's connection to Constantinople? Who lived there? If it was a major harbor inhabited by the wealthy and powerful?the region was a well-known country retreat for Constantinople's elite for centuries?why doesn't it appear in known historical sources? (Its name is a placeholder, inspired by two references eight centuries apart.) And what was its relationship to Rhegion, an imperial compound located just across the lake on the Marmara Sea?

To try to answer these questions, Ayding?n and her team will focus next year's dig on the seaward tip of the peninsula, where ground-penetrating radar has detected underground anomalies that may be structures. They also hope to restart underwater exploration. In 2008 they discovered an edifice that may have been a lighthouse. Local lore holds that it is a magical minaret that rises in warning whenever nearby villagers sin too much.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=23a13dfb798fdd35d04dff00f1cef9cb

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Soaring Insurance Costs

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - The one thing a New Year always brings in Florida is higher property insurances rates and 2013 will be no different. Although Florida escaped a major hurricane for a seventh straight year in 2012, property insurance costs continue to soar. Data from the New York-based Insurance Information Institute shows homeowners' claims have increased an average of more than 17 percent annually over the past decade- more than double the number filed in 2003. And virtually all of these in recent years have been claims on non-catastrophic events. Additional litigation and an increase in the number of public adjusters also factor into the rising number of insurance claims by home and business owners. Rate requests have also received more favorable action from state regulators. When all added up, consumers pay more.

Source: http://www.winknews.com/Local-Florida/2013-01-01/Soaring-Insurance-Costs

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When Five teens are leading different lives but share the same secret, what happens when the ones they are working for suddenly goes off the map?

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This topic is an Out Of Character part of the roleplay, ?Keep It A Secret?. Anything posted here will also show up there.

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This roleplay is supposed to be different in terms of creativity. It's something sophisticated yet fun. I dont want to seem like a demanding person so I'm open to suggestions on topics to include in the roleplay that you would like to see.

Ok as said let me actually brush up this topic since there seems to be a bit of confusion. Regarding the rules of GM, it cannot be a common thing thats seen in almost every post. It's rare that I ever allow it but it's ok to ask, just explain the purpose of why I should let you. Now for the power section, powers are not just for agents, anyone if not everyone is supposed to have a power. If you don't want your character to have a power then thats fine as well. Just include it in your application such as, Power: N/A. Simple and understandable I hope.

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NHL lockout: Union makes proposal, talks Tuesday

NEW YORK (AP) ? The NHL and the players' association will start the new year right where they ended the old one ? at the bargaining table.

The sides got together Monday for the first time since Dec. 13, and the union brought along a counterproposal in response to the 288-page contract offer the NHL presented on Thursday. There were some discussions between the negotiators inside the league's midtown Manhattan headquarters and some time spent apart in internal caucuses.

"This discussion was for us to respond and for them to ask questions and us to explain a number of the points we made," union executive director Donald Fehr said. "We covered the range of subjects that their document included."

After several hours passed, the NHL said it would be going over the players' new contract offer on Monday night and would get back to the union in the morning. Commissioner Gary Bettman said he expected negotiations would restart Tuesday afternoon.

"There was an opportunity for the players' association to highlight the areas that they thought we should focus on based on their response," Bettman said. "That's something we've now got to look at very closely in addition to the myriad other issues."

Neither side chose to delve into details of what was offered in either of the proposals nor characterize any of the discussions that Fehr said "weren't terribly long."

The fact that neither offer was quickly dismissed could be taken as a positive sign that perhaps the gap has closed between them.

"I'm out of the prediction business," Fehr said. "You get up every day and you try to figure out how to make an agreement that day, and if it fails you try and do it the next day. That's exactly where we are."

Bettman also reserved judgment when asked if progress was made.

"I think it would be premature for me to characterize it and not particularly helpful to the process," he said.

A crowd of people heading toward New Year's celebrations in New York gathered around the large throng of reporters and television cameras focused in on Bettman and Fehr as the two leaders spoke separately on the busy sidewalk. Clearly, both men would rather have the attention back on the ice instead of themselves.

This was the first meeting in nearly three weeks since the last round of negotiations with a federal mediator on Dec. 13. After presenting their proposal, union representatives stayed in the building in case there were further discussions ? later, with talks done for the day, the union said it expected a response from the NHL on Tuesday morning.

The New Year's clock ticked down while the window to reach a labor agreement to save the season was rapidly closing. Bettman said a deal needs to be reached by Jan. 11 to allow the season to begin by Jan. 19.

That leaves a little less than two weeks to reach an agreement and hold one week of training camp before the puck would drop on a 48-game campaign.

So far, a deal has proved elusive and well out of reach.

The league and the union had informational discussions ? by conference call and in meetings ? with staff members that lasted much of Saturday and ended Sunday. Those talks were spurred by the extensive contract proposal the NHL made on Thursday.

All games through Jan. 14 have been canceled, claiming more than 50 percent of the original schedule.

Bargaining sessions with only the NHL and union hadn't been held since Dec. 6, when talks abruptly ended after the players' association made a counterproposal. The league said that offer was contingent on the union accepting three elements unconditionally and without further bargaining.

The NHL then pulled all existing offers off the table. Two days of sessions with mediators the following week ended without progress.

The NHL is the only North American professional sports league to cancel a season because of a labor dispute, losing the 2004-05 campaign to a lockout. A 48-game season was played in 1995 after a lockout stretched into January.

It is still possible this dispute could eventually be settled in the courts if the sides can't reach a deal on their own.

The NHL filed a class-action suit this month in U.S. District Court in New York in an effort to show its lockout is legal. In a separate move, the league filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board, contending bad-faith bargaining by the union.

Those moves were made because the players' association took steps toward potentially declaring a "disclaimer of interest," which would dissolve the union and make it a trade association. That would allow players to file antitrust lawsuits against the NHL.

Union members voted overwhelmingly to give their board the power to file the disclaimer by Wednesday. If that deadline passes, another authorization vote could be held to approve a later filing.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nhl-lockout-union-makes-proposal-talks-tuesday-001933850--nhl.html

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Last Night Armed Robbers Stole Over $1 Million Worth Of Gear From a Paris Apple Store

If you think you're having a rough morning after your New Year's festivities, an Apple Store in Paris' opera district is still trying to determine just how much hardware was stolen after four or five armed thieves robbed the store three hours after it had closed. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/SGOxYjFWn2M/last-night-armed-robbers-stole-over-1-million-worth-of-gear-from-a-paris-apple-store

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