Walmart money is bribe: BJP

New Delhi: Rajya Sabha adjourned twice on Monday after Opposition uproar over reports of Walmart spending on lobbying to enter Indian market.
Raising the issue in the Rajya Sabha BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said the lobbying money was nothing but bribery and according to indina laws this is a serious offence.
Prasad's comments met with serious objections from the treasury benchers as the issue was not listed for discussion. The speaker disallowed the comments asking the members to follow proper procedures by issuing a due notice. MInutes later the house witness uproar leading to an adjournment.
The BJP leader also wanted to know who took the money from the walmart and asked the government to come clean on this.
Global retail giant Walmart - waiting for years to open its supermarkets in India - has been lobbying with the US lawmakers since 2008 to facilitate its entry into the highly lucrative Indian market.
As per the lobbying disclosure reports filed by Walmart with the US Senate, the company has spent close to $25 million (about Rs 125 crore) since 2008 on its various lobbying activities, including on the issues related to “enhanced market access for investment in India”.
In the last quarter ended September 30, 2012 itself, the company spent $1.65 million (about Rs 10 crore) on various lobbying issues, which included “discussions related to FDI in India”.
During the quarter, Walmart lobbied for its case with the US Senate, the US House of Represent-atives, the US Trade Repre-sentative (USTR) and the US Department of State, as per its latest quarterly disclosure report.
The companies are allowed to lobby for their cases in various departments and agencies in the US, but they are required to file their lobbying disclosure reports every quarter with the US Senate.
So far in 2012, Walmart has spent more than $3 million or about Rs 18 crore on its various lobbying activities, including those related to India.
As per Walmart’s lobbying disclosure reports, the company has continuously lobbied for its India entry since 2008, except for a few quarters in 2009.
The Indian government recently opened up its multibrand retail sector for foreign companies after years of political opposition and a Parliament motion against this decision was defeated last week in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.
The US-based supermarket chain operator Walmart Stores, which has an annual turnover of $444 billion, has been eyeing for a long time to enter India.

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Nelson Mandela Hospitalized

South Africa's former President Nelson Mandela was admitted to a military hospital on Saturday for medical tests, though the nation's president told the public there was "no cause for alarm" over the 94-year-old icon's health. 

The statement issued by President Jacob Zuma's spokesman said that Mandela was doing well and was receiving medical care "which is consistent for his age." The statement offered no other details.

Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison for fighting racist white rule, became South Africa's first black president in 1994 and served one five-year term. He later retired from public life to live in his village of Qunu, and last made a public appearance when his country hosted the 2010 World Cup soccer tournament.

"We wish Madiba all the best," Zuma said in a statement, using Mandela's clan name. "The medical team is assured of our support as they look after and ensure the comfort of our beloved founding president of a free and democratic South Africa."

In February, Mandela spent a night in a hospital for a minor diagnostic surgery to determine the cause of an abdominal complaint. He was hospitalized in January 2011 with a respiratory infection. While Zuma's statement offered no further details about who would provide medical attention for Mandela, the nation's military largely has taken over caring for the aging leader.

Mac Maharaj, a presidential spokesman, declined to say whether Mandela had been flown by the military to Pretoria. He also declined to say what the tests were for. "It's quite normal at his age to be going through those tests," Maharaj told The Associated Press.

Mandela's hospitalization comes just days after the crash of a military aircraft flying on an unknown mission near Mandela's rural home in which all 11 onboard were killed. The plane was flying to a military air base in Mthatha, which is about 30 kilometers (17 miles) north of Qunu. Military officials declined to say whether those on board had any part in caring for Mandela.

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Obama Seeks $60bn for Sandy Repairs

President Barack Obama asked Congress to approve a $60.4 billion aid package to help East Coast states rebuild after Superstorm Sandy, well short of their initial requests. 

Officials from storm-battered New York, New Jersey and Connecticut had said they needed at least $82 billion combined to make emergency repairs and upgrade infrastructure. New York and New Jersey lawmakers said they expect Obama will seek more aid as the extent of Sandy's damage becomes clearer. The two states were hit the hardest by the storm, which made landfall in New Jersey on Oct. 29.

"This supplemental is a very good start, and while $60 billion doesn't cover all of New York and New Jersey's needs, it covers a large percentage," said Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez of New Jersey. "This is the first good news New York has had in a while," New York governor Andrew Cuomo said.

Of the total, $15 billion would come in the form of community development block grants, a mechanism that gives local jurisdiction significant flexibility to provide aid and rebuild quickly. In addition, nearly $13 billion would go to an array of projects aimed at better protecting the New York-New Jersey coastal region and preventing damage from future storms. Another $6.2 billion would be reserved for public transportation infrastructure.

 Officials said they could ask for more aid later on. There is precedent for multiple funding requests to cope with a disaster. Less than two weeks after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast in 2005, Congress had passed two appropriations totaling $62.3 billion. Within a year, two more packages were passed worth a combined $48 billion, which also covered damage from Hurricanes Rita and Wilma.

Multibillion-dollar supplemental appropriations for Katrina were still being made as late as 2010. The disaster funding request, on a scale not seen since Katrina, could complicate already tense negotiations between the White House and Congress on a deficit reduction deal.

Lawmakers are trying to avert the year-end "fiscal cliff" of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts that amount to a total of $600 billion. "We have the request and will review it," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner. He did not elaborate.

House Appropriations Committee chairman Hal Rogers, whose panel will review the request, said Congress has a responsibility to help the region recover. "It is also our responsibility during these tight-budget times to make sure that the victims of this storm are getting the most of every single recovery dollar, and to ensure that disaster funds are timed and targeted in the most efficient and appropriate manner," the Republican lawmaker said in a statement.

Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Craig Fugate told lawmakers this week that the FEMA disaster relief fund was down to less than $5 billion and would run out by early spring at the current pace of disbursements. "We need a full recovery package to be voted on in this session of Congress," said New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg in a statement. "Any delay will impede our recovery."

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what Google is exactly?

Is Google a publisher? Or is Google simply a displayer of links? Are these two things the same?
Those questions are at the heart of a Australian case that just tipped against Google, and are likely at the heart of many cases to come. An Australian high court has found Google liable for libelous content tying a man to organized crime. Of course, Google didn’t create the article that made the references, it simply provided a link to it within its search results.
The man’s name is Milorad Trkulja, and he claimed that Google defamed him by associating his name and image with (untrue) claims of ties to organized crime, both in regular search results and in Google Image search. The jury in the case found Google guilty and therefore responsible for the content that they link to. They’ve been fined $200,000, but are in the process of appealing the ruling (as you would expect).
Is Google responsible for the content that is found using their search engine? Or is this a ridiculous claim to make? 
Here’s what the Judge in the case had to say:

The question of whether or not Google Inc was a publisher is a matter of mixed fact and law. In my view, it was open to the jury to find the facts in this proceeding in such a way as to entitle the jury to conclude that Google Inc was a publisher even before it had any notice from anybody acting on behalf of the plaintiff. The jury were entitled to conclude that Google Inc intended to publish the material that its automated systems produced, because that was what they were designed to do upon a search request being typed into one of Google Inc’s search products. In that sense, Google Inc is like the newsagent that sells a newspaper containing a defamatory article. While there might be no specific intention to publish defamatory material, there is a relevant intention by the newsagent to publish the newspaper for the purposes of the law of defamation.

Basically, Google may not want to publish it, but they are publishing the publishers. And since Google’s algorithms are tooled to find said content, they are responsible. Or at least it is plausible that a jury could see it that way. The Judge is clearly unconvinced that this stance is set in stone.
The Judge also differentiated search results pages from Google Image searches. The plaintiff also complained of images tying him to crime figures. The Judge notes that a Google Image search is a more-sophisticated version of cut-and-paste from magazines, and importantly a Google-created page:

As was pointed out by counsel for the plaintiff in his address to the jury, the first page of the images matter (containing the photographs I have referred to and each named “Michael Trkulja” and each with a caption “melbournecrime”) was a page not published by any person other than Google Inc. It was a page of Google Inc’s creation – put together as a result of the Google Inc search engine working as it was intended to work by those who wrote the relevant computer programs. It was a cut and paste creation (if somewhat more sophisticated than one involving cutting word or phrases from a newspaper and gluing them onto a piece of paper). If Google Inc’s submission was to be accepted then, while this page might on one view be the natural and probable consequence of the material published on the source page from which it is derived, there would be no actual original publisher of this page.

You can see just how much of a charlie-foxtrot this is. Which pages are Google’s creation, and which are simply the “consequence of the material published on the source page from which it is derived?”
The jury concluded that Google was a publisher, and was liable for the defamatory content even if they weren’t notified of it yet. Although Google contended that it doesn’t matter if they were notified of the content of not – they’re not responsible – the Judge rejected that notion as well.

It follows that, in my view, it was open to the jury to conclude that Google Inc was a publisher – even if it did not have notice of the content of the material about which complaint was made. Google Inc’s submission to the contrary must be rejected. However, Google Inc goes further and asserts that even with notice, it is not capable of being liable as a publisher “because no proper inference about Google Inc adopting or accepting responsibility complained of can ever be drawn from Google Inc’s conduct in operating a search engine”.
This submission must also be rejected. The question is whether, after relevant notice, the failure of an entity with the power to stop publication and which fails to stop publication after a reasonable time, is capable of leading to an inference that that entity consents to the publication. Such an inference is clearly capable of being drawn in the right circumstances (including the circumstances of this case). Further, if that inference is drawn then the trier of fact is entitled (but not bound) to conclude that the relevant entity is a publisher.[42] Google Inc’s submission on this issue must be rejected for a number of reasons, the least of which is that it understates the ways in which a person may be held liable as a publisher.

Of course, $200,000 to Google is basically nothing. The appeal really has nothing to do with the monetary damages. Google knows that this kind of decision sets an unsettling precedent for their future defenses in similar cases. Google as “automated news agent that’s responsible for what their algorithms pull out of the depths” is a view of Google that the company can’t afford to have stick.
We’ve seen this story play out numerous times over the past couple of years with Google’s autocomplete feature. In August of 2011, Google lost a case in Italy and was forced to remove autocomplete suggestion in its search box that tied a man to the word “truffatore,” meaning con man. A few month later, Google was fined $65,000 because one of its autocomplete suggestions labeled a French man “esroc,” meaning crook.
And this year, Google made an out-of-court settlement with French anti-discrimination groups over a “Jewish” autocomplete suggestion.
Google’s argument in these cases is similar to the argument in the Australian case. We’re not suggesting anything. We’re not defaming anyone. Google’s autocomplete suggestions are based on popularity of terms. That means that if anything, Google users are the ones linking people’s names with unsavory terms. Google’s search results are also based on an algorithm. Just ask Rick Santorum about how much responsibility Google claims in what people find using its search engine.

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Only 2% of Facebook’s Local Business Pages Are Using Promoted Posts

Back in May, Facebook began allowing page owners to pay to give their posts extended visibility in their fans’ news feeds. With Promoted Posts, Facebook gave business owners a way to make sure the right people see the right content- at least that’s the company’s pitch. Recently we’ve seen some page owners upset with Facebook over Promoted Posts and content visibility. They claim that changes to Facebook’s content algorithms have made their content less visible and that this is all part of Facebook’s plan to promote Promoted Posts.
Facebook says that’s simply not true. Either way, are you curious about the first six months of Promoted Posts? Just how much are page owners using the product?
Facebook has just released some figures on its initiative. According to the company, 300,000 pages have paid to promote at least one post. Facebook also said that they have reached 13 million local pages. If you do the math, you find that means just over 2% of pages have used Promoted Posts.
The company also says that 2.5 million individual posts have been promoted. That means that the average page owner who utilizes Promoted Posts has promoted a little over 8 posts. For pages in general, the receive 150 million visitors on a daily basis. Facebook says that half of them come via mobile.
In October, Facebook expanded their Promoted Posts product to individual users. Now, you don’t have to be a page to pat to promote your posts on the site. Initially, you could only promoted your individual posts if you had less than 5,000 friends. Last month, Facebook relaxed that rule. I would be interested to hear the figures on this initiative. I guess it’s simply too young of a venture for a meaningful report.

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Blogspot blogs redirect to new URL and loses alexa rank

Blogger is a very good platform to create free blog and write online. Blogspot blogs URL always looks like this www.techshortly.blogspot.com but now blogger automatically redirect to new URL it is contain your country code. Google has not released any statement about the changes till now.

For Example

• If you open www.latestpulse.blogspot.com  in India it will redirect to new URL www.latestpulse.blogspot.in
• If you open www.latestpulse.blogspot.com in Australia it will redirect to new URL www.latestpulse.blogspot.au

 For this changes all blogspot blogs losses it's alexa rank and shows #10,897,213. So all the blogspot bloggers very disappointed of this changes. But if you use custom domain for your blogs you won't worry about this because there is nothing changes to your blog URL.

So friends it is time to change your blogspot blogs to custom domain.

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How to Increase Alexa Rank basics must do

Alexa is the most internet ranking provider which decides your blog / website market value in the internet world. Alexa ranking system works level of traffic a website receives from people. Increase your Alexa rank is certainly not an easy task and needs a lot of hard work. Actually new bloggers don’t know how to improve their ranks.

If you are a professional blogger, alexa rank is the important role in your blogging career. Every bloggers feel like “I am getting large number of traffic but my alexa rank still not increase”. Alexa rank has nothing to do with Google page rank or the number of visits. Alexa has a different system to give ranks for blogs and websites.

What is Alexa Rank?

Alexa rank is a internet based ranking system. Its give the popularity for every website and blog. Alexa rank is issue website / blog traffic and some other factors. Alexa considers traffic originating from browsers installed with alexa toolbar only. Your blog / website get raffic from browsers without alexa toolbar do not come under alexa ranking algorithm.

Alexa Ranking Techniques

Install alexa toolbar – Download and install the alexa tool bar in your favourite browser. When you update your blog via your favourite browser, Alexa tool bar collect your blog information and its effects to increasing your alexa rank.

Install Alexa widget – Install the alexa widget on your blog / website. This widget also connect with alexa and count your website clicks and pageviews.

Claim your site – Place your alexa id on your blog / website head part. This is better way to allow alexa to access your blog.

Link building – Submit your blog posts to webmaster forums and social book marking web sites. Submit your blog posts to high page rank directories. This also gives some good links to improve your alexa ranking

Alexa review – Rate your blog on alexa and Write a Review for your Blog on Alexa Website. Ask some of your Friends for write review on alexa. Alexa rating and review Improve the Alexa Rank.

Blog Commenting – Write comments on high PR blogs. This also gives good back links and traffic to your blog. Its effect on alexa rank.

Webmaster friendly – Write articles about seo and blogs. Webmasters search this kind of articles. They may be had alexa toolbar also. If they visit your blog alexa rank will be increase.

Quality content – Update your blog regularly with quality contents. Alexa considers the page views and bounce rate. Unique and fresh content can only force a visitor to spend more time on your blog, This will get traffic from search engines and improve the alexa rank.

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