Business News

Paradise Lost

The government of the day is doing its best to ensure that Indialoses its charm for foreign investors.

Ashish Gupta

Call me cassandra. It seems a trifle demented to make a claim suchas the one above in a year that could be India's best yet in terms offoreign direct investment (FDI). By some estimates India will endDecember this year with some $8 billion (Rs 36,000 crore) of that.Then, there's the money being invested in Indian stock by ForeignInstitutional Investors (FIIs)-until November 12, they had invested$7.7 billion, Rs 34,650 crore-although this amount shouldn't reallybe taken into account because the breed will sell or buy to feed …

The court and the common bond

Justices weigh in on the side of banks but many in Congress lean the other way

Credit unions are still a moving target. Sure, the Supreme Court ruled late last month that credit unions don't have the right to expand willy nilly. The justices opined that, under prior interpretations of the common bond, a single credit union could be created "whose members would include the employees of every company in the United States."

But even before the ink was dry on the Court's decree, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R.-Ga.) promised support for legislation to permit what the banking industry perceives as unbridled expansion by credit unions-a view clearly affirmed by the Supreme Court. …

Tropical Storm Bertha approaches warmer waters in Atlantic, expected to strengthen

Tropical Storm Bertha is approaching warmer waters in the Atlantic and forecasters expect it to strengthen in the coming days.

Bertha, the second named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, was centered 1,310 miles (2,110 kilometers) east of the northern Leeward Islands in the Caribbean at 0900 GMT Sunday.

The storm's maximum …

Police and courts

Church leader gets

jail time for abuse

PRINCETON - A former church group supervisor will spend 30 daysbehind bars after pleading guilty to two counts of first-degreesexual abuse stemming from a relationship she had with a 15-year-old boy in 2005.

Mindy Keesecker, 37, formerly of Princeton, was originallyconvicted in 2006 of having a sexual relationship with the boy, whomshe supervised with a church group.

The conviction was reversed in May when the defense argued beforethe state Supreme Court that the prosecution erred during itsclosing argument by mentioning Keesecker's decision not to testify.

Keesecker then pleaded guilty to two counts of …

Gant, Cardinals slam Mets

Ron Gant hit a fifth-inning grand slam and Todd Stottlemyre beatthe Mets for the third time this season, leading the St. LouisCardinals over New York 4-3 Friday in Shea Stadium.

Gant's slam followed Stottlemyre's two-out single off BobbyJones (9-7), Royce Clayton's single and Ray Lankford's walk. It wasthe fourth slam of Gant's career, the second this season.

The homer, Gant's 21st this season, went 388 feet into theleft-field bullpen and gave St. Louis a 4-0 lead. Gant has sixhomers in his last 12 games.

Astros 5, Giants 1: Doug Drabek won for the first time since theAll-Star break, leading Houston over San Francisco in the Astrodome.

Drabek …

Kodak loses third board member in 2 weeks

ROCHESTER, New York (AP) — Eastman Kodak Co. says another member of its board of directors has resigned — the third director to exit the struggling company in the past two weeks.

The latest director to relinquish the post is Laura D. Tyson, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday. Kodak didn't say why Tyson resigned.

Tyson is a professor of global management at the University of California, Berkeley's Walter A. Haas School of Business.

On Tuesday, Kodak disclosed that Adam Clammer and Herald Chen …

Greek officials quits over singer husband's taxes

Greece's deputy tourism minister resigned Monday after tax officials said her husband, a popular singer, owes millions of euros in unpaid taxes, a major embarrassment for the cash-strapped government's war on tax evasion.

A government statement said Angela Gerekou, 51, stepped down "out of sensitivity" hours after the scandal broke in a daily newspaper.

"Angela Gerekou has submitted her resignation for reasons of sensitivity and sensibility, so that they cannot provide the slightest pretext to hurt the government," the statement said. It added that Gerekou claimed she had no involvement in the tax affairs of her husband, Tolis …