H-1B program is used by US business to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations requiring theoretical or technical expertise in fields, such as scientists, engineers, or computer programmers.

In the wake of the general economic recession in the US, there has been a sharp drop in the number of Indian professionals receiving the most coveted H-1B work visas between the years 2007 and 2009, latest official figures have revealed.

For the consecutive second year, response to the US H-1B visas was low with only 24,200 applications being received until July 2. After the first five days of having started to accept applications, UCSIC – US Citizenship and Immigration Services -had received only 13,500 H-1B petitions in the general category and 5,600 in the advanced degree category. By May 14, total number of petitions received in  general category was 19,000 and in the advanced degree category was 8,100.

Though India accounted for 36.3 per cent of the total H-1B visas issued in 2009, the number of Indians issued H-1B visas in 2009 was dropped by more than one fifth since 2007.

India continues to be the leading country to get the maximum number of H-1B work visas for professionals, despite the drop of over 34,000 H-1B visas in two years, and is a way ahead of other nations of the world.

In the fiscal 2007, as many as 157,613 Indians were issued the H-1B visas, while in 2008, the number dropped to 154,725 and further dropped to 123,002 in 2009.

This sharp drop has also resulted in decrease in short-term resident non-immigrants. In 2009, 364,757 Indians were in the US in this category, as against 425,826 the previous year in 2008.

[Source: PTI]

It will be making a Initial Public Offering (IPO) on track so that it will be able to beat the $22 bn record set by the Industrial and Commerce Bank of China in the year 2006.The Bank has received a widespread support as The Sovereignty Wealth Fund Bank from Qatar and The Standard Chartered Bank and US food giant Archer Daniels Midland are interested in investing in the bank.

Agbank Chairman Xiang Junbo stated that the company strives to reduce its bad debt load that is a major issue for major banks in China and is caused due to state sanctioned loans at time of global financial crisis in the country.

According to an estimate AgBank plans to raise $13.1 bn from the Hong Kong IPO where it will be offering shares at a price range of 37 to 44 US cents a share.

While at Shanghai, AgBank will be floating its shares at a price range of 37-39US cents per share. According to analysts the forecast is estimated to reach 82.9billion Yan profit for the year 2010.

[Source: Business Bureau]

China and Taiwan have been hostile for over 6 decades now, and the economic Cooperation Agreement (ECFA) is a leap towards reconciliation and enhanced trade relations.

The trade agreement was signed by senior delegates in the Southwest Chinese city of Chongqing. Tuesday will be remembered for a long time to come as the agreement ends traffic on hundreds of products being sold across the border and bilateral trade has many prospects and has been estimated to bring in profit of over one hundred billion dollars per year.

Some of the industries that will benefit from the agreement are PVC plastics and other high tech items that are manufactured in China. The pact will cut tariffs to ground level; on 539 Taiwan export items that are estimated to be worth around $13.84 billion that would be exported to China, while Taiwan gets $2.86bn headed the other way.

The pact also set off violent protests by a large number of protesters in the Capital Taipei on Saturday. The civilians feel that the deal would affect the nations self rule policy as well as economy.

[Source: AP]

According to latest reports, Google has made an announcement stating that it will automatically stop redirecting Chinese users to their Hong Kong site as they have submitted an application for renewal of license to the Chinese authorities.

Google has to renew its Internet Content Provider license renewed so that it can continue to provide information to 404 million users from China which is the worlds largest online population.

According to a latest Blog from David Drummond, who is the legal chief officer with Google the Chinese authorities have found Google’s behavior unacceptable and therefore the redirect will have to be halted until they can get their license renewed.

According to the blog, the Chinese government officials stated that if Google continues to redirect users to their Hong Kong site, their license would not be renewed.

Therefore over the next few days Google would halt the redirect entirely and the users would be directed to a new landing page. The Search engine giant had resubmitted its license for renewal with the Chinese authorities in lieu of a new approach.

[Source: Business news]

This also signifies that the new Apple iPhoen is the only product from Apple Inc that has been the most successful in the iPhone market. IT has been reported that since Apple iphone saw the light of the day in US , Britain, France , Germany and Japan , it has been in constant demand.

Some of the stores reported a shortage and  this was also the cause of strife in some areas. Steve Jobs is smiling all the way to the bank as he states  that the product is the most successful launch in Apple’s history. He also added a message of apology for the customers who were turned away as there was a shortage of supply of iphone units in the market.

According to sources, Apple is having difficulty in procuring parts like the most wanted feature – a high resolution screen. Shares of the Cupertino, Calif- based Apple rose by $1.52 to $268.22 in morning trading as noted on Monday.

[Source: Technology bureau]

The District Court Judge Louis Stanton stated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as the basis for the courts ruling. Kent Walker who is the Vice president and General Counsel of Google that owns YouTube marked the victory as an important event as the facility is used by billions of users in order to share their experiences on the World Wide Web.

But Viacom’s Michael Frickls has been trying to justify it’s stance by stating that protection of Copyright is critical for the survival of the creative Industry. He plans to take the case to the US second circuit court for appeals ads he states that the District Courts judgment has been fundamentally flawed.

Thus the copyright paradox has created potential tension between Viacom and YouTube continues as Viacom accumulated around one million videos that it said were violating the copyright act. The take down notice was issued to YouTube on the 2 and of February and Google promptly complied by removing the material by the very next day.

Today YouTube continues to rule the virtual world with a stock deal of $1.65 billion during the year 2006.

[Source: Business News agency]

Eurogroup President and PM of Luxembourg Jean-Claude Juncker

Paris – Mr. Jean-Claude Juncker, the chairman of the Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers, said the current status of the euro did not worry him much and dismissed the statement by Hungary that it would also face the Greek-style debt crisis.

Mr. Juncker who is also the Prime Minister of Luxembourg and who heads the regular monthly meetings of the euro zone finance ministers told in an interview on Radio France that the situation in Hungary does not worry him, and instead he is more worried by the speed at which the value of euro has fallen down most recently.

He further added that the Chinese currency Yuan was also undervalued, and that the measures taken by the euro zone members to deal with the current debt crisis is sufficient if the financial markets comprehended them and the governments took the conditions seriously for the help required to come out of this current economic scenario.

[Reuters]

On the other hand, Google tries to maintain that the users’ privacy is of great importance to the company and has also acknowledged last month how it mistakenly collected data over public Wi-Fi networks from around at least 30 countries while taking images of neighborhoods for the Street View feature (that allows pictures of neighborhoods by Google cameras, and is controversial in terms of maintaining privacy of the public). They also admitted that the problem was discovered only after the German regulators brought it to their notice.

Meanwhile, the Australian government investigation involves whether the pictures taken by the Google executives are in line with the country’s privacy laws or have violated them.

Google on the other hand admits that its collection of snippets from public mails and web browsing being carried on the public Wi-Fi networks was as an error and that it has already taken appropriate measures to deal with this to avoid its recurrence in future.

[AP]

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, left, chats with IMF MD Dominique Strauss-Kahn during a break in the G-20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting in Busan, South Korea Saturday, June 5, 2010.

Busan, South Korea – All the financial leaders from across the globe pledged to move ahead on curbing deficits while crafting out the financial reforms in the wake of recovering the plunging global economy, on Saturday.

The group of 20 countries welcomed the economic measures taken up by the European Union, the European Central Bank and the IMF, that include the $1 trillion bailout to cope up with the current financial breakdown in the eurozone.

Various finance ministers and the heads of the central banks gathered around in the city to have serious discussions on building safety nets for the countries that are badly stricken by the debt crises, while making the banks bear much of the financial burden for the government bailouts.

The U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the reporters on Saturday after the big meeting that all the financial bodies have the strong interest in seeing the safety measures succeed in restoring back the lost confidence and this can be effectively done by rebalancing growth for the long term and sustainable growth.

He further added that the US is aggressively moving to fix things and to strengthen the global economic fundamentals, and this kind of approach is expected by other countries to generate more growth all over.

In fact, Europe’s sovereign debt crisis has already sharpened the worries that the global economy might take a downturn, especially after the Hungary’s warning this week of its own meltdown like Greece.

The G-20 participants stressed on restoring the “fiscal sustainability”, and the talks in Busan have given the way to prepare an agenda for a meeting of all the G-20 leaders including US President Barack Obama, in Canada, this month end. In the wake of the global recession, all the advanced and the emerging economies of the G-20 has charted down the key priorities in setting a group to recover the global economy, from the Group of the Seven Industrialized nations.

The finance ministers are already working on the financial reforms that would help in combating financial meltdown that led to recession. Geithner stressed on the need to move ahead on stronger capital reserve requirements for banks and the limits on indebtedness so that banks and other financial institutions could figure the future financial crises well in advance.

[Source – AP]

This was the first ever penitent note by the CEO of the company along with the BP PLC executives in their first comprehensive update to the investors since the Deepwater Horizon rig almost 2 months back. This was mainly aimed to regain the marred reputation of the company, to restore the damaged Gulf coast and of course to stress on the safety measures that the company has charted down.

Even though the shares of the BP that were sold off had removed some $70 billion off the company value, the BP’s Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg has promised to meet all the obligations both as a responsible company and also in rebuilding the reputation of the BP as a long term member of the business communities not only in US but all around the globe.

The morning trading in NYSE saw the stocks getting lowered at around $37.78 i.e. by 3.8% on the stock market. Being the key stock for millions of share holders, and pension fund savers, BP accounts to about 6% of all the UK equity money held by the defined benefit pension schemes, and the company’s share price also has a major hold on the wider FTSE 100 Index accounting to about 7% of the index.

Mr. Hayward added that the company expects the containment and the clean up costs to go on with current rates as they have already topped $1 billion pounds since the rig explosion in April. So, if the company overcomes that by the month of August, then BP hopes to pay the majority of the costs by this year end exclusive of the costs for potential lawsuits and fines, he said.

However, he tried highlighting the company’s strong balance sheet, saying that BP continues to produce good cash inflows from other services.

Having earned $16 billion in the year 2009, BP has a good annual dividend yield of about 8.9%; Mr. Svanberg indicated that the company would come to the decision on the dividend closer to its next quarterly earnings report in July when it is the time to declare the next shareholder dividend. He also added that all the decisions will be taken in the long term interests of the investors while considering all the major factors in the process, but in the mean time, the priority of the company lies in the control of the oil spill.

[Source – AP]