Russia can chose between Assad or legitimate Syrian govt: Obama

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Thursday Russia and Iran must decide whether they want to prop up Syrian President Bashar al Assad or “save the Syrian state” by finding a Syrian government that can be legitimate.

Mr. Obama made the comment during a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Mr. Obama said the goal of recent diplomatic efforts is to create space that could eventually lead to a “pivot” and political transition. He said a hoped-for ceasefire might not be observed by all parties but would create “pockets of calm.”

Mr. Obama’s comments come amid U.S. hopes that Russia may be warming to the idea of a future Syria that doesn’t include Mr. Assad.

A sample Rs 1000 meal

The VAT + Service Tax (Including Swachch Bharat Cess) would be Rs 195.5. (Govt earning 195.5)

Now to take home that Rs 1000, I had to earn Rs 1333.33 rupees (25% approx Income Tax on salary). (Govt. earning Rs 333.33)

I had to use my bike for the 20km trip to and for home. Fuel Expenses -  Rs 45 (Govt earns Rs 23 on that. Including latest excise hike of 1.50

So when i went out for a meal for Rs 1000, the Govt. earned 195.5+333.33+23= 551 Rupees.
In total I have to earn Rs 1551 to have Rs 1000 meal outside home

This is today's scenario on direct and indirect taxation.

25+ Smart Excuses For Coming Late In The Office

It’s a working day and you are late because of last night show or party. Then you need to make up your mind and get ready to make a smart excuse so that your boss believe whatever you are saying. If you are working in a company or organization then it is obvious you need to deal with your boss’s attitude and we all know how bosses are like, don’t we?
You need to reach your office at time. Though sometimes you can make excuses but if you are frequently late then it might have a negative impact on your job and appraisal. Think of a situation when you were late for office and your boss didn’t even ask you anything. You also know it never happens. Sometimes we all get late due to some personal reasons or any other. In such a situations people generally go for excuses so that they could relieve themselves from boss taunt and lectures. However, you cannot repeat the same couple of excuses all the time. You need to make smart excuses.


We are providing you the list of some smart excuses that you can use next time when you were going to be late. I can bet these excuses will save you. No doubt you will make excuses so excuses must be smart enough. Don’t you think so? Find out the excuses and get ready to use them next time.
25+ Smart Excuses For coming late in the office

1. Held with doctor’s appointment

This is good reason to be used as no one can deny the issue of health as health is wealth, everyone knows that. When you are running out of time to office, make a statement that you were waiting to meet the doctor and crowd takes a lot of time. This excuse will convince your boss.

2. Death in family

This is excuse used by many people who needs no argument but meant to be accepted. Say your grandparents or far off relatives expire which turn you up late to work.

3. Feeling Dizzy

This is another good excuse that you can make but before using this excuse make a call to your boss early in morning with morning voice which will force him/her to believe you are not lying. Taking cough syrup or tablet last night makes you feel dizzy that unfortunately make you run out of time.

4. Take children to school first

Your boss knows the importance of family and children. Tell your wife is ill and there is no one to take children to school so you need to do that before coming to work place which makes you late for the office.

5. Weather condition

You can blame weather of your area in winter and rainy seasons, just ring up boss and tell about weather conditions and so on.

6. Missed your purse

Another valid reason and make sense for both male and female employees. Tell your boss half the way, you realize you leave your purse and getting it back eats all your time and result is here.

7. Getting caught by police

With interesting reason, make excuse you were held up by police for no reason or due to some misunderstanding. Keep yourself safe side as don’t try to be over smart in such situation as your boss might ask your for police slip or proof.

8. Car break down

Many employees make excuses that their car broke down in half of the way like battery break down or flat-tire.

9. Blame Traffic

This is genuine reason that mostly makes use of. If you use public transport then this excuse can help you out. Say there was heavy traffic or fight happened between drivers that take time to reach office.

10. Train timing

If you use train to reach office, say your train was late but make sure of other employees who use the same vehicle to reach office as they could increase your difficulty.

11. Blame alarm clock

This excuse can be making once or twice or more times it will look like lie so, use it smartly. Say your alarm clock didn’t work or ring in the morning and you actually realise later at the office time.

12. Blame Car keys

Why don’t you blame car keys, you can’t find your car key and thus no usage of car. Say this is done by your pet or small kids.

13. Have cramps

It is true there could be many issues related to health that need to be resolved. Just say you have cramps and that make you late for office.

14. Helping others

This can be acceptable reason as this will show you a responsible citizen and helping person. Say, you were helping one pregnant lady or old man to cross the road or dealing with strangers.

15. Blame your wife

You can use this excuse and your boss could agree, say your wife was in emergency or was out of house which makes him late for office.

16. Meeting with client

Say last night, you had meeting with client. Because of dealing with clients up to so late in night made you feel sleepy and unintentionally you become late for the office.

17. Laptop issue

This is genuine excuse to be made, say your laptop break out last night and without laptop you can’t for any work, so early in morning you took it to some computer shop and get it repaired from there which makes you run out of time.

18. Ill family members

This is one of the best excuses made by most of the employees that can’t be even denied. You can mention about illness of your family members like mother, father or grandparents and you were out to hospitals.

19. Fitting new appliance

You were waiting for mechanical appliances to be fixed by technician or company boys and you were not remembered of the appointment because of busy schedule. You waited for them to come and fix the machine. Sometimes unique excuses convince boss easily.

20. Public employee come for some enquiry

You can say some people came when you were about to leave the house for some income tax enquiry and unfortunately it took some time to deal with people.

21. Forgot important files

You were half of the way and suddenly you remembered you forgot the file that client asked for. Taking it back to home makes you run out of time.

22. Pet issues

At the last moment, you can blame your pets that they might run out or your pet may be ill or missing and it takes time to deal.

23. Looked indoors

You can say you were locked by your wife or children when they leave for school or office and by mistake they locked indoors and you kept on calling them for keys and neighbors to get out of situation.

24. Wet clothes

You can blame your wardrobe or washed clothes like they were wet and didn’t expect showers would mess clothes. This eventually becomes the reason for being late.

25. Not feeling well

Call your boos in the morning and tell you are not felling well because of cold or cough. But you can’t miss the office so you would be late.

26. Wrong hair cut

In order to look good for next presentation or meeting with client, lead you to salon that ate up half of the time as their machines stop working or they made wrong hair cut.

27. Difficulty in getting the car out of garage

Your car garage is automatic with power operated doors but unfortunately you were not able to get car out of garage due to power failure. This can be a good excuse for being late.

College Students More At Risk of Identity Theft

We often think that business people are more at risk of identity theft. But, this is not the truth. You will be surprised to know that most of the victims of identity theft are college students.
Students take this risk very lightly. They think they do not have much worth and so, what will the thieve benefit from students’ identity. But it’s just the opposite. The thieves are more interested in your identification documents. Also, their laptops are also less secured and are more vulnerable to hacking.

We need to understand whom we can trust and who can actually steal your identity information. Most of the time the culprits are average looking person like your ex-roommate, library friend, an open WiFi or any such person whom you will least suspect and who can easily get away with your ID information.
We have a very interesting infographic here telling us more about identity theft in colleges and how the students can save themselves from being a victim.

6 Most Powerful Tips to Speed up Windows 8 Boot Time

The era of Windows 8 has been already activated and users have started to search for solutions and tips to improve their Windows 8 experience. And one among the most searched concerns is ways or tips to improvise the Windows 8 boot time. Like always, Windows OS’s startup speed is disquiet for many users and when speaking on the part of Windows, they have always tried and have succeeded in improving the startup speed in each newer version.

image: http://cdn.techgyd.com/Windows-8-vs-Windows-7-Speed-Performance-Testing-1.jpg
And so Windows 8 have a startup time which is much more or double than that of Windows 7. And if you are not yet satisfied with the speed, here are some tips to speed up your Windows 8 boot time.

Manage your startup Programs

 Huge list of Startup programs is always a reason for increased boot time, while installing new programs they may automatically opt to run or start when the system gets on. So we will have to find these hidden programs and services and need to disable, those are not essential for us, nor for the system.

To disable such programs or services, open the Task Manager by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del and from it select the Start up tab, now you can see a list of programs and services which run along with system startup. This Window will also display the startup impact of each program and you can disable which are not necessary, like the Google Drive, etc….

Turn On Fast Start-up

Turn on fast start up is a new feature that can be seen in Windows 8 which will enable us to have a speedy startup time. To activate this feature, open up your Control Panel and navigate to the Power Option, now select the option saying “Choose what the power buttons do”, from the subsequent page check the check box saying “Turn on Fast Start-up”.

Clean your startup folder

Cleaning the startup folder is an effective way to speed up the boot time. This can be done by navigating to the following location
 C:UsersAppDataRoamingMicrosoftWindowsStart MenuProgramsStartup
Now find some program shortcuts which are not needed or not so essential and delete them and by doing this, the deleted program will be removed from startup list and will remain in your system and can be accessed manually.

Disable Startup Services

There are many services which will run in background and are sometimes of no use. Hence, deleting these services will result in a flying booting. So let’s find some unnecessary services and get those disabled.  To do that,
Go to your Start icon and open the RUN box, enter services.msc and press enter.

Now a box with a list of applications will be opened, choose which all are not essential and disable by right clicking on them.

Delete Temporary Files and Clear Buffer Memory

Deleting the temporary files like the ones stored by the internet browsers is a nice tip to speed up the boot. And to do that follow the steps below

Open the RUN box from Start or by pressing Win + R and type “%temp%” and hit Enter. Now select all the files from the window opened and delete them. Again open the Run box, type temp and press Enter and delete the files like above.  Yet again open the RUN box, type prefetch and click OK, and delete all files from the window that opens.Now go to My Computer and select properties of the drive that contains the operating system by right clicking on it. And in the properties window, you can see an option named, Disk Cleanup, click on it and hit OK.
Now your system is clean from all the temporary files and all those buffer memory.
These are the top, simple, basic and effective five tips to speed up your Windows 8 boot time and I hope these will surely help you to see a speedy boot time with your Windows 8 operating system. Keep in mind that having an up to date version Windows and respective application will also support in owning an improved boot time.

Pause Unnecessary Services

One of the major factor that affects the Booting Time and Windows Start is the number of services that are running at background. Apart from those Visible Services that you’ve disabled from Start-Up, services like Media Player File Sharing, Printer Spooler services are of not necessary all the time.
So, its better to disable these type of services that are affecting Start-Up. For this, Press Win+R and on Run Dialogue box, write msconfig and press enter.

Move to “Services” Tab. Here, you can handpick services that are not necessary for your PC. Like, if you are not having printer connected with your system, its better to disable “Printer Spooler” service.
If you are quite unsure about Microsoft Services then Tick the checkbox saying “Hide All Microsoft Services”. Now you can see all Non-Microsoft Services and disable them.

FC Barcelona Star Gerard Pique, Shakira Trapped in Sex-Tape Blackmail: Reports

FC Barcelona's Gerard Pique and his superstar wife Shakira are reportedly facing a blackmail plot by a former employee over an alleged sex video. Pique and Shakira have two sons -- Milan, two, and Sasha, 11-months.

Spanish football is already reeling under a major blackmail with Real Madrid striker Karim Benzema being probed for extortion of international teammate Mathieu Valbuena over another sex tape. According to Spanish law, blackmail is punishable by a serious jail term.

Spanish media has reported that Pique and Shakira have been threatened with the leak of an intimate video if the high-profile pair did not pay a significant sum of money. The footballer and his pop star wife have not confirmed or denied the reports, says the Mirror.

Shakira, 38, met Pique, 10 years her junior, when the Spanish star appeared in her music video for the single Waka Waka (This Time for Africa), the official song for 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

Pique left Manchester United in 2008 to join Barcelona in a 5 million Pound deal. He has been a Barca regular, helping the team win the Champions League three times, and five La Liga titles.

With Spain, Pique won the World Cup in 2010 and the European Championship two years later.

Gold Prices Rise But Still Near 5-Year Low

Melbourne: Global gold prices revived on Thursday from their lowest in more than five years the previous session as the dollar fell back, releasing its stranglehold on commodities and making gold more affordable for buyers paying with other currencies.

Federal Reserve officials on Wednesday continued to flag December as a likely time for interest rates to rise after seven years near zero, with two expressing confidence they will be able to pull off a rate hike smoothly despite fears of an abrupt market reaction.

"I'm convinced that the start of the (rate hike) cycle will see relative dollar weakness as investor money flows into other regions and other types of investment, away from the U.S. where the cost of capital - and doing business will also grow," said Chief Investment Officer Jonathan Barratt of Ayers Alliance in Sydney. He added that a rate increase could also boost gold's appeal as a hedge against inflation.

Spot gold was up 0.6 per cent at $1,077.20 an ounce by 0216 GMT. Prices fell to 1,064.95 an ounce on Wednesday, the weakest since early 2010.

US gold had risen 0.8 per cent to $1,077 an ounce.

US housing starts in October dropped to a seven-month low, weighed down by a steep decline in the construction of multi-family homes, but a surge in building permits suggested the housing market remained on solid ground.

The dollar fell back from seven-month peaks against a basket of currencies early in Asia on Thursday.

© Thomson Reuters 2015

Story first published on: November 19, 2015 08:52 (IST)