Dr M Khalid's global village blog

It took about two minutes for air-traffic control to respond to  AirAsia Bhd. (AIRA) ’s ill-fated Flight 8501 when the pilot requested permission to elevate the plane, according to  Indonesia ’s air navigation operator. In the final communication from the plane, one of the pilots asked to climb to as high as 38,000 feet, said Wisnu Darjono, director at  AirNav Indonesia , citing a transcript of the conversation from the National Transport Safety Committee. Air traffic control authorized the plane to ascend only to 34,000 feet about two minutes later, after which contact was lost, Darjono said. Accuweather.com data shows there were storms along the path of the plane, which Indonesia’s air transport director has said was flying at 32,000 feet. Air-traffic control “couldn’t immediately give permission to fly at 38,000 feet because checks needed to be made to see if there were other planes nearby,” Darjono said in a phone interview. The “pilot didn’t reply.” Radar...

In one case, Workday analyzed more than 1 million data points for 100,000 employees across 25 years to come up with employment suggestions. Good bosses have an uncanny ability to sense when employees are unhappy and work with them to fix problems in the office before it’s too late. At VMware in Silicon Valley, they let the machines figure it out. VMware has been testing a new prediction technology from Workday, which makes software for human resources departments. The system delivers notifications about when employees might be getting ready to quit, and allows managers to intervene before it's too late. It looks for trends within employee activity, when promotions were last handed out, regional factors, changes in the industry and other data to make its predictions. The recommendations can improve over time as employers train the system. "We've had some great results to date with the data,” Amy Gannaway, VMware’s senior director for worldwide human resources info...

Twenty-four European banks have failed "stress tests" of their finances, the European Banking Authority (EBA) has announced. The banks now have nine months to shore up their finances or risk being shut down. No UK banks are included. The review was based on the banks' financial health at the end of 2013. Ten of them have taken measures to bolster their balance sheets in the meantime. All the remaining 14 banks are in the eurozone. The health check  was carried out on 123 EU banks by the EBA to determine whether they could withstand another financial crisis. The list of 14 includes four Italian banks, two Greek banks, two Belgian banks and two Slovenian banks. The worst affected was Italian bank Monte dei Paschi, which had a capital shortfall of €2.1bn (£1.65bn, $2.6bn). Analysis: Kamal Ahmed, Business editor, BBC News With the European Union economies back in the headlines for not altogether comfortable reasons, today's testing of the European bankin...

Russia has close economic ties with the UK and the rest of the EU so any trade and financial sanctions are likely to hurt both sides. Find out more about which countries do the most business with Russia in the series of charts below. The EU ranks as Russia's number one trading partner, accounting for almost 41% of all trade. Trade between the two economies has grown steadily and reached record levels in 2012. EU trade EU exports to Russia are dominated by machinery and transport equipment, chemicals, medicines and agricultural products. Imports to the EU from Russia are dominated by crude oil and gas. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), European countries import 84% of Russia's oil exports, and about 76% of its natural gas. Germany is the single biggest importer of Russian oil and gas, while the UK buys about 6% of Russia's gas. The US is also an important trading partner for Russia. In 2013, the value of its imports was $26.9bn...

HYDERABAD: Emerging markets in Islamic banking and finance in India and abroad need close to 50,000 financial experts, a requirement that can be met by the huge reserves of human capital in the country, particularly in Hyderabad.  Speaking at a conference on Islamic banking here on Monday, M S Sheriff from the Institute of Islamic Banking Finance and Insurance (IIBFI  www. iibfi .com )     said, "There are 75 countries in the world which have recognised Islamic banking and finance with South Africa, USA,  Singapore ,  Saudi Arabia and Malaysia being a few of them. Major corporate banks such as HSBC, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and Standard Chartered all have Islamic banking windows. There are a lot of job opportunities in this sector for the youth. The youth of Hyderabad have always shown interest and are keen on understanding Islamic banking." Sheriff pointed out that a large section of the ulema (Muslim clergy) remain unaware of banking practices and n...

That the United States and China have engaged in skirmishes in the cyber domain is no secret. Since the beginning of the 21st century, targeted cyberattacks, often with signs of Chinese origin, have attempted to penetrate the computer networks of U.S. corporations and government agencies in search of potentially valuable information. In response to this new strategic threat, the U.S. Military’s Strategic Command commissioned the creation of a sub-unified Cyber Command in 2009, with one of its  stated objectives  being the “defense of specified Department of Defense information networks.” U.S. President Barack Obama very clearly defined the threat that cyberattacks pose to the economy, in both the public and private sectors, when he  said  that the “cyber threat is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation.” Indeed, conflict in the cyber domain is still having some serious repercussions for the business world. Civilia...

(Reuters) - The government has ordered a cut of nearly 20 percent in its 2014/15 healthcare budget due to fiscal strains, putting at risk key disease control initiatives in a country whose public spending on health is already among the lowest in the world. Two health ministry officials told Reuters on Tuesday that more than 60 billion rupees, or $948 million, has been slashed from their budget allocation of around $5 billion for the financial year ending on March 31. Despite rapid economic growth over the past two decades, successive governments have kept a tight rein on healthcare expenditure. India spends about 1 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on public health, compared to 3 percent in China and 8.3 percent in the United States. But hopes were high that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was elected in May, would upgrade basic health infrastructure and make medical services more affordable for the poor. The United Nations estimates about one third of the world...

Facebook to face suit for scanning messages: Judge Facebook  must face a class action lawsuit accusing it of violating its users' privacy by scanning the content of messages they send to other users for advertising purposes, a U.S. judge has ruled. U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton in Oakland, California, on Tuesday dismissed some state-law claims against the social media company but largely denied Facebook's bid to dismiss the lawsuit. David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images The Facebook logo is reflected in the eyeglasses of a user in San Francisco. Facebook had argued that the alleged scanning of its users' messages was covered by an exception under the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act for interceptions by service providers occurring in the ordinary course of business. Read More UN pushes for more digital privacy protection But Hamilton said Facebook had "not offered a sufficient explanation of how the challenged practic...

From the below list, I recommend  AVG(top) ,  Avira  and  Avast(third best) . ===== 1.  Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+ Lavasoft's Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+ program is different than the "Ad-Aware" you may already be familiar with. This program is a true, always-on, completely free antivirus program. Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+ supports Windows 8, 7, Vista, and XP. If my list was anything other than alphabetical,  Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+ probably wouldn't head up the pack, mainly because email scanning isn't supported. However, if you love Lavasoft's other free products, Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+ is a pretty solid choice. 2.  Amiti Antivirus Amiti Antivirus is a free antivirus program that includes heuristic scanning and supports 4 different scan types, including one that can check for viruses that are currently running in memory. Amiti Antivirus can be used with  Windows 8, 7, Vista, and XP. I really like how easy Amiti Antiv...