Dr M Khalid's global village blog

Executive coach  Dale Kurow , M.S., says successful people usually spend their weekends participating in a “combination of family activities with their kids and spouse, errands, and creative activities to exercise the right side of their brain.” Here are 14 things successful people do (or should be doing) on weekends: 1. Make time for family and friends.  This is especially important for those who don’t spend much time with their loved ones during the week. 2. Exercise.  Everyone needs to do it, and if you can’t work out 4 to 5 days during the workweek, you need to be active on weekends to make up for some of that time, Vanderkam says. It’s the perfect opportunity to clear your mind and create fresh ideas. 3. Pursue a passion.  “There’s a creative director of a greeting card company who went back to school to pursue an MFA because of her love of art,” Kurow says. “Pursuing this passion turned into a love of poetry that she now writes on weekends.” ...

No. 1 New York STEM Job Listings: 47,754 No. 2 Washington, D.C. STEM Job Listings: 39,368 No. 3 San Jose STEM Job Listings: 30,731 No. 4 San Francisco STEM Job Listings: 26,965 No. 5 Boston STEM Job Listings: 25,268 STEM fields  or  STEM education  is an  acronym  for the  fields of study  in the categories of  science ,  technology , engineering , and  mathematics . http://www.forbes.com/pictures/efkk45ekdik/the-10-best-cities-for-stem-jobs-right-now/#gallerycontent

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR145Bs-Um0

The central bank is playing its role in trying to engineer long-term changes that will benefit the economy long-term, analysts say. When it comes to the economy, China's policy makers have often been criticized for a heavy-handed approach, stepping in at the first signs of trouble. That makes the reluctance by the central bank to pump in cash and alleviate a credit squeeze for local lenders highly significant, analysts say. Recent noises from Beijing's policymakers have suggested that they are willing to  tolerate a slower rate of growth  even as signs of weakness show up in data. While a sharp slowdown in foreign exchange inflows and seasonal factors have dried up liquidity, the central bank has not helped by draining funds from the market and deliberately stayed away in a bid to force local lenders to rein in credit growth which has reached worrying levels. According to research from Credit Suisse, China's credit-to-GDP ratio surged to more than 17...

A Conversation With: Ravi Venkatesan, Former Chairman of Microsoft India By  HEATHER TIMMONS Anindito Mukherjee/European Pressphoto Agency Ravi Venkatesan. It would be hard to find a more passionate advocate for doing business in India than Ravi Venkatesan, the former chairman of Microsoft India. When Mr. Venkatesan moved to India in 1996 from the United States, he was so sure he wouldn’t be here long that he put his belongings in storage. Instead, he spent an eight year stint as the head of Cummins India, growing the company’s engine and generator set business here, and helping Cummins open the country’s first engineering college for women in Pune. Then he took the top job at Microsoft in India in 2004, despite knowing so little about information technology that he used to have someone print out his e-mails for him. He left in 2011, after helping expand the company’s business in India seven-fold to nearly $1 billion.  Mr. Venkatesan has written a book about how e...

Singapore has rapped 20 banks for allowing 133 traders to attempt to manipulate interest rates and foreign exchange benchmarks during a four-year period. The Monetary Authority of Singapore found no evidence of criminal behavior during a year-long investigation triggered by the  Libor rigging scandal , but said the traders had made several attempts to influence prices inappropriately between 2007 and 2011. Singapore's worst offenders were the  Royal Bank of Scotland  ( RBS ) and  UBS   ( UBS ) , which have already  paid fines  of $612 million and $1.5 billion respectively to settle Libor-rigging claims, and Dutch bank  ING   ( ING ) . Those three banks have been ordered to increase their reserves on deposit with the central bank by 1 billion to 1.2 billion Singapore dollars ($958 million) at a zero interest rate for a year. But the investigation -- launched after  Barclays   ( BCS )  became the first bank to ...

The Global 500 just keeps getting more, well, global. Yes, the U.S. still dominates the list, with 133 companies, but that number is down from 185 a decade ago. China continues its march, with 61 companies, vs. just 12 in 2001. Companies from India, Russia, Brazil, and other growth economies are moving up in the rankings -- and for the first time a Colombian company, Ecopetrol, made the Global 500. Simply put: If you're doing business with the biggest companies in the world, you're not just spending time in New York, London, and Hong Kong. Indian cities of Ahmedabad and Gurgaon are in the list. Above: Gurgaon. Below: Ahmedabad. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2011/hottest_cities/?iid=intnlrankings