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Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Don't get sunk by debt in the UAE
With personal lending on track to double this year, alarm bells should be ringing.
But it seems the lessons of the financial crisis are no longer at the forefront of consumers' minds, as personal borrowing hit more than Dh270 billion in the first five months of this year.
The problem, experts say, is a combination of consumerism, poor financial literacy, readily available high levels of credit and clever tricks played by banks to lure people into borrowing as much as they can afford, and sometimes more.
"The regulation is a bit lenient," says Sam Wani, the general manager of the mortgage adviser Independent Finance, who urges extreme caution when signing up for a credit card.
"If customers want to apply for a credit card, they can do it easily, and if they want multiple credit cards, they can get multiple credit cards. There's no credit bureau, so it's difficult for banks to know who they are lending to."
The Government is in the process of establishing Al Etihad Credit Bureau to provide data about individual debtors. It was due to start operating this month and would essentially provide to banks a credit score of borrowers to help them to balance their risk. At the moment, a customer with one credit card that is paid off every month may look low risk, but it is possible that he owes millions of dirhams on credit cards to other banks.
After the 2008 financial crash, the Government introduced rules to try to prevent another disaster on that scale. One of these, Mr Wani explains, is a credit ceiling, which is supposed to prevent banks from giving credit to clients who spend more than 50 per cent of their income servicing existing debts.
"They are supposed to be looking at all these things, mostly when it comes to mortgage lending," he says. "But this doesn't necessarily apply to the smaller debts.
"As mortgage advisers we have to make sure our clients don't get into debt. Most of our clients we talk to have two or three credit cards. We always advise them to cancel all but one.
"People usually have multiple cards because they are easily available and because of the promotions, the freebies attached to getting the credit card."
A compareit4me.com survey this month corroborated this theory and revealed that almost four people in 10 surveyed had three or more credit cards, and half of these people said the cards were almost all near their credit limits.
One of the most common pitfalls, according to the survey, was the trap of transferring debt from one card to another in an attempt to take advantage of a better rate or special promotion, then continuing to use both cards.
"There are 51 banks offering hundreds of different kinds of products," Mr Wani says. "Almost every credit card carries one promotion or another. But fundamentally it boils down to the individual. He has the choice. You can't over-regulate, because you are clamping down on choice and the free market goes away."
Using debt to reduce the balance of another debt is another common money pitfall. The compareit4me.com survey revealed that one person in five was resorting to using a credit card to make personal-loan repayments.
A sizeable 42 per cent admitted to making only the minimum payment on their credit cards each month. This is often a lot more expensive than people realise.
Taking into account compound interest, a debt balance of Dh100 on a credit card with a monthly finance charge of 3 per cent will increase to Dh142.5 by the end of the first year, and Dh203 by the end of the second, if only the minimum monthly payments are made. So 3 per cent is not 36 per cent a year, it is 42.58 per cent.
Taking out credit cards and simply multiplying the monthly rate by 12 is a common and dangerous mistake, Mr Wani says. It is not a representative figure.
In other countries, such as the UK, it is a legal requirement for any advertising of credit to include an APR, or annual percentage rate, which takes into account all charges associated with a product, in addition to the interest rate. This allows people to much more easily work out how their debt can grow.
In the UAE, however, there is no such requirement and banks much prefer to advertise very low monthly figures. It is down to the customer to push for an APR when applying for a credit card or loan.
"If you take a credit card, or you take many credit cards, you need to look at the annual interest, not the monthly. If the bank says 2 per cent, that means 24 per cent a year, but that's not including any charges or costs associated with acquiring that liability," Mr Wani says.
"If you are making a minimum payment you're paying a little bit of the principal and most of the interest. It's not the right thing to do. You can't pay off the outstanding. You must clear the balance every month. This is the only thing to do."
It is always worth checking whether the minimum payment includes only the interest, or also some of the balance.
A quick search of the internet gives a huge number of websites that will calculate an annual compound interest rate using the monthly figure offered by banks.
Despite the monumental financial crash in 2008, it seems banks are as keen as ever to encourage spending on credit. HSBC contacted some of its customers this month with a promotion to collect Air Miles when any of its credit cards are used abroad over the summer.
Spending the equivalent of Dh10,000 would earn the customer 40,000 bonus Air Miles. A bigger spend of Dh50,000 would be rewarded with 125,000 bonus Air Miles - which would buy about Dh900 worth of Sharaf DG vouchers from the Air Miles website.
Even the most financially savvy can be bamboozled by the wording in advertisements.
Earlier this month, eye-catching email adverts from the National Bank of Abu Dhabi were offering car loans at "2.49 per cent per annum*". The small print with the * revealed that the "2.49 per cent is for illustration purposes, effective interest rate is 4.72 per cent per annum calculated on reducing loan balance".
Ahmed, a 31-year-old Emirati, had a lucky escape after taking out a mortgage loan to buy an off-plan investment property in Al Raha Beach.
The father of one, who borrowed close to Dh1 million from an Islamic bank, says that although he isn't struggling to pay back the loan, he is "disappointed in the whole system".
"The way the banks operate is not good. When I took the loan they took a security cheque, so I was guaranteeing my own debt. I have a property but they take a cheque, so if it returns they can file a case with the police. This does not make sense."
Ahmed bought the one-bedroom property in the boom in 2008 hoping the rent would cover the mortgage payments of about Dh8,000 a month. Fortunately, he never missed a payment and the property is now leased out.
"I was lucky. But many, many people were not and the banks are also responsible. They do not act in a responsible way here.
"Many people do not read the terms and conditions, and financial awareness is very low. The banks do not explain things here."
His experience with the bank, which offered him no solutions when he approached them to say his property would not be ready on time, has left Ahmed wary of the entire financial system.
"The wife of a friend went for a top-up loan and when she showed her husband what the bank had offered her, he saw she couldn't afford the monthly payments. This is totally wrong. But I have heard many stories like this."
Souqalmal.com, the price-comparison site, reported in March that about three Emiratis in 10 have no savings at all. Half of western expatriates, it said, save between 10 and 30 per cent of their monthly income.
According to Ambareen Musa, chief executive of the site, although banks have become more responsible over the past few years, there is a huge gap in financial literacy, which is particularly a problem when it comes to advertising.
"Consumers need to be aware that all offers and products have terms and conditions to look out for, so ask the bank under what conditions is the offer applicable."
Customers should also pay more attention to the small print when taking on any sort of credit, she says, particularly credit-card fees on international spends, which most people are not aware of.
"Consumers need to build an understanding of how rates are calculated ? we also have to remember that advertising is always to incite you to buy, whether it's groceries, clothes or baking products, like in any other country.
"It is, however, our responsibility to educate ourselves on the different products."
munderwood@thenational.ae
Source: http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/dont-get-sunk-by-debt-in-the-uae
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Nara Gets First Telco Customer As SingTel Tries To Fend Off Content Competition
SingTel has licensed Nara Logics‘ restaurant recommendation engine, in a bid to give its Digital Life assets a shot in the arm. SingTel is Singapore’s largest telecoms provider, and one of the largest in Asia, with 434 million mobile customers in 25 countries in the region. The deal will see SingTel license Nara’s “Pandora for restaurants” algorithm, that is aimed at creating personalized lists of eating places for users. Nara currently lists about 250,000 restaurants across the US and Canada, and this deal with SingTel marks the first time the Cambridge, Massachusetts startup is working outside North America, and with a telco. The value of the deal was undisclosed, but Nara Logics’ CEO, Thomas Copeman, said it will span several years, and that the revenue from it is “financially significant” to Nara. Nara, founded in 2010, came out of stealth mode in 2012, raising $4 million in June, and another $3 million at the end of that year. SingTel will use Nara’s technology for its Digital Life portals, in particular its crowdsourced restaurant reviews sites, Hungrygowhere and Eatability. Last year, it acquired Singapore’s Hungrygowhere for $9.4 million and Australia’s Eatability for $6.2 million. It remains to be seen whether the inclusion of Nara will it make a difference for SingTel. Since the telco bought Hungrygowhere, it hasn’t really done much with the site other than mash some of the food-related editorial content from its news portal, inSing.com, onto Hungrygowhere. (It’s also slapped a whole bunch of ads on the site, too, in recent months.) The site currently has a fairly rudimentary search engine, and throws up search findings by keyword or tagged category. Copeman said the new search will allow SingTel users to input personal preferences, tastes and interests. The aim is to shorten search time and find results more relevant to users, he said. SingTel’s head of Digital Life’s local operations, Loo Cheng Chuan, said the aim for Digital Life is to be in the “hyperlocal” space, in particular serving food, lifestyle and e-commerce content. The telco also recently launched a restaurant booking site called TableDB, similar to OpenTable. As SingTel gets its arms deeper in the business of providing content, it faces some strong competition from existing local players. In Singapore, for example, Chope.com.sg and Reserveit.sg also provide table reservations, and in the “lifestyle discovery” portion, Yelp made Singapore its first destination in Asia last November. Still, SingTelSource: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/mkJVkORTTpk/
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7 Steps to Writing Song Melodies That Start By Speaking Your Lyric ...
When you speak lyrics melodramatically, important melodic shapes start to occur.
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?The Essential Secrets of Songwriting? 6-eBook Bundle?cleans up your songwriting technique. Become a top-level songwriter, starting today! (Free offer included ? Read more..)
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It?s a common question that songwriters tend to get: how do you start your songs? Are you a melody-first, lyrics-first, or chords-first songwriter? There is of course another possibility: you use a mixture of many different ways. You might create a bit of lyric, and then work out how you might set it to a melody and chords.
If you work out your music by focusing at different times on different elements ? lyrics, chords, melody, etc. ? you help build a nice sense of cohesion and balance into your music. Also, when you constantly turn your attention from lyric to melody to chords, you also lessen the possibility of writer?s block.
And here?s another benefit that applies particularly to the creation of song melodies: when you speak your lyric out loud, you start to hear melodic shapes. Those shapes can then translate into full melodies that sound strongly tied to the words you are setting.
Here are some ideas for doing that:
- Make a copy of your lyric.
- Speak your lyric out loud in a normal, reciting voice.
- Speak your lyric again, using a more melodramatic tone of voice. If certain words sound like they should be accentuated, allow your voice to rise dramatically in pitch. Then circle those high-sounding words on your lyric sheet.
- Speak your lyric again in the same melodramatic tone of voice. Some words will sound longer than others. Circle the longest words. (In some cases you will be circling the same word twice ? once for high pitch, and again for long rhythm.)
- Study the circled words. Words that are circled twice are key words that will require a special place in your melody. Those words will usually sound best when placed high in pitch, with a longer rhythmic value than other words.
- Speak your lyric again with the rises and falls that you used when you read it melodramatically. You should start to hear melodic ideas that match the gestures of your reciting. Improvise melodies that work well with your lyric.
- Pick up your guitar, or sit at a keyboard. Try to accompany your improvised melodies with one or two chords.
At this point, your song should be taking shape, and you?ll love how the melody just seems to be ?spiritually linked? to the lyric. It should all sound and feel pleasantly pulsed and natural.
The benefit to working out a melody this way is that it sounds as though the melody was written with the lyric in mind, which is of course what you?ve done. There is something very important about that kind of melodic-lyric relationship that really works well. (You can just imagine Leonard Cohen doing that with his chorus of ?Hallelujah?)
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Written by Gary Ewer.?Follow on Twitter.
Download ?The Essential Secrets of Songwriting? 6-eBook Bundle:?$95.70?$37.00?(and get a copy of ?From Amateur to Ace: Writing Songs Like a Pro??FREE.)
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Posted by garyewer on July 30, 2013
http://garyewer.wordpress.com/2013/07/30/7-steps-to-writing-song-melodies-that-start-by-speaking-your-lyric/
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Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Tablet sales to double in India in FY2014
Tablet sales are set to nearly double in the current fiscal year to 3.84 million units, according to data from IT hardware industry body Manufacturers Association of Information Technology (MAIT).
The 2012-13 fiscal year was a year where consumers chose the tablet over a PC as a replacement, MAIT President J. V. Ramamurthy, said in a Times of India article. He added the combination of PC features and affordability was turning the tide in the tablet's favor.
"Tablets are cannibalizing the?PC market?and registering a phenomenal growth of 424 per cent in the second consecutive year," Ramamurthy said in the report. Compared to the growth in tablets,?PC sales?are expected to rise by a modest 8 percent to 12.11 million against 11.17 million in the previous fiscal year.
According to MAIT, tablet sales in 2012-13 stood at 1.9 million units against 0.36 million the previous year. Last year, it estimated India's tablet market would grow to 7.3 million units by 2015-16.
The market leader for Q1 was Datawind, with a 15 percent local market share, ahead of Micromax and Apple. That's? without factoring in the numbers from its government-backed Aakash budget tablets for the education sector.
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Source: http://www.zdnet.com/tablet-sales-to-double-in-india-in-fy2014-7000018722/
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First female president for Malta Institute of Accountants
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Maria Micallef has been elected president of the Malta Institute of Accountants.
She is the first female president to be appointed since the institute was set up in 1942.
She will serve a two-year term.
MIA, which is the representative body of the accountancy profession, has 2,130 members.
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Monday, July 29, 2013
Indianapolis church mourns 3 who died in bus crash
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Source: http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/article/20130728/NEWS01/307280098/1002/NEWS01
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Philippines to move air force, navy camps for faster access to disputed South China Sea areas.
MANILA, Philippines ? The Philippines plans to relocate major air force and navy camps to a former U.S. naval base northwest of Manila to gain faster access to waters being contested by China in the South China Sea, according to the country's defense chief and a confidential government report.
Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said Sunday that as soon as relocation funds are available the government plans to transfer air force and naval forces and their fleets of aircraft and warships to Subic Bay, which has become a busy free port since the 1992 departure of the U.S. Navy.
"It's for the protection of our West Philippine Sea," Gazmin said from South Korea, where he was on a visit, using the name adopted by the Philippine government for the disputed South China Sea.
"We're looking now for the funding," he said.
Subic Bay is a natural deep harbor that can accommodate two large warships acquired recently by the Philippines from the United States, a defense treaty ally, he said, especially compared to shallower harbor at the naval fleet base at Sangley Point in Cavite province, south of Manila.
The first U.S. Coast Guard cutter was relaunched as the Philippines' largest warship in 2011. President Benigno Aquino III will lead ceremonies on Aug. 6 to welcome the second ship at Subic, the Philippine navy said.
A confidential defense department document obtained by The Associated Press says Subic's location will cut reaction time by fighter aircraft to contested South China Sea areas by more than three minutes compared with flying from Clark airfield, also north of Manila, where some air force planes are based.
"It will provide the armed forces of the Philippines strategic location, direct and shorter access to support West Philippine Sea theater of operations," the document said.
The report said the cost of repairs and improvements for an air force base in Subic would be at least 5.1 billion pesos ($119 million). It said that compares with an estimated 11 billion pesos ($256 million) that it would cost to build a new air force base, because the vast Subic complex about 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of Manila already has a world-class runway and aviation facilities.
Relocating about 250 air force officers and men to Subic, along with "increased rotational presence of foreign visiting forces" would bolster business and trade at the port, the military document said.
Source: http://www.startribune.com/nation/217272941.html
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Radio host Kidd Kraddick dies at golf tournament, Dallas media report
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Kidd Kraddick, the host of the popular syndicated radio show that airs locally on B97-FM, died at a charity golf tournament in Gretna on Saturday, July 27, 2013. (You Tube)
The popular syndicated radio host Kidd Kraddick, based in Dallas and heard in New Orleans on B-97-FM, died Saturday afternoon in New Orleans, according to The Dallas Morning News and WFAA-TV in Dallas. WFAA reported that Kraddick, 53, died at a charity golf tournament in Gretna.
"It has been confirmed that Kidd Kraddick passed away today in New Orleans at a golf tournament organized to raise money for his beloved Kidd's Kids charity," Kraddick's employer, Clear Channel, said in a statement reported by?The Morning News.?The cause of death has not been released.
Kraddick had hosted the radio show, which is syndicated from Dallas-area KISS-FM, since 1992. He had won numerous awards, including the 1998 Marconi Award for Major Market Radio Personality of the Year.
B-97 hosted an on-air tribute to Kraddick late Saturday night.?The radio station has also set up an online memory board on its website.
Source: http://www.nola.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2013/07/dallas_tv_station_reporting_ki.html
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Family fears inmate won't be tried for 2nd murder
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) ? Relatives of a Texas woman beaten to death in her bed 25 years ago long feared her killer never would be caught. Now, they worry he'll never go to trial for her slaying.
Debra Masters Baker's husband, sister, son and daughter gathered around a kitchen table recently for their first public interview since a man already serving a life term for a high-profile murder was charged last November with Baker's death.
Sometimes breaking into tears, they discussed their quest for justice since the 34-year-old property manager ? remembered for her infectious laugh and boundless generosity ? was bludgeoned to death before dawn on Jan. 13, 1988, in her Austin home. The family remains haunted by thoughts that if authorities hadn't wrongfully pursued and convicted an innocent man in an eerily similar case 17 months earlier, the real killer never would have been free to take another life.
"We know she didn't have to die, that if (prosecutors) had done their job right, they would have looked for the right murderer and hopefully she would have still been alive," Baker's sister, Lisa Conn, said during the nearly three-hour interview with The Associated Press.
Baker's daughter, Caitlin, said it was like a punch in the stomach when the district attorney told her family there was a possibility Mark Allan Norwood, eligible for parole in 15 years in the other case, wouldn't be tried in her mother's death. Prosecutors have since insisted they are still pushing for a trial.
"When something horrific like this happens, you deserve certain things, you deserve a day in court," Caitlin Baker said. "There's no reason why she shouldn't be entitled to that also."
Norwood, 59, a former dishwasher and construction worker, was convicted in March of killing Christine Morton on Aug. 13, 1986, in her home, about 12 miles from where Baker lived.
Morton's husband Michael was originally convicted of the crime and spent nearly 25 years in prison. DNA evidence helped exonerate him in 2011, and the case gained national attention when the district attorney who prosecuted it was indicted on charges he hid evidence from the defense that could have helped prove Morton's innocence.
Hairs on a comforter and bathroom towel in Baker's home were linked to Norwood, leading to his indictment in that case as well.
Dayna Blazey, a Travis County assistant district attorney and lead prosecutor in the Baker case, said all parties are waiting for the completion of the transcript from Norwood's first murder trial before they can proceed. She said it's not unusual for the process to take months, adding that a long prison term against a suspect in one case doesn't "automatically preclude" prosecutors from charging him in another.
"I can say that, to the best of my knowledge, the (case) is going to be prosecuted," Blazey said.
Patrick Metze, director of the Criminal Defense Clinic at Texas Tech University, said "at some point, the question becomes, 'How many life sentences does this person really need?'" However, he predicted prosecutors wouldn't turn back after going this far against Norwood: "You can take it to the bank."
But Baker's brother Jesse, who was 7 at the time of her slaying, said family members remain troubled by their meeting last year with Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg that led them to believe Norwood might not be tried in her death.
"I can see where (Lehmberg's) coming from, I can," said Jesse Baker, now 33. "She has a budget and she has to set priorities. But it just tears you up, and it makes it clear that it's not about justice."
Through a spokesman, Lehmberg declined to comment.
Caitlin Baker, now 29, was three days shy of her fourth birthday when her mother was killed. She spent years hounding cold case investigators for new information. At one point, she recalls a detective be quoted as saying: "I wish I had a crystal ball or magic wand, but we don't have it."
But, once Norwood emerged as a suspect, investigators found striking similarities between the Baker and Morton killings.
The two women were both mothers, and had long brown hair. Both had been beaten with blunt objects while alone in their waterbeds on the 13th of the month. Each time, the killer likely entered through an unlocked sliding door and stole little except cash and one other major item.
In Morton's case it was a handgun; in Baker's, it was a VCR with "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" inside.
Although they originally believed Baker was killed in a 10-minute struggle, investigators since have concluded she likely was sleeping and never regained consciousness. There was also no evidence of sexual assault.
"Getting these answers, finally, means the world. It means so much more than a conviction," Jesse Baker said.
Conn said she was at her sister's home until nearly midnight the night of the slaying and remembers hearing something in the bedroom closet.
"I really, honestly, believe he was in the house the whole time," said Conn, now 53. "He was just waiting for us to leave and for her to go to bed."
Norwood lived just a few hundred yards away from Baker. He had previously been arrested for burglary in their neighborhood after he tried to sell stolen items at a garage sale, but wasn't sent to jail for it until three months after Baker was killed.
Instead, investigators focused on Baker's husband Phillip, then 39. The couple had married in 1977, but he came out as gay and moved out around late 1984. They remained friends, however, and the kids were staying with him the night of the slaying.
"I was their guy for about six weeks," said Phillip Baker, now 64, who even took a lie-detector test.
Caitlin Baker only has snatches of memory about her mother, a blazing-fast typist and devoted fan of TV's Dallas. Her brother recalled his undefeated tee-ball team, which his mother coached.
Phillip later made Caitlin a scrapbook of her mother's life. It ends with a tuft of yellow police tape from the crime scene.
The family says that could be her lasting image ? unless the case goes to trial.
"She does have a story that needs to be told," Caitlin Baker said. "Nobody wants to be forgotten, or only remembered in her body bag."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/family-fears-inmate-wont-tried-2nd-murder-153244530.html
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