Archive for February, 2008

Today is February 29th, Happy Leap Year Day! ..the day we get at the end of February every 4 years. February would have 29 days in a leap year instead of the usual 28.
Today, Leap Year Babies Can Celebrate their Birthday today after 4 years.

What is a leap year?
A leap year is a year in which one extra day has been inserted, or intercalated, at the end of February. A leap year consists of 366 days, whereas other years, called common years, have 365 days.

Which years are leap years?

In the Gregorian calendar, the calendar used by most modern countries, the following three criteria determine which years will be leap years:

1. Every year that is divisible by four is a leap year;
2. of those years, if it can be divided by 100, it is NOT a leap year, unless
3. the year is divisible by 400. Then it is a leap year.

Understand why we have “leap years

Leap years are years with 366 days, instead of the usual 365. Leap years are necessary because the actual length of a year is 365.242 days, not 365 days, as commonly stated. Basically, leap years occur every 4 years, and years that are evenly divisible by 4 (2004, for example) have 366 days. This extra day is added to the calendar on February 29th.

However, there is one exception to the leap year rule involving century years, like the year 1900. Since the year is slightly less than 365.25 days long, adding an extra day every 4 years results in about 3 extra days being added over a period of 400 years. For this reason, only 1 out of every 4 century years is considered as a leap year. Century years are only considered as leap years if they are evenly divisible by 400. Therefore, 1700, 1800, 1900 were not leap years, and 2100 will not be a leap year. But 1600 and 2000 were leap years, because those year numbers are evenly divisible by 400.

Indian finance minister, Mr. P. Chidambaram presented the budget in the parliament for the fiscal 2008-09.
Highlights of the budgets are:

• Personal income tax exemption hiked to Rs 1.5 lakh
• Senior citizens threshold tax limit increased from Rs 1,95,000 to Rs 2,25,000
• Tax exemption for women increased to Rs 1.8 lakh
• New tax slabs: 10 per cent for 1,50,000 to 3,00,000, 20 per cent for 3,00,000 to 5,00,000 and 30 per cent above 5,00,000
• Small cars to become cheaper
• Reduced excise duty on two, three wheelers
• Rs 50 cr for tiger conservation
• Govt withdraws banking transaction tax
• Sixth Pay Commission report by March 2008
• Defence allocation up by 10% from Rs 96,000 cr to Rs 1,05,600 cr
• No excise duty on refrigerating equipments
• 22 Sainik schools get Rs 44 crore
• Short term capital gains to be taxed at 15%
• No change in surcharge of corporate tax
• Rs 624 cr for Commonwealth Games
• PAN sole identification in securities market
• Debt waiver scheme and relief to small and marginal farmers
• Duty reduced on life saving drugs
• Rs 750 crore for upgradation of 300 ITIs in 25 districts.

• Tax to GDP ratio at 9.2% in 2004 up by 12.5% in 2007-08
• Custom duty on steel scrapped
• Set-top boxes to become cheaper
• Farmers eligible for fresh agri loans post the waiver or one time settlement
• Haryana and Chandigarh to introduce smart card based delivery system under PDS
• Govt asks commercial banks to add 250 rural household accounts every year in rural and semi-urban banks
• FDI in Apr-Dec at $12.7 billion, FII inflow over $18 billion
• Jawaharlal Navoday Vidyalaya to be set in 20 new districts for SC/STs
• 3 IITs to be set up in Bihar, AP, Rajasthan
• Special attention, more funds for North East
• 54 gender budgeting cells set up
• Rajiv Gandhi drinking water mission to get Rs 7,300 cr
• Rs 3,966 cr for SC/STs schemes
• IT industry gets Rs 100 cr for connecting knowledge institutions
• NREGS to be extended to 596 rural distt with an outlay of Rs 16,000cr

• Inflation will be kept under check
• More allocation for polio and AIDS
• Health covers of Rs 30000 for workers in unorganised sectors

The Chinese have known about the medicinal benefits of green tea since ancient times, using it to treat everything from headaches to depression. Green tea has been used as a medicine in China for at least 4,000 years.

Green tea is now becoming the beverage of choice and replacing inferior beverages like coffee and black tea among Hollywood celebrities.

Here are the few medical conditions in which drinking green tea is reputed to be helpful:

• CUT YOUR CANCER RISK
• STEADY YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE
• RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS
• LOWERING CHOLESTEROL LEVELS
• PROTECT YOUR MEMORY
• STAY YOUNG
• LOSE WEIGHT
• CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE PREVENTION
• INFECTION PREVENTION

Dubai-based international airlines, Emirates announced its six-weekly, non-stop services to Kozhikode (Calicut) from July,1, 2008.

Kozhikode will be the third city in Kerala and 10th in India with non-stop Emirates flights from Dubai. Other cities previously served in kerala by Emirates are

1. Kochi
2. Thiruvananthapuram

The other cities in India it flies to include

• Ahmedabad
• Mumbai
• Bangalore
• Chennai
• Delhi
• Hyderabad
• Kolkata

Emirates will initially operate its Boeing 777-200 and Airbus A330-200 aircraft on the Dubai-Kozhikode route, offering over 4,000 business and economy class seats. The airline currently operates 99 weekly flights from Dubai to 9 cities in India.