Business Pivot Point

Police in Honduras say six of their own officers have been arrested for allegedly trying to rob a bank.

Prosecutors say the policemen forced their way into the bank in the capital, Tegucigalpa and tied up the security guards at gunpoint.

A passer-by raised the alarm and police fought a gun battle with the alleged robbers, injuring one of them.

A police spokesman said the six were “bad apples” who had sullied the name of the force.

Some 33 members of ousted Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s family have been held, state TV says.

It said that they were arrested as they tried to leave the country.

In a televised speech, interim leader Fouad Mebazaa vowed a “total break” with the past, an independent justice system and media freedoms.

In a separate development, the new government said it had freed all political prisoners. The reported move comes after weeks of mass protests.

As the world is becoming smaller and smaller, as the distances are shrinking by the minute, as one can travel faster and faster, the world is also becoming a slightly more dangerous place to live in. The safety aspects are going down.

More than the straight forward people, the criminals have an incentive to innovate and find out new things and new technologies and new ways of fleecing people and new ways of committing fraud. Now, this is where one has to be really sharp. This is where one has to do all kinds of Criminal Background Checks.

We take people into our work all the time. We take in maids. We take in servants. We take in people for work in our factories. How do we know that they are all good people? We have to know. Otherwise, it will become very difficult for us later on if any of the people we hired were criminals. We will pay for it dearly later on.

That is why thorough Background Checks are always recommended when you are taking in or hiring new people into your system. You may say that the guy you are taking in is producing a reference. That reference may be manufactured for all you know. You may say that he is producing all the right looking certificates and letters of recommendation. But, again, all that could be fabricated. That is all the more reason why you should absolutely be confident of the person and do a check.

Nowadays, checking is easier than ever before. One need not worry about going wrong. There are the right databases which the law authorities and the police have put together which is available for a small fee. One can check out the names and aliases and so on so that one can be confident about the person being hired to a large extent.

More than one million people are homeless in Sri Lankan stated the government reports on Wednesday. Sri Lankan government has started distributing emergency food,clotting and bedding for the flood affected victims. The week of the monsoon floods has caused the death of at least 23 people and cent re and east island causing the mudslides. The floods have affected the regions by the rising water levels and many mudslides stated a spokesman from the disaster management center.

The disaster management center in Colombo Batticaloa which is in eastern district had a bloody fighting during 2009 affected heavier. In the Batticaloa district about 541,000people are displaced and to accommodate the people about 275 camps have been constructed. The total number of people displaced due to the floods are about 1,081,000 and have taken shelter in relief camps by the State -run. Most of the houses where under water and the houses had about six feet water and most of the things were lost except the wearing clothes.

The rain had caused the rising water which swamped vast tracks and the television showed the pictures of the devastated regions. Mahindra Rajapakse,president of Sri Lanka has asked everyone to join hands and help the victims without any discrimination and considerations. The bad weather had prevented the helicopter tour of Rajapakse to visit the flood affected areas on Wednesday told related reports. The relief operations have been assisted by the security forces where 3000 soldiers are deployed for the services in the east. Many boats,helicopters,navy and soldiers are employed for helping out many people from the flood affected areas.

Maritime piracy costs the global economy between $7bn (£4.4bn) and $12bn (£7.6bn) a year, a study says.

The report, launched by UK think-tank Chatham House, calculated the amount from the costs of ransom, security equipment and the impact on trade.

The majority of costs came from piracy off Somalia, it says.

Although the costs are said to be difficult to assess, one researcher estimated they had increased roughly five-fold since 2005.

Life is beautiful because it is very short. So goes a proverb that I have read somewhere. It is a beautiful life. yes. Simply because it is so short. So, how do you make the most of this very short life? How do you make it sweet and memorable? That is the reason why so many of us want to live in style. Even in death, people don’t want to go just like that. They want to go in a particular way. People actually select their coffins and where they want to be laid down.

If people can be so very careful about death, imagine how careful one has to be about life.

Let us look at a few things which can make the life very stylish and very beautiful. One of the things which everyone of us uses is the computer. It has become so very ubiquitous that one cannot live without it. But, only a very few care about keeping it well, maintaining it and ensuring that it is kept up properly. Take, for example, the laptop stands. Very few people use this even though it is extremely useful and elegant to look at. It is not very expensive. However, people have not taken all these utilities in mind and hence it is not very widely used. Take the normal computer stands. People simply look at the functional aspects even through at very little expense, one can very easily look at having a very elegant and wonderful stand which can fulfill the functional requirement as well as the aesthetic requirement of the home.

This is where the concept of living in style comes in. Just take stock of your style quotient. You wear stylish garments. But, do you live in style? Do you have stylish gadgets? Do you have things which make a statement about you?

President Obama has cautiously hailed a “clear” trend of job growth, and called on businesses to boost investment.

His remarks at a window manufacturer came as the US unemployment rate dropped 0.4 points to 9.4% in December, the largest one-month drop since 1998.

Some 103,000 jobs were created last month, the Labor Department said, although this was fewer than forecast.

But Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned employment could remain depressed for four to five more years.

The lower unemployment rate, while cheering, came not only because more people found jobs, but also because 260,000 had given up looking and ceased being counted as unemployed.

The western United States is bearing the brunt of new winter storms, with heavy snow blanketing an area from New Mexico to Minnesota.

Snow and ice have closed a number of major roads, with Arizona particularly badly hit.

Forecasters have predicted as much as 18in (46cm) of snow in some parts.

The eastern seaboard is just recovering from a winter storm that paralysed transport, bringing an apology from New York’s mayor over clean-up efforts.

Ice and snow forced the temporary closure of Interstates 40 and 17 in northern Arizona, with a traffic hotline in the state taking more than a million calls on Thursday.

Phoenix was braced for rare freezing temperatures.

Britain would back any United Nations-led military action taken to force out incumbent Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo, William Hague has said.

But the UK’s foreign secretary stressed that this did not mean he was raising the prospect of sending British troops to assist with the situation.

Presidential rival Alassane Ouattara is recognised by the international community as winner of a recent vote.

But Mr Gbagbo - who has control of the armed forces - refuses to leave office.

Thousands more people are preparing to evacuate their homes as one of Australia’s worst floods continues to inundate the state of Queensland.

Houses in the town of Rockhampton are under threat from rising floodwaters that have displaced 4,000 people.

Australian PM Julia Gillard has visited flooded Bundaberg, and flew over Emerald as evacuations there continued.

The floods have affected about 200,000 people over an area larger than France and Germany, Queensland’s premier says.

The situation in Emerald - a town of some 11,000 people - was particularly bad, Anna Bligh told reporters.