On Thursday, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) has decided to increase ‘Dearness Allowance (DA)’ up to 8% for all the central government employees and pensioners in India from next month. Dearness allowance is a part of an employee’s salary. Along with house rent, this amount is also added to the basic salary of an employee. This DA is calculated as a percent of the basic salary. The overall dearness allowance is raised to 35%. ‘Dearness Allowance’ is also called as ‘Dearness Relief (DR)’. This hike in the ‘Dearness allowance’ will be effective form January 2009 and payable from March with employee’s salaries and pensioners.

For serving employees the increase in DA would be Rs. 4,100 crore for 14 months. And the DR for pensioners would be Rs. 1, 920 crore. Generally, the allowance to central staff will be revised twice a year, January 1st and July 1st and paid in salaries of March 1st and September 1st.

“The revised DA would be 22%, up 6% from the existing 16%. For the period from January 2009 to February 2010, the combined additional burden on exchequer owing to DA and DR would be Rs. 6,020 crore”, said by the Home Minister, P. Chidambaram.

For more details visit: http://dpe.nic.in/newgl/glch4bindex.htm

Many predictions are going on the NCAA Men’s tournament 2010. Kansas will become the ‘Champion in NCAA tournament 2010’, predicted by Barack Obama, President of US.

Kansas, Villanova, Kansas State and Kentucky are the final four teams selected by Obama for semi finals. ‘The final will be played between Kansas and Kentucky, and Kansas will win the championship’, said by Obama to ESPN.

The game will starts on March 18th, 2010. First game will be played between Brigham Young and Florida at 12:20 EST. Kansas, Kentucky, Syracuse and Duke are awarded as No.1 seeds. For overall tournament Kansas is given No.1 seed of the tournament.

The game will telecast live on CBS nationally. To get ‘NCAA Bracket 2010′ printable, click on http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/ncaatournamentbracket.pdf

For the current fiscal year 2010, the ‘Corporation Bank’ has started the recruitment for the Clerical & Probationary officer cadres and to fulfill 1400 vacancies. This is good news for all the job seekers. Currently, more than 1000 non-negative branches are present. Corporation bank is planning to add 100 more branches and decided to make the total number of branches as 1150 by the end of the March.

The business of the bank has crossed Rs. 1 lakh crore. Now, the bank is planning to raise 650 crore in this quarter, by issuing the bonds in the market. The people who are interested in clerical posts can register online.

For online registration and further details visit: http://www.corpbank.com/

Contact address:

Corporation Bank,

Mangaladevi temple road,

Pandeshwar, Mangalore – 575001.

Phone no: 0824-2426416, 2426420

Website: http://www.corpbank.com/

The 2010 NCAA Men’s Division Basketball Tournament started on March 16, 2010 at the University of Dayton Arena in Dayton. It is a single elimination tournament. 65 teams are selected for in this tournament. Among 65, 34 teams were granted ‘at large’ bids, extended by the NCAA Selection Committee. The remaining 31 teams earned automatic bids of the ‘lvy League’, by winning their conference tournaments. The first final championship game will be held at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana on 5th April.

The tournament starts with the ‘Play-in game’, which includes two teams. The winner in this will be promoted to the main draw of the tournament and plays a top in the one of the regionals. North Carolina, defining champion, did not qualify for the tournament.

The schedule of the tournament is as follows:

First Round: March 18th & 19th.

Second Round: March 20th & 21st.

Regional Semifinals: March 25th & 26th.

Regional Finals: March 27th & 28th.

National Semifinals: April 3rd.

National Championship Game – April 5th.

The teams in the tournament are Kansas, Lehigh, UNLV, Northern Lowa, Michigan State, New Mexico State,  Maryland, Houston, Tennessee, San Diego State, Georgetown, Ohio, Oklahoma State, Georgia Tech, Ohio State, UC Santa Barbara, Syracuse, Vermont, Gonzaga, florida State, Butler, UTEP, Vanderbilt, Murry State, Xavier, Minnesota, BYU, Florida, Kansas State, North Texas, Kentucky, East Tennessee State, Texas, Wake Forest, Temple, Cornell, Wisconsin, Wofford, Marquette, Washington, New Mexico, Montana, Clemson, Missouri, West Virginia, Morgan State, Duke, Arkansas – Pine Bluff, California, Louisville, Texas A&M, Utah State, Purdue, Siena, Notre Dame, Old Dominion, Baylor, Sam Houston State, Richmond, Saint Mary’s, Villanova, Robert Morris.

During a concert at the Manchester MEN arena, Katherine Jenkins, the Welsh singer and judge on Popstar to Operastar suffered a wardrobe malfunction

In a daring acrobatic flying routine where she was held by a male dancer, her left breast popped out of the low-cut dress that she was wearing. Popular UK Newspaper, The News of The World, managed to catch an picture and published it their newspaper the next day.

The incident left Katherine absolutely mortified and embarrassed. One fan that witnessed the incident said: “I could not believe what happened, but to be honest, for the stunt she was doing, the low cut dress was not the best move. I think someone who dresses Katherine should be sacked.”

The modest star had earlier refused to strip down for the popular Playboy magazine, but it seems fans now have an idea of what they’re missing!

There are at least two kinds of writers— those who write for writing’s sake and those who write to be read. I am of the second kind.

There are at least two kinds of writers who write to be read—those who do it for the fun of it and those who would like to make some money doing the writing thing which would include those who have written a book or two and want to get the word out. Again, I am of the second kind.

Reason 1: Blogging pays my mortgage. I earn enough from my blogs to pay my sizable Silicon Valley Mortgage. And I have had a book of my blog material published to boot. See Gee I Wish I Had Been Drinking at the Time. A second book will be out next month – How Wilby Got 20 Million People to Read His Blogs and How You Can, Too.

It is estimated that there are more than 77 million blogs.

The general wisdom is that if there are that many, some of them have to be good. Why shouldn’t mine be one of the good ones? Why shouldn’t yours?

Blog is a contraction for the term “web log.” Frankly, the name is not very attractive. It sounds too much like blah, blah, blahg. I prefer to explain what I do: I keep content current and focused on one topic on an interactive website, in a log format presented in reverse chronological order.

Please continue reading:  Introduction to blogging or 5 Reasons why I blog

LIC has invited applications for recruitment of 727 Apprentice Development Officers for its branches across India.

The Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC)  is the largest life insurance company in India fully owned by the Government of India.

LIC has assets estimated of 8 Trillion Rupees (or about $170 Billion dollars) and has a network of around 1.2 million of its agents for soliciting life insurance business from the public.

LIC has more than 2048 branches and offices in various  cities and towns of India.

Online registerations have begun from 17-3-2010 and last date is on 17-4-2010. The written test will be conducted on Sunday the 13th June 2010.

Check the below related links for more info.

• Fee Payment Challan – Format (pdf – 14 KB)

• Vacancies (zone-wise & division-wise) with zone codes and division/center codes

• Employment Notice – Short Notice (pdf - 57 KB)   Detailed Notice (pdf – 87 KB)

• Job Requirement (pdf – 8 KB)

• Remuneration (pdf- 9 KB)

• Eligibility Conditions (pdf – 14 KB)

• Selection Procedure (pdf – 11KB)

• How to Apply (pdf – 20KB)

• Important Instructions (pdf – 23 KB)