69th UN General Assembly session to start on Tuesday

The main aim of Post-2015 Development Agenda is to help define the future global development framework that will succeed the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of eight global development targets which will come to an end in 2015.

The MDGs, agreed upon by world leaders at a UN summit in 2000, set specific targets on poverty alleviation, education, gender  equality, child and maternal health, environmental stability, HIV/ AIDS and malaria reduction, and a global partnership for development.

According to President of the General Assembly's 68th session, John Ashe, over 300 resolutions and 80 decisions has been adopted during this session, which started last September.

The session covered a wide range of issues, including nuclear disarmament, rule of law at national and international levels, financing for development, the peaceful use of outer space, the right to privacy, the safety of journalists and peacekeeping missions budgets.

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Important to have FII debt limits: Raghuram Rajan

"We are limiting our reliance on foreign debt. It is important we keep it this way and manage the economy in way that is careful and that is circumspect," he said during an address at the 55th foundation day celebrations at the Somaiya Vidyavihar.

According to reports, the additional headroom is almost exhausted and FIIs' debt investments in the country are already nearing the USD 25 billion, leading to expectations that there might be an increase in the cap again.

Rajan said that the country has benefited from the foreign flows into the country, but advised caution, while dealing with such investments, which chase the best yields.

"We have to be careful about this money because if we say, 'this is wonderful, they all like us, we follow tremendous policies and that's why we got this money', and we go and spend, we run large current account deficits based on these foreign borrowings," he said.

"But this foreign borrowing cannot be taken for granted. At some point these investors will find greater usage of their money back home and they want to go out once again," he added.

Rajan, however, said that through various measures we have been successful in "substantially" containing the current account deficit (CAD), which narrowed to 1.7 percent in FY'14 from an all time high of 4.8 percent in the previous fiscal.

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Ericsson wins Vodafone India's contract for payment solutions

Financial details of the deal were not revealed. The five-year contract covers new circles of Uttar Pradesh (W), Uttar Pradesh (E), Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, besides Mumbai and Maharashtra.

"Ericsson Charging platform to be launched across 7 Vodafone circles, enabling new revenue-generating features and potential payment convergence across prepaid and postpaid segments," it said in a statement.

The system enables a host of new services like flexible refill, community charging and real time balance notifications among several other different voice and data offerings for over 75 million prepaid customers, it added.

It will also enable Vodafone to provide personalised offers to individual consumers by understanding their service consumption patterns, Ericsson said.

"As a part of the five-year agreement, Ericsson will be replacing legacy infrastructure with its new Charging System across five new circles of Uttar Pradesh (W), Uttar Pradesh (E), Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, in addition to Mumbai and Maharashtra circles where it was already deployed," it said.

The deployment will enable convergence across payment methodologies and devices and enable Vodafone to activate enhanced data charging via mobile broadband charging in the future, Ericsson added.

Ericsson has been a long-term partner for Vodafone. In 2010, Ericsson was chosen by Vodafone as an exclusive 3G HSPA hardware, software and related service vendor to equip India's largest metropolitan cities Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata with latest HSPA mobile broadband network.

Worldwide, Ericsson delivers more than 1,500 consulting and systems integration projects every year in multi-vendor and multi-technology environments and provides real-time charging solutions with more than 280 charging and billing customers globally.

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Unscrupulous builders should not be spared: NCDRC

A bench of National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NDCRC), also imposed punitive damages of Rs five lakh on the builder Emaar MGF Land Ltd, out of which Rs 2.5 lakh would be given to the buyer as compensation and Rs 2.5 lakh to be deposited in Consumer Legal Aid Account of the commission.
   
The bench pulled up the builder for filing an appeal against Chandigarh State Consumer Commission order and said it was well settled that no leniency should be shown to such type of litigants who in order to cover up their own fault and negligence, go on filing meritless appeal in different foras.    

"Unscrupulous builders like appellants who after taking almost the entire cost of the plot, do not perform their part of obligation, should not be spared. A strong message is required to be sent to such type of builders that this Commission is not helpless in such type of matters," a bench presided by Justice VB Gupta said.
   
The bench passed the order on the appeal of the builder challenging the state commission's decision of directing it to refund Rs 62,60,750 to the complainants along with interest, to pay Rs two lakh compensation for causing mental agony and physical harassment to them and a cost of Rs 20,000 to them.
   
A complaint was filed by Chandigarh residents Karnail Singh and his son Harmeek Singh, submitting that they had booked a plot in the builder's 'Mohali Plots at Mohali Hills' project in Sector 104, Mohali by paying a booking amount of Rs five lakh on February 12, 2011.
   
The builder had assured them that development activity at the site was in full swing and if they booked the plot, the possession would be given to them within 18 months from the date of execution of the Plot Buyer's Agreement, it said.    

It said the basic price of the plot was Rs 55 lakh and apart from this, the buyer had to pay Rs 6,87,500 towards Preferential Location Charges (PLC) plus additional charges.
   
After some discount, Singh had to pay Rs 65,30,250 towards the plot.

Source: Business News