South Indian Bank has tied up with Bank of New York Mellon to facilitate remittances from the US to India.
V.A. Joseph, the bank's managing director, told that Malayalam superstar Mammootty, the bank's global brand ambassador, would launch this facility at Kochi on Friday.
The South Indian Bank has 580 branches spread across 26 Indian states.

(source : headlinesindia)

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Spanish police said on Tuesday that they had broken up a vast international network that produced fake credit cards, an operation that led to the arrests of 178 people in 12 countries.
Members of the gang used real credit card numbers to produce fake cards which they then used to withdraw money from cash machines and make payments, police said in a statement. The network was also involved in “theft, swindling, sexual exploitation and money-laundering”. Its activities brought them “profits of more than 20 million euros”, police said.
Seventy-six people were held in Spain as part of the operation, 30 in France, 16 in Romania, 16 in Germany, 12 in Ireland, eight in United States, seven in Italy, four in Hungary, three in Finland, two in Australia, two in Sweden and two in Greece.

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In a sigh of relief to the salaried class, the government today dropped the contentious proposal to tax provident and pension fund withdrawals and decided to continue with the major tax incentive on housing loans.
In the revised Draft Taxes Code (DTC), which will replace the 50-year-old Income Tax Act, the finance ministry decided to drop its earlier proposal to tax the Government Provident Fund or the Public Provident Fund withdrawals.
"In the absence of adequate social security benefits, taxation of withdrawls from retirement benefits would be harsh," says the revised DTC.
It also said that the proposal to bring in perquisities like government accomodation to be part of salary has also been dropped.
Though the revised DTC is silent on the personal income tax rates and slabs, it said that home buyers would continue to get tax benefits on payment of interest on housing loans up to Rs 1.5 lakh annually.
Revenue Secretary Sunil Mitra said the taxation rates in the first draft, which suggested 10 per cent tax on income from Rs 1.60-10 lakhs and 20 per cent on income between Rs 10-25 lakhs and 30 per cent beyond that, were illustrative.
He said the tax rates would be made known only in the proposed Act, a bill for which will be introduced in Parliament in the coming monsoon session.
The proposals, which did not find favour with stakeholders like salaried class and the industry, were part of the first draft released in August last year.
The government received 1,600 representations on the first draft. The government has asked the stakeholders to give their views on the revised draft by end of this month.
The revised draft also dropped the proposal to impose Minimum Alaternate Tax (MAT) on gross assets, a move which too was fiercely opposed by the industry.

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The number of people unemployed in the UK increased by 23,000 to 2.47 million during the three months to April, official figures have shown.
The unemployment rate was 7.9%, up from 7.8% in the quarter to January.
However, the number of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance fell in May by 30,900 to 1.48 million, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.
And unemployment did fall in some parts of the UK, including Wales, and the north-east of England.
Further, when compared with the figures for the three months to March, overall unemployment has fallen from 2.51 million.
The ONS added that the number of people classed as economically inactive - those out of work and not seeking employment - rose by 29,000 during the three months to April to 8.19 million.
This is the highest level since records began, and represents 21.5% of the working age population.

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Britain will stop giving aid money to China and Russia, as "it is not justifiable" any longer, the UK government has said.
International Developement Secretary Andrew Mitchell announced a review into how the UK funds overseas development work in around 90 countries.
"The money will be redirected towards those countries where they can make the most difference," he said.
In 2008-09, China received more than £40m, while Russia got £190,000.
Britain's annual bilateral aid budget stands now at £2.9bn.
Mr Mitchell said that, apart from Russia and China, "other country programmes which are less effective will be closed or reduced".

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Indian inflation has risen to a two-year-high, raising the possibility of interest rate rises.
The wholesale price index rose to 10.16% in May, the highest since 2008.
Rising food and fuel costs have pushed the rate well above forecasts, which were nearer 9%. The government says prices will come down soon.
The rise in the inflation rate comes after India recorded its fastest growth in manufacturing in at least 15 years in April.

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Today, 26th February 2010, Union Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee will present the Finance Budget 2010 - 2011 in Parliament at around 11 am.

Partial rollback of stimulus packages is the most speculated issue in this budget season and thus, all eyes would be on Pranab Mukherjee as he would table the Budget 2010-11 in Parliament.

The Economic Survey released yesterday, suggested an increase in taxes and duties as a part of partial withdrawal of stimulus packages, offered to cope up with the global economic meltdown.

“The broad-based nature of the recovery creates scope for a gradual rollback, in due course, of some of the measures undertaken over the last 15 to 18 months,” said the Survey.

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