French court upholds dismissal over headscarf

A Muslim woman wearing the niqab in Montreuil, outside Paris. PHOTO: AFP/FILE

PARIS: A Paris appeal court on Wednesday upheld the right of a nursery to fire a female employee who insisted on wearing a headscarf at work.

In the latest round of a long-running legal battle, the court overturned a controversial March 2013 ruling that the “Baby-Wolf” kindergarten in the Paris suburbs had been guilty of religious discrimination when it dismissed Fatima Afif in 2008.

Afif was sacked after telling her employer that, on her return to work following five years of maternity leave, she wished to wear a headscarf at all times.

The head of the day nursery refused, citing the establishment’s rules that employees had to be neutral in terms of philosophy, politics and faith. That led to a stand-off and Afif being made redundant.

Wednesday’s verdict supporting the nursery’s action was hailed as a landmark decision by supporters of secular education.

But, in reality, it is unlikely to be the end of the case.

Lawyers for Afif said it was “very probable” that they would launch another appeal and she herself has said she is prepared to take her case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights.

Two earlier rulings, by a works tribunal and a lower level appeal court in Versailles, had both upheld the nursery’s case that they were entitled to insist on the children being looked after/educated in an environment free from religious influence.

Those decisions were overturned in March by the Court of Cassation in a ruling which was widely denounced by politicians across the political spectrum as undermining secular education and led to calls for the law to be clarified.

Any overt religious symbols – headscarves, Jewish skullcaps or Sikh turbans for example – are banned from French state schools, which operate on strictly secular lines.

But the Court of Cassation ruled in March that the legislation could not be applied to a private nursery and that Afif’s right to express her religious faith therefore prevailed.

Wednesday’s ruling on Afif’s case came as the European Court of Human Rights was due to start considering a challenge to France’s so-called burqa ban, a 2011 law which outlaws the wearing of niqabs – veils which cover the full face – in public.

Profile: Microsoft highlights business, social activities in Pakistan

The latest trend of moving towards mobile computing is forcing the company to step its game up. PHOTO: AFP

ISLAMABAD: 

When it comes to technology, a single hardware unit, an ingenious piece of software, or an industry-leading idea can change prevailing trends in what can be called a tech-ecosystem.

The technological revolution seen in the last few decades is a testament to what the human mind is capable of achieving and while many players have contributed to the change, Microsoft remains one of the companies that constantly tops the list.

For an in-depth view of its operations in the country, The Express Tribune caught up with its Vice President for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) Public Sector Joseph Macri – a Microsoft employee since 1996.

With a realisation of the many hurdles in the way of businesses in Pakistan – a consumer market with one of the largest potential for Microsoft, Macri conveniently divided the problems into two categories.

“On one hand, we have a global agenda that deals with education, healthcare and employability-related issues, while on the other hand we are concerned about safety, transparency and energy-related issues prevailing in Pakistan,” he said, adding despite the problems, the company is avidly pursuing to attract both consumers and tech developers.

According to Net Applications, a web analytics firm, the market share of Microsoft’s four most recent versions of the Windows desktop operating system in October 2013 stood at 90.66%. Though the figures are hard to beat and gives the company a certain amount of safety, the latest trend of moving towards mobile computing, a section dominated by Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, forces the company to step its game up.

“Through decades of experience, Microsoft’s knowledge base regarding market dynamics and technological advancements is strong enough to challenge the competition in every way possible,” the VP noted.

The world has moved on from having fewer companies with huge budgets to a cut-throat market that consists of a large number of companies that are trying to lead through innovation and not financial statements, according to Macri, whose company seems eager to introduce a cloud computing infrastructure in the country.

“Pakistan could introduce a national cloud-computing infrastructure in a number of ways. It can either follow the model of Egypt’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and implement the setup itself or find a sponsor to do so like Italy, which used the expertise of Telecom Italia,” Macri informed.

“Thirdly, and this is where we come in, the infrastructure can also be implemented by industry players.”

With the introduction of Office 365, Windows Azure and Windows Server 2012, the company is all set to take the latest developments head-on.

Handling larger data streams also means protecting clients from potential threats to their privacy. However, recent revelations about the snooping done by intelligence and surveillance agencies have also resulted in reluctance on behalf of potential consumers to embrace the change.

“Microsoft has never been party to any activity of the like. In fact, the company itself is one of the prime targets of cyber attacks,” revealed the company’s VP. “We realise that if a company is to grow, protecting customers’ privacy must top its priorities.”

CSR

As one of the world’s largest corporate organisations, Microsoft takes its social responsibilities very seriously and also carries out human resource development locally by catapulting both existing and budding developers and entrepreneurs to international markets.

According to Macri, the company achieved these feats in three parallel ways.

The company’s YouthSpark and STEM programmes attract around 300 million youngsters globally, with 21,000 from Pakistan. The company also runs two innovation centres in Lahore and Karachi, in collaboration with the Punjab Information Technology Board and Bahria University respectively.

Secondly, through its partners in learning programmes, Microsoft advocates new approaches to teaching and learning by using technology to support government policymakers, school leaders and educators.

Thirdly, the company provides financial support to social sector organisations like The Citizens Foundation. It has also provided $1.2 million to Pakistan to carry out flood relief activities to date.

Meet-up: A lesson or two for politicians in the Pepsi-Coke relationship

“Knowing when to fight and when to collaborate with one’s competitor is a sign of leadership’s maturity,” says Ahsan Iqbal. PHOTO: PID/FILE

KARACHI: If Pakistan was a ‘cola turf’ instead of a country, Minister for Planning, Development and Reforms Ahsan Iqbal would like political parties to imitate Pepsi and Coca-Cola.

According to Iqbal, Pakistan’s political leadership has gradually matured to the point where they compete fiercely among themselves, but collaborate fully when it comes to warding off threats from non-political forces.

“Knowing when to fight and when to collaborate with one’s competitor is a sign of leadership’s maturity,” he said while addressing the CEO Summit Asia 2013 on Wednesday.

An MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Iqbal has taught management at business schools for many years. No wonder his speech was peppered with anecdotes from global corporate giants like Apple and Blackberry to local players like Engro and Nestle.

“The elite class was withdrawn and didn’t want to engage back in 1999. But today, from ordinary people to the elite, everyone is willing to embrace change,” he said while describing the change that Pakistani society has undergone in the last decade.

Following the unanimous support that the 18th, 19th and 20th amendments to the constitution received from all parties, he said the entire political leadership of the country resolved on November 22 that they will not drift away from Vision 2025 – a holistic reform programme — no matter which party holds sway in parliament.

Don’t blame the government

Board of Investment Chairman Mohammad Zubair found himself on the receiving end of scathing criticism from the country’s top corporate executives during a panel discussion on “Corporate governance for growth”.

“Don’t be quick to blame the government. The private sector may think the government is inept, but with all its limitations, the government is trying its best to overcome problems,” Zubair said when panellists questioned him about the slow pace of the privatisation process.

Although he did not name any institution, Zubair implied the privatisation process is slow because of excessive scrutiny that it receives from various quarters. With an implied reference to the upcoming change of guards in the superior judiciary, he asked people to wait patiently for a week or so before major developments could be announced regarding the privatisation of state-owned enterprises.

Zubair claimed that every minister of privatisation since the early 1990s has either gone to jail or had cases registered against him.

“But ironically,” remarked Elixir Securities CEO Junaid Iqbal, who moderated the panel discussion, “nearly all privatisation deals have turned those loss-making entities into profitable companies that now employ even a larger number of people.”

Gas shortage: Textile millers seek innovative solution

Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) is set to halt gas supply to textile mills under its winter load management plan. PHOTO: FILE

LAHORE: All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (Aptma) Punjab Chairman S M Tanveer has asked the government to bring an innovative solution than stopping gas supply to textile mills from next month.

Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Tanveer said the industry would refrain from holding strikes and rather prefer to negotiate with the government to come up with innovative proposals to solve the energy crisis.

He said the government should avoid any radical measures like completely disconnecting gas supply to the industry and instead manage it through an hourly-based system.

Currently, gas supply to textile mills in Punjab has dropped to 2.33 days a week, translating into only 56 hours in a week with electricity supply for four to six hours a day.

Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) is set to halt gas supply to textile mills under its winter load management plan. Current demand for the SNGPL network is around 3,500 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) against availability of 1,450 mmcfd.

Tanveer said the industry was likely to lose exports worth $1.2 billion per month. Reports suggest that gas supply to textile mills will remain suspended for two to three months, which means that the industry will lose around $3 billion.

He said the textile industry in Punjab, which was running only one shift, was bearing a loss of Rs72 billion due to gas shortage for around 114 days per annum.

Tanveer expressed fear that cotton prices could crash in case of suspension of gas supply to the mills.

Cost-cutting HP beats Wall Street expectations

HP's Spectre 13 comes in both detachable and ultrabook (seen above) designs.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

Hewlett-Packard reported better than expected fourth quarter results and indicated that its turnaround plans are progressing.

The company reported a fourth quarter profit of $1.4 billion, or 73 cents a share, on revenue of $29.1 billion, down 3 percent from the same quarter a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings for the fourth quarter were $1.01 a share. Wall Street was looking for HP to deliver fourth quarter non-GAAP earnings of $1 a share on revenue of $27.9 billion.

As for the outlook, HP projected first quarter earnings to be 82 cents a share to 86 cents a share on a non-GAAP basis. Wall Street was looking for 85 cents a share. For fiscal 2014, HP projected non-GAAP earnings to be $3.55 to $3.75 a share. That outlook was in line with its previous estimates. Wall Street expects $3.65.

In a nutshell, HP CEO Meg Whitman has managed to make HP more efficient. The company's key units with the exception of enterprise all saw revenue declines.

A few key points worth noting:

• The company reported fiscal 2013 earnings of $5.1 billion, or $2.62 a share, on revenue of $112.3 billion, down 7 percent from a year ago.
• HP said that it cut its net debt position by $1.3 billion. HP ended the year with $12.16 billion in cash and equivalents and long term debt of $16.6 billion.
• The company spent $3.13 billion on research and development for the year ended Oct. 31. That sum accounts to 2.5 percent of revenue.

This chart unfolds HP's various units. The key points:

• x86 servers sold well in the fourth quarter.
• Commercial printers fared well as did consumer. Notebooks and desktops were off from a year ago.
• "Other" in the personal systems group, most likely tablets, saw growth of 23 percent in the fourth quarter off of a small base.
• HP's software business took a hit as sales fell 9 percent in the fourth quarter.

(Credit: HP)

Here's a look at the key charts from HP's presentation. All regions saw revenue declines in the fourth quarter. 

(Credit: HP)

HP is seeing some slight growth for commercial PC sales, but consumer revenue fell 10 percent. 

(Credit: HP)

Storage and networking revenue was up slightly in the fourth quarter. Converged infrastructure has a better growth rate. 

(Credit: HP)

HP's software group is a disappointment no matter how you slice it. Licensing revenue took a hit in the fourth quarter. 

(Credit: HP)

Chrome, Opera pass Epic Citadel demo's Web graphics test

The Epic Citadel demo of Unreal Engine 3 running in a browser using high-speed JavaScript and WebGL.

(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Chrome and Opera have become the first browsers to match Mozilla Firefox's support for Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 and the Web-based Epic Citadel demo that's built on the 3D graphics technology. The demo's computing challenges include 3D graphics covered with 2D textures, rustling leaves, flowing water, reflective stone floors, lens flare, and shadows and other lighting effects.

Mozilla and Epic Games demonstrated the advanced Web programming in March using a combination of Mozilla technologies: Emscripten that converts C or C++ software into JavaScript, and asm.js that can run a specialized subset of JavaScript much faster.

Mozilla has been trying to drum up support for asm.js, but Chrome and Opera used their own JavaScript technology. (Opera Software, earlier this year, shifted away from its browser engine, adopting Chrome's and benefiting from Google's investment in the software.) The Epic Games demo also uses the WebGL standard for 3D graphics, which Chrome, Mozilla, and Opera all support.

The new browser support is notable, given the push toward Web programs that run on any machine with a browser -- cross-platform flexibility that has big advantages over writing native code that only works on iOS, Windows, or some other specific operating system. But the maturity and consistency of Web programming still leave a lot to be desired, especially for complicated, performance-intensive Web apps.Epic Games added Chrome 31 and Opera 18 to its Unreal Engine 3 supported browsers list. Martin Best, the product manager of games at Mozilla, noted the rival browsers' achievementin a blog post Tuesday.

Mozilla and Google got their Unreal performance with significantly different approaches. Asm.js uses a technology called ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation for its performance boost, with the Web app sending a "use asm" hint to the browser to trigger the technology. Compilation is the process of converting human-written source code into machine language that a computer can execute. AOT compilation means the browser can build an optimized version of the software in advance.

The Epic Citadel demo of Unreal Engine 3 running in a browser using high-speed JavaScript and WebGL.

(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

But Chrome uses a different approach with its V8 JavaScript engine called just-in-time (JIT) compilation that's standard nowadays for most Web sites and Web apps. The JIT approach means the browser compiles the JavaScript, monitors how it runs, and optimizes with new compilation as it goes.

Google likes its approach because improvements to the JIT can mean all JavaScript across the Web gets faster, not just what's specifically created to take advantage of asm.js, the company said.

Google's "V8 people seem to want to JIT-optimize harder, not process 'use asm,'" said Mozilla Chief Technology Officer Brendan Eich, but he's not convinced the performance will catch up to AOT compilation. In his experience, Unreal Engine 3 on Chrome shows more "jank" from pauses triggered by recompilation.

"Yet they do well," Eich said, praising Chrome's virtual machine that runs the JavaScript programs. "V8 is a formidable JIT'ing virtual machine."

In my tests of the two, Chrome showed a higher frame rate on a 2012 Retina-equippedMacBook Pro. Firefox Nightly version 28.0a1 (2013-11-26) showed 52.4fps, but Chrome 33.0.1712.4-dev ran at 59.8fps.

Both versions sent the CPU fan whirring, though, so there's still work to be done.

Update, 11:24 a.m. PT: Adds comment from Google.

Financial results: Despite speed bumps, Honda announces profits

The company sold about 12,783 units during the period against the sales of 8,541 units last year. PHOTO: FILE

KARACHI: 

Honda Atlas Cars has announced a profit-after-tax of Rs314 million or per share earnings of Rs2.20 for the six-month period ended September 2013, compared with a loss of Rs71 million and loss per share of Rs0.50 last year.

However, the company’s profitability dropped in the quarter ending on September 2014 owing to the rupee’s depreciation against dollar.

“The lacklustre performance of the company in quarter (July-September 2014) is mainly linked with the fast rupee depreciation, which depreciated almost 8% in the last two months,” Summit Capital analyst Sarfaraz Abbasi said.

The depreciating rupee has increased the import cost of car parts that the company imports for assembling.

According to the company’s management, the company has booked a heavy exchange rate loss under other operating expenses which has reached to Rs606 million in the quarter ended September 2013, up from Rs41 million last year, Abbasi added.

On quarterly basis, the company has posted a loss after tax (LAT) of Rs13 million for the quarter ended September 2013, or a loss per share (LPS) of Rs0.09, compared with a profit of Rs150 million last year, or LPS Rs1.05 per share.

Sales

During the six-month period ending September 2013, topline of the company showed a growth of 67% year on year to Rs21.37 billion against the sales of Rs12.79 billion last year due to prices and rise in volumetric sales.

The company sold about 12,783 units during the period against the sales of 8,541 units last year. The main reason behind the higher growth in volumetric sales was a low base impact as company’s operation remained suspended because of non-availability of the imported parts due to floods in Thailand, a summit capital report said on Tuesday. However, Honda Civic continued to attract consumers as sales increased by a massive 117% year on year to 5,884 units as compare to 2,715 units in same period last year.

On the quarterly basis, sales of the company were down by 4% to Rs10.47 billion against the sales of Rs10.91 billion in the previous quarter due to lower volumetric sales that were down by 3% to 6,304 units against the sales of 6,479 units in the previous quarter.

Quarterly sales remained down due to the seasonal impact as Pakistanis purchase fewer cars during and after the monsoon season, Abbasi added.

The increasing trend of cost-push inflation, especially the recent hike in fuel and electricity, prices is likely to impact the primary margins of the company adversely. The production cost will also witness a sharp rise due to costly imports as rupee depreciates.