Wall Street financial icon Bernard Madoff is behind what is said to be one of the biggest financial scams in history - a multi-billion-dollar investment fraud that robbed thousands of people all over the world of their hard-earned money.

Included in Madoff’s victims are international celebrities, banks and Jewish charities, some of which had to close business after the fraud was exposed. According to prosecutors, about 13 billion dollars passed through Madoff’s hands, in the guise of an “investment.” In truth, however, the money only went either to Madoff himself, or to dividends for his primary investors in what is known as a “Ponzi scheme.” Madoff admitted to the court that he never invested a single cent of the money given to him. He instead kept the money in a Chase Manhattan bank account.

Madoff made a courtroom apology to his victims, though, and I think this part was admirable. He at least had the courage to admit his mistake and tell the people he’s swindled that he’s sorry for it. In his statement, he said, “I’m sorry. I don’t ask for forgiveness. I leave a legacy of shame to my family. I am responsible for a great deal of suffering and pain. I live in a tormented state. I cannot offer an excuse for my behavior. How do you excuse deceiving investors… and 200 employees? How do you excuse lying to my sons and two brothers? How do you excuse lying to a wife who stood by you for 50 years and still stands by me? There is no excuse for that.”

After he made this statement, he was sentenced to 150 years in prison. Robert Gibbs, spokesman for the White House, said that this sentence should be a clear reminder to other financial investors of the enormous responsibility they hold in investing the money that other people had entrusted to them.

An autopsy by Los Angeles County medical examiners suggested that Michael Jackson had taken unspecified prescription medications. Were these given by his doctor, Dr. Conrad Murray? According to the doctor’s lawyer, Edward Chernoff, no, they were not. Chernoff said that whatever medications the doctor had given to Jackson were prescribed to address specific symptoms that the King of Pop complained of. Furthermore, the doctor never prescribed Demerol or Oxycontin to the singer.

On the other hand, Jackson’s longtime friend and Deepak Chopra revealed that he had been worried about Jackson’s possible overmedication since four years ago. Chopra, a licensed physician and a best-selling author, said that Jackson came to him after his trial on alleged sexual harrassment in 2005, and asked him for a prescription for some pain killers. Chopra saw that the star already had in his possession a bottle of Oxycontin, and was alarmed. He did not give Jackson the prescription, but grilled him about the Oxycontin and found out that the singer was gettign it “from a bunch of doctors.”

Did his painkiller medications have anything to do with his death? Did his personal cardiologist, Dr. Conrad Murray, overprescribe these potent medications?

Let’s see how the story unravels.

The success of any business depends on the maintenance of proper accounts. This does not mean that even small work from home business should maintain an expensive system of vouchers and ledgers and have their accounts audited. For small businesses and work from home concepts a simple excel sheet listing out the income and expenditures, and a cash inflow versus cash outflow would suffice.

Keeping proper and updated accounts has its own advantages apart from the obvious indicator of whether the business is running in a profit or a loss. It helps the business owner track where the money comes from and where the money goes, and this would help him or her take better control of the business and even life in general. Such an account would help pinpoint areas of high expenditure and low returns, enabling their elimination. The maintenance of proper accounts is also indispensable when the taxman comes knocking.

Finally, even if the business makes a profit, but the business owner is unable to trace where the profit went, or how he or she consumed it, it actually becomes profit not gained or unrealized profit

One of the major time tested strategy for success in any business is to reduce overheads. Unless the business operates in a monopolistic environment where any price that is set for the product would be accepted by the market, the entrepreneur would be restrained by the market forces when it comes to fixing a selling price of a product. The profit would come after deducting the input cost to the product and overheads. Input cost, like sale price would also be more or less fixed by the market conditions, and the entrepreneur would be severely limited in expanding or contracting his or her profits by adjusting input costs.
It is only the overhead costs that remain directly in the control of the entrepreneur. Overhead costs include rent, utilities like power, salaries, advertising and other expense to keep the business running. The entrepreneur would have to make a judgment on the trade off between location and rent and the point at paying which higher rent would be worthwhile in terms of attracting more footfalls. Similarly, the entrepreneur would have to make a trade-off between paying higher salary and attracting more talent that can do the process in a better way and thus save through productivity.

It can be a challenge and a reward to work from home. There are advantages and disadvantages that need to be considered. The number one thing to take into consideration first and foremost is time management. Time management is a tool that can make your work both efficient and pleasant. If done right, time management can actually free up a lot of your time to do the things you enjoy with family and friends. The first tip for time management is to organize your day in time blocks. If you know you have an important project to work on and the deadline is soon, make that your first priority of the day.  Getting tasks like this out of the way can make you feel a thousand times lighter and make your other projects more enjoyable and less rushed.  Which would be the second tip, prioritize your tasks from most important to least important, by the end of the day all your important tasks will be out of the way and if you don’t have time to get to the remaining tasks, you can schedule to complete them the next day.

Working from home sometimes gives the impression that you have a lot of time on your hands and others will try to take advantage of this, thinking that you are just playing on the computer all day. Explain to your family that you actually have a real job and when you schedule your time to work, that means no interruptions unless it is an emergency, an actual emergency.  Sometimes that word gets thrown around a lot and what people think is an emergency actually isn’t, it is used out of context way too much these days.

So you have your time managed, your tasks prioritized and your work day scheduled. Now you need to find a quiet place free of distractions to get to work, preferably a home office or if that is not an option a quiet corner of the house where you can be comfortable and that is basically noise free. Now get to work. It will require some planning and fine tuning and a little self-discipline and the ability to say no to people when you are working but it is one of the greatest benefits that will afford you a steady income and peace of mind.

Best known for her role in 70’s TV hit, Charlie’s Angels, which in recent years has been adapted more than once to the big screen, former actress Farrah Fawcett recently succumbed to anal cancer.

The 62-year-old beauty icon was diagnosed with anal cancer three years ago. Though at first she fought for her privacy, she eventually made her disease public, so that many others might gain awareness and inspiration. In a documentary about her battle with cancer, entitled “Farrah’s Story,” she let people take a peek into the life of someone suffering from the dreaded condition. She shaved her beautiful blonde hair before it fell on its own with the effects of chemotherapy. She also underwent experimental treatments in Germany, in the hopes of getting a cure. She bravely fought her cancer to the end.

On Thursday morning, Farrah Fawcett died at the St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica. O’Neal, her son Raymond’s father, whom she got engaged to just this month but never had the chance to wed, said, “After a long and brave battle with cancer, our beloved Farrah has passed away. Although this is an extremely difficult time for her family and friends, we take comfort in the beautiful times that we shared with Farrah over the years and the knowledge that her life brought joy to so many people around the world.”

In times of recession, most businesses take a hit. This is because recession comes with massive job losses which would mean that people either do not have money to spend or do not spend for fear of loosing their job in the near future. This has a domino effect with businesses unable to sustain itself and thus folding up.

Recession or not, people would be forced to spend on their essentials. Such essentials include basic foodstuffs, shelter, communications, education and health-care. Businesses that offer luxuries like fashion, entertainment, vacations and the like are likely to be the worst hit and people stop spending completely on such heads till the recession gets over.

The recession in the US would actually be a boon for third-world countries where work could get done at lower costs. Many companies resort to outsourcing to cut costs even without a recession, and this has prompted many people in countries like USA and others from where the outsourcing takes place to call for an end to outsourcing so as to protect their jobs.

A common mistake many people make while transiting from a job to their own business is to remain process oriented rather than customer oriented. People are conditioned in the tradition job role to adhere to policies and procedures and deviate only with approval from the boss. This is process oriented and most employees would stick to the process even at the risk of antagonizing the customer. Though businesses are now realizing the need for empowering employees to be flexible in order to satisfy the customer, this has not yet established itself on a large scale.

Starting your own business means you are your own boss, and your paymaster becomes the customer rather than the boss. So, just like to the employee tries to please your boss at job, it becomes essential to please the customer, and processes and policies might sometimes have to be given the go-by to please an extremely demanding customer, a customer in a hurry, a customer with a special request or the like.

A couple of months back, there were reports that R&B singer Chris Brown choked, beat and bit then-girlfriend pop star Rihanna after leaving a pre-Grammys party. A photo of a bruised and swollen Rihanna was leaked on the internet, causing a whole lot of buzz all over the world. Rihanna filed a case against Brown after a while.

On Monday, a preliminary hearing was scheduled to take place when Brown pleaded guilty to felony. This plea will put him on probation for five years and require him to do community service for six months. What kind of community service? Cleaning up graffiti or roadside trash. Can you imagine a former Billboard top artist scrubbing walls on the street? Though the crime he did was abominable, I still feel bad for him because that will really take some top humility to do, especially for someone of his stature.

The judge also ordered both Brown and Rihanna to “stay away from each other” - specifically, at least 50 yards apart, or 10 if they’re attending an industry event. Brown made the plea before the scheduled preliminary hearing began. When he had left, Rihanna entered and was informed of the judge’s orders.

The formal sentence against Brown will be made in August, and Rihanna said that she might ask for the terms to be loosened after Brown has been formally sentenced.

Companies create new brand to encourage consumerism, for unless people continue to buy what they already have, a point will soon reach where most of the people who can afford to buy a product would already have the product, and this in turn would lead to lesser sales, making it unviable for the company to run profitably.

New versions or brands of the same product be it a car, a mobile phone or anything else will; definitely look different from the earlier brands and will usually have some improvements in the form of utility or features over the existing models. Companies then try to induce customers to upgrade their products through advertisements and other marketing campaign.

The policy of introducing new models boost the economy in form of increased sales and creates a second hand market where the buyers of new brands discard their old brands for discounted prices, which can then be picked up by people who cannot afford to purchase brand new products. The critics of this policy however advocate that it creates unnecessary obsession and people have to work harder and harder to keep up with the brands, and in the process loose sight on the purpose of life and the meaning of their existence.