Prime minister's own office broke expense rules

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's own department has repeatedly broken the government's tough rules for hospitality spending.

An internal report on how the Privy Council Office spent $340,000 on hospitality found widespread flouting of a basic rule — that is, public servants must get prior approval from a supervisor before spending the cash.

The review of 2,100 hospitality claims over 13 months, ending last June, found employees repeatedly failed to get a green light before racking up expenses.

The average claim was for about $160, for drinks, meals and other largesse.

The survey examined expense claims in the Prime Minister's Office as well those run up by the Privy Council Office, Harper's own department and the central organ of the Canadian government.

Auditors initially found several instances in which hospitality expenses were incurred without pre-authorization. But they were assured by senior managers that the problem had since been corrected.

So auditors randomly selected 20 more-recent hospitality claims — and found only half had been authorized in advance, clear evidence that the rules continued to be flouted, despite the protestations of senior management.

Money spent without prior approval

"For the majority of hospitality expenditures, Accounting Operations receives the pre-authorization form after the expenditure has been incurred," says the internal report.

The practice is specifically banned by the Financial Administration Act, and since coming to power in 2006, the Conservatives have further tightened spending on hospitality to curtail alleged abuses.

Last Nov. 24, Stockwell Day — then Treasury Board president — announced another crackdown on hospitality, citing as an example of abuse a $31,700 reception thrown by Statistics Canada for 400 people in 2005.

Day said the event "was not a good signal to be sending" as Canadians tighten their belts — and that a more restrictive policy would kick in on Jan. 1.

The Canadian Press later reported Harper had personally approved a $47,000 event for 600 employees in Privy Council Office.

Hospitality was budgeted at $7,400 for the PCO event, held three months before Day's tough-talking announcement and roughly equivalent in value to the Statistics Canada reception.

A spokesman for the Privy Council Office says that since Jan. 1, managers who fail to pre-authorize hospitality tabs are required to explain why and what they're doing to stop the problem.

Raymond Rivet also says they are including a reminder about pre-authorization in training sessions that began in February.

The so-called assurance review was completed in early March, but only recently released. The report does not provide any details of the offending hospitality claims.

The 2009 federal budget imposed a two-year freeze on spending for travel, conference and hospitality government wide. Privy Council Office reduced its bill for those items to $3 million in 2010-2011, down from $3.8 million in 2009-2010, and $4.1 million the previous year, Rivet said.

Denise Richards

Denise Richards

Denise Lee Richards (born February 17, 1971)[1] is an American actress and former fashion model. She has appeared in films including Starship Troopers, Wild Things, and The World Is Not Enough. She appeared on the reality TV show, Denise Richards: It's Complicated, which was carried by American cable channel E!.

Early life

Richards was born in Downers Grove, Illinois,[2] the daughter of Joni, a coffee shop owner, and Irv Richards, a telephone engineer. She has one sister, Michelle, and grew up in both Mokena and Downers Grove, Illinois. She graduated in 1989 from El Camino High School in Oceanside, California. As a child, she was the "only girl on the baseball team.

Before she was an actress, Richards was signed by the Judith Fontaine Modeling & Talent Agency as a model.

Career

In 1986, Richards appeared in the music video "The Captain of Her Heart" by Double. She spent the majority of the 1990s appearing in lower-budget films and TV shows such as Saved by the Bell, television movies, and guest starring in episodes of several television shows such as Married with Children (1991), a 5 second walk through. Her first starring role in a wide theatrical release was Starship Troopers in 1997, which was followed by her role in Wild Things in 1998.[4] In 1998, she appeared in the music video for the Blues Traveler song Canadian Rose.

Richards was cast as the nuclear-physicist Christmas Jones in the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough (1999). Though she considered her role "brainy", "athletic", and having depth of character,[6] she was criticized as not credible in the role.[7][8] Her outfit, which often comprised a low-cut tank top and tight shorts, elicited comments.[9] She was ranked as one of the worst Bond girls of all time by Entertainment Weekly in 2008,[10] and was chosen as "Worst Supporting Actress" at the 1999 Razzie Awards for the role.

In addition to her film work, Richards has made appearances in the situation comedies Spin City, Two and a Half Men, Friends and Seinfeld. She also starred in the short-lived UPN series Sex, Love & Secrets in 2005.

Richards appeared in Valentine, Undercover Brother and Scary Movie 3. In December 2004, she posed for a nude pictorial in Playboy magazine, five months after giving birth.[12] Richards also posed semi-nude for the July 2006 issue of Jane magazine to raise money for the Clothes Off Our Back Foundation. In 1999, she ranked 9th in Maxim's 50 Sexiest Women and in 2001 she was voted 2nd in FHM's USA 100 Sexiest Women, 5th in FHM's 100 Sexiest Women and 19th in AskMen.com's 50 Most Beautiful Women.

Richards appeared on the 8th season of Dancing with the Stars, paired with Maksim Chmerkovskiy. She was eliminated second on March 24, 2009. Richards sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh-inning stretch at Wrigley Field on May 1, 2009.

Personal life

On November 8, 2006, officers from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) were called to the River Rock Casino in Richmond, B.C., where Richards was making a movie. After seeing two photographers taking her picture from a nearby balcony, she confronted them, and threw their two laptop computers over the balcony. One laptop struck an 80-year-old woman in a wheelchair. The other laptop grazed the arm of a 91-year-old woman. Neither woman suffered serious injury, and no charges were pressed against Richards.

On December 1, 2007, it was announced that Richards' mother, Joni, died from cancer.

In a May 18, 2008 interview with Larry King on Larry King Live, when asked about her Catholicism, Richards claimed, "I do have faith.

Marriage to Charlie Sheen

In 2002, Richards married actor Charlie Sheen, with whom she appeared in Good Advice and then Scary Movie 3, in which she played his character's wife who was pinned to a tree in a car accident. They have two daughters, Sam J. Sheen (born March 9, 2004).[18] and Lola Rose Sheen (born June 1, 2005).Of her mothers side she is of Croatian descent.

In March 2005, Richards filed for a divorce from Sheen.[21] The couple briefly reconciled and were seeking marriage counseling to mend their relationship. However, on January 4, 2006, Richards' representative announced that she was continuing with the divorce, and she later sought a restraining order against Sheen, citing his alleged death threats against her.

On April 19, 2006, Richards filed formal legal papers asking for a divorce from Sheen under the laws of the state of California.

In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Sheen described Richards' actions as a "smear campaign"

In 2008, Richards decided to include her two daughters with Charlie Sheen in her confessional reality program on E!, Denise Richards: It's Complicated, which premiered on May 26, 2008. He deemed her plans "greedy, vain and exploitative".[25] On January 25, 2008, Richards won a court case against Sheen so that she can include her daughters in the show.[26] When a judge rejected Sheen's request to block it,[27] Sheen urged fans to boycott it.[28]

An agreement was reached between Sheen and Richards regarding the custody of the children, with Sheen stating in April 2009 that “we had to do what’s best for the girls.”[29]

The Mania for the Machine Men

Shankar’s Enthiran is ready for release and all of a sudden the curiosity about robots and robotics has gone up several notches. We seem to have this thing for the machines which look and behave as men but which seem to be more equipped than we are and sci-fi films and comics can take full credit for stoking our interest in the automatons.

The filmi robot men who captured our imagination were those in the Star Wars. C3 PO and R2D2 robots with their raspy guttural voices were metallic humanoids, striding on wheeler limbs.

The movie had the two robots sharing a comical camaraderie that was only too amusing. With the Star Wars becoming a phenomenon, a slew of movies with robots, cyborgs and humanoids as protagonists followed.

Though there were damp squibs at the BO, a few like I-Robot, Transformer, Robocop series, Aliens series, Star Trek series, Matrix and Robot (animation) made it big. Tapping the West’s craze for movies based on lesser known or unknown elements, movies about robots have surfaced time and again and are most likely to be made in the future too.

When they were new, they unleashed the movie makers’ creativity. Soon directors made these machine men fight the baddies, seek revenge, kill their makers (I Robot)  and even romance the heroine (buzz is that Enthiran is a pot pourri of all these?).

Kids merchandise has found a potential in these movies and robot toys  have been very popular. Even TV shows and comics that cater to youngsters had to have a robotic character for extra appeal.

Irona, the robot maid and security guard to Richie Rich, who lives with Richie’s family or Rosie the robotic maid of the Jetsons Family are all examples of mirthful fembots, while the robot of Toy Story ( animation series) is an intellectual.

May be it’s not fair, but the robots on screen have overshadowed their behind-the-screen counterparts, which were responsible for the technical brilliance of movies like Jaws.

The shark was actually a robot and in Jurassic Park, the dinosaurs were robots too. The mechanical giants were remote controlled.

To give them their due credit, the filmi robots brought the obscure science of Robotics to the fore. Many avid fans of the Star War series have vouched that the movie inspired them to turn robotic engineers.

But what is Robotics actually ? Is it a field with scope only in tinseldom or does it find applications in real life too?
We posed our questions to Asokan, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Design, IITM, who is also a Robotics Expert.

He says, ‘It is wrong to term Robotics as a budding branch of study. But there is no denying that over the last two or three decades, there has been a spurt of development in this field.

Now almost all engineering colleges in India offer basic courses in Robotics to their students and this is one subject that all students love. They eagerly await the annual robotics competitions that are held by various universities.’

‘What one sees in movies, books and serials are the fantasy applications of robotics. In reality, robots find many uses as industrial,  medical and domestic robots,’ he says.

Explaining the term robot he says, ‘it is a mechatronic system that is a combination of electronics, software communication and artificial intelligence to some extent.

‘At IIT we have designed robots to carry out underwater research. We are also into developing cost- effective robots for industrial purposes.

They carry out operations autonomously in adverse conditions. There are cleaning robots too. Domestic robots find a lot of applications as teachers for the differently abled in a few countries, though it may take longer for them to catch up in the Indian scenario.

But here too robots are being increasingly used to provide assistance to the elderly. These robots fitted with prosthetic devices help old people to move about, open doors etc. The field of robotics is undergoing a lot of change.

‘There is a shift from industrial to domestic usage and this is welcome. Schools are introducing basic courses in robotics. This will kindle the children’s curiosity. They would want to know how the machine works. This is a good sign,’ he says.

But coming back to Enthiran. It is our first cine robot, though Hollywood may have had several of them. The average Indian movie-goer does not ga ga over sci-fi and such films have usually not been runaway successes.

Enthiran is a different thing, however. Director Shankar has made it and there is Rajnikanth in and as robot. The hype surrounding the movie has been huge and they say it can only be a stupendous hit. The good thing is, we don’t have to wait long to find if it will truly be what it is being made out to be.