LONDON (Reuters) – Veteran Scottish rocker Rod Stewart received a knighthood in Queen Elizabeth’s birthday honours list on Friday as a weekend of events was launched to mark the official 90th birthday of Britain’s oldest and longest-reigning monarch.

Known for hits such as “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” and “Maggie May”, Stewart was among more than 1,000 people to receive awards in the annual list which recognises Britons from famous celebrities to community charity workers.

The queen herself was honoured earlier on Friday at a National Service of Thanksgiving at London’s St Paul’s Cathedral, attended by dignitaries including Prime Minister David Cameron and all the senior royals.

In a ceremony laden with the pageantry that accompanies significant royal events, the monarch was greeted by a trumpet fanfare while the entrance to the cathedral was flanked by her Bodyguard of the Yeoman of the Guard, veteran soldiers dressed in scarlet uniforms.

It was a double celebration for the royals, with the occasion falling on the same day as the 95th birthday of Prince Philip, the queen’s husband of 68 years.

“Your Majesty, today we rejoice for the way in which God’s loving care has fearfully and wonderfully sustained you, as well as Prince Philip marking his 95th birthday today,” Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion said in his sermon.

He said the country looked back at her decades of service to the nation, through war, hardship, turmoil and change, with deep wonder and gratitude.

The queen, who has been on the throne for 64 years, turned 90 in April but in keeping with a tradition dating back to 1748, she also has an official birthday, usually in June, to ensure celebrations take place when the weather is likely to be better.

It is when a list of honours is issued, with this year’s recipients including 99-year-old singer Vera Lynn, who entertained British troops during World War Two, and Tim Peake, the first British astronaut to visit the International Space Station.

Other well-known figures to be honoured were England cricket captain Alastair Cook, former England soccer player Alan Shearer and Jamie Murray, who topped the tennis doubles rankings this year – the first British man to be a world number one since computerized rankings were introduced in the 1970s.

On Saturday, Elizabeth will attend the traditional Trooping the Colour parade of soldiers in ceremonial uniforms in central London followed by a fly-past of Royal Air Force aircraft over Buckingham Palace.

To conclude celebrations, the queen hosts “The Patrons Lunch” for 10,000 guests at the largest street party ever to be held on the Mall, the grand avenue that leads to Buckingham Palace, an event organised by her grandson, Peter Phillips.

The guests will come from some of the more than 600 charities and other organisations of which she is patron with the festivities beamed to large screens in the capital’s parks.

The government has said millions of Britons are expected to join the occasion at local street parties across the country.

 (Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Stephen Addison)

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NEW DELHI (Reuters) – In late 2014, the knives were out for India’s central bank governor Raghuram Rajan.

Finance ministry officials were frustrated by his reluctance to cut interest rates to stimulate growth, and moves were afoot to ease him out of the job. Some were airing their reservations about Rajan’s hawkish stance in the media.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi convened a meeting of senior finance ministry staff that December to hear their complaints, said a person who was present.

At the end, the leader delivered a stern message: do not indulge in a public spat with the central bank.

The moment marked a turning point in ties between the heads of the newly installed government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Since then, Modi and Rajan have developed a close working rapport, government officials and people close to the governor say, and that could be crucial to the $2 trillion economy.

With Modi’s patronage, it is more likely the government will reappoint Rajan, whose three-year term expires in September, should he wish to stay on, the sources said.

That would allow him to try to revive India’s banking sector that has been smothered by distressed debt, which, in turn, is choking off economic recovery.

“Rajan will get another term and he will accept it,” said Arvind Mayaram, India’s former finance secretary who Rajan worked with closely first as the government’s chief economic adviser and then as RBI governor. “He is well entrenched in India’s political economy.”

A top government official said the decision rests with Modi and the leader has not yet said what he wants to do. Modi recently told The Wall Street Journal that Rajan’s reappointment would come up only in September.

The official, speaking anonymously because he was not authorised to discuss the matter with the press, added that the prime minister was “proud” of the RBI governor and that a campaign against Rajan would not affect Modi’s decision.

The prime minister’s office and finance ministry did not respond to requests for comment. Rajan, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, has not disclosed his plans, and did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

MODI’S SUPPORT IS KEY

Modi’s support would be important if the 53-year-old RBI chief is to get the big state banking sector to complete a cleanup of massive debts and force defaulters to pay up.

Banks making provisions for bad debt are reluctant to issue new loans, leading to criticism within the sector and complaints from smaller businesses and politicians.

Patronage from above will also help shield Rajan from lingering opposition within the ruling nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to a man known for his straight talking and willingness to question government policy and achievements.

As the personal understanding between Rajan and Modi appears to grow, some officials still resent him.

The fact that Rajan was appointed by the previous Congress government did not help him win friends in Modi’s BJP, and the former University of Chicago professor has been viewed by some with suspicion as a product of the West, not India.

BJP parliamentarian and economist Subramanian Swamy, one of those leading a campaign to remove Rajan, recently accused him of “wilfully and deliberately wrecking the Indian economy.”

The governor’s penchant for blunt commentary raises hackles.

Rajan’s appeal for tolerance late last year was perceived to be a veiled criticism of the government for appealing to the Hindu majority at the expense of minority communities, prompting Swamy to rebuke him for speaking like a “grandfather”.

Rajan recently compared India’s fast-growing economy to a “one-eyed king in the land of the blind”. Trade Minister Nirmala Sitharaman publicly censured his comments.

BONHOMIE

The first signs of growing bonhomie between Modi and Rajan came early last year, when Modi called Rajan the “best teacher” for explaining complex economic issues to him.

Days later, the governor returned the compliment, saying the teaching went both ways.

The prime minister backed Rajan in the monetary policy panel’s composition and blocking moves to strip the RBI’s authority to regulate government bonds and manage public debt.

Modi’s office also directed the finance ministry to pursue only those policies where there was agreement with the central bank, a former finance ministry official said.

The governor frequently visits New Delhi to meet Modi, a government official with direct knowledge said. But their meetings are mostly kept away from the public gaze.

Modi’s office declined a request to disclose the number and details of the meetings, saying the information relates to “economic interest of the state”.

Rajan had help from junior finance minister Jayant Sinha, a college friend and one of the more influential economic voices in the Modi government.

At the December meeting, Sinha told the attendees that the clashes were undermining the government’s credibility, the person present said.

A government source said that Sinha also facilitated meetings between Rajan and Modi to broker a compromise on thorny issues such as the composition of the new monetary panel. Sinha did not respond to a request for comment.

LEARNING ON THE JOB

Rajan may prove a more effective governor second time around if he gets the chance, say some RBI insiders and economists.

Although he fended off a market attack on the rupee early in his tenure, bankers, economists and his former colleagues said he was relatively slow to grasp how liquidity flows through the economy and how to fine tune it to meet his primary policy goal of taming inflation.

Under Rajan, the RBI forced banks to source limited short-term funds from cash-for-bond auctions rather than getting unlimited funds from the central bank at a fixed rate.

Banks complained the new system was forcing up costs and hampering the transmission of rate cuts to the real economy, said several bankers privy to the discussions with the RBI.

At first, Rajan publicly dismissed their concerns as “nonsense”. It was only after 16 months of pleading by banks that he finally revamped the RBI’s liquidity management in April, the bankers said.

A second stint is likely to see a more accomplished operator as the RBI tackles bank debt, tries to develop the bond market as a viable source of funding for companies and switches to a Western-style approach to decision making.

A new monetary policy panel will be formed later this year to set interest rates, something Rajan favoured to make the RBI more independent and introduce transparency to the process.

In a key victory for Rajan, draft legislation from the finance ministry that would have allowed the government to appoint more than half of the panel’s members was amended to split it evenly between government and RBI nominees.

Rajan will get the casting vote in the case of a 3-3 split.

Those who have worked with Rajan said his people skills and powers of persuasion will give him a big say on setting rates.

“WHY ROCK THE BOAT?”

Rajan continues to be lionised by foreign investors whose funds are needed to keep the Indian economy motoring ahead.

That was key in convincing Modi to defend him, while two off-cycle interest rate cuts in January and March last year also acted as a balm, a senior minister in the federal cabinet said.

The country has been ravaged by drought in the last two years and not enough jobs are being created to accommodate its rapidly expanding workforce, but India is the world’s fastest growing major economy and inflation is half what it was in 2013.

“The combination of Modi, (Finance Minister Arun) Jaitley and Rajan are delivering on the macro front,” said Gita Gopinath, an economics professor at Harvard University who knows Rajan well. “I really don’t see any reason to rock the boat.”

 (Additional reporting by Douglas Busvine, Neha Dasgupta, Suvashree Choudhury and Rupam Jain; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

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Authors:

François Vaillancourt

Charles Lammam

Director, Fiscal Studies, Fraser Institute

Feixue Ren

Economist, Fraser Institute

Marylène Roy

Research Assistant, CIRANO

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BERKELEY, CA / Troy Media: Here is a tip that will quickly gain you the nonverbal advantage in any negotiation or important business meeting.

Want to know what the biggest ‘secret’ to body language experts’ success? They take the time to determine how a person acts under relaxed or generally stress-free conditions so that they can more accurately spot meaningful deviations.

It’s the same for you. Before you can assign meaning to a behaviour (arms crossed, slumped posture, frown, etc.) you need a baseline to compare it to. When you know what is normal for your counterparts/co-workers/interviewees, you will be able to quickly and accurately detect even minor shifts when their body language behaviour is out of character. For example, if the person you are interviewing habitually sits with crossed arms, it is a baseline posture. But if the crossed-arms gesture occurs only rarely, then you’d be wise to pay attention to those occasions, know that something meaningful is happening, and ask follow-up questions.

Of course, you need to gather baseline information before the interview (or meeting or negotiation) starts. So, while you are chatting informally, notice how the other person’s body looks when he’s relaxed. What is her normal amount of eye contact and her blink rate? How does he respond when discussing some non-threatening topic? If you ask a few questions that makes the person recall factual information (‘Who referred you to me?’ ‘How many years have you been working as a consultant?’ ‘How did you hear about this job offer?’), you can note if her eyes move to a preferred side when accessing truthful answers.

Even a lie-seeking computer system relies on a baseline. At the University of Buffalo (New York) computer scientists developed lie detection software that tracks eye movements and blink rates, and correctly detects deceit more than 80 per cent of the time. The system employed a statistical technique to model how people moved their eyes in two distinct situations: during regular conversation (their baseline) and while fielding a question designed to prompt a lie. It was found that people whose pattern of eye movements changed between the first and second scenario were often lying, while those who maintained consistent eye movement were most likely telling the truth.

Try this: Before the next business meeting begins, look around the room and begin to notice – really notice – how your co-workers look when they are relaxed and comfortable. Then stay alert for changes in postures, gestures, and facial expressions. I think you’ll be surprised at how well you can ‘read the room.’

Troy Media columnist Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is an executive coach, consultant, and international keynote speaker at corporate, government, and association events

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LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister David Cameron published his tax records on Sunday in an attempt to draw a line under questions about his personal finances raised by the mention of his late father in the Panama Papers for setting up an offshore fund.

The revelations have led to demands for Cameron’s resignation and handed ammunition to opposition lawmakers who questioned why he was reluctant to detail his financial connections with his father.

Cameron took the unorthodox step of releasing the normally confidential details after saying he should have handled the scrutiny of his family’s tax affairs better.

The documents from RNS Chartered Accountants – which cover six years – show Cameron paid tax of 75,898 pounds ($107,198) on income of 200,307 pounds in the 2014-2015 financial year, the most recent one included.

His income comprised his 140,522 pound salary, taxable expenses of 9,834 pounds, 46,899 pounds from half of the share of rent from his family home in London and 3,052 pounds in interest on savings, according to the record.

Scores of politicians and business figures have been implicated in the Panama Papers, including the prime minister of Iceland who has since stepped down. The 11.5 million documents leaked from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca detail the creation of more than 200,000 companies in offshore tax havens.

While Cameron is not accused of doing anything illegal, he made four different statements over four days about his late father’s inclusion in the documents.

He said on Thursday he once had a stake in his father’s offshore trust and had profited from it.

He said the unit investment trust was not set up to avoid tax but to invest in dollar-denominated shares and that he had paid all taxes due on his own investment, which was worth “something like 30,000 pounds” when he sold out in January 2010, before he became prime minister.

TAX TASKFORCE

Cameron’s admission of fault comes after a torrid period for his Conservative government. It is divided over a June 23 referendum on whether to remain in the European Union, has been forced to backtrack on welfare cuts and has been accused of not protecting Britain’s steel industry.

Seeking to further take back the initiative, Cameron also announced on Sunday a new taskforce, jointly led by Britain’s tax authority and National Crime Agency, to build on the work Britain has done to tackle money laundering and tax evasion.

When Britain hosted a G8 summit in 2013, Cameron put tackling tax avoidance at the heart of the agenda. Some of Britain’s former colonies increasingly rely on revenues from shell companies and trusts that often hide wealth.

“The UK has been at the forefront of international action to tackle the global scourge of aggressive tax avoidance and evasion, and international corruption more broadly,” Cameron said in a statement.

“There is clearly further to go and this taskforce will bring the best of British expertise to deal with any wrongdoing relating to the Panama Papers.”

The government said it had tracked down 2 billion pounds  ($2.82 billion) from offshore tax dodgers since 2010, and authorities were already investigating 700 current leads with links to Panama.

The taskforce will receive 10 million pounds of funding to start work, the government said.

 (Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Alison Williams)

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