When the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer transited the Strait of Hormuz earlier this week, it had a light armored vehicle strapped to its flight deck. The novel innovation reflects the US Marine Corps' lack of preparation to counter emerging surface threats.
The 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) decided to strap one of its LAV-25 armored fighting vehicles to the flight deck of the USS Boxer earlier this week as the ship was preparing to enter the narrow Strait of Hormuz.
Evidence came in the form of a US Navy photo of AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters lifting off from the Boxer's flight deck, with the armored vehicle sitting in the background of the image.
WNU Editor:Strapping an armored vehicle on an assault ship's flight deck tells me that the Navy is not confident that their defensive systems will be able to stop an attack on the surface.
ISIL women run a morality police inside the camp, enforcing sharia law and even conducting brutal executions, officials say.
ISIL has largely taken over control of a huge camp in northeast Syria, and there's no plan for what to do with the 70,000 people there (including more than 50,000 children). The United States and Europe must immediately address this urgent national security and humanitarian crisis, before a new caliphate is established while we watch.
After the fall of Raqqa and the coalition defeat of ISIL's strongholds, President Donald Trump announced that "100 percent" of the caliphate had been destroyed. But the tens of thousands of ISIL fighters and family members left over were herded into massive fenced internally displaced persons (IDP) camps with little aid, security or supervision. Separate from the IDP camps, which house mostly women and children, more than 2,000 ISIL fighters sit in a network of makeshift prisons. The entire system is managed by the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who are under-resourced, understaffed and allied with a United States that is eyeing the exits.
* Cannon-Delivered Area Effects Munition system will use GPS to identify targets * The weapons will have a range of up to 60 kilometres while scanning and objects * Will replace the Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munition (DPICM) artillery
The U.S. government is spending millions of dollars on creating intelligent missiles - which will determine for targets for themselves.
The Cannon-Delivered Area Effects Munition (C-DAEM) system will use GPS to identify enemy tanks and armoured shells, which will be scanned in advance from the skies.
According to sources, the Pentagon will invest vast sums into the AI-guided munitions, which could be ready by 2021.
They will replace the Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munition (DPICM) artillery rounds, which were introduced in the 1980s.
WNU Editor: These AI-guided missiles will have the ability to "pick their own targets". All that I can say is that I hope the software that is used will be hack-proof.
* Republican Senator Marco Rubio calls the proposed deal 'an important step in support of Taiwan's self-defence efforts' * Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman warns 'the US will have to bear all the consequences' for its bold move
The Trump administration is pushing ahead with a US$8 billion sale of 66 F-16 fighter aircraft to Taiwan, a move expected to add further tension to already strained relations between Beijing and Washington, according to two influential senators.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida praised the administration for advancing the deal, which he said in a statement was "an important step in support of Taiwan's self-defence efforts".
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman shakes hands with US President Donald Trump, at the G20 leaders summit in Osaka, Japan, June 29, 2019 [Handout via Reuters]
Trump's mismanagement of the nuclear issue in the Middle East is damaging the international nonproliferation regime.
Over the past three months since the Trump administration imposed severe sanctions on Iran, which have significantly curbed its oil exports and exacerbated its economic crisis, tensions in the Gulf have escalated. Commercial vessels have been attacked, oil tankers seized and drones shot down. Despite these escalations, both sides are holding back and at least in the short-term, an open conflict so far seems unlikely.
In the long-term, however, the highly-problematic approach that the United States has adopted towards the nuclear issue could have devastating consequences. Two recent developments point in that direction.
WNU Editor: Long before President Trump was on the scene a number of Middle Eastern countries had .... or still have .... a nuclear weapons program. Israel was the first. Iraq under Saddam Hussein wanted nuclear weapons (we know what happened there). Syria's nuclear facilities were bombed by Israel before the Syrian war. Egypt abandoned its program to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has had a nuclear program since the 1990s. And now Saudi Arabia wants one.
From Wikipedia: Tripoli is a 1950 American adventure film directed by Will Price and written by Winston Miller. The film is a fictionalized account of the Battle of Derna at Derna, a coastal town in modern eastern Libya in April 1805 against Tripoli, one of the four Barbary states in North Africa and stars John Payne, Maureen O'Hara, Howard Da Silva, Phillip Reed, Grant Withers, Lowell Gilmore and Connie Gilchrist. The film was released on November 9, 1950, by Paramount Pictures.
And What That Means for a Future Conflict With the United States
In the spring of 2011, watching the groundswell of dissent that eventually came to be known as the Arab Spring, commentators of various political stripes and nationalities expressed hope that the region would move toward democracy. Iran had experienced a similar moment two years earlier, when millions of citizens protested what they saw as the fraudulent reelection of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But by 2011, Tehran had effectively crushed that movement. As a result, many Iranians watched the Arab Spring unfold with envy.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un guides the test firing of a new weapon, in this undated photo released on August 16, 2019 by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). KCNA via REUTERS
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the test-firing of a new weapon again on Friday morning, state media KCNA said on Saturday.
North Korea launched at least two short-range ballistic missiles on Friday, South Korea's military said, its sixth round of weapons launches since late July, complicating efforts to restart talks between the United States and North Korea over Pyongyang's weapons programs.
Stephen Biegun, the U.S. special envoy for North Korea will travel to Japan and South Korea next week to coordinate efforts to secure the denuclearization of North Korea, the State Department said on Friday.
* David Roche, a founder and strategist at research firm Independent Strategy, said China's response will be "linked to what happens to trade talks and international relations globally." * In fact, the politics go hand in hand with the Chinese economy, he told CNBC on Friday. * On Thursday, Hong Kong's government announced that it is expecting to lower its 2019 GDP growth forecast to between 0% and 1%, from the original range of 2% to 3%.
The months-long protests in Hong Kong could come to an end soon, according to strategist David Roche, who said they will "be settled or crushed" before October 1 — the 70th anniversary of China's National Day.
The way China responds to the situation in the city is crucial in determining how markets and U.S.-China trade talks will be affected, he told CNBC on Friday.
In fact, the politics go hand in hand with the Chinese economy, Roche said.
"I don't accept this will be a small scale problem in a larger China economy. The reason I don't is because I believe any intervention (from Beijing) to Hong Kong will be immediately, umbilically, linked to what happens to trade talks and international relations globally," said Roche, who is president at research and investment consulting firm Independent Strategy.
Roche said "Beijing has to weigh in on two things: the political and economic cause."
WNU Editor: October 1 will be the 70th anniversary of China's National Day, and it is an annual holiday. Will China intervene before that date? It is too far in the future to make such a prediction. I know that if the protests continue for the next month or two the urge for Beijing to intervene will be tremendous. But the economic and political cost will be enormous, and IMHO this is not the right time or place for a Chinese military incursion. The political and economic leadership in Hong Kong support the current government and their ties with Beijing, and even Hong Kong's movie stars are pushing for a peaceful resolution .... Jackie Chan & Mulan Star Liu Yifei Reportedly Speak Out on 'Sad and Depressing' Hong Kong Protests (People). A forceful and bloody military intervention will jeopardize all of this support, and it will certainly kill the vibrancy and energy that is Hong Kong. As to what is my take on the protests. I have been to Hong Kong dozens of times. I love the territory, and I have seen it grow and develop since the 1980s. The one country, two systems arrangement has benefited Hong Kong tremendously, and it has given Hong Kong a status that the mainland Chinese do not have. Beijing ordering the military to enter Hong Kong will destroy this arrangement, and the big losers will be the people of Hong Kong themselves. They will lose what they have right now, and the territory will never be the same.
WNU Editor: This ten minute time period is very feasible. Hong Kong is actually a very small place, and Chinese military forces are only stationed a few kilometres from the border (see the above map).
* The new Okhotsk drone, meaning Hunter, only made its maiden flight this month * It will be capable of flying from Moscow to London and back on a single mission * Drone can be deployed as a spy in the sky but is also capable of firing missiles * Russia boasts the lethal new stealth drone will be almost invisible to enemy radar
Vladimir Putin's lethal new stealth combat drone has taken to the skies in tandem with a Russian fighter jet for the first time.
The Sukhoi-made Okhotsk - meaning Hunter - only made its maiden flight this month and Russia boasts it is 'almost undetectable'.
The unmanned flying vehicle can be controlled on missions by pilots in an accompanying warplane, or from the ground.
The drone will be capable of flying from Moscow to London and back on a single mission.
WNU Editor: From RT .... While the drone's properties are still classified, it is believed that it will have a takeoff weight of some 20-25 tons and operate at a supersonic speed of 1,400 km/h (870mph). It is also likely to carry surveillance gear as well as weapons in its internal bays.
The units were spotted outside Eielson Air Force Base near the US-Russian border.
A pair of Soviet-era armoured air defence systems and at least one US Air Force F-16 with a colour scheme designed to look like the ones used by the Russian air force have been spotted during a recent US Air Force drill in Alaska.
The Soviet mobile air defence units involved included a 9K35 Strela-10 (NATO reporting name SA-13 Gopher) surface-to-air-missile (SAM) system, along with a 9K33 Osa (SA-8 Gecko) SAM, with the systems designed "to replicate various threats" to US aircraft and meant to ensure "a realistic training experience," according to Defence Blog.
The world's highest gas station. We've enjoyed having our joint force and international partners here for Red Flag-Alaska 19-3. Aerial refueling is but one component we train on but it's critically important to ensuring the readiness of our forces to deploy at a moment's notice. pic.twitter.com/zE9tQUAnMV
The plane, under the Treaty on Open Skies, is permitted to fly inside the airspace of parties, such as the United States, that are member to the treaty
* On August 14 it landed in Hawaii ahead of a flyover of US defense assets * The Russian Tupolev Tu-154M had departed Moscow, for the United States, via Iceland on August 11 * Its flight over Chicago this week caused a bit of a stir among locals unaware it was on an official mission permitted under the Treaty on Open Skies
A Russian Air Force jet has been spotted flying in the skies above the US Midwest on what appears to be a surveillance mission of key strategic defense assets in the nation.
The Tupolev Tu-154M was captured on flight radar flying across parts of the country including Chicago - the home of the US navy's largest training sites and Hawaii - home of the Hickam Air Force Base and the local Marine Corps.
FlightRadar24 data shows the air force jet left the Russian Federation on August 11, before a stopover in Reykjavik, Iceland, that same day before passing through Vacaville, Northern California before it is believed to have then undertaken its surveillance missions over Hawaii on Wednesday.
About one third of country's 15 million people are in dire need of food aid
Zimbabwe's police have attacked opposition protesters with batons and fired teargas at crowds gathered in the centre of Harare, organised in defiance of a ban.
More than a hundred supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) gathered in Africa Unity Square to demonstrate against the government's handling of the economy and its repressive crackdown against activists.
Police, who had banned the protest on Thursday, a move upheld by Zimbabwe's High Court on Friday morning, fired teargas to disperse the demonstrators, who ran into nearby streets, and arrested several among the crowd.
Many shops remained closed and residents reportedly stayed off the streets.
President Trump has privately asked aides about the possibility of purchasing Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
Two advisers told the Journal that Trump asked them and other advisers at dinners and in passing conversations whether such a move would be possible, listening intently when they talked about its resources and geopolitical importance.
He also reportedly asked his White House counsel to look into the idea.
WNU Editor: The Wall Street Journal is using two sources (i.e. two aides) for this story. Is it true? Like many of these stories I have become skeptical on what the media reports. But with only 56,000 inhabitants, and being an autonomous Danish territory, it is up to them on what they want .... 'We're NOT for sale': Greenland shoots down Trump plan to buy island (The Independent).
More News On Reports That President Trump Wants The U.S. To Buy Greenland
Eleven days after the Indian government suspended all communications in Indian-controlled Kashmir, the disputed region still has no contact with the outside world.
Millions of residents in the Kashmir Valley -- one of the most militarized regions in the world -- are living behind a virtual curtain. Unable to access the internet, send letters, or even make calls using a fixed line, India's most volatile region has vanished from the modern world.
"No telephone lines are working, no internet is working, no broadband is working. There is a virtual clampdown. There is no communication link... My own office is not functioning and I am not in touch with a single bureau member in Srinagar," said Anuradha Bhasin, executive editor of the Kashmir Times.
President Trump will meet with his national security team Friday afternoon to discuss a pending peace agreement with the Taliban, according to multiple reports.
A senior administration official confirmed to reporters that Trump will meet with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at his resort in Bedminster, N.J., but would not give details on the meeting's topic.
Multiple news outlets reported that the topic will be the 18-year-old war in Afghanistan. The official did not dispute that.
The official added that Trump has "been pretty clear" about his desire to withdraw from Afghanistan.
The sea service would prefer to recycle ship designs, adding revolutionary tech as it becomes available.
The U.S. Navy would prefer older ship designs outfitted with new weapons instead of new designs fitted with new weapons. The service, stung by recent difficulties fielding new hulls such as the destroyer USS Zumwalt, could choose to produce the same type of ship but with progressively more advanced technology, including weapons.
According to Greek mythology, the hero Theseus owned a ship that was slowly replaced, plank by plank, until every part had been replaced. This has led to the "Ship of Theseus" thought experiment that asks the question: if every part of an object is replaced, is the result the same object or an essentially new one?
WNU editor: I am sure the U.S. Navy will continue to explore and develop building ships with new designs, but the focus is shifting to produce ships that everyone knows will work.
The Navy plans to rip these systems out of five Nimitz class carriers, but until then, the service wants its crews trained on how to use them.
Sailors on board some of the U.S. Navy's Nimitz class aircraft carriers are still training to employ an unreliable anti-torpedo defense system nearly a year after it stopped work on the program entirely. The service still plans to remove these defensive systems from the ships completely within the next four years, but until that happens, personnel will have to remain qualified to use them, if necessary.
Venezuelan migrants Yonaimer Godoy and Mail Levea talk to Godoy''s father and their two-year-old son from a migrant shelter in Lima, Peru [Megan Janetsky/Al Jazeera]
Latin American countries, once relatively open for Venezuelans, introduce new restrictions for migrants and refugees.
Lima, Peru - Yonaimer Godoy and his wife peered into his cracked phone, their eyes stained with tears.
"What are you doing over there?" Godoy's father asked him through a video call.
"Crying."
It was their son's second birthday, and they were stuck in a migrant shelter in Lima, Peru. They had left their home in Venezuela with a goal: earn enough money to help their family and eventually get them out of their collapsing country.
But Peru, the second-biggest receiver of the more than four million migrant and refugee exodus from Venezuela, had been hard on them. With temporary tourist visas, they were unable to find the work they were searching for. Instead, they were forced to sell drinks on street corners for about seven dollars a day and said they've faced a rising wave of xenophobia.
WNU Editor: The exodus of Venezuelans fleeing their country has not stopped, with many predicting that this crisis is only going to get worse. The economies in Latin America are not structured to accept large number of migrants, and (not surprising) they are responding accordingly.
Editors Note: There are few places as chaotic or dangerous as Venezuela. "Life in Caracas" is a series of short stories that seeks to capture the surreal quality of living in a land in total disarray
He knew this one was going to get laughs. "Raise your hands if you're only in here because the power is on."
It was an easy lay-up for Oscar Martinez, one of the dozens of comedians drawing standing-room-only throngs in Venezuela's mostly miserable capital. He had another sure hit when he picked a couple out of the audience, asked a few questions and discovered the woman had a Spanish passport.
"So you're engaged and you're migrating, or are you engaged because you're migrating?" The crowd roared.
The crisis in the country is officially a laughing matter. Venezuelans have always been quick to turn catastrophe into jokes. It's a long tradition here. We're loud, irreverent, informal to a fault and wildly funny. (At least we think so.) But stand-up comedians are having a moment like never before, with shows almost every night of the week.
WNU Editor: This brings back memories of living in the Soviet Union. We all needed to laugh, and what better way than making a joke on how we were living.
(TASIILAQ, Greenland) — Greenlanders are giving Donald Trump the cold shoulder.
Although amused, they’re definitely not warming up to the U.S. president’s talk of buying the semiautonomous Danish territory. “We see it as an expression of greater interest in investing in our country and the possibilities we offer,” the Greenland government said Friday in a short statement. “Of course, Greenland is not for sale.”
Reports that Trump had spoken about the notion of buying the land mass, which lies between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, were good for a laugh, residents said.
“He has nothing to do with Greenland,” said 28-year-old Martina M.D.D. Tay, who was born and raised in Tasiilaq, a coastal Greenland town of about 2,000 people. “I think it’s a ridiculous idea. I think it sounds stupid.”
Lars Loekke Rasmussen, who served as Danish prime minister until June, weighed in on social media, tweeting “it must be an April Fool’s Day joke” that was out of season.
A Trump ally told The Associated Press on Thursday that the Republican president had discussed the purchase but was not serious about it. And a Republican congressional aide said Trump brought up the notion of buying Greenland in conversations with American lawmakers enough times to make them wonder, but they have not taken his comments seriously. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
“Because of the unofficial nature of the news, the government of Greenland has no further comments,” Greenland said on its website.
The White House has not commented on the reports, but it wouldn’t be the first time an American leader tried to buy the world’s largest island.
In 1946, the U.S. proposed paying Denmark $100 million to buy Greenland after flirting with the idea of swapping land in Alaska for strategic parts of the Arctic island.
When she heard that Donald Trump wants to buy Greenland, Tina Joergensen laughed. “I thought it was a joke,” said Joergensen, a native of Denmark who was flying from tiny Kulusuk on Greenland’s eastern coast to the larger Tasiilaq for a new job as a nurse. “He can buy anything I guess, or this is what he thinks he can. But you can’t — sorry. In my view, you can’t buy a country. It’s very respectless.”
Jakob Ipsen was less than impressed with the possibility Trump may want to purchase his nation. Ipsen has something in common with the U.S. president: Both run hotels.
Ipsen’s hotel is smaller than a Trump one and provides hands-on service, such as finding boats and driving guests around. Ipsen noted there’s a history of outsiders unsuccessfully wanting to take over the giant, mostly barren island.
“Never going to happen. They tried in 1867 without luck. They tried after World War II,” Ipsen said. “It didn’t happen then and it’s not going to happen now.”
It reads like something out of a conspiracy theory. On Tuesday, Russia sent a surveillance plane over the Midwest, and the U.S. military didn’t do anything to stop it.
Keen observers spotted the plane, a Tupolev Tu-154M, on commercial flight trackers as it entered U.S. airspace on Aug. 11 and flew past Dayton, Ohio and then west over Chicago and Minneapolis.
In fact, the flight was part of the Open Skies Treaty––a 17-year-old program that permits many countries, including Russia and the U.S., to send surveillance flights over each other’s territories each year.
Experts say that’s actually a sign of good will that Russia flies surveillance planes over U.S. territory. And, it might actually make you a bit safer by deescalating tensions between the two nations.
When is a Russian spy plane not actually a spy plane?
Open Skies flights aren’t a secret. Under the terms of the Treaty on Open Skies, both countries are aware of the flights in advance, and there’s a quota for the number of flights permitted. The country being flown over must sign off on the equipment the planes carry.
And the country sending the plane must notify the other country at least 72 hours ahead of the observational flight.
The information that the flights are collecting also isn’t a secret. The countries must provide all the images they collect to all of the other nations on request.
“This is all planned in advance. The Russians can’t just decide willy-nilly that they’re going to fly over Cleveland or Chicago or a missile base,” says Stephen Schwartz, a senior fellow with the non-profit Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
What is the Open Skies program?
In March 1992, the United States signed the Treaty with 23 Open Skies countries – including Russia. The countries agreed that they would permit the other countries to send a limited number of observation flights over their territories.
Signed in the aftermath of the Cold War, the treaty, which now has 34 members, was designed for the countries to gather intelligence about each others’ military capabilities, and according to the treaty text, to promote “greater openness and transparency in their military activities and to enhancing security by means of confidence––and security-building measures.”
Most of the former biggest Cold War players are signed on, including the U.S., Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Poland and Ukraine.
China, Japan and other Asian powers are not involved.
Since the program was put into effect on January 1, 2002, the member countries have conducted more than 1,200 surveillance flights.
Why do we let Russian spy planes fly over the U.S.?
It’s a useful program primarily because it allows both sides to have greater confidence that they are not being fooled by the other.
Schwartz says that the treaty serves two major purposes: reassuring both sides that they are aware of the other’s military and nuclear capabilities, and preventing an arms race generated by fear of the unknown.
According to Schwartz, arms races are wildly expensive and time consuming for both countries, and can lead to a dangerous escalation of tensions or accidents.
“The idea is that we have some confidence and some predictability about what’s going on on the ground, that we can see for ourselves––and they can see for themselves at our facilities,” Schwartz says. “It’s a reassurance that nothing truly nefarious is going on.”
Schwartz says that the treaty can mitigate each country’s concerns about falling behind their adversary, as occurred during the 1950s and 1960s.
“Because of fear and paranoia––and poor to nonexistent intelligence––both sides managed to convince themselves that the other side was doing something extremely dangerous and overcompensated by building all sorts of weapons––and deploying all sorts of weapons that in the end weren’t really necessary,” Schwartz says.
Schwartz says that at this time, there’s renewed cause for concern about escalating tensions between Russia and the United States leading to a new arms race. Earlier this month, the U.S. withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, and there are signs that the New START treaty will not be renewed when it expires in 2021.
Schwartz says that he’s concerned about the loss of restraints on the nuclear programs in the U.S. and Russia. Earlier this month, a small nuclear explosion at a Russian military installation came amid reports that the country is trying to develop new types of nuclear weapons.
“We’re in a very uncertain and, I think, dangerous moment here. And it’s all because of people like [Trump’s National Security Adviser, John] Bolton and his ilk who very want the United States to be able to act freely whenever and wherever we want. And that sort of attitude is not conducive to having a safe and secure world.”
(Bloomberg) –– The Trump administration has informally told Congress that it supports a potential sale of F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan, a move that will likely anger China at a key moment in trade talks with the U.S.
The State Department has informally told key House and Senate committees that it supports the $8 billion sale of 66 F-16s, according to two congressional aides with knowledge of the decision. Even with Congressional support, it will be years before any of the Lockheed Martin Corp. jets are delivered, assuming Taiwan signs an actual contract.
It’s unclear whether the administration’s support for the sale will be used as a bargaining chip in the still-fluid trade talks with Beijing or whether it represents additional support for a government long seen as a bulwark against Chinese expansion in the Asia-Pacific region. China has long protested U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, which it views as part of its territory.
The U.S., wary of antagonizing China, hasn’t sold advanced fighter jets since then-President George H.W. Bush announced the sale of 150 F-16s to Taiwan in 1992. The Obama administration rejected a similar Taiwanese request for new jets, agreeing in 2011 to upgrade the island’s existing fleet.
President Donald Trump on Thursday said he planned to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping “soon.” The U.S. has a new round of tariffs scheduled to go into effect on Chinese imports Sept. 1, a move authorities in Beijing has warned will spark a retaliatory response.
Normally, the informal 30-day notification process to Congress that started Thursday night would be followed by a formal, publicly released notification to congressional committees that lawmakers have another 30 days to approve or disapprove. A U.S. official said the formal notification is likely to occur sooner, however.
After that it could take months or years before Taiwan and the U.S. actually ink a contact and possibly years after that before deliveries begin. The “Block 70” F-16s offered for sale are common to those sold to other U.S. allies.
The Taiwan F-16s, however, would be equipped with top-line fire control radar made by Northrop Grumman Corp. that would allow precision-guided munitions to be fired at greater distances, said an official familiar with the details.
The current political turmoil in Hong Kong has extended to an unlikely battleground: Disney’s live-action remake of Mulan. On Thursday, an online protest emerged against the film after its star, Liu Yifei, expressed support for the Hong Kong police on social media. Here’s what to know about the developing controversy.
The battle for Hong Kong began several months ago
Pro-democracy protests have roiled Hong Kong for almost three months following Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s introduction of a bill that would allow for criminal extraditions to mainland China. Lam is backed by the mainland government, and pro-democracy advocates fear the bill would allow Beijing to punish dissidents more easily and forcefully.
This week, demonstrators occupied Hong Kong’s airport and clashes erupted with police. Over the past several months, protesters have faced batons, pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets from the police. Several prominent organizations, including the United Nations human rights office and Amnesty International, have condemned the Hong Kong police’s use of force during the protests. The police were also accused of allowing an armed mob to attack protestors last month, resulting in dozens of injuries.
Mulan star Liu Yifei said she supports the Hong Kong police
On Wednesday, Liu reshared a post from the state-backed newspaper People’s Daily that read: “I support the Hong Kong police. You can all attack me now.” Those words were said on Tuesday night by Fu Guohao, a reporter for another state-run Chinese newspaper, while he was being tied up and attacked by protestors at the Hong Kong airport. The words have become a rallying cry for the Chinese government and its supporters, who seek to portray the protestors as violent radicals.
Liu, in her own post, added in Chinese, “I also support the Hong Kong police,” and included heart and strong-arm emojis. Liu has 65 million followers on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform. The original post received over 2 million likes and an outpouring of support, and Liu’s post was liked 81,000 times.
Liu Yifei, also known as Crystal Liu, was cast as Mulan in 2017 after Disney saw nearly 1,000 candidates for the role, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Her casting was celebrated by an online community angry over a recent wave of whitewashed roles. Liu has been one of China’s most bankable stars over the last decade, appearing in fantasy and action films while also supporting a musical career.
Liu, who was born in China and spent part of her childhood living in New York, has spent much of her career in China. But she has also crossed over into English-speaking roles in 2008’s The Forbidden Kingdom, opposite Jackie Chan, and 2014’s Outcast, with Nicolas Cage.
Fans called for a boycott of the Disney live-action remake
Although her sentiment received an outpouring of support, Liu also quickly faced backlash from many across the world who support the protests, with the hashtag #BoycottMulan emerging on Twitter. “She could be a powerful voice for justice but instead, she supports this brutality,” one Tweet said of Liu.
To everyone including me who was excited about the new Mulan live action:
Liu Yifei is aligned with the Chinese Communist Party and is anti-Hong Kong. Do not go and watch it. pic.twitter.com/kl9cF499Qa
— 🇭🇰 Yusei #SAVEHONGKONG 🌺 (@synchroshipping) August 15, 2019
The protests have ensnarled the rollout of Mulan, a live-action remake of the beloved 1998 animated film that follows a Chinese girl as she impersonates a man in her quest to become a warrior and defend her homeland. The remake, slated for release in 2020, is highly anticipated: Its starry cast includes Donnie Yen, Jet Li and Rosalind Chao, and its director is Niki Caro (WhaleRider), who helmed filming in her home country of New Zealand. The film also arrives amidst an outcry for increased Asian representation in Hollywood, on the heels of films like Crazy Rich Asians and The Farewell.
The incident fits into a larger story about dissent and support among Chinese entertainers
While she’s being criticized widely on Twitter, Liu’s support of Chinese authorities is the norm for Chinese entertainers. Others have found that protesting the government carries huge career implications: the Cantopop singer Denise Ho, a vocal supporter of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, has been blacklisted from the mainland Chinese market. The singer Anthony Wong also said he lost more than half of his annual income that came from China after voicing support for the Umbrella Movement in 2014. “I think they are trying to ban us because they’re afraid of different views,” Wong told the New York Times that year.
And the career of Fan Bingbing, a Chinese icon, unraveled after she raised the ire of the Chinese government, albeit for a different reason, tax evasion. She was held under a type of house arrest for months by tax authorities.
Most Chinese entertainers have either voiced support for the government or refused to comment either way on the protests. Lay Zhang Yixing, a Chinese musician who is a member of the K-pop grop Exo, posted the same message as Liu. Jackie Chan, when asked about the protests, said “I don’t know anything about it.”
A representative for Disney and a publicist for Liu did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Correction, Aug. 16
The original version of this story misspelled the genre of music sung by Denise Ho. It is Cantopop, not Catopop.
(NEW DELHI) — Hundreds of people have held a street protest in Indian-controlled Kashmir as India’s government assured the Supreme Court that the situation in the disputed region is being reviewed daily and unprecedented security restrictions will be removed over the next few days.
Carrying green Islamic flags and placards reading “Stop Genocide in Kashmir, Wake Up World,” young and old people took to the streets in Srinagar, the region’s main city, after Friday prayers.
Some hurled stones and clashed with security forces, who responded with tear gas.
Earlier Friday, a senior Indian official in Kashmir, B.V.R. Subrahmanyam, confirmed there would some loosening of restrictions on the region’s residents, saying that landline phone services would be restored gradually beginning Friday night and schools reopened from Monday.
The U.N. Security Council is meeting behind closed doors to discuss the situation in Kashmir for the first time in decades at the request of China and Pakistan following India’s revocation of the region’s special constitutional status and downgrading of its statehood.
The U.N.’s most powerful body was being briefed Friday morning by Assistant Secretary-General Oscar Fernandez-Taranco and Gen. Carlos Humberto Loitey, the U.N. military adviser.
U.N. officials said the council session may be its first on Kashmir since the late 1990s, or possibly since the 1971 India-Pakistan war.
Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky, told reporters as he headed into the meeting that Moscow is concerned about the latest developments, but he said it is “a bilateral issue.”
Amnesty International Secretary General Kumi Naidoo said in a statement that council members “need to remember that their mandate is to protect international peace and security — and they should seek to resolve the situation in a way that puts the human rights of the people in this troubled region at its center.”
A lawyer for a Kashmiri newspaper editor says India’s top court has heard petitions challenging the revoked status and lockdown in Indian-administered Kashmir.
The court gave no immediate ruling after hearing the petitions Friday. The petitions were filed by advocate M.L. Sharma and by Kashmir Times editor Anuradha Bhasin.
Vrinda Grover, the attorney for Bhasin, said the government assured the court that the ground situation in Kashmir was being reviewed daily and that the restrictions will be removed over the next few days. Grover said the judges decided to give the government more time.
The lockdown now in its 12th day includes a near-constant curfew and a news blackout in the disputed Himalayan region. Some analysts have said the revoked status was illegal because it was done without Kashmiri representation.
The family of a Kashmiri journalist working with a regional English daily says he has been detained by Indian armed forces.
Irfan Amin Malik is 26 and works for Greater Kashmir, one of the largest circulating newspapers in the region.
Malik’s father Mohammed Amin Malik told The Associated Press that Malik was taken into custody late Wednesday night at his house in Tral in Pulwama, a southern district in Kashmir. He said, “We are worried about our son.”
Jammu and Kashmir Principal Secretary Rohit Kansal said he was looking into the case. Jammu and Kashmir police chief Dilbagh Singh declined to comment on the issue.
Malik’s is the first detention of a journalist in the region since India decided to revoke Kashmir’s special constitutional status on Aug. 5.
Kashmir is claimed by both India and Pakistan and divided between them.
Pakistan’s military says Indian troops have fired across the Line of Control in the disputed Kashmir region, killing another soldier and bringing the death toll to six in less than 24 hours.
Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Asif Ghafoor in a tweet Friday said “another brave son of soil lost his life in the line of duty” in Buttal town.
Pakistan’s military and police said Thursday that Indian firing killed two civilians and three soldiers in Pakistan’s part of Kashmir, which is split between the nuclear-armed rivals and claimed by both in its entirety.
New Delhi downgraded the autonomy of the part of Kashmir it controls last week and imposed a lockdown now in place for a 12th day.
India’s top court on Friday will hear petitions challenging the revoked status.
(BANGKOK) — Myanmar and Bangladesh will soon make a second attempt to start repatriating Rohingya Muslims, 700,000 of whom fled a security crackdown in Myanmar almost two years ago, officials from the two countries and the United Nations said Friday.
Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Htay, speaking in his country’s capital, Naypyitaw, said the parties concerned had agreed that the process would begin next Thursday.
Bangladesh Refugee, Relief and Repatriation Commissioner Abul Kalam said the identities of the refugees have been confirmed by Myanmar and they could go back there if they want.
Speaking in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, he said the government had ordered local officials in Cox’s Bazar district to locate those on the list in the four refugee camps there, but their repatriation would only happen if they want to return voluntarily.
He said Bangladesh is ready to provide support to any refugees who wish to return home, but also would not use force to make them go back.
Caroline Gluck, a spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told The Associated Press that the Bangladesh government has asked for its help in verifying 3,450 people who signed up for voluntary repatriation. She said the list was whittled down from 22,000 names that Bangladesh had sent to Myanmar for verification.
Leaders of the Rohingya refugee community in the camps said they had not been consulted on the matter and were unaware of plans for any imminent return.
Myanmar’s military in August 2017 launched a counterinsurgency campaign in response to an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. The army operation led to the Rohingya exodus to Bangladesh and accusations that security forces committed mass rapes, killings and burned thousands of homes.
The U.N.-established Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar last year recommended the prosecution of Myanmar’s top military commanders on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Myanmar has rejected the report and any suggestion its forces did anything wrong.
In July, Myanmar officials went to the camps in Bangladesh to talk to the refugees about their plans and preparations to bring them back, in the latest of several similar visits. So far, most refugees appear to distrust the promises and believe it is too dangerous to return.
Gluck said it is unclear when any repatriation might begin, given the need to find and check all the individuals and the fact that there is a major holiday at the moment in Bangladesh.
It is also possible it may stall, as it did last year.
Bangladesh authorities then had arranged transportation and other facilities for their return, but the refugees protested against the move, saying they would not go back because they did not feel safe. The authorities waited for a day to find a refugee who would go back voluntarily but found none. Bangladesh then suspended the repatriation attempt.
“It’s very hard to say whether people will accept voluntary repatriation this time round,” Gluck said. “They tell us very clearly we want to go back with … full rights. . They are not willing to go back if nothing on the ground has changed.”
The Rohingya have long been treated as outsiders in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, even though their families have lived in the country for generations.
Nearly all Rohingya have been denied citizenship since 1982, effectively rendering them stateless, and they are denied freedom of movement and other basic rights.
Zaw Htay said at a news conference that his country’s authorities had checked if the people on the list had previously lived in Myanmar and whether they had been involved in what he called “terrorism attacks,” a reference to sporadic armed actions by Rohingya insurgents.
“If they are sending these 3,450 returnees back, we can accept them immediately,” he said. He said Myanmar’s government has proposed resettling them as a group, not separately, a plan that is controversial because it suggests they will not be returning to their own homes.
News that President Donald Trump is interested in buying Greenland prompted mockery on Thursday when it was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
But it wouldn’t be the first time a President has sought to buy Arctic land from another country: In 1867, President Andrew Johnson bought Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million.
It wouldn’t even be the first time the U.S. has tried to bag Greenland. Back in 1946, officials offered Denmark $100 million in gold bars for the world’s largest island, a Danish autonomous territory. U.S. officials at the time thought it was a “military necessity.”
That 1946 offer was supposed to be a secret. (It was only widely revealed in 1991, when declassified documents were discovered by a Danish newspaper.) But in 1947, TIME caught a whiff of similar plans.
R.M.Chapin, Jr./TIMEA map from the Jan. 27, 1947 issue of TIME, illustrating the strategic advantage to the U.S. of acquiring Greenland
“This week, as U.S. strategists studied the azimuthal map of the Arctic,” TIME’s Jan. 27, 1947 issue reads, “Washington military men thought this might be as good a time as any to buy Greenland, if they could.”
The article is accompanied by a map titled “Arctic Circles,” which shows concentric circles emanating from both Alaska and Greenland––emphasizing Greenland’s proximity to European capitals including Moscow.
There was no word of the classified $100 million offer made by U.S. officials a year earlier, but TIME suggested that “military men” had considered writing off Denmark’s $70 million debt in return for Greenland.
The news came at a time of insecure postwar peace. The U.S. had emerged from the Second World War victorious, but the Cold War was already brewing. Tensions with the Soviet Union were out in the open, including over U.S. presence in the Arctic. “So long as U.S. servicemen—even radio beacon operators and weathermen—remain at Greenland outposts, the U.S. is exposed to verbal sniping from Moscow for ‘keeping troops on foreign soil,’” TIME noted.
Buying Greenland, the piece went on, would be the best way to solve that problem. It would also win the U.S. a substantial military advantage:
Greenland’s 800,000 square miles make it the world’s largest island and stationary aircraft carrier. It would be as valuable as Alaska during the next few years, before bombers with a 10,000-mile range are in general use. It would be invaluable, in either conventional or push-button war, as an advance radar outpost. It would be a forward position for future rocket-launching sites. In peace or war it is the weather factory for northwest Europe, whose storms must be recorded as near the source as possible.
“Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade,” Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in May. “This could potentially slash the time it takes to travel between Asia and the West by as much as 20 days. Arctic sea lanes could [become] the 21st century Suez and Panama Canals.”
But as students of history will know, that means the area around Greenland could also become the site of a 21st century political crisis.
Pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong rolled into their 11th week, but things took a dramatic turn after protestors decided to occupy Hong Kong’s airport earlier in the week, escalating matters considerably.
Why It Matters:
To recap, the initial round of Hong Kong protests were kicked off by the April decision of the territory’s Beijing-backed Chief Executive Carrie Lam to introduce a bill that would allow for criminal extraditions to mainland China, which pro-democracy advocates feared would allow Beijing to crackdown on dissidents more forcefully. The legislation was met with massive street protests, forcing Lam to put a hold on the legislation, but she refused to withdraw it completely and also refused to resign (as protestors had demanded). This angered pro-democracy supporters further, as did the accompanying police brutality that the protestors were met with.
Since then, the demands of protestors (who have no designated leader, adding to the chaos) have swelled to include amnesty for all arrested protestors, independent inquiries into police violence, and the right to directly vote for Hong Kong’s Chief Executive and the governing Legislative Council, among other concessions.
At heart of the matter is the future of Hong Kong’s autonomy and democratic rights within a China that is increasingly clamping down on those freedoms. When Hong Kong, a former British colony, was returned to China in 1997, it was with the understanding that the territory would operate under a “one country, two systems” approach until at least 2047. While Beijing would be responsible for the territory’s defense and foreign policy, Hong Kong would be allowed to retain freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, in addition to other liberties that are not afforded to the mainland Chinese population. But as China has grown in both economic power and geopolitical relevance, it has also grown more authoritarian, forcing matters with Hong Kong to a head.
What Happens Next:
So far, China has been reluctant to take the provocative act of intervening directly by sending in its military, preferring to let Hong Kong police take the lead in suppressing the protests. But as Hong Kong police have escalated the fight—both in terms of the violence and by deploying plainclothes officers to make arrests—the protestors have changed tack, leading to the decision to occupy Hong Kong’s airport early in the week, forcing the cancellation of hundreds of flights and stranding foreign passengers. The purpose of the airport occupation was both to disrupt the day-to-day functioning of one of the world’s most important financial centers, and to raise the visibility of the protests to an international level. Both targets were achieved, but the ensuing violence at the airport—in addition to the scuffles between police and protestors that flooded television and social media, protestors also detained a number of people they suspected of being Beijing informants and denied them medical assistance—has fueled perceptions that these protestors are more extremists than peaceful objectors.
This is a narrative that Beijing has leaned into, hoping to paint the protestors as radicals and separate them from the Hong Kong population at large, which had seemed to be tiring of the protests and wants to see life return to normal. Realizing that recent events have tarnished their image, the protestors quickly turned apologetic, framing their actions as proof of their desperation. Beijing will be watching closely to see how big turnout at the next round of protests will be. Typically, Beijing’s approach to previous protests has been either to offer minor concessions, or to let them run out of steam on their own (as the did with the 2014 Umbrella protests). The next few days will be critical.
The Key Statistic That Explains It:
Back in 1997, Hong Kong accounted for more than 15 percent of China’s overall GDP. Today, it contributes less than 3 percent. Hong Kong is still critical to China as a way to access Western markets, but in 2019 there are plenty of Western markets (and firms) willing to come to China. That helps explain why Beijing believes it can afford to take such a hard line against the protestors.
The One Major Misconception About It:
That these protests are all about China and its attempt at smothering Hong Kong’s democratic freedoms. That’s the main driver of the protests, but it also doesn’t help that almost 1 in 5 people in the city live in poverty and inequality is at its highest rate in almost 50 years.
The One Thing to Say About It at a Dinner Party:
Leave aside the rhetoric—actual US policy toward Hong Kong thus far has been the same under President Donald Trump as it would have been under Barack Obama or George Bush. But Trump’s language (or lack thereof) has given the Chinese government a green light to take a more aggressive posture. And a tweet tying the US-China trade dispute to Hong Kong isn’t going to change that fact. It also sends a clear message to other strongman leaders as well about what the US is now willing to tolerate.
The One Thing to Avoid Saying About It:
Plenty of US politicians are up in arms about Trump’s refusal to wade into the Hong Kong situation more forcefully on the side of the pro-democracy protestors. But if anyone actually believes Trump can insert himself into a highly combustible situation and calm everyone down, they haven’t been paying attention the last 2.5 years.
(JERUSALEM) — Israel said Friday it has granted a request by Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib to enter the West Bank on humanitarian grounds to visit her relatives, a day after Israel barred her and another congresswoman following an unprecedented request from President Donald Trump.
Tlaib and fellow Democrat, Rep. Ilhan Omar, had planned to visit Jerusalem and the Israeli-occupied West Bank next week on a tour partly organized by a Palestinian group. The two are outspoken critics of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and support the international movement boycotting Israel.
The two newly elected Muslim members of Congress have also sparred with Trump, who tweeted before the decision that it would be a “show of weakness” to allow them in. Israel controls entry and exit points to the West Bank, which it seized in the 1967 Mideast war along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, territories the Palestinians want for a future state.
On Friday, Israeli Interior Minister Aryeh Deri announced the latest twist — that Tlaib had requested and been granted permission to enter the West Bank to see relatives, including her 90-year-old grandmother. The American-born Tlaib’s family immigrated from the West Bank.
Deri’s office published what it said was Tlaib’s written request, on congressional stationary dated Thursday, in which she said she wanted to visit her grandmother, who is in her 90s.
“This could be my last opportunity to see her. I will respect any restrictions and will not promote boycotts against Israel during my visit,” she said.
Shortly after the announcement, however, Tlaib tweeted that she wouldn’t allow Israel to use her love for her grandmother to force her to “bow down to their oppressive & racist policies.” It was not clear if she was rejecting the offer to visit.
When I won, it gave the Palestinian people hope that someone will finally speak the truth about the inhumane conditions. I can't allow the State of Israel to take away that light by humiliating me & use my love for my sity to bow down to their oppressive & racist policies. https://t.co/OYIwExV0ga
“When I won, it gave the Palestinian people hope that someone will finally speak the truth about the inhumane conditions. I can’t allow the State of Israel to take away that light by humiliating me & use my love for my sity to bow down to their oppressive & racist policies,” she wrote.
Deri’s office said he decided to allow Tlaib’s entry, and “hopes she will stand by her commitment and that the visit will be for humanitarian needs only.”
Tlaib’s office could not immediately be reached for comment on the letter’s authenticity.
Hanan Ashrawi, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organization whose Miftah group had organized the original congressional visit, said she was not involved in the latest request.
“Miftah does not sponsor personal or individual or humanitarian visits nor do we intervene on behalf of any such petitions. As we announced yesterday, our delegation’s visit has been postponed until such time as all Congressional participants can have free access to Palestine,” she tweeted.
Trump’s request to a foreign country to bar the entry of elected U.S. officials — and Israel’s decision to do so — were unprecedented and drew widespread criticism, including from many Israelis as well as staunch supporters of Israel in Congress. Critics said it risked turning Israel into a partisan issue and threatened to undermine ties between the close allies.
Tlaib and Omar are known as supporters of “boycott, divestment and sanctions,” or BDS, a Palestinian-led global movement. Supporters say the movement is a non-violent way of protesting Israel’s military rule over the occupied territories, but Israel says it aims to delegitimize the state and eventually wipe it off the map.
Tlaib and Omar are also part of the “squad” of liberal newcomers — all women of color — whom Trump has labeled as the face of the Democratic Party as he runs for re-election. He subjected them to a series of racist tweets last month in which he called on them to “go back” to their “broken” countries. Both are American citizens.
With his latest move, Trump brought a longtime U.S. ally into a domestic dispute, essentially relying on Israel to retaliate against Tlaib and Omar after they had criticized him. It marked a glaring departure from the tradition of American politicians leaving domestic disputes at the water’s edge.
For Israel, the willingness to side so pointedly with Trump marks a deeper foray into America’s bitterly polarized politics and risks its relationship with Congress.
Israel announced the ban Thursday after Trump tweeted that “it would show great weakness” if the two were allowed to visit. Asked later if he had spoken to Netanyahu, he said, “I did talk to people over there,” without elaborating.
Omar, who became the first Somali-American elected to Congress, denounced the ban on her and Tlaib’s tour as “an affront” and “an insult to democratic values.”
In Israel, Netanyahu said Thursday that his country remains “open to critics and criticism,” except for those who advocate boycotts against it.
(BANGKOK) — Myanmar and Bangladesh are making a second attempt to start repatriating Rohingya Muslims after more than 700,000 of them fled a security crackdown in Myanmar almost two years ago, the U.N. refugee agency said Friday.
Caroline Gluck, a spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told The Associated Press that the Bangladesh government has asked for its help in verifying the 3,450 people who signed up for a voluntary repatriation. She said the list was whittled from 22,000 names that Bangladesh had sent to Myanmar for verification.
Myanmar’s military in August 2017 launched a counterinsurgency campaign in response to an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. The army operation led to the Rohingya exodus to Bangladesh and accusations that security forces committed mass rapes, killings and burned thousands of homes.
The U.N.-established Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar last year recommended the prosecution of Myanmar’s top military commanders for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Myanmar has rejected the report and any suggestion its forces did anything wrong.
In July, Myanmar officials went to the camps in Bangladesh to talk to the refugees about their plans and preparations to bring them back, the latest of several similar visits. So far, most refugees appear to distrust the promises and believe it is too dangerous to return.
It is unclear when any repatriation might begin, given the need to find and check all the individuals and the fact that there is a major holiday at the moment in Bangladesh, Gluck said.
It is also possible it may stall, as it did last year.
“It’s very hard to say whether people will accept voluntary repatriation this time round,” said Gluck. “They tell us very clearly we want to go back with .. full rights . They are not willing to go back if nothing on the ground has changed.”
The Rohingya have long been treated as outsiders in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, even though their families have lived in the country for generations.
Nearly all Rohingya have been denied citizenship since 1982, effectively rendering them stateless, and they are denied freedom of movement and other basic rights.
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DONALD TRUMP's administration has secured a mammoth $8 billion arms deal with Taiwan in what is a major blow to China's dominance in the South China Sea.
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National Housing Bank Result 2019 | Get NHB Assistant Manager Final Result & Cut off Marks here @ nhb.org.in result 2019 – National Housing Bank has recently uploaded the final result for the Post of Assistant Manager Recruitment 2019 on 26th July 2019. Applicants those who have qualified in the Interview can download Final result now!! Here on this page, we have given a direct link to download the NHB Result Marks from the below table. Applicants just by clicking the quick link to get your NHB Assistant Manager Exam Analysis 2019.
NHB Assistant Manager Result | nhb.org.in
National Housing Bank has conducted the Examination for the Post of Assistant Manager (Scale I) on 21st April 2019. Applicants those who are waiting to know the status of NHB AM Marks. And, the officials from the NHB has finally released the NHB Assistant Manager Result 2019 on 25th July 2019. In this article, all the applicants can get the NHB Exam Result. Because we have given a direct link to access your NHB Results 2019 and everyone can get the result from nhb.org.in result here.
NHB Assistant Manager Cut off & Marks Release Date
17th August 2019
Official Website
nhb.org.in
All the applicants those who have applied for the NHB Assistant Manager Exam can check your result from the below link. Apart from this candidates can get an overview of National Housing Bank Result 2019 from the above table. Because in this table we have mentioned NHB Assistant Manager Result date, nhb.org.in result 2019 link, NHB Assistant Manager Recruitment details and others. We advise the applicants to make use of the direct link to the NHB Assistant Manager Exam Analysis 2019.
Direct Link to download NHB Assistant Manager Cut off | Marks
Candidates can get the NHB Assistant Manager Cut off 2019 from the officials of NHB. The National Housing Bank officials will declare the NHB Assistant Manager Cut off 2019 as soon as possible. Because the officials will consider the NHB AM Marks to decide the Cutoff marks. Also, we have provided NHB Assistant Manager Previous year Cut off marks for your reference. Also, we have included the NHB Assistant Manager Expected Cut off from this page.
NHB Assistant Manager Merit list | nhb.org.in result
NHB Assistant Manager Merit list is going to publish by the officials of National Housing Bank. This will play an important role in the NHM AM Recruitment process. Because of the applicant’s name appears in the NHB Assistant Manager Merit list, can get all the benefits. The officials will call the applicants based on the Merit List for the Interview. The Top five or ten candidates will select for the interview directly. They will get easily qualified in the Interview. Here we have provided some steps to download NHB Assistant Manager Result 2019 easily.
How to check the NHB Assistant Manager Final Result?
Initially visit the official website of the National Housing Bank (NHB) i.e, nhb.org.in
On the home page click on the link Final Result of Recruitment of Assistant Managers
A new page will be open, in the page again click on the Final Result of Recruitment of Assistant Managers link
NHB Assistant Manager Result 2019 pdf will open
Applicants can check and download the results for further reference.
Direct link to download National Housing Bank Result 2019
HPSC Result 2019 – Here we have aGreat News for the Candidates those who are searching for the Haryana Civil Services (Ex. Br) & Other Allied Services Result 2019. Yes, HPSC Result has been published and the candidates can check complete details here. The officials of the Haryana Public Service Commission (HPSC) has conducted the Preliminary exam on 31st March 2019. Candidates who appeared for the Prelims Exam can download their Haryana HCS Result 2019 from the official site @ hpsc.gov.in or you can also download it from the direct link at the end of the post.
HPSC HCS (Ex.Br.) Through Register A-II Written Exam Result 2019 – Haryana Public Service Commission (HPSC) has released the HCS (Ex.Br.) Through Register A-II Members of Group ‘C’ Service Written Examination Result on 10th August 2019. Those candidates who have attended the Written Examination on 31st July 2019can check and download the HPSC HCS (Ex.Br.) Through Register A-II Written Exam Result 2019 from this page. Here we have provided a direct link to download your result of HCS (Ex.Br.) Through Register A-II Members of Group ‘C’ Service 2019.
HPSC HCS (Ex.Br.) Through Register A-II Written Exam Result 2019
Organization Name
Haryana Public Service Commission (HPSC)
Post Name
HCS (Ex.Br.) Through Register A-II Members of Group ‘C’ Service
HCS (Ex.Br.) Through Register A-II Written Exam Result 2019 – Download
HPSC Assistant Professor Final Result 2019 – Haryana Public Service Commission (HPSC) has released the Assistant Professor 2019 Final Result has announced. Those candidates who have attended the Interview on 27 & 28th June 2019 can check and download the HPSC Assistant Professor Final Result 2019 from this page. Here we have provided a direct link to download your Final result of Assistant Professor Posts 2019.
HPSC Assistant Professor Final Result 2019 – Download
HPSC ‘A’ Class Naib Tehsildar Final Result 2019 – Haryana Public Service Commission (HPSC) has released the Result of Recruitment Test for the posts of ‘A’ Class Naib Tehsildar (Apprentices) held on 26th May 2019. The result has been released on 14th June 2019 and now Final Result has released on 16th August 2019. Moreover, here we have furnished complete details regarding the Haryana Cut Off Marks 2019. The individuals can gain complete knowledge regarding the Haryana Merit List 2019 and also check the stepwise procedure to download the HPSC Civil Services Result 2019 in this post. Candidates can download the HPSC ‘A’ Class Naib Tehsildar Result from the link provided below.
HPSC ‘A’ Class Naib Tehsildar Final Result 2019 – Download HPSC ‘A’ Class Naib Tehsildar Result 2019 – Download
HPSC HCS (Ex. Br) & Other Allied Services Result 2019 – Haryana Public Service Commission (HPSC) has released Preliminary Result for the Post of 166 Ex. Br & Other Allied Service on 21st May 2019. The Preliminary Examination was held on 31st March 2019 in two Sessions. Moreover, here we have furnished complete details regarding the Haryana Cut Off Marks 2019. The individuals can gain complete knowledge regarding the Haryana Merit List 2019 and also check the stepwise procedure to download the HPSC Civil Services Result 2019 in this post. Candidates can download the HPSC HCS Prelims 2017 Result from the link provided below.
HPSC HCS (Ex. Br) & Other Allied Services Result 2019
HPSC HCS (Ex. Br) & Other Allied Services Result 2019 – Download
Haryana Public Service Commission (HPSC) has released the recruitment for the 166 HCS (Ex. Br) & Other Allied Services posts. Many candidates have applied and participated in the Prelims Exam which was held on 31st March 2019. and they are eagerly waiting for the Haryana Civil Services Result 2019 which will be released on 21st May 2019.
Applicants must download the Haryana HCS Result 2019 from the official site or from the direct link given at the bottom of the post. So that candidates can check or verify their performance or their status in the exam. Candidates keep a note that to check or verify the HPSC Civil Services Result 2019 the participant must handle the details required for login like Hall Ticket Number/ Admit Card Number, Date of Birth details, etc.
Haryana Cut Off Marks 2019 – Civil Services & Other Allied Services
The officials of the Haryana Public Service Commission notified that the Prelims Exam marks will not be counted for the Selection Process. Those who secure or score the minimum Haryana Cut Off Marks 2019 will be qualified to the Mains Exam. To qualify the Mains Exam the candidate must score the minimum qualifying marks that are given by the officials. Haryana Cut Off Marks 2019 will be notified by the officials in the official site of HPSC.
Candidates in the Haryana Merit List 2019 will be selected according to the marks obtained in the written exam. Haryana Merit List 2019 candidates will be able to participate in further rounds. Those who got selected in all rounds then the candidate will be placed or appointed for the HCS (Ex. Br) & Other Allied Services posts.
Steps to check Haryana HCS (Ex. Br) & Other Allied Services Result 2019
Visit the official site of the Haryana Public Service Commission (HPSC), hpsc.gov.in
On the home page of HPSC, can see the Results block which is at the left side.
A new result page will be appear
Search for the Result of the Haryana Civil Services and click on it.
Enter the details and hit on submit.
Then, Haryana HCS Result 2019 will get on the page.
Verify your marks and your status.
Download your HPSC Civil Services Result 2019 and preserve it in your device.
Haryana Civil Services Result 2019
HCS (Ex.Br.) & Other Allied Services Preliminary Exam – 2017
UPSSSC Recruitment 2019 –Apply Online for 486 Vacancies. Uttar Pradesh Subordinate Services Selection Commission (UPSSSC) is offering a job for candidates who have passed 10th class or ITI. This UPSSSC notification was announced for 486 Assistant Boring Technician Posts. Eligible candidates can apply online for the UPSSSC Vacancy. Starting date to submit your online application forms is 14th August 2019 @ www.upsssc.gov.in.
Candidates under 40 years passed 10th or ITI with National Apprenticeship training certificate can try for the UPSSSC Recruitment. Application forms in a prescribed format can be submitted on or before 04th September 2019. Selected candidates for the UPSSSC Vacancy will be paid a good salary with grade pay. Aspirants submit the online application before the last date. Scroll Down to know whether you satisfy all the requirements for UPSSSC Vacancy.
Initially, the government of the state of Uttar Pradesh established a commission for the selection of subordinate services through a 1988 ordinance, which was later replaced by a 1988 Law No. 7, which provided for direct recruitment to all specified “C” group positions. for the advice. Government of the State through a notification in this name. The Committee has also been authorized to examine the request of any government authority, company or company that belongs to or is controlled by the Government for such hiring in positions under this authority.
The Commission had a legal entity other than the government. Subsequently, on May 31, 1990, the previous Board of Directors dissolved and became a commission composed of a president and up to five members. In addition, the Law of the Subordinate Services Selection Commission of Uttar Pradesh, 1993 (Amendment) was enacted to define/modify the conditions of service of the President and the members of the Commission. With this amendment, the commission was transformed into a government department.
Know more about Uttar Pradesh Subordinate Services Selection Commission (UPSSSC):
In 1997, on December 28, 1997, this law was repealed by an ordinance and replaced by Law No. 5 of 1998. Law No. 1 of 2006. But this law got a replacement by the U.P. Ordinance No. 6 of 2007 and later by law no. 21 of 2007. Aware of the difficulty in recruiting the posts of group “C” in the State Administrative Services by the Public Service Commission of Uttar Pradesh due to increased pressure on its operation.
The current Commission created from again by the “Uttar Pradesh Subordinate Services Selection Commission Act, 2014”, which entered into force on June 20, 2014. Following the resignation of the then President and five of its members on April 6, 2017, the current Commission will get constitution and the President and outgoing members became members of the Commission in mid-January 2018.
RCUB Result 2019 – All those students who are pursuing their degree under the Rani Channamma University Belagavi here comes great news for you people. You 3rd Semester Examination Results are released for all the branches. Candidates can get the MA, M.Sc, MCA Degree RCUB Examination Results from the below section. Students can get the complete details regarding the Exam dates and Result dates from this site easily. Check out the Rani Channamma University Belgavi Results 2019 at the rcub.ac.in. official website.
Those who are searching up for the updated and latest Rani Channamma University Belagavi Semester Exam Results can check it out here. We people from Recruitment.Guru has collected all the updated results from the official website and updated it here. As the Rani Channamma University Belagavi has released the university results for the III Semester do click on the below link and get the RCUB Examination Result 2019. Just click on the below-given link and enter the register number and select the semester you wanted to get the results. All regular and private students non-college ex/students can check the result of Odd and Even been from the link given below. Students can visit this web portal and keep on pouring to get more details about the RCUB Result.
Before the Rani Channamma University came into being in 2010, Karnataka University KRCPG Centre of Karnatak University, Dharwad was functioning at Belagavi. The said Karnatak University PG Centre was established at Belagavi in the year 1982, to provide an opportunity to develop access to the students for higher education hailing from North Karnataka Region. At present, the Rani Channamma University is offering 9 PG courses at Vidyasangam Campus Belagavi, in the school of Arts, Education, Social Science, Science, Commerce, and Management. It is also offering M.Phil and Ph. D programmes. The courses in Social Science include Economics, Sociology, Social Work and in Arts includes Kannada and Marathi. In Science the university offers M.Sc in Physics, Mathematics, and chemistry and in Applied it offers Geography and Library and information science. School of Business and Economics offers a Master's Degree in Commerce and Management.
RCUB Regular/ Supplementary Examination Results
Those students who have attended the regular examination under the Rani Channamma University Belagavi and still failed. Here comes one more opportunity to clear the examination. To increase your scoring along with that students to fail in the previous examination will get a chance to clear through RCUB Revaluation Exams Results. For each and every semester Students can apply for the revaluation after the announcement of the main examination results. The Rani Channamma University Belagavi will take a week or more to process the exam papers to announce the Revaluation results. Do stay updated with the University to know about the Revaluation Exam Results.
SBI PO Result 2019 for Mains Exam will be out Today i.e 16th August 2019 @ sbi.co.in – State Bank of India (SBI) has recently uploaded Mains Exam Result for the Post of Probationary Officer PO Recruitment 2019. Those Candidates who have appeared in this Recruitment Exam can download Pre Exam Result now!!!. SBI has published the Probationary Officer Mains Exam Result on 16th August 2019. A huge number of applicants have applied for this Recruitment and written the Mains Examination. Those candidates can check their SBI PO mains Exam Result from the official website i.e, www.sbi.co.in. Moreover, Candidates can check SBI PO result from this page by clicking on the link.
SBI PO Mains Result 2019 Date
The SBI PO 2019 result of prelims has been declared first followed by mains and final result & selection list for an appointment. The SBI PO result 2019 of Prelims has been declared on 29th June 2019. Applicants should clear the Preliminary Examination to attend the Main Examination. SBI PO Mains Examination was conducted on 20th July 2019. Applicants all most waited nearly one month to get the Result, finally, SBI has released the Probationary Officer Mains Exam Result. Here on this page, we have given a direct link to verify your results from the below table.
The SBI PO result 2019 has been declared for only those candidates who have secured qualifying/passing marks in each stage of the entrance exam. Based on the SBI PO 2019 result, at each stage of examination (pre, mains & interview) an adequate number of candidates from each category to be shortlisted for appearing in a subsequent round of selection procedure. The examination authority declares the result for each stage of examination separately. And based on the qualifying criteria at each stage, a certain number of candidates are selected for the next round of the recruitment process.
A cumulative score of the mains exam and the interview process is considered to prepare the final merit list of selected students. The merit list is prepared in the descending order of marks obtained by candidates. Candidates who make it to the merit list will be given the appointment letter by the Bank of Candidate's choice.
SBI PO Cut Off 2019 @ www.sbi.co.in
SBI PO Cut-Off for the year 2019 will be declared by State Bank of India after the result of each phase has been declared. The cut-off for the preliminary phase of examination will be declared after the result for the same has been declared. Similarly, the cut-off for SBI PO Mains Exam will be declared after the result for the same has been declared by State Bank of India.
To know the expected SBI PO Cut-Off, one must be aware of the Cut-Off for SBI PO. Let’s have a look at the same.
SBI PO Mains Cut off
Category
GEN
OBC
SC
ST
OH
VI
HI
Marks
56.75
54.25
49.00
43.00
45.25
49.00
14.75
Steps to check SBI PO Mains Result
Applicants initially, should visit the official website of State Bank Of India i.e, www.sbi.co.in
In the home page click on the Careers tab. A new page will be open
In that page, Latest announcements section, select the SBI PO Prelims Exam Result
In that page, enter the roll number and date of birth
Give submit button, SBI PO Mains Result 2019 will display on your screen
Download the SBI PO mains Result for further reference.
MKBU Results 2019 – Hello Students!! We welcome you all to check your results from this site. Yes, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University has published the results for various Courses. The University has announced the results of MA Sem II Social, MA Sem II Psychology, TYBSC, B.Com Sem III, B.Com Sem I, SYBSC, MA ECO Sem II, B.Com Honor Sem I, BCA Sem III and other Courses results are available here. Students can analyze their performance in the exams through MKBU Results. All the Students those who have been appeared for those Examinations can check their results from the official website of the University i.e, mkbhavuni.edu.in. Here Students can get Latest updates regarding Bhavnagar University Results.
MKBU Results 2019 @mkbhavuni.edu.in
Students can hit on the below provided direct links to obtain the Bhavnagar University Exam Results of the desired Programme from the below table. It will help the Students to get the results without any confusion. At Present, Some of the Courses Bhavnagar University Result has been Announced and for the remaining Course who are under the UG & PG Gration MKBU Bhavnagar Results will be announced soon. Students can make use of this page to get the exam results. Here we will be updating the Upcoming MKBU Results link, it will work once the University will release the results by officially. Apart from this, we used to update the latest information about the Exam Results, Admit Card, Syllabus, Previous paper, and others. Students can check the University official website regularly, to get the latest information about the MKBU Exam Results 2019.
About Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University, formerly Bhavnagar University is a state university located in Bhavnagar city in the western province of Gujarat, India. The university provides teaching and research programs in Arts, Commerce, Science, Medicine, Management, Rural Studies, and Law Faculties. It has 22 departments, 18 postgraduate centers, and four recognized institutes and research centers. 83 colleges are affiliated with Bhavnagar University and currently running Arts, Science, Commerce, Law, Education, Management, Rural, and Medical courses. About 22 affiliated colleges are running post graduation courses.
MKBU Supply/Revaluation Results
Students have a chance to apply for the revaluation, if the students may get low marks in the examination, they can apply for the Revaluation results. So again the head of the Examiner will review the answer paper. After revaluation, students may get high marks. Still, if anyone got low marks, they can apply for the Supplementary Examinations. For Revaluation/Supplementary, students should pay the fee. Students can get all the results from this page Regular, Revaluation and Supplementary Results. Students of the Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University can also get all Results Also. Just we are advising the Students to frequently visit this page to get latest updates of all MKBU Results 2019.
UPSC CMS Result 2019 Declared | Get a direct link to download UPSC CMS Result 2019 Here @ www.upsc.gov.in – UPSC Combined Medical Services Result released at the official website www.upsc.gov.in. Union Public Service Commission conducted the CMS written exam on 21st July 2019. A large number of candidates applied for the CMS attended the exam. Now, candidates can check your UPSC CMS 2019 Result here on our page. Also, check the Combined Medical Services Merit list, cut off from the below sections.
UPSC CMS Result 2019 – Declared
UPSC announced the recruitment notification to fill vacancies for 965 CMS posts. Candidates are recruited in various posts under Combined Medical Services. So, all the interested candidates applied for the UPSC CMS Recruitment 2019. The UPSC Board will recruit the candidates for its organization based on their performance in the Computer Based exam. And, Union Public Service Commission successfully conducted the exam on 21st July 2019. Now, all the applicants are curiously looking for the UPSC CMS Final Result 2019. But the Union Public Service Commission does not declare the Result release date officially. The UPSC Board has released the UPSC CMS Result 2019 on its official website www.upsc.gov.in. So, Candidates can also check the UPSC CMS exam result 2019 here on our page from the below-attached link.
Union Public Service Commission announced the various updates regarding the UPSC CMS Notification, Exam, Admit Card, and Results. The organization mainly aims to recruit efficient and hard-working candidates to fill 965 posts. And the Board conducted the UPSC CMS computer exam on 21st July 2019. Those candidates names who qualified the Online exam and personality test are available on the official site. Aspirants appearing for the written examination can check your Results on our page All India Results. The UPSC CMS Final Result 2019 aspirants will receive the appointment letter from the organization. So, the aspirants don’t tense for the Results. We update every information regarding the UPSC CMS Exam Result on our site.
UPSC Cut off Marks for CMS Exam
Written exam Cut off Marks
Category
2016
2015
2014
2013
SC
193
175
203
178
ST
168
151
151
148
PH-I
78
82
103
101
General
229
220
265
264
OBC
194
180
232
214
Final Cut off
Category
2016
2015
2014
2013
SC
266
260
284
268
ST
244
230
255
227
PH-I
154
128
197
135
General
310
305
340
335
OBC
286
285
325
310
Check the previous years cut off for UPSC CMS. The cut off marks give the idea regarding the minimum marks required to get qualify for the exam. The cut marks are declared based on the number of candidates appeared for the written exam.
How to check UPSC CMS Result 2019 Online?
At first, visit the official website of the UPSC Board i.e., www.upsc.gov.in
Now, the home page will appear.
There click on the Final Results tab.
And check for the UPSC CMS Exam Result 2019.
Click on the Results link.
Now, a new window asking for your details will appear.
Enter the registration number and other valid data of the candidate.
If entered details are correct, click on the Submit Button.
Now Your UPSC CMS Result 2019 will appear on the screen.
Download the UPSC CMS Exam 2019 Result.
Finally, take the printout of the Result for future use.
upsc.gov.in – UPSC 710 Combined Medical Services Result 2019
Direct link to Download Union Public Service Commission CMS Exam Result 2019
Download UPSC Combined Medical Services Result 2019
Are you looking out for HARCO Bank Recruitment 2019 Detailed Information? Then, you are in the right place for your search. Here you will get complete information related to HARCO Bank Job Notification 2019. Candidates who are interested in Bank Jobs in Haryana can start applying for the exam from 14th August 2019. The last date for submitting the online applications as per Board is on 31st August 2019. Apply online before the last date commenced. For much more details, below we have given details section wise. Select the section according to your requirement & get the needed information.
HARCO Bank Recruitment 2019 – Overview
Haryana State Cooperative Apex Bank Ltd recently released recruitment notification for 978 Clerk, Junior Accountant, Senior Accountant & Asst Manager/Development Officer vacancies. Online applications are accepted from 14th August2019 to 31st August 2019 for direct recruitment in Haryana State Co. Apex Bank Ltd, Chandigarh & other 18 District Central Co. Banks in Haryana State. Applicants who are interested in Haryana Bank Jobs can make use of this golden opportunity by applying for the HARCO Bank Recruitment Exam 2019. For a brief view of the exam check the below table.
Haryana Cooperative Bank Recruitment 2019 – Overview
Description
Details
Organization Name
Haryana State Cooperative Apex Bank Ltd (HARCO Bank)
Name of the Post
Clerks, Jr Accountant, Sr Accountant & Assistant Manager/ Development Officer
HARCO Bank Post wise vacancy details are given below in detail.
Name of the Post
Number of Vacancies
Clerks
790
Junior Accountant
123
Senior Accountant
35
Assistant Manager/ Development Officer
30
Total
978
HARCO Bank Clerk Jobs 2019 Eligibility Criteria
Eligibility details such as educational qualification, age limit, salary, application fee and other details are available below.
Educational Qualification:
Post Name
Educational Qualification
Clerk
Graduation with 55% marks or Commerce Graduate with 50% marks from a recognized University.
Knowledge of Hindi/ Sanskrit up to Matric standard.
Junior Accountant
B.Com/B.A with Economics or Math/B.Sc with Maths as one of the subject with at least 55% marks in aggregate/ B.Tech with at least 60% marks.
Knowledge of Hindi/ Sanskrit up to Matric Standard.
Senior Accountant
At least 55% marks in Commerce or Science with Math or BA with Math or Economics with 3 years experience.
At least 50% marks in M.Com or MA with Maths or Economics.
Knowledge of Hindi/ Sanskrit up to Matric Standard.
Assistant Manager/ Development Officer
At least 60% marks in Graduation in science with Math/ Arts with Economics or Maths/ Commerce/B.Tech.
Post Graduate in Maths or Economics or Commerce or Business Administration
Engineering with at least 55% marks either in Graduation or Post Graduation or Chartered Accountant with at least 55% marks
50% marks in Post Graduation in Economics or Maths or Commerce with CAIIB.
Master in Banking and Insurance Management with 60% marks Knowledge of Hindi/ Sanskrit up to Matric Standard.
Age Limit
Candidate should be of minimum 18 years & of maximum 42 years on the last date of the application sent.
Age Relaxation
SC, ST, Backward Class A & B – upper age limit is relaxable up to 5 years
Ex-Serviceman Candidates – 42 years Plus continuous Military Service added by three years
Age limit – relaxed in cases of employees of Government/Boards/Corporation/Cooperative Institutions up to 10 years by the competent authority
HARCO Bank Recruitment Exam Fee Details
General Category – Rs.600/- + GST per application
Sc/BCA/BCB/EBPG(EWS) candidates of Haryana only & for female – Rs.300/- + GST per application
No fee for Ex-Serviceman of Haryana
Payment Mode
Payment via online (Credit Card/ Debit Card/ Internet Banking).
Application Mode
Online
Selection Process
For Clerk, Junior Accountant, and Senior Accountant
Online CBT Examination (Prelims & Mains)
Socio-Economic Criteria & Experience – 10 Marks
For Assistant Manager/Development Officer
Online Exam (90 Marks)
Interview (10 Marks)
HARCO Bank Clerk, Accountant Salary Details
Clerk
Level-6 (INR 35400-112400)
Junior Accountant
Level-6 (INR 35400-112400)
Senior Accountant
Level-6 (INR 35400-112400)
Assistant Manager/ Development Officer
Level-7 (INR 44900-142400)
Haryana HARCO Bank Exam Centers
Name of the Center
Chandigarh-Mohali
Ambala
Jind
Karnal
Panipat
Rohtak
Hisar
Sonepat
Gurugram
Faridabad
Yamuna Nagar
Kurukshetra
The exam will be conducted online at the venues given in respected call letters.
Change of venue/Center/date/session is not acceptable.
How to apply for HARCO Bank Recruitment Jobs 2019?
At first, visit the Banks website i.e. harcobank.org.in
Search for Advertisement “Recruitment of Cler, Senior Accountant, Jr. Accountant, AM/Development Officer in HARCO Bank & 18 District Central Co. Banks of Haryana 2019”.
Click on that advertisement.
HARCO Bank Job notification will open read it and check Eligibility.
Enter all the necessary details asked for.
Make the payment.
Finally, click the submit button and take a print out of it for future reference.
How to Download HARCO Bank Exam Admit Card 2019?
At first, visit the Banks website i.e. harcobank.org.in
intimation will be given through mail.
Once the candidate clicks on the relevant link, he/she will be able to access call letter and it can be downloaded 10 days before the exam date.
The Applicants need to give (i) Registration Number/ Roll Number (ii) Password/Date of Birth details for downloading the call letter.
The aspirant needs to affix recent recognizable photographer on the call letter, preferably the same as provided during registration, and appear at the examination centre with (i) Call Letter (ii) Photo Identity Proof and photocopy of the same Photo Identity Proof as brought in original.
Important Dates for HARCO Bank Recruitment 2019-20
Starting Date to Apply
14th August 2019
Last Date to Apply
31st August 2019
Prelims Exam Date
October/November 2019
Mains Exam Date
Update Soon
Important Links for HARCO Bank Job Vacancy 2019-20
Gujarat High Court Result 2019 – Dear Applicants!! Gujarat High Court has announced the results for various Posts. We have dedicated this page to update Gujarat High Court Result 2019, so applicants can get all your GHC Results. We are here to help you out to download and check your Results. As we know, those who have appeared for the Examination may wait for the Result. All the Candidates can get the result from the official website i.e, gujarathighcourt.nic.in. However, Applicants can get the direct link to download the Gujarat High Court Result in this article.
English Stenographer Grade-III Skill Test Result 2019 – Gujarat High Court has announced the English Stenographer Grade-II (Class-II) Result 2019 on 16th August 2019. Applicants those who have appeared for this English Stenographer Skill Test can check and download the results from the below link. We have provided a quick link to access your Results. Applicants can click the direct link to check and download your results. Moreover, All the Candidates can get the result from the official website i.e, gujarathighcourt.nic.in
English Stenographer Grade – III Skill Test Result 2019
English Stenographer Grade – III Skill Test Result 2019 – Click Here
Gujarati Stenographer Grade II Skill Test Result 2019 – Gujarat High Court has announced the Gujarati Stenographer Grade-II (Class-II) Result 2019 on 17th July 2019. Applicants those who have appeared for this Gujarati Stenographer Skill Test can check and download the results from the below link. We have provided a quick link to access your Results. Applicants can click the direct link to check and download your results. Moreover, All the Candidates can get the result from the official website i.e, gujarathighcourt.nic.in
Gujarati Stenographer Skill Test Result 2019 – Click Here
Gujarat High Court Civil Judge Result 2019 – As per the notification from the Gujarat High Court, they have announced the 124 vacancies for the Civil Judge post. A huge number of applicants have applied for the post and appeared for the Gujarat High Court Civil Judge exam 2019 on 5th May 2019. Those candidates waiting for their results now, and Gujarat High Court finally announced the Gujarat High Court Civil Judge Prelims Result on 25th June 2019. Applicants can click the direct link to check and download your results. Moreover, All the Candidates can get the result from the official website i.e, gujarathighcourt.nic.in
Gujarat High Court Civil Judge Result 2019 – Click Here
The High Court of Gujarat has finally published the List of Candidates who have secured 50% or More Marks in Preliminary Examination for the post of Civil Judge. The preliminary examination is to filter more candidates and predict the right applicants. This is the time to check your preliminary examination results and prepare for the Main Exam. Here on this site, we have provided the Gujarat High Court Civil Judge Exam Papers, Gujarat High Court Civil Judge Syllabus and others. By using these exam papers, Syllabus applicants can get an idea to crack the Gujarat High Court Civil Judge exam 2019.
The Cut Off Marks for the GHC Civil Judge Exam are decided as per the details of the level of the Exam, a number of individuals attempted the exam, a number of vacancies for the civil judge post, previous year cut off marks. Therefore, the Gujarat High Court Civil Judge Exam Cut Off 2019 is the minimum marks a candidate should secure in an examination.
Gujarat High Court Civil Judge Exam Merit list 2019
Aspirants whoever appeared for the Gujarat High Court Civil Judge Written Test can check their Gujarat High Court Civil Judge Merit List from this post and the PDF is attached at the bottom of this page. After knowing the Merit list and the Result, the candidate will get a clear idea of their status in the examination and they can prepare for the further rounds of the Selection Process for the post of Gujarat High Court Civil Judge. The Top priority candidates scored highest marks are listed in the Merit List and those are invited for further rounds.
Steps to check Gujarat High Court Civil Judge Result
Visit the official website of High Court of Gujarat i.e, gujarathighcourt.nic.in
In the home page, New update will be displayed on your screen
Click on the List of Candidates who have secured 50% or More Marks in Preliminary Examination Result link
A new page will be open with a pdf file, Gujarat High Court Civil Judge Exam Result 2019 pdf
Applicants can check the results with name & seat no
Download or take a print out of the file further reference.
Important links to download Gujarat High Court Civil Judge Exam Result 2019
Every year the Telangana Public Service Commission Board issues the TSPSC Hall Ticket 2019 for the candidates to download and appear for the upcoming examinations. So, all such applicants of various boards from the TSPSC Board can stay tuned to this page and get the latest and upcoming details about TSPSC Exam Admit Card 2019. Moreover, only the applicants of the respective job positions will be able to download the TSPSC Admit Card 2019 @ www.tspsc.gov.in. Also, once after the TSPSC Exam Call Letter 2019 is downloaded the individuals appearing for the examinations need to take the printout of it without fail.
TSPSC Group II Admit Card 2019 – Telangana State Public Service Commission has revealed the exam notice for 08th Week Interview. Hence, the admit card is available now to download. Participate in the Interview along with the TSPSC Admit Card 2019. Aspirants can download the TSPSC Interview Schedule notice from the below segment.
TSPSC Admit Card for Group 4 Examination is available now. The Aspirants who are eagerly looking for the Group 4 Posts can get here. However, to make you easily find the TSPSC Hall Ticket 2018, we were given the direct link below. Hence, Just click on the TSPSC Admit Card for Group 4 Link and download Hall Ticket. For more details check the Official Website of Telangana Public Service Commission.
TSPSC Hall Ticker 2018: for the Post of Health Assistant will be available soon. The Aspirants who applied for the Health Assist Post can download the Admit Card from the link given below. Keep visiting we update the link immediately when the TSPSC Hall Ticket for Health Assist is announced.
TSPSC Hall Ticket for Health Assistant 2018 – Available Soon
TSPSC Hall Ticket 2018
Looking for TSPSC Hall Ticket 2018 for the Recruitment of Fireman, Driver, and Other Posts released on April 2018. Applied for TSPSC Recruitment 2018, and waiting for the TSPSC Admit Card..!!. But, an official announcement for the release of TSPSC Hall Tickets is not yet released. However, Aspirants can keep visiting our site we will provide you with a direct link to the TSPSC Hall Tickets page at the below link. Candidates without TSPSC Hall Ticket 2018 are Not allowed to enter into the exam hall. Find all details like Exam Date, Venue and Time on the TSPSC Hall Ticket.
TSPSC Hall Ticket 2018 Fire Department Recruitment – Click Here
TSPSC Hall Ticket 2018 is here to download for the School Assistant Posts. Furthermore, the TSPSC Admit Card 2018 is released for various disciplines such as Biological Science, mathematics, and social studies. Now, all the applicants aspiring to get placed in the Telangana Public Service Commission can download the TSPSC Exam Admit Card 2018 from the link given below. Also, the examinations are held on 4th March 2018.
TSPSC School Assistant (Biological Science, Maths & Social Studies) – Click Here.
The applicants can now download the TSPSC Hall Ticket 2018. And attend the TSPSC Exam Hall Ticket 2018. Only the candidates who had applied for Physical Education Teacher (PET) Posts are eligible to download the TSPSC PET Call Letter 2018 @ @ www.tspsc.gov.in. Furthermore, the examinations are conducted on 2 days that is 4th and 3rd March 2018. The link to download your TSPSC Exam Admit Card 2018 is given below.
The TSPSC Hall Ticket 2018 is now released for the School Assistant in the Physical Education discipline posts. So, now all the applicants for the respective job positions can download your TSPSC Admit Card 2018. Also, the Telangana State Public Service Commission Authority has announced the date of the examination that is 2nd March 2018 @ www.tspsc.gov.in. Now the candidates can click on the link given below and download your TSPSC Exam Admit Card 2018
TSPSC Hall Ticket 2018 can be now downloaded by the applicants of the Secondary Grade Teacher Posts. So, now the waiting for all the individual is over. The candidates can just click on the link provided below. And download your TSPSC Admit Card 2018. Also, the examination will be conducted on 2nd March 2018 by the Telangana Public Service Commission Authority @ www.tspsc.gov.in.
TSPSC Secondary Grade Teacher Hall Ticket 2018 – Click Here.
TSPSC Hall Ticket 2018: The applicants of the School Assistant Posts of various Languages such as Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Urdu can get ready to write the TSPSC Exams. For that, the TSPSC Admit Card 2018 is required. So, we have given the link to download your TSPSC Call Letter at the link below. All that the candidates need to do is to click on the link and then download your TSPSC Exam Admit Card 2018.
TSPSC School Asst (Hindi, Kannada, Tamil & Urdu) Call Letter 2018 – Click Here.
TSPSC Exam Hall Tickets 2018 – 19
Applicants can download the TSPSC Hall Ticket 2018 now. For the Physical Education Teacher posts. Henceforth, all the candidates who had applied for the respective posts and are willing to appear for the examinations can download the TSPSC Admit Card 2018 from the link given below. After downloading TSPSC Exam Call Letter kindly take the printout of it. And then carry your TSPSC Exam Call Letter to the venue without fail.
Latest TSPSC Hall Ticket 2018 is released only for the applicants of the Pharmacist. Furthermore, the TSPSC Admit Card 2018 is proof that the candidate had applied for the respective post. Also, TSPSC Officials issued the TSPSC Hall Tickets 2018. Henceforth, there will be no ambiguity in it. Additionally, the applicants should not forget to carry the TS PSC Pharmacist Admit Card 2018 while appearing for the TSPSC Exams.
Telangana State Public Service Commission Board released the Telangana Recruitment Notification. Also, there was a huge number of vacancies. And a lot of aspirants who satisfied all the qualification such as Age Limit, Educational Qualification, etc had applied. And the candidates had to apply through online mode before the last date is over. Moreover, the board will consider the correctly filled applications.
TSPSC Hall Ticket 2018 – 19 @ tspsc.gov.in
Name of the Board
Telangana State Public Service Commission Board (TSPSC)
NEW DELHI: Amtek Auto is headed for liquidation after the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) rejected appeals for more time to hammer out a new resolution plan after bid winner Liberty House Group failed to meet its obligations. The auto parts maker has total debt of Rs 12,603 crore.London-based Liberty House Group (LHG) didn't furnish a bank guarantee of ?100 crore after its ?4,200-crore bid for the company had been accepted by the committee of creditors in July 2018.Amtek Auto was one of the 12 major nonperforming accounts that RBI had listed for immediate resolution under the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code in June 2017."We are not inclined to give any direction or exclude any period for fresh resolution plan," said the two-member bench led by Justice SJ Mukhopadhaya on Friday. "More than 270 days having passed, adjudicating authority may pass appropriate orders for liquidation in accordance with law." 70709055 Stakeholders ConcernedThe bench directed the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) to investigate the claims made by Amtek Auto's creditors and LHG regarding the latter's failure to meet its obligations after it was selected as the successful resolution applicant.LHG had argued that the information it was provided during the corporate insolvency resolution process was misleading and overstated the value of Amtek Auto's assets as well as the projected capacity of its plants. LHG called for a full investigation into the resolution process.Sanjeev Gupta-led LHG had also failed to implement its Rs410 crore resolution plan for Adhunik Metallics after it was selected as the successful resolution applicant. LHG also withdrew its resolution plan for Amtek Auto subsidiary ARGL.Sources close to developments told ET that key stakeholders were concerned that the NCLAT had not allowed for an additional 90 days for the resolution for Amtek Auto. Recent amendments to the IBC, which set a maximum timeline of 330 days for the resolution process, allowed for a 90-day extension for cases that were pending, according to them. However, the management of Amtek Auto may still be able to revive the company before liquidation by entering into arrangements with all the creditors to restructure its debt under Section 230 of the Companies Act.
NEW DELHI: The rebound in monsoon rainfall has created ideal conditions for agriculture for the rest of the year with accelerated planting and much more water in reservoirs, which officials said would lead to record food production this year.Rainfall in August has been 35% above normal so far, which has further improved crop planting and filled up major reservoirs with 25% more water than the 10-year average.This completes the turnaround of the farm situation that looked grim in June when authorities were planning drought-relief measures as rainfall was one-third less than normal and reservoirs were depleting at a time they normally fill up to meet post-monsoon requirement of drinking, irrigation and power generation.Will Also Help Rabi CropsNow the conditions are ripe for a good harvest of the kharif, or summer-sown, crop and higher farm incomes, which in turn should boost festive season demand and to some extent revive sales of vehicles, gold and consumer goods in an economy where companies have been nervous about weak demand. 70709027 "Good monsoon is kind of passport to better harvest," agriculture commissioner SK Malhotra told ET. "We achieved record food grain production last year. This year also, we expect the same."He said crop planting had accelerated in step with monsoon rainfall, which improved significantly in July and has been in a vigorous phase for three weeks."The deficit in crop planting is fast reducing since the last 30 days," Malhotra said. "We see some deficit in paddy sowing only, which we expect to cover up by August end. The sowing window for paddy is till August in West Bengal and Jharkhand. We don't see any shortfall in food grain productions this year," he said.Data issued by the agriculture ministry on Friday shows that planting of oilseeds is almost the same as last year, cotton is 5.6% higher, while pulses and coarse grains are 3.5% lower. Rice planting is 11% lower, making total crop sowing 4% less than last year, which is a vast improvement over the 12.5% deficit in June.Malhotra said the rains will not only help summer crops but also recharge the water table and fill reservoirs, which will help in the winter sowing also. Good monsoon rainfall, particularly towards the end of the season, are a boon for the winter-sown crops also as they improve soil moisture.Officials said the improvement in oilseed planting, following heavy rains in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, was particularly encouraging. It is now barely 0.7% lower than last year, but yields are expected to be better."Government is focusing big on oilseeds production for becoming self-sufficient in edible oil production," said PK Joshi, fellow at National Academy of Agricultural Sciences. "It is paying off well and we see a surge in oilseeds planting. We expect better yield this time as good high yielding varieties have been promoted," he said. The Met department's forecast of continuous good rains in the coming week has also raised hopes of increased economic activities in rural areas.
NEW DELHI: An ad war has begun between two consumer goods majors — Amul and Britannia — and the bone of contention is the good old butter in cookies.Amul recently released an ad, claiming that other biscuit manufacturers used just 0.3-3% butter and 20-22% vegetable oil in their cookies. Even though the creative did not name Britannia's Good Day, the picture used was indicative of the brand. The ad also claimed that Amul's own Butter Cookie had 25% butter and no vegetable oil.In an apparent response, Britannia released an ad which posed a question to the consumer: "How much cholesterol does a 25% butter cookie have? Approximately 7 times cholesterol." Britannia too did not name any competitors.Amul managing director RS Sodhi said Britannia's was a misleading claim. "If vegetable oil is as healthy as they claim, then why do they call their biscuit 'Butter Cookie' on the packet. Why not refer to them as palm oil cookie? As a brand we operate in a pure category and from Mr V Kurien, we have learnt never to cheat customers," Sodhi said, referring to father of the white revolution who played a key role in the formation of Amul.Britannia did not respond to an email seeking comment. 70709155 The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), a self-regulatory voluntary organisation of the advertising industry, said comparative advertising was permissible. "Brands, from beverages to detergents, have been doing comparative advertising for a long time. However, the claims they make have to be factually correct and truthful," said Shweta Purandare, its secretary-general. She did not reveal if ASCI had received complaints over the ads.Debate over the advertisements has spilled over onto social media platform Twitter.User @alibehzaad tweeted: "Amul has taken its long traditional route of emphasising on butter. Amul has a loyal and vociferous consumer base. With high cholesterol pitch Britannia has just differentiated itself, and may fight for market share in space which is overlapping. Amul has a higher emotional pitch."One @ghuubear tweeted: "Cholesterol from butter has no negative impact on health but these guys are perpetuating the same myth. Either they haven't read up enough or know it but still chose to go with the narrative of 'cholesterol is bad for you'. Dishonest marketing either way."
MUMBAI: Auto companies are slamming the brakes on campus hiring, cutting it to half or even less this year, owing to one of the worst slowdowns.Mahindra & Mahindra, Tata Motors, Maruti Suzuki and Ashok Leyland are cutting down on intake of freshers from campuses, even as there is a freeze on overall lateral hiring across levels, said industry insiders.At Mahindra, the country's largest maker of utility vehicles and tractors, entry-level campus hiring will be reduced to about half. "As against around 400 we used to hire, we will take just about 200 this year," said chief people officer Rajeshwar Tripathi. The approach now is to minimise fresh hiring and enhance productivity, he said."Since start of the downturn, we have been very judicious in our external hiring, including campus hiring, and have been encouraging internal job rotations to fill open positions," said a Tata Motors spokesperson.Maruti and Ashok Leyland did not respond to ET's queries.July sales of vehicles fell the most in 19 years across categories, at 18.7% on-year, as per data released by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers. In the passenger vehicle segment, the fall was almost 31%."The auto sector is not very big on hiring from B-schools like the IIMs. They are more in the engineering colleges and they are going to feel the pinch," said Kris Lakshmikanth, founderchief executive, The Head Hunters India. They also take students from industrial training institutes and they will also be hit, said Lakshmikanth. "It is not just this year, the next two years will be bad with no light at the end of the tunnel at the moment," he added.70709001 "Auto companies are hiring less," said Harish Kumar, associate director, industrial licensing and placements, Manipal Institute of Technology. "As of now, the number of offers from auto companies is very low." The transition to electrification from traditional core engine technology may also affect campus hiring, he said.Rotation of experiences and skill-building are some of the key focus areas in auto companies. In addition, there is an opportunity for relooking at productivity norms and plant layouts."With the auto sector meltdown, there will be pressure on companies to relook at campus hiring in this cycle. While productivity and manpower rationalisation, along with some injection of fresh blood, would be the right things, my sense is the numbers will be significantly truncated on both business and engineering campuses," said Prabir Jha, a former chief HR officer at Tata Motors and the founder and CEO of Prabir Jha People Advisory.Given the fall in demand, automakers have slashed production which has affected about 3,50,000 jobs across vehicle manufacturing, components and distribution segments in the past three months. The affected employees include about 2,30,000 at dealers, 100,000 in the auto component industry and another 15,000 casual and temporary workers.According to industry estimates, a million additional jobs stand to get affected in auto component manufacturing if the slowdown persists. The automotive industry employs 37 million people, directly and indirectly.
MUMBAI: Liquidity risk is increasing for Indian-based real-estate developers, as non-bank financial institutions (NBFI; including housing finance companies) are shying away from lending to the sector, said Fitch Ratings.Developers that rely on refinancing from NBFIs, particularly those with weak financial profiles, will be affected the most should conditions persist. The availability of unencumbered assets among large developers may be of limited use, as NBFIs are looking to shed their already-high exposure to the sector, especially to large borrowers.NBFIs have disproportionately increased their share of real-estate sector credit in the previous few years, owing to heightened risk aversion by banks; banks have been cutting exposure due to their own funding challenges that began in late 2018, which have become more acute in the previous few months; domestic bank exposures fell to 2.3% of loans in the financial year ending March 2019 from 2.8% in 2015-16.NBFIs are now also shying away from refinancing maturing debt of even large, proven developers to limit concentration risk to the sector. This is pushing developers towards alternative funding channels, such as private equity. The availability of such funding could be more limited than the value of maturing debt and may only be available to established developers with sufficient unpledged assets. It would also come at a higher cost. We believe banks may still consider exposure to quality real estate, but overall exposure continues to decline.Developers that are focused on high-end projects may face higher risk, as sales of such projects have slowed in the last two years. We believe these developers would be wary of taking sharp price corrections on unsold inventory to boost sales, except in extreme circumstances, as this could diminish the value of unsold inventory and weaken collateral cover for existing lenders.In addition, any boost in sales would be temporary. Meanwhile, developers with substantial exposure to affordable housing may still benefit from marginal access to lenders in light of healthy pre-sales growth, supported by India's substantial housing deficit and government incentives for buyers via the credit-linked subsidy scheme as well as for developers, including tax deductions and grant of infrastructure status, which entitles companies to some benefits and concessions.The government has announced measures to improve NBFI-sector liquidity, but their efficacy remains to be seen. For example, we believe the government's July 2019 announcement to provide a first-loss guarantee of 10% on securitised assets issued by NBFIs to banks could ease funding pressure for NBFIs in the short term. However, the provision refers only to financially sound issuers and there is a lack of clarity about the duration of the guarantee and the definition of what comprises a 'financially sound' entity. In addition, most of the actions by the authorities to alleviate the liquidity squeeze will benefit the largest and least risky NBFIs and is unlikely to address the pressure on the more property focused players.Defaults by two NBFIs - Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd (IL&FS) in September 2018 and Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Ltd (DHFL) in June 2019 - have contributed to the sector-wide liquidity squeeze, as investors have become more risk averse. Banks' low appetite for lending to real-estate developers is evidenced by the usually high risk weights attached to such loans. These are due to developers' typically low credit ratings amid high leverage, making exposure to the sector an inefficient use of banks' already-limited capital.Substantial bank recapitalisation to increase lending capacity could benefit NBFIs as well as real-estate developers, subject to the banks' risk appetite. Although a structural improvement in NBFI asset books would take time. Nonetheless, even under better conditions we expect NBFI's to tighten credit standards, with developers facing funding pressure until there is a broader improvement in their operations, with better end-user demand and pricing support.
NEW DELHI: India's $57-billion auto components industry is expected to face more jobs losses over the next quarter due to the ripple down effect of slumping automobile sales. Front-end sales jobs and those related to technical, painting, welding, casting, production technology and services are primarily at risk, industry players said."The vehicle industry is witnessing de-growth, resulting in 100,000 job losses in the component sector over the last few months. Should this trend persist for another 3-4 months, it could lead to 1 million job losses," Vinnie Mehta, director generalm Automotive Components Manufacturers Association of India (ACMA), told ET.Recruitment firms Xpheno and TeamLease have pegged the job losses at more than 500,000 in the coming quarter. "The job cuts are happening around the major hubs, and by at least 10% in each of the companies," said Rituparna Chakraborty, co-founder, TeamLease Services. The downturn in the auto sector is expected to last anywhere between six and nine months, she said.70709118 Tier II-III companies with a turnover of less than Rs 400 crore are bleeding the most. Around 5 million are employed in the sector, which exports components worth $15 billion. "Contractual employees are being laid off after unskilled and semi-skilled employees in the auto ancillary industry," said Mehta.The slowdown started during the festival season in September last year. "About 15% reduction in man-hours, including actual lay-offs and reduction in work days/hours, has taken place since September 2018 till date," said Ram Venkataramani, president, ACMA and managing director at Amalgamations Group, an auto ancillary player. Another 15%, roughly 750,000 workers, may be forced to quit over the next quarter or so, he said. Amalgamations Group has laid off about 200 across functions and levels.Other companies, too, have started taking protective measures. For instance, automobile components manufacturer Minda Industries Ltd has put a freeze on fresh and replacement hiring. It has also reduced inventory and operational costs. "We are not touching the people in the company just yet," said Nirmal Minda, chairman, Minda Industries, adding that contract workers may be the first to let go in case the situation worsens. The company has more than 20,000 employees, of which 5,000 are contract workers.Ajay Kumar, HR head at tyre maker Continental India, said, "We closely monitor our production and process cost. Hiring is being looked at carefully as a matter of process discipline but we are continuing to hire.""The auto ancillaries sector would definitely see some impact; Apollo Tyres has been able to keep itself above troubled waters till now," said Satish Sharma, president, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, Apollo Tyres.Bosch, Ceat, Shriram Pistons and Rings, and Lumax Industries did not respond to ET's queries on the employment scenario.
New Delhi: Air passengers taking domestic flights from the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport can now save some time, courtesy the new express check-in counter service. Passengers with only handbags will be allowed to avail this facility, which will enable them to head straight towards the boarding area via an 'express lane.'According to an official, about 40% of the flyers in Delhi do not travel with check-in bags, and the service will reduce crowding at the check-in zones of the congested terminals. It will also ensure fast and seamless flow of the domestic passengers travelling without any check-in baggage.GMR-led Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL), in collaboration with Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), introduced the facility at Terminal 2 on Friday. It will soon be extended to Terminal 1 and Terminal 3 as well.Videh Kumar Jaipuriar, CEO-DIAL, said, "This is a step forward towards our commitment to provide comfort and ensure convenience to our passengers for a hassle-free travel experience. CISF has played a vital role in supporting the implementation of this facility."The pre-embarkation security check would now happen immediately after the terminal's entry gate. The domestic passengers, after printing their boarding passes from the newly installed self-service kiosks or the web check-in located conveniently at the departures forecourt area outside the terminal building, can now enter the express security check lane and head straight towards the boarding area.Passengers, particularly frequent flyers such as government officials, businessmen and corporate travellers will benefit from the new facility. The new process will also help the airlines improve their on-time performance.Delhi airport's Terminal 2 handles about 45,000 domestic passengers daily, of which more than 13,000 passengers travel without any check-in baggage. Hyderabad airport was the first in India to provide express check-in facility for its domestic passengers with hand baggage only.
LONDON: OPEC delivered a downbeat oil market outlook for the rest of 2019 on Friday as economic growth slows and highlighted challenges in 2020 as rivals pump more, building a case to keep up an OPEC-led pact to curb supply.In a monthly report, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries cut its forecast for global oil demand growth in 2019 by 40,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 1.10 million bpd and indicated the market will be in slight surplus in 2020.The bearish outlook due to slowing economies amid the U.S.-China trade dispute and Brexit could press the case for OPEC and allies including Russia to maintain a policy of cutting output to support prices. Already, a Saudi official has hinted at further steps to support the market."While the outlook for market fundamentals seems somewhat bearish for the rest of the year, given softening economic growth, ongoing global trade issues and slowing oil demand growth, it remains critical to closely monitor the supply/demand balance and assist market stability in the months ahead," OPEC said in the report.It is rare for OPEC to give a bearish forward view on the market outlook and oil pared an earlier gain after it was released to trade below $59 a barrel.Despite the OPEC-led cut, oil has tumbled from April's 2019 peak above $75 pressured by trade concerns and an economic slowdown.OPEC, Russia and other producers have since Jan. 1 implemented a deal to cut output by 1.2 million bpd. The alliance, known as OPEC+, in July renewed the pact until March 2020 to avoid a build-up of inventories that could hit prices.OPEC left its forecast for 2020 oil demand growth at 1.14 million bpd, up slightly from this year. But OPEC added that its forecast for 2020 economic growth faced downside risk."The risk to global economic growth remains skewed to the downside," the report said. "Especially trade-related developments will need to be thoroughly reviewed in the coming weeks with some likelihood of a further downward revision in September."OPEC trimmed its global economic growth forecast to 3.1% from 3.2% and, for now, kept its 2020 forecast at 3.2%.RISING INVENTORIESThe report also said oil inventories in developed economies rose in June, suggesting a trend that could raise OPEC concern over a possible oil glut.Stocks in June exceeded the five-year average - a yardstick OPEC watches closely - by 67 million barrels.This is despite the supply cuts of OPEC+ and additional involuntary losses in Iran and Venezuela, two OPEC members which are under U.S. sanctions.OPEC deepened its cuts in July, the report showed. According to figures OPEC collects from secondary sources, output from all 14 members fell by 246,000 bpd from June to 29.61 million bpd as Saudi Arabia cut supply further.OPEC and its partners have been limiting supply since 2017, helping to clear a supply glut that built up in 2014-2016 when producers pumped at will, and revive prices.The policy has been giving a sustained boost to U.S. shale and other rival supply, and the report suggests the world will need significantly less OPEC crude next year.The demand for OPEC crude will average 29.41 million bpd next year, OPEC said, down 1.3 million bpd from this year. Still, the 2020 forecast was raised 140,000 bpd from last month's forecast.The report suggests there will be a 2020 supply surplus of 200,000 bpd if OPEC keeps pumping at July's rate and other things remain equal. Last month's report had implied a larger surplus of over 500,000 bpd.
In India, we have to be prepared for the worst. We have to undertake structural reforms right now to bring back animal spirits in the private investment cycle, says Anant Narayan, Professor, SP JIMR . Excerpts from an interview with ETNOW. What do you make of this pattern again and again coming in, where long-term yields are going below the short-term yields and what does it point out to? In simple terms, what does this mean?In simple terms it just tells you that the market is extremely nervous about prospects of global growth and global financial stability going forward. We have been seeing much yield curve inversion as , so much of global sovereign yields are going at negative yields. Over 25% of the outstanding bonds are now quoting negative yields. This kind of conditions were probably last seen sometime in 2007-2008 where people were the harbinger of the overall crisis that we saw. The data at this point in time does not indicate any real crisis as such. The US economy is doing reasonably well but the mood in the market and the sentiment in the market is just extremely soft. Unfortunately markets have a way of making their own prophecies come true and sentiments can translate into reality and there are enough soft spots in the world --. the trade war between US and China, the softness in Europe and Italy and Germany and other places; the geopolitics around Iran etc. There are plenty of flash points around the world which could make the market'' worst fears come true. What it means for us in India is that in an uncertain global context, a risk could turn off and seriously off for some time to come. Unfortunately very little of that is in our hands. We are takers of what happens globally rather than givers. It just highlights the fact that we need to put our own domestic house into order and there are plenty of structural issues that dogs us, which we have to try and address as quickly as possible -- the health of the banking system, the issues around the power sector, real estate, construction, airline and shipping, telecom. Plus the fact that we have not really undertaken real reforms when it comes to factors of production land, labour, capital and so on so forth. These are issues that we have to try and put into order while we hope for the best as far as global markets are concerned. While we are doing what we can on the monetary side and the fiscal side, these are dangerous signs, We have seen past experiments of excessive monetary easing and fiscal easing lead us to trouble. So unaccompanied by real reforms, they might not really provide us with too much of solutions. Long story short, global markets are extremely nervous, people are drawing parallels to what we saw 10-12 years ago. Unfortunately, we have to take what comes globally, we cannot be choosers. Our own domestic shop is not in great shape, the economy is hurting in parts while monetary and fiscal easing is underway right now. There is a need for sectoral reforms and there is a need for actual reforms to go through to get us out of where we are right now. Globally, is the situation a little different compared to what we saw in 2008 or 2001 when the yield curve inverted?Yes, absolutely. The context is very different. I just think the sentiment seems very similar, obviously the context is very different. At that point of time, the US was the centre of financial instability which came out in terms of leverage, in terms of the real estate sector which was hurting, in terms of too much of derivatives and associated issues coming up. So the context was very different, but the sentiment globally is very similar. It is a very, very bleak sentiment where we are all scratching our heads and the date does not seem to indicate things are that bad but the market prices indicate that people are really gearing up for the worst. As I mentioned earlier, it is not the US, there are other flash points which could possibly make these worst fears come true. We do not know the real health of China. We do not know how much capacity they have to ride out a prolonged trade war with the US and we will probably find out the hard way. The sentiment around Europe and Japan is pretty soft as well. So, there are plenty of soft points globally in terms of global leverage, which could unfortunately make these fears come true. So yes, the context is very different from the tech time or from 10 years or 12 years ago but the sentiment is very similar. I just hope that sentiment is misplaced and that things turn back into an even keel as we head into US elections etc next year. In India, we have to be prepared for the worst. That is why this underlying the need for us to set our own shop in order. We do have a window of opportunity where people are not too bothered about monetary easing or the size of fiscal easing. We cannot rely only on that. We have to undertake all those structural reforms which are so essential right now to bring back animal spirits in the private investment cycle.
New Delhi: Google's enterprise Gmail for businesses suffered an outage on Friday as some users in India faced problems while refreshing, sending and receiving emails on the secure, private and ad-free email service.It is not yet known if any other service by the Internet giant such as Google Drive or YouTube was affected by the disruption."We're investigating reports of an issue with Gmail. We will provide more information shortly. The affected users are able to access Gmail, but are seeing error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behaviour," the company said in an email sent to users.The enterprise Gmail edition, part of Google's GSuite, was later restored for some users.The last major outage that hit the Internet giant took place in June when services of YouTube, Snapchat, Gmail, Nest, Discord and a number of other web services suffered in the US.The primary cause of the blackout was said to be issues with Google's Cloud service that powers apps other than just Google's own web services.
Loo & Behold: Train users at Kalupur see red There are a total of nine toilets at its seven platforms, out of which only three are functional, while the rest are locked by the authorities claiming to be under maintenance.
Mumbai: Dining out is a 'perilous' affair in Kurla Over 200 hotels are operating illegally without adequate permissions like fire NOC, trade license, blgd permission
Decision on Justice Akil Kureshi in a week's time: Centre "The decision of the Centre will be informed to the Collegium," the Solicitor General told the court
Stimulus package talk still going on: FM Nirmala Sitharaman A number of sectors like the automobile and realty have urged the government to come up with a package
Ex-FM Arun Jaitley critical at AIIMS, say doctors The 66-year-old BJP leader, who held important portfolios during the first tenure of Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government, has not been keeping well for some time
It's true, you've got the Galaxy Note to thank for your big phone. When the device hit the scene at IFA 2011, large screens were still a punchline. That same year, Steve Jobs famously joked about phones with screens larger than four inches, telling a crowd of reporters, "nobody's going to buy that."
In 2019, the average screen size hovers around 5.5 inches. That's a touch larger than the original Note's 5.3 inches — a size that was pretty widely mocked by much of the industry press at the time. Of course, much of the mainstreaming of larger phones comes courtesy of a much improved screen to body ratio, another place where Samsung has continued to lead the way.
In some sense, the Note has been doomed by its own success. As the rest of the industry caught up, the line blended into the background. Samsung didn't do the product any favors by dropping the pretense of distinction between the Note and its Galaxy S line.
Ultimately, the two products served as an opportunity to have a six-month refresh cycle for its flagships. Samsung, of course, has been hit with the same sort of malaise as the rest of the industry. The smartphone market isn't the unstoppable machine it appeared to be two or three years back.
Like the rest of the industry, the company painted itself into a corner with the smartphone race, creating flagships good enough to convince users to hold onto them for an extra year or two, greatly slowing the upgrade cycle in the process. Ever-inflating prices have also been a part of smartphone sales stagnation — something Samsung and the Note are as guilty of as any.
So what's a poor smartphone manufacturer to do? The Note 10 represents baby steps. As it did with the S line recently, Samsung is now offering two models. The base Note 10 represents a rare step backward in terms of screen size, shrinking down slightly from 6.4 to 6.3 inches, while reducing resolution from Quad HD to Full HD.
The seemingly regressive step lets Samsung come in a bit under last year's jaw dropping $1,000. The new Note is only $50 cheaper, but moving from four to three figures may have a positive psychological effect for wary buyers. While the slightly smaller screen coupled with a better screen to body ratio means a device that's surprisingly slim.
If anything, the Note 10+ feels like the true successor to the Note line. The baseline device could have just as well been labeled the Note 10 Lite. That's something Samsung is keenly aware of, as it targets first-time Note users with the 10 and true believers with the 10+. In both cases, Samsung is faced with the same task as the rest of the industry: offering a compelling reason for users to upgrade.
Earlier this week, a Note 9 owner asked me whether the new device warrants an upgrade. The answer is, of course, no. The pace of smartphone innovation has slowed, even as prices have risen. Honestly, the 10 doesn't really offer that many compelling reasons to upgrade from the Note 8.
That's not a slight against Samsung or the Note, per se. If anything, it’s a reflection on the fact that these phones are quite good — and have been for a while. Anecdotally, industry excitement around these devices has been tapering for a while now, and the device's launch in the midst of the doldrums of August likely didn't help much.
The past few years have seen smartphones transform from coveted, bleeding-edge luxury to necessity. The good news to that end, however, is that the Note continues to be among the best devices out there.
The common refrain in the earliest days of the phablet was the inability to wrap one's fingers around the device. It's a pragmatic issue. Certainly you don't want to use a phone day to day that's impossible to hold. But Samsung's remarkable job of improving screen to body ratio continues here. In fact, the 6.8-inch Note 10+ has roughly the same footprint as the 6.4-inch Note 9.
The issue will still persist for those with smaller hands — though thankfully Samsung's got a solution for them in the Note 10. For the rest of us, the Note 10+ is easily held in one hand and slipped in and out of pants pockets. I realize these seem like weird things to say at this point, but I assure you they were legitimate concerns in the earliest days of the phablet, when these things were giant hunks of plastic and glass.
Samsung's curved display once again does much of the heavy lifting here, allowing the screen to stretch nearly from side to side with only a little bezel at the edge. Up top is a hole-punch camera — that's "Infinity O" to you. Those with keen eyes no doubt immediately noticed that Samsung has dropped the dual selfie camera here, moving toward the more popular hole-punch camera.
The company's reasoning for this was both aesthetic and, apparently, practical. The company moved back down to a single camera for the front (10 megapixel), using similar reasoning as Google's single rear-facing camera on the Pixel: software has greatly improved what companies can do with a single lens. That's certainly the case to a degree, and a strong case can be made for the selfie camera, which we generally require less of than the rear-facing array.
The company's gone increasingly minimalist with the design language — something I appreciate. Over the years, as the smartphone has increasingly become a day to day utility, the product's design has increasingly gotten out of its own way. The front and back are both made of a curved Gorilla Glass that butts up against a thin metal form with a total thickness of 7.9 millimeters.
On certain smooth surfaces like glass, you'll occasionally find the device gliding slightly. I'd say the chances of dropping it are pretty decent with its frictionless design language, so you're going to want to get a case for your $1,000 phone. Before you do, admire that color scheme on the back. There are four choices in all. Like the rest of the press, we ended up with Aura Glow.
It features a lovely, prismatic effect when light hits it. It's proven a bit tricky to photograph, honestly. It's also a fingerprint magnet, but these are the prices we pay to have the prettiest phone on the block.
One of the interesting footnotes here is how much the design of the 10 will be defined by what the device lost. There are two missing pieces here — both of which are a kind of concession from Samsung for different reasons. And for different reasons, both feel inevitable.
The headphone jack is, of course, the biggie. Samsung kicked and screamed on that one, holding onto the 3.5mm with dear life and roundly mocking the competition (read: Apple) at every turn. The company must have known it was a matter of time, even before the iPhone dropped the port three years ago.
Samsung glossed over the end of the jack (and apparently unlisted its Apple-mocking ads in the process) during the Note's launch event. It was a stark contrast from a briefing we got around the device's announcement, where the company's reps spent significantly more time justifying the move. They know us well enough to know that we'd spend a little time taking the piss out of the company after three years of it making the once ubiquitous port a feature. All's fair in love and port. And honestly, it was mostly just some good-natured ribbing. Welcome to the club, Samsung.
As for why Samsung did it now, the answer seems to be two-fold. The first is a kind of critical mass in Bluetooth headset usage. Allow me to quote myself from a few weeks back:
The tipping point, it says, came when its internal metrics showed that a majority of users on its flagship devices (the S and Note lines) moved to Bluetooth streaming. The company says the number is now in excess of 70% of users.
Also, as we're all abundantly aware, the company put its big battery ambitions on hold for a bit, as it dealt with…more burning problems. A couple of recalls, a humble press release and an eight-point battery check later, and batteries are getting bigger again. There's a 3,500mAh on the Note 10 and a 4,300mAh on the 10+. I'm happy to report that the latter got me through a full day plus three hours on a charge. Not bad, given all of the music and videos I subjected it to in that time.
There's no USB-C dongle in-box. The rumors got that one wrong. You can pick up a Samsung-branded adapter for $15, or get one for much cheaper elsewhere. There is, however, a pair of AKG USB-C headphones in-box. I've said this before and I'll say it again: Samsung doesn't get enough credit for its free headphones. I've been known to use the pairs with other devices. They're not the greatest the world, but they're better sounding and more comfortable than what a lot of other companies offer in-box.
Obviously the standard no headphone jack things apply here. You can't use the wired headphones and charge at the same time (unless you go wireless). You know the deal.
The other missing piece here is the Bixby button. I'm sure there are a handful of folks out there who will bemoan its loss, but that's almost certainly a minority of the minority here. Since the button was first introduced, folks were asking for the ability to remap it. Samsung finally relented on that front, and with the Note 10, it drops the button altogether.
Thus far the smart assistant has been a disappointment. That's due in no small part to a late launch compared to the likes of Siri, Alexa and Assistant, coupled with a general lack of capability at launch. In Samsung's defense, the company's been working to fix that with some pretty massive investment and a big push to court developers. There's hope for Bixby yet, but a majority of users weren't eager to have the assistant thrust upon them.
Instead, the power button has been shifted to the left of the device, just under the volume rocker. I preferred having it on the other side, especially for certain functions like screenshotting (something, granted, I do much more than the average user when reviewing a phone). That's a pretty small quibble, of course.
Bixby can now be quickly accessed by holding down the power button. Handily, Samsung still lets you reassign the function there, if you really want Bixby out of your life. You can also hold down to get the power off menu or double press to launch Bixby or a third-party app (I opted for Spotify, probably my most used these days), though not a different assistant.
Imaging, meanwhile, is something Samsung's been doing for a long time. The past several generations of S and Note devices have had great camera systems, and it continues to be the main point of improvement. It's also one of few points of distinction between the 10 and 10+, aside from size.
The Note 10+ has four, count ’em, four rear-facing cameras. They are as follows:
Ultra Wide: 16 megapixel
Wide: 12 megapixel
Telephoto: 12 megapixel
DepthVision
That last one is only on the plus. It's comprised of two little circles to the right of the primary camera array and just below the flash. We'll get to that in a second.
The main camera array continues to be one of the best in mobile. The inclusion of telephoto and ultra-wide lenses allow for a wide range of different shots, and the hardware coupled with machine learning makes it a lot more difficult to take a bad photo (though believe me, it's still possible).
The live focus feature (Portrait mode, essentially) comes to video, with four different filters, including Color Point, which makes everything but the subject black and white.
Samsung's also brought a very simple video editor into the mix here, which is nice on the fly. You can edit the length of clips, splice in other clips, add subtitles and captions and add filters and music. It's pretty beefy for something baked directly into the camera app, and one of the better uses I've found for the S Pen.
Note 10+ with Super Steady (left), iPhone XS (right)
Ditto for the improved Super Steady offering, which smooths out shaky video, including Hyperlapse mode, where handshakes are a big issue. It works well, but you do lose access to other features, including zoom. For that reason, it's off by default and should be used relatively sparingly.
Note 10+ (left), iPhone XS (right)
Zoom-on Mic is a clever addition, as well. While shooting video, pinch-zooming on something will amplify the noise from that area. I've been playing around with it in this cafe. It's interesting, but less than perfect.
Zooming into something doesn't exactly cancel out ambient noise from outside of the frame. Everything still gets amplified in the process and, like digital picture zoom, a lot of noise gets added in the process. Those hoping for a kind of spy microphone, I'm sorry/happy to report that this definitely is not that.
The DepthVision Camera is also pretty limited as I write this. If anything, it's Samsung's attempt to brace for a future when things like augmented reality will (theoretically) play a much larger role in our mobile computing. In a conversation I had with the company ahead of launch, they suggested that a lot of the camera's AR functions will fall in the hands of developers.
For now, Quick Measure is the one practical use. The app is a lot like Apple's more simply titled Measure. Fire it up, move the camera around to get a lay of the land and it will measure nearby objects for you. An interesting showcase for AR potential? Sure. Earth shattering? Naw. It also seems to be a bit of a battery drain, sucking up the last few bits of juice as I was running it down.
3D Scanner, on the other hand, got by far the biggest applause line of the Note event. And, indeed, it's impressive. In the stage demo, a Samsung employee scanned a stuffed pink beaver (I’m not making this up), created a 3D image and animated it using an associate' movements. Practical? Not really. Cool? Definitely.
It was, however, not available at press time. Hopefully it proves to be more than vaporware, especially if that demo helped push some viewers over to the 10+. Without it, there's just not a lot of use for the depth camera at the moment.
There's also AR Doodle, which fills a similar spot as much of the company's AR offerings. It's kind of fun, but again, not particularly useful. You'll likely end up playing with it for a few minutes and forget about it entirely. Such is life.
The feature is built into the camera app, using depth sensing to orient live drawings. With the stylus you can draw in space or doodle on people's faces. It's neat, the AR works okay and I was bored with it in about three minutes. Like Quick Measure, the feature is as much a proof of concept as anything. But that's always been a part of Samsung's kitchen-sink approach — some combination of useful and silly.
That said, points to Samsung for continuing to de-creepify AR Emojis. Those have moved firmly away from the uncanny valley into something more cartoony/adorable. Less ironic usage will surely follow.
Asked about the key differences between the S and Note lines, Samsung's response was simple: the S Pen. Otherwise, the lines are relatively interchangeable.
Samsung's return of the stylus didn't catch on for handsets quite like the phablet form factor. They've made a pretty significant comeback for tablets, but the Note remains fairly singular when it comes to the S Pen. I've never been a big user myself, but those who like it swear by it. It's one of those things like the ThinkPad pointing stick or BlackBerry scroll wheel.
Like the phone itself, the peripheral has been streamlined with a unibody design. Samsung also continues to add capabilities. It can be used to control music, advance slideshows and snap photos. None of that is likely to convince S Pen skeptics (I prefer using the buttons on the included headphones for music control, for example), but more versatility is generally a good thing.
If anything is going to convince people to pick up the S Pen this time out, it's the improved handwriting recognition. That's pretty impressive. It was even able to decipher my awful chicken scratch.
You get the same sort of bleeding-edge specs here you've come to expect from Samsung's flagships. The 10+ gets you a baseline 256GB of storage (upgradable to 512), coupled with a beefy 12GB of RAM (the regular Note is a still good 8GB/256GB). The 5G version sports the same numbers and battery (likely making its total life a bit shorter per charge). That's a shift from the S10, whose 5G version was specced out like crazy. Likely Samsung is bracing for 5G to become less of a novelty in the next year or so.
The new Note also benefits from other recent additions, like the in-display fingerprint reader and wireless power sharing. Both are nice additions, but neither is likely enough to warrant an immediate upgrade.
Once again, that's not an indictment of Samsung, so much as a reflection of where we are in the life cycle of a mature smartphone industry. The Note 10+ is another good addition to one of the leading smartphone lines. It succeeds as both a productivity device (thanks to additions like DeX and added cross-platform functionality with Windows 10) and an everyday handset.
There's not enough on-board to really recommend an upgrade from the Note 8 or 9 — especially at that $1,099 price. People are holding onto their devices for longer, and for good reason (as detailed above). But if you need a new phone, are looking for something big and flashy and are willing to splurge, the Note continues to be the one to beat.
As people strive ever harder to minutely quantify every action they do, the sensors that monitor those actions are growing lighter and less invasive. Two prototype sensors from crosstown rivals Stanford and Berkeley stick right to the skin and provide a wealth of physiological data.
Stanford’s stretchy wireless “BodyNet” isn’t just flexible in order to survive being worn on the shifting surface of the body; that flexing is where its data comes from.
The sensor is made of metallic ink laid on top of a flexible material like that in an adhesive bandage. But unlike phones and smartwatches, which use tiny accelerometers or optical tricks to track the body, this system relies on how it is itself stretched and compressed. These movements cause tiny changes in how electricity passes through the ink, changes that are relayed to a processor nearby.
Naturally if one is placed on a joint, as some of these electronic stickers were, it can report back whether and how much that joint has been flexed. But the system is sensitive enough that it can also detect the slight changes the skin experiences during each heartbeat, or the broader changes that accompany breathing.
The problem comes when you have to get that signal off the skin. Using a wire is annoying and definitely very ’90s. But antennas don’t work well when they’re flexed in weird directions — efficiency drops off a cliff, and there’s very little power to begin with — the skin sensor is powered by harvesting RFID signals, a technique that renders very little in the way of voltage.
The second part of their work, then, and the part that is clearly most in need of further improvement and miniaturization, is the receiver, which collects and re-transmits the sensor’s signal to a phone or other device. Although they managed to create a unit that’s light enough to be clipped to clothes, it’s still not the kind of thing you’d want to wear to the gym.
The good news is that’s an engineering and design limitation, not a theoretical one — so a couple years of work and progress on the electronics front and they could have a much more attractive system.
“We think one day it will be possible to create a full-body skin-sensor array to collect physiological data without interfering with a person's normal behavior,” Stanford professor Zhenan Bao said in a news release.
Over at Cal is a project in a similar domain that’s working to get from prototype to production. Researchers there have been working on a sweat monitor for a few years that could detect a number of physiological factors.
Normally you’d just collect sweat every 15 minutes or so and analyze each batch separately. But that doesn’t really give you very good temporal resolution — what if you want to know how the sweat changes minute by minute or less? By putting the sweat collection and analysis systems together right on the skin, you can do just that.
While the sensor has been in the works for a while, it’s only recently that the team has started moving toward user testing at scale to see what exactly sweat measurements have to offer.
“The goal of the project is not just to make the sensors but start to do many subject studies and see what sweat tells us — I always say ‘decoding’ sweat composition. For that we need sensors that are reliable, reproducible, and that we can fabricate to scale so that we can put multiple sensors in different spots of the body and put them on many subjects,” explained Ali Javey, Berkeley professor and head of the project.
As anyone who’s working in hardware will tell you, going from a hand-built prototype to a mass-produced model is a huge challenge. So the Berkeley team tapped their Finnish friends at VTT Technical Research Center, who make a specialty of roll-to-roll printing.
For flat, relatively simple electronics, roll-to-roll is a great technique, essentially printing the sensors right onto a flexible plastic substrate that can then simply be cut to size. This way they can make hundreds or thousands of the sensors quickly and cheaply, making them much simpler to deploy at arbitrary scales.
These are far from the only flexible or skin-mounted electronics projects out there, but it’s clear that we’re approaching the point when they begin to leave the lab and head out to hospitals, gyms and homes.
Businesses need to understand cause and effect: Someone did X and it increased sales, or they did Y and it hurt sales. That’s why many of them turn to analytics — but Bilal Mahmood, co-founder and CEO of ClearBrain, said existing analytics platforms can’t answer that question accurately.
“Every analytics platform today is still based on a fundamental correlation model,” Mahmood said. It’s the classic correlation-versus-causation problem — you can use the data to suggest that an action and a result are related, but you can’t draw a direct cause-and-effect relationship.
That’s the problem that ClearBrain is trying to solve with its new “causal analytics” tool. As the company put it in a blog post, “Our goal was to automate this process [of running statistical studies] and build the first large-scale causal inference engine to allow growth teams to measure the causal effect of every action.”
You can read the post for (many) more details, but the gist is that Mahmood and his team claim they can draw accurate causal relationships where others can’t.
The idea is to use this in conjunction with A/B testing — customers look at the data to prioritize what to test next, and to make estimates about the impact of things that can’t be tested. Otherwise, Mahmood said, “If you wanted to measure the actual impact of every variable on your website and your app — the actual impact it has on conversation — it could take you years.”
When I wrote about ClearBrain last year, it was using artificial intelligence to improve ad targeting, but Mahmood said the company built the new analytics technology in response to customer demand: “People didn’t just want to know who was going to convert, they wanted to know why, and what caused them to do so.”
The causal analytics tool is currently available to early access users, with plans for a full launch in October. Mahmood said there will be a number of pricing tiers, but they’ll be structured to make the product free for many startups.
In addition to launching the analytics tool in early access, ClearBrain also announced this week that it’s raised an additional $2 million in funding from Harrison Metal and Menlo Ventures.
Upfront Ventures, the 23-year-old, LA-based venture capital firm, is gearing up for far more deal-making.
In addition to filing paperwork with the SEC this summer to raise its third growth-stage investment fund (it is also investing a $400 million early-stage fund and probably announcing another soon), the firm just added two new general partners to its lineup of investors.
One of them, Michael Carney, joined Upfront as a principal in 2015 after working as an editor at the news site PandoDaily, and, before that, working as an investor and analyst at a boutique merchant bank called Worldvest.
The firm’s second new general partner is Aditi Maliwal, who has also circled in and out of investing before, including stints as an associate with Crosslink Capital and, more recently, spending several years with Google, where Maliwal worked in corporate development before becoming a product manager.
We talked with both this week to congratulate them, as well as to learn more about what they’ll be shopping for — and from where.
For her part, Maliwal, who begins work at Upfront next month, says the idea is for her to eventually open a San Francisco office, though for now, she’ll be operating from the Bay Area out of a space that’s yet to be determined and spending every Monday or every other Monday down in LA with the rest of the team.
She got to know Upfront through another general partner, Kara Nortman, who joined Upfront in 2014 and who Maliwal would continue to see at events, as well as on the occasional trip to LA to see extended family. Maliwal also says she would observe on her trips that the “ecosystem in LA has really grown from 2014 to where it is today. I think the Bay Area continues to see how important it is, too.”
As for becoming an investor again, Maliwal says she was always interested in becoming a VC, thanks in part to a class taught at Stanford by renowned venture capitalist Heidi Roizen that inspired her. She says spending time with founders in her husband’s business school class at Stanford this past year whet her appetite anew. “There are four or five companies I’m close to and they’re good friends and when I was up at 11 pm working on a company idea with one of them earlier this year, I just realized that this is what gives me a lot of energy and this is a space I want to [get involved in again].”
She says she’ll mostly be focusing on business to business to consumer models, as well as SaaS applications, fintech and, when the opportunity arises, consumer products. More broadly speaking, says Maliwal, she hopes to serve as a bridge for Bay Area startups looking for a foothold in the LA market and vice versa.
Meanwhile, Carney is, and will remain, more focused on later-stage bets that Upfront funded early on and whose success the firm wants to ensure (to the extent that any firm can).
Understandably, he sounds excited — still — about the work.
“In 2012, [when I was at PandoDaily] LA was crossing an inflection point, with a number of second- and third-time founders coming out of later-stage marquee companies. When I joined Upfront, it felt similar. It was an incredible platform, it was a year or two after the firm was rebranded [from GRP Ventures] and Kara had been there less than a year and [fellow general partner] Greg [Bettinelli] had been there maybe two years. The team was kind of maturing and I feel lucky to join when I did.”
Carney suggests the opportunities have only grown stronger based what he’s seeing in the later-stage world. “We’re definitely seeing [greater bifurcation] between the haves and have nots, with companies that can break out as clear leaders tending to have access to larger amounts of capital than in past years. For the best of the best, the conditions remain as favorable as possible, while it’s gotten harder for companies to raise capital that fail to hit those growth rates, even in good times.”
Being able to recruit employees from roles at top companies in the Bay Area is just one reason solid LA companies have attained more momentum. “I think that owes to the maturation of the LA ecosystem. I think people are drawn to LA because Silicon Valley, for all its incredible success in the tech sector, is an industry town and LA has a more diverse economy and ecosystem. But also, five years ago, people would ask themselves, ‘If this new role [in LA] doesn’t work out, what do I do next?’ And I think the answer to that question is much clearer and more positive today.”
According to Upfront, 40% of its initial checks are written to companies based in LA, though it has bets in other parts of the U.S. and world. Some of the best-known deals in its current portfolio include the scooter company Bird, the sneaker marketplace GOAT and the online resale store ThredUp. Upfront was also an investor in Ring, the smart doorbell company acquired early last year by Amazon for $1 billion.
In addition to Maliwal, Carney, Nortman and Bettinelli, the firm is managed by general partners Kobie Fuller, Kevin Zhang, Mark Suster and founder Yves Sisteron.
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The web infrastructure company has recently found itself at the center of political debates around some of its customers, including social media networks like 8chan and racist media companies like the Daily Stormer. In fact, the company went so far as to cite 8chan as a risk factor in its public offering documents.
Even so, the company will likely be worth billions when it starts trading on the market. And we have to point out that Cloudflare actually made its debut on TechCrunch's Battlefield stage back in 2010.
Corellium allows customers to create and interact with virtual iOS devices — a software iPhone, for example, running actual iOS firmware, all within the browser. Apple says this is copyright infringement.
Going forward, copyright owners will no longer be able to monetize creator videos with very short or unintentional uses of music via YouTube's "Manual Claiming" tool. Instead, they can choose to prevent the other party from monetizing the video, or they can block the content.
For scooter startups, city regulations can make or break their businesses across nearly every aspect of operations, especially in two key areas: ridership growth and the ability to attract investor dollars. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
In a fireside chat, we'll ask Russinovich about what Microsoft is doing to reduce the complexity of moving legacy systems to the cloud, and how enterprises can maximize their current cloud investments.
The phrase “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” was originally meant sarcastically.
It's not actually physically possible to do — especially while wearing Allbirds and having just fallen off a Bird scooter in downtown San Francisco, but I should get to my point.
This week, Ken Cuccinelli, the acting Director of the United States Citizenship and Immigrant Services Office, repeatedly referred to the notion of bootstraps in announcing shifts in immigration policy, even going so far as to change the words to Emma Lazarus's famous poem "The New Colossus:" no longer "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," but “give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet, and who will not become a public charge.”
We've come to expect "alternative facts" from this administration, but who could have foreseen alternative poems?
Still, the concept of 'bootstrapping' is far from limited to the rhetorical territory of the welfare state and social safety net. It's also a favorite term of art in Silicon Valley tech and venture capital circles: see for example this excellent (and scary) recent piece by my editor Danny Crichton, in which young VC firms attempt to overcome a lack of the startup capital that is essential to their business model by creating, as perhaps an even more essential feature of their model, impossible working conditions for most everyone involved. Often with predictably disastrous results.
Mary L. Gray is a Fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research. One of the world's leading experts in the emerging field of ethics in AI, Mary is also an anthropologist who maintains a faculty position at Indiana University. With her co-author Siddharth Suri (a computer scientist), Gray coined the term "ghost work," as in the title of their extraordinarily important 2019 book, Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass.
Image via Mary L. Gray / Ghostwork / Adrianne Mathiowetz Photography
Ghost Work is a name for a rising new category of employment that involves people scheduling, managing, shipping, billing, etc. "through some combination of an application programming interface, APIs, the internet and maybe a sprinkle of artificial intelligence," Gray told me earlier this summer. But what really distinguishes ghost work (and makes Mary’s scholarship around it so important) is the way it is presented and sold to the end consumer as artificial intelligence and the magic of computation.
In other words, just as we have long enjoyed telling ourselves that it's possible to hoist ourselves up in life without help from anyone else (I like to think anyone who talks seriously about "bootstrapping" should be legally required to rephrase as "raising oneself from infancy"), we now attempt to convince ourselves and others that it's possible, at scale, to get computers and robots to do work that only humans can actually do.
Ghost Work's purpose, as I understand it, is to elevate the value of what the computers are doing (a minority of the work) and make us forget, as much as possible, about the actual messy human beings contributing to the services we use. Well, except for the founders, and maybe the occasional COO.
Facebook now has far more employees than Harvard has students, but many of us still talk about it as if it were little more than Mark Zuckerberg, Cheryl Sandberg, and a bunch of circuit boards.
But if working people are supposed to be ghosts, then when they speak up or otherwise make themselves visible, they are "haunting" us. And maybe it can be haunting to be reminded that you didn't "bootstrap" yourself to billions or even to hundreds of thousands of dollars of net worth.
Sure, you worked hard. Sure, your circumstances may well have stunk. Most people's do.
But none of us rise without help, without cooperation, without goodwill, both from those who look and think like us and those who do not. Not to mention dumb luck, even if only our incredible good fortune of being born with a relatively healthy mind and body, in a position to learn and grow, here on this planet, fourteen billion years or so after the Big Bang.
I'll now turn to the conversation I recently had with Gray, which turned out to be surprisingly more hopeful than perhaps this introduction has made it seem.
Greg Epstein: One of the most central and least understood features of ghost work is the way it revolves around people constantly making themselves available to do it.
Mary Gray: Yes, [What Siddarth Suri and I call ghost work] values having a supply of people available, literally on demand. Their contributions are collective contributions.
It’s not one person you’re hiring to take you to the airport every day, or to confirm the identity of the driver, or to clean that data set. Unless we’re valuing that availability of a person, to participate in the moment of need, it can quickly slip into ghost work conditions.
Any first responder knows that situational awareness is key. In domestic violence disputes, hostage rescue or human trafficking situations, first responders often need help determining where humans are behind closed doors.
That’s why Megan Lacy, Corbin Hennen and Rob Kleffner developed Lumineye, a 3D-printed radar device that uses signal analysis software to differentiate moving and breathing humans from other objects, through walls.
Lumineye uses pulse radar technology that works like echolocation (how bats and dolphins communicate). It sends signals and listens for how long it takes for a pulse to bounce back. The software analyzes these pulses to determine the approximate size, range and movement characteristics of a signal.
On the software side, Lumineye’s app will tell a user how far away a person is when they’re moving and breathing. It’s one dimensional, so it doesn’t tell the user whether the subject is to the right or left. But the device can detect humans out to 50 feet in open air; that range decreases depending upon the materials placed in between, like drywall, brick or concrete.
One scenario the team gave to describe the advantages of using Lumineye was the instance of hostage rescue. In this type of situation, it’s crucial for first responders to know how many people are in a room and how far away they are from one another. That’s where the use of multiple devices and triangulation from something like Lumineye could change a responding team’s tactical rescue approach.
Machines that currently exist to make these kind of detections are heavy and cumbersome. The team behind Lumineye was inspired to manufacture a more portable option that won’t weigh down teams during longer emergency response situations that can sometimes last for up to 12 hours or overnight. The prototype combines the detection hardware with an ordinary smartphone. It’s about 10 x 5 inches and weighs 1.5 pounds.
Lumineye wants to grow out its functionality to become more of a ubiquitous device. The team of four is planning to continue manufacturing the device, selling it directly to customers.
Lumineye’s device can detect humans through walls using radio frequencies
Lumineye has just started its pilot programs, and recently spent a Saturday at a FEMA event testing out the the device’s ability to detect people covered in rubble piles. The company was born out of the Boise, Idaho cohort of Stanford’s Hacking4Defense program, a course meant to connect Silicon Valley innovations with the U.S. Department of Defense and Intelligence Community. The Idaho-based startup is graduating from Y Combinator’s Summer 2019 class.
If there is one company at the top of everyone’s mind this year, it is Slack.
The now-ubiquitous workplace messaging tool began trading on the New York Stock Exchange in June after taking an unusual route to the public markets, known as a direct listing. Slack bypassed the typical IPO process in favor of putting its current stock on the NYSE without doing an additional raise or bringing on underwriter banking partners.
Slack co-founder and chief technology officer Cal Henderson and Slack investor and Spark Capital general partner Megan Quinn will join us onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF to give a behind the scenes look at Slack’s banner year, the company’s origin story and what convinced Quinn to participate in the business’s funding round years ago.
Early in his career, Henderson was the technical director of Special Web Projects at Emap, a U.K. media company. Later, he became the head of engineering for Flickr, the photo-sharing tool co-founded by Slack chief Stewart Butterfield. In April 2009, he was reported to be starting a new stealth social gaming company with Butterfield, a project that would ultimately become Slack.
Quinn, for her part, invested in Slack before joining Spark Capital (Updated: 8/16/19 at 3:25 p.m.). Spark became an investor in Slack in 2015, participating in the company’s $160 million Series E at a valuation of $2.8 billion. No small startup at the time, Slack already had 750,000 daily users and backing from Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Social Capital, GV and Kleiner Perkins.
Quinn is a seasoned investor, known for striking deals with Coinbase, Glossier, Rover and Wealthfront, among others. She first entered the venture capital scene in 2012 as an investment partner at Kleiner Perkins (where she first invested in Slack and other early to mid-stage consumer tech startups). Quinn joined Spark Capital in 2015 to make growth-stage investments in companies across the board.
Before trying her hand at VC, she spent seven years in product management and strategic partnership development at Google and one year as the head of product at payments company Square.
Google publicly disclosed its acquisition of homework helper app Socratic in an announcement this week, detailing the added support for the company’s AI technology and its relaunch on iOS. The acquisition apparently flew under the radar — Google says it bought the app last year.
According to one founder’s LinkedIn update, that was in March 2018. Google declined to comment when asked for specifics about the acquisition.
Socratic was founded in 2013 by Chris Pedregal and Shreyans Bhansali with the goal of creating a community that made learning accessible to all students.
Initially, the app offered a Quora-like Q&A platform where students could ask questions that were answered by experts. By the time Socratic raised $6 million in Series A funding back in 2015, its community had grown to around 500,000 students. The company later evolved to focus less on connecting users and more on utility.
It included a feature to take a photo of a homework question in order to get instant explanations through the mobile app launched in 2015. This is similar to many other apps in the space, like Photomath, Mathway, DoYourMath and others.
However, Socratic isn’t just a math helper — it can also tackle subjects like science, literature, social studies and more.
Socratic explained the app and website were different products, and it was strategically choosing to focus on the former.
“We, as anyone, are bound by the constraints of reality—you just can't do everything—which means making decisions and tradeoffs where necessary. This one is particularly painful,” wrote Community Lead Becca McArthur at the time.
That strategy, apparently, was to make Socratic a Google AI-powered product. According to Google’s blog post penned by Bhansali — now the engineering manager at Socratic — the updated iOS app uses AI technology to help users.
The new version of the iOS app still allows you to snap a photo to get answers, or you can speak your question.
For example, if a student takes a photo from a classroom handout or asks a question like “what’s the difference between distance and displacement?,” Socratic will return a top match, followed by explainers, a Q&A section and even related YouTube videos and web links. It’s almost like a custom search engine just for your homework questions.
Google also says it has built and trained algorithms that can analyze the student’s question, then identify the underlying concepts in order to point users to these resources. For students who need even more help, the app can break down the concepts into smaller, easy-to-understand lessons.
In addition, the app includes subject guides on more than 1,000 higher education and high school topics, developed with help from educators. The study guides can help students prepare for tests or just better learn a particular concept.
“In building educational resources for teachers and students, we've spent a lot of time talking to them about challenges they face and how we can help,” writes Bhansali. “We've heard that students often get ‘stuck’ while studying. When they have questions in the classroom, a teacher can quickly clarify—but it's frustrating for students who spend hours trying to find answers while studying on their own,” he says.
This is where Socratic will help.
That said, the acquisition could help Google in other ways, too. In addition to its primary focus as a homework helper, the acquisition could aid Google Assistant technology across platforms, as the virtual assistant could learn to answer more complex questions that Google’s Knowledge Graph didn’t already include.
The relaunched, AI-powered version of Socratic by Google arrived on Thursday on iOS, where it also discloses through the app update text the app is now owned by Google.
The Android version of the app will launch this fall.
Updated, 8/16/19, 3:30 PM ET to note Google’s decline to comment.
NASA is celebrating alongside Northrop Grumman at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, as the latter becomes the first commercial partner to make use of the Vehicle Assembly Building on-site at the base. The VAB, as it’s more commonly known, is a cavernous building that’s used to build and test rockets ahead of rolling them out to nearby launch pads, which was originally constructed by NASA to support the Apollo program.
Northrop Grumman will be using the VAB to build and prep its OmegA launch vehicle, a new rocket the company is building to transport intermediate and heavy payloads to orbit. It’s a fully expendable rocket, which Northrop is positioning as a lower-risk alternative to reusable models flown by competitors (coughSpaceX cough), and it’s also billed as an “affordable” option for those seeking launch services. OmegA is designed to help Northrop Grumman compete for future national security launch contracts, as well as support commercial customer missions.
NASA will also continue to use the VAB for the assembly of its own Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which will be supporting missions in the Artemis program and transporting the Lockheed Martin-built Orion crew craft to space, and eventually to the Moon.
Kennedy Space Center also already plays host to rocket assembly and launch facilities for both SpaceX and Blue Origin, making it a hot spot for public-private space business activity.
Users have said they are receiving emails from Amazon containing invoices and order updates on other customers, TechCrunch has learned.
Jake Williams, founder of cybersecurity firm Rendition Infosec, raised the alarm after he received an email from Amazon addressed to another customer with their name, postal address and their order details.
Williams said he ordered something months ago which recently became available for shipping. He checked the email headers to make sure it was a genuine message.
“I think they legitimately intended to email me a notification that my item was shipping early,” he said. “I just think they screwed something up in the system and sent the updates to the wrong people.”
He said the apparent security lapse was worrying because emails about orders sent to the wrong place is a “serious breach of trust” that can reveal private information about a customer’s life, such as sexual orientation, proclivities or other personal information
Several other Amazon customers also said they received emails seemingly meant for other people.
“I made an order yesterday afternoon and received her email last night,” another customer who tweeted about the mishap told TechCrunch. “Luckily I'm not a malicious person but that's a huge security issue,” she said.
Another customer tweeted out about receiving an email meant for someone else. He said he spoke to Amazon customer service, which said they will investigate additional security issues.
“Hope you didn’t send my sensitive account info to someone else,” he added.
And, one other customer posted a tweet thread about the issue, saying they spoke to a supervisor about the issue who gave a “nonchalant” response, she wrote. She said the supervisor said the issue happens frequently.
Cecilia Fan, a spokesperson for Amazon, said: “Due to a technical issue, some customers were inadvertently sent a Delivery Estimate Update email not intended for them. We have fixed the technical issue and are informing impacted customers.”
It’s the second security lapse in a year. In November the company emailed customers saying a “technical error” had exposed an unknown number of their email addresses. When asked about specifics, the notoriously secretive company declined to comment further.
What's the lifeblood of any early-stage startup? Money and media coverage. Opportunities to acquire both abound at Disrupt San Francisco 2019, our flagship tech conference that takes place on October 2-4. It's all about networking and making the right connections to make your startup dreams come true, and there's no better networking mecca than Startup Alley.
Buy a Startup Alley Exhibitor Package and plant your early-stage startup in the path of more than 10,000 attendees, including leading technologists, investors, 400 accredited media outlets and other leading influencers. The package includes one full exhibit day and three Founder passes.
You'll have access to three days of Disrupt programming across the Main Stage, the Extra Crunch Stage, the Showcase Stage and the Q&A Stage. You can watch Startup Battlefield, our epic pitch competition, to see who takes home the $100,000 prize. You'll also receive invitations to VIP events, like a reception with top-tier investors and global media outlets.
You'll have CrunchMatch at your side to make networking as easy as possible. This free, business match-making platform helps you find and connect with the people who can move your business forward. It matches people based on their mutual business interests, suggests meetings and sends out invitations (which recipients can easily accept or decline). CrunchMatch even lets you reserve dedicated meeting spaces where you can network in comfort.
And how's this for opportunity? Every early-stage startup that exhibits in Startup Alley is eligible for a chance to win a Wild Card entry to the Startup Battlefield pitch competition. TechCrunch editors will select two standout startups as Wild Card teams to compete for $100,000 in Startup Battlefield.
It might sound like a longshot (and it is), but RecordGram earned a Wild Card spot and went on to become the Startup Battlefield champ at Disrupt NY 2017. Because dreams do come true.
Disrupt San Francisco 2019 takes place on October 2-4. Buy a demo table, exhibit in Startup Alley and network your way to greatness. Come on and show the world what you've got.
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If you're a New Yorker, one of the easiest ways to keep up-to-date on the latest consumer products — furniture, beauty products, mobile apps, you name it — is to hop on the subway.
Even before you board, you may find yourself walking through a station filled with colorful startup ads. And once you’re actually on the train, you may find yourself surrounded by even more of those of ads.
It felt very different when I first moved to New York in 2013, back when the only companies that seemed to buy subway ads were local colleges, law firms and sketchy-sounding surgeons. Over the next few years, I noticed that the companies I wrote about in TechCrunch were starting to show up on the subway walls.
These ads are managed by Outfront Media, which has an exclusive contract with the MTA and says it’s worked with more than 150 startups and direct-to-consumer brands since 2018.
“Startups and DTC brands, now more than ever before, are looking for ways to raise awareness and gain market share among a heavy competitor set,” said Outfront’s chief product experience officer Jason Kuperman via email. “For these brands, it is all about testing and learning, and leveraging out-of-home (OOH) [advertising] and advertising on the subway allows them to do just that.”
Kuperman added that when they launch their subway campaigns, many of these startups are unknown, so they “find value in a permanent place to advertise that people pass through every day.”
From out-of-home to in transit
John Laramie, CEO of out-of-home advertising agency Project X, agreed that there's been a big shift over the past few years.
SmileDirectClub, the at-home teeth-straightening service, is on its way to becoming a public company. SmileDirectClub is seeking to raise up to $100 million in its IPO, according to its S-1 filed today. The number of shares and price range for the offering have yet to be determined.
Prior to this, SmileDirectClub reached a $3.2 billion valuation following a $380 million funding round last October. Investors from Clayton, Dubilier & Rice led the round, which featured participation from Kleiner Perkins and Spark Capital. This funding came on top of Invisalign maker Align Technology's $46.7 million investment in SmileDirectClub in 2016, and another $12.8 million investment in 2017 to own a total of 19% of the company.
In 2018, SmileDirectClub’s revenues came in at $432.2 million, a significant uptick from just $147 million the year prior.
The company ships invisible aligners directly to customers, and licensed dental professionals (either orthodontists or general dentists) remotely monitor the progress of the patient. Before shipping the aligners, patients either take their dental impressions at home and send them to SmileDirectClub or visit one of the company's "SmileShops" to be scanned in person. SmileDirectClub says it costs 60% less than other types of teeth-straightening treatments, with the length of treatments ranging from four to 14 months. The average treatment lasts six months.
Though, members of the American Association of Orthodontists have taken issue with SmileDirectClub, previously asserting that SmileDirectClub violates the law because its methods of allowing people to skip in-person visits and X-rays is "illegal and creates medical risks." The organization has also filed complaints against SmileDirectClub in 36 states, alleging violations of statutes and regulations governing the practice of dentistry. Those complaints were filed with the regulatory boards that oversee dentistry practices and with the attorneys general of each state.
SmileDirectClub explicitly calls out those issues in its S-1 as potential risk factors. Here’s a key nugget:
A number of dental and orthodontic professionals believe that clear aligners are appropriate for only a limited percentage of their patients. National and state dental associations have issued statements discouraging use of orthodontics using a teledentistry platform. Increased market acceptance of our remote clear aligner treatment may depend, in part, upon the recommendations of dental and orthodontic professionals and associations, as well as other factors including effectiveness, safety, ease of use, reliability, aesthetics, and price compared to competing products.
Furthermore, our ability to conduct business in each state is dependent, in part, upon that particular state’s treatment of remote healthcare and that state dental board’s regulation of the practice of dentistry, each which are subject to changing political, regulatory, and other influences. There is a risk that state authorities may find that our contractual relationships with our doctors violate laws and regulations prohibiting the corporate practice of dentistry, which generally bar the practice of dentistry by entities. Two state dental boards have established new rules or interpreted existing rules in a manner that purports to limit or restrict our ability to conduct our business as currently conducted.
Additionally, as the S-1 notes, a national dental association recently filed a petition with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration claiming that SmileDirectClub’s manufacturing violates “prescription only” requirements. While no regulations or laws have been passed that would affect SmileDirectClub to date, it’s a possible scenario that would greatly impact the company’s core business.
Each month millions of Indians are coming online for the first time, making India the last great growth market for internet companies worldwide. But winning them presents its own challenges.
These users, most of whom live in small cities and villages in India, can't speak English. Their interests and needs are different from those of their counterparts in large cities. When they come online, the world wide web that is predominantly focused on the English-speaking masses, suddenly seems tiny, Google executives acknowledged at a media conference last year. According to a KPMG-Google report (PDF) on Indian languages, there will be 536 million non-English speaking users using internet in India by 2021.
Many companies are increasingly adding support for more languages, and Silicon Valley giants such as Google are developing tools to populate the web with content in Indian languages.
But there is still room for others to participate. On Friday, a new startup announced it is also in the race. And it has already received the backing of Y Combinator (YC).
Lokal is a news app that wants to bring local news to hundreds of millions of users in India in their regional languages. The startup, which is currently available in the Telugu language, has already amassed more than two million users, Jani Pasha, co-founder of Lokal, told TechCrunch in an interview.
There are tens of thousands of publications in India and several news aggregators that showcase the top stories from the mainstream outlets. But very few today are focusing on local news and delivering it in a language that the masses can understand, Pasha said.
Lokal is building a network of stringers and freelance reporters who produce original reporting around the issues and current affairs of local towns and cities. The app is updated throughout the day with regional news and also includes an "information" stream that shows things like current price of vegetables, upcoming events and contact details for local doctors and police stations.
The platform has grown to cover 18 districts in South India and is slowly ramping up its operations to more corners of the country. The early signs show that people are increasingly finding Lokal useful. "In 11 of the 18 districts we cover, we already have a larger presence and reader base than other media houses," Pasha said.
Before creating Lokal, Pasha and the other co-founder of the startup, Vipul Chaudhary, attempted to develop a news aggregator app. The app presented news events in a timeline, offering context around each development.
"We made the biggest mistake. We built the product for four to five months without ever consulting with the users. We quickly found that nobody was using it. We went back to the drawing board and started interviewing users to understand what they wanted. How they consumed news, and where they got their news from," he said.
"One thing we learned was that most of these users in tier 2 and tier 3 India still heavily rely on newspapers. Newspapers still carry a lot of local news and they rely on stringers who produce these news pieces and source them to publications," he added.
But newspapers have limited pages, and they are slow. So Pasha and the team tried to build a platform that addresses these two things.
Pasha tried to replicate it through distributing local news, sourced from stringers, on a WhatsApp group. "That one WhatsApp group quickly became one of many as more and more people kept joining us," he recalls. And that led to the creation of Lokal.
Along the journey, the team found that classifieds, matrimonial ads and things like birthday wishes are still driving people to newspapers, so Lokal has brought those things to the platform.
Pasha said Lokal will expand to three more states in the coming months. It will also begin to experiment with monetization, though that is not the primary focus currently. "The plan is to eventually bring this to entire India," he said.
A growing number of startups today are attempting to build solutions for what they call India 2 and India 3 — the users who don't live in major cities, don't speak English and are financially not as strong.
ShareChat, a social media platform that serves users in 15 regional languages — but not English — said recently it has raised $100 million in a round led by Twitter. The app serves more than 60 million users each month, a figure it wants to double in the next year.
Postmates has officially received the green light from the city of San Francisco to begin testing its Serve wheeled delivery robot on city streets, as first reported by the SF Chronicle and confirmed with Postmates by TechCrunch. The on-demand delivery company told us last week that it expected the issuance of the permit to come through shortly after a conditional approval, and that’s exactly what happened on Wednesday this week.
The permit doesn’t cover the entire city — just a designated area of a number of blocks in and around Potrero Hill and the Inner Mission, but it will allow Postmates to begin testing up to three autonomous delivery robots at once, at speeds of up to 3 mph. Deliveries can only take place between 8 AM and 6:30 PM on weekdays, and a human has to be on hand within 30 feet of the vehicles while they’re operating. Still, it’s a start — and from a city regulatory environment that has had a somewhat rocky start with some less collaborative early pilots from other companies.
Autonomous delivery bot company Marble also has a permit application pending with the city’s Public Works department, and will look to test its own four-wheeled, sensor-equipped rolling delivery bots within the city soon, should it be granted similar testing approval.
Postmates revealed Serve last December, taking a more anthropomorphic approach to the vehicle’s overall design. Like many short-distance delivery robots of its ilk, it includes a lockable cargo container and screen-based user interface for eventual autonomous deliveries to customers. The competitive field for autonomous rolling delivery bots is growing continuously, with companies like Starship Technologies, Amazon and many more throwing their hats in the ring.
For a long, long time, renewable energy proponents have considered advancements in battery technology to be the Holy Grail of the industry.
Advancements in energy storage has been among the hardest to achieve economically, thanks to the incredibly tricky chemistry that’s involved in storing power.
Now, one company that’s launching from Y Combinator believes it has found the key to making batteries better. The company is called Holy Grail and it’s launching in the accelerator’s latest cohort.
With an executive team that initially included Nuno Pereira, David Pervan and Martin Hansen, Holy Grail is trying to bring the techniques of the fabless semiconductor industry to the world of batteries.
The company’s founders believe that the only way to improve battery functionality is to take a systems approach to understanding how different anodes and cathodes will work together. It sounds simple, but Pereira says the computational power hadn’t existed to take into account all of the variables that go along with introducing a new chemical to the battery mix.
“You can’t fix a battery with just a component,” Pereira says. “All of the batteries that were created and failed in the past. They create an anode, but they don’t have a chemical that works with the cathode or the electrolyte.”
For Pereira, the creation of Holy Grail is the latest step on a long road of experimentation with mechanical and chemical engineering. “As a kid I was more interested in mechanical engineering and building stuff,” he says. But as he began tinkering with cars and became fascinated with mobility, he realized that batteries were the innovation that gave the world its charge.
In 2017 Pereira founded a company called 10Xbattery, which was making high-density lithium batteries. That company, launching with what Pereira saw as a better chemistry, encapsulated the industry’s problem at large — the lack of a holistic approach to development.
So, with the help of a now-departed co-founder, Pereira founded Holy Grail. “He essentially told me, ‘Do you want to take a step back and see if there’s a better way to do this?’ ” said Pereira.
The company pitches itself as science fiction coming from the future, but it relies on a combination of what are now fairly standard (at least in the research community) tools. Holy Grail’s pitch is that it can automate much of the research and development process to create new batteries that are optimized to the specifications of end customers.
“It's hard for a human to do the experiments that you need and to analyze multidimensional data,” says Pereira. “There are some companies that only do the machine-learning part and the computational science part and sell the results to companies. The problem is that there’s a disconnection between experimental reality and the simulations.”
Using computer modeling, chemical engineering and automated manufacturing, Holy Grail pitches a system that can get real test batteries into the hands of end customers in the mobility, electronics and utility industries orders of magnitude more quickly than traditional research and development shops.
Currently the system that Holy Grail has built out can make 700 batteries per day. The company intends to build a pilot plant that will make batteries for electronics and drones. For automotive and energy companies, Holy Grail says it will partner with existing battery manufacturers that can support the kind of high-throughput manufacturing big orders will require.
Think of it like bringing the fabless chip design technologies and business models to the battery industry, says Pereira.
Holy Grail already has $14 million in letters of intent with potential customers, according to Pereira, and is expecting to close additional financing as it exits Y Combinator.
To date the company has been backed by the London-based early-stage investment firm Deep Science Ventures, where Pereira worked as an entrepreneur in residence.
Ultimately, the company sees its technology being applied far beyond batteries as a new platform for materials science discoveries broadly. For now, though, the focus is on batteries.
“For the low volume we sell direct,” says Pereira. “While on high-volume production, we will implement a pilot line through the system… we are able to do the research engineering with the small ones and test the big ones. In our case when we have a cell that works, it's not something that works in a lab, it's something that works in the final cell.”
Twitter is testing a new way to filter unwanted messages from your Direct Message inbox. Today, Twitter allows users to set their Direct Message inbox as being open to receiving messages from anyone, but this can invite a lot of unwanted messages, including abuse. While one solution is to adjust your settings so only those you follow can send you private messages, that doesn’t work for everyone. Some people — like reporters, for example — want to have an open inbox in order to have private conversations and receive tips.
This new experiment will test a filter that will move unwanted messages, including those with offensive content or spam, to a separate tab.
Unwanted messages aren't fun. So we're testing a filter in your DM requests to keep those out of sight, out of mind. pic.twitter.com/Sg5idjdeVv
Instead of lumping all your messages into a single view, the Message Requests section will include the messages from people you don’t follow, and below that, you’ll find a way to access these newly filtered messages.
Users would have to click on the “Show” button to even read these, which protects them from having to face the stream of unwanted content that can pour in at times when the inbox is left open.
And even upon viewing this list of filtered messages, all the content itself isn’t immediately visible.
In the case that Twitter identifies content that’s potentially offensive, the message preview will say the message is hidden because it may contain offensive content. That way, users can decide if they want to open the message itself or just click the delete button to trash it.
The change could allow Direct Messages to become a more useful tool for those who prefer an open inbox, as well as an additional means of clamping down on online abuse.
It’s also similar to how Facebook Messenger handles requests — those from people you aren’t friends with are relocated to a separate Message Requests area. And those that are spammy or more questionable are in a hard-to-find Filtered section below that.
It’s not clear why a feature like this really requires a “test,” however — arguably, most people would want junk and abuse filtered out. And those who for some reason did not, could just toggle a setting to turn off the filter.
The idea of hiding — instead of entirely deleting — unwanted content is something Twitter has been testing in other areas, too. Last month, for example, it began piloting a new “Hide Replies” feature in Canada, which allows users to hide unwanted replies to their tweets so they’re not visible to everyone. The tweets aren’t deleted, but rather placed behind an extra click — similar to this Direct Message change.
Twitter is updating is Direct Message system in other ways, too.
Cedric Dussud, Michael Nason, Ahmed Elsamadisi and Matthew Star (pictured above, in order) spent the summer sharing a house in San Francisco, cooking meals together and building Narrator, a startup with ambitions of becoming a universal data model fit for any company.
Narrator is one of more than 100 startups graduating next week from Y Combinator, the San Francisco accelerator program. Put simply, the company provides data-science-as-a-service to its customers: fellow startups.
“We provide the equivalent of a data team for the price of an analyst,” explains Narrator co-founder and director of engineering Star. “Within the first month, our clients get an infinitely scalable data system.”
Led by chief executive officer Elsamadisi, a former senior data engineer at WeWork, the Narrator founding team is made up entirely of alums of the co-working giant. The building blocks of Narrator’s subscription-based data modeling tool were developed during Elsamadisi’s WeWork tenure, where he was tasked with making sense of the company’s disorganized trove of data.
As an early addition to WeWork’s data team, Elsamadisi spent two years bringing WeWork’s data to one place, scaling the team to 40 people and ultimately creating a functional data model the soon-to-be-public company could use to streamline operations. Then in 2017, Elsamadisi had an a-ha moment. The system he created at WeWork could be applied to any data stream, he thought.
“All companies are fundamentally the same when it comes to the kinds of data they want to understand about their business,” Narrator’s Dussud tells TechCrunch. “Every startup wants to know what’s my monthly recurring revenue, why are my customers churning or whatever the case may be. The only reason they have to go hire a data team and hire a business analyst is because the way that their data is structured is specific to that company.”
All Narrator clients use the same consistent format to absorb and manage their data, saving startups time and heaps of money.
Narrator follows a long line of Y Combinator graduates that built startups catering to other startups, as the accelerator becomes more of a SaaS incubator of sorts. PagerDuty and Docker proved that YC companies could build with a strong focus on other YC companies. Brex, a recent YC grad that issues credit cards to entrepreneurs, has leveraged the same startup-focused model for big-time success.
“Why not build a company to make something that other startups can have?” Asks Dussud. “It’s hugely valuable and only big companies have access to it. Let’s make it available to everybody.”
New York-based Narrator sees a massive opportunity ahead. Every company, after all, wants to increase revenue or decrease costs, a difficult task easier accomplished with a data-driven culture.
“If you start to imagine a world where, under the hood, the structure of the data at all companies is the same, you can now start reusing a lot of the things that in the past would actually be quite complicated,” said Star. “Right now, anytime you want to start from scratch with a new data system, you are literally starting from scratch and unfortunately reinventing the wheel. If you had a standardized system, you know, a standardized model, you could start reusing a lot of really wonderful things.”
Narrator is working with 14 clients today, each using an identical data model. Their goal is for Narrator’s structure to become the standard by which all startups do data science. In other words, Narrator hopes to become the operating system for data science.
“What’s kind of amazing is whether we’re working with a financial app … a clothing rental startup or a healthcare company, they’re all using the same data model,” said Star. “Any one of those teams, if they wanted to get the same level of analysis, they would have to hire a data analyst.”
Narrator raised $1.3 million in seed funding led by Flybridge Capital Partners prior to joining YC. Hot off the heels of the accelerator program, there’s no doubt the startup will close another round of financing soon.
Dozens of Android adware apps disguised as photo-editing apps and games have been caught serving ads that would take over users’ screens as part of a fraudulent money-making scheme.
Security firm Trend Micro said it found 85 individual apps downloaded more than eight million times from Google Play — all of which have since been removed from the app store.
More often than not adware apps will run on a user’s device and will silently serve and click ads in the background and without the user’s knowledge to generate ad revenue. But these apps were particularly brazen and sneaky, one of the researchers said.
“It isn’t your run-of-the-mill adware family,” said Ecular Xu, a mobile threat response engineer at Trend Micro. “Apart from displaying advertisements that are difficult to close, it employs unique techniques to evade detection through user behavior and time-based triggers.”
The researchers discovered that the apps would keep a record when they were installed and sit dormant for around half-an-hour. After the delay, the app would hide its icon and create a shortcut on the user’s home screen, the security firm said. That, they say, helped to protect the app from being deleted if the user decided to drag and drop the shortcut to the “uninstall” section of the screen.
“These ads are shown in full screen,” said Xu. “Users are forced to view the whole duration of the ad before being able to close it or go back to app itself.”
When the app unlocked, it displayed ads on the user’s home screen. The code also checks to make sure it doesn’t show the same ad too frequently, the researchers said.
Worse, the ads can be remotely configured by the fraudster, allowing ads to be displayed more frequently than the default five minute intervals.
Trend Micro provided a list of the apps — including Super Selfie Camera, Cos Camera, Pop Camera and One Stroke Line Puzzle — all of which had a million downloads each.
Users about to install the apps had a dead giveaway: most of the apps had appalling reviews, many of which had as many one-star reviews as they did five-stars, with users complaining about the deluge of pop-up ads.
Google does not typically comment on app removals beyond acknowledging their removal from Google Play.
Mumbai: Jogeshwari woman loses Rs 4 lakh gold, cops get it back Like all sisters, Prity too had gone to visit her brother at Santacruz to tie Rakhi. In the melee she left her 10 tola (100 grams) gold ornaments worth Rs 4 lakh in the auto-rickshaw she was travelling in.
UPSSSC Recruitment 2019 – Apply Online for 486 Vacancies. Uttar Pradesh Subordinate Services Selection Commission (UPSSSC) is offering a job for candidates who have passed 10th class or ITI. This UPSSSC notification was announced for 486 Assistant Boring Technician Posts. Eligible candidates can apply online for the UPSSSC Vacancy. Starting date to submit your online application forms is 14th August 2019 @ www.upsssc.gov.in.
“The goal of the project is not just to make the sensors but start to do many subject studies and see what sweat tells us — I always say ‘decoding’ sweat composition. For that we need sensors that are reliable, reproducible, and that we can fabricate to scale so that we can put multiple sensors in different spots of the body and put them on many subjects,” explained Ali Javey, Berkeley professor and head of the project.
