Anti-government protesters have been holed up in a Hong Kong university for days, surrounded by police. Photographer Bing Guan has spent the last five days with them, documenting the siege—and at the time of publication of these images he remains on the campus.
The occupiers originally numbered in the hundreds. But around 800 protesters who originally barricaded themselves inside Polytechnic University (PolyU) had surrendered as of Tuesday night. Others attempted daring escapes, crawling through underground sewerage systems or abseiling off a footbridge to make their way to waiting getaway vehicles below.
Now only a few hardliners remain.
PolyU has been the scene of some of the fiercest battles since the unrest began in June. Enraged by the death of a university student, protesters took over the campuses of several universities across the city last week. Students camping out at PolyU quickly began preparing for a protracted standoff.
Bing Guan A frontline protestor eats a late-night hot dog at the “American Diner” on the Polytechnic University campus, Nov. 15, 2019.
“Within a matter of hours, they turned this place into a fully-functioning city,” Bing tells TIME by phone.
Volunteer chefs whipped up hamburgers and french fries in the campus diner, and improvised pizza from bread, cheese and tomato sauce they found in the school’s canteen, to feed the hundreds of protesters who descended on the campus.
Bing GuanA protestor sleeps near a box of petrol bombs in the canteen at the Polytechnic University, Nov. 18, 2019.
Students turned the drained swimming pool into a practice range for Molotov-throwing practice and a gymnasium into de facto barracks. “There were mattresses, foam mats that they’d commandeered from the gym laid out, with blankets, pillows, clothing, gear,” Bing says.
Teams of protesters began stockpiling petrol bombs, in anticipation of a confrontation with police.
“There are Molotovs in the bathrooms, in the gymnasium, in the locker rooms.”
Bing adds that morale was high among protesters for the first few days. “People were tidying up everything, picking up recycling, sweeping up, people were being really fastidious about cleaning up the campus,” he says.
“They were assembling Molotovs, teaching each other how to shoot bows and arrows, building barricades and spray painting graffiti everywhere.”
Bing Guan A protestor readies his bow and arrow at Polytechnic University on Nov. 18, 2019.
For days, protesters kept police from entering the campus, countering volleys of tear gas and rubber bullets with petrol bombs, slingshots and bows and arrows. On Sunday, police attempts to enter the campus were met with particularly fierce resistance. Officers surrounding the university threatened the use of live ammunition, and warned those that decided to stay that they might be charged with rioting.
Undeterred, protesters set a police vehicle on fire with petrol bombs as it advanced on a bridge towards the school. A police officer was stuck in the leg with an arrow. Police responded with water cannon and students reported suffering from hypothermia as they spent the night in sodden clothes.
Protesters used whatever they could find inside the university. “Floor cleaning vehicles were transformed into makeshift ambulances or vehicles for bringing Molotovs to the frontline,” Bing says.
Bing Guan Bricks, used both to slow down advancing police as well as projectiles, are neatly sorted into garbage bins at PolyU.
On Monday, hundreds of sympathetic Hongkongers, including office workers, ordinary residents, and the family members of students trapped inside, staged sit-ins outside the university’s exits, which were blocked by police officers. Other supporters took part in street battles in nearby neighborhoods—hurling petrol bombs and bricks at police—hoping to draw them away from the university so those inside could escape.
Bing Guan Protestors sleep as police lay siege to the Polytechnic University of Hong Kong after anti-government protestors occupied the campus for five days, Nov. 18, 2019.
Protesters attempted to flee from the university on several occasions, but they were pushed back by volleys of tear gas.
Bing Guan Polytechnic University main atrium, fortified with umbrellas and barricades, Nov. 14, 2019.
The photographer says that those holed up inside the university were watching and waiting on Monday night to see if reinforcements outside the university would be able to break through the police lines surrounding the area.
“As it became apparent that the other protesters weren’t going to make it, that they weren’t going to be able to get past the police barricades and water cannons, people started surrendering themselves,” he says.
Bing Guan First-aiders convert a floor cleaning machine into a makeshift ambulance, Nov. 14, 2019.
Lawmakers, educators and religious leaders also began arriving on campus to convince students to leave, and to negotiate their release with police officers.
The city’s leader, Chief Executive Carrie Lam, said in a Tuesday press conference that she had asked the newly-appointed police chief to resolve the matter peacefully. Lam said minors exiting the university would have their information collected and would not be immediately arrested—although they could face charges later on, she said.
Bing Guan Volunteers, some of whom had never cooked before in their lives, helped prepare food for the thousands of protestors gathered at Polytechnic University, Nov. 14, 2019.
The number of protesters holed up inside the campus, Bing says, dwindled down to about 50 as of Wednesday. The once buzzing canteen now lies empty.
Bing Guan A canteen is seen inside the Polytechnic University after a three-day stand off between protesters and police in Hong Kong, Nov. 19, 2019.
“Right now, the place really looks apocalyptic,” Bing says. “There are plates of leftover food that have been sitting out for days. There are discarded clothing and supplies everywhere—respirators, medical supplies, spray paint, petrol bombs.”
Bing Guan A couple waits for news of a rescue operation for protestors still trapped in Polytechnic University, Nov. 18, 2019.
Bing says that it wasn’t an easy decision for those who decided to give up. “You could see it on their faces as they were leaving that they were wracked with guilt, feeling like they had not stuck by their friends.”
“At this point, there’s a lot of high school students left here, a lot of them are very terrified and desperate,” Bing says.
Those left on campus he says, are hiding out or looking for escape routes, but they remain defiant. “Some of them have been on the front lines since June,” says Bing. “They don’t want to surrender.”
(LONDON) — Britain’s Prince Andrew faced further disgrace Tuesday as charitable partners and educational institutions began to distance themselves from him amid unfavorable fallout from an interview on his friendship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Like most senior members of the royal family, Andrew is patron for charities and other civic endeavors, lending his name and the backing of the monarchy to the good works of all manner of institutions. But supporters of undertakings connected to Andrew are now reconsidering whether they want to be associated with him after his effort to draw a line under the Epstein scandal backfired so disastrously.
Andrew, the second son of Queen Elizabeth II, granted a no-holds barred interview to BBC’s Newsnight program to end years of speculation about his friendship with the tainted financier, who died in prison last summer while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. Andrew’s failure to show empathy for the young women exploited by Epstein earned him widespread derision — and made corporate backers and universities think twice about their ties to this senior member of the House of Windsor.
Standard Chartered bank, a backer of Andrew’s flagship entrepreneur project, Pitch@Palace, has decided not to renew its sponsorship for “commercial reasons.’’ Professional services provider KPMG won’t renew its support for the initiative either, Britain’s Press Association reported. Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca says it is reviewing its three-year partnership, which is due to expire at the end of the year.
The fallout has not been limited to corporations. Andrew is a patron for dozens of organizations, and a few of the more prominent groups have acknowledged they are considering whether they want that bond to continue. London Metropolitan University is reviewing Andrew’s role as patron, and students at the University of Huddersfield, where Andrew is chancellor, are objecting to being “represented by a man with ties to organized child sexual exploitation and assault.’’
“Prince Andrew’s association with a known paedophile, Jeffrey Epstein … combined with the allegations made by Virginia Giuffre that Prince Andrew sexually assaulted her make him an utterly unsuitable representative for us here at the University of Huddersfield,” according to a motion from a student panel. “We need to put survivors of sexual assault above royal connections and show students, alumni, and prospective students that this institution cares about their well-being, irrespective of the status of the alleged perpetrator.”
It is unclear what might happen at Huddersfield, as the situation is so unprecedented there is no formal process for what comes next.
“We are aware of the Students’ Union meeting last night and the motion it passed regarding the chancellor,’’ the university said in a statement. “We listen to our students’ views and concerns and we will now be consulting with them over the coming weeks.”
The 59-year-old prince categorically denied claims that he had sex with Giuffre, who says she was trafficked by Epstein and had sex with Andrew on three occasions, including twice when she was 17.
Epstein died Aug. 10 in a New York prison while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, robbing his alleged victims a chance for their day in court. His death has been ruled a suicide by the city’s medical examiner.
But in response to clinical questioning by the BBC’s Emily Maitlis, Andrew responded with detailed answers that seemed insensitive to a public accustomed to emotional responses — particularly in an era in which social media has made even the rich and the powerful seem more accessible.
Worse still, Andrew defended his previous friendship with the billionaire investor because of the contacts it provided when he was preparing for a role as Britain’s special trade representative. The damage to his image has prompted royal watchers to suggest Buckingham Palace will go into full damage control mode.
“I think he may eventually be forced to show how sorry he was that Epstein had many victims,’’ said Pauline Maclaran, author of “Royal Fever: The British Monarchy in Consumer Culture.” “There will be damage limitation.’’
On Monday, the Trump Administration broke with decades of U.S. precedent to redefine America’s policy on Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Since President Trump took office in 2016, he has overturned long-held U.S. positions on several of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’s most contentious issues, to the dismay of the Palestinian leadership. The White House’s latest announcement—that the U.S. will no longer consider Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be illegal under international law—is likely to further inflame those tensions. Here’s what to know.
What is Washington’s new policy on Israeli settlements in the West Bank?
“After carefully studying all sides of the legal debate,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters on Monday, “the United States has concluded that the establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not, per se, inconsistent with international law.” Pompeo added that “calling the establishment of civilian settlements inconsistent with international law hasn’t worked. It hasn’t advanced the cause of peace.”
Close to 600,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements Israel built after it took over the territory in the Six Day War of 1967. The area is also home to almost 3 million Palestinians who live under the control of the Israeli security forces, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Central Bureau of Statistics. Almost 2 million more Palestinians live in Gaza, a 25-mile long strip administered by the militant group Hamas and subject to a 12-year-long Israeli-Egyptian blockade.
How does this differ from the past policy?
While Israel has long disputed the majority of the international community’s determination that settlements are illegal under international law, for decades the U.S. had adopted a position of compromise. The State Department, under former president Jimmy Carter, in 1978 deemed that Israeli settlements are “inconsistent with international law.” His successor, Ronald Reagan disagreed, saying in 1981 he did not believe settlements were inherently illegal. Since then, Republican and Democratic Presidents have referred to settlements as “illegitimate” but declined to call them illegal—a designation that would make them subject to international sanctions. But in one of his Administration’s last foreign policy acts, former President Barack Obama broke with that trend, declining to veto a U.N. resolution urging an end to settlements.
What could the new announcement mean for Israeli-Palestinian relations?
Palestinians say the building of Israeli settlements on land they hope to make part of a future state makes a two-state solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict virtually impossible. The number of new settlements has risen sharply under the Trump Administration; the Associated Press charted a 39% increase in Israeli spending on West Bank settlement infrastructure in the year following Trump’s election in 2016. Pompeo’s announcement on the legal status of settlements, says Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, risks substituting international law with “the law of the jungle.”
It is the latest in a string of moves from the Trump Administration, which has abandoned the U.S.’s traditional role in the region as a mediator—leading to the signing of the Camp David Accords in 1978 that led to a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, and the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, which aimed to peacefully resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2017, Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, which Palestinians also see as the capital of their future state. He has cut U.S. funding to the U.N. Agency that helps Palestinian refugees and, in a move widely considered a pre-election gift to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a rocky plateau in south-western Syria that Israel seized in 1967.
What does the policy mean for the upcoming Israeli election?
Experts say the White House’s announcement on the legality of Israeli settlements appears designed to handicap Israel’s centrist opposition at a time when it poses the most serious threat yet to Netanyahu’s leadership.
Despite Trump’s support, Netanyahu still faces monumental challenges. The Israeli Prime Minister failed to form a government following his narrow election victory in April, and after he failed to do so again after re-run elections in September, Israel’s President handed the mandate to centrist Benny Gantz. Netanyahu’s right wing Likud party is also preparing for the expected indictment of its leader on several corruption charges within days.
Gantz has until Wednesday to tie up negotiations, with one potential option a minority government backed by Israeli-Arab dominated parties, who now comprise the third largest voting block in Israel’s parliament. Ayman Odeh, leader of the Israeli-Arab dominated Joint List coalition wrote (in Hebrew) on Twitter that a foreign administration’s policy change will not “change the fact that the settlements were built on occupied land upon which an independent Palestinian state will be founded alongside Israel.”
While Netanyahu welcomed Pompeo’s statement as righting what he called “a historical wrong,” Gantz’s endorsement was more surprising. “I applaud the U.S. government for its important statement, once again demonstrating its firm stance with Israel and its commitment to the security and future of the entire Middle East,” he said in a statement. More ambiguously, Gantz added that the fate of the settlements “should be determined by agreements that meet security requirements and that can promote peace.”
Like the vast majority of Israel’s security establishment, experts say that Gantz—a former military chief of staff—believes any move to annex the West Bank would undermine Israel’s security and economy, and be detrimental to its future as a Jewish and Democratic state. But Gilead Sher, co-chair of the Israeli non-partisan think tank Blue and White Future, says that Gantz’s more positive response to Pomepo was “based on domestic political considerations” rather than a genuine belief that Washington’s new policy on settlements would bolster Israel’s security.
“There are several issues which the center and the left cannot oppose, despite the fact that they know that such statements or symbollic steps are detrimental to any future Israeli-Palestinian peace,” he tells TIME. The White House statement handicaps Israel’s center left at a critical juncture in coalition negotiations because it makes it “unpopular to talk about two states for two peoples.” According to polling by the Jerusalem-based Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) about half of Israelis support a two-state solution to the conflict. But IDI President Yohanan Plesner told TIME in June that support is coupled with a “deep skepticism about whether there’s any tangible prospect for that to take place.”
Russia‘s new Vostochny space center, a pet project of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has lost at least 11 billion rubles ($172 million) through theft and top officials have been jailed, the Kremlin has confirmed.
Earlier this week, Russia’s investigative committee (SK) said 58 people have been sentenced to jail for crimes of embezzlement, swindling and abusing official powers. The longest sentence of 11 and a half years was handed to Yuri Khrizman, former head of the company that carried out the space center’s construction, who alone inflicted a loss of 5.2 billion rubles ($81 million) on the state budget. He and several other construction managers, including his son Mikhail, were jailed in February 2018. SK says it is currently handling 12 more criminal cases linked to embezzlement in the project.
For years, Moscow has tried to reboot the industry that was a source of great pride in Soviet times. The Vostochny space center, located in Russia’s far east, some 500 miles north of Vladivostok, is a “key part of Russia’s effort to reestablish itself as a space-faring superpower,” Professor Mark Galeotti, a Russia expert at the Royal United Services Institute, tells TIME.
Vostochny is intended to reduce the country’s reliance on the older Baikonur launch site, built by the Soviet Union in neighboring Kazakhstan in the 1950s. Russia has grand ambitions for the new launch site, the first it has built since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with aims to send crewed missions to the moon by 2030. Visiting Vostochny in September, Putintold space officials: “This is the country’s most important construction project of national significance.”
But its goals may strike some observers as incredibly ambitious, given that since its opening in 2016, Vostochny has been mired by corruption, expensive delays, hunger strikes by workers over unpaid wages and embarrassing failures. In 2017, Russia was forced to delay the launches of Proton space rockets after it was discovered that workers building the engines had stolen alloys made from precious metals and replaced them with less heat-resistant ones. Later that year, a Soyuz rocket launched from Vostochny fell to Earth after technicians forgot to reprogram its guidance system to take off from the new launch site.
Putin spoke furiously about ongoing corruption at Vostochny during a government meeting on Nov. 11. “A hundred times people were told: ‘Work transparently.’ But no! They’re stealing hundreds of millions,” he said. Just 3.5 billion rubles ($55 million) — less than a third of the total stolen — has been recovered, according to Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesperson.
Lack of financial transparency is the basic problem with Vostochny and other massive state projects in Russia, says Galeotti. Putin has not been “serious about addressing high-level corruption among senior figures,” he says. “He would have to tackle his entire elite, which he’s not willing to do.”
“When Putin grumbles, it’s partly in frustration that workers are taking more bribes than they’re entitled to,” Galeotti also says. “Putin is not trying to signal that Roscosmos [a Russian space agency] should become transparent, but that embezzlement has transgressed his tolerance levels.”
A military siege is like a chokehold on an entire people.
I was a teenager when I lived through a long curfew in Kashmir in the 1990s when the rebellion against Indian rule was at its peak. After decades of betrayals, broken promises, and pent-up resentment, Kashmiris had risen up in arms. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary Kashmiris marched through the streets in a mass eruption. India rushed in thousands of troops, turning the idyll of Kashmir into a dystopian garrison overnight. Everyone began to call the valley “a beautiful prison.”
The long war in and over Kashmir began soon after the Partition of British India in 1947. At the time, the future of the independent state of Kashmir was left undecided; in 1948, after India and Pakistan had fought their first war over Kashmir, it was agreed that a U.N.-mandated referendum would be held to allow Kashmiris a say in whether they joined India or Pakistan. That promise has yet to be honored. In 1987, a state election was rigged to prevent a new and popular Kashmiri party from gaining legislative power, leaving Kashmiris more disillusioned than ever. Pakistan readily handed Kashmiris arms and training, leading to full-blown mass uprising. The early 1990s were a time of daily bloodletting, as the Indian armed forcesresponded with limitless force, killing and torturing hundreds. Hundreds of protesters were killed by the paramilitaries from January to May 1990 alone.
On January 21, 1990, one day after India sent an all-powerful governor to stymie mass protests, at least 50 people were killed on the Gaw Kadal bridge in Srinagar, the main city in Kashmir. The paramilitaries surrounded unarmed demonstrators on the bridge and indiscriminately shot at them with automatic rifles. They then poked the piled-up bodies on the bridge to check if anyone was alive.
Robert Nickelsberg—Getty ImagesAn Indian Border Security Force soldier shows a suspected militant to people in a line of parked military vehicles, Srinagar, India, on July 28, 1994.
Far away in the arcadian countryside and along the Line of Control, the de-facto border that separates the disputed region into Indian- and Pakistan-administered territories, hundreds were killed in battles between the insurgents and Indian forces. Kashmir’s mountains became open burial grounds. Soon, we saw bloody internecine battles, too, as Pakistan decided to back pro-Pakistan militants to diminish those who favored an independent Kashmir. As if Kashmir hadn’t seen enough death, for some time, Kashmiris were killing one another on the streets. By day, Kashmiris were busy counting their dead, or mending their broken-bodied kin; at night, they contemplated their future.
Kashmiri Pandits, a Hindu minority who had lived together with Kashmiri Muslims for centuries, left in an almost overnight exodus. More than 200Pandits were targeted and killed by the militants; facing mortal fear, they just left their age-old homes for the hot plains of India and became refugees. Delhi has since then used their enormous tragedy and suffering to demonize Kashmiri Muslims.
In the city where I was—Srinagar, Kashmir’s biggest city—the sight of the “coffin car” (an armored carrier deployed by the Indian armed forces in residential neighborhoods) and the olive green “gypsy” (a customized jeep used as a patrol car) would send us boys fleeing. They would sweep down a street and grab and nab. The sheer glimpse of these monster vehicles would terrify parents.
On Aug. 5 this year, when India imposed the worst-ever siege on Kashmir and unilaterally revoked the region’s long-held autonomy, I wasn’t merely reminded of all this—I simply relived everything. The soul-crushing 70-day long curfew that I experienced growing up in Kashmir never really leaves you. It follows you like a second shadow, invisible but inerasable.
In the 1990s, soldiers marched outside in chain-like formations at intervals. Our movements to see neighbors, friends, or just to walk a bit, after weeks of being restricted indoors, had to be timed to the rounds. A slight miscalculation would result in someone or the other at the receiving end of rifle butts. The soldiers could shoot you dead on mere suspicion because draconian laws that India imposed in 1990 gave the armed forces complete immunity from prosecution. The laws remain in place even today. Violence, brute power, and total freedom to exercise that power are essential tools in the hands of an occupying military. The message to the natives is clear: to break your spirit, we can do anything to your bodies.
One evening, we were playing carrom in my uncle’s house next door when we heard a commotion outside, then loud cracks, then shouting and screaming. The paramilitaries had chased a shadow in the by-lane that led to our neighbourhood from a traffic artery and pulled apart a door that they thought had helped the escapee. We held our breath.
We never found out who was beaten up, tortured, or taken away.
Alixandra Fazzina—NOOR/ReduxWomen make their way home at dusk as clouds of tear gas engulfs the air in the stone strewn streets surrounding the Jama Masjed following riots in Srinagar in Dec. 2008.
Food began to run out. Kashmiris, conditioned by harsh winters and a long history of political repression, are accomplished hoarders of food and memories. We hang ornate garlands of sun-dried turnip, gourd, eggplant, on our balconies and roof terraces. We keep large amounts of rice and pulses in man-size vats of copper or earthenware. We store so many medicines that each house has a mini pharmacy in the kitchen or living room. We remember years and seasons as that curfew or this. People who get married during sieges sometimes come to be called “curfew bride” or “curfew groom.” We remember. All of this to nourish the primeval seed of survival, as hard times begin to loom—and they do ever so often.
We dig into these repositories when the snows or soldiers arrive. The snows are always welcome, as they replenish our mountains and inject fresh life into our springs and gardens. The soldiers are never welcome because they inevitably kill or torture—both the young and old, men and women. They land in Kashmir for one thing and one thing alone: to deliver imperial punishments to a people who’ve never accepted India’s rule over them.
As the curfew lasted months, and days and nights began to get longer and more dreadful, boys in the neighbourhood started to hatch plans to do something about it all. A festival day was approaching perhaps, and people whispered that some households were barely managing to feed their children with sparse meals of rice and beans. People helped each other, of course, with tins and bags of rudiments but everyone knew the stores were running out. We were alright, I remember, and didn’t go without meals, but only just about.
An older boy with whom I’d often played cricket in an apple orchard nearby, let it be known that we could all go on an expedition into the picturesque Dal Lake, a ten-minute walk from my parents’ home. Srinagar, one of the oldest cities in the world, is a town crisscrossed by water. It is hemmed in by the famous Dal Lake on the east, and the great river Jhelum runs through its heart in the old town. The people of the city have always depended on its water bodies for food and transport. It is a city defined by water. Although rampant urbanisation and bureaucratic venality have eroded Kashmir’s water bodies during the last few decades, fresh vegetables and fruit are to this day sold at the shores of the lake. The produce arrives daily from an intricate network of small lake-side farms, floating gardens, and inland waterways.
And it was into these un-curfewed patches of land on water, water on land, that I went on a rickety boat nearly thirty years ago to hunt for food. Or is ‘forage’ a more appropriate term? We set off by a narrow clearing away from the main shore in our parts – there were rumours that the armed forces had acquired naval boats to patrol the lake, to lay a siege on the water, too.
The boat was slow, somewhat precariously inclined in its negotiation with the surface of the lake. I had a makeshift paddle, perhaps an old cricket bat or a plank of wood. But what I do remember clearly is that we rowed with all our strength to cover ground quickly, glances darting left and right in case an unexhausted vegetable patch came into view, in case a kind farmer spied us from his perch somewhere in the dense growths and understood at once what we wanted, needed. There was, of course, an air of thrill, adventure, on the boat but we also knew it was a rather desperate situation.
Prashant Panjiar—AnzenbergerYoung Kashmiris play a game of carrom on the bank of the Dal Lake in Srinagar, the capital of Jammu and Kashmir.
Each of us returned with something in our hands. A bottle gourd, a batch of withered greens, lotus stems, some potatoes perhaps too… The neighbourhood, like most others across Kashmir survived the curfew by sheer graft, collective action, and what came to be known as a ‘shutter economy’, which meant shopkeepers sold or loaned basic goods to people secretly, from under the shutter.
In that summer and autumn, after we’d scoured for vegetables in that wobbly Shikara boat, I quickly turned from boyhood into youth, became someone who lived amidst curfews and sieges, witnessing the image of the pastoral idyll – Kashmir – breaking to reveal the terrifying darkness of oppression.
The current siege of Kashmir, complete with an unprecedented, three-month-long communications blackout, is in many ways a continuation of the sieges that have come before. Yet this one might stay for a long time, a permanent siege in some form or the other. Because history tells us Kashmiris will not relent, even as they are, more than ever, surrounded by the jackboots of an occupation.
(STOCKHOLM) — Sweden on Tuesday dropped its investigation into an alleged rape by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is currently in prison in Britain, because too much time has elapsed since the accusation was made over nine years ago.
Assange, who is battling an extradition attempt by the U.S. so he can face spying charges related to his WikiLeaks work, has always denied the allegations made against him during a visit to Stockholm in August 2010.
“Nine years have gone,” Swedish prosecutor Eve-Marie Persson said. “Time is a player in this. The oral evidence has weakened as time has passed.”
Though the victim “submitted a credible and reliable version of events,” Persson said “the memory fades for natural reasons.”
Still, Persson said her statements “have been coherent, extensive and detailed.”
Elisabeth Massi Fritz, the lawyer for the rape victim — a Swedish woman who was never identified — told Swedish broadcaster SVT that “the plaintiff’s information is supported by heavy written evidence plus verbal evidence in the form of doctors who examined the plaintiff.”
“To me that would be sufficient,” she said.
“However, the current prosecutor has done a thorough and solid job and she should be commended for that,” Massi Fritz wrote according to Swedish news agency TT.
The decision follows a ruling in June by a Swedish court that Assange should not be detained. Two months earlier, Assange was evicted from the Ecuador Embassy in London where he had been holed up for nearly seven years. He was immediately arrested and is currently serving a 50-week sentence in Britain for jumping bail in 2012.
Kristinn Hrafnsson, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, said in a tweet that the focus should now move to the “threat” that Assange has been “warning about for years: the belligerent prosecution of the United States and the threat it poses to the First Amendment.”
Swedish authorities have been investigating Assange since August 2010, when two women accused him of sexual offenses. Sweden then asked Britain to extradite Assange for questioning, and in June 2012 he sought refuge in Ecuador’s London embassy to avoid arrest. That request was granted two months later.
After that, the investigation stalled. Swedish prosecutors dropped the case of alleged sexual misconduct when the statute of limitations ran out in 2015, leaving only the rape allegation.
While denying the allegations in Sweden, he sought asylum for protection from possible extradition to the U.S. on charges.
Ecuador withdrew Assange’s asylum status in April and Assange was arrested by British police. He was sentenced in May to 50 weeks in prison for jumping bail in 2012. He remains in prison after authorities ruled he was a flight risk and faces an extradition hearing next year to the U.S. to face spying charges.
There, the Australian faces an 18-count indictment in the Eastern District of Virginia that accuses him of soliciting and publishing classified information and with conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to crack a Defense Department computer password.
___
Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, contributed to this report.
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HILLARY CLINTON's decision to exclude Margaret Thatcher from hers and daughter Chelsea's latest book, Gutsy Women, was sternly criticised by British commentator Christine Hamilton who claimed the former US presidential candidate has been "ungracious".
THE United States has condemned Emmanuel Macron's criticism of Nato and warned European Union leaders they can't manage global security threats on their own.
THE US is increasing its presence and military potential in the South China Sea by deploying two Independence-class ships specialising in nearshore operations, causing tensions to hit breaking point in the area.
GIBRALTAR's finance minister has admitted he was surprised by research which showed more than 90 percent of its business was done with the UK - describing the results as a "slam dunk" which proved the Rock's future lay with Britain.
CTET Admit Card 2019 Released. The Central Board of Secondary Education has issued the hall ticket for the Teacher Eligibility Test on 08th December 2019. Thus, the admit card has been released on 19th November 2019. The exam will be held at various centers. Make sure to download the hall ticket by entering valid details in it.
CTET Admit Card 2019 has announced the Admit Card in the Official Website on 21st June 2019. So, Contenders need to carry the CTET Hall Ticket so as to sit for the exam. The release date of CTET Hall Ticket will be on the Official Website as well as in this article also. From this article, Candidates can get the direct link to download the CTET Hall Ticket 2019. This article will assist you in downloading the Admit Card.
CBSE CTET Admit Card 2019
Central Board of Secondary Education has announced the date of examination for the Central Teacher Eligibility Test in July 2019. As per the Previous Year trends, the Admit Card has been released before 2 to 3 weeks before the examination. The Hall Ticket will be issued successfully to the registered candidates. In case, you are unable to download the CTET Hall Ticket contact the authorities before the exam date.
The board releases the Admit Card in the Official Website, Candidates who have applied to appear for the examination can download the Admit Card from here. The CTET Hall Ticket contains the following contents. Hence, go through all the important details which are in the admit card. Fill according to that.
Name of the Applicant.
Exam Date, Time & Centre.
Post Applied for.
Application or Registration Number
Father Name and
Important Instructions.
CTET Exam Schedule 2019
Central Teacher Eligibility Test will be held on 07thJuly 2019. Moreover, the exam will be of Paper I and Paper I. The CTET is the Central Teacher Eligibility Test conducted by the Central Government. The CTET qualified candidates are eligible to teach the Primary and Secondary class students of any Central Government School across the Country.
Paper
Time Schedule
Duration
Paper I
9.30 AM to 12.00 PM
2.30 hours
Paper -II
2.00 PM to 04.30 PM
2.30 hours
The questions will be of Objective Type.
Total Marks will be 15o Marks.
Each question carries 1 Mark.
Paper I: For Primary Stage (Class I to V)
Paper II: For Secondary Stage (Class VI to VIII)
CTET Call Letter 2019 – Download
Download the CTET Hall Ticket from the below section. Discrepancies in admit card can happen. There might be errors or incorrect info in the hall ticket that you get. This is the reason a thorough glance over your CTET admit is card is essential. You download the admit card from now, you should check for discrepancies and errors in the admit card. If you find errors you should immediately contact the official authorities. Contact details have been mentioned below.
Karnataka High Court Result 2019 | Get Group D Post Viva-Voce Result, Merit List @ karnatakajudiciary.kar.nic.in – Karnataka High Court is going to announce Viva Voce Result for the Post of Group D (Peon, Watchman, Sweepers, Housekeeping) in November 2019 (Tentatively). Applicants who are going to appeared for this Group D Selection Process can check and download their results from the official website. Here we have provided a direct link to check the Group D Result link, it will activate once the result will publish it by officially. Keep visiting this page to remain updated about the upcoming information on the High Court of Karnataka Group D Result.
Karnataka High Court Group D Intimation of Document Verification 2019 – Karnataka High Court is going to conduct the viva voce for the Post of Group D (Peon, Watchman, Sweepers, Housekeeping). A huge number of Interested Job searching aspirants from the Karnataka State have applied for this job and waiting for the Viva Voce Date. Karnataka High Court will be announcing the Viva Voce Date soon. We advise the applicants to keep track of this page to get the complete details about Group D Posts. After the Viva Voce Process, Applicants can get their result by just clicking the link provided in the below table.
Group D Intimation of Submission/uploading Document Verification 2019
Intimation Letter of Submission/uploading of documents for verification of Group D 2019 – Click Here
Karnataka High Court Typist Selection List 2019 – Karnataka High Court has uploaded the Typist Selection List of Candidates for the Post of Typist on 12th November 2019. A huge number of Interested Job searching aspirants from the Karnataka State have applied for this job and waiting for the Selection list. Karnataka High Court has announced the Selection list of candidates now!! The Selected candidates are directed to submit the original documents relating to your Date of Birth, qualification, Caste and other reservation claimed by them, to this office on or before 22nd November 2019 for verification. Applicants can get their result by just clicking the link provided in the below table.
Karnataka High Court Typist Selection List of Candidates 2019 – Click Here
Karnataka High Court Civil Judge Mains Result 2019 – The Karnataka High Court had conducted the mains exam for Civil Judge Post on 9th & 10th November 2019. Moreover, all the eligible candidates who are searching for the result must check this entire article. The officials will declare the Karnataka High Court Civil Judge Result 2019 tentatively in the month of December 2019at the official site. We advise the applicants to keep track of this page to get the complete details about the Posts. Applicants can get their result by just clicking the link provided in the below table.
Karnataka High Court Civil Judge Mains Result 2019
Karnataka High Court Civil Judge Result 2019 – Click Here
Civil Judges Mains Exam Intimation Letter 2019 – Karnataka High Court has published the Civil Judges Mains Exam Intimation Letter on 31st October 2019. Recently the officials have released the Result for the Prelims Examination on 09th October 2019. A huge number of Interested Job searching aspirants from the Karnataka State have applied for this job and waiting for the Mains Exam Intimation Letter. Karnataka High Court has announced the Mains Exam Intimation Letter now. We advise the applicants to keep track of this page to get the complete details about the Posts. Applicants can get their result by just clicking the link provided in the below table.
Civil Judges Mains Exam Intimation Letter – Click Here Civil Judges Mains Exam Admission Card – Download Civil Judges Preliminary Exam Result 2019 – Click Here To Make payment for Main Written Examination – Click Here
Karnataka High Court Typist Viva Voce Intimation Letter 2019 – Karnataka High Court is going to conduct the Viva-voce for the Post of Typist on 26th October 2019. A huge number of Interested Job searching aspirants from the Karnataka State have applied for this job and waiting for the Viva Voce Date. Karnataka High Court has announced the Viva Voce Date now!! We advise the applicants to keep track of this page to get the complete details about the Posts. Applicants can get their result by just clicking the link provided in the below table.
Karnataka High Court Typist Viva-voce Intimation Letter 2019
Karnataka High Court Typist Viva-voce Intimation Letter 2019 – Click Here Karnataka High Court Typist Eligible candidates for the Viva Voce – Click Here
Driving Test Eligibility List 2019Released– The Karnataka High Court has announced the Driving Test Eligibility List and Schedule for the Test on 19th September 2019. Karnataka High Court is going to conduct the Driving Test for Drivers on 14th October 2019. A huge number of Interested Job searching aspirants from the Karnataka State have applied for Driver Posts and waiting for the Eligibility List. Now, Karnataka High Court has announced the Eligibility list and Driving Test Date from the official website. We advise the applicants to keep track of this page to get the complete details about the Posts. Applicants can get their result by just clicking the link provided in the below table.
Driving Test Intimation Letter 2019 – Click Here Eligible Candidates for Driving Test 2019 – Click Here InEligible Candidates for Driving Test 2019 – Click Here
Civil Judges Preliminary Exam Intimation Letter 2019 – Karnataka High Court has conducted the Preliminary Examination for the Post of Civil Judge on 21st September 2019. Recently the officials have released the Final Answer Key for the Prelims Examination on 26th September 2019. A huge number of Interested Job searching aspirants from the Karnataka State have applied for this job and waiting for the Preliminary Exam Answer Key. Karnataka High Court has announced the Prelims test date now. We advise the applicants to keep track of this page to get the complete details about the Posts. Applicants can get their result by just clicking the link provided in the below table.
Civil Judges Preliminary Exam Intimation Letter 2019
Civil Judges Preliminary Exam Final Answer key 2019 – Click Here Civil Judges Preliminary Exam Answer key 2019 – Click Here Civil Judges Preliminary Exam Intimation Letter 2019 – Click Here
Karnataka High Court Typist Test Intimation Letter 2019 – Karnataka High Court is going to conduct the Typing Test for the Post of Typist on 14th September 2019. A huge number of Interested Job searching aspirants from the Karnataka State have applied for this job and waiting for the Typing Test Date. Karnataka High Court has announced the Typing test date now. We advise the applicants to keep track of this page to get the complete details about the Posts. Applicants can get their result by just clicking the link provided in the below table.
Karnataka High Court Typist Test Intimation Letter 2019
Karnataka High Court Typist Test Intimation Letter 2019 – Click Here
Karnataka High Court District Judges Result 2019 – Karnataka High Court has invited the online applications to fill up 26 Backlog posts of District Judges. Totally 09 candidates are qualified for selection as District Judges in the order of Merit on the basis of aggregate of the marks obtained in the written examination and Viva-voce. We advise the applicants to keep track of this page to get the complete details about the Posts. Applicants can get their result by just clicking the link provided in the below table.
Karnataka High Court District Judges Result 2019 – Click Here
Karnataka High Court Group D Result 2019 – Karnataka High Court is going to conduct the viva voce for the Post of Group D (Peon, Watchman, Sweepers, Housekeeping). A huge number of Interested Job searching aspirants from the Karnataka State have applied for this job and waiting for the Viva Voce Date. Karnataka High Court will be announcing the Viva Voce Date soon. We advise the applicants to keep track of this page to get the complete details about Group D Posts. After the Viva Voce Process, Applicants can get their result by just clicking the link provided in the below table.
Karnataka High Court Group D Result 2019 – Click Here
According to the Karnataka High Court Group D 2019 Notification, to apply for the 95 Group D (Peon, Watchman, Sweepers, Housekeeping) Vacancies, contenders must have completed their 10th or 12th Standard. Apparently, the Karnataka High Court Officials are going to conduct the Viva-Voce, to hire the candidates. A huge number of candidates registered for the Group D vacancy all over Karnataka. Getting a government job in Karnataka is not that much easy. So Applicants should ready for the Viva-voce process to get placed in the Karnataka High Court.
After the Viva-voce process, applicants will be waiting for the result. We are here to help you out with the results. Also, they will fully concentrate on the Karnataka High Court Group D Merit List. Karnataka High Court announces the merit list details after the week or two from the date of the result. Merit list is nothing but the list of candidate who is eligible for the further rounds of selection. Board shortlists the candidates based on the cut-off marks set by the officials. Keep checking our page for regular updates on Karnataka High Court Group D Result 2019.
Karnataka High Court Group D Selection List | karnatakajudiciary.kar.nic.in
After the successful completion of the Viva Voce process, Applicants will get the Selection list. The Higher officials will announce the selection list from the official website. The officials will consider Age limit, category, qualification, and the Merit List to select a Candidates for the Group D Post. Participants can know their performance status with the help of the Karnataka High Court Group D Cut Off Marks. Moreover, the Group D Cut Off Marks 2019 is the minimum no. of marks that the candidates must score in the written exam.
Steps to download Karnataka High Court Group D Result 2019
Visit the official website of Karnataka High Court i.e, karnatakajudiciary.kar.nic.in
In the home page view the Notification tab and click on the Recruitments
A new page will be open in that, Many links will be available
Applicants can click the appropriate link to check the results
Karnataka High Court Group D Result 2019 pdf will be open
Download or take a print out of the file for further reference.
Important links to download Karnataka High Court Result 2019
FCI Result 2019 @ fci.gov.in – The Food Corporation of India will declare the FCI Result 2019 Phase 2 Shortly. Check your FCI Result Date 2019 and Expected Cut off Marks from the below sections. FCI Phase-II Exam was conducted on 27th July 2019. Applicants can get the FCI Result 2019 Phase 2 exam from the bottom of this page. So, here on this page, we will be updating the latest result link and it will activate at the time of announcement. All candidates are required to visit this page regularly to get the latest updates about FCI Result Phase 2 Exam.
FCI Result 2019 for Phase II – Declare Soon
The result of the FCI Phase II Exam will be declared very soon. Applicants who are waiting for the FCI 2019 Phase 2 Score Card & Marks can check your result from this page. Here we will be updating the latest result link for Zone Wise. The Updated result link will activate at the time of the result announced officially. Candidates who get qualified in the Phase 2 examination can attend the next two rounds (Skill test (Qualifying in nature) and Document verification. So applicants should aware of the FCI Result Date 2019 to attend the further rounds.
FCI Phase 2 Result 2019 (Assistant Grade III, JE, Steno Grade-II, AG II, Typist)
FCI Result 2019 Phase 2 – Assistant Grade III, JE, Steno Grade II, AG II, Typist Cut Off, Merit List
Description
Details
Organization Name
Food Corporation of India (FCI)
Post Name
Junior Engineer, Steno Grade-II, Assistant Grade II, Typist, Assistant Grade III Posts
Candidates who will qualify in Phase 2 – Online Exam can attend the Skill Test. After announcing the FCI Result Phase 2, applicants will receive the Call letter for the Skill Test. All the applicants can keep track of this page to get your Results. Also, candidates can check your FCI 2019 Exam Phase II Result from the official website fci.gov.in. The FCI Recruitment process is to fill 4103 candidates for various Posts.
FCI Cut off Marks 2019 @ fci.gov.in
A huge number of candidates have appeared for the FCI Recruitment 2019. Now the candidates are shortlisted for the next round on the basis of FCI Cut off Marks 2019. FCI will release the Cut off Marks officially for all categories after the announcement of FCI Result 2019 Phase 2. Candidates can check your FCI 2019 Phase II Score Card & Marks by Category and Zone Wise. Here we have provided a direct link to check and download your result.
FCI AG-II, Typist, Junior Engineer Merit List 2019
The merit list will be decided based on the highest marks secured by the candidates in the examination. Get the shortlisted candidate’s details by checking with the name of the candidates and the roll number. It's important to check the FCI Junior Engineer, Steno Grade-II, Assistant Grade II, Typist, Assistant Grade III Posts Merit List 2019 to know the selection of next rounds.
Punjabi University Result 2019 – Check out Punjabi University Result New here for B.Ed, B.Sc, MA, M.Sc, MBA, BCA, and Other Courses. Students can get Punjabi University Results 2019 with a direct link. And now, PBI UNI has declared the Punjabi University Result 2019 for various Courses under Punjabi University Left.
Recently the University has published the results of Diploma in Mechanical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Add On Courses II Sem and other Courses results are available here. Students who have been appeared for that examination can check their results from the official website of the University i.e, punjabiuniversity.ac.in. Also, we have provided a direct link to the Students to download/ verify the Punjabi Uni Results from the below table. It will help the students to get the results without any confusion. We advise the Students to regularly check the Official website of the University to get the latest updates regarding the Examination results.
Punjabi UNI Result 2019 | Punjabi University Result 2019
The Punjabi University released the much-awaited Www Punjabi University Results Ac In online. So, check out the पंजाबी यूनिवर्सिटी रिजल्ट्स २०१९ for Under Graduate and Post Graduate Regular, Supplementary and Revaluation results. Furthermore, Students can get the Punjabi University Semester Wise Exam Result from this page. So, verify the entire article to download the Punjabi University Result in B.A. M.A and so on results. Here, we have provided direct links to find your results through individual links on this page. Furthermore, download the results for Arts, Science, Engineering, Medical, Management Courses simply by following the steps provided below. In fact, you can get the results for the other Universities on our official site.
Punjabi University is a state university located in Patiala, Punjab, India. Punjabi University teaches and researches in science, engineering, and technology, humanities, social sciences, performing arts and sports. It was established on 30 April 1962 and is only the second university in the world to be named after a language. The institution has more than 70 teaching and research departments, covering disciplines in Humanities, Science, Fine Arts, Computer Science, and Business Management. To obtain a doctorate degree from the university one should pass the Punjabi language exam (Punjabi Pravesika) conducted by the university twice a year. Students who study Punjabi as a subject until the 10th standard need not pass the test to qualify.
Students are waiting for the PBI Uni Left Result if they scored well they will lead to next year. But if they will not get more marks they can apply for the Revaluation Results. Once they applied for the Examination, the higher level Examiner will check the paper again. They can get the revaluation results within the time. Also if they still get fail marks, they can apply for the supplementary examination. For each and every semester Students can apply for the revaluation after the announcement of the main examination results. However, the PBI UNI will take a week or more to process the exam papers to announce the Punjabi University Revaluation Result. In the same way, stay updated with the University to know about the Punjabi University Revaluation Result.
HPU Result 2019 – Dear Students!! Students of Himachal Pradesh University can check the exam results on our page. Where we have given the latest HPU results and exam date details. Hence, Students of all Undergraduate, Postgraduate, M.Phil, and Ph.D. courses can check their result here. Also, we provide the HPU entrance exam result 2019 on our page. Students can now check out the Himachal Pradesh University Results from the Official Website @hpuniv.ac.in. Here on this page, Students can find the direct link for HPU Result 2019 updated on the in the tabular section below. Students can access all the HPU Semester wise results in the article below.
HPU Result 2019
Himachal Pradesh University announces the result for the entrance, all semester regular supplementary exam online. The University has published the results for MA History 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th Sem, MCA Results available here. We have provided a direct link to get the results from the below table. We people from recruitment.guru will provide all the latest results released by HPU to make avail for Students. By this, students can find the recent results given by the university without any confusion.
So, students of HP University can keep checking our page for regular updates and can evaluate their performance in exams by checking their results through our website. Apart from these results, we used to update the latest information about the HPU Exam Schedule, Admit Card, Syllabus, Previous Paper, and others. So we advise the students to regularly check our page to get additional information about the HPU Result.
Latest HPU Exam Result 2019
Name of the Exam
Download Link
M.A. English IDSPL students for the session of June, 2019 Ist to 4th Semester
Himachal Pradesh University was established on 22nd July 1970. HP University is located at the summer hill which is 5 km from the town of Simla. The environment of the university will be awesome, covered with woods, settled around summer hill. The HPU campus occupies 200 acres and has been designed to possess a distinctive architectural style. Himachal Pradesh University got accredited by NAAC and recognized by UGC as a center of excellence in Himalayan studies. The university provides both distance education and open learning. HP University has 300 affiliated and constituent colleges under it. Find the list of courses provided by Himachal Pradesh University in the section below.
HPU 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 Himachal Pradesh University can also get all Results Also. Just we are advising the Students to frequently visit this page to get the latest updates of all HPU Result 2019.
MLSU Results 2019 released for M.Sc. Maths Sem-II, M.Sc. Environmental Science Sem-II, IV Examination Result & Other Courses on 19th November 2019. Dear Students, now you can check your मोहनलाल सुखाड़िया विश्वविद्यालय परिणाम 2019 here through Online Mode. Mohanlal Sukhadia University has published the results for various courses every day. We have provided a direct link to check your results and anyone can check the results from the official website of the University i.e, mlsu.ac.in. Students who have appeared for the MLSU Examination can verify their results by using the below link. As the university offers all kinds of courses like UG/PG, Diploma, Ph.D., and others. Applicants can check their supplementary & Regular results on this page. However, check out complete details of MLSU Result from this webpage.
MLSU Result 2019
Mohanlal Sukhadia University has announced the results for the M.SC Sem Examination Result, and others. Students who have appeared for those exams can check this from the official website of the University. On this page, we will be updating the News, Time Schedule, Previous Papers, Admit Card and others. We will be updating all the details in a detailed manner. Anyone can check the MLSU Result 2019 from the link mentioned in the below table. We advise the Students to keep in touch with this webpage to get all updates related to MLSU Result 2019.
Latest MLSU Exam Result 2019
Name of the Exam
Announcement Date
Download Link
M.Sc. Botany(CBCS) II Sem Examination Result (Revised)
Mohanlal Sukhadia University also called the University of Udaipur is a public university in Udaipur city in the Indian state of Rajasthan. It consists of four constituent colleges and 60 affiliated colleges from various districts. The earlier agricultural university was turned into a multi-faculty university in 1964 and named the University of Udaipur. In 1984 it was renamed as Mohanlal Sukhadia University in memory of politician Mohanlal Sukhadia. Recognition of the Department of Geology, Botany, Physics and Zoology by UGC for its 'Special Assistance Programme' and support received from DST under the FIST program to various Science Departments is the testimony of scientific advances made by the faculty members.
Mohanlal Sukhadia University Supply/Revaluation Results
Those students who have attended the regular examination under Mohanlal Sukhadia University and still failed. Here comes one more opportunity to clear the examination. To increase the scoring along with that students to fail in the previous examination will get a chance to clear through Revaluation Exams Mohanlal Sukhadia University Results. For each and every semester Students can apply for the revaluation after the announcement of the main examination results. The Mohanlal Sukhadia University 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.
RTMNU Results 2019 – The Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University, Nagpur announces the Semester Exam results for the B.Sc, B.Com, MA, M.Com, and other exam results. Those who are checking out for the updated semester wise results for Supplementary & Regular Examination can get it here. The Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University, Nagpur offers all kinds of UG & PG Courses. Hence, Check other information of RTMNU Results in the below sections of this page.
RTMNU Results 2019-20
Get the updated and lastest Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University Results of Nagpur Branch. Here is the RTMNU Results Hub listed for the LLM, LLB, MSC and other Graduate & Post Graduate programming courses. Students of Nagpur City who are pursuing their degree under RTM Nagpur University can check out the complete semester examination results from the below section of this page. For detailed information and to know the previously released RTM Nagpur University Results candidates can get on the official website @nagpuruniversity.org for both the supplementary and regular results.
About Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University
Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University is also known as Nagpur University which located in the city of Nagpur in the central Indian state of Maharashtra. RTMNU is one of the oldest universities and the second oldest in Maharashtra. The university named on the Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj, who was a spiritual leader, orator, and musician from Vidarbha. The university is a member of the Association of Indian universities and the association of Commonwealth universities.
Nagpur University was established in the year 1923 with 6 affiliated colleges and 927 students. By 1947 the number of students increased to 9,000. This year even Library & Sports activities were drastically increased. The Governor of Maharashtra state will act as Chancellor of the university. While Mr. Siddharthavinayaka P. Kane is the Vice-Chancellor of the university.
RTMNU Revaluation Results
Students are waiting for the results if they scored well they will lead to next year. But if they will not get more marks they can apply for the revaluation results. Once they applied for the Examination, the higher level Examiner will check the paper again. They can get the revaluation results within the time. Also if they still get fail marks, they can apply for the supplementary examination. For each and every semester Students can apply for the revaluation after the announcement of the main examination results. Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University will take a week or more to process the exam papers to announce the RTMNU Revaluation Results. Do stay updated with the University to know about the RTMNU Revaluation Results.
GSERC Recruitment 2019 – Apply Online for 557 Assistant Teacher/ Shikshan Sahayak Vacancy. The Latest Notification released by Gujarat Government is updated right here. Candidates who looking for Gujarat Government Jobs check the Teaching Job details given here. If you are suitable for the Shikshan Sahayak vacancy in Gujarat then begin to apply for the 557 vacancies through Online mode. GSERC Online Application opens from 18th November 2019 @ www.gserc.in. Look at these sections to know eligibility details for Assistant Teacher Vacancy.
Gujarat State Education Staff Recruitment Selection Committee is looking for the eligibles to fill the 557 vacancies for Assistant Teacher Post. Aspirants submit the GSERC Application on or before the last date 27th November 2019. Interested candidates searching for Teaching Jobs in Gujarat can check this page for the latest recruitment update.
Other Gujarat State Education Staff Recruitment Selection Committee (GSERC)
The Gujarat State Education Staff Recruitment Selection Committee is a legislature of Gujarat body liable for deciding the arrangement related, authoritative, psychological, and scholarly bearing the state’s optional and the higher auxiliary instructive framework takes. The fundamental duties of the Board incorporate scholastics, leading assessments, and innovative work. The board is answerable for enlistment and organization of higher optional and auxiliary schools in the province of Gujarat. The Gujarat board was shaped based on ‘The Gujarat Secondary Education Act 1972’. what’s more, directs the state level test. The primary scholastic assignment of GSEB is the planning of prospectus for optional schools and furthermore the proposal of course readings to be instructed in government schools just as enrolled tuition-based schools.
The Board additionally plays out the obligations of perceiving new schools, execution assessment of schools and examinations of different schools. The GSEB conducts 2 (counting 4-semester type assessments) principle assessments – The Secondary School Certificate (SSC) test for Standard 10 and the Higher Secondary (School) Certificate (HSC)examination for Standard XI-XII understudies in Gujarat. The Board additionally holds a Talent Search for understudies of Std VIII and IX in five significant subjects each year. It is isolated into 2 significant parts.
UKPSC Result 2019 @ ukpsc.gov.in – Check UKPSC Assistants Conservator of Forest Merit List, Cut off Marks here. Applicants who have appeared for the UKPSC Assistants Conservator of Forest Exam 2019 can check your results from this page. Candidates those who appeared for the exam can check the full details of UKPSC ACF Result 2019 from this page. The officials are planning to release the UKPSC ACF Result 2019 in the month of December 2019 (Tentatively).
UKPSC ACF Result 2019– The result of the UKPSC ACF Exam 2019 will declare from the official website of the exam conducting authority and released through online mode. All the examiners who are eagerly searching for the result announcement now they can check their results. Based on the result, the candidates are qualified for the further selection process of the Assistants Conservator of Forest Exam 2019. Uttarakhand Public service commission has successfully conducted the ACF Exam 2019 on 03rd November 2019 in various Examination centers. The Result is expected to be released in the month of December 2019 (Tentatively).
UKPSC Assistants Conservator of Forest Result 2019
Uttarakhand Public service commission ACF Result 2019- Click Here
UKPSC Economics And Statistics Officer Result 2019 @ ukpsc.gov.in. The officials of Uttarakhand Public Service Commission (UKPSC) is planning to release the UKPSC ESO Result 2019 on the Last Week Of November 2019 (Tentatively). Moreover, the officials had conducted the UKPSC Economics And Statistics Officer Exam on 17th November 2019. And also can download UKPSC ESO Cut off Marks and Merit List Here.
UKPSC Economics and Statistics Officer Result 2019
Uttarakhand Public service commission ESO Result 2019 – Click Here
UKPSC ACF Cut Off Marks 2019
The UKPSC Assistants Conservator of Forest Cut Off Marks 2019 will release before the Result. The Cut Off Marks means the minimum marks that should be scored by the candidates to get qualified in the exam. Aspirants who have scored equal or more thanthe UKPSC ACF Cut Off Marks 2019 will be known to be selective in the UKPSC ACF Exam 2019. Candidates can check the UKPSC ACF Cut Off Marks 2019 from the official portal
UKPSC ACF Merit List 2019
The UKPSC ACF Merit List 2019 contains the names and register number of the candidates who secure top marks in the exam. Those top marks aspirants will have the chance to go for the next level Interview process. The officials will release the UKPSC ACF Merit List along with the results. Candidates can check the UKPSC Assistants Conservator of Forest Merit List 2019 form the official website @ ukpsc.gov.in
How to check UKPSC ACF Result 2019?
Visit the Official website of the Uttarakhand Public Service Commission ukpsc.gov.in
On the home page click on the results tab from the left side menu
A new page will be open, in that click on the related link of UKPSC ACF Results
The UKPSC Assistants Conservator of Forest Result will display on the screen
Calicut University Results 2019 is one of the famous university in Kerala which releases the examination results by the board. The Calicut University Results released on 20th November 2019 for Semester wise Bachelor & Master Degree Exams. Here we provide all the Courses Results according to the semester wise. Candidates do check complete section to know the Updated Calicut University Exam Results 2019.
Calicut University Results 2019-20
Calicut University (CU) is one of the top universities in India. Around 373 colleges are affiliated to the University of Calicut which has an annual intake of 100000 students. The University conducts exams for the students who are pursuing their UG, PG Programme, Ph.D. Programming Courses. Candidates can get the updated University results from the below page which will direct you to the official site. Earlier CU had declared M.Com 2nd Sem Results. Candidates can check their results of all exams from the direct link given below. Here you will find the direct link to check Calicut University Exam Result 2019.
Latest University of Calicut Exam Results 2019-20
Examination Name
Release Date
Results Link
II Semester M.Sc. Psychology (CUCSS) Examination 4/2019
The University of Calicut is the largest University in Kerala. Established in the year 1968, it is the second university to be set up in Kerala. The University aims to nurture excellence in education and research in its catchment areas of Northern Kerala, historically consigned to the periphery of Kerala's academic map. Calicut University lays its emphasis on fostering quality human resource and promoting productive research that benefits both local communities and wider humanity. The University created through a Government plan bifurcating Kerala University. As per the plan, the four post-graduate departments of the University of Kerala operating in Calicut annexed to the new University along with fifty four constituent colleges spread across seven northern districts.
University of Calicut Regular/ Supplementary Result
Students, those who have not cleared or got low marks in the University examinations can apply for the Revaluation. This is is a second chance for the students to increase their marks in subjects in which they have scored low marks. If students have written the main exam well and still got a low score or having doubts in the correction of the exam paper it is a choice to increase their marks. Currently, the Calicut University has released the revaluation results for UG, PG with all-region Students. So Students can check the Revaluation results from the official website as well as on this. We have provided a direct link to get the Supply/Revaluation Results.
Discover why you don't have to worry about a volatile market's impact on your simplified employee pension plan. Learn to use your SEP to navigate the markets.
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NEW DELHI: India is preparing a national retail framework for small neighbourhood stores to ensure they can better cope with competition from ecommerce platforms, which have been gaining ground. The programme could include one-time registration fees, soft loans for working capital and support to adopt electronic payments."Work has started on a national framework that states can adopt," a government official told ET. Retail is a state subject and each one of them follows varying policies with regard to the sector.As part of the exercise, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has asked the states to embark on a count of such stores.Domestic trade contributes about 15% of India's $2.7 trillion GDP with more than 60 million business enterprises across the country. 72134975 Move to Cut CostsAccording to estimates, domestic trade provides a livelihood to about 250 million people and is growing at 15% annually.Most states have a shops and establishment legislation under which such stores are registered. The registration policy, fees and other compliances vary. Registration is annual in some states and every five years at others.The proposed exercise is aimed at consistency, simplification and a lower compliance burden in order to lower costs. Under consideration is online enrolment for lifetime registration, said the person cited above."We are looking at issues that small shopkeepers face and how those can be addressed," the official said. "We are also looking at (whether) they can be provided soft loans, assistance to adopt digital payment mechanisms."Almost 65% of 70 million such stores are not digitally enabled, according to Praveen Khandelwal, secretary general of the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) lobby group, which has been at the forefront of complaints against ecommerce companies. It has accused them of disregarding the rules to offer discounts. The ecommerce companies have said they are compliant with the rules.The government and retailer groups have also discussed the idea of the state becoming guarantor for loans. That will allow banks to offer credit at lower interest rates and needing less documentation.The DPIIT is in the process of expanding the National Trader Welfare Board to make it more broad based, the official added.
New Delhi: Biscuit giant Britannia Industries has postponed product launches on account of a consumption slowdown in the country, which it said is expected to revive in the next 9-12 months."We had a fairly packed calendar. But when we started to see the slowdown, we decided to postpone these launches because we were seeing inefficiencies coming into the system," managing director Varun Berry told analysts on a call after the company's second-quarter earnings.Britannia, which also makes dairy and bakery products, said second-quarter net sales rose 5.88% to Rs 3,022.91 crore during July-September from Rs 2,854.81 crore in the corresponding year-ago quarter."We know that rural is growing much slower than urban. There is pain in rural. And it's important that gets sorted out for the overall growth to come back for every possible FMCG company," Berry said.The maker of Good Day and Tiger brand biscuits gets 75% of its revenue from biscuits."We are launching new packs but at a slower pace and getting more packs into outlets we're already present in," he said.Rural growth dropped below urban levels for the first time in seven years and the FMCG sector grew 7.3% by value in July-September, down from 16.2% a year earlier, market research firm Nielsen said in a report last month. The quarterly report said while the FMCG market witnessed a resurgence in modern trade, the rural market grew only 5%, which is one-fourth of the 20% clocked in the same period last year."The biggest issue is the liquidity crunch in the trade, especially in wholesale channels. Disposable income is under stress, especially in rural markets, while modern trade and e-commerce are doing better," said Marico managing director Saugata Gupta.The maker of Parachute hair oil and Saffola edible oils said instead of introducing new products, Marico would focus on improving existing brand strengths."While immediate consumer sentiment continues to be weak, along with the liquidity crunch, we expect to stay invested in both innovation and go-to-market," Gupta said.Berry said growth was being driven by premium products as financial stress in rural markets continues."The mix is moving towards premium. Sales are showing that premium products are doing better than value products. Consumers seem to be cutting back but whenever they're consuming our products or any other products in the market, they are leaning towards the premium products," he said.Britannia Defers LaunchesAlmost all consumer good companies are focusing on premium products through channels including e-commerce and modern trade to hedge against the rural slowdown, which accounts for about a third of the overall FMCG market. Hindustan Unilever, ITC and Reckitt Benckiser are among those that have rolled out premium products in the detergent, chocolate and car freshener categories, respectively.The National Council of Applied Economic Research pegged India's GDP growth at 4.9% for 2019-20, compared with 6.8% in 2018-19. It said India's economy grew 5% in the first quarter of 2019-20, the slowest in over six years. "On account of the rural slowdown, we are introducing products that are affordable and accessible for rural consumers in the form of low unit price packs," Dabur chief executive Mohit Malhotra said. The maker of Vatika shampoo and Real juices will continue to add premium products for modern trade and e-commerce, he said.Hindustan Unilever's chief financial officer Srinivas Phatak said on an investor call last month that the wholesale and smaller retail trade faced an acute liquidity crunch, on account of which rural markets grew far slower than the urban ones.
MUMBAI: The six Tata trusts that had their registrations cancelled by the income tax department in October will challenge the order before the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), arguing that they collectively hold less than 10% of Tata Sons, the conglomerate's holding company. Top trust officials close to the development said the six entities did not breach the objectives listed in the trust deeds as claimed by the department.One of the key reasons for cancellation is that the trusts allegedly violated Section 13 of the Income Tax (I-T) Act. This prohibits a trust from holding shares of a company, unless it has been doing so since June 1, 1973."It can be seen that the trusts, created for charitable purposes, are being utilised for controlling large business group through Tata Sons. Clearly this is not the intention of the trust deed," the I-T department said in its show cause notice (SCN) that was sent earlier this year. The notice has been reviewed by ET.A Tata trustee contested this and said philanthropy was the objective. 72134923 "We want to make it very clear that Tata Trusts is not here to do business," the person said. "We are a charitable trust and do not influence business decisions of the Tata Group. We may be seen as a majority shareholder in Tata Sons but that does not mean we are in any way involved. Our role does not go beyond core ethical issues.""This level of shareholding does not confer any control," the person said. "So, the department's finding on the face of it is factually wrong. The same would be contested in the plea before ITAT."2015 Notice"Each Tata trust is a separate entity. The other Tata trusts which hold shares in Tata Sons were not subject matter before the department. In any event, the shares held by those other trusts is not a 'new' development. They are being held for decades," the person added.As per the charter, the trustees have complete discretion on managing the trust fund so long as they utilise the money for the specified purpose, said this person."It is the trustees' fiduciary duty to protect the trust fund and maximise it to do more and more charity," the person said. "It is the trustees' duty to protect the corpus and maintain it in a form which is in the best interest of the Trust. The department cannot substitute its own judgement as to how and in what form the trustee should maintain the trust's assets or corpus."The person also pointed out that the trusts had concurred with show cause notices sent four years ago on cancellation of the registration."The other major point that the trusts argue is that the department has been sending SCNs since 2015," the person said. "When the SCN was issued on March 10, 2015, as to why the registration shouldn't be cancelled, on March 20, the trusts concurred with the department's notice and agreed that the registration be cancelled/withdrawn. However, the 2019 notice doesn't refer to the 2015 notice on the same issue."The amount that the I-T department wants the Tata trusts to pay is based on the accumulation of income of the last three assessment years — 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2017-18, said two officials with knowledge of the matter.The six entities are the Jamsetji Tata Trust, RD Tata Trust, Tata Education Trust, Tata Social Welfare Trust, Sarvajanik Seva Trust and Navajbai Ratan Tata Trust. They together hold 39,000 shares of Tata Sons, said one of the persons. The main shareholding trusts are the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and the Sir Ratan Tata Trust.While the Tata Trusts as a whole own 66% of Tata Sons, the six entities have less than 10%.While the I-T department hasn't raised a demand notice, based on a 10% holding this could amount to at least Rs 2,500 crore by a conservative estimate, said officials. The charity registration was cancelled for violating provisions of Section 115 (TD) that pertains to tax on accreted income. The trusts have six months to file an appeal before the ITAT. If the appeal goes against them, the trusts "shall be liable to pay tax on the accreted income within 14 days", under the I-T Act.The I-T department has also argued that the trusts were in violation of clause 4 of the trust deeds, which mandates its charitable nature. The Tata trusts have contended that the trustees acted in good faith.Another tax official cited changes to the law in 2014. Under this, "the general exemption available for dividend income would not be available to the trust", the person said.I-T sources told ET that before 2015, the trusts were under the exemption wing. After that, they were sent to assessment wing and have been filing regular returns since then. The I-T department's action is based on repeated queries from the Comptroller & Auditor General seeking an update on the action taken by them on its findings. In its 2013 report, CAG observed that the some of the Tata trusts were investing in certain avenues despite the law strictly forbidding public charitable trusts from holding such assets after 1973. This mainly pertains to the trusts holding shares of TCS and Tata Capital Ltd. A part of the TCS shares were subsequently divested and the proceeds were invested in the preference shares of Tata Sons."The newly added provision of Section 115(TD) included in June 2016 which allows them to claim 'accreted income' wasn't available in 2015 when they 'surrendered' their registration," said one of the IT officials. "However, last year when the CAG sent another reminder, the accounts were studied and a view was taken to reopen the case. The official said the I-T department will contest the Tata trusts in case they move the ITAT. "The I-T department's demand is purely based on the irregularities flagged off by CAG and subsequently also mentioned by the PAC (Public Accounts Committee of Parliament)," the person said.
More than two years ago, the Reserve Bank of India ordered local banks to take Essar Steel and 11 other borrowers to 'trials' under a revamped bankruptcy law enacted in late 2016. The jury is finally out on India's most significant piece of bad loan legislation: It has, unequivocally, recognised the primacy of secured creditors in asset-sale proceeds.But the ride so far has been rather rocky, testing the patience of all stakeholders. So much so that the chair of the country's largest lender, State Bank of India, had invoked divine intervention just three months ago, expressing his disappointment with the progress on bankruptcy cases — and their evident reflection in the masslender's quarterly financial statements."Every morning I am looking at the sky and praying to God that the three large NCLT accounts stuck in the middle of resolution get resolved — these alone will give us more than Rs 16,000 crore in write-backs," SBI chairman Rajnish Kumar had said in August, referring to Essar Steel, Bhushan Power and Steel and Alok Industries, where SBI has made 100% provisions against bad loans.Kumar can now breathe a sigh of relief, with his bank getting more than Rs 12,000 crore in recoveries on the provisions."This much awaited judgement (on the primacy of lenders) also settles numerous points of law under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code — points that were tested in various courts," Kumar said. "This should significantly reduce the scope for long-drawn litigations under IBC and would eventually lead to faster resolution of stressed assets."SECURED VS OPERATIONAL CREDITORSLast Friday, in its 164-page verdict in the case of Essar Steel, the Supreme Court not only upheld that the ultimate discretion on distribution of funds lies with the Committee of Creditors (CoC), but also ratified that the rights of secured and unsecured financial creditors are different when it comes to payment claims on resolution proceeds."The Essar ruling is like the Kesavananda Bharati case, where the basic structure of the Constitution was defined," said Hari Hara Mishra, director, UV Asset Reconstruction Company.This ruling has also reinforced that the distribution of bid proceeds shall be in accordance with the provisions of the bankruptcy code and the resolution plan approved by majority of creditors, making it clear that equity holders have no right on claims."This has led to a narrowing down in the scope for interpretation and interference by the authorities," said Ashish Pyasi, associate partner, Dhir and Dhir Associates. "This would also mean that now the commercial wisdom of committee of creditors will prevail and there is no equity as the interest of all stakeholders, including the operational creditors, has been taken care of in the amendment and the validity of same has also been tested by the Supreme Court in this ruling."TESTING OUR RESOLVEFor the bankruptcy mechanism, the journey over the past three years has been anything but smooth. It has faced obstacles from the word go. Not only were the biggest bad loan cases embroiled in litigation, but there have also been several issues about the interpretation of the law. Lenders were under constant fear that bankruptcy matters could get stuck in superior courts and then languish for months on delays caused by pendency and adjournments.Since the IBC was first implemented in May 2016, the government has brought about several changes in the law, including giving powers to the Reserve Bank of India to send cases into bankruptcy, blocking errant promoters from bidding and allowing exits from the code with maximum CoC vote. History has shown that India has been rather poor in implementing laws such as SICA, BIFR, DRT or Sarfaesi, but the jinx seems to have been finally broken."This is a landmark judgment and it sets very positive precedence for banks that there is hope with IBC as a lot of assets undergoing resolution were solid assets with good recovery potential," says CV Rajendran, MD, Catholic Syrian Bank. 72135274 Promoters of large bankrupt companies were steadfastly resisting loss of control over their business, and they also challenged the constitutional validity of the law. That contention was later shot down by the apex court, which held that the law does not infringe upon individual or fundamental rights.But this does not mean the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code has failed to make a mark. Prior to IBC, no one would have imagined that the likes of Ruias, Dhoots, Singhals, Miglanis or Dhams would be ousted from companies that were symbolic to their very existence.NEW TIMELINESThe Essar Steel judgement has come as a breather for 535 corporate debtors facing liquidation by December. The earlier rules allowed cases to be settled within 270 days, a deadline later relaxed to 330 days. Now, the apex court has held that if the debts are not resolved within this time frame, bankruptcy tribunals could award extension of time under exceptional circumstances. There are 1,497 cases pending in IBC. Of these, 535 cases have been in the resolution process for more than 270 days."By December, all these 535 cases would have crossed an additional 90 days over 270 days and forced into liquidation," says Mishra. "Forced liquidation is likely to be stopped by this Supreme Court judgement. There is fresh breather for companies completing 330 days in the December quarter."INDIAN STRETCHABLE TIMEThe number of companies undergoing insolvency reached 1,497 as on end of September 2019, an alltime high. But timelines for these cases continued to get stretched, with 36% of the on-going cases already having crossed 270 days. An ICRA analysis showed that the average time taken for cases to yield a resolution plan was 374 days.Until September 30, 2019, 1,045 cases of defaulting corporate debtors had been closed under the IBC. Of the same, 56% (587) were ordered into liquidation, while 15% (156) cases yielded a resolution plan In terms of resolution of the 12 large accounts – the claims are of Rs 3.45 lakh crore and these were ordered into IBC by Mint Road – the resolution plans for seven accounts have been approved and orders for liquidation have been made on two accounts. They had liquidation value of Rs 73,220 crore.Lanco Infratech and ABG Shipyard are under liquidation, while the resolution process for Amtek Auto, Era Infra and Jaypee Infratech is currently on.AN END TO LITIGATIONS?As matters stand, it may be a state of the glass being half full for the apex court, which has now set the broad contours of primacy in badloan resolutions, implying speedier resolutions and a more well-defined waterfall for sale proceeds. But in a country where promoters have been held invincible, a no-nonsense attitude by lenders will go a long way in smashing decades-old practices."This will not be end of litigations," said Abhishek Dafria, analyst, ICRA. "Questions raised by NCLAT have been answered by the Supreme Court and it will help in many cases. Over time, we will see more resolutions, and the way bankruptcy is handled in the country will take a few more years before the process is cemented."
KOLKATA: Samsung India is bringing back television production to India after a year with the government scrapping import duty on the biggest component open cell panel, or displays, said people with knowledge of the matter.The South Korean electronics company is about to sign a deal with homegrown contract manufacturer Dixon Technologies to manufacture television sets up to 55 inches in screen size, they said. These account for more than 85% of the Indian market. The company is evaluating options with other contract manufacturers to further expand local TV production in India, they added.Samsung, the largest television brand in India, is also evaluating whether it can restart the television line in its Chennai plant that was shut in October last year after the government imposed duty on open cell television panels. The company had then started importing finished television sets from its plant in Vietnam through the free trade agreement (FTA) route. 72135036 In September, the Centre had scrapped the 5% import duty on open cell panels. The display accounts for almost 65-70% of the production cost of LED televisions. There are currently no domestic manufacturers of television panels even though the government has been trying to push local production of this component.The television industry in India is going through one of its worst years with sales remaining mostly flat through 2019 despite the cricket World Cup and Diwali. Consumers are increasingly buying Chinese and online value brands such as Xiaomi, TCL, Kodak and Thomson in screen sizes up to 43 inches, which forced Samsung, Sony and LG to drop prices by 20-40%. Local production will provide greater cushion for Samsung in case it wants to cut prices further, said the people cited above.Since the duty was scrapped, senior Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) officials have held a series of meetings with Samsung India, including deputy managing director Peter Rhee, to understand the company's plans. "Samsung has finalised Dixon as a partner," said one of them.Saving Logistic Costs"There was intense pressure from the government to restart production since its exit was a blot on the flagship Make in India programme. This will also help Samsung since it can better manage its supply chain and save on logistic costs now that there is no cost difference between local manufacturing and FTA imports," added one of them.Samsung India didn't respond to queries. Dixon Technologies India chairman Sunil Vachani declined to comment.Dixon already manufactures televisions for brands such as Xiaomi, Panasonic and Sanyo and will produce the Samsung televisions at its plant near Tirupati. Four screen sizes will be manufactured — 32, 43, 50 and 55 inches — and they will include both high definition and smart televisions, said one person.Dixon and Samsung have an existing relationship. The former manufactures semi-automatic washing machines and last month started feature phones production for the South Korean company."Samsung may also start the TV line in its Chennai plant provided the government assures the company that the nil duty on open cell TV panels will continue for a few more years till local production of it begins," said one of the persons. "There has been some cost involved in the relocation to Vietnam. Once it has the policy assurance, it will relocate the line back."MeitY is also working on a phased manufacturing programme (PMP) for televisions, like the one for smartphones. This will specify how much of the manufacturing process and component production needs to be done in India and by when.
MUMBAI: Tata Motors is embarking on its most ambitious rationalisation of product portfolio as Bharat Stage VI emission norms kick in by April 2020.India's largest automobile company by revenues will have 400 new product programmes and 1,000 variants, come April, shedding 120-140 models from its portfolio. The clean-up will ensure higher commonalisation, quicker time to market and lower costs, thanks to new generation modular platforms. However, it would also mean a higher ticket price.Most of the upgrades are on the commercial vehicles front, where — based on applications — different aggregates, engines and body styles are created to suit customer needs.Upgrades include the Iris 0.5 tonne van, 55-tonne trucks, large buses, Tiago and Harrier SUV, with 40 different powertrain combinations (engine and transmissions) in 1-5.9 litre CNG, LPG, petrol and diesel engines with manual, automatic and automated manual transmission. Tata Motors would have put in Rs 2,500 crore in BS VI technology, which is its largest investment in vehicle development, said people in the know."There is a perfect storm on the technology side," said Rajendra Petkar, chief technology officer, Tata Motors. "We removed vehicle combinations that didn't make sense. We cut down product variants 15-20% as a step towards rationalisation. In engines, we would have cut down 25-30% as base engine level." Tata Motors said all its engines are BS VI compliant and it is just a matter of getting formal certification. The company has already received type approvals for more than 80% of their engines from the certification agencies. More than 90 vehicles combination have been certified.
Rich traders with an appetite for risk could initiate a call ratio spread in Reliance Industries. Analysts believe the momentum, which drove the stock to a fresh high of Rs 1514.90 Tuesday, could persist in the near term on hopes of improving prospects for its telco business amid debt concerns at rivals Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel.The strategy consists of buying a 1520-strike call and simultaneously selling two calls at the 1580-strike. Both the options expire on November 28. The sale of the two higher strikes reduces the overall debit but also exposes the trader to unlimited risk, if the upside is sharper than expected. If the RIL share consolidates, the trader can book out with a small loss as the time decay will eat into the premia of the sold higher strikes too.Using rounded off provisional prices Tuesday, the 1520-strike closed at Rs 25 and the 1580 at Rs 7 a share (500 shares make a lot). The sale of the two 1580 calls reduces the debit (1520 buy) to Rs 11 (25-14). The loss of Rs 11 happens if RIL closes at or below Rs 1520. At the other end, above Rs 1629, the loss could be unlimited unless a stop loss is placed at, say, Rs 1600, because an extra option has been sold.Bhavin Mehta, VP, Dolat Capital, and Rajesh Palviya, derivatives expert at Axis Securities, expect the strategy to deliver in a few days, failing which the positions could be squared off at a very limited loss. Mehta added that placing a stop loss at slightly above 1580 was a "must" to prevent a huge loss in the event of a "sharperthan-expected" move.The maximum profit of Rs 49 a share happens at Rs 1580. Above that level till Rs 1629, the profit keeps reducing. At Rs 1629 is the upper breakeven point, beyond which losses multiply. For instance, if RIL expires at or trades at Rs 1650, the 1520 call will be in the money (ITM) by a net Rs 119 as profit commences above Rs 1531. The two 1580 calls are ITM Rs 140, implying a loss of Rs 21a share.Placing a stop loss at Rs 1600 is advised, said Viral Berawala of Buoyant Capital. At that level the purchased 1520 call will be a net Rs 69 ITM, while the two sold 1580 calls will be worth Rs 40, implying a net profit of Rs 29.The stock closed Tuesday at Rs 1511.55 on NSE, before hitting a record high of Rs 1514.9. A slight rise in bullish futures bets on the near month coupled with short covering by call sellers at the 1500 strike helped buoy the share. Call sellers covered 10.05 lakh share at the 1500 strike which has the highest open interest at 16.3 lakh shares. The 1440 put has the highest OI, implying a strong support at that level. Further short covering by 1500 call sellers could take the stock higher.
NEW DELHI: The rush by airlines to add planes and launch flights on slots vacated by Jet Airways has led to overcapacity in the Indian market, slashed fares and losses piling up for carriers, senior airline executives told ET.According to the winter schedule, airlines have announced a high double-digit increase in capacity, filling the space created on key routes after Jet's demise."Jet's exit was a much-needed capacity correction," said a senior airline executive who did not want to be identified. "But the government forced capacity to come back by tying slots and rights allocation to incremental aircraft addition. This, coupled with a slowing economy, has resulted in the market not being able to go through the natural correction after Jet's exit. It has put airlines back into a doom loop, with excess capacity, not enough places to fly aircraft profitably and deep losses. Exit of another airline is quite possible."Overcapacity has kept fares under stress even during the festive season that sees an uptick in travel. While the number of passengers flying during October increased 4%, fares stayed lower than last year.Data from travel aggregator ixigo showed that average fares between routes such as Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Kulu were down by 9% and 54%, respectively, against last year. Some routes saw growth but not enough to offset overall losses. 72134893 While some are complaining, Ronojoy Dutta, chief executive of market leader IndiGo, recently told ET, "I do not think overcapacity is a problem. We have a meeting on network every Friday and everyone has ideas on new flight connections, but then we don't have enough planes to launch those flights." IndiGo, however, reported record losses, widening 63% to Rs 1,062 crore, in the second quarter, which it blamed on rise in cost due to old planes, pilot training and new accounting norms.SpiceJet, too, blamed its losses on new accounting norms.The government is worried about lower fares and feels carriers should charge "reasonably." A senior government official said, "Airlines should charge in a way that they are able to recover cost of operating flights," quickly adding that the government does not plan to interfere in ticket pricing.Overcapacity and lower economic growth are also set to take a toll on future realisations. IndiGo has predicted an almost flat revenue growth for the year ahead.
BENGALURU | MUMBAI: Clients of IT services providers are delaying decisions on large deals, as they deal with greater economic uncertainty, executives at large IT companies said.Slower global economic growth caused by the US-China trade war and a delayed Brexit have taken a toll on IT companies, as clients have cut or delayed spending.Earlier this month, DXC Technology, with about $20.75 billion in revenue, slashed its revenue target by $275 million to $19.5-$19.8 billion, as clients postponed signing new deals."We've seen additional delays in many large deals that we expected to close during the second quarter and that was particularly in the Americas and the UK," said Paul Saleh, chief financial officer, DXC.DXC recently said that about $1 billion in deals had been delayed in the first quarter, of which it had closed about 30% in the second quarter. "Some of the customers are not ready to make decisions. So, we've seen 30% (of the deals) move to maybe more than the fourth quarter, and some in the second half than we had originally anticipated... (many) are slipping into fiscal 2021 — early part of fiscal 2021 right now," Saleh told analysts in a post-earnings conference call.Despite overall growth in outsourcing spends in the Americas region and Apac in the third quarter, spending on managed services contracts were low compared to spends on as-a-service (cloud-based solutions) deals, which saw a rise across industries, according to technology research and advisory firm ISG."Overall, clients are skeptical about whether to invest in technology for growth or leveraging it for cost reduction and hence the uncertainty for large-sized deals. (We have) also come across some deals where clients have put the contract process on hold, though not explicitly stating the reason," said Mrinal Rai, principal analyst at ISG.India's largest IT services company Tata Consultancy Services also flagged delayed deals as one reason for slower growth in the second quarter. The weakness came particularly in the company's retail business. "We had hoped that Q2 would be the strong quarter. That has not turned out. Deals have gotten delayed. Whether they will close in Q3 or not, we will have to wait and see," TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan said last month.
NEW DELHI: The pace of employment growth in India slowed in the last two years with job creation growing 3.9% in 2017-18 and 2.8% in 2018-19, a study done by ratings agency CARE Ratings showed.Based on a set of 1,938 companies spread across all sectors, the study said the value of sales in FY19 was Rs 69 lakh crore thus covering the entire corporate sector. It includes all listed public sector entities but the SME segment may find less representation in this sample.As per the study, the aggregate headcount or employment increased at a CAGR of 3.3% over a four-year period from 2014-15 to 2018-19 compared with a CAGR of 7.5% in gross domestic product (GDP) during this period.In terms of growth in employment on an annual basis, it was 2.5% in 2015-16 and 4.1% in 2016-17."Therefore, there is a case that supports the argument that employment growth has not been commensurate with GDP growth with a difference of 4.2% in CAGR during this period," the study showed.It showed that around half the companies had witnessed a decline in growth in employment over this time period while 35% of them had witnessed growth of 11.5% on the aggregate each with an above average CAGR of 3.3%.Core worriesThe ratings agency highlighted that core industries have witnessed "virtually negative growth in headcount", with crude oil just about maintaining the employment level. These industries have been impacted by the slowdown in GDP growth as well as the challenges on the NPA side for banks.A similar picture is witnessed for the heavy investment industries where growth has tended to be negative for power and capital goods and just 0.4% for infra.However, the consumer oriented industries show a varied pattern with deceleration in employment in agricultural and durable goods but an increase for FMCG and textiles albeit at a lower than sample average of 3.3%."This is reflective of the slow uptick in consumer demand which has affected these industries not just in terms of sales as it evident from financial performance numbers but also a cautious approach to manpower planning," CARE said in the study.Among manufacturing industries, healthcare and automobiles registered a healthy growth of 4.8% in employment whereas the financial sector's performance was the impressive with banks, NBFCs and insurance witnessing impressive growthIn the non-financial sector segment, the IT and retail industries registered near or above average growth while telecom, hospitality and realty witnessed negative growth.The telecom industry has been through upheavals which have led to several mergers that have impacted headcount. In case of realty, the decline in growth in business impacted job prospects, it said."The CAGR in employment and growth in physical production for industries in the manufacturing sector are not well related," CARE Ratings concluded, adding that growth in employment has trailed growth in GDP indicating that the two have not moved in commensurate terms, and that service sector has performed better than manufacturing with financial sector industries doing better in terms of higher recruitment.
With Jinx, three former members of the Casper team are looking to bring what CEO Terri Rockovich called “the Casper playbook” to selling dog food.
The startup has raised $5.65 million from an all-star list of investors including Alexis Ohanian of Initialized Capital, Align Ventures, Brand Foundry, Wheelhouse Group, Will Smith and his family, the rapper Nas, singer Halsey, YouTube star/late night host Lilly Singh and TV personality/former NFL star Michael Strahan.
Rockovich previously served as vice president of acquisition and retention marketing at Casper, where she met her co-founders Sameer Mehta and Michael Kim. She said all three of them are “dog obsessives” who have experience trying to feed “picky eaters.” And they wer “hungry for a brand that is skinned in a way that is a lot more relatable to millennial consumer.”
It’s not just about taking regular dog food and selling it in a new way, either. Rockovich noted that an estimated 56% of dogs in the United States are overweight or obese. So Jinx’s staff nutritionist — working with a larger nutrition council — has developed a line of kibble and treats that she said is “packed with organic proteins, diversified proteins and easy-to-process carbohydrates for a moderately active animal.”
Jinx plans to start selling its first products in January. Rockovich said it will target pet owners with a certain set of “lifestyle attributes” — like living in an apartment, hiring dog walkers and owning dogs who sleep in their beds — and educate them so they actually examine the ingredients of their dog food, whether they buy it from Jinx or someone else.
“We understand the serious nature of creating something that goes into a body and kind of powers a lifestyle,” she said. “We've been so conscious of that. Frankly, it's delayed our timeline — we know we have to get it right.”
As for how much this will cost, Rockovich said Jinx will “fall in the premium category.” (If you’re familiar with premium dog food brands, she said Jinx pricing be somewhere between Blue Buffalo and Orijen.) And while the company start off by selling directly to consumers through its website, Rockovich said her Casper experience has taught her the importance of having “some IRL presence, specifically in retail.”
When disability rights lawyer Haben Girma, who is blind and deaf, booked an apartment in London via Airbnb last month, she says the host cancelled her reservation after she disclosed that her guide dog would be joining her.
Prior to the cancellation, Girma and the host, Kirk Truman, had a lengthy exchange over the course of about a week-and-a-half in which Girma explained her situation, as well as educated the host about Airbnb’s non-discrimination policy that protects both her and her guide dog, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Equality Act in the U.K., she told TechCrunch.
Despite this discussion, which TechCrunch has read and reviewed, Truman continued to express concern, saying, “I think my freeholder would be really unhappy with me if he found out that I had somebody stay in the flat with a dog/guide dog.”
The discussion continued, with Truman saying that “it should all be fine.” In the same message, he added that, had he “known when you first requested to book about you bringing your guide dog, I would’ve spoken to you about all we’ve discussed before proceeding with the booking.”
But ultimately, a couple of weeks later, Truman canceled Girma’s reservation. He justified the cancellation by saying the property would be undergoing some work during her scheduled stay, according to the conversation reviewed by TechCrunch. However, Girma says when her friend tried to book the same dates at that property five days later, Truman accepted the reservation.
When reached for comment about why Truman accepted her friend’s reservation for those same dates, Truman told TechCrunch via email his property has a leak and that the repairs are supposed to happen this coming weekend (November 23-24), which is when Girma was originally scheduled to stay at his flat.
“These dates were changed to this week by the contractor but then again changed to this coming weekend and are likely to be delayed into next week,” Truman said. “I should also add, that I also had to cancel another booking due to the issues with the leak as it happened again quite recently.”
It was when Girma found out Truman accepted her friend’s reservation for the same dates that she reached out to Airbnb. The company expressed remorse and told Girma that it would review the situation to determine if Truman deserved a warning, account suspension or permanent removal from the platform.
“For privacy reasons we can’t share what will happen after the review, but we want you to know that we are committed to fighting discrimination and ensuring that the Airbnb community is open and accessible to everyone,” an Airbnb customer service representative named Matt wrote to her in a message reviewed by TechCrunch.
But Girma took issue with the fact that Airbnb said it would keep the resolution of the review process quiet.
“Telling victims of discrimination that the result of the review process is private contributes to guests feeling like the platform is not safe,” Girma told TechCrunch via email. “We want to know if the company decides to protect discriminatory hosts. The company needs to be transparent with victims of discrimination.”
Girma proceeded to engage in a discussion with Airbnb, in which the company continued to say that its privacy policy prohibited it from communicating the results of the investigation to her. Airbnb offered to help her find a new place to stay, but Girma said she was not interested.
“I’m interested in whether or not Airbnb will take action, and I’m deeply disappointed that the company has chosen not to tell me what will be done in this incident,” Girma wrote to Airbnb.
In response, Airbnb reiterated that it would not disclose what actions it took with Truman. About one week later, however, Airbnb changed its course and let her know that the company took the route of host education. Additionally, Airbnb said Truman was now aware that future violations could result in his removal from the Airbnb platform.
But Girma said she had already gone out of her way to educate the host about Airbnb’s policy, as well as the ADA and the U.K.’s Equality Act.
“He knew it would be against your policy, and still canceled my reservation,” Girma wrote to Airbnb. “He claimed it was because the flat would have construction during my dates. My nondisabled friend then applied to stay at the flat for the exact same dates, and Kirk immediately accepted my friend’s reservation. All of this is in the records I sent to you.”
Girma then expressed dismay that Airbnb had chosen not to remove Truman and asked the company to reconsider. Shortly after sending that message, Girma got in touch with TechCrunch.
Following an inquiry from TechCrunch, Airbnb said it would suspend Truman for 30 days:
“To use our platform, Airbnb community members must commit to treat all fellow members of this community, regardless of disability, race, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or age, with respect, and without judgment or bias. We have suspended this host and sincerely thank Haben both for reporting this incident and for her past work to help Airbnb’s team better serve the disability community.”
In determining what action to take, Airbnb concluded that what Truman did fell into the category of discriminatory impact versus discriminatory intent. So, if a host calls the guest the N-word, that’s discriminatory intent and impact, which would result in immediate removal from the platform. Discriminatory impact, according to Airbnb, is how it sees this situation between Girma and the host. Airbnb’s theory is that Truman is not irredeemable and can learn from this situation. And, if he doesn’t, then he may be removed entirely.
“I understand the implication yes, though this was not why Haben’s booking was cancelled in the first place,” Truman told TechCrunch. “I have written to Airbnb to appeal against this decision as I feel there appears to have been a misunderstanding.”
Airbnb has since notified Girma of the resolution, which entails the aforementioned 30-day suspension, as well as a re-education of its policies. However, she says this is a “gentle” punishment.
“Responding to violations by educating hosts again and again creates a culture where hosts know they can get away with discrimination,” Girma said. “And if they are extremely unlucky the worst that will happen is a thirty-day suspension.”
Even more alarming, Girma said, is that Airbnb told her the company has instructed Truman that any similar violation “may result” in his removal.
“Airbnb cannot even commit to removing Kirk if he does this again,” she said. “I’m deeply concerned about the lack of enforcement.”
Airbnb has since offered Girma money to cover her costs of seeking accommodation elsewhere, but she says she does not plan to accept any compensation.
What Girma would prefer, she told TechCrunch, is for Airbnb to commit to making the complaint process transparent to victims, strictly enforce the accessibility policy and remove hosts who violate it.
“The company has thousands and thousands of hosts; why is Airbnb so intent on protecting a host that knowingly violated policies and discriminated against a disabled guest?” Girma wondered. “Airbnb has a systemic enforcement problem. Knowingly violating Airbnb policy apparently won't even get hosts removed from the platform. Airbnb policy is to not tell victims of discrimination the results of complaint reviews. How will guests ever feel safe using Airbnb when we know hosts that violate Airbnb's own policies stay on the platform?”
It’s worth noting Airbnb has also made some positive changes on the accessibility front. Last March, it added accessibility filters to make it easier for people with disabilities to find accessible travel accommodations, such as places with step-free entry and entryways that are wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair.
But despite Airbnb’s attempts to educate hosts and create a platform that fosters inclusivity, it’s clear that not all hosts are on board, which is still resulting in discrimination. If you’ve experienced discrimination on Airbnb, please get in touch with me at megan@techcrunch.com.
The Sundance Institute is looking to reach a broader community of up-and-coming filmmakers with a new website called Co//ab.
The institute’s chief product officer Tara Hein-Phillips told me that a small pilot version of the site first launched early in 2018, before beginning a “proper beta” in November of that year. And it spent a full year in beta testing — growing to 20,000 members — before Sundance took the label off earlier this month.
Hein-Phillips described Co//ab as an extension of the institute’s existing artist’s programs — leveraging the internet so that the programs can “have more impact.” There are plenty of other filmmaking tutorials out there (I’m both tickled and tempted by the existence of this David Lynch MasterClass), but she said they tend to be “inspirational,” whereas Co//ab is designed to be “more practical, more hands-on.”
“We really wanted the sweet spot to focus around works in progress — to give artists a completely safe and trusted space with other artists to take that work to the next level,” she said. “That's its whole purpose in the world.”
So Co//ab offers a general library of instructional videos, but also more in-depth courses and master classes. There’s also an opportunity to participate in monthly challenges (the current one involves rewriting an unsatisfying final scene) and to share scripts and films for feedback from other members of the Sundance community.
Asked about whether that feedback ever gets too harsh, Hein-Phillips noted that there’s a very “hands-on” community manager.
“We really do work to cultivate the spirit of generosity,” she added. “In part, it's a little bit in reaction too what we've seen in online community today. We're really trying to allow artists to redefine what online community is … We're seeing that really happen. We get so little negative feedback toward other people.”
Access to the video library is free, with pricing starting at $10 per month for a membership that includes members-only webinars and feedback on your work. There’s an additional fee for the individual classes — but Hein-Phillips noted that Co//ab will be offering need-based scholarships to 20% of all participants.
“We're clearly a not-for-profit,” she said. “Our goal is not to make money with this. We’d like it to be self-sustaining, and if it did happen to make money, that would filter back to our artist's programs.”
Lucence Diagnostics, a genomic medicine startup that develops non-invasive tests for cancer screening, announced today that it has raised a $20 million Series A led by IHH Healthcare, one of the world's largest integrated private healthcare groups. Other participants included SGInnovate and returning investors Heliconia Capital (a subsidiary of Temasek Holdings), Lim Kaling and Koh Boon Hwee.
The round will be used for scaling Lucence's labs, hiring and making its products commercially available to more patients in Asia and North America.
The funding will also support two prospective clinical trials. One will focus on its technology's sensitivity to actionable variables in late-stage cancer patients, while the other will evaluate its use for early-stage detection in several types of cancer, including lung, colorectal, breast and pancreatic. Lucence is currently designing a study that will involve 100,000 participants to validate its early-stage detection test. It will recruit its first patient in the middle of next year and launch in the United States and Asia.
Together with its seed funding, this round brings Lucence's total raised so far to $29.2 million.
Lucence's tests are currently used by physicians in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong, and it plans to expand further in North America and East Asia. Its lab in Singapore has received both CLIA certification and CAP accreditation, which means its tests can be used by doctors and patients in the United States. It is also currently building a lab in the Bay Area to decrease turnaround times for patients.
Headquartered in Singapore, with offices in San Francisco, Hong Kong and Suzhou, China, Lucence was founded by CEO Dr. Min-Han Tan, an oncologist, and spun out from Singapore's Agency of Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in 2016. Two years later, it launched LiquidHALLMARK, which the company describes as “the first and only clinical sequencing blood test that detects both cancer-related genetic mutations and cancer-causing viruses with a single assay” and looks for signs of fourteen types of cancer. The company says LiquidHALLMARK has been used by oncologists for 1,000 patients in Asia so far.
Other genomic sequencing startups that have developed tests that screen for cancer risks and signs include Sanomics, Prenetics, Guardant and Grail. Lucence's differentiators include its proprietary amplicon-sequencing, which examines specific genomic regions for variations, including mutations linked to cancer. The company describes its tests as a "Swiss Army knife," because it can be used for cancer screening, diagnoses, treatment selections and monitoring.
In a statement, Dr. Kelvin Loh, the CEO-designate of IHH Healthcare, said "liquid biopsy is a game-changer in our endeavor to provide cancer treatments with better, value-driven outcomes through precise treatment selections and more affordable care. Our investment in Lucence will provide IHH patients with better access to this advanced technology."
Superpedestrian, the startup working with a handful of scooter operators to deploy vehicles that can perform self-diagnostics, just raised a $20 million round from Spark Capital, General Catalyst, Hanaco Ventures and Empire Angels. This brings Superpedestrian’s total funding to $64 million.
Superpedestrian has yet to announce its operating partners, but is on track to launch in multiple markets in January.
Superpedestrian scooters can last up to seven days without recharging, assuming about five to six rides per day, its CEO Assaf Biderman told TechCrunch. But its key offering is the vehicle intelligence platform, which is designed to detect more than one hundred situations that could lead to malfunction, triage each issue and then determine what response to take in order to prevent vehicle damage and rider injury.
“The vehicle is constantly asking itself if it’s safe,” Biderman said.
That means Superpedestrian’s software is continuously monitoring for things like water penetration, cut internal wires, battery cell temperature imbalances, braking issues and more. Superpedestrian’s software is also able to quickly enforce local speed limits via geofencing.
Superpedestrian isn’t disclosing how much it’s selling its platform and vehicles to operators, but says the price is competitive with the other products on the market. While Biderman says Superpedestrian is currently focused on selling to operators, the company does plan to eventually sell directly to consumers.
While launching and operating shared micromobility services is no longer novel, Superpedstrian is trying to take advantage of an emerging opportunity in the space. That opportunity is software. As business and mobility analyst Horace Dediu recently told me, these micromobility vehicles have an opportunity to also be software hubs. In fact, he said it's where he expects bigger players like Google and Apple to enter the space.
Cloud kitchens, ghost kitchens, dark kitchens. No doubt by now you know a little about these businesses that are moving into underused or more affordable properties that can be turned into shared workspaces for the purposes of cooking up meals exclusively for delivery.
You probably also know that former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has been at the forefront of the trend for more than a year, growing his CloudKitchens business as fast as he can, fueled in part by $400 million that he quietly raised from the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia earlier this year. Sometimes these are in the U.S., in so-called opportunity zones or lower-income areas that, under the Trump Administration, are enabling businesses to set up shop and avoid federal taxes in exchange. Kalanick is also reportedly eyeing big moves into both India and China.
CloudKitchens has competition, though. In fact, among a growing number of rivals, its fiercest competitor is Kitchen United, a Pasadena, Ca.-based outfit that has raised roughly $56 million to date from investors including GV, Fidelity, and the real estate operating companies Divco West and RXR Realty, among others — and which has turned down hundreds of millions of dollars more for the time being.
Does its founder, a tech veteran turned restaurateur Jim Collins, not understand the opportunity before him? It was one question among many that Collins answered last week at a StrictlyVC event in San Francisco where he dazzled the crowd with his comic timing — and his tactics. The interview — conducted by former TechCrunch editor and now CNBC reporter Lora Kolodny — also provided one of the best overviews we’ve heard to date of what this fast-ballooning industry is really about.
On Collins’s background:
I did tech companies for a bunch of years and sold the last one off about 10 years ago, and i said i never want to work with venture capital people again. [Laughs.] That’s sort of true but not completely. Honestly, I was burned out, it was a grind.
[One day] there was a restaurant up the street for sale. I walked up the street and bought the restaurant and then came home and told my wife, ‘I bought the restaurant.’ And so we had a conversation that [that decision] might entail a lifestyle change where I was going to be gone every night, and I was at the restaurant every night for about a year and a half getting it going, but I absolutely fell in love with the restaurant business.
[Our restaurant] is in Montrose outside of Los Angeles, in a sleepy community that most people in Los Angeles have never heard of, and about a year-and-a-half ago, we started getting people at the door, saying, ‘Yes, I’m from Postmates’ or ‘DoorDash’ or ‘UberEats’ and ‘I’m here to place an order.’ Because we weren’t signed up on any services, I was like: What is that? I was so far outside of my past world that I didn’t even know what it was. But all of a sudden, it was a thing and [it was growing], and one day, a headhunter who I knew well called me up and said, ‘Hey, I want you to take a look at food thing.’ So he sent me a job description (that was honestly terrible) for the CEO role at Kitchen United, so I went and met the founders — the two folks who were with the company at the time — and I kind of fell in love with them and felt like it was a big idea that we could go after.
What they pitched him on, and why he didn’t think it would work:
The original business plan was, ‘Robots and autonomous cars are going to change the food business, so we need to be ready for that, so let’s build kitchens!’ And I said, ‘I think that’s actually true . . . in 10 years. The problem that the restaurant industry is experiencing because of the explosion of the shift in consumer demand and consumption isn’t a robots-and-autonomous-cars problem. It’s a proximity problem, and proximity is a problem we can solve tomorrow while we’re waiting.
What Kitchen United is building exactly:
We build kitchen centers. Basically you go into a space that’s $25 per square foot that no one has rented in 20 years, so we’ll take that space and put a bunch of kitchens in it. We also install a lot of technology — IoT, conveyer belts, all kinds of display information; we use machine learning to understand fire times — a whole series of things that go into deploying a kitchen center. Then we build a pick-up center in the front of the space that’s kind of the retail interface where drivers from Ubers, Postmates, DoorDash, Cavier, GrubHub (and seven other services can pick up the food) and [consumers can also grab pick-up].
There’s a thing called shared kitchens, which means that I’m going to go and cook in a space this morning, and when I’m done, somebody else is going to walk in this afternoon and cook in that same space. That’s not our business. Ours is effectively creating four-wall spaces for known restaurants to operate inside of our facilities for the purpose of extending their reach to meet new markets for delivery and consumer pick-up.
On whether Kitchen United is raising more money soon:
I don’t think so. We closed our Series B about six weeks ago.
It’s weird to be an entrepreneur in this world. There are two different operating methods that you’re encouraged to pursue if you’re going after a hot space. You’re either encouraged to be the biggest and fastest and to take as much money as you possibly can so you can be the biggest fastest, right? Or you’re encouraged to work hard and build a great business and then once you’ve built a great business, go out and get lots of money so you can build it.
Honestly, I felt like this business was so complex, that we had to learn about elementary stuff, like, where do we build these? Where’s the right place to put ’em? When we first started, we had meetings with big investment firms that were saying, ‘We’ll put $250 million against a $750 million valuation right now.’ That was the first conversation, when it was really like, we’ll put $8 in against whatever [laughs]. But when we were having that conversation, I’m flying home, thinking, $250 million? How would I deploy that? And they’re saying, ‘Well, you just go out and buy a bunch of warehouses in opportunity zones, and put kitchens in them, and it’ll be a great business! It’ll be awesome and you’ll own the market!”
Except warehouses in opportunity zones are too far away from consumers for food to get there fast enough for consumers to want to order from those restaurants. So I would have deployed $150 million in venture capital on brick walls and dry wall and stoves and vents and plumbing — like, ugly stuff. And once that stuff is deployed, it isn’t like it’s so easy to pick it up and move it someplace else.
How Kitchen United competes, if not in a land grab:
Most conservative projections for this space over the course of the next four years are that we’re going to go from somewhere around $30 billion today to around $230 billion, so people come along and people say, ‘This guy is in this business and he’s got all this money’ or ‘This company has raised this much to put to work; does that make you nervous?’ And the answer is, if we go out and build 3,000 of these things, we build like the fourth-largest restaurant chain in the U.S., we’ve only addressed about 40 percent of the total market. So when I look at it from a pure antiseptic, practical perspective, the fact is we need other people in the space, helping us solve the problem. And honestly, to the extent that other people are learning from us and getting better, and we’re learning from others and getting better, I think the competition isn’t a bad thing, I think it’s a good thing. (Here, Kolodny teased him for his “very diplomatic answer.”)
On what makes Kitchen United distinct from its long and growing list of rivals:
First, we decided the U.S. is a giant market, so we decided to focus here on the U.S., despite requests probably once a week from somebody saying, ‘Come to Saudi Arabia’ because it turns out it’s hard to build kitchens anywhere in the world, and we’re pretty good at building them.
The other thing we did . . .[is decide to play nice with Kitchen United’s two biggest customers — major food chains and delivery services]. I don’t want to boil the ocean. I don’t want to be a restaurant; I don’t want to cook food for consumers. There are 800,000 restaurants in the U.S., so let’s let them cook food and let’s come alongside them and help them expand what they are doing into new areas. . . . Our whole job is to expand the inventory for the [delivery] marketplace, expand the addressable market for the restaurant, and expand options for consumers so that we have a great business for all the various markets that we’re serving.
On the criteria to become part of Kitchen United:
We don’t work with startup restaurants. We don’t work with people that only have one location. When we started, we didn’t know what would work so we brought in all kinds of restaurants and ended up having to kick most of them out because either they didn’t know how to be a restaurant or they didn’t know how to be a multi-location restaurant. This is true of the ghost kitchen community as a whole: if you’re a restaurant and you don’t already have a consumer connection and an audience and a following and you try to open in a space with no consumer interface, no storefront, you have to climb a giant mountain.
There are some virtual restaurant brands. We have one in our location in Chicago. They were people who had operated multi-location restaurants and had a tremendous amount of internet marketing savvy and skill, so we decided to let them operate and they’re actually doing pretty well, so that’s an interesting new wrinkle.
On whether anything disqualifies a business from using Kitchen United as a platform:
Yes, a lot of large chains that will say we want to be in Kitchen United. We were at a big real estate development conference in Las Vegas and there were probably 20 chains that talked with us about being in KU and probably 18 of them would not qualify.
You’d like to think [that’s on a nutritional basis]. One thing we’ve learned isn’t to filter what the American consumer wants; our job is just to provide a path for them to get what they want.
The actual challenge is giant chains that have very little ability to create an online connection to their consumer. If they don’t have sophisticated online ordering interfaces, if they haven’t deployed the right technologies into their ERP and their ordering infrastructure and all the stuff that goes into the back end, then they aren’t going to be a good fit for KU because of the operational problems they have to overcome is just too great.
On how Kitchen United uses the data that’s running through its operations:
It’s a hot topic. We’re pretty careful. KU is a partner to our restaurants, and so we learn information through our own order channel. We don’t derive much information through the marketplace channels. There’s sort of a misnomer that when the marketplaces deliver orders . . . all we know is a consumer name, we don’t know an address or any of the other information. So you don’t get a lot of data like that.
Information we do get is stuff like how many chicken sandwiches a Chick-fil-A is selling or whatever. And you might think, ‘Oh cool, so you’ll just make a chicken sandwich [of your own] when Chick-fil-A closes down and you’ll sell it to the public.’ The restaurant world is very nervous about that; it’s a big topic in this space. If you go to restaurant conferences, there are a lot [accusations of], ‘They’re stealing my data.’ I’m the guy on stage saying, ‘It’s their data [the delivery marketplaces]. They attracted the consumer, they got the order from you. It’s their data. They aren’t stealing your data, it’s their data; you chose to allow them to sell your product on their network.’
But [also] it’s not as easy as that. You can’t just whip up a fried chicken sandwich and make consumers like it. The world is littered with even more failed restaurants than failed startups.
What happens to neighborhoods — and local restaurants — if Kitchen United succeeds:
The restaurant industry is huge — $800 billion in the U.S., $675 billion if you discount hospitals and stuff like that. [This take-out market] is somewhere around $33 billion this year. So we’re edging into it as a percentage, but if you look at dining room revenue year over year for the last 20 years in the U.S restaurant industry, it grows 1% per year, which is pretty much consistent with population growth. And the same is projected to be the case this year.
So restaurants aren’t dying because of marketplace delivery. Marketplace delivery is actually pulling business out of grocery stores. That’s why you see Kroger and Amazon and other grocery store chains plowing down rows of [goods] and installing warm counters with warm food and you’re seeing grocery chains focus on delivery.
It’s the wild west. It’s a crazy market and I absolutely, positively love it. It’s not a question of what gets me up in the morning. I never go to bed.
First came Ingress. Then came Pokemon GO, and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. Then came… Catan?
It’s starting to look like the next property to get Niantic’s “real world game” treatment will be Catan — the namesake island from the popular Settlers Of Catan board game series.
Late last month, the company behind Catan said during a board games conference in Germany that it was working on a “upcoming massively multiplayer location based game” (albeit with no mention of Niantic). Called Catan: World Explorers, they noted that it “transforms the entire Earth into one giant game of CATAN”.
A website for the game has since gone up, and folks over at the Ingress subreddit (the unofficial homebase for fans of Niantic’s very first title) managed to uncover a few curious breadcrumbs hiding in the source code. The official Terms of Service and Privacy Policy links both point to Niantic’s servers, for example, and the page pulls in some Javascript with “Niantic” in the filename. So if Niantic wasn’t involved here, someone made a bunch of super weird mistakes.
Sure enough, I’ve confirmed with folks at Niantic that the company is indeed involved. They won’t say much about it, but confirmed to me that the game is being built on Niantic’s Real World Platform.
There's a ton of overlap when it comes to which of the two companies is building what aspect of the game, but from what I'm told it sounds like Niantic is mostly focusing on the stuff behind the curtain — everything on the platform side, like the map engine, the networking, and the AR tech — while WB Games' main focus is the stuff you'll see in game, like the story, the content, and the art and animation.
Meanwhile, we know a little about this Catan game from the aforementioned promo site:
Karma Automotive took the wraps off Tuesday of a new electric concept car called the SC2 that produces a heart-thumping 1,100 horsepower and can travel from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 1.9 seconds.
The concept is a showpiece and an integral part of the Chinese-backed California-based startup’s new strategy to become a technology and design incubator that supplies other automakers.
Karma Automotive also unveiled Tuesday at Automobility LA, the press and trade days of the LA Auto Show, a performance variant of its Revero GT. The new Revero GTS is similar to the Revero GT, but boasts more performance and several other new interior and tech touches.
Meanwhile, the SC2 — with its eye-popping looks and performance specs — is meant to be show what Karma can do, not necessarily what it will do.
Karma CEO Lance Zhou called the SC2 a “signpost” to the company’s future as a technology-driven brand. It also previews the company’s future design language.
“Our open platform serves as a test bed for new technologies and partnerships, where we are to provide engineering, design, technology and customization resources others,” Zhao said.
The nuts and bolts
The battery-electric concept has front and rear mounted twin electric motors that deliver 800 kW peak power, with 10,500 pound-feet wheel torque and 350 miles of pure electric range. The I-shaped 120 kilowatt-hour battery is housed in the center tunnel beneath the dashboard and seats.
The vehicle has carbon ceramic breaks, a push-rod operated racing suspension and a Karma torque vectoring gearbox.
The hinge-winged doors aren’t the only flashy or tech-forward features. The concept has long-range radars, cameras, and FMCW lidar sensors in a nod towards an autonomous driving future.
Drivers will theoretically (this is a concept after all) enter the vehicle through fingerprint and facial recognition sensors. Inside the vehicle, there are biometric seats and 3D audio to create individual sound zones for driver and passenger. Electro chromatic glass shifts from clear to opaque for privacy and light sensitivity.
Reliving the drive
Karma also showed a feature that lets drivers re-live their street-racing adventures through a simulation. A triple high definition camera under the windshield and frequency-modulated continuous wave lidar sensors capture of the car in motion. At the same time, software captures in real-time all of the turns, braking and acceleration of driving.
After the drive, an adaptive laser projector replays the journey while the vehicle is parked. A mounted smartphone acts as the cabin’s rear-view mirror and turns it into a driving simulator where the user can re-experience their drive and fine-tune their skills.
And of course, drivers can then share that experience with others or stream drivers’ routes from around the world within their own vehicles.
SC2’s technology can be integrated into a variety of future vehicles, according to Andreas Thurner, Karma’s vp of global design and architecture.
And that’s the whole point of this exercise. It’s unlikely that the SC2 will ever be made as a production vehicle. But the tech and design features in it could live on.
Karma Automotive’s roots began with Fisker Automotive, the startup led by Henrik Fisker that ended in bankruptcy in 2013. China’s Wanxiang Group purchased what was left of Fisker in 2014 and Karma Automotive was born.
Karma hasn’t had the smoothest of resurrections. The company’s first effort, known as the Revero, wasn’t received warmly. The Revero GT has been an improved effort. However, that hasn’t relieved the pressure.
The company laid off about 200 workers this month from its Irvine, Calif. headquarters following a restructuring that will focus on licensing its technology to other carmakers. The company’s assembly plant is in Moreno Valley, Calif.
This new incubator effort is an effort to bring some stability to the company and help it offset the capitally intensive business of designing and producing its own cars.
Facebook’s NPE Team, a division inside the social networking giant that will build experimental consumer-facing social apps, has now added a third app to its lineup with the launch of meme creation app Whale. Currently, the app allows users to decorate photos with text and stickers in order to create memes that can be shared to social media or texted to friends.
The app isn’t all that original, given the plethora of image-editing apps on the App Store today with similar feature sets. But it does have the advantage of being free to use without in-app purchases or subscriptions.
In Whale, users can take a photo, select a picture from their camera roll, or browse the app’s library of stock images in order to create a meme. Blank, 2-grid, 3-grid, and 4-grid canvas layouts are also available. To customize the images, users can add emojis, text, effects, and filters like laser eyes, vortex or bulge, for example.
In addition to making shareable memes, users can make their own image stickers using the crop and cut tools. And those with artistic capabilities can use the included freeform drawing tool, as well.
Like other NPE Team apps, Whale isn’t offered for download in the U.S. Instead, it’s only available in Canada for the time being — the home market for the first two NPE Team apps, Aux and Bump. The latter was also available in the Philippines, but neither have reached the U.S. Canada is likely being chosen as it’s a good proxy for the U.S., in terms of consumer demographics and user behavior, but has fewer users to contend with, in case an app takes off and has to quickly scale.
Facebook had announced its plans for the NPE Team back in July, explaining that its goal would be to rapidly experiment with new ideas, and shut down those projects that didn’t gain traction.
Its investment in creating new mobile social experiences comes at a time when Facebook’s suite of apps is facing serious competition from newer publishers, including most notably, Snapchat and TikTok. More broadly, the social networking app market is today filled with Snapchat platform apps, like Yolo or LMK, at the top of the charts, alongside newer video chat apps like Houseparty and Marco Polo.
App store intelligence firm Apptopia was first to spot Whale’s launch, which was reported by The Information. The app arrived on November 15, 2019, according to App Annie but it hasn’t yet ranked in any App Store category at this time.
Facebook says it’s not commenting on individual NPE Team apps, but had previously noted that the availability of the apps would depend on each app itself.
Toronto-based startup Luna Design and Innovation is a prime example of the kind of space company that is increasingly starting up to take advantage of the changing economics of the larger industry. Founded by Andrea Yip, who is also Luna’s CEO, the bootstrapped venture is looking to blaze a trail for biotechnology companies who stand to gain a lot from the new opportunities in commercial space – even if they don’t know it yet.
“I’ve spent my entire career in the public and private health industry, doing a lot of product and service design and innovation,” Yip told me in an interview. “I was working in pharma[ceuticals] for several years, but at the end of 2017, I decided to leave the pharma world and I really wanted to find a way to work along the intersection of pharma, space and design, because I just believe that the future of health for humanity is in space.”
Yip founded Luna at the beginning of this year to help turn that belief into action, with a focus on highlighting the opportunities available to the biotechnology sector in making use of the research environment unique to space.
“We see space as a research platform, and we believe that it’s a research platform that can be leveraged in order to solve healthcare problems here on Earth,” Yip explained. “So for me, it was critically important to open up space to the biotech sector, and to the pharma sector, in order to use it as a research platform for R&D and novel discovery.”
The International Space Station has hosted a number of pharma and biotech experiments.
NASA’s work in space has led to a number of medical advances, inducing digital imaging tech used in breast biopsy, transmitters used for monitoring fetus development within the womb, LED’s used in brain cancer surgery and more. Work done on researching and developing pharmaceuticals in space is also something that companies including Merck, Proctor & Gamble and other industry heavyweights have been dabbling in for years, with experiments conducted on the International Space Station. Companies like SpaceFarma have now sent entire minilaboratories to the ISS to conduct research on behalf of clients. But it’s still a business with plenty of remaining under-utilized opportunity, according to Yip – and tons of potential.
“I think it’s a highly underutilized research platform, unfortunately, right now,” she said. “When it comes to certain physical and life sciences phenomena, we know that things behave differently in space, in what we refer to as microgravity-based environments […] We know that cancer cells, for instance, behave differently in short- and longer-term microgravity when it comes to the way that they metastasize. So being able to even acknowledge that type of insight, and try and understand ‘why’ can unlock a lot of new discovery and understanding about the way cancer actually functions […] and that can actually help us better design drugs, and treatment opportunities here on Earth, just based on those insights.”
Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket. Credit: Blue Origin .
Yip says that while there has been some activity already in biotech and microgravity, “we’re on the early end of this innovation,” and goes on to suggest that over the course of the next ten or so years, the companies that will be disrupting the existing class of legacy big pharma players will be ones who’ve invested early and deeply in space-based research and development.
The role of Luna is to help biotech companies figure out how best to approach building out an investment in space-based research. To that end, one of its early accomplishments is securing a role as a ‘Channel Partner’ for Jeff Bezos’ commercial space launch company Blue Origin. This arrangement means that Luna acts a a sales partner for Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital rocket, working with potential clients for the Amazon founder’s rocket company on how and why they might seek to set up a sub-orbital space-based experiment.
That’s the near-term vision, and the way that Luna will seek to have the most impact here on Earth. But the possibilities of what the future holds for the biotech sector start to really open up once you consider the current trajectory of the space industry, including NASA’s next steps, and efforts by private companies like SpaceX to expand human presence to other planet.
“We’re talking about going back to the Moon by 2024,” Yip says, referring to NASA’s goal with its Artemis program. “We’re talking about going to Mars in the next few years. There’s a lot that we will need to uncover and discover for ourselves, and I think that’s a huge opportunity. Who knows what we’ll discover when we’re on other planets, and we’re actually putting people there? We have to start preparing for that and building capability for that.”
For the second time in as many years, Macy’s customers have been hit by a data breach involving countless numbers of credit cards.
In a filing with the California attorney general, the retail giant said hackers siphoned off customers’ names, addresses, and phone numbers, but also credit card numbers, card verification codes, and expiration dates by inserting malicious code on its website and quietly sending the stolen data back to the hackers.
Macy’s said the breach lasted a week, between October 7 and October 15. The retail giant did not say how many customers were affected, but the breach is likely to affect thousands of customers.
Last year, Macy’s admitted a months-long breach that saw hackers steal credit card data and passwords about 0.5% of its customer base — on both its website and Bloomingdale’s site, which Macy’s owns. The breach resulted in a class action suit, which accused Macy’s of “lackadaisical, cavalier, reckless, and negligent” security practices.
Macy’s is one of the most popular websites in the U.S., according to Alexa rankings.
Alex Gold is co-founder of Myia, an intelligent health platform employing novel biometric data to predict and prevent costly medical events. Previously, Alex was Venture Partner at BCG Digital Ventures and a co-founder of Traction, a marketplace of digital marketing experts.
Over the past decade, software developers and growth marketers have automated most qualitative user feedback and testing. And yet, what about testing with communities like patients or senior citizens who may be more challenging to reach?
It was 2:00 a.m. at the Marriott Hotel in Singapore and I just wanted to get to bed after a 16-hour flight. As co-founder of a digital health company, I was in the process of building a community of test patients. Because of security and privacy concerns, I had to approach this process unconventionally; manually recruiting prospective testers online through administered groups and forums.
One of our test users had placed two urgent calls to me. I immediately called her back.
"One of our group members needs a new doctor. She is not doing well and needs a better specialist. I know you have a doctor on staff and I know it's not his job but…umm, but…”
I interjected immediately.
"Don't worry. You don't need to say anything. We'll do everything we can."
Immediately, I dropped everything and called our company's Chief Medical Officer to start a referral process. For the next few days, we fired off introductions to new doctors and assisted even though these tasks were not at all related to our company's product. We were engaging with a non-conventional community which sometimes required going above and beyond the call of duty.
In recent years, product managers have fundamentally altered and automated usability testing for new products. Employing distributed labor marketplaces like Rainforest QA, Usabilia and Juicy Studio, growth-minded product managers have accelerated UI, UX, and backend product testing to ship faster and faster.
One of the most important subsets of usability testing, qualitative user feedback, has also faced an onslaught of automation.
And yet, there are numerous organizations who operate in spaces like healthcare, politics, or even eldercare where obtaining qualitative feedback is not that easily automated. Often, these are fields where security, privacy, and other restrictions necessitate a manual recruiting strategy focused on partnership and community development. A good example of this is a digital health company looking to test the first iteration of its product with patients where protected health information may be shared. Yet another example is an application focused on First Amendment violations targeting journalists or other at-risk groups where identity disclosure may be prohibitive. One needs to look no further than recent news of Google’s Nightingale project with Ascension Health to underscore the importance of the right policies and controls in these spaces.
I've learned the lessons in this space first-hand. Over the past two years, I have built a user community of patients who suffer from cardiovascular disease. For no monetary compensation, they are testing our company's digital health application because they believe in its potential to make a difference in their lives and those of others. The most remarkable and fulfilling experience of my professional career, I have learned that to test your product with non-conventional users, you have to approach the process non-conventionally as well. In the words of Y Combinator Founder Paul Graham, you are going to have to "do things that don't scale" and not be afraid of digging right in.
Specifically, you have to look for and recruit users in unexpected places; some of which resist automated growth marketing efforts. Second, you need to understand the value of partnership as these groups tend to resist more transactional relationships. And finally, you need to ask for permission and be honest and forthright with your intentions as to the testing process and the eventual product that you hope will hit the market.
Recruit in unexpected places
If recruiting test users in a challenging space like healthcare, law and order, or even eldercare, you need to seek them out in non-traditional and unexpected places. While you may think that online discussion forums like that are centered around user testing is the first place to go, there are other channels in which you can find more engaged and eager communities.
In medicine, community platforms including Patients Like Me and Care Opinion provide a key outlet to reach potential participants in a constructive and open way. In the political space, sites like Democratic Gain and Hill Zoo act similarly. Uniquely, these platforms have built-in security and approval features that protect users' identities and allow them to only enter into conversations with their express and full consent. This is a key consideration for sensitive groups.
Facebook Groups allows for even more long tail recruiting but with the obvious and attendant risks that recruiting on an open platform like Facebook carries. Due to the closed nature of the Groups product as well as many built-in security features, Facebook Groups has escaped many of the information integrity issues and as a result, is one of the healthy components of the platform. Start by searching for a group in your space. Proceed by asking the group's administrator for permission to engage with members by explaining your purpose and focus honestly. Often, in areas like medicine or politics, group members are eager to participate in testing new products where they can offer feedback in real-time and make an impact.
Even more fascinating is Quora . Quora's platform emphasizes long tail discussions on a range of topics that even Facebook Groups cannot be narrow enough to encapsulate or cover. So, if you are looking for users with an extremely narrow focus, say those who are interested in testing a mobile app for tourism in the historic center of Hvar, Croatia, Quora may be your best opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals. Quora's discussions can go quite deep, drive substantial value, and be generative of new product features.
Karma Automotive’s second act is a gasoline-electric luxury vehicle that aims to deliver more performance and tech inside a sleek and sporty $149,950 package.
The 2020 Revero GTS unveiled Tuesday during AutoMobility LA, the press and trade days of LA Auto Show, shares some of the same bits as its sibling Revero GT. Both vehicles use a gasoline-electric powertrain — a BMW engine powers a generator that charges the 28 kilowatt-hour nickel manganese cobalt lithium-ion battery. Like the GT, the battery supplies the GTS with 80 miles of electric driving. Both vehicles have a total 360-mile range when they’re fully charged and fueled with gas.
And both have some of the same operational features, including three driving modes and launch control that allows drivers to unlock all the power and torque inside and “launch” the vehicle down the road. The three drive modes are “stealth,” for pure-electric driving, a range extender mode called “sustain,” and sport, which combines the output from the battery pack and the generator for maximum driving performance.
The specs
The GTS does have a lot of extra though and costs about $15,000 more than the GT. The GTS has a new body, including a redesigned hood, doors, deck lid, body sides and side mirrors. It’s also faster off the line and can travel from 0 to 60 miles per hour in an estimated 3.9 seconds compared to the 4.5 seconds in the GT. The GTS comes with electronic torque vectoring, refined power steering. It also has a higher electronically-limited top speed of 130 miles per hour versus the GT’s 125 mph.
The GTS’ twin electric motors and all-electric powertrain produce 536 horsepower and 635 pound-feet of torque, which should deliver a responsive and exciting enough drive. Although we’ll have to wait and experience it for ourselves.
The new vehicle has advanced driver assistance features like blind spot and cross traffic detection as well as audio technology developed in house and active noise cancelling. The infotainment system has also been improved on the GTS and includes haptic tactile switches a new touchscreen and user interface processor as well as a center console with improved storage.
Karma Automotive says it will begin production of the GTS in first quarter of 2020. First deliveries of the Revero GT expected during the fourth quarter of 2019.
The new business plan
The Karma Revero GT was the first fully conceived product to come out of a company that launched from the remnants of Fisker Automotive, the startup led by Henrik Fisker that ended in bankruptcy in 2013. China’s Wanxiang Group purchased what was left of Fisker in 2014 and Karma Automotive was born.
It hasn’t been all smooth sailing though. The company’s first effort, known as the Revero, wasn’t received warmly. The Revero GT has been an improved effort. However, that hasn’t relieved the pressure.
The company laid off about 200 workers this month from its Irvine, Calif. headquarters following a restructuring that will focus on licensing its technology to other carmakers. The company’s assembly plant is in Moreno Valley, Calif.
Karma’s efforts to pack more tech and performance in the GTS makes sense considering the company’s new business strategy to open its engineering, design, customization and manufacturing resources to other companies. It also explains Karma’s other reveal Tuesday, an all-electric concept vehicle called the SC2 that delivers a stunning 1,100 horsepower and 10,500 lb.-ft. of torque and can achieve 0 to 60 mph in less than 1.9 seconds.
In other words, the GTS is a model of what Karma can do. And it explains some of Karma’s decisions to design and produce more of the vehicle’s components in house. Karma has developed its own inverters to maximize and maintain full software control for fast over-the-air updates as well as a proprietary 7.1-channel 570-watt Soloscape audio system, according to Todd George, the company’s VP of Engineering. The inverters convert DC current from the battery pack to power the AC drive motors, and to also capture AC power from the regenerative braking system to recharge the battery pack.
It’s a business angle that Karma hopes will give it the immediate and long-term capital it needs to stay afloat. Karma is backed and owned by Wanxiang, the massive Chinese auto parts supplier. But it will eventually need to stand on its own.
Before the hyperclouds, there were Linode, Mediatemple, HostGator and seemingly a million other hosting services that let you rent affordable virtual private servers for your development needs. And while we don’t talk about them all that much these days, with maybe the exception of Digital Ocean, which disrupted that market a few years ago thanks to its low prices, these services are still doing quite well and are working to adapt their offerings to today’s developers. Unsurprisingly, that often means adding support for containers, which is exactly what Linode is doing with the beta launch of its Linode Kubernetes Engine (LKE) this week.
Like similar services, 16-year old Linode argues that its offering will help enable more developers to adopt containers, even if they are not experts in managing this kind of infrastructure.
“With the launch of Linode Kubernetes Engine, we've democratized Kubernetes for developers, regardless of their resources or expertise,” said Linode CEO and Founder Christopher Aker. “By automating the configuration, node provisioning and management of Kubernetes clusters, we've made it faster and easier to ship modern applications. And with realtime autoscaling, free master services, and our intuitive cloud manager interface and open API, developers can bypass the complexities of traditional container management and focus on innovating.”
The service is, of course, integrated with the rest of Linode’s tools, which these days include block and object storage, for example, as well as load balancing, in addition to the usual server options. There’s also support for autoscaling and while advanced users can use tools like Helm charts, Terraform and Rancher, there’s also one-click app support for deploying often-used applications.
Linode’s service is entering a market that already features plenty of other players. But it’s also a growing market with room for lots of different tools that cater to a variety of needs. Tools like Kubernetes now allow companies like Linode to reach beyond their current customer base and offer businesses a platform that allows them to easily develop and test new services on one platform and then put them into production somewhere else — or, of course, put them into production on Lindode, too.
Clumio, a 100-people startup that offers a SaaS-like service for enterprise backup, today announced that it has raised a $135 million Series C round, led by existing investor Sutter Hill Ventures and new investor Altimeter Captial. The announcement comes shortly after the company’s disclosure in August that it had quietly raised a total of $51 million in Series A and B rounds in 2017 and 2018. The company says it plans to use this new funding to “accelerate its vision to deliver a globally consolidated data protection service in and for the public cloud.”
Given the amount of money invested in the company, chances are Clumio is getting close to a $1 billion valuation, but the company is not disclosing its valuation at this point.
The overall mission of Clumio is to build a platform on public clouds that gives enterprises a single data protection service that can handle backups of their data in on-premises, cloud and SaaS applications. When it came out of stealth, the company’s focus was on VMware on premises. Since then, the team has expanded this to include VMware running on public clouds.
“When somebody moves to the cloud, they don’t want to be in the business of managing software or infrastructure and all that, because the whole reason to move to the cloud was essentially to get away from the mundane,” explained Clumio CEO and co-founder Poojan Kumar.
The next step in this process, as the company also announced today, is to make it easier for enterprises to protect the cloud-native applications they are building now. The company today launched this service for AWS and will likely expand it to other clouds like Microsoft Azure, soon.
The market for enterprise backup is only going to expand in the coming years. We’ve now reached a point, after all, where it’s not unheard of to talk about enterprises that run thousands of different applications. For them, Clumio wants to become the one-stop-shop for all things data protection — and its investors are obviously buying into the company’s vision and momentum.
“When there’s a foundational change, like the move to the cloud, which is as foundational a change, at least, as the move from mainframe to open systems in the 80s and 90s,” said Mike Speiser, Managing Director at Sutter Hill Ventures . “When there’s a change like that, you have to re-envision, you have to refactor and think of the world — the new world — in a new way and start from scratch. If you don’t, what’s gonna end up happening is people make decisions that are short term decisions that seem like they will work but end up being architectural dead ends. And those companies never ever end up winning. They just never end up winning and that’s the opportunity right now on this big transition across many markets, including the backup market for Clumio.”
Speiser also noted that SaaS allows for a dramatically larger market opportunity for companies like Clumio. “What SaaS is doing, is it’s not only allowing us to go after the traditional Silicon Valley, high end, direct selling, expensive markets that were previously buying high-end systems and data centers. But what we’re seeing — and we’re seeing this with Snowflake and […] we will see it with Clumio — is there’s an opportunity to go after a much broader market opportunity.”
Starting next year, Clumio will expand that market by adding support for data protection for a first SaaS app, with more to follow, as well as support for backup in more regions and clouds. Right now, the service’s public cloud tool focuses on AWS — and only in the United States. Next year, it plans to support international regions as well.
Kumar stressed that he wants to build Clumio for the long run, with an IPO as part of that roadmap. His investors probably wouldn’t mind that, either.
Helping out a friend in need online can be surprisingly difficult. While giving cash is easy enough, that’s often not what people need most — so Give InKind aims to be the platform where you can do a lot more than write a check. The idea is such a natural one that the company tripled its goal for a pre-seed round, raising $1.5 million from Seattle investors.
The problem Malcolm is attempting to solve is simply that in times of hardship, not only do people not want to deal with setting up a fundraising site, but money isn’t even what they require to get through that period. Malcolm experienced this herself, when she experienced a personal tragedy and found that what was out there to let others help was simply inadequate.
“My friends and family were trying to support me from around the country, but the tools they had to do that were outdated and didn’t solve the problems for us,” she explained. “There just wasn’t one place to put all the help that’s needed, whether that’s meal drop-off, or rides to school for the kids, or a wishlist for Instacart, or Lyft credits. Every situation is unique, and no one has put it all together in one place where, when someone says ‘how can I help?’ you can just point there.”
The idea with Give InKind is to provide a variety of options for helping someone out. Of course you can donate cash, but you can also buy specific items from wishlists, coordinate deliveries, set up recurring gifts (like diapers or gift boxes), or organize in-person help on a built-in calendar.
These all go on a central profile page that Malcolm noted is rarely set up by the beneficiary themselves.
“90 percent of pages are set up by someone else. Not everyone has been impacted by one of these situations, but I think almost everyone has known someone who has, and has wondered how they were supposed to respond or help,” she explained. “So this isn’t about capturing people during a time of need, but about solving the problem for people who want to know how to help.”
That certainly resonated with me, as I have always felt the cash donation option when someone is going through a tough time to be pretty impersonal and general. It’s nice to be able to help out in person, but what about a friend in another city who’s been taken out of action and needs someone else to figure out the dog walking situation? Give InKind is meant to surface specific needs like that and provide the links (to, for instance, Rover) and relevant information all in one place.
“The majority of actions on the site are people doing things themselves — signing up for meals, or to help. The calendar view is for coordination, and it’s the most used part of the site. About 70 percent is that, the rest is those national services [i.e. Instacart, Uber, etc.],” Malcolm said.
Locally run services (cleaners that aren’t on a national directory, for instance) are on the roadmap, but as you can imagine that takes a lot of footwork to put together, so it will have to wait.
Right now the site works almost entirely on an affiliate model; Helpers make accounts to do things like add themselves to the schedule or help edit the profile, then get sent out to the merchant site to complete the transaction there. The company is experimenting with on-site purchases for some things, but the idea isn’t to become host transactions except where that can really add value.
The plan for expansion is to double down on the existing organic growth patterns of the site. Every page that gets set up attracts multiple new users and visits, and those users are far more likely to start more pages even years down the line. Between improving that and some actual marketing work, Malcolm feels sure that they can grow quickly and could soon join other major giving services like GoFundMe in scale.
Ready, set, raise… a lot more than expected
Give InKind came to my attention through the Female Founder Alliance here in Seattle, which hosted a demo night a little while ago to highlight the companies and, naturally, their founders as well. Although some of the companies focused on female-forward issues, for instance the difficulty of acquiring workwear tailored to women’s bodies, the idea is more to find valuable companies that just happen to have female founders.
“Ready Set Raise was built to find high potential, dramatically undervalued investment opportunities, and translate them into something the VC community can understand,” said FFA founder Leslie Feinzaig. “Our last member survey results were consistent with findings that women founders raise less capital but make it go further. Give InKind is a perfect example. They bootstrapped for 3 years, found product market fit, grew 20% every month, and still struggled to resonate with investors.”
Yet after presenting, Malcolm’s company was honored at the event with a $100K investment from Trilogy Ventures. And having originally kicked off fundraising with a view to a $500K round, she soon found she had to cap it at an unexpected but very welcome $1.5M. The final list of participants in the round includes Madrona Venture Group, SeaChange Fund, Keeler Investments, FAM Fund, Grubstakes, and X Factor Ventures.
I suggested that this must have been something of a validating experience.
“It’s super validating,” she agreed. “The founder journey is long and hard, and the odds are not in favor of female founders or impact companies, necessarily, and consumer is not huge in Seattle, either. We really sort of defied the odds across the board raising this round so quickly… Seattle really showed up.”
She described the accelerator as being “incredibly unique. It’s entirely about creating access for female founders to investors, mentors, and experts.”
“We spent so much time turning my model upside down and shaking everything out of it. Turns out it was much more defensible than I thought. We didn’t change the business, and we didn’t change the product — we lightly changed the positioning,” she said. “This combination of access with coaching and mentorship, getting the ability to present the business in a way that’s compelling, you realize how much of this is held back from people who don’t have these opportunities. I’ve been carrying around Give InKind for three years in a paper bag, and they put a bell on it.”
Feinbaig cited the competitiveness of the application process and quality of their coaches, which give lots of 1 on 1 time, for the high quality of the companies emerging from the accelerator. You can check out the rest of the companies in the second cohort here — and of course Give InKind is live should you or anyone you know need a helping hand.
A commons tactic in both amateur and professional sports – and even in competitions as mundane as a casual board game night – is trash talk. But the negative effect of trash talk may have less to do with the skill of the repartee involved, and more with just the fact that it’s happening at all. A new study conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University suggests that even robots spitting out pretty lame pre-programmed insults can have a negative impact on human players.
CMU’s study involved programming one of SoftBank’s Pepper humanoid robots to deliver scorchers like “I have to say you are a terrible player” to a group of 40 participants, who were playing the robot in a game called “Guards and Treasures,” which is a version of a strategy game often used for studying rationality. During the course of the experiment, participants played 35 times against the robot – some getting bolstering, positive comments form the robot, while others were laden with negative criticism.
Both groups of participants improved at the game over time – but the ones getting derided by the bots didn’t score as highly as the group that was praised.
It’s pretty well-established that people excel when they receive encouragement from other – but that’s generally meant other humans. This study provides early evidence that people could get similar benefits from robotic companions – even ones that don’t look particularly human-like. The researchers still want to do more investigation into whether Pepper’s humanoid appearance affected the outcome, vs. say a featureless box or an industrial robot acting as the automaton opponent and doling out the same kind of feedback.
The results of this and related research could be hugely applicable to areas like at-home care, something companies including Toyota are pursuing to address the needs of an aging population. It could also come into play in automated training applications, both at work and in other settings like professional sports.
The technology behind Hyundai’s new car-sharing service in Los Angeles is provided by a company that is largely unknown despite its ubiquity.
Vulog announced Tuesday during Automobility LA that Hyundai will use its technology platform for a car-sharing pilot that will launch in Los Angeles at the end of 2019 and will eventually grow to 300 vehicles.
Vulog might have a low profile, but it’s hardly a startup. The French-based company has been providing the underlying hardware and software needed for car-sharing services since 2006. Vulog’s product, which includes tools like fleet management and a consumer-facing app, is used in car-sharing services in more than 30 cities globally. The company says its turnkey product can get a large-scale car-sharing service up and running in about three months.
Today, its platform is used by Volkswagen’s WeShare, Kia Motor’s Wible and Groupe PSA’ Free2Move car-sharing service. Aimo, which is owned by Sumitomo Corporation, and a British Columbia Automobile Association company called Evo also uses the platform. And now, Hyundai.
Earlier this month, Hyundai Group launched MoceanLab, a mobility service venture based in Los Angeles and the latest effort by the automaker to diversify and modernize its core business of producing and selling vehicles. MoceanLab will focus on piloting autonomous ridesharing, shuttling, multimodal transportation, and personal mobility in Los Angeles.
One of the efforts under MoceanLab is Mocean Carshare, the car-sharing service that will use Vulog’s technology platform. The service is part of a permit pilot program offered by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation and Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
The car-sharing service will use 20 Hyundai Ioniq plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Mocean Carshare will eventually transition to a fleet of 300 fully electric vehicles from Hyundai and Kia Motors.
MoceanLab, the umbrella mobility services venture, will do more than car-sharing. The Hyundai-owned company is eyeing the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles as an event to offer a variety of services to alleviate congestion, including autonomous ridesharing and shuttling.
The creation of MoceanLab follows Hyundai’s joint venture with autonomous driving company Aptiv and the launch of BotRide, an autonomous ride-hailing service in nearby Irvine, California with Chinese autonomous startup Pony.ai and Via.
Meanwhile, Vulog has its own ambitions. The company plans to double its footprint in the next year to hit 60 cities by the end of 2020.
Facebook announced its plans for its F8 annual developer conference, which is where the company shows off its latest technology, apps and its vision for the future. The company says the next event will take place on May 5-6, 2020 at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, CA.
Interested attendees can sign up at www.f8.com to be notified when registration opens and receive updates.
Last year, the company used the F8 event to introduce a huge redesign of Facebook.com, plus upgrades, products, and expansions in areas like Messenger, WhatsApp, Dating, Marketplace and beyond. It also showed off how it’s putting new technology to work, including with VR, smart home, hardware, and other developer-facing technology, including Facebook's Ax and BoTorch initiatives.
Facebook isn’t yet talking about what it will show off at F8 in 2020, but says it will feature: “product demos, deep-dive sessions that showcase how technology can enable you to come together and create your best work, and opportunities for you to network with our global developer community and learn from each other,” according to its announcement.
Beyond the news that comes from F8 in terms of individual products, the conference gives Facebook a platform to present its overarching vision.
Last year, for example, it was one of a network that’s trying to become more private and working to retain users. More recently, Facebook’s initiatives show a company that’s still trying to be disruptive, with new products like Libra. But some of its launches also demonstrate that the company is painfully aware of how much it’s ceding traction to other social apps, like Snapchat and TikTok. We’ll see if Facebook has any new responses to those challenges, or to the larger, more existential issues Facebook now faces with the rise of anti-trust investigations that put Facebook in their crosshairs.
Starting today, when you say “Hey Google, play me the news” to a Google Assistant-enabled phone or smart speaker, you’ll get a tailored playlist of the day’s big headlines and stories.
That’s probably what many of us are hoping for when we listen to a news radio station or a daily news podcast during the morning commute. But those come from a single broadcaster, and may require you to hop around to get all the news you’re looking for.
In contrast, the feature that Google is calling Your News Update draws stories from a variety of publisher partners, focusing on the ones that seem relevant to your interests and your location.
“Audio has always been great,” said Audio News Product Manager Liz Gannes (a former tech journalist herself.) “It’s a tremendously evocative medium that conveys an immense amount of information.”
But she suggested that “the distribution technology has been slower [t evolve] than things like text and video,” which is why Google has been experimenting in this area. For example, it’s already added news stories to Google Assistant, as well as responses to news-related questions like “What’s the latest news about Brexit?”
Gannes added that behind the scenes, the company has been developing “an open specification for single topic audio stories.” So rather than dealing with an unwieldy hourlong broadcast or podcast, Google Assistant is working clips focused on a specific piece of news.
Your News Update usually starts with a few brief, general interest clips — namely, the big headlines of the day. Then it starts playing longer stories that are selected based on what Google knows about you.
For example, when I tried it out this morning, my update began with a 30-second update on the impeachment from Fox News (not one of my regular news sources) and ran through other then major stories of the day, then switched to longer (two- to three-minute) entertainment stories from sources like The Hollywood Reporter.
Gannes noted that “there’s a big emphasis on local news in this product — that don't just mean where you live, but also other locations you care about.” And she said the average update will be around an hour and a half — so it can keep you occupied during a long commute, no dial-fiddling required.
John Ciancutti, Google’s director of engineering for search, added that the recommendations should get smarter over time: “If you want to skip a story … the more you listen, the better sense we get of your tastes and interests.” He also suggested that Your News Update could become more sensitive to context, offering different stories depending on whether (say) you’re in your car or in your kitchen.
“You can imagine in the future, you tune in and we know you're in your car on Tuesday morning at 7:36, and we can predict based on other listening that you've got about a 28-minute commute,” Ciancutti said.
Your News Update is currently available in English in the United States, with plans for international expansion next year.
Group D
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There’s a thing called shared kitchens, which means that I’m going to go and cook in a space this morning, and when I’m done, somebody else is going to walk in this afternoon and cook in that same space. That’s not our business. Ours is effectively creating four-wall spaces for known restaurants to operate inside of our facilities for the purpose of extending their reach to meet new markets for delivery and consumer pick-up.
