Twitter said it has permanently banned US conspiracy theorist Alexander Jones and accounts associated with his website Infowars for “abusive behaviour”.

“Today, we permanently suspended @realalexjones and @infowars from Twitter and Periscope,” Twitter said on Thursday on its Safety account, Xinhua news agency reported.

The world leading social media site said it took the action “based on new reports of Tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behaviour policy, in addition to the accounts’ past violations.”

The ban will cut Jones and Infowars from its 1.5 million followers on future interaction on Twitter’s platform, and Twitter vows to “take action” if the latter attempts to circumvent the prohibitive measure.

“We will continue to evaluate reports we receive regarding other accounts potentially associated with @realalexjones or @infowars and will take action if content that violates our rules is reported or if other accounts are utilized in an attempt to circumvent their ban,” @TwitterSafety said in one of its tweets.

The social media firm said it will increase transparency in implementation of its rules and actions, but it declines to “comment on enforcement actions we take against individual accounts, for their privacy.”

Twitter is one of the latest major tech companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple that has permanently banned Jones and his associated accounts. It imposed a week-long ban on Jones as a warning for his bellicose behaviour last month.

In August, Google-owned YouTube, Apple and Facebook removed or restricted Jones’ activities on their platforms for hate speech.

Jones is a controversial American radio show host and conspiracy theorist, who runs the website Infowars.com that is devoted to conspiracy theories and fake news.

He is notorious for accusing the US government of planning the Oklahoma City bombing that killed at least 168 people and wounded more than 680 others in 1995.

Jones also doubted the government’s role in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the US that left 2,996 people dead and over 6,000 injured.

(IANS)

Indian software major Infosys on Friday said it has formed a joint venture (JV) with global investment firm Temasek in Singapore to service it and its clients in the digital domain.

“The JV will integrate our team with that of Temasek’s Singapore subsidiary Trusted Source Pte Ltd, which delivers IT services to it and its clients,” said the city-based IT major in a statement here.

As per an agreement signed by the partners on Thursday night, Infosys will hold 60 per cent in the JV and Temasek 40 per cent.

As governments the world over including in India aim to store data of their people within their boundaries, Facebook on Friday announced to build its first data centre in Asia that will be located in Singapore.

The 170,000-square-metre data centre will be built with more than 1.4 billion Singapore dollars (over $1 billion), opening hundreds of job opportunities.

“We are excited to announce that Facebook’s first custom-built data center in Asia will be located in Singapore. It will support hundreds of jobs and form part of our growing presence in Singapore and across Asia,” Facebook said in a statement.

Facebook’s data centres are currently located across the US and in Europe.

In India, a government panel is currently working on the guidelines to ensure that data generated locally must be stored within the country.

The social media giant said it selected Singapore for robust infrastructure and access to fibre, a talented local workforce, and a great set of community partners, including the Singapore Economic Development Board.

“Singapore has also established policies that foster a business-friendly environment, including measures that support the enforcement of contracts and increase the ease of construction permitting,” Facebook said.

The World Bank recently named Singapore as top country in Asia to do business.

The Singapore data centre will be the first to incorporate the new “StatePoint Liquid Cooling” system.

This technology minimises water and power consumption and can reduce the amount of peak water used by 20 per cent in climates like Singapore’s, said Facebook.

The 11-storey facility will be powered by 100 per cent renewable energy, Facebook added.

(IANS)

The key Indian equity market indices on Thursday opened higher despite a muted trend in global markets.

The Sensitive Index (Sensex) of the BSE, which had closed at 38,018.31 points on Wednesday, opened higher at 38.161.85 points.

Minutes into trading, it was quoting at 38,096 points, up by 77.69 points, or 0.20 per cent.

At the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the broader 51-scrip Nifty, which was quoting at 11,499.60 points, was up by 22.65 points or 0.20 per cent.

On Thursday, Asian indices were showing a mixed trend. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was quoting in red, down by 0.42 per cent, Hang Seng was down by 0.57 per cent, South Korea’s Kospi was up 0.02 per cent and China’s Shanghai Composite index was trading in green, up by 0.21 per cent.

Overnight, Nasdaq closed in red, down by 1.20 per cent while FTSE 100 was also down by 1.01 per cent at the closing on Wednesday.

(IANS)

Google on Thursday launched a new search engine for the scientific community that will help them make sense of millions of datasets present online.

The service, called Dataset Search, will help scientists, data journalists and geeks find the data required for their work and their stories — or simply to satisfy their intellectual curiosity.

The new search engine will work like Google Scholar, the company’s popular search engine for academic studies and reports.

“Dataset Search lets you find datasets wherever they’re hosted, whether it’s a publisher’s site, a digital library, or an author’s personal web page,” Natasha Noy, Research Scientist, Google AI, said in a blog post.

To create Dataset search, Google developed guidelines for dataset providers to describe their data in a way that the company (and other search engines) can better understand the content of their pages.

“These guidelines include salient information about datasets: who created the dataset, when it was published, how the data was collected, what the terms are for using the data, etc,” Noy said.

Google then collects and links this information, analyses where different versions of the same dataset might be, and finds publications that may be describing or discussing the dataset.

“We encourage dataset providers, large and small, to adopt this common standard so that all datasets are part of this robust ecosystem,” said Google.

People can find references to most datasets in environmental and social sciences, as well as data from other disciplines including government data and data provided by news organisations, such as ProPublica.

Dataset Search works in multiple languages with support for additional languages coming soon, said Google.

As 4G penetration increases in India, Kolkata has emerged as the top city with a 4G availability score of an impressive over 90 per cent, London-based wireless coverage mapping company OpenSignal said on Thursday.

Kolkata topped the list of 22 telecom circles in the country.

However, the other 21 circles saw 4G (LTE) reach scores over 80 per cent, including top circles like Punjab with 89.8 per cent, Bihar on 89.2 per cent, Madhya Pradesh with 89.1 per cent, and Orissa on 89 per cent.

According to OpenSignal’s latest 4G availability metrics, the results reflect the outstanding availability growth in India — quite remarkable for a country which has only had 4G since 2012.

“We analysed our data for 4G availability across all of India’s 22 telecoms circles in the 90 days from the start of May 2018, and found Kolkata came top with a hugely impressive score of 90.7 per cent,” OpenSignal said in a statement.

Many of the top telecoms circles for 4G availability were in the East and North of the country, reflecting a similar trend in OpenSignal’s analysis of LTE reach in India’s cities six months ago.

In its April survey, Patna had beaten Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai to top the 4G availability metric that measures where users get access to an LTE connection most of the time.

Mumbai had ranked 15th while Delhi grabbed the 17th spot in 4G availability in India’s 20 largest cities.

This time, Delhi was 12th while Mumbai 13th on the 4G availability list.

“The Indian government has just kicked off the process for a major spectrum auction in the country, which should allow the operators to make further improvements in these highly impressive 4G availability scores,” said OpenSignal.

Reliance Jio has played a key role in increasing 4G penetration in India, helping the rural population get 83 million 4G subscriptions out of the total 238 million 4G subscribers by December 2017, said market research firm CyberMedia Research (CMR).

According to the CMR, 35 per cent of the 4G subscribers in India will use a 4G-enabled feature phone by 2020, taking the total 4G subscribers to 432 million.

After Wednesday’s congressional hearings, Facebook and Twitter will now face questions from the Justice Department (DOJ) over allegations of political bias, an issue flagged by US President Donald Trump.

In a meeting in September, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, along with state attorneys general, would look into whether Facebook and Twitter are “intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas on their platforms”, CNET reported on Wednesday.

The DOJ announced the meeting on a day when Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg appeared before the US Congress, admitting to the lawmakers that they were “too slow to act” and “ill-prepared” to tackle foreign interference on their platforms.

According to The Washington Post, Sandberg told the US Senate Intelligence Committee that they were too slow to spot this and too slow to act. “That’s on us.”

The social networking platforms attracted criticism for being vulnerable to Russia-linked influence campaigns.

Trump has accused Google, Facebook and Twitter of trying to “silence” conservative voices.

Appearing before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on Wednesday in a hearing on online censorship of conservative opinions and misinformation activities ahead of the 2018 mid-term elections, Dorsey said Twitter will remain an “impartial” “global town square”, and it does “not shadow-ban anyone based on political ideology”.

“To serve the public conversation, Twitter is incentivised to keep all voices on the platform,” he said.

Twitter has constantly denied the claims by Republicans that conservative accounts were shadow-banned or their opinions were censored on the platform.

Earlier in the day, Dorsey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Russian meddling in the 2016 US election.

Following the meeting, Twitter shares fell six per cent on Wednesday, CNBC reported.

(IANS)

The Centre is unlikely to cut excise duty on petrol and diesel despite sky-rocekting fuel prices pummelled by a sliding rupee as the government intends to remain focussed on fiscal prudence, a top government official said on Tuesday.

“We cannot reach a point of twin deficit. Current account deficit (CAD) is already widening and an excise duty cut will disturb fiscal deficit (target). We’d rather remain fiscally prudent,” the official told Moneycontrol on condition of anonymity.

Global crude oil price has been on a rise in the last few months and is hovering above $70 per barrel.

Falling value of rupee against dollar, as well as escalated crude oil price has inflated India’s import bill as it is the largest imported commodity into the country.

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Further, higher import bill has widened the current account deficit – a key measure of a country’s macroeconomic stability and an excess of sum of exports of goods and services, as well as income receivable over imports and income payable.

While the current account deficit had ballooned to 6.7 percent of GDP in 2012-13, the Narendra Modi-led government consistently maintained the deficit to contain it under 2 percent of GDP annually. Experts believe that CAD will worsen to cross 2 percent of GDP in the quarter ended June as against 1.9 percent in 2017-18.

The official further said that the rupee is expected to come down in the near future.

“Rupee is falling because of the trade war and rising oil prices. The US-China trade war has been a major factor behind this slide. This is further hurting Asian currencies,” the official said.

On Tuesday, the rupee closed to a record low of Rs 71.58 per dollar.

At this point, the government can only take advantage of the situation by taking steps to boost exports, the official added.

Rising oil prices continues to remain a concern with petrol price in Mumbai crossing Rs 86 per litre and diesel being sold at Rs 75.74 per litre on Tuesday.

A higher fuel price brings risk of an increased inflation, which could ultimately result in the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) hiking key interest rates, which makes borrowing more expensive.

However, the official said that reducing excise duty on fuel will massively widen the fiscal deficit.

Lower revenue from oil could mean that the government may have to curtail its expenditure to stay on the path of fiscal prudence.

“We can’t cut expenditure on social sector schemes such as Ayushman Bharat (health insurance scheme), or on building rural roads. We cannot reduce defence expenditure or interest payments if we decide to cut excise of petrol and diesel,” the official explained.

(PTI)

Even before Bengaluru real estate market could fully recover from the scars of from demonstration, the state government increased the guidance value in and around Bengaluru city. The increase is between 5 to 20%.

According to the Gazette notification issued by the state government, the guidance value has been increased in all the zones of the Bengaluru city and the urban areas of the Bengaluru rural district.

According to the authorities, the state government has given 15 days time to submit objections for the revised guidance value. “It will be implemented from October 1,” said sources.

“Last time guidance value was revised in March 2016. This time, the revision has been done to compensate the revenue loss arising out of the farm loan waiver,” said sources.

San Francisco, Microsoft is releasing the redesigned version of its personal information manager Outlook to Windows and Web users with improved search options, simplified ribbon (toolbars at the top of the window) and options to control and personalise inboxes.

The revamped version of “Outlook” comes with provisions of finding files quicker in the inbox, suggested replies, simplified event creation option and smart-room suggestion to help users find the best rooms for meetings based on time, availability and preferences, Gabriel Valdez from the tech and marketing team for Outlook, Microsoft wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.

Additionally, the “Outlook” redesign also incorporates simpler ways to the “add-in” experience that brings the user’s most used apps into the inbox for faster multitasking, including saving an email directly to notebook, translating emails on the fly or peer-to-peer paying.

“You can also install more add-ins from the Office Store-simply open an email, click the drop-down menu, and select Get Add-ins. Once installed, add-ins will show up in the drop-down menu. You can also choose to pin frequently used add-ins,” wrote Valdez.

Microsoft has also added more ways to manage groups in refreshed “Outlook” version like faster and simpler group creation, richer group card, more efficient group email triage and group Files view that would focus on the latest file activity and group management.

More enhancements would keep coming over the next few months with updated features.

“Based on your feedback, we’ll iterate, improve, refine, or discard them,” Valdez added.

The new Outlook is not yet available on Mac, but the redesign is available now for Windows users in the “Targeted programme” while “Targeted Release” users would get it in the next few weeks.

(IANS)