Samsung India has sold over 20 lakh units of its recently-launched Galaxy J8 and J6 mid-segment smartphones in India, attracting nearly 50,000 consumers a day, the company said on Monday.

Galaxy J6 was launched on May 22 while Galaxy J8 was introduced on July 1.

“We are happy with the huge success of Galaxy J8 and J6 smartphones. Our philosophy of keeping our ears to the ground and incorporating consumer feedback into our products has paid off,” said Asim Warsi, Senior Vice President, Samsung India.

The “Chat-over-Video” feature in Infinity models received an overwhelming response with more than 50 percent consumers using it on a regular basis.

“Galaxy J8 and J6 have set the standard for an unparalleled viewing experience with our signature super AMOLED Infinity Display,” Warsi added.

Galaxy J8 is available at Rs 18,990 and Galaxy J6 (64GB and 32GB variants) are available at Rs 15, 990 and Rs 13,990, respectively.

Both Galaxy J8 and J6 sport Samsung’s signature “Infinity Design” philosophy, giving users nearly 15 percent more display area without increasing the overall size of the device.

The Super AMOLED display delivers an 18.5:9 aspect ratio, providing more browsing space.

Galaxy J8 also sports advanced dual rear camera with flagship “Live Focus” feature, where users can bring sharp focus to the foreground while blurring out the background.

“Galaxy J, known for unique ‘Make for India’ innovations, has a stellar legacy, accounting for one in three smartphones sold in the country. We are confident that the new devices will help us further increase our market share in the country,” Warsi noted.

Samsung shipped 9.9 million smartphones in India in the second quarter of 2018, registering almost 50 percent annual growth rate — its best since the fourth quarter of 2015, Singapore-based market research firm Canalys said last week.

Samsung “J2 Pro” was the top model in the second quarter, with 2.3 million units shipped in India.

A young man and a teenager suffered serious burn injuries when they came in contact with a high-tension overhead wire while flying kite in north Delhi, police said on Thursday.

Police said Kartik, 18, and his juvenile neighbor, 14, received over 60 percent burn injuries when they received electric shocks while flying a kite on the terrace of the latter’s Sonia Vihar house on Wednesday afternoon.

Some children standing on adjoining buildings raised an alarm, following which their family members rushed upstairs and tried to pull them away with the help of bamboo sticks, Deputy Commissioner of Police Atul Kumar Thakur told IANS.

Both were later taken to nearby GTB Hospital.

Kartik is an auto-rickshaw driver while the teenager is a Class 6 student.

“We will take action against officials concerned for negligence. We are awaiting improvement in their condition to record their statements,” the officer added.

The undetermined strike by the lorry operators affiliated to the All India Motor Transport Congress (AIMTC) across the country to highlight removal of toll plazas on the national highways and other charters of demands commenced in the state on Friday.

The indefinite strike was to press the demands of reducing fuel price and for a uniform national pricing with quarterly revision, transparency and reduction in third party insurance premium.

Abolition of tax deduction at sources, rationalization of presumptive income under Sections 44 AE of Income Tax Act were the other demands. The AIMTC also demanded the government to address the E-Way Bill operational issues, abolish direct port delivery scheme and streamline port congestion.

Three lakh lorries off the roads
C. Dhanaraj, secretary, Tamil Nadu Lorry Owners Federation, one of the constituents of the AIMTC, told The Hindu that the association accounted for 4.60 lakh lorries, of which three lakh lorries were already off the road from Friday.

About 1.5 lakh lorries have carried loads of onion, dhal and other perishable items to north Indian states and they too were returning back to Tamil Nadu.

Mr. Dhanaraj said that in Salem district alone, about 40,000 lorries were off the road and this has affected the transportation of vegetables, fruits, textiles, sago.

Mr. Dhanaraj said that despite the discussion the Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari, had with the office-bearers of the AIMTC on the removal of toll plazas on Thursday, no compromise could be reached on the issue.

The lorry operators are firm on continuing the strike till all their just demands were conceded by the Centre, Mr. Dhanaraj said.

The lorry booking agents who have expressed their support to the strike call suspended the booking of consignments since July 15. According to P. Rajavadivel, president of the Tamil Nadu Booking Agents Association, due to this about 15,000 lorries which used to carry the loads to other states daily, were not being operated from Friday.

Due to the commencement of the strike, all the major lorry sheds in Salem and Namakkal districts were overflowing with the vehicles. The grounded lorries have also occupied all the space available in the lorry bays on national highways and in the fuel retail outlets. [Read more…]

As the government served WhatsApp with a second notice asking it to check the spread of fake and provocative content, the Facebook-owned platform on Friday said it is launching a test to limit forwarding that will apply to everyone in India.

“In India where people forward more messages, photos, and videos than any other country in the world, we’ll also test a lower limit of 5 chats at once.

“We will also remove the quick forward button next to media messages,” WhatsApp said in a blog post.

In its second notice, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) on Thursday said WhatsApp has been requested to come out with more effective solutions that can bring in accountability and facilitate enforcement of the law in addition to their efforts towards labeling forwards and identifying fake news.

“It has been conveyed to them in unmistakable terms that it is a very serious issue which deserves a more sensitive response,” MeitY said.

WhatsApp said that with new changes, which it will continue to evaluate, “will help keep WhatsApp the way it was designed to be: a private messaging app”.

“We are deeply committed to your safety and privacy which is why WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, and we’ll continue to improve our app with features like this one,” it added.

In its first reply, WhatsApp wrote to the IT Ministry, saying the company is horrified by terrible acts of violence.

The IT Ministry had asked WhatsApp to ensure that the platform is not used for malafide activities over the growing instances of a lynching of innocent people owing to a large number of irresponsible messages filled with rumours.

WhatsApp, which has over 200 million monthly active users in India, listed several measures it is taking — including labeling Forwarding messages — to control the spread of misinformation and abuse on its platform.

Several people have lost their lives in the past one year by lynch mobs after rumours of child lifting triggered via messages on WhatsApp.

The Goa government on Thursday banned the sale of liquor in North Goa’s Surla village for 30 days to curb the nuisance caused by tourists.

Issued by North Goa Collector Levinson Martins, the order shuts down about a dozen liquor bars and restaurants serving liquor, liquor shops, pubs, provision stores, etc in Surla, located on the Goa-Karnataka border, around 60 km from here.

The prohibitive order is aimed at curbing the “menace, annoyance and nuisance created by tourists who primarily visit the place for drinking alcoholic beverages”.

“Particularly to ensure total protection to the vulnerable inhabitants of the village, i.e. children and women who are presently living under the possible threat of being targetted by the unruly behavior of drunken youth tourists visiting the village,” the order said.

Surla has a tiny population of around 500 residents, but its location along the border of Karnataka attracts a large number of tourists who want to enjoy the splendour of the Western Ghats in the rains when numerous waterfalls sprout, and also to buy alcohol, which is available at cheaper rates, thanks to Goa’s low tax regime on alcohol.

Over the years several drownings, as well as law and order-related incidents, have occurred in the forested areas near Surla, where tourists have either drowned or engaged in drunken brawls.

In a signed resolution addressed to Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar earlier this month, dozens of local residents, as well as students, listed the fallouts of alcohol abuse by tourists in their village.

India faces the possibility of losing in the trade disputes with the US on its challenge to export subsidies, but the government is working on schemes to make them WTO compliant, an official said here on Thursday.

“We have a whole lot of challenges in World Trade Organization (WTO)… we respond strongly (but) there is a real possibility that we will lose this dispute because India has crossed the income threshold to be able to give direct export linked subsidies,” Union Commerce and Industry Secretary Rita Teaotia said while responding to a query on the US challenging India’s export subsidies in the WTO.

“What we are now trying to do is WTO compliant,” she said at an event organized by the Indian Chamber of Commerce.

Teaotia said that anything which entails a refund of the statutory levy is legitimate for the purpose of exports in trade rules while incentive given only for exports is not legitimate.

“Right now, we have an expert group studying to see what the WTO compliant supports are and what the global practices are in a transparent way. This exercise is almost complete. In fact, we are having the first round of presentation next week.

“Hopefully, we would have a draft set of schemes for the discussion in a month or so,” she said.

The Centre is looking to support for regulatory compliance, Teaotia said.

Incentives on service exports, duty free import of inputs, refund on statutory levies are legitimate for the purpose of exports, she said, adding that refund of uncovered taxes under GST regime are some of the supports that will likely to continue under the revised schemes.

She also said that the government was looking to at an integrated multimodal logistics legislation which covers all stakeholders.

Flagging off the issues related to tea blending, she said some factories or aggregators mix teas in such a way that purity of crop tends to fail and due to this, market share falls in the international markets.

Teaotia also pointed out the auction platforms of tea in India “has not had kind of acceptability that it should have had” and it is the reason for which, 100 per cent tea does not come to auction.

She said Tea Board’s new Vice Chairman has one of the first responsibilities to look at the acceptability of auctions platforms and how these platforms can be revamped in such that everybody buys into it.

She requested the industry to find out ways to make platforms better because the platforms are for the industry to serve its purpose.

“This was the discussion that we had this morning. There will be interactions next week with the groups of the industry to find out what people want to see on the platforms,” Teaotia added.

Foreign and defense ministers of India and the US will hold their first edition of the “2+2” strategic dialogue on security and defense ties in Delhi on September 6, the US State Department announced on Friday.

The twice deferred meeting was earlier scheduled to take place in Washington on July 6. But it had to be put off purportedly because US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was to travel to North Korea for unscheduled meetings with officials of that country.

The first “2+2” meeting was to take place in April. That was also to be hosted by the US but was called off after then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was suddenly sacked by President Donald Trump.

Announcing the new date and venue, the State Department said “the inaugural US-India 2+2 Dialogue will be held in New Delhi on September 6”.

It said US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defence Secretary James Mattis will meet with their Indian counterparts External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman “to discuss strengthening strategic, security, and defence cooperation as the US and India jointly address challenges in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond”.

US Ambassador in New Delhi Ken Juster said the US “look(s) forward to productive discussions between our two countries on ways to strengthen US-India strategic, security, and defense cooperation”.

The “2+2” dialogue for strategic level talks was agreed between the two sides during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s June 2017 US trip. The new format replaces the Strategic and Commercial Dialogue between the foreign and commerce ministers of the two countries held during the Obama administration.

The sudden decision to call off the talks in July triggered speculation that it signalled a lower priority the Trump administration was according to the ties with India.

It was also said that the US may not have been happy with India going ahead with its plan to buy military equipment from Russia despite American sanctions targeting Moscow under the Countering America s Adversaries through Sanctions Act (CAATSA).

Sources in New Delhi said the two sides in their September 6 meetings will seek finalisation of key defence agreements like the Communications, Compatibility, Security Agreement (COMCASA) — a defence foundational pact that will enable India to obtain critical, secure and encrypted defence technologies from other countries.

The sources said Indian and the US ministers would also discuss developments and issues of mutual interest in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. Russia and China are also expected to come up during the talks.

They said India would seek waiver from the CAATSA that can hit Indian military purchases from Russia and also the import of crude oil from Iran which has also been sanctioned.

The US sanctions against Russian oligarchs and companies have threatened India’s proposed purchase of five regiments of Russian-made S-400 Triumf advanced air defense system, a $5.5 billion military deal almost ready to be signed for a closure.

The US has said the CAATSA also prohibits American allies from dealing with sanctioned individuals and companies of Russia, and if New Delhi went ahead with its new military purchases, it would complicate “our ability to work out inter-operability”.

India’s deep military and strategic ties with Russia date back to the beginning of the Cold War even as New Delhi led a movement of “non-aligned” countries that declared their tilt with neither Washington nor Moscow. However, India always leaned toward the then USSR.

India still buys over 60 per cent of its defence equipment from Russia. At present, the Indian armed forces are 70 per cent equipped with Soviet or Russian weapons.

Defence Minister Sitharaman last week said the CAATSA, essentially a US law, was not binding on India and would therefore not affect India’s foreign policy and strategic decisions with other countries.

The European Union slapped Google with a record $5bn fine for using its Android smartphone system to illegally boost its search engine – the biggest anti-trust penalty in EU history.

Google immediately said it would appeal the massive fine.

Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition commissioner, announced the stiff penalty on Wednesday saying the US tech giant forced – and in some cases paid – major phone makers to pre-install its search engine and Google Chrome browser.

The company also limited the ability of manufacturers to sell phones running alternative versions of Android.

“Google has used Android as a vehicle to cement the dominance of its search engine,” Vestager said in a statement. “This is illegal under EU anti-trust rules.”

The company, however, said instead of restricting competition it did the opposite.

“Android has created more choice for everyone, not less,” said Google spokesman Al Verney. “We will appeal the commission’s decision.”

The commission also ordered Google to end the illegal conduct within 90 days or face additional penalties of up to 5 percent of parent Alphabet’s average daily worldwide turnover.

Wednesday’s ruling came a year after the EU’s enforcer handed down a $2.7bn fine on Google for favouring its shopping service over rivals.

Angering Washington

Vestager has targeted a series of Silicon Valley giants in her four years as the 28-nation European Union’s competition commissioner, winning praise in Europe but angering the United States.

On Wednesday, Vestager told a news conference in Brussels she “very much” likes the United States.

“But the fact is that this has nothing to do with how I feel. Nothing whatsoever. Just as enforcing competition law, we do it in the world, but we do not do it in political context,” she said.

Brussels has repeatedly targeted Google over the past decade amid concerns about the Silicon Valley giant’s dominance of internet searches across Europe, where it commands about 90 percent of the market.

The EU ordered Apple in 2016 to pay Ireland 13bn euros in back taxes that the maker of iPhones and iPads avoided by a tax deal with Dublin.

It has also taken on Facebook over privacy issues after it admitted millions of users may have had their data hijacked by British consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica.

Parliament has approved the bill to merge six subsidiary banks with the State Bank of India (SBI) with the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday clearing the State Banks (Repeal and Amendment) Bill, 2017.

The bill repeals the State Bank of India (Subsidiary Banks) Act, 1959, and State Bank of Hyderabad Act, 1956 besides amending the State Bank of India (SBI) Act, 1955.

The State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, State Bank of Mysore, State Bank of Patiala and State Bank of Travancore were constituted under the State Bank of India (Subsidiary Banks) Act, 1959.

The State Bank of Hyderabad and the State Bank of Patiala were wholly owned by the State Bank of India (SBI). The SBI had 90 percent shareholding in the State Bank of Mysore, 75.07 percent shareholding in the State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur and 79.09 percent shareholding in the State Bank of Travancore.

For the purposes of “rationalisation of resources, reduction of costs, better profitability, lower cost of funds leading to better rate of interest for public at large, improved productivity and customer service,” the SBI, with the sanction of the central government and in consultation with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), entered into negotiations with these subsidiary banks for acquiring the business, including assets and liabilities.

The Union Cabinet granted its approval in February 2017, which allowed the SBI to acquire these subsidiaries.

“After the acquisition of the subsidiary banks by SBI, the subsidiary banks have ceased to exist and, therefore, it was necessary to repeal the State Bank of India (Subsidiary Banks) Act, 1959 and the State Bank of Hyderabad Act, 1956,” the objectives of the Bill read.

“There are certain provisions in the State Bank of India Act, 1955, which apply to the subsidiary banks. After the acquisition of all the subsidiary banks by the SBI, it is not necessary to retain such provisions in the State Bank of India Act, 1955. Therefore, certain amendments are necessary in the said Act in so far as they relate to the subsidiary banks,” it said.

The Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha by the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on July 21, 2017, and has been passed by the lower house.

Geologists have classified the last 4,200 years as being a distinct Earth age and are calling it a new chapter — the “Meghalayan Age” — the onset of which was marked by a mega-drought that crushed a number of civilisations worldwide.

They divide up the 4.6-billion-year Earth existence into slices of time. Each slice corresponding to significant happenings — such as the break-up of continents, dramatic shifts in climate, and even the emergence of particular types of animals and plant life.

The current age in which we live is called the Holocene Epoch, which reflects everything that has happened over the past 11,700 years — since a dramatic warming kicked us out of the last ice age, the BBC reported on Wednesday.

But the Holocene itself can be subdivided, according to the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS).

The ICS is the official keeper of geologic time and it proposed three stages be introduced to denote the epoch’s upper, middle and lower phases. These all record major climate events.

The Meghalayan, the youngest stage, runs from 4,200 years ago to 1950. It began with a destructive drought, whose effects lasted two centuries, and severely disrupted civilisations in Egypt, Greece, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and the Yangtze River Valley, the BBC report added.

To win the classification, a slice of geological time generally has to reflect something whose effects were global in extent, and be associated with a rock or sediment type that is clear and unambiguous.

For the famous boundary 66 million years ago that marks the switch in period from the Cretaceous to Tertiary, this “golden spike” is represented by traces in sediments of the element iridium. This was spread across the planet in the debris scattered by the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.

For the Meghalayan, the spike is epitomised in specific chemical signatures, the finest example of which can be seen in the layers of stalagmites on the floors of caves in the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya.

It was likely triggered by shifts in ocean and atmospheric circulation, the ICS said.

The Meghalayan Age is unique among the many intervals of the geologic timescale. Its beginning coincides with a global cultural event produced by a global climatic event, said Stanley Finney, Professor at Long Beach State University and Secretary-General of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), which ratified the ICS proposal.

The middle phase of the Holocene will be referred to as the Northgrippian, and runs from 8,300 years ago up to the start of the Meghalayan. The onset for this age was an abrupt cooling, attributed to vast volumes of freshwater from melting glaciers in Canada running into the North Atlantic and disrupting ocean currents.

The oldest phase of the Holocene — the exit from the ice age — will be known as the Greenlandian.

The International Chronostratigraphic Chart, the famous diagram depicting the timeline for Earth’s history will be updated, the BBC reported.