With Twitter playing an increasing role in shaping political debates around the world, a new study of American political journalists has shown how male journalists use the microblogging site to increase their influence, while pushing their female peers to the margins of political discussion.

The researchers found that among the journalists accredited to cover the US Congress, known as Beltway Journalists, male journalists amplify and engage male peers almost exclusively, while female journalists tend to engage most with each other.

Male political journalists reply to other male journalists 91.5 per cent of the time, showed the findings to be published in the International Journal of Press/Politics.

The findings suggest that women political journalists get less attention on the microblogging site.

For the study, the researchers looked at 2,292 Twitter accounts belonging to Washington DC-based journalists who are accredited to cover the US Congress, The Guardian reported on Sunday.

While the difference between the numbers of male and female journalists is not starkly high, men dominate the Twitter space with higher number of tweets, have on an average twice as many followers and they are also likely to retweet each other.

“The gender imbalances present on beltway journalism Twitter are another case showing women do not receive adequate recognition or attention for their creative labour,” the report said.

This “may well create an even greater structural disadvantage for female journalists, given how this platform is so critical to success in beltway journalism”, the report added.

It was a problem because debate on Twitter helped frame political reporting on other websites and as a result, the site could be inadvertently marginalising female journalists in “gender silos”, the Guardian mentioned one of the study authors, Nikki Usher of the University of Illinois, as saying.

The national truckers’ organization on Friday temporarily called off their strike, claiming to have received a communication from the Union Road Transport Ministry promising a meeting.

“We received a call from Union Minister Nitin Gadkari’s office and they have called us to talk… We have temporarily called off the strike because it was affecting truckers and people both,” ACOGOA General Secretary Kausar Hussain told IANS.

The All India Confederation of Goods Vehicles Owners’ Association (ACOGOA), that had called a nationwide strike on June 18 against the high diesel prices, high toll rates and a sharp hike of third-party insurance premium, said they have received assurance of a meeting after June 27.

“We have received a telephone call from central ministry, that since the minister is not in station till June 27, to call off the strike… In view of this and in the public interest, we have postponed the truckers strike,” said a statement from ACOGOA president B. Channa Reddy.

Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari is currently in Tajikistan.

Many truck owners and operators including from West Bengal, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Punjab, and Rajasthan were on strike.

The ACOGOA had claimed that some 40 lakh trucks were off the roads across the country on June 18, causing over Rs 800 crore revenue loss to the exchequer.

By Andrea Princy, Abhirami, Santhosha D

The determination never lets you down. The more we trust in the field we love, the more confidence it gives. On the path of failure, we will find the success as the goal.
Nanjundaiah : A person from a poor family in a village, worked hard and did his B.E ad MBA in Bangalore. He understood the hard work of the farmers and villagers who are suffering without electricity. So, he planned to create a machine which will produce electricity using wind as it’s source of energy. He was given recognition in the IISC and was given a patent for that machine. The IISC people appreciated him and told him to create a machine which can work anywhere without depending on wind. So, he planned to create a machine which will use the energy from the source and keep reusing the same energy.
He named this machine as Renewable Energy Machine. He spent 1 and 1/2 year to complete this machine and used this machine at his place for 1 year and his family was satisfied with the process of the machine. This machine uses a battery to generate energy and renews that energy again and again to generate electricity. This machine hasn’t yet received the patent but after it receives, he is planning to create 4 more types of machines which will be useful for farmers, in automobiles, etc. These machines are useful for household purposes also.
This machine will be the third kind of machine, the first one is petrol and the second is diesel. The source for this machine is taken from batteries, it’s not going to pollute the environment and safe for all living things in the environment.
A humble Indian is gifted with a great talent. An Indian from a village works hard to develop India and aid the poor income society. So, let us appreciate our fellow Indian by purchasing an Indian model for the development of our country.

An initial snap is an indicator for a great photographic future. People have their photographic brains switched on all the time, and their eyes capture various encounters they face, but sadly it can’t be stored in their conscious mind at all time, so here comes the Phone Camera for our aid in times of need.

Mobile photography has seen it’s advancement in years. The phone camera is considered the best camera for it’s various features. It can be used anywhere, at anytime and by anyone. It is a raw material for a successful progress. It is a portable equipment and weightless and it can be used at all times easily but the camera which is a little heavy should be carried in a bag, and should be looked after carefully and it’s technical to learn but a phone camera has simple and beautiful features to capture a wonderful moments and candid snapshots that can be carried just in our palms but whereas the camera adjusts the reality with Shutter speed, Aperture, and ISO. A phone camera is less cost-effective and the photos can be transferred easily without much pain. Some mobile camera takes dull photos but it doesn’t really matter because there are so many options inbuilt in the camera settings and many apps to change a gloomy image into a vibrant and dazzling image. And millions of people have taken up Phone photography as their creative hobby and Instagram has the largest dedicated platform for phone photographers.

A job of a camera is to click a beautiful image of memories and this can also be done through phone camera and not necessarily a digital camera. A dedicated heart and mind can even use a phone camera images look professional and successful.

The vast Indian public sector will embark on a true digital journey only once the government decides to relax old procurement rules, make the stakeholders aware of benefits of Cloud and get rid of the ageing IT infrastructure, a top Amazon Web Services (AWS) executive has stressed.

According to Peter Moore, Regional Managing Director, Public Sector-Asia Pacific at AWS, which is Amazon’s growing Cloud computing business, governments around the world including in India are grappling with the massive loss of data owing to old hardware and software, badly designed IT architecture and poor operating practices in terms of accessing the data.

“Any major transformation in technology requires people to change and India is no different. It has cultural as well as technological challenges when it comes to embracing Cloud. Addressing tech challenges is easy but making people want to do something different is the difficult part,” Moore told IANS in an interview on the sidelines of the AWS public sector summit here.

Civil servants, he said, can’t be forced to learn Cloud computing faster or convinced easily to replace legacy IT infrastructure and reskilling the workforce can only change the scenario.

“We would like to help the government design effective procurement vehicles that cut long paperwork aligned with traditional hardware purchasing,” emphasised Moore, who is driving government agencies, educational institutions and non-profits implement AWS Cloud computing services.

In India, AWS is listed as Amazon Internet Services Pvt Ltd (AISPL) which undertakes the resale and marketing of AWS Cloud services in the country.

In order to make deeper inroads, Moore doesn’t want to waste time on customers who don’t plan to begin their Cloud journey despite continued efforts.

“There is so much opportunity in India. It won’t be wise of us to waste efforts on customers who don’t move say for years despite the best of our efforts. We are seeking customers who are ready to go with us now.

“We are customer-obsessed and more than eager to give them best advice when it comes to either migrating workloads to Cloud or building something entirely new,” Moore said.

AWS has a long list of government customers in India but feels there is a long way to go when it comes to achieving its full potential.

“There is a lot of talk within the Indian government agencies about the success they have had after moving to Cloud. We have all the capabilities that meet the government standards. We have already passed all the tests — be it scalability, agility or security,” Moore told IANS.

AWS is the first Global Cloud Provider (GCP) in the country to achieve full empanelment by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) for delivering Cloud services to government customers.

The company successfully completed the Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) audit from MeitY for Cloud services last year.

The company launched AWS Asia Pacific (Mumbai) Region with two availability zones in 2016 and has seen stupendous growth in adding new customers in the region.

“For AWS, Cloud computing means that you don’t need to pay upfront and pay only what you consume, scale up and scale down as you need. This is the reason for our tremendous success in a short span of time,” Moore informed.

He sees a real momentum in the Indian tech landscape, especially in the start-up segment.

“Almost all the start-ups in India would not have been start-ups without access to AWS. They are not asking us should we move to Cloud but how to move. There is a real pent-up demand coming from India,” the AWS executive emphasised.

Exponential growth is right around the corner in the public sector, he said, adding that AWS, which has invested a lot for years in setting up right infrastructure in India, is now ready to reap the results.

“We will continue to work to make procurement process easier as it is the key roadblock. We will continue to develop our capacities, add new capabilities and invest significantly in the country towards training, skilling and building resources,” Moore noted.

The dynamism infused in the Indo-French relations during the visit of French President Emmanuel Macron to India in March seems to be building up as the two countries have committed to raising their bilateral trade from 9 billion euros to 15 billion euros in the next two years official sources said.

Besides this, boosting French investment in India was one of the several issues that Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj discussed with her French counterpart Jean Yves Le Drian on Monday evening during her maiden visit to France.

The French have been keen to significantly enhance their presence in Indian business ecosystem, especially in areas where they have in-house strengths, notably sustainable development, transport and smart cities.

The two ministers also discussed numerous international issues such as the impact of the decision by US President Donald Trump to withdraw from the Paris Climate Change Treaty as well as the Iran nuclear deal. Regional issues such as terrorism and situation in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region were also discussed.

Swaraj thanked Le Drian on behalf of the Indian government for the unstinted support that France has given to India’s bid to be inducted as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council as well as the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

The two leaders also exchanged a letter of intent for collaboration in the conservation of prehistoric monuments. The first such collaboration will take place in the famous Bhimbetka caves in Swaraj’s native Madhya Pradesh.

Claiming that about 54 lakh trucks are off the road observing nationwide strike against fuel hike, third party insurance and toll, an association of the goos vehicle operators called their move non-political and last resort after several failed attempts to reach the government.

The All India Confederation of Goods Vehicles Owners Association (AICGVO), a Delhi-based association of over 90 lakh truckers, said that while the big truckers and transport agency are just managing to survive, number of recent changes including fuel price have “killed the small and medium transport businesses”.

Talking to IANS, AICGVO General Secretary Kausar Hussain noted that a 1,117 per cent rise in the premium of third party insurance by the Insurance Regulatory Development Authority of India (IRDAI) is killing the transport industry, which is largely owned by small businesses.

For 2018-19, the IRDAI has revised the third party liability insurance for by up to 30 per cent — a hike by 18 to 30 per cent over the existing premium rates.

“ruck or transport business owners get businesses through booking agents who are still offering the same rates while the toll, diesel and insurance premiums are shooting persistently… how will we survive, that the biggest question,” he said.

Asked if they had political support, Hussain said that they had received a support letter from the Communist Party of India, but their association and the decision to go on strike is “completely non-political”.

“On April 23 we wrote to our honorable Prime Minister, later we wrote to Finance Ministry, Petroleum Ministry and Road Transport Ministry, but received no response… finally we had no other option but call for indefinite strike,” he said, adding that the profits of small truckers, who own one to three trucks, had been reduced by more than half.

He added that rising price of spare parts, tyre had already been bothering transport business, on which fuel and insurance tarrif are acting like “salt on the wounds”.

According to AICGVO, the maximum support for the strike has come from West Bengal, where they claim over 90 per cent of truckers have decided to go off the road.

While AICGVO called for indefinite strike from Monday, another nation wide organisation — All India Motor Transport Congress (AIMTC) said that it will observe strike from July 20 on the same lines.

“There are number of reasons for going on strike but our demands are focused on three of them, which are rising fuel price, toll and third party insurance… strike is not always welcomed as it affects out business, but we had no other option,” its Secretary General Naveen Kumar Gupta told IANS.

AIMTC says that the transport sector in India is completely unorganised which is the “reason for its exploitation”.

Domestic petrol prices were steady for the third consecutive day on Monday. In the national capital, the fuel was sold at Rs 76.35 per litre, data from the Indian Oil Corp website showed.

Prices of petrol across the four metros have been unchanged since the decline of around eight paise on June 15.

In Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai, the fuel was priced at Rs 79.02, Rs 84.18 and Rs 79.24 per litre.

Transport fuel prices have largely been on the downside since May 30, although with a nominal decline on a daily basis.

Before the previous fall in petrol prices on June 15, prices were stable for three days during June 12-14.

Prices of the other key transportation fuel diesel were also unchanged on Monday. In the cities of Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai, the fuel was sold at unchanged price of Rs 67.78, Rs 70.33, Rs 72.13 and Rs 71.54 per litre.

Diesel prices had declined by around seven paise on Sunday, June 17, after remaining unchanged for four days.

Fuel prices in the country are largely determined by global crude oil prices, which have been on a downward trajectory for nearly a month now. The brent crude oil is currently priced around $74 per barrel, down from nearly $80 a barrel a month ago.

In yet another long blog, Finance Minister and senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley on Monday lauded the fourth quarter GDP growth of 7.7 per cent saying the future looked much brighter than the past.

“The fourth quarter result of GDP data showed a phenomenal 7.7 percent growth rate and has established India firmly as the fastest growing global economy. This trend, according to experts, is likely to continue for the next few years, he wrote.

“With structural reforms like demonetisation, the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and the enforcement of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), we had two challenging quarters,” Jaitley said adding that “those who predicted a two per cent decline in GDP growth have been conclusively proved wrong.”

He said a distinguished predecessor of his had feared that he may have to live his future in poverty. “We have enabled every Indian to be a part of the world’s fastest-growing economy. The future looks much brighter than the past. This trend is likely to continue for some years,” Jaitley said.

He tried to address various economic issues concerning people from rising oil price, structural reforms, and job creation and praised the social sector schemes and the rural development programmes launched by the government.

“These involve legislations which are path-breaking and development works in roads, railways, housing, power, sanitation — which yield high social benefits — require a high level of government expenditure. This type of government spending promotes growth. This is what we are witnessing today,” he said.

Jaitley who underwent kidney replacement recently is still recovering and is yet to rejoin his office.

On Job job creation Jaitley said: “An analysis of the data released clearly shows that the construction sector is expanding by double digits. It is a job-creating sector. Investment is increasing. Domestic investment is also increasing. The FDI is at an unprecedented level.”

He said the IBC had unlocked value in non-performing assets. “Fixed capital formation is growing. Manufacturing is expanding. We are spending huge amounts on infrastructure creation. Expenditure on rural projects has increased in a big way. The social sector schemes, more particularly the financial inclusion programmes, have created a wave of self-employment. Each one of these is a high job-creating sector,” he asserted.

He said if India remains a tax non-compliant nation, both Centre and state government would have very little to spend. They will borrow more and spend less. “Demonetisation, GST, digitization, Aadhaar and the anti-black money measures are leading to a gradual formalization of the Indian economy.”

Talking about tax collection, Jaitley said: “We have reached 6.86 crore income tax return filers last year. The number of income tax returns post demonetization show a 25 percent growth. Even the corporate returns have increased by 17 percent.”

He said that GST, after a few weeks of its implementation became problem free, and was leading to higher tax collection. “With higher revenues, the Government has been able to spend more on infrastructure, rural India and social sector schemes and yet maintained fiscal prudence and keeping the fiscal deficit on downward glide path,” he added.

“The last four years have seen an improvement in central government’s tax-GDP ratio from 10 percent to 11.5 percent. There is an increase of 1.46 percentage points. Almost half of this, 0.72 percent of GDP, accounts for an increase in the non-oil tax-GDP ratio. The level of non-oil taxes to GDP at 9.8 percent in 2017-18 is the highest since 2007-08 a year in which our revenue position was boosted by a buoyant international environment,” the minister said.

He said despite higher compliances in a new system, as far as the non-oil taxes are concerned, “we are still far from being a tax complaint society. Salaried employees is one category of tax compliant assessees. Most other sections still have to improve their track record. The effort for next few years has to be to replicate the last four years and improve India’s tax to GDP ratio by another 1.5 percent.”

Finally speaking about the spiraling fuel prices, which is hurting every common man, he said: “if people pay their taxes honestly the high dependence on oil products for taxation eventually comes down.”

Taking a dig at former finance minister and Congress leader P. Chidambaram over his comment on oil, Jaitley said: “Another distinguished predecessor of mine had stated that the tax on oil should be cut by Rs 25 per liter. He never endeavored to do so himself. This is a “Trap” suggestion. It is intended to push India into an unmanageable debt — something which the UPA Government left as its legacy.”

He the economy and the markets rewarded structural reforms, fiscal prudence, and macroeconomic stability. “They punish fiscal indiscipline and irresponsibility. The transformation from UPA’s ‘policy paralysis’ to the NDA’s ‘fastest growing economy’ conclusively demonstrates this,” Jaitley said.