SuperstarSalman Khantoday joined the league of top Bollywood celebrities in supporting the striking FTII students who are facing rustication for opposing the appointment of TV actorGajendra Chauhanas the chairman of the institute.Salman said the "Mahabharat" star should pay heed to the students and resign from the post. The Bollywood heart-throb's support came a day after the institute warned the agitating students to end thestrikeor face "strong administrative action which may include rustication"."I think that he (Chauhan) should listen to the students ...Because the students have made our industry, worthy industry...," Salman told reporters here.ALSO READ:FTII notice to striking students; warns them of rusticationThe students have been agitating for last more than a month following the appointment of Chauhan, alleging that he lacks "vision and stature" to head the prestigious FTII.The issue has snowballed into a big controversy with several Bollywood celebrities batting for thestudents and asking the government to reconsider Chauhan's appointment.Well-known celebrities like Rishi Kapoor, son Ranbir Kapoor, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Anupam Kher, filmmakers Kundan Shah, Aziz Mirza, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Kiran Rao, Rajkummar Rao, Sudhir Mishra, Sayeed Mirza, Resul Pookutty and Piyush Mishra have voiced their reservation.Cinematographer Santhosh Sivan, actress Pallavi Joshi and National Award-winning filmmaker Jahnu Barua resigned as members ofthe FTII Society in support of the striking students.Meanwhile, FTII authorities yesterday served an ultimatum to the agitating students asking them to call off their 34-day strike or face the risk of rustication.Director D J Narian served a notice to the students, asking them to terminate the protest immediately or face "strong" administrative action which may include rustication"."All concerned students will themselves be responsible for any administrative action in this regard."You are therefore ordered to terminate the strikewith immediate effect and resume academic activities without any further delay, failing which the institution will be free to take strict administrative action," the notice said.
Thursday, July 16, 2015
Saturday, July 11, 2015
2-minute silence for 2-minute Maggi noodles! Top Twitter reactions
North to south: 5 states ban two-minute Maggi noodles in a day Four more states joined Delhi on Thursday to ban Maggi noodles sales and several others sent samples for tests amid mounting food safety fears, deepening a crisis for manufacturer Nestle India whoseshare price continued to tumble.Gujarat and Uttarakhand banned the product for 30 and 90 days, respectively, after samples showed the instant noodles contained dangerously high levels of lead and the chemical flavour enhancer, Monosodium Glutamate (MSG).Assam government too decided to ban the chicken flavoured Maggi for 30 days after finding presence of monosodium glutamate (MSG) in the noodle.Jammu and Kashmir announced a similar 30-day precautionary embargo but is yet toreceive results of a lab test. The Tamil Nadu government banned sale, storage and manufacturing of Maggi and three other brands of noodles for three months.“We can’t let someone to play with the health of the people, therefore the ban,” Uttarakhand health minister Surendra Singh Negi told HT.At least 10 other states have sent samplesof Maggi noodles for tests amid a widespread panic over food safety guidelines, a day after Delhi became the first state in the country to ban the product.A number of prominent retailers including the Future Group, which runs Big Bazaar, Walmart and Metro AG have also pulled the ubiquitous “two-minute” snack from their shelves.The flurry of bans hurt Nestle India with plunging sales of its flagship product sending share prices down by around 4%, following a nearly 10% slump on Wednesday. The company maintains its pd levels a
Friday, July 10, 2015
whatsapp the world's most popular...
WhatsApp is theworld’s most popular smartphone messaging app, lettingmore than 800 million peoplesend and receive texts on the cheap. But it’s evolving into something more.On Tuesday, the company, which is owned by Facebook, released a new version of the app that allows people with iPhones to not only text people, butactually talk to them. This built on a similar move the company made at the end of March, when it quietly released anAndroid update that did the same thing. And in the week following the addition of voice calling on Android, WhatsApp-related traffic increased about 5 percent on carrier networks, according to a study byAllot Communications—an Israeli company that helps manage wireless network traffic worldwide.That figure will likely get a lot bigger as WhatsApp shifts from being the world’s favorite messaging app to become a more wide-ranging—and bandwidth-intensive—communication tool.Others have offered internet voice calls on smartphones, most notably Skype andViber. But WhatsApp is different. So many people already use the app, and the company isintent on keeping it free (or nearly free). Though it has little traction here in the US, WhatsApp isenormously popular in parts of Europe and the developing world—areas where there’s a hunger for cheap communication. The result is an app that could bring inexpensive Internet calls to an audience of unprecedented size.Developing WorldThe rapidly evolving WhatsApp is but one face of the dramatic technological changes sweeping across the developing world. So many companies are working to bring affordable smartphones to the market, fromChina’s Xiaomito the Silicon Valley’sCyanogen, as many others, from China’s WeChat to Viber, push cheap communication services onto these devices.These technologies face the usual obstacles—and WhatsApp is no exception. Though the app is expected to reach a billion users by year’s end, its push into voice calls could alienate many wireless carriers. If you have free internet calls, after all, you don’t need to pay for cellular calls. Some carriers may fight the tool as a result, says Allot associate vice president Yaniv Sulkes.But the same could be said of messaging on WhatsApp. It too cuts into the carriers’ way of doing things. And yet, WhatsApp has thrived. It has so much traction in large part because it has cultivated partnerships with carriers, striking deals that bundle its app with lost-cost wireless services. According another Allot survey, about 37 percent of the carriers nowhave deals with WhatsApp or similarinexpensive Internet-based services—a sharp rise over the past few years. “More and more operators areadopting the strategy of ‘let’s partner with them’ rather than ‘let’s fight them,'” Sulkes says.In the meantime, Facebook is pushing forsomewhat similar arrangements, through its Internet.org initiative, that bundle limited Internet access with access to specific apps. Mark Zuckerberg and company haveencountered some opposition to these deals. But the combined might of Facebook and WhatsApp will be hard for carriers to resist.Video Next?As WhatsApp spreads, Sulkes believes, it will keep pushing into new services. After rolling out voice calling, he says, it may venture into video calling. The app already lets you send files, including videos, and other messaging apps, such as SnapChat, already have ventured into video calls.None of these tools—video calls, voice calls, file sharing—are new technologies. But not everyone has them. WhatsApp has the leverage tochange that. The app has grabbed hold of the developing world in rapidfashion, and now it can serve as a platform for bringing all sorts of modern communications to the far reaches of the globe. Yes, there’s another major obstacle to overcome: so much of the developing world doesn’t have the network infrastructure to accommodate these kinds of modern services. But Facebook is set tochange that, too.
source-http://www.wired.com/2015/04/facebooks-whatsapp-worlds-next-phone/
Sahid Kapoor's marriage
EXCLUSIVE: Shahid Kapoor, Mira Rajput’s reception card"When Shahid Kapoor came to select card designfor reception and he was clear about what he wanted," says Ravish Kapoor's office. While Shahid's wedding card was lovely and subtle, designed by Delhi based Ravish Kapoor, the invitation cards for reception, also designed by Ravish are in midnight blue colour. (Express Photo)
EXCLUSIVE: Shahid Kapoor, Mira Rajput’s reception card"When Shahid Kapoor came to select card designfor reception and he was clear about what he wanted," says Ravish Kapoor's office. While Shahid's wedding card was lovely and subtle, designed by Delhi based Ravish Kapoor, the invitation cards for reception, also designed by Ravish are in midnight blue colour. (Express Photo)
EXCLUSIVE: Shahid Kapoor, Mira Rajput’s reception card"When Shahid Kapoor came to select card designfor reception and he was clear about what he wanted," says Ravish Kapoor's office. While Shahid's wedding card was lovely and subtle, designed by Delhi based Ravish Kapoor, the invitation cards for reception, also designed by Ravish are in midnight blue colour. (Express Photo)
Google apologises for Narendra Modi 'top 10 criminals' search resultsIndian PM appears alongside gangsters, murderers, dictators and Justin Bieber in image searches for phraseNarendra Modi, India’s prime minister. Photograph: Adnan Abidi/ReutersAisha Gani@aishaganiThursday 4 June 201510.13 EDT06.18 EDTGooglehas apologised after photographs of the Indian prime minister started appearing in image search results for “top 10 criminals”.Narendra Modi, who took office last year, appears alongside notorious gangsters, murderers, dictators and Justin Bieber in the search results.Google said it was sorry “for any confusion or misunderstanding” and blamed the results on a unspecified British news site that had published an image of Modi with erroneous metadata, the often invisible information used by websites to describe photographs and other content.“These results trouble us and are not reflective of the opinions of Google,” it said. “Sometimes, the way images are described on the internet can yield surprising results to specific queries. We apologise for any confusion or misunderstanding this has caused. We’re continually working to improve our algorithms to prevent unexpected results like this.”Google image search for “top 10 criminals”.Photograph: Google Screengrab for the GuardianOther results for the search query “top 10 criminals” include George W Bush, Muammar Gaddafi and Osama bin Laden.Several well-known Indians come up in the search results, including Delhi’s chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal; Dawood Ibrahim, a fugitive underworld leader, andSanjay Dutt, a Bollywood actor serving a jail term in connection with deadly blasts in Mumbaiin 1993.Below the search box, the results page states: “These results don’t reflect Google’s opinion or our beliefs; our algorithms automatically matched the query to web pages with these images.”Google said multiple news articles with images of Modi reported his comments about politicians with criminal backgrounds. It said the articles did not linkModi to criminal activity but the words appeared in close proximity to his name.Last monthGoogle apologisedafter searches that included racist terms in connection with Barack Obama found the White House on Google Maps. In 2010 the company’s search auto-complete system suggested racist queries when typing the word “why”.Astudy by a Harvard professorfound that Google’s advertising system was 25% morelikely to bring up ads for criminal record checks when searching for names associated with African-Americans.
source-http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/04/google-narendra-modi-top-10-criminals-search-results
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