India

Dal Khalsa writes to European Union for Bhullar's release

Karontha tense, villagers spurn Rampal's followers

Elisa is feeling a bit better so last night we grabbed the train from Delhi over here to khajuraho. The train system ran pretty much on time and Im happy to report that India has been full of some excellent surprises.We were able to book sleepers these are where you have three people on each wall with six total in a fairly small space. I grabbed the highest bunk and fell into a light sleep tha

Not aware of any dossier on drug smuggler: Sukhbir Badal

On his first foreign tour as Chinese Premier, Li Keqiang is in Berlin today, where he met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Germany, China’s largest European trading partner, will be the premier’s only stop in an EU member nation on a tour that began in India last week. Deutsche Welle reports on the growing trade links between China and Germany, and on agreements signed in Berlin: Trade between Germany and China reached around 144 billion euros ($185.7 billion) in 2012, according to official German data. German motor vehicles and auto parts, machinery and electrical goods have a vast export market in China, the world’s second-largest economy. China, on the other hand, utilizes technology from Germany. More than half of its solar panel output is exported to Europe. During their encounter, Chinese and German representatives signed 17 declarations and agreements on bilateral trade projects and German-Chinese cultural ties. China’s Confusius Institute, which offers language courses, is to work closer with Germany’s 16 regional states or Länder. [Source] Li’s Berlin visit follows his criticism of intended EU probes and tariffs against Chinese solar and telecoms equipment. While in Switzerland yesterday, Li signed a free trade agreement that he lauded as a “powerful message to the rest of the world” against what he sees as a European trend towards protectionism. In a joint statement from Berlin today, Li and Merkel both affirmed a commitment to free trade. From Reuters: German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Sunday called for an end to a trade row between Europe and China over solar panels and wireless equipment, telling a joint news conference they were both for free trade. [...]Merkel said Germany would do everything it could to prevent the trade dispute from escalating to the point where the European Commission imposed import duties on Chinese panel makers. [...]Li, standing next to Merkel at the briefing that followed the signing of a range of business agreements, said a trade dispute between the EU and China would harm both sides and benefit neither. [Source] Bloomberg outlines the heightening trade tensions between China and the EU: The European Commission, the EU’s regulatory arm, expects to introduce levies on solar products by June 6 to punish Chinese manufacturers for selling in the 27-nation EU below cost, a practice known as dumping. The duties will be the preliminary outcome of an inquiry that is due to end in early December, by which time EU governments must decide whether to impose “definitive” anti-dumping duties for five years. The Alliance for Affordable Solar Energy, a Brussels-based lobby group, had urged Merkel to defuse the looming trade conflict and “actively push” for a mutual solution as tariffs would only hurt jobs and undermine solar energy growth. The Obama administration has also engaged in preliminary talks with the EU and China to settle the solar dispute, according to people familiar with the discussions. The EU is poised to penalize imports of Chinese solar products after Solarworld AG (SWV), Germany’s biggest panel maker, lodged an anti-dumping complaint with the commission. Import tariffs would hurt manufacturers such as China’s Trina Solar Ltd. (TSL) and raise costs to build power plants in Europe, the world’s largest market for solar products and one largely supplied by Chinese manufacturers. [Source] Amid this tense trade environment, AFP reports on the “special relationship” that may have prompted Li to choose Germany as his only EU stop, and on the two country’s interests in quickly resolving tensions: Germany is the only stop among the EU’s 27 member states for Li on the trip, in a sign that Beijing wants to continue their special relationship, analysts say. “From the German side, it’s all about trade. Germany sees China essentially as a large export market on which it’s in

Here are eight ways which seem to work very well for Sher Khan 1. 2 3 4 5 If you think this method works only in the hot summer months, please take a look at, these pictures 6 Somebody has moved from the top of the cushions to…. 7 8. Tagged: Cat Photographs, companion animals, Delhi NCR summer, Delhi Summer, My cat, Sher Khan, show me a cuter cat

India-based Exotel has been taking the country by storm with its offering of virtual phone numbers for SMEs, allowing small businesses to communicate with their customers more effectively. The company is now on the path towards making their service even more useful, by opening up their API to third-party developers so they can create and launch apps that Exotel users can take advantage of. Exotel was born out of budding entrepreneur Shivakumar Ganesan‘s need to be able to efficiently manage calls and text messages for his own business called Roopit, an online marketplace that connected buyers and sellers. At a local startup conference, he built and demoed a solution that logged information about how many calls he was receiving and where they were coming from, including the ones he missed. His idea has come a long way since then. Exotel currently offers virtual phone numbers to Indian businesses that they can use along with a layer of apps to suit their needs for communicating with customers — be it an IVR to connect callers with various departments, recording calls for training customer support, offering real-time delivery status info or reducing response time to inbound calls. Exotel’s clients can also tap into the service’s API to integrate it with their own CRMs, databases and other applications to streamline communication. In India, most companies that expand beyond a single desk face the problem of managing phone calls without breaking the bank — the most common solution is an EPABX system that allows an in-house operator to route calls to employees. Unfortunately these systems are clunky, expensive and aren’t of much help at anything besides patching calls through. At the other end of the spectrum, large businesses like major e-commerce companies and BPO/KPO call centres implement custom solutions from players like Avaya. But what if your business fits in somewhere in between? Exotel’s virtual numbers and accompanying apps allow small businesses to harness the power of managed telephony solutions at a nominal cost, and do so without the need of specialized IT personnel or hardware, thanks to the service’s simple web-based interface. The company is eyeing a massive market of over 2.8 million SMEs in the country that have an online presence, and has already signed up 400 clients from various sectors. A user inbox showing inbound and outbound calls within Exotel’s web app Using Exotel is as simple as it can get — simply sign up for a virtual number, create users and groups by entering their actual phone numbers and set up rules for how you want calls to be handled, routed and recorded. Exotel’s App Bazaar includes a number of ingenious ways to extend the functionality of the main service that are relevant locally, such as confirming user identity for Cash-on-Delivery orders for e-commerce businesses and allowing callers to subscribe to services and content by leaving a missed call on a specified number (a common practice among Indian mobile phone users). Exotel already allows its users to access its API and integrate the service with whatever programs they are using internally, but the big deal the company is excited about is that it has developed an SDK to allow 3rd-party developers to create apps for Exotel users to release and profit from in Exotel’s App Bazaar. Exotel’s App Bazaar lets users extend the functionality of their virtual numbers An example of such an app is one of Exotel’s own recent creations. Across the country, Indians use Justdial, a call—/SMS-/app-/web-accessible directory of local businesses (including restaurants, movie theaters, handymen, retail stores and more) to find whatever they’re looking for in their city, and SMEs subscribe to this service to get instant notifications when a caller asks for a location or phone number. The highest-bidding subscriber gets the notification soonest, but even then they sometimes lose out to c

The Board for Control of Cricket in India President N.Srinivasan has denied any knowedge of the involvement of his son in law,Gurunath Meiyappan in betting on IPL matches. Commenting on the arrest of Gurunath, he said whatever steps or action have been taken in case of anybody else, same will apply to him.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Sunday suspended Chennai Super Kings CEO Gurunath Meiyappan, who was arrested for alleged involvement in betting, pending an inquiry into his role in the IPL spot-fixing scandal.

Jim Fruchterman, founder of the NGO Benetech, writes in frustration from the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva, where the US Trade Representative is scuttling a treaty that will help blind people and people with other disabilities access copyrighted works, largely by making the (actually rather good) US laws the standard around the world. Rather than promoting the US approach -- which allows for the creation of works in accessible formats without permission -- the US Trade Rep and his friends from the MPAA are advocating for a treaty that is far more restrictive than US law, ensuring that the US itself could never sign it. In the process, they're killing a badly needed project to help people with disabilities around the world help each other to access creative works in formats that are adapted for their use. To give you an idea of the poison pills being advocated for by the MPAA, publishers, and now the U.S. trade delegation, I've outlined the most notable ones below: 1. Commercial Availability Requirements. This poison pill says that if a book is commercially available in an accessible format, it can't be provided by a library to a person with a disability. This is equivalent to walking into a public library and finding padlocks on all the books with a note that says: "If you want to read it, buy it." With a commercial availability requirement, libraries like Bookshare, with hundreds of thousands of accessible books available to people with print disabilities, would have to go through such complex bureaucracy that we couldn't afford to serve people outside the U.S. under a Treaty. The World Blind Union's lead negotiator pointed out how these provisions would, in practice, stop Bookshare from serving blind people in India. 2. The "Three-Step Test" Chokehold. The three-step test is part of international copyright law meant to allow countries to reflect their own values in their copyright exceptions. The United States' copyright exception for the blind is a shining example of something that complies with the three-step test. So what are the negotiators trying to do? They are working to alter the very meaning of the three-step test, changing the language of the test to the point of which it will put a chokehold on a country's ability to make broader exceptions to copyrights. Which leads to #3. 3. Conflicts with American Law. Simply put--the US won't sign it. Our trade delegation is now advocating for a Treaty that would require, if ratified, the U.S. Congress to gut our model copyright exception. Essentially, the Treaty would be too poisonous for the U.S. to swallow. It's clear to everyone that if we couldn't even get the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, which was pretty much identical to our own Americans with Disabilities Act, ratified by the Senate, a poisoned Treaty for the Blind has no chance of ratification. Poisoning the Treaty for the Blind