It was a good chance for Yuki Bhambri to improve his record at the Australian Open© AFP Yuki Bhambri struggled to rein in his unforced errors and played well only in patches as his third Australian Open appearance ended with a straight-set first-round defeat at the hands of a seasoned Marcos Baghdatis on Monday. The 25-year-old Indian qualifier ranked 122, had his chances against world number 103 Cypriot, but unforced errors cost him the match 6-7(4) 4-6 3-6 after two hours and nine minutes on court number eight. Bhambri is yet to win a round in the main draw of a…
Author: Loknath Das
On Ordinary Superstar, a track from her self-titled mini-album, Rina Sawayama imagines what it is like to be a famous vlogger, “so far removed from who you really are”. It is just one example of the way that the rising pop star, who has another track called Cyber Stockholm Syndrome, prods our perma-connected culture. True to her lyrics, when we meet for a morning coffee near her home in south London, she puts her phone into airplane mode straight away. “I’m very strict about that,” she says emphatically. “When I’m with someone, the phone is fucking off. There have been…
Once again, Mark Zuckerberg shook up the world last week when he announced Facebook will change its algorithm to promote more personal content rather than news. Soon after my inbox was flooded with headlines like: “Facebook Shares Fall”, “Facebook Is Changing” “Zuckerburg’s Net Worth Has Just Taken A 2.9 Billion Dollar Hit.” Since obsessing about Zuckerburg’s net worth has never yielded positive results for me, I instead called over our Social Media Strategist, Thomas Drew, to discuss the current social media environment. Our conclusion was this: What’s bad for businesses is good for Influencers. With new regulations on data (see GDPR) and less material…
Canadian planemaker Bombardier is ready to finance 80 percent of Iran’s order to buy 10 commercial aircrafts, Financial Tribune daily reported on Tuesday. Bombardier has obtained the license from the U.S. Treasury’s Office for Foreign Assets Control to sell 10 brand-new CRJ-900 NextGen regional jets to Iran and is ready to finance 80 percent of the order, the CEO and Chairman of Qeshm Investment and Development Company told the daily. “The remaining 20 percent would be funded by Iran’s Qeshm Free Area,” Reza Baqerinejad said without providing further details about the total value of the contract. The planemaker has submitted…
The new education secretary, Damian Hinds, is an unknown quantity for most teachers and parents, but we do know he is a grammar-educated former strategy consultant who would like to see an “elite” selective school in every town and reportedly said that only “mums” can really make a difference to children’s learning in the early years.The controversial removal of the comprehensive-educated Justine Greening and her replacement by Hinds makes sense only if you believe, as I do, that the prime minister is preparing for another election based on the same key commitments as last time. Yes, even though they didn’t go down hugely well with the electorate. It was…
Following last summer’s series of attacks on universities, the Commons Education Committee is looking at value for money in higher education, and the Treasury Committee has an enquiry on student loans. Although the current funding system has increased the number of young students entering higher education, including from disadvantaged backgrounds, which is very much to be welcomed, it has also led to a catastrophic fall in the number of mature and part-time students which is a source of grave concern. At the same time, politicians of all stripes are realising that the harsh cuts the further education sector has suffered – between 2009 and 2015 colleges dealt with…
When 32-year-old German teacher and academic book author Bahar Aslan took to Twitter last week to accuse authorities of not doing enough to investigate an alleged xenophobic murder potentially committed by police officers, she hardly assumed that in doing so she would soon be accused of having broken the law, too. After all, freedom of speech is enshrined in the German Constitution. But her tweet soon disappeared, and Aslan says Twitter later messaged her saying that she had violated Germany’s hate crime law. Aslan was not alone. She and hundreds of other affected social media users have voiced criticism and concerns about censorship over the controversial new…
One brave soul went ahead and distilled the United States’ new national pastime into a simple web game in which you slam dunk over President Donald Trump over and over again until you simply lose interest in the activity. Created by artist Jayson Musson, Dunk on Trump is about as simple as a game can get: you simply tap the space bar of your keyboard while a green-clad baller approaches the president, leaps up high, and scores two while posterizing Trump, who’s sent sideways offscreen. The experience isn’t a game so much as it is an interactive piece of art, and Musson says as…
PosiGen Inc. was close to finalizing terms on a $100 million financing deal. Then Congress passed President Donald Trump’s tax-reform plan. “We just lost $100 million in tax equity last week,” Thomas Neyhart, chief executive officer of the Louisiana rooftop solar installer, said in an interview. “Of course, they let us go because we’re relatively small.” He declined to identify the prospective U.S. investor. PosiGen is one of many companies that are suddenly facing a new financing reality because of the tax overhaul, especially clean-energy developers seeking tax-equity deals. At least $3 billion in potential deals are on hold for this…
The Jammu and Kashmir government lashed out on Saturday at Indian Army chief Bipin Rawat over his remarks about schools in the state, saying the ‘well-decorated officer’ should not give sermons on issues that are not in his domain. The state government’s retort was in response to Rawat’s statement that schools in the state were teaching two maps — India’s and Jammu and Kashmir’s — to the students, which he said was radicalising youth. Rawat’s statement was criticised on social media with many pointing out that students in all schools in the country are taught two maps, the country’s and the state’s.…