Monthly Archives: June 2017

‘Orphan Black’ Season 5 Premiere Recap: Life is Tough on and off the Island – BuddyTV (blog)

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Orphan Black's final trip gets off to a wild start, with most of the season 5 premiere taking place on the island of Doctor Moreau P.T. Westmorland. Sarah's injured but determined to find Cosima and a way off the island, while the geek monkey clone is introduced to Revival.

Elsewhere in "The Few Who Dare," Alison, Donnie and Helena are still camping out in a national park, but not for long. Art also gets a new partner and when their paths cross? Uh-oh.

Orphan Black Season 4 Finale Recap: Things Get Crazy and Bloody on the Island>>>

Welcome to the Island Where Stabbing is Part of Animal-on-Animal Violence

Picking up right where the season 4 finale left off, Sarah uses the 2% battery life left on her phone to call and update Felix. Ferdinand took Mrs. S. and Kira. Rachel took over from Susan. She's fine. (And she expects him to ignore the fact that he knows that last bit of information is a lie.) She's not leaving without Cosima, and fortunately, Ira tells her about the village near the boathouse.

After burning a photo of Kira to start a fire and using what she has to bandage her leg, Sarah is attacked by someone (something?!) growling, and she manages to fight him (it?) off before making her way across the island. However, when she finds the boathouse, it's under guard, and one of the men, Cooper, says that the "Old Man" made it clear they don't go home until "she" is back at Revival with "the other one."

Sarah hides after finding game strung up and a dead animal stabbed with a stick. (Cooper tells Amar that a bear killed the latter, even though it was stabbed.) When the men fail to find her before it gets dark, it's time for them to head back to Revival. As for the still missing Sarah? "Good luck to her." (Well, at least she's proven that she can take care of herself.)

Welcome to the Crazy Science of Revival

After waking up in a yurt, Cosima is introduced to Revival by one of its people, Mud. They've been "sustaining life off the grid since 1908" and are almost completely self-sufficient. People are chosen from everywhere and are there to genetically improve the human race. Everyone contributes and everyone benefits. Mud also informs Cosima that Rachel Duncan is in seclusion with the 170-year-old Westmorland and Susan is going to pull through. "P.T. and Susan go way back, but with family feuds, who's to say?" Mud remarks.

"We are all Revival's children. Chosen for a brighter future. Where our frail bodies become so much stronger. And death and aging haunt us no longer," Cosima reads in a book Charlotte was given.

Meanwhile, Delphine uses her work in the clinic to her advantage, hiding Cosima's treatment in a fridge. She also takes the file of a young patient from Afghanistan who came to Revival "for the fountain" before the Messenger retrieves her because "he" wants to see her. When she returns to Cosima, it's only long enough to tell her where her treatment is and about the patient and then say goodbye; she's going on a research trip to Sardinia.

"This is the heart of Neolution," Delphine explains. The entire island is a decades-long prolongevity study. If you want to genetically improve the human race, life extension is key. She leaves Cosima with the key to the clinic, a kiss and a reminder to "follow the crazy science." And those two were just reunited!

Cosima joins the rest of the village when Rachel emerges from her meeting with Westmorland to address them on his behalf. "Like you, I was selected. I know now his hand guided my entire life," she says. "I know Susan Duncan, my mother, once stood here as I am, appointed to move the future forward, and she did. She created me. It is time to be brave, to sacrifice. The fruits of nearly 200 years of Neolution science are now within our grasp, and we here shall drink from the fountain first."

That night, Cosima sneaks into the clinic, where she is reunited with Sarah. But they don't have time for much more than a quick update before the Messenger realizes Cosima's not in her yurt and the village begins looking for her. But Cosima's not leaving with Sarah. This place is the answer, she explains to her sister. She needs to stay for all of them because they'll never be free if she leaves.

Sarah reluctantly leaves, but that means Cosima's left to inject herself in the uterus with her treatment. That is, until Rachel finds her and offers to do it. "I'm as invested in this as you are," she says. "There's no need to be afraid anymore. He wants you to be part of this. You and I are going to cure us all."

Unfortunately, Sarah doesn't make it off the island. Cooper finds her in the boathouse, and just as she's succumbing to the tranquilizer he gives her, Rachel joins them. "It's a new day, Sarah," she tells her. Well, at least that's better than another knife to the leg.

Orphan Black: The 5 Best Reactions to Being Told the Clone Secret>>>

Life Isn't Much Better off the Island

Felix finds a bloody corkscrew at the safe house (pub fighting, classic Siobhan, so that's a good thing, he and Art determine), and he can't contact Mrs. S.' network, so they might be blown too. Art can only do so much since he doesn't even know who can be trusted at the station. And Ira can only be so much help because Susan apparently avoided the subject of Revival.

That's why Scott and Hell Wizard are trying to reach out to Mika, spamming video games with avatars named Sarah Manning. Since she contacted Kira through a game on a laptop at the safe house, Felix heads back there, only to encounter a Mr. Frontenac. Which faction is he from, Felix asks. "There's only one faction now," the man informs him. There's nothing for him to fear because Rachel has taken a special interest in his family, and Felix doesn't really have a choice but to go with him.

Art's life continues to get more complicated thanks to clone business. As his new partner, Detective Enger pulls over to the side of the road in the middle of nowhere and shows him a file on the Hendrixes. "No cracks," she comments while looking for a reaction from him. "Damn, you're a survivor."

But she bets that they know where "the psycho" (Helena) is, and though he claims to have never met her, she warns him, "you don't know how far we're willing to go to bring all these clones in," showing him a photo of his daughter and advising him to "embrace this new future ... 'cause it's going to be here real soon."

Though Felix and Art decide that the best thing for Alison, Donnie and Helena is to stay where they are, Alison begins packing as soon as she hears what's happening. Donnie uses a loon call to summon Helena back from her hunting, only for Helena to see someone in the woods near her and respond with what he thinks is an emergency loon call.

When he steps away to listen, two men approach Alison, grab her and put a black bag over her head from behind. When Donnie realizes this, he ... takes his suitcase and hurries away. I guess they didn't include "I will not run when my spouse is grabbed by the enemy" in their wedding vows?

Alison is brought in a van to Art and Enger, and Enger questions her as to Helena and Donnie's whereabouts. She was out murdering God's creature, and he abandoned her, the clone says. Supposedly, Neolution wants a truce and for them to all come in, and Enger warns Alison that while she can't hurt a single hair on a single clone head, the same is not true when it comes to Art. She puts a gun to his head, but Alison insists she has no idea where Helena is. Enger believes her. It's time to take her home.

Just as Donnie reaches the car they've hidden and puts his suitcase inside, a man comes up behind him with a gun. "Oh, Jesus" is all Donnie says when Helena shows up because he obviously knows what she's going to do. He even helps out a bit, but after the guy is down, they realize there's a stick in Helena's stomach. Time to get her to the hospital ASAP and hope her babies are okay.

Do you think Cosima made the right decision to stay at Revival? Should Donnie have done something to help Alison? Are you worried about Helena's babies?

Orphan Black season 5 airs Saturdays at 10/9c on BBC America. Want more news? Like our Orphan Black Facebook page.

(Image courtesy of BBC America)

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Iran Swiftly Moving Towards a Knowledge-Based Economy Part 3 – TechRasa (press release) (blog)

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In the two previous articles on the UNCTAD report on Irans standing in science, technology and innovation we summarized the main findings of the report regarding Irans human resource base and infrastructure. Both of which have developed rapidly and have played and will continue to play a significant role in the transition towards a knowledge-based economy. In the final article we will present a general image of Irans STI landscape and discuss actions which Iran can take to further accelerate the transition.

Read the previous articles: Part 1 Part 2

Irans STI policy since 1990 has gone through three stages of change. The first wave of STI policy in Iran was aimed at developing higher education and scientific publications, the implication of which was the development of the significant human resource base discussed in the first part of our report. From the year 2000 came the second wave of STI policy, which intended to develop research and emerging technologies, resulting in increased number of scientific publications and endeavors in nano- and bio-technologies. From 2010, transition towards innovation and a knowledge-based economy has gained pace. The outcome of the third wave today has been the increase in KBFs, S&T parks, VCs and other sources of funding, and the development of laws to support the transition.

The UNCTAD report in 2005 indicated that, at the time, the mostly state-owned economy created very low competitive pressure and very few incentives for technological upgrading and innovation. Before 2005 the private sector accounted for an only 15% share of the value added in GDP and policies were mainly focused on production, rather than innovation.

In an effort to devise policies that intend to support KBFs, Irans government established the Vice Presidency for S&T in 2007. The establishment of this institution along with its 16 technology councils, and the Innovation and Prosperity Fund in 2011, were among the major institutional and structural changes made to assist the growth of KBFs. Other strategies were also used to achieve S&T goals; creating a system to monitor and evaluate institutions of higher education and S&T, increasing the ratio of gross expenditure on R&D by 0.5% every year and including the indicators of S&T, such as the revenue generated from exporting, in government planning.

While government and companies have increased R&D investments, the importance of the structure and type of R&D investments should also be taken into account. The UNCTAD report found that 64% of the R&D investments is associated with buying new equipment and machinery, whereas, collaborative R&D remains largely overlooked. Other forms of R&D investments such as collaboration with foreign companies and acquisition of external knowledge should have a larger share of R&D investments, especially at a time when political tensions have decreased and sanctions have, at least partly, been lifted. The ratio of R&D investment to sales is highest among ICT firms and remains under 0.5% in the food industry and agriculture.

To stimulate knowledge-based economic growth Iran should focus on attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). For many years FDI in Iran remained below 0.5% of the GDP and is still estimated at below 1% of the GDP, compared to the average 2.6% for all developing economies. Most of the FDI is focused on the oil and gas sector and a large proportion is focused on maintaining existing businesses but not developing new leading businesses, export-oriented products or collaborating with existing firms in R&D and innovation. FDI is of great importance in economic growth, however, the government should develop incentives and policies to direct a significant share of FDI to innovation and R&D in high-tech industries. FDI should become means to accessing not only capital, but new technology and know-how.

Analyzing the input and output of STI indicators reveals a significant gap between the level of human resource and infrastructure development, and their contribution to an innovation and knowledge-based economy (high-tech exports account for less than 1% of Irans exports). To achieve this goal, policy making in Iran should be aimed at strengthening the private sector, creating a dynamic ecosystem for innovation in the business sector, creating stronger demand for innovative skills and knowledge-intensive activities in mature industries that are currently using mainly mid-level technologies, and increasing private sector investment in design, engineering, R&D and innovation.

Iranian businesses, startups and entrepreneurs are now extremely hopeful about their future. The macroeconomic context has stabilized significantly. Compared to before 2012, the entrepreneurial culture is spreading and the government has realized the importance of KBFs and has started to take action to enhance the business environment. All that s points to a brighter future for KBFs and a diversified economy less dependent on oil for Iran.

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Iran Swiftly Moving Towards a Knowledge-Based Economy Part 3 - TechRasa (press release) (blog)

In times of automation, job creation biggest challenge: ET India Leadership Council – Economic Times

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MUMBAI: Job creation is the number one challenge for India at a time when digitisation and automation are disrupting traditional roles across all sectors, panellists at the ET India Leadership Council said. The India Leadership council is an exclusive peer group platform working towards bringing change in the country's business environment.

Mahindra Group chairman Anand Mahindra, ICICI Bank MD Chanda Kochhar, Marico chairman Harsh Mariwala, HDFC Bank MD Aditya Puri, YES Bank MD Rana Kapoor, Amazon India country manager Amit Agarwal and BCG Asia Pacific chairman Janmejaya Sinha held the inaugural meeting of the ET India Leadership Council. After the closed-door meeting, Mariwala, Kapoor, Agarwal and Sinha participated in a panel discussion, which focused on the challenges in job creation for India in the next few years.

Speaking at the inauguration, Times Group MD Vineet Jain said, "I am confident that ILC holds the potential to knit the business fraternity together and create 'Change' that will be impactful at multiple levels. Together, we will also enlist the brightest minds, thought leaders, senior academicians and visionaries, as we seek to create the next wave of leaders by encouraging conversations around macro issues like capacity building, innovation and digitisation."

One very real challenge is disruption due to automation which will have to be dealt with by finding new opportunities in areas like design, innovation and creativity, they suggested. Digitisation has already replaced many manual jobs and will continue to do so but there are also new avenues opening up where a different set of skills will be required, the panel felt.

Harsh Mariwala, Rana Kapoor, Amit Agarwal, Janmejaya Sinha at panel discussion.

For instance, the banking sector has already seen an impact due to automation, which is forcing it to change the way bankers work.

"Today the alliances-relationshiptechnology model of a business has been disturbed. We will have to create an economy led by design, innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship (DICE) to bring about a transformation," Rana Kapoor said.

Besides banking, another sector grappling with change led by automation is information technology (IT). Falling margins, a changing political environment and automation are forcing these companies to innovate or shed jobs. Marico chariman Harsh Mariwala said flexible labour policies are crucial if companies are to continue to invest. "Labour reform is a state subject.

But in spite of many states being ruled by the NDA government, we have not seen labour reforms taking place in states. There is clearly a hesitation in bringing about radical reforms. What the industry needs now is flexibility in employment so that in case of a downturn, the workforce can be reduced. Otherwise, it tempts you to invest in capital and equipment," Mariwala said.

However, BCG Asia Pacific chairman Janmejaya Sinha said flexibility will prevail if it is rewarded accordingly. "It is important that flexibility in employment is rewarded, in which the flexible workers are taken care of, given appropriate health insurance etc, so it is not a win-loss situation for people engaging in flexible ways of employment and it is a fair and just process," he said.

Amazon country manager Amit Agarwal who has recently been promoted to the position of global vice-president, however, said internet has created a unique method of job creation in non-linear ways.

"Amazon has created close to 1,50,000 jobs in India in the last four years and that has happened because of non-linearity. It was not because of a law that enabled us to do this. It happened because internet, when left barrier-free, lets people innovate," Agarwal said defending the ecommerce sector which he said should not be judged so early for its potential.

There are some areas somewhat immune to effects of automation, the panel felt. "There are three sectors, namely tourism, housing and agriculture and associated sectors, that will not be affected either by automation or lack of labour reforms," Mariwala said.

The government with its various skilling programmes is trying to bridge the gap between eligibility and employability. The panel felt that while some good ideas have been developed on this front, implement is lagging ideation, and regulation needs to be closely looked at in this area.

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In times of automation, job creation biggest challenge: ET India Leadership Council - Economic Times

ISG Research: Automation and AI Use to Triple by 2019 – PR Newswire (press release)

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Overall investment in automation technologies including robotic process automation (RPA), autonomics, virtual customer service agents and personal assistants, natural language processing and machine learning is expected to double in the next two years, the survey finds, as enterprises look to harness technologies that have the flexibility to solve more than one business problem.

"Automation and artificial intelligence are top of mind for business executives and service providers alike and with good reason," said Todd Lavieri, partner and president of ISG Americas. "Robotic process automation, autonomic systems and cognitive agents are making employees more productive by taking over routine, process-oriented tasks. At the same time, data scientists are using machine learning to find patterns and make predictions on vast troves of structured and unstructured data. These technologies, taken together, promise to usher in the next wave of enterprise growth and profitability."

A Strategic Imperative

Some 75 percent of respondents indicate automation and AI will be critical to their ability to deliver products and services competitively, and two-thirds say such technologies will be required to fend off competition from digital disruptors. An equal number say cognitive systems will be central to strategic decision-making.

From a functional perspective, nearly 70 percent say information technology will be most impacted by automation and AI specifically by autonomics in the next two years. Nearly 60 percent believe autonomics will double IT productivity by 2020.

Other key areas of impact are customer care, where more than 60 percent say virtual agents and chatbots will improve customer experience by 2020, and finance and accounting, where more than 50 percent say RPA will automate more than half of F&A processes in the same time frame.

Automation and AI also will force enterprises to completely reimagine their talent acquisition and retention strategies, more than 60 percent of respondents say, particularly for such hard-to-obtain-and-retain skills as software development and data science.

Disruptive to Outsourcing

More than 60 percent believe automation and AI will decrease the need to outsource IT and business-support functions, and more than half say it will enable them to repatriate work now performed offshore.

Among enterprise buyers, 54 percent say they expect providers will need to lower their costs by 25 percent or more as a result of automation and AI, and an even greater number 65 percent say such technologies will reduce the cost to manage their service provider relationships significantly.

Nearly half of enterprise buyers believe service providers are avoiding automation and AI to preserve short-term revenue. Yet, 54 percent say they prefer to buy the business outcomes of automation and AI (cost avoidance, productivity, quality, etc.) from a service provider rather than buy automation and AI software themselves.

"As ITO and BPO buyers increasingly look to automate processes before they outsource them, the need for traditional tower-based outsourcing services will wane as will the need to have a significant number of delivery resources offshore," said Stanton Jones, director and principal analyst at ISG Research, and a co-author of the survey research report. "Buyers also are becoming savvier about the use of automation and are realizing their managed services providers are not always passing savings back to them as services become more automated."

More than 80 percent of respondents say the most important outcomes from enterprise automation and AI are avoiding long-term costs (such as adding new hires), boosting productivity and improving customer experience. The vast majority do not view automation and AI as a way to cut jobs, with nearly 70 percent saying such technologies are focused on automating tasks, not entire roles. Nearly three-quarters feel automation and AI will free up employees to work on more value-added activities.

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About the ISG Automation and AI Survey

The ISG Automation and AI Survey asked 532 IT and business leaders in April 2017 about their current and planned adoption of automation and AI solutions, the reasons behind their adoption, their success to date and how such technologies would impact their talent acquisition and retention strategies both internally and through service providers.

About ISG

ISG (Information Services Group) (NASDAQ: III) is a leading global technology research and advisory firm. A trusted business partner to more than 700 clients, including 75 of the top 100 enterprises in the world, ISG is committed to helping corporations, public sector organizations, and service and technology providers achieve operational excellence and faster growth. The firm specializes in digital transformation services, including automation, cloud and data analytics; sourcing advisory; managed governance and risk services; network carrier services; technology strategy and operations design; change management; market intelligence and technology research and analysis. Founded in 2006, and based in Stamford, Conn., ISG employs more than 1,300 professionals operating in more than 20 countriesa global team known for its innovative thinking, market influence, deep industry and technology expertise, and world-class research and analytical capabilities based on the industry's most comprehensive marketplace data. For more information, visit http://www.isg-one.com.

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/isg-research-automation-and-ai-use-to-triple-by-2019-300471665.html

SOURCE Information Services Group, Inc.

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ISG Research: Automation and AI Use to Triple by 2019 - PR Newswire (press release)

Why Automation Is the Key to Achieving Drop Shipping Success – Tech.Co

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Thanks to the development of the world wide web, drop shipping has flourished, becoming a financially sustainable industry that successfully meets consumer needs while maintaining a cost-effective business model.

But the nature of drop shipping is such that there are a few things you have to keep in mind for it to be effective. For one, companies will take a cut so you have to sell something that customers are willing to pay high value for. Youll also have to develop some sort of niche in order to attract customers to your business, since youre not selling your own products but essentially consolidating already available products. And finally, you have to make sure you can maximize your sales as quickly as possible, because youre on the internet and growth is the key to survival.

But if you can do that, you can develop a business that is significantly more efficient at moving products, selling money and meeting customer needs than the traditional store model of anticipating inventory need and hoping you dont get it wrong, as well as dealing with overhead costs and protecting your goods.

Drop shipping only works when you can maintain the benefit customers have come to expect always having unique and available inventory you can sell them. This means you have to develop as many sellers as you can, you have to ensure you have inventory available at all times and you always have to be aware of exactly what inventory is available.

All of this data is easily automated nowadays, making it incredibly easy for you to track what you have or switch to a different provider if you run out of a product automatically. This decreases the frequency with which customers see a product is out of stock and ensures they come to rely on your website for consistency and availability.

By choosing to automate features like selecting vendors, updating inventory and processing orders, you do two things: you make your drop shipping business run far more efficiently, and you save yourself the cost of paying someone to do it. These tasks can traditionally take several hours of manpower, which can add up if you have an employee, or eat up significant parts of your day if youre a busy entrepreneur. You can keep several thousand dollars more a year in your pocket and in your business by automating as much as possible.

Simplify your business so you can focus on whats important: making connections with new vendors and growing your customer base through marketing and advertising.

Finally, the most compelling reason to automate your drop shipping? Because all your most successful competitors are doing it. EBay and other major retailers have long since moved into this method and smaller retailers are doing it too. AI is one of the most popular developments that companies can take advantage of, and developments in AI including machine learning have enabled programmers to automate increasingly complex tasks with code. A company in the modern era must take advantage of this development in order to stay in the game.

Several companies are now available that offer automation services for drop shipping businesses, including Spark Shipping, Dropship Commerce and Etail Solutions. Any of these companies is likely to fit your needs, but you can research to see which one is most suited to your particular industry, niche or business size.

Drop shipping is the new era of online business retail. And automated drop shipping is the streamlined, most efficient version of it available. Catch up to the developing trends of AI by implementing this into your business. Improve your productivity, your growth capacity and your bottom line all at once.

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Why Automation Is the Key to Achieving Drop Shipping Success - Tech.Co

Automation at scale is driving transformative change across insurance – Automotive World (press release)

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While the promise of automationhas been around for years, the pace and the extent of its adoption in the workplace has significantly picked up over the past 12 months. For an industry that barely earns its cost of equity, automation at scale represents a massive competitive advantage for businesses that can get it right.

McKinsey recently moderated a panel discussion on automation at scale in insurance. The panel consisted of Alex Bentley (director of Corporate Development, Blue Prism), Edwin Van Bommel (chief cognitive officer, IPsoft), Eric Musser (managing director, Robotics and Workforce Intelligence, Pega) and Max Yankelevich (CEO and chief architect, WorkFusion).

Edited excerpts from that conversation follow:

Max Yankelevich:Fundamental breakthroughs in quantum computing have already happened, but were now seeing them cross into the mainstream. Machine learning is a good example. Most insurers use people to handle first notice of loss, basic investigation, and data entry. Machines monitoring humans as they perform their computerized tasks can actually develop a cognitive understanding of how to process documents, automating 50 to100 percent of this work in some instances. The impact is very real.

Eric Musser:Were all familiar with machine-learning engines on websites like Amazon, which regularly serve up targeted offers to customers. Were now taking that model into insurance back offices for policy-application review and approval processes, for example. People often make different decisions with similar data, and this inconsistency points to an opportunity. In addition, the average user in the back office interacts with many different types of technology to get their job done, and this naturally raises the notion of using robotics to integrate and automate these systems. We are now exploring how to automatically create rules, centralize them, and make them available to all applications across the organization.

Alex Bentley:We now enjoy the capabilities that allow you to unlock the potential from these automation technologies. Because the execution platform is far more agile and flexible, insurers can better manage constant changes in a complex legacy environment. Cost pressure is increasing, and insurers need to manage the cost to serve.

Organizations that adopt automation are able to reduce the cost to serve, be more responsive to the market, and address growth areas more effectively. So I think there will be winners and losers in that respect. Those organizations that embrace automation can drive tremendous step changes in their productivity, while those who do not will be left behind. So while its not Netflix versus Blockbuster, I think anybody too late to the party will be significantly disadvantaged.

Max Yankelevich:In addition to improving operational efficiency and regulatory compliance, we often forget that automation can drive higher morale within your workforce, because youre freeing people up to perform higher-value activities instead of mundane tasks. A lot of employees mindshare and budgets can be invested in new products, services, and new ways of serving customers. Additionally, customer satisfaction improves, because we can accelerate delivery to our customers and improve quality through the consistency of answers and customer experience.

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Automation at scale is driving transformative change across insurance - Automotive World (press release)

Genpact Launches AI-based Drug Safety Automation Program – Pharmaceutical Processing

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Genpact launches an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based solution to usher in a new era of drug safety automation.

Genpact's Pharmacovigilance Artificial Intelligence (PVAI) will be the life sciences industry's first fully-integrated, end-to-end adverse event (AE) processing solution, leveraging intelligent automation to not only reduce the effort of processing adverse events, but also to enable an AI-driven level of real-time predictive analytics and actionable insight not previously possible.

As life sciences companies face escalating AE volumes for their products and increasing pressure to improve quality and compliance while reducing costs, they are looking for breakthrough solutions to help them transform their pharmacovigilance operations.

Genpact's PVAI offering brings together and integrates optical character recognition, robotic process automation, natural language processing, and machine learning technologies to automatically extract and code AE data from unstructured and semi-structured source documentseliminating manual workflow, saving pharmaceutical companies significant time and resources, and helping to establish a scalable PV operating model. The solution continuously builds predictive insights as more and more AE goes through it over time.

"Industry leaders have stated that the current manually-intensive approach to AE processing is simply not sustainable and needs an innovative approach. Through robust pilot testing with clients, our new PVAI solution has proven that the vast majority of case processing can be successfully automated in a fraction of the time and cost,"said Balkrishan 'BK' Kalra, senior vice president and business leader, Consumer Goods, Retail, Life Sciences and Healthcare, Genpact. "We continue to invest in PVAI and are excited to bring this holistic, unique and market-leading, AI-driven digital proposition to the industry."

As part of its investments in PVAI, Genpact recently acquired the assets and team of November Research Group (NRG), aBerkeley, CA-basedprovider of product vigilance software. The transaction added NRG's domain expertise and fully-featured pharmacovigilance Software-as-a-Service, contributing to PVAI's approach to automating drug safety operations in the life sciences industry. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Genpact currently serves global life sciences companies, helping pharmaceutical and medical devices companies pursue growth, achieve cost reduction, increase speed to market, and improve regulatory compliance by providinga range of digital solutions, analytics services, and business process transformation expertise. Genpact has alife sciencesregulatory servicesbusiness stemming from its acquisition of Pharmalink in 2014.

(Source: PR Newswire)

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Genpact Launches AI-based Drug Safety Automation Program - Pharmaceutical Processing

The scout system at Oxford must be scrapped – Cherwell Online

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The Fay School is an independent, coeducational boarding school located near Boston, Massachusetts. It enrols students between grades seven to nine in a boarding program, that is, the British equivalent of years eight to ten. Among other things, Fay students are expected at that age (eleven through 14 years old) to take care of their own laundry, clean their own rooms, and dispose of their own trash, as they board year long as the school.

Who knew, that expecting a 12 year old to be able to manage a cordless handheld vacuum cleaner to suck up spilt ramen powder could be such an easy request? Apparently, Oxfords colleges thinks much less of us, and that its students, the supposed best and brightest in all of Britain, if not the world, are less competent at cleaning up their crisp crumbs and bread dust than prepubescent children.

As we know, each college has their own system of housekeepers, known colloquially as scouts. Scouts perform a variety of housekeeping duties for each individual students room typically during morning hours. Scouts also clean and maintain a number of communal living areas, such as kitchens, bathrooms, and showers. The system has existed nearly as long as Oxford has, and well into the 60s and 70s, scouts were still openly referred to as servants, bringing bottles of milk to the doors of students.

To be fair, while Fay might not get parents rolling in to complain of the dreadful living conditions that their students might have to live in, its not entirely unimaginable to picture Oxford mothers railing one out at a college principal for daring to ask their child, god forbid, unclogs their own sink, is it? That being said, this comparison is wholly unnecessary. If we have reduced ourselves to asking each other to perform basic duties such as taking care of ourselves, the same way children half our size and age do, which apparently we have, we should actively recognise that there is something seriously wrong with the way the university is shaping our behaviour and expectations.

The claim, furthermore, that scouts fill a necessary role, is ludicrous. Imagine any other world-renowned institution telling its students that they need to hire cohorts upon cohorts of cleaners to vacuum their floors them and scrub their windows to a shine. They would be laughed at, as Oxford is. A concept straight out of Downtown Abbey, it is, and should be, considered an ancient practice. The practice continues, regrettably so, at Cambridge University, and Durham University, where they are otherwise known as bedders. Outside of these three universities, there is no equivalent at any other major educational institution in the entire world.

Why that is not concerning to the main body of administrators and students at Oxford, I will never understand. The former equivalent system at Trinity College Dublin, where scouts were known as skips, was abandoned in the 70s, when British civilisation also typically abandoned other archaic practices such as restricting university admission to men only. Apparently this idea of progress has been lost on Oxford. The idea that adults, or anyone over a reasonable age, cannot be expected to clean after themselves, and instead, require other grown adults to clean after them, in spaces as small as college rooms, is utterly absurd.

The entire system, thus, reeks of the same problems of potential for human trafficking and wage slavery that the entire housekeeper labour supply industry stinks of. In fact, some members of the administration at Oxford have clearly had the time to think it through and realise the very real grey area that exists. The Oxford University Council Secretariat has its own dedicated page towards compliance issues regarding Modern Slavery in its supply chains, for both labour and material goods. Now thats a term that you wont find, or need to find, in every other universitys websites, no matter how much you Google. It is a well known fact that at many colleges in Cambridge, nearly half of the bedders are Polish.

Related Is Mays snap election in the national interest or political opportunism?

The system of scouts also removes any sense of privacy, and automatically places students and scouts on a hostile ground over this effect. As if the smattering of CCTV cameras that spy on every nook and cranny of your college were not enough, the scout system is the icing on the cake that reminds you that the college you live in will never truly be your home. We are forced to give daily access to our rooms. The positive spin is typically presented as the requirement for scouts and students to develop a trusting relationship. I suppose that is the best way of phrasing the concept of being forced to agree to a system in which the posessions of students, both valuable and not valuable, are constantly accessible. This, along with the fact that many days of the week, scouts often have nothing to do, combine to create a naturally toxic relationship between scouts and students.

This occurs especially potently when scouts have to deal with the vibrant community of the spoiltthey face mockery and judgment from students who are faced with the existential conundrum of wanting everything done for them, but at the same time, naturally desiring privacy over their baubles, and so the cooking pot of rage boils. Reports of students unleashing verbal tirades on scouts, who do not speak English as a first language and thus dont even understand what is being said, are not unheard of. Fortunately, we can see colleges such as Jesus addressing the issue at hand properly, which have been reported in the past to force scouts to adopt Anglicised names, and colleges such as Christ Church who have been reported to force their scouts to learn English. In this manner, these two wonderful colleges have ensured that the scouts can receive a good scolding from entitled students and understand it too!

If all of the above were not concerning enough, what we should be most shocked at is that many scouts are not even paid a living wage. The Oxford Living Wage, separated from the national living wage costs because of the ridiculously high costs of living in Oxford, is 8.93 per hour, below the London living wage of 9.75 per hour. Despite this having been made clear by the Oxford City Council numerous times over the past and visibly declared on their online platforms, Oxford continues to pay its scouts below the Oxford Living Wage. More than 2,000 employers in Oxfordshire have signed up to the living wage scheme, and yet, according to vacancies advertised online, most colleges continue to pay their scouts below said wage. Hertford, which I regret to mention, because I suspect that they pay their scouts above the par in comparison to most other colleges, pay their scouts 8.45 an hour. It is reported that numerous other colleges continue to pay their scouts 7.85 an hour.

Harvard students famously campaigned for living wages for their own staff between 1998 and 2002. This past autumn, 750 workers went on strike, with the support of numerous student groups, to protest minimum wages that were not considered enough to afford a decent living, i.e. below the living wage. As a result, numerous dining halls closed all over Harvard, with the majority of the students on campus standing in solidarity with the workers, until the protest ended all dining halls return to normal operation. Unfortunately, I have the disappointment in believing that the same protest could never happen at Oxford, understandably so, as students study in one of the shortest year long undergraduate programmes ever, with tiny eight week terms.

Related The OxStew: PM criticises OUSU's financial strategy

The existence of terrible treatment outside of already terrible wages is no conspiracy. In a Cherwell investigation two years ago, incidents reported from scouts all over Oxford including instances of being forced to work from nine to 11 overtime with no compensation or apology, contracts that prevent scouts from having a lunch break, scouts forced to wear makeup and skirts, and persistent harassment from managers. Scouts themselves also lack the capacity to bargain or even remotely protest. The scouts at Oxford certainly have not unionised, and I suspect that they fully lack the ability to do so.

Reports at Jesus College of the harassment of scouts and the complete denial and gaslighting of scout concerns goes towards this belief. It is also well understood that scouts often refrain from discussing their wages or their working conditions in fear of losing their job, a state that no labourer should have to experience. Furthermore, while some scouts might be somewhat satisfied with their jobs and colleges, we should remember that is no prerequisite for the acceptance of the conditions and treatment of others, or for the existence of the system in general.

Finally, it is listed as a final resort, often by college principals themselves who relish in receiving housekeeping in their own college accommodations to free up time for their exhausting duties as revered heads of colleges of Oxford, that the colleges need tending to over the holidays. It is heavily ironic that college principals deliver platitudinous sermon after sermon about how learning takes precedence above all at that their colleges are first and foremost institutions of learning. If I were a wanderer with no prior knowledge of the colleges, I would not be able to tell the difference between most colleges at Oxford, and vaguely colonial hotels.

Then again, when colleges become displayed on TripAdvisor and get five star ratings for services, I begin to question myself if I am in a college that I am supposed to call my home, or a Hilton stuffed with tutors and an only somewhat meaningful history. How different really, are term stays from eight-week bookings at the Marriot?

The system of scouts makes a laughingstock out of the University of Oxford and each of its individual colleges. I would say that it contributes to the outsider picture of Oxford students as posh spoilt twats that puts so many off even bothering to apply, but how far would that picture really be from reality? How the system remains to the present day confuses me because I thought that the university had moved past inflting the egos of the talcum-powdered brats that genuinely believe that less time spent scrubbing the mirror clean of last nights spilt Dom Perignon means more time reading Isaiah Berlin and Sartre. Apparently, this is not the case. Get a grip, Oxford.

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The scout system at Oxford must be scrapped - Cherwell Online

Exeter car wash owner in court accused of posing modern slavery risk – Devon Live

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The manager of two car washes in Exeter has appeared in court accused of posing an exploitation risk to his Romanian workforce.

Luan Sinanaj, 44, of Harrington Road, Pinhoe, has been made the subject of an interim slavery and trafficking risk order.

It follows concerns about the poor pay and living conditions of Romanian workers at car washes, run by Mr Sinanaj and his cousin, in Honiton Road and Main Road in Pinhoe.

Mr Sinanaj appeared before magistrates in Exeter on Monday. The case is one of only a handful of its type ever prosecuted in the country.

Prosecutor Emmi Wilson said Devon and Cornwall Police were bringing the application for a risk order under the Modern Slavery Act 2015.

Mr Sinanaj's cousin, Vladimir Veliaj, has already been made the subject of a full order preventing him from being involved in the transport of workers from within and outside the UK.

Mr Wilson said Mr Sinanaj was responsible for 'arranging for workers to come over to Exeter from Romania', to work at the two car washes which he ran with Mr Veliaj.

They were promised a good wage but were living in poor conditions and not paid much at all," she said.

Mr Sinanaj said he needed more time to get his lawyers involved and the case was adjourned.

Ms Wilson asked magistrates to impose an interim order until a full hearing could take place.

The test today is whether it would be just to make an order," said Mr Wilson.

The police say it is necessary to protect the public from these sorts of activities continuing in the interim."

READ MORE: 'Incompetent burglar' jailed after raiding bride-to-be's Exeter...

Magistrates agreed the interim order was needed.

An application for a full five-year risk order will be made on July 20. Mr Sinanaj is expected to oppose the application by police when he reappears.

Slavery and trafficking risk orders were introduced in the Modern Slavery Act 2015.

The risk order restricts the activity of people who have not been convicted of a modern slavery offence but who pose a risk of committing any such offence.

The recent prosecution of Mr Veliaj was the first of its type in Devon, Cornwall and Dorset.

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Exeter car wash owner in court accused of posing modern slavery risk - Devon Live

The making of the Muslim world – New Statesman

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The Turkish nation, Mehmed Ziya Gkalp wrote, belongs to the Ural-Altai [language] group of peoples, to the Islamic umma, and to Western internationalism. Gkalp was an early-20th-century sociologist, writer, poet and political activist whose work was influential in shaping the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatrk, the main figure in the founding of modern Turkey. What is striking about Gkalps argument is that it stitches together three elements that today seem to many to be irreconcilable. Islam and Western internationalism, in particular, are often seen as occupying opposite sides in a clash of civilisations.

This sense of a fundamental separation between Islam and the West has been exacerbated by the rise of Islamism and the emergence of Islamic State. Some Muslims are attracted to IS because of a deep loathing for the West. Many in the West regard that support as evidence for the incompatibility of Western and Islamic values. Christopher de Bellaigues The Islamic Enlightenment and Cemil Aydins The Idea of the Muslim World, in very different ways, try to explain the historical shifts that have made what once seemed necessary and rational now appear impossible and self-deluding.

The starting point of de Bellaigues luminous work is the oft-made claim that Islam needs its Enlightenment. The author argues, on the contrary, that for the past two centuries, Islam has been going through a pained yet exhilarating transformation a Reformation, an Enlightenment and an Industrial Revolution all at once. What is distinctive about the Islamic world today, he writes, is that it is under the heel of acounter-Enlightenment, a development visible in particular through the emergence of Islamism, of which Islamic State the group that has claimed responsibility for terror attacks in Europe, including the latest atrocities in London and Manchester is the most grotesque expression.

The Islamic Enlightenment explores the complex relationship between Muslim-majority countries and modernity, a relationship mediated largely through its relationship with Europe, and more generally the West. De Bellaigue begins in three of the great cities of the Muslim world Cairo, Istanbul and Tehran and guides us through the transformation of their intellectual, political and social worlds in the 19th century. He is a wonderful narrator, and these chapters burst with colour and detail.

Each city and nation confronted modernity and the West in distinctive ways. However, in all cases, de Bellaigue observes, The world of Islam was only ready to shed its superiority complex once its supports were revealed to be rotten. In Egypt, that rottenness was laid bare by Napoleons invasion of 1798. In the shadow of the Pyramids, as the French destroyed the Egyptian forces, the fiction of Christian deference to Muslim superiority fell away.

Napoleon brought to Egypt not only soldiers but scholars, too. In Cairo he set up the Institute of Egypt, which became the meeting point for Islam and the Enlightenment. One of the first Egyptians to visit the institute was Hasan al-Attar, who later became Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar, among the most important clerics in Sunni Islam. Egypts first modern thinker, in de Bellaigues words, al-Attar was a polymath who became intoxicated by the learning he found at the institute. He transformed al-Azhar, one of the oldest centres of Islamic learning, into a vibrant university and encouraged a new generation of thinkers versed in Western thinking.

Most notable of this new generation was Rifaa al-Tahtawi, another Egyptian cleric who made it his lifes work to prove that reason was compatible with Islam. After spending time in Paris, al-Tahtawi returned home in 1831 to help lead the statewide effort to modernise Egypts infrastructure and education. He founded the school of languages in Cairo and supervised the translation of over 2,000 foreign works into Arabic the greatest translation movement since that of the Abbasid period, a millennium earlier. His own works introduced to a new audience Enlightenment ideas about secularism, rights and liberties.

It was not just the intellectual sphere that was upturned. The physical and social worlds were transformed, too, at a pace undreamt of in Europe. From the printing press to female graduates, from steam trains to oppositional newspapers, from theabolition of slavery to the creation of trade unions, in the space of a few decades in Egypt, modernity wrought changes that had taken more than a century to happen in Europe, and transformed Cairo, Istanbul and Tehran from semi-medieval markets into modern, semi-industrial cities. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, Marx observed of the disorienting effect of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution in Europe. How much more so that must have seemed in Islamic states.

Inevitably there was a backlash, as there was in Europe. Yet unlike in Europe, those who promoted Enlightenment values in the Muslim world faced another problem: that of the European powers themselves. European nations may have basked in the light of the Enlightenment but they also insisted that pursuit of ideals such as liberty or democracy should not get out of hand and threaten European imperial interests.

Take Iran. In August 1906, a year-long popular struggle for democracy against the shah and his autocratic government succeeded in establishing an elected national assembly and a new constitution. The radical democrats looked to Europe for their ideals. Iran must both in appearance and reality, both physically and spiritually, become Europeanised and nothing else, claimed one of the leading constitutionalists, Hassan Taqizadeh. But the European powers were fearful that the new, democratic Iran would no longer be a pliant creature, acting in the interest of the West. In August 1907, Britain and Russia signed an accord dividing Iran into two zones of imperial influence. Russian troops invaded Iran, dissolved parliament, and arrested and executed many deputies. Britain established a de facto colony in its area of influence in the south-east of the country.

Four decades later, after democracy had been restored in Iran, Western powers again intervened to destroy it. In 1951 the democratically elected prime minister Muhammed Mossadeq nationalised the oil industry. Britain and the United States engineered a coup dtat that, two years later, overthrew Mossadeq and returned the shahto power and Irans oil industry to Western control.

Such actions of European powers led many people in Muslim countries to see the modernising project as an imperialist imposition. It also led many to elide opposition to imperialism, and defence of the nation, with opposition to Enlightenment ideas of liberty, equality and secularism. Hence the growth of popular support for Islamist groups. The eventual consequence of Western attempts to suppress democracy in Iran was the revolution of 1978-79 and the seizing of power by Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters.

The Islamic Enlightenment is a dazzling feat of erudition and storytelling. It is also a necessary work, challenging many of the assumptions that animate contemporary narratives about Islam. But for all that it unpicks the myths woven into the conventional narratives, de Bellaigues own narrative weaves in its own myths.

Consider the very notion of the Islamic Enlightenment. The European Enlightenment did not emerge ex nihilo. It was the culmination of centuries of development and struggle and the starting point for a new set of struggles and developments. Those struggles gave meaning to the ideas that flowed out of the Enlightenment.

In Egypt, Turkey and Iran, the outpouring of new ideas in the 19th century came suddenly, largely through confrontation (both physical and existential) with Europe. Intellectuals, social reformers and political revolutionaries found hope and inspiration in the same set of ideas as their peers in Europe. And, as in Europe, these ideas became central to the reach towards modernity.

Yet to call this the Islamic Enlightenment is to mistake what the European Enlightenment was about. I am not suggesting that the Enlightenment in some sense belongs to Europe, or that Enlightenment values do not apply to non-Europeans. Far from it. And yet, there are important differences in the historical trajectories that led to the Enlightenment in Europe and those which led Egypt, Turkey and Iran to adopt those ideas. To call the social and intellectual changes of which de Bellaigue writes so eloquently the Islamic Enlightenment is to erase those differences and hence to undermine his own aim of looking more rationally at the Muslim world.

***

If de Bellaigue wants us to have a more nuanced understanding of the Islamic world, Cemil Aydin of the University of North Carolina challenges the very idea that such a world exists. The expression Muslim world does not derive from umma, a concept as old as Islam, which refers to the Muslim religious community. Rather, it began to develop in the 19th century and achieved full flower in the 1870s. Nor is it the case that Muslims were united until nationalist ideology and European colonialism tore them apart. The truth, he suggests, is the very opposite:

"Muslims never dreamed of global political unity until the peak of European hegemony in the late 19thcentury, when poor colonial conditions, European discourses of Muslim racial superiority, and Muslims theories of their own apparent decline nurtured the first arguments for pan-Islamic solidarity."

For much of the history of Islam, Aydin writes, Muslim leaders had no sense of loyalty to fellow Muslims. He tells the story of Tipu, the sultan of Mysore in southern India who in 1798 sought allies to help push back the forces of the British East India Company. He appealed to the Ottoman caliph Sultan Selim III, in the name of Muslim solidarity; and to Napoleon, to help forge an alliance against a mutual enemy. The French were willing to be allies. The Ottomans were not. Shared religion and culture could not sway the Ottomans from their strategic interests, allied as they were with Britain and Russia against Napoleon, who had just invaded Ottoman Egypt, Aydin writes.

The following year the British invaded Mysore in consort with Indian Muslim leaders whose troops joined battle against fellow Muslims. Muslim political experience from the 7th through the 18th century, Aydin notes, tells a story of multiplicity, contestation and change, leaving the idea of the Muslim world to emerge later.

That is true. But it is equally true of the period from the 19th to the 21st centuries, when the notion of the Muslim world became entrenched. From the Muslim Brotherhood to Islamic State, Islamist dreamers of a unified caliphate are hardly reticent in attacking other Muslims. Saudi Arabia and Iran fiercely rival each other as champions of the Muslim world. The morass that is Syria proves that those who promote the clash of civilisations thesis are as eager to butcher those within their civilisation as those without. Aydin is right, however, that modern conceptions of the Muslim world and the clash of civilisations are different from previous notions, and are products of the changes explored by de Bellaigue.

I am sympathetic to Aydins basic thesis, though many of his specific claims such as the importance of racial theory in creating the idea of unified Muslim world are more problematic. His book, however, is more argumentative than empirical. Where de Bellaigue weaves into his narrative stories and facts to undergird his argument, Aydin is far more polemical. The Idea of the Muslim World has the feel of a work in progress rather than a properly fleshed-out thesis.

Where Aydin and de Bellaigue want to retell aspects of the history of the Muslim world, Tariq Ramadan, a professor of Islamic studies at Oxford, sets himself to describe Islams meaning. Islam: the Essentials is a breezy tour through theology and practice, aimed primarily, it seems, at Western liberals. It is full of vaguely New Agey phrases such as Rediscovery of the Way, in a holistic manner, points to nothing less than an intellectual and psychological revolution. To him, the heart of Islam is diversity. His main criticism is of literalists and traditionalists who ignore the need for the Quran and other prophetic texts to be interpreted in their social and historical context.

There is a defensive tone to the book. I have not sidestepped a single question, no matter how challenging, Ramadan tells us, nor has he attempted to justify the unjustifiable or defend the indefensible.

What he has done, however, is to wish away the difficult issues. Ramadan has two basic manoeuvres. The first is to rewrite history. Take his explanation of why slavery flourished in Muslim societies until the 19th century. The general thrust of the Revelation is a clear requirement to bring the practice of slavery to end, he writes, but God insisted that abolition had to take place step by step, to enable emancipated slaves to find a place in society, rather than ending up free but marginalised and indigent. Hence the timescale for [the abolition of ] slavery is longer than that for alcohol for here nothing less than a thoroughgoing transformation of society was required. This is not quite slavery was maintained for the good of the slaves, but it comes damn close to it.

Ramadans second manoeuvre is to make a distinction between religion and culture. Islamic religious norms (properly understood) are always good. What is questionable about Muslim societies comes primarily from cultural problems. Islam has never placed any limitations on knowledge, the arts and religious diversity, he argues. Hence the great flourishing of Islamic learning between the 8th and 11th centuries. But the cultural and historical context in which Islam found itself forced the faith to turn inwards and put up barriers. Hence the millennium of decay and decline since.

It may be a convenient argument, but it is also one that runs against his own view about the limitations of reason. Ramadans starting point is the revealed truth given to Muhammad, which forms the Quran. Revealed truth, as he has previously observed, is clear and immutable and its legitimacy cannot be challenged by reason. A few years ago, I interviewed Ramadan for a Radio 4 documentary. I asked him about one of the controversies that surround him his refusal to call for an outright ban on the practice of stoning women for adultery, merely recommending a moratorium. Why wont he call for abolition, I asked. Because, he replied, the texts that demand stoning come from God. But isnt that the problem, I asked. Ramadan knows rationally that certain actions are morally wrong but will not say so, because of his attachment to the word of God. Simply to believe in rationality, he responded, is to accept the dictatorship of intelligence and that is a dominant, arrogant posture. Its dangerous.

It is a way of reasoning of which many of the great figures who populate The Islamic Enlightenment would have despaired. Ramadan is often referred to an Islamic moderniser and bridge-builder. Yet the chasm between the vacuity and defensiveness of a contemporary intellectual such as he and the openness and intellectual depth of a 19th-century moderniser and bridge-builder such as Rifaa al-Tahtawi shows how much has been lost.

Kenan Maliks books include From Fatwa to Jihad: How the World Changed from the Satanic Verses to Charlie Hebdo (Atlantic)

The Islamic Enlightenment: the Modern Struggle Between Faith and Reason Christopher de Bellaigue Bodley Head, 432pp, 25

The Idea of the Muslim World: a Global Intellectual History Cemil Aydin Harvard University Press, 304pp, 23.95

Islam: the Essentials Tariq Ramadan Pelican, 336pp, 8.99

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The making of the Muslim world - New Statesman

It’s Time for a Disarmament Race – The Nation.

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Nelson Mandela knew that racism, injustice, and the bomb are inextricably linkedand that the arms race can only end in oblivion.

A mock North Korean Scud-B missile, center, and other South Korean missiles displayed at the Korea War Memorial Museum in Seoul, South Korea. (AP Photo / Ahn Young-joon)

When Nelson Mandela walked free, in 1990, after 27 grueling years behind bars, South Africa began the process of emancipating itself from not only from its brutal apartheid regime but also its arsenal of atomic bombs. Like white-minority rule, these awful weapons had weighed heavily on us all, entrenching our status as a pariah nation. Their abolition was essential for our liberation.

Today, North Korea rightly faces the same kind of stigma over its nuclear weaponry. By pursuing such arms, it is behaving as no respectable member of the family of nations should. But too seldom do we hear strong words of censure for others who wield these abominable devices. On the world stage, they present themselves, oxymoronically, as responsible nuclear powers.

To realize a nuclear weaponfree world, we must acknowledge that nuclear weapons serve no legitimate, lawful purpose.

All of those who wield nuclear weapons are deserving of our scorn. The development and stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction by any state is morally indefensible. It breeds enmity and mistrust and threatens peace. The radiation unleashed by an American or British or French nuclear bomb is just as deadly as that from a North Korean one. The inferno and shock waves kill and maim no less indiscriminately.

With sabres rattling and the specter of nuclear war looming large, the imperative to abolish mans most evil creationbefore it abolishes usis as urgent as ever. Further arms races and provocations will lead us inexorably to catastrophe. The overwhelming majority of the worlds nations understand this, and are now developing a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons under international law.

They began negotiating the accord at the United Nations in March and will resume their work on June 15. Regrettably, however, all of the nuclear-armed nations, along with several of their allies, are refusing to take part. They claim that their bombs help keep the peace. But what peace can be maintained through threats of annihilation? So long as these weapons exist, we will continue to teeter on the brink.

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To realize a nuclear weaponfree world, we must first acknowledge that nuclear weapons serve no legitimate, lawful purpose. That is precisely what the new treaty will do. It will place nuclear weapons on the same legal footing as chemical and biological weapons, anti-personnel landmines, and cluster munitionsall of which the international community has declared too inhumane ever to use or possess.

Some leaders, intent on preserving the status quo, have dismissed this UN process as futile given the resistance of the so-called great powers. But what is the alternative? To wait and hope that the powerful few will one day show enlightened leadership? That would be a very poor strategy indeed for safeguarding humanity. In the absence of tremendous pressure, disarmament will remain but a fantasy.

For too long, the nuclear powers have failed us terribly. Instead of disarmingas they are duty-bound to dothey have squandered precious resources on programs to bolster their nuclear forces. They have held humankind to ransom. But nuclear-free nations are now rising up, asserting their right to live in a safe, harmonious global community, unburdened by this ultimate menace.

Of course, it was not the slaveowners who led the struggle to abolish slavery. Nor was it the Afrikaners who tore down the system of apartheid in South Africa. The oppressed fought for, and ultimately secured, their own freedom. Through collective action, we built the foundations for transformative change, to the benefit of all. This is what we are witnessing today in the arena of disarmament diplomacy.

Every nation will be better off in a world without these terrible and terrifying weapons of mass destruction, as Mandela so aptly described them to the UN General Assembly in 1998. Disarmament was a cause dear to his heart. He saw racism, injustice, and the bomb as inextricably linked, and he knew that the arms race, if not curtailed, could only end in oblivion. What we need now is a disarmament race.

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It's Time for a Disarmament Race - The Nation.

Selfie by Will Storr review me, my selfie and I in an age of ego – The Guardian

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Donald Trump, posing with a supporter, personifies the psychological and moral malady that Selfie investigates. Photograph: Chris Keane/Reuters

Infatuated with his own reflection in a pool, Narcissus pined away and died of self-love. Freud diagnosed this folly as a perversion, a neurotic choice of sterile solitude, but the warning was futile. The iPhone has mechanised narcissism and a gadget meant to facilitate communication with others has caused its most addicted users to behave like long-lost Kardashian cousins, cheesily grinning as they document their unexceptional doings.

In his book on the phenomenon, Will Storr interviews a young woman who has hundreds of thousands of selfies stored on memory cards, a hard drive and a sagging, overburdened iCloud. She frequently works through the night to edit and filter her daily quota of new images in readiness for disseminating them on social media. The unexamined life may not be worth living, but do all lives deserve to be examined in such redundant detail? Storrs informant goes on to confess that she feels most alive when slashing her flesh with a razor blade.

Storr finds no remedy for his self-dislike, and instead concludes that the self is a false divinity

Self-obsession, Storr suspects, is a reflex of self-dissatisfaction or self-dislike, a symptom of social perfectionism that pushes some of its victims towards suicide. His imposing survey traverses centuries of what we thought was progress to show how we reached this psychic dead end. Selfie begins in the tribal wilderness, locally known as Walthamstow. Here, Storr encounters a contemporary version of those alpha chimps that roared and brawled their way to dominance in the jungle: a bouncer and gangland enforcer, now meekly repentant after a religious conversion, who represents the self at its most bestial and atavistic.

The next stop is classical Greece, where the long story of the human began when Aristotle separated the individual from the rest of nature; as a consequence, the idealised self became a living work of art. Christianity then endowed the Greek body with a soul and forced it to chasten the sinful flesh. Storr, conscientiously working his way through the eras, comes to understand the process by suffering a week of medieval self-mortification in a dank Scottish monastery.

From here the book hops to blithe California. On that last frontier, western individualism arrives at its most extreme and absurd development: the old-fashioned idea of what novelists call character, a sober amalgam of virtues and defects, has here given way to the glitzy notion of personality, projected in all those self-made, self-congratulating iPhone images. Storr signs on for a course of humanistic alternative education in a yurt on a cliff beside the ocean at Big Sur and is ordered by a bossy therapist to shed his adult inhibitions and return to being the juvenile delinquent he once was. The experience, as he reports it, is hilarious but unenlightening.

Storrs final stop is in Silicon Valley, whose slick entrepreneurs transformed the computer from a bureaucratic machine into a plaything for the self and its galleries of exponentiating snapshots. Promoters babble about the Synthetic Age, predicting that we will soon evolve into a post-human species, although not everyone is ready for the future. Storr recalls a geeky genius with a scheme for biohacking our DNA. Rehearsing to play God, he devised a means of synthesising probiotics to waft away vaginal odours. He called his formula Sweet Peach, and sold it as a means of personal empowerment. But angry feminists turned on him, unready to have their private parts refreshed, and he ended by hanging himself in his lab. Rather than waiting around for the promised transformation of the universe, Storr comes home to England, where we are grubbily inured to imperfection.

Selfie is as much autobiography as cultural history. Storr was prompted to write it by a slew of personal problems, leftovers from a troubled adolescence combined with middle-aged revulsion at the lardy bib beneath his shirt, the result of weekends sunk into the sofa, surrounded by pizza boxes. He finds no remedy for his self-dislike and, instead, concludes that the self is a false divinity. Worshipping it, we ignore profounder truths. Were connected, Storr reminds us, were a highly social species. Narcissus died because he forgot he belonged to the human family.

This all-seeing book has one blind spot. Caught off guard by Trumps electoral success, Storr mentions him only briefly as a sumptuously narcissistic self-publicist with a liking for Ayn Rands neofascist fiction. The ogre with the gilded quiff, the petulantly pouting mouth and the aggressive elbows merits closer inspection: Trump personifies the psychological and moral malady that Selfie investigates.

One of the experts consulted by Storr refers to a dark power immensely powerful and concerned solely with pursuing its own interests at the expense of everyone else in the world. That quote is a generalised account of the ego; scarily, it also serves as a description of Trump, a puffed-up primate with a nuclear arsenal at his disposal. Storr even indirectly explains Trumps chronic mendacity: at our most crassly selfish, we act on irrational urges or fits of pique that we or brown-nosed apologists such as Sean Sphincter try to justify after the event by confabulating, inventing pretexts for our behaviour that are convenient but patently phoney.

A therapeutic industry caters to the self-esteem or self-delusion of such egomaniacs; it cossets them, Storr suggests, because their competitive frenzy masks an inner hollowness, a noisy denial of their own weaknesses or incompetences. The presidents current state of flailing mayhem could not be more pithily summed up. Trump is obsessed with winning: the worst he can say about jihadis is to insult them as losers, even when they have catastrophically succeeded in slaughtering the innocent.

Politics, for Trump, exemplifies what Storr rather awkwardly calls the gamification of human life. He viewed the presidential campaign as a game show and, after the wonky arithmetic of the electoral college awarded him the prize, assumed that he could look forward to eight years of victory laps and ego-boosting pep rallies, punctuated by recuperative spells watching alt-right rants on his panoramic TV screen. He didnt expect to be exposed to scorn rather than acclaim. Still less did he reckon on having to do an arduous and uniquely complicated job. His former life, he now complains, was easier and more enjoyable: as a celebrity, his sole obligation was self-display.

It remains to be seen whether the superego, policing quaint old-fashioned concerns such as ethics and honesty, will manage to restrain this monster. Surely Trumps permatan isnt armour-plated? On the evidence of Selfie, the world is suffering from a bad case of the DTs and we urgently need detoxing.

Selfie by Will Storr is published by Picador (18.99). To order a copy for 16.14 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99

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Selfie by Will Storr review me, my selfie and I in an age of ego - The Guardian

Global markets slide, led by technology shares – ABC News

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Global stock markets fell on Monday, led by technology shares, as investors look ahead to policy meetings this week by the central banks of the U.S., Britain and Japan.

KEEPING SCORE: France's CAC 40 dropped 1 percent to 5,247, while Germany's DAX dropped 0.9 percent to 12,703. Britain's FTSE 100 fell 0.1 percent to 7,518. U.S. shares were set to drift lower, with Dow futures slipping 0.2 percent and S&P 500 futures 0.3 percent lower.

TECH SELL-OFF: A drop in technology stocks in the U.S. on Friday echoed through markets on Monday. In Germany, Infineon Technologies was down 5 percent and SAP 3.5 percent. Finland's Nokia was down 2.8 percent. Investors seem spooked the prospect that tech stocks might be overpriced after months of strong gains. The Nasdaq fell 1.8 percent on Friday.

CENTRAL BANKS: Looking ahead, market players are watching central banks' meetings in Britain and the U.S. later this week. Analysts say the Fed is likely to raise interest rates, while the Bank of England is expected to keep them unchanged. The Bank of Japan is also meeting on monetary policy later this week, but little is expected to impact markets, they say.

THE QUOTE: "The start of the week may be quiet, but we'll get monetary policy decisions from the Federal Reserve, Bank of England and Bank of Japan on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, respectively. The Fed will be of particular interest with markets now fully pricing in a rate hike and instead more concerned with whether they'll signal another this year or focus more on balance sheet reduction," said Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at OANDA.

ASIA'S DAY: Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 slipped 0.5 percent to finish at 19,908.58. South Korea's Kospi slipped 1.0 percent to 2,357.87. Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 1.3 percent to 25,703.83, while the Shanghai Composite index dipped 0.6 percent to 3,139.88. Trading was closed in Australia for a national holiday.

ENERGY: Benchmark U.S. crude added 74 cents to $46.57 a barrel. It had gained 19 cents on Friday. Brent crude, used to price international oils, added 85 cents to $49.00 a barrel in London.

CURRENCIES: The pound continued to drop after falling over 2 percent versus the dollar after the Conservatives lost their majority in Parliament. The vote's outcome is creating disarray in Britain's negotiations to leave the European Union, due to start June 19. The pound was down at $1.2680, from $1.2721 on Friday. The dollar weakened to 109.88 yen from 110.36 late Friday. The euro strengthened to $1.1221 from $1.1182.

Yuri Kageyama can be reached on Twitter at https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

Her work can be found at https://www.apnews.com/search/yuri%20kageyama

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Global markets slide, led by technology shares - ABC News

New technology could recover more oil from early Bakken wells – Bismarck Tribune

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Oil companies are applying new hydraulic fracturing techniques to early Bakken wells, a process industry leaders say has the potential to recover more oil without increasing the footprint on the land.

Operators are targeting wells drilled between 2008 and 2010, the early years of Bakken development before fracking technology advanced to where it is today.

Companies are refracturing the older wells using todays technology and getting promising results, said Justin Kringstad, director of the North Dakota Pipeline Authority, who recently analyzed the wells.

On average, theyre getting better performance from the wells, Kringstad said.

Fracking or pumping a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals deep underground and horizontal drilling techniques allowed operators to recover oil from the Bakken.

But the industry believes its only recovering about 5 to 15 percent of the oil available, Kringstad said.

More than 140 wells in the Bakken have been refractured, and most saw an increase in oil production from 200,000 to 250,000 barrels, according to Kringstads analysis.

The newly fracked wells are injected with larger volumes of fluid and sand and the fracture treatments are applied to smaller segments of the well, he said.

North Dakota legislators also are interested in the potential for refracturing existing oil wells and are planning a study during the interim focused on the fiscal impact to the state.

Sen. Kelly Armstrong, R-Dickinson, said recovering more oil would mean more tax revenue and more jobs.

Armstrong, one of the legislators who introduced the study, said legislators plan to invite experts to learn more about refracturing and discuss if there are economic incentives the state could consider.

We are only getting a small, small amount of the total potential reserve down there, Armstrong said. Everybody would benefit if we could figure out a way to recover more.

Monte Besler, a Williston oilfield consultant known as the FRACN8R, said not all wells will be good candidates for refracturing. But it can pay off in wells that were completed with technology now considered outdated, he said.

Kringstad said companies will typically want to see at least an additional 200,000 barrels of oil to justify the investment.

Lynn Helms, director of the Department of Mineral Resources, said refracturing oil wells can recover more oil without expanding the footprint of the Bakken.

Theres no additional environmental impacts and theres generally already a pipeline there, Helms said.

Kringstad also is studying the impact refracturing could have on the pipeline industry and working to provide oil and natural gas pipeline operators data to help them plan.

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New technology could recover more oil from early Bakken wells - Bismarck Tribune

Telcos not investing in technology reason behind financial stress: Reliance Jio – Economic Times

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NEW DELHI: Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio today said telcos not investing in new technology and instead leveraging their balance sheet are themselves to blame for financial difficulties.

Newcomer Reliance Jio, which met the Interministerial Group (IMG) today said operators need to raise funds by selling stake or invest in new technology through internal accruals.

"Operators (excluding Jio) need to invest Rs 1,25,000 crore, payback debt and they need to invest in technology, as growth is happening in data...they can do this by selling stake," said a senior Jio official who did not want to be named.

Stating that the financial stress being faced by operators was "their own creation", the official said the only policy intervention required is in form of reduction in GST rates, licence fee and USO levies.

Lowering of these levies can generate Rs 20,000-25,000 crore additional EBITDA for the industry, the Jio official said after coming out from the 45-minute meeting with the IMG.

The IMG today began consultation with operators as part of efforts to address the financial difficulties being faced by the sector. The telcos are reeling under a massive Rs 4.6 lakh crore debt, and are facing pressure on revenue, profitability and all other financial matrix in face of increasing competition intensified by the entry of Jio.

Over the next few days, the IMG will also meet other operators including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular, as well as top officials of telecom PSUs Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd.

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Telcos not investing in technology reason behind financial stress: Reliance Jio - Economic Times

Darknet guru: New technology can help build European identity – EURACTIV

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Modern technology could shore up the European project, boost transparency and help governments collect taxes. Author Jamie Bartlett told EURACTIV.com that the EU should become the great technological innovator but warned that politicians simply arent prepared for massive changes ahead.

Jamie Bartlett is a writer, journalist and director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at UK think tank Demos. In 2014, he published The Dark Net and has just released his latest book, Radicals.

In Brussels at the invitation of Full Circle, Bartlett spoke to EURACTIVs Sam Morgan.

Whats the EUs role in technological advancements like Bitcoin, blockchain etc.?

Theres a battle going on in terms of regulation. It seems to most people, including myself, that the European Commission is one of the only places that has the courage to give it a go. My view has changed slightly over the years. I used to think that regulation was pointless and wouldnt work and that the nature of borderless digital communication meant that it was like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke. But the coming progress in artificial intelligence, peer-to-peer platforms and the power of modern computing means governments are going to have to start regulating if they want to maintain a serious tax-paying base, if they want all the things about modern society we have come to depend on to remain. They are all going to be under unprecedented threat in the next decade.

Is it something governments are aware of or even willing to be aware of? Is there a comparison with denial of climate change to be made here?

These new businesses become so large and so valuable before the regulators notice them that suddenly they are too big to regulate. Its unreasonable to expect politicians to have a handle on these issues but they do need to understand the scale of the challenge coming, the biggest of which is AI. I dont mean killer robots but the twin forces of automation and machine learning, and the effect they are going to have on millions of jobs. The optimist says humans will create new jobs, itll be fine, thats what weve always done. But Im not so sure its the same this time around. When you combine that with a more precarious workforce that inevitably comes with the gig economy, the sorts of skills people are going to need and the type of jobs that will become available, I think politicians simply dont have a clue what is looming on the horizon. We are talking ten years and we are talking massive disruption.

Supporting innovation should be the driving force behind the EU response to the emerging field of financial technology, European lawmakers said in a draft resolution adopted yesterday (25 April).

Is that linked to how short a shelf-life governments and leaders have now? We have referendums and elections all the time, are politicians now not interested in thinking long-term?

Possibly. The horrible factor with global warming is that democracy perhaps isnt the best political model to deal with it. It might not be right for artificial intelligence either. I think that the last year has been a little skirmish ahead of what lies ahead. The big political parties are going to have to actually decide how to deal with these problems, so were not shocked when this all hits us further down the line. When populists make certain promises that cant be delivered upon and when centrist parties mimic those pledges to try and keep control it results in spiralling frustrations that push people towards the extreme right or left. We are going to have to change how we do politics. Do we really think that people who are in their early twenties or even younger are going to accept the way we do politics in a decades time? I dont.

If its a generational thing, what can the EU do to bridge that gap? Should they leap on new technologies like Bitcoin, blockchain, etc.?

Absolutely. Like I said, the institutions have already shown leadership on these kinds of issues, including privacy and antitrust cases against Google and Microsoft. Thats a good example of the size and power of these big companies, and the scale of the technology; it needs a framework with the scope of the EU to confront them. We know the challenge is borderless, like climate change. The EU needs to harness things like AI and Bitcoin in order to address the needs of people. We cannot let technology run away with us.

Youve previously highlighted how these new technologies can be used illegally and immorally. If a body like the EU were to focus on something like blockchain, do you think it would appropriate the tech for good?

Well there will always be people that use technology for bad. But if the EU were to do more then it would mean that it wouldnt just be in the hands of the FinTech industry and criminals. You could well imagine the Commission, which is often seen as being very distant from people, taking that technology and trying to use it in a way where it establishes itself as an innovator, a leader. There are always going to be people abusing new technology but, this way, the benefits could at least be shared.

So could blockchain be a real weapon in the push for transparency? Its something the Commission has beat the drum about for a while now.

I would love it if the European Union bodies were able to use it to deliver on these promises. The EU has always talked about creating a pan-European identity, where citizens across Europe can discuss ideas with each other. Well thats already happening, all the time, on these massive platforms. So why cant the institutions follow suit? Why cant policy-based documents be crowd-source edited by people from across the EU? Thats how you bring disparate people together and make them feel close to decision-making procedures.

Youve written before about crypto-anarchists, many of whom hope these new technologies can bring about a form of stateless society. Do you think the EU and national governments are aware of this threat to their existence?

Of course not! I talked to the European Commission in 2011/2012 about a paper I had done on far-right activists across Europe, which said that populist groups were building a really good online presence with enormous support bases, which would make a big impact on formal politics. That was five years ago. No one listened. Now, I think they are now going to put all their energies into finally dealing with this so they are going to miss out on other movements. The people involved in this crypto-anarchic world are the very people who run these tech companies, who are building all this technology we use, and they hate the European Union. They hate it because its this distant, centralised body that represents everything they dislike about politics.

The sharing economy hasnt exactly sprung up out of nowhere but everyone has heard of Uber, Airbnb now

Four years ago, did anyone imagine they would advance like they have? I didnt see blockchain or Bitcoin coming. But every single person who worked on the internet now says that blockchain is completely revolutionary. Its as revolutionary as TCP/IP. Does anyone in this town really understand that? I dont think so.

Is there a glimmer of hope in Estonia taking over the rotating presidency of the EU? Its often been described as the first digital nation.

I hope people will go there and see the things they are willing to pilot. This is the kind of hackers mentality we need, where things are tried and failures arent terminal. But this is at odds with how policy is made at the moment. I hope Estonia bangs home the point that Russias propaganda campaign is only going to get bigger and bigger in the Baltics.

The German army launched a dedicated cyber-defence unit recently. Its offensive capabilities have been criticised but is this likely to be the norm from now on?

They have to go on the offensive. They also knew they were going to be criticised, as we live in an open society, but armed forces are going to carry on doing it anyway. Look at the scale of the offensive propaganda campaigns weve always run in Europe, Ive got no reason to believe well change now.

We can rent a car or house anywhere we want, you showed that you can buy whatever you want on the dark net, but have advancements in technology outstripped how we have developed as a society? Can we be trusted with the power literally at our fingertips or is it like giving a toddler a hand-grenade?

The mere smartphone gives us near godlike powers. Encryption can be used for good and bad, as can the sharing economy. It all makes systems more fragile. British Airways latest IT crash was caused by just one person not following the right protocol. Expect more fragility too. Look at the huge increase in the amount of information that has been hacked over the last three or four years from companies: thats the new normal.

So its something we are just going to have to accept and get used to?

It also means a smaller number of people can do greater damage than before. My only hope is that this turbulence we are going through will teach us how to deal with these problems. As a society, we will have to develop new ways of dealing with these threats. At the moment, these are the growing-pains of a system that we are currently not equipped to deal with.

Optimists say we will deal with automation and Industry 4.0 by retraining people in IT, code-writing, etc. Do you think that increases the chances of these threats, if more people know how to manipulate this technology?

Well have to think really hard about what we train people in.The stock answer seems to be computer programming but computers are going to be better and faster at that too.Thats only going to lead to a spiral of frustration. Theres also going to be a form of inequality springing up between those who can use technology and those who cant. Its going to exacerbate the levels of inequality we already have.

If you could drive the EU towards a certain policy topic or run it in a certain way, how would you handle it?

The EU should somehow be the great innovator and great regulator. A pity that we in the UK will only watch from the sidelines.

How is Brexit going to affect privacy and other developments long-term?

The government has already said it intends to stay with the data passporting system, because its too difficult for British businesses without it. So much of the economy involves data and the government is desperate to encourage digital technologies. I originally thought that the UK would say data regulations are too onerous and that it would decide to set up its own little system, with really lax rules, which could attract tech firms. Companies will be attracted by this kind of data-haven as much as by a tax-haven. But the draw of European and American business will ultimately be too great, so Brexit wont actually have a massive impact on privacy.

This technology seems to offer governments a new source of revenue if anything

Cryptocurrencies certainly offer them a chance to collect tax more efficiently. Taxes are going to get harder and harder to raise. Truck and taxi companies are suddenly software companies, which are harder to tax than the taxi firm just down the road. Without a tax-raising base, everything goes to pot. But if they start experimenting with cryptocurrencies, the people involved are going to get more frustrated and create more systems that make it harder to raise taxes, so well find ourselves in a vicious circle and a form of digital arms race.

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Darknet guru: New technology can help build European identity - EURACTIV

India’s Sensex Drops Most in Two Weeks, Led by Technology Stocks – Bloomberg

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Indian shares dropped as industrial-equipment makers declined ahead of a factory output data that some investors gauged would fall short of estimates. Lenders also fell on concerns that farm-credit waivers by states would add to bad loans in the banking system.

The benchmark S&P BSE Sensex closed 0.5 percent lower in Mumbai, its steepest decline in nearly three weeks. The NSE Nifty 50 Index also fell 0.5 percent. Larsen & Toubro Ltd., the nations biggest engineering company, retreated 2.3 percent to be worst Sensex performer along with Tata Motors Ltd.

Investors may be positioning themselves for a bad set of manufacturing data later in the day and thats reflecting in the capital-goods shares, Ashish Shah, head of equity at Mumbai-based A.C. Choksi Share Brokers Pvt., said on phone. The market is under some selling pressure after its rally so far this year, he said.

Indias index of industrial production rose 2.7 percent in April versus a year earlier, according toestimates compiled by Bloomberg. The index is likely to miss that forecast and rise 2.3 percent, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

Ten of the 13 sector gauges compiled by BSE Ltd. retreated, led by the S&P BSE Capital Goods Indexs 1.6 percent drop. The S&P BSE Information Technology Index rebounded from a fall of more than 1 percent to close 0.4 percent higher, the best performer.

A gauge of lenders also fell 1 percent after the Maharashtra governmentannounced that it will waive farm credits, adding to investor concerns of a further increase in bad loans at banks, already the highest among major economies globally. Uttar Pradesh, the nations most populous state, made a similar announcement in April.

Read the central banks views on farm-loan waivers

Farm loan waivers have created negative sentiments, mainly for banks and financial companies, which have largest weights in indexes, said Sanjay Sinha, founder of Mumbai-based Citrus Advisors. Credit discipline suffers and these measures are also economically regressive, he said.

Indias Sensex and Nifty indexes have both rallied 17 percent in 2017, the best-performing gauges among major Asian markets.

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India's Sensex Drops Most in Two Weeks, Led by Technology Stocks - Bloomberg

Opinion: What’s next for technology stocks bloodbath or bliss? – MarketWatch

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The response to my last column, which warned of an ominous pattern in charts of big technology stocks, shows that while professionals are hedged against a decline, the average investor is full of bravado.

The real question

The real question for investors is what comes next bloodbath or bliss. To find the answer, we need to take the equivalent of an X-ray of the U.S. stock market. At The Arora Report, to do the X-ray, we mostly depend on the ZYX Global Multi-Asset Allocation Model. This is an adaptive model it changes along with market conditions. The algorithms used in the model involve a large number of macro, fundamental, quantitative and technical indicators. Today I am going to expose readers to a technical indicator that is of special note at this time about big tech stocks. On Friday I wrote: Pay attention to the ominous pattern in big technology stocks.

The most useful indicator

To see this indicator, please click here for an annotated chart.

The chart shows the difference between advancing and declining issues of the Nasdaq 100 index NDX, -1.02% The popular ETF that represents Nasdaq 100 is QQQ, -0.93% The index contains popular technology stocks such as Apple AAPL, -2.94% Facebook FB, -1.67% and Nvidia NVDA, -2.14%

Here are my observations from the annotated chart.

The top pane shows candlesticks for the difference between advancing and declining issues among Nasdaq 100 stocks.

Traditionally, only the closing value is used as an input into further studies. In my three decades-plus in the markets, I have concluded that the traditional way often gives misleading results.

To overcome the limitation of the traditional way, at The Arora Report we use an average of open, high, low and close.

The bottom pane of the chart is simply a cumulative sum of daily averages.

The cumulative sum is still in an uptrend.

The cumulative sum has its own limitations.

The middle pane shows cumulative adjusted value that overcomes some of the limitations.

The cumulative adjusted value is beginning to roll over more than the cumulative sum, but it is still above the trend line.

Ask Arora: Nigam Arora answers your questions about investing in stocks, ETFs, bonds, gold and silver, oil and currencies. Have a question? Send it to Nigam Arora.

Money flows

Investors may consider combining the difference between advancing and declining issues in the stock market or the index of their choice with money flows to gain valuable insights. To learn more about money flows, please see Four big events that are prompting investors to sell stocks and buy bonds and gold.

What to do now

This column is written for investors and not for day traders. At this time, there is no reason to panic and any dip is likely to be a buying opportunity. Having said that, the market is very overbought from a long-term perspective and valuations are stretched. Overbought markets tend to be vulnerable. Vicious selling can start at any time. Selling on Friday was nothing compared with what can happen.

For prudent investors, a defensive posture is warranted.

Here is our last call to subscribers of The Arora Report: It is important for investors to look ahead and not in the rearview mirror. Consider continuing to hold existing positions. Based on individual risk preference, consider holding cash or Treasury bills 18%-28%, short- to medium-term hedges of 15%-25% and very short-term hedges of 15%. It is worth remembering that you cannot take advantage of new upcoming opportunities if you are not holding enough cash. When adjusting hedge levels, consider adjusting partial stop quantities for stock positions (non-ETF); consider using wider stops on remaining quantities and also allowing more room for high-beta stocks. High-beta stocks are the ones that move more than the market.

Disclosure: Subscribers to The Arora Report may have positions in the securities mentioned in this article or may take positions at any time. All recommended positions are reviewed daily at The Arora Report.

Nigam Arora is an investor, engineer and nuclear physicist by background, has founded two Inc. 500 fastest-growing companies, is the developer of the adaptive ZYX Global Multi Asset Allocation Model and the ZYX Change Method to profit from change in trading and investing. He is the founder of The Arora Report, which publishes four newsletters. Nigam can be reached at Nigam@TheAroraReport.com.

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Opinion: What's next for technology stocks bloodbath or bliss? - MarketWatch

MARS Launches New Water Meter Test Bench Technology and Feature Enhancements – PR Newswire (press release)

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OCALA, Fla., June 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- MARS Company, global leader in water meter testing and technology solutions, announced today that it has launched new water meter test bench technology and feature enhancements that provide unique abilities with regard to meter testing performance, form factor and application.

Patented, Ultra-Low Flow Water Meter Testing and Accuracy Measurement Optional Feature

MARS Company announces that it has optimized the design of a patented, test bench meter adapter to assist in accurately measuring the next generation of ultra-low flow water meters. As water meter technology advances and water conservation becomes more vital, the need to monitor and test the meters at ranges lower than the current testing parameters is of increasing importance. MARS Company has designed the Ultra-Low Flow feature to adapt to existing and new installations, with minimal impact on field installations for current customers. "Our state-of-the-art test bench system coupled with the industry's only Enterprise-grade Software provides the industry with unparalleled flexibility to meet the most demanding water meter test requirements. Our technology can revolutionize how water meters are tested for generations to come," said Dave Corey, CEO of MARS Company.

Advanced Ultra-Low Flow Water Meter Testing Option

The Ultra-Low Flow Feature may be coupled with other MARS Company products to further minimize disturbance issues and achieve a high degree of accuracy for the meter test. These products include, but are not limited to, the MARS Gravity-Based Recirculation System and the MARS M3 2017 Enterprise Software System.

Backflow Preventer Testing - Optional Feature

Customer and market demand led to the new MARS optional test bench feature for comprehensive testing of backflow preventers, in compliance with state or local directives. In addition, this system not only tests the backflow device but also records the data for report generation and historical reference and storage. MARS Company has developed this exclusive solution to provide in-house testing of the backflow preventer prior to field deployment and when the unit is returned to the testing center after field removal.

Back Flow Water Meter Testing Option

The patented, Ultra-Low Flow optional feature is immediately available and the Back Flow Optional Feature will be available in the 3Q of 2017. MARS Company will be exhibiting at AWWA 2017 Trade show, June 12-14 in Philadelphia, PA at booth #2225. For more information about MARS Company please visit http://www.MARSwater.com.

About MARS Company

MARS Company is a global leader in water meter testing and technology solutions. With more than 30 years of experience assisting municipal and private utilities throughout the world, MARS has a long track record of success. MARS core business and expertise include: Patented Water Meter Testing Systems & Software Technology, Innovative AMR/AMI Technology Products and Software Solutions and Water System Specialty Products. Innovative thinking allows MARS to leverage its unique, proprietary technology, patent positioning, manufacturing infrastructure and world-class management strength, to further position itself as the leader in the water industry.

CONTACT: Mike Mastic, Director of Test Bench and Software Systems; Tel: (352) 414-7690; 163855@email4pr.com

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements containing the words "planned," "expects," "believes," "strategy," "opportunity," "anticipates" and similar words. Such forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties or other factors that may cause MARS Company's actual results to be materially different from historical results or any results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. MARS Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances arising after the date hereof. The potential risks and uncertainties which could cause actual growth and results to differ materially include but are not limited to, customer acceptance of the company's services, products and fee structures, the success of the company's brand development efforts, the volatile and competitive nature of the water industry, and changes in domestic and international market conditions, and foreign exchange rates.

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mars-launches-new-water-meter-test-bench-technology-and-feature-enhancements-300472240.html

SOURCE MARS Company

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MARS Launches New Water Meter Test Bench Technology and Feature Enhancements - PR Newswire (press release)

‘Equality’ marchers push for progress on LGBT rights – CNN International

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The march Sunday was vibrant, in attire and color.

There were rainbow pride flags, trans pride flags, even American and Puerto Rican flags with rainbows as their stripes.

The energy was palpable, even as they lined up; sporadic cheers would overtake the crowd, interrupting percussive protest chants.

And then it suddenly got quiet. Soft singing soon overtook the soft fluttered of flags in the breeze

"Oh, say can you see..." The national anthem.

More and more joined the chorus as the song neared its apex, roaring towards the final lines.

As it concluded, the crowds let up a thunderous cheer. The march had begun.

Wayne Pawlowski and Ted carried one of those bright rainbow pride flags near the front of the parade. Ted declined to give CNN his full name; he knows that his marriage and his sexual orientation could get him fired.

Wayne and Ted have been together for 35 years, married for nine of them.

"There's a lot of basic rights that we as gay people don't have that a lot of Americans do and take for granted," said Ted. "We need to change that."

But Ted, 62, and Pawlowski, 71, have a unique historical artifact their rainbow pride flag.

They flew it at the capital's first ever LGBT protest on October 14, 1979. And they've brought it to every single Pride celebration and protest they've ever gone to since.

Jasmine and Nette Archangel made the trip North from Louisiana to be here they brought their whole family. For them, the march was about being visible.

"We want our family to be normalized, not just tolerated," said Nette, 32. "Our family's made out of love."

Last year, the couple made a big move from rural Louisiana into New Orleans, a place they feel "more accepted."

Jasmine, 33, is a bit more shy.

"I want my sons to know no matter what they decide to do, we love them regardless," she says through a smile.

The Archangels weren't the only family to travel from Louisiana. Erin Crisham and Monica Herbert brought their 3-year-old son Cullen to the march.

"We want to make sure that voices are still being heard," said Crisham. "Legislation continues to progress and not stall."

Crisham, like many in the community, saw a number of LGBT rights victories. Now, with a new President at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, they want to maintain that progress.

"We don't want to see anything stay stagnant," she said. "We don't want to see anything take steps back. We really want to see things continue to move forward."

The community won those hard-fought victories by the grassroots organizing of their organizations. They rapidly and fundamentally shifted American public thought on a variety of LGBT issues by coming out to their families, friends and coworkers and pressuring their politicians.

So how will the community pressure continued progress on LGBT issues in President Donald Trump's America?

They'll stay involved and start at home, just like they always did.

Crisham and Herbet are going to work with local LGBT family organizations just like the Archangels. And they agree with the Archangels; their family needs to be treated like anyone else's.

She says sometimes people just aren't used to having different types of families around them. It's a matter of getting them used to it.

"Sometimes, we're the educators for that," she said.

For Ted, it's simple. He's going to make sure he's at the ballot box each election voting for pro-gay candidates, "whenever we can."

His husband Wayne is going to support the organizations that helped make marriage equality the law of the land.

"We are going to go back to Florida tomorrow," he said. "The first thing we're going to do is send more donations (supportive organizations including Human Rights Campaign and the American Civil Liberties Union) ... the organizations that fight for us in ways that we can't individually."

Clayton Whitehead, 29, agrees. He sprained his ankle playing flag football earlier in the week but did not let that, or the crutch he has to walk with, stop him from marching.

The march was, "only the beginning."

"We have to get involved at the local level," he says. "Have the courage to speak up. Go to your community meetings. Your council meetings. Vote in your local elections. Those are just as important as our national elections."

Lou and John Thompson, both 69, came to Washington from Conway, Arkansas, for their first Pride and their first political protest.

They held a sign that reads, "We love our (single) gay son!" Their son Brock's sign read, "I love my (annoying but well-meaning) straight parents!"

"We need to make a stand at times," said Thompson, who thinks now is not the time to be silent. "In our churches. City council. Just every little opportunity that you get to make a stand, I think you need to say something."

Brock Thompson agrees.

"We're going to march every day if we need to," he says, beaming.

CNN's John Bena contributed to this report.

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'Equality' marchers push for progress on LGBT rights - CNN International