WORLD WIDE MIRROR

Russia has rejected the US call to cut ties with North Korea after Pyongyang launched ballistic missiles on Wednesday. "We perceived this negatively," Al Jazeera reported, citing Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as saying. "We have repeatedly stated that the pressure of sanctions has been exhausted," he told journalists in the Belarusian capital, Minsk. His comments come in response to Washington's statement on the need to cut ties with North Korea. US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley on Wednesday called on all countries to sever ties with Pyongyang. The Trump administration has also vowed to slap additional sanctions. In addition to refusal, Lavrov also questioned the United States' intention and asked whether the Washington was plotting to destroy the isolated country. "The Americans need to explain what they are aiming for. If they are looking for a reason to destroy North Korea, then they should say it straight and the American lea

Taking a jibe at British Prime Minister Theresa May, United States President Donald Trump on Thursday said that she should focus on "the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. President Trump tweeted, "Theresa @theresamay, don't focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine!" The US President's statement came after the British Prime Minister branded the former "wrong" for retweeting anti-Islam videos, which was originally published by Jayda Fransen, a leader of a far-right British fringe party, who was earlier convicted for abusing a Muslim woman. Local media reports quoted May as saying, "It is wrong for the president to have done this." The President retweeted three videos from Britain First on Wednesday morning with one carrying the caption "Muslim migrants beating up a Dutch boy on crutches&qu

United States President Donald Trump has spoken with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to address North Korea's intercontinental ballistic missile launch that impacted within Japan's Exclusive Economic Zone. "The two leaders agreed that the North Korean regime's provocative actions are undermining its security and further isolating it from the international community. The leaders reaffirmed their commitment to combat the North Korean threat," said the White House in a statement on Wednesday. An unidentified ballistic missile was fired by North Korea in the direction of the Sea of Japan yesterday. The missile "flew eastward from the vicinity of Pyongyang" toward the Sea of Japan, South Korean military officials said. It was fired in the middle of the night (local time) on Wednesday, a US official said to Fox News, which seemed to have landed within exclusive economic zone of Japan. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe termed the missile launch to be '

Debt-ridden Essar Group on Friday announced the closure of its BPO arm Aegis sale for Rs 2,000 crore and said it has been able to pare debt by Rs 75,000 crore, thanks to the proceeds from the recent sale of its refinery business. The company announced the conclusion of the Rs 2,000-crore sale of Aegis to Capital Square Partners (CSP), marking its exit from the business process outsourcing (BPO) business. Advertisement: Replay Ad Ads by ZINC 3 In July this year, the total debt of the group was Rs 1.38 lakh crore. A Businees Today report had earlier said that Rosneft deal alone would bring down Essar's debt to around Rs 70,000 crore. In 2014, Essar sold its BPO business in the US, Aegis USA Inc, to Frances Teleperformance for $610 million. Early this year, Essar exited the BPO business by selling assets in 10 countries to Singapore-based private equity firm Capital Square Partners for $300 million (Rs 1,950 crore). Essar had acquired US

Anil Ambani's Reliance Communications (RCom) had warnings from many quarters when it took loans from Chinese banks. All was well for the seven years since 2010 when Reliance Power (R-Power) and Shanghai Electric Power Co signed in-principle agreements with Chinese banks for up to $12 billion of financing. But defaulting repayments of Chinese loans threw a spanner in RCom's strategic debt restructuring plan. Under the plan, RCom was supposed to sell assets such as wireless spectrum, towers, fiber-optic networks and real estate for a valuation above $4 billion, in addition to a $1 billion debt-to-equity swap in favour of creditors. The Chinese are the first among lenders to take the telecom operator to bankruptcy court. China Development Bank (CDB) filed an insolvency petition on 24 November against RCom to recover its loan of $1.78 billion (Rs 11,460 crore), according to media reports. It accounts for 37.11 per cent of RCom's total secured debt. Indian bankers, who also len

Japan's SoftBank Group Corp is offering to purchase shares of Uber Technologies Inc at a valuation of $48 billion, a 30 percent discount to its most recent valuation of $68.5 billion, a person familiar with the matter said on Monday. The investment, which was approved by the Uber board in October, would also trigger a string of governance changes at Uber that would limit some early shareholders' voting power, expand the board from 11 to 17 directors and cut the influence of former Chief Executive Travis Kalanick. Advertisement: Replay Ad Ads by ZINC 3 The investment and board moves are supported by new Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi and come at the end of a year of scandals and change for Uber, including the announcement last week that executives covered up a major hack in 2016. The consortium of investors led by SoftBank and Dragoneer Investment Group plan to take a stake of at least 14 percent in the ride-services company. The

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) came out with its recommendations on Net Neutrality today. It is pretty clear in its views. No telecom service provider (TSP) or Internet Service Provider (ISP) will be allowed to discriminate against access to any website. They can neither slow down access to a site, nor can they work out any arrangement by which some websites get favourable treatment. The TRAI also suggests that traffic management practices of ISPs and TSPs should be reported transparently so that it is clear that there is no bias. That comes as a huge relief to new websites and digital entrepreneurs who now have as much chance of getting noticed as a well established website. The Net Neutrality recommendations would ensure that no service provider can give preferential access to say, a Facebook, compared to a new social media site started by an entrepreneur. The Net Neutrality recommendations have thus leveled the playing field to a large extent. Advertiseme

Bitcoin zoomed past $11,000 to hit a record high for the sixth day in a row on Wednesday after gaining more than $1,000 in just 12 hours, stoking concerns that a rapidly swelling bubble could be set to burst in spectacular fashion. After soaring more than 1,000 percent since the start of the year, bitcoin rose as much as 15 percent on Wednesday, but by mid-afternoon in New York, the virtual currency was trading at $9,500, down 3.7 percent on the day on Luxembourg-based Bitstamp, one of the largest and most liquid cryptocurrency exchanges. Advertisement: Replay Ad Ads by ZINC 3 "As many seasoned traders know all too well, anything that rockets higher, tends to fall down faster when the time comes, and the time will come," James Hughes, chief market analyst at FX broker AxiTrader, said. Bitcoin topped $10,000 for the first time in early Asia trading, before surging above $11,000 less than 12 hours later to reach $11,395. Bitcoin&

The second day of the 8th Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad on Wednesday started with sessions on 'Women can do it!' and 'Innovations in Workforce Development and Skills Training', which focused on the summit theme of 'women first, prosperity for all'. Industry leaders from all walks of life discussed ways to boost women participation in the workforce, and advocated for better access to skills and training programmes, education, and career opportunities. Niti Aayog is hosting this year's Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad in association with the United States government. As many as 1,500 entrepreneurs from 170 countries would attend the three-day summit; many Indian Americans are also participating. US President Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump, who headed the US delegation, finished her India visit with a private tour of Golconda Fort. In line with the theme, women make up about 52.5 per cent of the entrepreneurs, investors and ec

After reports on Tuesday that a bug in macOS could allow practically anyone with access to a Mac running on High Sierra to gain root access by simply typing "root" as the username, Apple quickly responded by releasing an update to fix the flaw on Wednesday. The company's spokesperson said in a statement that the patch can be manually downloaded (via the support page), and the update would  be automatically installed on all systems running High Sierra later in the day. "Security is a top priority for every Apple product, and regrettably we stumbled with this release of macOS. When our security engineers became aware of the issue Tuesday afternoon, we immediately began working on an update that closes the security hole. This morning, as of 8 a.m., the update is available for download, and starting later today it will be automatically installed on all systems running the latest version (10.13.1) of macOS High Sierra. We greatly regret this error and we apologize to all

Google on Thursday announces a new application called Datally. As the name suggests, this application basically helps smartphone users to check, understand, and save on their mobile data. Datally basically lets users track their data usage in real time. Not only that, the application also provides personalized recommendations on saving data like it notifies users about public Wi-Fi spots available nearby. So, if you're struggling to save your phone's data, or if your data pack is getting over a lot before the validity date, Datally is the option for you. Datally is already available for download on the Google Play store -- and all Android phones running on Android 5.0 (Lollipop) and higher operating systems. This new application by Google basically lets you have a check on your data usage, understand where you're spending most of your data, or which app is eating away the maximum chunk of your data pack and after which also provides your with ways to have a control over th

With Oppo set to launch a phone that looks like an iPhone X , Huawei too seems to be taking inspiration from Apple in their own way. At the AI focused Honor V10 's launch event in China, the company teased their own facial recognition technology, which is said to be ten times more accurate than Apple's FaceID. The facial recognition tech, which is meant to take Apple's TrueDepth face detection system head on, uses a combination of infrared and a projector to create a 3D map of your face. Where things get things interesting is the fact that this 3D sensor captures 300,000 data points - ten times more than what iPhone X's FaceID captures. The caveat? The technology in its current state takes 10 seconds to create the 3D model. Huawei claims that this technology is not only secure enough for payments but is also extremely fast. When perfected, Huawei claims it will take just 400 milliseconds to unlock the phone. It is not known at the moment exactly when Huawei plans to s

After Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, YouTube is now planning to roll out a Stories-like feature called Reels. The launch of Reels Beta was made on YouTube in its blog post titled as 'Expanding community on YouTube'. The company says that Reels is a spin on Stories format but designed specifically for Creators. "Reels are YouTube's spin on the popular "stories" format, but designed specifically for YouTube creators. We learned that you want the flexibility to create multiple Reels and have them not expire, so we'll give you those options," notes the blog post. Currently, Reels is being tested in a small group of the creators and the company hasn't revealed any date for its final roll out.   YouTube calls Reels as a spin on Stories but the feature differs from the latter in many ways. First, Reels won't be a time-limit feature. This means that the Reels won't disappear after 24 hours or

Trump has hit back at British PM Theresa May late Wednesday on her criticism of anti-Muslim propaganda by Trump. US President Donald Trump has hit back at British Prime Minister Theresa May late Wednesday on her criticism of anti-Muslim propaganda by Trump. The diplomatic row between the two leaders is a high-profile spat with one of America's closest international partners. Trump wrote on Twitter, "@theresa_may, don't focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine!" .@Theresa_May, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine! - Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2017 Earlier, in a rare rebuke to Britain's closest ally, British Prime Minister Theresa May's spokesman said Wednesday that U.S. President Donal

Lauer, 59, has hosted "Today" for two decades. He joins a lengthening list of media figures felled by sexual misconduct charges this year. NBC News fired longtime "Today" show host Matt Lauer on Wednesday for "inappropriate sexual behavior," making him the second morning television show personality to lose his job because of sexual misconduct charges in a week. Lauer's co-host Savannah Guthrie made the announcement at the top of Wednesday's "Today" show. Last week, CBS News fired Charlie Rose after complaints from several women who worked for him. NBC News Chairman Andrew Lack said the network had received a complaint from a colleague on Monday night, and a review determined it was a clear violation of company standards. While it was the first complaint lodged against Lauer, Lack said in a memo to staff that "we were also presented with reason to believe this may not have been an isolated incident."