Indians said “I love you” to Amazon’s Alexa 19,000 times a day in 2020 and got an equal number of bedtime story requests. Indians even proposed Alexa 6,000 times a day. “Many customers found a companion in Alexa last year,” Puneesh Kumar, Country Leader for Alexa, told Zenger News. “We are pleasantly surprised with the growing adoption of Alexa by users across age groups — and humbled to be part of this voice revolution in India,” he said. The voice assistant of the U.S. e-commerce giant has been an instant hit since its inception in the Indian market in 2018.…
Author: zenger.news
The image of ease of doing business in India has suffered another hit after U.K.-based oil major Cairn Energy filed a case in a US court to enforce a $1.2-billion arbitration award it won in December 2020. India has lost two international arbitration cases within three months. It lost against Vodafone in September 2020 after the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague in the Netherlands ruled that India’s retrospective tax demand of $2 billion “breached the guarantee of fair and equitable treatment”. India had modified its tax laws retrospectively in 2012 to make them effective from 1962. India had…
KARACHI, Pakistan — The horrific summer of 2015 is still fresh in the mind of Shahzad Qureshi. That year, hundreds had died in the city due to heatstroke, and the large halls of the city’s expo center were piled up with dead bodies waiting to be buried. “The extreme temperatures turned out to be fatal for residents living in the concretized spaces. I can never forget the mass graves filled with unidentified bodies,” Qureshi told Zenger News. As many as 1,200 people died due to the heatwave and hospitals were put on high alert as the temperatures hit 49 degrees Celsius (120…
KENT, UK – The British cops arrested two men and seized over half a million dollars worth of cocaine and amphetamine from their homes which resulted in a five-year jail term for the duo. Matthew Beal, 43, from West Malling, and Robert Edwards, 51, from Maidstone in Kent, United Kingdom were arrested in their homes during two separate raids on Nov 6 and Dec 1 last year. An investigation led by the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate revealed the two had been operating a drug-supply chain where Beal would transport large quantities of drugs to a lock-up in Wierton…
TEL AVIV — Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the U.S. National Institutes of Health — and the public face of Covid-19 policy in the United States who at times found himself at odds with ex-President Donald J. Trump — has won a 2021 Dan David Prize of $1 million. The Israeli late businessman and philanthropist Dan David established the international prize in 2001 at Tel Aviv University. Every year, three prizes of $1 million each are awarded to globally inspiring individuals and organizations. Laureates donate 10 percent of the money to scholarships…
PUNE, India – U.S. e-commerce giant Amazon will begin manufacturing its devices in India, starting with the production of Fire TV Sticks in the southern city of Chennai later this year, the company said on Feb. 16. “We are delighted to announce Amazon’s first manufacturing line in India to produce hundreds of thousands of Fire TV Stick devices every year,” tweeted Amit Agarwal, global senior vice-president and country head, Amazon India. “This further reiterates our commitment to ‘Make in India’, contributing directly to the local economy, creating jobs and boosting Indian innovation.” Amazon’s manufacturing move comes at a time when the company is…
LONDON, UK — Regent’s Zoo in London has shared an amusing video of squirrel monkeys catching snowballs thrown by their keepers. The video which was posted on their Facebook page on Feb 8 shows the monkeys playing in the snow. The two monkeys and Agnes and Pip, who were born last year, were experiencing snow for the first when they were filmed. “It was another snow day, and our squirrel monkeys played a fun game catching snowballs thrown by their keepers,” Zoological Society of London Zoo wrote in their post. The zoo currently has 19 Black-capped or Bolivian squirrel monkeys…
ARCTIC OCEAN — Two Russian strategic missile carriers, which are the fastest bombers in the world, conducted a successful flight over neutral waters. The footage was released by the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation showing the scheduled flight which took place over the Arctic Ocean. Both the Tu-160 strategic missile carriers took off before embarking on their 12-hour journey which went over the Barents Sea, Greenland and the Norwegian Sea. “The flight duration was about 12 hours,” as per an official report by the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation. “Fighter escort was provided by the crews…
A government official from Najafgarh, a town in southwest Delhi, decided to buy an electric vehicle (EV) last year to do his bit for the environment. After reading rave reviews about the zero-emission Nexon XZ+, he decided to purchase the car. The Nexon EV is sold in India by Tata Motors, the owners of Jaguar Land Rover that wishes to turn into an all-electric luxury brand from 2025. Excited with the purchase, his family decided to go on a trip in early January but got a rude shock as the car stalled in the middle of the road at around 10:00 am,…
MUMBAI, India — “Namaste Wahala”, a love story of an Indian boy and a Nigerian girl that released on Netflix on Valentine’s Day, brings together the Indian and Nigerian film industries, two of the largest in the world, for the first time. The title translates in Hindi and Nigerian Pidgin to ‘Hello Trouble.’ The film has generated considerable interest because it is the first film to touch upon a romance between the two communities. Nollywood, as the Nigerian film industry is called, makes around 2,500 films in a year and is the second-largest film producer in the world in terms of…