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Lok Sabha elections 2019 exit polls out today: How reliable are they?

When the last phase of Lok Sabha elections 2019 end on Sunday, all eyes will be on exit polls that will be released after voting concludes. The counting of votes, which will begin at 8 am on May 23, is expected to take longer than usual this time around and will reportedly continue well into the night. Till then, the numerous exit polls — regardless of their accuracy — will put forward their predictions on whether the Narendra Modi-led BJP government will come back to power or not.

With the embargo on their broadcast being lifted on Sunday evening, the following exit polls will be announced today: Republic-Jan Ki Baat, Republic-CVoter, Today’s Chanakya, ABP-CSDS, News18–IPSOS, India Today-Axis, Times Now-CNX, and NewsX-Neta. Here’s everything you need to know about them.

ALSO READ: Exit Polls 2019: Be careful; take their forecasts with a bucketful of salt

What are exit polls and how are they conducted?

An exit poll is a poll of voters conducted soon after they walk out having cast their vote. Conducted by a number of organisations, these post-voting polls ask voters for whom they actually voted, unlike opinion polls that ask voters for whom they plan to vote. Their aim it to predict the actual result of the elections based on the information gathered from the voters. To accurately predict election results, it is important that the exit poll’s sample size is geographically, demographically and socially representative.

ALSO READ: Exit polls 2019 LIVE: Will Modi magic work again for BJP in LS polls 2019?

Amazon faces boycott call for selling toilet seats with Hindu gods’ images

Amazon.com faced a social media backlash in India on Thursday after toilet seat covers and other items with images of Hindu gods were spotted on the US retailer’s website, making #BoycottAmazon the country’s top trending topic on Twitter.

Thousands of Twitter users backed the call for the boycott, with some tagging Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and urging her to take action against the world’s biggest online retailer.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The episode is reminiscent of an incident in 2017 when New Delhi took the Seattle, Washington-based company to task after its Canadian website was spotted selling doormats resembling India’s flag.

Swaraj at the time threatened to rescind visas of Amazon employees if the doormats were not removed from its site.Reuters found several listings of toilet seat covers, yoga mats, sneakers, rugs and other items depicting Hindu gods, or sacred Hindu symbols, on Amazon’s US website.

Some of the items were no longer available for purchase, suggesting that Amazon may have been withdrawing some of the items, as it did in 2017. Read Complete Article

Electric flying taxi unveiled, could be operating worldwide by 2025

The world’s first all-electric vertical takeoff and landing passenger jet has been unveiled after completing its first flight.

German startup Lilium aims to have a fleet of the five-seat aircraft — which can operate with a pilot or in drone mode — flying in cities worldwide by 2025, providing a pay-per-ride service that will be emission-free, five times faster than a car and produce less noise than a motorbike. Lilium has $100 million in funds and must raise the same amount again to bring the model to market, while adding hundreds more jobs to its payroll of 300 people, Chief Executive Officer Daniel Wiegan told Bloomberg TV.

The plane will have a 300-kilometer (186-mile) range, allowing it link New York and Boston. A short hop between John F. Kennedy International Airport and Manhattan will cost about $70 per passenger, making it cheaper than a helicopter and competitive with top-end limousine services, Chief Commercial Officer Remo Gerber said in an interview. A full-scale, full-weight prototype made its flight from Lilium’s base near Munich and has commenced flight tests, the company said Thursday. The craft is powered by 36 jet engines that swivel after takeoff to provide forward flight in the manner of a standard plane, using 10% of the energy of multi-rotor drones based on helicopter technology. That saving in turn allows it to fly for 10 times the distance, overcoming the range issues regarded as a major obstacle to electric-powered planes. Read Complete Article

Xiaomi Redmi 7 review: Strong build and sleek design, but camera a dampener

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi unveiled its latest budget offering — the Redmi 7 — last month. It is priced at Rs 7,999 and is available in three colour variants: eclipse black, comet blue and lunar red.

The Redmi 7 sports a 6.26-inch HD+ IPS LCD screen with a waterdrop notch, accommodating a selfie camera. The phone is reminiscent of the Redmi Note 7 Pro, but with a plastic back instead of glass. Powering the phone is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 SoC. The phone comes with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. The Redmi 7 features two slim card slots and a dedicated microSD card slot. Redmi 7 now features palm shutter gesture functionality, so you need to gesture towards the lens and the picture is taken without you having to touch the screen.

Design and display

The phone has a plush look and feel in your hands. As the name goes, it is one of the few phones in the budget category that comes with a dot notch, but is not bezel-less. The phone is equipped with a 6.26-inch LCD display and has an HD+ screen resolution of 1520 x 720 pixels. The phone supports colour temperature adjustment in the standard mode. The reading mode has a yellowish tinge and does not really make a difference to the reading experience. It might feel a bit heavy at 180 grams, but its 8.47-mm thickness lends the phone sturdiness. Read Complete Article

Asus Zenfone 6 with 48+13MP flip camera unveiled: Better than OnePlus 7?

At a global event held in Paris, Taiwanese smartphone maker Asus on Thursday unveiled the Zenfone 6. A successor to the Zenfone 5z, the Zenfone 6 has a three-side bezel-less screen, glass-metal-glass design, motorised flip camera, and 5,000 mAh battery. Pitched as a rival to the recently launched OnePlus 7, the Zenfone 6 is expected to launch in India sometime next month.

Design

The Asus Zenfone 6 has a glass-metal-glass design with Gorilla Glass 6 on the front and Gorilla Glass 3 on the back. The phone’s overall design resembles the ROG phone, albeit without the flashy elements like exhaust vents and LED insignia. The phone’s key design highlight is its 6.41-inch fullHD+ screen with no notch or cut-out area for earpiece and sensors which gives it a three-side bezel-less profile.

Camera

The phone boasts a dual-camera module featuring a 48-megapixel primary sensor (Sony IMX 586) of an f/1.79 aperture and a 13MP ultra-wide lens of a 128-degree field of view.

The cameras are fitted on a motorised flip module resting inside a cut-out area on the back. Unlike the motorised pop-up camera module that ejects from the chassis, the flip module rotates 180 degrees, giving more flexibility to the user, especially while taking panorama shots or selfie shots.

Specifications

Powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 system-on-chip, the phone boots Android Pie-based ZenUI 6.0. The new user interface is an improvement over the existing ZenUI. It looks close to the stock Android and has several value-add features integrated by Asus for an improved user experience. The key highlight of the phone is its 5,000 mAh battery, which supports 18W fast charging with the supplied charger. The phone is compatible with the Quick Charge 4.0 quick-charging technology.

Read Complete Article

ICC Cricket World Cup 2019: Here are strongest playing 11 for the 10 teams

With the biggest cricket spectacle, the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019, just days away, and the provisional squads for all the 10 participating teams already announced, it is time to look at the strengths and weaknesses of each team.

The May 23 deadline for making any changes to the 15-member squads is just around the corner. There have been some forced changes for some teams due to injuries, but most squads are likely to remain unchanged.

Let’s take a look at the strongest playing 11 of all the 10 teams for the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019:

India

Virat Kohli Virat Kohli. Photo: PTI India named their 15-man squad on April 15 and there were some surprises: Rishabh Pant, touted as the best batsman to solve their number-four conundrum, was not included in the 15-player list; Vijay Shankar was chosen for his “3-dimentional abilities” and Dinesh Karthik was given another chance as the team needed and experienced hand behind the wickets. Read Complete Article

It costs only Rs 1,000 to bypass anti-spam restrictions set by WhatsApp

Whats App

WhatsApp clones and software tools that cost as little as Rs 1,000 are helping Indian digital marketers and political activists bypass anti-spam restrictions set up by the world’s most popular messaging app, Reuters has found.

The activities highlight the challenges WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, faces in preventing abuse in India, its biggest market with more than 200 million users.

With fervent campaigning in staggered general elections, which concludes on May 19, the demand for such tools has surged, according to digital companies and sources in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its main rival, the Congress party.

After false messages on WhatsApp last year sparked mob lynchings, the company restricted forwarding of a message to only five users. The software tools appear to overcome those restrictions, allowing users to reach thousands of people at once.

Divya Spandana, the social media chief of the Congress, and the BJP’s IT head, Amit Malviya, did not respond requests for comment.

Rohitash Repswal, who owns a digital marketing business in a cramped, residential neighbourhood of New Delhi, said he ran a Rs 1,000 piece of software round-the-clock in recent months to send up to 100,000 WhatsApp messages a day for two BJP members.

“Whatever WhatsApp does, there’s a workaround,” Repswal said during an interview at his small, two-bedroom house.

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Hinduja group keen on Jet Airways takeover; seeks Naresh Goyal’s consent

The Hinduja group would be keen to take over Jet Airways, provided lenders agree to take a substantial haircut on their dues and founder Naresh Goyal gives his consent to the takeover. A top official of the group said it sees value in the airline, which is going through a crisis.

“We may look at the airline provided banks agree to take a haircut on debt. The high debt is unsustainable,” said a source close to the development. Jet Airways owes Rs 9,000 crore to banks and has defaulted to banks, suppliers and employees. Its operations have shut down due to lack of funds.

If both banks and Goyal agree, the group will start talks with Etihad, which had made a bid for the airline last week. Goyal owned 51 per cent stake in the airline of which 41 per cent stake is pledged with the lenders. “Goyal has run the airline like his own baby and we do not want to take any action unless he agrees,” the source said.

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