ABC
ABC issued a statement saying it was “surprised by the action” after content on its website about unrest in Myanmar between Muslims and Buddhists was included on the blocking list. India’s Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde insisted in a statement the government was “only taking strict action against those accounts or people which are causing damage or spreading rumours.” Shinde added that the government sought to block the Myanmar online photos because they were “disturbing the atmosphere here in India.”
The government said photographs of clashes in Myanmar were circulating on the Internet with fake captions claiming the scenes were from the north-eastern Indian state of Assam, where 80 people have died in recent ethnic violence. Vivek Sood, senior Supreme Court lawyer and an author on Internet legalisation, called the government’s step “a gross abuse of power.”
“It’s completely illegal under the Indian IT Act,” he told The Economic Times. Indian journalist Kanchan Gupta, who is often critical of the government, had his Twitter account targeted by a government blocking order in a move he called a “political vendetta”. Al Jazeera webpages on the blocking list, including a report on the exodus from Bangalore, appeared unaffected by the government orders, the channel’s Delhi bureau chief Anmol Saxena told AFP.
Ministers earlier complained they had not received co-operation from websites and social network groups. The government on Thursday said Twitter had agreed to remove six fake accounts parodying Prime Minister Singh. The prime minister’s office issued a statement on Friday quoting Twitter that they have “removed the reported profiles from circulation due to violation of our Terms of Service regarding impersonation”. United States State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said as India “seeks to preserve security, we are urging them also to take into account the importance of freedom of expression in the online world”.
IKEA
More Sri Lankan investments in India – IKEA to invest.
The Union minister of Commerce has decided to redefine small and medium enterprises (SME) to make it possible for investment by the Swedish furniture giant IKEA . Union minister Sharma announced this at the India road show here.
IKEA furniture manufacturer has sought some changes in policy to come in with an investment of over Rs 10,500 crore into India. As per current definition, SME is a unit with $1 million investment that can go in for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). IKEA pointed out that once it started sourcing from SME in India, the growth would be fast and SMEs would have to exceed the investment limit.
Sharma said that the moment SME started selling its products to companies abroad its investment would need to go up and under the present law it would cross the limit given and make it not eligible for FDI. Sharma said that the present law was penalizing SME for doing well.
The government to attract FDI had relaxed the foreign direct investment rules last year to allow 100% FDI in single-brand retail . Earlier it was 51% but imposed numerous conditions such as mandatory local sourcing kept off foreign players.
A few investors such as Skechers, Pavers England, Promod and Tommy Hilfiger did express interest but were deterred by stringent norms in upcoming national manufacturing investment zones (NMIZ).
Sharma announced three additional national manufacturing investment zones (NMIZ) will be
coming up in Andhra Pradesh and two in Karnataka. Work on 12 more zones will start by the end of August. Talking about Sri Lankan companies’ investment , Sharma said Sri Lankan companies especially the textile firm Brandex, MAS textiles and Toray are coming to invest heavily in India.
He said Brandex apparels aims for fourfold increase in its exports from Vizag unit in the coming years. Not only Brandex is very upbeat on increasing its investment in India, every Monday about 50 million lingerie pieces are exported by them to Victoria Secret.
CompUSA
Best Buy gets paid a bounty by the carrier for each customer it signs up. But the incentive structure is flat, so salespeople aren’t biased toward one phone or the other. That’s the store’s biggest appeal: it isn’t trying to push one product over another, and offers virtually all of the products from each of the major carriers. It will also often bundle in additional discounts or freebies, such as a Best Buy gift card or free video game.
Even as it closes big-box stores, Best Buy plans to open 100 standalone Best Buy Mobile stores. That could very likely be the start of a broader migration toward a more mobile-centric offering.
Still, the continued interest in smartphones may not be enough to get Best Buy through its recent struggles. The closing of 50 big-box stores this year fiscal year portends the same kind of troubles CompUSA and Circuit City faced before they declared bankruptcy and disappeared.
Meanwhile, Best Buy’s sales declines in its other segments continue, with languishing demand for consumer electronic products. The 21 percent month-over-month decline in the entertainment category is particularly stark.
More importantly, Best Buy is losing the e-commerce battle to the likes of Amazon, which has grown into the de-facto place for consumers to buy their goods.
But fortunately for Best Buy, handsets remain a place where consumers want advice and touch and feel and actual device before making a purchasing decision, something they can’t do with a Web site.
So how Best Buy looks in a few years — or whether it survives — remains an uncertainty. But it could very well end up as a mobile device-centric chain, rather than the one-stop shop for all things electronic.