Zombies in Bengaluru

Zombies don't only exist on the silver screen.

 

A signboard in Bengaluru, India is going viral on the Internet, warning citizens of a new kind of danger – the smartphone zombie. 

 

The notice's clear caution, "Beware of Smartphone Zombies", stands as a grim reminder of the growing epidemic of digital distraction that is engulfing society

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The post was shared by X user @prakritea17, with the caption, "This signboard in BLR single-handedly attacked our entire generation". Needless to say, the picture went viral, provoking a spirited chorus of reactions from the public.

 

The term "Smartphone Zombies" describes individuals so engrossed in their mobile devices that they resemble walking unaware and disconnected from the physical world. This conduct not only results in reduced productivity and social disconnection but also presents notable safety hazards, especially when individuals use their phones while navigating busy streets. 

 

Wembley will be a sea of red and blue when Liverpool meet Chelsea in the EFL Cup final on February 25. The 2-1 win against Fulham in the semi-finals first leg and their 1-1 in the second leg on Wednesday was enough to get the job done. 

 

The Reds goal yesterday came in the eleventh minute when Luis Diaz chested down Jarell Quansah's diagonal ball, cutting inside and beating the Cottagers goalie at his near post, albeit with the help of a deflection.

Next, are two home games in two other competitions: Norwich in the FA Cup on Sunday, followed by Chelsea in the Premier League next Wednesday.

Pastor Sells God-backed Crypto: In God They Trust

A US pastor who sold a worthless cryptocurrency to his flock and pocketed $1.3 million, has insisted he was only doing what God commanded him. 

 

He and his wife, Kaitlyn, face a civil lawsuit alleging they flogged the so-called INDXcoin to fellow Christians in Colorado, with divine guarantees investors would become rich.

 

Eli Regalado who runs the online-only Victorious Grace Church set up the Kingdom of Wealth exchange in 2022 along with his spouse, Kaitlyn. Investors were told their INDXcoins, a form of crypto that could only be traded on the couple's platform, were "God-backed". 

 

Supposedly, there were 30 million in circulation, meaning the company should have made $300 million from the coins – but state investigators found just $30,000 in the bank.

 

On November 01, the exchange was shutdown, leaving investors with no possible way to recoup the funds. And now the couple are being sued for securities fraud, the Denver Post reports and the SEC have frozen their assets.

 

As per the complaint filed by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, investigators found 300 people sank $3.2 million into the said project. 

 

Faced with the fraud allegations, Regalado doubled down on his message of a God-given mission. 

 

"So the charges are that Kaitlyn and I have pocketed $1.3 million, and I just want to come out and say that those charges are true", he admitted in a video posted to a forum for INDXcoin investors.

 

The couple allegedly splashed on a Range Rover, jewelry, swanky handbags, home renovations, snowmobile trips, cosmetic dentistry and an au pair among other extravagances. They also sent $290,000 to their church, a non-profit owned by the couple, the lawsuit claims. 

 

Facing the legal action, which was filed in Denver last week, Regalado conceded it was possible there had been some communication issues on his hotline to God, though he was still holding out hope that the Big Man would come through in the end.

 

"We took God at his word and sold a cryptocurrency with no clear exit", he said. 

 

"Either I misheard God... or God is still not done with this project", he added. "What we're praying for... is that God is going to work a miracle in the financial sector. He is going to bring a miracle into INDXcoin". 

 

Colorado Securities Commissioner Tung Chan said potential investors in get-rich quick schemes would be wise not to take them at face value. 

 

"We allege that Mr. Regalado took advantage of the trust and faith of his own Christian community and that he peddled outlandish promises of wealth to them when he sold them essentially worthless cryptocurrencies", Chan said. "New coins and new exchanges are easy to create with open source code. We want to remind consumers to be very skeptical".

 

NBC News reported that the husband-and-wife team are due to appear in court next week.

H&M Pull School Uniform Advert

H&M, the Swedish clothing company, have drawn ire for their advertisement for school clothing. Social media users branded it as "sickening" and questioned the reasoning behind the ad.

 

The advertising campaign launched in Australia featured two young girls in pinafore dresses with the caption, “Make those heads turn in H&M’s Back to School fashion”.

 

On Monday, an H&M spokesperson said, “We have removed this ad. We are deeply sorry for the offence this has caused and we are looking into how we present campaigns going forward”.

 

The move comes after social media users accused the company of sexualising young girls. 

 

“The little girls’ parents generally prefer heads don’t ‘turn’ when others see their daughters walking to school, on a bus or in class”, Melinda Tankard Reist, an Australian writer known for campaigning against pornography, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. 

 

“Why would you want to fuel the idea that little girls should draw attention to their looks, bodies and ‘style’? Perhaps have a word to your marketing team and come up with something that doesn’t draw attention to pre-pubescent girls already struggling to thrive in a culture that values ‘lookism’ as an aspirational goal?”

 

Boeing will hold a quality stand down tomorrow at the Seattle-area US location where they make 737 aircraft, pausing production and delivery operations for a day, the company announced yesterday.

 

During the stand down, employees will attend quality workshops and “pause, evaluate what we're doing, how we're doing it and make recommendations for improvement”, said Boeing Commercial Airplanes President Stan Deal. 

 

The first stand down will occur at the Renton, Washington-area factory where the 737 is built. All other Boeing commercial production facilities and fabrication sites will have stand downs over the next few weeks, Boeing said.

 

It is long overdue! Stop gambling lives and start putting quality over profit!

[V]ladimir [Z]elensky Loses His Marbles

Ukrainian President [V]ladimir [Z]elensky loses his marbles! He is declaring six Russian regions to be “historically inhabited by Ukrainians” in a decree published on Monday. 

 

Another way of putting it: Ukrainians had lived there before, meaning, they're Ukrainian lands and therefore, they should belong to Ukraine.

 

The list does not include any of the territory that Kiev claims sovereignty over in the ongoing conflict with Moscow, and focuses on globally recognized parts of Russia. The document includes Bryansk, Kursk, and Belgorod regions, all of which border Ukraine. It also lists Voronezh, Rostov, and Krasnodar regions, all of which bordered Ukraine before 2014, when Crimea decided to join Russia in a referendum and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics declared independence from Kiev. 

 

[Z]elensky (right) claimed the population of these territories had been subjected to “the policy of forced Russification”, and ordered the government in Kiev to develop “an action plan” to “preserve” Ukrainian “national identity” in Russia. 

 

The decree calls on Russia to “provide Ukrainians living in its territories” with access to education in the Ukrainian language, as well as access to Ukrainian-language mass media and special “civil, social, cultural, and religious rights”.

 

Note that Moscow has never imposed any restrictions on the Ukrainian language. Russia’s education minister, Sergey Kravtsov, said in July 2022 that “no one was banning” it, and that it would be taught in schools where necessary. 

 

[Z]elensky’s decree also tasks the Ukrainian government and the National Security and Defense Council with “collecting and studying facts and testimonies about crimes” supposedly committed against Ukrainians in Russia throughout its history, as well as “countering disinformation and propaganda” about Ukrainian history, allegedly spread by Moscow. 

 

The president also instructed the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences to “prepare materials” on the “thousand-year-old history” of Ukraine and distribute them around the world. The country’s educational programs and textbooks should also contain “the true history of ethnic Ukrainians”, [Z]elensky added. 

 

The Russian regions mentioned in the decree have repeatedly been targeted by Ukrainian missile and drone attacks as well as shelling since the start of hostilities with Moscow in February 2022.

 

It's a big joke that [Z]elensky is making “territorial claims” on sovereign Russian regions! He has really gone completely mad!

Huawei's Move to Totally Abandon Android

Huawei have hinted a major release of their HarmonyOS that will see the Chinese giant break with the Linux ecosystem. 

 

HarmonyOS was launched in 2019 – initially as an OS for IoT devices, but later adapted to run on smartphones and other hardware. Huawei suggested the OS could run on their wearables, tablet computers, smartphones, and smart TVs, and offer a unified experience across all. That's a lot like the sort of thing Google can deliver with Android, with which HarmonyOS was compatible. 

 

But between the geopolitical difficulties of cross-border tech transfers, and a desire to build the best possible offering, through 2023, Huawei indicated that they would build a version of HarmonyOS that broke with the Android ecosystem – even if that meant pain for developers and users.

 

Last week, Huawei launched that Android-free offering: HarmonyOS Next. And they claimed they've also created the kernel to power it – meaning Huawei have divorced themselves from both Android and Linux. 

 

Huawei are committed to seeing HarmonyOS Next making a debut for consumers in Q4 of 2024, and that by then they will have trained millions of developers and secured thousands of native apps to run on the OS. A version for developers has been promised for imminent release. 

 

In sessions for developers, Huawei detailed the innards of the OS and how it will ship with all the basic apps and services consumers will expect – stuff like maps, photo management, and a calculator – and the developer tools they've created. 

 

Huawei have also developed an "open" version of HarmonyOS Next – presumably in the hope that third parties might consider the OS to power their own devices. The developer push and possible OEM adoption of HarmonyOS Next are as significant as the software itself. 

 

If Huawei can develop an ecosystem of third-party players, they could create a viable alternative to the Android/iOS duopoly. 

 

Huawei's revived smartphone range has been hailed as a patriotic alternative for Chinese buyers. Yet even a couple of hundred million Huawei devices running HarmonyOS Next would not be a significant challenge to Apple and Google outside China. Nor would other Chinese handset-makers adopting the OS necessarily make a difference. 

 

Recall that Microsoft signed up the likes of HTC, LG, and Samsung to build Windows Phone handsets, but couldn't crack the market. Only Samsung remains a force in the handset market – and it's all-in on Android.

 

That may be so, but I don't think anybody should underestimate Huawei!

Hamas Retain the Capacity to Fight Israel

Israel has killed between just 20% and 30% of Hamas’ fighters in Gaza since declaring war on the freedom fighters following their cross-border raid on October 07, according to US intelligence estimates reported by the Wall Street Journal yesterday. 

 

In a classified report compiled earlier this month, Washington estimated Hamas had between 25,000 and 30,000 fighters in Gaza before the war, plus thousands of members of the territory’s police force and other authorities, basing its estimates on intercepted communications, drone surveillance, and Israeli intelligence. 

 

Hamas, which have governed Gaza since 2007, also retain the firepower to continue striking Israel – and Israel Defense Forces assets in the Palestinian territories – “for months”.

 

Hamas will prevail over the Israelis.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Five-star Celts powered into the next round as Highland League Buckie Thistle's Scottish Cup adventure ended at Celtic Park, Glasgow yesterday.

 

The fifth-tier side from the north east of Scotland held the Scottish champions for 25 minutes before eventually succumbing to Celtic. Paulo Bernardo dinked the opener in the twenty-fifth minute, Odin Holm netted his first Celtic goal with a neat finish eight minutes later and Kyogo Furuhashi made it three in the 41st minute. Luis Palma and Rocco Vata added two more in the fiftieth and seventy-sixth minutes respectively to make it 5-0.

 

The holders will now have an eye on the draw for the last 16, but will be expected to go all the way no matter who they are paired with.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Liverpool beat AFC Bournemouth 4-0 on Sunday to move five points clear at the top of the Premier League.

 

Both sides struggled to create anything worthwhile in the first half – things kept almost happening but nothing actually quite happened.

 

In the second half though, within four minutes of the resumption, Liverpool were ahead thanks to a move which showed the purpose and composure they had lacked in the first half. Ibrahima Konate played an artful crossfield ball to pick out Curtis Jones, who angled a pass for Diogo Jota to slip a pass for Darwin Nunez. Nunez was then involved in the build-up to Liverpool's second with 20 minutes left, battling to win possession for Cody Gakpo to release Jota, who beat the Cherries goalie at his near post. Jota got his second in the seventy-ninth minute when he initially miscontrolled, but then recovered his poise to send a low shot beyond the Bournemouth keeper. Then, in injury-time, Joe Gomez delivered a wicked cross from the right and Nunez stole in at the far post to score with a delicious outside-of-the-boot finish.

 

And, as Liverpool go into Wednesday's EFL Cup semi-final second leg at Fulham with a 2-1 advantage, what many felt would be a transitional season now shapes up into something special.

Ferdinand Marcos Jr Takes Presidential Chopper to Coldplay Concert

Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos Jr received fierce backlash for using a presidential chopper to attend a musical performance north of the capital Manila, bypassing the area’s notorious traffic jams.

 

Marcos Jr  and wife (left) had arrived at the British rock band Coldplay's concert at the Philippine Arena, Ciudad de Victoria in Bocaue and Santa Maria, Bulacan, about 30 kilometers north of Manila on Friday.

 

On social media, many accused the president of wasting taxpayers’ money, and pointed out that the public has to endure Metro Manila’s infamous traffic daily while commuting. 

 

The Presidential Security Group said the Philippine Arena had “experienced an unprecedented influx of 40,000 individuals eagerly attending a concert, resulting in unforeseen traffic complications along the route”. The traffic situation posed “a potential threat to the security of our president”, they claimed.

 

In a column for the Philippine Star, Ana Marie T Pamintuan wrote: “Perhaps the horrendous traffic that forced the first couple to take a helicopter will end the state of denial in the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority about the Philippine capital region having the worst traffic congestion among ‘metros’ in the world”.

 

For the older generations, the incident had revived memories of Marcos’ parents, Pamintuan wrote. The late dictator Marcos Sr ruled the Philippines for two decades, and the family, known for their extravagance, were accused of plundering billions of dollars.

 

Harimau Malaya lost 1-0 to Bahrain in Saturday's Asian Cup Group E match. 

 

"Nothing went wrong. This is the level we are at", said a frustrated Pan Gon. "Maybe I'm the wrong coach? Maybe I placed too much expectations and gave too much hope to the public and the players. But, these are my problems and not those of the players, the FA of Malaysia, or the public. These are all my problems".

 

The 55-year-old said Malaysia failed to control and dominate the game. 

 

Oh well, back to the drawing board. And don't expect a miracle on Thursday when Harimau Malaya face South Korea.

No Air Defense, No Air Force, No Money, Complains Slovakia

Slovakia’s continuous military aid to Ukraine under the previous government has left the country’s own defense posture badly damaged, with “years” now needed to fix it, the current Slovak Defense Minister Robert Kalinak admitted.

 

“The former government left us without our own anti-aircraft defenses, without combat aviation, and we don’t even have the promised 700 million for MiGs, which the government also handed over to Ukraine”, he complained.

 

The minister (left), who assumed office back in October under the new government led by Prime Minister Robert Fico, accused his predecessors of simply surrendering key military assets to Ukraine without coming up with any plan to secure their replacements. [Note: Slovakia had sent military aid in thirteen packages worth 671 million euros ($718.24 million) to Kyiv since Russia's Special Military Operation in February 2022 before Fico's appointment].

 

The defense ministry had effectively been run by “people with qualities of pugs rather than wolves”, Kalinak told the Standard newspaper on Thursday.

 

Upon his electoral victory in September, Fico (left) had immediately halted the country’s military aid to Kiev, as well as pledged to block Ukraine’s potential accession into the US-led NATO bloc. 

 

The new PM has repeatedly criticized the Western approach to handling the Ukraine conflict, arguing that the enduring support of Kiev turned into a “futile waste of human resources and money”, which only prolongs the hostilities and fills Ukrainian cemeteries with “thousands of dead soldiers". 

 

Fico wrote in Slovakia’s Pravda newspaper last week, promising that he will no longer be subject to stupid liberal and progressive demagoguery. Regrettably, much of Europe is very much caught up in this farcical foolishness – and it will be at their peril.

 

Methinks, Boeing are cursed! 

 

On Friday, a Boeing 747 cargo jet in the US flying from Miami, Florida to Puerto Rico caught fire while it was still above Miami, prompting a stunned witness on the ground to shout, "Oh my God, it's on fire. Oh my God!"

 

Fortunately, the Atlas Air flight, with five people on board, safely returned to Miami International Airport. 

 

A preliminary report by the FAA says the plane experienced "engine failure" and that a "post flight inspection revealed a softball-size hole above #2 engine".

 

Stay tuned for more Boeing mishaps.

Beautiful Old People Are Works of Art

Pursuant to my post "WSC's Twenty-fifth Meeting" published yesterday, this cartoon strip gives an explanation on beauty – but with a different perspective: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Balenciaga go heavy metal! 

 

The French luxury fashion house introduce their "DIY Metal" line. Emblazoned with Balenciaga logos in a variety of metal typography – from 80s glam metal to death metal. 

The line includes the $825 t-shirt above along with $1,250 hoodies, $150 socks, and a $2,350 purse.