The Department of Telecom of the Government of India has launched Sanchar Saathi Portal to help people block, track and check the genuineness of a used device before buying them. “First leg of Sanchar Saathi portal is CEIR (Central Equipment Identity Register). If you lose your mobile phone, then you can visit this portal. There will be some identity verification, requirement of undertaking and immediately after this the portal will interact with law enforcement agencies and telecom service providers and block your lost mobile phone,” said Union Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. A
People in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are among the hardest working globally and do the longest hours per week as the pandemic has changed the 9 to 5 workplace culture. Nearly half of the workers in the country put in over 49 hours in the office every week, says a Business Name Generator (BNG) study. The BNG study found the UAE to be the world’s third hardest-working country, with 46.5 percent of workers logging 49 or more hours per week. While the average paid work hours per week total 52.6 in the country. In the list of 150 countries, Malta tops as a staggering 91 per cent of wor
From May 8, Zimbabwe has begun circulating digital tokens backed by gold reserves that people can use to conduct peer-to-peer payments and transact with businesses, said Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor John P Mangudya. International gold prices determined by the London Bullion Market Association will dictate the local pricing of the tokens, he added. The African nation is introducing local digital tokens to reduce reliance on the US dollar. The tokens will be available to purchase via banks, and transactions will be enabled through “e-gold wallets or e-gold cards” held by banks. Ther
India aims to establish 100 semiconductor design startups to create innovative solutions and designs for the global market, says Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and IT. The union minister said that the country also plans to create a talent pool of 85,000 highly-skilled professionals in the sector. Rajeev Chandrasekhar was speaking at the third edition of the Semicon India event, which brought together students, young innovators, industry stakeholders, and other key individuals at IIT Delhi. With a brand-new curriculum in place, he believes India will contribute to t
India is looking to ramp up its exports to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with a target of $50 billion in exports by the financial year 2026-27. This goal was set during a meeting between India's Minister of Commerce and Industry, Piyush Goyal, and the UAE's Minister of Economy, Abdulla Bin Touq Al Marri. The UAE is one of India's top trading partners, and India has been working to strengthen its economic ties with the country. In the financial year 2020-21, India's exports to the UAE stood at $14.42 billion, with imports from the UAE at $17.77 billion. The Indian government is now look
US tech giantsGoogle and Apple once had a war going to get the services of three important engineers, Srinivasan Venkatachary, Steven Baker and Anand Shukla, who play a key role in ramping up the artificial intelligence (AI) services, according to a report by The Information. The three engineers had previously worked for Apple and were instrumental in modernising Apple's search technology. They are now with Google and working on large-language models (LLMs), to lower training costs and advance the precision of LLMs and the products based on these models. The report said that Google CEO Sun
From July 1, 2023, the emissions reduction scheme of the Australian government, called the Safeguard Mechanism, will help the country meet its climate targets. The policy is expected to drive down industrial emissions. A reboot of an existing scheme, the revised scheme will push more than 200 of Australia’s top greenhouse gas polluters to make deep emissions cuts, by nearly 5 per cent a year to 2030 against a baseline or limit set by the government. The Safeguard Mechanism represents a major turnaround in Australia’s climate policies after years of deep divisions among the main poli
Group of Seven (G7) advanced nations should adopt “risk-based” regulation on artificial intelligence, their digital ministers agreed on April 30. However, the ministers said that such regulation should also “preserve an open and enabling environment” for the development of AI technologies and be based on democratic values. The top tech officials from G7 – Britain, Canada, the EU, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States – met for G7 Digital and Tech Ministers' Meeting in Takasaki, a city about 100 km northwest of Tokyo, Japan, on April 29-30. In a joint statement iss
South Korea has restored Japan to its list of countries it gives preferential treatment in trade on April 24, three years after the Asian countries downgraded each other’s trade status in the midst of a diplomatic row led by historical grievances. South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy in a government gazette also said Seoul will further restrict technology and industrial exports to Russia and its ally Belarus over the war in Ukraine. Japan and South Korea are working to repair relations, as they boost three-way security cooperation with Washington to counter the threat p
The UK government has announced £100 million in funding for a taskforce that would develop artificial intelligence (AI) models similar to ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, to help the country build and adopt the next generation of safe AI. The Foundation Model Taskforce will be modelled on the success of the COVID-19 Vaccines Taskforce, and will work on safe and reliable use of this pivotal AI across the economy and ensure that the UK is globally competitive in this strategic technology. The expert taskforce will launch first pilots targeting public services in the next six months, said an off