India's Narendra Modi woos Iranian leaders

Image copyright

Image captionPrime Minister Modi (R) hopes for a constructive dialogue with President Rouhani

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives in Tehran this weekend, he will find out whether it's the beginning of a new era in bilateral ties - or a missed opportunity.

Delhi's relations with Tehran are multi-faceted and complex. The two countries share centuries-old cultural and linguistic links. In modern times, the relationship is more economic and strategic.

Tehran was the second biggest supplier of crude oil to India until 2011-12. Iran is also strategically located in the Gulf, and it offers an alternative trade route to Afghanistan and to Central Asia.

India is home to the world's second highest Shia population, next only to Iran. Iran's influence over an estimated 45 million Shias in India is regarded as significant. With Iran emerging after international sanctions, it offers great investment opportunities to Indian companies.

But the bilateral ties suffered setbacks following international sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear programme. As successive Indian governments moved closer to the US, their Iran policy took a back seat, much to the displeasure of the Iranians.

Iranians were dismayed when India voted against their country at a vote in the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2009. Then India significantly reduced oil imports from Tehran following US pressure.

"That was a bitter lesson for the Iranians. They understood that India would not take Iran's side on any dispute and India would not sacrifice its relations with the US and the West for Iran," says Fatemeh Aman, an Iran-South Asia affairs analyst based in the US.

During his first two years at office, Mr Modi focused more on India's immediate neighbourhood and Indian Ocean rim countries. Relations with the United States and the west were given a priority.

Image copyright

Image captionInida hopes investment in Chabahar port will provide it with a gateway to Afghanistan

"There is very clear sense in India that he has to engage more with Muslim countries in the region, in the extended neighbourhood. Mr Modi has already been to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and planning to visit Qatar.

"The visit to Iran comes as part of the strategy," says Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, Senior Fellow for South Asia at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London.

When the international sanctions were in place, India could not pay for the oil it had imported from Iran. It still owes $6.5bn in unpaid dues and Delhi is still finding a way to facilitate the payment.

Western banks are still reluctant to do business with Iran when some of the US sanctions are still in place.

India is aware that China is making inroads into Iran to rebuild the economy devastated by the sanctions. The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, visited Iran in January this year to firm up business ties. Beijing is already Iran's largest trading partner.

---

Much travelled Modi:

• As of May 2016, Prime Minister Modi has made 40 foreign trips on five continents since his election in 2014
• State visits in 2015: Seychelles, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, France, Germany, Canada, China, Mongolia, South Korea, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, UAE, Ireland, UK, Singapore, Russia, Afghanistan
• State visits in 2016: Belgium, Saudi Arabia, Iran, US (to come).

Profile: Narendra Modi

With the security situation in Afghanistan deteriorating, India is also looking to find various ways to maintain its foothold in the war-torn nation to counter Pakistani influence. With the land route to Afghanistan through Pakistan unavailable, it's looking at Iran to trade with Afghanistan.

India is investing more than $150m to develop Chabahar port in south-eastern Iran. It hopes the port will give a transit route to Afghanistan.

In the future, it also wants to bring gas from Central Asia and then transport it to India. The project will also give sea access to Afghanistan.

"From India's perspective, Chabahar port is a gateway to Afghanistan. From Chabahar there is a road which goes all the way to Afghanistan and it will link up with a road which India has already built inside Afghanistan. In a way, India is ensuring that there could be no exit strategy from Afghanistan," says Mr Roy-Chaudhury.

Mr Modi plans to visit Kabul in June and he is expected to sign a trilateral trade agreement with Iran and Afghanistan for Chabahar port.

During his meeting with the Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, Mr Modi would want to assure that India is keen to establish deeper and long-standing ties.

But Iranians may be a bit wary given their past experience.

India records its hottest day ever

Image copyright

Image captionThe weather office has issued several warnings of "severe heat wave" conditions in recent days

A city in India's Rajasthan state has broken the country's temperature records after registering 51C, the highest since records began, the weather office says.

The new record in Phalodi in the desert state comes amid a heatwave across India.

The previous record for the hottest temperature stood at 50.6C in 1956.

The heatwave has hit much of northern India, where temperatures have exceeded 40C for weeks.

The run-up to the Indian monsoon season is always characterised by weeks of strong sunshine and increasing heat but life-threatening temperature levels topping 50C are unusual.

Rumours and memes as Indians vent frustration on social media

Murari Lal Thanvi, an eyewitness in Phalodi, told the BBC he had struggled to stay outdoors on Friday.

"Even my mobile phone gave up and stopped working when I was trying to take pictures today," he said.

"I was able to switch my mobile phone on after putting a wet cloth on it for about 20-25 minutes."

India Heatwave

51C

Temperature recorded on Thursday in Phalodi, Rajasthan

• 50.6C Previous record for the hottest temperature in India, 1956
• 45C Temperature at which India declares a heatwave
• 56.7C Hottest temperature ever recorded (Death Valley, US, 1913)

Source: ASU

The weather office has issued warnings of "severe heat wave" conditions across large parts of India's northern and western states through the weekend.

India declares a heatwave when the maximum temperature hits 45C, or five degrees higher than the average for the area in previous years.

Image copyright

Image captionThe searing heat in Phalodi did not stop this sweet shop maker from plying his trade

This summer, the heatwave has claimed dozens of lives in the south Indian states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

Permanent relief from the heat is only expected with the arrival of the monsoon, which normally comes in mid-June.

What your WALK really say about you ?

If you saw a man walk into a bar with a John Wayne swagger, you might assume that he’s a confident, tough kind of guy. Or perhaps you’d have less polite thoughts. Either way, you probably wouldn’t be able to help yourself from jumping to conclusions about his personality based on his gait.Psychologists have been studying these assumptions for well over three quarters of a century, and their findings suggest that most of us do tend to make very similar interpretations of other people’s personalities based on their walking style. After watching that wannabe cowboy walk into the bar, the likelihood is that you and I would agree about the kind of personality he has.But how accurate are these assumptions? And what other kinds of characteristics can we read from someone’s gait? Chillingly, the best person to ask may be a psychopath.What can we read from someone’s gait? The best person to ask may be a psychopathLet’s look first at the research into gait and personality. One of the earliest investigations was published in 1935 by German-born psychologist Werner Wolff. He filmed five men and three women without them knowing, as they took part in a ring-throwing task while wearing overalls (to conceal other personality give-aways).A John Wayne swagger makes people picture a certain personality (Credit: Getty Images)Later, the participants watched back the video-tapes, which had been edited to hide their heads, and they made interpretations of each other’s personalities based purely on their gaits.The study features some quaint details - the sound of the recording reel had to be camouflaged with a ticking metronome, for instance. More importantly, Wolff found that his participants readily formed impressions of each other based on their gaits, and that there was often a lot of agreement in their judgments. For example, consider some of the descriptions given independently by the participants for “Subject 45”:“Pretentious, with no foundation for it.”“Somebody who wants to gain attention at any price.”“Conscious and intentional vanity, eager to be admired.”“Inwardly insecure, tries to appear secure to others.”“Dull, somewhat subaltern, insecure.”It seems amazing that the participants formed such similar impressions for this subject and others. Of course, with such a small sample and the possibility that the participants were picking up on other cues besides gait, there are problems with this early research (the participants also knew each other, although they were poor at recognising who was who from the videos).US psychologists in the late 1980s found that there are broadly two kinds of walk (Credit: iStock)


Modern experiments are more sophisticated, not least because of digital technology that can transform a person’s walk into a simple point-light display against a black background, with white dots showing the movement of each of their key joints. This strips out any other cues besides the motion of their gait.


Swing or sway
Using this approach, US psychologists in the late 1980s found that there are broadly two kinds of walk, which could be characterised by either a more youthful or older style of movement. The former involving a more bouncy rhythm, more swaying of the hips, larger arm swings and more frequent steps, while the latter was stiffer and slower with more leaning forward. Crucially, the gait did not necessarily correspond to the walker’s actual age – you could be young with an old gait and vice versa. Furthermore, the observers assumed that people who walked with a younger style were happier and more powerful. This remained the case even when their actual age was made apparent by revealing their faces and bodies.There are broadly two kinds of walk: youthful, or older style of movementSuch research shows again how readily and consistently people make inferences about others based on seeing the way they walk, but the study didn’t address the question of whether these assumptions are accurate. For that, we must turn to a British and Swissstudy published just a few years ago, which compared people’s ratings of their own personalities with the assumptions other people made about them based on point-light displays of their walks.Their results suggested again that there are two main walking styles, although this study described them in slightly different terms: the first was said to be an expansive, loose style, which observers saw as a mark of adventurousness, extraversion, trustworthiness and warmth; the other was a slow, relaxed style, which observers interpreted as a sign of emotional stability. But crucially, the observers’ judgments were wrong – these two different walking styles were not actually correlated with these traits, at least not based on the walkers’ ratings of their own personalities.

False impression
The message from all this research is that we treat a person’s gait much like we treat their face, clothing or accent – as a source of information about the kind of person they are. It’s just that, whereas the evidence suggests our assessments are rather good for faces, we tend to make false assumptions based on gait.We tend to make false assumptions based on gait (Credit: iStock)At least, that’s the case for most of the judgements we make. But there is a rather more sinister way that we do make more accurate judgments about each other based on our walks – and it has to do with our vulnerability.We treat a person’s gait much like we treat their faceSome of the earliest findings showed that men and women with a shorter stride, smaller arm swing and slower walk tend to be seen as more vulnerable (note the similarity to the older walking style found in the personality research). A rather disturbing Japanese study, published in 2006, added to this by asking men to say how likely it was that they would chat up or inappropriately touch different female students who were depicted in point-light displays. Based purely on the women’s gait, the men tended to say that they would be more likely to make uninvited advances towards the women with more vulnerable personality traits, such as being more introverted and emotionally unstable.More worrying still, research has shown that imprisoned inmates with higher psychopathy scores are particularly accurate at detecting which people have previously been attacked in the past, simply from watching video clips of them walking down a hall. It seems that some of the inmates were fully aware of this ability: the higher scorers in psychopathy specifically stated that they paid attention to the people’s gait when making their judgements. This tallies with anecdotal evidence. For example, serial killer Ted Bundy reportedlysaid that he could “tell a victim from the way that she walked down the street”.Some research suggests you can learn to walk in a way that sends a message of invulnerabilityThis entire field of research raises the question of whether you can adapt your walking style to change the impression you give. Some research suggests you can learn to walk in way that sends a message of invulnerability – faster with a longer stride and bolder arm movements – and that women instinctively adopt elements of this style when in less safe environments. But the psychologists who examined the personality profiles associated with those expansive and slow or relaxed walking styles say that it is by no means clear whether these particular gaits could be taught.So it’s probably not advisable to try too hard to make an impression. Otherwise it may just come across as a desperate attempt at the bravado of “Subject 45” – or that swaggering cowboy.

Why is Apple's Tim Cook visiting India?

Less than seven hours after a midnight landing in India, Apple CEO Tim Cook was spotted in a famous Hindu temple in Mumbai on Wednesday.

He was seen there with Anant Ambani, son of Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, whose Jio 4G service is expected to be a game-changer for mobile internet in India by the end of 2016.

Such high-speed networks would "unleash the power of the iPhone", Mr Cook had said after announcing Apple's results for the first quarter of 2016.

India was the sole bright spot in those results as Apple reported its first-ever revenue decline in 13 years. While global iPhone sales fell for the first time ever, a drop of 16% from the first quarter of 2015, they rose 56% in India in the same quarter.

Mr Cook's visit to India is a first for an Apple CEO. None of the California-based technology giant's seven CEOs ever visited India while in office, though Steve Jobs famously came here as a backpacking hippie looking for "answers" in the mid-1970s.

China v India

If a country's importance to a global firm is measured by CEO visits, Mr Cook's score is telling: China 8, India 1.

India accounts for just 1% of global iPhone sales and Apple's share of India's mobile handset sales is 1.5%. India's market is dominated by phones under 5,000 rupees ($75; £50), while Apple's recent models start at 39,000 rupees ($580; £390).

Of India's rapidly-growing smartphones market, Apple has 3.4% share, according to CyberMedia Research (CMR). It ranks seventh among smartphones brands in India, though it is number two worldwide after Samsung.

Image copyright

Image captionApple sees India as a fast-growing market

China, on the other hand, is the second-largest market in the world for Apple after the United States. Apple announced that it would invest $1bn in Chinese ride-hailing app Didi Chuxing last week to "better understand the Chinese market", Mr Cook told Reuters. He came to Mumbai straight from Beijing.

The Chinese economy is struggling, though, and the decline in phone sales there contributed to Apple's revenue loss. iPhones account for nearly two-thirds of Apple's global revenue.

For Apple, the almost-untapped Indian market could help revive its fortunes.

Making iPhones in India

Mr Cook is expected to apprise Prime Minister Narendra Modi of Apple's investments in India this week.

But the firm has already made two announcements. Apple's first development centre in India will be in Hyderabad, the capital of the southern state of Telangana, where over 150 Apple developers will work on Apple Maps.

The centre would later move to Apple's own campus in or near the city and expand to 2,500 employees, government sources told The Hindu newspaper.

Image copyright

Image captionMr Cook would expect Mr Modi to allow Apple to sell its refurbished phones in India

On 18 May, Apple also announced a "design and development accelerator" in Bangalore, the southern city considered to be India's tech and start-up capital. The centre, to be set up in 2017, will provide support to iOS app developers in India.

With Mr Modi's focus on his "Make in India" programme, the discussion is almost certain to veer to manufacturing.

Will Apple make iPhones in India? Not on its own.

Apple doesn't make its iPhones: they're made by Taiwanese firm Foxconn in China. Last August, Foxconn announced plans to invest $5bn in a plant for multiple brands in the western state of Maharashtra. Reports this year said Foxconn was likely to set up a $10bn plant in Maharashtra to make Apple devices.

While these plans have not been confirmed yet, the firm has taken up space in and near the state's capital, Mumbai, for making handsets for Chinese vendor Xiaomi and Indian operator Reliance Jio.

Local manufacturing, with incentives and lower duties, is likely to allow Apple to reduce its iPhone prices.

Apple's price problem

In a price-sensitive market, iPhones are expensive and fall in the "premium smartphone segment".

Most phones in this segment cost more than 30,000 rupees ($450; £300) and they accounted for just 3.4% of India's total mobile-phone sales, or 3.3 million handsets in 2015, according to CMR.

But in this premium segment, Apple has 44% share, nearly level with market-leader Samsung.

Image copyright

Image captionThe sale of smartphones is growing in India, but it's a price sensitive market

Even in 2016, when Indians are expected to buy five million premium smartphones, 96% of the smartphone market will remain below $450. Apple has no recent models, less than a year old, below this price point.

And manufacturing in India will not bridge the gap for Apple's $600 handsets.

Older iPhone models are cheaper, but their sale is low. The 5s is nearly three years old and Indian buyers, though price-conscious, have not shown much interest in buying old models.

Apple, therefore, has a problem. Its newer models are expensive and its cheaper models are too old to be interesting for Indian buyers.

Refurbished phones

One answer is refurbished phones, which Apple sells in other markets. It calls them "pre-owned and certified", explaining that these are current models, often returned by a customer. These models go back to the factory to be tested and certified. They emerge with a new identity (an IMEI number) and warranty.

Analysts say this could be a winner for Apple because Indian buyers will be more willing to buy such phones at a discount.

Selling refurbished current models will increase Apple's share of the 15,000 to 30,000-rupee segment, which accounted for 5.6% of the smartphone market in the first quarter of 2016, according to CMR analyst Faisal Kawoosa.

"With the brand equity of Apple, it can easily grab over 40% of this segment, almost doubling its sales," he says.

"This could take Apple to selling four million units in 2016 in India."

Image copyright

Image captionOlder iPhone models are cheaper, but their sale is low in India

There is a problem, though.

The government may not allow Apple to sell refurbished phones in India, citing concerns about "dumping of old models" and "e-waste".

Industry insiders say this appears to be a result of intense lobbying by rival handset vendors with the government to disallow Apple from selling refurbished phones. Apple India sources say they have no official communication from the authorities on this. This is likely to be a subject of Mr Cook's discussion with officials in Delhi.

Another point of discussion would be the company's plans to open Apple-owned retail stores, thus far blocked by Indian regulations that require 30% of the goods in the store to be sourced locally.

Delhi has said it could waive the rule for companies with cutting-edge technology and Apple is hoping to deal with this obstacle during Mr Cook's visit.

Mr Cook began his India visit in Mumbai by praying to the Hindu elephant god, Ganesha, revered as the remover of obstacles.

And it seems Apple is going to need a lot of help from Ganesha.

(Source : BBC)

China 'flooding' social media with fake posts

China is "flooding" social media with comments by paid supporters in a bid to sway public opinion, a report has said.

The research by Harvard academics draws on leaked documents to paint a picture of the way China polices social media.

The government and its army of helpers write 488 million fake posts a year, the report said.

The profusion of comments on social media sits alongside other efforts, to find and delete content deemed too sensitive for Chinese citizens.

The vast majority of the comments and posts made on social media are crafted to look like they come from ordinary people, said the authors of the paper, who were led by Gary King from Harvard's department of government.

Many of the posts do not attempt to rebut or argue with critical comm-enters, they said.

"They do not step up to defend the government, its leaders, and their policies from criticism, no matter how vitriolic; indeed, they seem to avoid controversial issues entirely," said the paper.

"Letting an argument die, or changing the subject, usually works much better than picking an argument and getting someone's back up," it said.

More often Communist Party workers or ordinary citizens employed to post on behalf of the government engage in "cheer leading" about the state's achievements or its history.

Pseudonyms

The helpers are known within China as the "Fifty Cent Party" because of an unsubstantiated rumour that contributors are paid 50 cents for each of their posts.

The 488 million posts per year are made more effective by making sure they are added during the busiest times on social media or when a controversial issue is being widely debated.

The study used documents and spreadsheets leaked in 2014 that revealed the names and online pseudonyms of people employed by the Chinese authorities to post on the state's behalf.

The academics extrapolated from this sample in an attempt to estimate the true scale of official activity on social media sites.

There were good psychological reasons for using distraction rather than censorship or counter-arguments, the paper said.

"Since censorship alone seems to anger people, the 50c AstroTurf program entailing creation of fake grassroots content] has the additional advantage of enabling the government to actively control opinion without having to censor as much as they might otherwise," the authors concluded.

Solar Impulse aeroplane reaches Ohio

Solar Impulse has landed in the US state of Ohio following the 12th stage of its circumnavigation of the globe.

The zero-fuel aircraft arrived in Dayton at 21:56 local time (01:56 GMT) having flown from Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The 1,100km journey took pilot Andre Borschberg about 16 hours to complete, a relatively short hop for the plane.

Solar Impulse is aiming to get to New York in the next couple of weeks before it crosses the Atlantic - the last big leg in its global endeavour.

To complete the circumnavigation, the aeroplane needs to get to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates where the journey started in March last year.

As well as setting new aviation milestones, the stated purpose of the project is to demonstrate the capability of clean technologies.

The plane gets all its energy from the sun, captured by 17,000 photovoltaic cells on its top surfaces. These power the craft's propellers during the day but also charge batteries that the vehicle's motors can then call on during the night.

The craft is wider than a 747 jumbo jet but weighs just 2.3 tonnes. Low flight speed means mission legs can take several days and nights of continuous flight.

The pilot is permitted only catnaps of up to 20 minutes, and the cockpit is little bigger than a public telephone box.

Image copyrightEPA

Image captionAndre Borschberg was at the controls for this leg of the journey

---

LEG 1: 9 March. Abu Dhabi (UAE) to Muscat (Oman) - 772km; 13 Hours 1 Minute

LEG 2: 10 March. Muscat (Oman) to Ahmedabad (India) - 1,593km; 15 Hours 20 Minutes

LEG 3: 18 March. Ahmedabad (India) to Varanasi (India) - 1,170km; 13 Hours 15 Minutes

LEG 4: 18 March. Varanasi (India) to Mandalay (Myanmar) - 1,536km; 13 Hours 29 Minutes

LEG 5: 29 March. Mandalay (Myanmar) to Chongqing (China) - 1,636km; 20 Hours 29 Minutes

LEG 6: 21 April. Chongqing (China) to Nanjing (China) - 1,384km; 17 Hours 22 Minutes

LEG 7: 30 May. Nanjing (China) to Nagoya (Japan) - 2,942km; 1 Day 20 Hours 9 Minutes

LEG 8: 28 June. Nagoya (Japan) to Kalaeloa, Hawaii (US) - 8,924km; 4 Days 21 Hours 52 Minutes

LEG 9: 21 April. Kalaeloa, Hawaii (US) to Mountain View, California (US) - 4,523km; 2 Days 17 Hours 29 Minutes

LEG 10: 2 May. Mountain View, California (US) to Phoenix, Arizona (US) - 1,199km; 15 Hours 52 Minutes

LEG 11: 12 May. Phoenix, Arizona (US) to Tulsa, Oklahoma (US) - 1,570 km; 18 Hours 10 Minutes

LEG 12: 21 May. Tulsa, Oklahoma (US) to Dayton, Ohio (US) - 1,100 km; 16 Hours 34 Minutes