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"The government must inform people when more water will be rushing into the Indian territory and which places are likely to be submerged ... thousands of lives can be saved by this advance information," he said.
In Madhepura, one of the biggest flooded towns, residents stormed a government office late on Monday, throwing stones and demanding food, television news reports showed.
Officials say the flooding is expected to continue until November when the monsoon rains are expected to stop.
Only then will officials be able to fix the breach in the Kosi River that is more than a kilometre wide and growing.
While the state of Bihar is used to flooding from the annual monsoon, this year's floods have been particularly devastating because they have hit areas that normally remain dry and lack the infrastructure to deal with the rising water levels.
The monsoon season, which starts in June, is vital for the farmers of South Asia, but the rain can also cause massive destruction.
In neighbouring Bangladesh, flooding has cut off at least 50,000 people, according to news reports on Tuesday.
A flood warning agency forecast the situation as "likely to deteriorate."
News reports said three people drowned on Monday in flood-ravaged areas north of the capital of Dhaka.
Bulldogs climb to .500 in Conference USA play.
RUSTON — Oliver Powell led four players in double figures with 12 points and seven rebounds and Louisiana Tech beat Charlotte 83-65 on Thursday night to hand the 49ers their ninth straight defeat.
Louisiana Tech built an 18-2 lead in the first six minutes with Jacobi Boykins making a pair of 3-pointers and DaQuan Bracey and Amorie Archibald each knocking down 3s. Austin Ajukwa made a pair of foul shots and Jon Davis added a jumper to bring Charlotte within 30-21 with 4:50 left before halftime. Bracey's 3-point play just before the break made it 44-32 and the Bulldogs led by double digits the rest of the way.
Boykins and Derric Jean each scored 11 and Anthony Duruji chipped in 10 for the Bulldogs (15-10, 6-6 Conference USA) who shot 31 of 60 from the field.
Davis led Charlotte (5-17, 1-10) with 24 points, eight rebounds and eight assists, Najee Garvin scored 12 and Jailan Haslem grabbed 11 rebounds.
The \”new normal\” has transformed into the \”new neutral,\” says Pimco\’s leadership in the money manager\’s latest secular outlook, meant to guide its investing methodology over the next half decade.
The subtle change in language on Tuesday sounds more befitting of a restrained Federal Reserve memo than of a money manager whose founder has a penchant for outlandish proclamations (yes, the language shift certainly is modest to moderate).
But underlying the wording is an interesting change in the investing outlook toward expectations of a slow-growth future with accommodative central banks leading the way. In that sense, the market is pricing in excessive tightening by the central banks that Pimco deems too aggressive.
The change in language also marks a shift for Pimco as a whole. The \”new normal\” was coined by Bill Gross in 2009, but was widely spoken about by then-CEO Mohamed El-Erian, who used it to describe a period of global economic stabilization following the financial crisis. Back then, El-Erian used the metaphor of a major cardiac arrest to describe what happened to markets and the economy, suggesting that the investing outlook would be guided by a slow healing process in which the patient wouldn\’t look the same once it emerged from the hospital.
In January of this year, El-Erian abruptly announced that he would depart Pimco, amid reports of a clash between his management style and that of founder Bill Gross, which the former CEO has since walked back. Now, just months later, the \”new normal\” is out as well.
Gross\’s flagship Pimco Total Return Fund , the world\’s largest bond fund, has now seen a full year of investor outflows as the fund\’s performance has struggled. So the latest secular outlook has the feel of a reboot.
The term brought in to replace El-Erian\’s lingo comes from Pimco\’s 2014 Secular Forum last week, which was led by Richard Clarida, the firm\’s global strategic adviser. The thesis centers around a period of \”historically modest trend growth\” over the next three-to-five years, and that\’s likely to lead to continued low policy rates from central bankers.
The global economy has yet to deleverage, with debt now at it\’s highest point ever. China\’s shadow-banking system has increased its leverage fourfold while the sovereign debt of European countries remains too large. In the U.S. the private sector and households have deleveraged and economic growth looks most promising, but there is still fear about sluggish growth.
It’s been several months since Microsoft announced it was bringing mobile-style ARM processors to Windows 10 and now we’re finally seeing the fruits of that labor. Say hello the “Always Connected PC,” the first batch of which are powered by Qualcomm processors.
Qualcomm apparently thought I was cool enough to fly me out to its event in Hawaii (disclaimer), where it showed showed off two Windows PCs, the HP Envy X2 and the Asus NovaGo. They’re powered by the Snapdragon 835 – the same chip in the Galaxy S8, Pixel 2, and the vast majority of Android flagships in 2017.
Surprise: They feel just like any other laptops. But the impressive bit is that they look just like any other laptops and can supposedly last 20+ hours on a charge. That puts even the best performers on the market to shame.
The Envy x2 is very akin to the recent Spectre x2 at first glance. However, it uses a kickstand in the vein of the Huawei Matebook E, integrated into the keyboard cover rather than the tablet itself. That means that, unlike a traditional kickstand, the laptop is fully covered – it’s basically always in a case.
I only had a few minutes with the device, but the hardware felt premium. Typing felt better than most tablet keyboards, perhaps even as good as the Surface Pro, and miles ahead of the iPad Pro. The included pen was smooth with no obvious latency. The 1080p screen isn’t the sharpest around, but colors and contrast were vibrant, and you won’t miss the extra resolution too much on a 12.3-inch display.
Mostly, I was impressed by how thin and light it was, something surely aided by the new chipset. It’s 6.9mm thin and 1.5 lb (HP’s website says 1.21 kg for some reason, but it stated the former on stage). Picking it up without the keyboard portion, it felt more like an iPad and less like a PC stuffed into a tablet form factor. Even with the keyboard attached, it still felt super light.
The device comes with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage by default, and the only ports are USB-C and a headphone jack. HP isn’t providing a price quite yet, but considering the Spectre x2 starts at $1,149, we imagine the Envy x2 will start close to the one grand mark. HP has more specs and information here.
Asus’ offering was clearly aimed at the budget market with a starting price of $599, and that somewhat shows in its design. That’s not to say it’s bad – in fact, it feels quite solid – but it doesn’t have the sleekness of a premium ultrabook.
Still, it’s an all metal design with a good screen (100 percent sRGB) and smallish bezels, and the flipping-hinge mechanism felt solid too. I had no immediate complaints about the keyboard and trackpad, and the stylus felt responsive as well. There are two USB-A ports and and HDMI port, but USB-C is disappointingly omitted.
The 4GB/64GB model will retail for $599, while the 8GB/256GB one will run $799. You can find more specs and information on Asus’ website.
The tablets come with Windows 10 S, meaning you can only run apps from the Microsoft Store by default, but you can upgrade to Windows 10 Pro and run regular Windows apps. However, according to Qualcomm, they will only run Win32 applications if not available through the Windows Store. Software that only comes in a 64 bit version will not work, but most programs generally still include a 32-bit variant.
It also remains to be see how much of a performance hit Win32 programs will see when emulated to run on ARM chipsets. Until we can test how they perform with legacy software these laptops might actually be best left to running Windows Store apps or used only as a secondary laptop. The last thing you want is to have to use some crucial software for work or school only to find out it doesn’t work on your brand new laptop.
All that being said, performance on Windows S felt surprisingly good, with quick loading times and smooth animations – smoother than I’ve seen from many budget laptops. And this is just the beginning; as ARM processors become more popular in Windows, developers will be able to further optimize their applications.
Really though, the story of Qualcomm-powered PCs is all about the battery life and connectivity. Unfortunately thhose aren’t things we can test in a brief hands on, but even if HP and Asus only manage to squeze half of the claimed 20-22 hour battery life, you’d still be outlasting pretty much every other laptop currently on the market.
Conversely, PC manufacturers could use the extra efficiency to reduce PC sizes significantly while still providing solid battery life. I don’t think laptops need to get any thinner, but manufactures will be able to experiment with lighter, smaller form factors thanks to the increased efficiency and smaller chipset size of ARM processers. And as more entry-level laptops adopt Qualcomm chips and the world moves to 5G, we’ll likely see the majority of computers come with wireless internet connectivity, not just a handful of models.
We’ll have to see how the laptops perform in the long term once we get our hands on devices in 2018. If app compatibility doesn’t become a pain point and battery life holds up to scrutiny, Qualcomm’s processors – and other ARM chips, once they join in on the fun – could actually change the way we use our PCs. I’m looking forward to the day we can get this type of battery life from higher-performance chipsets too.
There is an alternative to the tax credit cuts saga and it's a negative income tax \| City A.M.
Chancellor George Osborne's tax credits cuts have seen him come under a lot of fire from surprising quarters. So far, every welfare cut, no matter the extent, has brought him approval from centre-right think tanks, his backbenchers, The Sun newspaper, and the public via polling. But there seems to be rising opposition to this new retrenchment, particularly because it stands in rude opposition to the government's repeated mantra of making work pay.
All welfare benefits can distort labour markets, but tax credits, which are paid out conditional on having a job and earning above a certain threshold, are one of the least inefficient ways of topping up incomes. Since they are conditional on being in work, they don't disincentivise employment, and since they do not affect a worker's productivity, they don't simply subsidise employers by lowering wages—a logical argument that is held up by the empirical work.
Politicians always find U-turning unappealing, probably because they rightly believe that voters judge it weak, which implies that Osborne will try his best to find a solution that allows him to at least appear to stick with his plans for cuts. But he will also be eager to try and head off the makeshift coalition that seems to be building against him around these plans.
Read more: Osborne's "rhetoric on tax credits is just empty words"
It may seem panglossian to say so, but I believe such a policy exists: the negative income tax. The negative income tax (NIT) is a policy which replaces all major means-tested cash benefits and instead guarantees a universal basic income, or minimum income floor, paying money directly to individuals. As a person earns more through wages or other sources, the benefit is steadily withdrawn, like it is being taxed.
For example, it might guarantee a monthly income of £700. For each extra £100 a person earns a month in the labour market, they lose £50 of their initial £700 benefit. When their wages hit £700 they're getting £350 from the state, for a total of £1,050—when their wages hit £1,400, they no longer get anything.
The negative income tax has a long heritage, but its most prominent support has come from an unlikely base: free marketeers. Economists like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, both Nobel prizewinners, saw the negative income tax as a way of shredding administrative costs and freeing up recipients to make their own decisions instead of being given things they might not themselves judge that they want or need.
Aside from the potential to slash something like £5bn off government costs (the Department of Welfare and Pensions spent £5.3bn on administration, according to a 2011 freedom of information request), the NIT has huge additional benefits.
The current system requires costly and complicated applications, leaving many eligible recipients in the lurch. It also disincentivises moving to find work, since many benefits require reapplication. And even after the implementation of Universal Credit (UC), which has cost hundreds of millions already and reached very few people, withdrawal rates are often near 75 per cent.
When we cut taxes on top earners from 83 per cent to 60 per cent and then to 40 per cent, we saw them do a lot more work, earn a lot more income, and pay a lot more in taxes. Why should we expect different results when it comes to the effective tax rates on the badly-off?
The NIT offers George Osborne an opportunity to snuff out many of his political problems: he can end the nightmare of UC implementation; he can save billions in administration to make up for the cost of scrapping the planned cuts to support for worse-off workers; he can make good on his pledge to make work pay through an even better system; and he can do it all without appearing to U-turn.
Osborne's "rhetoric on tax credits is empty words"
AUSTIN, Texas – The 600-plus school districts suing Texas say the way the state pays for public education is "constitutionally and fundamentally broken."
State District Judge John Dietz declared more than year ago that funding for public education is inadequate and unfairly distributed among school districts.
The initial decision came in response to the Legislature's cutting $5.4 billion in funding to classrooms in 2011. But last year, lawmakers restored more than $3.4 billion while easing high school graduation standards.
Dietz reopened the case three weeks ago to hear evidence on how that might affect his initial decision.
During closing arguments Friday, school district attorney Rick Gray said "Band-Aid solutions" aren't enough.
Dietz will issue a final, written ruling on the entire trial after mid-March. That will be appealed to the Texas Supreme Court.
Taking an ECG on Apple Watch Series 4 takes only 30 seconds.
The Apple Watch Series 4's transformation from miniature iPhone and fitness tracker to medical device is now complete with the release of the ECG (electrocardiogram) app and irregular heart rhythm notifications.
The two heart-related features were introduced at the revamped smartwatch's debut in September and are now finally available via a software update.
SEE ALSO: Apple products are pricier than ever. Why that’s bad news for its future.
The ECG app is exclusive to the Apple Watch Series 4 as electrocardiogram readings need the electrodes built into both the heart rate monitor on the backside and within the Digital Crown to create a reading.
The irregular heart rhythm notifications (IHR) feature, however, only uses the optical heart rate sensor, and is therefore compatible with all Apple Watches from Series 4 going back to Series 1 (not to be confused with the original Apple Watch which is technically "Series 0").
Apple gave me a preview of the ECG app and irregular heart rhythm notifications feature pre-loaded onto a Series 4 loaner unit so I could see for myself how they worked.
Of course, I couldn't properly test whether the features would be life-saving or not since my heart's healthy. Still, having the two features accessible from my wrist fulfills the device's promise as a wearable companion that's got my back if I were to notice unusual symptoms or signs that could be related to heart problems.
The most important thing to understand about both new heart-related features is that they're — Apple can't stress this enough – not replacements for a doctor. Nor do they make the Apple Watch some kind of holy grail wearable capable of detecting if you've got a heart attack or stroke.
Rather, both Apple Watch features are there to detect signs of atrial fibrillation (AFib), an irregular beating of the heart. If an ECG reading shows an irregular heart beat pattern or the IHR notifications thinks something isn't right, that's a suggestion and gentle nudge to check in with your physician. They're by no means a definitive diagnosis of any heart condition.
Making sure Apple Watch users understand what the ECG readings and IHR notifications do and don't do and translating the complicated medical terminologies associated with heart issues was a top priority for Apple.
Apple makes it easy to understand what an ECG is with plain English.
You should definitely read up on what everything means.
Setting up both features happens within Apple's Health app on iOS. In typical Apple fashion, it walks you through how to use the ECG app on your Apple Watch and explains in plain English terms like sinus rhythm and atrial fibrillation, and the various readouts for what they could possibly suggest.
Tapping on "learn more" link button expands each section with more details and at first I was tempted to tap through to quickly complete the setup, but I decided not to. Because why even bother turning these features on if you don't care to understand how your heart works and what the readouts might mean? You owe it to yourself to read through the various setup sections if you care about your heart health.
Taking an ECG on an Apple Watch Series 4 is quite easy: simply launch the ECG app and place your finger on the Digital Crown and a 30-second timer will count down.
For the best results, you'll want to make sure your Apple Watch is snug on your wrist so the crystal heart rate sensor on the back accurately detecting your pulse and also have your arm rested on a table.
Once finished, you'll get one of four different results: sinus rhythm, atrial fibrillation, low or high heart rate, or inconclusive.
If your heart's operating normally, it'll likely get a sinus rhythm result indicating "the upper and lower chambers of your heart are beating in sync" according to the Health app.
An atrial fibrillation result suggests your heart's beating irregularly could be a sign of arrhythmia and you should probably visit your physician to find out if it's something more serious.
A low or high heart rate result happens when your heart rate is either under 50 BPM (beats per minute) or over 120 BPM. In these cases, the Apple Watch's sensors simply can't check for atrial fibrillation and Apple considers the reading "inconclusive."
Inconclusive readouts simply mean they couldn't be classified, and could have been from improperly taking the ECG (see recommended tips above). An inconclusive readout doesn't mean nothing is wrong.
You shouldn't take an ECG every day.
What an ECG will look like in the Health app on iOS.
Regardless of what ECG result you get when you take it, again, it's not definitive. Symptoms such as fatigue or shortness of breath or chest tightness could impact the result and as such, the ECG app gives you a list of symptom options to add to each reading. These are stored together with the detailed ECG charts within the Health app.
Also important to note: You shouldn't take an ECG all the time. While it might be comforting to get an ECG daily, Apple doesn't want to put people in a state of paranoia or panic; it should only be used if you have symptoms that you think might impact your heart rhythm. Moreover, taking too many ECGs can actually create more false positives and false negatives, leading to inaccurate results over time.
A PDF export of one of my ECG readings.
ECG readings in the Health app are presented in a graph that Apple says is familiar to physicians. In my briefing on the ECG app, I got the sense Apple wants patients to build a closer relationship with their healthcare providers.
For example, the ability to export your ECG readout as PDF and send it to your doctor or print it out to show them during a visit isn't common yet, but it might be in the future. It gives some control back to the patient, but at the same time allows both patient and doctor to have a more informed overview of the patient's health.
That said — in maybe what's now sounding like somewhat of an annoying reminder — the Apple Watch's ECG readout is only a single-lead ECG as opposed to the 12-lead ECGs used by hospital or doctor's offices. The latter looks at your heart rhythm from multiple views (one for each of the connected leads) and can detect heart attacks.
If the Apple Watch ECG shows AFib, the responsibility is on the individual to get it further checked on by a physician and perhaps take a more advanced ECG reading.
Irregular heart rhythm notifications work in the background and supports Series 1-4.
There's not a whole lot to say about the irregular heart rhythm notifications since I couldn't get any data on it from my test Apple Watch.
Unlike an ECG, IHR notifications work in the background and only send an alert "if an irregular rhythm is detected on five rhythm checks over a minimum of 65 minutes."
It's still really early days for the Apple Watch's medical ambitions, but it's already looking promising. The American Heart Association published a white paper of preclinical studies that took a look at the effectiveness of using an Apple Watch for ECGs and IHR notifications. The results suggest the smartwatch is highly accurate in detecting signs of AFib.
As the Apple Watch's sensors improve, heart and medical readouts will only get better and more accurate.
ECG and IHR notifications doesn't mean we don't need doctors anymore. Rather, it's like having a guardian on your wrist — you'll be glad it's there if anything bad happens.
Both features will be available in a software update for watchOS starting today.
The Monopoly game is back at McDonald’s in Canada. To promote it, Cossette Vancouver imagined if the board game’s little green houses existed in real life.
The agency set up a pop-up experience where a salesman pushed a fictitious development called Green Estates, “a growing community development that offers leisure, lifestyle and ‘greener’ building practices than any other community could reasonably claim.” With an emphasis on greener.
A convenient railroad connects everything from “Go” to “Free Parking,” multiple airports, hydroelectric power, and a jail that we’re legally obliged to tell you about. What more could you want in a community?
Led by visionary real estate mogul Mr. Monopoly, the Omnopoly corporation has created many successful developments prior to Green Estates. Perhaps most famously, their line of red luxury hotels which, despite controversy surrounding the demolition of four houses per hotel in almost every instance, was seen as a massive industrial success.
It’s a cute promotion, and surely a lighter lift than actually painting a whole neighborhood of houses green.

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