1 New India govt eyes rapid reforms (BBC) India's
new government has unveiled a programme for rapid economic reforms aimed at
creating jobs and boosting foreign investment. The announcement by President
Pranab Mukherjee included plans designed to simplify taxation and reduce
inflation. Industrial reforms included attracting private investment to the
coal and defence sectors.
The President's parliamentary address was made to lawmakers
elected in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's landslide victory last month. Mr
Mukherjee said that the government would introduce a general sales tax,
encourage foreign investment and speed up approvals for major business
projects. It would also tackle bottlenecks that make India's food inflation the
highest among major economies.
The anti-inflationary message will be welcomed by
central bank governor Raghuram Rajan, who has made lowering India's
growth-stifling high interest rates contingent on containing consumer prices. India's
economic expansion has slowed markedly, growing by 4.7% in the 2013-14
financial year and marking the second year of sub-5% growth.
2 Supermarket price wars a ‘race to the bottom’
(Katie Allen in The Guardian) Supermarkets are being warned they are locked in
a "race to the bottom" in a new report showing that a food price war
dragged sales lower last month. The British Retail Consortium said
like-for-like food sales fell by an annual rate of 2.2% during March to May, in
contrast to a year earlier when turnover grew 0.7%.
On one measure, it was the worst quarter for food
sales since BRC records began in 2008. While non-food retailers are seeing
steady sales growth, the grocers appear locked in a race to the bottom,
imposing price cut after price cut to maintain their sales volumes," said
David McCorquodale, head of retail at the report's co-authors, KPMG. "This
price war is hindering the retail sector's overall recovery."
This latest research pointed to a growing divide
between food and non-food sales. The BRC said clothing was the best performing
category in May, helped by warmer weather. Aside from the usual boost to
televisions, the World Cup saw demand pick up for collectibles and sticker
magazines.
"Overall food and grocery sales for May were a
further disappointment. For food retailers, it will be essential to capitalise
on opportunities provided by the summer events and the World Cup in
particular," said Joanne Denney-Finch, chief executive at IGD, the data
company providing the BRC report's food figures.
3 Sony v/s Facebook in virtual reality (Cliff
Edwards in San Francisco Chronicle) Now it's Sony versus Facebook. After being
knocked around by Apple and Samsung for more than a decade, Sony Corp. is up
against yet another tech rival, attempting to build the PlayStation 4 into an
entertainment powerhouse and develop a virtual-reality headset for the gaming
market. And in this fight at least, Sony, which has lost money in five of the
last six years, might have an edge. Its commanding lead in sales of video-game
consoles could give a boost to the Project Morpheus headset. The chief
competition is Oculus VR Inc., the virtual-reality goggle pioneer being
acquired by Facebook Inc.
The video-game division at Sony is one of the few
bright spots for a company whose television business hasn't been profitable in
about a decade and whose smartphone and tablets are perennial also-rans to
those from Apple and Samsung. Gaming is just the first killer application for
virtual-reality headwear, which could become standard gear for experiences that
put users closer to or even inside the action, from watching sports to taking
classes online.
Sony's movie and television studios can feed its
consoles with virtual reality-ready fare, and the Project Morpheus headset
could help attract non-gamers. CEO Kazuo Hirai's idea is to deliver an array of
offerings via the Web to challenge Apple, Samsung, Google Inc. and, now,
Facebook.
The Oculus headset, called the Rift, has to connect
to a high-powered PC to perform well. Morpheus works with the PS4, which has
souped-up hardware and high-definition audio. More than 7 million PS4s have
sold since its debut in November, and there are more than 100 million
PlayStations operating around the world.
While virtual-reality goggles have been demonstrated
for decades, it's only now that screen technology has gotten cheap and light
enough for mass-market opportunities. Facebook said in March that it planned to
buy Oculus for $2 billion. "The technology opens up the possibility of
completely new kinds of experiences," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a
Facebook post.
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