Google to ditch controversial 'first click free' policy

Google is to abandon its controversial policy of forcing news providers to offer free articles in order to appear on its search engine as part of a collection of measures designed to support the growth of digital subscriptions.

The US company will replace its so-called “first click free” policy, which requires publishers to offer three free articles a day before readers come across a pay wall.

Instead Google will offer a flexible sampling model that allows news organisations to decide how many, if any, articles it offers for free.

The “first click free” model has been described as “toxic” by publishers such as Axel Springer and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

Robert Thomson, chief executive of News Corp, which publishes the Times and the Sun, revealed at a conference last month that Google was considering getting rid of “first click free”, adding that it would “fundamentally change the content ecosystem”.

He said: “If you don’t sign up for ‘first click free’, you virtually disappear from a search. Given the power of that Google platform, that is disadvantaging premium content of great provenance.”

Google is making the move after feedback from publishers and readers and after tests with the New York Times and the Financial Times. It is also a recognition of the growth of subscription services and the fact a “one size fits all” approach was not appropriate.

In a blog, Richard Gingras, vicepresident of news at Google, said: “Journalism provides accurate and timely information when it matters most, shaping our understanding of important issues and pushing us to learn more in search of the truth. People come to Google looking for high-quality content, and our job is to help them find it. However, sometimes that content is behind a paywall.

“While research has shown that people are becoming more accustomed to paying for news, the sometimes painful process of signing up for a subscription can be a turn off. That’s not great for users or for news publishers who see subscriptions as an increasingly important source of revenue.

“To address these problems we’ve been talking to news publishers about how to support their subscription businesses.”

As well as dropping “first click free”, Google will make it easier for users to subscribe to services. For example, people will be able to subscribe to news providers with one click through Google’s existing payment technology.

Catalonia has ‘won the right’ to secede

Catalonia’s leader Carles Puigdemont said the region had won the right to break away from Spain after 90 per cent of voters taking part in a banned referendum voted for independence, defying a sometimes violent police crackdown and fierce opposition from Madrid.

His declaration appeared to set the restive region on course for a deeper split with the Spanish government, after Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy reiterated his government’s position that the vote was an illegal act, to which the state had reacted “with firmness and serenity”.

Any attempt to unilaterally declare independence is almost certain to be opposed not just by Madrid but also by a large section of the Catalan population, which is deeply split on the issue.

The regional government said 2.26 million people took part in Sunday’s referendum, or 42.3 per cent of the electorate.

Mr Puigdemont said his people had “won the right to an independent state” and urged the EU to stop “looking the other way”.

He has said that in the event of a Yes victory he would declare independence for Catalonia, which accounts for 19 per cent of Spain’s economic output.

At least 92 people were confirmed injured from a total of 844 who needed medical attention, Catalan authorities said.

Further adding to tensions, unions and Catalan associations called a region-wide strike for today to protest against “the grave violation of rights and freedoms,” urging people to take to the streets.

Helmeted police armed with batons moved in en masse early on Sunday to seal off polling stations and seize ballot boxes, sparking clashes. Police dragged voters from polling stations by their hair, threw people down stairs and attacked Catalan firefighters protecting polling stations.

The interior ministry said 33 police required treatment.

Mr Rajoy declared the plebiscite had been blocked, and called the vote a process that “only served to sow division, push citizens to confrontation and the streets to revolt”, but left the door potentially open to negotiations on greater autonomy for the region.

The referendum was organised under the threat of reprisals and criminal charges but thousands of Catalans stood in defiance of the central government, crying “Votarem” ( “We will vote”).

Mr Puigdemont said in an address after polls closed: “With this day of hope and suffering. The citizens of Catalonia have won the right to an independent state in the form of a republic.”

The referendum law foresees a declaration of independence soon after a Yes vote but it remains unclear if the regional government will actually do so.

Even before the vote, judicial officials ordered police to seize ballot papers, detain key organisers and shut down websites promoting the referendum after Madrid and the courts deemed it unconstitutional. Thousands of people gathered outside polling stations before dawn, joining those who had spent the night camped inside to ensure stations would be open on the day.

In central Barcelona, riot police charged at protesters sitting on the ground at a polling station, and fired rubber bullets, witnesses said.

Riot police also stormed a polling station near Girona, smashing the glass doors of the sports centre where Mr Puigdemont was due to vote and cutting a chain to force their way in. But Mr Puigdemont managed to vote anyway in nearby Cornella del Terri.

The crackdown drew a sharp rebuke from Catalan leaders and others including Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the pro-independence Scottish National Party.

The trouble caused Barcelona football club to play its La Liga match against Las Palmas behind closed doors after the Spanish league refused to postpone the match.

But in several areas, voting was peaceful.

Although Catalans are divided over independence, most want to vote on the matter in a legal and binding plebiscite. Catalonia already has significant control over education, healthcare and welfare, but the region says it pays more in taxes than it receives from Madrid.

FLAG DISPLAY OF ROAR POWER

Richmond’s fleet-footed backflanker Bachar Houli did it all in the Grand Final, repeatedly beating opponents including Taylor Walker ( No. 13) and Rory Atkins while setting up attacking plays and even bobbing up for a crucial firstquarter goal, while Alex Rance’s intercept-marking game (below) was at its absolute peak.

A37-YEAR premiership drought was brought to an almighty end as Richmond defied the odds to overcome Adelaide in Saturday’s Grand Final.

Nervous Tigers fans filled the stands of the MCG hoping, praying, their team might follow in the footsteps of the Western Bulldogs 12 months earlier and write the final chapter of a fairytale year.

But few could have seen the end result coming.

Richmond not only won, but did so in style by 48 points.

No Richmond player had previously taken to the field in an AFL Grand Final before, and it showed early in the match.

Nerves led to turnovers going forward and disorganisation in the back half.

After key Crows Rory Sloane and Eddie Betts slotted the first two goals, those nerves only increased.

When Richmond did get the ball forward, it failed to make the most of its opportunities as Jack Riewoldt missed the team’s first three shots on goal.

The Tigers soon steadied, but it was the Crows who looked far more dangerous every time they went into attack.

At the two-minute mark of the second term, Adelaide was holding sway in the armwrestle by 13 points. Then the game changed. A Riewoldt goal sparked the revival at one end, but it was Richmond’s biggest strength all season — its defence — that was the catalyst for change after what could have been considered a sloppy opening quarter.

David Astbury was keeping Crows skipper Taylor Walker quiet, Dylan Grimes shut Betts out of the game completely after quarter-time and Alex Rance was at his goal-saving best.

The ever-courageous Nick Vlastuin and dashing defender Bachar Houli started providing rebound from the back half and, suddenly, the Adelaide forward line no longer looked dangerous.

Adelaide’s other problem was the midfield battle, in which Richmond got on top during the second term.

Dion Prestia was in everything, Brownlow medallist Dustin Martin was a class above as usual and Shane Edwards’ clearance work was pivotal after a quiet opening term.

Then there was Jack Graham.

Sent to do a job on Sloane — who was racking up the touches in the middle and already had two goals to his name — fifth-gamer Graham made his coaches proud as the impact of the Crows ballwinner was quickly and dramatically reduced.

The Tigers had also ramped up their forward-half pressure and set up a wall across the middle of the ground that Adelaide struggled to penetrate.

And so it began — a run of seven unanswered goals which put Damien Hardwick’s team in the box seat for premiership

glory and eased the nerves of both the players and the club’s army of supporters.

If shutting down Sloane was not enough, Graham kicked his second goal of the game less than three minutes into the third quarter, showing composure beyond his age and experience.

When Kane Lambert put one through the big sticks at the nine-minute mark, the Tigers held a commanding 28point lead.

Given Richmond’s history and the Crows’ scoring power, the fat lady was not quite singing, but she was warming up side of stage and ready for a big entrance.

Walker kicked his first goal at the 14-minute mark, cutting the margin to 20 points.

But it was Graham — a most unlikely Grand Final hero — who responded with his third major to regain the momentum for Richmond.

When Riewoldt kicked the first goal of the final term, it was party time.

Tears of joy started flowing in the stands as the realisation set in that 2017 was the year of the Tiger.

Surely Josh Caddy — who joined Richmond from Geelong last summer — and Toby Nankervis — who crossed from Sydney — would not have thought they would have been a better chance of winning a premiership at Punt Rd this year than at their former clubs.

None of the “experts” tipped such a dramatic rise from 13th on the ladder, either.

Unlike Adelaide, the Tigers had few weak links, but also few standouts.

Everyone played their role, other notable ones being Jacob Townsend’s defensive forward job on Crow Jake Lever and Nankervis’s secondhalf response in the ruck against Sam Jacobs after being soundly beaten early.

Martin (29 disposals, two goals) won the Norm Smith Medal ahead of Houli (25 disposals, one goal). Only one of the five judges did not give Dusty maximum votes.

The Crows were left to pick up the scraps of what had been a year of such promise, but a day of such disappointment.

As Richmond proved, you don’t have to be the best team of the year, you just have to be the best on Grand Final day.

“We lost to Geelong Round (21) and then we just went whack, whack, whack, whack, whack, whack,” coach Hardwick said after the game.

“We learnt a lot of lessons from the games that we lost and we played our best footy when it mattered most.”

$ 100-m Diwali Bonus for Flipkart Staff

Bengaluru: The board of Flipkart has approved a plan to repurchase employee stock options in a move that could benefit close to 6,000 current and former employees at India’s largest online retailer, according to two people familiar with the development. The share buyback plan marks the largest such programme till date in the Indian startup sector and offers stakeholders the biggest opportunity, so far, to liquidate their holdings in the country’s most valuable startup.

“The overall corpus reserved for buyback of shares from employees is over $100 million,” said one of the people cited above.

The development comes after Flipkart successfully raised about $4 billion in financing this year from investors such as Japan’s SoftBank Corporation and Chinese internet conglomerate Tencent.

Besides Flipkart, employees of subsidiaries like online fashion retailer Myntra and payments unit PhonePe will also be a part of the repurchase programme which is expected to close by December, sources said.

Employees will be allowed to sell a certain percentage of their vested shares under the programme, and a few senior former employees of the company could make “tens of crores”, people aware of the plans told ET.

The floor capital adequacy level for a bank is the ratio of different kinds of bank capital (equity, free reserves, secondary bonds etc.) to its risk-weighted assets. Since a ‘default rating’ on a loan would sharply raise the risk weight attached to the loan in question, a downgrade would thus lower the capital adequacy ratio of a bank – an event that would require a bank to arrange more capital to sustain the same level of business.

Unlike a default on bond — which investors immediately get a whiff of — news of a loan default rarely leaks out. Banks categorise a loan as non-performing asset (NPA) three months after a default. If a borrower services the loan after a few weeks of delay, it is not reflected on lenders’ books as the loan is regularised within the 90-day window. Only when a borrower fails to repay within 90 days, analysts and investors come to know about a corporate default and classification of the loan as NPA.

Banks had told agencies that initial default or delay is common among borrowers and reporting each non-payment of interest or principal or even processing fee could cause a downgrade of several loans. Also, since many of these payments happen after some delay (but before 90 days), a default tag would not only trigger hardship for the borrower but also stress capital levels of banks.

Indeed, banks had refused to share information on loan default even with rating agencies. The issue came to the fore in May 2017 when Sebi asked rating agencies to explain what lead to the downgrade of Reliance Communications’ debt securities and loans by several swift notches. Sebi had then wanted to know whether investors of RCom securities could have been alerted with an early rating action.

RCAP EXPOSURE TO RCOM

With RCom calling off its merger with Aircel, some of the rating agencies will soon ask Reliance Capital to spell out its exposure to the group’s debt-laden telecom company. While the RCap’s exposure to RCom is small compared to the former’s net worth, rating agencies are likely to seek information and finances as of September 30.

The rating on RCap papers is currently on ‘credit watch with developing implications’.

Cancel Hold to select Select All Catalonia vote: Spain in crisis as over 40 unions threaten strike

EVEN AS Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy insisted hat there was no independence vote in Catalonia, Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont called Monday for international mediation in the crisis pitting his regional separatist executive against Madrid, a day after police violence marred an independence referendum banned by the central government.

In the early hours of Monday morning, the Catalan government claimed that 90 percent of voters backed independence in the referendum, which it said saw a turnout of just over 42 percent despite attempts to stop them from voting.

Puigdemont, meanwhile, said his region had “won the right to an independent state.”

Prime Minister Rajoy said in a television address that the great majority of Catalans did not “follow the script of the secessionists.” He gave no proof for that statement. Rajoy said the independence referendum only served to sow divisions.

Meanwhile, several unions, including the UGT and CCOO, Spain’s biggest unions, the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and 41 other organisations called a region-wide strike for Tuesday, condemning the police crackdown, calling it a “grave violation of rights and freedoms.”

Over 230m people in villages have stopped defecating in the open

COVERAGE HAS INCREASED TO 69% FROM 39% Three Years of Swachh India: Rural India Numbers Showing Progress

New Delhi: Inthreeyearsof Swachh Bharat,ruralsanitationcoveragehas increased to 69% from 39%, more than 230-million people in villages have stopped defecating in the open and nearly 5 crore toilets have been built — these are observations of the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, which is in charge of PM Modi’s flagship programme. The focus now is to ensure that villages declared free of open defecation do not “slip back”. Verification of construction of toilets and usage, f ur t her buil di ng awareness, training of ‘swachhagrahis’ (sanitation motivators) — one in every village — and treatment of waste are the priorities for the government, officials said.

LaunchedonGandhiJayantiin2014, the programme aims to make India clean and open-defecation-free (ODF) by2019,the150thbirthanniversaryof Mahatma Gandhi, by building individual,communityandclustertoilets. The ministry said states have made significant progress on the project — 203districtsandabout2.5lakhvillages have been declared ODF, while Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Haryana and Uttarakhand have become ODF states. “One of the biggest achievements has been that all the 4,000 villages on the banks of the holy Ganga have become ODF,” a senior official in the government said.

Focus now is to ensure that villages declared free of open defecation do not ‘slip back’

‘Round-arm’ Jadhav does the trick for India again

Nagpur: On a decent batting surface at Jamtha in the last One-dayer, Australia were cruising along nicely when Kedar Jadhav turned things around again for India. Openers Aaron Finch and David Warner had already hit 10 boundaries in the first 10 overs and India needed to slow things down. Hardik Pandya got India the first breakthrough, sending back Finch in his very first over

To everyone’s surprise, skipper Virat Kohli replaced Pandya with part-timer Kedar Jadhav. The move could have backfired with Steve Smith and David Warner at the crease. Jadhav, however, seemed unfazed. He instead bowled slower and slower through the air. Smith got frustrated by Jadhav’s tight spell and eventually was trapped leg-before going for the slog sweep to a straighter delivery. From 60-0, Australia went to 103-2 by the 20th over. They had lost the momentum and their skipper.

By the end of the Australian innings, Jadhav’s figures read 10-0-48-1. It was the most he had ever bowled in an ODI. With every passing game, the 32-year-old’s performance with the ball keeps improving. “He is proving to be a great asset with his bowling. I am sure he hasn’t taken any coaching. He doesn’t need coaching. If he takes coaching he won’t be the same bowler. At present, he is assessing the conditions well, listening to the captain and just doing the job with intelligence,” former India leg-spinner Narendra Hirwani, who is also the head spin bowling coach of the National Cricket Academy, told TOI.

It was just a year ago that Jadhav was given another opportunity as a middle-order batsman during the Onedayers against New Zealand. Till then, he was known largely as a gifted strokeplayer and makeshift wicketkeeper. Nobody had seen him bowl. Out of the blue, then ODI skipper Mahen- dra Singh Dhoni introduced Jadhav into the attack in the first One-dayer in Dharamshala after New Zealand were reduced to 57-5. In his second over, Jadhav struck twice in two balls to get rid of James Neesham and Mitchell Santner. In Mohali, he picked up some big wickets of the in-form Tom Latham, Kane Wlliamson and Corey Anderson. He ended the series with six wickets.

Hirwani feels Dhoni discovered that Jadhav could contribute handily with the ball. “Dhoni has a knack for picking talent. He has played a vital role in Jadhav’s emergence as bowler. He must have played Jadhav in the nets. Jadhav was part of a young team Dhoni led in Zimbabwe before the New Zealand tour. Dhoni must have found him difficult to get away and that’s how Jadhav started bowled in matches. You don’t throw the ball to someone just like that in a match. Now, Virat (Kohli) is using him quite well,” Hirwani said.

Since that New Zealand game, Jadhav has bowled in every series and picked up crucial wickets. He started bowling with a round-arm action during the One-day series against West Indies. He uses the crease well, creates different angles and slows down the pace to make it difficult for batsmen. “Batting is about timing and power. Jadhav’s bowling makes it difficult to time the ball. It all boils down to how much power a batsman can generate. He has very unusual action too. Have you seen a spinner bowling with a roundarm action? After pitching, the ball just doesn’t come on to the bat. He can break the rhythm of a set batsman. Also, being a part timer, he doesn’t have any pressure,” the 48-year-old said.

Kohli too said that being a part-time bowler, Jadhav has nothing to lose. “If a proper set batsman tries to go after parttimers, more often than not you get your breakthroughs. The regular bowlers are obviously always looking for consistency, and thinking from a bowler’s point of view. If it turns, good, and he’s giving six runs an over, he’s done his job,” Kohli had said after the Bangalore ODI.

It’s still early days for Jadhav as an international cricketer. The team management expects him to finish games with the bat. He is still learning that art. He averages 45.11 with the bat, and 24.81with ball. Any international cricketer will be proud of those stats. While Jadhav isn’t a genuine allrounder, he is still doing his best for the team.