Hindustan Motors sells iconic Ambassador brand to Peugeot

February 11, 2017

Feb 11: The iconic brand Ambassador, which used to be a symbol of the high and mighty in power corridors, has changed hands, with Hindustan Motors selling it to European auto major Peugeot for Rs 80 crore.

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The C K Birla group firm has inked an agreement with Peugeot SA to this effect.

As things stand, the manufacturing of Ambassador car has been discontinued.

"Hindustan Motors has executed an agreement with Peugeot SA for the sale of the Ambassador brand, including the trademarks, for a consideration of Rs 80 crore," Hindustan Motors said in a regulatory filing.

Last month, the PSA Group had inked a partnership with the CK Birla group to re-enter the Indian market and earmarked an initial investment of 100 million euros (around Rs 700 crore) to set up vehicle and powertrain manufacturing in Tamil Nadu.

The tie-up entails two joint venture agreements between the companies of the two groups.

The initial manufacturing capacity will be set at about 1,00,000 vehicles per year and followed by incremental investment to support a progressive ramp-up of the long-term project.

The manufacturing capacity for powertrains will cater to the domestic market requirements and global OEMs. The performance of the industrial set-up will be supported by a significant level of localisation in order to attain necessary cost competitiveness, the company had said last month.

The long-term partnership will allow both companies to participate in the growth of the Indian automotive market, which is expected to reach 8-10 million cars by 2025, from the current 3 million in 2016.

The PSA group, which sells three brands -- Peugeot, Citron and DS -- is no stranger to India, having entered into a partnership with the erstwhile Premier family, resulting in joint venture Peugeot PAL India. However, it pulled out of the JV in 2001.

The group had made repeated attempts to return to the Indian market. In 2009, it decided to go slow on plans to kick off operations in India due to a global economic slowdown.

Later, in 2011, it announced plans to re-enter the Indian market with a mid-sized sedan, 10 years after it had exited the country. The plan, however, did not materialise.

The CK Birla group is better known for the now discontinued iconic Ambassador car that was manufactured by group firm Hindustan Motors.

It has presence in technology automotive, home and building, healthcare and education.

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Agencies
July 18,2020

New Delhi, Jul 18: India's national cybersecurity agency CERT-in, has warned people of credit card skimming spreading across the world through e-commerce platforms.

Attackers are typically targeting e-commerce sites because of their wide presence, popularity and the environment LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP), the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) said in a notice on Thursday.

Recently, attackers targeted sites which were hosted on Microsoft's IIS server running with the ASP.NET web application framework, it said.

Some of the sites affected by the attack were found to be running ASP.NET version 4.0.30319, which is no longer officially supported by Microsoft and may contain multiple vulnerabilities, CERT-In said.

The notice also included a list of best practices for website developers including the use of the latest version of ASP.NET web framework, IIS web server and database server.

The advisory is based on research by Malwarebytes which found that this skimming campaign likely began sometime in April this year.

Credit card skimming has become a popular activity for cybercriminals over the past few years, and the increase in online shopping during the pandemic means additional business for them, too, Malwarebytes said in a blog post, adding that attackers do not need to limit themselves to the most popular e-commerce platforms.

Researchers from global cybersecurity and anti-virus brand Kaspersky had warned in December last year that more cybercriminal groups will target online payment processing systems in 2020. 

It said that over the past couple of years, so-called JS-skimming (the method of stealing of payment card data from online stores), has gained immense popularity among attackers. 

Kaspersky researchers in their report said they are currently aware of at least 10 different actors involved in these type of attacks.

Their number will continue to grow during the next year, the report said, adding that the most dangerous attacks will be on companies that provide services such as e-commerce as-a-service, which will lead to the compromise of thousands of companies.

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Agencies
January 12,2020

Washington D.C., Jan 12: A recent study has claimed that people end up wasting almost an entire day when they take a vacation.

This can happen while standing in a queue or searching for places to visit, people do not keep a count of the time they have actually utilised during the trip. As a result, they end up doing much lesser activities than they originally had planned.

According to a recent report in Fox News, the study has also shared the fact that people try to justify time waste with planning and scheduling activities whereas the truth is that these things can be done well ahead to save time during the trip.

The average time waste according to the study commissioned by Sykes Holiday Cottages also said the people taking a seven days' trip waste a minimum of 17-and-a-half hours to figure out various factors.

But there are other causes involved as well. When one visits any crowded location, the real-time spent to enjoy the location is lesser than the time spent on reaching and trying to get involved. For instance, if one visits an amusement park, the activities take lesser time than the preparatory and other phases.

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Agencies
March 16,2020

While Google is still working on a coronavirus screening and tracking website, Microsoft Bing team has already launched a web portal for tracking COVID-19 infections worldwide.

The website, accessible at bing.com/covid, provides up-to-date infection statistics for each country.

The COVID-19 Tracker currently lists 168,835 as total confirmed cases, 84,558 active cases, 77,761 recovered cases and 6,516 deaths.

There are at least 3,244 confirmed cases of novel coronavirus in the US and at least 61 deaths.

"Lots of Bing folks worked (from home) this past week to create a mapping and authoritative news resource for COVID19 info," Michael Schechter, General Manager for Bing Growth and Distribution at Microsoft, was quoted as saying in a ZDNet report on Sunday.

An interactive map allows site visitors to click on the country to see the specific number of cases and related articles from a variety of publishers.

Data is being aggregated from sources like the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

Microsoft announced the website two days after US President Donald Trump said Google has begun working on COVID-19-related portal for US citizens.

Google's website is being built by Verily, a subsidiary of Alphabet focused on healthcare services.

"More than 1,700 engineers are currently working on the site", Trump said during a press briefing last week.

The tool will triage people who are concerned about their COVID-19 risk into testing sites based on guidance from public health officials and test availability.

Initially, there was some confusion on Google's coronavirus portal but the company later announced that it is "partnering with the US Government in developing a nationwide website that includes information about COVID-19 symptoms, risk, and testing information."

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