New Delhi, May 12 (IANS) The powerful geomagnetic storms, which hit the Earth on Friday and disrupted GPS, satellite navigation, and other technologies, is expected to continue till Sunday night, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) classified the geomagnetic storm on Friday as “extreme,” or a G5 storm — the highest level.

It’s the first G5 storm to hit Earth since 2003 and caused several coronal mass ejections or CMEs.

Besides allowing many skygazers across the globe to see the beautiful northern lights where they usually can’t, it also led to “major disturbance in Earth’s magnetic field, causing radio blackouts, affecting GPA and satellite systems, including Elon Musk’s Starlink.

“Geomagnetic storming of various intensity will continue overnight,” NOAA shared in a post on X.com

“By early Sunday, and into Sunday night the next major coronal mass ejection (CME) – moving at speeds up to 1800 kilometres per second – will begin to slam into the Earth’s magnetic field and reach the outer atmosphere.

“A G4 Watch remains in effect for May 12,” it added.

What is a geomagnetic storm?

A geomagnetic storm is “a disturbance in the Earth’s magnetosphere caused by solar wind activity.” Wind from these storms can cause aurora in the sky, in addition to possible disturbances in satellite communications.

On a scale from G1 to G5, G5 is the strongest level of geomagnetic storm.

“Widespread voltage control problems and protective system problems can occur,” NOAA warned. “Some grid systems may experience complete collapse or blackouts. Transformers may experience damage.”

The most recent G4 (severe) storm occurred on March 23, 2024, while the Halloween Storms in October 2003 marked the last G5 (extreme) event.

The G5 storm in October 2003 reportedly caused power outages in Sweden and damaged transformers in South Africa.

With the sun building towards a peak in its 11-year solar activity cycle, expected to occur in 2025, experts noted that geomagnetic storms are going to have an increased presence.

–IANS

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New Delhi, May 12 (IANS) Indian tech industry leaders have come out in support of Ola Founder and CEO, Bhavish Aggarwal, after his tirade against Microsoft-owned LinkedIn for deleting his posts and “bullying Indians” into agreeing with the Big Tech platforms or cancelling them out.

Homegrown IT software company Zoho’s CEO Sridhar Vembu agreed with Aggarwal, saying “we in India have to strongly resist this woke imperialism”.

“It is best understood as a fanatical religious doctrine that masquerades as a socio-political movement,” Vembu posted on X social media platform.

Edtech company Unacademy CEO Gaurav Munjal earlier posted that this is so “f***** up on LinkedIn’s part”.

An angry Ola CEO on Saturday announced the termination of Microsoft Azure cloud’s services and moved the entire workload of his company to his own AI venture called Krutrim.

“We’ve decided to move our entire workload out of Azure to our own Krutrim cloud within the next week,” he said in a blog post.

When reached, LinkedIn or Microsoft did not comment on Aggarwal’s blog post.

The tussle began when Ola CEO shared his thoughts on gender pronouns, with a LinkedIn post on “pronoun illness”.

The LinkedIn AI chatbot used “they” and “their” to address the founder.

The professional networking platform later deleted Aggarwal’s posts “without notifying him”, leading to an outburst from the Ola founder.

“Proud of you Bhavish. When CEOs like you show the way, I’m sure many will emulate you. It is one thing to coax people to be inclusive but quite another to use bullying and cancelling techniques to impose a fake inclusiveness with dubious benefit. May Dharma always guide you,” Author Sahana Singh posted on X.

Aggarwal has said he will work with the domestic developer community to build a digital public infrastructure (DPI) social media framework and the only ‘community guidelines’ should be the Indian law.

“Woke” was a word earlier used within Black communities in the US to refer to an “awareness of inequality”.

It is now being frequently used in political parlance to describe anything that appears too liberal or progressive.

–IANS

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New Delhi, May 12 (IANS) Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Sunday said that Mark Zuckerberg-run Meta is “super greedy” at taking credit for advertisers who run campaigns on its platform.

A Musk follower raised this issue in a post, saying several of his advertisers noticed that while running campaigns on both X and Meta, nearly all conversions are attributed to Meta, “with X reporting almost no conversions.”

“Interestingly, when X ads are turned off, total conversions significantly drop, including those reported on Meta. No research is needed to understand what’s going on here,” the follower commented.

The X owner replied that “we are terrible at claiming credit, and Meta is super greedy at claiming credit.”

Another Musk follower posted that eventually, “Meta will need to revise their attribution model, revealing the truth to advertisers who are already noticing a decline in results.”

“For X, refining the attribution model to align more closely with reality is relatively straightforward. This will show even better outcomes for advertisers,” the X user suggested.

The rivalry between Musk and Zuckerberg is well known.

They were apparently set for a “cage fight’ some time back — dubbed as the fight of the century.

However, the much-anticipated showdown between the duo was cancelled.

–IANS

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Seoul, May 12 (IANS) South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group beat Volkswagen Group to rank second after Toyota Group in operating profit for the January-March period, their earnings data showed on Sunday.

In the first three months, Hyundai Motor Group posted an operating profit of 6.98 trillion won ($5.08 billion), higher than 6.78 trillion won reported by the German carmaker, according to their earnings results.

The won’s weakness against the US dollar and strong sales of high-end models in the US and other major markets helped push up Hyundai’s operating income in the past quarter, reports Yonhap news agency.

Toyota Group, which has Toyota Motor Corp. as its flagship affiliate, posted an operating profit of 9.8 trillion won in the January-March period.

The first three months are the fourth quarter of the 2023 fiscal year for the Japanese company.

Among the world’s five biggest carmakers, that include GM Group and the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance, Hyundai Motor Group topped others in terms of operating profit margin in the January-March period, the data showed.

Hyundai Motor Group’s two major car-manufacturing affiliates — Hyundai Motor and Kia — reported a combined operating profit margin of 10.4 per cent, followed by Toyota Group with 10 per cent, GM Group’s 8.7 per cent, Volkswagen’s 6.1 per cent, and the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance’s 4.3 per cent.

–IANS

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New Delhi, May 11 (IANS) Indian drug maker Zydus Lifesciences on Saturday announced receiving final approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) to market a generic medication for arthritis and other conditions.

The company received approval to market Dexamethasone Tablets USP, 1 mg, in the US.

Dexamethasone is used to treat conditions such as arthritis, blood/hormone disorders, allergic reactions, skin diseases, eye problems, breathing problems, bowel disorders, cancer and immune system disorders.

The product will be manufactured at the group’s formulation manufacturing facility at Baddi, Himachal Pradesh, the drug maker said.

According to the data by the global provider of advanced analytics, technology solutions IQVIA, Dexamethasone tablets had an annual sales of $1.8 million in the US.

Earlier in the week, Zydus Lifesciences received final approval from the USFDA to market Dapsone Gel, 7.5 per cent.

Dapsone Gel is used to treat acne and will be manufactured at the group’s topical manufacturing facility at Changodar in Gujarat’s Ahmedabad.

As of December last year, the group has 395 approvals and has so far filed more than 460 Abbreviated New Drug Applications (ANDAs) since the commencement of the filing process in FY 2003-04, the company mentioned.

–IANS

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