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Perspective: Missing John Prine

Four weeks ago tonight, John Prine caught the April super moon and rode it to heaven. We knew he was sick with the virus and that his chances of recovery were slim, but it still hurt and it still does. I imagine he would have written some good tunes about our current state of being. As a “young man from a small town with a very large imagination,” he “made up songs,” along his postal route in the Chicago area. I can listen to his lyrics over and over and still get a rush of mixed emotions from his stories that are funny, absurd, devastating — and sometimes all in one song. John Prine introduced us to a colorful cast of characters: Lydia - “reading romance novels in her room,” while Donald was “envisioning romantic scenes” from the “barracks latrine,” and them “making love in their dreams.” Sam Stone returning from Vietnam with a “Purple Heart and a monkey on his back.” And the couple from “In Spite of Ourselves”- She “swears like a sailor when she shaves her legs,” and he “drinks his




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Fund-starved Karnataka raises liquor duties, distillers say move won’t help anyone

Chief minister BS Yediyurappa has been exploring revenue opportunities, and plans to also auction off plots of land in and around Bengaluru to mobilise funds. The revised retail prices will take effect Thursday. The CM has, however, spared beer and wine.




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Budweiser to invest more in e-commerce as virus hits offline demand

The company, which has a portfolio of more than 50 beer brands including Stella Artois, Corona and Harbin, reported quarterly revenue of $956 million, down from $1.6 billion last year.




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Delhi govt issues 4.75 lakh e-tokens to buy liquor

Under the e-token system, customers are given specific time for purchasing alcohol so that there is no violation of social distancing norms by people queuing up outside liquor stores.




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After demonetisation, GST, floods hit Agra's footwear industry hard

Sharing the reasons for the slowdown in the shoe industry, shoe manufacturer Pradeep Kumar said: "The main cause is the flood that most part of the country is facing. Due to sluggish sales, we are also short of funds."




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Bata to add 500 more stores in next 5 years on franchise model

Bata has already identified 180 such markets in smaller cities pan-India.




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This footwear maker's stock surged over 1,600% in a decade

On a yearly basis, the Kolkata-based company's share price, which stood at Rs 1127.35, as of January 1, 2019, has gained around 55.32 per cent.




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Sustainable footwear brand Neeman’s raises $1 million from angel investors

Founded in 2017 by Taran Chhabra and Amar Preet Singh, Neeman’s is a sustainable shoe brand that uses completely natural, renewable, recyclable and chemical-free materials to reduce the carbon footprint.




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Rising fitness a boost for women’s activewear sales

Women’s share in the activewear category has gone up for sports brands such as Nike, Reebok, Adidas and Puma because of an increase in their participation in sports and other activities such as running, yoga, pilates and Zumba.




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India is driving Puma’s global growth: CEO

Puma operates 365 owned stores in India, and over the past three years, has signed up cricketer Virat Kohli, boxer Mary Kom, footballer Sunil Chhetri and actress Sarah Ali Khan to endorse its products.




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Puma India elevates India MD Abhishek Ganguly to General Manager- SE Asia and India

In a letter to the brand’s business partners, Bjorn Gulden, global CEO of Puma SE, announced Ganguly’s elevation in the company adding that that he will continue to work out of Puma’s India head office in Bengaluru.




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Adidas apologises after backlash over refusing to pay rent amid coronavirus scare

"We would like to wholeheartedly apologise. We have paid our landlords the rent for April." Adidas, which made a net profit of nearly two billion euros ($2.2 billion) in 2019, has been hard hit by a slump in Chinese sales and store closures around the world.




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Titan’s optical division forays into smart eyewear segment

​​The Bluetooth-enabled smart sunglasses by Titan’s eyewear division will allow users to listen to music with 8-hour playtime. An in-built mic will give access to Siri and Google assistant and allow hands-free calling.




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Titan Q2 profit inches up 2% YoY to Rs 320 crore, misses Street estimates

The company had posted Rs 314.38 crore profit in the year-ago period.




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Traditional watches to get a sporty twist as athleisure trend picks up in 2020

The growth of healthy lifestyle has added impetus to the athleisure trend.




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Titan Q3 profit rises 13% YoY: Key takeaways

The revenue growth was led by the jewellery segment, while growth in other segments were muted during the quarter.




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Getting good quality retail in India is a challenge: Niladri Mazumder, Seiko India

Retail in India has not developed at the same pace as the products. Getting good quality retail is a challenge. The country has limited number of malls. There is no high street.




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Titan acquihires HUG Innovations, with an aim to strengthen its smart wearables division

The watchmaker will form a development centre in Hyderabad with HUG in hardware, firmware, software and cloud technology and has appointed the company's founder Raj Neravati to head technology for wearables at Titan Company.




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Swiss watchmakers see exports plunge amid pandemic

Exports to Hong Kong, the sector's biggest market, plummeted 41.3 percent, while exports to France fell 48 percent, and those to South Korea were down 46.2 percent.




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Vasant Nangia is CEO of Chumbak

​Chumbak founder Vivek Prabhakar will continue as head of marketing and digital, and co-founder Shubhra Chaddha will continue to head product and design.




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The Visit, realistic simulation of a reality that already exists

The elderly Viv notices our presence and invites us to sit in her kitchen, right there in front of her, where she can see us. Thus began the interactive video experience “The Visit“, born from the collaboration of the artist



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Nina Sun Eidsheim – The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music

Duke University Press, ISBN-13: 978-0822368687, English, 288 pages, 2019, USA

Eidsheim starts this book by introducing ‘the acousmatic question’ (“who’s this, who’s speaking?”) to discuss the dichotomy between a sound and its source before and




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Alan Licht – Sound Art Revisited

Bloomsbury Academic, ISBN-13: 978-1501333774, English, 208 pages, 2019, UK

This is the second (revisited edition) of one of the first books addressing sound art as such, attempting through a diversified research a consistent and universal




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This Side of Jordan - Mandolin Orange

For Andrew Marlin, the genesis of Mandolin Orange’s 3 rd CD “This Side of Jordan” evolved from a near-tragic incident in his own life back in 2011 that occurred around the release of the duo’s 2 nd CD. (AM) “What happened was I was on this dam just down the road from where we live. It’s a popular swimming spot. It was a little early in the morning and I just got a little too close and fell over the dam. Luckily I just broke my pelvis, but it was an eye-opening experience. It could’ve gone so many ways. I think it had a huge impact on this record, opening up my eyes to mortality and how crazy just little instances like that go. I can go one way or the other so fast.” But while Andrew says that accident definitely affected the production of “This Side of Jordan,” the spiritual aspect that runs throughout the disc may have come out anyway, given the style of music that he and partner Emily Frantz partake in. “I grew up in the church. My mom, she always played for the church when I was




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Virus impact: Offline retailers running out of handsets as distributors hoard

Industry watchers say wholesalers are holding back stocks of popular phone models in anticipation of a price rise by the month-end as production in China slows; brands as yet unaware of complaints.




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China-made phones off speed dial as supply chains disrupted amid coronavirus outbreak

“There are supply issues for several brands. There is no clarity when the situation will normalise,” said Nilesh Gupta, director at Vijay Sales, a leading electronics retailer in Mumbai and New Delhi. “If it doesn’t get corrected fast, we may move into a stock-out situation from next month.”




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Cellphone retailers appeals to Finance Minister requesting her not to raises taxes on mobile phones

"We strongly appeal to you to not increase GST on mobiles. The increase of 6% would directly lead to hike in prices of product, impacting consumer behaviour leading to a slowdown in demand affecting business adversely,” said the letter written by AIMRA national president Arvinder Khurana.




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Offline phone retailers approach home ministry to restart shops

“We recommend allowing all physical shops dealing on sales, repair and service activity of mobile phones, mobile devices (laptops and tablets) and their supporting accessories to be opened on a limited basis (three days a week for five hours) with limited number of staff,” AIMRA said in an April 17 letter to union home minister Amit Shah.




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Microsoft to launch Xbox One in India through Amazon this week

Xbox will be available for Rs39,990, while the model with Kinect, an interface that allows the use of gestures to play games, will cost Rs45,990.




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This new feature could make 'Super Smash Bros' the game of the year

There's no better game to play with friends than "Super Smash Bros." And it's about to get even better.




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One of the biggest video game franchises might come to the iPhone

Pokemon is the most successful and lucrative video game franchise in the world, second only to Mario.




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Rovio Entertainment,owner of the Angry Birds franchise, aims to become default app on India smartphones

Rovio’s India head also said that the company wants to have its own retail store where it can sell Angry Birds merchandise such as shirts and stuffed toys.




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Gaming firm Nazara Technologies signs up Credit Suisse to raise up to Rs 640 crore

Nazara Technologies has mandated investment bank Credit Suisse to raise Rs 480-640 crore, the largest capitalraise in India’s still nascent mobile gaming industry.




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NVIDIA to expand gaming footprint in India, add 100 gaming cafes this year

There are nearly 100 such gaming cafes currently and less than 1000 non-exclusive cafes, said Vamsi Krishna, Head of Consumer Marketing, South Asia, NVIDIA.




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Free download from the Lovell Sisters




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Free Download from Enter the Haggis

Free download of Can't Trust the News from Enter the Haggis ' new CD "The Modest Revolution", currently featured on The Sound.




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Free Download from the Coffis Brothers & the Mountain Men

Free download of You Ain't Got the Heart from the CD Roll With It by the Coffis Brothers & the Mountain Men , currently featured on The Sound. Find out more about the artist here .




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Reader connect, eclectic collections help bookstores flourish in online times

Though the business is a precarious one, bookstores are here to stay as long as there are readers driven by a compulsion to read, say leading booksellers in the capital.




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Lacasa store concept will grow our business 2 times by 2020: Manish Bhatia, HSIL

We will be investing approximately Rs 2-3 crore each in setting up 10 Lacasa stores covering around 40,000-50,000 sq. ft. area till 2020.




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Durables, electronic items to feature high on shoppers' list post lockdown: Croma

Products such as laptops, smartphones and printers have become crucial for those working from home, while household appliances like washing machines, ACs, TVs and vacuum cleaners are now more important than ever for households.




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Samsung heir apologises over corruption scandal

Lee Jae-yong is vice-chairman of Samsung Electronics and was jailed for five years in 2017 for bribery, embezzlement and other offences in connection with the scandal that brought down South Korean president Park Geun-hye.




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Sony cuts television prices up to 20% to spur demand during Covid-19

The company has cut prices anywhere from Rs 2,000 on the smaller screen televisions going up to Rs two lakh on a flagship 85-inch model apart from rolling out long tenure no-cost EMI schemes and bundling offers. It has launched a new 85-inch model at Rs 5.9 lakh bringing down its earlier pricing structure of Rs 10 lakh in this screen size.




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Stationery business on rise in Koramangala

The business of fine writing instruments is growing in tandem with other luxury segments in Koramangala and its surroundings.




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Tolexo collaborates with Google to boost sales and bring down customer acquisition cost

With about a million products available on its website, Tolexo is among the largest B2B ecommerce sites in the country, serving 2.5 lakh businesses.




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Meet Ryan: A 7-year old boy who is the highest-paid YouTube star of 2018

The boy topped Forbes' list of "Highest-Paid YouTube Stars 2018" with an impressive earning of USD 22 million.




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Reliance acquires British toy-maker Hamleys for undisclosed sum

Reliance Retail’s marquee label operator Reliance Brands is the India master franchisee for Hamleys, which reputedly has its origins in the world’s oldest toy store in London that was opened in 1881.




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Reliance Brands completes acquisition of Hamleys

Reliance Brands has completed acquisition of 100 per cent stake of Hamleys Global Holdings (HGHL) through a special purpose vehicle company set up in United Kingdom for cash consideration of GBP 67.96 million, Reliance Industries said in a BSE filing Thursday.




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Iconic toy maker Lego in talks with the Indian government to prioritise play

Rohan Mathur, senior regional sales manager - South Asia for The Lego Group spoke to ET about the toy industry, company’s India plans and its recent event in Delhi engaging the Indian government to prioritise play.




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Hanung Toys promoter detained at airport following LOC issued by PNB

Hanung Toys and Textile Ltd owes Rs 2,300 crore from a consortium of 15 lenders led by state-owned PNB, which alone has exposure of Rs 599 crore.




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Sony enters into kids merchandise space

Sony has roped in brand licensing company Black White Orange to roll out kids’ consumer products