The Indian government has developed a bill that will completely ban cryptocurrencies in the country.

Storage, release, mining, trading and transfer will face a fine or criminal liability. At the same time, citizens will be given six months to get rid of cryptocurrency assets. If the bill is passed, India will become the first major economy to completely ban cryptocurrencies.

Of course, Indian government do this not because they love you. Main reasons are ability to avoid taxes and big energy consumption.

Visible in US light.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dth.14740

Acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) is commonly used for primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular diseases. Aspirin use is associated with better outcomes among COVID‐19 positive patients. We hypothesized that aspirin use for primary cardiovascular disease prevention might have a protective effect on COVID‐19 susceptibility and disease duration. We conducted a retrospective population‐based cross‐sectional study, utilizing data from the Leumit Health Services database. The proportion of patients treated with aspirin was significantly lower among the COVID‐19‐positive group, as compared to the COVID‐19‐negative group (73 (11.03 %) vs. 1548 (15.77%); p=0.001). Aspirin use was associated with lower likelihood of COVID‐19 infection, as compared to non‐users (adjusted OR 0.71 (95% CI, 0.52 to 0.99; p=0.041). Aspirin users were older (68.06 ± 12.79 vs. 56.63 ± 12.28 years of age; p<0.001), presented a lower BMI (28.77±5.4 vs. 30.37±4.55; p<0.0189) and showed higher prevalence of hypertension (56, 76.71%), diabetes (47, 64.38%) and COPD (11, 15.07%) than showed the aspirin non‐users (151, 25.64%, p<0.001; 130, 22.07%, p<0.001; and 43, 7.3%, p=0.023, respectively). Moreover, COVID‐19 disease duration (considered as the time between the first positive and second negative COVID‐19 RT‐PCR test results) among aspirin users was significantly shorter, as compared to aspirin non‐users (19.8±7.8 vs. 21.9± 7.9 p= 0.045). Among hospitalized COVID‐positive patients, a higher proportion of surviving subjects were treated with aspirin (20, 19.05%), as opposed to 1 dead subject (14.29%), although this difference was not significant (p=0.449). In conclusion, we observed inverse association between the likelihood of COVID‐19 infection, disease duration and mortality and aspirin use for primary prevention.

https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/febs.15784

Nokia did not disclose the number of employees in its quarterly financial statements. Last year, the company managed to hide the reason for the reduction in labor costs by 500 million euros. However, from the latest annual report released by Nokia, it became known that the company cut almost 5,000 employees in 2019. An additional 6,000 workers were laid off in 2020.

The report shows that the company cut 11,044 employees in two years. As a result, the total number of Nokia employees in 2020 was 92,039 people.

Nokia did not mention the layoffs in the report. Instead, the company gave a rather vague wording: "In recent years, as we adjusted our strategy in accordance with business goals and areas of activity, the number of our employees has fluctuated." Among other things, it is worrying that Nokia's latest savings plan has led to significant cuts in research and development costs. After about 4.5 billion euros were invested in this direction, the budget was cut by 450 million euros last year.

Rumors are that Nokia can pull our of 5G market due to having non competitive offers.

En Russie le gouvernement est un despotisme mitigé par la strangulation.

in english

In Russia the government is a despotism mitigated by strangulation.

Pushkin.

A US federal court on Friday temporarily suspended a ban on investment and cooperation with Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi.

In January, under previous President Donald Trump, the Pentagon blacklisted Xiaomi and eight other Chinese companies. According to the American authorities, they are controlled or cooperate with the military-industrial complex and the PRC intelligence services. The sanctions included a ban on any financial transactions by citizens and companies from the United States. In addition, American individuals and legal entities had to sell their shares in Xiaomi by a certain date.

The Chinese company then went to court in Washington, DC, claiming that the blacklisting was unconstitutional and that the US authorities did not provide any evidence of Xiaomi's involvement with the intelligence services.

Small pause before new rounds of conflict.

Apple has discontinued its original HomePod after four years. It says that it will continue to produce and focus on the HomePod mini, introduced last year. The larger HomePod offered a beefier sound space but the mini has been very well received and clearly accomplishes many of the duties that the larger version was tasked with. The sound is super solid (especially for the size) and it offers access to Siri, Apple’s assistant feature.

We are focusing our efforts on HomePod mini. We are discontinuing the original HomePod, it will continue to be available while supplies last through the Apple Online Store, Apple Retail Stores, and Apple Authorized Resellers. Apple will provide HomePod customers with software updates and service and support through Apple Care.

Biggest reason are lacking Siri capabilities. Accuracy, features, music library put Siri in the least capable assistant territory while Amazon assistant is gaining momentum. Apple also still have very bad support for any languages except English, learning and resources allocated to other languages are minimal.