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The Semi’s 500-mile range is apparently well-suited to Walmart’s usage habits, which revolve around one-day round trips. In other words, it wouldn’t work so well for multi-day or multi-point trips where there wouldn’t be many opportunities to recharge.

This isn’t the hugest order (PepsiCo, for instance, has 100 on deck). It does represent a vote of confidence from a major brand, however, and that could be crucial to Tesla when it’s still trying to win over customers ahead of the Semi’s 2019 production start — especially when competition is breathing down its neck.

Revolut, the new-generation smartphone-based bank which is blowing up Europe right now, has confirmed its intention launch in the United States and Canada later this year, taking its interesting combination of personal banking, crypto wallet and fee-free stocks trading app to main-street North America. Co-founder and CEO Nik Storonsky said the company now has a 60,000 person waiting list for U.S customers for when it launches.

On-stage at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco today Storonsky, said the startup, which has already past the ‘unicorn’ stage of a billion dollar valuation, would be launching some time between October and December this year.

Revolut’s app-based checking account and debit card offers customers payment notifications, built-in budgeting controls and the ability to spend and transfer money globally using the real exchange rate, thus bypassing forex fees.

In the last six months, Revolut has launched a feature allowing customers to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies, although these are held within the app’s wallet, and can’t be traded on exchanges. The crypto currencies the company uses to provide this service is also held offline in ‘cold storage’, Storonsky told me on stage. He wouldn’t say where.

Last week, the company launched a fully contactless metal card that gives customers up to 1% cashback on spending in either fiat or cryptocurrency, overseas travel insurance and a personal concierge for booking everything from restaurant tables to festival tickets.

Revolut is also actively working on a commission-free trading platform. This will put it at logger-heads with the US-based Robinhood, which bills itself as a disruptive force in the online brokerage industry, by allowing customers to buy and sell stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) without paying a commission. Why? Because Robinhood has announced it’s intention to expanding into the personal banking space, while Revolut (a bank) is expanding into Robinhood’s space. It should make for an interesting battle-to-come.

Launched three years ago, London-based Revolut has grown very quickly in Europe. The company has a total of three million customers and claims it is opening over 7,000 new accounts every day. Revolut has raised over $336 million in funding from VCs including Index Ventures, Ribbit Capital and DST Global, and unusually originally crowd-funded its startup capital.

Incumbent US banks would do well to sit up and take notice. They are about to have a very aggressive challenger bank appear on their doorstep which appeals to the many millennials who run their lives via a smartphone.

Aviation in India is on a rising demand because of the needs of the passengers. The main focus for them, now, is to make the entire process as easy as possible which is to provide access to the plane. This initiative has led to bring about the futuristic ideas possible now.

Bengaluru airport has just achieved it too. Soon you will not have to carry or worry about your boarding pass if you are travelling from Bengaluru airport. Bengaluru International Airport (BIAL) has partnered with Portuguese technology company Vision-Box to implement this smart project.

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With this implementation which is of a biometric technology, Bengaluru Airport will be India’s first Airport to have this feature. It will be an end-to-end solution for paperless air travel.

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This is what they posted on Twitter. Have a look:

“Your face becomes your boarding pass! BIAL has partnered with @Visionbox to bring you India’s first airport to have an end-to-end solution for paperless air travel. The contract was signed in the presence of Portuguese Prime Minister @antoniocostapm,” tweeted the BIAL.

Your face becomes your boarding pass! BIAL has partnered with @Visionbox to bring you India’s first airport to have an end-to-end solution for paperless air travel. The contract was signed in the presence of Portuguese Prime Minister @antoniocostapm pic.twitter.com/4QAPmsNcyh

— BLR Airport (@BLRAirport) September 5, 2018

According to the information given, after the implementation of this rule on Bangalore Airport, passengers of Jet Airways, Air Asia and SpiceJet will start getting this facility from the first quarter of 2019. This project will be completed in the first quarter of 2019. Beginning with this facility, Bengaluru Airport will become the first airport in India.

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Bial said, “Now your face will be your boarding pass.” To make Bengaluru the first paperless airport, Bial has signed the agreement with Vision-box for boarding technology. The agreement was signed in the presence of the Prime Minister of Portugal, Antonio Costa. BIAL’s MD and CEO Hari Marar said that this facility will enable passengers to travel in a non-linear air travel.

Published by Minal Gupta on 06 Sep 2018

President Donald Trump is taking the Washington debate over his Supreme Court nominee to the homes of two red-state Senate Democrats this week, elevating Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation as a political litmus test for voters.

Trump’s strategy aims to turn the screws on the lawmakers, Jon Tester of Montana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, who find themselves caught between Senate leaders and progressive donors who are fighting Kavanaugh’s confirmation, and their states’ more conservative electorate, which is more broadly supportive of Trump’s pick.

Neither senator has laid down a clear marker on how he or she will vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation, which Senate Republican leaders hope to bring to a vote before the full chamber later this month — just weeks before the general election.

Trump is holding a rally in Billings, Montana, on Thursday night, and then attending fundraisers in Fargo, North Dakota, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on Friday.

White House officials contend the Supreme Court was a powerful motivator for Republican base voters in 2016, when Trump won the White House, and they’re seeking to capitalize on Kavanaugh’s confirmation to help overcome an enthusiasm gap with Democrats. Likewise, a vote for Kavanaugh by either Tester or Heitkamp could frustrate their Democratic base eager for a more confrontational approach to the Trump administration.

“It’s a real pickle,” said GOP strategist Josh Holmes.

“There is no question that all of these red-state Democrats would prefer to have an extremely quiet experience when it comes to the consideration of Kavanaugh,” he said. “They don’t want to upset leadership and the liberal base that’s funding their campaigns, but the voters who control their fate are overwhelmingly in favor of Kavanaugh.”

Democrats question whether the Kavanaugh vote will resonate in the race to unseat Tester, the Big Sandy farmer who has emphasized his independence and willingness to cross the partisan aisle to work with the president, who carried Montana by 20 percentage points two years ago.

“It’s not like you’re standing in the grocery store line and people are talking about the Kavanaugh confirmation. It’s pretty inside baseball for folks,” said Barrett Kaiser, a Montana-based Democratic strategist who advised former Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.

Kaiser said Tester had demonstrated a “proven bipartisan record of working with this administration when it helps Montana and oppose them when it doesn’t.”

Republicans last year assailed Tester for his vote against the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s nominee to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Tester said Gorsuch would “stand between a woman and her health care” and not protect personal privacy.

He’s yet to make a commitment on Kavanaugh or even to meet with the nominee. Tester initially said he wanted to meet with Kavanaugh and blamed the lack of a meeting on a White House cancellation. He retracted that claim Saturday when his spokeswoman told the Billings Gazette newspaper that the Democrat “misspoke” and that the White House had pushed back, not canceled, the meeting.

Tester said again on Tuesday that he wanted to meet with Kavanaugh. Among the topics he wants to cover are privacy rights, women’s access to health care, campaign finance reform and gun rights, said Tester spokeswoman Marnee Banks.

Matt Rosendale, Montana’s state auditor and the senator’s opponent, alleged that Tester had been caught in a “blatant lie.”

“What I’m really disturbed by is the fact that two months ago, when the president came out and announced his nominee, Jon Tester said, `I’m going to keep an open mind and meet with Brett Kavanaugh,”‘ Rosendale said.

Tester unveiled a television ad Wednesday promoting his collaboration with Trump as he seeks to inoculate himself against conservative critics.

Heitkamp is locked in a tough re-election fight in heavily Republican North Dakota, where she narrowly won six years ago and now faces a more formidable opponent in Rep. Kevin Cramer. Cramer has been a fervent supporter of Trump, who remains popular in North Dakota.

As Kavanaugh’s hearings began, Cramer launched an ad attacking Heitkamp for a January procedural vote that effectively blocked legislation to make nearly all abortions after 20 weeks illegal.

The Kavanaugh nomination puts the same pressure on Heitkamp as last year, when she ultimately was one of only three Democrats to vote for Gorsuch’s confirmation. She remains undecided.

“One of the most important jobs of any U.S. senator is to fully vet and consider nominees to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court — the highest court in our land,” Heitkamp said in a statement. “And right now Judge Kavanaugh is going through his very important job interview which I’m watching closely as I continue to review his record.”