Quick notes: E-commerce, Aruba networks...

• FDI for Flipkart and Snapdeal: It has the potential to render many small retailers’ physical stores unsustainable



• Standing up to the Chinese:  Taiwan tells Alibaba to exit within 6 months



• Keerti Melkote: Aruba networks sells for $3 billion.



• Samuel, the messiah: Illegal YSR statues encroaching roads in AP



• $60,000 speeding ticket: Instead of a flat fine, Finland bases the penalty as a percentage of daily income. The rationale is that the fine should sting for anyone, even the ultra-rich.



• Healthy cows: Butter from grass-fed cows leads to fewer heart attacks



• McDonald's to cut use of antibiotics in chicken: Many poultry producers give their birds antibiotics to make them grow faster. But overuse of the drugs could lead to them becoming less effective in treating illness and disease in humans.



• It was not the British government that seized India, but a private company, run by an unstable sociopath. Using its rapidly growing security force – its army had grown to 260,000 men by 1803 – it swiftly subdued and seized an entire subcontinent. “What honour is left to us?” asked a Mughal official named Narayan Singh, shortly after 1765, “when we have to take orders from a handful of traders who have not yet learned to wash their bottoms?”



• White man's burden: One article describes "Nirbhaya" as "speaking excellent English". What comes through, then, is a sense of India as a place of ignorance and brutality towards women, that inspires both shock and pity, but also call for a rap on the knuckles from the "civilized world" for its "brutal attitudes". Nirbhaya, described patronizingly as a speaker of "excellent English" is marked approvingly as a good subject for the global rescue mission. ..(excuse me for quoting Kavita Krishnan)