Mathura Cult Chief Ram Vriksh Yadav Killed In Clashes, Say Police

    The members of the cult in Mathura had set off has cylinder explosions when they clashed with the police.

MATHURA: Ram Vriksh Yadav, leader of the cult that clashed with policemen in Mathura on Thursday, was among those killed in the violence, the police have said.Twenty-four people, including two policemen, had diedin the clashes.

Yadav was the key accused of leading the violence andran a camp backed by a private army divided into unitswhich had taken over Mathura's Jawahar Bagh. He had eight cases against him including murder and land-grabbing.

More than 3,000 people of the cult, which called itself Swadhin Bharat Vidhik Satyagrah, hadambushed nearly a thousand policemen with swords, guns and grenades after police launched a drive to evict them.

They also lit hundreds of cooking gas cylinders leading to a huge explosion and causing most of the deaths. Yadav appeared to be among those killed in the fire and his body had been lying in the mortuary for two days, police said.

Two police officers were killed in Uttar Pradesh's Mathura in clashes between police and members of a sect.

The identity of several of those killed, including Yadav, could not be confirmed till Saturday as many of them were charred and no one had turned up to claim them.

According to sources, Yadav hailed from the Ghazipur district of Uttar Pradesh. He formed an offshoot of the Jai Gurudev sect after the death of its leader in 2012 and a fight over succession.

Claiming to be political and social revolutionaries, his group said they were fighting for the abolition of elections and cheaper fuel for everyone.

In March 2014, his group was allowed to camp at Jawahar Bagh for two days after being denied permission to take a protest march to Delhi - an encroachment started which ended on Thursday.

Government sources had told NDTV that they had started action against the encroachment in the park a month ago, when the last appeal by Yadav was rejected by a court.

Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's government has faced sharp criticism for the operation. He later said that he did not "anticipate they (members of the sect who attacked cops) would be so well armed".

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Whoa: Facebook, Microsoft to build an internet cable across the Atlantic Ocean 2016

Tech giants Microsoft and Facebook are investing big in high-speed internet access by building a subsea cable connecting Virginia and Spain.

The MAREA cable will be the highest-capacity subsea cable to ever cross the Atlantic, and will lead to faster growth in internet bandwidth rates, the companies said. MAREA will run farther south than existing cables, expanding coverage, and works with a variety of equipment to make it cheaper and easier to upgrade.

Microsoft has increasingly shifted its offerings, like Office 365, Skype, Xbox Live and the Microsoft Azure, to the cloud. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, has committed to expanding web access with initiatives like internet.org.

Between them, they said, it made sense to create a "vendor-agnostic" partnership to create the cable.

The MAREA collaboration comes on the tail of FASTER, a $300 million cable built by Alphabet, in partnership with five Asian telecom companies. FASTER is expected to come online sometime this year, according to Reuters' initial reports.

MAREA will begin construction in August and is expected to be completed in October 2017, according to the companies. It will be operated and managed by Telxius, Telefonica's new telecommunications infrastructure company, which hopes to "capture market opportunities" in Western Europe and new emerging routes in Northern Africa as part of the deal.

We want to do more of these projects in this manner — allowing us to move fast with more collaboration," Najam Ahmad, vice president of network engineering at Facebook, said in a statement. "We think this is how most subsea cable systems will be built in the future."

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'Clash of Clans' Developer Supercell Reports $829 Million In Revenue And A Desire To Support The Finnish Community

Finnish mobile game developer Supercell has reported revenue of $892 million for 2013, a significant gain on 2012′s revenue of $101 million. With just two games released (‘Clash of Clans‘ and ‘Hay Day‘), Supercell has seemingly cracked the winning formula in the mobile space.

CEO Ilkka Paananen firmly believes that this is down to the ‘people first’ approach of the company. “We believe the best people will create the best games,” he told the press this morning during Supercell’s earnings call, ahead of a disclosure filing required by Finland’s financial authorities.

“Money is not the reason we come to work each day. We come to work excited to build great games with amazing people. We view [the results] as validation for the great work that our people have done.” That validation comes in at revenue of $892 million; earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization of $464 million (due to Finnish regulation on the sale of virtual goods, Supercell is also reporting GAAP revenue of $889 million, and GAAP EBITDA of $322 million).

Founded in 2010, Supercell has hired 60 staff during the last twelve months taking the head count to 138, and now has three subsidiary offices around the world in San Francisco, Seoul, and Tokyo. The head office will be permanently in Finland. Supercell and Paananen have a strong belief in social equality. There are “no tax optimisations via holding companies” or similar arrangements and as such the company and its founders will be paying approximately $345 million in taxes to Finland.

Why? “The answer is simple, this is where we are from,” explains Paananen. “We have taken so much from the community we feel it is our time to give back to the community.” To go along with this principle, Pannanen also highlighted that retaining their Finnish Head Office and Incorporation in Finland was part of the negotiations with SoftBank (who invested $1.5 billion alongside GungHo in October 2013, valuing the company at more than $3 billion.

During today’s earnings call, Pannanen also went into a little more detail about Supercell’s upcoming release of Boom Beach, which is only the third full release for the company. That low release rate should not be a surprise, given a culture that is built around extensive in-house play testing and internal rejection, as Forbes’ Karsten Strauss discussed last year:

Supercell’s developers work in autonomous groups of five to seven people. Each cell comes up with its own game ideas. They run their ideas by Paananen (he can’t remember ever nixing a proposal), then develop those into a game. If the team likes it, the rest of the employees get to play. If they like it, the game gets tested in Canada’s iTunes App store. If it’s a hit there it will be deemed ready for global release. This staged approach has killed off four games so far, with each dead project a cause for celebration. Employees crack open champagne to toast their failure.

Boom Beach has passed these test, with over 3,800 ratings on the Canadian store and reaching #5 in the Top Grossing Apps chart. That result has been duplicated in Australia, and the rest of the world’s iOS gamers will be able to play the title in March.

Supercell now has the financial resources, shareholder structure, and the mindset, to be able to make long-term plans. Part of the thinking behind taking on the investment from SoftBank and GungHo was to return money to their shareholders and reduce the pressure to go public in the short term. Supercell is looking to make a significant contribution, measured in years, both in the gaming space and in the Finnish start-up scene. They want to illustrate the measurable economic impact that start-ups can have to a nation’s economy.

And Paananen’s team want everyone to have fun while they reach for those goals.

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Shaandaar (English: Fabulous) is an upcoming Indian romantic comedy film, directed by Vikas Bahl and produced by Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane. It stars Alia Bhatt and Shahid Kapoor in lead roles, with Pankaj Kapur and Sanjay Kapoor in supporting roles. The Times of India described Shaandar as "India's first destination wedding film". The Principal photography began in August 2014 in Leeds, and the film is scheduled for release on 22 October 2015 and coinciding with Dussehra.

Cast

• Shahid Kapoor as Jagjinder Joginder
• Alia Bhatt as Aila Alia
• Pankaj Kapur as Tata
• Sanjay Kapoor
• Diipakk Kwatra
• Sanah Kapoor as Isha
• Sushma Seth
• Diljit Dosanjh
• Shibani Dandekar
• Anjana Sukhani
• Tessa Vellara
• Teena Vellara
• Niyati Shah
• Karan Johar                                                     
•                                                       
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Lamborghini Gallardo Catches Fire in Delhi; What Could Be the Reason?

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There have been several instances of supercars catching fire; the list of such cars comprises names like Porsche 911 GT3, Ferrari 458 Italia, and of course Lamborghini Gallardo. There's little doubt that these cars cost a bomb, and one would think they are better equipped in terms of safety provisions to prevent fires.

While both Ferrari and Porsche had issued recalls for their respective cars, Lamborghini issued a recall in 2012 for about 1,500 units of the Gallardo Coupe and Spyder variants manufactured between 2004-2006. According to the company, in certain driving conditions, the high pressure steering pipes near the steering assistance hydraulic system pump might leak. Leaking fluid, in the presence of an ignition source, could result in a fire.

Unfortunately, the victim of today's incident was an Arancio Borealis (Italian for Orange) Lamborghini Gallardo that suddenly caught fire in South Delhi's Badarpur area. If you look at the pictures closely, you can see that the fire started at the rear of the car. It is said that the car was returning from the service centre when it caught fire.

So, who is to blame? The service centre? Or the guy behind the wheel? According to Bonito Chhabria, Director, DC Design, "The car is a mechanical thing and there are 4000 different parts that keep the car moving, if one of them is not working to its optimum level, then such things are bound to happen. It's unfortunate but you really cannot predict when and how things can go wrong."

Having been around supercars, Bonito knows that this could happen if the car is not properly maintained. "A manufacturer cannot really ready itself for such a thing. From the looks of it, an oil leak led to the unfortunate incident. At such times we need to look at the positive side of things and see that no one was hurt."

Accompanied by a price tag of Rs. 2.7 crore in India, it was the most successful car for Lamborghini; the carmaker sold 14,000 units of the car in the span of a decade. The 5.5-litre hand-made engine, which was charred in this incident, punches out a hefty 513bhp. Lamborghini discontinued the Gallardo in 2013, and replaced it with the Huracan.

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Huawei-Made Nexus Smartphone Spotted in New Leaked Images

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It seems there will be no end to the leaks on Google's upcoming Nexus smartphones - the smaller said to be manufactured by LG, and the larger by Huawei - until the company reveals them alongside the final build of Android 6.0 Marshmallow later this year.

In the latest leak via a Google+ user, the Huawei-made Nexus smartphone has been spotted in live images. The new set of leaked images of the Huawei-made Nexus smartphone are in line with recentlyleaked images and shows the handset sporting a similar design. The rear camera on the Huawei-made Nexus seems to be placed on a bump that stretches along the entire width of the back panel, unlike what we have seen on the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, Samsung Galaxy S6, and HTC One M9. The rear camera of the smartphone is placed on the top-left side with slightly protruding glass panel on the top. The rear camera is also seen accompanied by a dual-LED flash module, but no laser autofocus sensor is seen in the leaked image. The fingerprint sensor and front-facing speakers are also present, as previously tipped.

Tiesen Fu, the Google+ user, has also tipped that he received the images from a China-based source where we can expect Huawei's Nexus smartphone to be manufactured.

In a separate leak, a Google employee via his Google+ account has shared an image, which is said to be taken from the front camera of the LG-made Nexus smartphone, believed to be dubbed Nexus 5 (2015). According to TechTastic, the image details tip that it was taken by camera model named "Bullhead," which was earlier rumoured to be the codename of the LG-made Nexus smartphone.

As per the image details, the front camera on the LG Nexus 5 (2015) will be a 5-megapixel camera which will be able to click 1944x2592-pixel images with an aperture of f/2.0.

Based on preliminary leaks, the LG Google Nexus 5 (2015) will feature a 5.2-inch display; dimensions of 146.9x72.9x8mm, and USB Type-C port at the bottom. The Huawei-made Nexus is said to come with a 5.7-inch display, front-facing speakers, pack USB Type-C port as well (possibly the 3.0 version) and also include a fingerprint scanner.

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The World's Highest-Paid Country Acts 2015

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Garth Brooks may have friends in low places, but his earning power is quite the opposite.

The country legend pulled in $90 million over the past year, making him No. 1 on our annual Country Cash Kings list. In addition to being the highest total this year, it’s also the biggest single-year payday FORBES has ever recorded for a country act.

Together with wife Trisha Yearwood, Brooks has spent much of the past year playing arena shows across the U.S. in his long-awaited return from semi-retirement. That pent-up demand has allowed the duo to sell out arenas multiple nights in a row, sometimes while playing back-to-back shows in a single night.

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Cricketer Rohit Sharma Buys Rs 30-Crore Flat in South Mumbai

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Mumbai: India batsman Rohit Sharma has purchased a sprawling 4BHK flat in the plush Ahuja Towers in Worli recently.

The deal is said to be pegged at a whopping Rs 30 crore. The flat is on the 29th floor of the 53-storey skyscraping property which has been granted the Occupation Certificate and is ready for possession. Sharma's sea-facing flat offers a 270-degree breathtaking view of the Bandra-Worli Sea Link.

It is learnt that the towers are replete with amenities like a concierge service, chef on demand, business area, swimming pool, snooker room, yoga room, salon and spa, kids play area, gymnasium, mini theatre, sky cafe and cigar room spread across four levels.

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Brothers Movie Review 2015

•                                                                                                 
• Genre:
  Action, Drama
• Cast:
  Akshay Kumar, Sidharth Malhotra and Jacqueline Fernandez
• Director:
  Karan Malhotra
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• SPOILERS AHEAD
  
  An overblown, ultra-violent melodrama, Brothers spills a lot of blood and breaks plenty of bones on the way to establishing the primacy of fraternal love.
  
  The collateral damage that the film inflicts isn’t confined to the screen alone. Its excesses could drive the more sensitive and discerning of Bollywood pulp lovers off such fare for a spell, if not for good. 
  
  Brothers is an official remake of the 2011 Hollywood actioner Warrior. With the predilections of Indian audiences in mind, it tweaks the source storyline in significant ways in a bid to whip up high-pitched emotions and over-the-top drama.
  
  The film has loads of both – emotion and drama. Yet, it is strangely torpid because ring hollow. 
  
  In any case, how edifying and exhilarating can the sight of beefy men pummeling each other be when it is stretched beyond two and a half hours? 
  
  The tale revolves around two Mumbai half-brothers, part of a family that once was. Fate brings the two streetfighters head to head in a bloody mixed martial arts contest.
  
  One of them is in the arena for the money that could save his ailing daughter; the other is in the game to redeem his alcoholic father, the man at the root of all their troubles.
  
  As the MMA tournament unfolds along entirely predictable lines, one of the excitable ringside commentators, who is as annoyingly loud as anything else that the film has to offer, hollers that this is “Mahabharat reloaded”, this is epic”. 

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NWA: The World's most Dangerous Group ?

With Straight Outta Compton, NWA brought the brutal soundtrack of the LA streets to the mainstream. It was a sound not everyone wanted to hear, writes Rebecca Laurence.

This article contains strong language that some readers may find offensive

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The director of Straight Outta Compton, a highly anticipated new NWA biopic out in US cinemas this week, has hailed his subjects as the forefathers of modern hip hop. “There’s no Eminem if there is no Dr Dre. There’s no Dr Dre if there’s no NWA", says F Gary Gray. "NWA is the origin story.”

The group’s 1988 debut album, also called Straight Outta Compton, promoted hip hop, and specifically a sub-genre dubbed gangsta rap from the underground into the American mainstream. For over two decades, hip hop would dominate the US charts and its youth culture. But the era was one of controversy; debate about the music’s lyrical content stretched from the ghettos of Los Angeles all the way to Washington DC.

America loves the outlaw, the gangster, from Billy the Kid to Al Capone

The streets of South Central Los Angeles in the mid-1980s epitomised a problematic pattern that could also be seen in many other US cities. After World War Two, discriminatory real-estate policies and rapid suburbanisation led to huge overcrowding and poverty in urban areas like Compton and nearby Watts, both largely populated by African-Americans and other minority groups.

In LA, recession and de-industrialisation led to mass job losses (in 1983 youth unemployment was nearly 50%). Hundreds of rival gangs sprung up – the most notorious being the Crips and the Bloods – and a crack-cocaine epidemic raged under an increasingly brutal police force, who adopted a ‘Batteram’, an armoured military vehicle to smash into suspected crack houses.

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With Straight Outta Compton, NWA offered an uncompromising view of life as young black men on the streets of LA (Credit: Ruthless)

Express yourself

On Straight Outta Compton’s title track, Gangsta Gangsta (from which the term ‘gangsta rap’ was coined) and the controversial single, Fuck tha Police, rapper Ice Cube and NWA offered an uncompromising view of life as young black men on the streets of LA, delivered with unswerving aggression, braggadocio and dark humour.  

“America loves the outlaw, the gangster, from Billy the Kid to Al Capone,” mused Ice Cube in 2010. “It was the same thing with us. We were saying the things people wanted to say.” Shocking to many, the plain truth to others, the sound of NWA was called ‘the new punk rock’ by the press. Despite neither radio airplay nor promotion from their label, Straight Outta Compton went gold in six weeks – and eventually, double platinum.

Gangsta rap forced America to confront the issues in its ghettos

“Straight Outta Compton defined the West Coast sound,” explains the Chicago Tribune music critic and writer Greg Kot, who reviewed the LP when it was released in 1989. “The Dr Dre production was lean, driving, and funky, with rhymes dropping like nails atop the beats.”

Jeff Chang, author of Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop, called it “the new Blues”. “With their urban-canyon echoing drums and casual descriptions of explosive violence,” he wrote, “the new myths of crack, guns and gangs sounded a lot larger than life.” For a new generation, these sounds held an enthralling appeal.

Parental discretion advised

It was the crossover into mainstream white American culture that provoked concern among the US establishment, parent groups and the religious right – and caught the attention of law-enforcement agencies. “Gangsta rap forced America to confront the issues in its ghettos, and its realities were shocking when presented so explicitly on a recording that white suburban teenagers coveted,” Kot suggests.

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Straight Outta Compton was one of the first records to receive a Parental Advisory Label (PAL), the black-and-white stickers that warn parents of explicit content (Credit: RIAA)

Straight Outta Compton was one of the first records to receive a Parental Advisory Label (PAL), the ubiquitous black-and-white stickers that warn parents of explicit content. The emergence of the Parental Advisory Label sheds light on the atmosphere of the decade – one in which music was the subject of rigorous cultural and even political debate.

The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) was a committee formed in 1985, after its co-founder, Mary ‘Tipper’ Gore, wife of Senator and later Vice President Al Gore, recognised references to masturbation in a song her daughter was listening to: Prince’s Darling Nikki. In addition to Gore, the PMRC also included Susan Baker, wife of Secretary of the Treasury James Baker, and other prominent women who were referred to as the ‘Washington Wives’.

Their considerable political clout enabled them to bring a senate hearing debate on “porn rock” and, along with the National Parent-Teacher Association (PTA), encourage the Recording Industry Association of America to introduce the PAL. To avoid losing sales, record companies had artists re-record songs and albums with ‘clean’ versions that could be sold alongside those bearing a PAL. Some songs were deleted from albums altogether and retail chains such as Walmart refused to stock PAL-stickered records in an attempt to brand themselves ‘family-friendly’.

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Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+ and Galaxy Note 5 unveiled

Samsung has announced two new large high-end Android handsets: the Galaxy S6 Edge+ and the Galaxy Note 5.

Both phones have 5.7in (14.5cm) screens and are going on sale earlier in the year than their previous generations.

The launches follow five successive falls in Samsung Electronics' quarterly profits.

Analysts say the popularity of mid-range phones from Chinese rivals, and Apple's shift to bigger iPhones, have dented demand for Samsung's devices.

The Galaxy S6 Edge+ shares the curved glass screen of its smaller sibling

However, the firm remains the world leader in terms of overall smartphone shipments.

The announcements were made at a press conference in New York.

Manufacturer	April-June smartphone shipments	Year-on-year change
Samsung	73.2 million	-2.3%
Apple	47.5 million	+34.9%
Huawei	29.9 million	+48.1%
Xiaomi	17.9 million	+29.4%
Lenovo (incl Motorola)	16.2 million	+11.6%
Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker

The company also revealed that its smart wallet service, Samsung Pay - which allows the phones to trigger payment card transactions - would go live in South Korea on 20 August.

That service will be extended to the US on 28 September and then to the UK and Spain at an unspecified date.

No Note for Europe

Like previous versions of the Note, the new version comes with a stylus - which Samsung says makes it suitable for productivity tasks. But the phone now has metal edges and a glass back to give it a more "premium" feel.

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Samsung has opted not to launch the stylus-controlled Galaxy Note 5 in Europe - at least for now

In a change of strategy, the South Korean firm has no plans at present to release the Note 5 in Europe - a decision it says is purely for marketing reasons.

One company-watcher said that could be a mistake.

"The Note would have been a good fit for Europe's enterprise market, and if Samsung expects the S6 Edge+ to attract the same business users I don't believe it will succeed," commented Francisco Jeronimo from market research firm IDC.

Unlike last year, there is no "edge" edition of the Note.

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Samsung held a launch event in New York rather than wait for Germany's Ifa tech show in September

Instead, the Galaxy S6 Edge+ is targeted at those who want a "phablet"-sized handset with curved sides.

The "plus" in its name refers to the fact that its screen is both 0.6in (1.5cm) larger than the earlier edition and more scratch-resistant.

It now has an extra gigabyte of memory, taking it up to 4GB of RAM to aid multi-tasking, but uses the same in-house Exynos processor as before.

This marks a change from the S5 Plus, which was the same size but contained a faster processor than the original S5.

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The Galaxy Note 5 can be used with a case that doubles as a physical Qwerty keyboard to aid typing

The two new phones also introduce a couple of new features:

• A button in their camera apps activates a "live broadcast" mode, which streams 1080p high definition video to YouTube and sends invitations to selected acquaintances.
• They support the ultra-high quality audio (UHQA) format. A new hardware component means there should be "less sound distortion" when files saved in the codec are played. Users can also use bundled software to "upscale" existing MP3s.

Ahead of Apple

The decision to host a standalone press conference for the handsets marks a change of strategy for Samsung.

All the previous versions of the Note were unveiled at Germany's annual Ifa tech show, which is still three weeks away. The S5 Plus was announced last October in a low-key press release.

One of the benefits of announcing the new models together at this point is that it should give Samsung about a month's lead on Apple - reports suggest the US firm will update its own smartphones on 9 September.

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Both phones can record video in the 4K ultra-high definition resolution

Samsung acknowledged its schedule had been influenced by its rival's diary.

"Of course, we're not alone in the market and we take the whole [sector] into consideration to find the best opportunity," Jean-Daniel Ayme, vice president of Samsung Electronic's European telecom operations told the BBC.

"It's fair to say that we're in a market which has competition, and we welcome that - it's a maturing market all around the world and we thrive in developing new opportunities, new devices that will grow the business."

One tech industry analyst addressed the point more directly.

"Mid-August is an unusual time for a launch - it's a quiet month when half of Europe is on holiday," said Ian Fogg from IHS Technology.

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Samsung's home nation of South Korea will be the first to get its smart wallet service

"One reason Samsung may have done this was to get the announcements out ahead of all the other smartphone makers - both those at Ifa and Apple afterwards.

"The other rationale is that it needs to get these new models into the market quickly because it's under competitive pressure, and has accelerated its launch plans."

Samsung's launch, however, has coincided with Xiaomi's surprise unveiling of a new phablet - the Redmi Note 2 - earlier in the day at a Beijing event.

Mr Fogg added that he too believed the decision not to launch the Note 5 in Europe was "surprising and "disappointing".

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Xiaomi's Redmi Note 2 is several times cheaper than Samsung's Galaxy Note 5

"One of Samsung's challenges is that although both products will not be available globally, the announcement will be communicated globally," he said.

"One of the risks is that consumers will learn of both products, not be able to buy one of them in certain geographies and then defer their purchase."

The new phones go on sale on 21 August.

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