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Hurricane Florence pounds US East Coast with heavy rain
Washington, Sep 14 (IANS) Tens of thousands of homes were without power and sea water was sloshing through the streets as Hurricane Florence began lashing the US East Coast on Friday, bringing powerful winds along with warnings of “life-threatening” storm surge and rainfall.
The hurricane lost power, downgraded to a Category 1 storm, as it approached North and South Carolina, but officials warned it could still kill “a lot of people” amid the risk of “catastrophic” flooding, the US media reported. Evacuation warnings were in place for more than a million people.
Roy Cooper, the Governor of North Carolina, where Florence was expected to make landfall later in the day, said surviving the storm would be a test of “endurance, teamwork, common sense and patience”.
National Weather Service forecaster Brandon Locklear said North Carolina was likely to see eight months of rain in two to three days.
Reports of collapsed roofs and other structures were already reported from North Carolina’s Morehead City and New Bern areas, the Washington Post reported.
New Bern was particularly hard hit with reports of more than a hundred people stranded in their homes and in need of rescue.
A gauge in the city’s Neuse River near the town of Oriental indicated the water was 4 feet over flood stage and more than 5 feet above normal levels. More than 1,300 flights along the US East Coast were cancelled through Friday.
According to meteorologist Ryan Maue, the tropical cyclone was expected to unload 10 trillion gallons of rainfall in North Carolina, enough to fill over 15 million Olympic-size swimming pools, CNN reported.
Conditions deteriorated on Thursday. Some areas of North Carolina saw almost a foot of rain in just a few hours and footage showed sea levels beginning to surge on land.
More than a million people were ordered to leave the coasts of the Carolinas and Virginia, with over 12,000 taking refuge in emergency shelters. But not everyone obeyed the warnings.
Cheryl Browning, who lives with her husband and son in North Carolina, said they chose to stay put despite the warnings as they also have three dogs and three parrots.
She said she “could not find anywhere to go” as the family cannot afford multiple hotel rooms.
“Either no (hotel) rooms are available, or we are denied because of the breed or size of dogs. Many that will accept them only allow one per room. And since we have three dogs and three parrots, they’re requesting us to take two to six rooms.”
Several residents told CNN they were not evacuating because emergency shelters won’t accept pets.
Officials in several states declared a state of emergency, including in the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia and Maryland, where coastal areas were still recovering from summer storms.
–IANS
soni/bg
International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.
Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.
The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.
Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile
The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.
The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.
“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.
Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).
Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.
The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.
Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.
Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities
The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.
On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.
Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.
“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.
The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.
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