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Hindu prayer opens Idaho state senate session amid protest
New York: For the first time the opening prayer for the Idaho state senate was said Tuesday by a Hindu cleric amid protests by some senators who claimed the United States was a Christian nation and denounced Hinduism, local media reported.
Universal Society of Hinduism President Rajan Zed, who said the prayer in Sanskrit and English, made a call for the legislators to “act selflessly without any thought of personal profit” because “selfish action imprisons the world”.
He was invited by Senate President Pro-Tem Brent Hill to be a guest chaplain and deliver the invocation which is usually made by a Christian chaplain at the start of the day’s legislative session in Boise. According to The Idaho Statesman, when protests were made before the session, Hill said: “I reviewed the prayer. It did not seem offensive in any way.” He added: “It refers to ‘deity supreme’.”
Senator Steve Vick, who walked out of the Senate chamber before Zed’s invocation said that Hindu prayers should not be allowed because the US was “built on the Judeo-Christian not only religion but work ethic, and I don’t want to see that undermined”, the Statesman reported. Hindus “have a caste system,” he added. “They worship cows.”
He was one of the three Republican senators to boycott the prayer. Senator Sheryl Nuxoll said she boycotted Zed’s prayer because she believed the United States is a Christian nation and “Hindu is a false faith with false gods,” according to the newspaper.
But Hill, who is also a Republican, told the Statesman, “In my mind, you either believe in religious freedom or you don’t… We have had Jewish prayers, many denominations of Christian prayers.”
The Statesman quoted Zed as saying of the protests: “We donÂ’t mind. Hinduism is more embracing.”
KTVB-TV said that Zed noted “that most of the legislators welcomed him warmly” and said, “We all have different viewpoints, and that is wonderful, that is what makes our country great.” He added: “We are all looking for the truth. If we can join our resources together, we can reach there faster.”
Senators from both the Republican Party, which controls the Senate, and the Democratic Party shook the saffron-clad Zed’s hand and thanked him for coming, the Statesman said.
The US does not have an official religion and the secular constitution prescribes strict separation of religion and state. However, federal and state legislatures open their sessions with prayers, even though prayers are prohibited in government schools because of the constitutional injunction.
In 2000, Venkatachalapathi Samuldrala of Shiva Hindu Temple in Parma, Ohio, made the opening invocation in the House of Representatives in Washington. Zed said the opening prayers at the federal Senate in 2007 when it was disrupted by protesters from the public gallery.
Idaho borders Washington State, where two Hindu temples were vandalised last month. The second attack occurred the same week that an influential Christian fundamentalist preacher, Pat Robertson, said on his TV show that Hindu prayer “sounds like gibberish”.
A former candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, he had earlier called Hinduism “demonic.”
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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