Until recently, Amazon was the absolute leader in the smart home speaker market, which emerged several years ago with the release of the Amazon Echo speaker, but in recent months the company's position has weakened. As Phone Arena writes, citing data from Strategy Analytics, in the second quarter of this year, Amazon sold 4.8 million Echo devices, while a year earlier sales volume was 2.9 million speakers. At the same time, Amazon's market share dropped from 75.8% to 41%.

The transgender woman will compete for the first time for the post of governor in the United States. Christine Holculuster will represent a democratic party in the Vermont elections. Victory in the elections will allow her to become the highest -ranking transgender in the system of American power, the Russian Air Force service reports. “Tonight we created a story.

The number of Chinese tourists who visited Russia in the first six months of 2018 as part of organized groups increased by 20% compared to a similar last year, Interfax reports with reference to the data of the World without Borders associations. "For six months, Chinese tourists made almost 374 thousand trips to Russia as part of organized tourist groups, which is 20% more than last year, the association reported.

Landscaping of courtyards in the capital must be carried out every seven years. This was stated by candidate for the position of Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin during a meeting with experts in the field of improvement at his election headquarters. He is quoted by RIA Novosti . “We will continue to go to the districts. By the way, about the courtyards - formally all the courtyards in Moscow are landscaped.

At least 45 Afghan security forces were killed in an attack by radical Taliban militants on a military base in Baghlan province in the northeast of the country, Tolo News TV channel reported . The attack on the base took place on the night of Wednesday, August 15. According to a police source, 35 military personnel and 10 local police officers were killed in the militant attack. Law enforcement agencies confirmed the attack, but did not specify the number of deaths.

The President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, fired two ministers and plans to continue resignations in the government due to the breakdown of the production plan at the enterprises of the industrial unit in the city of Orsha. These enterprises, in particular, are involved in the Russian defense program, reports TASS with reference to the expert of the Russian Council for International Affairs (RSMD) Peter Petrovsky.

The investigation asked to translate the defendants in the “New Greatness” of Anna Pavlikova and Maria Dubovik under house arrest. A petition for a change in the preventive measure contained in the investigative isolator for the girls was announced to the Dorogomilovsky court of Moscow the investigator Malyukin, writes New Gazeta with reference to the lawyer Dubovik Maxim Pashkov on August 15. Pavlikova’s lawyer Nikolai Fomin confirmed this information to RBC .

In Spain, the first flying cars from Pal-V , which in March 2018, introduced its cars at the Geneva Motor Show , and now entered the elite transport market in March 2018. The PAL-V Liberty model, which is a mixture of a car and a gyroplan (auto-fat), was recently exhibited in the Marbella Supergarage salon in Marbella (Malaga), which is famous for the sale of exclusive vehicles.

Mail.ru Group, which owns social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, sent official appeals to the State Duma, the Supreme Court and the Ministry of Justice due to the growth of the number of criminal cases against users for publishing pictures or reposts on social networks. The company also sent letters to the Commissioner for Human Rights, the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation and the head of the Investigative Committee.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will provide protection to lawyer Evgeny Ryzhov due to threats he receives from unknown persons in the US, FBI detective Stephen Coin told RBC .

After the collapse in the Italian Genoa of a 200-meter span of a 50-year-old automobile bridge, which killed at least 39 people , the Italian Research Council (CNR) warned the authorities that the country had similar problems with thousands of bridges. All of them were built more than 50 years ago, their supporting structures weakened and now need serious repair.

Russian President Vladimir Putin during a visit to the Mashuk educational forum and communicating with its participants lamented the number of positive content on social networks insufficient, according to him. Putin expressed this opinion after the author and manager of the Student Media Holding project Visrail Khadiev told the president how content is created for student television studies.

The Amazon Streaming Service in its official YouTube channel presented the new trailer for the Romanov series (The RomanOffs), which talks about numerous descendants of the Russian imperial family. The series consists of eight separate episodes that are not interconnected by the plot and actors. The creators of the show will talk about people who consider themselves descendants of the dynasty, who ruled Russia from 1613 before the abdication of the throne of the last Emperor Nicholas II in 1917.

The General Inspector of the US Department of Defense conducts an internal investigation to identify the facts of abuse by the Pentagon press secretary to the White of official authority for personal purposes. This was announced in citing four informed sources of CNN . The investigation was initiated several weeks ago on the basis of numerous complaints of subordinates against White.

Last week, Google announced the release of the final version of the mobile OS Android P, and also revealed its full “sweet” name – Android 9.0 Pie (“Pie”). The updated mobile OS has received a number of new features and improvements, but one of its features may upset many users. According to the XDA Developers resource, users of devices running Android 9.0 will not be able to record phone calls without root rights, the presence of which allows you to edit system files and folders.