MAM
Levi’s ad draws ire of US Safety Coalition
WASHINGTON: The latest train television commercial by jeans manufacturer Levis has come under a cloud. US’ Operation Lifesaver (OL) which is a non-profit rail safety group, and its partners from the highway and rail safety communities have urged Levi Strauss to pull its latest television ad, Horsebecause the commercial encourages risky behaviour around trains.
The ad features a model on a dark horse coming out of a railroad tunnel. Stopping her steed in the middle of the tracks as a train rapidly approaches, she rides directly into the path of a train. Miraculously, the model manages to fly over a multi-car train without a scratch.
This is not the first time that a Levis ad has provoked controversy. Four years ago, Levi produced Trainthat enticed young people to create their own cutoffs on the tracks. Operation Lifesaver President Gerri Hall said, “I don’t want to believe that Levi Strauss would intentionally produce an ad that would influence youth to put themselves in harm’s way. However, this is exactly what this ad does. It trivialises the dangerous, illegal and all-too-often tragic activity of playing on railroad tracks.”
In a letter addressed to Levis, OL has cited US government figures showing more than 5,000 pedestrians have been killed since 1990 while trespassing on railroad tracks and property. Modern trains are quieter than in the past and they cannot stop quickly to swerve to avoid someone on the tracks.
Four years ago, Levis bowed down to protests and developed an edited version of the Trains ad. The US Federal Trade Commission insisted that Levi’s edit the portion that demonstrated how to make shorts out of jeans. Their concern was that teens and pre-teens would get on the tracks to mimic the ad.
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Samsung certifies 1,000 Maharashtra students in AI and coding
The South Korean electronics giant marks its first large-scale skilling push in the state, with women making up nearly half the national programme’s enrolment
PUNE: Samsung has put 1,000 students in Maharashtra through a certified training programme in artificial intelligence and coding, the largest such drive the South Korean electronics company has run in the state and a signal that corporate India’s skilling ambitions are moving well beyond the boardroom brochure.
The certifications were awarded under Samsung Innovation Campus (SIC), the company’s flagship corporate social responsibility programme, which launched in India in 2022 with the stated aim of democratising access to future-technology education. The 1,000 graduates were drawn from four institutions: 127 from Savitribai Phule Pune University, 373 from Pimpri Chinchwad University, 250 from D.Y. Patil University’s Ramrao Adik Institute of Technology and 250 from Anjuman-I-Islam’s Kalsekar Technical Campus. All completed training in either AI or coding and programming, the two disciplines Samsung has identified as the critical pillars of the digital economy.
The programme does not stop at technical training. Soft-skills development and career-readiness modules are baked into the curriculum, a deliberate attempt to close the gap between what universities teach and what employers actually want.
“India’s digital growth story will ultimately be shaped by the quality of its talent pipeline,” said Shubham Mukherjee, head of CSR and corporate communications at Samsung Southwest Asia. “As technologies like AI move from the periphery to the core of industries, skilling must evolve from basic training to building real-world capability. This milestone in Maharashtra reflects how industry and academia can come together to create a future-ready workforce that is both globally competitive and locally relevant.”
The Maharashtra drive sits within a rapidly scaling national effort. Samsung Innovation Campus trained 20,000 young people across India in 2025, hitting its stated target for the year. Women account for 48 per cent of national enrolments, a figure the company cites as evidence of its push for an inclusive technology ecosystem. The programme is implemented in partnership with the Electronics Sector Skills Council of India and the Telecom Sector Skill Council.
Samsung, which is marking 30 years in India this year, runs SIC alongside two other initiatives, Samsung Solve for Tomorrow and Samsung DOST, as part of a broader effort to build what it calls a generation of innovators with both the technical depth and the problem-solving mindset to thrive in a fast-moving digital world.
A thousand certified students is a tidy headline. Whether they find jobs that match their new skills is the harder question, and the one that will ultimately determine whether corporate skilling programmes like this one are genuine pipelines or well-photographed gestures.
