It was reported that Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah's actor Samay Shah was attacked by goons outside his residence. However, now Samay has taken to his social media and clarified that although there was a man who threatened to kill him for no reason but he was not attacked. And also, this happened before lockdown
Director Bejoy Nambiar, who has made films in Tamil, Malayalam as well as Hindi languages, says south Indian film producers are more willing to take risks with experimental storytelling than most of Bollywood.
Yeh Hai Mohabbatein actor Aly Goni is all set to step in the Bigg Boss 14 house next week as another wild card contestant. The makers of Bigg Boss 14 have revealed in a new promo that Aly Goni, will be taking entry in the house for BFF Jasmin Bhasin, to be her 'ultimate' support in the journey. 
The world has lost one of its true cinematic icons --Bond, James Bond. Sean Connery passed away at the age of 90. The actor worked in several international movies. However Connery was the first actor to play the 007 agent on the big screen. Following his death, several Bond fans took to Twitter and mourned his death. James Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson shared this statement on Twitter: "We are devastated by the news of the passing of Sir Sean Connery. He was and shall always be remembered as the original James Bond whose indelible entrance into cinema history began when he announced those unforgettable words - "The name's Bond... James Bond" - he revolutionised the world with his gritty and witty portrayal of the sexy and charismatic secret agent. He is undoubtedly largely responsible for the success of the film series and we shall be forever grateful to him." 
After an intimate wedding in Mumbai on October 30, actress Kajal Aggarwal and her husband Gautam Kitchlu shared unseen photos from the most special day of their lives. The actress shared a beautiful picture with her soulmate in which she can be seen kissing his hand and sharing a precious moment. In another photo, the duo is seen taking vows. Then in another picture, they pose like the perfect couple. Kajal wrote, "And just like that, from ms to mrs! I married my confidante, companion, best friend and soulmate. So glad I found all of this and my home in you @kitchlug #kajgautkitched" Gauatam also shared a gorgeous portrait of the newlyweds and wrote, "Man and Wife."Scottish star Sean Connery, who had a massive fan-following in India as the original James Bond, visited the country back in 2007 and spent his Valentine''s Day with wife Micheline Roquebrune at the Taj Mahal. The actor, who charmed everyone with his charismatic portrayal of author Ian Fleming''s British spy, died on Friday at the age of 90.
Actor Ayushmann Khurrana and his wife Tahira Kashyap have a fairytale love story. The duo has been together for more than a decade now and shares a bond as fresh as a daisy. There is no denying that the duo is a living example of how love should look like. Interestingly, the two were in the same tuition class in class 12th in Chandigarh and from there, their love bloomed and today, they are happily married with two children. On Sunday, the duo celebrated their wedding anniversary. Sharing a lovestruck picture with Tahira, Ayushmann Khurrana penned down a heartfelt note for his beautiful wife and said that they are celebrating '125 years of togetherness.'
Actor Sean Connery, who is widely recalled as the original James Bond on the Hollywood screen, had an active career as an actor spanning nearly five decades. The news of his death came as a shock to many and celebrities took to social media to pay tribute to the legendary actor in their own ways. The Scottish star's family communicated the news of his death, according to a report in bbc.com. No official reason has been shared for death yet. From James Bond producers Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli to current Bond actor Daniel Craig, everyone believes that Connery is responsible for the success of James Bond character.
Bigg Boss 13's Shehnaaz Kaur Gill is back in the house and how! The most talked-about contestant of the last season has finally made her appearance in the show as a guest and she will be seen interacting with the housemates as well as host Salman Khan in today's Weekend Ka Vaar. Soon after the channel aired the promo of Shehnaaz with Salman Khan, her fans were left doing the happy dance as they were eagerly waiting for the 'Punjab Ki Katrina Kaif' to steal the limelight with her cuteness and beauty. In the promo, Shehnaaz can be seen in her flavour, asking host Salman why he hasn't matched his outfit with her and also told him "I love you..in a positive way." 
Global icon Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is a show-stealer. Her name has been synonymous with beauty and elegance since she was crowned Miss World in 1994. Over the years, from mesmerising the viewers with her ability to bring life to a character on the big screen to changing lives with her generosity in the real world, Aishwarya has always been audiences' favorite. Her crowning moment is as special to her fans till date as it is for her. The contest had participants from 87 countries and Aishwarya who was just a 21-year-old architecture student won everyone's hearts with her presence of mind other than eye-popping beauty.
Filmmaker Anubhav Sinha has announced that he will be returning with another Bhojpuri song after his peppy track Bambai main ka ba, which featured Manoj Bajpayee. Sinha tweeted the news on Saturday along with the song's poster.
The study implies that middle-aged and older women who have less social involvement are more prone to suffer from hypertension, which also increases the risk of heart disease and stroke.
Bigg Boss 14 contestant Rahul Vaidya’s nepotism comment on Jaan Kumar Sanu created a huge uproar not only inside the house but also outside. During a nomination task in the last week's episode, Rahul had nominated Jaan by saying, that he hates 'nepotism' and since the latter was a Nepo-Kid, he is in the house because of his legendary singer-father Kumar Sanu.
Like every year, Bollywood celebrities are in a mood to celebrate Halloween flaunting different costumes and makeup. While COVID19 has restricted the celebrations, stars made sure that they enjoy it by turning into various characters. From superstar Aamir Khan's daughter to the little munchkins Taimur Ali Khan, Inaaya, Neha Dhupia's daughter Mehr, celebs celebrated Halloween 2020 with full enthusiasm.
This year, the coronavirus pandemic has impacted Halloween as going out to party is not a wise option. Here's one thing you can do sitting at home.
Despite being arrested in a money laundering case related to drugs seizure, Bineesh Kodiyeri, the son of Kerala CPI-M's powerful leader Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, continued to be a member of the Association Malayalam Movie Artistes (AMMA). "What if actor Bineesh Kodiyeri is cooling his heels in the custody of the Bengaluru division of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) after his arrest under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, his membership in AMMA will remain intact", said an actor on condition of anonymity.
After Union minister Ramdas Athawale tested positive for Covid-19,Bengali actress Payal Ghosh, who recently joined his party Republican Party of India, had also undergone Covid-19 test. Payal’s COVID result is out and the actress has, fortunately, tested negative.
Akshay Kumar and Kiara Advani's upcoming film Laxmmi, earlier titled Laxmmi Bomb, has been keeping the fans excited for its release this Diwali. The trailer of the film released earlier this month and impressed the viewers for its one-liners as well as Akshay's role as a transgender. However, it faced a roadblock when the makers received a legal notice from the Rajasthan-based outfit, Shri Rajput Karni Sena, claiming that the name Laxmmi Bomb was demeaning towards Goddess Laxmi, adding that the title insulted sentiments.
Actress Sanya Malhotra has spoken about why working with filmmaker Anurag Basu was an unusual experience. For the first time, Sanya recalled, she was working without a script.Selecting the best PC to match your requirement can be intimidating. Let's help you select the right computer that will suit your needs. So, let's first build your profile and check what you're looking for.
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Actress Koena Mitra has a serious allegation against the microblogging platform Twitter. She claims Twitter is shadow banning her account and suspending her followers drastically. "Many of my followers call me and message me on WhatsApp complaining that their accounts are being suspended or banned for no reason and they don't get to see my tweets on their timeline," claimed Koena to IANS.
Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, who is turning 55 on November 2, wanted his birthday celebrations to be low-key as he has asked his fans not to assemble outside his house unlike every year. Thousands of his fans and followers gather outside his sea-facing bungalow, Mannat, waiting for the Badshah to wave out to them from the balcony. This year due to Coronavirus Pandemic, the actor has asked people not to gather in huge numbers outside this house. 
Bollywood actress Kangana Ranaut on Saturday paid tribute to the Iron Man of India Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel on his 145th birth anniversary and said that the country got 'akhand bharat' because of him. She also chronicled his sacrifice to give up the post of the first Prime Minister for "a weaker mind like (Pandit Jawaharlal) Nehru". The Queen actor took to Twitter to remember the first deputy prime minister of India. "Wishing India's Iron man #SardarVallabhbhaiPatel a happy (birth) anniversary, you are the man who gave us today's akhand Bharat but you took your great leadership and vision away from us by sacrificing your position as a Prime Minister. We deeply regret your decision."
Messiah of migrants Sonu Sood has been providing help to everyone in need even though the lockdown has come to an end and people have resumed their work. The actor has been helping daily wage workers and everyone affected by the COVID19 wave with books, work, jobs and other things. He recently also shared that he receives endless mails and letters daily for help and it is impossible for him to contact each one of them. Along with the people who actually need his help, there are a few pranksters who joke around with the actor and Sonu replies to them with similar humor. 
TV star Kim Kardashian West revealed that her rapper husband Kanye West has gifted her a hologram of her late father, Robert Kardashian Snr. Kim's father Robert, a lawyer, passed away in 2003, two months after being diagnosed with esophageal cancer, reports mirror.co.uk. Kim posted the hologram on Twitter and wrote: "For my birthday, Kanye got me the most thoughtful gift of a lifetime. A special surprise from heaven. A hologram of my dad. It is so lifelike! We watched it over and over, filled with emotion."
Ashwagandha is one of the most well-known ayurvedic herbs and is traditionally known for its stress-relieving properties.
Given how many of your actions require your hips, it’s natural for them to become strained or stiff sometimes. You may not even realise this is happening until your lower back or thighs start aching.
Bronchitis is a respiratory condition where the tiny air carrying tubes of the lungs get inflamed and start producing too much mucus.
While the new season of Saath Nibhaana Saathiya has been launched last week, the old season is also being re-aired. Both the seasons are among the most-watched shows on TV this week.
Kumkum Sehgal and nephew Sahil, sister of noted filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, have filed a defamation case in Bombay City Civil Court against actress Luviena Lodh. The duo has demanded an apology from the actress and compensation of Rs 90 lakh for the 'false' allegations she has leveled against the filmmaker and his family. Mahesh Bhatt's sister took this step after a video posted on Luviena's Instagram in which she claimed that the Bhatt's are into dealing of drugs and she has seen many actresses take the narcotic substance from him.
Bollywood superstar Salman Khan is known for his kind heart and determination towards his work. The actor has always kept his personal and professional lives separately and fulfilled his commitments at any cost. As the actor's film London Dreams clocked 11 years, director Vipul Shah recalled his experience of working with Salman and superstar Ajay Devgn together and revealed that Salman had shot for the concert scenes of the film hours after the funeral of his dogs, Myson and MyJaan. Filmmaker Vipul Amrutlal Shah said that it was an amazing experience shooting with the two superstars for the first time. He said that it felt like a 'picnic.'
Actress Kajal Aggarwal is now Mrs. Kitchlu! The actress tied the knot in an intimate ceremony with businessman Gautam Kitchlu on Friday (October 30). The couple's fairytale wedding in Mumbai was attended by her close friends and family and was a private affair, however, inside pictures from the most special day of the actress have gone viral on the internet. Before saying her wedding vows, Kajal took to Instagram to tease her fans with her wedding look. She shared a picture of herself and wrote, "Calm before the storm. #kajgautkitched." In the photo, the actress can be seen almost ready as her hair looks neatly tied in a bun with all the accessories including a gold matha patti. The monochrome picture shows that she is wearing a bathrobe as her lehenga hangs in the backdrop. 
Actor Kubbra Sait has a funny anecdote about attending the mega wedding of Bollywood superstars Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone.The United States reached a milestone, of sorts, when last week the Food and Drug Administration approved the first treatment for COVID-19.
The drug is called Veklury, although most people know it by its scientific name, remdesivir.
On Wednesday, its manufacturer, Gilead Sciences, said that remdesivir, which has been authorized for emergency use since the spring, had brought in $873 million in revenues so far this year and that it was the company’s second-best-selling drug in the third quarter, behind its HIV drug, Biktarvy.
But the FDA’s decision to grant the drug full approval — which means the company can begin broadly marketing it to doctors and patients — has puzzled several outside experts, who say that it may not deserve the agency’s stamp of approval because it is, at best, a mediocre treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. And they have questioned whether Gilead deserves to pocket potential billions from the drug when the federal government has played a significant role in its development.
“This is a troubling approval,” said Dr. Peter B. Bach, director of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. “This is an extremely weak set of trials to support an approval for an antiviral.”
Remdesivir was seen as one of brightest hopes in the dark days of March and April, when doctors had few tools to treat a new disease and families rushed to gain access to the drug in a desperate gambit to save their dying relatives.
More than six months later, enthusiasm has fizzled. One large, government-run trial showed that the drug shortens patients’ recovery times, but the two other studies the FDA used to justify its approval — sponsored by Gilead — did not compare the treatments with a placebo, the gold standard for evaluating a drug. No studies have shown that it significantly lowers death rates.
And just days before the FDA granted approval, a large study sponsored by the World Health Organization found that remdesivir provided no benefit to hospitalized patients.
“I think most people think that because a drug is FDA approved, that means it must work,” said Dr. Aaron S. Kesselheim, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who studies the drug industry. He and other researchers recently found that less than one-third of new drugs approved by the FDA and its European counterpart over the past decade were rated as having a “high therapeutic value” by outside experts.
“I think it’s important to recognize that FDA approval doesn’t guarantee a certain level of benefit — all it says is that there is some benefit,” he said.
On a call with investors Wednesday, Gilead’s chief executive, Daniel O’Day, said remdesivir had a role to play, along with vaccines and other treatments.
“There’s a lot we don’t know about the pandemic, of course, but I think what we do know is that in order to get us all back to normal, this is going to take a variety of approaches,” he said. “We’re proud to be at the front end of this with a very potent antiviral.”
Remdesivir was originally developed as a treatment for Ebola and hepatitis C and is thought to interfere with the reproduction of viruses by jamming itself into new viral genes.
Because it had previously shown promise in animal studies of other coronaviruses, it was almost immediately seen as a possible answer for COVID-19. Gilead rushed emergency doses to China and began ramping up manufacturing.
The drug was initially used on the very sick but has since been found to work better earlier in the course of the disease. It is routinely given as a five-day treatment to people who are hospitalized for COVID-19, including to President Donald Trump when he was infected earlier this month.
Gilead has come under criticism for its efforts to profit from the drug. In March, when there were still fewer than 200,000 cases of COVID-19, the company applied to the FDA to label remdesivir as an orphan drug, a designation that provides tax and other incentives to companies developing products for rare diseases. After a public outcry, it asked the FDA to rescind its application.
Gilead has gotten mixed reviews from outside experts over the price it has set, at $3,120 for a course of treatment for private insurers and $2,340 for government entities.
One outside group that evaluates drug prices, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, said Gilead had made a “responsible pricing decision” that was in line with its own determination that $2,800 would be a fair price. However, that praise came with a significant caveat — the price would be fair only if remdesivir ultimately showed that it significantly lowered death rates, a benefit that has not been proven.
Others say the company’s profits are unfair, given how much support it has gotten from the government. Public Citizen, a consumer group, has estimated that the federal government has invested $70 million in remdesivir, and it sponsored the major trial that led to FDA approval — and the only major study that compared it with a placebo.
“Remdesivir should be in the public domain,” said Peter Maybarduk, director of the global access to medicines program at Public Citizen. “Gilead will have remade its modest investment many times over.”
In August, attorneys general from 34 states wrote to federal health officials asking them to exercise so-called march-in rights to alleviate shortages of the drug (which have since been resolved). And in September, 11 state treasurers wrote to the company, asking it to price the drug “more affordably.”
In a statement, Gilead said that its own investments in the drug this year “will exceed $1 billion, primarily due to early investments in the rapid scale up of manufacturing, and we expect to invest significantly more in 2021 as we make additional investments in development and manufacturing around the world.”
The company said that by December, it expected to have produced enough drug to treat 2 million patients and that it was studying an inhaled form of the drug that could expand its use to outpatients.
Last week, Gilead came under new criticism because when remdesivir was approved, the company was awarded a priority review voucher, an incentive that allows it to get expedited review from the agency for a future product or to sell that right to another company. The vouchers, which can sell for about $100 million on the open market, are awarded to companies that develop products — such as ones that address a public health threat like a pandemic — that might not otherwise be profitable.
But remdesivir is already proving to be a significant moneymaker for Gilead.
“The idea behind the priority review vouchers program is that there’s relatively little financial incentives for companies to make drugs for some of these conditions,” said Rachel Sachs, an associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis who studies drug policy. “If we think that this drug will be a blockbuster, then the reasons why we created the program would seem to apply with much less force here.”
The FDA’s approval was surprising to some because it came just days after the release of results from the Solidarity trial, a large, global study of more than 11,000 people that found that remdesivir did not reduce deaths.
Both the FDA and Gilead have noted, however, that the Solidarity trial had shortcomings, including that it was not compared with a placebo, as the trial sponsored by the National Institutes of Health was.
Now that Veklury is FDA-approved, Gilead can begin marketing it, including to doctors and hospitals that might be reluctant to use the treatment.
Gilead said it did not plan to run television advertising for Veklury but would deploy a “field team of medical and sales professionals to educate health care professionals across the country.”
It said it also had plans “to develop some direct-to-consumer materials on Veklury, focused on providing information and education for patients and their families.”
Veklury’s future sales are uncertain. On the call with investors, executives said that predicting revenues in the middle of a pandemic is difficult. Around 40% to 50% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients receive the drug — fewer than some industry analysts had expected. But the drug is profitable so far. One Wall Street analyst, Geoffrey Porges of SVB Leerink, said Thursday that the company’s gross margin on sales to the government — the amount it pockets after the cost to produce it — appeared to be about 90%.
In the call with investors, O’Day said that he expected Veklury to ultimately provide a “very good return” on the company’s investment. “We do feel very strongly that Veklury will contribute to our overall sales, being an important source of cash for our business,” he said.
Bach, of Memorial Sloan Kettering, said that as doctors’ knowledge of COVID-19 had evolved, the significance of remdesivir had receded in favor of other options, including dexamethasone, a steroid made by several generic drug companies.
Because the steroid is a cheap, widely available drug whose patent protections have long since expired, there is little incentive for those companies to seek formal approval from the FDA to be able to market the drug for COVID-19.
That gives Gilead a potential marketing advantage, with no other drug company actively competing for sales. But the purpose of an approval is not to grant companies a financial incentive.
“The FDA doesn’t exist to give monetary prizes to drug companies,” Bach said. “The FDA exists to help inform doctors as to what drugs they should give patients in front of them today.”
Katie Thomas. c.2020 The New York Times Company
With competition among Earth's telecoms providers as fierce as ever, equipment maker Nokia announced its expansion into a new market on Monday, winning a deal to install the first cellular network on the Moon.
The Finnish equipment manufacturer said it was selected by NASA to deploy an "ultra-compact, low-power, space-hardened" wireless 4G network on the lunar surface, as part of the US space agency's plan to establish a long-term human presence on the Moon by 2030.
The $14.1 million contract, awarded to Nokia's US subsidiary, is part of NASA's Artemis programme which aims to send the first woman, and next man, to the moon by 2024.
The astronauts will begin carrying out detailed experiments and explorations which the agency hopes will help it develop its first human mission to Mars.
Nokia's network equipment will be installed remotely on the Moon's surface using a lunar hopper built by Intuitive Machines in late 2022, Nokia said.
"The network will self-configure upon deployment," the firm said in a statement, adding that the wireless technology will allow for "vital command and control functions, remote control of lunar rovers, real-time navigation and streaming of high definition video."
The 4G equipment can be updated to a super-fast 5G network in the future, Nokia said.
In all, NASA announced last week it would distribute $370 million to 14 companies to supply "Tipping Point" technologies for its mission, which include robotics and new methods of harvesting the resources required for living on the moon, such as oxygen and energy sources.
The bulk of the funding went to companies researching cryogenic propellants, freezing liquids used to fuel spacecraft.
Among them, Elon Musk's SpaceX received $53.2 million for a demonstration of the transferring of ten metric tons of liquid oxygen between tanks on a starship vehicle, NASA said.
Actress Taapsee Pannu has wrapped up her upcoming film Haseen Dilruba. The actress shared a happy picture on Instagram and introduced her character Rani Kashyap from the film saying that she is a "self obsessed borderline narcissist character." In the picture, Taapsee can be seen laughing her heart out along with Virant Massey in the background. Her costume is hidden by a shawl and has henna on her hands.
Acclaimed filmmkaer Deepa Mehta's upcoming feature "Funny Boy" will represent Canada at the 93rd Academy Awards as the submission for best international film, marking the director's second time competing in the category. Mehta's film "Water", the third feature in her Elements trilogy, was Oscar-nominated in the international feature film category in 2007. The first film in the trilogy was "Earth" and the director followed it up with "Fire".
Creating awareness about psoriasis and its causes and symptoms can play a pivotal role in decreasing the psychological burden associated with this condition.Future pandemics will happen more often, kill more people and wreak even worse damage to the global economy than Covid-19 without a fundamental shift in how humans treat nature, the United Nations' biodiversity panel said Thursday.
Warning that there are up to 850,000 viruses which, like the novel coronavirus, exist in animals and may be able to infect people, the panel known as IPBES said pandemics represented an "existential threat" to humanity.
Authors of the special report on biodiversity and pandemics said that habitat destruction and insatiable consumption made animal-borne diseases far more likely to make the jump to people in future.
"There is no great mystery about the cause of the Covid-19 pandemic — or any modern pandemic," said Peter Daszak, president of the Ecohealth Alliance and chair of the IPBES workshop that drafted the report.
"The same human activities that drive climate change and biodiversity loss also drive pandemic risk though their impacts on our agriculture."
The panel said that Covid-19 was the sixth pandemic since the influenza outbreak of 1918 —all of which had been "entirely driven by human activities".
These include unsustainable exploitation of the environment through deforestation, agricultural expansion, wildlife trade and consumption — all of which put humans in increasingly close contact with wild and farmed animals and the diseases they harbour.
Seventy percent of emerging diseases — such as Ebola, Zika and HIV/AIDS — are zoonotic in origin, meaning they circulate in animals before jumping to humans.
Around five new diseases break out among humans every single year, any one of which has the potential to become a pandemic, the panel warned.
IPBES said in its periodic assessment on the state of nature last year that more than three-quarters of land on Earth had already been severely degraded by human activity.
One-third of land surface and three-quarters of freshwater on the planet is currently taken up by farming, and humanity's resource use has rocketed up 80 percent in just three decades, it said.
IPBES conducted a virtual workshop with 22 leading experts to come up with a list of options that governments could take to lower the risk of repeat pandemics.
It acknowledged the difficulty in counting the full economic cost of Covid-19.
But the assessment pointed to estimated costs as high as $16 trillion as of July 2020.
The experts said that the cost of preventing future pandemics was likely to be 100 times cheaper than responding to them, "providing strong economic incentives for transformative change".
"Our approach has effectively stagnated," Daszak said.
"We still rely on attempts to contain and control diseases after they emerge, through vaccines and therapeutics."
The IPBES suggested a global, coordinated pandemic response, and for countries to agree upon targets to prevent biodiversity loss within an international accord similar to the Paris agreement on climate change.
Among the options for policymakers to reduce the likelihood of a Covid-19 re-run are taxes or levies on meat consumption, livestock production and other forms of "high pandemic-risk activities".
The assessment also suggested better regulation of international wildlife trade and empowering indigenous communities to better preserve wild habitats.
Nick Ostle, a researcher at the CEH Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, said the IPBES' assessment should serve as a "withering reminder" of how reliant humanity is on nature.
"Our health, wealth and wellbeing relies on the health, wealth and wellbeing of our environment," said Ostle, who was not involved in the research process.
"The challenges of this pandemic have highlighted the importance of protecting and restoring our globally important and shared environmental 'life-support' systems."
Eight nations have signed on to become founding members of NASA's Artemis Accords, an international agreement that establishes how countries can cooperate to peacefully and responsibly conduct exploration of the moon.
NASA announced Tuesday that the United States signed the accords, together with Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said the agreement would establish a “singular global coalition” to guide future expeditions to the moon.
“With today’s signing, we are uniting with our partners to explore the moon and are establishing vital principles that will create a safe, peaceful and prosperous future in space for all of humanity to enjoy,” Bridenstine said in a statement released Tuesday.
NASA developed the Artemis Accords to partner with other nations to set basic principles to guide robotic and crewed lunar exploration. The agreement’s name refers to NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to send astronauts, including the first woman, to the moon by 2024.
The accords include provisions for peaceful exploration, safety, transparency, sustainable use of space resources, cooperation to build and operate spacecraft and other hardware, and the management and disposal of orbital debris.
“Fundamentally, the Artemis Accords will help to avoid conflict in space and on Earth by strengthening mutual understanding and reducing misperceptions,” Mike Gold, NASA’s acting associate administrator for international and interagency relations, said in a statement. “The Artemis journey is to the moon, but the destination of the Accords is a peaceful and prosperous future.”
The Artemis Accords build on another major international agreement known as the Outer Space Treaty, which was enacted in 1967. The Outer Space Treaty bans the use of nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction in space and establishes that exploration of space, the moon and other celestial bodies should only be for peaceful purposes.
Blue Origin, the US space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, succeeded Tuesday in its latest test flight of its rocket aimed at one day taking tourists to space, even as the date of the first crewed launch remains unclear.
The New Shepard capsule, which was propelled over the boundary of space by a small reusable launch vehicle that returned to land vertically, will one day carry up to six passengers.
It attained an altitude of 66 miles (106 kilometers) above sea level, before descending back to the surface using parachutes and landing in a cloud of dust in the desert of West Texas.
Its total flight time was 10 minutes and nine seconds.
Blue Origin previously unveiled the capsule's interior: six seats with horizontal backrests, placed next to large portholes, in a futuristic cabin with swish lighting.
Multiple cameras help immortalize the few minutes the tourists experience weightlessness while taking in the Earth's curvature.
This summer, competitor Virgin Galactic showed off the interior of its own vessel which is one day supposed to take private passengers to the boundaries of space for a few minutes.
But neither company has announced the start of commercial flights, which have been expected for years.
Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan's daughter Suhana Khan has wished her BFF Ananya Panday on her birthday with a funny throwback video on latter's 22nd birthday. The TikTok video shows the two of them along with AbRam Khan and Shanaya Kapoor.
Sanjana Sanghi’s excitements knew no bounds as she came across a message from Fault in Our Stars author John Green’s message to her. Yes, the ace writer sent her a personal message on social media after watching the actress’s film Dil Bechara which is the remake of Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort starrer.Creating awareness about psoriasis and its causes and symptoms can play a pivotal role in decreasing the psychological burden associated with this condition.While the rest of the U.S. economy languished earlier this year, the tech industry’s biggest companies seemed immune to the downturn, surging as the country worked, learned and shopped from home. On Thursday, as the economy is showing signs of improvement, Amazon, Apple, Alphabet and Facebook reported profits that highlighted how a recovery may provide another catalyst to help them generate a level of wealth that hasn’t been seen in a single industry in generations.
With an entrenched audience of users and the financial resources to press their leads in areas like cloud computing, e-commerce and digital advertising, the companies demonstrated again that economic malaise, upstart competitors and feisty antitrust regulators have had little effect on their bottom line.
Combined, the four companies reported a quarterly net profit of $38 billion.
Amazon reported record sales, and an almost 200% rise in profits, as the pandemic accelerated the transition to online shopping. Despite a boycott of its advertising over the summer, Facebook had another blockbuster quarter. Alphabet’s record quarterly net profit was up 59%, as marketers plowed money into advertisements for Google search and YouTube. And Apple’s sales rose even though the pandemic forced it to push back the iPhone 12’s release to October, in the current quarter.
On Tuesday, Microsoft, Amazon’s closest competitor in cloud computing, also reported its most profitable quarter, growing 30% from a year earlier.
“The scene that’s playing out fundamentally is that these tech stalwarts are gaining more market share by the day,” said Dan Ives, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities. “It’s ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ for this group of tech companies and everyone else.”
The results were strong despite increasing antitrust scrutiny from regulators. Last week, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit accusing Google of cementing the dominance of its search engine through anti-competitive agreements with device makers and mobile carriers. Facebook faces a possible antitrust case from the Federal Trade Commission.
The companies’ advantages are becoming more pronounced in an economy starting to dig out from the coronavirus pandemic. On Thursday, the Commerce Department said U.S. economic output grew 7.4% last quarter, the fastest pace on record, but remained below where it was in the last pre-pandemic quarter.
That slow return to health is also providing momentum to companies that suffered early in the pandemic, like Twitter, which reported on Thursday that revenue rose 14% in the third quarter as advertisers started to return. Twitter’s stock dropped about 14% in after-hours trading on Thursday, a reaction that analysts attributed to slow user growth.
Big Tech’s third-quarter boom could look modest when compared with the final quarter of the year. For Apple, it’s when consumers buy newly released iPhones. And the year-end shopping peak means lots of customers turning to Amazon for gifts, while advertisers rely on Google and Facebook for digital ads during the holidays.
The pandemic-fueled surge in online shopping pushed Amazon to a record for both sales and profits in the latest quarter.
Sales were $96.1 billion, up 37% from a year earlier, and profits rose to $6.3 billion.
The quarter did not include the usual boost from Prime Day, Amazon’s yearly deal bonanza, which was delayed to October. And the profit increased during a building boom, with Amazon expanding its fulfillment infrastructure by 50% this year. The company added almost 250,000 employees in the quarter, for the first time surpassing more than 1 million workers.
The lucrative Amazon Web Services division grew 29% as companies continued their shift to cloud computing.
Amazon said sales could reach $121 billion in the fourth quarter because of the confluence of Prime Day, the holiday shopping season and the turn to online spending.
The delay in the iPhone 12’s release meant Apple would face a tough comparison with the same quarter last year, which included sales of the iPhone 11. As a result, iPhone sales dropped more than 20% in the quarter.
Yet Apple’s overall sales still rose 1% to $64.7 billion, showing the increasing strength of other parts of the company’s business.
Apple’s services segment, which includes revenues from the App Store and offerings like Apple Music, increased 16% to $14.5 billion. Sales rose 46% for iPads, 29% for Mac computers and 21% for wearables.
Profits fell 7% to $12.7 billion, partly because the company spent more on research and development.
“There are lots going on here, and everything is going incredibly well,” Luca Maestri, Apple’s finance chief, said in an interview.
Facebook’s revenue for the third quarter rose 22% from a year earlier, to $21.2 billion, while profits jumped 29% to $7.84 billion. The results surpassed analysts’ estimates of $19.8 billion in revenue and profits of $5.53 billion, according to data provided by FactSet.
Facebook had strong results despite a wide-ranging boycott by advertisers this summer over issues of hate and toxic speech on the site. Although the grassroots campaign, Stop Hate for Profit, rallied many of the top advertisers on Facebook to reduce their spending, the overall effects were brief.
The company continued gaining users as well. More than 1.82 billion people used the Facebook app every day, up 12% from a year earlier, it said. More than 2.54 billion people now use one or more of Facebook’s family of apps — Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger or Facebook — daily, up 15% from a year earlier.
After its first-ever decline in quarterly revenue in the second quarter, Alphabet rebounded with its highest-ever profit. The strength came from across Google, with search advertising revenue growing 6% and YouTube ad spending rising 32%. Google’s cloud computing business grew 45%.
When advertisers slowed spending with Google this year as COVID-19 started to spread, Alphabet’s business took a significant hit. But as the economy has improved and businesses found their footing, advertisers have returned.
Alphabet posted a net profit of $11.25 billion in the third quarter as revenue rose 14% to $46.1 billion. Ruth Porat, Alphabet’s chief financial officer, said the improved profitability reflected efforts to cut costs during the economic downturn, including a hiring slowdown.
Daisuke Wakabayashi, Karen Weise, Jack Nicas and Mike Isaac.
NASA said Thursday its robotic spacecraft Osiris-Rex was able to stow a rock and dust sample scooped up from the asteroid Bennu, after a flap that had wedged open put the mission at risk.
"We are here to announce today that we've successfully completed that operation," said Rich Burns, the mission's project manager.
The probe is on a mission to collect fragments that scientists hope will help unravel the origins of our solar system, but hit a snag after it picked up too big of a sample.
Fragments from the asteroid's surface in a collector at the end of the probe's three-meter (10-foot) arm had been slowly escaping into space because some rocks prevented the compartment from closing completely.
That arm is what came into contact with Bennu for a few seconds last Tuesday in the culmination of a mission launched from Earth some four years ago.
On Thursday, NASA said it had been able a day earlier to maneuver the robotic arm holding the leaking particles to a storage capsule near the center of the spacecraft, drop off the sample and close the capsule's lid.
It was a delicate two-day procedure, requiring the team at each step to assess images and data from the previous step.
The probe is 200 million miles (320 million kilometers) away, so it takes 18.5 minutes for its transmissions to reach Earth, and any signal from the control room requires the same amount of time to reach Osiris-Rex.
"My heart breaks for loss of sample," said Dante Lauretta, the mission's chief scientist, but he noted that they had successfully stowed hundreds of grams (several ounces) of fragments, far in excess of their minimum goal.
"Now we can look forward to receiving the sample here on Earth and opening up that capsule," he said.
Osiris-Rex is set to come home in September 2023, hopefully with the largest sample returned from space since the Apollo era.
Actress Scarlett Johansson tied the knot with actor Colin Jost in a secret ceremony. The celebration was attended by close friends and family. "Meal on Wheels America", an NGO that helps vulnerable older adults confirmed the news about the wedding. it is said that the couple announced the news through the NGO in order to increase donations.
Model Chrissy Teigen removed a few posts on her Twitter account on realising Hillary Clinton follows her. Teigen went off social media to cope with the loss of her son Jack last month. On returning, Chrissy found out that the American politician was taking keen interest in her story, reports mirror.co.uk. Sharing Teigen's post about her Jack's stillbirth, Clinton had written: "Thank you, Chrissy Teigen, for your bravery and grace in starting a hard conversation to help other families heal alongside yours."
A study conducted in India also found that more cases of COVID-19 are seen in areas at a relatively higher altitude and colder temperatures.
Colitis is an inflammation of the inner lining of the colon which causes many symptoms like diarrhea, abdominal pain, bloating and blood in the stool.
Abhijeet Bhattacharya has lent his melodious voice to many romantic tracks featuring A-list Bollywood stars. Here we look at five of them.
On Thursday, Ghaziabad's Chhavi Kumar became the first contestant to reach the Rs 1 crore question in the quiz based reality show hosted by superstar Amitabh Bachchan. An English teacher by profession, Chhavi played really well in the game and was about to become the first crorepati of the season but she didn't know the correct answer to the Rs 1 crore question. So, she decided to quit the game rather than giving the wrong answer to the question based on astronomy.
