May 2020

Return of ‘Flop Show’ on Doordarshan emotional: Savita Bhatti Veteran actor-producer Savita Bhatti on Wednesday said she feels “rejuvenated” after Doordarshan announced the re-run of “Flop Show”, the satirical sitcom which is an intrinsic part of her identity. “Flop Show”, created and directed by Savita Bhatti’s co-star and late husband, satirist Jaspal Bhatti, joins the long list of DD’s iconic old shows such as “Ramayan”, “Mahabharat”, “Buniyaad”, “Shaktimaan”, among others to make a come back on the small screen amid the coronavirus-led lockdown. On Monday, the national broadcaster revealed that it was bringing back the serial, which first aired in...

New York City Could Begin Some Re-opening Only Around ‘First Half of June’, Says Mayor de Blasio New York City, hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, is still weeks away from a phased reopening by the first half of June, Mayor Bill de Blasio has said, as authorities are trying to meet all the seven health-related measures necessary for such a step. New York City, the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic in the US, has 191,073 coronavirus cases and 15,983 confirmed Covid-19 deaths, which are deaths following positive Covid-19 laboratory tests. “There’s no way we’re getting to the City and...

Donald Trump’s use of malaria drug to prevent Covid is a boost for India US President Donald Trump’s declaration that he was taking an antimalarial drug of dubious effectiveness to help fend off the coronavirus will likely be welcomed in India. Trump’s previous endorsement of hydroxychloroquine catalyzed a tremendous shift in the South Asian country, spurring the world’s largest producer of the drug to make much more of it, prescribe it for front-line health workers treating the virus and deploy it as a diplomatic tool, despite mounting evidence against using the drug for COVID-19. Trump said Monday that he was taking hydroxychloroquine as...

Jio Can Help Advance India as Global Tech Leader: General Atlantic’s Sandeep Naik Yesterday, noted American investment firm General Atlantic picked up a 1.34 percent stake in Jio Platforms, the holding company of Reliance Jio — the largest telecom operator of India. The investment of Rs 6,598.38 crore comes on the back of similarly sizeable investments by Silver Lake (Rs 5,655.75 crore for 1.15 percent), Vista Equity Partners (Rs 11,367 crore for 2.3 percent) and the world’s largest social media corporation, Facebook (Rs 43,574 crore for 9.99 percent). With total assets of Rs 2.57 lakh crore under management across numerous...

Ilaiyaraaja’s tech-savvy drummer, R. Purusothaman, dies R. Purusothaman, the drummer and conductor of maestro Ilayaraja, died here on Tuesday. “He died of blood cancer,” said his elder brother and guitarist R. Chandrasekar. He was 70 and is survived by two sons. Purusothaman, Purus as he was known in the film world, and Mr. Chandrasekar, started working for Ilayaraja from the maestro’s first film Annakili. Chandrasekar played for the song, Ilaya Nila Pozhigirathey in the film Payanangal Mudivathillai. “We worked with music directors Divakar, K.V. Mahadevan, M.S. Viswanthan and Sankar-Ganesh, before joining Ilayaraja,” said Mr. Chandrasekar. Source: The Hindu

Didn’t Know We Were Going to Make History With Mahabharat, Says Sumeet Raghvan Actor Sumeet Raghvan, who essayed the character of adolescent Sudama in B.R. Chopra’s Mahabharat decades ago, says that he had no inkling that the show would create history. “I was very young when I bagged the role, and I was as excited as any new kid on the block. I was quite skinny at the time, probably that’s why I got the role,” he quipped. “We had barely shot for 3 to 4 days and I remember shooting the Sandipani Ashram portions in Film City and the...

Permanent work from home can be damaging for mental health of employees, says Satya Nadella Coronavirus caused most employees across the world to work from home through the first quarter. As lockdowns across the world are getting relaxed gradually, employees are being asked to resume to their offices. Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella said that permanently working from home can be damaging for social interaction and mental health for workers. Nadella in an interview with NYT said the all-remote setup would be “replacing one dogma with another dogma.” Nadella emphasised that virtual video calls cannot replace in-person meetings. “What I miss...

UK’s richest man spent $940 mn of own cash to build EV to rival Tesla James Dyson, UK’s richest man with an estimated wealth of 16.2 billion pounds (around ₹1.5 lakh crore), decided to spend 500 million pounds (around ₹7,125 crore) of his own money to produce an electric car that he claims can rival even Tesla. The news comes seven months after the billionaire had decided to can the project to come up with this electric car. Dyson’s company decided to reveal the electric car, codenames N526, during an interview of James Dyson for topping the Sunday Times list of richest...

Broadband to become a fundamental human right: TRAI chairman MUMBAI: Broadband will become a fundamental human right and it will be difcult to imagine life without broadband connectivity, said Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (tRAI) chairman R S Sharma. He was speaking at a virtual conference organised by Broadband India Forum. He said that it is time to make investment to boost xed-line broadband so as to support areas such as education, work from home, etc. While it is a fact that the country has achieved a lot in mobile, we still have a long way to go in the...

Uddhav Thackeray wants to get rid of Covid-19 by the start of monsoon Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on Monday set an ambitious target of overcoming the Covid-19 pandemic by the time the monsoon starts. “We want to get rid of this calamity by the beginning of monsoon,” he said in a video address Maharashtra with a tally of over 35,000 Covid-19 cases is the state with the highest numbers in India. But Thackeray claimed that the government has managed to slow down the spread of the disease. “We have slowed down the spread of Covid-19. Now we can lift...