Sonam Wangchuk, the man who inspired 3 Idiots movie, wants Indians to defeat China through wallet power

Sonam Wangchuk, the man who inspired Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s 3 Idiots, has taken upon himself to advice Indians on how to win a war against China on two fronts, first, through Army and second, through people’s boycott of Chinese companies.

Wangchuk, an engineer turned education reformer, is asking people to boycott everything made by China. “Give up all Chinese software in a week, all Chinese hardware in a year,” he said, adding that the boycott should be turned into a people’s movement against China’s increasing aggression.

“On one hand, our soldiers are fighting them and on the other hand, we buy Chinese hardware and use software like the TikTok app, we give them business worth crores so they can arm their soldiers to fight against us,” Wangchuk said.

Source: Livemint

India, China talking though diplomatic, military channels to resolve Ladakh standoff: Rajnath Singh

NEW DELHI: India and China are talking through diplomatic and military channels to resolve the ongoing troop confrontation in eastern Ladakh, said defence minister Rajnath Singh, adding even the major 73-day Doklam face-off in 2017 had also been defused through bilateral dialogue.

The minister, in a couple of interviews to television channels on Saturday, did not directly answer whether Chinese troops had actually intruded deep into Indian territory across the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh.

“There are perceptional differences with China over the LAC,” he said, but added in another interview later in the day that the Chinese soldiers had “come a little further than they used to earlier” to make the “situation different this time”.

Source: The Times of India

Donald Trump postpones G7 summit; wants India to join group

WASHINGTON : U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday he would postpone a Group of Seven summit he had hoped to hold next month until September or later and expand the list of invitees to include Australia, Russia, South Korea and India.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One during his return to Washington from Cape Canaveral in Florida, Trump said the G7, whose members are the world’s most advanced economies, was a “very outdated group of countries” in its current format.

“I’m postponing it because I don’t feel that as a G7 it properly represents what’s going on in the world,” Trump said.

Source: Livemint

Indian aviation on a two-year pause, says AirAsia India CEO Bhaskaran

Speaking in CAPA India webinar on designing a sustainable roadmap for the revival of Indian aviation, Bhaskaran said that while there is no doubt about a strong demand outlook for the Indian market in the long run, the next few quarters are going to be challenging with less number of flights and weak load factors.

“All expansions are on hold. We are struggling to keep up to whatever capacity we have. Unfortunately, aviation industry is a contract between a lessor and a lessee, so strongly in favour of lessor that even if we would like to, we could not return the aircraft or the cost of it would be so high that it would not be worthwhile. As I see today, it has to come with the confidence of customers which will come either with a cure or a vaccine in place. I don’t see that coming back in 18-24 months. So I think it is a pause for Indian aviation for two years. But we will surely get back to the same growth path after that,” Bhaskaran said.

Source: CNBC TV18

Sony CEO Opens Up on PlayStation 5 Pricing Strategy

Sony is finally opening-up on its next-gen console, PlayStation 5, after having kept mum for most of the year. With a game reveal , we can expect further news to start flowing in. While next week’s showcase is sure to give us something about the console itself, do not expect too much. Sony is bound to continue keeping its cards close to its chest. However, Sony PlayStation’s CEO, Jim Ryan, did touch upon a few elements regarding the console in a sit-down with gamesindustry.biz.

The reports, mostly unconfirmed, about PlayStation 5 have surely given the console’s loyal community a bit of anxiety. The first half of the year has more or less been about how Sony has run into trouble due to the pandemic ravaging our globe. Be it a possibility of a delay, or the disturbance in the production capacity of the new console, the news was pretty grim until this month.

Source: Essentially Sports

BCCI nominates Rohit Sharma for Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has nominated India vice-captain Rohit Sharma for the prestigious Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award 2020. Meanwhile, the board has also nominated Ishant Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, and Deepti Sharma for the Arjuna Award.

The Government of India’s Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports had sought invitations for the respective awards with the period of consideration beginning 1st January 2016 to 31st December 2019.

Rohit Sharma, Team India’s vice-captain in the white-ball format has been a prolific run-getter. Named the ICC ODI Cricketer of the Year for 2019, the stylish opener became the first player in the history of the game to score five ODI centuries in one edition of the World Cup.

Source: India Today

Roger Federer is the world’s highest-paid athlete for 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic knocked soccer’s Lionel Messi off top spot, according to the annual Forbes list released on Friday.

The Swiss tennis great, owner of a men’s record 20 Grand Slam singles titles, earned $106.3 million in the last 12 months, including $100 million via endorsements, to move up four places and become the rst player from his sport to top the list.

Soccer players Cristiano Ronaldo ($105 million), Messi ($104 million) and Neymar ($95.5 million) and American basketball player LeBron James ($88.2 million) rounded out the top five.

“The coronavirus pandemic triggered salary cuts for soccer stars Messi and Ronaldo, clearing the way for a tennis player to rank as the world’s highestpaid athlete for the rst time,” said Kurt Badenhausen, senior editor at Forbes.

Source: Onmanorama

Covid-19 Vaccine Could Be Ready By October End, Claims Pharma Major Pfizer’s CEO

Global pharmaceutical major Pfizer believes that a vaccine to prevent Covid-19 could be ready by the end of October, the company’s CEO Albert Bourla said.

Pfizer is conducting clinical trials in the US and Europe for the BNT162 vaccine programme to prevent Covid-19 in collaboration with German mRNA company BioNTech.

Bourla made the comments while participating at a virtual event organised by the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA) this week.

“If things go well and the stars are aligned, we will have enough evidence of safety and efficacy for us to feel comfortable, for the FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) to feel comfortable, and for the EMA (European Medicines Agency) to feel comfortable, to have a vaccine around the end of October,” Bourla was quoted as saying at the event by FierceBiotech.

Source: Swarajya

Vaccine to prevent Covid-19 will take long time to be ready: Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

A safe Vaccine to prevent COVID-19 could take a very long time to be ready, so there is a need to deal with the pandemic for next few years and invest more in healthcare, Biocon Executive Chairperson Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw said on Saturday.

She was speaking in a webinar on ‘Pharma and Healthcare’s New Normal: Engaging With Customers in Uncertain Times; Business Model Post-COVID-19’, organised by CorpGini.

“…We believe that it will take a very long time before you can actually have a safe vaccine that can be accessible to the entire country. We must understand that vaccine development is a very complex process. Shortest time taken for any vaccine is not less than 4 years,” Mazumdar-Shaw said.

Source: Hindustan Times

Omi Vaidya on life in lockdown in Washington DC: This country is run by capitalism, people in power more focused on money than lives

Actor Omi Vaidya’s opening statement, talking to us from Washington, DC where he lives, is “I am okay. We are all alive!” Describing the situation there in the current Covid-19 pandemic, he says it’s not great.

“It’s not a lockdown like in India, which it should be. It’s starting to open up here, because this country is run by capitalism, so people in power are a little bit more focused on making money, than lives sometimes. But it’s okay, there are only a couple of big hotspots — DC, New York, LA, there the rates are still high of cases. Luckily, these are also the places where professional and intelligent people live, so most are following rules,” he tells us. 

Source: Hindustan Times