Category: Life & Style

Pop superstar Beyoncé broke the record for most career wins at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards on February 5. British singer Harry Styles won the prestigious album of the year award. Music composer Ricky Kej, based out of Bengaluru, has won his third Grammy Award for the album Divine Tides.

Beyoncé added four Grammys to her collection. Her lifetime total now stands at 32, surpassing the tally of late classical conductor Georg Solti. The US singer was nominated for nine awards this year. She won the all-time Grammy record with her award for best dance/electronic album for Renaissance, and the best R&B song award for Cuff It.

In other awards, Lizzo’s upbeat About Damn Time won record of the year. Blues singer Bonnie Raitt’s Just Like That, about an organ donor, won song of the year, one of her three awards on Sunday. In other categories, Bad Bunny took home the award for best música urbana album for Un Verano Sin Ti. For best rap album, Kendrick Lamar succeeded with Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. American jazz singer Samara Joy was named best new artist.

US First Lady Jill Biden presented a new honour for a song that tackles social issues. The accolade went to Iranian singer and songwriter Shervin Hajipour for Baraye, a powerful and poetic call for freedom and women’s rights.

The Biodiversity Management Committee, the panchayat of Chumathang village, and SECURE Himalaya Project have resolved to declare Yaya Tso as Ladakh’s first biodiversity heritage site (BHS) under the Biological Diversity Act.

Yaya Tso is among the most beautiful lakes in Ladakh. It is known as birds’ paradise for its beautiful lake located at an altitude of 4,820 metres. A nesting habitat for a large number of birds and animals, such as the bar-headed goose, black-necked crane and brahminy duck, it also has the distinction of being one of the highest breeding sites of the black-necked crane in India.

The lake could be reached from Mahe monastery on the way to Tsomoriri lake after driving up to the nunnery and then crossing a small mountain pass. The proposed Yaya Tso site will have an approximate area of 60 square kilometers, which will also include the lake’s watershed.

The project will facilitate the official notification of the BHS after taking the application up with the Ladakh Biodiversity Council. SECURE Himalaya has also proposed to develop a management plan for the BHS and pilot interventions to support conservation of this lake.

Long-haul carrier Emirates successfully flew a Boeing 777 on a test flight on January 30 with one engine entirely powered by sustainable aviation fuel. The test flight comes as carriers worldwide try to lessen their carbon footprint.

The fuel powered one of Boeing’s two General Electric Co. engines, with the other running on conventional jet fuel for safety. Flight No. EK2646 flew for just under an hour over the coastline of the United Arab Emirates. It took off from Dubai International Airport, the world’s busiest for international travel, and headed out into the Persian Gulf before circling back to land.

The state-owned airline Emirates described the sustainable fuel as a blend that mirrored the qualities of jet fuel. It included fuel from Finnish firm Neste and US-based Virent, which describes itself as using plant-based sugars to make the compounds needed for sustainable jet fuel. Neste’s fuel comes from vegetable oils and animal fats. Those fuels reduce the release of greenhouse gas (GHG) carbon dioxide let off by flight engines.

Aviation releases only one-sixth the amount of carbon dioxide produced by cars and trucks, according to the World Resources Institute, but as airplanes fly by far fewer people per day, the sector becomes a higher per-capita source of GHG emissions.

Hong Kong is giving away 5,00,000 airline tickets worth more than €250 million in an effort to woo tourists back to the region.

On February 1, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive John Lee launched the $2 billion (€1.8 bn) ‘Hello Hong Kong’ campaign. Under the campaign, flight tickets will be given away beginning March 1, going on for about six months, with tickets distributed in phases.

The city has rolled back several COVID-19 travel restrictions in recent months, including mandatory isolation on arrival. It now hopes to bounce back from the massive impact that the pandemic had on its tourism industry. The city’s GDP last year fell 3.5 per cent from 2021.

The free air tickets will be distributed by Hong Kong-based airlines Cathay Pacific, HK Express and Hong Kong Airlines. Tickets will be distributed gradually on the airlines’ overseas platforms beginning with Southeast Asian countries, followed by mainland China and Northeastern Asia. The free air tickets include 80,000 tickets for Hong Kong residents, to be given in the summer, and 80,000 tickets for those living in the Greater Bay Area. Visitors can also enjoy special offers and vouchers among other incentives in the city.

India has jumped 26 spots globally in case of median mobile speeds, from rank 105th in November 2022 to rank 79th in December 2022, said a report by Ookla.

Ookla released an update on the Speedtest Global Index for the month of December 2022. In its report, the network intelligence and connectivity insights provider said median mobile download speeds in India increased from 18.26 Mbps in November to 25.29 Mbps in December. However, the country fell in overall median fixed broadband speeds category to 81st position from 80th. Its performance in fixed median download speeds witnessed a slight increase from 49.11 Mbps in November to 49.14 Mbps in December.

Qatar led the chart for global median mobile speeds. Rwanda leapt 47 spots and Burkina Faso jumped 22 spots in their ranks globally. Singapore gained the top position in fixed broadband download speeds.

In October, India recorded a 13-month high in mobile and fixed broadband download speed. Moreover, in November last year, it had recorded the highest median mobile download speed, from 16.50 Mbps in October to 18.26 Mbps in November.

Reliance Jio recently recorded almost 600 Mbps median download speed on its 5G network in Delhi, while the country’s overall 5G speed hit 500 Mbps as it rolled out 5G services in October.

India and South Africa (SA) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to translocate more than 100 cheetahs to India over the next decade, said the SA government on January 26, 2023, in a press release.

The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment release said that 12 big cats may arrive in India sometime in February. The plan is to translocate 12 cheetahs every year for the next eight to 10 years to establish a healthy and genetically diverse cheetah population in India.

The terms of the MoU on Cooperation in the Re-introduction of Cheetah to India will be reviewed every five years. For India, restoring cheetah populations is considered to be a priority. It will have crucial and far-reaching conservation consequences, which would aim to achieve a number of ecological objectives, such as re-establishing the functional role of cheetahs within their historical range in India and improving the livelihood options and economies of the local communities, the release said.

Under the MoU, the two countries will collaborate and exchange best practices in large carnivore conservation through the transfer of technology, training of professionals in management, policy, and science, and establish a bilateral custodianship arrangement for cheetah translocated between the two countries.

The Egyptian Army contingent marched on the Kartavya Path for the first time on Thursday on the occasion of India’s 74th Republic Day. The contingent, with 144 soldiers, was led by Colonel Mahmoud Mohamed Abdel Fattah El Kharasawy. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi was the chief guest of this year’s Republic Day celebrations. It was for the first time that an Egyptian leader was invited on India’s Republic Day.

The Egyptian contingent carried the legacy of one of the oldest regular armies known to humanity. The history of the Egyptian army goes back to 3200 BC when King Narmer unified Egypt. The modern Egyptian army was established during the rule of Muhammad Ali Pasha.

El-Sisi, who was on a four-day visit to India, was accompanied by a high-level delegation. In addition to the Republic Day celebrations, he attended an ‘At-Home’ reception by President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan, and a meeting with Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar.

India and Egypt have enjoyed strong defence ties. There was close cooperation between the Air Forces, with efforts at jointly developing a fighter aircraft in the 1960s. IAF pilots had also trained Egyptian pilots from the 1960s until 1984. The countries are celebrating 75 years of establishment of diplomatic relations this year. India has also invited Egypt as a guest country during its G20 Presidency.

Japanese Prime minister Fumio Kishida has vowed to take urgent steps to tackle the country’s declining birth rate. On Monday, he pledged to take urgent steps, saying it was “now or never” for one of the world’s oldest societies.

In Japan, births plunged to a new record low last year, dropping below 800,000 for the first time. It was a defining moment that came eight years earlier than the government had expected. The country has the median age of 49 years, which is the second highest in the world after Monaco’s 55 years.

Japan is the third-most-expensive country globally to raise a child, according to YuWa Population Research, behind only China and South Korea.

“Our nation is on the cusp of whether it can maintain its societal functions. It is now or never when it comes to policies regarding births and child-rearing – it is an issue that simply cannot wait any longer,” said Kishida, in a policy speech at the opening of this year’s parliamentary session.

The Japanese Prime Minister said he would submit plans to double the budget for child-related policies by June, and that a new Children and Families government agency to oversee the issue would be set up in April.

A team of Indian scientists from the Indian Institute of Geomagnetism (IIG) have found the first evidence of the presence of solitary waves around Mars. These solitary waves are distinct electric field fluctuations in the Martian magnetosphere that control particle energisation, plasma loss, and transport through wave-particle interactions.

IIG researchers identified and reported the solitary waves in the Martian magnetosphere with the help of high-resolution electric field data recorded by Langmuir Probe and Waves instrument on Nasa’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft. The findings have been published in The Astrophysical Journal, which states the analysis of 450 solitary wave pulses observed by the MAVEN spacecraft during its five passes around Mars in February 2015.

Earth and planetary space plasma environments support a variety of electromagnetic and electrostatic waves. These plasma waves are widely studied using observations, theory, and simulations to enhance our knowledge of the ambient plasma conditions and fundamental physical processes operational in those regions.

Researchers say that Earth is like a giant magnet, and its magnetic field protects us from high-speed charged particles that are continuously emitted from the Sun in the form of solar wind. However, it is different for Mars, as the Red Planet does not have any intrinsic magnetic field that allows the high-speed solar wind to interact directly with the Mars atmosphere. They have now found that its magnetosphere is weak, but highly dynamic and formed due to the direct interaction of solar winds with the Martian atmosphere.

Spare, the memoir of Prince Harry, has become the fastest-selling nonfiction book of all time, confirmed by the Guinness World Records on Friday, after the book sold 1.43 million copies on its first day.

The sales outperformed Penguin Random House’s previous first-day non-fiction record, for US President Barack Obama’s memoir, A Promised Land, in 2020, and Michelle Obama’s book, Becoming in 2018. A Promised Land had sold 8,87,000 copies on the debut day.

Penguin Random House (PRH) UK said the book had sold 7,50,000 copies in the UK across all formats – hardbacks, ebooks and audiobooks – in its first week. Of these, 400,000 copies were on its first day on sale in the UK.

Spare is in its second printing after selling the first two million copies. The high sales came despite excerpts of the book being leaked after Spanish-language copies were mistakenly put up for sale in Spain ahead of the release day.

In Spare, Prince Harry lays bare intimate details about his life and his family. It sold 1.4 million English-language copies in all formats in the US, the UK and Canada on release day, according to Penguin Random House.

The book also remains No 1 on the Amazon bestsellers chart, and is the site’s bestselling nonfiction title.