1) Scientists are getting closer to understanding the sun’s ‘campfire’ flares By Adam Mann
Magnetic cancellation is
thought to underpin the diminutive solar phenomenon.DALLAS — Scientists are
starting to figure out what causes tiny eruptions on the sun called campfire
flares.
Campfires were
discovered in 2020, when the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter probe
snapped closeup photos of our parent star and spotted diminutive flickers of
ultraviolet light (SN: 7/16/20). The flashes resemble more massive explosions
such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections but are only a millionth or a
billionth the size.
Using observations of 52
campfires, solar physicist Navdeep Panesar and her colleagues tracked these
bursts from their beginnings. The team noticed that nearly 80 percent of the
campfires were preceded by a dark structure made from cool plasma, Panesar
reported April 9 at the Triennial Earth-Sun Summit.When this cool plasma rises,
a brightening appears underneath it. That brightening turns into a campfire,”
says Panesar, of Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo
Alto, CalifSuch cool plasma structures also precede coronal jets, another of
the sun’s recurring explosions. The findings suggest these plasma structures
are more common than previously believed, Panesar says, and that many solar
eruptions — campfires, jets, flares and mass ejections — arise in a similar
fashion.
Flares and mass
ejections occur when magnetic fields of opposite polarities get tangled and
cancel one another out, leading to a powerful release of energy. Campfires are
believed to be produced via similar mechanisms, though a full understanding has
so far eluded researchers.
Since campfires tend to
be between half a million and 2.5 million degrees Celsius, they are thought to
help heat the sun’s million-degree atmosphere, the corona. Understanding why
the corona is so much hotter than the sun’s surface, which is a mere 5500° C,
has been a longstanding problem for solar
2) Scientists
developed a sheet of gold that’s just one atom thick By Skyler Ware
The development,
reported in the April 16 Nature Synthesis, could someday allow scientists to
use less gold in electronics and chemical reactions, says materials physicist
Lars Hultman of Linköping University in Sweden. The gold sheet may also exhibit
exotic properties like those found in other two-dimensional materials (SN:
10/2/19).
Goldene holds promise as
“a great catalyst because it’s much more economically viable” than thicker,
three-dimensional gold, Hultman says. “You don’t need as many gold atoms to get
the same function.”Gold joins a rarefied group consisting of several elements,
including carbon and phosphorus, that have been formulated into 2-D sheets (SN:
3/10/14). While two-dimensional sheets of nonmetal elements — such as
carbon-based graphene — can be prepared with relative ease, making 2-D sheets
with metals such as iron and gold is harder, Hultman says (SN: 1/17/18). In
gold’s case, atoms tend to form clumps rather than flat sheets.
Hultman and colleagues
first made a three-dimensional material called titanium gold carbide, whose
structure contains two-dimensional sheets of gold. Then they etched off the
surrounding material with a potassium-based solution, leaving goldene behind.
“The good news was that
we were freeing goldene,” Hultman says. “The bad news was that as the goldene
was freed, it started to curl up on itself like a scroll.” Keeping the goldene
sheets flat required the team to add a surfactant to the etching solution in
which the sheets floated.
The team hopes to apply
a similar etching strategy to make 2-D sheets of other metals like iridium and
platinum, says coauthor Shun Kashiwaya, a materials scientist at Linköping
University.
3) ChatGPT for
CRISPR’ creates new gene-editing tools By Ewen Callaway
Some of the AI-designed
gene editors could be more versatile than those found in nature.In the
never-ending quest to discover previously unknown CRISPR gene-editing systems,
researchers have scoured microbes in everything from hot springs and peat bogs
to poo and even yogurt. Now, thanks to advances in generative artificial
intelligence (AI), they might be able to design these systems with the push of
a button.
This week, researchers
published details of how they used a generative AI tool called a protein
language model — a neural network trained on millions of protein sequences — to
design CRISPR gene-editing proteins, and were then able to show that some of
these systems work as expected in the laboratory1.
And in February, another
team announced that it had developed a model trained on microbial genomes, and
used it to design fresh CRISPR systems, which are composed of a DNA or
RNA-cutting enzyme and RNA molecules that direct the molecular scissors as to
where to cut2.
“It’s really just
scratching the surface. It’s showing that it’s possible to design these complex
systems with machine-learning models,” says Ali Madani, a machine-learning
scientist and chief executive of the biotechnology firm Profluent, based in
Berkeley, California. Madani’s team reported what it says is “the first
successful editing of the human genome by proteins designed entirely with
machine learning” in a 22 April preprint1 on bioRxiv.org (which hasn’t been
peer reviewed).
Alan Wong, a synthetic
biologist at the University of Hong Kong, whose team has used machine learning
to optimize CRISPR3, says that naturally occurring gene-editing systems have
limitations in terms of the sequences that they can target and the sort of
changes that they can make. For some applications, therefore, it can be a
challenge to find the right CRISPR. “Expanding the repertoire of editors, using
AI, could help,” he says.
Trained on genomes
Whereas chatbots such as
ChatGPT are designed to handle language after being trained on existing text,
the CRISPR-designing AIs were instead trained on vast troves of biological data
in the form of protein or genome sequences. The goal of this ‘pre-training’
step is to imbue the models with insight into naturally occurring genetic
sequences, such as which amino acids tend to go together. This information can
then be applied to tasks such as the creation of totally new sequences.
Madani’s team previously
used a protein language model it developed, called ProGen, to come up with new
antibacterial proteins4. To devise new CRISPRs, the team retrained an updated
version of ProGen with examples of millions of diverse CRISPR systems, which
bacteria and other single-celled microbes called archaea use to fend off
viruses.
Because CRISPR
gene-editing systems comprise not only proteins, but also RNA molecules that
specify their target, Madani’s team developed another AI model to design these
‘guide RNAs’.The team then used the neural network to design millions of new
CRISPR protein sequences that belong to dozens of different families of such
proteins found in nature. To see whether AI-designed CRISPRs were bona fide
gene editors, Madani’s team synthesized DNA sequences corresponding to more
than 200 protein designs belonging to the CRISPR–Cas9 system that is now widely
used in the laboratory. When the researchers inserted these sequences —
instructions for a Cas9 protein and a ‘guide RNA’ — into human cells, many of
the gene editors were able to precisely cut their intended targets in the
genome.
The most promising Cas9
protein — a molecule they’ve named OpenCRISPR-1 — was just as efficient at
cutting targeted DNA sequences as a widely used bacterial CRISPR–Cas9 enzyme,
and it made many fewer cuts in the wrong place. The researchers also used the
OpenCRISPR-1 design to create a base editor — a precision gene-editing tool
that changes individual DNA ‘letters’ — and found that it, too, was as
efficient as other base-editing systems, as well as less prone to errors.
Another team, led by
Brian Hie, a computational biologist at Stanford University in California, and
by bioengineer Patrick Hsu at the Arc Institute in Palo Alto, California, used
an AI model capable of generating both protein and RNA sequences. This model,
called EVO, was trained on 80,000 genomes from bacteria and archaea, as well as
other microbial sequences, amounting to 300 billion DNA letters. Hie and Hsu’s
team has not yet tested its designs in the lab. But predicted structures of
some of the CRISPR–Cas9 systems the group designed resemble those of natural
proteins. The work was described in a preprint2 posted on bioRxiv.org, and has
not been peer reviewed.
Precision medicine
“This is amazing,” says
Noelia Ferruz Capapey, a computational biologist at the Molecular Biology
Institute of Barcelona in Spain. She’s impressed by the fact that researchers
can use the OpenCRISPR-1 molecule without restriction, unlike with some
patented gene-editing tools. The ProGen2 model and ‘atlas’ of CRISPR sequences
used to fine-tune it are also freely available.
The hope is that
AI-designed gene-editing tools could be better suited to medical applications
than are existing CRISPRs, says Madani. Profluent, he adds, is hoping to
partner with companies that are developing gene-editing therapies to test
AI-generated CRISPRs. “It really necessitates precision and a bespoke design.
And I think that just can’t be done by copying and pasting” from naturally
occurring CRISPR systems, he says.
4) Why is exercise
good for you? Scientists are finding answers in our cells By Gemma Conroy
Decades of evidence shows
that exercise leads to healthier, longer lives. Researchers are just starting
to work out what it does to cells to reap this reward.When Bente Klarlund
Pedersen wakes up in the morning, the first thing she does is pull on her
trainers and go for a 5-kilometre run — and it’s not just about staying fit.
“It’s when I think and solve problems without knowing it,” says Klarlund
Pedersen, who specializes in internal medicine and infectious diseases at the
University of Copenhagen. “It’s very important for my well-being.”
Whether it’s running or
lifting weights, it’s no secret that exercise is good for your health. Research
has found that briskly walking for 450 minutes each week is associated with
living around 4.5 years longer than doing no leisure-time exercise1, and that
engaging in regular physical activity can fortify the immune system and stave
off chronic diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and type 2
diabetes. But, says Dafna Bar-Sagi, a cell biologist at New York University,
the burning question is how does exercise deliver its health-boosting effects?
“We know that it is
good, but there is still a huge gap in understanding what it is doing to
cells,” says Bar-Sagi, who walks on a treadmill for 30 minutes, five days a
week.
In the past decade,
researchers have started to build a picture of the vast maze of cellular and
molecular processes that are triggered throughout the body during — and even
after — a workout. Some of these processes dial down inflammation, whereas
others ramp up cellular repair and maintenance. Exercise also prompts cells to
release signalling molecules that carry a frenzy of messages between organs and
tissues: from muscle cells to the immune and cardiovascular systems, or from
the liver to the brain.
But researchers are just
beginning to work out the meaning of this cacophony of crosstalk, says Atul
Shahaji Deshmukh, a molecular biologist at the University of Copenhagen. “Any
single molecule doesn’t work alone in the system,” says Deshmukh, who enjoys
mountain biking during the summer. “It’s an entire network that functions
together.”Exercise is also attracting attention from funders. The US National
Institutes of Health (NIH), for instance, has invested US$170 million into a
six-year study of people and rats that aims to create a comprehensive map of
the molecules behind the effects of exercise, and how they change during and
after a workout. The consortium behind the study has already published its
first tranche of data from studies in rats, which explores how exercise induces
changes across organs, tissues and gene expression, and how those changes
differ between sexes2–4.
Building a sharper view
of the molecular world of exercise could reveal therapeutic targets for drugs
that mimic its effects — potentially offering the benefits of exercise in a
pill. However, whether such drugs can simulate all the advantages of the real
thing is controversial.
The work could also
offer clues about which types of physical activity can benefit people with
chronic illnesses, says Klarlund Pedersen. “We think you can prescribe exercise
as you can prescribe a medicine,” she says.
Hard-wired for exercise
Exercise is a
fundamental thread in the human evolutionary story. Although other primates
evolved as fairly sedentary species, humans switched to a hunter-gatherer
lifestyle that demanded walking long distances, carrying heavy loads of food
and occasionally running from threats.
Those with better
athletic prowess were better equipped to live longer lives, which made exercise
a core part of human physiology, says Daniel Lieberman, a palaeoanthropologist
at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The switch to a more active
lifestyle led to changes in the human body: exercise burns up energy that would
otherwise be stored as fat, which, in excess amounts, increases the risk of
cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers. The stress induced by
running or pumping iron has the potential to damage cells, but it also
kick-starts a cascade of cellular processes that work to reverse those effects.
This can leave the body in better shape than it would be without exercise, says
Lieberman.
Researchers have been
exploring some of the biological changes that occur during exercise for more
than a century. In 1910, pharmacologist Fred Ransom at the University of
Cambridge, UK, discovered that skeletal muscle cells secrete lactic acid, which
is created when the body breaks down glucose and turns it into fuel5. And in
1961, researchers speculated that skeletal muscle releases a substance that helps
to regulate glucose during exercise6.
More clues were in
store. In 1999, Klarlund Pedersen and her colleagues collected blood samples
from runners before and after they took part in a marathon and found that
several cytokines — a type of immune molecule — spiked immediately after
exercise and that many remained elevated for up to 4 hours afterwards7. Among
these cytokines were interleukin-6 (IL-6), a multifaceted protein that is a key
player in the body’s defence response. The following year, Klarlund Pedersen
and her colleagues discovered8 that IL-6 is secreted by contracting muscles
during exercise, making it an ‘exerkine’ — the umbrella term for compounds
produced in response to exercise.High levels of IL-6 can be beneficial or
harmful, depending on how it is provoked. At rest, too much IL-6 has an
inflammatory effect and is linked to obesity and insulin resistance, a hallmark
of type 2 diabetes, says Klarlund Pedersen. But when exercising, the molecule
activates its more calming family members, such as IL-10 and IL-1ra, which tone
down inflammation and its harmful effects. “With each bout of exercise, you
provoke an anti-inflammatory response,” says Klarlund Pedersen. Although some
physical activity is better than none, high-intensity, long-duration exercise
that engages large muscles — such as running or cycling — will crank up IL-6
production, adds Klarlund Pedersen.
Exercise is a balancing
act in other ways, too. Physical activity produces cellular stress, and certain
molecules counterbalance this damaging effect. When mitochondria — the
powerhouses that supply energy in cells — ramp up production during exercise,
they also produce more by-products called reactive oxygen species (ROS), which,
in excessive amounts, can damage proteins, lipids and DNA. But these ROS also
kick-start a horde of protective processes during exercise, offsetting their
more toxic effects and fortifying cellular defences.
Among the molecular
stars in this maintenance and repair arsenal are the proteins PGC-1α, which
regulates important skeletal muscle genes, and NRF2, which activates genes that
encode protective antioxidant enzymes. During exercise, the body has learnt to
benefit from a fundamentally stressful process. “If stress doesn’t kill you it
makes you stronger,” says Ye Tian, a geneticist at the Institute of Genetics
and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing.
Exerkines everywhere
Since IL-6 ushered in
the exerkine era, the explosion of multiomics — an approach that combines
various biological data sets, such as the proteome and metabolome — has allowed
researchers to go beyond chasing single molecules. They can now begin
untangling the convoluted molecular web that lies behind exercise, and how it
interacts with different systems across the body, says Michael Snyder, a
geneticist at Stanford University in California, who recently switched from
running to weightlifting. “We need to understand how these all work together,
because [humans] are a homeostatic machine that needs to be properly tuned,” he
says.
In 2020, Snyder and his
colleagues took blood samples from 36 people aged between 40 and 75 years old
before, during and at various time intervals after the volunteers ran on a
treadmill. The team used multiomic profiling to measure more than 17,000 molecules,
more than half of which showed significant changes after exercise9. They also
found that exercise triggered an elaborate ‘choreography’ of biological
processes such as energy metabolism, oxidative stress and inflammation.
Creating a catalogue of exercise molecules is an important first step in
understanding their effects on the body, says Snyder.Other studies have probed
how exercise affects cell types. A 2022 study in mice led by Jonathan Long, a
pathologist at Stanford University, identified more than 200 types of protein
that were expressed differently by 21 cell types in response to exercise10. The
researchers were expecting to find that cells in the liver, muscle and bone
would be most sensitive to exercise, but to their surprise, they found that a
much more widespread type of cell, one that appears in many tissues and organs,
showed the biggest changes in the proteins that it cranked out or turned down.
The findings suggest that more cell types shift gears during a workout than was
previously thought, although what these changes mean for the body is still an
open question, says Long.
The findings also showed
that after exercise, the mice’s liver cells squeezed out several types of
carboxylesterase enzyme, which are known to ramp up metabolism. When Long and
his colleagues genetically tweaked mice so that their livers expressed elevated
levels of these metabolism-enhancing enzymes, and then fed them a diet of fatty
foods, the mice didn’t gain weight. They also had increased endurance when they
ran on a treadmill. “The improvement in exercise performance by these secreted
carboxylesterases was not known before,” says Long, whose weekly exercise
regime involves swimming and lifting weights. He adds that if the enzymes could
be produced in the right quantities and purity, they could possibly be used as
exercise-mimicking compounds.
During a workout,
distant organs and tissues communicate with each other through molecular
signals. Along with exerkines, extracellular vesicles (EVs) — nanosized,
bubble-shaped structures that carry biological material — could be one of the
mechanisms behind organ and tissue crosstalk, says Mark Febbraio, a former
triathlete who is now an exercise physiologist at Monash University in
Melbourne, Australia. In 2018, Febbraio and his team inserted tubes into the
femoral arteries of 11 healthy men and drew blood before and after they rode an
exercise bike at an increasing pace for an hour. During and after exercise, but
not at rest, they found a spike in the levels of more than 300 types of protein
that compose or are carried by EVs11.
When the team then
collected EVs from mice that had run on a treadmill and injected them into
another group of healthy mice, most of the EVs ended up in liver cells. In a
separate mouse study that is yet to be published, Febbraio and his colleagues
found hints that the contents of these liver-bound EVs can arrest a type of
liver disease. A big question is whether EVs also deposit genetic material into
different cells, and if so, what that means for the body. “We still don’t know
a great deal,” he says.
Exercise as medicine
Larger efforts are under
way to build a detailed molecular snapshot of how exercise exerts its
health-boosting effects across tissues and organs. In 2016, the NIH established
the Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium (MoTrPAC), a six-year
study on around 2,600 people and more than 800 rats that aims to generate a
molecular map of exercise. The effort — one of the largest studies on physical
activity — is teasing apart the effects of aerobic and endurance exercise on
multiple tissue types across different ages and fitness levels.
The first data set is
from rats that completed one to eight weeks of treadmill training, and had
blood and tissue samples collected at the end. The researchers pinpointed
thousands of molecular changes throughout the rats’ bodies, many of which could
have a protective effect on health, such as dialling down inflammatory bowel
disease and tissue injury2. A separate study3 found that the effects of
endurance training differed across sexes: markers associated with the breakdown
of fat increased in male fat tissue, driving fat loss, whereas female fat
tissue showed an increase in markers related to fat-cell maintenance and
insulin signalling, which might protect against cardiometabolic diseases. A
third study4 found that exercise alters the expression of genes linked to
diseases such as asthma, and could help to trigger similar adaptive responses.A
big goal is to uncover why exercise has such varied effects on people of
different sexes, ages and ethnic backgrounds, says Snyder, who is a member of
the MoTrPAC team. “It’s very obvious that some people benefit better than
others,” he says.
Researchers hope that
the reams of molecular data will eventually help clinicians to develop tailored
exercise prescriptions for people with chronic diseases, says MoTrPAC team
member Bret Goodpaster, an exercise physiologist at the University of
Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. Farther down the track, such insights could be used
to develop therapeutics that mimic some of the beneficial effects of exercise
in people who are too ill to work out, he says. “That’s not to say that we will
have exercise in a pill, but there are certain aspects of exercise that could
be druggable,” says Goodpaster, who has taken part in triathlons, marathons and
cycling races.
Several teams are
already in the early stages of developing exercise-mimicking therapeutics. In
March 2023, a team led by Thomas Burris, a pharmacologist at the University of Florida
in Gainesville, identified a compound that targets proteins called
oestrogen-related receptors, which are known to trigger key metabolic pathways
in energy-intensive tissues, such as heart and skeletal muscle, particularly
during exercise12. When the researchers administered the compound — called
SLU-PP-332 — to mice, they found that the treated rodents were able to run 70%
longer and 45% farther than untreated mice. Six months later, a separate study,
also led by Burris, found that obese mice treated with the drug lost weight and
gained less fat than those that didn’t receive the treatment — even though
their diet was the same and they didn’t exercise any more than usual13.
There is already
evidence that exercise itself acts like medicine. In 2022, Bar-Sagi and her
colleagues found that mice with pancreatic cancer had elevated levels of CD8 T
cells — which destroy cancerous and virus-infected cells — when they did 30
minutes of aerobic exercise for 5 days a week14. These killer cells express a
receptor for IL-15, another exerkine released by muscles during exercise. The
researchers found that when CD8 T cells bind to IL-15, they unleash a more
powerful immune response on tumours in the pancreas. This effect prolonged
survival of mice with tumours by around 40%, compared with that of control
mice. The findings held up when Bar-Sagi and her team analysed tumour tissue
taken from people with pancreatic cancer. Those who did 60 minutes of aerobic
and strength training each week had more CD8 T cells, and were twice as likely
to survive for up to 5 years, than were people in the control group.
Although exercising more
is a no-brainer for improving health, around 25% of adults globally do not meet
the World Health Organization’s recommended levels of exercise each week:
150–300 minutes or more of moderate-intensity exercise, such as a brisk walk;
or 75–150 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise, such as running. David James,
an exercise physiologist at the University of Sydney in Australia, who rides
his bike to work each day, says that understanding the inner workings of
exercise could help to develop clearer public-health messages about why
physical activity is important and how it can offset the risk of getting
chronic diseases. “That’s a powerful message,” says James.
5) Archaeology team
discovers a 7,000-year-old settlement in Serbia by Kiel University
Together with
cooperation partners from the Museum of Vojvodina in Novi Sad (Serbia), the
National Museum Zrenjanin and the National Museum Pančevo, a team from the
ROOTS Cluster of Excellence has discovered a previously unknown Late Neolithic
settlement near the Tamiš River in Northeast Serbia."This discovery is of
outstanding importance, as hardly any larger Late Neolithic settlements are
known in the Serbian Banat region," says team leader Professor Dr. Martin
Furholt from the Institute of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology at Kiel
University.
Geophysics reveals a 13-hectare settlement structure
The newly discovered
settlement is located near the modern village of Jarkovac in the province of
Vojvodina. With the help of geophysical methods, the team was able to fully map
its extent in March of this year. It covers an area of 11 to 13 hectares and is
surrounded by four to six ditches.
"A settlement of
this size is spectacular. The geophysical data also gives us a clear idea of
the structure of the site 7,000 years ago," says ROOTS doctoral student
and co-team leader Fynn Wilkes.
Parallel to the
geophysical investigations, the German-Serbian research team also
systematically surveyed the surfaces of the surrounding area for artifacts.
This surface material indicates that the settlement represents a residential
site of the Vinča culture, which is dated to between 5400 and 4400 BCE.
However, there are also
strong influences from the regional Banat culture. "This is also
remarkable, as only a few settlements with material from the Banat culture are
known from what is now Serbia," explains Wilkes.Investigation of circular
enclosures in Hungary
During the same two-week
research campaign, the team from the Cluster of Excellence also investigated
several Late Neolithic circular features in Hungary together with partners from
the Janus Pannonius Museum in Pécs. These so-called "rondels" are attributed
to the Lengyel culture (5000/4900–4500/4400 BCE). The researchers also used
both geophysical technologies and systematic walking surveys of the surrounding
area.
Thanks to the
combination of both methods, the researchers were able to differentiate the
eras represented at the individual sites more clearly than before. "This
enabled us to re-evaluate some of the already known sites in Hungary. For
example, sites that were previously categorized as Late Neolithic circular
ditches turned out to be much younger structures," explains co-team leader
Kata Furholt from the Institute of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology at
Kiel University.New insights into the distribution of wealth and knowledge in
the Neolithic period
The highlights of the
short but intensive fieldwork in Hungary included the re-evaluation of a
settlement previously dated to the Late Neolithic period, which is very likely
to belong to the Late Copper Age and Early Bronze Age Vučedol culture
(3000/2900–2500/2400 BCE), as well as the complete documentation of a Late
Neolithic circular ditch in the village of Vokány.
"Southeast Europe
is a very important region in order to answer the question how knowledge and
technologies spread in early periods of human history and how this was related
to social inequalities. This is where new technologies and knowledge, such as
metalworking, first appeared in Europe. With the newly discovered and
reclassified sites, we are collecting important data for a better understanding
of social inequality and knowledge transfer," says Professor Martin
Furholt.
The results are being
incorporated into the interdisciplinary project Inequality of Wealth and
Knowledge of the Cluster of Excellence ROOTS, which is focusing on these
issues. The analyses are still ongoing.
6) New findings
point to an Earth-like environment on ancient Mars :by Los Alamos National
Laboratory
A research team using
the ChemCam instrument onboard NASA's Curiosity rover discovered
higher-than-usual amounts of manganese in lakebed rocks within Gale Crater on
Mars, which indicates that the sediments were formed in a river, delta, or near
the shoreline of an ancient lake. The results were published today in Journal
of Geophysical Research: Planets. "It is difficult for manganese oxide to
form on the surface of Mars, so we didn't expect to find it in such high
concentrations in a shoreline deposit," said Patrick Gasda, of Los Alamos
National Laboratory's Space Science and Applications group and lead author on
the study.
"On Earth, these
types of deposits happen all the time because of the high oxygen in our
atmosphere produced by photosynthetic life, and from microbes that help
catalyze those manganese oxidation reactions.
"On Mars, we don't
have evidence for life, and the mechanism to produce oxygen in Mars's ancient
atmosphere is unclear, so how the manganese oxide was formed and concentrated
here is really puzzling. These findings point to larger processes occurring in
the Martian atmosphere or surface water and shows that more work needs to be
done to understand oxidation on Mars," Gasda added.
ChemCam, which was
developed at Los Alamos and CNES (the French space agency), uses a laser to
form a plasma on the surface of a rock, and collects that light in order to
quantify elemental composition in rocks.
The sedimentary rocks
explored by the rover are a mix of sands, silts, and muds. The sandy rocks are
more porous, and groundwater can more easily pass through sands compared to the
muds that make up most of the lakebed rocks in the Gale Crater.The research
team looked at how manganese could have been enriched in these sands—for
example, by percolation of groundwater through the sands on the shore of a lake
or mouth of a delta—and what oxidant could be responsible for the precipitation
of manganese in the rocks.
On Earth, manganese
becomes enriched because of oxygen in the atmosphere, and this process is often
sped up by the presence of microbes. Microbes on Earth can use the many
oxidation states of manganese as energy for metabolism; if life was present on
ancient Mars, the increased amounts of manganese in these rocks along the lake
shore would have been a helpful energy source for life.
"The Gale lake
environment, as revealed by these ancient rocks, gives us a window into a
habitable environment that looks surprisingly similar to places on Earth
today," said Nina Lanza, principal investigator for the ChemCam
instrument. "Manganese minerals are common in the shallow, oxic waters
found on lake shores on Earth, and it's remarkable to find such recognizable
features on ancient Mars."
1) Rahul Gandhi
skips Amethi, to file nomination from Rae Bareli:
Rahul Gandhi is already
contesting the Lok Sabha elections from Kerala's Wayanad district.Congress
leader Rahul Gandhi will file his Lok Sabha elections' nomination from Uttar
Pradesh's Rae Bareli, the family stronghold, which was vacated by Sonia Gandhi.
The BJP, meanwhile, has said the Congress stalwart will lose from Rae Bareli as
well.
The last date for the
filing of nomination papers for the two constituencies is May 3, Friday.
The two seats, which
used to be the Gandhi family's strongholds, will go to polls on May 20.The Rae
Bareli seat was vacated by Sonia Gandhi after she became a member of the Rajya
Sabha earlier this year.Rahul Gandhi is already contesting the Lok Sabha
elections from Kerala's Wayanad district.
Rahul Gandhi, the
incumbent MP from Kerala's Wayanad, will contest the Rae Bareli polls against
BJP's Dinesh Pratap Singh, whom Sonia Gandhi defeated in the 2019 general
elections.Kishori Lal Sharma is a close confidant of Rahul Gandhi's in Amethi.
Rahul Gandhi represented
the Amethi constituency in the Lok Sabha thrice -- 2004, 2009, 2014. However,
in 2019, he lost his family stronghold to BJP's Smriti Irani. He was elected to
the Lower House of Parliament from Kerala's Wayanad.
Sonia Gandhi is likely
to attend Rahul Gandhi's nomination proceedings. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will
accompany Kishori Lal Sharma.Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's
supporters had already prepared their nomination papers.BJP's Smriti Irani has
filed her nomination papers from Amethi.
The delay in announcing
candidates on the two seats had prompted BJP's attacks. The party attributed
the delay to the Congress's alleged lack of self-confidence.
Asked if he would
contest the elections from Amethi, Rahul Gandhi last month said he would do
what the party leadership decides.Sonia Gandhi represented Rae Bareli between
2004 and 2024. She won the Lok Sabha polls in Amethi in 1999.
The Congress is
contesting 17 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh. Its ally, Akhilesh
Yadav's Samajwadi Party is contesting 63 seats.
2) Prajwal Revanna
‘sex video’ case: 7 times prominent politicians were booked for 'crimes against
women' in India
Prajwal Revanna ‘sex
video’ case: As per a 2023 analysis by election watchdog ADR, the BJP had 44
lawmakers with cases of crimes against women against them. The Congress had 25
followed by AAP with 13 sitting MPs of MLAs who declared cases related to
crimes against women.Janata Dal (Secular) Member of Parliament (MP) Prajwal
Revanna, embroiled in a scandal over obscene 'sex videos' allegedly involving
him, has been booked by Karnataka police after an accusation of harassment by a
woman who worked as a house help at his home.
The woman, 47, has also
named Holenarasipur MLA HD Revanna, Prajwal's father, as an accused. The case
has been registered at Holenarasipur police station in Karnataka's Hassan
district on April 28.Revanna, the grandson of former Prime Minister HD Deve
Gowda, and whose father, HD Revanna, is a former minister, is seeking another
term in the Lok Sabha from Hassan seat. The constituency went to polling in the
second phase of Lok Sabha elections on April 26. JD (S) is an ally of the
Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) in Karnataka. Revanna filed a complaint on April
28, claiming the viral videos are “morphed" and are being circulated to “tarnish
his image and poison the minds of voters"
3) BJP's decision to not fight in Kashmir Valley
helped NC and PDP
The BJP has fielded its
candidates in Udhampur and Jammu and is backing its allies, People's Conference
and Apni Party, in Baramulla, Srinagar and Anantnag-Rajouri.
In Short
BJP does not field any
candidates in 3 Lok Sabha seats in Kashmir Valley
Party's election
strategy has allowed NC and PDP to attack the BJP
Jammu and Kashmir is
voting in 5 phases from April 19 to May 20
The BJP's election game
plan in Jammu and Kashmir has placed both its allies, People's Conference and
Apni Party, in a restrained position. These parties are hesitating to publicly
acknowledge their allegiance to the BJP due to the saffron party's decision to
not field any candidates from three Lok Sabha seats in the Kashmir Valley.
The BJP has fielded its
candidates in Udhampur and Jammu and is backing its allies in Baramulla,
Srinagar and Anantnag-Rajouri.This strategy has served as an advantage for the
National Conference (NC) and the Jammu and Kashmir People's Democratic Party
(PDP). Distinctly different from conventional politics, the NC and the PDP,
with a neck-and-neck competition in all three constituencies of Kashmir, are
not targeting each other but directing their attacks towards the BJP.
Tanveer Sadiq, NC's
chief spokesperson, told India Today that BJP's actions in Jammu and Kashmir,
particularly in the past six years, have made the people angry and therefore,
the rage is all being directed towards the saffron party and its proxies.
With the change
witnessed in the political climate of Jammu and Kashmir following the scrapping
of Article 370, the NC and the PDP have realised that it would be futile and
politically counter-productive to target each other. Both parties are seeking
to regain their relevance and existence in Kashmir politics and are banking on
their own ground assessment.PDP president Mehbooba Mufti has disparaged the BJP
in all her public addresses. However, she has consciously refrained from
criticising the NC. This strategy effectively portrays the BJP as the primary
adversary.
"The BJP has
dismembered Jammu and Kashmir and disempowered its people. While doing so, they
have been going around and lying about what they have done to the people here
and claiming that they are happy. But the fact remains that they know the kind
of sentiment that exists for them and for what they have done and by running
away from the elections," said PDP's chief spokesperson Suhail Bukhari.
"They have
acknowledged that they have been lying about it (situation after Article 370)
all through. They are trying to do some face-saving through their proxies and
that too has failed miserably," he claimed.
This crafty strategy has
confounded BJP's allies like the Apni Party and the People's Conference,
forcing them into a quandary. They are now trying to deflect blame onto the NC
and PDP and defend the BJP, fearing an election setback, while maintaining a
balance between pleasing the people and maintaining good relations with the
ruling party.
On the contrary, senior
BJP leader and former Deputy Chief Minister Kavinder Gupta defended the party's
election strategy in Jammu and Kashmir as being in the larger national
interest.
4) I refuse to be
cowed down by engineered narratives,’ Bengal Governor CV Ananda Bose reacts to
sex harassment allegation
Bengal Governor CV
Ananda Bose denies sexual harassment claims by Raj Bhavan employee, calls
allegations 'engineered narrative.' Vows to continue fighting against
corruption and violence in Bengal.Bengal Governor CV Ananda Bose rejected
claims of sexual harassment made by an employee at the Raj Bhavan.
Bose further labelled
the allegations as an “engineered narrative"In a post on X, Raj Bhavan
Kolkata said, “To the Raj Bhavan staff who expressed solidarity with Hon'ble
Governor Dr. C. V. Ananda Bose against whom some derogatory narratives were
circulated by two disgruntled employees as agents of political parties, Hon'ble
Governor said".“Truth shall triumph. I refuse to be cowed down by
engineered narratives. If anybody wants some election benefits by maligning me,
God Bless them. But they cannot stop my fight against corruption and violence
in Bengal," it further added.
The Governor's statement
came after senior TMC leaders claimed this evening in a series of social media
posts that the woman, who had levelled the allegations, has been taken to a
police station to complain against Bose.
Earlier on Thursday,
Trinamool Congress MP Sagarika Ghose accused Bengal Governor CV Ananda Bose of
'molesting' a woman. In a post on X, Ghose stated that a woman claimed she was
molested when she visited the Governor at Raj Bhavan that day.
“BIG. Bengal governor CV
Ananda Bose accused of molesting a woman. How utterly APPALLING and HORRIFYING.
Ahead of @narendramodi visit to Kolkata who is supposed to stay overnight at
Raj Bhavan, a woman has alleged that she was molested while she went to meet
the Governor at Raj Bhavan today," the post read.Another Trinamool
Congress MP, Saket Gokhale, also posted about the issue on his X account.
West Bengal's Minister
for Women and Child Development, Shashi Panja, criticized the Governor's
actions, calling it "shameful." She said, “The Governor has maligned
his post and has used it to 'torture a woman'.""It is appalling and
shocking to see such an incident. This is the same Governor who had reached out
to Sandeshkhali to talk about women's rights and Nari Shakti. This is shameful
that the Governor sought undue advantages in the pretext of giving her a
permanent job. We want Prime Minister Narendra Modi who will be addressing
rallies in Bengal tomorrow to react on this issue," she said.
PTI reported citing
sources in the Governor House, the "woman employee with the help of her
alleged boyfriend who is also an employee of the Raj Bhavan was blocking
complaints (from people) being sent to the Election Commission of India.
A Raj Bhavan said, “When
she was reprimanded for that, she went outside and alleged molestation. She is
in the habit of throwing tantrums against her colleagues because of some
disease."Since assuming office in November 2022, the West Bengal Governor
and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government have strained relationships with
frequent clashes over various issues.
5) After Surat, another
jolt to Congress as its Indore candidate withdraws nomination
BJP spokesperson Hitesh
Bajpai claimed that Bam "was disgruntled by the loot, exploitation and
non-cooperation of senior Congress leaders”.The Congress in Madhya Pradesh
suffered a setback on Monday with its Lok Sabha candidate from Indore, Akshay
Kanti Bam, withdrawing his nomination. He was expected to join the BJP.
State Cabinet minister
and BJP leader Kailash Vijayvargiya in a post on X said: “Congress Lok Sabha
candidate from Indore, Akshay Kanti Bam ji, is welcomed into the BJP under the
leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, national president Shri J P Nadda,
Chief Minister Mohan Yadav and state president V D Sharma.” However, the party
was yet to make an official announcement.
The Congress alleged
that Bam withdrew his nomination under pressure and that he had been
“intimidated, threatened and tortured in various ways”.District Collector
Ashish Singh said Monday was the last date for withdrawing nominations for the
May 13 polls in Indore and “three candidates, including Congress’s Bam,
withdrew their nominations today as per due procedure”. Earlier in the day,
Bam, along with BJP MLA Ramesh Mendola, visited the District Collector’s office
to withdraw his nomination.
This comes days after
the Election Commission rejected the nomination of Congress’s Surat candidate,
leading to BJP’s Mukesh Dalal winning the Lok Sabha seat unopposed. Congress
candidate Nilesh Kumbhani’s nomination was rejected on April 21 after three of
his proposers submitted affidavits to the Surat district election officer
claiming that the signatures on the document were not theirs. The nomination
form of the Congress’s substitute candidate had also been invalidated on the
same groundIn Indore, Congress had pitted poll debutant Bam against incumbent
BJP MP Shankar Lalwani. After Bam’s withdrawal, Congress leaders went into a
huddle as the party looked for a suitable opposition candidate to back.Relief
for Congress unlikely
WITH THE last day for
withdrawal of nomination having passed, Congress will go unrepresented in the
election in Indore. Since the candidate’s withdrawal was in line with EC rules,
the party is unlikely to get any relief. The sole option for the party is to
back another Opposition candidate.
Responding to Bam’s
withdrawal, state Congress president Jitu Patwari said that he had been charged
under IPC section 307 (attempt to murder) just a few days ago. “He was
intimidated, threatened, and tortured in various ways throughout last night and
when his form was returned this morning, the message being given is that you,
the public, should not use your right to vote. I ask that if you believe in
democracy, then everyone should stand against this dictatorship,” Patwari
said.Bam had been campaigning in Indore until Sunday night and had even spoken
to some Congress workers at 7 am Monday. When photographs of him with
Vijayvargiya started circulating on social media later in the day, Congress
leaders rushed to Bam’s residence, where they found a police contingent outside
and missing Congress flags.
“He has been unreachable
since morning. Bam was recently charged under a section 307 case. His family
owns several private law and management colleges in the city and they were
under investigation recently. This was the pressure applied on him by the BJP
leadership. He should never have been given a ticket,” a senior Congress leader
from Indore said.
In his election
affidavit, Bam disclosed that there were three cases pending against him. Two
of those were related to land disputes, and the third was a rash and negligent
driving case registered in 2018.
On April 24, the day Bam
filed his nomination, a district court framed charges against him and his
father, Kantilal, under IPC section 307 (attempt to murder), which carries a
10-year prison sentence if convicted, in one of the land dispute cases. Bam and
his father were summoned to appear in court on May 10.During scrutiny of
nomination papers, the BJP’s legal cell had raised an objection regarding Bam’s
nomination not mentioning the addition of the attempt to murder charge, but
poll officials overruled the objection as the charge was added on the day he
filed his papers.
According to the court
order adding the attempt to murder charge, the accused persons, including Bam
and his father, had on October 4, 2017 “assaulted the complainant’s labourers,
set fire to a soybean crop, used criminal force and instructed to open fire at
the complainant”.While BJP leaders said Bam switched over after being inspired
by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s guarantees, Congress leaders said the BJP had
been putting pressure on him for some time. A Congress leader said Bam was also
unhappy over increasing election expenses. “There are around 2,500 polling
booths, and at the last minute, the expenses began rising. There was anger over
that. But his departure caught everyone by surprise,” the leader said.
Former Chief Minister
and BJP leader Shivraj Singh Chouhan said: “The condition of the Congress has
become such that even candidates do not want to be in the party.”BJP
spokesperson Pankaj Chaturvedi told The Indian Express, “The Congress candidate
has withdrawn his nomination. This is a failure of the Congress leadership.
It’s a failure of their policies. Their vote bank politics, inheritance politics…
has backfired. Congress workers were already leaving, and now the leaders have
joined.”
Chaturvedi said
allegations that the BJP had put pressure on Bam were “cheap excuses”. He said:
“10 lakh leaders have left the party across India, and around 5 lakh in Madhya
Pradesh alone. Can you pressure them all? The Congress leadership is going
through a policy paralysis and leaders are joining the BJP as they believe in
Modi’s guarantees.”
Hitesh Bajpai, another
BJP spokesperson, claimed Bam “was disgruntled by the loot, exploitation and
non-cooperation of senior Congress leaders”.
6) BJP drops Brij
Bhushan Sharan Singh, fields his younger son Karan Bhushan from Kaiserganj
BJP names Uttar Pradesh
minister Dinesh Pratap Singh for the Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seat. He had reduced
the then Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s victory margin in 2019 The Bhartiya
Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday ended the suspense on Uttar Pradesh’s Kaiserganj
and Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seats, which have been under intense public and media
scrutiny for different reasons, barely 36-hours ahead of the close of
nominations, dropping its controversial but heavyweight sitting MP Brij Bhushan
Sharan Singh while settling for his 33-year-old son Karan Bhushan.
The party also reposed
faith in Uttar Pradesh minister Dinesh Pratap Singh, who had reduced the then
Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s winning margin in 2019, in Rae Bareli. The
Congress is yet to name its candidate for the seat though there the buzz is
that a “Gandhi family” member could contest the family pocket borough.At Brij
Bhushan’s Gonda home, supporters had started distributing sweets and as soon as
the BJP made the decision official, sloganeering in support of Brij Bhushan and
his son began.
The suspense on
Kaiserganj was all the more as the Samajwadi Party had also tactically held
back declaring its candidate on the seat, giving rise to speculation that the
state’s main opposition party was looking to accommodate the politically
influential Brij Bhushan, despite him being accused by some of country’s top
wrestlers of misusing his authority as Wrestling Federation of India (WFI)
chief, a post he doesn’t hold now for the first time since 2012.A chargesheet
was filed against six-time MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh under Sections 354,
354D and 345A of the Indian Penal Code for stalking and sexual harassment on
June 15.
“Yes, my son has got the
ticket,” Brij Bhushan told the media in Kaiserganj, where this news had spread
even before the BJP officially confirmed it.
“Kya karein, dabdaba toh
hai, woh toh Bhagwan ka diya hua hai (what can I do, the clout and political
heft is God-gifted),” he said when local media persons asked him if the ticket
for his son meant that he would continue to wield his clout.
“I thank the party. I am
not bigger than it,” Brij Bhushan said in a subsequent reaction to the
media.His son Karan Bhushan told the media, “I am thankful to the party for
giving me an opportunity to serve the masses.”
Even before BJP made the
decision to pass the Kaiserganj baton from the father to the son, a viral video
of Karan Bhushan seeking his father’s blessings had been interpreted as
confirmation in the region that the ticket would stay in Brij Bhushan’s family.
This is the second time
when Brij Bhushan’s a family member would be contesting instead of him. The
first time was in 1996 when his wife Ketaki had contested and won the seat as
Brij Bhushan wasn’t named a candidate since he was accused of sheltering
terrorists, a charge from which he was subsequently exonerated. There is a
sense that given his political heft in the region, his close association with
the Ram temple movement as well as his bonding with the main opposition
Samajwadi Party, the BJP could have found it difficult to ignore Brij Bhushan’s
claim on the seat but he ultimately seemed to have agreed on a compromise that
his younger son be named on the seat. His elder son Prateek is already the
sitting BJP MLA from the Gonda (Sadar) assembly constituency.
Even as the delay in
naming Kaiserganj had led to intense speculation, Brij Bhushan had remained
apparently unmoved amid all the media scrutiny and continued to campaign.
“There was never any
doubt as to who would contest from here. Now, this is official that Kaiserganj
is going to stay with the family as the baton is rightly getting passed from
the father to son,” said Dharmendra Singh, a Brij Bhushan loyalist in
Kaiserganj. The Bahujan Samaj Party named its candidate, Narendra Pandey, on
the seat earlier in the day while the Congress-backed Samajwadi Party candidate
is still awaited.
1) Madrid Open:
Top-seeded Bopanna-Ebden pair knocked out in first round
Bopanna and Ebden, who
are the reigning Australian Open men’s doubles champions, went down 7-6 (4),
7-5 in a contest that lasted one hour and 17 minutes.Top-seeded Indo-Australian
pair of Rohan Bopanna and Mathew Ebden bowed out of the ATP Mutua Madrid Open
after a shocking first-round loss to the unheralded duo of Sebastian Korda and
Jordan Thompson.Bopanna and Ebden, who are the reigning Australian Open men’s
doubles champions, went down 7-6 (4), 7-5 in a contest that lasted one hour and
17 minutes.
Squaring off for the
first time, the American-Australian duo matched Bopanna and Ebden shot for
shot.Korda and Thompson displayed a strong service game and saved the lone
break point they conceded in the opening set.
To their credit, Bopanna
and Ebden also did not allow Korda and Thompson to convert the three breaks points
they ended up conceding. However, Korda and Thompson managed to gain the
upper-hand by clinching the set in a tie-breaker.
Korda and Thompson
gained in confidence and managed to break Bopanna and Ebden once from the four
chances that came their way.The top seeds, in contrast, could not exert any
such pressure, resulting in an early exit from the tournament, being played on
clay.
The rare setback
notwithstanding, Bopanna and Ebden have enjoyed a good run on the circuit,
winning the Indian Wells Masters last year which made the 43-year-old Indian
the oldest ever ATP Masters 1000 champion.The duo made the men’s doubles
semifinals at Wimbledon and the final of the US Open in the same season.Earlier
this year, Bopanna also became the oldest world number one in doubles thanks to
the Australian Open triumph.
2) CSK vs PBKS
highlights, IPL 2024: Punjab Kings defeats Chennai Super Kings by seven wickets
CSK vs PBKS: Catch the
highlights from the IPL 2024 match between Chennai Super Kings and Punjab Kings
at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai.
CSK 162/7 in 20 overs
Arshdeep to bowl the
final over. Starts with a wide. Low full toss and Dhoni hits a boundary.
Another full but this time Dhoni misses it. Another wide. Dhoni lofts towards
off side Mitchell wants a run but Dhoni sends him back. Dot on the fourth ball.
SIX! Low full toss again and this time Dhoni connects it and goes over cover.
Dhoni slices just over short third. They attempt a double but Dhoni can’t reach
on the second run and is OUT FOR THE FIRST TIME THIS SEASON
PBKS 163/3 in 17.5 overs
Gleeson. Starts with a
beamer. Curran misses the free hit. Four! Dube misfields at the midwicket
region and balls goes for four. Curran given out LBW! Pitching outside leg and
the decision is turned. Shashank pushes the ball towards square leg and gets a
double. Match over. PBKS wins by seven wickets.
3) India vs
Indonesia, Thomas Cup 2024: Defending champion finishes second after 1-4 loss
to Indonesia
India, having beaten
England and Thailand to enter the knockouts, is playing the most successful
team in the Thomas Cup, Indonesia, in its final group stage game.Defending
champion India lost 1-4 against Indonesia after Dhruv Kapila and Sai Pratheek
lost in straight games to Leo Rolly Carnando and Daniel Marthin, 22-20, 21-11,
in Chengdu, China, on Wednesday.India, having beaten England and Thailand in
the group stage, has already qualified for the knockouts, but lost its chance
to go top in Group C to Indonesia after losing the tie.
Earlier, H. S. Prannoy
gave India a positive start after beating Anthony Ginting 13-21, 21-12, 21-12
to take a 1-0 lead in the contest.
“I knew that Ginting was
going to be quick in the opening game. But I knew that if I stuck with him in
the second game till 13-all, 14-all then I had a chance,” said Prannoy after
the match adding that he is always confident when match goes into the decider.
But the results since
were all disappointing in three losses. Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag
Shetty lost the men’s doubles 22-24, 24-22 and 21-19 to Muhammad Shohibul
Fikri, Bagas Maulana while Lakshya Sen finished second-best in the the men’s
singles against Jonatan Christie with a score 18-21, 21-16, 17-21.
In the final game,
Kidambhi Srikanth lost 21-19, 22-24, 12-19 to Chico Aura Dwi Wardoyo as India finished
second in the group and qualified for the final eight.
India will face Group A
winner China in the quarterfinals on Thursday. China thrashed Australia and
Canada 5-0 each while it pipped South Korea 3-2 in its final group stage match
on April 30.
India lost to Indonesia
1-4 (HS Prannoy bt Anthony Ginting 13-21, 21-12, 21-12; Satwiksairaj
Rankireddy/Chirag Shetty lost to Muhammad Fikri/Bagas Maulana 22-24, 24-22,
17-21; Lakshya Sen lost to Jonatan Christie 18-21, 21-16, 17-21; Dhruv
Kapila/Sai Pratheek K lost to Leo Carnando/Daniel Marthin 20-22, 11-21; Kidambi
Srikanth lost to Chico Dwi Wardoyo 21-19, 22-24, 14-21)
4) How India’s
bowling attack might shape up at T20 World Cup 2024
With the tracks in the
USA and West Indies being quite different, the team, specifically the bowling
attack, must make the best use of the conditions in order to make it deep into
the showpiece event.The Indian team for the upcoming ICC T20 World Cup 2024 in
the West Indies and USA was announced on Tuesday, with 15 players and four
reserves finding a place in the squad.The Rohit Sharma-led side will have
another shot at silverware after falling agonisingly short during the 2023 ODI
World Cup on home turf.
India is part of Group
A, along with Pakistan, Ireland, Canada and co-host USA. The team plays all its
group-stage encounters in the USA before the caravan moves to the Caribbean for
the Super Eights phase.
With the tracks in the
two nations being quite different, the team, specifically the bowling attack,
must make the best use of the conditions in order to make it deep into the
showpiece event.
India’s bowling will be
led by Jasprit Bumrah, who has been at his best during the ongoing edition of
the Indian Premier League (IPL). His ability to provide crucial breakthroughs
irrespective of the pitch conditions will be vital to India’s bid to challenge
for the trophy.
Supporting Bumrah will
be the pace trio of Mohammed Siraj, Arshdeep Singh and all-rounder Hardik
Pandya. Medium pace all-rounder Shivam Dube also finds a place in the squad but
his bowling might be undercooked, having not bowled a single ball so far in IPL
2024 for Chennai Super Kings.The selection to the final playing XI will
eventually be based on the conditions on the day. While Siraj is a proven
wicket-taker in the PowerPlay, left-arm pacer Arshdeep has evolved as a
multi-phase bowler for Punjab Kings.
Mumbai Indians captain
Hardik might also be effective in the PowerPlay when there is some movement in
the air for the white ball. Hardik has proved to be quite expensive at the
death this year so the team might be tempted to go with Arshdeep to combine
with Bumrah at the death.On the spin bowling front, India has four options -
two left-arm orthodox spinners and two wrist tweakers. Ideally, only one from
each category will make it to the playing XI, but if the West Indies pitches
are slow, India could experiment with a third spinner.
Ravindra Jadeja and Axar
Patel are the contenders for the number seven slot in the batting order,
performing the role of containing the innings post the six-over mark. Kuldeep
Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal are the more attacking options - the southpaw might
be higher in the pecking order as he turns the ball away from the left-handers,
a skill missing due to the lack of an off-spinner.
Apart from the regulars,
India also has the option of calling on Khaleel Ahmed and Avesh Khan from the
reserves in case of injury.
5) Archery World
Cup 2024 Shanghai: Indian men’s recurve team wins historic gold medal; Deepika
Kumari bags silver
The recurve mixed team
also clinched a bronze as Indian archers finished the Stage 1 World Cup with a
record haul of eight medals.The Indian men’s recurve team of Tarundeep Rai,
Pravin Jadhav and Dhiraj Bommadevara won the gold medal at the Archery World Cup
2024 in Shanghai, People’s Republic of China, on Sunday while Deepika Kumari
bagged a silver in the women’s individual recurve event.
India also clinched the
mixed team recurve bronze courtesy Ankita Bhakat and Dhiraj to finish the
Shanghai meet with eight medals - five gold, two silvers and one bronze. The
country’s compound archers accounted for five medals, including four golds, on
Saturday. This is India's best medal tally at any single edition of an archery
World Cup.
In the men’s team
recurve finals, India faced a daunting task against the top-seeded team from
the Republic of Korea, featuring Kim Woojin and Kim Je Deok - two members of
the Tokyo 2020 Olympics gold medal-winning team. Lee Woo Seok was the third
archer in the South Korean team.The Indian trio, however, remained calm under
pressure to pick up a stunning 5-1 win against the Koreans to secure the top
podium. This was India’s first World Cup gold medal in men’s recurve team
archery in 14 years.
The historic win will
significantly boost India’s chances of securing a berth in the Paris 2024
Olympics through the rankings route.Till now, Dhiraj Bommadevara has obtained
India’s only archery quota for Paris 2024.
Soon after, Dhiraj went
on to partner with Ankita Bhakat to win the bronze medal in the mixed team
event after blanking Mexico 6-0.On Wednesday, Dhiraj Bommadevara shot a new
national record score of 693 in the men’s recurve qualifiers and obtained third
seeding. Indian archers, however, drew a blank in the men’s individual recurve
event.
Pravin was ousted in the
opening round itself while Dhiraj exited in the third round. Olympian Tarundeep
Rai’s medal charge ended in the quarter-finals.
However, India’s Deepika
Kumari struck silver in the women’s individual recurve event.
The three-time Olympian
accounted for South Korea’s Nam Suhyeon 6-0 in the semis but lost to another
Korean Lim Sihyeon by a similar scoreline in the gold medal match.
This was Deepika’s
second successive medal since returning to the international arena after her
maternity break. She participated in her first international competition after
a 14-month-long hiatus at the 2024 Asia Cup in Baghdad this February and marked
the occasion by winning the individual gold medal.
HEERAMANDI: THE
DIAMOND BAZAAR – NETFLIX
Acclaimed filmmaker
Sanjay Leela Bhansali‘s much-awaited series, Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar,
will premiere on Netflix this week. The plot of the period drama revolves
around Mallikajaan and her courtesans from the red-light district of Heera
Mandi in Lahore, who face a new and unexpected threat as rebellion brews in
British-ruled India. The upcoming series features an ensemble cast that
includes Manisha Koirala, Sonakshi Sinha, Aditi Rao Hydari, Richa Chadha,
Sanjeeda Sheikh and Sharmin Segal. A must-watch title on the list of latest OTT
releases this week.
SHAITAAN – NETFLIX
After doing a good
business in the domestic and international circuits, filmmaker Vikas Bahl’s
horror flick Shaitaan will finally arrive on OTT (Netflix) this week. The film
delves into the life of a simple family whose lives are rattled by the arrival
of a mysterious man, who hypnotises the couple’s teenage daughter, which sparks
a battle between the good and evil. The film features Ajay Devgn, R Madhavan,
Jyotika, and Janki Bodiwala in prominent roles.
THE FALL GUY – THEATRES
Apart from Shaitaan, The
Broken News 2, Wonka, and other titles, the list of new OTT releases arriving
this Friday ie. May 3, 2024, includes The Fall Guy. Headlined by Ryan Gosling
and Emily Blunt, the upcoming action comedy follows a stuntman who decides to
leave everything and move to another city after an accident. When his former
lover turns filmmaker, he returns to help her track down the lead actor but
ends up unraveling a dark secret plot that upends his life.
THE BROKEN NEWS 2 – ZEE5
Picking up from where
the previous season ended, The Broken News sheds light on the power struggles
in journalism, where each channel battles for the top spot. A remake of the
British series Press, the upcoming newsroom drama will feature Jaideep Ahlawat,
Sonali Bendre, and Shriya Pilgaonkar, among others.
ARANMANAI 4 –
THEATRES
Sundar, Tamannaah
Bhatia, Raashii Khanna, and Yogi Babu have come together for a horror comedy
film titled Aranmanai 4. The film revolves around the protagonist who embarks
on a mission to solve the mystery behind his sister’s death. It is the fourth
instalment in the popular horror comedy Aranmanai film franchise.
TAROT – THEATRES
This is a horror film
directed by Spenser Cohen. The plot of the upcoming film revolves around a
group of friends who get dragged in a cat-and-mouse game with fate when a
cursed deck of tarot cards predicts their death. The ensemble cast of the film
includes Harriet Slater, Adain Bradley, and Avantika Vandanapu, among others.
WONKA – JIOCINEMA
The list of new OTT releases
arriving this Friday includes Timothée Chalamet’s much-appreciated film Wonka.
Directed by Paul King, the movie tells the story of chocolatier Willy Wonka
whose passion and creativity helped him overcome several obstacles to become
the best chocolatier in the world.
BOOK OF THIS WEEK:
Smoke and Ashes: A
Writer’s Journey Through Opium’s Hidden Histories by Amitav Ghosh (Author)
When Amitav Ghosh began
his research for the Ibis Trilogy some twenty years ago, he was startled to
find how the lives of the nineteenth-century sailors and soldiers he wrote of
were dictated not only by the currents of the Indian Ocean, but also by a
precious commodity carried in enormous quantities on those currents: opium.
Most surprising of all was the discovery that his own identity and family
history were swept up in the story.
Smoke and Ashes is at
once a travelogue, a memoir and an excursion into history, both economic and
cultural. Ghosh traces the transformative effect the opium trade had on
Britain, India and China, as well as on the world at large. Engineered by the
British Empire, which exported opium from India to sell in China, the trade and
its revenues were essential to the Empire's survival. Upon deeper exploration,
Ghosh finds opium at the origins of some of the world's biggest corporations,
several of America's most powerful families and institutions, and contemporary
globalism itself. In India the long-term consequences were even more profound.
Moving deftly between
horticultural histories, the mythologies of capitalism and the social and
cultural repercussions of colonialism, Smoke and Ashes reveals the pivotal role
one small plant has played in the making of the world as we know it - a world
that is now teetering on the edge of catastrophe.
'In thinking about the
opium poppy's role in history it is hard to ignore the feeling of an
intelligence at work. The single most important indication of this is the
poppy's ability to create cycles of repetition, which manifest themselves in
similar phenomena over time. What the opium poppy does is clearly not random;
it builds symmetries that rhyme with each other.Only by recognizing the power
and intelligence of the opium poppy can we even begin to make peace with it.'
Amitav Ghosh (born
July 11, 1956, Calcutta [now Kolkata], India) is an Indian-born writer whose ambitious novels use
complex narrative strategies to probe the nature of national and personal
identity, particularly of the people of India and Southeast Asia. He received
the Jnanpith Award in 2018.
As a child, Ghosh, whose
father was a diplomat, lived in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Iran. He
received a B.A. in 1976 and an M.A. in 1978 from the University of Delhi; at
about the same time, he also worked as a newspaper reporter and editor. He
subsequently attended the University of Oxford, where in 1982 he received a
Ph.D. in social anthropology.
Ghosh went on to teach
at the University of Delhi, the American University in Cairo, Columbia
University in New York City, and Queens College of the City University of New
York, among other institutions. After a stint at Harvard University that began
in 2004, Ghosh turned to writing full-time and split his time between the
United States and India.
His first novel, The
Circle of Reason (1986), follows an Indian protagonist who, suspected of being
a terrorist, leaves India for northern Africa and the Middle East. Blending
elements of fable and picaresque fiction, it is distinctly postcolonial in its
marginalization of Europe and postmodern in its nonlinear structure and thick
intertextuality. The Shadow Lines (1988) is a sweeping history of two families
(one Indian and the other English) that are deeply shaped by events following
the departure of the British from India in 1947. The Circle of Reason and The
Shadow Lines, both written in English, were widely translated and gained Ghosh
an international readership.
It is important to
recognize that these cycles will go on repeating, because the opium poppy is
not going away anytime soon. In Mexico, for instance, despite intensive
eradication efforts the acreage under poppy cultivation has continued to
increase. Indeed, there is more opium being produced in the world today than at
any time in the past.
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