April saw record temperatures in the Indian subcontinent. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines heatwave as “a period of abnormally hot weather, often defined with reference to a relative temperature threshold, lasting from two days to months.”
Author: knowalledgeAdmin
Tim Cook inaugurates Apple’s first retail store in India.
Apple’s first retail store in India opened in the heart of Mumbai’s bustling Bandra Kurla Complex. Tim Cook also greeted customers who visited the store and posed for selfies with some of them. The design of the store has been inspired by the black-and-yellow taxis, locally known as kaali-peelis that are ubiquitous in India’s financial capital. The Apple CEO was visibly stunned when a man named Sajid Moinuddin brought with him a 33-year-old Macintosh classic computer with himself.
Vedaant Madhavan makes a splash in Kuala Lumpur
The 18-year-old won five gold medals for India at the Malaysian invitational age group swimming championships in Kuala Lumpur. A familiar name since the Khelo India Games, the teenage sensation is the son of the actor R Madhavan.
Duan and Marco Jansen become the latest pair of brothers to play in the IPL.
They are also the only twins to play in the tournament. Siblings to have played in IPL include Irfan and Yusuf Pathan, Shaun and Mitchell Marsh, Michael and David Hussey, Albie and Morne Morkel, Brendon and Nathan McCullum, Dwayne and Darren Bravo, Siddarth and Uday Kaul, Hardik and Krunal Pandya, and Sam and Tom Curran
Photographer turns down prestigious award as the winning image was generated by AI
When the Sony World Photography Awards announced the winning entry in their creative photo category in March 2023, the artist Boris Eldagsen turned down the award announcing his photograph was not a photograph at all. He had crafted it through creative prompting of DALL-E 2, an AI image generator.
Diljit Dosanjh becomes first Punjabi artiste to perform at Coachella
In 2023, Diljit Dosanjh became the first Punjabi artiste to perform at Coachella, alongside headliners Blackpink, Bjork and Ali Sethi. He got the crowd on their feet as he performed to his hits Clash and Lemonade among others.
In one of the videos gone viral, the singer says, “It is really hot in Coachella. Is it the heat or it’s because of the Punjabis here?”, inviting a thunderous applause from the audience. He added his patent, “Punjabi aa gaye Coachella oye!”
Fans were also in awe of his humbleness when he spoke to the security present at the venue and apologised on behalf of his fans, who were elated with his music. He said to the security present there, “Security paaji sorry. They are very excited basically, they are good people. First time Dosanjhwala on stage at Coachella that’s why they are excited. So please, I am sorry on behalf of them. Thank you”.
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Coachella is an annual music and arts festival held at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, in the Coachella Valley in the Colorado Desert.
Rinku Singh hits 5 sixes in an over to create history
KKR’s Rinku Singh shot to instant stardom as he smashed 5 sixes in the final over to successfully chase down 29 runs against Gujarat Titans in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023. Former and current Indian cricketers took to social media to praise his performance, with India captain Rohit Sharma calling it an “unbelievable innings”.
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The little-known batter from the north Indian city of Aligarh was born into a low-income family and grew up helping his father transport gas cylinders on a motorbike.
He was picked up by film star Shah Rukh Khan’s KKR in a player draft for INR 800,000 in 2018 and has been earning a steady income which he says has helped uplift his family.
New emoji released to commemorate coronation
It is the world of tech-savvy gen Zs and the British royalty is not far behind. Buckingham Palace has revealed an official emoji to celebrate the coronation of King Charles III. The colourful cartoon motif depicts the 17th-century gold jewelled St Edward’s crown with purple velvet cap.
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- St Edward’s Crown is the crown used at the moment of coronation.
- It was made for Charles II in 1661, as a replacement for the medieval crown which had been melted down in 1649.
- The original was thought to date back to the eleventh-century royal saint, Edward the Confessor – the last Anglo-Saxon king of England.
- The crown was commissioned from the Royal Goldsmith, Robert Vyner, in 1661.
- Although it is not an exact replica of the medieval design, it follows the original in having four crosses-pattée and four fleurs-de-lis, and two arches.
- It is made up of a solid gold frame set with rubies, amethysts, sapphires, garnet, topazes and tourmalines. The crown has a velvet cap with an ermine band.
MLB rolls out a number of changes for baseball
One of the changes as mandated by Major League Baseball (MLB) is a bigger base. The traditional base is a square with 15-inch sides, and the new base is now 18 inches along the side, which not only means more base to grab but also means that the distance between the bases is slightly less. The intention of league officials is to reduce injuries and increase stolen bases, an element of the game that has been decimated in the era of analytics.
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MLB is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada comprises 30 teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada.
Start-up to produce oxygen from moon’s surface
An Israeli start-up, Helios, says it has developed technology that can produce oxygen needed for fuel from the lunar soil. This will make multiple and long-term missions to the moon economically viable, as it will allow moon colonies to “live off the land” instead of having to carry all of their fuel and other resources from Earth.
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In 1970 Gerard K. O’Neill, a Princeton University physicist and space activist talked about space colonies and presented detailed concepts for human settlements in space. He designed a kilometre-long sealed cylinder, to be built primarily of processed lunar materials and powered by solar energy, capable of sustaining a human colony indefinitely at a point in space between the Earth and the Moon.
In his book The High Frontier (1978) he suggested that space colonies might be the ultimate solution to such terrestrial problems as pollution, overpopulation, and the energy shortage.