SUNDAY FOCUS

New Delhi: Two and a half years ago, the Bachchans invested in a company not known by many. The company was Meridian Tech Pte, a Singapore based company. The company owned Ziddu.com. The portal in those days described itself as "an empowering free cloud storage, global wallet, social commerce & social gaming platform startup". 

The move fetched the Bachchans a minority stake in the parent company Meridian Tech but made news mainly because it was their first significant equity investment in an overseas company. Ziddu-.com — was then acquired by other company LongFin Corp. Since Bachchans held shares in Meridian Tech Pte, they received 250,000 shares of LongFin Ziddu-.com purchase.

New Delhi: The Ocean’s miniature inhabitants can shred a small plastic bag -- the type used to hold groceries -- into 1.75 million microscopic fragments, according to a new study.

When scientists from University of Plymouth in England fed a plastic bag to Orchestiagammarellus, a tiny species of amphipod abundant in the coastal waters of Northern Europe, they were surprised at the rate at which the trash was consumed and broken down.

But while the amphipods broke down the plastic bag with tremendous speed and efficiency, they didn't exactly remove the trash from the environment. They simply turned one piece of plastic pollution into a lot of tiny pieces of plastic pollution -- 1.75 million microscopic fragments, to be exact.

New Delhi: The rise of selfie photography in some of the world’s most beautiful, and dangerous, places is sparking a range of interventions aimed at combating risk-taking that has resulted in a string of gruesome deaths worldwide.

With the increase in deaths, now experts at universities in the United States and India have launched an app that could disable phone cameras in the most dangerous spots.Researchers have developed an app that deters people from clicking "dangerous selfies" called Saftie.

The act of taking a picture of oneself with a mobile phone, placing the subject center-stage, has exploded in popularity in recent years, with everyone from Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II to Celebrities worldwide.

New Delhi: Scholars are now clamouring for Bhuila, a tiny village 30 km away from Basti in Western UP, to be recognised as the actual birthplace of Gautama Buddha.

According to Buddhist literature, Buddha was born in Lumbini in the kingdom of Kapilavastu, a location which Nepal claims to be within its own territory but which scholars claim is totally false. 

Bhuila (PIN Code 272161) is an obscure and dusty hamlet in the district Basti of U.P 128 Km away from the current day Kapilavastu district in Nepal. It was extensively surveyed by archaeologists in the 19th century but completely ignored by the ASI afterwards. 

New Delhi: India's nominee to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) DalveerBhandari was re-elected to the last seat of the world court after Britain withdrew its candidate Christopher Greenwood from the election.

Bhandari received 183-193 votes in the General Assembly and secured all the 15 votes in the Security Council after separate and simultaneous elections were held at the UN headquarters in New York for the nine-year term.

The permanent members of the Security Council, the US, Russia, France and China were understood to have been throwing their weight behind Greenwood. Britain is the fifth permanent member of the Security Council.