| |
Read More
- The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal were awarded Pulitzer Prizes on 16th April for their separate investigations of President Donald Trump and his family.
- The Times won the prestigious journalism award for a probe of the Trump family's finances that "debunked his claims of self-made wealth and revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges," the Pulitzer Prize Board announced during a ceremony at New York's Columbia University.
- The Journal won for its coverage of Trump's secret hush money payments to two women during his 2016 presidential campaign who claimed to have had affairs with him.
- The South Florida Sun-Sentinel won a Pulitzer for its coverage of failings by school and law enforcement officials before and after the February 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
- The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was honoured for its coverage of the October 2018 shooting at a synagogue in the city that left 11 people dead.
- The Associated Press won a Pulitzer for international reporting for its coverage of the war in Yemen.
- Reuters was honoured for international reporting for its coverage of atrocities committed against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.
- In other categories, "The Overstory" by Richard Powers won the Pulitzer for fiction and "Fairview" by Jackie Sibblies Drury won the prize for drama.
- Special citations were awarded to soul legend Aretha Franklin for her contributions to music and to the staff of the Capital Gazette newspaper of Annapolis, Maryland, which lost five employees in a June 2018 shooting.
|
Read More
- NASA’s latest planet-hunting probe has discovered its first Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting a star 53 light-years away.
- The Transiting Exoplanets Survey Satellite (TESS) also discovered a warm sub-Neptune-sized world in the same system, according to a study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
- “It’s so exciting that TESS, which launched just about a year ago, is already a game-changer in the planet-hunting business,” said Johanna Teske, Carnegie Institution for Science in the US.
- “The spacecraft surveys the sky and we collaborate with the TESS follow-up community to flag potentially interesting targets for additional observations using ground-based telescopes and instruments,” Teske said in a statement. One such tool, the Planet Finder Spectrograph on the Magellan II telescope in Chile, was a crucial component of this effort.
- It helped confirm the planetary nature of the TESS signal, and to measure the mass of the newly discovered sub-Neptune.
- The PFS works using a technique called the radial velocity method, which is currently the only way for astronomers to measure the masses of individual planets. Without known masses, it is very challenging to determine a planet’s density or its general chemical composition.
- This method takes advantage of that fact that not only does a star’s gravity influence the planet orbiting it, but the planet’s gravity also affects the star in turn. The PFS enables astronomers to detect these tiny wobbles that the planet’s gravity induces in the star’s orbit.
|
Read More
- Ace cricketer Mithali Raj has been named as the goodwill ambassador of the Indian team for the Street Child Cricket World Cup.
- Captain of India's woman ODI side, Mithali joins former captain Saurav Ganguly and IPL franchise Rajasthan Royals in supporting the team.
- Mithali said, "I am excited to join the Street Child Cricket World Cup as a goodwill ambassador for Team India. As an athlete, I know the true potential that sports can play in not just changing a child's reality, but also garnering public support for children who live on the streets.
- "India has over 20 lakh street connected children and there lies our nation's untapped potential. As a woman cricketer, I am super thrilled to see that this tournament is gender equal - boys and girls will play together."
- Earlier, PTC India Financial Services Ltd. announced its support for the team to create national and international visibility of children.
|