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 The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is expected to take a call on the inclusion of new sports, including cricket, ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics at Los Angeles in October, according to reports.  It is expected that more than 100 IOC members will meet in Mumbai in October to vote for the inclusion of new sporting disciplines in the biggest sporting spectacle in the world.  Led by rising batter Ruturaj Gaikwad, the Indian's men cricket team will compete in the Asian Games for the first time since 1998.

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered that cybercriminals are increasingly merging 'vishing' techniques (voice phishing) with new OTP grabber services to amplify their malicious activities, a new report said on Monday.  Vishing involves manipulating individuals into revealing sensitive information over the phone.  The human touch in vishing adds a convincing element to these attacks, making victims more likely to trust the caller.  They employ sophisticated interactive voice response (IVR) systems, authentic voice recordings of real individuals, or even deploy real-time calling methods that convincingly appear to originate from a trusted company, the researchers explained.  Using such tactics, users get skillfully manipulated into revealing their one-time passwords, typically delivered via text messages.  " Employing vishing as their method of choice, the cybercriminals successfully obtained employee credentials, secured global admin privileges within Azure ...

The anticipation is palpable as the prestigious Miss World pageant draws closer, set to unfold after 27 years in India, with its rich tapestry of history, culture, and diversity, India provides an exquisite backdrop for this global celebration of beauty, intellect, and compassion.  While India has a rich legacy of producing remarkable beauty queens from the trailblazing Reita Faria in 1966 to the globally renowned Priyanka Chopra in 2000, these former Miss Worlds from India have not only adorned crowns but have also become icons of empowerment.  Reita Faria was the first Asian to be crowned Miss World. Reita was chosen to represent India at the Miss World contest, becoming the second Indian woman to do so.

According to a new study, the harsh lights of big cities may be generating an evolutionary adaption for smaller eyes in some birds.  The findings, published in Global Change Biology, have ramifications for conservation efforts as bird populations across the United States continue to drop. The Northern Cardinal and Carolina Wren, two common songbirds that reside year-round in the urban centre of San Antonio, Texas, had eyes that were around 5 per cent smaller than individuals of the same species from the less bright outskirts.  Researchers discovered no variation in eye size between two migratory bird species, the Painted Bunting and the White-eyed Vireo, regardless of where they remained for most of the year. The findings were published in Global Change Biology. "This study shows that residential birds may adapt over time to urban areas, but migratory birds are not adapting, probably because where they spend the winter--they are less likely to have the same human-caused light ...

NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission has successfully delivered the first-ever rock sample from asteroid Bennu on Earth.  The OSIRIS-REx (short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer), carried an estimated 8.8 ounces of rocky material collected from the surface of the asteroid Bennu in 2020.  " The pristine asteroid sample capsule landed in the Utah desert in the US at 10.55 a.m after a 3.86-billion mile journey, " NASA wrote in a post on X.  According to the US space agency, the pieces of 4.6 billion-year-old space rock will " act as a time capsule from the earliest days of our solar system ".

Microsoft -owned OpenAI has launched an upgraded version of its text-to-image tool  DALL·E 3 , that uses AI chatbot ChatGPT.  " Just ask ChatGPT what you want to see in anything from a simple sentence to a detailed paragraph, " Open AI said on Wednesday.  When prompted with an idea via ChatGPT, it will automatically generate tailored, detailed prompts for DALL·E 3 that will bring your idea to life.  If you like a particular image, but it's not quite right, you can ask ChatGPT to make tweaks with just a few words.

A new study demonstrated the isolation and sequencing of RNA molecules from a Tasmanian tiger specimen kept at room temperature in a museum collection over a century ago. For the first time, skin and skeletan muscle transcriptomes from an extinct species were reconstructed. The researchers emphasise that their findings have ramifications for international efforts to restore extinct animals, such as the Tasmanian tiger and the woolly mammoth , as well as studies into pandemic RNA viruses. The Tasmanian tiger, commonly known as the thylacine, was a magnificent apex carnivorous marsupial that formerly roamed the Australian continent and Tasmania. This unusual species met its end following European colonisation, when it was considered an agricultural pesr and a bounty of 1 euro was imposed by 1888 for each full grown animal slain.  The last known surviving Tasmanian tiger died in captivity in 1936 at Hobart's Beaumaris Zoo. Recent de extinction attempts have concentrated on the Tasmani...

Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella on Thursday doubled down on the role of generative AI in the company's product portfolio, starting with Windows 11 that will include the new AI powered Copilot feature, along with launching a powerful new Surface laptop lineup.  With over 150 new features, the new Windows 11 update will be available starting September 26, bringing the power of Copilot and new AI powered experiences to apps like Paint, Photos, Clipchamp and more right to your Windows PC. " It will be a simple and seamless experience, available in Windows 11, Microsoft 365, and in our web browser with Edge and Bing. It will work as an app or reveal itself when you need it with a right click," Microsoft said.

As a measure to control rising pollution levels in the state because of automobile fuel emission, the West Bengal government has taken a decision to only use electric vehicles for all administrative functions. Even the vehicles taken on rent by the administration will also be electric vehicles only, as per a notification issued by the State Transport Department. The department has also drawn a rough estimate of the expenditure to be borne on this count. "Shifting to the new system will obviously involve extra cost and hence extra pressure on the state exchequer. But this is necessary to prevent the rising air pollution from the automobile fuel emission, especially that from the diesel-driven vehicles," a senior Finance Department official said. The decision has been welcomed by the environment activists in the state, who claimed that the initiative is the right step in the right direction.

The climate crisis is reaching an unprecedented level of urgency as global temperatures soar to record breaking heights, with July 2023 marking another alarming milestone. Based on the China global Merged Surfave Temperature dataset 2.0, a new study from Sun Yat-sen University has revealed that 2023 is expected to be the hottest year ever. This comes after NASA and the European Union Climate Monitor has also stated 2023 to be the hottest on record. The researchers analysed the dataset and discovered that 2023 has already experienced the third hottest first half year since records began, narrowly trailing 2016 the warmest year and 2020 the second warmest. The global mean sea surface temperatures (SSTs) surged to an all time high in April, while global mean land air temeratures followed suit by reaching their second highest monthly level in June. This cimbination resulted in May being crowned the hottest month ever recorded for global mean surface temperatures. Did you know? Global temer...

The Andes mountain range is the longest in the world. It stretches for more than 7,000 k.m. down the west side of South America, running the whole length of the continent.  Several peaks are more than 6,000 meter high and Aconcagua, on the border between Argentina and Chile, is the highestmountain in the Americas at 6,960 meter.  Many of the peaks are active volcanoes.  The Andes are rich in minerals such as copper, Silver and Gold.

Microsoft has been pacing fast enough in the AI sector by launching a variety of products for users. Microsoft recently launched an open-source library called TypeChat on its GitHub blog. TypeChat uses TypeScript and generative AI to bridge natural language, application schema, and APIs. Microsoft mentions: “how do we augment traditional UI with natural language interfaces?How do we use AI to take a user request and turn it into something our apps can operate on?And how do we make sure our apps are safe, and doing work that developers and users alike can trust? “Today we're releasing TypeChat, an experimental library that aims to answer these questions. It uses the type definitions in your codebase to retrieve structured AI responses that are type-safe,” it adds. This new platformwas created to make it easier for developers to build natural language interfaces to large language models (LLMs). One of the biggest problems that developers have with integrating large language models ...