News Flash (10th July 2020): Top 10 Stories Of The Day

1. ICSE, ISC Results of class 10 and 12 for the year 2020 announced

Results for Class 10 ICSE and Class 12 ISC examinations were declared on Friday, 10 July, at 3 pm by the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examination (CISCE). More than 2 lakh candidates from all over the country appeared for the examinations. The overall pass percentage of the ICSE (Class 10) was 99.3%, while the overall pass percentage for the ISC (Class 12) was 96.8%. The council in a tweet said that it won’t publish the merit list “in view of exceptional circumstances.”

2. Indian boy sets Guinness record by jumping across ruler 101 times in 30 secs

17-year-old Dubai based Indian teenager, Soham Mukherjee, set a Guinness World Record for most side-to-side hops in 30 seconds after he jumped across a ruler 101 times. “The record was measured by a close-up slow-motion video so that the line object and my feet are clearly seen”, said Mukherjee. Out of the 110 hops, nine were considered invalid by Guinness.  He managed to break the previous title of 96 hops in 30 seconds.

3. PM Narendra Modi launches Asia’s largest 750-MW solar power project in MP’s Rewa

PM Narendra Modi on Friday launched Asia’s largest 750-MW solar power project in Madhya Pradesh’s Rewa through video conferencing and said the state will emerge as a major hub for lean and cheap power. “Not just for the present, solar energy will be a medium of energy needs of the 21^st Century because solar power is sure, pure and secure,” said Modi. India is now among the top five solar power producers in the world. Apart from Rewa, work is underway on solar power plants in Shajapur, Neemuch, and Chhatarpur.

4. Gangster Vikas Dubey, in an attempt to escape, shot dead by the UP Police

Arrested for Kanpur ambush where eight policemen were martyred, Gangster Vikas Dubey was shot dead in an encounter on Friday in Kanpur after being brought back from Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh. He tried to escape custody after the car carrying him overturned. The police tried to make him surrender, during which he fired at the policemen. Dubey was arrested less than 24 hours ago in Ujjain.

5. Astronomers spot “an unexpected class of astronomical objects” in deep space

A team of researchers led by Western Sydney University’s astrophysicist Ray Norris has spotted four mysterious circular objects in deep space through an Australian radio telescope. Three of them have bright rings around the circular object. They said that the four objects “don’t seem to correspond to any known type of object.” Researchers suspect that the “Odd Radio Circles” could be a spherical shock wave from an extragalactic transient event.

6. Auction of ‘World’s largest encyclopedia’ earns Rs 69 crore

Two volumes of a 15^th Century old Chinese Encyclopedia ‘Yongle Dadian’ sold for more than 8.1 million euros (nearly Rs. 69 crores), more than 1000 times the estimated price, at an auction. The encyclopedia was commissioned by a ruler of the Ming dynasty who reigned from 1402 to 1422, reported CNN. Paris-based auction house Beaussant Lefevre said, “Yongle Dadian is the largest encyclopedia in the world. It originally counted 22,877 manuscript volumes, made up of approximately 370 million characters.”

7. Maharashtra’s Education Minister tells MHRD, conducting Final-year uni exams impossible

A day after the University Grants Commission (UGC) accepted a recommendation by an expert committee, clarifying that universities should conduct end-of-term exams for their final-year batches, Maharashtra’s Higher and Technical Education Minister Uday Samant has said he has written to MHRD about being unable to conduct final year university exams in the state. At present, Maharashtra is the worst affected state with more than two lakh confirmed Coivd-19 cases. He added if MHRD wants exams to be held by stipulated time, it should issue guidelines for students from containment zones, their quarantine, setting exam papers, and handling of answer sheets.

8. ACC confirms the cancellation of Asia Cup 2020. Sri Lanka to stage next year’s tournament.

The 2020 edition of the Asia Cup has been cancelled, the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) confirmed after a meeting on Thursday. This year’s tournament was going to be hosted by Pakistan, in September in the United Arab Emirates, but now the hosting rights have been transferred to Sri Lanka, who will stage next year’s event, while the 2022 edition will be hosted by the Pakistan Cricket Board 

9. PlayStation-maker Sony to acquire a 1.4% stake in Epic Games for $250 million

PlayStation-maker Sony has invested $250 million (around Rs.1,880 crore) to acquire a 1.4% stake in Epic Games, the owner of the online video game ‘Fortnite’. Last month, Bloomberg had reported that Epic Games was close to securing funding at a valuation of about $17 billion. Sony’s shares were up as much as 3.2% in Tokyo on Friday, nearing a 19-year high.

10. Nasal spray to reduce COVID-19 spread developed by a Harvard professor

Harvard University Professor, Dr. David Edwards, claims to have developed a nasal spray that could reduce COVID-19 transmission. The product, named FEND, is a saline mixture containing no drugs at all. It is instead directed from naturally occurring salts that are most often found in the seawater.  FEND comes along with another component, Nimbus, that is an aerosol squirter and is set to be available in September.