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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday surprised markets by naming Nirmala Sitharaman , formerly the country’s defence minister, as the next finance minister at a time when Asia’s third-largest economy is stuttering. Sitharaman, 59, will become the senior most woman minister in Modi’s cabinet and the second woman to head the finance department after late former prime minister Indira Gandhi. Amit Shah, chief of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was appointed as the minister of home affairs, giving him responsibility for internal security with a control over the federal police. Regarded as the architect of Modi’s landslide victory in the recently concluded general election, Shah replaces senior BJP leader Rajnath Singh, who will now be defence minister. Shah had been tipped as a possible candidate for the finance ministry in recent days, but the job went to Sitharaman, who has an economics background and was briefly the junior finance minister in Modi’s first ...

Since the earliest days of virtual chess and solitaire, video games have been a playing field for developing artificial intelligence (AI). Each victory of machine against human has helped make algorithms smarter and more efficient. But in order to tackle real world problems – such as automating complex tasks including driving and negotiation – these algorithms must navigate more complex environments than board games, and learn teamwork. Teaching AI how to work and interact with other players to succeed had been an insurmountable task – until now. In a new study, researchers detailed a way to train AI algorithms to reach human levels of performance in a popular 3D multiplayer game – a modified version of Quake III Arena in Capture the Flag mode. Even though the task of this game is straightforward – two opposing teams compete to capture each other’s flags by navigating a map – winning demands complex decision-making and an ability to predict and respond to the actions of other p...

In today’s match of ICC cricket World Cup 2019 (CWC), the Pakistan cricket team, led by Sarfaraz Ahmed, will lock horns with Jason Holder’s Windies cricket team at Trent Bridge stadium in Nottingham. Pakistan will look to draw inspiration from the 2017 Champions Trophy win in England two years ago. However, Pakistan’s record in One Day Internationals (ODI) since then has not been very awe-inspiring: They have lost 21 of the 32 ODIs since their Champions Trophy triumph, and won only nine. While Pakistan at present has a losing streak of 10 which they would like to break today, West Indies have been in good form in recent times. The latter held England to a stalemate at home earlier this year. They also boast some big power hitters like Chris Gayle, Andre Russell and Shai Hope in their batting line-up,. which can tear apart any opposition and make a mockery of their bowling attack. Head to head, too, Windies have an edge. They have won 70 of their 133 matches against Pakistan, whil...

Cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar will make his debut as an on-air expert in the ICC ODI World Cup, starting Thursday in the United Kingdom. The Master Blaster will take his place in the commentary box ahead of the tournament opener between hosts England and South Africa. Tendulkar joins an illustrious panel of experts in the pre-show on Star Sports. He will have his own segment 'Sachin Opens Again'. The 46-year-old, who has represented India in six World Cups, holds the record for scoring the highest number of runs in a single edition of the World Cup, scoring 673 in 2003. India opens its campaign on June 5 against South Africa .

In today’s match of ICC cricket World Cup 2019 (CWC 2019), the Eoin Morgan’s England cricket team will lock horns with South Africa cricket team led by Faf du Plessis at The Kennington Oval in London. An embarrassing first round exit in cricket world cup 2015 prompted them to rethink of their approach towards the 50-over cricket. The transformation has been remarkable, with England national cricket team climbing to the top of the one-day international (ODI) rankings and twice setting a new record for the highest ODI total, which now stands at 481 for six. On the other hand, South Africa have suffered plenty of cricket World Cup heartache which earned them the title of ‘chokers’. However, they are coming into the ICC CWC 2019 as an underdog with most of their players are expected to retire after the show-piece event. Head to head, South Africa have an advantage as they won 29 out of 59 matches while one match ended in a tie and 3 matches ended with no result. ALSO READ : These gor...

EPFO recruitment 2019: Employees Provident Fund Organisation has come out with a notice inviting interested and eligible candidates to apply for 280 vacancies for the post of Assistant section officer. Candidates can apply online from May 30, 2019 to June 25, 2019 through the official website https://www.epfindia.gov.in . EPFO will conduct an online exam for the posts on July 30 and July 31. The entry level pay for the posts is Rs 44,900 How to apply Candidates can apply online upto 25.06.2019 and no other mode of application will be accepted. IMPORTANT POINTS TO BE NOTED BY CANDIDATES BEFORE APPLYING ONLINE (i) Before applying online, candidates should scan their: photograph (4.5cm × 3.5cm) signature (with black ink) left thumb impression (on white paper with black or blue ink) a hand written declaration (on a white paper with black ink) ensuring that the all these scanned documents adhere to the required specifications as given in Para 4.II of this Notice. (ii) Signatur...

SSC MTS exam 2019 : Today is the last day of Staff Selection Commission (SSC) accepting applications for SSC MTS or Multi-Tasking (Non-Technical) Staffing 2019 recruitment drive. Candidates who are interested in appearing for the recruitment process but have not applied yet are advised to do without any delay at http://ssc.nic.in . SSC has been accepting applications for SSC MTS Recruitment 2019 since April 22. How to apply for SSC 2019 MTS recruitment: — Visit the SSC official website. — Users have to register first at the SSC website, which can be done by clicking on ‘New User ? Register Now’ button in the — Login section of the home page. — Once registered, click on ‘Apply’ button on the home page. — Click on ‘Others’ tab and click on ‘Apply’ link against the MTS. — Go through the application process and pay the requisite application fees. — Once submitted, take a print out of the application for future reference. Payment method for SSC MTS Recruitment Offline: Candidat...

On February 1, two experienced Indian Air Force (IAF) pilots died when their newly upgraded Mirage 2000-I fighter crashed while taking-off in Bengaluru. A Court of Inquiry (CoI) investigating the accident is now confronting the worrying possibility of a glitch in the Mirage 2000’s flight computer that kicks in without warning, causing the aircraft to behave unpredictably. IAF flight records examined by the CoI have revealed at least four such incidents in the past. In each of these, a flying Mirage 2000 has, suddenly and without command from the pilot, jerked its nose towards the ground. Then, as spontaneously, the nose was jerked upwards. Each time, the aircraft has continued this up-and-down jerking — termed “pitch oscillations” — for several seconds before resuming normal flight. Members of the CoI from the IAF, Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL), the National Aeronautics Laboratory (NAL) and the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) are veering round to the belief that such an inc...

Chinese mobile phone maker Oppo is set to bring its recently introduced Reno smartphone series to India with the launch of the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom and the Oppo Reno on May 28. The two phones and will go on sale exclusively on home-grown e-commerce platform Flipkart . Oppo Reno 10x Zoom specifications, features, camera, and more The Oppo Reno 10x Zoom, as the name suggests, is a camera-centric smartphone with a 13-megapixel periscope telephoto lens on the back, capable of up to 10x hybrid lossless zoom. The phone sports two more optics on the back – a 48MP primary sensor and an 8MP ultra-wide angle lens. Another key feature of the device is shark fin shaped selfie camera (16MP) module, which comes out from the top. The phone sports a 6.6-inch AMOLED screen with no notch, thanks to mechanical pop-up selfie camera module. It is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 system-on-chip (SoC), mated with up to 8GB of RAM. The phone has a 4,065 mAh battery, supported by VOOC 3.0 fast cha...

The poster features the Telugu superstar, who looks quite intense and captivating. The ultra cool sunglasses, black leather jacket and the actor's fierce look while riding a motorbike are the highlights of the poster. The film, which also stars Shraddha K apoor in the lead role, is slated to hit the big screens on August 15 (Independence Day), this year. Earlier, the makers had released ' Shades of Saaho Chapter 2 ' on the occasion of Shraddha's birthday (March 3). The video features glimpses of a power-packed action-filled world with amazing sound effects. The teaser begins with a lot of villains firing guns and a few seconds into the video, enters Prabhas , who fights against them without any weapons or guns. The video later introduces Shraddha, who looks fierce, intense and beautiful in a red outfit. Shraddha is shown to be reluctant on whether to shoot or not but soon lifts the gun and fires. The makers had released the first chapter of 'Shades of Saaho...

On a recent afternoon at the Lao Thai Kitchen restaurant, the telephone rang and the caller ID read “ Google Assistant .” Jimmy Tran, a waiter, answered the phone. The caller was a man with an Irish accent hoping to book a dinner reservation for two on the weekend. This was no ordinary booking. It came through Google Duplex, a free service that uses artificial intelligence to call restaurants and — mimicking a human voice — speak on our behalf to book a table. The feature, which had a limited release about a year ago, recently became available to a larger number of Android devices and iPhones. The voice of the Irish man sounded eerily human. When asked whether he was a robot, the caller immediately replied, “No, I’m not a robot,” and laughed. “It sounded very real,” Tran said in an interview after hanging up the call with Google. “It was perfectly human.” Google later confirmed, to our disappointment, that the caller had been telling the truth: He was a person working in a cal...

Aimed at niche gamers, performance-centric gaming smartphones are making inroads in India. After the launch of Asus ROG (review) and Nubia Red Magic (review), Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi’s sub-brand Black Shark is set to bring to India its flagship smartphone on Monday (May 27). Named Black Shark 2 , the phone was unveiled in March in the company’s home country China. The Flipkart-exclusive smartphone will be unveiled at 1 PM and goes on sale at the e-commerce platform soon. Being a gaming smartphone, the Black Shark 2 boasts flagship hardware, including Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 system-on-chip (SoC), up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage, multilayer liquid cooling system and gaming-centric content and services. The phone sports a 6.39-inch AMOLED screen of fullHD+ resolution, stretched in tall 19.5:9 aspect ratio. The display supports 100 per cent DCI-P3 colour gamut. Imaging is covered by a dual camera module on the back, featuring a 48-megapixel primary sensor...

Singer-songwriter Selena Gomez made a surprise announcement on Instagram when she revealed her plan to marry co-actor Bill Murray! Following her Cannes red carpet debut along with the screening of her film The Dead Don't Die, the 26-year-old shared many pictures on social media. She made the announcement in one of the posts. "My first time in Cannes! I’m so honored to have been a part of this movie with Jim and the whole cast. By the way Bill Murray and I are getting married," read a gallery post shared by the I Can't Get Enough songstress.

It seems chowkidaar would not be guarding BJP’s interest on the back of which it won its massive mandate. The tagline has been dropped from the Twitter handle of the PM. And other leaders, sources said, might follow suit. “The time has come to take the chowkidaar spirit to the next level. The word chowkidaar goes from my Twitter name but it remains an integral part of me. Urging you all to do the same too!” Modi tweeted on Thursday evening. According to sources in Bharatiya Janata Party , the party is going to coin a new term that would replace chowkidaar. This term would portray how the government would function over the next five years. “The people of India became chowkidaars and rendered great service to the nation. Chowkidaar has become a powerful symbol to safeguard India from the evils of casteism, communalism, corruption and cronyism,” the PM said in another tweet. Read Complete Article

Film:  India's Most Wanted ; Starring: Arjun Kapoor, Rajesh Sharma; Writer and Director Rajkumar Gupta; Rating: ****(4 stars) In a milieu of bustling violence, terrorism has been reduced to a formula in our cinema. A pretext to show larger-than-life villains with heroes to match. But what about those real terrorists and those unsung heroes who have apprehended dreaded terrorists not for fame recognition or, God forbid, money. But simply because to them, that seems the right thing to do. India's Most Wanted is that rare film on counter-terrorism which seems to show no inclination to overplay its cards, Rajkumar Gupta's target here is to not show his hero indulging in scene-stealing heroics (the kind Akshay Kumar would be seen doing), but to put the protagonist, a docile humble unostentatious man Prabhat who never smiles because...well, what is there to smile about? Have you seen the number of bomb blasts that have occurred in the last two decades? Read Complete Arti...

American technology giant Apple has updated its MacBook Pro-series with 8th-Generation and 9th-Generation Intel Core processors. The upgraded MacBook Pro is touted to deliver two times faster performance than the previous generation’s quad-core variant, and up to 40 per cent better performance than the hexa-core variant. The new MacBook Pro continues to come in 13-inch and 15-inch screen variants, priced at Rs 159,900 and Rs 199,900, respectively (for base models). Besides new processors, the MacBook Pro features Apple’s Retina display with 500 nits of brightness, support for the P3 wide colour gamut and True Tone technology. It boasts stereo speakers, Touch ID, Touch Bar, and a large Force Touch trackpad. The MacBook Pro also features solid state drive (SSD) storage, the Apple T2 Security Chip for enhanced security, and Thunderbolt 3 ports for data transfer, charging and connecting up to two 5K displays or four external GPUs. ALSO READ: Apple iMac 2019 a lot like iMac Pro, but...

The Virat Kohli-led India cricket team on Wednesday left for England to participate in the biggest international 50-over cricket tournament, the International Cricket Council (ICC) Cricket World Cup 2019 . They will play their first match of the tournament on June 5 against South Africa, which would be keen to shed their ‘chokers’ tag this time around. In the days leading up to the cricket world cup 2019 opening match, to be played between hosts England and South Africa on May 30, the 10 participating teams will play a number of warm-up games to acclimatise themselves to the English conditions. ALSO READ: ICC Cricket World Cup 2019: Why India are best placed to win the trophy Eyeing their third World Cup title, Virat Kohli’s India would play their first warm-up match against New Zealand on May 25 and another against Bangladesh on May 28. At a press conference in Mumbai on Tuesday, Kohli said India were entering the tournament with a balanced and strong side. "You saw in...

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro's) workhorse PSLV-C46 , carrying RISAT-2B, a radar-imaging earth observation satellite, took off successfully from the Sriharikota space port. The satellite will beef up India’s surveillance capabilities in the sky. After a successful countdown that started at 04:30 a.m. (IST) on Tuesday, the rocket was launched at 05:30 a.m. on Wednesday early morning as scheduled from the the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, near Chennai. About 15 minutes into flight, the rocket placed RISAT-2B into an orbit of about 555 km. Stating that he was extremely happy to announce that PSLV-C46 has successfully injected RISAT-2B in precise orbit, Isro chairman K Sivan said with this mission, the PSLV rocket had crossed the landmark of lofting of 50 tonnes since it started flying. Adding that the PSLV satellite has put into orbit 350 satellites, he said, “The rocket had a piggy back payload, the indigenously developed Vikram computer chip that ...

Skullcandy Set is a pair of wired earphones for sports and fitness enthusiasts. Priced at Rs 2,999, the earphones are sweat resistant that makes them a suitable pair for people with active lifestyle. Besides, the pair also have a microphone and a call controller, which also doubles up as a track controller, that makes it easy to take calls, change audio tracks, play/pause music, etc. on the go -- when connected with a smartphone. Being budget earphones, the Skullcandy Set come in a generous package, which includes three different sizes of earbuds – small, medium and large – a pair of gels, and the main unit. The earphones come with two-year warranty that make these pairs a good play in the budget segment. Design The Skullcandy Set have an in-ear design with changeable ear buds that are neither too hard nor too soft, making them comfortable to use while providing good noise isolation as well. For sports enthusiasts, the earphones also have hook-shaped elongated removable gels...

The Redmi Y3 , a selfie camera-centric smartphone from Chinese phone maker Xiaomi, is a successor to the Redmi Y2 (review), with more than just a few cosmetic upgrades. Its front camera has higher megapixels, and the phone boasts a new design, mid-tier processor, and decent battery capacity. The sum of its features and specifications makes the smartphone an all-rounder in its segment, at least on paper. Let us take a look at how it fares in real life: Design and display The Xiaomi Redmi Y3 takes design cues from the Redmi Note 7-series. It has a metallic chassis and glass on the front and back. The glass body makes it prone to fingerprints which dulls it reflective properties and requires regular cleaning to maintain the sheen. The phone’s front is covered with a 6.26-inch screen and has a dot shaped notch on top to house the front camera. Though bright and vivid, the screen is not the sharpest in the segment due to its HD+ resolution. It also lacks the Widevine L1 certificat...

JEE Advanced 2019 admit card : The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee is expected to release the admit card for Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), Advanced for admissions to IITs today i.e. May 20, 2019 at 10 am. The exam will be held on May 27, 2019.The hall tickets or admit cards will be released on the official website  http://jeeadv.ac.in . According to the information provided by IIT, Roorkee, which is organising the JEE this year, the admit card will be available till May 27, 2019. The admit card will be made available in online mode. Those candidates who qualified the JEE Mains and have registered for JEE advanced on the official website  http://jeeadv.ac.in  will have to go to the website to download the admit card after 10 am. A total of 2,24,000 students have qualified JEE Mains and are eligible to give JEE Advanced. ALSO READ:  JEE Main April Paper 2 results 2019 released: Steps to check score Write ca...

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi on Monday announced the launch of the Redmi Note 7S – a trimmed down version of the company’s recently launched Redmi Note 7 Pro. The Flipkart-exclusive smartphone will be available in two RAM and storage variants -- 3GB RAM/32GB storage and 4GB RAM/64GB storage – priced at Rs 10,999 and Rs 12,999, respectively. The phone comes in sapphire blue, ruby red, and onyx black colours variants. It will go on sale from May 23 on Mi.com, Flipkart and Mi Homes. The phone will be available in offline stores from May 24. The Xiaomi Redmi Note 7S boasts a 48-megapixel primary sensor on the back, mated with a 5MP depth sensor. The phone has a 13MP selfie camera on the front, place in a dot shaped notch area on top of the display. The phone is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 system-on-chip, which has a dedicated artificial intelligence engine to handle AI workloads. The phone ships with a 4,000 mAh battery with support for Quick Charge 4.0 charging techn...

Write caption… When the last phase of Lok Sabha elections 2019 end on Sunday, all eyes will be on exit polls that will be released after voting concludes. The counting of votes, which will begin at 8 am on May 23, is expected to take longer than usual this time around and will reportedly continue well into the night. Till then, the numerous exit polls -- regardless of their accuracy -- will put forward their predictions on whether the Narendra Modi-led BJP government will come back to power or not. With the embargo on their broadcast being lifted on Sunday evening, the following exit polls will be announced today: Republic-Jan Ki Baat, Republic-CVoter, Today's Chanakya, ABP-CSDS, News18–IPSOS, India Today-Axis, Times Now-CNX, and NewsX-Neta. Here's everything you need to know about them. ALSO READ: Exit Polls 2019: Be careful; take their forecasts with a bucketful of salt ...