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A man rows his boat during sunset at Dal lake in Srinagar. (Photo: AFP)

’s voice to narrate Lord Buddha’s life in light & sound show When the long-awaited sound and light show will begin using Dhamekha Stupa of Mauryan era at Sarnath as screen by the year-end, the audience will get to hear about the life of Lord Buddha in the rich baritone voice of Amitabh Bachchan. The company assigned production of the show has started preparations for recording, divisional commissioner Deepak Agrawal told TOI on Sunday. The show had to be ready for screening by September 30 as per initial plan, but Bachchan tested positive just when the recording had to begin, said Agrawal. Fresh dates have been given to the company and recording will complete by October 25 after which sound mixing will take some time and so the show is likely to be ready for screening by the year-end, he added. Efforts to rope in Bachchan for the recording of the narration of Lord Buddha’s life since childhood to his parinirvana for a global audience had started in 2018, said officials of the tourism department. Tourism joint director Avinash Mishra said the content of the show had been finalized long ago and the content creator who developed the light and sound show of Agra and Jhansi was engaged.

Paul R Milgrom and Robert B Wilson wins 2020 Nobel Prize in Economics Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson on Monday were awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for "improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats.” The award caps a week of Nobel Prizes and is technically known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Since its establishment in 1969, it has been awarded 51 times and is now widely considered one of the Nobel prizes. Last year's award went to two researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—Indian-American Abhijit Banerjee and his wife Esther Duflo and a third researcher from Harvard University, for their groundbreaking research into efforts to reduce global poverty. The prestigious award comes with a 10-million krona ($1.1 million) cash prize and a gold medal. On Monday, the Nobel Committee awarded the prize for physiology and medicine for discovering the liver-ravaging hepatitis C virus. Tuesday's prize for physics honoured breakthroughs in understanding the mysteries of cosmic black holes, and the chemistry prize on Wednesday went to scientists behind a powerful gene-editing tool.

Konnichiwa! Welcome to this village school This Aurangabad village school’s tryst with the Japanese language began after some of its students took up studying robotics under the innovative learning programme of the Maharashtra government. Today, around 100 students from Class 4 to 8 in the school are learning the language and some of them are set to start online training for students from seven other village schools in Aurangabad district. The school run by the zilla parishad (ZP) in Gadiwat, a modest village surrounded by hills, is located around 25km from Aurangabad and has 2,000 inhabitants living in four hamlets. The school has 372 children studying up to Class 8. Their parents are mostly marginal farmers and farm labourers, who cannot help chuckling when the students wish each other with a “konnichiwa” (Japanese for hello).

‘FLIGHT TO NOWHERE’ TAKES OFF: Passengers cheer as the Qantas Airways ‘flight to nowhere’ that sold out in 10 minutes last month takes off on Saturday. The approximately seven-hour flight took off from and landed at Sydney and showcased locations unique to the Australian landscape, including sacred indigenous site, Uluru

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Most states not yet ready to unlock schools, to take call after festive season The Union education ministry has paved the way for re-opening of schools from October 15 under Unlock 5.0, but most states are not willing to throw the school gates open yet. While some states are still deliberating on when to open schools, many are waiting for the festival season to get over even as parents in most states are not willing to send their children to school. Hectic consultations are on within various government departments in the states, with many even taking up the issue in their cabinet meetings. Meetings are also on with stakeholders, especially parents. Many states have set up panels to review the situation.

200 million-yr-old spider species spotted in Bengal A professor of zoology from Keshpur College has found a rare species of spider— Idipos Nilagiri, a member of the tarantula family, in Midnapore. The species, which is around 200 million years old, was first discovered in Odisha last year. Named after the Nilagiri region in the state, the Mygalomorph species (under the large group of Tarantulas), is a long living one. The same species was sighted a few months back by the zoology professor Suman Pratihar. His paper, on the recent finding, has now been published in The Journal of British Tarantula Society in its October issue. Unlike other commonly found spiders, this species does not form a web and stays in small holes in the soil. The finding also points at the nature of vegetation/jungle in parts of Odisha and West Bengal, which are still conducive to these species — one of the most ancient spiders.

Despite cost caps, Covid may cripple 80% of families Most states have capped Covid-19 treatment charges, yet more than 80% of families would be financially crippled if a single member undergoes treatment. Reason: Bills for 10 days of treatment work out to several times their monthly expenditure, an analysis of the charges and official data on monthly expenditures shows. For instance, according to the latest household expenditure report of 2017-18 put out by the National Statistical Office, in Delhi, which has among the highest monthly per capita expenditures in the country, for 80% of the population monthly spend per person is below Rs 5,000 or Rs 25,000 for a family of five. The lowest priced isolation bed in a non-accredited hospital in the Capital would cost Rs 80,000 for ten days of treatment, more than three times the monthly spending of 80% of the population. For a patient with severe Covid in ICU care with ventilator support, the bill could be several lakhs as the treatment could stretch for two to three weeks or more.

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Dalit chief made to sit on floor at panchayat meeting in Cuddalore A dalit woman president of a village panchayat in Cuddalore district has been forced by the vice-president, who is from the locally-dominant vanniyar caste, to sit on the floor during meetings of the local body she has presided over for a year now. This is the latest in a series of incidents of caste discrimination against dalit women since the local body polls in Tamil Nadu last year. The case came to light after the husband of Rajeshwari Saravanakumar, 37, recently circulated on social media a photo of her sitting on the floor during a panchayat meeting on July 17. Rajeshwari said another dalit woman panchayat member, Suganthi Tamilarasan, was also forced to sit on the floor. She accused the panchayat vice-president K Mohanraj of not allowing her to convene meetings of the panchayat on several occasions. Bhuvanagiri police have booked a case against Mohanraj and Therkku Thittai panchayat secretary Sindhuja based on a complaint from Rajeswari under various sections of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. Police arrested Sindhuja and launched a hunt for Mohanraj, who is absconding.