Urdu poet Sahir Ludhianvi’s priceless handwritten notes, poems found at scrap shop

Agencies
September 9, 2019

Mumbai, Sept 9: A bunch of priceless handwritten letters, diaries, nazm, and black and white photographs of legendary Urdu poet-lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi were found at a scrap shop in Mumbai, and has been bought by an NGO for just ₹3,000 for preserving it.

Mumbai-based Film Heritage Foundation, a not-for-profit NGO, found these items recently amid a dump of newspapers and magazines at the scrap shop in Juhu and now plans to preserve and exhibit "the archives".

"The diaries found have details of his daily routines like where he would be going for song recording and other personal life happenings. Then there are several poems and notes. The notes are related to his publishing house 'Parchaian'," Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, the founding-director of Film Heritage Foundation, told PTI.

"There are letters addressed to him from prominent people of the time like music composer Ravi, his friend and poet Harbans. Some of the letters are in English, and some in Urdu. Rest all work is in Urdu," he said.

Then there are photographs of Sahir — some individual, some with his sisters and friends and some of his home in Punjab. The foundation's experts are analyzing the poems and finding out which are the ones that have not got published, he said.

"This is reminiscent of a scene from Guru Dutt's 'Pyaasa' where the protagonist's poems and writings are found at a scrap shop," he said.

Sahir had written songs for the 1957 film, now considered a cult classic. Several situations in the film, whose protagonist played by Dutt too was a poet, were based on Sahir's life.

Dungarpur said his foundation had purchased the entire collection of Sahir's items for ₹3,000, stressing how the invaluable work of the master poet had landed in a quaint scrap shop in a Mumbai bylane.

"Our team is always on the lookout for such film-related works. We once found original film reel of Guru Dutt's 'Bharosa' and actress Sadhna's items in similar condition and have restored them," he said.

"Afsos hota in cheezon ko aisi haalat mein dekh ke (it is saddening to find such articles in this condition). But we are happy that we are able to find and preserve them," he added.

The Film Heritage Foundation now hopes to restore these archival items, digitize the documents and preserve them.

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Agencies
June 26,2020

Facebook will introduce a new notification screen on its platform that will warn users if the article they are about to share is over 90 days old, the company announced on Thursday.

“We’re starting to globally roll out a notification screen that will let people know when news articles they are about to share are more than 90 days old,” Facebook wrote in a blog post.

The social media platform had previously introduced a context button in 2018 that provides information about the sources of articles in the News Feed. Building upon that, the new feature will inform users about the timeliness of the article.

“To ensure people have the context they need to make informed decisions about what to share on Facebook, the notification screen will appear when people click the share button on articles older than 90 days, but will allow people to continue sharing if they decide an article is still relevant,” Facebook said.

The social media giant stated that timeliness is important in understanding the context of an article and curbing the spread of misinformation on the platform.

“News publishers, in particular, have expressed concerns about older stories being shared on social media as current news, which can misconstrue the state of current events. Some news publishers have already taken steps to address this on their own websites by prominently labelling older articles to prevent outdated news from being used in misleading ways,” Facebook added.

Apart from this, the platform will also be testing a similar notification screen for information related to the global Covid-19 pandemic. The notification screen will provide information about the source of the link shared in a post if the link is related to information on Covid-19. It will also direct people to its previously introduced Covid-19 information centre for “authoritative” health information, it said.

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News Network
May 19,2020

Washington, May 19: As the scientists across the world are struggling to develop a vaccine for combating coronavirus, US drugmaker Moderna announced on Monday (local time) that the phase I trial of its Covid-19 vaccine has shown positive early results.

The company is hopeful that it's vaccine could be available to the public as early as January next year. Several firms across the world are in the race to develop a vaccine for the deadly virus which has claimed over 3 lakh lives worldwide.

CNN citing Dr. Tal Zaks, Moderna's chief medical officer reported that "if future studies go well, the company's vaccine could be available to the public as early as January".

"This is absolutely good news and news that we think many have been waiting for for quite some time," Zaks was quoted as saying.

Moderna, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts announced that the vaccine developed neutralising antibodies to the virus at levels reaching or exceeding the levels seen in people who have naturally recovered from Covid-19, reported CNN.

These will be followed by phase 2 trials and phase 3 trials, which Moderna plans to start in July.

President Donald Trump had on Friday said that that the United States will be able to deliver a few hundred million doses of COVID-19 vaccine, under 'Operation Warp Speed', by the end of this year.

"I have very recently seen early data from a clinical trial with a coronavirus vaccine and this data made me feel even more confident that we'll be able to deliver a few hundred million doses of vaccine by the end of 2020 and we will do the best we can," Trump had said at a press conference at the White House on Friday.

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News Network
March 2,2020

Paris, Mar 2: A global agency says the spreading new virus could make the world economy shrink this quarter, for the first time since the international financial crisis more than a decade ago.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says Monday in a special report on the impact of the virus that the world economy is still expected to grow overall this year and rebound next year.

But it lowered its forecasts for global growth in 2020 by half a percentage point, to 2.4 per cent, and said the figure could go as low as 1.5 per cent if the virus lasts long and spreads widely.

The last time world GDP shrank on a quarter-on-quarter basis was at the end of 2008, during the depths of the financial crisis. On a full-year basis, it last shrank in 2009.

The OECD said China's reduced production is hitting Asia particularly hard but also companies around the world that depend on its goods.

It urged governments to act fast to prevent contagion and restore consumer confidence.

The Paris-based OECD, which advises developed economies on policy, said the impact of this virus is much higher than past outbreaks because "the global economy has become substantially more interconnected, and China plays a far greater role in global output, trade, tourism and commodity markets."

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