US producer buys rights to Amish Tripathi's Shiva triology

January 20, 2014

Shiva_TrilogyJaipur, Jan 20: Author Amish Tripathi, who created waves in Indian publishing with a USD 1 million book contract, has cracked it even bigger this time with an American producer purchasing the rights to "The Immortals Of Meluha."

While Bollywood director Karan Johar has obtained the rights for an adaption of the popular book, the English rights of the same has gone to an undisclosed American producer.

"I have signed the deal with a US producer for the first book with an option for the subsequent books," Tripathi said on sidelines of ongoing Jaipur Literature Festival here.

"I can't disclose the name as of now, it will be announced shortly," the 40-year-old author said.

Tripathi was given a lucrative book deal by publisher Westland for writing his Shiva triology "The Immortals of Meluha" (2010), "The Secret of the Nagas" (2011) and "The Oath of the Vayuputras" (2013).

The banker-turned-author has now started work on his next book.

"I have already begun work on my next. It is certainly not an extension to the Shiva trilogy, that's over.

But this book would be also pertaining to mythology, history and spirituality genre. This is my area of passion," he said.

According to Amish, the domestic film industry and publishing industry were moving closer to one another.

Pointing out that during the 50s and the 60s adaptations of books like that by Sharat Chandara, into films was quite common but the practise had died out.

"Now the Indian film industry is changing. The story is gaining importance. The stars themselves want a good story and they have realised that a good story is important and a great place to get those stories is in books," Tripathi said.

Tripathi said filmmakers didn't mind picking a bestseller, which meant that the story was already well liked.

"A bestseller means that the story is out, it is well developed and has been successful already. You know the risk has been reduced," the author said.

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Agencies
May 15,2020

Kolkata, May 15: Veteran Bengali author Debesh Roy, who was conferred the Sahitya Akademi award for his novel 'Teesta Parer Brittanto', died at a private hospital in Kolkata on Thursday, his family members said.

Roy was 84 and he is survived by his son. His wife had died earlier.

He was admitted to the hospital near his residence at Baguihati, in the eastern fringes of the city, on Wednesday after having symptoms like sodium potasium imbalance, sugar problem and breathing problem, his family members said.

He suffered a massive cardiac arrest and died at 10.50 PM.

A regular contributor to a number of Bengali dailies, he was a staunch critic of the attacks on liberals by in the country in recent times and attended protest meetings despite his failing health.

He was born in Pabna in present-day Bangladesh on December 17, 1936. He had five decades of career as a writer.

Besides Teesta Parer Britanta', he will be remembered for books like Borisaler Jogen Mondal , Manush Khun Kore Keno and Samay Asamayer Brittanto . His first book was Jajati.

His last rites will be performed tomorrow.

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Agencies
March 21,2020

The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Saturday launched a Health Alert on WhatsApp where over 1.5 billion users can ask questions and they will be provided with reliable information about new coronavirus 24/7.

This will also serve government decision-makers by providing the latest numbers and situation reports, WhatsApp said in a statement.

To contact the WHO Health Alert, save the number +41 79 893 1892 in phone contacts, and then simply text the word 'Hi' in a WhatsApp message to get started.

The service responds to a series of prompts and will be updated daily with the latest information.

"You can also visit the WhatsApp Coronavirus Information Hub at whatsapp.com/coronavirus," and click on the WHO link on the homepage to open up a chat with the WHO Health Alert if you have WhatsApp installed," said the micro-blogging platform.

The WHO Health Alert will provide official information on topics such as how to protect yourself from infection, travel advice, and debunking new coronavirus myths.

The service is initially launching in English but will be available in all six languages within the coming weeks (English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish.)

"Digital technology gives us an unprecedented opportunity for vital health information to go viral and spread faster than the pandemic. We are proud to have partners like Facebook and WhatsApp, that are supporting us in reaching billions of people with important health information," said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the WHO.

The WHO Health Alert is the latest official NGO or government helpline to become available on WhatsApp, joining the Singapore Government, The Israel Ministry of Health, the South Africa Department of Health, and KOMINFO Indonesia.

Earlier this week, WhatsApp, in partnership with the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and UNDP, launched the WhatsApp Coronavirus Information Hub. The hub offers general tips and resources for users around the world to reduce the spread of rumours and connect with accurate health information.

WhatsApp also announced a $1 million grant to the International Fact Checking Network to support fact-checking for the #CoronaVirusFacts Alliance.

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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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