Author: Admin

Comedian and talk show host Conan O’Brien will reportedly return to host the Oscars next year for the third consecutive time despite a 9% decline in viewership between the 2025 and 2026 awards ceremonies. O’Brien first hosted the prestigious Academy Awards in 2025 and followed it up with a second hosting gig in 2026. The 2025 ceremony, which aired on ABC and Hulu, pulled in a viewership of 19.69 million viewers, while the 2026 event recorded a 9% drop, with a recorded 17.86 million viewers. The 2027 Oscars will be the penultimate edition of the awards show to be aired…

VIENNA — America’s allies now outspend it in purchasing power-adjusted defense budgets, a new analysis by the Economist shows. Using data on global defense budgets collected annually by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI, the London-based weekly calculated that American allies in the North Atlantic and Indo-Pacific spent 111% of what the U.S. did on its own defense in 2025. The countries included in the tally are the 31 non-U.S. NATO members plus Washington’s treaty allies in Asia: Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Australia and the Philippines. For the first time, spending by the U.S. treaty allies surpassed $1 trillion…

Bengal CM Suvendu Adhikari NEW DELHI: West Bengal chief minister Suvendu Adhikari on Wednesday decided to retain the Bhabanipur seat and vacate Nandigram after winning from both constituencies in the recently concluded West Bengal assembly elections.Suvendu had contested from his stronghold Nandigram as well as Bhabanipur, the constituency long considered a bastion of former chief minister Mamata Banerjee.“I cannot take oath as an MLA from two assembly constituencies. I have taken oath as the MLA from Bhabanipur. I will have to leave the Nandigram Assembly constituency,” the West Bengal chief minister said.”With the blessings of the people and under the…

A new mission will attempt to chart a mysterious ring-shaped current surrounding the Earth, so that researchers can better protect satellites and power infrastructure from charged particles in space.The NASA mission, called STORIE (Storm Time O+ Ring current Imaging Evolution), will try to hunt down more details about this “ring current” that traps charged particles in a doughnut shape around our planet. The payload also aims to answer a big question: do these particles come from the sun, or from Earth?Wherever they came from, “these particles have important space weather impacts,” Alex Glocer, STORIE’s principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space…

Neighborhood: Thonglor districtPrice range: $$Dish to order: Fermented tea leaf salad, a Burmese stapleWith a restaurant scene as varied and multi-cultural as Bangkok’s, you’d be missing out if you only stick to local grub. The Yangon-born Rangoon Tea House, which opened a Bangkok offshoot in 2024, is one of those spots proving why: in its buzzy Thonglor-district dining room, furnished with rattan chairs and pink neon lights, it serves up small-plate, hyper-creative takes on Burmese cuisine, itself an amalgamation of Indian, Chinese and Southeast Asian influences. The fermented tea leaf salad, a Burmese staple, is the obvious order, but don’t…

Amazon’s head of devices and services, Panos Panay, says that the company is “not necessarily” planning to release a smartphone, but has stopped short of denying it outright. It was previously reported that Amazon is developing an Alexa-enabled AI phone codenamed “Transformer,” more than 10 years after it scrapped its ill-fated Fire Phone.Speaking to the Financial Times, Panay was asked directly if the company was planning another smartphone. “It’s just not the goal,” he replied. “I know there’s a lot of rumors out there.”“I think your black and white question is, are you going after a phone? A lot of…

New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is expected to pay the highest-ever dividend to the government, providing the Centre with a fiscal cushion to address challenges arising from the ongoing Middle East crisis, sources said. Last year the RBI made a record dividend payout of Rs 2.69 lakh crore to the central government for 2024-25, 27 per cent higher than Rs 2.11 lakh crore transferred in the previous year.RBI is likely to decide about dividend quantum in its board meeting expected to be held during this month, sources said. The transferable surplus for any financial year is arrived…

The Bihar government on Wednesday approved amendments to its Electric Vehicle policy with the aim of ensuring that at least 30 per cent of all new vehicles sold in the state by 2030 are EVs.The decision was taken at a cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary.The move is aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, curbing vehicular pollution and improving air quality across the state, officials said.”The Bihar government aims to ensure that by 2030, at least 30 per cent of all new vehicles sold in the state are electric vehicles,” the proposal approved by the cabinet stated.The policy…

Traders are interpreting the late addition of Nvidia’s CEO to the Air Force One passenger list as a signal that good news about export licenses may be in the offing Source link

Reporting for this story was supported by the Pulitzer Center. Sarah Mattalian is a 2025 Reporting Fellow. The heavy downpours that bring roughly 90 inches of rainfall to Las Marías, Puerto Rico, each year subside in the first few weeks of December, the start of the dry season. Even as the rainfall decreases, rain still comes on a near-daily basis, often in short bursts that cause mist to rise from the tropical mountainside forests. The rain makes it easy for rainbows to form above the hills where the municipality is nestled.  But the precipitation causes more than iridescence in the…