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  Los Angeles : Hollywood’s award season kicks off on Sunday at a very different Golden Globes, with a mainly virtual ceremony set to boost or dash the Oscars hopes of early frontrunners like   Nomadland   and   The Trial of the Chicago 7 . Usually a star-packed, laid-back party that draws Tinseltown’s biggest names to a Beverly Hills hotel ballroom, this pandemic edition will be broadcast from two scaled-down venues, with essential workers among the few in attendance. Deprived of its usual glamour, the Globes remain a coveted prize, and a high-profile source of momentum in the run-up to the season-crowning Oscars, which were pushed back this year to April. Nomadland , Chloe Zhao’s paean to a marginalised, older generation of Americans roaming the West in rundown vans, has long been viewed as a frontrunner for the Globes’s top prize. But it will face stiff competition from Aaron Sorkin’s  Chicago 7 , a courtroom drama about the city’s anti-war riots in 1968 with...

  New Delhi : The secretary in the ministry of information and broadcasting, Amit Khare, said on Saturday that the country was for the first time moving from censorship to self-regulation, even as critics have taken on the government for being “authoritarian” with new online media guidelines. “There will be no authoritarian process,” Khare told Hindustan Times. “The regulation system is accountable to the courts. Any misuse of power can be checked.” The new rules that will cover over-the-top (OTT) platforms such as Netflix and Hotstar, social media intermediaries such as Facebook and Twitter, and digital news media, were notified by the government on Thursday. The guidelines mandate a three-tier self-regulation system with an authorised official from the I&B ministry at the apex. The official can check non-compliance with the rules and even issue take-down orders under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, which so far only applied to social media intermediaries and go...

  New Delhi : Antigua and Barbuda has cancelled the citizenship of Mehul Choksi granted under the Caribbean nation’s Citizenship by Investment Programme (CIP) in November 2017 even as his partner-in-crime in the ₹13,500-crore fraud case, Nirav Modi, suffered a legal setback after a UK court ordered his extradition last week, people familiar with the matter said. The development was confirmed to HT by at least two officers in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED), who added that the fugitive businessman is currently fighting revocation of his citizenship in an Antiguan civil court. “Antigua cancelled his citizenship sometime last year after which he has approached a civil court in St John’s. We believe he will lose his appeal as he is fighting the Antiguan government on a well-established investment scheme, which he misused to take refuge in the island nation after cheating Indian banks,” said the CBI officer cited above. They added that as soon ...

  Spacewalking astronauts ventured out on Sunday to install support frames for new, high-efficiency solar panels arriving at the International Space Station later this year. Nasa’s Kate Rubins and Victor Glover put the mounting brackets and struts together, then bolted them into place next to the station’s oldest and most degraded solar wings. They had to lug out the hundreds of pounds of mounting brackets and struts in 2.5 metre duffle-style bags. The equipment was so big and awkward that it had to be taken apart like furniture, just to get through the hatch. With more people and experiments flying on the space station, more power will be needed to keep everything running, according to US space agency Nasa. The six new solar panels — to be delivered in pairs by SpaceX over the coming year or so — should boost the station’s electrical capability by as much as 30%. 

  Bitcoin dropped 5.84% to $43,418.02 on Sunday, losing $2,691.96 from its previous close. Bitcoin, the world’s biggest and best-known cryptocurrency, has fallen 25.6% from the year’s high of $58,354.14 on February 21. Bitcoin’s price soared this year as major firms including BNY Mellon, asset manager BlackRock Inc, and credit card giant Mastercard Inc backed cryptocurrencies, while others such as Tesla Inc Square Inc and MicroStrategy Inc invested in Bitcoin. Its weakness in the face of market gyrations raises questions about its efficacy as a store of value and hedge against inflation, a key argument among proponents of its stunning rally over the past year. Detractors have maintained the digital asset’s surge is a speculative bubble and it’s destined for a repeat of the 2017 boom and bust. agencies

  The UN rights office said it had credible information that at least 18 people had been killed in Sunday’s crackdown on protesters in Myanmar as it strongly condemned the violence. Myanmar security forces opened fire on protesters, in the bloodiest action so far to smother opposition to the military coup four weeks ago. “We strongly condemn the escalating violence against protests in Myanmar and call on the military to immediately halt the use of force against peaceful protesters,” Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement. “Throughout the day, in several locations throughout the country, police and military forces have confronted peaceful demonstrations, using lethal force and less-than-lethal force that -- according to credible information received by the UN Human Rights Office -- has left at least 18 people dead and over 30 wounded,” the body said. 

  An estimated 50.86% electorate voted on Sunday in the bypolls to five municipal wards that were touted as a precursor to the civic polls scheduled next year. Of the five wards, Kalyanpuri (under East Delhi Municipal Corporation) recorded the highest voter turnout at 59.72% and Shalimar Bagh (under North corporation) the lowest, at 42.36%. Though the outcome of the bypolls will not alter the composition of the two municipal corporations, those who came out to vote said that they have voted for change and development. The BJP rules the three municipal corporations with a comfortable majority. By-elections were also held in Chauhan Banger (041E) and Trilokpuri (02E) and Rohini-C wards. This was the first election in the Capital to be held during the pandemic.