Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, a dark mythological adventure that follows a young warrior suffering from psychosis, was the big winner at the 2018 Bafta video game awards on Thursday night at Tobacco Dock, London. The game, which was developed in conjunction with psychologists and neuroscientists to ensure its accurate depiction of mental illness, was nominated in nine categories and won for best British game, best performance, artistic achievement, audio achievement and a new category, games beyond entertainment, which celebrates new releases with a political or social message. Accepting the latter prize, psychologist Paul Fletcher, a professor of neuroscience at Cambridge University who…
Author: Loknath Das
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India is seeking long-term, low-cost funds for the ambitious river linking project aimed at fixing water woes confronting large swatches of the country, Union minister Nitin Gadkari said in a discussion at the Hindustan Times-Mint Asia Leadership Summit on Friday. The government’s target of doubling the income of farmers by 2022, Gadkari stressed, cannot be achieved without effective water management. Apart from enhancing river connectivity, the project is aimed at improving drip and pipe irrigation to reduce water wastage.The project envisages linking almost 60 rivers to cut the dependence of Indian farmers on annual monsoon rainfall by irrigating croplands “The…
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday sought to calm the southern states, which are protesting the 15th Finance Commission’s (FFC) terms of reference (ToR) for its alleged potential to reward populous states at their cost, saying the Centre had, in fact, suggested to the commission to “consider incentivising the states who have worked on population control”. Inaugurating the diamond jubilee building of the Cancer Institute in Chennai, Modi said, “I would like to remind you this (incentive for population control) was not the case earlier.” The prime minister said, “Baseless allegations were being made about the ToR being biased against certain states…
Gurugram-headquartered online lending startup Aye Finance has raised $4.6 Mn (INR 30 Cr) in debt funding led by Swiss impact investor BlueOrchard Finance Ltd. The development comes less than two months after that startup secured $3.8 Mn (INR 25 Cr) from three investors, including Hinduja Leyland Finance and IntelleGrow. As per the media statement, the latest round of funding will enable Aye Finance to further diversify its lending portfolio, with the aim of reaching out to more MSMEs in India. Commenting on the fundraise, Sanjay Sharma, Managing Director and Founder of Aye Finance, said “It is humbling to see the amount of trust BlueOrchard has shown…
There will always be some states disgruntled over the devolution formulae of finance commissions (FCs). However, probably for the first time, the terms of reference (ToRs) of an FC have stirred a controversy. To the extent that finance ministers of most southern states came together to register a protest. And, plan to broaden their group by including other states, including Punjab and West Bengal. The positive side of such a development is that the protest will not remain only a divide between northern and southern states. However, it is taking a political shape, of a battle between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and…
Technology, education and trade will be the key areas of cooperation that will be discussed between India and the UK when Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets his British counterpart Theresa May next week. Modi is scheduled to visit the UK from April 17-20 for the Commonwealth Heads of the Governments Meeting. During the visit, he will hold a bilateral meeting with May on April 18 and also have an audience with Prince Charles. The meeting gains significance as it comes in the backdrop of Britain’s decision to exit the European Union. The Brexit “divorce” process is currently underway, and although…
Families of children with special needs are joining forces to fund legal action against local authorities in England that are cutting budgets, after the teaching union said children who could not be supported were being taken out of schools. Alicia McColl, whose 14-year-old son Kian has autism, raised £2,600 via the crowdsourcing website CrowdJustice to help pay for a judicial review of Surrey county council’s proposals to cut its special educational needs and disabilities (Send) budget by £20m. A similar challenge is under way in Hackney, London, watched closely by parents across the country who are also witnessing cuts. The backdrop to…
For Kris Halpin, a disabled musician who delivers music lessons in schools, the thought of being in front of a room full of students used to be terrifying. But he knew what it would have meant to him at 14 to see a disabled person teaching his class. “My experience in education [in the 1980s] was not immensely positive,” Halpin says. “I was bullied a lot at school because of my disability. Not by my peers but by the staff … When I had to flag an access [problem], I was told I was only disabled when it suited me. It…
You don’t have to follow up-to-the-minute reports on Silicon Valley to be aware that 2018, thus far, has been anything but smooth for the tech industry as a whole. Tesla and Uber are grappling with fatal self-driving crashes, Facebook is finally facing long-delayed comeuppance for its willingness to throw even the most basic user privacy under a bus in pursuit of revenue, the rise of so-called “deepfakes” suggests video may not be trustworthy much longer. And if we take a jaunt back into 2017, we’ve got arguably the worst security breach in history. Into this proud moment in history comes Mozilla, with its…
This week, three Osaka video game bars announced that they were closing. The reason, it seems, was copyright violation. According to IT Media, the three game bars—1Up, Catena and Clan—will cease operation on July 29 when their lease ends. 1Up opened in 2013, while Catena and Clan both opened in 2016. The bars allowed customers to play games for free, while charging them for drinks. The Association of Copyright for Computer Software (ACCS) pointed out that not getting permission from the creators violated copyright. In 2011, ACCS called on game bars across Japan to adhere to copyright law. An ACCS spokesperson told IT Media…