NASA has named the 18 astronauts half of them women who will train for its Artemis moon-landing programme.

The first woman and next man on the moon will come from this elite group.

Vice President Mike Pence introduced the astronauts on Wednesday at the close of his final meeting as chairman of the National Space Council. The announcement was made at Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre, beneath one of only three remaining Saturn V moon rockets from the 1960s and 1970s Apollo programme.

My fellow Americans, I give you the heroes of the future who will carry us back to the moon and beyond, the Artemis generation, Pence told the small crowd, seated several feet apart from one another.

Five of the astronauts the only ones in attendance walked onto the stage, waving and wearing masks.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine stressed there would be more astronauts joining the group. NASA has 47 active astronauts.

The space agency is aiming for a moon landing by 2024, although the chances of that happening are growing increasingly dim. The upcoming change in administration also adds uncertainty.

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Google released its annual ‘Year in Search’ list today which shows the top trending topics people searched for in 2020. From ‘How to make dalgona coffee’ to TV anchor Arnab Goswami, netizens searched it all this year as they tried to make sense of things under intermittent lockdowns, uncertainties, and the fear amid Covid-19 pandemic.

While Kangana Ranaut, Rhea Chakraborty, among other were most searched personalities, Indian Premier League remained the most searched topic on google this year in the overall category.

Here’s what people searched on Google this year:

Overall and News Events

Among the major news events, the Indian Premier League, Coronavirus and US elections triggered noteworthy search activity, as users looked for latest updates and election results. Other important news events included the frequent Lockdowns, and the Locust swarm attack. International news events like the Beirut explosion and Bushfires in Australia also made it to the list.

As Covid-19 pandemic continued to hover throughout this year, trending search terms were dominated by the obvious concern around the global pandemic, with a surge in questions about Coronavirus.

While the excitement around the Indian Premier League made it the top trending query, the US elections triggered significant search activity along with Bihar elections and Delhi elections.

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As global smartwatch shipments increased 6 per cent in third quarter of 2020 compared to the same period last year, Apple remained the leader with 28 per cent share while Samsung took the third position, overtaking BBK (Imoo brand), a new report said on Wednesday.

The top five brands contributed more than 66 per cent of the total shipments in Q3 2020 while China surpassed North America to become the market leader after seven quarters, according to the ‘Global Smartwatch Model Tracker’ by Counterpoint Research.

Apple launched its first mid-tier smartwatch, the Apple Watch SE, during the quarter. Apple Watch SE (GPS) starts at Rs 29,900 while Apple Watch SE (GPS+ Cellular) begins from Rs 33,900 in India.

Huawei managed to maintain its second position with 15 per cent share, thanks to the good performance of its newly launched models, especially the ones for children.

With the successful launch of the Galaxy Watch 3, Samsung took the third position with 10 per cent market share.

“In terms of sales, Apple’s position is even stronger. In the third quarter, it achieved $2.3 billion, nearly half of global smartwatch shipments and an 18 per cent increase over the same period last year,” said senior analyst Sujeong Lim.

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WhatsApp on Tuesday said it is adding ‘carts’ feature to make it easier for businesses to conduct transactions through the platform.

Last month, the Facebook-owned company had started rolling out a shopping button on its app to make it easier for people to discover a business’ catalog to get information about the goods and services offered by the firm.

“WhatsApp is fast becoming a store counter to discuss products and coordinate sales. Catalogs have allowed people to quickly see what’s available and helped businesses organise their chats around particular items. With more and more shopping happening through chats, we want to make buying and selling even easier,” WhatsApp said in a blog post on Tuesday.

WhatsApp said the ‘Catalogs’ feature has allowed buyers to quickly see what’s available while helping businesses organise their chats around particular items.

“Starting today, we’re excited to bring carts to WhatsApp. Carts are great when messaging businesses that typically sell multiple items at once, like a local restaurant or clothing store…This will make it simpler for businesses to keep track of order inquiries, manage requests from customers and close sales,” the blog said.

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India is poised to derive full benefit of global investments on 5G standards and ecosystems in the coming two-three years, as equipment prices come down and devices become available, Chairman of Bharti Airtel, Sunil Mittal said on Tuesday.

Terming space as the “next frontier of communications”, Mittal said India’s proactive lead in the space industry and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Department of Space’s call to private sector, would ensure that advantages move in the country’s favour in space communication industry, as well.

Speaking at India Mobile Congress 2020, a virtual event this year, Mittal said that onset of pandemic has accelerated digital adoption of various products and services. The force multiplier of pandemic has pushed digitalisation of the country, he added.

The next-generation 5G would start to become the norm in the mobile broadband space in next two-three years.

“As world settles down on 5G space, pricing of the equipmesunt comes down and importantly the devices start getting available in plentiful, I think India in two-three years’ time will be ready to receive the benefit of the investments that the globe would have made on 5G standard and 5G ecosystems,” Mittal said.

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