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Born: April 10, 1894 Achievement: Laid the foundations of the Birla Empire; founder of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). Ghanshyam Das Birla is considered as a doyen of Indian Industry. He was the man who laid the foundations of the Birla Empire. G.D. Birla was a multi-faceted personality. He was a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi and advised Gandhiji on economic policies. He was the most important pre-Independence contributor to the Indian National Congress. Ghanshyam Das Birla was the founder of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). He is also po[CENSORED]rly known as the builder of Birla Mandirs. Born on April 10, 1894, G.D. Birla, was a native of Pilani. His grandfather Shiv Narayan Birla was a traditional marwari moneylender. Ghanshyam Das Birla entered the business arena during the time of First World War. He established a cotton mill in Sabzi Mandi, and later on established Keshoram Cotton Mills. Along with cotton mills he diversified to jute business and shifted his base to Calcutta city in Bengal, the world's largest jute producing region. He established Birla Jute Mills in Bengal, much to the consternation of established European merchants. In 1919, with an investment of Rs. 50 lakhs, the Birla Brothers Limited was formed and a mill was set up in Gwalior. In 1930s, G.D. Birla set up Sugar and Paper mills. In 1940s, he ventured into the territory of cars and established Hindustan Motors. After independence, Ghanshyam Das Birla invested in tea and textiles through a series of acquisitions of erstwhile European companies. He also expanded and diversified into cement, chemicals, rayon and steel tubes. Ghanshyam Das Birla also founded several educational institutions. Birla Institute of Technology and Sciences (BITS) Pilani has today evolved into one of India's best engineering schools. He also established many temples, planetariums, and hospitals. Ghanshyam Das Birla died in 1983 at the age of 90. In his honour, G.D. Birla award for scientific Research has been established to encourage scientists for their contribution in the various fields of scientific Research. Source

Last year, the Toyota GR86 famously sold out in just 90 minutes, giving Glastonbury a run for its money in the po[CENSORED]rity stakes. But there was another fast-selling in-demandcar that slipped under most people’s radar: the Hyundai Ioniq 6 First Edition, which was all gone in just 24 hours. Granted, that’s not quite Billie Eilish fast, but for an electric car, and a Hyundai at that, it’s still some statement. As a result of its global po[CENSORED]rity and the (yawn) ongoing supply problems, we’re only just getting into a first review of the car in the UK, despite it being available in Korea back in October. The proper dealer allocation won’t even come through until March, with UK prices for the Ioniq 6 starting at £46,745. What can people expect when it does finally arrive? Certainly one of the more individually styled cars on the road. I was in the design preview briefing for the Ioniq 5 with Hyundai chief creative officer Luc Donckerwolke and thought at the time that car was punchy, but on the road the 6 is arguably even more distinctive, with its streamliner profile and twin-deck rear. It’s based on the same E-GMP platform as the 5 and comes with the same 77kWh battery that has recently been dropped into its sibling. Thanks to its reduced drag coefficient of 0.21, the rear-wheel-drive Ioniq 6 can do a claimed 338 miles between charges. That’s not only a useful bit more than the 5 but also within a whisker of the Tesla Model 3 Performance. Like all EVs, though, that drops in winter and our test range was 230 miles. Adopting the same 800V architecture as the 5, the Ioniq 6 can use 350kW fast chargers (if you can find one) to go from 10% to 80% in 18 minutes. There is also a twin-motor all-wheel-drive 6, which gets 16 miles less range but lops 2.3sec off the 0-62mph time. Our rear-driver manages a reasonable 7.4sec, which is more than adequate for most situations, even if it can’t compete with Tesla’s clickbait figures. The 6 is available in two trims (if you ignore the limited First): Premium from £46,745 and Ultimate, tested here, at £50,245. Interestingly, these figures aren’t too dissimilar to the 5’s, a ploy by Hyundai to offer two solutions depending on needs and tastes. Normally, I’d stick to the lower trim but in this case the Ultimate makes more sense because it gets the kit you’d want: plush Relaxation front seats with ventilation, improved audio, an excellent head-up display and a 360deg camera. LATEST DRIVES Yaris GR Sport front dynamic Toyota Yaris GR Sport first drive Toyota Yaris GR Sport first drive Hyundai Ioniq 6 front dynamic Hyundai Ioniq 6 UK first drive Hyundai Ioniq 6 UK first drive volvo xc90 t8 recharge2023 01 front tracking Volvo XC90 T8 Recharge 2023 UK first drive Volvo XC90 T8 Recharge 2023 UK first drive Audi Q3 45 TFSIe front corner 2 Audi Q3 45 TFSIe first drive Audi Q3 45 TFSIe first drive Honda NSX Type S front driving Honda NSX Type S Honda NSX Type S View all latest drives Back to top One thing: I have a feeling the car could be quite colour sensitive as the black loses some of the streamliner detail on a dull day in Surrey. Choose wisely, even if the vast majority of options look like shades of grey on the configurator. Build quality inside is top-notch and the layout light and airy. You sit slightly higher than I was expecting, but the position itself isn’t uncomfortable and the view forward is dominated by the twin screens, mercifully also with physical buttons to take you to items like the nav or favourites. Take note, Volkswagen. Rear knee room is impressive, although the skateboard battery and sloping roofline mean the floor is quite high and the head room tight. The 5 is better if you carry tall people. Both cars get a set of controls that enable the front passenger seat to be moved by someone in the rear. Beware of that if you’ve got kids who fiddle. Out on the road, the Ioniq 6 accelerates as you’d expect – swiftly from a standstill and then tailing off as the speed rises. As the headline figures suggest, it’s not whip-crack fast but I can’t see many instances when you’d need much more. As befits the smoother styling, this is more of a lounge driving experience than in the edgier hatchback 5. It’s the sort of car that would do very well churning through motorways, quiet and largely comfortable. The primary ride is good, tied down and not floating, while the steering is of the right sort of pace and feel to make long journeys effortless. The trouble is that it’s not as good over the UK’s rougher roads. Here, the dampers struggle to control the 20in wheels and unsprung weight, making it a bit too lumpy. You can feel that the fundamentals are largely correct because the 6 rolls over a bump with a certain degree of suppleness, but the control isn’t there when you hit several in a row. It’s a pity that the 6 can’t nail the comfort angle entirely. Weirdly for an executive EV, there is the occasional hint of amusement. I gave it a bootful on a wet roundabout, and although the resulting action could hardly be called drifting, it definitely needed a slight steering correction. It’ll be interesting to see which of the 5 or 6 fares better in the UK. I suspect it will be the 5, but the 6 deserves its place and should also be considered alongside cars like the Model 3 and Polestar 2. Hyundai’s brave new world expands. Source

Satellite photos showing poop stains in the West Antarctic snow and ice have revealed a previously unknown breeding colony of emperor penguins. A never-before-seen emperor penguin colony — one of only 66 known to exist — has been spotted by accident in satellite photographs of West Antarctica that clearly show their guano, or droppings, staining the ice. The colony is estimated to be home to about 1,000 adult birds, in 500 pairs with their young, which makes it relatively small for an emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) breeding site. But it's an important addition to what's known of the species. Peter Fretwell(opens in new tab), a geographic information officer with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), discovered the colony in December; but the announcement was delayed so that it coincided with Penguin Awareness Day, which is held on Jan. 20 each year. Fretwell told Live Science that he was looking at sea ice loss in photographs from the European Space Agency's two Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites(opens in new tab) when he spotted the distinctive signs of an emperor penguin colony. "I could see what looked like a very small brown stain on the ice," he said. Higher resolution photographs of the same area taken in October by the Maxar WorldView-3 satellite(opens in new tab), which can image objects as small as 12 inches (30 centimeters) across, confirmed the presence of the breeding colony, near West Antarctica's Verleger Point, Fretwell said. Because the penguins' guano accumulates and stains the ice and snow a deep-brown color, it is much easier to see from afar than the emperor penguins themselves. But the high-resolution images also show individual emperor penguins — pictured as tiny dots — and the po[CENSORED]tion estimate is based on those, Fretwell said. Emperor penguin colonies are often remote and difficult to study, but BAS scientists have discovered several in satellite photos of Antarctica's coastline over the past 15 years. Recent satellite research has even suggested that there could be around 20% more emperor penguins in the Antarctic than previously estimated. Emperor penguins exclusively breed on packed sea ice. This reliance on sea ice, however, also makes the penguins vulnerable to its loss in a warming climate; and West Antarctica has already been badly affected. "Last year we had the minimum ever sea ice extent in Antarctica, and this year is even worse, for two consecutive years," Fretwell said. "It's estimated that we will probably lose a minimum of 80% of emperor penguin colonies before the end of the century." Due to this threat from climate change, emperors are now listed as a threatened species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Emperor penguins are the tallest and heaviest of all penguins, typically reaching up to 39 inches (100 cm) in height and weighing up to 100 pounds (45 kilograms.) They get their name from their dramatic black, white and yellow plumage. Emperors spend most of the Antarctic summer diving for fish, crustaceans and krill. They breed during the dark winter months on the surface of the packed sea ice, sometimes more than 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the open ocean, and where temperatures can dip as low as minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 60 Celsius.). Fretwell recently visited Antarctica to observe another large emperor penguin colony by aerial drone, to confirm the numerical estimates of penguin breeding colonies only seen in satellite photographs. And while he got close enough to smell the penguin poop, it wasn't that bad, he said. Because emperor penguin colonies are on sea ice, much of the guano is frozen and doesn't smell — unlike the colonies of penguins that breed among rocks, where the smell can be intense. "The emperors are more stately and not as smelly as other penguins," he said. https://www.livescience.com/satellites-reveal-emperor-penguin-colony-antarctica

Biden's congressional antagonists heading into 2024:Biden’s most vocal Republican antagonists emerge from the sidelines – with subpoena power Yet problems with safeguarding such documents have been known for years, if not decades. And current and former government officials, security analysts and private watchdog groups have been pushing for reforms, with little success. “We’re really seeing an existential crisis at the highest levels of government, at the presidential level,” said Lauren Harper, the director of Public Policy and Open Government Affairs at the nonpartisan National Security Archive in Washington, D.C. “And it’s something that we've certainly been saying needs to be addressed and reined in.” Adds Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight, "I'd bet you that if they go back to all of the living presidents and root through their homes and their libraries and their warehouses and garages, they're going to unearth some classified documents there." Security lapses are not uncommon Former President Donald Trump’s problems stem from his insistence that he declassified entire boxes of documents, his resistance to returning them and the fact top secret materials were mixed in with personal items. President Joe Biden’s lapses appear more accidental, his staff has said, and involve a smaller cache of classified documents from his time as vice president that was found at a former office and at his home in Wilmington, Delaware. The White House has refused to comment on the nature of the Biden documents, including why the documents were in his possession for such a long period of time without anyone noticing. But CNN, citing a source familiar with the matter, reported that among the items discovered in a private office last fall were 10 classified documents, including U.S. intelligence memos and briefing materials that covered topics including Ukraine, Iran and the United Kingdom. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed two special counsels, one each to investigate Trump and Biden to see if any laws were broken and to look for additional documents that may be in their possession. Such security lapses are a somewhat regular occurrence, according to one former senior security official involved in protecting classified presidential documents under Trump and his predecessor, Barack Obama. A few times a year, a current or former White House official would alert authorities about a classified, secret, or confidential document that had turned up somewhere, and someone with the appropriate security clearance would be dispatched from the White House, National Archives, or FBI to retrieve it, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss matters under investigation. It happens frequently enough, he said, that the National Archives and Records Administration, as it is formally known, has formal written procedures for how to deal with it. Mark Zaid, a lawyer who specializes in the handling of classified information, said such lapses date back to World War II or earlier, and are far more common than is known publicly. “Before the Presidential Records Act was enacted during the Carter administration, these guys brought classified records home all the time,” Zaid said. “I have one in my library from the Truman administration that was top secret until 1994, but it was in the possession of Truman's chief of staff for half a century, at home somewhere because that's what they all did.” The Presidential Records Act of 1978 was enacted after the Watergate scandal, in which former President Richard Nixon tried to claim that his secret White House tapes and other records were his personal property. It states that “the United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records," but critics have said it's too vague in terms of what the law covers. “Since the PRA got enacted, pretty much every presidential library and administration, Republican and Democrat, have had instances where classified information, unfortunately, was taken home or to an office,” Zaid added. “That’s not to condone it or excuse it because it has potentially serious consequences for an individual who is found to have mishandled classified information. But it happens all the time.” Longstanding calls to fix the problems The Project on Government Oversight is one of several watchdog groups that have been pushing for reforms, including more funding and authority for the National Archives so it can be more aggressive about keeping current and former administrations in line. "I'd love to see Congress turn their attention to the more systemic problems here and propose fixes on what we need those (presidential) offices to do," Amey told USA TODAY, "as well as the National Archives, to make sure that classified materials don't leave, either in computers or in banker's boxes." The National Security Archive, a research and public interest law organization that is not affiliated with the similar-sounding government agency, said the problems with safeguarding classified U.S. documents have been made much worse due to the relatively new explosion of new forms of digital and electronic information used by presidents and their staffs. At the end of each administration, Harper said, the law requires that all of those documents be sorted, cataloged and handed over to the National Archives for processing. Depending on their level of secrecy, most eventually will be made available to the public, either at the National Archives in Washington or at the libraries of former presidents. “Even without these kinds of extreme examples from the White House, given the sheer volume of electronic records that are being created, it is a disaster that gets worse, literally, by the day,” Harper told USA TODAY. The U.S. government’s top secrecy czar agrees. In his latest annual report to the president, which is required by Congress, the head of the National Archives’ Information Security Oversight Office warned of the “dire need” to revamp the entire system of protecting secret government records. That includes addressing problems created by the new forms of electronic records, as well as the longstanding issue of over-classification of millions of documents that probably don't need to be marked top secret, oversight office Director Mark Bradley wrote in the July 22 report. Those problems, combined with the damaging effect that COVID-19 pandemic had on the work of the National Archives’ offices in recent years, means "we can no longer keep our heads above the tsunami of digitally created classified records,” Bradley wrote. Source

WASHINGTON – The Treasury Department Thursday began “extraordinary measures” to pay the nation’s bills after reaching a limit on how much it's allowed to borrow, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress. While the United States has been in this position before, fears are rising over whether political brinkmanship will prevent the limit from being raised as it has in the past, risking an economic calamity. The amount of time the Department can continue taking steps to avoid defaulting on the debt unless the $31.381 trillion limit is raised is uncertain, Yellen wrote in her letter to lawmakers. But the government is expected to be able to keep operating until at least June. “I respectfully urge Congress to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States,” she said. Stay in the conversation on politics:Sign up for the OnPolitics newsletter Some House Republicans are insisting Democrats agree to spending cuts in exchange for Congress raising the debt limit. “We cannot raise the debt ceiling,” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., tweeted Tuesday. “Democrats have carelessly spent our taxpayer money and devalued our currency. They've made their bed, so they must lie in it.” The White House insists the limit be raised “without conditions.” “We're not going to negotiate on this,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday. “The basic duties of Congress is to deal with this issue.” What is the debt ceiling? The debt ceiling refers to the maximum amount the U.S. government can spend on its existing obligations, including Social Security and military salaries. Voting to raise the debt ceiling would not be a vote to spend more money. Without a higher debt ceiling, the government would default on bills it already has incurred and has committed to pay. What happens if the U.S. defaults on its debt? Economists warn that defaulting on its debt – something the U.S. has never done – could cause financial markets to tank, hurting 401(k)s and other investments. A debt ceiling standoff in 2013 cost the economy 1% in GDP. How many times has the U.S. raised its debt ceiling? Since 1960, Congress has acted 78 times to permanently raise, temporarily extend, or revise the definition of the debt limit – 49 times under Republican presidents and 29 times under Democratic presidents, according to the Treasury Department. That includes three times during the Trump administration. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., voted for those increases, White House principal deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton said Thursday. "And there's no reason that this position should change," she added. McCarthy said Sunday it's "arrogant" to assume there's no government waste. "Let's sit down and change our behavior for the good of America, because what we're going to do is bankrupt this country and bankrupt these entitlements if we don't change our behavior today," he said on Fox News. What are people saying about the debt limit? The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget called Thursday for Congress to raise the debt ceiling as quickly as possible. “The debt ceiling is too important to turn into a game of chicken, and default should never be suggested by those with a fiduciary responsibility to govern the nation,” said Maya MacGuineas, the group’s president. Politicians worried about the nation’s unsustainable borrowing should oppose legislation that would add to the debt while offering specific solutions to control financial obligations already on the books instead of threatening not to pay down debt that already has been incurred, MacGuineas said. “An ideal solution would be for Congress to lift the debt ceiling as soon as possible and at the same time put in place measures to improve our fiscal trajectory,” such as specific policies or processes such as a fiscal commission, she said. Source

Ten years ago today, a jetpack lowered NASA’s Curiosity rover onto the Red Planet, beginning the SUV-size explorer’s pursuit of evidence that, billions of years ago, Mars had the conditions needed to support microscopic life. NASA’s Curiosity Rover Turns 10: NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover set out to answer a big question when it landed on the Red Planet 10 years ago: Could Mars have supported ancient life? Scientists have discovered the answer is yes and have been working to learn more about the planet’s past habitable environment. Since then, Curiosity has driven nearly 18 miles (29 kilometers) and ascended 2,050 feet (625 meters) as it explores Gale Crater and the foothills of Mount Sharp within it. The rover has analyzed 41 rock and soil samples, relying on a suite of science instruments to learn what they reveal about Earth’s rocky sibling. And it’s pushed a team of engineers to devise ways to minimize wear and tear and keep the rover rolling: In fact, Curiosity’s mission was recently extended for another three years, allowing it to continue among NASA’s fleet of important astrobiological missions. A Bounty of Science It’s been a busy decade. Curiosity has studied the Red Planet’s skies, capturing images of shining clouds and drifting moons. The rover’s radiation sensor lets scientists measure the amount of high-energy radiation future astronauts would be exposed to on the Martian surface, helping NASA figure out how to keep them safe. But most important, Curiosity has determined that liquid water as well as the chemical building blocks and nutrients needed for supporting life were present for at least tens of millions of years in Gale Crater. The crater once held a lake, the size of which waxed and waned over time. Each layer higher up on Mount Sharp serves as a record of a more recent era of Mars’ environment. Now, the intrepid rover is driving through a canyon that marks the transition to a new region, one thought to have formed as water was drying out, leaving behind salty minerals called sulfates. “We’re seeing evidence of dramatic changes in the ancient Martian climate,” said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “The question now is whether the habitable conditions that Curiosity has found up to now persisted through these changes. Did they disappear, never to return, or did they come and go over millions of years?” Curiosity has made striking progress up the mountain. Back in 2015, the team captured a “postcard” image of distant buttes. A mere speck within that image is a Curiosity-size boulder nicknamed “Ilha Novo Destino” – and, nearly seven years later, the rover trundled by it last month on the way to the sulfate-bearing region. The team plans to spend the next few years exploring the sulfate-rich area. Within it, they have targets in mind like the Gediz Vallis channel, which may have formed during a flood late in Mount Sharp’s history, and large cemented fractures that show the effects of groundwater higher up the mountain. How to Keep a Rover on a Roll What’s Curiosity’s secret to maintaining an active lifestyle at the ripe old age of 10? A team of hundreds of dedicated engineers, of course, working both in person at JPL and remotely from home. They catalog each and every crack in the wheels, test every line of computer code before it’s beamed into space, and drill into endless rock samples in JPL’s Mars Yard, ensuring Curiosity can safely do the same. “As soon as you land on Mars, everything you do is based on the fact that there’s no one around to repair it for 100 million miles,” said Andy Mishkin, Curiosity’s acting project manager at JPL. “It’s all about making intelligent use of what’s already on your rover.” Curiosity’s robotic drilling process, for example, has been reinvented multiple times since landing. At one point, the drill was offline for more than a year as engineers redesigned its use to be more like a handheld drill. More recently, a set of braking mechanisms that allow the robotic arm to move or stay in place stopped working. Although the arm has been operating as usual since engineers engaged a set of spares, the team has also learned to drill more gently to preserve the new brakes. To minimize damage to the wheels, engineers keep an eye out for treacherous spots like the knife-edged “gator-back” terrain they recently discovered, and they developed a traction-control algorithm to help as well. The team has taken a similar approach to managing the rover’s slowly diminishing power. Curiosity relies on a long-lived nuclear-powered battery rather than solar panels to keep on rolling. As the plutonium pellets in the battery decay, they generate heat that the rover converts into power. Because of the pellets’ gradual decay, the rover can’t do quite as much in a day as it did during its first year. Mishkin said the team is continuing to budget how much energy the rover uses each day, and has figured out which activities can be done in parallel to optimize the energy available to the rover. “Curiosity is definitely doing more multitasking where it’s safe to do so,” Mishkin added. Through careful planning and engineering hacks, the team has every expectation the plucky rover still has years of exploring to ahead of it. More About the Mission JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, built Curiosity for NASA and leads the mission on behalf of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Source