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A TO Z OF NEWS“If you can't understand it without an explanation,you can't understand it with an explanation.” Haruki Murakami 03

News...To The

Today, in order to comment, debate or even opinionate, one needs to dig deep and know the A TO Z of news. Startingwith letter A, TIMES NIE takes you on a news-ical journey,explaining most names, places and contexts associated with it

Why we are talking about it? Pakistan opens air space for all

Pakistan has reopened its airspace to allcivilian planes after months of restric-tions, following Indian Air Force’s

airstrikes on a Jaish-e-Mohammed terror campin Balakot earlier this year. Air India flight AI184 — from San Francisco to Delhi — becamethe first to fly over Pakistani airspace recently.Figure out how it would affect economics.

AIR SPACESHARING

ALEXA, WHOCREATED YOU?

What the closure broughtThe closure, which came into ef-fect from February 27, had re-sulted in flights between SouthAsia — including North India —taking longer detours on theroutes. ❚ This led to an increase in flyingtime by anywhere up to threehours; adding fuelling stops ondirect India-US non-stops of AirIndia; cancelled flights of airlineslike United on India-Newark sec-tors and a sharp hike in operat-ing costs for airlines.

Fact Indian carriers together lost over`550 crore due to Pakistan’s air-space closure. Consider this: Air India (whoseWest-bound flights include Eu-rope, US, Gulf, Saudi Arabia) bledthe most, with `491 crore in loss-es till July 2. It was followed bySpiceJet (Gulf, Saudi Arabia), In-diGo (Gulf, Istanbul, Saudi Ara-bia) and GoAir (Gulf) losing ̀ 30.7

crore, `25.1 crore and `2.1crore, respectively, ac-cording to a parliamen-tary reply by Aviationminister HS Puri onJuly 3.

Thereis no interna-

tional agreement onthe VERTICAL EXTENT

OF SOVEREIGN AIRSPACE,with suggestions ranging from

about 30 km – the extent of thehighest aircraft and balloons — to about 160 km — the

lowest extent of short-term stable orbits.

The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale hasestablished the Kármán line — at an altitude of 100

km — as the boundary between Earth's atmos-phere and outer space, while the US consid-

ers anyone who has flown above 80 kilometres to be an

astronaut!

TERMS YOUSHOULD KNOW

AIRSPACE is the portion ofthe atmosphere controlledby a country above its terri-tory, including its territorialwaters. IItt iiss nnoott tthhee ssaammee aassaaeerroossppaaccee,, wwhhiicchh iiss tthhee ggeenn-eerraall tteerrmm ffoorr EEaarrtthh''ss aattmmooss-pphheerree aanndd tthhee oouutteerr ssppaaccee iinniittss vviicciinniittyy..INTERNATIONAL LAW: Astate “has complete andexclusive sovereignty overthe airspace above its terri-tory”, which correspondswith the maritime definition of territorialwaters as being 12 nauticalmiles (22.2 km) from anation's coastline. FLIGHT INFORMATIONREGION: A country may, byinternational agreement,assume responsibility forcontrolling parts of interna-tional airspace, such asthose over the oceans.

Why talkabout it? EdSheeran dumpsBieber for Alexa

Ed Sheeran, the ginger-hairedEnglishman, who collaboratedwith Justin Bieber for one of

the biggest billed songs, ‘I don’t care’from his new album, decided todump Bieber for Amazon’s Alexa forthe new version of the song.

What’s Alexa up to?Like Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant andMicrosoft’s Cortana, Alexa is an intel-ligent virtual assistant – with a com-puter generated, rather than human,voice. Critics say that the new songsounds very strange, because he isso honeyed and she is so monoto-nic. But strangeness is dependenton people’s taste, and even Be-liebers are giving Alexa a listen.

Today Alexa is makingheadlines by singing. The oth-er day she was creeping outpeople by laughing ran-domly, when they didn’teven know she could laugh.Like melody or art, laugh-ter has long been seen as anessentially human attrib-ute. In the Star Trek fran-chise, this is why Spock andData just don’t get humour.Neither do they sing. So until now,it hasn’t seemed possible that arti-ficial intelligence could script theKapil Sharma show or Gol Maal –surely only humans can beShakespeares and Beethovens?

How the name‘Alexa’ came upMany people who worked atLab126, Amazon’s hardware

division, hated thename, according to two

former employees. ChiefJeff Bezos, on the other

hand, was strongly in favour.And there was anotherworry. A core feature of

the device is a “wakeword” that cues it to

begin taking voice com-mands when spoken.

One of the two words beingconsidered was “Alexa.” Be-zos thought the best wordwould be “Amazon.” This pre-

sented a challenge, be-cause people say that

word a lot. The speakerswould wake up on hearingAmazon ads on TV and com-mence buying random stufffrom the internet. This iswhen it was zeroed on Alexa.

➤ Amazon created Lab126 in 2004 to build the Kindle e-read-er. The lab’s name is a reference to the alphabet, with 1 rep-resenting the letter A and 26 repre-senting Z. ➤ There was talk thatAmazon is setting up Lab126, itssecretive consumer devices develop-ment arm, in Mumbai, as the companygrows its portfolio of devices in India,its fastest growing market, accordingto Factor Daily in 2017. ➤ Lab126 isbehind Kindle e-readers, Fire TV stick,Fire tablets and smart speaker Echo.

BORN IN LAB126

Why we are talking about it Storm Area 51, new rage on FB

The truth is out there, but it’s probably notat Area 51, the secret US military base inthe Nevada desert – a target of the alien

conspiracy theories for decades. Now, peoplehave signed up for a Facebook event called“Storm Area 51,” planned on September 20, 2019.

What is the plan?The creators of the page have statedtheir plans: “We will all meet up at theArea 51 Alien Center touristattraction and coordinate ourentry. If we ‘Naruto run’, wecan move faster than their bul-lets. Lets see them aliens.”

NARUTO RUN:For anyone whoisn’t well-versedin anime-lingo, aNaruto run is a styleof running in which aperson or character runs lean-ing forward with their armsstretched out behind them.

Who is running?They’re internet jokesters. Thememe has spread to several socialmedia platforms and spawnedmany jokes.

Are there aliens?Unlikely. What you would see issome benign government build-ings surrounded by barbed wire.Aliens are far less likely. Douglas Vakoch, president ofMessaging Extraterrestrial In-telligence says, “I’m not convincedthat the aliens are here, or thatthey ever were.”

AREA 51

➤ It’s a real military base, run by the US Air Force andused for flight testing stealth planes. The projectsthere have long been held secret, and the first officialmention of its existence came only in 2013, when theCIA de-classified a report on the history of theLockheed U-2 spy plane.➤ The testing of spy planes possibly led to numerousreports of UFOs in the area, though none have beenconfirmed to be of extraterrestrial origins. The namecomes from a convention of naming the plots of landon the base. There are other numbered areas, desig-nated by the now-defunct Atomic Energy Commission.

WHATIS AREA

51?

What is it? With the NRC deadlinenearing, families stranded in Assamfloods don’t want to be rescued

In minority-dominated areas of Assam,home and land are tangible markers ofidentity in a state that is days away from the

July 31 deadline for publication of the finalNational Register of Citizens (NRC). Recently,the Centre and state admitted that the NRCexercise in Assam has been a total mess.

ASSAM’S NRCDISASTER

■ NRC is a registercontaining names ofall genuine Indian cit-izens. The register wasfirst prepared after the1951 Census of India.■ The NRC is now be-ing updated in Assamto include the namesof those persons (ortheir descendants)who appear in theNRC, 1951, or in any ofthe Electoral Rolls upto the midnight of 24thMarch, 1971 or in any one of the other admissibledocuments issued up to the midnight of 24th March,1971, which would prove their presence in Assam orin any part of India on or before 24th March, 1971.The update process of NRC started in 2013.

THE PROBLEM The mess was not totallyunexpected. In a countrywith a weak culture ofdocumentation and inef-ficient bureaucracy, ask-ing people to producepapers and legaciesgoing back more than 40years is ridiculous.

Why talk? HK exposes chinksin China’s ‘Asian values’ thesis

Large-scale protests in Hong Kongover an unpopular extraditionbill that would have allowed fugi-

tives to be sent from the territory tomainland China, turn several assump-tions on their head. First, the vigorousprotests by Hong Kongers show thatthey continue to value freedoms ofexpression, thought and choice whichare unavailable on the mainland.

The protests arose over concerns thatsuch legislation would blur the demar-cation between the legal systems (alsoknown as “one country, two systems”) inHong Kong and mainland China, sub-jecting Hong Kong residents and thosepassing through the city to de facto ju-risdiction of courts controlled by theCommunist Party of China.

ASIAN VALUESTHESIS

One country, two systems

"One country, two systems" isa constitutional principle for-mulated by Deng Xiaoping, theParamount Leader for the re-unification of China duringthe early 1980s. He suggestedthat there would be only oneChina, but distinct Chinese re-gions such as Hong Kong andMacau could retain their owneconomic and administrativesystems, while the rest of Chi-na uses the socialism with Chi-nese characteristics system.

ASIAN VALUES?

The theory goesthat Asian civili-sations prizeorder, socialcohesion and astrong but benev-olent govern-ments overdemocracy. Thus,Asian nationsought to singu-larly focus ongrowth and powerinstead of demo-cratic freedoms.Democracy, inthis view, is colo-nial baggage.

Photo: Getty images

Photo: Getty images

Photo: Getty images

Photo: Getty images

Photo: Getty images