The Weekly Focus Edition 95
Sri Lankan Economic turmoil
Seeing the abysmal situation in Sri Lanka it is sad to say that we haven’t had much good news. Protests continue and many find the current government incompetent. Power cuts are now not out of the ordinary as the crisis deepens. The stock exchange has been halted to limit loss. The country has runout of essentials food, medicine and fuel. Inflation is at an all time high and this is one of the worst economic crises of the century. Sri Lanka's securities exchange is closely monitoring the situation and has stopped operations for a week from 18 th April. Investors are dumbfounded by this crash and can only hope for a better future with a speedy solution that is effective. Sri Lanka has been importing cooking gas with a credit line arrangement with India. This means that India is lending liquid cash to Sri Lanka in a timely phase to phase manner for cooking gas and other essentials. The central bank of Sri Lanka announced that it would be almost impossible to payback external debts and this seems to be the truth and no one can euphemise it. The government is now trying its best to get any sort of aid or help from other countries and are barely standing for survival.
The question is can they rebuild, and if yes how?
Elon Musk buying Twitter?
Elon Musk; a billionaire, entrepreneur and investor is reportedly in talks with possible
investors regarding a bid for twitter the social media company that is without a doubt one of the biggest of its time. According to certain reports, a new plan could be revealed soon. A potential partner could be Silver Lake Partners, this private equity firm was set to invest a long with Musk in 2018 while thinking about taking Tesla private. Silver Lakes Co-CEO, Egon Durban, is a member of the Twitter board of directors and handled Musk's negotiations during the aforementioned attempt in 2018. This is a potential takeover is extremely interesting considering that he is controversial with his “Meme” way of dealing with certain things; Along with twitter an MNC could we see something big happening soon? Will twitter stock blow up? Is Elon Musk Capable of managing twitter? There are clearly many doubts, if a takeover does take place there is no safe bet in predicting stock prices, Elon Musk has proven himself and with certain help can be successful however we can only know with time. Whatever is happening it will impact our world massively.
Moon Souvenir sells for half a million dollars
A small amount of lunar dust collected by Neil Armstrong during the Apollo 11 mission first sent people to the moon, but sold $ 4,444 at auction for $ 504,375. Bonhams Auctioneers sold moondust at a space history auction in New York City on Wednesday.
Armstrong was collecting dust in 1969, shortly after taking the first step on the moon. According to Forbes, the six-digit final price was below the Bonhams pre-auction estimate of $ 800,000 to $ 1.2 million. The winning price was $ 400,000 and the final price included fees and buyers premium.
The successful purchase now marks the end of a complicated story about lunar dust since its arrival on Earth. But it should be noted that the selling price of Moon dust is surprisingly low because the particles are the only verified samples of the Moon sold to individuals. Dust samples have also been confirmed as authentic by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the lunar dust bag packed on board Apollo 11 sold for $1.8 million in 2017. .
Charles LeClerc wins the Australian Grand Prix, making it the second win of the season for him
Mumbai Indians equal the longest losing streak in IPL history with 6 losses in a row
Deepak Chahar, bought for 14 crore by CSK rules out of the IPL
Ronaldo scored another hat trick as Manchester United beat Norwich 3-2
Other News
Russian State TV claim that Russia have started World War 3.
US intelligence shows the possibility of the Russians using nuclear weapons against Ukraine.
Sri Lanka officially declares itself bankrupt with over 40 billion dollars of debt.
Reports state that the Pakistan military launch operations in some provinces of Afghanistan.
Tropical storm Megi hits the Philippines, over 167 dead and many more missing.
Fact or Fiction
1) One of the surprising social media usage facts on Instagram is that; the platform has 1 billion active monthly users worldwide. More than 500 million of these use the platform daily.
2) 65% of all Facebook users are under the age of 35.
3) Facebook has around 500.000 new users every single day, which is translated into 6 new profiles every second!
4) One of the mind-blowing facts about YouTube is that, more than 50 hours of video is uploaded every single second!
5) People have watched over 50,000 years of product videos.
6) Tweets with images can receive approximately 160% more retweets than those without.
7) 500 million tweets are sent every day which is translated into 5,787 tweets every second.
8) 40% of Pinterest users use it to find the perfect product.
9) Social media users are active and this promotes two-way communication.
10) The most liked post on Instagram is XXXTentacion’s final post before death, which amassed 29 million likes.
We deeply apologize for the late upload today, due to unforeseeable circumstances uploading it at our regular time was not possible. Expect our uploads to return to the normal time from next week onwards.
Written by Arhaan Zaveri
Article 3 by Krishnav Bubna
Fact or Fiction by Nikunj Gupta
Edited by Vivaan Dharamshi
Scroll Down for Fact or Fiction Answers!
Answers:
1) Fact
2) Fact
3) Fact
4) Fiction (500 hours are uploaded every single minute, not 50 hours every second (that would be a little too much).)
5) Fact
6) Fact
7) Fact
8) Fiction (An astonishing 70% of people find Pinterest helpful in finding the perfect item!).
9) Fact
10) Fiction (The most liked post is a photo of an egg, with 56 million likes, uploaded by @world_record_egg).