Quick notes: Gaali project | Pink salt...

• Gaali Project: swear with love: Team seeks suggestions on healthy swear words.. Reforming India’s vocabulary, one word of discontent at a time.
  



• Pink salt neither healthy nor Himalayan: It’s not healthier. It doesn’t come from the Himalayas. Most of it comes from Khewra Salt Mine, situated between Islamabad and Lahore.



• India lost control over 300 square km: India realized it had lost control of about 250 square km of land in the Depsang Plains, which holds key roads leading up to the Karakoram Pass, as well as 50 square km of land in the Pangong Tso.



• China Building New 'Tunnels' For Winter At Doklam: To ensure all-weather access into the Doklam plateau.. The Doklam plateau is entirely snowed under during the winter months making access a challenge.



• ‘Won't soften stance on China’: Biden could pressure Beijing more effectively than Trump by galvanizing U.S. allies and criticizing its human rights record.. “The most effective way to meet that challenge is to build a united front of US allies and partners to confront China’s abusive behaviours and human rights violations”.



• Aao karein thodi cheeni kum: Micromax is relaunching to reduce dependence on Chinese tech. “The big brother in Delhi then announced demonetisation and we knew that we couldn’t launch right away.” This change in plan hurt the company hard. #BoycottChina



• Aishwarya Sridhar - Wildlife photographer-filmmaker: . Competing against 50,000 entries from 80 countries, 23-year-old Aishwarya Sridhar became the first Indian woman to be awarded the Wildlife Photographer of the Year award announced at the Natural History Museum in London





• Andhra man spends life savings on renovation of burial grounds: Venkat Rao, who is presently engaged in construction of Mahakali and Mahakaleshwar temple at an estimated cost of Rs 22 crore, for which he had already spent Rs 14 crore from his pocket till date, says he feels his hard-earned money was well spent on renovation of two cremation grounds and now on the temple. 
  



• Here's where you can learn Kannada: Bite-sized lessons online
  



• Build underground tanks in low-lying areas to arrest floods: Experts feel Bengaluru could learn a lesson or two from Tokyo, which had built the world’s largest underground water tank to beat recurring floods. Today, it serves as a massive discharge channel for floodwaters. Excess water automatically flows into the tank, larger than a football field. When the water approaches capacity, operators pump it out from the main tank... In Munich, recurring floods were arrested by building 13 underground tanks. “These were mainly built on civic amenity sites. The tanks had two tiers, each 8m deep. Water would flow into these 16m tanks, to be pumped out when required.”



• Walmart’s PhonePe zips past Google Pay: “Unlike China, we have given equal opportunities to both domestic and foreign companies”.



• India opens antitrust case against Google: Competition Commission of India has opened an investigation into Google for allegedly abusing the dominant position of its app store to promote its payments service in the world’s second largest internet market.



• Will Smith And Family Host Sadhguru
  




• China Lobbies for the West to Pay Africa’s Debts (to China): Angola, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, and Zambia have gone deeply into debt with China, giving China leverage to control their governments and influence state financial decisions by offering or withholding debt relief. 



• In China, Big Tech Isn't the Enemy. It's the Strategy: Foreign companies — notably in semiconductors, software or materials — that still believe China is a viable long-term business are kidding themselves. 



• Sexual impropriety: Pope John Paul II was warned about abusive archbishop Theodore McCarrick