Simon Cowell broke down into tears at Liam Payne‘s funeral on Wednesday. The record executive who helped create One Direction shared an emotional hug with the late singer’s parents outside St. Mary’s Church in Amersham, England.
Simon Cowell shared an emotional hug with Liam Payne’s parents during the late singer’s funeral on Wednesday
Heartbroken Simon Cowell shares emotional hug with Liam Payne’s parents
The America’s Got Talent judge attended Payne’s last rites with his fiancee, Lauren Silverman, who had a sombre look on her face as she shared his grief. A visibly heartbroken Cowell buried his head in Payne’s father Geoff’s shoulder while keeping his arm around the Strip That Down hitmaker’s mother, Karen.
As the trio shared an emotional moment, Silverman looked on with her hand on her chest as she stood behind them. While the ceremony was private, a slew of A-listers, including the One Direction members – Harry Styles, Zayn Malik,Niall Horan, and Louis Tomlinson, gathered as Payne was laid to rest.
In addition to Cowell, who played a crucial role in Payne’s career by establishing the famous boyband, James Corden and Scott Mills were also in attendance. The Teardrops singer’s ex Cheryl Cole, the mother of his seven-year-old son Bear, also showed up alongside her Girls Aloud bandmates Nicola Roberts and Kimberley Walsh.
Notably, Kate Cassidy, Payne’s girlfriend, who was with him in Buenos Aires just days before his death, was one of the first to arrive, as reported by the Independent. Wearing all-black, the London-based influencer wore all black and came along with Elizabeth Hurley’s son, Damian Hurley.
Payne’s funeral took place over a month after he fell to his death from a hotel balcony in the capital, Buenos Aires, on October 16. (Read More: How did Liam Payne die? Autopsy reveals…) After the news of his shock death, Cowell took to social media to pay tribute to Payne. “I feel empty. And I want you to know how much love and respect I have for you. Every tear I have shed is a memory of you,” he wrote on Instagram.
Google has silently rolled out its Quick Share app for ARM-powered devices running Windows 11 or later. Although the app was previously available for Windows-based devices, it did not have support for the ARM architecture and thus, could not run on those devices without significant workarounds. But with its introduction, users can now easily send and receive photos, documents, and more data between nearby Android devices and Windows PCs including the new Snapdragon X Elite laptops.
QuickShare on ARM-Powered Devices
Google highlighted that the new Quick Share app for ARM devices running Windows 11 is available for manual download via the official Android website. Users will now be able to share photos, videos, documents, audio files, or entire folders between Android devices and Windows-based desktops and PCs.
They can choose whether to keep control over the device’s visibility to themselves or share it with a friend or everyone. All Quick Share transfers are claimed to have end-to-end encryption for protecting user privacy. The Mountain View-based tech giant says Quick Share already comes built-in on devices running Android 6 or later, and the app only needs to be downloaded on Windows.
Google says Quick Share is now available to users. The Android website’s FAQ section about the requirements for running the app confirms that ARM devices are now supported. However, tipster Mishaal Rahman claims that despite bringing support for ARM, Quick Share is still not ARM64-native and can only be run via emulation.
Notably, this development comes after Google rolled out a new update for Quick Share on the Windows platform last month that did not bundle any new features but brought bug fixes for several issues that plagued users in recent weeks, including those related to Wi-Fi LAN advertising, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Quick Share shortcut icon, system configuration preferences, and app crashing. The fixes were introduced with the Quick Share app version 1.0.2002.2 for Windows.
In a new study published on Tuesday, researchers from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) project suggest that the mysterious force known as dark energy might not remain constant over time, challenging existing assumptions in cosmology. While the findings hint that dark energy, believed to drive the universe’s accelerated expansion, may be waning, the study simultaneously upholds the validity of general relativity, Albert Einstein’s foundational theory of gravity. Published on the DESI project’s website and on arXiv, the study builds on an April report from the same collaboration that had indicated a similar outcome.
DESI’s Expansive Galaxy Mapping Efforts
The DESI project, conducted at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, has created an unprecedented 3-D map of galaxies, which allows scientists to explore the structure and growth of cosmic formations over time. Unlike previous analyses, which primarily examined baryon acoustic oscillations — sound waves from the early universe that are still detectable — the latest study includes data on how galaxy formations evolve. Cosmologist Dr Dragan Huterer of the University of Michigan noted that these structural shifts are highly responsive to the effects of dark energy and potential modifications in gravity.
Evidence Points Toward Variable Dark Energy
The consistency between the recent findings and those from earlier analyses has been highlighted by cosmologist Dr Pauline Zarrouk of the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, who explained that matching conclusions were essential given the shared dataset. DESI’s analysis also incorporated information from other astronomical observations, including the cosmic microwave background, the universe’s oldest observable light. The study’s results suggest a potential variation in dark energy’s density, reinforcing previous indications that cosmologists may need to revise their models if these findings continue to hold.
Upcoming DESI Results May Shed New Light
While general relativity remains largely unchallenged, the DESI findings have introduced uncertainty into the field. Physicist Dr Daniel Scolnic of Duke University remarked that such discoveries often dissipate quickly, but the DESI team continues to stand by its data. The results present no evidence for modified gravity theories, which propose an alternative view of gravity that could explain dark energy and dark matter.
DESI’s upcoming findings, expected in 2025, will reveal insights based on three years of data collection, testing the robustness of the variable dark energy hypothesis and potentially reshaping our understanding of the cosmos.
Search engine giant Google adopted various strategies over 15 years to avoid legal scrutiny over anti-trust issues, a New York Times report has claimed.
The logo for Google is seen at a Google store in Manhattan, New York City, U.S. (File image)(Reuters)
The company, facing legal anti-trust lawsuits in the United States, reportedly told employees to destroy evidence of their text messages, avoid using certain words in internal communication that could later serve as legal evidence and often copy lawyers as soon as possible.
HT cannot independently verify this information.
Alphabet-owned Google has been deploying such strategies since 2008, when the company was under legal scrutiny over an advertising deal with its then-rival Yahoo, the report said.
The company’s executive is said to have sent a confidential memo cautioning employees that regulators might seize on words casually used or thoughtlessly written to one another. The employees were also asked to “think twice” before writing on “hot topics”.
Government regulations in the US mandate that companies anticipating legal action preserve their documents. But Google’s technology for its internal communication was reportedly tweaked to make deletion default and it was left to individual employees facing legal action to decide on having their chat history on.
In an internal memo from 2011, Google recommended employees to avoid “metaphors involving wars or sports, winning or losing,” and rejecting references to “markets,” “market share” or “dominance”. Phrases like “putting products in the hands of new customers” was also asked to be avoided as regulators might interpret the term to accuse the company of denying consumers a “choice”, the NYT report added.
Several testimonies in anti-trust cases prove that Google also took other steps to maintain a tight lid on its internal communications.
According to the NYT report, Google employees were encouraged to mark “attorney-client privileged” on documents and always add the company’s lawyer to the list of recipients, even when a specific internal communication did not involve legal issues.
In Google vs Epic Games case, a district court judge in California observed that the search giant “ingrained systemic culture of suppression of relevant evidence” and it was “a frontal assault on the fair administration of justice,” the report said.
In another case involving the company’s advertising technology, a district court judge in Virginia remarked that Google’s document retention policies were designed in a way that an “awful lot of evidence has likely been destroyed”.
In a case brought by the US Justice Department against Google’s search engine dominance, a Columbia district court reviewed documents withheld by the company as privileged and concluded that it did not deserve to be deemed privileged after all.
What Google said?
The company in a statement said it took obligations to preserve and produce relevant documents seriously. “We have for years responded to inquiries and litigation, and we educate our employees about legal privilege,” it added.
Agnieszka McPeak, a professor at Gonzaga University School of Law, told The New York Times that Google’s internal practices created an illusion of deceit that the company tried so hard to hide.
“Google had a top-down corporate policy of ‘Don’t save anything that could possibly make us look bad. And that makes Google look bad. If they’ve got nothing to hide, people think, why are they acting like they do?,” McPeak added.
The company’s lawyer testified in the Epic Games trial that a Google employee on average wrote 13 times more emails compared to an employee from other companies and changes were made to its policies to avoid things becoming “worse”.
In the Epic case, the company was accused of misusing the “attorney-client” privilege merely to keep documents away from legal scrutiny. Google denied that it was practiced to encourage a “culture of concealment” and claimed that its employees were “unsure” of the meaning of certain words.
Google also asserted that it did its best to provide the government with documents needed and the Justice Department failed to establish that “deleted” conversations were crucial to prove its case. The department hit back claiming it could not because the material had been “deleted”.
The NYT report notes that Google allegedly changed its procedures once again amid mounting legal scrutiny. The company has started saving everything, including chats and employees under litigation cannot turn off their chat history.
The company’s employees responded to the news by forming a group on WhatsApp, Meta’s end to end encrypted messaging app!
Microsoft released the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview to the Canary channel on Wednesday, introducing two significant upgrades. The biggest inclusion is an update to the Prism emulator for Arm PCs which brings support for additional extensions to devices running Windows 11 on Arm-based chipsets. With this, these devices will be able to run more legacy apps and games, as well as the latest Adobe Premiere Pro 2025. Alongside, the update has also introduced a new on-screen gamepad keyboard.
Windows 11 Insider Preview Gets Updated Prism Emulator
In its Windows Insider blog post, Microsoft announced the release of the Windows 11 Insider Preview build 27744. The new version updates the Prism emulator to let laptops and desktops powered by Arm chipsets such as the Snapdragon X series run unsupported apps and games.
Microsoft says the upgraded Prism will be able to run “more 64-bit x86 (x64) applications by adding support for more CPU features under emulation. This means software such as the Adobe Premiere Pro 2025 as well as legacy gaming titles will now work on these devices.
The newly added CPU extensions with this version of the emulator include AVX, AVX2, BMI, FMA, F16C, and more. The tech giant highlighted that while these extensions are not necessary to run Windows, however, they have become so common that some apps expect devices to have support for them. Notably, while in preview, only x64 applications will be able to use these new CPU features.
Apart from this, Microsoft has also introduced a new on-screen gamepad keyboard layout in Windows 11 Insider Preview. It supports the ability to utilise the users’ Xbox controller to navigate as well as type. The keyboard also comes with button accelerators and has a vertical alignment for better controller navigation.
Additionally, the new Windows 11 build also addresses several bugs and glitches. The design of the Disconnect and Logoff dialog in Task Manager now supports dark mode and text scaling. Another issue where PCs with older Nvidia GPUs saw the display appear as a black screen has also been fixed.
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Latest entertainment news on November 21, 2024: Simon Cowell shared an emotional hug with Liam Payne’s parents during the late singer’s funeral on Wednesday
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Nov 21, 2024 12:41 AM IST
Music News Live Updates: Liam Payne’s funeral: Simon Cowell shares emotional hug with late One Direction singer’s parents
The America’s Got Talent judge attended Payne’s last rites with his fiancee, Lauren Silverman, who had a sombre look on her face as she shared his grief.
Oppo Reno 13 series is scheduled to launch in China on November 25. In recent weeks, the company has revealed the RAM, storage and colour options of the upcoming smartphones. Ahead of its anticipated debut, Oppo Reno 13, the base variant in the lineup, has been now spotted on a benchmarking platform, along with several of its specifications. The listing suggests that the successor to the Reno 12 may be powered by the same MediaTek processor that is also speculated to power the Reno 13 Pro model.
Oppo Reno 13 Geekbench Listing
First spotted by Gizmochina, Oppo Reno 13 has allegedly been listed on Geekbench with the model number PKM110, which is likely to be the China variant. It is said to be powered by an octa-core chipset with an ARMv8 architecture, one prime core clocked at 3.35GHz, three mid-cores operating at 3.20GHz, and four efficiency cores capped at 2.20GHz.
While the chipset’s name isn’t stated, the listed clock speeds suggest it is speculated to be the MediaTek Dimensity 8300 SoC, which is also reported to power the Oppo Reno 13 Pro. The chipset may be paired with approximately 11.21GB of RAM, likely to be translated to 12GB of RAM, and the motherboard has “k6897v1_64” as its identifier.
In the Geekbench 6.2.0 for Android AArch64 cross-platform benchmark, the upcoming Oppo Reno 13 had 1,256 and 3,958 single and multi-core scores, respectively. It is said to run on Android 15 and may adopt ColorOS 15 — the new operating system (OS) for Oppo and OnePlus smartphones that was unveiled in China last month.
Oppo has already confirmed that the base Reno 13 model in China will be available in five RAM and storage configurations — 12GB + 256GB, 12GB + 512GB, 16GB + 256GB, 16GB + 512GB and 16GB + 1TB. At the moment, a single Butterfly Purple colourway has been confirmed, although it could be joined by other colour options too in the days leading up to the launch.
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Milap Zaveri, who has been garnering praises for his dialogue-writing in Rohit Shetty‘s ‘Singham Again‘, opened up about his next venture, ‘Tera Yaar Hoon Main’ led by Indra Kumar‘s son Aman and Akanksha Sharma was a major plus point. At the launch of the film, Milap shared that ‘Tera Yaar Hoon Main’ is full of entertainment with action, comedy, romance, music, and drama. Milap is mostly known for featuring Nora Fatehi‘s dance numbers in his recent films including ‘Satyameva Jayate’ (2018), ‘Marjaavaan’ (2019), and ‘Satyameva Jayate 2’ (2021) that turned into super hits.When asked if Nora would appear in a dance number for Tera Yaar Hoon Main, Milap clarified that she wouldn’t. He expressed gratitude for all the work she has done in his projects and shared that he now looks forward to directing her as an actress instead of in another song. While ‘Tera Yaar Hoon Main’ has action sequences in it, it is not an action-based film like most of Milap’s previous films. He does intend to go back towards more action films with scripts already being developed and also had good vibes about Masti 4. Milap also stated that ‘Tera Yaar Hoon Main’ has tremendous action sequences, which would surely earn applause from the audiences. The filmmaker added that he is very proud of Aman, for his brilliant body, acting, dancing, and action skills and wants to present Aman as a commercial mass hero in the film.
Gigabyte M27QA ICE monitor was launched in India on Tuesday. It joins the Taiwanese manufacturer’s extensive lineup of gaming monitors and boasts features such as a 27-inch panel with QHD resolution, a refresh rate of 180Hz, and AMD FreeSync technology for improved visuals. Gigabyte says its monitor carries support for OSD Sidekick software which enables users to tweak various display settings and allows for further customisation through the keyboard and mouse.
Gigabyte M27QA ICE Monitor Price in India
Gigabyte M27QA ICE monitor is priced in India at Rs. 29,000. It is available in a single white colourway and can be purchased from Amazon, Flipkart, and other online and offline retail outlets.
Gigabyte M27QA ICE Monitor Specifications
The Gigabyte M27QA ICE monitor comes equipped with a 27-inch IPS non-glare display with a QHD (2560×1440 pixels) resolution and a 180Hz refresh rate. The company claims it offers 95 percent DCI-P3 and 130 percent sRGB colour gamut coverage, and a rapid 1ms (MPRT) response time. The gaming monitor features AMD FreeSync technology that is said to improve the display’s synchronisation with compatible GPUs to eliminate screen tearing.
Additionally, it also has VESA DisplayHDR400 certifications, which is claimed to deliver enhanced contrast and brightness for a more immersive gameplay experience.
Its other features include OSD Sidekick, Aim Stabiliser Sync, Black Equaliser, Dashboard, Crosshair, and six-axis Colour Control — all of which contribute to providing clearer visuals and reducing motion blur during fast scenes. The monitor also has OSD Sidekick software which lets users adjust display settings and customise the user profiles by just using the keyboard and mouse. With the built-in KVM switch, they can control multiple devices via one set of keyboard, video and mouse.
In terms of connectivity, the Gigabyte M27QA ICE monitor is equipped with a single USB Type-C port, two USB 3.2 Downstream ports, one USB 3.2 Upstream port, DisplayPort 1.4, two HDMI 2.0 ports, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. It measures 615.11 x 367.35 x 42.21 mm (without a stand) and weighs 3.45 kg.
In a recent Senate testimony, Jon T. Kosloski, Director of the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), clarified the office’s stance on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) and their ongoing investigations. Speaking to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities on November 19, Kosloski emphasised that AARO has yet to uncover verifiable evidence supporting extraterrestrial life, technology, or activity despite numerous unexplained sightings reported by military personnel. He stressed that his office investigates each sighting scientifically and transparently, addressing all domains – including sea, sky, and space.
UAP Cases: Mostly Explained, Some Remain Unresolved
AARO was established in 2022 to centralise UAP reports, allowing streamlined assessment of anomalous sightings by government and military entities. While most cases have been attributed to known objects like birds, drones, and balloons, Kosloski mentioned that a minority of incidents remain unexplained, as per a Space.com report.
In his testimony, he reportedly reviewed examples, such as a 2013 UAP sighting in Puerto Rico that appeared to vanish into the ocean. AARO’s investigation concluded it was an optical illusion caused by the camera’s inability to differentiate the object’s temperature from its surroundings.
Public Pressure for Transparency
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand queried whether AARO’s methods might deter individuals from reporting UAP incidents due to perceptions of governmental secrecy. Kosloski countered by asserting that AARO is uniquely empowered to access historical and current UAP data, with a mandate for transparency in reporting to Congress. In the session, it was noted that some classified data restrictions still apply, particularly regarding sensitive sensor technology, limiting the office’s public disclosures.
AARO’s 2024 report outlined 485 UAP cases, of which 118 have been solved, and 174 are under final review. While the office has encountered challenges in securing complete sensor data for some incidents, Kosloski assured that no evidence points to UAP activity linked to foreign adversaries.
