All posts tagged: Covid

Who Has Done the Most Films Since COVID?

Who Has Done the Most Films Since COVID?

Published by Webster

Alia Bhatt vs Her Contemporaries: Has Alia Bhatt Done More Movies Than Deepika Padukone? ( Photo Credit – Instagram ) Is Alia Bhatt really everywhere? That was one of the most popular questions on X after the actress officially joined the fantasy-horror film Tumbbad 2. The announcement came a week after YRF released Alpha. The spy film underperformed at the box office, and the current social media wave has largely turned against the actress. Amid this, Alia Bhatt’s casting in Sohum Shah’s film has drawn mixed reactions. As mentioned earlier, many have started wondering if audiences have seen too much of Alia Bhatt in recent times. While the perception may suggest that, largely because the actress has actively promoted her recent films, the numbers tell a different story. Since the pandemic, she has starred in roughly the same number of films as her contemporaries. Let’s take a look at the number of films done by Alia Bhatt vs Her Contemporaries. Kritik Sanon- 10 Films ( Photo Credit – Instagram ) The actress tops the list …

Christopher Nolan says he wanted to hold Tenet premiere in India but Covid ruined plans: ‘Wanted to do this for years’

Christopher Nolan says he wanted to hold Tenet premiere in India but Covid ruined plans: ‘Wanted to do this for years’

Published by Parlour News

For filmmaker Christopher Nolan, bringing The Odyssey to India is more than a promotional stop; it’s the fulfilment of a promise delayed by the pandemic. Recalling his earlier visit to Mumbai and his admiration for India’s passion for cinema, the filmmaker explained why he was determined to make the country a key part of the film’s global journey. Christopher Nolan revealed he wanted to do Tenet premieres in India. ( Ethan Miller/Getty Images/AFP (Photo by Ethan Miller / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP)) Christopher Nolan wanted to hold Tenet premieres in India Ahead of The Odyssey’s red-carpet premiere in Mumbai, director Christopher Nolan, actors Matt Damon and Tom Holland, along with producer Emma Thomas, attended a press conference in the city on July 11. During the press conference, when asked what made him choose India as part of the Odysseys press tour journey, the filmmaker said, “Oh, well, that’s easy. I mean, I first came to Mumbai years ago, brought by my friend Shivendra (Singh Dungarpur) to do a conference about …

Stuck in Covid, Gill’s Punjab teammate Nikhil Chaudhary earns Australia call-up

Stuck in Covid, Gill’s Punjab teammate Nikhil Chaudhary earns Australia call-up

Published by Webster

4 min readJun 11, 2026 07:58 PM IST When Nikhli Chaudhary got stuck in Australia during COVID-19, little did he or his family back home in Punjab know that the inconvenience would eventually result in him getting called up for the Aussie T20 side in just over six years time. A former teammate of Shubman Gill, Abhishek Sharma and Harbhajan Singh in the state side, Nikhil travelled to Australia’s Townsville in March 2020 for a friend’s birthday, just before borders were closed. Now, the 30-year-old has a chance to become only the third India-born cricketer to have played for Australia, following in the footsteps of Rex Sellers and Lisa Sthalekar. “When Nikhil decided to play club cricket in Australia months after he was struck there, I was a bit displeased. He had played for Punjab and wanted to don the Indian jersey one day. But he saw himself growing as a professional cricketer there,” his father Sneh Kumar Chaudhary told The Indian Express on Thursday. “Right from his childhood, he was an admirer of the …

COVID-19 forced vulnerable Indian households into ‘impossible choices’: Study

COVID-19 forced vulnerable Indian households into ‘impossible choices’: Study

Published by Parlour News

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed some Indian households into difficult and often unsustainable coping strategies, forcing trade-offs between immediate survival and long-term stability, according to a new study by researchers from Lancaster University and the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK). The study found that circular or recent migrant workers and daily wage-dependent families were among the hardest hit, with limited alternative support systems available. (Representative photo/ HT Photo) The study — Diverse Coping Strategies for Food Security: A Qualitative Study of Economically Precarious Households in India in the Context of COVID-19 — found that circular or recent migrant workers and daily wage-dependent families were among the hardest hit, with limited alternative support systems available. The research team spoke with 86 families between December 2022 and March 2023. Published in PLOS One, the study interviewed families who made “impossible choices”, including skipping meals, delaying medical treatment, taking loans and withdrawing children from school to meet expenses. It examined how vulnerable households that depended on daily wages coped when COVID-19 disrupted their livelihoods. Government support through the …

PM Modi warns of ‘return of massive poverty’, flags ‘disaster decade’ of Covid, wars, fuel crisis

PM Modi warns of ‘return of massive poverty’, flags ‘disaster decade’ of Covid, wars, fuel crisis

Published by Parlour News

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered one of his starkest warnings yet about the state of the global economy on Saturday, telling the Indian diaspora in the Netherlands that decades of hard-won progress against poverty stood at serious risk if the world’s cascading crises were not urgently reversed. From Energy Crisis to AI Boom: Key Takeaways from PM Modi’s Netherlands Address | Watch Full Speech “The world is dealing with new challenges,” he said, speaking at a community event in The Hague during the second leg of his five-nation European tour. In light of ongoing conflicts, particularly in the oil-rich West Asian region after the US and Israel’s attacks on Iran, Modi described the present decade as a period of compounding catastrophe. “First came the corona(virus) pandemic; then wars began to break out, and now there is an energy crisis. This decade is turning into a decade of disasters for the world,” he explained, speaking in Hindi. He issued a pointed warning about the consequences of inaction. If these situations are not rapidly changed, he …

Covid pandemic saw 22.1mn excess deaths; three times 7mn formally documented

Covid pandemic saw 22.1mn excess deaths; three times 7mn formally documented

Published by Parlour News

The latest World Health Statistical Report again underlined higher volumes of excess deaths during Covid-19 pandemic with the report estimating 22.1 million excess deaths having occurred between 2020 and 2023, over three times the documented 7 million deaths. Doctors and nurses wearing protective gears attend a Covid-19 patient on ventilator at the intensive care unit of Szent Laszlo Hospital in Budapest, Hungary, on December 13, 2021. (AP) Excess mortality was highest in 2021, with 10.4 million deaths, as more lethal variants emerged and health systems faced severe strain, before declining to 3.3 million deaths in 2023. Men consistently saw higher excess mortality than women, with age-standardised mortality rates about 50% higher in men than women at the 2021 peak. A strong age gradient was also apparent; excess mortality rose sharply in older adults and was 10 times higher in people 85 years and older than among younger adults, the data showed. The Covid-19 pandemic inflicted a setback of historic proportions that wiped out nearly a decade of gains in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy …

Indian cricket’s fast bowling pipeline is broken, Munaf Patel explains why | Cricket News

Indian cricket’s fast bowling pipeline is broken, Munaf Patel explains why | Cricket News

Published by Webster

3 min readApr 15, 2026 06:18 PM IST Munaf Patel believes reverse swing is on its way to becoming a YouTube memory. And he thinks cricket’s administrators are largely responsible. On Bombay Sport Exchange, TOI Sports’ YouTube show, the former India fast bowler traced the decline directly to the Covid-era saliva ban — a ban that he argues should have been lifted long ago but hasn’t been, because the wrong people are making the decisions. “It depends on who is making the decisions. If you have the right people — cricketers — they will understand that saliva should be allowed. But when you have put office bearers in charge, they simply don’t know.” Sweat, he explains, doesn’t do the same job. “Paani se nahi aata hai.” [It doesn’t work with water.] What works is saliva thickened by sugar — chewing gum, a jelly, anything sweet. “Vo saliva mein aap jo agar koi chewing gum khate ho ya koi jelly khate ho toh usse thoda mota ho jaata hai — sugar ki wajah se.” [Whatever you …

Meet the 2 families that took fight to Supreme Court after losing daughters to ‘Covid vaccine side-effects’ | India News

Meet the 2 families that took fight to Supreme Court after losing daughters to ‘Covid vaccine side-effects’ | India News

Published by Parlour News

3 min readHyderabadMar 12, 2026 06:33 AM IST In 2021, when COVID-19 cases were surging across India, G Venugopalan, a father of two, was battling a different demon. His 20-year-old daughter Karunya, an M Sc Data Science student who was administered the Covishield vaccine on June 8, 2021, developed acute side effects within 10 days — including swelling of the airway and severe leg pain. “When we took her to the hospital on June 20, the doctors said that her condition was unconnected with vaccination, because at that time the vaccine was considered safe,” Venugopalan, a Kerala native settled in Coimbatore, told The Indian Express. Within five days, she was shifted to a tertiary care hospital but died on July 10, 2021. In Hyderabad, Rachana Gangu, a mother of two, had already faced a similar situation. Gangu’s daughter Rithaika Sri Omtri, 18, who took Covishield on May 29, 2021, developed acute adverse effects five days later. “She was complaining of a severe headache, blotches of blood clots on her palms, and her platelet count was …

Former Missouri House speaker sentenced to prison for COVID relief fraud| India News

Former Missouri House speaker sentenced to prison for COVID relief fraud| India News

Published by Parlour News

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo., — A former Missouri House speaker was sentenced Monday to 21 months in prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud for misusing federal COVID-19 relief funds for his personal benefit. Former Missouri House speaker sentenced to prison for COVID relief fraud Former Republican House Speaker John Diehl received about $380,000 in federal loans for his law firm between 2020 and 2022 through a program intended to help cover operating expenses for businesses affected by the coronavirus pandemic. But Diehl admitted in a September plea agreement that he instead used the money for personal expenses, including country club dues, swimming pool maintenance, his home mortgage and vehicle payments for a Tesla, Audi and Jeep. Prosecutors said he used more than half the money to fund his law firm’s defined benefit plan, of which he was the only participant, and also paid off a civil settlement related to his time as state House speaker. Diehl resigned as House speaker in 2015 after The Kansas City Star reported that he had exchanged sexually suggestive text …