If you ever wanted to hear what it was like if Seal was just a bunch of seals, then here's that. Next we'd like to see what they can do with Korn.

We are all used to the op-amp, as a little black box from which we can derive an astonishingly useful range of circuit functions. But of course within it lurks a transistor circuit on a chip, and understanding the operation of that circuit can give us insights into the op-amp …read more

Sales from online dealers has shot up during the lockdown. Here’s your chance to find some great deals and also to try some new bottles and grapes

Shaw and Smith Sauvignon Blanc, Adelaide Hills, Australia 2019 (£14.95, slurp.co.uk) With most of us living out most of our lives in the virtual world at the moment, it’s not surprising that a lot of wine buying has migrated online, too. Depending on which statistical data gatherer you believe, sales of alcohol online were up by as much as 50% in the first weeks of the crisis v “normal” times. A lot of those sales went through the virtual tills of the supermarkets, of course. But the online wine specialists have been benefiting, too. If you’re looking to dip a toe into online wine buying for the first time, many retailers are offering discounted mixed cases to get you started. Slurp.co.uk, for example, has a 10-bottle “Indulge in Isolation” case, which at £120 works out as a £50 discount. There are some nice wines in there, although, personally, I’d rather go à la carte on slurp’s extensive list, filling a case with bottles such as Shaw and Smith’s superbly zingy, pristine sauvignon.

De Martino Viejas Tinajas Cinsault, Itata, Chile 2018 (£14.95, virginwines.co.uk) One mixed case that I do like the look of is Virgin Wine’s selection of contemporary German bottles, which, includes pinot blanc and pinot noir as well as a scintillating example of the country’s most famous grape variety, Gunderloch Fritz’s Riesling, Rheinhessen 2017 (a bottle of which is £14.99 on its own; The Best of Modern Germany case of 12 bottles is £140). You could also include any of those Germans in a mixed case with a wine such as the gorgeously light, rosehippy-red fruited, clay amphora-made Viejas Tinajas from Chile. Meanwhile, the UK’s oldest wine retailer, and one of the first to make a success of online, Berry Bros & Rudd, has a tempting 12 for £200 mix and match offer of 30 smart bottles, which is pretty good value for wines from the likes of De Martino, the Loire’s Vincent Carême, Beaujolais’ Julien Sunier and the Douro’s Quinta de la Rosa.

We may be spending less by not travelling to work, but with an uncertain future it’s time to take stock of personal finances

With gyms shut, taps turned off in pubs and the prospect of a holiday a distant dream, many people are finding their outgoings have dropped since lockdown. But the shadow of a looming recession and concern about whether jobs will even exist when offices reopen, means many are looking at their finances even more closely.

So what are the best ways to improve them amid extraordinary times and an uncertain future?

The Observer’s critics recommend the best new arts shows to enjoy on TV, on the radio and online

Barber Shop Chronicles
A never-before-broadcast recording of Inua Ellams’s 2017 hit play splicing stories and banter with barbs and laughter. Available to stream for seven days from 7pm Thursday on the National Theatre’s YouTube channel. Clare Brennan

Vande Bharat Mission: The special evacuation flight AI 130, a Boeing 777 plane which departed from London on Saturday, landed at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport at around 1.30 AM with 326 Indians

Though most passengers are from Kerala and Tamil Nadu, there were repatriates of 18 other states and Union Territories also in the ship, which began its journey from Male to Kochi on Friday night

Actor Jake Gyllenhaal says he has become less interested in work and more interested in personal life, adding that he hopes to have kids in the future.

In an interview with British Vogue, the actor, who has been part of showbiz since the last two decades, shared that he is now ready to focus on his personal life, reports etonline.com.

"I'm interested in my life, even more so than my work. I've reached a point in my career where I feel hungry in a different way," said Gyllenhaal, adding: "I've seen how much of my life I've neglected as a result of being committed to that work and that idea."

"(I've) lightened up. Seeing life as something that is, you know, fleeting, and the world being as it is now. I've turned to my family, I've turned to my friends and I've turned to love. I'm a little less interested in the work, I would say, and more interested in that," said the 39-year-old star, known for starring in movies like "Donnie Darko", "Brokeback Mountain", "Nightcrawler" and "Spider-Man: Far From Home".

Gyllenhaal, who has been romantically linked to French model Jeanne Cadieu in the past few years, shared that he "definitely" sees kids in his future.

"Yes, of course I do. I definitely do," he said, adding: "The act of making love to make a child…the real thing is life. You get to the end of the show and that's what it's about. Children. Children and art."

He continued: "I'm not someone who has ever existed in a space where I've really known what's coming next. But you do have to be open to it. And there has been no other time in my life that I can safely say…. My mother and my sister are some of the most extraordinary people I know. Our vulnerability with each other, our ability to communicate about how tough times can be is what I'm most proud of in my family. For everything I hope to pass on, that's the most important."

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Air India's first evacuation flight with 326 Indians from London landed at Mumbai Airport on Sunday. According to Indian high commission in the UK, the flight took off from London on Saturday on board 326 people. It landed at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport. On Monday, India announced had that it will begin phased repatriation of its citizens stranded abroad from May 7.

The government said that Air India will operate 64 flights in the first week from May 7 to May 13 to bring back around 15,000 Indian nationals.

On day three of the 'Vande Bharat Mission', flights carrying Indians from the Gulf countries, the United Kingdom, Bangladesh and Malaysia arrived in India.

Catch up on all the latest Mumbai news, crime news, current affairs, and a complete guide from food to things to do and events across Mumbai. Also download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps to get latest updates.

Mid-Day is now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@middayinfomedialtd) and stay updated with the latest news

This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed, agencies. Mid-day accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability, trustworthiness, reliability and data of the text. Mid-day management/mid-day.com reserves the sole right to alter, delete or remove (without notice) the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever

Fitness – an attribute hard to maintain; a healthy lifestyle hard to achieve; a life with no celebrations. Is that you? This guide outlines some of the practical methods for a healthy, fit and happy...

The London Apprenticeship Campaign was launched in 2010 to boost the number of apprentices in London. It was developed as part of an ongoing policy focus to tackle long-standing skill shortfalls in the city, shortages which have been constraining employment, social opportunity and productivity.

This paper highlights the growth in support for financial instruments for seed and early-stage firms across OECD countries. These instruments include grants, loans and guarantee schemes, tax incentives and equity funds. This increased support is linked to the recent financial crisis and the growing concern about young firms’ access to finance.

The European Commission has proposed an integrated EU approach to stop profits from trading minerals being used to fund armed conflicts. The package of measures aims to make it more difficult for armed groups in conflict-affected and high-risk areas to finance their activities through the mining of and trade in minerals.

Building on concrete examples, this book explores emerging topics in innovation policy for more inclusive and sustainable growth.

The report takes a comparative look at ADB and OECD experiences, and aims to identify promising policy solutions for creating an SME base that is resilient to crisis, from a viewpoint of access to finance, and which can help drive growth and development.

The study assesses the role of feed-in tariffs (FITs) and renewable energy certificates (RECs) in creating incentives for cross-border investments and for investments in particular technological portfolios via M&A. The analysis explores the dataset on M&As in alternative energy sources worldwide over 2005-2011.

There has been increasing global concern from policy makers over the lack of access to finance for young innovative firms. As a result, governments in many OECD countries have sought to address the financing gap and perceived market failures by supporting the seed and early stage market.

Slowing growth in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) is grabbing the headlines with some suggesting a third wave of the 2008 global financial crisis. While this topic deserves attention because of its global economic implications, there is insufficient analysis of firms in global production networks (GPNs), which were at the forefront of the economic transformation in PRC and the rest of East Asia, and lessons for latecomers to GPNs.

The more governments and firms understand the implications of new technologies for production, the better placed they will be to prepare for the risks, shape appropriate policies, and reap the benefits.

A High-Level Meeting on excess capacity and structural adjustment in the steel sector was convened on 18 April 2016, at the Palais d’Egmont in Brussels, co-organised by the OECD and the Belgian government.

In an increasingly competitive international environment, providing workers with the right mix of skills can help ensure that globalisation translates into new jobs and productivity gains rather than negative economic and social outcomes, according to a new OECD report.

This collection compiles the contributions of senior policy experts, academics, and economic practitioners on developments in the financial integration and financial regulation of cross-border capital flows since the 2008 global financial crisis at the OECD High-Level Seminar “Open and Orderly Capital Movements” held in October 2016.

This paper provides a first assessment of the degree to which public research contributes to innovative entrepreneurship, using data on start-ups and venture capital.

Powered by the OECD, spearheaded by Danone, and driven forward at the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Biarritz in August 2019, B4IG, the ambitious initiative against inequality sponsored by French President Emmanuel Macron, is a coalition of leading multinational enterprises committed to tackling inequalities and promoting inclusive growth: economic growth that is distributed fairly across society and creates opportunities for all.

In his speech to OECD Ambassadors, the President of Iceland discussed how Iceland could offer lessons on the nature of a clean energy economy; and presented some insights from Iceland's recent challenges in dealing with the financial crisis.

In OECD countries, networks look like a mesh with multiple paths that can act as each other’s backup. In developing countries, however, communication networks often resemble rivers, with small branches of regional networks delivering their traffic to a central national backbone that ends at one submarine fibre, making cable cuts a greater risk to the functioning of the economy.

The first generation of those born into the internet age is already joining the workforce and yet the internet still manages to disrupt. The phenomenon of fake news is one of the by-products of digital transformation and it is worth taking a look at what is new, and not so new, and how it fits in to the rest of what some are calling the “post-truth world”.

More than 110 countries and jurisdictions have agreed to review two key concepts of the international tax system, responding to a mandate from the G20 Finance Ministers to work on the implications of digitalisation for taxation.

The OECD LEED Programme launches this "Call for Initiatives" to extract what local authorities and other actors know works, what the new scenario is demanding and how equipped they are to respond. We are interested in learning from the experiences of EU member countries, the wider OECD area as well as other countries.

The unfolding refugee crisis requires a bold, comprehensive and global response. At the same time, OECD countries should adapt their policies to foster the integration of those who are going to stay. While this implies significant up-front costs, it is also essential to reaping sizeable medium- to long-term social and economic benefits.

Perspectives on Global Development 2017: International Migration in a Shifting World shows that while the share of global migrants originating from developing countries has remained fairly stable at around 80% over the last 20 years, the share of developing country migrants heading to high-income countries has jumped from 36% to 51% of the world total.

Labor Migration in Asia – Safeguarding rights from home to the workplace

When it comes to labour and migration, global governance of almost any kind is missing. When it comes to labour, the International Labour Organization, which is the oldest among the institutions mentioned here, has little power and deals mostly with national labour rules.

The Dominican Republic stands to benefit from integrating migration further into sectoral and national development strategies, says new joint OECD Development Centre – UNIBE report

This paper presents comparative data on innovation in selected climate change mitigation and adaptation technologies in the context of Africa. Such analysis informs policy aimed at encouraging international technology transfer and development of domestic innovation capacities.

In his speech to OECD Ambassadors, the President of Iceland discussed how Iceland could offer lessons on the nature of a clean energy economy; and presented some insights from Iceland's recent challenges in dealing with the financial crisis.

Competitiveness and carbon leakage issues have been some of the main concerns in the implementation and discussions of climate policies. This paper examines the macroeconomic and sectoral competitiveness and carbon leakage impacts associated with a range of stylised mitigation policy scenarios.

The Netherlands is a global pioneer in water management with a long history of containing flood risks and reclaiming land from the sea. Yet it will need to adapt its water governance policies to meet the looming challenges of shifting demographics, regional development and climate change, according to an OECD report.

This study uses a unique dataset of investment flows to analyse the role of two categories of public interventions (finance and policies) in mobilising flows of private climate finance worldwide and in the more specific context of flows to and in developing countries. The objectives are threefold. Find out more.

Challenging free trade orthodoxy is a heavy lift in our political culture; anything that has been in place for that long takes on an air of inevitability. But, critical as these shifts are, they are not enough to lower emissions in time. To do that, we will need to confront a logic even more entrenched than free trade–the logic of indiscriminate economic growth.

The current Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal highlights the difficult reality of making the transition to a low-carbon economy. It also highlights the growing need for governments to make smart policies, based on actual costs.

Participants to the Arrangement on Officially Supported Export Credits have agreed new rules on official support for coal-fired power plants, including restrictions on official export credits for the least efficient coal-fired power plants, the OECD announced today.

Urgent research is needed to assess the possible risks to human health and ecosystems from the ever-increasing amounts of engineered nanomaterials going into household waste and ending up in the environment, according to a new OECD report.

This report provides a review of recent firm-level and plant-level surveys containing questions on environmental policies, innovation practices or performance which are relevant for environmental policy analysis and assessment. We specifically focus on the core element that relates environmental policies to environmental and economic performance, namely the adoption of innovative practices and environmental innovations by firms.

This paper provides an in-depth review of experiences and insights from mainstreaming biodiversity and development in South Africa. More specifically, it describes how biodiversity considerations have been mainstreamed in five key sectors/areas, namely: land use planning, mining, water, infrastructure, and the agricultural sector.

The OECD will convene its 6th Workshop on Regional trade agreements and the environment on 10 June 2016, at the OECD Headquarters. The focus of the workshop will be on chapters of regional trade agreement (RTAs) that are concerned mainly with issues other than the environment, such as market access, investment, or government procurement, TBT, regulatory coherence or dispute settlement.

Developing countries are disproportionately affected by the rising trend of losses from climate-related extreme events. This paper uses case studies of Colombia and Senegal to examine how countries are using financial protection as part of their approaches to managing climate risks; it also identifies emerging priorities for development co-operation providers in supporting financial protection against climate risks.

Climate change is a clear and undeniable challenge that requires a global response. The Paris Agreement represents the careful crafting of a collective effort of over 190 countries to meet this challenge.

This paper presents updated results for the cost of ambient air pollution in 41 countries: the 6 major emerging economies known as the BRIICS – Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China and South Africa – and the 35 OECD member countries.