India’s Covid-19 count is nearing 60,000 mark with 59,662 cases after new cases topped 3,000 for the third consecutive day. The overall death toll too was just short of 2,000 at 1,981. Overall, 3,294 fresh cases were reported from states in past 24-hour. Stay here for all live updates

The U.K.s new special cyber operations unit, 6 Division (6 Div), will move beyond the typical cyber capabilities within the military sphere into full-blown social media "information warfare." And here the primary adversary is Russia, which has turned the dark art of peddling fake news and political propaganda across major social media platforms into a national security strategy.

Much of the work of the new unit will be relatively traditional signals activities—jamming and intercepting enemy comms, supporting the field world of allied intelligence agencies.

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Halloween is coming, and that means that brands are looking at ways they can tap into the rising Halloween conversation, and maximize their exposure by latching onto trending hashtags.

And this week, Twitter has provided some notes to help you maximize your Halloween tie-ins on the platform - and within them, there are a couple of hidden gems of information, which likely apply to your tweet strategy beyond the event itself.

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When was the last time you watched a video on Facebook? What about Instagram or Twitter?

My guess is that it was probably within the last day.

The reason for this guess is because video continues to be one of the most powerful forms of content on social media. You can not take a digital step without coming face-to-face with a video – and there is a reason for this.

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The offices of the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University sit 10 floors above Bostons Back Bay. Wraparound windows offer a floating panorama of the city, from Boston Common to Fenway Park, as a half-dozen young analysts toil quietly at computers.

At 10 a.m. on a recent morning, with the early calls to the World Health Organization and European doctors complete and the check-in with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scheduled for later, Alessandro Vespignani, the institute’s director, had some time to work the room. In a black blazer and jeans, he moved from cubicle to cubicle, giving each member of his team the latest updates on the coronavirus pandemic.

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Self-quarantining during COVID-19 has caused some, especially those in the travel industry, to take a bigger hit than others. Those who usually work from home have had to make less of an adjustment, though booking paid partnerships is a struggle industry-wide.

As a result, many influencers are getting creative with their social strategies. Those who are multiplatform and have more than one revenue stream are coming out on top.

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Social media has been one of only a handful of sectors that is benefiting from the stay-at-home environment. Social distancing has forced social interactions online for the time being, but investors looking to capitalize on the surge in social media usage be surprised at the big winner.

On Friday, DataTrek Research co-founder Nicholas Colas said the biggest social media winner from the COVID-19 era is not Facebook, Inc.
FB , its subsidiary Instagram, Snap Inc  SNAP 0.06% or Twitter Inc TWTR 0.02%
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Instead, teen-oriented video platform TikTok has seen the biggest surge in Google search volume over the last 90 days. TikTok is owned by the private Chinese company ByteDance.

Social Media Search Numbers
Colas said Facebook and Twitter saw only a small bounce in worldwide Google search volume since global lockdowns went into effect. In the chart below, searches for Snapchat have demonstrated a similar trend, while searches for TikTok have steadily risen over the last 90 days.

In Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures, Tama Leaver, Tim Highfield and Crystal Abidin elaborate on why Instagram is more than just a social media platform: instead, it has become an icon that has altered understandings of visual social media cultures. By doing so, they focus on different aspects of Instagram, such as its aesthetics, cultures, ecologies and economics, supported with real-life examples and cases.

Instagram has tried to keep itself distinct from Facebook and other social platforms.

An Italian-based artificial intelligence company is regularly analyzing social media posts about the coronavirus for their emotional content.

Why it matters: Classifying tens of thousands of posts by their emotional tone provides a snapshot of how people feel about the pandemic. Spoiler alert: not great!

How it works: Expert System specializes in semantics and natural language reading, a branch of AI involving computer systems that attempt to make sense of written language.

In doing so, a computer can rapidly analyze vast amounts of the written word — like, for example, a day's worth of social media posts about the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the past few weeks, Expert System has been collecting English language social media posts each day that feature frequently used hashtags like #coronalockdown and #covid19. Its AI can extract the emotional content of those posts, which is then analyzed and interpreted by Sociometrica.

Two Indians, who were among the 363 nationals brought back to Kerala from the Gulf, have tested positive for Covid-19, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said on Saturday. With this, the total number of active cases has climbed to 17 in the state. The patients have been admitted to hospitals in Kozhikode and Kochi.

The testing capacity for Covid-19 has been scaled up to around 95,000 tests per day and a total of 15,25,631 tests have been conducted so far across 332 government and 121 private laboratories, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Saturday. The minister reviewed the status of Covid-19 in the northeastern states along with the measures taken for its containment.

The New England Patriots have been rapidly locking up their draft picks in the wake of the 2020 NFL Draft. They signed two more to contracts on Friday.

The Patriots announced yet another signing of a draft pick. Actually, they announced four, but three previously were reported. The team has come to terms with offensive guard Michael Onwenu, a sixth-round choice. He becomes the eighth choice to agree to terms, leaving only second-round safety Kyle Dugger and third-round tight end Dalton Keene unsigned. [more]

Yahoo Fantasy’s Liz Loza and NFL writer Eric Edholm provide their NFL player comparisons for the rookie wideout from South Carolina. Subscribe to the Yahoo Fantasy Football Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

The NFL released its schedule for the upcoming season last night despite concerns over the coronavirus pandemic. Myron Rolle, a former NFL player who is now a neurosurgery resident at Massachusetts General hospital, joined CBSN to discuss whether there is a safe way to play sports during this time. 

Defensive tackle Derrick Brown, the seventh overall choice, became the league's initial first-round draft pick to sign his rookie deal. He agreed to a fully guaranteed, four-year, $23.621 million contract Friday. Uncertainty over the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a question of whether some owners might hold onto signing bonus money longer than usual. The Bills, [more]

Several major upgrades to predecessor Galaxy S10 Plus but the same price tag of Rs 73,999 make the Galaxy 20 Plus a worthy premium smartphone

Web hosting is a very important aspect of owning a website, as you need a reliable, fast and secure host. But there’s hundreds of companies providing hosting. Today, let’s have a look at InMotion Hosting, which offered me to review their “Launch Plan”. But this article is more than a simple review: it features an …

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Recent clinical trial results and the decision by the US Food and Drug Administration to issue 'Emergency Use Authorisation' for remdesivir have highlighted the urgency of this work and the importance of planning for access to remdesivir globally, Gilead said.

While frantic efforts are underway to develop a vaccine and doctors all over try and control the spread of the disease for which there is yet no cure, hydroxychloroquine, or HCQ, has emerged as a prime focus area of treatment.