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Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari

Nil Battey Sannata (Hindi slang for 'Good for Nothing') is a 2015 Indian comedy-drama film directed by Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari (pictured) in her feature debut. Produced by Aanand L. Rai, Ajay Rai, and Alan McAlex, the film was co-written by Iyer, Neeraj Singh, Pranjal Choudhary, and Nitesh Tiwari. Swara Bhaskar starred as Chanda Sahay, a high-school drop-out household maid and the single mother of a sullen young girl named Apeksha, played by Ria Shukla. The film's theme is a person's right to change their life, irrespective of social status. The film garnered critical acclaim for its realistic narrative and its cast, especially Bhaskar. In 2017 Iyer won the Filmfare Award for Best Debut Director; Screen Awards went to Bhaskar for Best Actress (Critics) and to Shukla for Best Child Artist. The film totalled around ₹69 million (US$830,000) at the box office. It was remade in Tamil as Amma Kanakku and in Malayalam as Udaharanam Sujatha. (Full article...)

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Inauguration of Lai Ching-te

... that China launched a military exercise in response to the inauguration of Lai Ching-te as president of Taiwan (pictured)?
... that although Luxembourg has won the Eurovision Song Contest five times, none of the winning artists representing the country have been native Luxembourgers?
... that basketball player Dylan Travis played for nine head coaches in nine years?
... that The Chinese in America documents how people in California, during the gold rush era, mailed their laundry to Hong Kong for cleaning?
... that a member of the House of Lords was the principal of a Canadian junior school?
... that despite being invented in the 2000s, Frutiger Aero was not named until 2017?
... that Roscoe "Red" Jackson was the last person to be publicly executed in the United States?
... that Cameroonian-born Joel Embiid opted to play for the 2024 U.S. Olympic basketball team instead of France in part because his son is American?
... that after Wong Sau Ying attempted to assassinate a British colonial official, the police and press began to associate the bob cut with anarchism?

In the news

Ismail Haniyeh

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (pictured) is assassinated in Tehran, Iran.
Landslides in Wayanad, India, kill more than 180 people.
In Gaelic football, the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship concludes with Armagh defeating Galway in the final.
Typhoon Gaemi leaves more than 70 people dead in the Philippines, China, Taiwan, and Cambodia.

On this day

July 31: Lā Hae Hawaiʻi (Flag Day) and Lā Hoʻihoʻi Ea (Sovereignty Restoration Day) in Hawaii (1843)

The lunar surface as photographed by Ranger 7 approximately 17 minutes before impact

1874 – Patrick Francis Healy was inaugurated as president of Georgetown University, becoming the first African-American president of a predominantly white university in the United States.
1924 – A private senator's bill by Herbert Payne to introduce compulsory voting in Australia became law.
1954 – A team of Italian climbers became the first to reach the summit of K2, the world's second-highest mountain.
1964 – The space probe Ranger 7 captured thousands of close-up photographs of the Moon (example pictured) over its final minutes of flight and transmitted them to Earth before crashing on the lunar surface.
2014 – Gas explosions in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, killed 32 people and injured 321 others.

Fred Keenor (b. 1894)
David Norris (b. 1944)
J. K. Rowling (b. 1965)

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Today's featured picture

The Gowanus Canal is a 1.8-mile-long (2.9 km) canal in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, on the westernmost portion of Long Island. It was created in the mid–19th century from local tidal wetlands and freshwater streams, and by the end of that century was very polluted due to heavy industrial use. Most industrial tenants had stopped using the canal by the middle of the 20th century, but it remained one of the most polluted bodies of water in the United States. Its proximity to Manhattan and upper-class Brooklyn neighborhoods has attracted waterfront redevelopment in recent years, alongside attempts at environmental cleanup. It was designated a Superfund site in 2009. This five-segment panoramic photograph shows the Gowanus Canal as viewed from Union Street Bridge in 2021, looking northeastward towards Downtown Brooklyn.

Photograph credit: Tony Jin

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