A TO Z OF NEWS“If you can't understand it without an explanation,you can't understand it with an explanation.” Haruki Murakami 03

News...To The

Today, in order to comment, debate or even opinionate, one needs to dig deep and know the A TO Z of news. Startingwith letter A, TIMES NIE takes you on a news-ical journey,explaining every name, place and context associated with it

Iran discovers new oil field In the news for:

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhanihas announced the discovery of anew oil field with more than 50 bil-

lion barrels of crude — a find thatcould boost the country’s proven re-serves by a third as it struggles to sellenergy amid the US sanctions.

IranThe country, officially called theIslamic Republic of Iran, has apopulation exceeding 79 million,and is the 18th-largest country bypopulation.

Persian is the official lan-guage of Iran. However, other lan-guages spoken across the coun-try include Turkic, Kurdish, Gi-laki and Arabic. Prior to the 1930s,Iran was called Persia. Iran trans-lates to “Land of the Aryans” inPersian. The current Iranian flagwas adopted in 1980.

I T S O I L F I E L D S● A total of 102 fields are oiland the remaining 43 are gas,and there are 205 oil reservoirsand 92 natural gas reservoirs.According to the Iran EnergyBalance Sheet (2009), 78 ofthese fields are active, with 62onshore and 16 offshore, and 67 fields inactive.

● The announcement by HassanRouhani comes as Iran facescrushing US sanctions after itpulled out of its nuclear deal.

● The vast field in Khuzestanholds around 53 billion barrels ofcrude, Rouhani said in a speechfrom the central city of Yazd.

WHEN IN IRAN...

➤ Satellite TV is banned.➤ It is illegal for men towear shorts or neckties.➤ The country is one of theworld’s largest producers of

caviar, pistachios & saffron.➤ It’s world-renowned fortheir Persian rugs, which thelocals have been creating forover 2,500 years.➤ The Persian cat, one ofthe most popular breeds,originates from Iran. The ani-mals live in the high plateausof Iran, andtheir longfur suppos-edly keepsthem warm.➤ Tehran isknown asthe “nosejob capital of the world.”➤ It has coastlines along theIndian Ocean and the CaspianSea. It is the only country tohave coastlines along both.➤ The world’s first windmillswere invented here.

Studentsmeasuremelting glacier In the news for:

Every October since 2010,now-retired schoolteacherJon Stefansson has intro-

duced college students aged 13from a faculty in Hvolsvollur — avillage about 60 kilometres away —to Solheimajokull glacier to docu-ment its evolution. The outcomesare chilling: nestled between twomoss-covered mountain slopes, theglacier has shrunk by a median of40 metres. Solheimajokull is anoutlet glacier of Myrdalsjokull, thenation’s fourth-biggest ice cap.

IcelandWidely known as “TheLand of Fire and Ice”,Iceland is home tosome of the largest gla-ciers in Europe, andsome of the world’smost active volcanoes.

Iceland’s land-scapes forged by theprocesses of volcan-ism include rift val-leys, geysers, hot

springs, rhyolitemountains, colum-nar basalt formations,

lava fields and lunar-likecraters. Subglacial volcanismhas created table mountains innorthern and southern Iceland.Glacier ice and cooled lava eachcover approximately one-tenthof the country’s total area.

THERE'SNO

SUCHTHINGAS BOY JOBSANDGIRLJOBS

Iceland is rated the best country inthe world for gender equality bythe World Economic Forum. It is fol-lowed by its Scandinavian neigh-bours, Norway and Finland in sec-ond and third places respectively.

In US, Insta to hide likes In the news for:

The news of Instagram’s planto start testing hidden likecounts this week has been

nothing short of divisive. Thechange has been embraced bymany who see it as positive foruser mental health, while ithas simultaneously invokedthe ire of several celebritiesand creators who rely on vis-ible metrics such as likecount to grow their brands.

INSTAGRAM

ICELAND

IRAN

Ice eggs spotted in Finland? In the news for:

An exceptional collection of ‘ice eggs’ has beennoticed in Finland, an occurrence whichtakes place only under very rare conditions,

according to scientists. The eggs had been pho-tographed by Risto Mattila, an amateur photogra-pher, and his wife, who were walking along the Mar-janiemi beach, Hailuoto island.

waves. Ice eggs form similarly to sea glass or roundedstones that wash up on the beach, said BBC Weather ex-pert George Goodfellow.Chunks of ice break offfrom larger ice sheetsin the sea and taxi toshore on the incomingtide or get pushed in bygusts of wind. Accord-ing to JouniVainio at theFinnish MeteorologicalInstitute, “you need theright air temperature(below zero, but only abit), the right water temperature (near freezing point),a shallow and sloping sandy beach and calm waves. Youalso need something that acts as the core. The core be-gins to collect ice around it and the swell moves it alongthe beach, forward and back. A small ball surface getswet, freezes and becomes bigger and bigger.”

In the news for: ‘Pakistan borrowed$10.40 bn duringImran’s innings’

Cash-strapped Pakistangovernment of PrimeMinister Imran Khan

borrowed $10.40 billion asloans from friendly coun-tries like China and the Unit-ed Arab Emirates to stabilisethe foreign exchange re-serves and repayment of oldloans, a media report said re-cently.

Pakistan has been facinga serious economic crisiswith short supplies of for-eign currency reserves andstagnating growth.

Imran Khan❚ Khan was born into an affluent Pashtunfamily in Lahore and was educated at eliteschools in Pakistan and the UK, includingthe Royal Grammar School in Worcesterand Aitchison College in Lahore. ❚ Khan played his first match for Pakistan'snational team in 1971; by the early 1980sKhan had distinguished himself as an ex-ceptional all-rounder. ❚ Khan’s athletic tal-

ent and good looksmade him a celebrityin Pakistan and Eng-land. ❚ In 1992, he ledthe Pakistani team toits first World Cup ti-tle. ❚ After his re-tirement from crick-et, Khan founded

his own political party,Tehreek-e-Insaf in

1996. ❚ Tehreek-e-Insaf wona plurality of seats in theNational Assembly, allow-ing Khan to seek a coalitionwith independent membersof the parliament. ❚ He be-came prime minister on Au-gust 18, 2018.

Photo: Getty images

Photo: Getty images

➤ The country has about 10% of the world’s oil reserves. Iranpumps nearly 4 million barrels of oil every single day. Iran hasthe world’s fourth-largest proven deposits of crude oil, accord-ing to TIME. ➤ Iran shares its borders with 10 other countries,including Turkey, Iraq, Kuwait, Pakistan, and Oman.

Why is Insta doing so?

Hiding like counts is just thelatest step in Instagram’squest to become thesafest place on the in-ternet, along with

algorithmsand filtersto remove of-fensive or divi-sive comments orpictures. But themove hasn’t come

without panickedpushback from

users, who,among othercomplaints,note that hid-ing engage-ment met-

rics will make it harder to de-termine whose follower count

is legitimate.

Has Insta testedthis?

Instagram willstart testing a

feature that hideslike counts on posts

for some US users start-ing this week.

Months after the compa-ny tested hiding “like” countsin Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ire-land, Italy, Japan, and NewZealand, CEO Adam Mosseriannounced that some Instagramusers in America can expecttheir like counts to vanish frompublic view.

HOW INSTAGRAM STARTEDS O M E S U P P O R T E R S T O ODespite having more than 151 million Instagram followersand the platform being crucial in making some of her$350 million personal net worth, Kim Kardashian Westseems to agree with Instagram's decision to hide‘likes’; it would be good for the mental health of itsusers, she says. Kardashian West added Instagramexecutives reached out to her. Instagram is quicklybecoming the “mental health lab of our era”.

➤ Insta was developed in San Franciscoby Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. ➤ Instagram launched on 6 October, 2010.From a handful of users, it gathered100,000 users in one week, increasing to 1million in two months. ➤ It went on to be bought by Facebookfor $1 billion in 2012. It has 600 mn users.

ICE EGGS

Iceland inspiredLed Zeppelin towrite the ImmigrantSong

LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUNIn early June each year,the sun in Iceland rises

just after 3 am, andkeeps on shining

until just beforemidnight, allow-ing only a few

hours of half dark-ness. Come summer

solstice, the gap will nar-row further, as the countryis gripped by a luminousparty atmosphere.

IT IS HOME TO TWOCONTINENTS

Iceland sits on two continents.Geographically, it is situatedboth in Europe and NorthAmerica, but it is a separateisland nation, not a part ofeither. The western side of theEurasian and eastern side ofthe North American tectonicplates form the northernmostpart of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge,which Iceland is located on.

IMRAN KHAN

What are they?Ice eggs are sculpted by a combination of weather and