News in Short

• The dwarf planet Ceres, which lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is not a barren space rock as earlier believed. New data from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft have shown that it is a water-rich world.
• After analyzing data collected near the end of the mission, scientists determined that beneath the surface of Ceres, there could be a deep reservoir of brine, or salt-enriched water which is about 40 km deep and hundreds of miles wide.
• Ceres makes up almost a third of the asteroid belt’s total mass, but it is still far smaller than Earth’s Moon. The Dawn spacecraft arrived at Ceres in 2015.
• Long before Dawn arrived at Ceres, scientists had noticed diffuse bright regions with telescopes, but their nature was unknown.

• In a landmark judgment, Supreme Court has ruled that daughters will have inheritance rights equal to those of sons from properties of fathers and grandfathers right from the codification of the law in 1956.
• A bench of Justices cleared the confusion arising from the apex court’s conflicting interpretations of the amended Section 6 of Hindu Succession Act, which came into force from September 9, 2005.
• The bench said whether the father is alive or not, daughters born before September 9, 2005, too can claim equal rights in inheritance.
• The apex court said, daughters cannot be deprived of their right to equality conferred by Section 6 of the Act.

• Akshay Kumar is the only Bollywood actor to feature in top 10 of Forbes' list of highest paid actors for the year 2020. The list has Akshay Kumar at the 6th spot with his earnings of $48.5 million.
• Meanwhile, wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne Johnson retained his top slot on the Forbes' list of the world’s highest-paid male actors for the second straight year.
• Ryan Reynolds came in second in the Forbes ranking of male stars. He earned $20 million for film, plus another $20 million for the film Six Underground, the magazine said, part of his $71.5 million total for the one-year period.

• Noted Urdu poet and lyricist Rahat Indori, who tested positive for COVID-19, died of a heart attack in Indore.
• Indori was a Ph.D. in Urdu literature. He taught at Indore’s Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya for many years.
• Indori’s association with Hindi cinema was fruitful but not memorable. He wrote lyrics in over 20 films and worked with Vidhu Vinod Chopra for Kareeb (1998), Mission Kashmir (2000), and Munnabhai MBBS (2003).

• Democratic nominee Joe Biden picked California Senator Kamala Harris, whose mother is a Tamilian from South India, as his vice-presidential running mate for the 2020 Presidential election.
• Harris, who was born in Oakland, California, and whose father is Jamaican, will be the first black and Indian American on a major US party ticket. She is also only the fourth woman in history to be chosen for on a major party's presidential ticket.
• She rose to national prominence within the Democratic Party by interrogating Trump nominees during Senate hearings, from former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.