Daily Archives: December 13, 2021

YouTube Shorts offers an amazing potential for artists and creatives of all shapes and sizes to reach new viewers and connect with fans in brand new ways. Taking after the TikTok, Shorts transform the wealth of video content on YouTube into short, easy-to-watch, and fun videos that are great for casual entertainment or a quick watch.

In the short time since Shorts have launched, theyve become a huge part of the veteran video site and gain billions of views every single day. Especially now whilst YouTube are prioritising Shorts videos to build the format and get YouTube users watching them, there is huge potential in reaching a much bigger audience with very little effort.

So, come and explore with us the potential in YouTube Shorts and how you can take advantage of them to grow your following.

Shorts are YouTubes answer to the short-form fun that is taking the world by storm on TikTok and Instagram Reels. With Shorts, viewers dont have to leave their favourite video website to take part in short and easy to watch videos, optimised for smartphones and watching whilst on the go.

They are videos of up to 60 seconds which are either vertical (9:16) or square (1:1) ratio, making them easy to watch on phones and tablets. Content on Shorts can be anything from little comedy skits and jokes to educational snippets and bite-sized facts, dances and music trends to insights and advice.

There are a number of ways you can upload YouTube Shorts and it depends on the content youre looking to upload and where from. Shorts was designed with simplicity in mind, allowing anyone to use YouTubes new in-app camera and editing tool available for on-the-fly recording. Recording with this tool means that users can immediately upload their Shorts straight after theyve filmed it.

From the editing tool creators can add music to their videos, effects and filters, adjust the speed of it, and more to create the effect they want with a simple phone recording.

You can also upload Shorts the same way that you would normal YouTube videos, with all of the editable functionality with descriptions and thumbnails on offer. If your video is under 60 seconds long and in the compatible aspect ratio then uploading it normally will allow YouTube to pick it up as a Short automatically. Some recommend adding the hashtag #shorts to your title to get recognised even more quickly.

You can also create Shorts from existing videos which are eligible for being sliced and made into clips. Videos which have been marked by the creator as approved for making clips from will show an option underneath the video to Clip it. This is only available on certain videos for the time being.

There are a number of places where you can find all of the Shorts on YouTube, whether youre looking for the ones that you have created and uploaded or the Shorts of others.

Channel pages: Shorts will show up on the feed of channels. You can find your own Shorts in your video list on your channel and any other creators. You can also scroll down a channels homepage to see a collection of their Shorts at the bottom, separated from their regular videos.

YouTubes homepage: On mobile devices, as you scroll down a sliding feed of Shorts will be available to explore based on trending videos and your tastes.

The Shorts tab: A Shorts feed is available on the bottom tab of the mobile app.

Subscriptions: When the channels youre subscribed to upload Shorts videos then theyll show up in your Subscriptions feed.

Searching: You can search topics and videos like usual and Shorts will be included in the search results.

Shorts offers a great opportunity for creators to get discovered and the potential for artists to use the format to reach new audiences is huge. For a start, creating Shorts yourself is a fantastic way to engage with audiences through a format that YouTube is prioritising currently and that engages with large audiences of viewers quickly.

Getting involved by creating your own Shorts opens up a huge opportunity to be watched by new viewers on the many places Shorts are displayed across YouTube. You can use them creatively to promote your music/artist personality in unique ways like behind the scenes videos, snippets of upcoming content, talking to fans, and whatever else you can come up with. Even just making a skit unrelated to your music can open you up to a big new audience that then have eyes on your content.

Then theres the Audio Library, a massive source of potential for tracks to go viral and for artists to be heard by listeners whove never heard them before. The Audio Library allows any creator to explore YouTubes music library and select a track to use as the soundtrack of their Shorts. This library is open to all creators and gives tracks the potential to reach millions of viewers when Shorts get viewed.

Each YouTube Short which uses a track from the Audio Library features that tracks icon in the bottom right. Viewers can tap this to go to the sound page for that track which shows more videos using that song. There is also then the option for fans to head straight to the music video for that track or create their own Short using the song.

Its been proven with TikTok that being featured in a viral video can lead an artist to blow up and convert into new listeners and higher streams.

There are numerous ways that Shorts can be used to promote your music and your artist brand. One method to explore is using your own music to create Shorts, where you can then record anything to engage viewers: dance around, cartwheel into a hedge, skate off a large ramp, fall over in a comical fashion whatever feels appropriate and entertaining. Treat it like a mini music-video that you can use to promote your track by showing every viewer a snippet of it.

Similarly, once your songs have gone live then encourage your fans to create Shorts with your music. Getting people sharing your music and setting it to videos theyve created is a fantastic way of creating unique and varied content around your music. You can encourage people to get involved by creating a trend: come up with a unique dance for your song or do something silly that people can recreate in their own video.

Using a hashtag is a powerful way of starting a trend and keeping all the content connected. Make sure to come up with something unique that wont be competing with other content and then encourage participants to create their own Shorts and use your hashtag to build a feed of fun and interesting videos that all link back to your track.

Find out how to get your music in YouTubes Audio Library in the section below so that Shorts creators can use it in their videos.

Another great way to use Shorts to reach audiences is to take a step back from your own music and create engaging content beyond it. Any content that appeals to viewers is building your brand and gaining you increased recognition. Why not explore your creative process in a Short, appealing to likeminded music creators? Or you could provide some advice on the trials youve faced as a musician and how youve overcome them.

You can make the most of anything youre doing by recording it and sharing it. Going into a practice session? Why not record a snippet and share it with fans to show what youre working on. Getting merch ready for a tour date? Share what youve got on offer in a Short and show fans what they can get whilst promoting your upcoming gigs at the same time.

Anything youre doing will be interesting if you have dedicated fans who love your music. People love being able to relate to the people they look up to, and seeing behind the curtain at what happens beyond the music can be a great way to connect with audiences in a personal way that offers them some deeper value though if this doesnt work for your artist persona, then fair enough!

Heres some inspiration for using YouTube Shorts to promote your next release with an example schedule and strategy for combining a new release with Shorts content for maximum engagement. These tips come straight from YouTube themselves, so take notes!

Use Shorts as a creative platform for your music and brand, not just a place to broadcast messages

Announce your upcoming release

Connect to audiences with behind-the-scenes content

Encourage fans to make their own Shorts using your music

Use Shorts Analytics to measure the performance of your Shorts content and make informed decisions for the future strategies

Continue posting Shorts with your music and engaging with fans on your Shorts

At RouteNote we can add your music to the YouTube Shorts Audio library for free. First up youll need to create a free account and then upload your music. Select YouTube Music as a store to ensure that your music is sent to YouTubes library.

Once your music has been approved, fill out this form to find out if your track is eligible to be made available in the YouTube Shorts library: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeNQWHN3RykE3liAZKH925PAI8qABR_haXA3Ytd2U1QRcFaIA/viewform?vc=0&c=0&w=1&flr=0

If a video is in 9:16 or 1:11 ratio and is under a minute long then it will automatically be recognised as a Short and featured in the sections where YouTube features Shorts.

If your content has been uploaded for Shorts through RouteNote and isnt available in the Audio Library, it may be because it wasnt eligible. Some tracks wont be eligible for certain territories or because of the rights involved in them. If you believe your music should have been eligible for Shorts but isnt available in the library then get in touch with our support team via a support ticket on the website or at support@routenote.com.

Subscribers who have their bell notifications turned on for a channel will be sent personalised Shorts highlights notifications. Belled subscribers will receive up to three notifications a day for non-Shorts videos on a channel and a maximum of three personalised Shorts highlight notifications across all of the channels theyre subscribed to.

Only the primary owner of a channel can upload Shorts. YouTube have plans to update the Shorts potential across channel permissions.

You can see analytics for your Shorts videos the same as the rest of your content in your channels analytics dashboard. On your individual Shorts you can select the Analytics button to bring up a display of performance statistics for that video in particular.

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Everything you need to know to use YouTube Shorts as an artist - RouteNote

The deadline for uploading the documents for the second round of counselling is up to 5 pm on 11 December

Representational image. Firstpost

The results of the second round of seat allotment will be released by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), at 5 pm today, 8 December. Candidates can check the round 2 seat allotment results on the official website of ICAR icarexam.net.

Here's how tocheck the result when it becomes available:

According to the online counselling schedule available on the website, for the second round of counselling, the seat allotment and uploading of documents by students will begin today from 5 pm today.

The processes of depositing the seat acceptance fee, generation of provisional allotment letter, re-submission of documents (if required) and online response to queries raised by the ICAR universities will also start from today.

The deadline for uploading the documents for the second round of counselling is up to 5 pm on 11 December. The educational institutes will verify the documents of the candidates till 14 December.

Applicants have to keep in mind that the last date to re-submit the documents by candidates as well as the last date for verification of re-submitted documents by the institutes is 15 December.

The deadline for depositing the seat acceptance fee by candidates is 16 December whereas the last date for online reporting and fee reconciliation and by the ICAR universities is 17 December.

Once the second round of online counselling is complete, a third seat allotment list will be released by ICAR on 22 December.

The ICAR counselling is being held for all candidates who appeared in the undergraduate, postgraduate and doctorate entrance exams of the council. The results for the first round of seat allotment was released by ICAR on 26 November.

Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News,India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

See the article here:

ICAR Counselling 2021: Round 2 seat allotment results to be declared today; check icarexam.net - Firstpost

Rebecca S. Chopp had a plan: Shed leave the chancellorship at the University of Denver after about 10 years, then return to the faculty and teach classes.

It would be a fitting cap to her career, returning to her first loves teaching and scholarship after years in administration, where shed often been the first woman to occupy a given post.

But in 2019, her fifth year as chancellor, she abandoned that timeline and announced her retirement.

In a message to the Denver community, Chopp said she was stepping down because of a complex neurological disorder, one that shed recently been diagnosed with and that she needed to attend to sooner rather than later.

Only a few in her inner circle knew what she wasnt yet ready to say publicly: Rebecca Chopp had Alzheimers disease.

Its a devastating diagnosis for anyone, but particularly for Chopp, now 69, whod spent her adult life in academe, a field that prizes the mind above all else. A feminist theologian by training, she was known for her stellar memory, whether she was reciting paragraphs of Hegel or supplying some forgotten detail during a meeting. Her friends jokingly called her a brain with a body attached.

Chopp never saw herself as consumed by her job, the way academics and business leaders can sometimes be. Still, much of her days and many of her dreams were dictated by her work and by the intellect that made that work possible.

Gradually, her mental faculties will dissipate, a striking irony for a woman who has spent a lifetime in thought. Who will she be then?

Chopp has long cast her lot with the underdogs.

People underestimate me. And I kind of enjoy that people underestimate me, she says.

Shes used smarts and a studied savvy to take control of her circumstances, from becoming the first in her working-class Kansas family to attend college to breaking glass ceilings in ministry and academe. Not one to lead marches or throw bottles through windows, she made her way as a quiet radical, a charismatic, witty leader with a stiff backbone.

In girlhood, Chopp brought home straight-A elementary-school report cards. She took solace in books because a severe speech impediment left her unable to speak well as a child, and she made regular treks to the pea-green bookmobile that stopped in her neighborhood. Captivated by the tales of Trixie Belden, Nancy Drews fictional girl-detective contemporary, she daydreamed of becoming a detective and solving mysteries.

But the environment Chopp was born into a tiny tract house in 1950s Salina, Kan., felt more limiting than that. Neither of her parents went to college; they were distrustful of education, which they felt smacked of elitism and often took young people away from their families. In their view, women werent supposed to work outside the home, and their daughters destiny was to marry, which is why Chopp took home economics, sewing, and typing, rather than college-prep classes, in high school.

So Chopp created her own curriculum. While she wasnt raised in a church, shed always been interested in spirituality. I just started reading everything I could at our local library, she says, which in Salina, Kan., was not a whole lot. She dug into Christian scriptures, the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita. And she joined the high-school debate team, drawing on her penchant for research and developing arguments.

Theo Stroomer, Redux for The Chronicle

Despite her parents misgivings, Chopp enrolled at Kansas Wesleyan University. There, in a first-year anthropology lecture on family systems, something clicked. It was as though her intellectual world and the more insular one shed been raised in exploded. More epiphanies followed. She saw a Mark Rothko painting that made words in a textbook come alive. In a course on religion and the environment, she caught a glimpse of how her self-designed high-school curriculum might turn into a college major, even a career.

This, Chopp began to think, is going to be my life.

And so it was. Chopp went on to seminary at the Saint Paul School of Theology, spent several years serving in churches as an ordained Methodist minister, and then headed to the University of Chicago for a Ph.D. For a kid from Kansas, Chicago was Disneyland for intellects, where, at a restaurant, she might find herself seated next to a famous cultural anthropologist or rhetorician or scientist.

Chopp joined the faculty of Chicagos divinity school, teaching feminist and liberation theology and running the theology program. She got married and became the mother of an artistic and sensitive son named Nate. When it rained at his baseball practices, hed often look over to see his mother pulling out an umbrella and a philosophy book.

Again and again, Chopp, who divorced when Nate was a preteen, confronted vestiges of the patriarchal system shed grown up in. Chopp says the United Methodist Church initially refused to ordain her, though shed graduated first in her seminary class, and UMC administrators delayed assigning her a church because, they told her, no one would want a female minister. At one point, she recalls, a church official tried to slash Chopps salary because she had a child. Chopp says she asked the official to hand her the phone so she could call the bishop and get a new appointment. Rather than hand over the phone, she says, the man restored her salary.

At the time, Chopp didnt tell anyone about the discrimination she was facing, fearing retaliation. She and the few women shed gone to seminary with struggled largely in silence, she says.

As Chopp transitioned into academe, she was determined not to let sexism stand in her way there, either. She remembers being the only woman in a meeting she attended at Emory, where she became an assistant professor after leaving Chicago. Her male colleagues were arguing, vying to be the loudest voice in the room. She was being ignored, except by one man who asked her to get him a cup of coffee.

Chopp decided she would not be ignored any longer. So she 5-foot-4 and petite stood up and stopped the meeting. Gentlemen, gentlemen oh, you arent behaving like gentlemen, she told her colleagues. Im going to my office, and when you are behaving like gentlemen again, please let me know, because Id so like to continue this meeting.

At the time, Chopp had just started at Emory. Some of the men in the room, she figured, hadnt even known who she was. But if you want to be heard, she reasoned, youve got to assert yourself.

Sometimes her very presence was assertion enough: Chopp was the first woman to be president of Colgate University, then Swarthmore College, and to be chancellor at the University of Denver.

At her side during her ascension into administration was Fred Thibodeau, whom she had met in seminary. Theyd reconnected after their respective divorces and gotten married, Thibodeaus two sons joining their blended family. Thibodeau followed Chopp, first to Atlanta and Emory and then to New Haven for Chopps one-year stint as dean of Yale Divinity School. As Chopp assumed the top posts at Colgate, Swarthmore, and Denver, he played a supporting role, using his background in university development to help her raise funds. Their days were full and frenetic, but they liked it that way.

That was life before everything changed.

In October 2018, Chopp was driving to her physicians office for an annual checkup when she got lost. Her GPS was on, and the drive wasnt a difficult one, but she couldnt make sense of where she was. She pulled into a parking lot and called Thibodeau for directions. Over the cars speaker, he guided her to the doctors office: Turn around here, go past the Texaco. Thibodeau chalked it up to her being busy and tired.

That day, the doctor ran through a list of routine questions. Has anything changed? she asked.

Yes, as a matter of fact, Chopp said. It was great: Lately shed been getting eight or nine hours of sleep every night. All her life, shed run on something more like five hours of sleep, and shed always joked that one reason she got so much done was that the nighttime hours gave her eight days a week, compared with everybody elses seven.

The sleep, the momentary disorientation on the way to the appointment something wasnt right, the doctor said. A physicians assistant gave Chopp a 10-minute test that day. Over the next few months, she saw a memory-care specialist and underwent several more rounds of testing, continuing her grueling work schedule and thinking of her medical trouble only occasionally. A PET scan in March 2019 gave Chopp the most definitive answer possible without an autopsy: Her results were consistent with a diagnosis of Alzheimers dementia.

For Chopp, the word dementia brought to mind images of her mother, Marion, who had struggled for years with paranoia and delusions. Could she have inherited the same affliction? The answer turned out to be no. Her doctors took an extensive family history, then concluded her mother probably had suffered from Lewy body dementia, a disease different from Alzheimers. That was a relief.

Still, Chopps doctor advised her to quit her job, and soon. Much of her new life would be built around delaying symptoms. Stress part and parcel of a university leaders job is not good for neurological conditions.

Chopp, who had come with a list of questions for the doctor, held herself together during the appointment. Only when she and Thibodeau got to the car did the tears flow. That night, in a booth at the back of the Mexican restaurant across the street from their apartment in downtown Denver, they drank too many margaritas, helped each other home.

Within days, Chopp got in touch with Denise M. OLeary, the chair of Denvers Board of Trustees. I need to see you, she told OLeary, and it needs to happen right away.

The two sat on OLearys back patio. It was a typical, beautiful Denver day, warm even in March. The morning shade was gone, and the sky was a vibrant blue. I hope everythings OK, OLeary said.

Well, no, its not, Chopp told her.

For a few minutes, they held hands and cried.

Then, OLeary, whose mother has advanced Alzheimers, had questions: What tests had she had done? How was Fred doing? What about Chopps son, Nate?

Eventually, the conversation morphed to work: Chopp had already decided she needed to step down that summer, in just three months, to preserve her own quality of life, and to avoid putting the university at risk if her condition suddenly deteriorated.

University of Denver

Couldnt Chopp stay on just a few more months, OLeary asked, as Denver searched for a new chancellor? Others could relieve Chopp of many of her duties in the meantime.

The answer was a firm no. This has to be it, Chopp told OLeary, worried that if she were to experience a rapid decline, there would be no room for error.

That day on the back patio, Chopp and OLeary sketched out the beginnings of a plan. Meetings would be scheduled, a draft statement prepared. Chopp would tell the board at its next meeting in April. The list went on, with Chopp working through the next steps, detached, almost clinical.

The conversation was one of the saddest of OLearys life.

Any terminal illness Chopp could have contracted would have been terrible, no doubt. But this one carried a particular kind of brutality. Chopp was a true academic, whose office was lined with books, who could readily recall passages shed read 20 years ago. For her to slowly lose her mind would, OLeary thought, be like a marathoner losing her legs.

For her to know that the way she is going to die, in all likelihood, is going to be by losing the thing that she has valued most her entire life just seemed like such a cruel, cruel twist of fate, OLeary says.

Its like, What do you do? Its your life.

In private conversations, friends and colleagues say, Chopp was unflinchingly candid about her diagnosis, and her feelings, from the start. But that was not, and to some degree could not, be the case for the public Rebecca Chopp, the one at the helm of a major private research university.

Thats why the campus announcement that Chopp sent on April 19, 2019, did not contain the word Alzheimers, and why she requested in that same announcement that no one ask for more details about this unexpected turn of events.

Chopp needed time to process her diagnosis, and stereotypes about the disease loomed large. When she started telling people she had Alzheimers, they would talk louder to her, or turn to Thibodeau instead. People seemed to think shed gone deaf, or had utterly lost her ability to form thoughts, just like that.

As she observed those reactions, and as she read and thought about Alzheimers, Chopp felt compelled to do something. Shed been diagnosed early, and her status as a university administrator and public figure had habituated her to public speaking and to advocating for important causes. Raising money for Alzheimers research and awareness of the importance of testing and early detection may not have been among the issues on her higher-ed agenda, but she saw no reason why they couldnt be added to her docket in retirement.

People are rightly fearful of this disease. But they also need to know that its not an immediate death sentence, that there are things you can do to help prevent it, Chopp says. On a personal level, both my husband and I thought, What do we have to lose?

Rebecca Chopp

In December 2019, nine months after her diagnosis, Chopp spoke publicly for the first time about having Alzheimers while accepting an award from DUs Knoebel Institute for Healthy Aging, which she co-founded. Even that disclosure, she recalls, was a spur-of-the-moment decision, made on the way to the event.

The audience stood and applauded, giving Chopp the encouragement she needed to keep going. She became a full-on advocate for Alzheimers awareness, motivated in large part by the scientific promise and importance of early detection. She wrote blog posts for the Colorado chapter of the Alzheimers Association, and appeared with Thibodeau in a video that was shown at the chapters annual gala.

Her reasoning for doing so is simple: Once an educator, always an educator, Chopp, now chancellor emerita of DU, says. She sees Alzheimers education as a continuation of purpose in this new life of hers.

Purpose, she reasons, is an ever-evolving kind of thing.

When her time at Denver ended, Chopp wrestled with existential dread. She and Thibodeau went on vacation that August, and she wondered, What am I going to do with myself?

Advice from her doctors provided some answers. Shed been told to do as much as she could to build new neural pathways, a task she threw herself into with the same gusto Thibodeau had seen her employ so many times in academic leadership. Already an avid hiker, she redoubled her lifelong commitment to fitness and spent hours lifting weights. She took classes in ballroom dancing with Thibodeau. She committed to a Mediterranean diet designed to promote brain health.

Chopps days are still full, but no longer rushed. She wakes up at 5:30 better than 4:30, when her alarm went off in her days as a college leader and prunes through 20 emails a day instead of 300. She works out for an hour and trains her puppy, a Pomeranian-Siberian husky mix named Budhy. In the evening, she and Thibodeau read and listen to music. She still consults with college leaders, taking three or four calls a week to keep a foot in the higher-ed world. And for several hours a day, she paints.

Chopp started painting soon after her diagnosis, at the urging of a friend. At first she hated it. Shed spent a lifetime believing she was bad at art.

But Chopp warmed to the canvas. She realized she could lose herself in it the way she used to become absorbed in her religious-studies texts. In the quest to distinguish one shade of a shadow from the next, she feels content, whole.

Ever the researcher, Chopp tried all styles of painting, reading about techniques and watching videos online. She found a teacher with whom she takes a weekly seminar-style class over Zoom, the students uploading photos of their works-in-progress to be critiqued by the group.

Chopp eventually adopted expressive realism as her painting style, and she particularly enjoys practicing the portraiture techniques of the Old Masters, with many glazed layers allowing light to shine through. The mix of technicality and creativity reminds her of the balance she often tried to strike in the classroom. And shes joked with her art teacher that painting has become her second Ph.D.

Right now, Chopp is working on two paintings a portrait of a girl sitting in a park, petting her dog, that came from her weekly class, and a landscape of the Colorado sunset that will be a gift to Thibodeau. But she has in mind a magnum opus of sorts, which shell soon begin. She plans to paint portraits of her family members and close friends, to place nearby as her memory fades. Shell write a story about each person to accompany the painting, and eventually, the paintings will be given to the people they show.

That, though, is yet to come.

Theo Stroomer, Redux for The Chronicle

As a trained theologian, Chopp has thought a lot about death. Religion, she thinks, provides context for the sadness and mystery surrounding death. Rather than explain away what death or grieving mean, she says, religion offers words to talk about them, to navigate unfamiliar territory and maybe arrive somewhere new.

In her time as a minister, Chopp often officiated at funerals. Shed say, jokingly, that she preferred them to weddings because funerals were more real. They involved more words, in the form of stories told about the person whod died. Sometimes the stories were not happy ones, as Chopp witnessed while helping one family bury a patriarch who had caused them a lot of pain. But they were real stories, and ones told within the Christian narrative of ongoing life and resurrection.

At the same time, words and stories only go so far. As a theologian, Chopp is all too familiar with the debates about what happens when we die, but to her, those questions are beyond understanding. As a scholar and administrator, she was accustomed to precision, but she also doesnt see rationality and ambiguity as contradicting one another. Instead, she thinks, they work together.

So it has been in the two and half years since Chopps diagnosis. Her symptoms have been minor. She visits her neurologist every four months for a check-in; her cognitive test scores have been stable the last three times shes taken them. She hasnt gotten lost since that first day headed to the doctors office.

There are small signs. Chopps short-term memory isnt what it once was, and she forgets appointments she used to have no trouble recalling. Shes learned to write plans onto a paper calendar immediately after making them, and to consult the calendar once a day. Shes stopped going to large social gatherings, finding that they require too much energy and focus. And the slight lisp shes had all her life, a remnant of her childhood speech impediment, is becoming more pronounced.

On the day of her diagnosis, Chopps doctor gave her a prescription that began with a simple edict: Live with joy. The rhythms of her life are driven by things that fill that prescription, and for Chopp, theres not much more to want. I kind of want what I have, she says painting, hiking, the company of friends and family who will be there for the long haul.

Chopp is determined to define for herself a new sort of life, one attuned to the needs of her changing condition but not dictated by it. Shes not a fundamentally different person than she was before her diagnosis, because shes never believed in identity as a fixed concept. In each of her professional roles, she learned new things about herself, met new people, tried new things.

Shes reinvented herself so many times. This, she knows, is one more reinvention.

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The Reinvention of Rebecca Chopp - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Prior to the Governorship election in Anambra State, there was widespread apprehension prompted by factors such as the security situation in the South East and the Independent National Electoral Commissions (INEC) readiness for the election especially with the controversy generated by its decision to deploy technology in the conduct of the election and the transmission of its results.

There were, actually, calls for the postponement of the election because it was assumed that the pervasive threats by secessionist elements within the region will make its conduct ill-advised. In a daring move, almost all the stakeholders in the zone, including the government and civil society organisations, pulled every stop to ensure that the election held.

Political analysts explain what happened in Anambra state as a victory for democracy and a demonstration of willpower by all concerned which was channeled to a cause that would have embarrassed the nation if non-state actors had been allowed to actualise their threats to disrupt the exercise.

More than anything else, the security situation created a siege mentality among the people who were scared of taking a bold step forward to perform their civic duty. This state of mind on the part of the people was exacerbated by the presence of the security agencies which were on orders to dominate their environment. Many among the indigenes of the state did not want to be caught in the crossfire. Not a few, under the prevailing circumstance at the time, wondered if the election will hold at all. INEC, undaunted by the palpable state of anxiety and the near overwhelming challenge of having to provide some of the most basic infrastructure it needed, put its act together and successfully conducted the election.

The nation heaved a sigh of relief as the worst that was feared did not happen. Expectedly, however, there was a low voter turnout. But that common feature of polls in the South East generally, at the best of times, did not vitiate the credibility and integrity of the process and its outcome, or, for that matter, the determination of the electoral commission to carry out its assigned duties not minding the intervening odds.

Were there lessons to learn from the situation before, during and after the Anambra polls and their implication for future exercises? The Commission was the first to admit that it was not unaware of the issues raised about the performance of the new technology deployed for voter accreditation, for instance. It averred that the deployment of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) in the Anambra governorship election was the second pilot test and it was intended to achieve two objectives. First, INEC explained, is voter accreditation to replace the Smart Card Reader. The second is the uploading of polling unit result to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal to replace the z-pad. BVAS performed optimally in its opinion, by uploading results to the IReV portal, but there were the usual challenges associated with the pilot of a new technology in a major election.

Assessing itself further, INEC pointed out that much of the glitches encountered on election day in Anambra State had little to do with the machines but more with the operators of the system. According to it, the extraordinarily difficult circumstances under which the election was held meant that some of the better trained ad hoc staff withdrew at the 11th hour. As if that was not bad enough, some critical service providers such as vehicle owners also withdrew, thereby severely affecting plans for rapid response by technicians the Registration Area Technical (RATECH) staff. Still on that self-assessment, the electoral body noted that in spite of the glitches, BVAS justified the determination by the commission to deepen the deployment of technology in the electoral process.

In the opinion of this newspaper, and regardless of the perceived inefficiency of this new technology, it has strengthened the belief in the public space that even the minimal introduction of technology in voter accreditation is better than the best manual process. This has also justified the hope of citizens across the country that the deployment of more appropriate technology is essential to electoral integrity in Nigeria.

INEC wants Nigerians to be assured that it has learnt vital lessons from the Anambra pilot. It also pledged that there will be remarkable improvement in the next major election which is the end-of-tenure Area Council election in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) schedule to hold in three months on 12th February 2022.

While we commend INEC for the outcome of the Anambra election, it is pertinent to call its attention to the tendency, on its part, to be over-confident in its preparations preceding the exercise proper. This was one of the major issues raised by observers as reports started filtering in about disappointments by critical service providers and ad hoc staff. Given the security situation in the South East, INEC ought to have anticipated those and put in place a contingency plan. Still, we believe that the Anambra election, with all its challenges and lessons, was a good outing for INEC and an affirmation of the viability of democracy in the country.

Read more from the original source:

[EDITORIAL] As INEC Reflects On The Anambra Election - LEADERSHIP NEWS

The December 31 deadline for filing your income tax returns for FY20-21 is round the corner. From a renovated website to an advanced utility for tax filing, the taxman has spared no effort to offer taxpayers a hassle-free experience this year.

A few tax payers also have new incomes that would be chargeable to taxes and for a few others, there are new concessional tax rates. Here is a low-down on whats new for taxpayers this tax filing season, so you can navigate that eleventh hour rush smoothly.

The Income tax Department launched a new website for e-filing in June this year (https://tinyurl.com/Incometaxportal). After initial hiccups, the site has been up and running for quite some time now. Existing registered users of the old website can seamlessly log into the new portal, with their credentials. However, those using Digital Signature Certificates (DSC) might have to re-register the same on the new portal, after logging in.

Those new to e-filing will need to register themselves on the new portal by furnishing details of their Permanent Account Number (PAN), mobile number, current address and e-mail address. Upon registration, users will receive OTP on both their mobile number and e-mail address.

New e-filing portal (https://www.incometax.gov.in/iec/foportal/)

Apart from availability of features in the old website such as filling/uploading your income tax returns (ITRs), verifying them, viewing/downloading Form 26 AS, request for refund re-issue, and viewing/responding to a demand notice, the new website also has a host of other new features. The website offers a single dashboard to view all the interactions, uploads, and pending actions with the IT Department. Besides, taxpayers can now fill all ITRs directly (1 to 7) online, unlike earlier where only ITR 1 and 4 were available to be filled online and the remaining forms were required to be filled via excel or Java utilities before being uploaded on the website.

On the new portal, in the online mode, one can make use of the free ITR preparation software that, through simple questions, not only guides one in deciding the applicable return and the schedules one needs to fill in, but also helps fill most of the ITR form for you. Users who opt for the offline mode need to fill in the returns using the JSON utility and later upload the same on the portal.

For further queries, taxpayers can view the detailed FAQs, tutorials, videos or dial up the call centre co-ordinates shared on the website. A chat bot (Tax Genie) is also available to respond to your queries instantly. Thereafter, the website is also well-equipped to handle seamless and fast processing of the returns filed.

Besides, the taxman is working towards launching other features such as a mobile application for tax filing and newer tax payment modes (such as through RTGS/NEFT, credit card, UPI and net banking), soon.

For ease of use and for the lack of internet connectivity throughout, a few taxpayers may wish to fill the return offline and then upload the same online.

The IT Department has discontinued the erstwhile excel and Java utilities and launched a new offline utility based on the JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format. The utility is available on the e-filing portal under the downloads tab, for users to install on their computers. Post installing the utility software, users can download their pre-filled data from the e-filing portal in JSON format, which can be later edited offline on the utility. Even a draft version of the return filed online can be saved in JSON format and later filled in using the utility in the offline mode. A more detailed user guide is available on the income tax website at (https://tinyurl.com/taxoffline).

However, do keep in mind that since the utility has been recently launched, users have been experiencing technical glitches and bugs. Our checks with users show that while some experienced troubles with pre-filled data, for others, calculations went haywire. For instance, a taxpayer was not able to go through the option of paying taxes simply because the utility prompted the tax amount payable in the refund column, instead of the amount payable column (see screenshot).

Glitches in JSON utility The aggregate tax liability is greater than taxes paid earlier. But the utility is erroneously reflecting the difference in refund field, instead of amount payable.

Another user reported troubles with auto-calculated fields, such as in the schedule of Current Year Loss Adjustment where losses in the current year are adjusted against your taxable income. Since in both cases the fields cannot be manually edited, the users had to then re-fill the entire return afresh on the utility to go past the errors.

Another common bug that users faced was a no explanation, cliched response from the utility that read Internal Server Error. Clueless on what went wrong the user had to uninstall the offline utility and download it again before re-filling his ITR form. A few others found no errors while filing the return on the utility, but say that errors did crop up while uploading the JSON files on the portal.

So, brace yourselves for some hiccups while using the utility. Getting the job done right away might buy you some time before the deadline, in case you need to re-fill the return from scratch.

Also read: Know the key points about new tax regime

This year onwards, the exclusion list of ITR-1, that is, persons who cannot file their returns using ITR-1, has got some new frills. Taxpayers for whom TDS has been deducted at the rate of 2 per cent (under section 194N), on cash withdrawals exceeding 1 crore can no longer file their returns in ITR-1. Banks (including co-operative societies and post office) are required to deduct TDS on such withdrawals under section 194N and the deduction shall be 2 per cent for amounts exceeding 20 lakh or at the rate of 5 per cent if withdrawals exceed 1 crore, for non-filers of income tax returns (i.e. those who did not file returns in all of the last three assessment years).

Even employees of eligible start-ups, who can now defer their tax liability on ESOPs, cannot file returns in ITR 1 or 4. They have to file returns in forms 2 and 3 only. This is with reference to the recent amendment in tax laws wherein employees of eligible start-ups can now defer the tax on perquisite by 48 months from the end of the relevant assessment year in which the shares are allotted. However, if the employee quits the job or sells the shares before the expiry of the said 48 months, the perquisite shall be taxable in the year in which he/she quits or sells the shares. Besides, such employees should also remember to fill up the Schedule TTI (Computation of tax liability on total income) in the ITR forms 2 or 3, which now require clear bifurcation of such current and deferred tax amount on ESOPs.

This year also marks the beginning of taxes on your dividend incomes, post the abolition of Dividend Distribution Tax (DDT) in the Budget of 2020. Investors, hence, have their job cut out, in compiling all the dividends earned on their investments in FY21.

However, a few investment apps and broking apps help compile dividends earned on your holdings in a year. This could be useful while filling your Schedule OS relating to Income from Other Sources. One needs to clearly mention the dividend income earned, (those earned by non-resident taxpayers that are chargeable at special rates, under section 115A have to mentioned separately) and interest expenditure which can be claimed as a deduction under section 57(1) if incurred in relation to dividend income.

From now on, even those filing ITR-1 are required to give a quarterly break-up of the dividend income earned, to facilitate computing the interest liability according to advance tax provisions.

Also read: New income tax regime: Should you switch?

Starting this year, taxpayers will also be able to opt for concessional tax rates (under section 115 BAC of the Income tax Act), by foregoing certain exemptions. Taxpayers are required to specify if they are opting for new tax regime under the section, in Part A of all the ITR Forms.

Do remember, taxpayers are free to make the choice between the old and new regime (tax rates) every year, unless one earns business income. However, if those who earn business income opt for the new concessional rates in a given year, they cannot revert to older tax rates in subsequent years.

Besides, assessees with income from business or profession are required to exercise such option on or before the due date for furnishing returns by filing Form 10-IE. Details such as date of filing form 10-IE and its acknowledgement number must be mentioned in Form ITR-3.

Read more:

4 things to note this tax filing season - The Hindu BusinessLine - BusinessLine

In the penultimate episode of Invasion, the human race takes a major step against the alien invaders. But, with that cliffhanger ending, fans of the Apple TV+ series are wondering if Casper is dead.

[Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for Invasion Episode 9, Full of Stars.]

In Episode 9, Full of Stars, of Invasion, Mitsuki (Shioli Kutsuna) contacts Japans lost ship and hears what she believes to be Hinatas voice. The American officer working with JASA thinks the voice is the alien enemy, and he reveals the United States is going to hit the ship with a nuclear weapon.

Meanwhile, Casper (Billy Barratt) and Jamila (India Brown) go to Caspers London apartment and find that his mom died from an alien attack. Casper realizes that the visions he gets during his seizure hold the key to defeating the aliens.

When the kids head out to the hospital to induce a seizure, they find Ward (Shamier Anderson). Seeing Caspers prophetic drawing, Ward knows the boy is important. He takes him to the hospital, where a doctor reluctantly induces a seizure. Just before aliens attack the hospital, Casper has a series of visions. He realizes hes connected to the monsters.

But when they leave the hospital, a bright orange light appears in the sky, signifying the nuclear strike. Casper immediately falls limp, and it looks as if hes died along with the aliens.

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In the final scene of Invasion Episode 9, Casper lies seemingly lifeless in Ward and Jamilas arms. It sure seems as if hes dead, but viewers wont know what happened to him until the season finale.

However, there are some fan theories that could explain his connection to the aliens and predict his survival. One theory is that the aliens share a hive mind that Casper is connected to. If only a few aliens have been wiped out by the nuke, then Casper could remain alive when he reconnects to the others.

Another theory also suggests that the aliens are uploading the consciousness of every person they kill. That could explain why Casper was looking for his dead mom at the end, one Reddit fan wrote. Maybe she wasnt dead, just uploaded somewhere.

If fans are hoping to get a full explanation of everything by the season finale, they may be disappointed. According to Invasion showrunner Simon Kinberg, the show wont reveal all of its secrets at once.

I think the mystery of life is what fuels science fiction, and it is what fuels this show, he told Screen Rant. There is a mystery to the unraveling of what is happening.

Thats what I wanted to explore on the show, Kinberg added. I wanted to explore that almost eerie feeling of unknowability as much as there was also the terror of cities being destroyed and we cant go home because our houses are no longer safe.

The final episode of Invasion season 1, First Day, hits Apple TV+ on Dec. 10.

Read more:

'Invasion': What Happened to Casper on the Apple TV+ Series? - Showbiz Cheat Sheet