Latest news with #BCE
Globe and Mail
2 hours ago
- Business
- Globe and Mail
RY, BCE, CSU: Canadian Stocks Get a Lift as Economy Grows More than Expected
Leading Canadian stocks such as Royal Bank (RY), BCE (BCE), and Constellation Software (CSU) are getting a lift after data showed the country's economy grew more than expected in the first quarter. Confident Investing Starts Here: Easily unpack a company's performance with TipRanks' new KPI Data for smart investment decisions Receive undervalued, market resilient stocks right to your inbox with TipRanks' Smart Value Newsletter Canada's gross domestic product (GDP) increased 0.5% in the year's first quarter, the same rate of growth as in the previous fourth quarter of 2024. GDP in Q1 grew by 2.2% on an annualized basis. Analysts polled by Reuters (TRI) had expected first-quarter GDP to expand by 1.7% year-over-year. Statistics Canada said that exports of goods were largely responsible for the Q1 growth, followed by accumulations of business non-farm inventories. Higher imports and weak residential home sales were a drag on Canada's economic growth between January and the end of March. Preparing for Tariffs Canada's total exports rose 1.6% in the first quarter of 2025 after increasing 1.7% in the fourth and final quarter of 2024. Exports got a big boost from looming U.S. tariffs, said Statistics Canada, with exports of motor vehicles rising nearly 17% and industrial machinery and equipment jumping 12% higher. At the same time, imports increased 1.1% in the quarter, following a 0.6% rise in the previous quarter. Among Canadian households, spending slowed to 0.3% in the year's first three months after rising 1.2% in the fourth quarter of 2024. The household savings rate slowed to 5.7%, the lowest rate of growth since the first quarter of 2024. Investment income received declined 1.7% in Q1. Is BCE Stock a Buy? The stock of BCE has a consensus Hold rating among nine Wall Street analysts. That rating is based on one Buy, five Hold, and three Sell recommendations issued in the last three months. The average BCE price target of $33.22 implies 10.88% upside from current levels. Disclaimer & Disclosure Report an Issue
New York Post
4 hours ago
- Health
- New York Post
Why it's time to start treating revenge as the potentially deadly addiction that it is
We don't usually think of anger and resentment the way we think about drugs or alcohol. But growing evidence suggests that, for many people, the craving for revenge follows the same patterns as substance abuse and addiction, triggering powerful biological urges that can spiral out of control and destroy lives. Recent neuroscience discoveries show that your brain on revenge looks like your brain on drugs. Real or imagined grievances (perceived mistreatment, humiliation, shame, victimization) activate the anterior insula — part of the brain's 'pain network.' In response, your brain activates its reward circuitry, causing dopamine to flood your brain, producing short-lived bursts of pleasure. 5 Legendary thinker Homer focused on themes of revenge in his iconic tale 'The Odyssey.' Getty Images For most people, this process is manageable. But for others, the self-control area — the prefrontal cortex — that's supposed to stop you from engaging in harmful behaviors gets hijacked, resulting in tragedy. We know now that revenge isn't metaphorical. It's biological. In the moment, revenge feels great. But like drugs and alcohol, the effects wear off quickly, and the pain returns. If not controlled, revenge can turn into a deadly addiction. The only way to gratify revenge cravings is by inflicting harm on the people who hurt you (or their proxies). Hard-core drug users inject narcotics into their own bodies to satisfy their cravings. Hard-core revenge users inject bullets into the bodies of others. Public health data and research show that grievance-triggered revenge cravings are the root motivation of almost all forms of violence, including youth violence and bullying, intimate partner violence, street and gang violence, police brutality, violent extremism, terrorism, and even war. 5 Almost every act of violence and warfare can be attributed to feelings of vengeance, which is why revenge must be treated as an addiction, critics believe. Getty Images Criminologists have proposed other motivations — predation, dominance, ideology, hate, and sadism. But the neuroscience of revenge suggests these are better categorized as grievances that activate revenge desires, and the hedonic reward one receives when revenge is achieved. While scientists haven't thought of revenge as an addictive process until recently, poets, playwrights, and prophets have been trying to tell us this for millennia. Writing in 700 BCE, Homer, for instance, warns of the dangers of compulsive revenge seeking in the Odyssey. The tale of Odysseus reveals the hero returning home from the Trojan War to find his wife, Penelope, in the company of more than a hundred suitors. Odysseus slaughters them all in an orgy of retaliation, unleashing a cycle of revenge that can only be stopped with the intervention of the gods. 5 Author Matthew White estimates that 445 million people have been killed in revenge-related acts of violence. Facebook In the fifth century BCE, the ancient Greek playwrights Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides achieved immortal fame through tragic plays like 'Antigone,' 'Oedipus Rex,' 'Agamemnon,' and 'Medea,' which exhorted audiences about the dangers of compulsive revenge seeking. The book of Genesis cautions humanity about the risks of revenge in stories such as Cain's murder of Abel and God's vengeance-fueled mass slaughter of humanity during the flood. Today, we see the perniciousness of revenge on every scale. From vicious personal feuds and road rage to mass shootings, terrorist attacks, genocides, and war, the compulsion to seek revenge can often not be tamed, even when it costs everything. Whether it's a teenager bullied at school, a political faction nursing old grievances, or a nation seeking redress for historical wrongs, the underlying brain biology is the same. Tally the casualties of all the murders and physical and psychological assaults throughout human history, and you're likely to reach the number of dead and wounded from compulsive revenge seeking. Multicide researcher Matthew White estimates that a staggering 455 million people have been killed in just the top 100 most deadly atrocities and wars in recorded history. The World Health Organization estimates that violence-related injuries kill approximately 1.25 million people each year. 5 'The Science of Revenge' is written by James Kimmel Jr. But there's good news. Understanding violence as the result of an addictive process means that we can finally develop ways of preventing and treating it beyond mere arrest and punishment. Laws and prisons deter some people, but not those whose brains are gripped by the intense craving for payback. Like drug addicts risking death for a fix, revenge addicts risk everything for the fleeting satisfaction of retaliation. As with drug addiction, education, cognitive therapies, counseling, self-help strategies, and, potentially, anti-craving medications like naltrexone and GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic may help. But an even more powerful revenge addiction strategy exists inside our brains — forgiveness. Recent neuroscience studies show that when you simply imagine forgiving a grievance, your brain's pain, craving, and reward circuitry shut down and your self-control circuitry activates. In other words, forgiveness takes away the pain of past trauma, eliminates revenge cravings, and restores smart decision-making. 5 James Kimmel, Jr. says that forgiveness acts as 'an even more powerful revenge addiction strategy.' Michelle Senatore It's not a gift to the person who hurt you — it's a gift to yourself. You can use it as often as needed to heal yourself from the wrongs of the past, but still defend yourself from threats of the present or future. Bottom line: Forgiveness is a wonder drug that we don't use often enough. As May closes and we reach the end of Mental Health Awareness Month this year, there may be no mental illness that we need to become more aware of than revenge addiction. Unless we learn how to break the cycle of revenge, it will continue to destroy individuals, families, communities, and nations. James Kimmel, Jr., JD, is a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine and author of 'The Science of Revenge: Understanding the World's Deadliest Addiction — and How to Overcome It,' from which this article is adapted.
Time of India
a day ago
- Business
- Time of India
MP slams Centre over Keeladi report correction
Madurai: Madurai MP Su Venkatesan has accused the Union govt of trying to alter the Keeladi excavation report, and to suppress crucial historical findings. The CPM leader questioned the repeated revisions being sought in the report submitted by archaeologist Amarnath Ramakrishnan. "Why is there a continuous push to revise the Keeladi report even after two versions were submitted? Who is behind this pressure," he said. Venkatesan alleged that the central govt was trying to dilute findings that date Tamil civilisation at Keeladi between the 8th and 5th century BCE, a discovery that could redefine the understanding of ancient Indian history. The ministry of culture claimed that the corrections were part of standard administrative processes. However, Ramakrishnan reportedly refused to make further alterations, stating that scientific data supports the existing timeline. "This is not a technical correction; this is an attempt to rewrite Tamil history," Venkatesan said. He said the CPM will organise a state-wide walkathon from June 11 to 21 to highlight public grievances at the central, state, and local administrative levels, including pending financial dues owed by the Centre to Tamil Nadu. Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like How long does it take to breakeven on solar panels? Activ8 Undo On the RBI's new draft guidelines on gold loans, he said conditions such as mandatory proof of income and original purchase receipts for pledged gold, were impractical for daily wage earners and the middle class. "Gold loans are 100% secured. There is no risk to banks. These new conditions will only hurt the poor," he said. Venkatesan said he submitted a petition to finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who assured that the matter would be reviewed.
Time of India
2 days ago
- General
- Time of India
‘All excavation reports need proper vetting and editing before publication'
Chennai: A week after a controversy broke out over its seeking corrections to the draft report on the Keeladi excavations, especially the dating of the settlement's first period to between the 8th century BCE and the 5th century BCE, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) on Thursday said, "All reports need proper vetting, editing, proofreading, and designing before they are sent for publication. " "That the ASI is uninterested in the publication of the Keeladi report is a figment of imagination, which aims purposefully to paint the department in bad colours," it further said in a statement. Archaeologist K Amarnath Ramakrishna, who excavated the Keeladi site that proved the existence of an urban centre during the Sangam Age, classified the site's age into three different periods: the pre-early historic period (from the 8th century BCE to the 5th century BCE), the mature early historic period (from the 5th century BCE to the end of the 1st century BCE), and the post-early historic period (from the end of the 1st century BCE to the 3rd century CE). More than two years after the submission of the 982-page report, ASI's director (exploration & excavation), Hemasagar A Naik, asked Ramakrishna to make "corrections" in his draft report on the Keeladi excavations "to make it more authentic" as per the suggestions of two experts who were not named. Naik said Keeladi could at best be dated to around 300 BCE. Ramakrishna defended his findings, saying the final report has "all documentary evidence and chronological sequence". Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Giao dịch CFD với công nghệ và tốc độ tốt hơn IC Markets Đăng ký Undo In response to the adverse reactions to its demand, ASI said: "In a set process, after the submission of the reports by the excavators, those are then sent to various subject experts, who are requested to vet the reports for publication. Various alterations, as suggested by the subject experts, are carried out by the excavators and resubmitted finally for publication. These are then published as Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India (MASI). " "The same procedure was adopted in the case of the Keeladi report, wherein the report was sent for vetting to experts. Accordingly, the excavator of the Keeladi has been communicated the suggestions of the experts for making necessary corrections in the draft report submitted by him, but he did not carry out the correction to date," it said. "The story being circulated in a part of the media is misleading, untrue, and is absolutely and vehemently denied. The Director General and the ASI officials understand the importance of an excavated site, but all reports need proper vetting, editing, proofreading, and designing before they are sent for publication," the release said. It also called the notion that the ASI is uninterested in the publication of the Keeladi report "a figment of imagination which aims purposefully to paint the department in bad colours". "The letter from the director (Excavations & Explorations) is a routine matter which the Director (EE) regularly writes to the excavators for carrying out changes in the report or otherwise," the release said. Madurai MP Su Venkatesan, who raised the issue on various platforms, called the release a joke.
The Print
2 days ago
- Science
- The Print
Sanskrit didn't always drive innovation in ancient India. There are two reasons
Mathematics and geometry in the Indian subcontinent began with the Harappans, who deployed them extensively in urban planning, construction, and hydraulic engineering. Despite various attempts , the Harappan script remains undeciphered. The earliest recorded Indian mathematics, then, comes from the Vedas. Historian David Pingree studied them in his Jyotiḥśāstra: Astral and Mathematical Literature. Vedic priests constructed elaborate altars of mud-brick, in the shape of hawks, herons, chariots and so on. In order to maintain consistent designs, they used geometrical formulae, recorded in the Sulbasutras , appendices of the Yajur Veda dating to c. 500 BCE. From this early period, Indians developed a fascination with trigonometry, including what came to be known as the Pythagorean theorem. On the strength of these claims, various NGOs and politicians have called for Sanskrit learning to be a part of school curricula. But few seem aware of the actual history of science in Sanskrit. As with every scientific tradition across the world, the Sanskritic approach made extraordinary achievements—but it also had severe limitations that took centuries to overcome. To understand this, let's look specifically at the science of astronomy. Earlier this month, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta declared that Sanskrit, ancient India's premier language of power and literature, is 'scientific' and 'the most computer-friendly language', according to 'NASA scientists'. This claim has been doing the rounds for over a decade, sometimes accompanied by pseudoscientific declarations of the achievements of ancient Indians—think flying saucers, cloning, nuclear weapons, and whatnot. In the centuries after, the trajectory of Indian mathematics is somewhat unclear. Around the 4th century BCE, Jains were developing an expansive cosmology, with vast distances and eras of time. Mathematician George Gheverghese Joseph, in The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics, provides some examples. 'A rajju is the distance traveled by a god in six months if he covers 1,00,000 yojanas (a million kilometres) in each blink of his eyes; a palya is the time it will take to empty a cubic vessel of side one yojana filled with the wool of newborn lambs if one strand is removed every century.' This led Jains to develop advanced concepts of infinity: infinite in one or two directions, in area, in time, in space. Europeans, writes Joseph, only came round to this idea in the late 1800s. By the turn of the first millennium CE, the subcontinent's connections to global trade grew denser — a phenomenon we've examined many times in Thinking Medieval. As Indian textiles, spices, animals and other exotica went to the Mediterranean, mathematical and astronomical ideas flowed in the other direction. Sanskrit learning branched out from liturgy into new disciplines, like politics and aesthetics; the earliest Puranas were also compiled, addressing topics of mythology, ritual, history, and cosmology. Sanskrit scientific writings took on a heterogeneous character. Puranic authors insisted that the Earth was a flat disc surrounded by oceans, supported by elephants, turtles and serpents; the planets, stars, Sun and Moon were held to revolve in wheels above. But another set of authors, composing treatises called Siddhantas, absorbed Mediterranean conceptions such as a spherical Earth and elliptical orbits. However, the basis for calculations and geometry was rooted in Indian techniques. This rich exchange is visible in the work of then 23-year-old prodigy Aryabhata in his Aryabhatiya, completed in 499 CE. According to Joseph, the Aryabhatiya introduces the sine and versine (1-cosine) functions, as well as methods for solving quadratic equations. Wielding these techniques, Aryabhata made extremely accurate calculations of the value of pi, of longitude and the position of planets over time. Also read: Medieval Kashmir was confidently multicultural. And dazzled the world with art and ideas Stagnation and innovation Over the next centuries, Sanskrit writers further developed their knowledge of trigonometry, calendrical calculations, and arithmetic. However, there were two major challenges. As Sanskrit was seen as the language of divinity, the main current of Sanskrit knowledge tended to be conservative, resistant to new developments. And rather than developing ideas based on observations, there was a tendency to emphasise theory over observation and experimentation. Arabs, in the 8th and 9th centuries CE, were able to break new ground in optics, hydraulics, and astronomy, both by translating Indian ideas and verifying claims with observations. In India, meanwhile, as late as the 12th century, Siddhanta writers such as Bhaskara II were still rejecting Puranic notions that eclipses were caused by the demon Rahu. Prof Pingree, in his 1978 paper 'Indian Astronomy', argues that medieval Indian astronomers often miscalculated eclipses, and found that despite the confident statements of some Sanskrit treatises, their tables of planetary and star positions could contain errors. There are also precious few descriptions of measuring equipment, such as astrolabes. How could both innovation and stagnation, dogma and genius, coexist in the same literary tradition? Firstly, to be 'learned' by medieval standards was to have an encyclopaedic command of texts, wielding rhetorical, linguistic and logical tools to defend a metaphysical viewpoint taught by one's guru. Mathematical truths were developed out of curiosity, or for better calculations. But the idea of scientific innovation for its own sake, to profitably harness natural principles, did not exist as it does today. The bigger limiting factor on Sanskrit was that it required years of specialised study. This could only happen at elite institutions with endowments of food and capital, such as Brahmin Agraharam settlements or Buddhist mahaviharas. Needless to say, these institutions tended to be open only to elite men, even if they came from distant countries. Though many male-authored Sanskrit texts pay lip service to female and 'lower' caste devotees, barely a handful of actual texts authored by these groups survive across Sanskrit's millennia-long history. They made their own advancements, though poorly recorded. Even as the Sanskrit astronomical tradition floundered, as attested by Arab travellers in the 12th century CE, the star-charts of illiterate South Indian seafarers were the most accurate in the world. Also read: A Sanskrit Bible story was written in Ayodhya. The patron was a Lodi, the poet a Kshatriya New ideas For centuries, Indian mathematics had led the world. But by the 1200s and 1300s, Indian writings seem to have withdrawn from the world stage as advanced Persianate astronomical methods — often based on Indian maths — took over. To be clear, there were still innovations, especially in Kerala, where the Brahmin school of Madhava made substantial innovations in circular and trigonometric functions. Bigger changes, though, came only gradually: the Sanskrit tradition, unfortunately, had become more interested in preserving its prestige and age-old conventions, and only rarely engaged with new, 'alien' (and hence less prestigious) ideas. As Sanskritist Christopher Minkowski writes in 'Astronomers and their Reasons: Working Paper on Jyōtiḥśāstra', members of this school, by the 16th century, were calling for the increased use of observations to verify their methods. Somewhat later, and apparently independently, a Brahmin at the court of Shah Jahan began to translate Persian astronomical treatises into Sanskrit. This was controversial; 17th-century Benares was alight with debates as to whether observation-based Muslim astronomy was acceptable at all. But change was in the air. By 1730, the astronomer-king Sawai Jai Singh II tacitly accepted the importance of observation, setting up large observatories such as the Jantar Mantar in Jaipur. Attempts to shake up the Sanskritic knowledge system continued under British administrators. In his chapter 'The Pandit as Public Intellectual: The Controversy over Virodha or Inconsistency in the Astronomical Sciences', part of the edited volume The Pandit: Traditional Scholarship in India, Minkowski looks at Lancelot Wilkinson, British Political Agent at the court of Bhopal. Wilkinson commissioned a Brahmin to write a Marathi text on the modern, Copernican system of astronomy. Within two years, it attracted multiple critiques and commentaries from Brahmins bashing it in Marathi, Hindi, English and Sanskrit. The text's author was forced to retract his assertions. But the floodgates were opened: one of Wilkinson's proteges, writes Minkowski, went on to teach both Indian and European astronomy at the Benares Sanskrit college, providing a model of the 'accommodation of science and scientific rationality which still enabled holding on to the context of traditional Sanskrit learning.' Today, Sanskrit is no longer just a language: it has become a stand-in for something bigger, the idea of a perfect, just, advanced ancient Indian society that could be resurrected if only we all spoke it again. Indeed, NGOs such as Samskrita Bharati — at whose event CM Gupta spoke earlier this month — claim that Sanskrit was the mother tongue of all Indians irrespective of caste, class, and religion. (Anthropologist Adi Hastings conducted a detailed study of this organisation in 2008). Since the 1900s, led by ideologues like Dayanand Saraswati, Sanskrit texts like the Vedas have come to be seen as infallible, as already containing all scientific knowledge. Praising Sanskrit orthodoxy and buzzwords seems to have replaced Independent India's proud traditions of serious, independent scientific research open to scholars of all backgrounds. But the fact is that languages are products of history: they are not divine or perfect, but have their brilliances and their flaws. Insisting on the superiority of a single language closes us off from learning from the others: in my view, a mistake our ancestors have already made. The language of science and progress is not English, or Persian, or Greek, or Latin. Nor is it Sanskrit. It is mathematics, it is reason, it is evidence: the common heritage of all humanity. Anirudh Kanisetti is a public historian. He is the author of 'Lords of Earth and Sea: A History of the Chola Empire' and the award-winning 'Lords of the Deccan'. He hosts the Echoes of India and Yuddha podcasts. He tweets @AKanisetti and is on Instagram @anirbuddha. This article is a part of the 'Thinking Medieval' series that takes a deep dive into India's medieval culture, politics, and history. (Edited by Theres Sudeep)
