Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware®


On Wednesday, September 11, Publishers Lunch published an article by Erin Somers about payment issues at Dreamspinner Press, which I'm reprinting here with permission.

Dreamspinner Keeps Promising Authors to "Catch Up What Everyone Is Due" In Payments

Romance publisher Dreamspinner Press has not been paying royalties in timely fashion, authors have been reporting online, at least partially confirmed by emailed updates from the company that have been shared. Earlier this summer, authors posted on Twitter that the publisher had been inconsistent with payments for over a year, including delays in issuing both first quarter and second quarter 2019 royalties. In June, author TJ Klune posted, "Out of the last 8 quarters, this is the fourth time payments have been late, and the second in which I am owed penalties for said lateness." (Klune had said in March he would part ways with Dreamspinner after delivering three more books.) Author Suki Fleet posted, "I'm not waiting on a lot--but what I am waiting on is from foreign royalties paid to Dreamspinner this time *last* year, that I had to specifically ask for."

That month authors began announcing requests to revert their rights, a trend that continued over the course of the summer. There was some controversy within the romance community over whether authors withdrawing their work could cause the publisher to fail (or fail faster), in which case no one would get paid. Criticism extended to authors who supported the publisher as well, even though they were owed money.

Multiple agents PL spoke to said they were no longer doing business with Dreamspinner, except to negotiate their clients' rights back. They told us that acquisitions at the publisher had dwindled over the past year, confirmed by the sharp drop in PM deal reports, with Dreamspinner acquiring mostly from their existing authors, many of whom are unrepresented.

Dreamspinner provided authors a number of explanations in weekly emails, including writing that they had "not received payments from Amazon for UK or EU currencies," that they were awaiting deposits from "vendors," and that the late payments had been caused by a software glitch. In their latest update on September 4, the publisher said that they are anticipating a small business loan that will enable them to issue payments, and that they "can't offer a firm payment date to catch up what everyone is due." The email goes on, "With every set of deposits we receive, we've been sending payments, and we are continuing to respond as best we can to author requests." They added that they can't provide proof of the impending loan that authors have asked for because, "legal and banking documents are confidential and can't be posted online."

Meanwhile, authors including Indra Vaughn, Avon Gale, Jeff Adams, Will Knauss, CJane Elliott, Meredith Shayne, Tia Fielding, and many more have requested rights back. Fielding wrote on Facebook, "In the last year or so, they've repeatedly been more or less late in royalty payments." TJ Klune wrote in an email to the company that he posted on Twitter, that he is owed $27,448 in royalties and plans to involve a lawyer. A Facebook group of 75 former DSP authors has formed for people who have pulled their books or are considering it.

RWA has offered support for authors who have experienced trouble with Dreamspinner. They said in an August 21 statement: "We're aware of the situation, and members who need professional relations assistance, should contact memberadvocacy@rwa.org to reach our staff professional relations manager." Dreamspinner did not respond to PL's request for comment.

Writer Beware has been receiving similar complaints about late royalty and advance payments and confusing/conflicting explanations for the delays, with some authors saying they are owed four- and even five-figure amounts. According to a number of authors who contacted me, these problems have become more acute in the past few months, but they aren't new: periodic payment delays, with attendant excuses, began as much as two years ago.

Although Dreamspinner regularly sends out update emails (you can see an archive of these here), several authors told me they were having trouble getting responses from Dreamspinner CEO Elizabeth North.

Also of concern: in the midst of repeated payment delays, and despite its admissions of financial distress, Dreamspinner appears to be proceeding with sweeping expansion plans, including a shift to mass market paperback format, increasing the number of translations for the foreign market, and rolling out a new accounting and payment system (which several of the authors who contacted me told me they'd had trouble with). Multiple authors told me that they fear that author royalties, which Dreamspinner says go into an escrow account, are instead being used to finance company operations.

Authors' anger at the situation is growing. Meanwhile, Dreamspinner is still open for submissions. Writers who are considering approaching this publisher might want to hold off for the moment.

More information:

Tweets from authors Avon Gale, TJ Klune, Roan Parrish, KJ Charles (search "Dreamspinner" on Twitter to see many more).

Blog posts by authors Mary Winter, RJ Scott, Rhys Ford, TJ Klune.

Non-Dreamspinner author X. Marduk is compiling a Dreamspinner timeline, with lots of links to tweets and blog posts.

UPDATE 12/25/19: The payment problems at Dreamspinner appear to be ongoing. A group of Dreamspinner authors contacted RWA to request help:


You can read the entire letter here.

According to one of the letterwriters, RWA responded that there is nothing they can do. Dreamspinner's issues are now part of the implosion of Romance Writers of America, with writers increasingly furious over RWA's alleged foot-dragging in addressing complaints--not just about Dreamspinner, but generally.

UPDATE 12/28/19: Another of Dreamspinner's eminently reasonable-sounding but holy-crap-if-you-read-between-the-lines updates. (Summary, if you don't want to click on the tweet: they've hired a firm that specializes in financial restructuring to "develop a plan for 2020 and a structured repayment of all past due amounts." They promise to "be in touch with authors directly about their repayment schedule".)

And here's the latest Dreamspinner update. Um. Yeah. Financial restructuring. pic.twitter.com/dYjZaXKgrt

— Anna Zabo (@amergina) December 28, 2019

When you have to explain yourself by saying "We want to make clear that this isn't bankruptcy", it's not generally a good sign.

UPDATE 1/16/20: I continue to hear from Dreamspinner authors who have not been paid. Some are owed thousands of dollars for the first three quarters of 2019, and have received no payment at all; some have gotten partial payment, or are owed for fewer quarters. Bottom line: Dreamspinner owes a crapload of money to its authors.

According to the latest update from Elizabeth North, "Payments for November have started posting. They will all be submitted through Tipalti [Dreamspinner's accounting software] by Friday, January 10." What this appears to mean--at least, as of this writing and based on the authors who have contacted me--isn't actual payment (as in, money in bank account), but a status change on Tipalti from "In Process" to "Submitted For Payment." Also, the payments are for November royalties only. Anything prior to that will be folded into the restructuring plan Dreamspinner says it is pursuing.

Other stuff:

• Writers seem to be requesting rights reversion in droves. Many of them have multiple titles with Dreamspinner.
• In some cases,Dreamspinner seems to be unilaterally charging certain fees or expenses or other amounts against what they owe individual writers--i.e., reducing royalties owed by whatever the amount of the expense is. I don't want to provide details here, because I don't want to risk identifying the writers.
• The National Writers Union wants to hear from Dreamspinner authors who haven't been paid.
• Dreamspinner is fully enmeshed in the implosion of RWA. Claire Ryan has an exhaustive timeline of the crisis that's tearing RWA apart, with references to RWA's anemic response to Dreamspinner authors' complaints, and allegations that recently-resigned RWA President and Dreamspinner author Damon Suede may not have been eligible for the office based on his actual publications.

One thing that's really striking to me in this whole mess is how, if you look at just one of Dreamspinner's announcements and updates, they sound so very businesslike and reasonable. It's only if you go back and read them all in sequence--as I just did--that the facade starts to crumble, with unmet deadlines, moving goalposts, and unfulfilled commitments.

Back in June, Dreamspinner was promising that "the remainder of outstanding royalties" were about to be released...but here we are in January 2020, and they still owe tens of thousands of dollars. In July, they promised that they were "in the final steps" with the Small Business Administration loan, and "estimated funding has been moved back to mid-August"...but as of January, the loan is still pending. Over the months from June through December, they promised repeatedly to get everyone paid (especially, again and again, royalties for Quarter 2)...and then, in December, they suddenly announced the hiring of a firm to re-structure the entire debt from October backward, with no details about the process, or even an end date for it. Presumably, this firm will want a fee...from a publisher that can't afford to pay its authors.

I get that it's tough out there for small presses. Things go wrong. Vendors are tardy. Loans fall through. Personal emergencies happen. But read from beginning to end, Dreamspinner's updates--so reasonable-seeming individually--start to feel like mere excuses. Together with authors' frustrations and complaints, they paint a really troubling picture.

UPDATE 1/17/20: Re: all those November royalties that were to be released by January 10, and are currently listed in authors' Tipalti dashboards as "submitted" but not actually paid...this rather irate email from Tipalti to Dreamspinner in response to an author's inquiry about the delay suggests why nothing is landing in authors' bank accounts: Dreamspinner's payment account is not funded.


This is not good news. It's really starting to feel like there's some serious gaslighting going on here.

UPDATE 3/19/20: Dreamspinner has not provided an author update since January 7, and writers are still reporting that royalties are in arrears. Yet, amazingly, Dreamspinner is open to submissions:


Also seeking submissions: Dreamspun Desires.

Writer beware.

Coronavirus has robbed the Democrat of his typical back-slapping approach as he faces growing scrutiny and a third-party challenge

The Tampa, Florida, rally for Joe Biden on Thursday evening began as it normally might have, before a once-in-a-century pandemic transformed all aspects of American life, including the presidential campaign. A local high school student recited the pledge of allegiance, a campaign organizer pleaded with supporters to volunteer and a local DJ spun R&B music between speakers.

But in a sign of how profoundly the coronavirus crisis has reshaped American politics, that was where the similarities ended.

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#265 — May 6, 2020 Read on the Web StatusCode Weekly Covering the week's news in software development, ops, platforms, and tooling. Caddy 2: The Go-Powered Web Server with Automatic, Default TLS — After over a year of redesign, Caddy 2 has a new architecture to v1. If you want a new HTTPS server that ‘just works’, Caddy is well worth a look IMO. Its lead creator, Matt Holt, answered lots of questions on this Hacker News thread about the release. Caddy Web Server Redis 6.0 Released — The next major release of the popular data structure server is here. Redis is at the heart of so many data systems nowadays that any major release is big news but 6.0 packs in a lot of new bits and pieces that make it more robust and capable of modern workloads, including: Access Control Lists (ACL) for limiting what certain clients can do. Diskless replication on replicas. Threaded I/O (but Redis itself remains primarily single threaded). SSL/TLS support. A new client-server protocol, RESP3. Salvatore Sanfilippo Faster CI/CD for All Your Software Projects Using Buildkite — See how Shopify scaled from 300 to 1800 engineers while keeping their build times under 5 minutes. Buildkite sponsor An 'Extra Dumbed Down' Explanation of BGP — The BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) is a fundamental part of how the Internet works by defining and exchanging routing information between systems. This post explains what BGP is but, importantly, what its flaws are and how it needs to be made better. RevK How PHP is Beginning to Show Its Maturity — “If you still think PHP lacks an appropriate object model, you might be pleasantly surprised taking a look again.” Add proper FFI, dependency management, and security to the mix and PHP looks better than ever as of version 7.4. John Coggeshall (LWN) What Netlify’s Infrastructure Team Learned As It Increased Deploy Speed by Up to 2x — How the infrastructure team at Netlify took a 4 year old codebase, isolated an issue, tested a few different solutions, and eventually improved observability while rolling it out to production. Epure, Neal and Drasner Quick bytes: Tim Bray, an esteemed engineer and co-author of the original XML specification, has quit Amazon over their recent whistleblower firings. Allegedly servers managed with Salt are being targeted en-masse by hackers right now, including the popular Ghost blogging platform. More info here. And here's Salt's response. Forget joining the lottery to attend Apple's WWDC developer conference this year.. it's going online for everyone to enjoy. Want to code but short of project ideas? What To Code hopes to solve your coder's block. Yes, yes, yes, the TIOBE Index's methodology has all sorts of problems, but C just jumped over Java to reach #1. Maybe the news about the sale of the .ORG TLD will finally come to a close? ICANN's board has withheld consent for a change of control. ???? Jobs DevOps Engineer at X-Team (Remote) — Join X-Team and work on projects for companies like Riot Games, FOX, Coinbase, and more. Work from anywhere. X-Team Find a Job Through Vettery — Vettery specializes in tech roles and is completely free for job seekers. Create a profile to get started. Vettery ℹ️ Interested in running a job listing in StatusCode Weekly? There's more info here. ???? Stories and Opinions How a Few Lines of Code Broke Lots of JavaScript Packages — A week ago JavaScript developers were reporting breakage in numerous key packages. The culprit? A tiny change in a tiny dependency. A fix was quickly deployed and the creator of the affected project reflects on what happened here. Forbes Lindesay systemd, 10 Years Later: A Historical and Technical Retrospective V.R. Initial Impressions of WSL 2 — WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) is a compatibility layer for running Linux executables natively within Windows 10 and ”..it feels like a new era for web development on Windows.” Dave Rupert What Port Numbers Do Developers Use Locally? — A look at what port numbers developers are using locally in development. Roland Crosby ▶  A Language Head to Head: Kotlin 4 vs. Scala 3 Garth Gilmour and Eamonn Boyle ▶  Does Agile Make Us Less Secure? — Weighing up the balance between older ways of making things ‘just so’ before deploying versus pushing to production numerous times a day. Michael Brunton-Spall How to Remain Agile with DynamoDB — Amazon DynamoDB delivers performance at scale but at a cost to flexibility. See how the costs can be mitigated to remain Agile. Rob Cronin ???? Tutorials Using AWS CodeBuild to Execute Administrative Tasks — A look at using AWS CodeBuild to run scheduled or adhoc jobs. It’s not the first tool most would jump to (as it’s marketed as a build service) but the flexibility provided is pretty neat and might help you package together code in a way that better suits your use case (it’s well suited for batch jobs that take a while to run, rather than 500ms functions, say!) Gojko Adzic Git Branch Naming Conventions — A primer on naming branches for modern git workflows to help organize your or your team’s work. Sanket Saurav Implementing Conway's Game of Life in 32 Bytes — Not exactly a tutorial but if you can read x86 you’ll learn something. Here’s a video of it in action. SizeCoding TLDR: Writing a Slack bot to Summarize Articles — Using state-of-the-art NLP to read more news, faster? I always find automated summaries to be kinda useless, but the way it’s put together is neat nonetheless. Chris Ismael OAuth 2.0 Security Best Current Practices IETF Using PostgreSQL for JSON Storage — With JSON and JSONB types and associated advanced ways to query such columns, using Postgres as a store for JSON data is pretty simple. This is the briefest of overviews but leads into an interactive online tutorial. Steve Pousty ???? Code and Tools Never IPv4: A Quick Way to Test Your IPv6 Support — If this site doesn't load for you, you're in the majority! It's a test site that only has AAAA records and so will only work on a fully working IPv6 stack. NeverIPv6.com provides the opposite. As207960 Cyfyngedig actions-cli: Monitor Your GitHub Actions in Real Time from the Command Line Tommaso De Rossi Pixie Is Alive. Monitor & Trace K8s Apps On-Prem Without Changing Code — At-scale streaming, gaming, e-comm & SaaS SRE teams run eBPF based edge monitoring Pixie scripts to debug in minutes. Pixie sponsor Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Now Has S3 Compatible APIs — Backblaze B2 has been a compelling alternative to S3 for a while on price alone but now it shares an API too. Gleb Budman awesome-kubernetes: A Curated List for Awesome Kubernetes Sources — A lot of k8s resources here from installers and useful articles to platforms, projects, books, and Twitter accounts. Ramit Surana Rich: A Python Library for Rich Text and Beautiful Formatting in the Terminal — This does look really nice. Will McGugan

Coronavirus has robbed the Democrat of his typical back-slapping approach as he faces growing scrutiny and a third-party challengeThe Tampa, Florida, rally for Joe Biden on Thursday evening began as it normally might have, before a once-in-a-century pandemic transformed all aspects of American life, including the presidential campaign. A local high school student recited the pledge of allegiance, a campaign organizer pleaded with supporters to volunteer and a local DJ spun R&B music between speakers.But in a sign of how profoundly the coronavirus crisis has reshaped American politics, that was where the similarities ended.With much of the US still in lockdown, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has been forced to take his campaign to unseat Donald Trump online. It has not always been easy.His campaign’s first attempt to recreate a traditional rally – part of a virtual swing through the battleground state of Florida – was later described by his opponents as an “unmitigated technological failure”. The video stream was glitchy and pixelated. The audio was choppy, rendering some remarks nearly incomprehensible. And there were lengthy delays between speakers and at one point, the feed went dark for several minutes.“Am I on?” asked Biden, beaming into the telecast from his home in Wilmington, Delaware, where he has been isolated since the middle of March. An off-camera voice replied that he was. Biden removed a pair of aviator sunglasses as he walked toward the camera.“Good evening, Tampa. Thanks so much for tuning in,” he continued, a hint of irritation in his voice. “I wish we could have done this together – and it had gone a little more smoothly.”For nearly two months, Biden has been the test subject in a novel political experiment: running for president in the age of Covid-19.Social distancing restrictions imposed to stop the spread of the virus have already starved the campaign of a victory tour to mark his ascent to the Democratic nomination. It may well deny Democrats the chance to formally nominate him in person at the party’s national convention this summer. Endorsements from former rivals and party leaders occur online to varying degrees of fanfare. . The remote set-up, anathema to Biden’s back-slapping, glad-handing approach to politics, has left the candidate walled off from voters and competing for visibility.Yet, technical difficulties aside, his campaign of confinement seems to be working.In recent weeks, Biden has widened his lead over Trump as the president’s support slips amid growing disapproval of his response to the pandemic. Surveys from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina and Arizona – key battlegrounds that Trump won in 2016 – show Biden ahead. At a recent virtual fundraiser last week, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, his new campaign manager, expressed optimism about Biden’s prospects in Florida and Arizona.“The natural state of this race is to be a referendum on Donald Trump and every time Donald Trump steps to the microphone he hurts himself,” said Mark Mellman, a veteran Democratic pollster. “That’s a pretty good position for Joe Biden to be in.”Biden initially struggled to adapt to his cloistered reality. In March, the campaign turned a recreation room in the basement of his home into a studio, though not fast enough for his critics, who launched a “Where’s Joe” campaign to mark the candidate’s relative disappearance from the national stage.But since then, Biden has been busy. Nearly every day he makes appearances on local TV news channels or national talkshows. He launched a podcast, where he has hosted conversations with prominent Democratic governors and potential vice-presidential candidates. He spends time each day speaking with a voter – a frontline worker, campaign volunteers – and he participated in what the campaign billed as a “virtual rope line”.“So what’s up?” he said to Ashley Ruiz of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, one of several voters on the rope line. “Tell me about your situation, Ash.”•••Biden’s rise in the polls comes as he contends with an allegation from Tara Reade, a former aide in his Senate office who accused him of sexual assault in 1993. In an interview this week with Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News and NBC television host, Reade said he should withdraw from the presidential race.Biden has forcefully denied the allegation. “It’s not true, I am saying unequivocally. It never, never happened,” he said last week, in an interview addressing her claim for the first time publicly.Publicly, Democrats, including prominent MeToo advocates, have rallied around Biden, though privately some in the party have expressed concern about the continuous drip of reporting on the matter.So far the allegation appears to have marginally dented his reputation, but not his lead. Most voters – 86% – are aware of the allegation, according to a Monmouth poll, which found the electorate divided over whether they viewed the claim as credible. At the same time, the poll showed Biden nine points ahead of Trump.Despite Trump’s falling electoral fortunes, many Democrats remain anxious about Biden’s position – and his strategy.David Axelrod and David Plouffe, two of Barack Obama’s top campaign strategists, implored Biden’s campaign to expand its digital footprint in a joint New York Times op-ed that compared the atmospherics of the candidate’s home videos to “an astronaut beaming back to earth from the International Space Station”.“Online speeches from his basement won’t cut it,” they wrote.Lis Smith, the former top adviser to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, followed with an op-ed on Thursday that offered a blueprint for turning Biden into the “hottest bad boy and disrupter in the media game”. She suggested his campaign use TV appearances and digital content to highlight Biden’s empathy, a trait even supporters say the president has lacked in response to the rising coronavirus death toll.Part of the campaign’s evolving digital strategy includes partnering with groups that already have an online presence, like JoeMamas2020, a national coalition of “moms, caregivers, moms to be, aunts & all the parental figures in between” with about 27,000 Facebook and 1,200 Twitter followers. The group has helped amplify Biden’s appearances and policy proposals while spreading the word about upcoming events.Julie Zebrak, the group’s co-founder, said the online army is growing with women energized to help elect a candidate who would end the Twitter presidency.“We are all extremely enthusiastic for Joe Biden to beat Donald Trump,” she said.Yet the same traits that endear Biden to a growing coalition of suburban women and Never Trump Republicans have largely failed to excite younger, progressive voters. It’s not that they prefer Trump – they don’t – but a lack of enthusiasm among those voters could spell trouble in November if they stay home or vote for a third-party candidate.The campaign has also ramped up its outreach to young people, who overwhelmingly supported Biden’s rival Bernie Sanders. On Friday, Biden presented his economic pitch in an appearance on NowThis, a social-media-heavy news outlet with a young, progressive audience.“This crisis hit harder and will last longer because Donald Trump spent the last three years undermining the core pillars of our economic strength,” Biden said in remarks that attacked Trump’s stimulus efforts a kind of “cronyism” and corporate welfare. Before he began speaking, Biden removed a face mask, a pointed rebuke of the president who had refused to wear one.Still, new research conducted on behalf of NextGen America found many young people weren’t convinced Biden’s policies meet the scale of the challenges bearing down on their generation.This makes the efforts of groups like Progressive Turnout Project, which endorsed him this week, all the more important. In the coming months, the group is investing more than $52m to turn out low-propensity Democratic voters – including young people and people of color – in 17 key battleground states.“The best thing we can do is go and knock on doors and have face-to-face conversations with voters,” said Alex Morgan, the group’s executive director. “We are still looking to do that. But it’ll be knocking on that door and then taking a few big steps back and having a more distant conversation.”•••Biden’s campaign also faces another looming threat. The Michigan congressman Justin Amash, who left the Republican party last year after voting to impeach Trump, recently announced that he would seek the Libertarian party nomination.His entrance has alarmed Democrats, who fear he could siphon off Never Trump voters who might otherwise back Biden, particularly in Amash’s home state of Michigan, where third-party candidates pulled away a combined 5% of the vote share in 2016. Hillary Clinton lost the state by just 10,704 votes, less than 0.25%.Many Democrats believe Biden’s fate may well rest on his ability to persuade their own side to vote.“Trump has shown no desire or ability to moderate for those swing voters in this election,” said Addisu Demissie, who served as Cory Booker’s presidential campaign manager. “So those voters are now likely going to end up either Biden voters or non-voters or third-party voters, and that’s the competition.”This week, Trump traveled to the battleground state of Arizona, where he toured a medical mask facility without wearing one himself. The visit was a symbolic show of his administration’s push to reopen the US economy but there were unmistakable elements of his signature campaign rallies, including the music that played when Trump finished his remarks (the Rolling Stones’ You Can’t Always Get What You Want).Trump’s cross-country venture stood in striking contrast to Biden’s virtual swing through Florida – which included a rally, a roundtable in Jacksonville and an appearance on the local news in Tampa. The technical glitches only further highlighted the limitations of his confinement.But the coronavirus has also upended Trump’s strategy, erasing the booming economy he has made a centerpiece of his re-election campaign. In recent weeks, his campaign has all but abandoned championing the president’s leadership, instead focusing its efforts on diminishing Biden.Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, previewed the onslaught on Twitter this week, comparing the Trump re-election juggernaut to the Death Star from the Star Wars movies. “In a few days we start pressing FIRE for the first time,” he wrote.As Trump prepares to make even greater use of the advantages of incumbency, Biden faces his biggest test yet. Can he really lead a Rebel Alliance from his basement?

The Red Arrows fly over an empty central London to celebrate the 75th anniversary of VE Day.

Actress Bhumi Pednekar has been honing her green thumb during the COVID-19 lockdown. The actress has taken to social media to share the yield she has grown at home. The list includes feugreek (methi), mustard (sarson), amaranth (cholai), green chillies, brinjals and strawberries.

Sharing the photos of her homegrown crops on Instagram, the actress wrote: "After months of tender love & care, we present to you #PednekarKePed #homegrown #GharKiKheti #sustainableliving."

 

 

 

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After months of tender love & care,we present to you #PednekarKePed 🌱 #homegrown #GharKiKheti #sustainableliving

A post shared by Bhumi✨ (@bhumipednekar) onApr 25, 2020 at 2:56am PDT

 

Earlier this month, the actress had announced that she would utilise the lockdown time learning the science of hydroponics (soil-less) farming from her mother Sumitra Pednekar.

"My mom and I always wanted to have a hydroponics garden of our own where we grow our own vegetables and can have a fully sustainable lifestyle. We wanted to have a garden to table lifestyle at home and we are both happy with the progress," she had shared.

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Mutual funds are a great way for investors to channel their savings for long term investments and to generate returns.... [Read More]

Amid the lockdown, veteran actor Anupam Kher has decided not to shave and let his beard grow. On Tuesday, Kher took to Instagram and shared a picture in which he is seen flaunting his beard. He also revealed that he's sporting a beard after almost 37 years. "The face is a picture of the mind with the eyes as it's interpreter." Thanks to the #Lockdown I could grow my beard after 37 years," the actor wrote.

 

 

 

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"The face is a picture of the mind with the eyes as it's interpreter." Thanks to the #Lockdown I could grow my beard after 37years. :)

A post shared by Anupam Kher (@anupampkher) onMay 4, 2020 at 8:47pm PDT

Reacting to Kher's salt and pepper look, a user commented: "Beard suits you". Another one wrote: "Loving your new look sir". On the work front, Kher was last seen in a medical drama, "New Amsterdam".

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It is not just Bollywood celebrities, but many people who are extremely concerned and panicking for the grooming woes. It was Mira Rajput, Shahid Kapoor's wife who was worried about her eyebrows. In fact, she also posted a funny picture of her face, which highlighted the on-fleek brows.

 

 

 

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So far the eyebrows are behaving 🤨

A post shared by Mira Rajput Kapoor (@mira.kapoor) onApr 4, 2020 at 10:44am PDT

With going to the salon for a quick fix no longer an option, now Kriti Kharbanda's biggest dilemma is how to shape her brows. "Baaki sab toh theek hai, par in eyebrows ka kya karein?" she wrote on Insta and referred to the bushy look as 'COVID brows'. Earlier, Sonam K Ahuja, too, had expressed concerns about her brows being a 'complete mess'. If you don't want to DIY, let big, thick brows be the latest must-have.

Well, it seems like grooming is a grave issue than anything else right now.

On the professional front, Kriti Kharbanda was last seen in Pagalpanti, and now, the actress is all set to woo the audience with her next film releases Vaan and Taish. Speaking about her personal life, Kriti is currently dating Pulkit Samrat, her Pagalpanti co-star.

On the other hand, Sonam Kapoor was last seen in The Zoya Factor, opposite Dulquer Salmaan. Before that, the actress was a part of LGBTQIA film, Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga, also starring Anil Kapoor, Regina Cassandra and Rajkummar Rao.

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Bollywood actress and Miss Universe 2000 Lara Dutta turned 42 years old on April 16, 2020. Lara Dutta's birthday celebrations, however, were not stopped due to the COVID-19 lockdown. Lara Dutta's husband Mahesh Bhupathi was the one to bring in her birthday and host what was called a 'virtual birthday party' at their home in Mumbai.

Mahesh Bhupathi also took to Instagram to share a couple of photos and a video of Lara Dutta's birthday celebrations along with their daughter Samaira. The couple also had their close friends on a video conference to wish Lara Dutta on her birthday. Mahesh Bhupathi described how the part went and also had a fun caption to go with it. Virtual birthday party done .. Happy Birthday, Lara. May God continue to bless you with this amazing husband and incredible kid for another few decades atleast. Yes, we ate well today." Here's Mahesh Bhupathi's post on Instagram.

 

 

 

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Virtual Birthday Party done .. Happy Birthday @larabhupathi . May God Continue to Bless you with this amazing husband and incredible kid for another few decades at least 😍😍 . Ps .. yes we ate well today . Thanks for the amazing cake @hakunamatatapatisserie

A post shared by Mahesh Bhupathi (@mbhupathi) onApr 16, 2020 at 6:50am PDT

Lara Dutta made her Bollywood debut in 2002 with the superhit film Andaz alongside Akshay Kumar and Priyanka Chopra, who also made her debut. Both actresses won the Filmfare award for Best Female Debut.

Lara Dutta has since appeared in a list of Bollywood hits such as Masti, No Entry, Housefull, Partner, Bhagam Bhaag and Don 2. She also ventured into production with the film Chalo Dilli in 2010.

Mahesh Bhupathi and Lara Dutta got engaged in September 2010 and tied the knot in February 2011. In January 2012, Lara Dutta and Mahesh Bhupathi welcomed their daughter Samaira into the world.

In a direct threat to Snapchat, India's first homegrown messaging app hike messenger on Thursday rolled out three new features — Stories, a built-in camera and live filters — and withdrew "Timeline" feature that was rolled out last year.

The Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes has just completed peer reviews of 11 jurisdictions. This brings to 70 the number of peer review reports completed since March 2010.

Private equity epiphany; Royal Mail; CEO succession at HSBC

Allegations of high-level corruption have convulsed the Mediterranean island state of Malta and shocked the rest of Europe. Public anger has been unleashed by dramatic recent developments in the investigation into the killing of the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in a car bomb attack in October 2017. Ben Hall discusses the wider repercussions of the case with Josephine Cumbo and Michael Peel.

 

Contributors: Ben Hall, Europe editor, Josephine Cumbo, pensions correspondent, and Michael Peel, EU diplomatic correspondent. Producer: Fiona Symon

 

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Traditionally dominated by big players like Adobe and Autodesk, the world of design has been flush with a newer wave of startups that are creating collaboration spaces and new cloud-based tools designed to address the needs of creatives. Today, two of those players are combining. Dribbble, an online community for designers that lets them post […]

In spite of being in the midst of a pandemic sowing economic uncertainty, one area that continues to thrive is cloud computing. Perhaps that explains why Microsoft, which saw Azure grow 59% in its most recent earnings report, announced plans to open a new data center in New Zealand once it receives approval from the […]

Mobile app market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, which provides data-driven insights about the app economy, has raised $45 million in new funding from Riverwood Capital. This is the first significant investment the now-profitable company has seen since its $1 million seed round in 2013. The investment speaks to the growing demand for data about the […]

In spite of being in the midst of a pandemic sowing economic uncertainty, one area that continues to thrive is cloud computing. Perhaps that explains why Microsoft, which saw Azure grow 59% in its most recent earnings report, announced plans to open a new data center in New Zealand once it receives approval from the […]

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released updated projections of future U.S. energy production and use in its Annual Energy Outlook 2020 (AEO2020) today.