In the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, one sign that social distancing measures may be working is that people’s temperatures — a symptom of the virus — are dropping in some cities in the U.S., according to a smart thermometer company. The data could give health officials an early look into how the virus is progressing. Michelle Quinn takes a look. …
New analysis of data collected by the U.S. space agency’s Cassini spacecraft may have solved what has been a mystery to scientists for years: What keeps the upper layers of Saturn so warm?The warmth of Saturn and other gas giants in the solar system has puzzled scientists because the planets are too far from the sun for it to be the source of the heat that has been found in their atmospheres.But the authors of a report published this week in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy used NASA’s Cassini probe …
Taiwan’s cabinet has told government agencies to stop using Zoom Video Communications Inc’s conferencing app, the latest blow to the company as it battles criticism of its booming platform over privacy and security.Zoom’s daily users ballooned to more than 200 million in March, as coronavirus-induced shutdowns forced employees to work from home and schools switched to the company’s free app for conducting and coordinating online classes.However, the company is facing a backlash from users worried about the lack of end-to-end encryption of meeting sessions and “zoombombing,” where uninvited guests crash …
Habbo Hotel, a hit online networking game more than a decade ago, is drawing back hundreds of thousand of players as locked-down millennials look to rediscover a childhood favorite, its Finnish maker said. “Our traffic has tripled over the past month. The exact user number growth figure is 213% since February 25,” game maker Sulake’s Chief Executive Valtteri Karu told Reuters, adding that this included hundreds of thousands of new and returning users. Launched 20 years ago, Habbo Hotel gained a strong following among children and teenagers before it was eclipsed by …
The lockdown that served as a model for countries battling the coronavirus around the world is set to end after 11 weeks: Chinese authorities are moving to allow residents of Wuhan to once again travel in and out of the sprawling city where the pandemic began. Just after midnight Wednesday, the city’s 11 million residents will be permitted to leave without special authorization as long as a mandatory smartphone application powered by a mix of data-tracking and government surveillance shows they are healthy and have not been in recent contact …
Pakistan’s military promised Tuesday that dozens of doctors who were briefly jailed for protesting a lack of protective equipment needed to treat the growing number of coronavirus cases will get the equipment they need. The 47 doctors protested in Quetta, the capital of southwestern Baluchistan province, on Monday, when they were detained. They were released later the same day, according to provincial spokesman Liaquat Shahwani. An army statement on Tuesday said the “emergency supplies of medical equipment, including PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) are being dispatched to Quetta.” …
A silver lining of the current pandemic is that rescue dogs are finding foster homes at higher than normal rates right now, according to the Humane Rescue Alliance, an animal welfare organization in Washington, DC.More people have also reached out about adopting than was the case pre-coronavirus, says Ashley Valm, director of adoptions at the organization’s two shelters. Lucky dog Just ask Tom Drescher and his wife, Becky Nolin, who, after browsing online for a few months, finally settled on a terrier Pitbull mix named Goldie. “My wife and I had been talking for quite a while about the idea of adopting a dog,” Drescher told VOA during an interview via Zoom. With both now working from home, they decided it …
The World Health Organization warns a severe global shortage of nurses is putting the lives of millions of people at risk and is particularly worrisome at a time when the world is doing battle with the COVID-19 pandemic. To mark World Health Day, the first ever State of the World’s Nursing Report, produced jointly by WHO and the International Council of Nurses, is being launched. Data from 191 countries show the critical work performed by nurses is frequently undervalued. Instead of celebrating their skills and compassion, the survey finds nurses too …
For the billions of Christians around the world it is Holy Week, the seven days spanning from Palm Sunday to Easter. Along with one third of the world under lockdown to try to stop the COVID virus, Christians in the Holy Land are preparing for a very different kind of holiday. Linda Gradstein reports for VOA from Jerusalem. …
Ceri Weber had just begun to defend her dissertation when the chaos began: Echoes and voices interrupted her. Someone parroted her words. Then Britney Spears music came on, and someone told Weber to shut up. Someone threatened to rape her. Hackers had targeted the meeting on the video conference platform Zoom while Weber was completing the final step of her doctoral degree at Duke University. The harassment lasted 10 minutes — the result of an increasingly common form of cyber attack known as “Zoom bombing.” As tens of millions of people turn …
A Nigerian court has ordered actress Funke Akindele-Bello to perform community service after she pleaded guilty to violating a lockdown restriction by hosting a birthday party for her husband while publicly promoting a ‘Stay Home’ campaign. Following their arrest, the couple appeared in court on Monday on charges of breaking the Lagos State Infectious Disease 2020 regulation and were ordered to pay a fine and perform 14 days of community service. The couple’s defense began to unravel on Saturday when the husband, AbdulRasheed Bello, posted a video of the party on his …
Honor Blackman, the potent British actress who took James Bond’s breath away as Pussy Galore in Goldfinger and who starred as the leather-clad, judo-flipping Cathy Gale in The Avengers, has died. She was 94. Blackman’s family said in a statement Monday that she died peacefully of natural causes at her home in Lewes, in southeastern England. The honey-voiced Blackman first became a household name in the 1960s spy TV series The Avengers. She joined the show in the second season as Cathy Gale, the leather-wearing anthropologist with martial arts skills. Blackman departed the …
People around the world, trapped in their homes amid a health crisis, have something to look forward to this week when the full moon appears as a supermoon for the second of three times this year and in its most spectacular form. A phenomenon known as the Super Pink Moon will make an appearance over a couple of nights this week. It will be the biggest and brightest on Tuesday, but its appearance on Monday and Wednesday will also be worth viewing. Housebound people are more likely than usual to want to step out into their yards or poke their heads out of their windows to watch this so-called supermoon and develop a new appreciation for the natural world or renew an old one. A full moon appears approximately once …