Heena Sharma Blog

  More people were diagnosed with Covid-19 during the past seven days than any other week since the start of the pandemic — topping 5.2 million globally — with the worst outbreaks accelerating in many countries that are ill-equipped to deal with them. The worrisome trend, just days after the world surpassed 3 million deaths, comes as countries are rolling out vaccinations in an effort to get the virus under control. The data from Johns Hopkins University showing a 12 per cent increase in infections from a week earlier casts doubt on the hope that the end of the pandemic is in sight. The weekly increase surpassed the previous high set in mid-December. While infection rates have largely slowed in the US and UK, countries in the developing world — India and Brazil in particular — are shouldering surging caseloads. Read More

Oxford University will start human testing with a Covid-19 vaccine they developed from Thursday, the UK government said in a coronavirus press conference. The Oxford team – led by Professor Sarah Gilbert, is testing ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, a candidate based on a chimpanzee adenovirus modified to include the spike or ‘S’ protein on the surface of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. The government funded the vaccine project with 20 million pounds to Oxford University and another 22 million pounds to a second vaccine project at Imperial College, London, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Wednesday, adding the project will help support phase 2 trials and help prepare for a larger phase 3 study. Read More

While Google is still working on a coronavirus screening and tracking website, Microsoft Bing team has already launched a web portal for tracking COVID-19 infections worldwide. The website, accessible at bing.com/covid, provides up-to-date infection statistics for each country. The COVID-19 Tracker currently lists 168,835 as total confirmed cases, 84,558 active cases, 77,761 recovered cases and 6,516 deaths. There are at least 3,244 confirmed cases of novel coronavirus in the US and at least 61 deaths. "Lots of Bing folks worked (from home) this past week to create a mapping and authoritative news resource for COVID19 info," Michael Schechter, General Manager for Bing Growth and Distribution at Microsoft, was quoted as saying in a ZDNet report on Sunday. An interactive map allows site visitors to click on the country to see the specific number of cases and related articles from a variety of publishers. Read More

The economic slowdown is beginning to reflect in the salary hikes of India Inc. The average salary increase in 2020 is projected to be 9.1 per cent, the lowest in a decade, according to the 24th edition of Aon Plc’s annual salary increase survey. In 2018 and 2019, companies increased average salary by 9.5 per cent and 9.3 per cent, respectively. After the financial crisis of 2008, the average hike had slumped to 6.6 per cent. The projected increase for 2020 is lower than the average salary hike that graduates of top Business schools have managed at around 12 per cent. The good news, however, is that despite gross domestic product (GDP) growth estimates getting revised downward, the average salary increase for 2020 will be only 20 basis points lower than that of the previous year. Moreover, double-digit salary increments have not vanished entirely. While the average for the country has come down, 39 per cent of the companies are still willing to give double-digit salary incr...

At least fifteen people were killed and nine others injured in a coal mine gas explosion in north China's Shanxi Province, local authorities said on Tuesday. The incident happened on Monday when 35 miners were working underground at the coal mine in Pingyao County when the blast happened, the Shanxi Administration of Coal Mine Safety said. Authorities said that 15 people were killed in the blast. "Eleven miners managed to escape," the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Read More

China has officially commenced the research and development of the 6G telecom service, days after launching 5G cellular services in the country in a bid to advance its ambitious goal to emerge as a global leader in the next generation telecom technology, surpassing the US and the western countries. The Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology on Wednesday announced the establishment of two offices to develop 6G, setting off the competition for the next-generation cellular data service that comes after the super-fast 5G. The Ministry said one of the offices will house the government agencies responsible for the relevant policy making. The other is comprised of 37 experts from colleges, research academies and enterprises, who are expected to advise policymakers, it said. China's Vice-Minister for Science and Technology Wang Xi said that worldwide knowledge about the telecom technology is still in an exploratory stage, without consensus over its definitions and applic...

A powerful early morning suicide truck bomb devastated a hospital in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 90 others, an official said. The Taliban took responsibility for the attack, which destroyed part of the hospital in Qalat, the capital of southern Zabul province, and left a fleet of ambulances broken and battered. Residents, many of whom had come to see their sick family members, used shawls and blankets to carry the wounded inside the destroyed building, while authorities scrambled to take the worst of the wounded to hospitals in nearby Kandahar. In the early hours after the explosion there were contradictory figures of the dead and wounded. The provincial governor's spokesman Gul Islam Seyal put the death toll at 12 but said authorities were on the scene sifting through the debris. Atta Jan Haqbayan, head of the provincial council, put the death toll at 20. Read More Article Source -> Business Standard

The Asia-Pacific Group of the the global watchdog for terror financing and money laundering has put Pakistan in the Enhanced Expedited Follow Up List (Blacklist) for its failure to meet its standards, officials said on Friday. The Asia Pacific Group (APG) of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has also found that Pakistan was non-compliant on 32 of the 40 compliance parameters of terror financing and money laundering. The FATF APG meeting was held in Canberra, Australia and the discussions lasted over seven hours over two days. "The APG has placed Pakistan in the Enhanced Expedited Follow Up List (Black List) for failure to meet its standards," an Indian official privy to the development said. On 11 effectiveness parameters of terror financing and money laundering, Pakistan was adjudged as low on 10. The official said despite its efforts, Pakistan could not convince the 41-member plenary to upgrade it on any parameter. Read More Article Source -> Bus...

At least nine people, including six policemen, were killed and around 40 others injured in northwest Pakistan on Sunday in a terror strike on a checkpost and a subsequent suicide blast by a burqa-clad woman at a hospital where the victims of the first attack were shifted. Both the attacks took place in Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a day after the first-ever successful election was held in the newly merged tribal areas of the province. Both the attacks took place in Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a day after the first-ever successful election was held in the newly merged tribal areas of the province. Read More Article Source -> Business Standard

Brazil's Supreme Court voted Thursday to criminalise homophobia, an important step for sexual minorities in one of the most dangerous countries for LGBT people in the world. The Supreme Federal Court (STF), which voted eight to three in favour of the measure, classified homophobia as a crime similar to racism, until Congress -- which is held by a conservative majority and is strongly influenced by evangelical churches -- passes a law specifically addressing such discrimination. Brazil now joins a growing number of countries in the typically conservative and Catholic-influenced Latin American region that have passed measures in favour of LGBT rights. "All prejudice is violence. All discrimination is a cause of suffering," said judge Carmen Luzia while voting in favour of the measure. "But I learned that some prejudices cause more suffering than others." According to the NGO Grupo Gay de Bahia, which has collected national statistics for the past fou...

Indian writer Annie Zaidi was on Wednesday announced as the 2019 winner of the $100,000 Nine Dots Prize, a prestigious book prize created to award innovative thinking that addresses contemporary issues around the world. Mumbai-based Zaidi, a freelance writer whose work includes reportage, essays, short stories, poetry and plays, won for her entry Bread, Cement, Cactus' combining memoir and reportage to explore concepts of home and belonging rooted in her experience of contemporary life in India. What really appealed to me about the Nine Dots Prize was the way it encourages entrants to think without borders or restraints. My work has often crossed over genres, traversing between memoir and journalism, and this timely but wide-open question encouraged us to approach it with methods that were equally far-ranging, said the 40-year-old winner. Now in its second cycle, the prize challenged entrants to answer the question Is there still no place like home?' in a 3,000-word...

The engine is from a roadcutter, the wings are burlap, the wheels are borrowed from a rickshaw: a popcorn seller has caught the attention of the Pakistan Air Force by building his own plane. The tale of Muhammad Fayyaz has captured the hearts of many in a nation where millions, just like him, have limited access to education and are fighting for opportunities. "I was literally in the air. I couldn't feel anything else," Fayyaz said of his first flight in a machine he learned to build mainly from viewing TV clips and online blueprints. Pakistan has been thrilled before by stories of scientific prodigies plucked from obscurity before -- notably, that of the engineer who said in 2012 that he had invented a car that could run on water -- a story that was later debunked by scientists. But Fayyaz insists he flew and his claim is being taken seriously by the air force, whose representatives have now visited him multiple times, even issuing a certificate to commend ...

Sri Lanka observed a nationwide three-minute silence Tuesday to pay homage to more than 300 people killed in the gruesome Easter Sunday bombings, the country's worst terror attack blamed on a local previously little-known Islamist outfit. National flags were lowered and people bowed their heads as the silence began at 8:30 am local time, the time the first of the attacks occurred on Sunday. "We have declared today a day of national mourning, we urge people to raise a white flag in honour of the victims," said Kamal Padmasiri, Secretary to the Ministry of Home Affairs. He said a 3-minute silence was observed nationwide and the national flag will be flown at half-mast. Police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera said the death toll in a series of devastating blasts that tore through churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka had risen to 310. "The death toll has now gone up to 310", Gunasekera said. Read More Article Source -> Business Standard

Winter came around four hours early for some lucky " Game of Thrones " fans, who caught the highly-anticipated final season premiere of the epic HBO show on DirecTV Now. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the first episode of season eight landed on the AT&T-owned service around 5 pm ET, instead of its 9 pm ET premiere time on Sunday. The episode was live for some users for hours on DirecTV Now, before it was taken down. Besides reports of the first chapter of the last season being live, some users reported that they received a push notification that the episode was ready to be viewed. "Apparently our system was as excited as we are for 'Game of Thrones' tonight and gave a few DirecTV Now customers early access to the episode by mistake. "When we became aware of the error, we immediately fixed it and we look forward to tuning in this evening," a representative for AT&T said. Read More Article Source -> Business Standar...

Social media platforms including Facebook Inc. are facing harsher scrutiny after a shooter accused of killing 40 people in two mosques in New Zealand appeared to livestream the murders over the internet. While platforms including Twitter and YouTube said they moved fast to remove the content, users reported it was still widely available hours after being first uploaded to the alleged shooter’s Facebook account. The video, which shows a first-person view of the killings in Christchurch, New Zealand, was readily accessible during and after the attack — as was the suspect’s hate-filled manifesto. Facebook, YouTube and other social-media platforms are struggling to scrub offensive content from sites that generate billions of dollars in revenue from advertisers. In the U.S., those sites also have been criticized for spreading political misinformation, with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg being called before Congress. In August, a shooting at a Madden 19 video-game tournament in...

China's military, the world's largest force, has cut the size of its land-based army by about 50 per cent and significantly boosted its navy and air force as part of an "unprecedented" strategic shift designed to transform the People's Liberation Army (PLA) into a comprehensive modern force. The 2 million-strong Chinese military has significantly boosted its navy, air force and new strategic units and downsized its land-based army, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported quoting a state-run Xinhua report. In a feature report highlighting the "transformational changes" made by the PLA, Xinhua on Sunday said "this new data is unprecedented in the history of the PLA the army now accounts for less than 50 per cent of the total number of PLA troops; almost half of our non-combatant units have been made redundant, and the number of officers in the PLA has been reduced by 30 per cent." In the last few years, the PLA has down...

The destructive California wildfires have so far killed at least 74 people with over 1,000 reported missing, authorities said. Butte County Sheriff and Coroner Kory Honea said on Friday evening that the number of people missing due to Northern California's Camp Fire, deemed as the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in the state's history, was 1,011, CNN reported. Of the 74 victims, 71 were killed in Northern California while the three others died in the Woolsey Fire in Southern California. As of Friday, the Camp Fire has destroyed about 9,700 homes and scorched 146,000 acres. President Donald Trump is expected to visit the region on Saturday. Governor Jerry Brown and Governor-elect Gavin Newsom plan to accompany him. Meanwhile, the Woolsey Fire in Southern California has destroyed 548 structures in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, said Cal Fire, the state's forestry and fire protection agency. More than 98,000 acres have been burned since...

New dating app DonaldDaters was supposed to help lonely conservatives find each other discreetly. But the app leaked its database of users on launch day, a report said Monday. With the slogan "Make America Date Again," the app targets the "American-based singles community connecting lovers, friends, and Trump supporters alike," its website says. The app had just over 1,600 users on its first day of operations, technology news site TechCrunch reported. TechCrunch said it learned the figure because a French security researcher found "issues" with the app, making it possible to download the entire user database. The researcher "shared the database with TechCrunch, which included users' names, profile pictures, device type, their private messages -- and access tokens, which can be used to take over accounts," it said. TechCrunch said the data was pulled offline after it contacted the app maker. DonaldDaters' website says ...

Robots will handle 52 per cent of current work tasks by 2025, almost twice as many as now, a World Economic Forum (WEF) study said Monday. The sharp increase could also see a net gain in "new roles" for humans, who will have to revamp skills to keep pace with the "seismic shift" in how we work with machines and computer programmes, the forum estimated. "By 2025 more than half of all current workplace tasks will be performed by machines as opposed to 29 per cent today," a statement by the Swiss non-profit organisation said. Simultaneously, rapid changes in machines and algorithms, or computer processes that are designed to solve problems, "could create 133 million new roles in place of 75 million that will be displaced between now and 2022," the group forecast. Its report, The Future of Jobs 2018 , foresees robots swiftly replacing humans in the accounting, client management, industrial, postal and secretarial sectors. Read our ful...

At least 54 people were killed in the Philippines on Sunday after Typhoon Mangkhut wreaked havoc in the island nation as the storm continued its devastating path and made landfall in Hong Kong and mainland China. The typhoon, dubbed as the world's strongest storm of the year, had made landfall in the Philippines on Saturday. With winds reaching a speed of up to 165 mph, the storm sent debris flying, toppling roofs of houses, crashing down trees and flattening huts, CNN reported. According to government officials on Sunday, 42 people were missing and rescue operations to trace those missing will resume on Monday. Over 250,000 people were affected by the storm across the island nation, forcing them to seek shelter in evacuation centres in the northern Philippines, a region which has seen 51 incidents of landslides. Read Complete Article