NAKHABINO, Russia — A video of a chubby dog named Dyusha helping his owner with everyday chores has taken over the internet by storm. Yuri Odinokov, from the city of Nakhabino in the district of Krasnogorsky in the Russian region of Moscow Oblast, is the proud owner of four-year-old Dyusha. Dyusha not only helps his owner with the household chores like taking out the recycling and helping him put on and take off his coat and shoes, but he also attracts scores of followers on social networks. The dog racks up over 6 million views monthly. Yuri admits he has not…
Author: zenger.news
MADRID — Living in Spain just got pricier. And two of the country’s five main political parties are proposing a housing law to address the issue. A rented house is 50 percent more expensive today than five years ago. Though most Spaniards earn a salary of around 1,000 euros ($1,177) per month, finding an apartment for less than 500 euros ($589) in cities like Madrid or Barcelona is practically impossible. That’s why one of the coalition government agreements between the PSOE (Spanish Socialists Workers’ Party) and Podemos (a far-left party) was to approve a new housing law that would regulate the…
VALENCIA, Spain — Experts restored a Roman sandal made from grass, and as per its carbon dating, it goes back to the fourth century AD. The sandal was probably worn indoors, much like a slipper in today’s world. The grass sandal, made using esparto, a type of grass from North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, was found by members of the archeological section of the Hiker Centre, Eldense. The sandal was found at the archeological site of El Monastil, located in the municipality of Elda, in the south-eastern Spanish province of Alicante. The sandal was restored by the Archeological Museum…
CANBERRA, Australia — Will it be a cliff or a steady slope? That is the question on the minds of Australian workers, business owners, economists, and politicians as JobKeeper comes to an end. The wage subsidy was introduced on March 30, 2020, in a bid to stem a massive boost to the dole queue at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. As Treasurer Treasurer Josh Frydenberg put it in parliament recently, the early months of 2020 had been a time when “Australia was staring into the abyss”. “Where Treasury could see a situation where the unemployment rate could reach 15 percent,” Frydenberg…
PUNE, India — “On Feb. 22, my seller account with Amazon India got deactivated,” a Delhi-based seller of audio accessories who was with e-commerce platform Amazon India since 2019 said. “My inventory has been stuck in the Amazon warehouse since I got logged out of my seller central dashboard. I cannot file goods and services tax returns [as mandated by the government] as I don’t have the sales data. My working capital is also stuck, which is not a pain point for Amazon, but I have to pay my employees and vendors.” This seller is among thousands whose accounts were suspended…
DELHI, India — At 23, Siya Gupta is old enough to vote, drive a car, get married, and run a food takeaway business, but not to buy alcohol. In New Delhi, India’s national capital, where Siya lives, the legal drinking age is 25 years. However, that’s set to change. The Delhi government recently passed a new excise policy that lowers the minimum legal drinking age in the union territory to 21 years. Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia announced this at a press conference on March 22, where he announced that the government would no longer run any liquor vends and ensure more equitable…
PUNE, India — Imagine scrolling through a website or an app idly, or watching a movie trailer or an ad, subconsciously taking it in without delving into it. There is big money behind decoding these subconscious emotions. And 33-year-old Ranjan Kumar is among a growing bunch of deep-tech entrepreneurs in India, helping brands with such consumer insights with his Artificial Intelligence start-up Entropik Tech. “Before Entropik, I helped build two start-ups,” Kumar, chief executive and co-founder of Entropik, told Zenger News. “One failed, one succeeded. But I learned that, as a company, you have to sort out your differentiator early on in the…
MELBOURNE, Australia — Varroa destructor is a deadly stowaway that port authorities are determined to keep away from the bee population in the southeast Australian state of Victoria. Artificially intelligent beehives are being installed at Victorian ports to detect pests as they arrive at ships rapidly. “The Varroa mite is extremely destructive; it kills bees very rapidly,” said Mary-Anne Thomas, the Victorian agriculture minister. “I would look forward to a project like the Purple Hive rolling out across the country. This is world-leading technology.” Purple Hive was launched on March 29 at the Port of Melbourne — a solar-powered device that detects Varroa destructor,…
NEW DELHI — Fifty-one-year-old M. Eniyavan from Tamil Nadu in South India said he owes his life to idli, fermented and steamed rice-and-black-lentil cake, and one of the most popular breakfasts in the country. “I was born to a very poor family with nine siblings in Coimbatore (in Tamil Nadu),” Eniyavan told Zenger News. “My father, who used to do seasonal manual labor jobs, found it difficult to feed his huge family. I went to school till class VIII mainly to get a free midday meal.” Life had other plans for him, of course. After working as a seasonal fruit seller…
YAOUNDE, Cameroon — Thousands of commuters on the Bamenda-Babadjou road network that links the Western and Northwestern regions of Cameroon were stranded for several hours last week after a section of the 35-kilometer (22-mile) dilapidated network collapsed following torrential rains. Construction to rehabilitate the road network began in 2017 after the country received financial assistance from the World Bank. But work stalled for months during the long-running armed conflict between government forces and separatist militants. “Work was advancing on the Babadjou-Bamenda stretch. But following attacks [by secessionist forces] on Jan. 8, 2021, the contractor notified us he couldn’t continue because of…