Dinosaurs might still roam the Earth if a giant ancient asteroid had taken a slightly different course. And if Prof. Avi Loeb had followed his expected trajectory, he’d have become a philosopher rather than Harvard University’s longtime chair of astronomy and founding director of its Black Hole Initiative. And if a shiny space object dubbed “Oumuamua” hadn’t deviated from an orbit shaped by the Sun’s gravity, Loeb wouldn’t have written his bestselling book, “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth.” Cover image of Avi Loeb’s book. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)“The starting point of a trajectory is extremely important because…
Author: zenger.news
Local media negotiations with Facebook are “quite rugged,” but Australia’s competition watchdog is giving the social network more time before enacting the news media bargaining code. The code would force Google and Facebook to pay Australian news organizations for content. Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Chair Rod Sims says he is happy to give the social media giant more time, amid reports Facebook is not negotiating in good faith with news companies. “Obviously there will come a time where we might have to do something, but I don’t think we’re there yet,” he told a Senate inquiry into media diversity.…
Hamdayet, though overwhelmed, offers a glint of hope to refugees in the desert of Sudan. The small community of 600 people by the river on the border of Sudan and Ethiopia serves as a transit center where refugees are processed before being moved to permanent camps in Um Rakuba and Al Tanideba. Since the most recent conflict in Ethiopia broke out in 2020, Hamdayet has become the main crossing point into Sudan. An estimated 10,000–12,000 refugees are in and around Hamdayet, where shelter, access to food, sanitation and clean drinking water continues to be an issue. Most of the refugees,…
Counterterrorism watchdog Financial Action Task Force (FATF) reaffirmed Pakistan on the grey list of countries vulnerable to terror financing during a virtual press briefing on Feb. 25. “Pakistan remains under increased monitoring,” said FATF President Marcus Pleyer, while announcing the adjudication, reiterating that Islamabad still needs to fully address three of the 27-points in the action plan. Last month’s ruling marks three years of Islamabad’s return to the FATF grey list. While Pakistan was formally reinstated in the list in June 2018, the announcement had been made in the annual Paris meet that year. Over these three years, Pakistan has gradually increased its…
MUMBAI, India — Two crowdsourcing initiatives recently managed to collect enough funds for a dose of the world’s costliest life-saving medication for six-month-old Teera Kamat from the western Indian city of Mumbai. Teera suffers from a rare genetic disease called type 1 spinal muscular atrophy that affects one in 8,000 newborns the world over. The cost of the medicine that was administered was INR 16 crores ($2.2 million). “As middle-class working professionals in India, most of us barely make INR 1 crore ($137,432) in our lifetime,” father Mihir Kamat told Zenger News. “Raising INR 16 crore ($2.2 million) was impossible for…
MIDDLESBROUGH, England — Criminals have a knack for coming up with creative ways to commit crimes. The Cleveland Police Department recovered cannabis crops worth more than $700,000 from a secret farm in a property on Kildare Street in Middlesbrough, England. Following a resident’s tip-off, the cops found the farm which contained a total of 112 plants, as well as additional 500 seedlings which they said had a street value of up to GBP 514.000 ($713,946). “Following valuable information which came to us, we have been able to disrupt further organized crime groups from exploiting our area and putting people in our local communities…
LIANYUNGANG, China — A Chinese father recently filmed his 4-year-old child creating a mess with ink at his residence at Lianyungang city in Jiangsu province of China. The video footage filmed on Mar.3, shows the hands and feet of the child completely covered in black ink. While filming the video, the father explains what his child did in his absence. However, the boy seems unapologetic for his activity. “He has not even started going to school, yet he is so naughty,” said Liang, the father of the child. He is known by his last name. The father of the kid was…
BUCHHOLZ IN DER NORDHEIDE, Germany — Former world champion boxer, Alicia Melina, severely injured her knee during a training session for the Ninja Warrior competition. The former boxer and singer was training for the “Ninja Warrior Germany All-stars” competition when she seriously damaged the tibia bone of her left knee. The 32-year-old, who hails from a town called Buchholz in der Nordheide in the Harburg district of Germany, informed about the mishap through an Instagram post. “It happened so quickly,” she said. “I, unfortunately, got a tibial plateau fracture in my knee during Ninja Warrior training. You will see me on crutches…
PUNE, India — Amidst a military standoff with India and growing political tensions with the United States, China hiked its defense budget to $209 billion — an increase of 6.8 percent over last year. China maintained a growth in the military budget for the sixth consecutive year. The rise in defense spending was announced by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on March 5. The official state-run press agency of the People’s Republic of China, Xinhua News Agency, reported that China’s defense budget ($209 billion) is about one-quarter of the United States’ defense budget ($740.5 billion), and three times more than India’s ($65.7 billion). “But…
The world’s costliest edible fungi, the Morchella mushrooms, has been artificially cultivated in the U.S., China, and France. Now, India has added its name to the list. “In India, the mushroom variety can be cultivated on a much larger scale than the other countries,” Anil Kumar, the scientist who was entrusted with the project to artificially cultivate Morchella mushrooms in 2019, told Zenger News. The test tube version of the mushrooms is known as guchhi mushrooms. They are also known as morel mushrooms. “We are still in the process of obtaining patents for the research,” V.P. Sharma, director of Indian…