China
Donald Trump threatens to cut China ties over coronavirus spread
US President Donald Trump threatened to cut ties with China over its role in the spread of the coronavirus, as the global death toll from the disease topped 300,000. Despite fears of a second wave of infections, national and local governments around the world are easing lockdown orders as they try to get stalled economies moving again. But there were warnings Friday that some of the world’s poorest people remain the most vulnerable, with predictions that a quarter of a billion Africans could be infected without urgent action. The nexus of poverty and risk was highlighted by the discovery of cases in the world’s biggest refugee camp, where upwards of a million Rohingya live in squalor. “We are looking at the very real prospect that thousands of people may die from COVID-19” in these camps, ...
Zamfara governor commends EFCC for exposing Chinese ‘fraudsters’
Zamfara State Governor Bello Matawalle has commended the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for exposing Chinese nationals who tried to block investigations against their alleged shoddy contract in the state. Two of the Chinese nationals, representing the company allegedly approached the EFCC zonal officer with a bribe of N100 million and were immediately arrested. Reacting to the development, Matawalle said the attempted bribery further confirmed his earlier accusation that the company only collected the contract sum without executing the project. He was quoted as saying: “I want to specifically commend the leadership of Ibrahim Magu and his able Zonal Head in Sokoto, Alhaji Lawal Abdullahi, for moving this case to a significant stage by this arrest and further proving to the...
NAFDAC warns against use of Chloroquine for coronavirus treatment
The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has, again, warned Nigerians against taking Chloroquine as treatment for Coronavirus (COVID-19). “Nobody should buy Chloroquine and use it. If you have COVID-19, go to a doctor. We have warned Nigerians and shall do that again. Do not take Chloroquine,” Mojisola Adeyeye, NAFDAC’s Director General, told newsmen on Thursday in Abuja. “The delay in approving some of the drugs for treatment of the virus is because of the clinical trials the agency is carrying out on them. “So far, no group or individual has proffered any solution to the treatment or management of the pandemic,” she said. Mrs Adeyeye, a professor, said the Chinese government carried out lots of trials on Chloroquine before it approved its use for treatmen...
WHO: Coronavirus may never go away
The new coronavirus may never go away and populations around the world will have to learn to live with it, the World Health Organization warned Wednesday. As some countries around the world begin gradually easing lockdown restrictions imposed in a bid to stop the novel coronavirus from spreading, the WHO said it may never be wiped out entirely. The virus first emerged in Wuhan in China late last year and has since infected more than 4.2 million people and killed nearly 300,000 worldwide. “We have a new virus entering the human population for the first time and therefore it is very hard to predict when we will prevail over it,” said Michael Ryan, the WHO’s emergencies director. “This virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities and this virus may never go away,” he told a ...
Tencent Music Revenue Hit New Highs in Q1 as Coronavirus Spread Through China
The Chinese music streaming company took a hit, but still grew earnings 27.4% year-over-year. Tencent Music Entertainment (TME), the Chinese music streaming company with 657 million monthly listeners, took a hit from the coronavirus pandemic in the first quarter but was able to grow both music subscribers and revenue. According to the company’s earnings report released Monday, Q1 music revenues leapt 27.4% year over year to $288 million while monthly average users grew 0.5%. Even though the pandemic led people to spend more time with entertainment, TME’s social media revenue rose just 3.3% even though 256 million people, a 13.3% gain, used its social app, WeSing. Still, music is a relatively low earner for TME; social media delivered an average revenue per media revenue per user of $15.65 ...
Nigeria increases coronavirus testing above 27, 000
The Federal Government on Monday said the country has ramped up testing for the coronavirus to 27,078. Osagie Ehanire, the Minister of Health, disclosed this in Abuja at the Presidential Taskforce (PTF) briefing on COVID-19 in the country. Ehanire said this has yielded about 4,399 cases in 35 states with a gender ratio of 30 per cent to 70 per cent of men and women. He said 778 persons have been discharged with 143 deaths. The minister added that personnel in federal hospitals participated in a multi-national teleconference with medical and academic experts in Beijing on the COVID-19 treatment strategy of China. “Our COVID-19 response must become a concerted national collaborative drive to become more effective. “This requires synergies across all tiers of government levels which should be...
China’s Wuhan reports first coronavirus infection in over a month
China on Sunday reported the first case of coronavirus in over a month in Wuhan, the city where the outbreak first started in December last year. China’s National Health Commission also reported the first double-digit increase in countrywide cases in nearly 10 days, saying 14 new infections had been confirmed. Two of the cases were imported into the country from overseas, the commission said. The coronavirus first emerged in China’s Wuhan, a major industrial and transport city in central China, in December. It has since infected nearly four million people worldwide — claiming more than 270,000 lives — and crippled the global economy. The total number infected in China is 82,901, with an official death toll of 4,633. No new deaths have been reported for nearly a month. China’s ruling Commun...
International borders: 10 remarkable frontiers
From mountains to libraries, we take a look at some of the most extraordinary international borders to be found across the globe Over the last few years, we’ve seen an impressive collection of new websites, blogs and social media accounts dedicated to ‘travel porn’. They’re filled with big, sweeping images of fairytale lands and precarious precipices. Sometimes, like this incredible piece on architectural density in Hong Kong, they’ll depict urban decay or stifling poverty – always gilded by the photographer’s lens. At Atlas & Boots, we always wanted to strike the right balance between travel porn and more in-depth content; the type that provided some previously unknown knowledge or insight. We’re using the current downtime to update some old content and came across this post about unu...
China admits coronavirus exposed ‘shortcomings’ in healthcare system
The coronavirus outbreak exposed “shortcomings” in China’s public healthcare system, a top health official admitted Saturday, saying that reforms are underway to improve the country’s disease prevention and control mechanisms. China has faced criticism both at home and abroad for downplaying the virus and concealing information about the outbreak when it first emerged in the central city of Wuhan in December. The virus has since infected nearly four million people worldwide — claiming more than 270,000 lives — and crippled the global economy. Beijing has insisted it has always shared information with the World Health Organization and other countries in a timely manner. But on Saturday Li Bin, deputy director of China’s National Health Commission, made a rare admission when he said the heal...
Pfizer, BioNTech dose U.S first participants of trial coronavirus vaccine
Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE announced on Wednesday, May 6, 2020, that the first participants have been dosed in the U.S in the Phase 1/2 clinical trial for the BNT162 vaccine program to prevent COVID-19. The trial is part of a global development program, and the dosing of the first cohort in Germany was completed last week. The Phase 1/2 study is designed to determine the safety, immunogenicity and optimal dose level of four mRNA vaccine candidates evaluated in a single, continuous study. The dose level escalation portion (Stage 1) of the Phase 1/2 trial in the U.S will enrol up to 360 healthy subjects into two age cohorts (18-55 and 65-85 years of age). The first subjects immunized in Stage 1 of the study will be healthy adults 18-55 years of age. Older adults will only be immunized with ...
France using artificial intelligence to check whether people are wearing masks on public transport
France is integrating new AI tools into security cameras in the Paris metro system to check whether passengers are wearing face masks. The software, which has already been deployed elsewhere in the country, began a three-month trial in the central Chatelet-Les Halles station of Paris this week, reports Bloomberg. French startup DatakaLab, which created the program, says the goal is not to identify or punish individuals who don’t wear masks, but to generate anonymous statistical data that will help authorities anticipate future outbreaks of COVID-19. “We are just measuring this one objective,” DatakaLab CEO Xavier Fischer told The Verge. “The goal is just to publish statistics of how many people are wearing masks every day.” The pilot is one of a number of measures cities around the world a...
Climbing the seven summits: a route to the top
Climbing the seven summits – the highest mountain on every continent – is an improbable dream of mine… but that’s the beauty of dreams I have always loved trekking and climbing. I usually spend several weeks of any given year on the grades of the Scottish Highlands or Welsh Snowdonia or ideally further afield such as the Arctic Circle Trail in Greenland or the K2 base camp trek in Pakistan. It was one of these trekking trips – to Tanzania in 2010 – that ignited something new inside me. It was while climbing Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, that an idea, an ambition, began to formulate. My hobby deepened into passion and I realised that I wanted to achieve something great: to climb the seven summits, the highest mountain on every continent. Mountain Continent Altitude Tech....
