Day: September 9, 2020

Millennials Connect Via Social Media Challenges During COVID-19

Bingo is back, this time among millennials and Gen Zers. To stave off boredom caused by the coronavirus quarantine and connect with others, millions of global millennials and Gen Zers are issuing challenges to each other on social media.  Challenges have gotten so popular that social media giant Instagram added a “challenge” story sticker to make it easier for users to create their own or nominate others.  Challenges and tags flooding social media range from drawing random oranges and tagging friends, to perfecting 15-second dances on TikTok to keep people busy, connected and entertained.  Here are some of the biggest social media trends and challenges that have gone viral.Bingo  People are making bingos about everything, whether it’s a university, zodiac sign or ethnicity. Bingo questions usually follow a “never have I ever” format that users cross off until they eliminate all the spaces on a card to make bingo. Users tag friends and post to their social media. (Courtesy of @eggtaurus via Instagram)Workout challenges The rules are simple: Film yourself doing 10 or more pushups and tag as many people as you want to challenge them to do the same. The first was the #see10do10 pushup challenge. Workout challenges include the plank challenge, the (Courtesy of Madeline Joung)Drawing challenge  Users draw digital paintings of random objects on Instagram and tag their friends to continue the chain.  Toilet paper challenge  This challenge is popular among pet owners, seeing how many stacks of toilet paper a pet can jump over, leaping over several stacks or sometimes crashing through a wall of toilet paper. 

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Mexican Airport Site Emerges as Major Graveyard of Ice Age Mammoths

Amid busy construction crews racing to build an airport in Mexico, scientists are unearthing more and more mammoth skeletons in what has quickly become one of the world’s biggest concentrations of the now-extinct relative of modern elephants.More than 100 mammoth skeletons have been identified spread across nearly 200 excavation sites, along with a mix of other Ice Age mammals, in the area destined to become the Mexican capital’s new commercial airport.Lead archeologist Ruben Manzanilla explained on Tuesday that around 24,000 years ago mammoth herds reached this spot where sprawling grasslands and lakes would have enticed them to reside.”This place was like a paradise,” he told Reuters, noting that as the last glaciers melted a wide range of mammals — including ancient species of camels, horses and buffalo — lived along what would have been an extremely muddy shoreline.”Then over many years the same story repeated itself: The animals ventured too far, got trapped and couldn’t get their legs out of the muck,” said Manzanilla.Ruben Manzanilla Lopez of the National Anthropology Institute shows the skeleton of a mammoth that was discovered in the construction site of Mexico City’s new airport, Sept. 3, 2020.He speculates that most of the mammoths died this way, though he adds that there is some evidence that around 10,000 years ago early humans may have also hunted the 20-ton beasts with flint arrows and spears, or dug rudimentary shallow water pits to snare them.But the sheer amount of bones, including long, curling tusks — technically the animal’s front two teeth — have come as a shock.”We had the idea that we’d find mammoth remains, but not this many,” he said.Once the excavations are finished, Manzanilla said the site, located about 30 miles (50km) north of downtown Mexico City, could rival others in the United States and Siberia as the planet’s biggest deposit of mammoth skeletons.He noted that a museum-style mammoth exhibit is being planned for the airport’s main terminal.The series of inter-connected lakes that once covered the Valley of Mexico were deliberately drained by Spanish colonial masters beginning in the 1600s in an effort to tame annual flooding.Today, the mostly dry landscape is dominated by the working-class neighborhoods and highways that spill out from Mexico City.

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Big Drop Reported in Vaping by US Teenagers

Vaping by U.S. teenagers fell dramatically this year, especially among middle schoolers, according to a federal report released Wednesday.Experts think last year’s outbreak of vaping-related illnesses and deaths may have scared off some kids, but they believe other factors contributed to the drop, including higher age limits and flavor bans.In a national survey, just under 20% of high school students and 5% of middle school students said they were recent users of electronic cigarettes and other vaping products. That’s down from a similar survey last year that found about 28% of high school students and 11% of middle school students had recently vaped.The survey suggests that the number of school kids who vape fell from 5.4 million to 3.6 million in a year, officials said.But even as teen use declined, the report shows a big bump in use of disposable e-cigarettes. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) earlier this year barred flavors from small vaping devices like Juul and others that are mainly used by minors. The policy did not apply to disposable e-cigarettes, which can still contain sweet, candylike flavors.”As long as any flavored e-cigarettes are left on the market, kids will get their hands on them and we will not solve this crisis,” Matt Myers of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids said in a statement.CDC surveyThe national survey is conducted at schools each year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and usually involves about 20,000 middle and high school students. It asks students if they had used any vaping or traditional tobacco products in the previous month. The survey was cut short this year as schools closed because of the coronavirus pandemic.FILE- Flavored vaping solutions are shown in a window display at a vape and smoke shop in New York, Sept. 16, 2019.Federal health officials believe measures like public health media campaigns, price increases and sales restrictions deserve credit for the vaping decline. The age limit for sales is now 21.But they also acknowledge vaping-related illnesses probably played a part. The CDC’s Brian King said sales started falling in August — when national media coverage of the outbreak intensified.”It’s possible that some of the heightened awareness could have influenced decline in use,” said King.By the time the outbreak was winding down early this year, more than 2,800 illnesses and 68 deaths had been reported. Most of those who got sick said they vaped solutions containing THC, the ingredient that produces a high in marijuana. CDC officials gradually focused their investigation on black market THC cartridges, and on a chemical compound called vitamin E acetate that had been added to illicit THC vaping liquids.’Very encouraging’Kenneth Warner, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan’s school of public health, said the teen vaping drop was larger than expected.”This does look like a very substantial decrease in a single year and it’s very encouraging,” said Warner, a tobacco control expert.Among the likely factors, Warner noted the general negative publicity surrounding vaping. Additionally, Juul preemptively pulled all its vaping flavors except menthol and tobacco last fall ahead of federal action.Warner and other researchers have tracked a recent decline in teen smoking to all-time lows — about 6% — even as vaping has increased. He said it will be critical to watch whether teen smoking begins rising again as fewer teens vape.The new figures were disclosed on the same day that all U.S. vaping manufacturers faced a long-delayed deadline to submit their products for FDA review. Generally, that means the vaping companies must show that their products help smokers reduce or quit their use of cigarettes and other tobacco products.E-cigarettes first appeared in the U.S. more than a decade ago and have grown in popularity with minimal federal regulation.

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US Disease Expert Fauci Says Halt of Coronavirus Trial a ‘Safety Valve’ at Work 

America’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said Wednesday that AstraZeneca’s suspension of final global trials of its COVID-19 experimental vaccine points to the effectiveness of the safeguards that have been incorporated into the trials.“It’s important to point out that that’s the reason why you have various phases of trials, to determine if, in fact, these candidates are safe,” Fauci said in an interview with “CBS This Morning.”“It’s really one of the safety valves you have on clinical trials such as this.”The British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant paused the trials because a volunteer participant became ill after receiving the experimental drug.“It’s unfortunate that it happened, and hopefully they’ll be able to proceed along with the remainder of the trial,” Fauci said. “But you don’t know. They need to investigate it further.”The company issued a statement Tuesday saying the pause in testing is a “routine action, which has to happen whenever there is a potentially unexplained illness in one of the trials, while it is investigated, ensuring we maintain the integrity of the trials.”AstraZeneca developed the vaccine, AZD1222, in cooperation with Britain’s University of Oxford. The vaccine is being tested in large-scale Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials in several nations, including the United States, Britain, Brazil, South Africa and India. AZD1222 is one of three COVID-19 vaccines in late-stage Phase 3 trials in the United States.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
People queue to take a COVID-19 test at a walk-in test facility in Bolton, Britain, Sept. 7, 2020.The pandemic also continues to affect ordinary activities around the globe. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to issue an order Wednesday limiting the number of people taking part in most social gatherings to six, from the current 30.The new limit, would take effect next week, as Britain is enduring a surge of nearly 3,000 new daily COVID-19 cases in recent weeks, the highest daily figure since May.And officials in Los Angeles County, California, have issued an order banning most Halloween activities, traditionally observed on Oct. 31. The banned activities include the traditional door-to-door “trick-or-treating,” when costume-clad children knock on doors to receive candy, and “trunk-or-treating,” a similar activity involving going from car to car. Indoor and outdoor events, including carnivals, festivals and “haunted houses” are also prohibited.Los Angeles County officials said nearly 250,000 coronavirus cases had been recorded there, and 6,036 people died from the disease since the start of the pandemic.

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Шакалье нутро путляндии: кто забывает историю, обречен на ее повторение

Шакалье нутро путляндии: кто забывает историю, обречен на ее повторение.

Обиженный карлик пукин будет действовать теми же методами, что и совок, прикрывая свои действия идентичной совковой риторикой. Но главное в том, что он даже последовательность действий сверяет с первоисточником. Зная то, что способствовало совку и что ему мешало, можно достаточно легко избрать правильный инструмент для ликвидации этой угрозы.

И еще один вывод напрашивается сам собой. Обиженный карлик пукин действует примерно так, как это делает шакал. Он старается выбрать момент, когда кто-то оступится и ослабеет или когда кто-то подвергнется нападению и только в этот момент он будет готов активно вступить в игру
 

 
 
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Зелений карлик і дегенерат медведчук: як зникає «гучна історія»

Зелений карлик і дегенерат медведчук: як зникає «гучна історія».

Осінь 2019-го: ображений карлик пукін застерігає зеленого карлика від «переслідування» дегенерата і зрадника медведчука. Вже минув рік і це достатній період, аби проаналізувати, що цьому передувало та що там зараз у зеленого карлика з медведчуком?
 

 
 
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“Скрепное ихтамвеличие”: яд “новичок” в путляндии превратился в самогон…

“Скрепное ихтамвеличие”: яд “новичок” в путляндии превратился в самогон…

Разработчики “Новичка” возмущены клеветой на свое детище, а пукинская госдума демонстрирует стойкость…
 

 
 
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Доигрались: рубль пробивает очередное дно из-за новых санкций Запада

Доигрались: рубль пробивает очередное дно из-за новых санкций Запада.

Среди двух нежелательных сценариев обиженный многоходовочник выбрал очередной этап международной изоляции. И это понятно, ведь кормить народ сказками о плохом Западе можно долго, а вот потеря власти приведет к очень быстрому демонтажу правящего режима
 

 
 
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На махолете в Ростов! Маньяк лукашеску уже не президент Беларуси

На махолете в Ростов! Маньяк лукашеску уже не президент Беларуси.

Обиженный карлик пукин ни за что не отпустит Беларусь, поскольку у него не осталось других вариантов расширения своего концлагеря
 

 
 
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Nigeria Math Teacher Offers Free Lessons on Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram

A teacher in Nigeria is offering free mathematics classes via Twitter, WhatsApp and Instagram to help struggling students affected by the coronavirus lockdown. After almost six months, more than 1,000 students are taking her online classes, across Nigeria and even internationally. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports.

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COVID-19 Vaccine Development Will Follow Scientific Process, US Experts Vow

Development of a COVID-19 vaccine will not be compromised by outside political considerations, U.S. health experts told lawmakers Wednesday.The nation’s top health officials said the six vaccine candidates currently in large-scale U.S. trials are expected to deliver a result that can be distributed to the most vulnerable populations — including health care workers and first responders — by the end of this year.  “We need to follow the process because the process works,” U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams told Senate lawmakers Wednesday.  Surgeon General Jerome Adams appears before a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing to discuss vaccines and protecting public health during the coronavirus pandemic on Capitol Hill, Sept. 9, 2020.President Donald Trump has made vaccine development an issue in the U.S. presidential election, suggesting his administration’s efforts to fast-track a vaccine could yield results by October. If this happened, it would be the fastest ever development of a vaccine for a novel virus.  “Under Operation Warp Speed, we’re producing a vaccine in record time. This is a vaccine that we’re going to have very soon, very, very soon. By the end of the year, but much sooner than that, perhaps. And this is something that’s incredible. This would’ve taken two or three years by the last administration, and in all fairness, by most other administrations,” Trump said Tuesday.  FILE – Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., speaks about the coronavirus during a media availability on Capitol Hill, March 3, 2020.US Drug Execs Promise COVID Vaccine Safety Before Seeking Government Approval Unusual statement by nine competing firms comes as Trump pushes for vaccine approval before Election Day “We want it to be known that also in the current situation we are not willing to compromise safety and efficacy,” said Ugur Sahin, chief executive of Pfizer’s German partner BioNTech and one of the co-signers of the pledge.  Another co-signer, AstraZeneca also said Tuesday that it had voluntarily paused late-stage trials of its vaccine due to illness in one of the study volunteers. The company noted this is not an unusual occurrence or response during vaccine development.  Pharmaceutical Giant AstraZeneca Halts COVID-19 Vaccine TrialTesting of vaccine developed with University of Oxford paused after participant develops ‘unexplained illness’The U.S. leads the world in confirmed COVID-19 deaths, with nearly 190,000. The U.S. is also home to a world-leading 6.3 million coronavirus infections, nearly one-quarter of the more than 27.3 million worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University.   Adams and Collins said the vaccine was still on track to be distributed to the American public by 2021.  
 

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‘Octopus Teacher’ Lets Filmmaker Into Secret World

South African nature filmmaker Craig Foster was burned out. He had lost his passion for working on documentaries such as “Blue Planet 2.” To re-energize, he started free diving without an oxygen tank or wet suit near in the chilly waters off the Western Cape, where he’d grown up.The dives served as a form of therapy, comforting yet challenging the depths of his understanding of marine life. He remembered seeing indigenous San bushmen ply their tracking skills in southern Africa’s Central Kalahari Desert 20 years earlier.“These extraordinary men were just so close to nature and they were just so good at tracking and understanding the natural system,” Foster says. “I was deeply envious of their abilities. … And then I had this idea: Could I ever track animals underwater?”Over four years of diving every day, he learned how. It was a “very exciting, empowering process,” Foster says, “and that enabled me to get into the secret world of some of these special animals.”One tangible result is “My Octopus Teacher,” the first South African nature documentary to air as a Netflix Original. Released in early September on the pay channel, it tells the tender story of Foster befriending a small octopus in the icy Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Cape Town.Accruing honorsThe film, for which Foster did the underwater photography, has already won a prestigious award and has been nominated for a slew of others.It shows Foster diving every day to visit a female octopus he discovered when she burst from beneath a pile of shells. At first, the small cephalopod is wary. Over time, she reaches out to him with one tentacle and eventually trusts him enough to sit on his chest and let him stroke her.“She taught me humility. She taught me compassion. She opened my mind to just how precious wild creatures are and how complex,” says Foster, who, despite his familiarity with the creature, never gives her a name.“It’s quite incredible. You think: This is an animal that’s separated in evolution by hundreds of millions of years and it’s a mollusk, essentially a snail without a shell. But she’s got a huge mind and huge curiosity and a tremendous intelligence,” he says. “… That’s why I called her my teacher, because I did learn so much from her.”Foster in 2012 had co-founded the Sea Change Project, a nonprofit group meant to protect marine life by raising awareness of the South African kelp forest’s ecological importance.The film, too, has been years in the making. While Foster eventually had a big team, he and environmental journalist Pippa Ehrlich initially worked alone for a few years. It was her first movie, and she directed — with James Reed – wrote, filmed and edited.Building understandingEhrlich says she hopes the work will create awareness about the octopus’s home. The Great African Sea Forest stretches for 1,300 kilometers, or just over 800 miles, along South Africa and Namibia’s coastlines.In the last few decades, “40 percent of our world’s kelp forests have declined and some of them have disappeared completely,” mostly due to climate change, Ehrlich says. “And unlike coral bleaching, for example, it’s not something that’s getting a lot of attention. … In fact, a lot of people don’t know that there is such a thing as an underwater forest.”Ehrlich gave up a job diving to film sharks all over the world to work on “My Octopus Teacher,” even though it had no funding at the time. So she’s grateful for the positive response to the film.It has received eight award nominations for Jackson Wild — known earlier as the Jackson Hole (Wyoming) Wildlife Film Festival — including for best feature film and best ecosystem film.It has two nominations for the British-based Wildscreen Panda Awards, which recognize international wildlife film and TV content, and six for the German-based Green Screen Festival. And, says Ehrlich, “we were really, really excited to win the best feature” category for the Texas-based EarthX Film Festival in April.Awards or not, Foster says “My Octopus Teacher” has a lesson for mankind.“We are totally reliant on the natural world as our life support system. It keeps us breathing” and eating, the filmmaker says. “It’s easy to forget that in this industrial world, running around and trying to survive.“So it’s absolutely critical that we reconnect with nature, no matter where we are, and seriously get together to think about how we can regenerate the very system that is keeping us alive.”This report originated in VOA’s English to Africa service.

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Pharmaceutical Giant AstraZeneca Halts COVID-19 Vaccine Trial

British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant Astra-Zeneca has paused large-scale global trials of its COVID-19 vaccine because a volunteer participant became ill after receiving the experimental drug.   The company issued a statement Tuesday saying the pause in testing is a “routine action, which has to happen whenever there is a potentially unexplained illness in one of the trials, while it is investigated, ensuring we maintain the integrity of the trials.”AstraZeneca developed the vaccine, AZD1222, in cooperation with Britain’s University of Oxford. The vaccine is being tested in large-scale Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials in several nations, including the United States, Britain, Brazil, South Africa and India.  AZD1222 is one of three COVID-19 vaccines in late-stage Phase 3 trials in the United States.    US Drug Execs Promise COVID Vaccine Safety Before Seeking Government Approval Unusual statement by nine competing firms comes as Trump pushes for vaccine approval before Election Day The company did not disclose the nature of the participant’s illness, but The New York Times reports the volunteer, based in Britain, was diagnosed with transverse myelitis, an inflammatory syndrome that affects the spinal cord and is often sparked by viral infections.  But the Times says it is unknown whether it is directly linked to the AZD1222 vaccine.Hours before announcing the pause of its COVID-19 vaccine testing, AstraZeneca joined eight other drug makers in pledging not to seek approval from U.S. government regulators for any vaccine until all data showed it was safe and effective.   The chief executive officers of the nine companies, which include Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Moderna and Novavax, as well as those heading two joint vaccine projects, Pfizer and BioNTech, and Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline, issued a statement promising they would “only submit for approval or emergency use authorization after demonstrating safety and efficacy through a Phase 3 clinical study that is designed and conducted to meet requirements of expert regulatory authorities,” including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.The executives said they would “always make the safety and well-being of vaccinated individuals our top priority.”The unusual joint pledge was aimed at alleviating growing fears by health experts that pharmaceutical companies are under considerable political pressure to quickly develop and introduce a COVID-19 vaccine. U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly suggested that a successful vaccine could be ready before November 3, the date of the presidential election.But Moncef Slaoui, Trump’s top vaccine adviser and the co-director of the administration’s “Operation Warp Speed” initiative, which is funding many of the efforts to develop, test and manufacture a potential vaccine, told the public broadcasting organization NPR last week that it is “very unlikely” a vaccine would be authorized before Election Day.Trump, Biden Clash Over COVID-19 Vaccine Rhetoric Both presidential candidates are campaigning in battleground states this week as election race enters homestretchThe United Nations is warning that the pandemic could reverse decades of advances in reducing preventable childhood deaths.   A new report by three U.N. agencies — UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and the Population Division of the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs — and the World Bank Group says there were just over 5 million preventable deaths in 2019, compared to 12.5 million in 1990.But the report also found that 68% of respondents across 77 countries reported at least some disruption in children’s physical checkups and vaccinations.  Much of the disruption is due to parents’ fears that their children will be infected with the virus.   “The global community has come too far towards eliminating preventable child deaths to allow the COVID-19 pandemic to stop us in our tracks,” UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said in a news release.  “When children are denied access to health services because the system is overrun, and when women are afraid to give birth at the hospital for fear of infection, they, too, may become casualties of COVID-19,” Fore said.  COVID Vaccines Approaching Finish Line Use New Technology But crossing the finish line — getting shots in arms — won’t be easy The pandemic also continues to affect ordinary activities around the globe.  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to issue an order Wednesday limiting the number of people taking part in most social gatherings to six, from the current 30.  The new limit, would take effect next week as Britain is enduring a surge of nearly 3,000 new daily COVID-19 cases in recent weeks, the highest daily figure since May.And officials in Los Angeles County, California have issued an order banning most Halloween activities, traditionally observed on October 31.  The banned activities include the traditional door-to-door “trick-or-treating,” when costum-clad children knock on doors to receive candy, and “trunk-or-treating,” a similar activity involving going from car to car.   Indoor and outdoor events, including carnivals, festivals and “haunted houses” are also prohibited.  Los Angeles County officials said nearly 250,000 coronavirus cases had been recorded there and 6,036 people died from the disease since the start of the pandemic. 

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Top Film Awards Impose New Diversity Requirements

The organization that honors movies with the Academy Awards said Tuesday it will require films to meet new standards in order to promote diversity both on the screen and behind the scenes. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said the rules apply only to those films eligible for the best picture Oscar and will go into effect in 2024. Among the rules are requirements for the percentage or numbers of actors, production and marketing staff, and internships on a movie that must be filled by non-whites, women, people with disabilities or people from the LGBTQ community. “The standards are designed to encourage equitable representation on and off screen in order to better reflect the diversity of the movie-going audience,” the Academy said in a statement. The Academy has faced criticism in recent years for a lack of diversity among its Oscars honorees, including in 2016 when all of the nominees in the four acting categories were white.  

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Australian Teenagers Take on Mining Giant Over Expansion Plans

For the first time in Australia, teenagers have launched a class-action lawsuit on behalf of young people around the world to stop the extension of a coal mine in the state of New South Wales. Anxiety over global warming is driving this teenage campaign to stop the expansion of a coal mine near Gunnedah, 430 kilometers northwest of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales. The class-action lawsuit asserts that Australia’s Environment Minister Sussan Ley, has a legal duty to protect young people and should reject the proposal. The claimants are between the ages of 13 and 17. They argue that by burning coal, climate change will be made worse, harming their future. Rather than making the claim under environmental legislation, the case asserts the Australian government has a common law duty of care.  The high school students filed an injunction Tuesday in Australia’s Federal Court. The expansion has been approved by an independent planning commission, which ruled the project was in the public interest, but the final decision rests with federal authorities. The federal government has not commented on the lawsuit because the matter is before the courts.   Sixteen-year-old Laura Kirwan is one of the teenage plaintiffs. She told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. how she was scared about the future. “I am really worried. Like, climate anxiety, it affects me and I know many, many people that it affects. It is really, really scary to think about the future and not know whether we will have a safe time. I am involved in this case because climate change is really important and is only getting worse. I think that it is really important that the federal environment minister is aware that she should be protecting the younger generations,” Kirwan said.  Whitehaven Coal, the resources company behind the mine expansion, has said it would bring social and economic benefits to the region, including up to 450 jobs and millions of dollars in direct capital investment. It has not yet commented on the lawsuit.   Legal experts believe that, given its complexity, the case will be tough for the high school students to win. If they do, it could have huge ramifications for other new coal mines in Australia, which is one of the world’s major coal producers, selling mostly to India, China and Japan.  In 2019, coal exports were worth about $50 billion. However, the Reserve Bank of Australia has previously noted that there are “some uncertainties for the longer-term outlook for coal exports” because of the shift to renewable energy and the “pace of global economic growth.” Australia relies on cheap supplies of domestic coal to generate much of its electricity and is one of the world’s biggest per capita emitters of greenhouse gas pollution. 

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