New hybrid turbo-machinery system is designed to consume small plastics which are polluting the oceans. Matthew Stock reports.
The founder and CEO of MyPillow, who amplified President Donald Trump's claims of election fraud, said a backlash against his company has begun after a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol this month. Mike Lindell, who appears in TV commercials hugging the company’s foam-filled pillows, said major retailers like Bed Bath & Beyond and Kohl’s have dropped his products recently. Lindell has continued to push bogus claims of election fraud since Trump’s loss to President-elect Joe Biden in the presidential race.
The Ministry of Health (MOH) confirmed 30 new COVID-19 cases in Singapore on Tuesday (19 January), taking the country’s total case count to 59,157.
China has added a new giant buoy to a marine surveillance network used partly to strengthen the country’s territorial claims in the disputed East China Sea – dubbed a “buoys’ graveyard” after several were lost or damaged through accidents and vandalism as several nations vie for regional influence.Deployed this month at an unspecified location in the East China Sea – some of which is also claimed by Japan and South Korea – the 15-metre-wide platform will fill a gap in a buoy network used to collect data, according to a statement on Monday by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).The new buoy will help China better prepare for challenges such as environmental protection, extreme weather and territorial disputes with neighbouring countries, according to researchers involved in the project.Get the latest insights and analysis from our Global Impact newsletter on the big stories originating in China.An important function of the Chinese network is to mark out territory over which China is in dispute with Japan and South Korea, according to its operator, the State Oceanic Administration of China (SOA), which estimates the disputed waters at a combined 340 sq km (131 square miles) – more than half of the East China Sea.“The buoy deployment locations [in the East China Sea] cover areas of territorial disputes and other sensitive activities to meet the demand of data collection for rights protection and to demonstrate the sovereignty of our country,” said an introduction to the network by SOA researchers in a domestic journal in 2014.Cameras and other sensors on buoys in disputed waters will alert Chinese naval and law enforcement agencies if other parties make what is deemed an intrusion, so that they can move into position to thwart it, the SOA said.Such buoys can also collect data to improve early detection of natural disasters, being placed in the potential path of typhoons, and can monitor nutrients in the water.Among marine scientists, however, the East China Sea is known as a “buoys’ graveyard”. For centuries, it has been a busy fishing ground for Japanese, Korean and Chinese vessels. Some expensive buoys deployed there by countries in the region, and by others including the United States, have been damaged – often through accidents involving fishing boats, but sometimes by vandalism, with expensive on-board equipment sometimes removed.The US used to have the largest number of buoys in waters around China, as part of its strategy to counter China’s expansionist approach with its “first island chain”, a defence network comprising a large number of military bases stretching between South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.But in recent years the scale of China’s ocean surveillance network is believed to have exceeded the American presence in the region. The Chinese government has claimed to have established a monitoring network in the South China Sea “greater than any other country”.China’s known number of buoys in the East China Sea tripled to 27 between 2014 and 2019, with nearly half positioned in disputed waters, according to the SOA.The new 15-metre buoy is larger than most surveillance buoys worldwide, with the largest US buoy being 12 metres wide.“The commissioning of this facility put an end to the absence of long-term, fixed-point, real-time water profile observation in the offshore waters of our country by enhancing the observation capabilities of the Donghai [East China Sea] Surveillance Network,” the CAS statement said. South China Sea: the dispute that could start a military conflictAs China’s largest, most comprehensive and smartest data collection platform for marine observation and experiments, the new 15-metre buoy is better equipped to prevent interference, according to the researchers. It has been guarded by three sentry buoys, each moored to the sea floor and carrying solar-powered lighthouses to keep fishing boats at a safe distance.The main buoy’s size should make it less susceptible to damage in a collision with a fishing boat, researchers said, because its sensors can detect trespassers and send images to a Chinese command post on land.Smaller buoys’ data collection capability is limited, and gaps between data collection points can detract from the accuracy of estimates used in computer modelling for scientific research and naval activities. A submarine can use such data to avoid running into a rapid current that could drag it to deadly depths.Thanks to its size, the 15-metre buoy collects data with a robotic platform able to move up and down between the water's surface and the sea floor, enabling it to capture an underwater environment with unprecedented resolution and continuity and beam data to a communication satellite overhead. Its daily operations are run mostly by artificial intelligence.More from South China Morning Post: * Beijing defends East China Sea activities after Japan protests * Boiling point: Can China and Japan find a way to ease rising tensions over the East China Sea? * By air and sea: China’s two-pronged strategy to grind Japan down over disputed islandsThis article East China Sea: why giant Chinese territory marker may be leagues above old buoy network first appeared on South China Morning PostFor the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2021.
The government is monitoring the COVID-19 situation carefully and considering if more measures are necessary, said Education Minister Lawrence Wong.
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Recent deaths among elderly people in Norway who received a Covid-19 vaccine should be treated with caution because they were all high-risk individuals, public health experts have said.“All reports of safety issues must be taken seriously, but the initial reports [from Norway] do not reveal cause for alarm,” Jerome Kim, director general of the International Vaccine Institute said.Last week it was reported that 29 elderly people had died in Norway after receiving the first dose of a vaccine made by Pfizer-BioNTech. So far, Norway, has inoculated over 40,000 elderly people.Get the latest insights and analysis from our Global Impact newsletter on the big stories originating in China.The Norwegian Medicines Agency said that all those who died also had “serious basic disorders”, Bloomberg reported on Saturday. Chinese drug maker says Covid-19 vaccine effective for at least six months“Most people have experienced the expected side effects of the vaccine, such as nausea and vomiting, fever, local reactions at the injection site, and worsening of their underlying condition,” it said.Pfizer said in a statement that it was working with the Norwegian regulator and the number of incidents so far is “not alarming” and “in line with expectations”.Kim, from the International Vaccine Institute, said deaths among elderly people in nursing homes were still to be expected.“The ability of these vaccines to protect against symptomatic Covid-19 is the kind of protection you hope to see in this [section of the] population, one at particular risk [from] poor outcomes if they have Covid-19,” Kim said.In Norway, around 400 care home residents die normally every week, according to the British Medical Journal.Further investigations and more detailed evaluation, including autopsies, were under way to determine if there was a common cause of death, Kim said, while the health authorities should clarify if common batches of vaccine were used. Chinese vaccine maker hoping to inoculate children as young as threeWhile it is unclear exactly when the deaths occurred, Norway has given at least one dose to about 42,000 people and focused on those considered most at risk if they contract the virus, including the elderly.The Norwegian health authorities have changed their recommendations on the use of the vaccine to consider excluding the terminally ill, Pfizer said on Monday.The company said in a statement that it was working with the Norwegian regulator and the number of incidents so far is “not alarming” and “in line with expectations”. It added that the regulator would investigate all deaths to see if they were linked to the vaccine.The vaccine, jointly developed by the US and German companies, has also been given to millions of people in Britain and the United States.The European Union approved its use last month and Japan hopes to have approved it by mid-February.In Britain, the first Western country to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, more than half of its population over the age of 80 have had their coronavirus vaccine, according to health secretary Matt Hancock.“I’m really pleased we can now offer jabs to the over-70s and the clinically extremely vulnerable,” Hancock tweeted on Monday.Abrar Ahmad Chughtai, an epidemiologist from the school of population health at the University of New South Wales in Australia, said one option would be to delay giving the vaccine to the very old until more data was available.While the Norwegian deaths may be unrelated to the vaccine, health authorities need to be vigilant and check data from other countries, he said.“Millions of doses of Pfizer vaccine have been distributed and not a single case has died elsewhere. If there is some real issue, then very elderly people in some countries might die as well,” he said.“But we need to keep an eye on this, as if this is a true finding, which is very unlikely, this could be a disaster.”Separately, Brazil approved the emergency use of vaccines from Britain’s AstraZeneca and China’s Sinovac on Sunday. The country has recorded almost 8.5 million coronavirus cases with nearly 210,000 deaths.Trial data for the Sinovac vaccine was released in a confusing and piecemeal fashion, but on Friday the drug maker confirmed that it had an efficacy rate of 50.4 per cent.But Kim warned: “We have to be very careful not to extend the results beyond what they actually tell us. We don’t know whether the vaccine prevents transmission. We don’t know the impact on communities or cities.“We do know that the vaccine protects individuals from symptomatic disease. You would hypothesise that this should reduce hospitalisations and deaths, but that needs to be formally studied. None of the existing trials can say that yet, including this one.”More from South China Morning Post: * Coronavirus: Norway raises concern over Pfizer vaccine jabs for elderly as Australia seeks information * China’s Sinovac defends Brazil results but regulators to look hard at dataThis article Coronavirus: experts say no reason for alarm over reports elderly people died after being given vaccine first appeared on South China Morning PostFor the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2021.
We give you the lowdown on how fixed deposits work, and round up the best fixed deposit offers in the market right now. Imagine if you could stash away all the money you received as gifts throughout the year, forget about it for a while, […] The post Best Fixed Deposits To Lock In Your Savings In Singapore (2021) appeared first on SingSaver Blog - We Compare, You Save.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed declared victory in his military operation in the northern region of Tigray, but there are clear signs that fighting persists despite a claimed return to normalcy.
The Netflix-produced series "Lupin", a sly modern take on France's beloved gentleman thief, is on track for 70 million views worldwide in its first month, setting a record for a French TV show, the streaming platform said Tuesday.
President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday signalled a new tone for the US government by leading a powerful tribute to the 400,000 Americans lost to Covid-19 as he arrived in Washington on the eve of his inauguration.
Leicester moved top of the Premier League by inflicting another damaging 2-0 defeat on Chelsea on Tuesday, to leave manager Frank Lampard fighting to remain in charge at Stamford Bridge.
Pressure is mounting on Sherman Kwek, heir to Singapore’s biggest family fortune, as he seeks to salvage the troubled property investment at the centre of an ambitious expansion into China.
The Boeing 737 Max can return to Canadian airspace beginning Wednesday, officials said, concluding nearly two years of government review after the aircraft was involved in two deadly crashes that saw the planes grounded worldwide. Transport Canada said Monday the planes will be permitted to fly as long as they meet conditions specified by Transport Canada in December, including allowing pilots to disable a faulty warning system that was found to be central to two deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019. “Canadians and the airline industry can rest assured that Transport Canada has diligently addressed all safety issues prior to permitting this aircraft to return to service in Canadian airspace,” Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said in a statement.
Fresh questions have been raised over the risks of catching the coronavirus from food after traces were found in at least five samples of ice cream made in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin.Last Thursday, authorities in Tianjin, neighbouring Beijing, said three samples of ice cream had been found to contain traces of Sars-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the disease Covid-19.An investigation suggested that Ukrainian milk powder used to make the ice cream was the likely source, after three samples of the powder and two further samples of ice creams from the same batch were also found to contain Sars-CoV-2, from more than 2,800 samples taken from the ice cream, packaging, manufacturing plants and retail stores.Get the latest insights and analysis from our Global Impact newsletter on the big stories originating in China.Most of the potentially contaminated ice cream had been traced and recalled, but 21 ice creams remained unaccounted for, the authorities said.The World Health Organization (WHO) has said the possibility of catching Covid-19 from frozen food is low, but China has linked infections to imported food. In November, a truck driver, also from Tianjin, was infected with a strain of Covid-19 also found on pork imported from North America that he had handled, according to local authorities.Discovering traces of the coronavirus in ice cream prompts new questions, given that the food is usually consumed directly when cold, according to Han Jie, an environmental science professor from China’s Xian Jiaotong University.“The contamination of ice cream raw materials is different to the contamination that has happened previously during cold-chain food transportation and retail,” she said in an emailed response.“Frozen foods are usually safe to eat after being treated with high temperatures, such as cooking. But ice cream would not be treated with high temperatures. Whether the virus can infect people through the digestive tract if it enters the body via food, as far as I know there is no conclusive evidence yet.” Are fears over catching coronavirus from frozen food justified?Han was the co-author of a review published in the journal Environmental Chemistry Letters in October that looked at the available evidence at the time on whether Covid-19 could be transmitted through food and identified areas needing further research.“The continuous low-temperature environment kept through the storage and transport of refrigerated and frozen foods can dramatically prolong the survival of Sars-CoV-2, a characteristic commonly observed on other coronaviruses,” the review said.“The frequent detection of Sars-CoV-2 in frozen foods suggests that these are not random, isolated incidents but rather signs that viral contamination and food-borne transmission may present a systematic risk in the ongoing pandemic.”Previous research showed the coronavirus survived longer at 4 degrees Celsius (39 degrees Fahrenheit) than at higher temperatures. Other coronaviruses, including the one causing severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), were found to survive at 4 degrees Celsius for 14 to 49 days, depending on the material they were stored in, but research specifically on the survival of Sars-CoV-2 on food surfaces was lacking, the review said.Fears over the ice cream and other food have become a political matter, with Chinese experts and media suggesting the coronavirus could have been brought to China via frozen products, despite there being no evidence to support this theory. WHO experts this month arrived in China to begin their long-awaited investigation into the possible origins of the virus.Instances of food being found to be contaminated with the virus have been rare. China’s National Centre for Food Safety Risk Assessment has said random inspections yielded positive tests just 0.48 times per 10,000 samples. Of the 873,475 frozen food samples randomly inspected by Chinese customs, only 13 returned positive results for the coronavirus, according to the agency.To try to prevent contaminated food causing infections, China has stepped up tracing capabilities.A data-sharing platform is being tested to share information with restaurants on the processing, retail and sale status of over 90 per cent of the country’s imported frozen food, according to China’s market regulator. China has encouraged food producers to maintain records to aid traceability in the event of food safety incidents.More from South China Morning Post: * Coronavirus: China reports 96 new infections, links superspreader to 102 asymptomatic cases * China’s rural Covid-19 clusters challenge country’s strategy to stop disease spreading * Coronavirus: what’s life like for the 20 million Chinese back in lockdown?This article Coronavirus in Chinese ice cream raises new alarm over infection via food first appeared on South China Morning PostFor the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2021.
Outgoing US President Donald Trump will be far from the first to boycott his successor Joe Biden's inauguration on Wednesday -- but his absence will be the first since 1869.
Asian shares were mostly higher Wednesday, ahead of Joe Biden's inauguration as U.S. president. Japan's benchmark lost early gains as worries grew about the surge in coronavirus cases. Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 lost early gains to slip 0.4% in morning trading to 28,515.21.
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Brazil rolled out a nationwide vaccination campaign Monday, bringing it forward two days in response to growing impatience as the country battles a devastating second wave of Covid-19.
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The 2020/21 LaLiga Santander season reaches its halfway mark with a series of midweek fixtures this week.
