New Delhi (Sputnik): Harmless to humans, the mysterious looking bats who spend most of their life hanging upside down are now looked at with even more suspicion since some initial studies and media reports held them responsible for the new coronavirus, although this theory has not been confirmed yet. The death of hundreds of bats…
Ethiopia Strengthens Air Defences with High End Russian Hardware – Pantsir Combat Vehicles and More
Footage released on Ethiopian national television has shown that the country is deploying Russian manufactured Pantsir S1 air defence combat vehicles, as part of a broader military modernisation program. The short range air defence system is highly mobile, and is also capable of engaging ground targets such as infantry and light armoured vehicles – deploying…
‘Finally, a virus got me.’ Scientist who fought Ebola and HIV reflects on facing death from COVID-19
Virologist Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, fell ill with COVID-19 in mid-March. He spent a week in a hospital and has been recovering at his home in London since. Climbing a flight of stairs still leaves him breathless. Piot, who grew up in Belgium, was one of the discoverers…
Did coronavirus accidentally escape from a Wuhan lab? It’s doubtful |The Fact Checker
In the absence of crucial information on how the novel coronavirus began many theories have gained traction — one is that the virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China. But does any evidence support that origin story? There are a number of reasons why this theory has gained traction over the past few…
Safaricom determined to enter Ethiopian telecom market
Safaricom is determined to enter the Ethiopia market despite protectionism in the neighbouring country aimed at shielding its state corporations. Ethiopia’s central bank recently said it would only allow locally-owned financial institutions to offer mobile money services, leaving Safaricom with a GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) option only. New directives have however opened the…
The Secret to Germany’s COVID-19 Success: Angela Merkel Is a Scientist
The chancellor’s rigor in collating information, her honesty in stating what is not yet known, and her composure are paying off. BERLIN—Today, we face the global outbreak of a disease that has the potential to catalyze what the historian Eva Schlotheuber terms a “pandemic of the mind.” As misinformation proliferates and lines between fact and fiction are…
China approves three COVID-19 vaccines for clinical trials
The seamless connection between research and approval is the major reason behind the fast development of vaccines. BEIJING, April 14 (Xinhua) — China has approved three COVID-19 vaccine candidates for clinical trials, said an official with the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) on Tuesday. An adenovirus vector vaccine, developed by a research team led…
Coronavirus patient monitoring system launches in Moscow
The day before, the Moscow authorities extended restrictions on public events and ordered the closure of all non-essential shops, restaurants, cafes, and bars until May 1 as part of efforts to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease, EDNews reports citing Sputnik. The authorities of the Russian capital stated on Friday that a system to…
Google Agrees to Pay $11 Million to Owners of Suspended AdSense Accounts
By Lawrence Abrams – Bleeping Computer Google has agreed to create a fund of 11 million dollars as part of a a class action settlement for terminating or disabling a publisher’s Adsense accounts, but not paying out any balances that the publisher had at the time. The class action complaint filed by a California company named Free Range Content,…
German spy agency warns of Chinese LinkedIn espionage
(BBC) China is using fake LinkedIn profiles to gather information on German officials and politicians, the German intelligence agency (BfV) has said. The agency alleges that Chinese intelligence used the networking site to target at least 10,000 Germans, possibly to recruit them as informants. It released a number of fake profiles allegedly used for this…