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by Sean GLEESON Agence France-Presse HONG KONG, China (AFP) When two Spanish footballers took to the controls of “FIFA 20” after the coronavirus pandemic saw their La Liga match cancelled, a stadium-sized virtual audience watched online. The huge digital crowd last week is part of a spectacular boom for the digital gaming industry, as record numbers flock to online servers for distraction, entertainment and friendship with the “real world” seemingly falling apart. Real Betis striker Borja […]
by Arman SOLDIN ROME, Italy (AFP) — They may not be a miracle cure or a vaccine, but respirator valves from 3-D printers have helped coronavirus patients breathe a little easier in the Italian epicenter of COVID-19. Italy has thrown everything at a pandemic that has killed more than 6,000 people in just a month, more than anywhere else. Hospitals in the northern Italian heart of the outbreak have had to make life-and-death decisions about […]
by Victoria LOGUINOVA-YAKOVLEVA Agence France-Presse MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) —A vast and contentious network of facial recognition cameras keeping watch over Moscow is now playing a key role in the battle against the spread of the coronavirus in Russia. The city rolled out the technology just before the epidemic reached Russia, ignoring protests and legal complaints over sophisticated state surveillance. Since last month, thousands of Muscovites have been confined to their homes for 14 days of compulsory […]
by Rob Lever Agence France Presse Washington, United States (AFP) – Gamers, bitcoin “miners” and companies large and small have teamed up for an unprecedented data-crunching effort that aims to harness idle computing power to accelerate research for a coronavirus treatment. The project led by computational biologists has effectively created the world’s most powerful supercomputer that can handle trillions of calculations needed to understand the structure of the virus. More than 400,000 users downloaded the […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — NASA said it has suspended work on building and testing the rocket and capsule for its Artemis manned mission to the Moon due to the rising number of coronavirus cases in the community. The space agency is shutting down its Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where the Space Launch System rocket is being built, and the nearby Stennis Space Center, administrator Jim Bridenstine said late Thursday. “The change at […]
by Pitcha DANGPRASITH and Lillian SUWANRUMPHA BANGKOK, Thailand (AFP) — Thai hospitals are deploying “ninja robots” to measure fevers and protect the health of overburdened medical workers on the frontlines of the coronavirus outbreak. First built to monitor recovering stroke patients, the machines have been quickly repurposed to help fight the disease, which has so far killed nearly 9,000 people around the world. They have helped staff at four hospitals in and around Bangkok to […]
Jerome Kim, the Director General of the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul, South Korea, sits with Agence France-Presse (AFP) to discuss the steps and measures being taking by the scientific community to develop a vaccine for COVID-19. Kim says it is ‘kind of remarkable’ that new coronavirus vaccine research is at the ‘pre-clinical stage’ as the world scrambles to find a solution to the outbreak.
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — Gamers breathed a sigh of relief on Wednesday after the end of a network outage that affected Nintendo’s online games, with internet-based systems under increasing pressure from people staying home over coronavirus. “The issue with our network services has now been fixed. Thank you for your patience!” tweeted Nintendo on its European Twitter account, with similar messages posted on its other accounts. The hours-long outage affected its online games but also […]
by Beiyi Seow with Jessica Yang in Shanghai Agence France Presse BEIJING, China (AFP) — Ultraviolet light is being beamed through public buses and lifts in China to wipe out any possible germs as part of efforts to clear the country of the deadly coronavirus epidemic. With companies under pressure to meet strict prevention measures for the virus, which has killed more than 3,100 people in China, some are turning to new technology to […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — A civil liberties watchdog sued the US government Thursday seeking the disclosure of records on the use of facial recognition technology being deployed at American airports. The American Civil Liberties Union said it was seeking to force the Department of Homeland Security to release records on its contracts and policies for the technology which has been expanded in recent months. ACLU staff attorney Ashley Gorski said the lawsuit aims to […]
by Abhaya SRIVASTAVA NEW DELHI, India (AFP) — When amputee Shreya Siddanagowder was offered new hands, the Indian student didn’t hesitate — even though they were big, dark and hairy, and once belonged to a man. Now though, not only have her new hands become more slender, they have also changed color to match her skin tone, mystifying the doctors who carried out the rare 13-hour transplant. “The donor was a tall man with big […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — SpaceX on Thursday announced a partnership to send three tourists to the International Space Station (ISS), the first private trip in more than a decade. Elon Musk’s company has signed a deal with Axiom Space to transport the tourists along with a commander on one of its Crew Dragon capsules in the second half of 2021. Axiom CEO Michael Suffredini said the flight “will represent a watershed moment in the […]
