YOUR WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE
- Patrick Paumen, a 37 year old security guard from the Netherlands, is able to make payments by simply holding his hand close to any contactless card reader. No bank card or mobile phone is required. He is able to do this because of a contactless payment microchip that he had implanted under his skin in 2019. Mr. Paumen noted that the procedure to inject the chip hurts no more than being pinched. He also says that the reaction he gets from cashiers is priceless.
- Ali Harbi Ali, a 26-year old from Kentish Town, North London, and also an ISIS militant, was found guilty of murder and preparing acts of terrorism. The accused stabbed Sir David Arness, the Southend West MP, more than 20 times during a constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex on 15 October 2021. It took a jury at the Old Bailey a mere 18 minutes to convict him. Ali denied the charges, claiming he was motivated by the MP’s support for airstrikes on Syria.
- Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, admitted that his bid to acquire Twitter could still fail. The acknowledgement came just hours after disclosing his offer to buy the company for $54.20 a share, which would give the firm a value of $43bn. Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s CEO, informed employees on Thursday that the firm was analysing the offer but reassured them that Twitter was not ‘held hostage’ by Mr. Musk’s bid. During the TED2022 conference in Vancouver, Musk mentioned having a Plan B should his bid fail, but without disclosing what this might entail.
- A comet larger than the US State of Rhode Island is heading towards earth at 22,000 miles per hour. However, it will not arrive until 2031 and even then will miss Earth by one billion miles. It was first seen in 2010, but its size – 500 trillion tonnes and 137 km wide, larger than anything observed before – was only confirmed now by Nasa’s Hubble telescope. Professor David Jewitt of the University of California, Los Angeles, confirmed that its huge size had been suspected because of its brightness and distance, but now it could be confirmed.
- As Shanghai enters its third week of Covid lockdown, videos of fights between police and people being driven from their homes have emerged. Millions of people are confined to their homes, residential compounds are being turned in quarantine centres, and anybody testing positive for the virus is quarantined. Shanghai is facing a fresh outbreak of the virus with over 20,000 new cases every day. Struggling to find enough space, authorities have in recent weeks resorted to turning exhibition centres and schools into quarantine centres.
- Coral reefs are one of the most threatened ecosystems on earth. A recent IPCC report stated that only 10-30% of coral reefs are expected to survive even a modest increase in global temperatures of 1.5 degrees C. In response, scientists have mapped Caribbean coral reefs to identify those most likely to survive climate change. Corals along Cuba’s northern shoreline are most likely to survive, while locations around the Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Haiti, eastern Jamaica, and the United States state of Florida also appear promising.
NEWS BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMELA MOORE
Date: 25/03/22
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