World News Headlines

Federal Minister for Science and Technology, Fawad Chaudhry, announced on Monday that the government is studying a proposal to run an “electric automatic train from Islamabad airport to Murree”. Taking to Twitter, the federal minister said that with the electric buses project for Islamabad reaching EOI level, a plan to launch an electric train from Islamabad airport to Murree is in the works. “The next major project is the electric automatic train from Islamabad Airport to Murree. The study of which has started and a meeting has been held with the planning ministry in this regard,” said Chaudhry in a tweet. اسلام آبد میں 38 الیکٹرک بسوں کا منصوبہ اب EOI کی سطح پر آچکا ہے، اگلا اہم منصوبہ انشاللہ اسلام آباد ائرپورٹ سے مری تک الیکٹرک آٹومیٹک ٹرین کا ہے جس کی اسٹڈی شروع ہو گئ ہے اور پلاننگ منسٹری سے اس ضمن میں میٹنگ بھی ہو چکی ہے، انشاللہ اس پراجیکٹ سے سیاحت اور سفر کامنظر بدل جائیگا https://t.co/61iZjK69TV — Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) November 2, 2020 On Saturday, Fawad Ch...

A company, Klein Vision, has managed to transform a car into an aeroplane in Slovakia after 30 years of research and development on a prototype, called ‘AirCar’. The company run by Professor Stefan Klein made the announcement for the completion of successful test flights of the two-seat AirCar that weighs 1,100 kg and can carry an additional load of 200 kg. Klein Vision released some impressive footage of the test flights of the fifth generation of the product. Interestingly, the company wrote on Youtube about the futuristic car, “The latest generation of flying car developed by KleinVision company transforms from road vehicle into air vehicle in less than 3-minutes,” The video showed that AirCar while barreling down the road before transforming into a plane and taking to the skies. The vehicle is powered by a BMW 1.6l engine giving the car-plane an effective power output of 140HP. According to Klein Vision, the estimated travel range of the AirCar is 1,000km with a flight consu...

From his lab in Toulouse, France, Benjamin Sanderson models the range of extreme risks to humans from climate change — research he hopes can inform policymakers planning for worsening wildfires and floods. It is the kind of work he once performed in the United States — and hopes to again soon. Sanderson is among dozens of US-based climate scientists who shifted their research to France, or sought refuge in academia or in left-leaning states like California after Republican Donald Trump was elected in 2016. They worried his administration’s distrust of science would impact their ability to finance and advance their work. Now, with the presidential election looming — and Democrat Joe Biden ahead in the polls and promising to prioritise the role of science in policymaking — some of these researchers hope for a return to the days when the US was viewed as the best place on earth to do their jobs. Climate science in Europe is not treated as a “political topic”, Sanderson said, adding t...

A US appeals court on Monday rejected a Justice Department request that it allow the government to immediately ban Apple and Google from offering Tencent’s WeChat for download in US app stores. The three-judge panel for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said in a brief order the government had not demonstrated it would “suffer an imminent, irreparable injury during the pendency of this appeal, which is being expedited.” On Friday, a U.S. judge in San Francisco rejected a Justice Department request to reverse her decision preventing the WeChat ban sought by the U.S. Commerce Department in response to a lawsuit filed by WeChat users. The WeChat users said the ruling will avoid an “unprecedented shutdown of a major platform for communications relied on by millions of people in the United States.” The Commerce Department order, which had been set to take effect Sept. 20, would also bar other U.S. transactions with WeChat, potentially making the app unusable in the United States. Th...

The widely-used messaging application WhatsApp will not be free for all anymore, as it has now announced to charge business customers for some of the services it offers. According to the press release issued by WhatsApp, the app has taken the decision to "charge business customers for some of the services" to continue building a business of their own as the company plans to provide and expand free end-to-end encrypted text, video, and voice calling for more than two billion people. "We’ve provided the WhatsApp Business app and WhatsApp Business API to help businesses of all sizes manage their chats. We’ve listened to feedback on what’s worked and believe WhatsApp can help make messaging the best way for consumers and businesses to connect," read the official document. Highlighting that the global pandemic has made clear that businesses need fast and efficient ways to service the social media users and make sales, WhatsApp said that over 175 million people every...

Facebook’s Oversight Board has announced that users can now submit appeals on content removal to the global body for an independent review. In May, Facebook appointed 20 people from around the world to serve on what will effectively be the social media network’s “Supreme Court” for speech, issuing rulings on what kind of posts will be allowed and what should be taken down. The list features a former prime minister, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and several constitutional law experts and rights advocates, including the Pakistani lawyer and founder of Digital Rights Foundation (DRF), Nighat Dad. The Oversight Board is a global body that will make independent decisions on whether specific content should be allowed or removed from Facebook and Instagram. Facebook can also refer cases for a decision about whether content should remain up or come down from either Facebook or Instagram. “The board is eager to get to work,” said Catalina Botero-Marino, Co-Chair of the Oversight Board, in ...

The US government filed a blockbuster lawsuit on Tuesday accusing Google of maintaining an “illegal monopoly” in online search and advertising in the country’s biggest antitrust case in decades — and opening the door to a potential breakup of the Silicon Valley titan. The politically-charged case, which could take years to play out, draws new battle lines between the US government and Big Tech with potentially major implications for the sector. Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said the case filed with Republican state attorneys general from 11 states takes aim at Google’s dominance of the online ecosystem. “Google is the gateway to the internet,” Rosen told reporters. “But it has maintained its monopoly through exclusionary practices that are harmful to competition.” The suit said these agreements include long-term agreements requiring that Google search be pre-loaded on devices and making it impossible to delete some of its apps. The government claims Google pays billions ...

PTA unbanned Chinese video-sharing app in Pakistan, it emerged on Monday. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) had on October 9 blocked the social media app for failing to filter out "immoral and indecent" content. The telecom regulator had said that the decision to ban the app was taken after the authority received a number of "complaints from different segments of the society against immoral and indecent content on the video sharing application. from Science & Technology - SUCH TV https://ift.tt/34d07ki

Federal Minister for Science and Technology, Fawad Chaudhry on Wednesday offered support on behalf of his ministry for introducing electric buses in Karachi. In a meeting with the Governor of Sindh, Imran Ismail, held here on Wednesday, Fawad Chaudhry said that his ministry was ready to extend every possible support for introducing electric buses in the port city. Ministry of Science and Technology is ready to extend every possible support for introducing electric buses in Karachi after Islamabad”, he said and added that the development of Karachi was the first priority of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government. The governor agreed on the idea of launching electric buses in Karachi and assured his full cooperation in that regard. Besides electric buses, the science and technology minister also offered support to the Sindh government regarding the waste management issue – a major problem of the provincial capital which had damaged the city. During his visit to Karachi last...

French scientist Emmanuelle Charpentier and American Jennifer A. Doudna have won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the development of a method for genome editing, the award-giving body announced on Wednesday. “Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna have discovered one of gene technology’s sharpest tools: the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement on awarding the 10 million Swedish crown ($1.1 million) prize. “This technology has had a revolutionary impact on the life sciences, is contributing to new cancer therapies and may make the dream of curing inherited diseases come true.” “The ability to cut the DNA where you want has revolutionised the life sciences,” Pernilla Wittung Stafshede, member of the academy of sciences, told reporters. Charpentier, who is French, and Doudna, an American, become the sixth and seventh women to win a Nobel for chemistry, joining the likes of Marie Curie, who won in 1911, and more recently, Fr...

A media event for October 13 amid expectations it would unveil one or more new iPhones which use ultrafast 5G wireless technology. The event comes a month after Apple disappointed some fans with a September event which unveiled new service bundles but no new smartphone. Apple, which has habitually unveiled new iPhones ahead of the holiday season, has said supply chain disruptions due to the pandemic have delayed its plans for product launches by several weeks. A notice posted on Apple's website offer no specific clues but included the message, “Hi, Speed,” in an apparent reference to the faster wireless networks being introduced in many parts of the world. Across the board we are seeing an uptick around production and pent up demand for the slate of iPhone 12 models (expecting 4 new models) set to be unveiled next week in this launch event,” said Daniel Ives at Wedbush Securities. Ives said he is expects strong demand for the new handsets with consumers looking to upgrade ol...

Three scientists who unravelled some of the deep mysteries of black holes, the awe-inspiring pockets of the universe where space and time cease to exist, have won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics. Britain’s Roger Penrose, professor at the University of Oxford, won half the prize of 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million) for his proof that black holes are a direct consequence of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. “It was an extreme honour and great pleasure to hear the news this morning in a slightly unusual way - I had to get out of my shower to hear it,” Penrose told reporters from his home in Oxford on Tuesday. German Reinhard Genzel, of the Max Planck Institute and University of California, Berkeley, and Andrea Ghez, at the University of California, Los Angeles, shared the other half for discovering that an invisible and extremely heavy object governs the orbits of stars at the centre of our galaxy. Ghez - only the fourth woman to be awarded the Physics prize aft...

Elon Musk’s SpaceX won a $149 million (£114.8 million) contract to build missile-tracking satellites for the Pentagon, the US Space Development Agency (SDA) said on Monday, in the company’s first government contract to build satellites. SpaceX, known for its reusable rockets and astronaut capsules, is ramping up satellite production for Starlink, a growing constellation of hundreds of internet-beaming satellites that chief executive Elon Musk hopes will generate enough revenue to help fund SpaceX’s interplanetary goals. Under the SDA contract, SpaceX will use its Starlink assembly plant in Redmond, Washington, to build four satellites fitted with a wide-angle infrared missile-tracking sensor supplied by a subcontractor, an SDA official said. Technology company L3 Harris Technologies, formerly Harris Corporation, received $193 million to build another four satellites. Both companies are expected to deliver the satellites for launch by fall 2022. The awards are part of the SDA’s fi...

Federal Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry on Sunday vowed to convert Karachi’s public transport into electric buses. Addressing a press conference here in Karachi, the science and technology minister said that efforts are underway to make Islamabad as the first-ever city of Pakistan to convert its public transport into electric vehicles in near future. “There is no doubt that Karachi is facing issues of public transport and the present government will fix this problem soon,” he said, adding that the federal government will talk with the provincial government for converting Karachi’s transporting into electric vehicles. Chaudhry noted that global warming and climate change are attributed over 25 percent to transport and thus concluded that shifting to electric mode of public transportation will be a good initiative towards environment protection. Last month, Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Hussain Chaudhry signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with ...

Pakistan will this week begin the process of selling unused telecom spectrum in an auction it hopes will raise around $1 billion and enhance network capacity, said three senior government officials familiar with the matter. The spectrum is in the 1800 and 2100 MHz bands typically used by operators for 4G LTE (long-term evolution) networks that offer faster video streaming and internet downloads, said the officials. They asked not to be named as they were not authorised to discuss the matter with the media. The country plans to kick-start the process by laying out plans to retain an international consulting firm that would design the auction process, and advise on base pricing and other details, they said, adding that no sale date has yet been set. Pakistan is anxious to replenish state coffers that have been hit by a slump in the economy and in tax collections exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. A spokesman for Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said the process to ...

Advertisers who boycotted social media are not all rushing back, despite an agreement by Facebook, YouTube and Twitter on how to curb harmful content online. Unilever, one of the world’s biggest advertisers, told Reuters the move this week was “a good step in the right direction,” but would not say whether it would resume paid advertising on Facebook in the United States next year after stopping over the summer. Coca-Cola also remains paused on Facebook and Instagram and declined to say if this changed its view. Beam Suntory, maker of Jim Beam bourbon and Courvoisier Cognac, plans to stay away from paid advertising for the rest of 2020 and reassess in 2021 based on how Facebook adjusts its approach. Over 1,000 advertisers joined a Facebook boycott over concerns it wasn’t doing enough to combat hate speech. U.S. civil rights groups enlisted multinationals to help pressure the social media giant after the June death of George Floyd, an American Black man, in police custody in Minnea...

Internet search giant Google has announced to update its free Maps application this week with colour-coding that highlights areas infected with cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. In a blog post published Thursday, the search giant said Maps will be enhanced if a user taps the new "COVID-19" option in the layers feature in the top corner of the screen. It will provide data using the latest seven-day average of cases per 100,000 people in areas being viewed, it added. A label will also let users know whether the number of COVID-19 cases in a particular spot is trending up or down, according to Maps product manager Sujoy Banerjee. "In some regions, you might find additional information related to COVID-19. If you select the alert on the Google Maps home screen, you'll find locally relevant links based on your current map view," it added. The tool is meant to provide "critical information about COVID-19 cases in an area so you...

ByteDance-owned short-video app TikTok said on Tuesday it removed over 104 million videos from its platform globally in the first half of the year for violating guidelines or terms of service. “Of those videos, we found and removed 96.4% of videos before a user reported them, and 90.3% were removed before they received any views,” TikTok said in a transparency report. TikTok started fact-checking programs in the first half of the year to verify content related to the novel coronavirus and elections. The report comes at a time China’s ByteDance has been racing to avoid a crackdown on TikTok after the U.S. Commerce Department said it would block new downloads and updates to the app. U.S. officials had expressed concern that personal data of as many as 100 million Americans that use the app was being passed on to China’s Communist Party government. The company said on Tuesday it got 1,768 requests for user data, with 290, or 16.4%, of those from U.S. law enforcement agencies. f...

Fasten your seatbelt, because Tuesday is Tesla’s “Battery Day”, and some investors expect Chief Executive Elon Musk’s pitch on the electric car maker’s energy storage advances to re-energize its rally following a recent 21% stock slump. Tesla’s stock has recovered in the runup to the event scheduled and it gained 1.4% in early trading on Monday, helped by a leaked email from Musk that said the company was hopeful of racking up record car deliveries in the third quarter. Many analysts expect Musk to unveil battery improvements extending the Palo Alto, California automaker’s lead over General Motors, Volkswagen and other rivals. Tesla options are pricing in a stock move of around 17% - up or down - by Friday, said Christopher Murphy, co-head of derivatives strategy at Susquehanna Financial Group. Tesla’s stock has more than made up for a historic slump on Sept. 8 after it was unexpectedly left out of a group companies joining the S&P 500, and it has surged over 400% year to dat...

A US judge on Sunday blocked the government’s ban on WeChat downloads, hours before it was due to take effect in an ongoing technology and espionage battle between Washington and Beijing. The Trump administration had ordered a ban on downloads of the messaging platform WeChat as well as hugely popular video-sharing app TikTok, both owned by Chinese companies. Both bans have now been suspended. A California court ruling said it granted a “motion for a nationwide injunction against the implementation” of the government order on WeChat, with the judge citing concerns over free speech. The order would have slowed WeChat down and made it unusable in the United States for video chats with family and friends, according to experts. Owned by technology giant TenCent, WeChat has around 19 million active daily users in the US. As President Donald Trump seeks a breakthrough with voters to win a second term in the November 3 election, he has increasingly put national security and his aggressi...