Fast food chain McDonald’s has announced it will halt operations in five cities in China’s Hubei province, where the new deadly coronavirus is believed to originate. The suspension comes into effect on Friday. The restaurant chain has dozens of locations in the region, including in the city of Wuhan, which is considered to be the epicenter of the virus. Apart from Wuhan, where most infections have occurred, McDonalds will close restaurants in Ezhou, Huanggang, Qianjing and Xiantao. The company says that the temporary measure is introduced for “for employee and customer health and safety.” In a statement to RT, McDonald’s said that…
Author: mediahitman
Content moderators are being asked to sign forms stating they understand the job could cause post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to reports. The Financial Times and The Verge reported moderators for Facebook and YouTube, hired by the contractor Accenture, were sent the documents. Moderators monitor objectionable materials and often view hundreds of disturbing images in a day’s work. Accenture said the wellbeing of workers was a “top priority”. In a statement the company added only new joiners were being asked to sign the forms, whereas existing employees were being sent the form as an update. “We regularly update the information…
Peter Andrews is an Irish science journalist and writer, based in London. He has a background in the life sciences, and graduated from the University of Glasgow with a degree in Genetics. New research has shown that despite being marketed as a healthy alternative, soybean oil, America’s most popular oil, causes neurological changes in the brains of mice, and may contribute to autism and dementia in humans. Extracted from the seeds of soybeans and used in everything from fast food to animal feed and even baby formula, soybean oil is easily the most widely consumed oil in the US, ubiquitous in…
The newly unveiled logo for US President Donald Trump’s Space Force appears to have boldly gone where Star Trek went before. Twitter users noted that the emblem, revealed by the president, bears an uncanny likeness to the insignia from the cult sci-fi TV series. The striking resemblance left many critics as stunned as though they had been zapped by Captain Kirk’s phaser. But others online insisted the logo was really based on the US Air Force one. The intergalactic controversy comes after mockery erupted last week when it emerged Space Force troops will wear woodland camouflage uniforms. Unveiling the insignia…
The London Metropolitan police have announced that they will be deploying facial recognition cameras for the first time on the streets of the capital within the next month, prompting fears the move will erode civil liberties. Met police say that the cameras will be operating for five to sex hours at a time, covering a “small, targeted area,” with officers working with bespoke lists of suspects wanted for serious and violent crime being drawn up each time. It comes after recent pilots of the new surveillance technology in London and South Wales. In response, privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch…
Chocolate chip cookies have become the first food to be baked in space in a first-of-its-kind experiment. Astronauts baked the cookies in a special zero-gravity oven at the International Space Station (ISS) last month. Sealed in individual baking pouches, three of the cookies returned to Earth on the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on 7 January. The aim of the experiment was to study cooking options for long-haul trips. The results of the experiment, carried out by astronauts Luca Parmitano and Christina Koch, were revealed this week. The question is: how do they taste? The answer: nobody knows, yet. A spokesman for…
Universities and Science Minister Chris Skidmore has said that the UK will not implement the EU Copyright Directive after the country leaves the EU. Several companies have criticised the law, which would hold them accountable for not removing copyrighted content uploaded by users, if it is passed. EU member states have until 7 June 2021 to implement the new reforms, but the UK will have left the EU by then. The UK was among 19 nations that initially supported the law. That was in its final European Council vote in April 2019. Copyright is the legal right that allows an…
China spent the crucial first days of the new coronavirus outbreak arresting people who talked about it online and harassing journalists trying to cover the story. While Chinese officials were quick to inform world health authorities about the new disease, they appear to have tried to repress the news at home. That could have allowed the disease to spread quickly through cities such as Wuhan, now thought to be the epicentre of the virus, because citizens were largely unaware it existed and took no precautions against it. The move also has chilling echoes of the 2003 SARS outbreak, which China…
Big Pharma at it again…. Here are some simple questions answered for those who are paranoid by the media and there lies. Can the coronavirus be transferred through items shipped from Wuhan ? There is no evidence this is a risk yet. But most diseases – including the coronavirus it can be spread through surfaces contaminated by people coughing or sneezing on them. There is still questions about whether international shipping would be a major problem if boxes were infected and spread globally.Cold viruses typically tend to survive less than 24 hours outside the human body although norovirus can last…
“We are already at the point where you can’t tell the difference between deepfakes and the real thing,” Professor Hao Li of the University of Southern California tells the BBC. “It’s scary.” We are at the computer scientist’s deepfake installation at the World Economic Forum in Davos which gives a hint of what he means. Like other deepfake tools, his software creates computer-manipulated videos of people – often politicians or celebrities – that are designed to look real. Most often this involves “face swapping”, whereby the face of a celebrity is overlaid onto the likeness of someone else. As I…
A banker implicated in the embezzlement and money-laundering case against Africa’s richest woman, Isabel dos Santos, has been found dead in Lisbon. Nuno Ribeiro da Cunha, 45, managed the account of oil firm Sonangol, formerly chaired by Ms Dos Santos, at the small Portuguese lender EuroBic. His death, on Wednesday, was reported on Thursday soon after Angolan prosecutors named both as suspects. Ms Dos Santos denies alleged corruption revealed by leaked documents. Mr Da Cunha was found dead at one of his properties in Lisbon. A police source told Portuguese media that “everything points to suicide”. Local media quoted police…
Amazon has asked a court to “pause” Microsoft’s work on a multibillion dollar deal to provide cloud services to the US military. Microsoft was awarded the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (Jedi) contract in October. A month later, Amazon filed a notice in the US Court of Federal Claims, claiming the process had contained deficiencies and “unmistakable bias”. It accused President Trump of political interference. Amazon had been the favourite to win the vast contract, which is worth $10bn (£7.6bn) over the next 10 years. It now wants the deal put on hold until the court rules on its protest. In…
An app that tasks users with spreading a deadly virus around the world has skyrocketed in popularity in China amid the coronavirus outbreak. On Wednesday, eight years after its release, the game became the bestselling app in China. Some players have suggested people were downloading the game as a way to cope with fears surrounding the virus. The coronavirus has so far killed at least 17 people in the country and infected more than 500 others. Developed by UK-based Ndemic Creations, the strategy game, Plague Inc, puts the user in control of a disease they must develop into a global…
UN human rights experts have demanded an immediate investigation into allegations Saudi Arabia’s crown prince hacked Amazon boss Jeff Bezos’s phone. They said Mohammed bin Salman should also be investigated for “continuous, direct and personal efforts to target perceived opponents”. A message from a phone number used by the prince has been implicated in a breach of Mr Bezos’s data. The kingdom’s US embassy has denied the “absurd” story. But the independent UN experts – Agnes Callamard, special rapporteur on summary executions and extrajudicial killings, and David Kaye, special rapporteur on freedom of expression – said the crown prince’s “possible…
A mummified Egyptian priest dead for millennia has been granted the gift of gab after scientists used 3D printed vocal cords to recreate his voice, fulfilling the priest’s dying wish to be heard from the afterlife. After some 3,000 years of silence, the mummy – named Nesyamun – is no longer tongue-tied thanks to a British research team, which painstakingly mapped out the priest’s well-preserved vocal tract for replication in a 3D printer. The team published its findings in Scientific Reports on Thursday, along with a clip showcasing Nesyamun’s new voice – here’s what he had to say: The first…
A lawyer representing Julian Assange has told a London court that the WikiLeaks founder’s legal team is being restricted from meeting him and it is hampering preparation for his trial on extradition to the United States. Queen’s Counsel Edward Fitzgerald told Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Thursday that he has had great difficulty gaining access to Assange in Belmarsh prison to discuss evidence and take instructions from the Australian. The 48-year-old is wanted in the US for allegedly conspiring with army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to expose military secrets. “We simply can’t get in as we require to see Mr Assange…
The outbreak of a coronavirus in China that is now an international threat could cut oil demand by 260,000 bpd, which would translate into a price drop of almost $3 per barrel, Goldman Sachs has said. Most of the demand loss will come from jet fuel as the risk of disease discourages travelers from getting on a plane, according to the investment bank, whose analysts qualified the outbreak’s effect on oil prices as modest, Bloomberg reports. Coronaviruses are common among animals but some of them can jump species, which is what happened with the SARS virus, to which the new one…
Dating app Tinder has added a ‘panic button’ feature that tracks the user through a ‘date’ and allows them to surreptitiously notify authorities if they’re in trouble. The company insists users are fine with the loss of privacy. The precision location tracking feature lets Tinder users store details about their dates and their planned itinerary so that authorities can be quickly and comprehensively notified at the touch of a button should anything go awry. Triggering the panic button results in a text from Noonlight, the company behind the technology. If the user doesn’t respond with reassurance that all is well,…