US President Joe Biden on Wednesday asked the country’s intelligence agencies to present a report on their most up-to-date analysis of the origins of Covid-19 within 90 days. Biden also said that the US, along with other countries, will press China to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation.In a statement released by White House, Biden said that he received a report from the intelligence agencies on Covid-19, which was first reported from China in late 2019, in April, but it was not conclusive.The US President said he has asked intelligence agencies to “redouble their efforts to collect and…
Author: Mike Harrison
President Joe Biden on Wednesday asked U.S. intelligence officials to “redouble” their efforts to investigate the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, including the unlikely possibility that the origins of the virus trace to Chinese lab.After months of minimizing the possibility as a fringe theory, the Biden administration is responding both to domestic and geopolitical concerns about putting pressure on China to be transparent about the outbreak.Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have promoted the theory that the virus emerged from a laboratory accident, rather than naturally through human contact with an infected animal.Biden in a statement said the majority of…
Former South African President Jacob Zuma accepted more than 700 bribes over the course of a decade before he was president, including cash payments from French arms company Thales, prosecutors alleged on the first day of Zuma’s corruption trial on Wednesday.Zuma, the president of Africa’s most developed economy from 2009 until he was forced out amid other graft scandals in 2018, was charged with multiple counts of corruption, as well as racketeering, fraud, tax evasion, and money laundering. He pleaded not guilty to all counts and claimed the trial was politically motivated.Also Read | Corruption trial against South African ex-President…
Several European influencers have claimed that they have been offered money by a communications agency to discredit the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech. They were asked to create videos for YouTube, Instagram and other social media platforms questioning the safety and efficacy of the vaccine. One influencer told French TV that he was offered about $2,500 for a video.French YouTuber Léo Grasset, whose popular science channel has nearly 1.2 million subscribers, recently shared the information about the “strange” proposal he received and posted screenshots of the request from his Twitter handle. Grasset said that the agency, posing as based in…
A traveler arriving in Brazil has been diagnosed with the B.1.617.2 coronavirus strain from India, Sao Paulo health officials said on Wednesday, adding to concerns about the new strain fueling one of the world’s deadliest outbreaks.Brazil has lost more than 450,000 lives to COVID-19, the worst death toll outside the United States, and has struggled to contain transmission of homegrown variants or to accelerate a sputtering vaccination campaign.Following the treatment of crew members who contracted the B.1.617.2 variant on a cargo ship on Brazil’s northern coast last week, the case confirmed on Wednesday raised alarms about the new variant passing…
US President Joe Biden on Wednesday nominated Indian-American Arun Venkataraman for the Director-General of the United States and Foreign Commercial Service and the Assistant Secretary for Global Markets in the Department of Commerce.According to a White House readout, Venkataraman has over 20 years of experience advising companies, international organisations and the US government on international trade issues.He is currently the Counselor to the Secretary of Commerce, advising the Department on trade and other international economic matters. Before joining the Biden-Harris Administration, Arun was a Senior Director at Visa, a leading global government engagement strategy on a range of international policy…
Google has made a deal for access to patient records from HCA, which which operates 181 hospitals and more than 2,000 healthcare sites in 21 states, so the tech company can develop healthcare algorithms, The Wall Street Journal reports. Google will store anonymized data from patient health records and internet-connected medical devices. That data will be used to build programs that could inform medical decisions made by doctors. The deal is described as “multiyear” by the WSJ, without specifying how many years. As health records moved online over the past few years, hospitals and tech companies jumped at opportunities to…
Gunfire erupted Wednesday at a railyard in San Jose, and a sheriff’s spokesman said multiple people were killed and wounded and that the suspect was dead.Santa Clara County sheriff’s spokesman Deputy Russell Davis said that he could not specify the number of dead and wounded or describe how the suspect died.The shooting took place at a light rail facility that is next door to the sheriff’s department and across a freeway from the airport. The facility is a transit control center that stores trains and has a maintenance yard.The victims include Valley Transportation Authority employees, Davis said.The VTA provides bus,…
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday announced a donation of one million doses of Covid-19 vaccines for Nepal, which is facing a severe shortage of jabs for providing the second shots to more than one million people. Xi announced the provision of the vaccines as grant assistance during a phone conversation with his Nepalese counterpart Bidya Devi Bhandari, according to a statement from Nepal’s foreign ministry. China had provided 800,000 doses of Sinopharm’s BBIBP-CorV vaccine to Nepal in March. The Chinese assistance comes at a time when Nepal is grappling with a second wave of Coronavirus infections, with 6,677 new…
GPU shortage = madness. That’s basically what’s happening out there right now, with a lot of current-generation NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards being almost impossible to get without paying exorbitant prices. As a result, many PC gamers out there are stuck with either their systems’ integrated GPUs, or graphics cards that are several generations old. (Photo : Neil Godwin/PC Format Magazine via Getty Images)A Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti PC graphics card, taken on September 4, 2015. But again, who can really blame them? The GPU shortage has put the PC gaming world to a standstill. It’s hard for a…