Technology

KARACHI: While the government is clamping down on “immoral” content online, digital rights experts and social media users have termed the recent bans on digital applications a threat to creative expression by youths who are otherwise devoid of entertainment. In a statement on Monday, the Pakistan Telecommunication Autho­rity (PTA) announced it had issued a “final warning” to video-sharing service TikTok …

Brazil will begin advanced clinical testing of a Chinese-made vaccine against the new coronavirus Tuesday, issuing the first doses to around 900 volunteers, officials said. The coronavirus vaccine, developed by private Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinovac, is the third in the world to enter Phase 3 trials, or large-scale testing on humans — the last step before regulatory approval. It will …

Russia claimed on Tuesday that the Covid-19 vaccine developed with the Russian Defense Ministry has completed Phase 2 trials and ready for use. “Russia’s first vaccine against the novel coronavirus infection, which was created by military specialists and scientists of the Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology, is ready, said First Deputy Defense Minister Ruslan Tsalikov. According to …

WASHINGTON: Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview published on Monday he has “no deal of any kind” with President Donald Trump on content moderation on the social media giant. Zuckerberg, in an interview with Axios, rejected the “speculation” that Facebook had an arrangement that gives the president free rein on the platform. “Let me be clear: There’s no deal of any …

KARACHI: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) banned live streaming application Bigo and issued a “final warning” to video-sharing service TikTok over obscene and immoral content on the platforms. TikTok is a Chinese social networking app that allows users to make video clips, lip sync to songs and create short videos. Last week, a civil miscellaneous application was filed in the …

Astrophysicists on Monday published the largest-ever 3D map of the Universe, the result of an analysis of more than four million galaxies and ultra-bright, energy-packed quasars. The efforts of hundreds of scientists from around 30 institutions worldwide have yielded a “complete story of the expansion of the universe”, said Will Percival of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. In …

NEW YORK: TikTok has been in discussions with the UK government over the past few months to locate its headquarters in London, a source familiar with the matter said, as part of a strategy to distance itself from its Chinese ownership. London is among one of several locations the company is considering, but no decisions have been made, the source …

A United Arab Emirates spacecraft rocketed into blue skies from a Japanese launch centre on Monday at the start of a seven-month journey to Mars on the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission. The liftoff of the Mars orbiter named Amal, or Hope, starts a rush to fly to Earth’s neighbour that is scheduled to be followed in the next few …

LONDON: British scientists analysing data from a widely-used COVID-19 symptom-tracking app have found there are six distinct types of the disease, each distinguished by a cluster of symptoms. A King’s College London team found that the six types also correlated with levels of severity of infection, and with the likelihood of a patient needing help with breathing – such as …

WASHINGTON: Twitter said on Saturday that hackers “manipulated” some of its employees to access accounts in a high-profile attack, including those of Joe Biden and Elon Musk, and apologised profusely for the breachenter link description here. Posts trying to dupe people into sending the hackers Bitcoin were tweeted by the official accounts of Apple, Uber, Bill Gates and many others …