Fight | Common News Update

Oct132020 by adminNo Comments

South Korea introduces mask mandate in COVID-19 fight

SEOUL, Oct. 13 (UPI) -- South Korean health authorities issued a new order that makes wearing face masks mandatory in high-risk areas including public transportation, hospitals, long-term care facilities and mass rallies, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency announced Tuesday. Individual violators of the rule will face fines of up to $ 87, while operators of facilities and organizers of rallies who fail to enforce the mandate can be hit with fines of $ 2,600 and could face closure. Advertisement The new regulations went into effect on Tuesday, but a grace period of one month will be in effect before the fines are implemented, the KDCA said. The announcement comes a day after South Korea eased its social distancing guidelines from Level 2 to Level 1 on its three-tier scale as th...

Sep192020 by adminNo Comments

Goldman snubs £2bn Darktrace float amid extradition fight

Business

The Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs is to snub the £2bn flotation of one of Britain’s fastest-growing technology companies amid US prosecutors' efforts to extradite its biggest investor.Sky News has learnt that Goldman has declined to seek a role on the initial public offering (IPO) of Darktrace, a leading player in the provision of artificial intelligence (AI) cybersecurity services. Banking sources said that executives at Goldman had raised concerns about the ongoing legal ramifications of billionaire Mike Lynch's $ 11bn sale of the software company Autonomy to Hewlett Packard (HP) in 2011.Mr Lynch, one of the most prominent figures in Britain's technology industry, faces an extradition hearing early next year following the decision by US authorities to charge him with 17 counts of securi

Aug252020 by adminNo Comments

Carmakers urge FTC to fight Qualcomm ruling

Technology

A group of carmakers and tech firms is urging US regulators to take further action against chipmaker Qualcomm over its sales practices.Tesla, Ford, Honda, Daimler, Intel and MediaTek have asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to fight a recent court ruling in favour of Qualcomm.Qualcomm has a practice of requiring customers to sign patent licence agreements before selling them chips.Such practices have drawn accusations the firm is stifling competition.Qualcomm, the world's biggest maker of mobile phone chips, has contested those claims. The BBC has approached the firm for comment on the carmakers' letter.In January 2017, the FTC brought a complaint against Qualcomm in federal district court, accusing it of using "anticompetitive tactics" to maintain a...

Aug252020 by adminNo Comments

Biofuels could better aid climate change fight if grown on converted farmland

Science

Aug. 24 (UPI) -- The promotion of biofuels as an eco-friendly replacement for traditional fossil fuels has been criticized by environmental groups. But research published Monday in the journal PNAS suggests biofuels can help mitigate climate change only as long as biofuel feedstock crops, like switchgrass, are grown on converted agricultural land. Advertisement The problem with biofuels is that their promotion by policy makers can trigger deforestation. If trees are felled to grow crops to make biofuels, the action can hinder the fight to curb greenhouse gas emissions and reverse climate change. To calculate the effects of biofuels on carbon storage potential, researchers used models to simulate the movement of carbon through an ecosystem under a variety of land use scenarios. Scientists...

Aug102020 by adminNo Comments

Coronavirus: Is the world winning the pandemic fight?

Health

It is little more than six months since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the arrival of a new virus a global emergency.On that day, at the end of January, there had been almost 10,000 reported cases of coronavirus and more than 200 people had died. None of those deaths were outside of China. Since then the world, and our lives, have changed profoundly. So how are we faring in this battle between the human race and the coronavirus? If we take the planet as a whole, the picture is looking rough. There have been more than 19 million confirmed cases and 700,000 deaths. At the start of the pandemic it was taking weeks to clock up each 100,000 infections, now those milestones are measured in hours. "We're still in t...