A MONOLITHIC sandstone Shiv Linga from the ninth-century was discovered during an on-going conservation project in the Cham Temple Complex in Vietnam -- over 5,000 kilometers from here. The Archeological Survey of India (ASI) has undertaken several major conservation works across various countries of Asia, including the My Son Temple in Vietnam...

FOR the first time,Twitter put a warning labelunder two posts by Donald Trump , prompting the US President to accusethepop-ular social media platform of“ interfering”in the presidential election scheduled in November.Twitter highlighted two ofTrump’s tweets on Tuesday that falsely claimed mail-in ballots would lead to widespread voter fraud in the elections, append-ing amessagethe social mediagiant has introducedrecently tofight mis information or unveri-fied claims.“There is NOWAY (ZERO!) that Main-in ..

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Director-General, said that a clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) on COVID-19 patients has come to “a temporary pause”, while the safety data of the the anti-malaria drug was being reviewed. According to the WHO chief, ‘The Lancet’ medical journal on May 22 had published an observational study on HCQ and chloroquine and its effects on COVID-19 patients that have been hospitalised, reports Xinhua news agency. The authors of the ..

NEW coronavirus cases dropped to zero in China for the first time on Saturday but overwhelmed hospitals across Latin America – both in countries lax about lockdowns and those lauded for firm, early confinement. The virus hit a reopened church in Germany and possibly a restaurant, too. The pandemic’s persistence stymied authorities struggling to keep people safe and revive their economies at the same time, disrupting the Memorial Day weekend in the United States and collective celebrations around the ..

TWO sets of Indian-origin siblings dominate the annual tally of Britain’s wealthiest as the Hinduja and Reuben brothers share the second spot with a fortune of 16 billion pounds each, while British inventor-entrepreneur James Dyson tops ‘The Sunday Times Rich List 2020’ with 16.2 billion pounds. Srichand and Gopichand Hinduja, who run the Hinduja Group of companies, lost 6 billion pounds to slip from the top slot in last year’s list. Mumbai-born David and Simon Reuben lost 2.66 billion pounds over ..

THE World Bank on Friday approved a USD 1 billion loan to support India’s efforts for providing social assistance to the poor and vulnerable households, severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The “Accelerating India’s COVID-19 Social Protection Response Programme” will support the Government’s efforts towards a more consolidated delivery platform – accessible to both rural and urban populations across state boundaries. This takes the total commitment from the World Bank towards emergency COVID-19 ..

THE global death toll from the novel coronavirus has reached 3,00,000, mark with over 4.42 million cases of infections, according to the Johns Hopkins University. Some 1.58 million people have also been cured of the illness, as per US-based tracker. As of 4 am Friday, the number of people infected globally stands at 4,426,937 with at least 301,370 deaths reported. The United States has the highest case count in the world, 1,413,012, including 85,581 fatalities...

BRITISH Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a COVID-19 survivor, has warned that a mass vaccine for the highly contagious disease may be over a year away and may in fact never be found. In his foreword to the Government’s new 50-page guidance on a step by step easing of the lockdown measures in place to control the spread of the deadly virus, the UK Prime Minister lays out plans for businesses to gradually start reopening with“COVID-19 Secure” measures of social distancing and for the public to use“good ..

A TWO-WEEK course of antiviral therapy that combines the power of three drugs has shown promise in treating hospitalised patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 in a carefully undertaken phase 2 clinical trial. The results of the trial, published in the journal The Lancet, involved 127 adults from six public hospitals in Hong Kong. The drug combination tested in the trial included -- interferon beta-1b which was developed to treat multiple sclerosis (MS), lopinavir-ritonavir which is normally used ..

RESEARCHERS studying the structure of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 have found a unique feature in the virus that could explain its high transmissibility between people, an advance that may help develop new drugs against the disease. The study, published in the Journal of Molecular Biology, identifies a structural loop in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, an area of the virus that facilitates its entry into cells. In this loop, the researchers, including those from Cornell University in the ..

ISRAELI Defence Minister Naftali Bennett has said that scientists at the country’s main biological research institute has made a “significant breakthrough” in developing an antibody to the novel coronavirus, as the researchers wrapped up the development phase and moved to patent and mass produce the potential treatment. Bennett visited the labs of the Israel’s Institute for Biological Research (IIBR), supervised by the Prime Minister’s Office and mandated to develop a..

NASA’s first Mars helicopter has a name now and the credit goes to 17-year-old Indian-origin girl Vaneeza Rupani. Rupani, a high school junior from Northport, Alabama, earned the honour of naming the helicopter after she submitted her essay into NASA’s “Name the Rover” contest. Destined to become the first aircraft to attempt powered flight on another planet, NASA’s Mars Helicopter officially named: Ingenuity, as suggested by Rupani. While NASA announced in March that its next rover would be named ..

AFTER more than three months of an arduous fight, Wuhan, the city located at the heart of China and epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, has cleared all remaining cases related to the deadly infection in its hospitals, health authorities told Xinhua news agency on Sunday. This came as a 77-year-old man surnamed Ding tested negative for the second time for coronavirus in the capital city of Hubei province. He no longer had clinical symptoms and was able to be discharged, an official with Wuhan Municipal ..

STEPHEN Hawking, one of the world’s best-known physicists, has left behind 16.3 million pounds in a will which he signed with a thumbprint due to his motor neuron disease. Hawking, who died in Cambridge aged 76 in 2018, put the large fortune in a trust fund for his three children and three grandchildren and also bequeathed 10,000 pounds to his loyal personal assistant Judith Croasdell, 71, according to a report in ‘The Sun’ newspaper. A legal note to go with the will notes: “Signed with his ‘mark’ ..

THE World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday said that the COVID-19 crisis will not end any time soon, with several countries only in the initial stages of the fight against the virus. “Make no mistake, we have a long way to go. Coronavirus will be with us for a long time. There is no question that stay at home orders and other physical distancing measures have successfully suppressed transmission in many countries,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a press conference. “Most countries ..

PHILANTHROPIST and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has commended Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership and his Government’s “proactive measures” such as lockdown and expansion of focused testing in combating the COVID-19 pandemic in India...

TEDROS Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), warned that “the worst is yet ahead of us” in the coronavirus pandemic that has infected millions and killed thousands across the globe. Addressing the media here on Monday, the WHO chief said: “Trust us. The worst is yet ahead of us... Let’s prevent this tragedy. It’s a virus that many people still don’t understand,” the ‘Evening Standard’ newspaper reported. “There is no secret in WHO because keeping things confidential ..

THE US wants to send a team of experts to China to investigate the coronavirus, President Donald Trump has said, a day after he warned Beijing of “consequences” if it was knowingly responsible for the spread of COVID-19 which has killed more than 165,000 people globally, including over 41,000 in America. Describing the coronavirus as a plague, Trump, during his White House news conference on Sunday, said that he is not happy with China where the pandemic emerged in December last year in the central ..

SWITZERLAND has expressed solidarity with India in its fight against the coronavirus pandemic by projecting the tricolour on the famous Matterhorn mountain in the SwissAlps to give“hope and strength” to all Indians. Swiss light artist Gerry Hofstetter has been lighting up the 4,478-meter pyramidal peak straddling between Switzerland and Italy with spectacular displays of flags of different countries and messages of hope as part of a nightly series supporting the nations combating the deadly COVID-19 ..

SOCIAL distancing measures such as restrictions on public gatherings may have to remain in place intermittently for at least a couple of more years to contain the spread of COVID-19 in the absence of vaccine against the virus or dramatic increase in critical care capacities, researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health have warned. These tough measures which have already pushed the world economy into recession may be necessary because the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes ..

SCIENTISTS have discovered six new coronaviruses in bats in Myanmar -- the first time these viruses have been found anywhere in the world. The findings, published in the journal PLOS ONE, will help understand the diversity of coronaviruses in bats and inform global efforts to detect, prevent and respond to infectious diseases that may threaten public health, particularly in light of ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. According to the researchers from the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology ..

THE worldwide number of deaths from the novel coronavirus pandemic rose to 1,09,307 on Sunday, according to a tally compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT from official sources. More than 1,780,750 declared cases have been registered in 193 countries and territories since the epidemic first emerged in China in December. Of these cases, at least 3,9,200 are now considered recovered. The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organistion (WHO), probably ..

THE United States has threatened to cut off Beijing-controlled China Telecom from serving the US market because of legal and security risks, announced the Justice Department. A recommendation by the Government’s top departments, including Defence, State and Homeland Security, said the Federal Communications Commission should “revoke and terminate” all authorisations for the Chinese giant’s US subsidiary, China Telecom, to provide international telecommunications services to and from the United States...

ABOUT 250 Indians, with nearly half of them staying in close contact in the dormitories for foreign workers, have tested positive for the coronavirus in Singapore, the Indian High Commission here said on Friday. Indian High Commissioner Jawed Ashraf told PTI that almost all of the Indians who have the disease are mostly stable or improving. He said that the about 250 Indian nationals, who are suffering from the disease, include some permanent residents...

BEIJING, A CHINESE astronomer has discovered a fastest rotating star in the Milky Way galaxy based on the data from a telescope located in northern China’s Hebei Province. The star was discovered based on the data from the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) located in Xinglong, Hebei Province...

United States President Donald Trump has fired a fresh salvo at the World Health Organisation, accusing its chief of siding with China and “politicising” the coronavirus pandemic while repeating his threat to freeze the UN agency’s funding. Trump’s allegation comes a day after the US President threatened to put a “very powerful”..

TENS of thousands of people in Wuhan, the origin point and epicentre for the coronavirus pandemic, travelled out of the sprawling city on Wednesday as China lifted its 76-day lockdown that sealed off around 11 million people in the city, even as health experts warn that the threat of a rebound in infections remains far from over. Within hours of the lifting of the travel ban, tens of thousands of people wearing masks travelled out of the city as trains, domestic flights and taxis resumed operations, ..

A NOVEL vaccine fully protects mice against a lethal dose of MERS, a close cousin of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, scientists said on Tuesday. The vaccine uses a harmless virus to deliver a MERS coronavirus protein into cells to generate an immune response, said the researchers from researchers at the University of Iowa and the University of Georgia in the US. It may hold promise for developing vaccines against other coronaviruses diseases, including COVID-19, they said. The team tested ..

NADIA, a 4-year-old female Malayan tiger at the Bronx Zoo in New York, has tested positive for the novel coronavirus after developing a dry cough, in what is believed to be the first known case of an animal infected with COVID-19 in the US, raising new questions about human-to-animal transmission of the virus. The tigress, along with six other big cats, is thought to have been infected by an asymptomatic zoo keeper, the Wildlife Conservation Society, which manages the zoo, said in a statement on Sunday...

THE coronavirus pandemic has killed over 60,000 people worldwide, nearly three quarters of them in Europe, since it emerged in China in December, according to a tally compiled by AFP at 1330 GMT Saturday from official sources. A total of 60,457 deaths have been recorded, including 44,132 in Europe, the continent worst hit by the virus...

THE World Health Organisation (WHO), on Friday, said that it is going to launch a second protocol for the Solidarity Trial soon. “WHO would soon be launching a second protocol for the Solidarity Trial that will help establish incidence and prevalence of infection and the future behaviour of the virus,” Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director of WHO South-East Asia said in a press statement. At least three South-East Asia member countries, including India, Indonesia and Thailand have already signed ..

STAYING six feet away from others may not work, an MIT researcher has warned - saying the coronavirus can rather travel 27 feet and can linger for hours. The study was conducted by MIT associate professor Lydia Bourouiba, who has researched the dynamics of coughs and sneezes for years. It was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Bourouiba warned that the current social-distancing guidelines to stay six feet from others are based on outdated models from the 1930s, reported ..

THE heads of three global agencies warned on Wednesday of the risk of a worldwide “food shortage” if authorities fail to manage the ongoing coronavirus crisis properly. Many Governments around the world have put their populations on lockdown causing severe slow-downs in international trade and food supply chains. Panic buying by people going into confinement has already demonstrated the fragility of supply chains as supermarket shelves emptied in many countries...

EVEN as researchers across the world work overtime to understand evolution of the virus that causes the disease COVID-19, scientists have identified at least eight strains of coronavirus doing the rounds globally. Over 2,000 genetic sequences of the virus submitted from laboratories across the world to the open-source project Nextstrain.org show how the virus is migrating into new subtypes...

UNITED NATIONS, THE world economy will go into recession this year with a predicted loss of trillions of dollars of global income due to the coronavirus pandemic, spelling serious trouble for developing countries with the likely exception of India and China, according to a latest UN trade report. With two-thirds of the world’s population..