on 15-Jan-2021 (Fri)

Sinovac Biotech, China NationalPharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm), CanSinoBIO and the Chinese Academy of Sciences are in late-stage clinical trials.None of them has released detailed efficacy data.

Brazil expects to release CoronaVac's efficacy data by Jan.7 after three delays.

The South China Morning Post newspaper

Who is buying China’s vaccines?

The United Arab Emirates became the first country to rollout a Chinese vaccine to the public this month.

Facebook confirmed Wednesday it was closing its Irish subsidiaries at the centre of a dispute on profit shifting to avoid taxes in the United States.

The California tech giant acknowledged the winding down of Facebook Ireland Holdings Unlimited Company amid a dispute with US tax authorities, which claimed the company owed billions in taxes by improperly shifting profits offshore.

Facebook says it has paid more than $11 billion globally in income tax over the past three years and that its effective tax rate over the last five years exceeds 20 percent.

In November, some 75 major tech players, including Google and Facebook, backed a French initiative committing them to making a "fair tax contribution" in countries where they operate.

Sydney is Australia’s most populous city

Melbourne, Australia's second-most populous city, has cancelled its fireworks this year.

New Zealand, which is two hours ahead of Sydney

In South Korea, Seoul's

Meiji Shrine in downtown Tokyo, which attracts millions of people every year during New Year holidays

Taiwan will host its usual New Year’s celebration, a fireworks display by its capital city’s iconic tower, Taipei 101

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have devised an artificial intelligence (AI) tool to predict the level of loneliness in adults, with 94% accuracy.

The tool used Natural Language Processing (NLP) developed by IBM to process large amounts of unstructured natural speech and text data. It analysed factors like cognition, mobility, sleep and physical activity to understand the process of aging.

Where is Emotion AI used?

The most common use lies in virtual personal assistants like Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri, that perform tasks on command.

Earlier in October, laptop maker HP introduced a virtual reality (VR) headset that uses sensors to measure physiological responses like facial expressions, eye movement and heartbeat to provide user-centric gaming experiences.

AI is not sophisticated enough to understand cultural differences in expressing and reading emotions, making it harder to draw accurate conclusions. For instance, a smile might mean one thing in Germany and another in Japan.

Emotion AI is a subset of artificial intelligence that measures, simulates and reacts to human emotions. Market research firm Gartner predicts that by 2022, your personal device will know more about your emotional state than your own family members.

U.S. President Donald Trump has indefinitely extended the visa sanctions on countries refusing to repatriate their citizens who violated laws in the United States.

The vaccine is the first one approved for general use in China.

China has given conditional approval to a coronavirus vaccine developed by state-owned Sinopharm.

La Soufriere volcano in St Vincent and the Grenadines, a chain of islands home to more than 1,00,000 people.

La Soufrière violently erupted in 1718, 1812,^[2] 1902 and 1979. The Saint Vincent eruption of 6 May 1902,

The most recent warning was issued late on Tuesday for La Soufriere volcano in St Vincent and the Grenadines, a chain of islands home to more than 1,00,000 people. Officials reported tremors, strong gas emissions, formation of a new volcanic dome and changes to its crater lake.

The government warned those living near the volcano to prepare to evacuate if needed, declaring an orange alert that means eruptions could occur with less than 24 hours’

Mt Pelee too is now active once again.

While the eastern Caribbean is one long chain of active and extinct volcanoes, volcanologist Erik Klemetti, at Denison University in Ohio, said the activity at Mt Pelee and La Soufriere are not related.

“It’s not like one volcano starts erupting that others will,” he said.

Mr. Klemetti said the most active volcano in recent years in the eastern Caribbean has been Soufriere Hills in Montserrat, which has erupted continuously since 1995, destroying the capital of Plymouth and killing at least 19 people in 1997

Seventeen of the eastern Caribbean’s 19 live volcanoes are located on 11 islands, with the remaining two are underwater near the island of Grenada, including one called Kick ’Em Jenny that has been active in recent years.

U.N. experts and advocates say at least a million ethnic Uighurs have been detained at some point in camps in China's Xinjiang region.

The incident in the town of Karak

Israel’s foreign minister said Wednesday he is leaving the Blue and White party

Gabi Ashkenazi, a former military chief of staff, is joining an exodus from Blue and White

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday that relations between the European Union and China had strengthened in recent years, following an investment deal that will give European companies greater access to Chinese markets.

Iran’s civil aviation authority has said the misalignment of an air defence unit’s radar system was the key “human error” that led to the plane’s downing.

Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 crashed shortly after taking off from Tehran on January 8, killing all 176 people aboard.

Iran’s announcement Wednesday that it will pay $150,000 to each family of those killed in the accidental downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane was promptly slammed by Kiev as “unacceptable”.

The Islamic republic admitted three days later that its forces mistakenly shot down the Kiev-bound Boeing 737-800 plane after firing two missiles, amid heightened US-Iran tensions.

US assassination of Iran’s top commander, General Qasem Soleimani.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack in Deir Ezzor province targeted a bus carrying regime soldiers going home on leave.

The war in Syria has killed more than 387,000 people since it started in 2011, the Observatory says.

7 fighters loyal to the Damascus government

China one year ago launched its second aircraft carrier, the Shandong, which was the first to be built at home.

the Liaoning, which was developed by retrofitting a Soviet-era cruiser and commissioned in 2012. The Shandong, which has already been deployed in the Taiwan Straits and in the South China Sea, is only likely to be combat ready next year.

Two larger aircraft carriers are being built at the Jiangnan Shipyard near Shanghai, the first of which is likely to be launched in 2021,

Number puzzles appeared in newspapers in the late 19th century, when French puzzle setters began experimenting with removing numbers from magic squares. Le Siècle, a Paris daily, published a partially completed 9×9 magic square with 3×3 subsquares on November 19, 1892

The modern Sudoku was most likely designed anonymously by Howard Garns, a 74-year-old retired architect and freelance puzzle constructor from Connersville, Indiana, and first published in 1979 by Dell Magazines as Number Place (the earliest known examples of modern Sudoku)