Malawi is emerging victorious in its battle against the deadliest cholera outbreak in the country’s history, which has killed nearly 2,000 people since its onset in March of last year. Health authorities say the country has seen a steady decline in the death rate, with no new cases or hospitalizations for the past two weeks. A cholera report, which Malawi’s health ministry released Sunday, shows that the outbreak has been fully controlled in 21 districts. These include Chitipa, Dowa, Kasungu, Likoma, Mzimba South, Mzimba North, Mwanza, Nkhata Bay, Ntchisi, Phalombe and Lilongwe, which reported most of the cases. Minister of Health Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda said in a statement that a few areas are still reporting cases. These areas include Balaka, Blantyre, Chikwawa, Machinga, Nsanje, Ntcheu, Salima and Zomba. George Mbotwa, spokesperson of the health office in Nsanje district, said the district is recording an average of one or two cases per day, but that number is lower than the average of about 30 daily cases during the peak of the outbreak. “We have continued to record cases because about 50 percent of Nsanje is bordered by Mozambique. And these cases are coming from across the borders,” he said. “We still have some local transmission but very minimal. And this is coming in because the adoption of hygiene behavior has been very slow.” Mbotwa said the cross-border cases largely happen because most Mozambican nationals stay away from their country’s health facilities and seek medical assistance at Malawian hospitals. He said, however, …
Submarine Exploring Titanic Wreck Missing, Search Underway
A submarine on a tourism expedition to explore the wreckage of the Titanic has gone missing off the coast of southeastern Canada, according to the private company that operates the vessel. OceanGate Expeditions said in a brief statement on Monday that it was “mobilizing all options” to rescue those on board the vessel. It was not immediately clear how many people were missing. The U.S. Coast Guard did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Media reports said the Coast Guard has launched search-and-rescue operations. “We are deeply thankful for the extensive assistance we have received from several government agencies and deep sea companies in our efforts to reestablish contact with the submersible,” OceanGate said in a statement. The company is currently operating its fifth Titanic “mission” of 2023, according to its website, which was scheduled to start last week and finish on Thursday. The expedition, which costs $250,000 per person, starts in St. John’s, Newfoundland, before heading out approximately 400 miles into the Atlantic to the wreckage site, according to OceanGate’s website. In order to visit the wreck, passengers climb inside Titan, a five-person submersible, which takes about two hours to descend to the Titanic. The British passenger ship famously sunk in 1912 on its maiden voyage after striking an iceberg, killing more than 1,500 people. The story has been immortalized in non-fiction and fiction books as well as the 1997 blockbuster movie “Titanic.” …
Netherlands Soon to Announce Controls on IT Exports to China
The Dutch government is soon to join the United States and Japan in rolling out new semiconductor export control measures aimed at keeping sensitive technology away from China due to concern for potential misuse, the country’s economic affairs minister told reporters on a visit to Washington. The measures are likely to further restrict sales to China by Netherlands-based ASML, maker of the world’s most advanced chip-printing machines, which last year disclosed the “unauthorized misappropriation of data” by a now former employee in China. The United States in October 2022 announced its own export control measures affecting advanced computing integrated circuits and certain semiconductor manufacturing items. The U.S. said the measures were aimed at items that “could provide direct contributions to advancing military decision making” such as “designing and testing weapons of mass destruction (WMD), producing semiconductors for use in advanced military systems, and developing advanced surveillance systems that can be used for military applications and human rights abuses.” The U.S. subsequently asked allies including Japan and the Netherlands, which play key roles in the semiconductor supply chain, to introduce similar measures. “The main concern is [the chip-making technology] will be used in military products,” Micky Adriaansens, Netherlands’ minister of economic affairs and climate, told a group of journalists on June 8 at the Dutch Embassy in Washington. Adriaansens acknowledged that the negotiations with Washington have not been easy. “To be honest, the conversation has been intense, and is still intense,” she said. “But we agreed already upon the main issues, …
Venezuelans Lack Access to HPV Vaccine
Getting vaccinated is an effective way to prevent infection from human papillomavirus, also known as HPV, a virus that can lead to cervical cancer in women and other cancers in men. But the vaccine is neither available nor affordable to many in Venezuela. For Adriana Nunez Rabascall in Caracas, Venezuela, Cristina Caicedo Smit narrates the story. Camera – Jackson Vodopija. …
Microsoft Says Early June Disruptions to Outlook, Cloud Platform, Were Cyberattacks
In early June, sporadic but serious service disruptions plagued Microsoft’s flagship office suite — including the Outlook email and OneDrive file-sharing apps — and cloud computing platform. A shadowy hacktivist group claimed responsibility, saying it flooded the sites with junk traffic in distributed denial-of-service attacks. Initially reticent to name the cause, Microsoft has now disclosed that DDoS attacks by the murky upstart were indeed to blame. But the software giant has offered few details — and did not immediately comment on how many customers were affected and whether the impact was global. A spokeswoman confirmed that the group that calls itself Anonymous Sudan was behind the attacks. It claimed responsibility on its Telegram social media channel at the time. Some security researchers believe the group to be Russian. Microsoft’s explanation in a blog post Friday evening followed a request by The Associated Press two days earlier. Slim on details, the post said the attacks “temporarily impacted availability” of some services. It said the attackers were focused on “disruption and publicity” and likely used rented cloud infrastructure and virtual private networks to bombard Microsoft servers from so-called botnets of zombie computers around the globe. Microsoft said there was no evidence any customer data was accessed or compromised. While DDoS attacks are mainly a nuisance — making websites unreachable without penetrating them — security experts say they can disrupt the work of millions if they successfully interrupt the services of a software service giant like Microsoft on which so much global commerce …
Secret Washington Garden Has Vital Government Mission
Nestled among the bustling city streets of Washington is a hidden oasis that many Americans don’t know exists. Congress established the U.S. National Arboretum in 1927. Vital scientific research is under way at the sprawling 183-hectare compound. VOA’s Dora Mekouar reports on the arboretum’s critical government mission. Camera: Adam Greenbaum …
EU: Powerful Illegal Drugs Inundating Europe, Sending Corruption and Violence Soaring
New harmful illicit drugs are inundating a flourishing market for traffickers amid violence and corruption hurting local communities across Europe, the EU’s agency monitoring drugs and addiction said Friday. The grim finding was part of the agency’s annual report. It also said that drug users in Europe are now exposed to a wider range of substances of high purity as drug trafficking and use across the region have quickly returned to pre-COVID 19 pandemic levels. Cannabis remains the most-used illicit substance in Europe, the agency found, with some 22.6 million Europeans over the age of 15 having used it in the last year. Cocaine seizures are “historically high” and new synthetic drugs whose effects on health are not well documented are worrying officials. In 2022, 41 new drugs were reported for the first time by the agency. “I summarize this with the phrase: ‘everywhere, everything, everyone,’” said European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction Director Alexis Goosdeel. “Established illicit drugs are now widely accessible and potent new substances continue to emerge,” Goosdeel added. “Almost everything with psychoactive properties can appear on the drug market.” Among the new popular substances, ketamine and nitrous oxide — so-called laughing gas — are raising concern over reported cases of bladder problems, nerve damage and lung injuries associated with users. Alongside the high availability of heroin on the continent, synthetic opioids are on the rise and have been linked to deaths by overdose in Baltic countries. The report said the opioids situation in Europe …
Researchers Studying Cancer in Wildlife Grapple With Why Some Get the Disease While Others Don’t
Researchers have been exploring the presence of cancer in animals from elephants to mollusks to learn about cancer in wild animals. They also hope their research will help with human cancers. “Studying wildlife cancer, and more generally the evolution of cancer across the tree of life, is extremely promising to develop innovative therapies to treat cancer in humans,” Mathieu Giraudeau, a researcher at France’s La Rochelle University who has been focusing on cancer in wild animals since 2018, told VOA. “The idea behind this is that some species have evolved some mechanisms to limit cancer initiation and progression,” he said. “If we identify and understand these mechanisms, then the goal is to use them as a source of inspiration to develop new therapies.” Cancer affects both humans and animals but its impact on wild animals has been difficult to uncover. “There are no basic blood tests to detect cancer in the wild animals,” Giraudeau told VOA, “so most of the studies have to use necropsies [post-mortem examinations of animals] to detect cancer cases in wild animals. That’s why using zoo animals is a fantastic opportunity, since a necropsy is performed for most of the animals dying in zoos.” Researchers say there are more questions than answers regarding cancer in wild animals, which are hard to study in their natural habitat because they move around and are therefore difficult to observe over time. “We don’t really know much about the different kinds of animals species that get cancer or how much,” …
Australia Activates First Renewable Power Station on Decommissioned Coal Plant Site
The first large-scale battery to be built at an Australian coal site has been switched on in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, east of Melbourne. The 150-megawatt battery is at the site of the former Hazelwood power station in the southern Australian state of Victoria. The station was built in the 1960s and closed in 2017. The new battery was officially opened Wednesday and has the ability to power about 75,000 homes for an hour during the evening peak. The decommissioned coal plant produced 10 times more electricity, but the battery’s operators aim to increase its generating capacity over time. The Latrobe Valley has been the center of Victoria’s coal-fired power industry for decades, but the region is changing. The new battery will store power generated by offshore wind farms and is run by the French energy giant Engie, and its partners Eku Energy and Fluence. Engie chief executive Rik De Buyserie told reporters it is an important part of Australia’s green energy future. “The commissioning of this battery represents a key milestone in this journey and marks an important step in the transition of the La Trobe Valley from a thermal energy power to a clean energy power provider,” he said. The state of Victoria aims to have at least 2.6 gigawatts of battery storage connected to the electricity grid by 2030 and 6.3 gigawatts by 2035. Lily D’Ambrosio, Victoria’s minister for climate action, energy and resources, told reporters that the state government is committed to boosting its renewable energy sector. …
US Energy Dept., Other Agencies Hacked
U.S. security officials say the U.S. Energy Department and several other federal agencies have been hacked by a Russian cyber-extortion gang. Homeland Security officials said Thursday the agencies were caught up in the hacking of MOVEit Transfer, a file-transfer program that is popular with governments and corporations. The Energy Department said two of its entities were “compromised” in the hack. The Russia-linked extortion group CI0p, which claimed responsibility for the hacking, said last week on the dark web site that its victims had until Wednesday to negotiate a ransom or risk having sensitive information dumped online. It added that it would delete any data stolen from governments, cities and police departments. Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said while the intrusion was “largely an opportunistic one” that was superficial and caught quickly, her agency was “very concerned about this campaign and working on it with urgency.” Reuters reports that the Britain’s Shell Oil Company, the University of Georgia, Johns Hopkins University and the Johns Hopkins Health System were also among those targeted in the hacking campaign. The Associated Press quoted a senior CISA official as saying U.S. military and intelligence agencies were not affected. MOVEit said it is working with the federal agencies and its other customers to help fix their systems. Information for this report was provided by The Associated Press and Reuters. …
Experts Divided as YouTube Reverses Policy on Election Misinformation
An announcement by YouTube that it will no longer remove content containing misinformation on the U.S. 2020 presidential election has some experts divided. In a June blog post, YouTube said it was ending its policy — enforced since December 2020 — that removed tens of thousands of videos that falsely claimed the 2020 election was impaired by “widespread fraud, errors or glitches.” “We find that while removing this content does curb some misinformation, it could also have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm,” the post said. The Google-owned platform says the move is to support free speech, but some experts in tech and disinformation say it could allow harmful content to again be easily shared. “The message that YouTube is sending is that the election denial crowd is now welcome again on YouTube and can resume its campaign of undermining trust in American elections and democratic institutions,” said Paul Barrett, deputy director at New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights. But others say the policy caused “legitimate” content to be removed and that the core issue is a wider societal problem, not something confined to YouTube. YouTube’s other election misinformation policies remain unchanged, the platform said. These include prohibiting content aimed at misleading people about the time and place for voting and claims that could significantly discourage voting. Google spokesperson Ivy Choi told VOA in an email that the company has “nothing to add beyond …
Security Firm: Suspected Chinese Hackers Breached Hundreds of Networks Globally
Suspected state-backed Chinese hackers used a security hole in a popular email security appliance to break into the networks of hundreds of public and private sector organizations globally, nearly a third of them government agencies including foreign ministries, the U.S. cybersecurity firm Mandiant said Thursday. “This is the broadest cyber espionage campaign known to be conducted by a China-nexus threat actor since the mass exploitation of Microsoft Exchange in early 2021,” Charles Carmakal, Mandiant’s chief technical officer, said in an emailed statement. That hack compromised tens of thousands of computers globally. In a blog post Thursday, Google-owned Mandiant expressed “high confidence” that the group exploiting a software vulnerability in Barracuda Networks’ Email Security Gateway was engaged in “espionage activity in support of the People’s Republic of China.” It said the activity began as early as October. The hackers sent emails containing malicious file attachments to gain access to targeted organizations’ devices and data, Mandiant said. Of those organizations, 55% were from the Americas, 22% from the Asia Pacific region and 24% from Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and they included foreign ministries in Southeast Asia and foreign trade offices and academic organizations in Taiwan and Hong Kong. the company said. Mandiant said the majority impact in the Americas may partially reflect the geography of Barracuda’s customer base. Barracuda announced on June 6 that some of its email security appliances had been hacked as early as October, giving the intruders a back door into compromised networks. The hack was so …
US Regulator Panel Weighs Makeup of Next COVID Vaccine
Advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration met Thursday to discuss and vote on whether to recommend targeting one of the currently dominant XBB coronavirus variants in updated COVID-19 shots being developed for a fall vaccination campaign. FDA staff reviewers in documents released this week said available evidence suggests this year’s shots should target an XBB variant. XBB and its offshoots, which now account for most U.S. infections, are descendants of the omicron variant that caused COVID cases to surge to record levels early last year. U.S. regulators are looking to bring the next COVID shots more closely in line with the circulating virus. The next-generation shots should select a single XBB-related target, the FDA’s staff reviewers suggested. A so-called monovalent vaccine would be a change from the most recent bivalent COVID boosters that targeted both the original strain of the coronavirus and omicron. Top FDA official Peter Marks said there was concern about another COVID wave over the 2023-24 winter, when population immunity could wane further. The expert panel meeting comes after an advisory group to the World Health Organization last month recommended the next wave of COVID booster shots be updated to target XBB subvariants. Europe’s medicine regulators backed that recommendation. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended booster shots broadly last year. But panel member Dr. Paul Offit questioned whether the shots needed to be recommended for “everybody every season,” noting that the highest risk groups are those most likely to benefit …
Chinese EV Makers Make Progress in Bid to Dominate British Market
Chinese manufacturers of electric vehicles are stepping up their push to dominate the European market. As Amy Guttman reports from London, they are making progress in Britain, where car shoppers are eager to buy the lower-cost electric cars that Chinese automakers are offering. …
Bill Gates Visits China for Health, Development Talks
Microsoft Founder Bill Gates was in China on Thursday for what he said were meetings with global health and development partners who have worked with his charitable foundation. “Solving problems like climate change, health inequity and food insecurity requires innovation,” Gates tweeted. “From developing malaria drugs to investing in climate adaptation, China has a lot of experience in that. We need to unlock that kind of progress for more people around the world.” Gates said global crises stifled progress in reducing death and poverty in children and that he will next travel to West Africa because African countries are particularly vulnerable “with high food prices, crushing debt, and increasing rates of TB and malaria.” Reuters, citing two people familiar with the matter, said Gates would meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Gates is the latest business figure to visit China year, following Apple’s Tim Cook and Tesla’s Elon Musk. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. …
Cambodian Facial Recognition Effort Raises Fears of Misuse
Experts are raising concerns that a recent Cambodian government order allocating around $1 million to a local company for a facial recognition technology project could pave the way for the technology to be used against citizens and human rights defenders. The order, signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen and released in March in a recent tranche of government documents, would award the funds to HSC Co. Ltd., a Cambodian company led by tycoon Sok Hong that has previously printed Cambodian passports and installed CCTV cameras in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. The Oct. 17 order appears to be the first direct indication of Cambodia’s interest in pursuing facial recognition, alarming experts who say such initiatives could eventually be used to target dissenters and build a stronger surveillance state similar to China’s. In recent months, the government has blocked the country’s main opposition party from participating in the July national elections, shut down independent media and jailed critics such as labor organizers and opposition politicians. Neither the Interior Ministry nor the company would answer questions about what the project entails. “This is national security and not everyone knows about how it works,” Khieu Sopheak, secretary of state and spokesperson for the Interior Ministry, told VOA by phone. “Even in the U.S., if you ask about the air defense system, they will tell you the same. This is the national security system, which we can’t tell everyone [about].” The order names HSC, a company Sok Hong founded in 2007, as the funds’ recipient. …
NASA Finds Key Building Block for Life in a Saturn Moon
The long hunt for extraterrestrials just got a big boost. Scientists have discovered that phosphorus, a key building block of life, lies in the ocean beneath the icy surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The finding was based on a review of data collected by NASA’s Cassini probe, and it was published Wednesday in the prestigious journal Nature. Cassini started exploring Saturn and its rings and moons in 2004, before burning up in the gas giant’s atmosphere when its mission ended in 2017. “This is a stunning discovery for astrobiology,” said Christopher Glein of the Southwest Research Institute, one of the paper’s co-authors, noting: “We have found abundant phosphorus in plume ice samples spraying out of the subsurface ocean.” Geysers on Enceladus’ south pole spew icy particles through cracks on the surface out into space, feeding Saturn’s E ring — the faint ring outside the brighter main rings. Scientists previously found other minerals and organic compounds in the ejected ice grains, but not phosphorus, which is an essential building block for DNA and RNA. It also is found in the bones and teeth of people, animals, and even ocean plankton. Simply put, life as we know it would not be possible without phosphorus. While geochemical modeling had previously found it was likely phosphorus would also be present, and this prediction was published in an earlier paper, it is one thing to forecast something and another to confirm, said Glein. “It’s the first time this essential element has been discovered in an …
As Deepfake Fraud Permeates China, Authorities Target Political Challenges Posed By AI
Chinese authorities are cracking down on political and fraud cases driven by deepfakes, created with face- and voice-changing software that tricks targets into believing they are video chatting with a loved one or another trusted person. How good are the deepfakes? Good enough to trick an executive at a Fuzhou tech company in Fujian province who almost lost $600,000 to a person he thought was a friend claiming to need a quick cash infusion. The entire transaction took less than 10 minutes from the first contact via the phone app WeChat to police stopping the online bank transfer when the target called the authorities after learning his real friend had never requested the loan, according to Sina Technology. Despite the public’s outcry about such AI-driven fraud, some experts say Beijing appears more concerned about the political challenges that deepfakes may pose, as shown by newly implemented regulations on “deep synthesis” management that outlaw activities that “endanger national security and interests and damage the national image.” The rapid development of artificial intelligence technology has propelled cutting-edge technology to mass entertainment applications in just a few years. In a 2017 demonstration of the risks, a video created by University of Washington researchers showed then-U.S. President Barack Obama saying things he hadn’t. Two years later, Chinese smartphone apps like Zao let users swap their faces with celebrities so they could appear as if they were in a movie. Zao was removed from app stores in 2019 and Avatarify, another popular Chinese face-swapping app, …
Bill Gates in China to Meet President Xi on Friday – Sources
Bill Gates, Microsoft Corp’s co-founder, is set to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday during his visit to China, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The meeting will mark Xi’s first meeting with a foreign private entrepreneur in recent years. The people said the encounter may be a one-on-one meeting. A third source confirmed they would meet, without providing details. The sources did not say what the two might discuss. Gates tweeted on Wednesday that he had landed in Beijing for the first time since 2019 and that he would meet with partners who had been working on global health and development challenges with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation and China’s State Council Information Office, which handles media queries on behalf of the Chinese government, did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. Gates stepped down from Microsoft’s board in 2020 to focus on philanthropic works related to global health, education and climate change. He quit his full-time executive role at Microsoft in 2008. The last reported meeting between Xi and Gates was in 2015, when they met on the sidelines of the Boao forum in Hainan province. In early 2020, Xi wrote a letter to Gates thanking him, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for pledging assistance to China including $5 million for its fight against COVID. The meeting would mark the end of a long hiatus by Xi in recent years from meeting foreign private entrepreneurs and business leaders, after …
EU Lawmakers Vote for Tougher AI Rules as Draft Moves to Final Stage
EU lawmakers on Wednesday voted for tougher landmark draft artificial intelligence rules that include a ban on the use of the technology in biometric surveillance and for generative AI systems like ChatGPT to disclose AI-generated content. The lawmakers agreed to the amendments to the draft legislation proposed by the European Commission which is seeking to set a global standard for the technology used in everything from automated factories to bots and self-driving cars. Rapid adoption of Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other bots has led top AI scientists and company executives including Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to raise the potential risks posed to society. “While Big Tech companies are sounding the alarm over their own creations, Europe has gone ahead and proposed a concrete response to the risks AI is starting to pose,” said Brando Benifei, co-rapporteur of the draft act. Among other changes, European Union lawmakers want any company using generative tools to disclose copyrighted material used to train its systems and for companies working on “high-risk application” to do a fundamental rights impact assessment and evaluate environmental impact. Microsoft, which has called for AI rules, welcomed the lawmakers’ agreement. “We believe that AI requires legislative guardrails, alignment efforts at an international level, and meaningful voluntary actions by companies that develop and deploy AI,” a Microsoft spokesperson said. However, the Computer and Communications Industry Association said the amendments on high-risk AIs were likely to overburden European AI developers with “excessively prescriptive rules” and slow down innovation. “AI …
Women Want Fistula Treatment, End to Stigma in Tanzania
Six percent of all maternal deaths around the world are caused by obstructed labor, according to the World Health Organization. That’s when a baby can’t move through the birth canal. It can also lead to obstetric fistula, a condition that can have a long-term impact on a woman’s health, especially in developing countries. Reporter Idd Uwesu has more from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in this report narrated by Omary Kaseko. Video: …
EU Regulators Order Google To Break up Digital Ad Business Over Competition Concerns
European Union antitrust regulators took aim at Google’s lucrative digital advertising business in an unprecedented decision ordering the tech giant to sell off some of its ad business to address competition concerns. The European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch and top antitrust enforcer, said that its preliminary view after an investigation is that “only the mandatory divestment by Google of part of its services” would satisfy the concerns. The 27-nation EU has led the global movement to crack down on Big Tech companies, but it has previously relied on issuing blockbuster fines, including three antitrust penalties for Google worth billions of dollars. It’s the first time the bloc has ordered a tech giant to split up keys of business. Google can now defend itself by making its case before the commission issues its final decision. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The commission’s decision stems from a formal investigation that it opened in June 2021, looking into whether Google violated the bloc’s competition rules by favoring its own online display advertising technology services at the expense of rival publishers, advertisers and advertising technology services. YouTube was one focus of the commission’s investigation, which looked into whether Google was using the video sharing site’s dominant position to favor its own ad-buying services by imposing restrictions on rivals. Google’s ad tech business is also under investigation by Britain’s antitrust watchdog and faces litigation in the U.S. Brussels has previously hit Google with more than $8.6 billion worth of …
What Peanuts Dancing in Beer Teaches Us About the Earth’s Crust
When peanuts are dropped into a pint of beer, they sink to the bottom before floating up and “dancing” in the glass. Scientists have dug deep to investigate this phenomenon in a study published on Wednesday, saying it has implications for understanding mineral extraction or bubbling magma in the Earth’s crust. Brazilian researcher Luiz Pereira, the study’s lead author, told AFP he first had the idea when passing through Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires to learn Spanish. It was a “bartender thing” in the city to take a few peanuts and pop them into beers, Pereira said. Because the peanuts are denser than the beer, they first sink down to the bottom of the glass. Then each peanut becomes what is called a “nucleation site.” Hundreds of tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide form on their surface, acting as buoys to drag them upward. “The bubbles prefer to form on the peanuts rather than on the glass walls,” said Pereira, a researcher at Germany’s Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. When the bubbles reach the surface, they burst. The peanuts sink again before being propelled up anew by freshly formed bubbles, in a dance that continues until the carbon dioxide runs out, or someone interrupts it by drinking the beer. In a series of experiments, the team of researchers in Germany, Britain and France examined how roasted, shelled peanuts fared in a lager-style beer. ‘Beer-gas-peanut system’ The study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, describes two key factors in what the …
Big Amazon Cloud Services Recovering After Outage Hits Thousands of Users
Amazon.com said cloud services offered by its unit Amazon Web Services were recovering after a big disruption on Tuesday affected websites of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority and The Boston Globe, among others. Several hours after Downdetector.com started showing reports of outages, Amazon said many AWS services were fully recovered and marked resolved. “We are continuing to work to fully recover all services,” AWS’ status page showed. Tuesday’s impact stretching from transportation to financial services businesses underscores adoption of Amazon’s younger Lambda service and the degree to which many of its cloud offerings are crucial to companies in the internet age. According to research in the past year from the cloud company Datadog, more than half of organizations operating in the cloud use Lambda or rival services, known as serverless technology. Nearly 12,000 users had reported issues with accessing the service, according to Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources, including user-submitted errors on its platform. The disruption appeared smaller in time and breadth than one the company suffered in 2017 of its data-hosting service known as Amazon S3, representing the bread and butter of its cloud business. The outage appeared to extend to AWS’s own webpage describing disruptions in its operations, which at one point failed to load on Tuesday, Reuters witnesses saw. “We quickly narrowed down the root cause to be an issue with a subsystem responsible for capacity management for AWS Lambda, which caused errors directly for customers and indirectly …