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Bus ‘blast’ in Pakistan kills at least 12 including nine Chinese. A bus carrying construction workers which plunged into a ravine in Pakistan’s far north following an explosion has killed at least 12 people, including nine Chinese citizens. The Pakistani foreign ministry has referred to the incident which occurred on Wednesday as caused due to a ‘mechanical failure’ but China is calling it an ‘attack’.

Brazilian president Jair Bolsnaro may have emergency surgery after persistent hiccups. Jair Bolsnaro who was rushed to hospital in the early hours of Wednesday complaining of abdominal pain may now be forced to undergo emergency surgery following 10 days of incessant hiccups. The President was transferred to São Paulo where a surgeon diagnosed him with bowel obstruction. Bolsnaro’s health has raised eyebrows in recent days after a series of public appearances during which he visibly struggled to speak.

Summer setback: COVID deaths and cases rising again globally. COVID-19 deaths and cases are rising again globally, a demoralizing setback for what was expected to be an at least ‘normal’ summer this year. The World Health Organization said Wednesday that deaths climbed last week following nine straight weeks of decline, with more than 55,000 lives lost. Cases rose 10% last week to nearly 3 million, with the highest numbers recorded in Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Britain, sparking newer restrictions and lockdowns.

Il est temps de raconter le monde

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On the radar today

Angela Merkel meets Joe Biden. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US president Joe Biden are set to meet today. Merkel will visit Biden in the White House, the third time a foreign leader has met with him since becoming president, where the duo are expected to discuss a range of issues including the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, cybersecurity, ending the COVID-19 pandemic, and enduring trade issues.

‘Genocide Games’: UK Parliament to debate on boycotting 2022 Olympics. A motion for the royal family to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics due to hold in Beijing over China’s alleged perpetration of human rights abuses, particularly against its Uyghur minority is set to be debated in the UK Parliament today. The motion tabled by Tim Loughton follows a similar motion in the European Parliament which passed. China has refuted the claims of any wrongdoings but more than a million people are said to have been arbitrarily detained.

Can Polish law take priority over EU law in Poland? The court decides today. The constitutional court in Poland will decide today whether the country’s national law can take precedence over European Union (EU) law. It comes amidst heightened friction between Poland and other bloc members over controversial judicial reforms, including a measure that disallowed judges from referring certain legal issues to the European Court of Justice.

Keystone

Teaching Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant to speak native African languages. While Africa boasts over 1,000 native languages, the three bestselling voice assistants can’t respond to a single one of them. A Mozilla project, Common Voice wants to change this by allowing people to donate their «voice» — language, accent, intonations, and speech patterns — to a publicly accessible database. The platform includes 90 different languages including Luganda, spoken in Uganda, and Kabyle, spoken in Algeria.

In the African lab

Smile Identity. Image: TechCrunch

African identity verification startup ‘Smile Identity’ raises $7million Series A funding. Following a $4 million seed round in 2019, the four-year-old startup has raised a $7 million Series A investment that was led by Costanoa Ventures and CRE Venture Capital. The startup which leverages camera technology to verify faces has established a presence in six countries in Africa, including Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Rwanda, and Uganda, performing over one million identity checks monthly.

Move over Europe! Archaelogists have found a massive cathedral in Sudan linked to a lost Nubian kingdom. Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of a massive cathedral in what used to be the Kingdom of Makuria, a Christian stronghold in Africa that surpassed the medieval powers of Europe. The recently discovered church which once stretched 85 feet wide and loomed as tall as a three-story apartment building is believed to be the largest church ever discovered in the region.

Africa records 17.3% increase in Fintech startups with Kenya among the top 3. A new report released by Disrupt Africa has revealed that the number of fintech startups on the continent grew by 17.3 percent to 576 in 2021. The report also cited African fintech startups as leading the pack in attracting investment with 277 fintech startups raising ~900 million in the past six and a half years, more than twice the number of startups in other sectors, and with startups in Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya receiving most of the funding.

On Heidi.news today

Keystone

Stormy or scorching, the coming Swiss summers are no dream. Thunderstorms, hailstorms, and storms have been a daily occurrence in Switzerland for the past month. Violent events, the intensity of which was partly attributed to climate change, which is usually more readily mentioned during heat waves and droughts than stormy ones. But could constantly alternating between the two extremes and the disrupting effects of climate change be the end of summer as we know it?

7 out of 10 Genevans have antibodies against Sars-CoV-2. Sixty-seven percent of Genevans presented antibodies against Sars-CoV-2 in June, according to a study from HUG and UNIGE. Half of that number developed antibodies from the vaccine and the other half from a Covid-19 infection. The study also revealed unsurprisingly that it is those over 65 who have the highest seroprevalence rate and children who have proportionately the fewest antibodies.

Messenger RNA: a surprise doping agent for the Tokyo Olympics? In both the covid vaccines from Moderna and BioNTech-Pfizer, synthetic messenger RNA induces the production of proteins called antigens. They then trigger the establishment of immunity. EPO or growth hormones. But EPO or growth hormones produced in cell cultures have been used for years in sports doping and are also proteins which can be induced by messenger RNAs. Is it possible that messenger RNAs produce such proteins in athletes, and will they be visible in tests?

It may surprise you

Can you poop and get money at the same time? This invention might just have made that possible. An Urban and Environmental engineering professor at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea, Cho Jae-weon has built an eco-friendly toilet that converts human poop into digital money. Not literally though. Students who use the toilet which is connected to a laboratory that harnesses the excrement to produce biogas and manure receive a digital currency and can use their poo money to buy things like coffee on campus.

With or without onions? Pro-onion faction triumphs in Spain’s great omelette debate. A new survey might have just resolved one of Spain’s most ancient, vexed, and divisive questions by revealing that a majority of Spaniards really do prefer their omelette with onion. The survey showed that 72.7% of those who participated favoured onion; 25.3% were against adding onions, and a non-committal 1.9% didn’t answer.