Your Bhaskar deadline is here!
If you haven’t voted for your favourite movie, director, actor etc., do it soon! Our deadline is tomorrow at 12 am. At the stroke of midnight, the winners will be sealed in stone! The form is here. So vote now to make your faves the winner of a gorgeous Bhaskar:) We are actually going to send one to each winner. Imagine Viola Davis or Aaron Sorkin getting this beauty lol!
Fly, Ingenuity, fly!
Once again, we turn to the mighty drone to cheer us up with its antics. The drone helicopter Ingenuity took its first flight over the surface of Mars on Monday. We now have NASA footage of that historic moment. It looks like this:
The great pandemic: A quick update
First, the numbers: We recorded 315,660 new cases and 2,091 deaths yesterday. This is the highest ever single day case-count recorded for any country ever. The previous high: the U.S. reported 300,310 new infections in January. The leading states remain the same: Maharashtra, followed by Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. Among the new cases: Shashi Tharoor.
A Financial Times analysis shows that we are doing significantly worse than any other country at its peak—be it the speed of the rise or the lack of hospital beds. This Twitter thread has a great set of charts, which includes this one:
As for those death counts, this is how “incredible” they are:
Point to note: Epidemiological models predict the second wave to peak in May—when the number of daily cases will exceed 3.5 lakh. Also this:
“The IIT scientists have also predicted that the case fatality rate which has been low in India, will rise as the infection reaches rural areas of Bihar, UP and West Bengal; that have inadequate health infrastructure.”
About those vaccines: Serum Institute announced its price per dose for Covishield. Union government: Rs 150. State government: Rs 400. Private hospital: Rs 600. The higher price for state governments sparked immediate furore—with state officials telling Indian Express: “We are astonished… the Government of India and the state government being treated as separate for purposes of a vaccine in times of pandemic. Are we less deserving entities?” Serum scrambled to clarify that it will charge the Centre Rs 400 once it fulfills the current contracts that have a baked-in Rs 150 price.
Better news about vaccines: Interim data for Covaxin’s phase 3 trials are out. Efficacy rate: 78%—which is slightly lower than the 81% reported in March. It offers 100% protection against severe disease. Also good news: a very tiny fraction of those vaccinated with either Covishield or Covaxin were reinfected. The Hindu has more details:
A new Indian variant: Scientists have identified a new variant in 15% of the samples in Bengal. The B.1.618, has a major mutation called E484K—which it shares with the double mutant variant B.1.617. We don’t know if this variant is of concern yet. Meanwhile Israel reports that the Pfizer vaccine offers reduced protection against the double mutant variant—but it’s still effective.
Netflix’s not doing that good
The streaming platform’s pandemic boom appears to have ended. It added only 3.98 million new subscribers this first quarter of the fiscal year—compared to 16 million during the same period last year. And that number was 2 million short of its own projection. But hey, the company plans to spend an astonishing $17 billion on content this year—which is way higher than its 2020 spend of $11.8 billion. So spending more for fewer eyeballs… well, that’s one way to go. (Variety)
A ransomware attack on Apple
A Russian hacking group has stolen the blueprints for Apple’s core products—and it wants $50 million to give it back. What was stolen: schematics for Apple’s just-revealed iMac redesign; manufacturing diagrams for Apple’s 2020 M1 MacBook Air; and plans for an as-yet-unreleased laptop. They stole the information from a Taiwanese manufacturer—that has refused to pay up. Now, the hackers are trying to negotiate directly with Apple. (The Verge)
In other Apple news: The company as usual rolled out a bunch of cool products at its Spring Loaded event. Verge has a full list, but people are most excited about the purple iPhone:
Also: the ultra-thin candy-coloured iMacs with the company’s M1 chip—which you can check out here. We’re also intrigued by AirTags that will let you find all the stuff you always misplace: keys, wallets etc. Here’s a fun video that shows you how it works:
NDTV has all the India prices for these ridiculously expensive products.
Bhima Koregaon: the latest update
Back in February, a highly respected US forensics firm issued a report showing that Rona Wilson and sixteen other activists may have been framed in the Bhima Koregaon case (explained in detail here). That first report showed that at least 10 documents were planted on Wilson’s computer using malware. This latest update reveals that an additional 22 documents were also maliciously inserted:
“The additional 24 files largely contain purported correspondence between members of the banned [naxal group] Communist Party of India (Maoist), discussions on fund transfers, how to improve women's representation in organisations, difficulties party members face in communicating with each other, concerns over state crackdown and some photographs of Maoist guerillas.”
Article 14 has more details.
Farmer protest: the latest update
A number of folks have written in to ask for an update on the farmer’s protests that have fallen off the front page. Here’s what we learned from this latest report in Quint. The farmers’ plan to stay where they are—i.e. on the Delhi border, and the second wave won’t make a difference. Yogendra Yadav says:
“I don’t understand why there is so much attention being given to the farmers’ protest which is almost a replica of any basti or colony in any city… About 4-5 people living in a tent is similar to a family living in a jhuggi in a slum area. If a slum is not being demolished to combat COVID-19, why should a farmers’ protest have to end to control the pandemic?”
Leaders have put out a ‘Phir Dilli Chalo’ call, urging farmers to return to Delhi to rally for the cause—but there are no firm dates for the next big march. Most worrying: While there are ongoing attempts to ensure social distancing, the camps themselves appear to be in a state of Covid denial, with farmers saying: “There have been no cases of COVID-19 at the farmers’ protest. So, most people here believe that COVID is a hoax and are against the concept of wearing a mask.”
In other farmer-related news: The BJP claims that farmers are blocking oxygen tankers from entering Delhi. The farmers in turn have pointed to multiple barriers and concertina wire fences put in place at the Delhi border by the government to barricade the protests—and which are difficult for tankers to navigate. (The Telegraph)
Bad news for a Spanish cathedral
UNESCO is threatening to withdraw the world heritage status from one of Europe’s greatest cathedrals—the Cathedral of St Mary of Burgos in Spain. The reason: church authorities decided to mark its 800th anniversary by commissioning an award-winning artist to create a new set of doors—featuring the faces of God the Father, Jesus as a child and the Virgin Mary. To be fair, the ‘face of God’ does bear “an unnerving resemblance to the disgraced former king Juan Carlos.” (Times UK)
Also fighting for UNESCO’s love: Residents of Naples who think their coffee culture should be specifically listed on UNESCO’s list of ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity’. Vying for that same honour, Italy, the nation. Neapolitans dramatically claim: “If you imagine Naples as a body, coffee is the blood flowing through it.” But supporters of Italian espresso say: “They want to say that coffee comes from Naples, but such prevarication is unacceptable. It means appropriating something which isn’t only theirs. It is also theirs.” (Wall Street Journal)
A key link between sleep and dementia
A significant new study shows that people who don’t get enough sleep in their 50s and 60s are more likely to develop dementia when they are older. It found that those who consistently reported sleeping six hours or less on average were about 30% more likely to be diagnosed with dementia decades later in life. Point to note:
“Pre-dementia brain changes like accumulations of proteins associated with Alzheimer’s are known to begin about 15 to 20 years before people exhibit memory and thinking problems, so sleep patterns within that time frame could be considered an emerging effect of the disease.”
Also this: Because sleep-deprivation or shortened sleep times are common, even a modest link has a huge impact. And more importantly, it is something we can actually control. (New York Times)
A very mysterious ‘Pak’
The work of an anonymous digital artist who goes by the name ‘Pak’ was sold at a high-profile, three-day online auction of NFTs by Sotheby’s—for a total of $17 million! The Fungible’ Collection included a series of digital cubes which collectors could buy for $500 to $1,500 each, receiving a number of NFTs based on how many cubes they own. Or they could pick up The Pixel—an image of a single pixel which finally fetched $1.36m after a 90-minute bidding battle. Also, the cubes looked like this:
Nope, we don’t understand it any more than you do. (Wall Street Journal)
An amazing drone show
Forget the big light shows using hundreds of drones. Frodo Álvarez used just five pre-programmed drones to create towering light paintings in the sky: “The drones were each flown into a very specific position before turning on their LED lights and then performing a pre-determined flight pattern.” The final result looked like this:
