In a breakthrough achievement, astronomers have taken the first ever image of a black hole, international media report said. The black hole is located in a distant galaxy.

The black hole is 500 million trillion km away from the earth and was photographed by a network of eight telescopes across the world, BBC reported.

It has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun and it is one of the heaviest black holes that astronomer think exists.

KATHMANDU: Tarai-Madhesh is facing a growing risk of heat waves, according to a new study.

The  study on ‘Assessing trends of heat waves and perception of people about health risks of heat wave in Nepal’ showed that the recent freak storm that struck some places in Bara and Parsa districts was the result of uneven heat. The study on heat wave was conducted for the first time in Nepal.

This is mentioned in the report of study financially and technically Tarai-Madhesh assisted by the World Health Organisation and conducted by the Nepal Health Research Council (NHRC) here today.

The preliminary findings of the report are the scale of heat is increasing and the southern plains witness hotter nights; impact of pre-monsoon before and excessive rains during monsoon.

KATHMANDU: German Embassy in Kathmandu is organizing a 16-day exhibition on “The German Energiewende: Transforming Germany’s energy system” in Lalitpur from 12-26 April.

The exhibition illustrates the German economy’s transformation towards reusable energy sources, it was shared at a press conference organized by the German Embassy in Kathmandu.

Ambassador Ronald Schafer informed that since Germany is leading the movement with an objective of achieving carbon neutrality in 2050, Nepal too has huge potential in generation of renewable energy through tapping in to various sources such as hydro-power and solar energy, but also working towards energy efficiency, among others.

The exhibition, according to Ambassador Schafer, will be an occasion to discuss challenges, and show appreciation for the efforts of the Government of Nepal to create a conducive environment towards climate-friendly energy in the country.

A statement issued on the occasion said the interactive exhibition has already toured more than 80 locations in more than 30 countries and has been seen overwhelmingly across the world.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a photo story about 60 years of friendship between Nepali and German citizens.

Germany, through GIZ, is supporting Alternative Energy Promotion Center (AEPC) in promotion and development of renewable energy technologies in various municipalities and rural municipalities, the statement said.

KATHMANDU: Minister for Communications and Information Technology Gokul Baskota has asserted that the government is preparing for the implementation of 5G soon. He said that the expansion of ‘4G’ technology was accorded highest priority by the government.

Minister Baskota said that the recently held Nepal Investment Summit had also emphasized on the development and expansion of information and technology in the country.

Inaugurating the Nepal Mobile Congress-2019 organized here today by the Chinese telecommunication giant Huawei, Minister Banskota said the government was working towards making Nepal a digital country.

Seeking cooperation from all sectors to achieve the vision of ‘Digital Nepal’, Baskota sought support from investors, private sectors in development, and expansion of information and technology.

According to the Minister, the government was seeking investment in information technology and launch a new information and technology act to end the existing hassles, if any, prevailing at the policy-level.

“Nepal is paving its path towards Nepal digital economy. Information Technology would be optimally employed in education, health, agriculture, tourism, forest, irrigation and energy sector,” the Minister observed.

Reminding that Prime Minister KP Oli had instructed to bring into effect the digital framework within five years, Minister Baskota expressed his confidence that Nepal would make a stride in the field of information and technology.

Huawei, which has been working in Nepal since 1999, has its presence in more than 170 countries across the globe.

The four-day event showcases the works carried out by the Chinese telecom giant.

Huawei’s Executive Chief for Nepal, Denny Deng, urged all sides for digital economy and shared about the activities of the Huawei.

SYDNEY: Facebook Inc said it would toughen measures to fight fake news in Australia, media reports said.

It said it will also ‘briefly block’ foreigners from buying political advertisements in the lead-up to a national election, which is due in a few weeks, according to reports.

In Australia, it is, however, not clear which foreigners sought to buy campaign ads. However, the government warned in 2017 of Chinese interference attempts and said in February a foreign government had hacked parliament’s computer network.

Facebook’s move also comes particularly in the wake of the mass shooting at a mosque in New Zealand.

According to reports, foreigners would be forbidden from buying advertising mentioning political parties, slogans and logos. (Agencies)

NEW YORK:  Cats can respond to the sound of their own names, according to a study. Japanese scientists said that they have provided the first experimental evidence that cats can distinguish between words that we people say.

Atsuko Saito of Sophia University in Tokyo says there’s no evidence cats actually attach meaning to our words, not even their own names. Instead, they’ve learned that when they hear their names they often get rewards like food or play, or something bad like a trip to the vet. And they hear their names a lot. So the sound of it becomes special, even if they don’t really understand it refers to their identity.

Saito and colleagues describe the results of their research in the journal Scientific Reports. In four experiments with 16 to 34 animals, each cat heard a recording of its owner’s voice, or another person’s voice, that slowly recited a list of four nouns or other cat’s names, followed by the cat’s own name.

Many cats initially reacted — such as by moving their heads, ears or tails — but gradually lost interest as the words were read. The crucial question was whether they’d respond more to their name. Sure enough, on average, these cats perked up when they heard their own name.

Kristyn Vitale, who studies cat behavior and the cat-human bond at Oregon State University in Corvallis but didn’t participate in the new work, said the results “make complete sense to me.”

(Agencies)

CHENNAI: Saying that the popular Chinese video app TikTok has been encouraging pornography, an Indian court has ordered a ban on the video app.

According to news carried by Indian media, the Madras High Court has also directed the media from telecasting videos made using the app.

The court while hearing a petition maintained that children using TikTok were vulnerable to exposure to sexual predators. The app that allows users to create and share short videos with special effects has over 54 million monthly active users in India.

SAN FRANCISCO: The news of Facebook user data being publicly exposed has brought a new height of security of Facebook.  Security researchers have uncovered more instances of Facebook user data being publicly exposed on the internet, further underscoring its struggles as it deals with a slew of privacy and other problems.

UpGuard, the research based company said that the data, which included user names and passwords, came from two different Facebook apps that stored their data publicly on Amazon’s cloud services. Facebook said the databases have been taken down.

The databases were from a Mexico-based media company called Cultura Colectiva, which included more than 540 million records — like user comments and likes — and from an app called At the Pool. The researchers said passwords stored for At the Pool were “presumably” for the app and not for Facebook. Still, storing them publicly could put people at risk if they used the same passwords across different accounts.

While the At the Pool data collection was not as large as that for Cultura Colectiva, UpGuard said it included plain text passwords for 22,000 users. The app itself shut down in 2014, and UpGuard said it is not known how long the user details were exposed.

The discovery comes a little over a year after Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal , in which the data mining firm affiliated with Donald Trump got personal data on millions of Facebook users.

“As Facebook faces scrutiny over its data stewardship practices, they have made efforts to reduce third party access. But as these exposures show, the data genie cannot be put back in the bottle,” UpGuard wrote in its blog post. “Data about Facebook users has been spread far beyond the bounds of what Facebook can control today.”

SEOUL: South Korea is commercially launching the fifth-generation (5G) services on Friday to become the first country to roll out the latest wireless technology with Samsung Electronics’ new 5G-enabled smartphone Galaxy S10.

Ryu Young-sang, executive vice president at SK Telecom, said the country’s telecom companies have been providing services meeting the South Korean customers’ high standard in speed and picture quality.

According to him, 5G will change the landscape of the gaming industry since it will allow games streamed with minimal delay to be played on smartphones.

The 5G technology can offer 20-times faster data speeds than 4G long-term evolution (LTE) networks. It will also better support for artificial intelligence. (Agencies)

MUMBAI: The messaging platform WhatsApp said it has launched a service for Indians to check the reality of information on its platform ahead of national elections beginning this month.

It said the service was launched in an attempt to combat fake news, Reuters reported.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, WhatsApp said it was working with local startup Proto. It will be classifying messages send by users as true, false, misleading or disputed.