Seventeen crew members of a ship docked at the Trincomale Habour have tested positive for Coronavirus.
All 17 patients are Indian nationals.
The ship has transported fuel to the Indian Oil Company.
The crew members have not disembarked from the vessel, Chief Epidemiologist Dr. Sudath Samaraweera told NewsWire. (NewsWire)
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Minnesota officials halted a door-to-door COVID-19 survey gauging the prevalence of the virus after residents intimidated and shouted racist slurs at health care workers, The Star Tribune reported.
The newspaper reported that the surveyors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were insulted by angry residents at their doors and from nearby neighbors.
One Hispanic surveyor said she had been called more slurs in the week of doing the survey than she had "in her entire life," according to The Star Tribune.
A state health official also told the newspaper one team felt threatened by three men, including one whose hand was on a holstered gun, though the city's mayor later disputed that account, said no one was armed, and that the men had approached due to concerns about an unmarked car with out-of-state license plates going door-do-door.
"In a small town where everyone knows everyone, a group of unfamiliar people with out-of-state plates is unusual, and to some residents is a cause for concern," Adamson said in a statement, according to MPR. "This situation was handled professionally, courteously and unbiased with no racial slurs, threats or inappropriate comments made."
The survey was part of the CDC's CASPER — Community Assessment for Public Health Emergency Response — door-to-door survey that determines the needs of each community following crises.
Per the Star Tribune, state public health officials opted to end the survey to protect surveyors from further harm.
The coronavirus pandemic has sparked hostility and even violence in many communities across the United States. A city in Oklahoma overturned a face mask mandate after residents threatened to harm employees wearing masks.
Retail workers at chains like Kroger, Costco, and Waffle House told Business Insider they've faced violence and threats when enforcing their stores' mask policies.
The pandemic has also brought about racial resentment, particularly towards Asian Americans, who say they've experienced an increase in xenophobia and discrimination this year. President Donald Trump has defended his use of the phrase "China virus" to refer to COVID-19.
Getty
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the UK would pledge £571 million ($727 million) to ensure the COVID-19 vaccine would get distributed to the world's poorest countries.
Johnson announced the move during a prerecorded speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday. The funding will go toward COVAX, an effort spearheaded by the World Health Organization to develop, manufacture, and distribute coronavirus vaccines evenly across the world.
In his remarks, Johnson urged countries to unite against the virus, which he called "common foe." He said the coronavirus has divided countries, resulting in a global patchwork of coronavirus regulations and closed borders.
"After nine months of fighting COVID-19, the very notion of the international community looks, frankly, pretty tattered," Johnson said. "And we know that we simply can't continue in this way. Unless we get our act together."
The US and China opted out of participating in COVAX, which an initial plan projects would raise funding from its wealthiest member countries to release vaccine doses to "all countries reach enough quantities to cover 20% of their population" before a second wave would allocate doses based on each country's "COVID threat and vulnerability."
The prime minister had initially been slow to issue country-wide stay-at-home mandates and distribute testing before contracting the virus himself on March 27. Johnson ordered restaurants to close and people to work from home earlier this week after the country recorded thousands of new cases in several parts of the country. A September study found coronavirus infections were doubling every week from people returning to work and increasing social interaction.
Johnson also said he would increase funding to WHO by 30%, or £340 million ($433 million) over the next four years.
"Here in the UK, the birthplace of Edward Jenner who pioneered the world's first vaccine, we are determined to do everything in our power to work with our friends across the UN, to heal those divisions and to heal the world," Johnson said.
Reese's
Everyone can agree that 2020 has been filled with stress and chaos. Now, brands are trying to capitalize on the year from hell.
This week, Reese's decided to launch its new Big Cups with Pretzels with a series of "salty" tweets.
"Yearning for the days when the world's biggest problem was that Reese's wasn't stuffed with pretzels," one reads.
"Spent the day sneering every time I heard 'the new normal' instead of 'the new Reese's.' Feeling pretty good about my time management skills," reads another.
—REESE'S (@reeses) September 21, 2020
Reese's explained that the new treat represents how people are feeling in 2020 — "keeping it together on the outside, but we're salty on the inside."
"Let's face it, we're all feeling a little bit salty this year," Ian Norton, Reese's senior director, said in a statement. "In true Reese's fashion, we channeled our feelings into sweet and salty deliciousness with new Reese's Big Cups with Pretzels."
There is plenty to feel "salty" about, though perhaps a more accurate word for some would be "depressed" or "enraged."
The unemployment rate is at 8.4%, as roughly 12.6 million Americans are currently receiving unemployment benefits. Millions of protesters have taken to the streets across America to rally against racism and police brutality since the killing of George Floyd on May 25. The US is a little over a month away from an election that President Trump has said he expects to "end up in the Supreme Court," while also refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses. More than 200,000 people in the US have died of COVID-19, and a widely available vaccine is still months away.
In March, brands were quick to update their marketing strategies to reflect the pandemic, as companies scrapped ads that showed people failing to social distance, hugging, or — in KFC's case — licking their fingers after eating fried chicken.
Many new advertisements early in the pandemic addressed the coronavirus head on. Budweiser and McDonald's were among the companies that ran ads celebrating first responders in April. But, as the pandemic stretches on, marketing has shifted to what executives call the "new normal."
Brands are now building strategies that acknowledge the general hellishness of this year, without focusing specifically on the coronavirus.
The most obvious channel that brands have used to show that they "get" 2020 is social media, where companies tend to be more casual and strive towards relatability. Burger King, for example, has tweeted numerous times about how terrible and bizarre this year has been.
—Burger King (@BurgerKing) May 21, 2020
—Burger King (@BurgerKing) July 22, 2020
—Burger King (@BurgerKing) September 15, 2020
—Burger King (@BurgerKing) May 19, 2020
Other campaigns that play on how horrible 2020 is include Natural Lights' offer to build a "mobile dorm" as colleges go remote due to COVID and one of KFC's temporary slogans in the UK: "It's make you forget about 2020 good."
People's struggles are also playing into companies' strategies in more subtle ways. For example, Starbucks and Dunkin' launched their Pumpkin Spice products earlier than ever before this year. The decision seems to have been sparked in part by people's desperation for 2020 to end — or at least to have something to brighten their days as the year dragged on.
"While there is so much uncertainty heading into the fall, one thing our fans can count on is the return of pumpkin at Dunkin'," Dunkin's vice president of marketing strategy, Jill Nelson, said in a statement to USA TODAY. "We're excited to bring them one of the most anticipated flavors earlier than ever before."
Katherine Cullen, NRF's senior director of industry and consumer insights, told Business Insider that people are looking for anything that will distinguish one day from the rest. For example, Americans who plan to celebrate Halloween are spending more money on costumes, decorations, and candy than ever before, allotting more than $92 simply to break up the monotony of 2020.
"It's a way to have a little joy and share a little joy at a time when people are dealing with a lot of uncertainty," Cullen said.
Sri Lanka ranked 2nd in latest World Survey on Pandemic Control conducted by the YICAI Research Institute in China
YICAI Research Institute is part of China’s largest financial media conglomerate Yicai Media Group based in Shanghai.
“Sri Lanka absolutely deserves a global recognition on it without any bias.” Chinese embassy in Colombo tweeted.
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Kraft
As the leaves turn orange, flannel-wearers everywhere anticipate the arrival of the classic drink: The Pumpkin Spice Latte. But this year, there's another seasonal treat to look forward to: Pumpkin Spice Mac & Cheese.
On Tuesday, Kraft Canada announced that they would be raffling off 1,000 boxes come October, and directed people to an online waitlist to enter for a chance to win. 30,000 Canadians signed up for the waitlist in 48 hours, according to Today. On Friday, Kraft announced that Americans have the chance to taste the special edition mac and cheese too.
"While Pumpkin Spice KD may be trolling the classic 'PSL', this spicy cheesy treat is very real and will come in a signature white cup with cinnamon spice topping," Kraft said in a press release.
The pasta dish is made with Kraft's traditional cheese powder and has a fall twist: cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and ginger. A box of Pumpkin Spice Mac & Cheese also comes with a coffee cup "with your name written on it (spelled wrong of course)," in a nod to the classic PSL — a not-so-subtle reference to Starbucks.
"After seeing the huge response Pumpkin Spice Mac & Cheese received north of the border, and even hearing some heated debates about it down here, we had to bring it to the U.S. for Americans to try," said Martina Davis, brand manager for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese said, according to Today.
Pumpkin Spice Mac & Cheese follows other unusual announcements from the classic brand. In August, Kraft released a Cheetos mac and cheese, complete with a Flamin' Hot flavor, and a special breakfast edition mac and cheese. In a press release titled, "It's Official: Kraft Mac & Cheese Is Approved for Breakfast," the company said that 56% of parents served their children mac and cheese for breakfast more often since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Curious cooks have until September 29 to enter the sweepstakes to win Pumpkin Spice Macaroni and Cheese. Only 1,000 lucky winners will be able to taste the experimental new dish.
Boston Globe / Contributor / Getty Images
A Louisiana school suspended and nearly expelled a fourth-grader for unintentionally showing a BB gun during his virtual class.
Ka Mauri Harrison, a 9-year-old in Harvey, Louisiana, moved a BB gun that his younger brother tripped on during an English test, Nola.com reported. The teacher attempted to speak to him, but because he muted the computer for the test, he was disconnected from the class. The school then called his parents notifying them of his suspension.
The school suspended Harrison for violating their policy for handling weapons in the classroom setting and the school's internet usage policy, according to the report. Expulsion had been recommended, but the school's hearing officer later opted not to expel Harrison.
Business Insider reached out to the school and the Harrison family for further comment.
The fourth grader's suspension is one of several instances of Black children being disciplined during the disorganized shift to online school, further perpetuating racial bias in education. In May, a Michigan judge incarcerated a 15-year-old Black girl for not completing her homework, leading to protests and petitions demanding her release. A Colorado school suspended and sent the sheriff to a 12-year-old Black boy's home for showing his toy gun in class.
Black students are disproportionately suspended or expelled, one of the ways that make up the "school-to-prison" pipeline. In Minneapolis, Black students made up 41% of the overall student population, but 76% of suspensions. In Paramus, New Jersey, Black students were 12.4 times more likely to get suspended than white students between 2015 to 2016.
Specifically, Black boys represented 8% of all enrolled students in 2015-2016 but accounted for a whopping 25% of all school suspensions, the US Education Department found.
Educators told The New York Time's Aaricka Washington that the rules set up to maintain order during "Zoom schooling" could lead to unnecessary discipline. But overseeing their children during the virtual school — an already tedious task for working parents — could particularly disadvantage Black and Latino families that faced higher job loss and illness during the pandemic.
"All the situations that we know make people vulnerable to bias exist in this situation," Miranda Johnson, a law professor at Loyola University Chicago who studies school discipline, told Chalkbeat. "High stress situations, people are at their limits both professionally and personally, lots of discretion in these decisions because there's not clear guidance, and everyone is sort of making things up as they go."
Courtesy of Jess Smith-Winchester
Back in February, I was prepping to find another job. 2019 was a fantastic year. Going into 2020, I said, I'm getting a new job. I wasn't necessarily let go because of COVID-19 — my company knew I was unhappy and applying to other jobs. So when the pandemic buzz started, I was the first to be let go. They've let others go since then because of business slowing, and they've been paying my unemployment.
I reached out to some offers and there was a lot of momentum, then people started getting cold feet. I immediately filed for unemployment. I didn't want to take a job, then get let go in a month and have to start over again, because I heard from multiple people that unemployment was becoming a mess to get on.
Right when I got let go, my husband got promoted and started working from home full-time, so he works longer days than ever. His job ramping up kind of pushed me into this homemaker role. We don't have kids, but he's the provider, and I find myself putting the house ahead of my career focus.
I'm not a homebody, so we've been doing some car travel for our mental health. But those are also times when I'm not looking for a job.
We used our stimulus check to pay off a credit card. My unemployment originally was equal to my salary before commission, so it was livable. Now, it's down to like $380 a week. We paid off my husband's student loans this past April, and it couldn't have happened at a better time.
I'm searching for jobs within my field. Competition and the potential career setback are big fears. I would take an entry-level position, but it would kind of break my heart because it wasn't until 2019 that I felt like I was making the kind of money I deserved to be making. I don't want this big gap in my work history, but I'm also being picky. At this point I don't necessarily have to settle for just anything.
While unemployed, I've taken jobs as a poll worker, done some photography gigs, I've been selling on Poshmark, and I'm attempting to monetize the blog I've had since 2007, along with my social media.
Now, day-to-day life looks like providing meals for myself and my husband, cleaning up, then tending to the house, our two cats, and our 100-plus plants. On weekdays, I try to work out, look at LinkedIn, apply for jobs, and do some photo editing. I'm an extrovert, so I also talk to friends and family a lot on FaceTime.
I graduated in 2008 into a recession, had a good job for three months, then got laid off. I got laid off again in 2011 during another dip in the economy, so this is essentially my third crisis. It's disheartening. But this time around I'm the most secure, money-wise, so I feel fortunate on that end.
Rob Lever/Getty Images
Dozens of heads bob in unison over a techno beat, their facial expressions synchronizing to match the face of a TikTok star lip synching the lyrics. As she mouths the words, videos of Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, Benedict Cumberbatch, an Easter Island head, and the clown from "It" follow along in perfect lock-step.
Unsurprisingly, the video isn't real — rather, it's an example of an AI-generated deepfake, and part of a meme that's sweeping platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
While deepfakes have typically been seen as sophisticated technology outside the reach of amateurs, new consumer-facing apps are making it increasingly easy to generate convincing lookalike videos that appear to show a person saying something that they never actually said.
So far, the arrival of these apps has spawned memes and social media trends that are mostly harmless — but experts warn that the increasing availability of the technology could spawn a misinformation crisis.
Many of the latest deepfake memes were made using RefaceAI, a new app that has built its own machine learning frameworks that enable users to take a selfie and merge it with a target video or gif to create a deepfake. Unlike face masking tools found on apps like Snapchat, Reface generates an entirely new video using the twin inputs, CEO and cofounder Roman Mogylnyi told Business Insider.
"Before, making a deepfake video could take a week or more, and even then you wouldn't be satisfied with the results," Mogylnyi said. "It was a challenge for us ... we wanted people to have Hollywood level post production on their phone."
Reface was founded by a group of Ukrainian software engineers but is incorporated in the US. After piloting an early version of their technology as a web service last year, Reface debuted on the App Store and Google Play stores in January 2020.
Since then, it's popularity has skyrocketed. Memes made with Reface have been retweeted by Elon Musk and Britney Spears, and the app soared to the top of app store charts in more than 100 countries. It has been downloaded more than 42 million times, and has been used to make hundreds of millions of deepfake gifs and videos, according to Chief Business Officer Dima Shvets.
—chrissy teigen (@chrissyteigen) August 26, 2020
Reface currently makes money through advertisements and premium subscriptions on its app, but its creators envision building an entire Reface platform similar to Snap's Bitmoji or Apple's Memoji that users could use to personalize their interactions and use across social media.
Experts have warned for years that deepfakes could pose a unique misinformation threat if they're weaponized to mislead people about the actions of an individual or public figure. As the technology becomes more widely available, those concerns are amplifying.
One of the earliest uses of deepfakes was to harass women by creating synthetic porn videos that grafted their faces onto sexually explicit content without their consent. It's also been used for political misinformation — a deepfake video that appeared to show Belgium's prime minister making false claims about COVID-19 went viral earlier this year before it was debunked.
Deepfake technology could be evolving too rapidly for public understanding to keep up, according to Nina Schick, author of a book titled Deepfakes: The Coming Infopocalypse.
"Unfortunately, I think synthetic media is so fun, the technology is so nascent, it's such an area for growth and so much private investment is backing it that it will just explode and the ethical and moral considerations will be three steps behind," Schick told Business Insider.
Reface is already taking steps to counter potential misinformation, Mogylnyi said. It has pornography detection meant to automatically remove nudity. The app currently only lets people make deepfakes using gifs or 10-second videos, and Reface is building out digital watermarking for all videos before it expands the tools available to users.
"Currently, in my opinion, we're only giving users access to 10% of the technology's capabilities," Mogylnyi said.
He added that Reface has shared its API with companies like Facebook to help build tools to detect deepfakes, and that Reface is working on its own detection tool that would let people upload media to check whether it's synthetic.
That approach was echoed by Sergey Tokarev, a lead investor of Reface who feels the technology's promises outweigh its potential risks.
"No technology can be safe from misuse in a negative way. But does it mean that technology should not be developed?" Tokarev said. "My point is that all technologies should serve the world development and be used in good faith."
Other startups dabbling in deepfake tech are choosing to deploy it through narrow avenues in order to avoid abuse. Kapwing, a San Francisco-based startup that makes video editing tools geared towards influencers, published a tutorial that links to the code to create a deepfake synced to one specific song that became popular on TikTok, without giving people tools to make a wider range of deepfakes. The video has been viewed more than 500,000 times.
"We've been very careful about our approach to this," Robert Martin, a strategist at Kapwing, told Business Insider. "I'm reluctant for us to do much more with this technology than what we've done here."
As deepfakes become more widespread, there could be a rise in "deepfake literacy," or people's general awareness of deepfakes and ability to spot the telltale quirks inherent in the videos. But future advances in technology could make deepfakes even more seamless — and, according to Schick, deepfakes becoming commonplace could reduce people's trust in real media.
"Everything can be fake, and everything can be denied" Schick said. "The democratization of this type of manipulation of media is just one step into the future, but I don't think we're ready for it."
