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[fastworldnews1]

Melody queen Nayyara Noor passes away at 71

Renowned Pakistani singer Nayyara Noor has passed away after a brief illness in Karachi at the age of 71, her family confirmed on Sunday.

The musical legend had been under treatment for the last some days in the port city.

Her funeral prayers will be offered at 4pm today at Masjid/Imambargah Yasrab located in DHA, according to the family.

The singer will be laid to rest to at a DHA Phase 8 cemetery.

Nayyara Noor, the melody queen of Pakistan, was one of the top playback singers in the country. With no formal musical background, Noor also did not receive any formal training in music, however, she proved her God-gifted singing talents all over the subcontinent.

She was born on November 3, 1950, in Guwahati, Assam where she spent her early childhood days. She was seven when her family migrated to Pakistan.

From her early childhood, she took fancy to Begum Akhtar's ghazals, thumris and Kanan Devi's bhajans. Later, in 1968, Noor started singing songs on Radio Pakistan and then on Pakistan Television in 1971. The singer then never looked back as her unstoppable musical journey began.

In 1973, she was accorded the Nigar Award for Best Playback Singer in the film Gharana. In 1977, her reputation peaked as the songs of the film Aaina touched the hearts of Pakistanis.

Hundreds of Nayyara Noor's songs for Pakistani films are still fresh in her fans' memories even today. Her fans across the subcontinent remember her ghazals even today.

Nayyara Noor showed her excellence while working with every major composer for film and TV during her time. She sang Ahmed Shamim's 'Kabhi Hum Bhi Khoobssorat Thay' for the PTV drama serial 'Teesra Kinara.'

Nayyara liked to sing Ibn-e-Insha's ghazals as she believed they carry a unique pathos, like 'Jalay tau jalao gori'.

Initially, she came to be known for singing Faiz Ahmad Faiz's poetry. Her iconic rendition of Faiz's poetry turned out to be probably the most known and celebrated work she produced in 1976 as a birthday gift for Faiz.

In her long career as a singer, Nayyara Noor received a lot of praise and was given the title of Bulbul-e-Pakistan (Nightingale of Pakistan).

In 2006, Noor was honoured with the Pride of Performance Award, and in 2012, she bid farewell to her professional singing career by saying that it is honourable to step back in time.

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[fastworldnews1]

What are the most-hated apps in the world?

Customer satisfaction is very important when it comes to mobile apps and according to a recent study by DotNek, this satisfaction has fallen in recent years.

There are some apps that are loved by customers and some that are absolutely hated. Many factors contribute to these feelings like user interface and frequency and number of ads.

Experts at Electronics Hub decided to study how much apps were liked or disliked around the world.

The team analysed more than three million geotagged tweets related to different dating, mobile games, social media, and money transferring and social media apps.

Their analysis showed that mobile games got relatively fewer negative reviews. However, Roblox emerged as the most-hated app in 21 countries.

The most hated app on the planet turned out to be the dating app Hinge with 34.4% of tweets talking about their negative experience with the app.

Dating apps, in general, were found to be the most hated category of applications.

Some countries were found to be more critical of apps in general including Ireland, New Zealand, Jersey, and Jamaica.

Cultural differences were also clearly observed in the study. Most of the wealthy English-speaking world and the Middle East hated the dating app Tinder. In Iran, 71.4% of all tweets about Tinder were negative which is the highest percentage.

South America hated e-commerce apps the most with Amazon topping their list of most-hated apps.

The data from mobile analytics firm Tune showed that apps mostly drive people insane forcing them to uninstall and reinstall the app. It turns out that is common to be frustrated by this process as 41% of the apps are reinstalled after being uninstalled.

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[fastworldnews1]

Video: Self-driving Tesla seen running over child mannequin

A Tesla in its self-driving mode can be seen running over a child mannequin multiple times during a test drive by a safety campaign group.

The "deeply disturbing" video shows how Tesla was unable to detect the dummy in front of it and ran over it at an average speed of 25mph. The Dawn Project, which carried out the experiment, claimed that it was executed under "controlled conditions" on a test track.

MailOnline reached out to billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk for his comments but have not received a response yet.

MailOnline reported that the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was investigating Tesla's Autopilot active driver assistance system.

In the self-driving mode, cameras, ultrasonic sensors, and radar are supposed to see and sense the surroundings of the car.

"The deeply disturbing results of our safety test of Tesla full self-driving should be a rallying cry to action," said Dan O'Dowd, founder of The Dawn Project.

The video can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHIgawTRCv8

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[fastworldnews1]

Pakistan reports 628 new COVID-19 cases, 3 more deaths

Pakistan has reported 3 deaths in the last 24 hours by coronavirus as the number of confirmed positive cases has surged to 1,559,929. The nationwide tally of fatalities has jumped to 30,508 on Monday.

According to the latest figures by the National Institute of Health (NIH), at least 628 persons were tested positive for COVID-19 across the country in the past 24 hours.

Pakistan has conducted 19,451 tests in the past 24 hours out of which 628 persons were tested positive for the disease. The COVID Positivity Ratio was recorded at 3.23 percent.

COVID-19 Statistics 08 August 2022 Total Tests in Last 24 Hours: 19,451 Positive Cases: 628 Positivity %: 3.23% Deaths: 03 Patients on Critical Care: 163

— NIH Pakistan (@NIH_Pakistan) August 8, 2022

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[fastworldnews1]

Molecules that can reverse ageing discovered

Researchers from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem say they found a group of molecules that repair damaged cells which degenerate over time. The discovery is also linked to a new pill that prevents age-related diseases like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s.

To conduct the study, the researchers developed a drug to protect human cells from damage, which allows a person’s tissues to retain their function for a longer period.

 “Mitochondria, the cell’s ‘power plants,’ are responsible for energy production. They can be compared to tiny electric batteries that help cells function properly.

"Although these ‘batteries’ wear out constantly, our cells have a sophisticated mechanism that removes defective mitochondria and replaces them with new ones,” Professor Einav Gross explained in a media release.

However, the mechanism breaks down as people grow older, which can lead to cell dysfunction and diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and heart failure.

The team is hopeful that their oral pill may act as a preventative measure to repair cellular breakdown before a disease is triggered.

 “Ben-Sasson’s and Gross’s findings have significant value for the global ageing population,” said Itzik Goldwaser, CEO of Yissum.

 “As Vitalunga advances towards pre-clinical studies, they’re closer than ever to minimising the unbearable burden that ageing-related diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, have on individuals, their families and our health care systems.”

The study was published in Autophagy.

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[fastworldnews1]

Pakistan reports 673 coronavirus cases in 24 hours

Pakistan has reported no death in the last 24 hours by novel coronavirus as the number of confirmed positive cases has surged to 1,558,657. The nationwide tally of fatalities stands at 30,505. According to the latest figures by the National Institute of Health (NIH), at least 673 persons were tested positive for COVID-19 across the country in the past 24 hours. Pakistan has conducted 20,735 tests in the past 24 hours out of which 673 persons were tested positive for the disease. The COVID Positivity Ratio was recorded at 3.25…

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[fastworldnews1]

Facebook to shut down live shopping feature

Facebook's QVC-like Livestream feature, live shopping, that let creators showcase and sell their products to their audience, is shutting down on October 1. The company intends to divert its focus to Reels instead.

TechCrunch explained that though the shopping feature would be disappearing from Facebook, it would still be available on Instagram. The company said, "As consumers’ viewing behaviors are shifting to short-form video, we are shifting our focus to Reels on Facebook and Instagram, Meta’s short-form video product."

Initially rolled out in Thailand in 2018, and globally by 2020, the shopping feature had let influencers host their own shopping session by broadcasting their products and putting them up for purchase. The feature was greatly successful in China but failed in the rest of the world. Last month TikTok announced that it was pulling back on its shopping tab feature in Europe and US, due to slow response.

Facebook is dedicated to improving on its Reels, its short-form video feature, which it launched just last year. Facebook and Instagram have been striving to compete with short video content similar to that of TikTok, which has grasped the interest of young people.

Previously Instagram deliberated on introducing video content algorithms like TikTok but had met with criticism from its users for moving away from the photo-sharing essence of the platform. The criticism compelled the social media company to withdraw the changes it had made but it continues to invest in short-video content.

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[fastworldnews1]

James Webb telescope captures the most distant star in marvelous detail  

The James Webb Telescope has taken a new image of the most distant star, nearly 28 billion light years away, and has captured it in stunning detail.

Researchers were able to spot galaxies and had a glimpse of a star called Earendel using the telescope.

Earendel means 'morning or rising star' and is situated in a galaxy called Sunrise Arc. The star is aligned with the galaxy cluster providing maximum magnification.

Dan Coe at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland said, “Nobody’s ever seen a star this highly magnified, not to mention a galaxy.”

Since light takes time to travel, the pictures of the star Earendel are the way it was 900 million years ago, soon after the Big Bang.

JWST is expected to have its next round of observation in December which will reveal what Earendel and Sunrise Arc are composed of. Coe says, "We’re all made of starstuff, but that stuff wasn’t around in the early universe. This is a rare opportunity to see if the heavy elements were there in this star 13 billion years ago.”

Astronomers from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland wrote in a published paper, "JWST was designed to study the first stars. Until recently, we assumed that meant populations of stars within the first galaxies. But in the past three years, three individual strongly lensed stars have been discovered. This offers new hope of directly observing individual stars at cosmological distances with JWST."

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[fastworldnews1]

France, Italy and Spain ask Big Tech to share Europe network costs

France, Italy and Spain are stepping up pressure on the European Commission to come up with legislation that ensures Big Tech firms partly finance telecoms infrastructure in the bloc, a document showed on Monday.

This was the first time the three governments have expressed their joint position on the issue.

EU regulators said in May they were analysing the question of whether tech giants Alphabet's Google, Meta and Netflix should shoulder some of the costs of upgrading telecoms networks.

In a joint paper, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, the three governments said the six largest content providers accounted for 55% of internet traffic.

"This generates specific costs for European telecom operators in terms of capacity, at a time they are already hugely investing in the most costly parts of the networks with 5G and Fiber-To-The-Home," the document said.

It urged that European telecom networks and large online content providers pay fair shares of network costs.

"We call for a legislative proposal...ensuring all market players contribute to digital infrastructure costs," the document said.

Two Italian government officials confirmed the details of the joint document. One of them said Rome's government was set to give informal support in its caretaking capacity ahead of a general election in September.

The French and Spanish governments did immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to a study released by telecoms lobbying group ETNO earlier this year, an annual contribution of €20 billion to network costs by the tech giants could give a €72 billion boost to the EU economy.

However, digital rights activists have warned making Big Tech pay for networks could threaten EU net neutrality rules, which they feared could be watered down in a deal with online giants to help fund telecoms network.

Any legislative proposal should "ensure fairness between users in accordance with the net neutrality rules, which is a core principle we absolutely need to preserve," the joint document said.

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[fastworldnews1]

New research debunks popular myth about overuse of smartphones

UCL researchers found that using smartphones can actually boost memory skills, debunking the popular myth that overuse of technology leads to memory loss.

Surprisingly, the study shows that using smartphones helps people remember both information that is saved and also not saved on the device.

 “We found that when people were allowed to use external memory, the device helped them to remember the information they had saved into it. This was hardly surprising, but we also found that the device improved people’s memory for unsaved information as well,” said senior author Dr Sam Gilbert (UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience), in a media release.

To conduct the study, researchers developed a memory task played on a digital device by 158 participants between the ages of 18 and 71.

The volunteers were shown up to 12 numbered circles on-screen and were told to remember to drag the circles either to the left or right. One side was considered “high value” and would earn participants more money at the end of the experiment than if they dragged the circle to the “low value” side.

Researchers found that participants tended to use digital devices to store the details of the high-value circles, which improved their memory by 18%. Participants’ memory for low-value circles also improved by 27%.

“The results show that external memory tools work,” said Dr Gilbert. “Far from causing ‘digital dementia’, using an external memory device can even improve our memory for information that we never saved.

But we need to be careful that we back up the most important information. Otherwise, if a memory tool fails, we could be left with nothing but lower-importance information in our own memory.”

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[fastworldnews1]

Pakistan reports 656 Covid cases

Pakistan reports 656 new coronavirus cases and one death during the last 24 hours, said the National Institute of Health in its update on Monday morning.

According to fresh statistics, the COVID-19 positivity rate in Pakistan surged to 3.35 percent.

As many as 656 new COVID-19 infections were detected after testing on 19,611 samples in the last 24 hours, taking Pakistan's total cases to 1,554,591.

Meanwhile, 161 people suffering from the virus are being treated in critical care units.

  COVID-19 Statistics 01 August 2022 Total Tests in Last 24 Hours: 19,611 Positive Cases: 656 Positivity %: 3.35% Deaths: 01 Patients on Critical Care: 161

— NIH Pakistan (@NIH_Pakistan) August 1, 2022

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[fastworldnews1]

Instagram to pause ‘TikTok-like features’

Instagram will pause features that users have campaigned against and complained make the social network too much like TikTok, according to a report in the Platformer tech newsletter.

Celebrity sisters Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner were some of the most vocal users to have posted messages on social media this week calling for the company to “make Instagram Instagram again” and stop trying to be like TikTok.

The slogan sprang from a Change.org petition that had received more than 229,000 signatures as of late Thursday. “Let’s go back to our roots with Instagram and remember that the intention behind Instagram was to share photos, for Pete’s sake,” the petition read.

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri had responded to the controversy earlier this week with a video on Twitter in which he said the features were a work in progress, and being tested with a small number of users.

Changes included playing up short-form video, displaying it full-screen the way TikTok does, and recommending posts from strangers. “We are going to have to lean into that shift.” Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg backed that position during an earnings call on Wednesday, saying that people are increasingly watching videos online.

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[fastworldnews1]

China launches second of three space station modules

China on Sunday launched the second of three modules needed to complete its new space station, state media reported, the latest step in Beijing’s ambitious space programme.

The un-crewed craft, named Wentian, was propelled by a Long March 5B rocket at 2:22pm (0622 GMT) from the Wenchang launch centre on China’s tropical island of Hainan.

A quarter of an hour later, an official from the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) confirmed the “success” of the launch.

Hundreds of people gathered on nearby beaches to take photos of the launcher rising through the air in a plume of white smoke. After around eight minutes of flight, “the Wentian lab module successfully separated from the rocket and entered its intended orbit, making the launch a complete success,” the CMSA said.

Beijing launched the central module of its space station Tiangong — which means “heavenly palace” — in April 2021.

Almost 18-metre long and weighing 22 tonnes, the new module has three sleeping areas and space for scientific experiments.

It will dock with the existing module in space, a challenging operation that experts said will require several high-precision manipulations and the use of a robotic arm.

“This is the first time China has docked such large vehicles together, which is a delicate operation,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

He said until the next module arrives, the space station will have a “rather unusual L-shape�� which will take a lot of power to keep stable.

“These are all technical challenges that the USSR pioneered with the Mir station in the late 1980s, but it’s new to China,” he said. “But it will result in a much more capable station with the space and power to carry out more scientific experiments.”

Wentian will also serve as a backup platform to control the space station in the event of a failure. The third and final module is scheduled to dock in October, and Tiangong — which should have a lifespan of at least 10 years — is expected to become fully operational by the end of the year.

Under Chinese President Xi Jinping, the country’s plans for its heavily promoted “space dream” have been put into overdrive. China has made large strides in catching up with the United States and Russia, where astronauts and cosmonauts have decades of experience in space exploration.

“The CSS (Chinese Space Station) will complete its construction... in one and half a year which will be the fastest in history for any modular space station,” said Chen Lan, analyst for the site Go-Taikonauts.com, which specialises in China’s space programme. “In comparison, the constructions of Mir and the International Space Station took 10 and 12 years, respectively.”

China’s space programme has already landed a rover on Mars and sent probes to the Moon. In addition to a space station, Beijing is also planning to build a base on the Moon and send humans there by 2030.

China has been excluded from the International Space Station since 2011, when the United States banned NASA from engaging with the country.

While China does not plan to use its space station for global cooperation on the scale of the ISS, Beijing has said it is open to foreign collaboration.

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Scientists sure Webb telescope has found oldest known galaxy

Just a week after its first images were shown to the world, the James Webb Space Telescope may have found a galaxy that existed 13.5 billion years ago, a scientist who analysed the data said on Wednesday.

Known as GLASS-z13, the galaxy dates back to 300 million years after the Big Bang, about 100 million years earlier than anything previously identified, Rohan Naidu of the Harvard Center for Astrophysics said.

“We’re potentially looking at the most distant starlight that anyone has ever seen,” he said.

The more distant objects are from us, the longer it takes for their light to reach us, and so to gaze back into the distant universe is to see into the deep past.

Although GLASS-z13 existed in the earliest era of the universe, its exact age remains unknown as it could have formed anytime within the first 300 million years.

GLASS-z13 was spotted in so-called “early release” data from the orbiting observatory’s main infrared imager, called NIRcam — but the discovery was not revealed in the first image set published by Nasa last week.

When translated from infrared into the visible spectrum, the galaxy appears as a blob of red with white in its centre, as part of a wider image of the distant cosmos called a “deep field”, Naidu and colleagues — a team totalling 25 astronomers from across the world — have submitted their findings to a scientific journal.

For now, the research is posted on a “preprint” server, so it comes with the caveat that it has yet to be peer-reviewed — but it has already set the global astronomy community abuzz.

“Astronomy records are crumbling already, and more are shaky,” tweeted Nasa’s chief scientist Thomas Zurbuchen.

“Yes, I tend to only cheer once science results clear peer review. But this looks very promising,” he added.

Naidu said another team of astronomers, led by Marco Castellano that worked on the same data, has achieved similar conclusions, “so that gives us confidence”.

One of the great promises of Webb is its ability to find the earliest galaxies that formed after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago.

Because these are so distant from Earth, by the time their light reaches us, it has been stretched by the expansion of the universe and shifted to the infrared region of the light spectrum, which Webb is equipped to detect with unprecedented clarity.

Naidu and colleagues combed through this infrared data of the distant universe, searching for a telltale signature of extremely distant galaxies.

Below a particular threshold of infrared wavelength, all photons — packets of energy — are absorbed by the neutral hydrogen of the universe that lies between the object and the observer.

By using data collected through different infrared filters pointed at the same region of space, they were able to detect where these drop-offs in photons occurred, from which they inferred the presence of these most distant galaxies.

“We searched all the early data for galaxies with this very striking signature, and these were the two systems that had by far the most compelling signature,” said Naidu.

One of these is GLASS-z13, while the other, not as ancient, is GLASS-z11.

“There’s strong evidence, but there’s still work to be done,” said Naidu.

In particular, the team wants to ask Webb’s managers for telescope time to carry out spectroscopy — an analysis of light that reveals detailed properties — to measure its precise distance.

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[fastworldnews1]

October trial set in Musk, Twitter buyout battle

Twitter and Elon Musk were ordered on Tuesday to trial in October over whether the Tesla chief can be forced to complete his $44 billion deal to buy the social network, an early win for the uncertainty-wracked platform.

A judge in the eastern US state of Delaware ruled against Musk’s push for a February date, while hewing closely to Twitter’s desire for an expedited schedule.

Billions of dollars are at stake, but so is the future of the platform that Musk has said should allow any legal speech, an absolutist position that has sparked fears the network could be used to incite violence.

“We urge the court to enter a prompt schedule and give multiple grounds for that,” Twitter lawyer William Savitt argued, noting “the continued uncertainty caused by Musk’s purported termination inflicts harm on Twitter every day, every hour of every day.”

Musk’s team had argued fiercely against an expedited trial date, saying Twitter’s preferred date in September was simple too fast for such a complex matter. The judge did not set an exact date, leaving it to the parties to converge on the timing.

Twitter lawyers noted the deal is supposed to close toward the end of October, just six months after Musk launched an unsolicited bid that the company’s board first resisted but then supported.

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[fastworldnews1]

TikTok removes 12.5m videos from Pakistan in first quarter of 2022

Popular video-sharing platform TikTok has said that it removed nearly 12.5 million videos from Pakistan in the first quarter (January to March) of 2022 for violating community guidelines, placing the country second on the list of largest volume of videos removed.

In a press release, TikTok said as per the latest "Community Guidelines Enforcement Report", Pakistan had a removal rate of 96.5 per cent before any views and 97.3pc before 24 hours.

The report reflects the platform’s ongoing commitment to earn trust by being accountable while working to be safe and welcoming. Efforts include fostering authentic engagement across the comment space, safety reminders for creators and adhering strictly to the extensive community guidelines, it said.

"A proactive removal rate of 98.5 per cent was used by TikTok to remove 12,490,309 Pakistani videos," the press release said.

With these figures, Pakistan ranks second in the world for the largest volume of videos taken down in the first quarter of 2022, following the United States which ranks first with 14,044,224 videos removed.

In this quarter, 102,305,516 videos were removed globally, which represents about one per cent of all videos uploaded to TikTok, the statement added.

TikTok explained that the videos were removed for violating its "robust set of community guidelines that are designed to foster an experience that prioritizes safety, inclusion, and authenticity".

In addition, the report showed that in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, TikTok's safety team removed 41,191 videos, 87pc of which violated its policies against harmful misinformation.

"TikTok also labelled content from 49 Russian state-controlled media accounts. The platform also identified and removed six networks and 204 accounts globally for coordinated efforts to influence public opinion and mislead users about their identities."

The report also showed that the total volume of ads removed for violating TikTok's advertising policies and guidelines increased in the first quarter of 2022, the press release concluded.

A tale of four bans

The first time the Chinese-owned app was banned in Pakistan was in October 2020. According to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the decision was taken over complaints regarding indecent and immoral content. It was lifted 10 days later after the company had assured the telecom regulator that it would block accounts "spreading obscenity".

In March 2021, the Peshawar High Court (PHC) had also imposed a ban on the video-​sharing application that was later lifted in April.

In June the same year, the Sindh High Court had followed suit and ordered the PTA to suspend access to TikTok in the country for “spreading immorality and obscenity”. The court had lifted the suspension three days after issuing the order.

However, the PTA had blocked access to the platform again in July 2021 for its failure to take down "inappropriate content".

Later in November the same year, the PTA had restored TikTok in the country following assurances by the Chinese social media giant that it would "control" the uploading and dissemination of "immoral and indecent content" on the app.

The PTA had also agreed to establish a mechanism with TikTok to ensure that all content uploaded on the platform was lawful and safe for society.

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Facebook to allow up to five profiles tied to one account

Meta Platforms Inc said on Thursday its flagship social network Facebook is introducing ways for users to maintain up to five profiles, a major shift from the "real name" requirement the company has maintained since its inception.

The product change would "help people tailor their experience based on interests and relationships," like posting different types of content aimed at family versus friends, Meta said in a statement.

The company will continue to require that each user have only one Facebook account, with the main profile that continues to use the person's real name. People will be able to access any additional profiles they create after logging in to that account.

The change grants users formal leeway to semi-anonymize their identity on the world's biggest social network, in keeping with options offered by competitors like TikTok and Twitter, as well as Meta's own photo and video app Instagram.

In its statement, Meta said its rules against impersonation and other types of misleading representations of identity would continue to apply to all profiles.

A Meta spokesperson said the company was testing the new approach in certain countries but declined to specify which ones.

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