Kerry injured in bike accident in France, taken to Geneva
Geneva: US Secretary of State John Kerry was hospitalised here on Sunday after suffering a leg injury in a bike accident in France, the State Department said.
Kerry, 71, who was flown by a helicopter to the Geneva University Hospital is in stable condition. Kerry “is stable and… did not lose consciousness,” the State Department said in a statement. He met with the accident while bicycling near Scionzier, France, some 40km south-east of the Swiss border.
Paramedics and a physician were on the scene with the Kerry’s motorcade at the time of the accident. Kerry was in Switzerland for talks on the Iranian nuclear programme, and was due in Madrid tomorrow for the signing of a defence deal. Kerry is known for his love of cycling and often takes his bike with him when he travels. (PTI)
Indian-origin businessman honoured for public service in Singapore
Singapore: An Indian-origin businessman has been honoured for his commendable public service in Singapore, a media report said on Sunday.
Gautam Banerjee, senior managing director at Blackstone and co-chairman of its Asia operating committee, as well as chairman of Blackstone Singapore, was awarded the prestigious Public Service Medal by President Tony Tan Keng Yam on Saturday, AsiaOne online reported.
Having left Mumbai at the age of 16, Banerjee worked with leading financial firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for more than 30 years, with nine years as its executive chairman, until his retirement in December 2012.
Once nominated a member of parliament in Singapore, Banerjee currently serves on the board of Singapore Airlines Limited, the Indian Hotels Company Limited and is the vice chairman of the Singapore Business Federation.
He is also a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) and the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants (ISCA).
“Their strong support has led to the development of new capabilities in their respective sectors, and created exciting job opportunities for Singaporeans,” Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) chairman Beh Swan Gin said in a statement. (IANS)
Now, scream to click a selfie!
New York: With this new app, you can take a selfie by screaming at your phone.
The new iOS camera app called Triggertrap Selfie, launched by camera triggering company Triggertrap, activates the phone camera through sound inputs.
The method is simple: Just point your phone and scream at your camera, and the app will take care of snapping a shot for you, reported petapixel.com.
The app’s live view will initially show your face as a jumble of pixel blocks. To clear up the screen and snap a photo, just make some noise. “As soon as the shout hits the required number of decibels, the pixelated screen will clear and the camera snaps a selfie,” Triggertrap said. There is also a smart face detection built into the software that makes sure it only snaps a photo when there is a face in the frame. The selfie can be shared to Twitter from inside the app. Users can download Triggertrap Selfie for free from the Apple App Store. So, keep screaming. (IANS)
Google aims to turn your clothes into touchscreens
Washington: Tech giant Google is planning to make clothes act like touchscreens by weaving conductive yarns into textiles. Project Jacquard by Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) lab is developing smart yarn that is both touch-sensitive and strong enough to be woven into practically any piece of clothing. The touch-sensitive yarn contains thin, metallic alloys combined with standard yarn from materials like cotton or silk.
Jacquard yarns can either have prominent stitching – isolated patterns that make it clear to the wearer which part of their shirt doubles as a controller – or be woven seamlessly into the textile as a whole. “Using conductive yarns, bespoke touch and gesture-sensitive areas can be woven at precise locations, anywhere on the textile. Alternatively, sensor grids can be woven throughout the textile, creating large, interactive surfaces,” Google said on the project website. “The complementary components are engineered to be as discreet as possible. We developed innovative techniques to attach the conductive yarns to connectors and tiny circuits, no larger than the button on a jacket. “These miniaturised electronics capture touch interactions, and various gestures can be inferred using machine-learning algorithms,” Google said.
Captured touch and gesture data is wirelessly transmitted to mobile phones or other devices to control a wide range of functions, connecting the user to online services, apps, or phone features. In a demonstration, Google has used touch-sensitive fabric to control Philips’ Hue lights, ‘Gizmag’ reported.
A quick tap of the clothing turned the lights on and off, a swipe to the right scrolled through different colour settings and swipes up and down changed the brightness.
“Jacquard is a blank canvas for the fashion industry. Designers can use it as they would any fabric, adding new layers of functionality to their designs, without having to learn about electronics,” Google said. (PTI)
Two-and-a-half year old Singapore boy enters Mensa
Singapore: A two-and-a-half year old boy in Singapore with an incredible IQ of 142 has joined the genius club Mensa. Elijah Catalig is one of the youngest member of the Singapore chapter of Mensa – the society for people with IQs in the top two per cent of the population.
Elijah, aged just two years and six months, solves patterns, reads storybooks and plays IQ games meant for kids five years his senior.
His parents took him for a psychological test last month and discovered he has an IQ score of 142, which places him at the 99.7 percentile, straitstimes.com reported. Only seven children around his age have joined the local chapter of Mensa in the past four years. The youngest on its record is a boy aged two years and two months when Mensa accepted him last November. An average child has an IQ of 100.
Elijah took the Stanford Binet test which measures analytical and reasoning abilities. The IQ test, with a score of up to 160, is used widely around the world. He was tested on logic, mathematics, picture puzzles and number sequences. He scored the highest – 149 – in quantitative reasoning, the ability to use numerical skills to solve problems. (PTI)
Comic book to steer young Pakistanis away from extremism
Islamabad: When Taliban militants stormed a school in Pakistan’s northwest last December, killing 150 people, mainly children, in the country’s deadliest terror attack, comic book creators Mustafa Hasnain and Gauhar Aftab decided it was time to act.
The pair had already been working on a series to raise awareness about the corruption that plagues the economically- underperforming Muslim giant of 200 million people. But they quickly decided to shift their focus to violent extremism — and felt holding candle-light vigils was not the best way to effect change.
Hasnain, a British-educated computer graphics specialist, founded his own company Creative Frontiers in 2013, today employing 20 people, including young male and female artists, programmers and writers, in a hip Silicon Valley-style office in the city of Lahore. He explained: “It was a huge watershed moment for us. I got together with Gauhar and I said ‘We really have to do something about this’. “We used to stand over there (at vigils) with a candle… but we wanted to do something more.”
The result was “Paasban” — or “Guardian” — a three-part series featuring a group of close friends at college who begin to worry when one of them drops out to join a religious student group that is ostensibly working for charitable causes.
Some in the group however, suspect it may have darker aims. Fifteen thousand of the books are set to be distributed for free from June 1 at schools in the cities of Lahore, Multan and Lodhran while some copies will be made available in book stores. The comic will also be distributed on a tailor-made app the group have developed for Apple and Android smartphones. (AFP)
