World's oldest living person dies aged 117

Agencies
September 20, 2017

Washington, Sept 20: The world's oldest living person and the last living subject of Queen Victoria, Violet Mosse- Brown, has passed away at the age of 117 in Jamaica.

Brown is also the first verified supercentenarian from Jamaica. In 2015, she was given a letter by Queen Elizabeth II in honor of her 115th birthday.

Brown was born on March 10 in 1900, 67 years before Jamaica was founded, when it was still part of the British Empire.

Better known by family and friends as Aunt V, Brown officially claimed the title on July 27 this years aged 117 years and 139 days old, the Guinness World Records said.

Brown died on September 15 after being diagnosed with dehydration and irregular heartbeat.

"It was truly an honour to present Ms Violet Brown with her Guinness World Records certificate for being the oldest person living, as she put it, 'in the entire world'," said GWR's Carlos Martinez.

"Not every day does one have the opportunity to share some time with the person who has been on this planet the longest," said Martinez.

"Really and truly, when people ask what I eat and drink to live so long, I say to them that I eat everything, except pork and chicken, and I don't drink rum and dem tings," Brown had said when asked about her secret to long life.

Brown has seven children in total, four of whom are still living. Her first child, Harland Fairweather, died on April 19 this year at the age of 97 years and 4 days.

She shared another record for longevity with her 96- year-old child - the Highest combined age for a parent and child (living).

Harland Fairweather was born in Jamaica on 15 April 1920, which meant that he and his mother had a combined age of 213 years 345 days in March earlier this year, Guinness World Records said.

"As a child of 1900, Violet was born before the advent of zeppelins, vacuum cleaners and Nobel Prizes, and the world population was a quarter of what it is now," said Craig Glenday, Editor-In-Chief of the Guinness World Records.

The previous oldest living person, Emma Morano, passed away on April 15 this year, aged 117 years, 137 days.

The Oldest person ever to have lived is also female, Jeanne Calment from France who lived to 122 years and 164 days.

There is no current record holder for Oldest living male. Guinness World Records is consulting expertsto verify the potential successor for both the female and male titles.

According to the list of living supercentenarians maintainec by the Gerontology Research Group, Nabi Tajima from Japan is now the oldest living person, aged 117 years and 46 days.

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Agencies
June 9,2020

New Zealand's research institute in Antarctica is scaling back the number of projects planned for the upcoming season, in an effort to keep the continent free of coronavirus, it was reported on Tuesday.

The government agency, Antarctica New Zealand, told the BBC on Tuesday that it was dropping 23 of the 36 research projects.

Only long-term science monitoring, essential operational activity and planned maintenance will go ahead.

The upcoming research season runs from October to March.

"As COVID-19 sweeps the planet, only one continent remains untouched and (we) are focused on keeping it that way," Antarctica New Zealand told the BBC.

The organisation's chief executive Sarah Williamson said the travel limits and a strict managed isolation plan were the key factors for keeping Scott Base - New Zealand's research facility - virus free.

"Antarctica New Zealand is committed to maintaining and enhancing the quality of New Zealand's Antarctic scientific research. However, current circumstances dictate that our ability to support science is extremely limited this season" she said.

Earlier in April, Australia announced that it would scale back its activity in the 2020-21 summer season.

This included decreasing operational capacity and delaying work on some major projects.

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Agencies
June 24,2020

New Delhi, Jun 24: The Centre has made it mandatory for sellers to enter the 'Country of Origin' while registering all new products on government e-marketplace (GeM).

The e-marketplace is a special purpose vehicle (SPV) under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry which facilitates the entry of small local sellers in public procurement, while implementing 'Make in India' and MSE Purchase Preference Policies of the Centre.

Accordingly, the ministry said the move has been made to promote 'Make in India' and 'Atma Nirbhar Bharat'.

The provision has been enabled via the introduction of new features on GeM.

Besides the registration process, the new feature also reminds sellers who have already uploaded their products, to disclose their products' 'Country of Origin' details.

The ministry further said that failing to disclose the detail will lead to removal of the products from the e-marketplace.

"GeM has taken this significant step to promote 'Make in India' and 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat'," the ministry said in a statement.

"GeM has also enabled a provision for indication of the percentage of local content in products. With this new feature, now, the 'Country of Origin' as well as the local content percentage are visible in the marketplace for all items. More importantly, the 'Make in India' filter has now been enabled on the portal. Buyers can choose to buy only those products that meet the minimum 50 per cent local content criteria."

In case of bids, the ministry said that buyers can now reserve any bid for a "Class I Local suppliers. For those bids below Rs 200 crore, only Class I and Class II Local Suppliers are eligible to bid, with Class I supplier getting purchase preference".

In addition to this, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has reportedly called for a meeting with all e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart to display the country of origin on the products sold on their platform, as well as the extent of value added in India.

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Agencies
June 26,2020

Facebook will introduce a new notification screen on its platform that will warn users if the article they are about to share is over 90 days old, the company announced on Thursday.

“We’re starting to globally roll out a notification screen that will let people know when news articles they are about to share are more than 90 days old,” Facebook wrote in a blog post.

The social media platform had previously introduced a context button in 2018 that provides information about the sources of articles in the News Feed. Building upon that, the new feature will inform users about the timeliness of the article.

“To ensure people have the context they need to make informed decisions about what to share on Facebook, the notification screen will appear when people click the share button on articles older than 90 days, but will allow people to continue sharing if they decide an article is still relevant,” Facebook said.

The social media giant stated that timeliness is important in understanding the context of an article and curbing the spread of misinformation on the platform.

“News publishers, in particular, have expressed concerns about older stories being shared on social media as current news, which can misconstrue the state of current events. Some news publishers have already taken steps to address this on their own websites by prominently labelling older articles to prevent outdated news from being used in misleading ways,” Facebook added.

Apart from this, the platform will also be testing a similar notification screen for information related to the global Covid-19 pandemic. The notification screen will provide information about the source of the link shared in a post if the link is related to information on Covid-19. It will also direct people to its previously introduced Covid-19 information centre for “authoritative” health information, it said.

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