Greater Victoria residents have an opportunity to learn about space and take in its spectacular views for the first time in two years this May 7 as International Astronomy Day activities make their return.
The Victoria Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada is hosting a full day and evening of events at the Royal B.C. Museum and Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Saanich.
“This is the biggest astronomy outreach event in Canada, and we have really been missing it,” Victoria Centre president Randy Enkin said of the day’s significance. “There is a real hunger and interest for learning about the skies and things like the new James Webb telescope.”
The day kicks off at 10 a.m. just outside the RBCM, where volunteers will be making solar telescopes available for safe viewing of the sun. Inside the museum’s Clifford Carl Hall there will be astrophotography and history displays, hands-on activities for children and a series of lectures by society members and University of Victoria researchers.
The astronomy events at the museum are free of charge and run until 3 p.m., however, regular admission fees apply to the rest of the museum.
From 7:30 to 11 p.m., the Friends of Dominion Astrophysical Observatory will be hosting a lecture by Chris Gainor on the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes, as well as tours of the observatory and – weather permitting – views of the night sky through various telescopes on site.
“To be a good citizen of the world, it’s important to not just know the facts of science, but also the methods,” said Enkin. “We ask the questions, we develop methods to answer them, and we usually make our lives better for it. We use the methods of science to make our lives better. Astronomy is just one example.”
Due to COVID protocols, only 100 people will be able to attend events at the observatory, and free admission tickets must be obtained online ahead of the event.
While admission is limited, Enkin said those who miss out on a spot shouldn’t worry too much. The event is just the beginning of what is expected to be a summer full of “star parties” at the observatory.
They are planned for every two weeks until July, and will be expanded to weekly events from July on should everything go to plan.
27 April 2022, 12:00–13:00 Central European Summer Time (virtual event)
Cancer is a major health, social and public policy challenge and successfully tackling it requires an understanding of all its determinants. Although commercial determinants are a relatively new field of study, there are emerging themes which are very important for cancer policy along the cancer control continuum.
Commercial determinants are those private-sector activities that affect the health of populations. They can have a negative impact, as commercial interests can trump nobler health goals.
So, how do commercial determinants affect cancer control policies in Europe? What are the challenges and opportunities for governing them along the cancer control continuum? Join our webinar to learn more.
Prevalence of cancer in the European Region
Cancer is responsible for a high burden of disease within the WHO European Region. In 2020 alone, 4.8 million people in the Region were diagnosed with cancer, of whom a staggering 2.2 million people lost their lives.
By 2030, these numbers are estimated to reach 5.4 million new diagnoses annually and 2.5 million deaths each year. Additionally, these numbers will most likely be an under estimate given the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on delayed diagnosis and treatments. If efficient prevention and early detection strategies are in place, 30–40% of cancers are preventable. This is not being achieved due to cancer policy-making remaining quite far from what evidence and cost–effectiveness recommends, with treatment often being prioritized over prevention and early detection strategies, for example.
Cancer policy-making also differs significantly across the European Region, contributing to the widening of health inequalities within and between countries. Action on cancer prevention and control is a key priority to curb the burden of disease within the population of the European Region and to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal target to reduce by one third premature mortality from noncommunicable diseases by 2030.
Keynote speakers
Marilys Corbex, WHO Regional Office for Europe
Monika Kosinska, WHO headquarters
Speakers
Gauden Galea, WHO Representative Office in China
Stuart Hogarth, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Richard Sullivan, King’s College London, United Kingdom
Moderators
Matthias Wismar and Erica Richardson, European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies
This event is intended for policy-makers, advisors, national experts, medical and health-care professionals, members of professional societies, researchers, advocates and representatives of nongovernmental organizations.
Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout has started their April events leading up to a big announcement. Apparently Silent, “the greyest of the Blunderdome’s mysterious Showrunners“, wants to launch a satellite into the sky above the Blunderdome and any players that help out will get exclusive rewards.
When will the Fall Guys April events begin?
Starting from today, April 4, players can take part in the Satellite Stars: Adapt! event, which is a “grab bag of classic rounds and variations“. Those who manage to complete all of the challenges during the event will earn the Star Princess costume. The event will end on April 10.
After a gap of eight days, the second event will begin on April 18. Satellite Stars: Logic! is a playlist set exclusively in the jungle. Successful players will need to find shortcuts and perfectly calculate their way past stampeding rhinos. Those who are successful will get the Star Detective costume, but you only have until April 24 to grab it.
The final event begins on May 4. Satellite Stars: Bravery! is a series of Sweet Thieves challenges where players find the final pieces of the satellite. Completing these challenges earns the final costume in the set: Star Guy. Star Guy will be the bean in charge of taking the team into space to finish building the satellite. Once that’s done, there will be a big announcement, although Mediatonic isn’t dropping any hints as to what that might be.
In other news, Ron Gilbert and LucasFilm Games have announced a new title in the Monkey Island franchise. Return to Monkey Island is a direct sequel to Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge and will feature Guybrush Threepwood and Murray the Demonic Skull. Elsewhere, World of Tanks and World of Warships developer Wargaming has announced they will be withdrawing from Russia and Belarus, shutting down their Minsk studio in the process.
The first newly built large live events venue in central London for 80 years is set to open this summer.
Outnet Live is a state of the art 2,000-capacity venue. Part of Outernet London, an immersive media and culture district set to open later this year, it will host live music, dance, immersive theatre, awards shows and brand experiences.
Green Light Development founders Robert Butters and Karrie Goldberg will manage and operate the venue as joint venture partners. It is already open for bookings.
Before co-founding Green Light Development, Butters was CFO and VP for business development at Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group and SVP of business development at SFX (now Live Nation).
Goldberg is also the founder and CEO of venue and talent booking agency The Kagency and has programmed and managed spaces for artists including Beyoncé, Madonna and Lady Gaga as well as high-end brands such as Cartier and Louis Vuitton.
They’ll be joined by the venue’s new chief operating officer Tristan Hoffman, who’s previously worked on venues in New York and London, including BB Kings Blues Club in Times Square, artistic director Leo Green, a concert promoter who most recently served as Live Nation’s director of live events, operations manager Octavia Harwood, who joins from a five-year run as head of venue management at the O2 Arena and beverage director Shannon Tebay, who comes from Savoy Hotel’s American Bar.
As part of the venue, the 12 Bar Club will also be revamped with an increased 350 capacity.
“This area of London has an amazing tradition of brilliant venues but many of them have sadly gone,” said Philip O’Ferrall, CEO and president Outernet Global said. “To open Outernet Live as part of our wider culture and music district makes us all immensely proud. It is absolutely vital that artists and fans have a place to go in the centre of our city to perform and enjoy live music and we will welcome many other types of events to our venue as well. When you factor in the incredible things we can do with the Outernet screens we move to another level and our offering is something that really can’t be found anywhere else in the world. We love the history of Denmark Street and embrace what the future holds.”
Butters and Goldberg said: “We have two amazing venues that sit at the heart of London’s first music, media and culture district. Launching Outernet Live is going to be very special as we combine a world class venue with the power of the wider Outernet campus.”
Apple Inc AAPL-Q will likely announce a new low-cost version of its iPhone SE with 5G capabilities at its annual spring product launch event on Tuesday, analysts say.
The iPhone maker is also expected to launch a new version of the iPad Air and a high-end Mac Mini at the event.
Apple’s iPhone SE is currently priced at $399. CFRA Research analyst Angelo Zino said Apple could attract more price-sensitive consumers if the price remains the same for the new version.
“It could potentially provide upside to our unit iPhone estimate for 2022 if they keep that price point unchanged,” Zino said. “The iPhone SE really caters well to a lot of first-time buyers on the iPhone ecosystem that may be younger individuals, where their parents are going out there buying that device.”
The new phone would be the first update to the iPhone SE model in two years and is rumoured to come with an improved camera and a faster processor.
The United States, Japan and Western Europe have been the top markets for iPhone SE sales in recent years, said analyst Ryan Reith of IDC. Reith said these regions will likely remain the top markets after the anticipated launch of the third-generation iPhone SE.
“We probably won’t see big geography shifts,” Reith said, adding that he expects the new iPhone SE to account for 10 per cent of iPhone shipments globally after the launch.
IPhones with 5G capabilities have been a big part of Apple’s focus for its flagship product, with its latest-model iPhone 13 showing off custom 5G antennas and radio components for faster speeds as customers look for powerful devices with better connectivity.
But some analysts still point to the limitations of 5G technology globally.
“Currently in most countries in the world, that (5G) technology simply isn’t good enough to create a unique and differentiated experience … the fact that the iPhone SE comes with 5G is more a way to enable users to leverage 5G when that technology evolves over the next year or two,” Canalys research analyst Runar Bjørhovde said.
Zino said he does not anticipate services or accessories launches at the Tuesday event, though an unexpected announcement in the services sector is still possible.
Apple usually hosts three events every year to launch new products, starting in spring and announcing the launch of its latest iPhone range just before the holiday shopping season.
In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Apple said on March 1 it has paused all product sales in Russia. The company also said it has stopped all exports into its sales channels in the country and limited Apple Pay and other services in Russia.
The Russian state media, RT News and Sputnik News, are no longer available for download from the Apple Store outside Russia.
Be smart with your money. Get the latest investing insights delivered right to your inbox three times a week, with the Globe Investor newsletter. Sign up today.
The Realme GT 2 series is here, and Realme’s YouTube livestream is just warming up now.
We actually know a bit about these devices already, since they launched in China a few months ago, and you can see our Realme GT 2 hub here for all the news. Saying that, they could have changed some specs for the international launch, so we might be going in blind.
Welcome to (the official) Day 1 of MWC 2022!
We’ve got a few reporters on the ground, a few in the cloud (well, remotely), ready to bring you all the news from this super-busy day of tech.
There’s not too long to wait before the events start either.
Well, that’s it for TechRadar for today.
Thanks for following along with the MWC 2022 announcements that we’ve already seen, and we’ll pick this live blog back up bright and early tomorrow morning ready for the busy day of fun.
Tomorrow, or Day 1 as we’ll call it, is looking a lot busier. There’s set to be launch events from:
Realme
Xiaomi / Pocophone
Oppo
Honor
And maybe a few more brands besides. Each company could unveil multiple devices, and it could be a really busy couple of hours. So this is set to be the day when our coverage will really ramp up.
So what have we seen today, in day -1 of MWC?
Nope, it seems that’s it for the first pre-day of MWC. We’ll give brands a little more time before winding down this live blog for the day.
The very short Samsung event is over, and the laptops were the only products unveiled during it.
The pre-MWC day is nearly over, so if there’s more to come, we expect it to be along very shortly. Or maybe there isn’t.
(Image credit: Samsung)
Samsung’s event is for the Galaxy Book 2 Pro and Galaxy Book 2 Pro 5G – yep, those are some tongue-twister names.
Despute the ‘M’ in ‘MWC’ standing for ‘mobile’, lots of companies do show off their new laptops at the event, so this isn’t a huge surprise – but it does result in lots of mobile journalists having to work out lots of laptop specs!
Samsung’s event live stream has started, but we’re just seeing a looping animation of the Samsung MWC teaser at the moment. Expect the real deal to start in 10 minutes.
There’s about an hour to go until the next event: Samsung’s MWC event.
You can find a placeholder on YouTube here – it’s set to start 15 minutes before the event actually does, but there will probably be some pre-able footage beforehand. The real thing starts on the hour.
We don’t actually know what to expect from this event, so make sure to pay attention. Or not, that’s what this live blog is for after all.
(Image credit: TCL)
TCL also showed off a few more gadgets as part of its MWC collection.
The most interesting is the one that’s depicted above, the TCL NxtPaper Max 10, which is a 10-inch Android tablet with an E-Ink screen (like a Kindle). However it seems like this device is only releasing in Asia.
There are also a few more Android tablets, including a re-release of the NxtPaper 10s which we saw at CES in January.
The NxtWear Air was shown off, and these are some smart glasses, though again we’ve already seen them. Finally there was a huge collection of audio products with loads of true wireless earbuds that you might see on store shelves or Amazon soon.
(Image credit: TCL)
And there’s been another product launch, and this has brought us the first smartphones of MWC 2022.
These are five budget phones, and they’re all pretty similar too, but we don’t imagine all of them will drop in any one region.
(Image credit: Huawei)
One other interesting device from Huawei’s conference: the new MatePad. Yep, the successor to the Huawei MatePad 11 doesn’t have a number.
You can read our whole Huawei MatePad report here, but it’s a fairly low-cost HarmonyOS tablet that could be tempting for people who are split between an Amazon or iPad tablet.
It’s got a 10.4-inch 2K screen which seems like its biggest feature, but also stylus compatibility and a thin design.
(Image credit: Huawei)
Here’s another device from the Huawei press conference that we’re intrigued by: the Huawei Sound Joy may have a weird name, but it’s the company’s first-ever portable Bluetooth speaker.
This gadget has four speakers, a 8,800mAh battery life (26 hours of use, according to Huawei), IP67 resistance and costs €149 (around $170, £130 or AU$230, though availability hasn’t been confirmed yet).
We’ll have to test this out to see if Huawei can hold its own against Sonos or JBL, but it looks pretty neat.
(Image credit: Huawei)
So that Huawei event was surprisingly eventful.
Perhaps the biggest announcement was the Huawei MatePad Paper, a new E-Ink tablet-slash-ereader that’s coming to Euro soon.
It’s bigger and more powerful that the Amazon Kindle, which is the natural rival to any E-Ink device, and also comes with stylus support, video playback and handwriting recognition. Very nifty!
Okay, here we go – things are starting to kick off, and it’s Huawei who are first out of the blocks with their press conference – you can watch it right now.
This conference is named “Huawei Spring 2022 Smart Office Launch”, which means business related announcements, rather than consumer devices. We’re keeping an eye on it however, just in case.
(Image credit: TicWatch)
Though nothing’s launched yet, some companies have been announcing their MWC 2022 plans.
This seems to be a smartwatch with an emphasis on heart rate tracking features – we’ll make sure to bring you the news whenever Mobvoi officially announces this device.
And we begin! Sunday technically isn’t part of MWC, since the event only truly kicks off tomorrow, but that doesn’t stop some companies.
We already know Samsung is doing something today, and that’s the biggest news through Sunday that we’re aware of – but we might see other companies debut devices without warning too.
On 18 February, 2022, WHO along with the Presidency of the European Council, the Presidency of France and the Presidency of South Africa, will hold a press conference to announce the first recipients (the ‘spokes’) of mRNA technology on the African continent as part of the global mRNA technology transfer hub located in Cape Town, South Africa.
Speakers will showcase the global collaboration between WHO, Member States and centres of excellence and training to develop strategic and sustainable solutions to build national and regional capacities for pharmaceutical manufacturing so that countries can become more self-reliant and enabled to address health crises and reach universal health coverage.
Twine, a company that provides networking tools for virtual events and remote teams, will soon bring its services to Zoom thanks to its just-closed acquisition of the Y Combinator-backed startup, Glimpse, which had developed a “speed matching” platform designed for virtual events. Glimpse’s idea was to offer a way to facilitate the connections that typically took place at real-world events, and bring them online by matching attendees within video chats using A.I. intelligence. Recently, Glimpse had been testing a new integration that would allow event hosts to add speed networking to their Zoom meetings, webinars and events.
This integration is powered by Zoom’s new “Breakout Room” APIs, which Glimpse and a handful of others had early access to. Though both companies were working in a similar space of working to connect people remotely, Glimpse’s Zoom integration put them ahead of twine in terms of product development. Plus, twine co-founder and CEO Lawrence Coburn admits his company had even lost some deals to Glimpse.
With this acquisition, Glimpse’s technology will become available to twine’s customer base, including its plans to expand to reach the broader Zoom user base.
In the next few weeks, a small group of apps built using Zoom’s new breakout room APIs will be added to its app store, the Zoom App Marketplace, which today houses dozens of apps either designed to work within the Zoom client itself, or expand its capabilities in other ways. The forthcoming “twine for Zoom” product will be among them, giving customers access to matching tools, networking and virtual watercooler tools that can be used not only for virtual events, but also other types of meetings, like company socials, all-hands meetings, new hire onboardings, community meetups, and more.
“We’ve admired the Glimpse team and products from afar for a long time, and we are thrilled to be teaming up with them,” Coburn said. “What they’ve managed to build within the Zoom ecosystem is nothing short of remarkable, with game-changing impact for remote teams and virtual events.”
Though a relatively young company with only a small amount of revenue, Glimpse had grown to 150 customers and had a waitlist of 700 more businesses interested in using its platform. These ranged from edtech companies to VCs to even enterprise clients. The latter appealed most to twine, which already had larger companies using its tools, including Amazon, Microsoft and eBay, for example.
“Glimpse is a great example of a highly innovative company utilizing the Zoom App Marketplace to enhance the customer experience,” said Ross Mayfield, Product Lead Zoom Apps & Integrations, in a statement. “I look forward to seeing the twine team bring twine for Zoom to market,” he added.
Glimpse had participated in startup accelerator Y Combinator’s winter 2020 batch and had seed-stage investment from both YC and Maven Ventures. Its co-founders, Helena Merk and Brian Li, will remain on retainer to be available to twine during the transition. However, its team of three employees is joining twine, which now has 16 people full-time. The acquisition terms aren’t being disclosed, as this is a small exit, given the early nature of both companies. However, we understand this to be an all-stock deal in the seven-figure range.
