Malaysia detects new Covid-19 strain that’s 10 times more infectious

The mutation called D614G was found in at least three of the 45 cases in a cluster that started from a restaurant owner returning from India and breaching his 14-day home quarantine

Malaysia has detected a strain of the new coronavirus that’s been found to be 10 times more infectious. The mutation called D614G was found in at least three of the 45 cases in a cluster that started from a restaurant owner returning from India and breaching his 14-day home quarantine. The man has since been sentenced to five months in prison and fined. The strain was also found in another cluster involving people returning from the Philippines.

Fauci says new mutation may speed the spread of coronavirus

The strain could mean that existing studies on corona vaccines may be incomplete or ineffective against the mutation, said Director-General of Health Noor Hisham Abdullah.

ALSO READ: Covid-19 Factoid: India’s fifth block of 10,000 deaths came in just 10 days

The mutation has become the predominant variant in Europe and the U.S., with the World Health Organization saying there’s no evidence the strain leads to a more severe disease. A paper published in Cell Press said the mutation is unlikely to have a major impact on the efficacy of vaccines currently being developed. “People need to be wary and take greater precautions because this strain has now been found in Malaysia,” Noor Hisham wrote in a Facebook post on Sunday. “The people’s cooperation is very needed so that we can together break the chain of infection from any mutation.”..

Malaysian PM Mahathir accepts failure of the boom he launched 30 years ago

While Vision 2020 was always more rhetoric than reality, it did serve to harness Malaysia to the climate of the times

Mahathir Mohamad has walked away from one of the big intellectual drivers of his decades at Malaysia’s helm: The idea that the former commodity-dependent backwater could be transformed into a fully developed country by 2020. It’s vital for the Southeast Asian nation’s future that the right lessons be learned from this letdown.

The prime minister conceded last weekend that Vision 2020, his demanding scheme to propel Malaysia to an industrial powerhouse, has failed. Launched in 1991, the plan became shorthand for the rapid development that characterized much of Asia during that decade. Mahathir Mohamad effectively just closed the book on an economic era. For this, he is to be applauded, overdue though such an acknowledgment was.

While Vision 2020 was always more rhetoric than reality, it did serve to harness Malaysia to the climate of the times. Globalization was in its glory days, elaborate supply chains were built throughout the region, and foreign investment poured in. Living standards and education attainment rose, Japan was Asia’s big commercial power and the end of the Cold War made Western-style economic and political opening seem like natural law. I even believed it myself during my tenure in Kuala Lumpur before witnessing the devastation wrought by the Asian financial crisis. Not that Mahathir saw the West as necessarily the best template. He often favored Japan and its model of post-war industrialization, which inspired a signature approach that he dubbed, “Look East.”

Halal internet? This browser promises to be compliant with Islamic values

SalamWeb relies on community-vetted content filters that mark web pages as appropriate, neutral or inappropriate, while warning users when they approach sites with gambling or pornography

Current Affairs: A Malaysian startup is betting that there’s plenty of pent-up demand for a new browser that’s compliant with Islamic values, at a time of mounting concerns over privacy, bias and online abuse over the internet.

SalamWeb, a mobile browser, is designed to deliver a Muslim-friendly web experience. The app, which includes messaging, news and other features, is aimed at users in Malaysia and Indonesia, according to Hasni Zarina Mohamed Khan, managing director at Salam Web Technologies MY Sdn.

Her goal is to eventually capture 10 per cent of the 1.8 billion global Muslim population. She pointed to some of challenges facing the web, as the world’s largest technology companies from Google to Facebook Inc. face criticism for doing too little to address harmful content and false information. Human rights group Amnesty International looked at abusive interactions and concluded that Twitter is a “toxic place for women.”

“We want to make the internet a better place,” Hasni Zarina said. “We know the internet has the good and the bad, so SalamWeb offers you a tool to create this window that lets you go to the internet to see the good.”

SalamWeb relies on community-vetted content filters that mark web pages as appropriate, neutral or inappropriate, while warning users when they approach sites with gambling or pornography. It also has Muslim-specific functions, such as prayer times and an indicator for Qibla, or the direction that a Muslim must face when praying…

Contain Source by Business Standard or BS