Srinivas Padma: Personal Musings on Life, Growth, and Connections

What Is a Coronavirus? Coronaviruses were first identified in the 1960s, they get their name from their crown-like shape. Sometimes, but not often, a coronavirus can infect both animals and humans. Most coronaviruses spread the same way other cold-causing viruses do: through infected people coughing and sneezing, by touching an infected person's hands or face, or by touching things such as doorknobs that infected people have touched. Coronaviruses cause diseases in mammals and birds that include diarrhea in cows and pigs, and upper respiratory disease in chickens. In humans, the virus causes rare but potentially lethal respiratory infections. Cases of the virus have been detected around China, including Hong Kong and Macao, and other countries, including Japan, South Korea, the United States and Thailand. Singapore and Vietnam are the latest to join the list. The symptoms of most coronaviruses are similar to any other upper respiratory infection, including runny nose,...

A man who cloned the official Beijing Olympics website and made around $US50,000 from fake prize draws has been arrested. Liao Peigui, a 20-year-old computer engineer in Danzhou city, Hainan province, persuaded his victims to transfer 10-20 per cent of the value of their "prize" into his bank account. His copy of the official website www.beijing2008.cn , which gets more than one million visits a day, netted Liao a suspected 400,000 yuan ($56,077), the Xinhua agency said.

Russia, China and India contain the most areas where toxic pollution and human habitation collide with devastating effects Sumqayit in Azerbaijan gained the dubious distinction this week of being added to Blacksmith Institute's top 10 list of the world's most polluted sites . Yet another heir to the toxic legacy of Soviet industry, the city of 275,000 souls bears heavy metal, oil and chemical contamination from its days as a center of chemical production. As a result, local Azeris suffer cancer rates 22 to 51 percent higher than their countrymen and their children suffer from a host of genetic defects ranging from mental retardation to bone diseases. "As much as 120,000 tons of harmful emissions were released on an annual basis, including mercury ," says Richard Fuller, founder of Blacksmith, an environmental health organization based in New York City. "There are huge untreated dumps of industrial sludge." Fuller says the list includes "places that are...

China will build the world’s highest airport in Tibet as part of a 13-billion-dollar investment splurge in the Himalayan region, state media reported on Tuesday. China will spend more than $12.9 billion over the next three years on 180 projects in Tibet, including the airport in northern Ngari prefecture, Xinhua news agency said, citing the regional government. The airport will be the fourth in Tibet and another important plank in China’s plan to link the remote Himalayan region with the rest of China. A third airport began operating in Nyingchi, southeast Tibet, in September 2006, two months after China launched a railway line from Beijing to the regional capital of Lhasa . The Ngari airport will be located at about 4,300 metres above sea level, making it the highest airport in the world, according to reports in the state press. The first reports of plans for an airport at Ngari emerged in 2005. Xinhua said the 180 projects by 2010 would focus on other forms of infrastructure such as...

Beijing: A leading Chinese match making portal will check the age, marital status and other personal details of prospective cyber daters against an official database to prevent deception. The portal, Baihe.Com will screen its eight million online daters from Monday against an “ID authentication system”. The new system was jointly developed by the website and the ministry of public security. “In the long run, we’ll arrange dates only for those who are proven to be telling the truth,” company Ceo Jason Tian said. Tian said the move would enhance trust among online daters, improve credibility and prevent deception, and employees of the website would keep the daters’ personal information strictly confidential. Most Chinese rely on friends and relatives to find a partner, and lack of trust is often cited as a major reason for spurning Internet services. “People tend to misrepresent themselves online and you never know if you are being told the truth,” said schoolteacher Sun Wei. A surve...