THE PERILS AND PROMISES OF GENE-DRIVE TECHNOLOGY

What if, with a wave of the wand, we could eliminate some of the world’s most devastating causes of illness and death? First, we might fight over which of our many maladies causes the most harm. Cardiovascular disease kills more people every year than any other, but it almost always develops over a lifetime: heart attacks may be sudden, but their causes are not. H.I.V./aids is another worthy candidate; it claims more than a million lives each year, and nearly forty million people are currently infected.

But my vote would go to malaria. Despite progress in reducing infections and deaths over the past decade, malaria still kills as many as half a million people a year, most of whom are under the age of five. They are invariably the poorest people in the world. Nearly two hundred million people become infected every year, and almost half of the planet’s population lives in areas in which the anopheles mosquito, malaria’s carrier, thrives. The global economic burden of the disease—including the impact on impoverished families from time lost at work, at school, and on the farm—is, as it has always been, nearly incalculable.

The magic wand is now within reach. It is called a gene drive, and it works by overriding the traditional rules of genetic inheritance. Normally, the progeny of any sexually reproductive organism receives half its genome from each parent. For decades, however, biologists have been aware that some genetic elements are “selfish”: evolution has bestowed on them a better-than-fifty-per-cent chance of being inherited. But, until scientists began to work with crispr, which permits DNA to be edited with uncanny ease and accuracy, they lacked the tools to make those changes. Source

Nokia no longer the butt of tech jokes

The clichéd joke is that it's tech's most famous has-been, a firm that peaked with the 3310 and has nothing else to offer the world other than nostalgia about how your dad "still uses his old Nokia!".

And after Microsoft bought Nokia's mobile division, and then swiftly gave up on making phones, it seemed like that was it for Nokia as a consumer brand.
But what Microsoft left behind in Finland, a country which once oozed with pride over Nokia's success, was a bevy of bright engineers and strategists.

Nokia isn't going away, and it surely once again deserves the tech world's respect and attention.

Velocity

Let's start with its most recent acquisition: Withings. Withings is a French digital health company that holds the accolade - if you ask me - for producing the only smartwatch on the market that isn't grossly offending to your eyes. Source

LENOVO UNVEILS THEIR TAKE ON MODULAR PHONES WITH MOTO Z; ALSO UNVEILS PHAB2 PRO

Lenovo, the Chinese tech giant which acquired the Motorola brand from Google, a few years ago for a hefty sum of $2.91 billion, came out with new offerings in their smartphones range. The offerings included a much awaited Tango device and a new model in the Moto Z series, one which can be transformed into a plethora of things such as a video projector and powerful high-definition speakers.

The major announcement from Lenovo comes weeks after the Korean electronics giant, LG announced their company’s first modular phone.

Lenovo’s PHAB2 Pro smartphone which is embedded with Google’s Tango (an augmented reality technology) was the spotlight stealer in the company’s smartphones announcements at Lenovo Tech World gathering in San Francisco. The PHAB2 Pro is a unique offering from Lenovo in the sense that the phone can sense and adequately map out the surroundings while also providing holograms to be overlaid on real world settings which are beneficial for both gaming purposes and size evaluation. The big-screen device is expected to make a global appearance in September bearing a price tag of $499.
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Twitter locks accounts after log-ins go on sale

On Thursday reports surfaced that a Russian hacker called Tessa88 was asking for 10 bitcoins (£4,000) for access to a list of 32 million names.
In a blogpost, Twitter said it was confident that the data had not come from a hack attack on its servers.

But after scrutinising the list, it had locked some accounts and users would need to reset their passwords.

"The purported Twitter @names and passwords may have been amassed from combining information from other recent breaches, malware on victim machines that are stealing passwords for all sites, or a combination of both," wrote Michael Coates, chief security officer at Twitter, in the blogpost.
Security firm Leaked Source

Hillary Clinton employs cold tea to deflect questions about her running mate

Hillary Clinton isn't ready to reveal her running mate, but she will share her favorite iced beverage.

The presumptive Democratic nominee and purveyor of memes is having a pretty great week after her "delete your account" triumph over Donald Trump. So great, in fact, that she felt comfortable being totally goofy with overzealous reporters.
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5 reasons Malawi is Africa's next go-to destination

Lilongwe, Malawi (CNN) -- Despite a majestic lake stretching through its eastern border that gives way to beautiful beaches,Malawi is the African country less-traveled.

But it's the place to be if you want to enjoy a natural paradise without everybody else. Read more

More than half of the U.S. is enduring a dangerously cold start to the week as a whirlpool of frigid, dense air known as a ‘polar vortex’ descended on Monday morning, pummeling parts of the country with a dangerous cold and adding to the brutal weather that has grounded more than 4,400 flights.

Record low temperatures have already been set; at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, temperatures of minus 16 degrees were recorded at 8am on Monday, beating the previous record of minus 14 set in 1988.

In Minnesota, officials took the rare step of closing all of the state's public schools on Monday - the first time in 17 years. Schools across Chicago, Milwaukee and St Louis were also closed, while officials in Washington D.C. and as far south as Atlanta have announced school closures for Tuesday.

With wind chill warnings stretching from Montana to Alabama, much of the U.S. is experiencing the coldest temperatures in almost 20 years, according to the National Weather Service. They are expected to be 30 to 50 degrees below average in some cities - and the deep freeze is expected to last into Tuesday.

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