viral newses

Bangkok, Thailand – The small park in Bangkok’s Rama III district is mostly popular with runners circling its neatly trimmed garden track to the sound of birdsong. But on Thursday, they were joined by a convoy of fire trucks and half a dozen military drones, drawing dozens of curious onlookers. After an hour setting up, the drones and water cannon were pumping thick plumes of water into the empty sky above. Speakers blared warnings about the operation and instructed runners to keep their distance. The odd display was the Thai government’s latest attempt at curbing the alarmingly high levels of pollution that have been plaguing the capital for weeks. The drones, geared with water tanks and fire-fighting sprinklers, were supposed to break up the smog that has been smothering the city of around 10 million people for at least a month. Initially, Thailand ‘s authorities said the worsening pollution was being blown over from China, predicting that it would be gone within a week or so. ...

Interested in Donald Trump? Add Donald Trump as an interest to stay up to date on the latest Donald Trump news, video, and analysis from ABC News. President Donald Trump said Thursday that “unity” will be the theme of his first State of the Union address under divided government and that he respects Stacey Abrams, who will give the Democratic response. “I hope she does a good job. I respect her,” Trump said of Abrams, who will be the first black woman to deliver the rebuttal. Trump will give his speech Tuesday before a joint session of Congress at a sensitive time in talks over keeping the government open and funding the border wall he is demanding as part of any deal. Members of Congress are inviting federal workers worried about another shutdown after Feb. 15. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election meddling also hovers. Trump will also be surrounded by living reminders of the changes wrought by the 2018 midterm elections that ushered Democrats into the H...

The Trump administration just made a big move against a little-known pricing practice that the pharmaceutical supply chain depends on. On Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said it’s proposing a rule that would effectively ban the use of rebates for pharmaceutical drugs. HHS said the move is designed to lower the cost of prescription drugs for patients, a major goal for the administration. “This proposal has the potential to be the most significant change in how Americans’ drugs are priced at the pharmacy counter, ever, and finally ease the burden of the sticker shock that millions of Americans experience every month for the drugs they need,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement. Drugmakers pay out more than $100 billion in rebates annually. Rebates are a big business for pharmaceutical middlemen, otherwise known as pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), such as Express Scripts, CVS Caremark, and OptumRx. Cigna, which owns Express Scripts, and CVS Health...

Starting this spring, five corporate giants — Anthem, Cigna, CVS Health, Humana and UnitedHealth Group — will control health insurance and pharmacy benefits for more than 125 million Americans. Why it matters: Most of this happened through rapid consolidation, and now the pressure is on these companies to prove they can better control both medical and drug spending with everything under the same roof. Driving the news: Anthem has been working for over a year to create its own pharmacy benefit manager , called IngenioRx, so it could sever ties with Express Scripts . Anthem’s new prescription drug negotiator is now ready to go live by March, 10 months ahead of schedule, the company said Wednesday . This is the new landscape. These 5 companies will handle both drug and medical bills for millions of people across Medicare, Medicaid and employer-based insurance. UnitedHealth Group is the largest entity combining health insurance and pharmacy benefits, with UnitedHealthcare an...

Mutraw, Myanmar – With a Myanmar government-backed peace process in deadlock, e thnic Karen political leaders and activists have declared thousands of square kilometers of land a “peace park” and the Karen people its rightful custodians. The Salween Peace Park, which was “established” last month in  eastern Myanmar’s Kayin (Karen) state where  the Karen National Union (KNU) has long fought for autonomy, is t he culmination of years of grassroots efforts aimed at preserving indigenous traditions and culture, among others. The central Myanmar government in Naypyidaw, however, has not acknowledged the park’s existence as a “people-centred alternative” to militarisation and mega-development in the Salween River basin.  “The [Myanmar] government should realise that if they want to control everything in this country, the resistance will always continue … it will never end,” Saw Alex, deputy director of the Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN), one of...

11 detainees at an ICE detention facility in El Paso, Texas, have been refusing food , some for more than 30 days, and six of the detainees are being force-fed per orders by a federal judge, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed Thursday. Interested in Immigration? Add Immigration as an interest to stay up to date on the latest Immigration news, video, and analysis from ABC News. An additional four other detainees are on a hunger strike at ICE detention centers nationwide — one each in the Miami, Phoenix, San Diego and San Francisco areas — bringing the number of detainees refusing to eat to 15 nationwide, according to ICE. The Associated Press, the first to report the hunger strike, said as many as 30 are striking, per interviews with detainees, relatives and an attorney representing those on hunger strike. The hunger strikers are from India and Cuba , the AP reported , and some were so weak they can’t stand up or talk. The detainees are on hunger strike because ...

The following is a transcript of the video. I’ve been using MacBook Air laptops for roughly the last decade, give or take, without pause. I tested out the Microsoft Surface Go, a significantly less expensive laptop solution against my MacBook Air. The results were kind of a mess. The majority of stuff that I do on my MacBook Air is writing and or using the internet. I occasionally do some kind of heavier lifting, but nothing super processor-intensive. Most of what I’m doing is kind of power internet using. My first impressions of the Surface Go are that it looks and feels very similar to previous Surface products. The keyboard is maybe the most impressive hardware feature of it. It in every other way is a relatively budget looking version of a standard Microsoft Surface tablet device. There’s a kind of kickstand device on the back that you can position. It feels extremely strange to have a kind of like kickstand on your legs because it’s not very adjustable to different heights. One...

Watch the moment a ball girl at the Thailand Open leaves Sabine Lisicki and the crowd stunned as she doesn’t hold back on removing an insect from the court. Read More from Viral Newses http://bit.ly/2D0EUuT

As Taliban members and US officials met in Doha, Qatar   earlier in January for talks aimed at finding a solution to end the 17-year war in Afghanistan , Khalid Bashari revisited his father’s poems expressing love for his country. He was 19 when his father was shot dead by unknown people in 2016 in their hometown of Khogyani district in the south of Nangarhar, a province bordering Pakistan . In one Pashto poem, his father had written: “Every person here has a story to tell, I swear the Americans are here! “No one can sleep in peace these days, when the caravan of Americans is here! “We saw a lot of prisoners, by God, when the caravan of the evil Americans got here!” Now burdened with domestic responsibilities, Bashari sells wood to feed his family of five, and is concerned about his sisters’ education, security and a stable income. Meanwhile, in hotels and conference rooms, peace talks are under way and focused on the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Li...

Amazon’s ad business may not be as gigantic as Facebook or Google, but it’s gaining traction. During Amazon’s fourth-quarter earnings, the e-commerce giant reported $3.38 billion in “other revenue,” a line item mostly comprised of advertising sales during the fourth-quarter of 2018, up from $2.5 billion during the third-quarter. Year-over-year “other” revenue jumped 97% from the $1.7 billion Amazon reported in the fourth-quarter of 2017. For the total year of 2018, Amazon’s ad revenue hit $10 billion. According to a recent note from Pivotal Research, Amazon is expected to make $38 billion in ad revenue by 2023. Read more: Amazon’s ad business is set to more than quadruple by 2023 — and Google should be worried Advertising represents a small fraction of Amazon’s revenue, but it’s increasingly on the lips of executives. To compare, Facebook made $56 billion in ad revenue for 2018, and Wall Street expects Alphabet-owned Google to report $136 billion in 2018 revenue when it report...

Facebook is suffering through a second day of chaos. On Wednesday, Apple took the extraordinary step of effectively blocking Facebook’s internal company iOS apps, causing havoc for the Silicon Valley tech giant’s tens of thousands of employees. They’ve been left unable to do anything, from communicating with their colleagues to using company transportation. The iPhone maker took action after Facebook was caught by tech news site TechCrunch paying people to install an app that let it spy on their data and phone habits . The program violated Apple’s policies, so Apple pulled the plug by revoking the app’s certificate — and because that certificate was also powering all of Facebook’s internal employee apps, they all stopped working too. In a leaked memo obtained by Business Insider on Wednesday , Facebook leadership attempted to quell unrest among employees and told them the company was working “closely” with Apple. But a day later, Facebook’s internal apps remain unusable, sources sa...

Nairobi, Kenya – After Anne Khasakalla suffered two stillbirths in 2014 and 2015, she looked for a solution that would provide her with better healthcare. Friends told her that pregnant women in Kenya have to pay bribes to doctors and nurses to escape long queues of mothers waiting to deliver their babies. “During my first pregnancy, I was excited to be a mother and I could not wait to welcome my then expected newborn baby into this world,” the 34-year-old told Al Jazeera. “I registered to give birth at [the government-run] Pumwani Maternity Hospital in Nairobi. I attended all the pre-natal clinic dates at the hospital, did an ultrasound scan and my baby was healthy. “On my day of giving birth, I was disappointed as some women who came after me to the hospital [and] delivered their babies before me. I experienced prolonged labour lasting 18 hours from the time I was admitted to the facility’s maternity ward. The end return was a stillborn daughter.” Khasakalla earns $30 a month...

ICYMI, a Harry Styles superfan called Kelsy Karter hit the headlines earlier this week after debuting a massive tattoo of the singer on her cheek. The New Zealand musician has now defended why she underwent a portrayal of the former One Direction star on her face and hit out at speculation the whole thing is a publicity stunt to promote her career. In a conversation with The Edge Afternoon Show, the 24-year-old argued that there’s nothing wrong with wearing her passion for Harry loud and proud: “I just wear my heart on my cheek and I couldn’t really control what went on from there.”  “As a fellow musician, I really respect what he’s doing for rock ‘n’ roll. I’m a female in the modern day movement of rock ‘n’ roll and he’s exposed the kids to sounds they might have not otherwise heard. “ Getty She added: “Because he came from the pop world and did a rock ‘n’ roll album, it’s opened doors for people like me. I really respect what he’s doing and love what he’s doing...

The European Union  has announced the setting up of a payment mechanism to secure trade with Iran  and skirt  US sanctions after Washington pulled out of the landmark nuclear deal last May. The proposal of a financial instrument has been a key element in the EU’s strategy to keep Iran from quitting the 2015 nuclear agreement , which was signed to prevent Tehran from building nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief. The new institution, named INSTEX – Instrument In Support Of Trade Exchanges – will allow trade between the EU and Iran without relying on direct financial transactions. It is a project of the governments of France, Germany and Britain and will receive the formal endorsement of all 28 EU members. The administration of US President Donald Trump has been closely eyeing European efforts to establish the financial mechanism and warned any attempt to evade its “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran would be subject to stiff penalties. The...

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Facebook on Wednesday announced fourth-quarter results that beat on both the top and bottom lines. The tech giant also posted strong user metrics. Encouraged by Facebook’s strong earnings, many Wall Street analysts raised their price targets. Analysts noted Facebook will attract advertisers sp long as users are not leaving the platform. Facebook on Wednesday posted fourth-quarter earnings that crushed Wall Street estimates, sending shares up as much as 12% early Thursday. The tech giant earned $2.38 a share, or $0.20 more than what Wall Street analysts were expecting. It netted $16.91 billion in revenue, topping the $16.39 billion that was expected. Facebook also proved it was able to keep users, totaling 1.523 billion daily active users in December 2018, while analysts were expecting 1.51 billion. It had 2.32 billion monthly active users as of December 31, 2018, in line with the Wall Street consensus. The social-media platform added that it...

Athens, Greece – NATO and the European Union celebrated Greece’s ratification of the Prespes Agreement last week that  recognises its northern neighbour  as North Macedonia. But the deal has yet to enter into force. “It has been adopted but not implemented. It’s an interim period,” says Greek foreign ministry spokesman Alexandros Gennimatas. “As soon as we ratify the NATO Induction Protocol, we shall inform Skopje and they will reply saying ‘we are now called North Macedonia’.” This is to happen over the next 10 days. Then North Macedonia ‘s induction will have to be ratified by the parliaments of all 29 NATO members. “Last time this took a year,” says Gennimatas, referring to Montenegro ‘s induction in 2017. In the weeks following, Greece is also expected to notify the EU that it supports accession talks with North Macedonia. The two countries will upgrade their liaison offices to full embassies. Within five years, North Macedonia is to rename all its public bodies...

Ariana Grande has already fixed her latest tattoo after fans spotted that what was *meant* to be a tribute to new single ‘7 Rings’ was actually a direct translation for a Japanese barbecue grill. The 25-year-old debuted the palm inking yesterday and it took approximately five minutes for fans across the world to point out that a major mistake had been made with the characters. Instagram/ArianaGrande Quick to spot the comments, Ari replied: “Indeed, I left out ‘つの指’ which should have gone in between. It hurt like fuck n still looks tight. I wouldn’t have lasted one more symbol lmao. “But this spot also peels a ton and won’t last so if I miss it enough I’ll suffer thru the whole thing next time. Pls leave me and my tambourine grill alone. thank u.” Giphy Despite standing in solidarity with the grill, it looks like she had a change of heart and decided to rectify the mistake ASAP. Sharing an image of the fixed tattoo, Ari praised her tutor and thanked the...