Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg is Time's Person of the Year

NEW YORK -  Greta Thunberg, the teen activist from Sweden who has urged immediate action to address a global climate crisis, was named Time Magazine's Person of the Year for 2019 on Wednesday.

Thunberg, 16, was lauded by Time for starting an environmental campaign in August 2018 which became a global movement, initially skipping school and camping out in front of the Swedish Parliament to demand action.

"In the 16 months since, she has addressed heads of state at the U.N., met with the Pope, sparred with the President of the United States and inspired 4 million people to join the global climate strike on September 20, 2019, in what was the largest climate demonstration in human history," the magazine said.

"Margaret Atwood compared her to Joan of Arc. After noticing a hundredfold increase in its usage, lexicographers at Collins Dictionary named Thunberg’s pioneering idea, climate strike, the word of the year," Time said.

Thunberg, who turns 17 in January, continues to beat the drum, saying in Madrid last week that the voices of climate strikers are being heard but politicians are still not taking action.

(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Toby Chopra and Nick Zieminski)

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Senior Trump official faked Time cover, gilded resumé: report

MANILA — A senior Trump administration official, who was falsely reported as the next US envoy to the Philippines, created a fake Time magazine cover with her face on it and exaggerated her professional background in her resumé, NBC News reported Wednesday. 

Mina Chang, the deputy assistant secretary in the State Department's Bureau of Conflict and Stability Operations, brought a Time magazine cover with her face to a 2017 interview where she described her work in disaster response, said the report. 

The cover is "not authentic," Time magazine spokesperson Kristin Matzen was quoted as saying by the broadcaster. 

Chang, who assumed her post in April, also "inflated her educational achievements and exaggerated the scope of her nonprofit's work," the report said. 

The 35-year-old Chang "invented a role on a UN panel, claimed she had addressed both the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and implied she had testified before Congress," NBC News said. 

In her official biography, Chang said she is an "alumna" of Harvard Business School. The university said Chang attended a 7-week course in 2016, and does not hold a degree from the institution, the report added. 

Chang helps oversee efforts to prevent conflicts from erupting in politically unstable countries in her current post, earning a "6-figure salary in a bureau with a $6 million budget", said NBC News. 

The report said Chang was considered for an even higher government post in which she would have overseen the US Agency for International Development's work in Asia. 

Her nomination to the job, which had a budget of more than $1 billion, was withdrawn on Sept. 9 without public explanation after senators asked her for more documents and details about her nonprofit organization and work experience, NBC News said. 

It said Chang, the State Department and the White House did not respond to requests for comment. 

The Philippine Star and political news website Politiko in July reported that Chang was going to be America's next representative in the Philippines, which the US Embassy belied. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

VIRAL: Balang 'kills it' with 'Sorry' dance cover

Sorry by Justin Bieber Dance Cover ???? #Sorry

Posted by John Phillip Bughaw aka Balang on Saturday, 30 January 2016

MANILA - John Phillip "Balang" Bughaw, who rose to fame after catching the attention of television host Ellen DeGeneres for his nifty moves, is at it again.

In his official Facebook account, Bughaw shared his dance cover of Justin Bieber's "Sorry."

A host of foreign media such as Time and MTV have caught wind of his video and helped it reach more than 14 million views since being uploaded last January 30.

Even Bieber himself managed to watch Bughaw, and praised the Filipino kid for his adorable dance moves. "Kills it," the pop star wrote on his Twitter account.

Bughaw first shot to stardom after a video of him dancing to Ariana Grande and Jessie J's "Bang Bang" went viral. He was invited to perform on DeGeneres' show last May.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

TicTocTrac Watch Tracks Your Perception Of Time, Also Tells It

Anyone with even the vaguest understanding of the theory of relativity knows that time isn’t a fixed construct. How you experience time depends on what you’re doing –whether you’re sitting around, or moving at near light-speed. Your perception of time also depends on what you’re doing in a more mundane way, like whether you’re playing video games or sitting in a meeting. The TicTocTrac watch aims to help you learn more about that second kind of time warping. Also, like any good watch, it also tells time.

The watch, a DIY project by Cornell students Brian Schiffer and Sima Mitra, works by giving you the opportunity to guess how long you think it took to do something. Whether you overestimate or underestimate, and by how much, illustrates how your perception of time is skewed. Say, for instance, you’re about to wash the dishes. You can set the TicTocTrac watch to go into monitoring mode for a set period of time, during which it won’t display the time on its face. When you’ve finished your task (presumably before the monitoring timer runs out) you estimate about how long you think the activity took.

Of course, there’s more to it than that. TicTocTrac will keep track of all these little tests, so that over time you build a library of data that tracks the fluctuations in your perception of time over a day, or a week. For an example, you can take a look at the data from one of the guys who designed the watch. It’s a little hard to understand at first, but just the fact that it exists is fascinating.

The project’s documentation is incredibly throrough, and all the schematics are available if you’re the kind of person that might build your own. On the tech side, the watch is pretty impressive for a DIY project, including a vibration motor and a micro SD card slot. If you want to know more, the documentation will tell you more than you ever thought there was to know.

It’s interesting, but beware, your perception of time might speed up a little if you read it all the way through.

source: geekosystem.com