The authorities of the university of Lund in southern Sweden intend to dump a ton of chicken droppings in the central park in a bid to deter up to 30,000 residents from gathering there for traditional celebrations to mark Walpurgis Night on Thursday, Guardian reports.
“Lund could very well become an epicentre for the spread of the coronavirus on the last night in April, [so] I think it was a good initiative,” the chairman of the local council’s environment committee, Gustav Lundblad, told the Sydsvenskan newspaper.
“I am not a fertiliser expert, but as I understand it, it is clear that it might smell a bit outside the park as well,” Lundblad admitted. “These are chicken droppings, after all. I cannot guarantee that the rest of the city will be odourless. But the point is to keep people out of the city park.”
Gustav Lundblad, head of the municipal environmental commission, said the authorities are trying to prevent the spread of coronavirus in this way.
The Swedish government prohibited residents from gathering in groups of more than 50 people, and also recommended that they keep a distance of two meters from each other.
Shops and restaurants in the country remain open. Mortality from Covid-19 in Sweden is several times higher than the statistics of neighboring Scandinavian countries, reports BBC.
Sweden remains one of the few countries that have not yet introduced hard quarantine from the coronavirus pandemic. Initially, residents welcomed this approach, but as the number of coronavirus victims in the country increased, the actions of the authorities became more and more criticized.
A resident of the village Slobozhansky of the Dnipropetrovsk region decided to walk to the local grocery store with a chicken on a leash, the portal "Ukrana.ru" reports.
Probably, in this way, he wanted to avoid the restrictions that exist during the regime of self-isolation due to the threat of the spread of coronavirus infection. Authorities are allowed to leave the house for dog walking, but there is no clarification about chickens in the legislations.
The young man was wearing a protective mask and gloves. People walking by managed to record a video, which went viral on social media.
Earlier in Moscow, a new type of business was lauched - dog rental.
During quarantine, there are many restrictions in place however, if you have a dog, you can go for a walk. And this is exactly that the service is all about - rent a dog for one hour in order to avoid being penalized
The owner of the business said that a walk with a dog costs 200 rubles ($2.65): exactly how much a serving of food costs, reports Life.ru
It is never too late to fulfill your dreams or finish college. This is demonstrated by an 88-year-old American who is one of the recent graduates of St. John University, Brooklyn.
Pat his youth he gave up college to work, but the dream of being a student again pursued him all his life.
In his old age, the man remembered what he had said to his four children, three lawyers and a teacher: "Don't go to college just to get a job. Go and enjoy your free time." He followed his own advice and graduated from college.
He watched the graduation ceremony online, from his personal tablet, in the context of the epidemic.
It doesn't make me sad that at my age I'm alone and not at the graduation ceremony. There are a lot of people living alone in coffins now, so I'm not complaining, "The old man gave advice to the young people, advice he gave in the past to his four children.
"Don't go to college just to get a job. Go and enjoy your free time," said graduate Pat Branley.
More masks than jellyfish. Coronavirus debris reaches the ocean and turns into ecological bombs
Environmental activists warn that the coronavirus pandemic is leading to a massive increase in ocean pollution, exacerbating the problem of plastic waste dumped in the water, which has been threatening marine life for some time, reports The Guardian. Sanitary masks floating in the water like jellyfish and latex gloves on the ocean floor - this is what the pollution of the oceans during the pandemic looks like.
The French non-profit organization Operation Mer Propre, whose activists collect waste and debris dumped on the Cote d'Azur, have begun warning about people's behavior regarding the disposal of masks and other such consumables.
The divers discovered in the water what Joffrey Peltier, a member of the organization, described as "COVID waste" - lots of masks, empty bottles of hand sanitizer and latex gloves. All this, combined with the waste that people used to throw into the sea - disposable glasses and other plastic or aluminum objects.
Although the amount of waste was not huge, the discovery of these new forms of pollution raises fears that in the era of COVID, it may become a new norm as millions of people around the world begin to use masks and gloves to fight viruses.
Orders of 2 billion masks have been announced in France alone, according to French authorities. "There is a risk that very soon we will have more masks floating in the Mediterranean than jellyfish," says Laurent Lombard, another environmental activist, in a post on Twitter, along with a video showing a bunch of masks and gloves removed from the sea.
The lifespan of the discarded sanitary masks is 450 years, which makes them ecological time bombs, especially in the conditions of the climate crisis that has been affecting the planet for some time. "We see them everywhere (masks - ed.). Ever since the masks began to be worn in society, the cause and effect can be seen on the beaches, ”says Gary Stokes, a member of Oceania.
Although much of the waste is dumped for lack of interest or attention, he says it may be carried by the wind on beaches and oceans after it has been dumped in cities or inhabited areas.
Google is adding features to Maps to alert users to travel restrictions related to Covid-19
Google is adding features to Maps to alert users to travel restrictions related to Covid-19, to help them better plan their routes, the Alphabet group's division announced on Monday.
The update will allow users to check how crowded a station might be at a given time, or if buses on a particular route have a limited schedule, Google said.
Alerts will be available in Argentina, France, India, the Netherlands, the United States and the United Kingdom, among other countries.
The new features will include details on checkpoints for Covid-19 and restrictions at national borders, starting with Canada, Mexico and the United States.
In recent months, the company has analyzed location data from the phones of billions of users in 131 countries to examine mobility during restrictions and to help health authorities assess whether people are complying with social restraints and other orders. to control the spread of the virus.
Google has invested billions of dollars in search engine advertising revenue to digitally map the world, attracting an average of 1 billion users a month to the free navigation app.
The Eiffel Tower, the most visited monument in the world, will reopen to the public on June 25, after being closed for more than three months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a statement from the Company that manages the monument and taken over by EFE.
“We are eager for the Tower to receive visitors again, of course under strict protection measures and within the current sanitary measures in force ", the general manager of the company that manages the monument, Patrick Branco Ruivo, wrote in the communiqué, writes Agerpres.
In order to have access to the tower, it is recommended to buy tickets on the Internet, the obligatory use of protective masks, and a signaling system will be installed in the whole monument for the orderly management of visitors, whose number will be limited both on floors and at entrance, and a daily disinfection of public spaces will be carried out.
In the first moment, the access will be made exclusively on the stairs and up to the second floor, with the entrance through the east wing and the exit through the west to minimize the contact between the visits. The main elevator will not be reopened yet, and its use will depend on the evolution of the sanitary crisis.
The Eiffel Tower was closed to the public due to the coronavirus pandemic on March 13 and was then used as a symbol to support gestures of solidarity with health workers and the victims of the virus.