San Francisco, United States |Long maligned as job-stealers and aspiring overlords, robots are being increasingly relied on as fast, efficient, contagion-proof champions in the war against the deadly coronavirus.
One team of robots temporarily cared for patients in a makeshift hospital in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the COVID-19 outbreak began.
Meals were served, temperatures taken and communications handled by machines, one of them named "Cloud Ginger" by its maker CloudMinds, which has operations in Beijing and California.
"It provided useful information, conversational engagement, entertainment with dancing, and even led patients through stretching exercises," CloudMinds president Karl Zhao said of the humanoid robot.
"The smart field hospital was completely run by robots."
A small medical team remotely controlled the field hospital robots. Patients wore wristbands that gathered blood pressure and other vital data.
The smart clinic only handled patients for a few days, but it foreshadowed a future in which robots tend to patients with contagious diseases while health care workers manage from safe distances.
- Checkup and check out -
Patients in hospitals in Thailand, Israel and elsewhere meet with robots for consultations done by doctors via videoconference. Some consultation robots even tend to the classic checkup task of listening to patients' lungs as they breathe.
Alexandra Hospital in Singapore will use a robot called BeamPro to deliver medicine and meals to patients diagnosed with COVID-19 or those suspected to be infected with the virus in its isolation wards.
Doctors and nurses can control the robot by using a computer from outside the room, and can hold conversations with the patient via the screen and camera.
The robot reduces the number of "touch points" with patients who are isolated, thereby reducing risk for healthcare workers, the hospital's health innovation director Alexander Yip told local news channel CNA.
Robotic machines can also be sent to scan for the presence of the virus, such as when the Diamond Princess cruise ship cabins were checked for safety weeks after infected passengers were evacuated, according to the US Centers for Disease Control.
Additionally, hospitals are turning to robots to tirelessly rid room, halls and door handles of viruses and bacteria.
US firm Xenex has seen a surge in demand for its robots that disinfect rooms, according to director of media relations Melinda Hart.
Xenex's LightStrike robots have been used in more than 500 healthcare facilities, with the number of deployed bots rising due to the pandemic, Hart said.
"We are getting requests from around the world," Hart said.
"In addition to hospitals, we're being contacted by urgent care centers, hotels, government agencies and pharmaceutical companies" to disinfect rooms.
Shark Robotics in France began testing a decontamination unit about a month ago and has already started getting orders, according to co-founder Cyril Kabbara.
- Worth the price? -
The coronavirus pandemic has caused robotics innovation to accelerate, according to Lesley Rohrbaugh, the director of research for the US Consumer Technology Association.
"We are in a time of need for some of this technology, so it seems like benefits outweigh costs," Rohrbaugh said.
Artificial intelligence, sensors and other capabilities built into robots can push up prices, as can the need to bolster high-speed internet connections on which machines often rely, according to Rohrbaugh.
Innovations on the horizon include using drones equipped with sensors and cameras to scan crowds for signs of people showing symptoms of coronavirus infection.
A team at the University of South Australia is working on just that, in collaboration with Canadian drone maker Draganfly.
"The use will be to identify the possible presence of the virus by observing humans," said university professor Javaan Singh Chahl.
"It might form part of an early warning system or to establish statistically how many people are afflicted in a population."
His team is working on computer algorithms that can spot sneezing or coughing, say in an airport terminal, and remotely measure people's pulses and temperatures.
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Kiev, Ukraine | Tears of joy stream down Andrea Viez's face as she lifts her baby boy, born to a surrogate mother in Ukraine.
"He's a star," the Argentinian in her late 40s says, her voice trembling.
After nine years of trying to have a child, Viez can finally hold her son in her arms, thanks to a booming surrogacy industry in Ukraine that has given hope to thousands of struggling would-be parents.
But behind their dream-come-true is a highly profitable and murky business that many worry is taking advantage of desperate young women and operating in a grey zone open to abuse.
"Ukraine is becoming an international online baby store," the country's commissioner for children's rights Mykola Kuleba warned last month, condemning the "exploitation" of Ukrainian women and calling for a ban on the industry.
The fact that Ukraine is one of the few countries allowing commercial surrogacy for foreigners was oddly thrown into the spotlight by the coronavirus.
When travel restrictions imposed to fight the pandemic prevented dozens of parents from picking up their children born to surrogates, a local surrogacy company posted a video online showing the infants lying in rows of plastic cots in a hotel on the edge of Kiev.
The BioTexCom clinic hoped to draw attention to the stranded babies' plight. It worked and the government stepped in to help parents like Viez obtain special permits and pick up their children a few weeks later.
Though it has existed since the early 2000s, the industry exploded in Ukraine after India and Thailand outlawed commercial surrogacy for foreigners about five years ago.
One the poorest countries in Europe, the post-Soviet nation is also known for its attractive prices, with birth through a surrogate costing about $42,000. In the United States it can cost more than twice as much.
- 'Total chaos' -
There are no official statistics, but experts say between 2,500 and 3,000 children are born every year through surrogacy in Ukraine for foreign parents. About a third of customers are Chinese.
The industry is poorly regulated and rife with abuse and corruption, says Sergiy Antonov, who runs a law firm specialising in reproductive issues.
Women are sometimes not paid promised amounts or are housed in terrible conditions during the later stages of their pregnancies. In some cases parents have discovered they have no genetic link with children born to surrogates.
Authorities suspect some clinics are also using surrogacy as a cover for illegal commercial adoptions.
"It's total chaos," Antonov says.
Olga Korsunova, a 27-year-old going through her fourth surrogate pregnancy, says women "very often" have trouble obtaining money they were promised.
They are most often hired through intermediaries who keep part of the surrogacy fee.
Korsunova is paid $400 a month during a pregnancy and receives $15,000 after delivery.
"I would not call this exploitation, nobody forces us," she says in the modest flat she rents in Kiev with her eight-year-old son.
Korsunova dreams of becoming a doctor but started working as a surrogate after she and her son fled war-torn eastern Ukraine in 2014.
She does admit that because of their drastic financial situation Ukrainian women "trade part of your health... for money."
Another surrogate, 26-year-old Olga, says she is happy to be able to help people have children.
"These children will be loved by their parents for the rest of their lives," says Olga, who is expecting twins for a Chinese couple.
She normally earns about $135 a month as a waitress and this is her second surrogacy. She hopes to open a cafe with her payment of $15,000 after delivery.
"I'm proud to be able to provide babies to people who couldn't become parents in a different way," she says.
"But if I had a normal job, of course I wouldn't have done it."
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Mumbai, India |When coronavirus claimed its first victim in India's largest slum in April, many feared the disease would turn its narrow, congested streets into a graveyard, with social distancing or contact tracing all but impossible.
But three months on, Mumbai's Dharavi offers a rare glimmer of hope with new infections shrinking, thanks to an aggressive strategy that focused on "chasing the virus, instead of waiting for disaster", according to city official Kiran Dighavkar.
The sprawling slum has long been a byword for the financial capital's bitter income disparities -- with Dharavi's estimated one million people scraping a living as factory workers or maids and chauffeurs to Mumbai's well-heeled residents.
With a dozen people typically sleeping in a single room, and hundreds using the same public toilet, authorities realised early that standard practices would be of little use.
"Social distancing was never a possibility, home isolation was never an option, and contact tracing was a huge problem with so many people using the same toilet," Dighavkar told AFP.
An initial plan to conduct door-to-door screenings was abandoned after Mumbai's searing heat and humidity left medical workers feeling suffocated under layers of protective equipment as they combed the area's cramped alleys for cases.
But, with infections rising fast and fewer than 50,000 people checked for symptoms, officials needed to move quickly and get creative.
What they came up with was coined "Mission Dharavi".
Each day, medical workers set up a "fever camp" in a different part of the slum, so residents could be screened for symptoms and tested for coronavirus if needed.
Schools, wedding halls and sports complexes were repurposed as quarantine facilities that offered free meals, vitamins and "laughter yoga" sessions.
Strict containment measures were deployed in virus hotspots that were home to 125,000 people, including the use of drones to monitor their movements and alert police, while a huge army of volunteers swung into action, distributing rations so they didn't go hungry.
Bollywood stars and business tycoons paid for medical equipment as construction workers built a 200-bed field hospital at breakneck speed in a park inside Dharavi.
By late June, more than half the slum's population had been screened for symptoms and around 12,000 tested for coronavirus.
So far Dharavi has reported just 82 deaths -- a fraction of Mumbai's more than 4,500 fatalities.
- 'Brink of victory' -
"We are on the brink of victory, I feel very proud," said Abhay Taware, a doctor who saw around 100 patients daily in his tiny clinic at the height of the crisis.
The 44-year-old father-of-two also had to fight his own battle against coronavirus when he contracted the disease in April, but told AFP he had "no doubts" about returning to work.
"I thought I could show my patients that a positive diagnosis does not mean the end," he said.
Although doctors like Taware worked to reassure worried residents, the stigma persists.
After an isolating 25-day spell in hospital and a fortnight in quarantine, Sushil -- not his real name -- said he now feared discrimination if people found out about his diagnosis.
The 24-year-old also struck a note of caution, warning of a potential resurgence in infections.
"People need to take as many precautions as possible. The numbers might have come down but they can swiftly rise again", he told AFP.
- 'No escape next time' -
With Mumbai and Delhi struggling to accommodate coronavirus patients as India's cases surge past half a million officials are also wary of celebrating too soon.
"It's a war. Everything is dynamic," said Dighavkar.
"Right now, we feel like we are on top of the situation," he said.
"The challenge will be when factories reopen," he added, referring to the billion-dollar leather and recycling industries run out of Dharavi's cramped tenements.
And some in the slum fear their community might not be as lucky next time.
On a blazing morning, as car salesman Vinod Kamble lined up to have his temperature taken, he recalled his terror when the virus landed in Mumbai.
"I felt like Dharavi would be destroyed, and nothing would be left," he told AFP, describing the near impossibility of avoiding infection in the slum.
"We need better infrastructure," the 32-year-old said.
"Otherwise the next time a disease like this emerges, I don't think Dharavi will be able to escape."
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New York, United States |
The elusive "2001: A Space Odyssey" spacesuit believed to have been worn by Dr. David Bowman when he "killed" HAL in the groundbreaking 1968 film goes on the auction block next month.
The highlight of a Hollywood and space exploration memorabilia show that's set for July 17-18 in Beverly Hills, the spacesuit is conservatively estimated to fetch between $200,000 and 300,000.
It's a rare artifact from the classic by filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, who is thought to have destroyed most of the props and wardrobe from "2001" -- widely regarded as one of most influential films of all time -- to prevent their use in other productions without his authorization.
According to Jason DeBord -- chief operating officer of Julien's Auctions, which is hosting the event -- the only other significant piece from the film to go up at auction was the Aries 1B Trans-Lunar Space Shuttle, which in the movie transported Dr. Heywood R. Floyd from the International Space Station to the moon.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences -- the organization behind the Oscars -- snagged that prop in 2015 for $344,000.
The spacesuit is especially sought after because it is believed to have been used in one of the film's most iconic scenes -- when Bowman destroys HAL 9000, a sentient computer that is killing the astronauts onboard to uphold its programmed mission.
Auctioneers believe this particular costume was used in that scene because its helmet has a base green layer of paint, the color of the helmet worn by Bowman, who was played by Keir Dullea.
The near complete spacesuit was likely worn by other actors as well, as the helmet also has layers of white and yellow paint.
Along with the helmet, the suit includes boots and an MGM shipping crate.
The piece was auctioned off in 1999 and has been in controlled storage for two decades.
"It just sort of fell off the face of the earth," DeBord told AFP. "It's kind of magical, because it's sort of a lasting artifact of the filmmaking process."
He said film buffs are hoping to track down a production plan of the Oscar-winning film to "align the different layers of paint with the shooting schedule, and possibly even get a little more specific about where it might have been used in the film."
"2001" received four Academy Award nominations and won for visual effects, an accolade for its pioneering techniques that included accurately portraying space flight.
In 1991, it was added to the National Film Registry, earmarked for preservation by the Library of Congress.
Among the more than 900 items going up for auction at the same event are the pilot control stick Neil Armstrong used on the Apollo 11 flight to the moon -- estimated to go for $100,000 to $200,000 -- and an Apollo-era spacesuit glove designed for Armstrong, estimated at $10,000 to $20,000.
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Cairo, Egypt | President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi inaugurated two more airports near Cairo in a bid to lure tourists as Egypt aims to recover from the economic downturn caused by coronavirus.
One airport is in Egypt's new administrative capital, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) to the east, that the government hopes to turn into a hub that reduces traffic in the sprawling 20-million strong megacity of Cairo.
The other is called Sphinx Airport in Giza, south of the capital.
Both will soon handle flights from abroad, in addition to Cairo international airport, after authorities announced the return of all commercial flights starting 1 July.
Sisi also unveiled the restored Baron Empain Palace in eastern Cairo, built by wealthy Belgian industrialist Edouard Empain between 1907 and 1911.
The architectural masterpiece is constructed in a style reminiscent of the Cambodian Hindu temple of Angkor Wat set amid lush gardens.
The facelift which began in 2017 cost over $6 million.
The spree of openings come after Egypt officially ended a three-month nighttime curfew on Saturday.
Cafes and shops have re-opened but public beaches and parks remain closed as part of measures to curb the spread of coronavirus.
Egypt has recorded more than 65,000 COVID-19 cases including over 2,700 deaths.
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Washington, United States | The United States' new Space Force military wing revealed Tuesday that one of its units would be named "Space Operations Command" -- or "SpOC" for short, in an echo of pointy-eared "Star Trek" character Spock.
An earnest statement from Space Force unveiled its organizational structure, but made no reference to SpOC's fictional predecessor who was the unflappable science officer on the Starship Enterprise.
"SpOC will be the primary force provider of space forces and capabilities for combatant commanders, coalition partners, the joint force and the nation," the statement said, adding SpOC would be headquartered at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado.
In the "Star Trek" television series and movies, Spock is a half-Vulcan alien, half-human character known for the catchphrase "highly illogical," who was most famously played by Leonard Nimoy.
President Donald Trump, who has described space as "the world's newest warfighting domain," founded Space Force as the country's sixth military branch after the army, air force, navy, marines and coast guard.
The SpOC unit is not the force's first brush with "Star Trek."
When Trump unveiled Space Force's logo in January, the design was widely compared to the "Star Trek" insignia of the franchise's Starfleet -- a fictional peacekeeping and exploration force of the United Federation of Planets alliance.
The logo has appeared as a pin on the uniforms of Spock and fellow crew member Captain Kirk ever since the sci-fi classic debuted in 1966.
Fans say "Star Trek" has a long history of foreshadowing real innovations from tablet computers to needle-free medicine injectors and real-time translators.
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Paris, France |
Emma Watson, the actress and activist who made her name as Hermione Granger in the "Harry Potter" films, joined the board of the French fashion giant Kering Tuesday, in a major coup for the world's second biggest luxury group.
The British star, who was born in Paris, is the face of the Good On You app, which rates fashion brands on their ethical and sustainability credentials.
Although Kering is seen to have the environmental edge on its rival LVMH, its top labels Gucci, Saint Laurent and Balenciaga are only rated "Not good enough" or "It's a start" by Good On You.
Saint Laurent has also run into trouble with feminists and the regulators over a 2017 "porno chic" advertising campaign that was condemned as degrading to women.
Watson "is one of the world's most popular actors and best-known activists," Kering said in a statement after on the appointment of the 30-year-old, a high-profile women's rights advocate as well as a UN goodwill ambassador.
"Emma Watson is also a pioneer in advocating for sustainable fashion," Kering added.
She was nominated onto the board alongside the Ivory Coast-born former CEO of Credit Suisse Group Tidjane Thiam and Jean Liu, the president of "the Chinese Uber" Didi Chuxing, by shareholders at Kering's AGM.
- Millennial moral compass -
Since the end of the "Harry Potter" franchise in 2010, Watson, has combined acting in hit films such as "Little Women" with going back to university, championing reading groups and heading up the UN's HeForShe gender equality campaign.
She also coined the phrase "self-partnered" to describe her contentment as being single.
Having lost Stella McCartney -- arguably the world's most ethnical luxury label -- to LVMH earlier this year, recruiting Watson is a coup for Kering which is keen to win over millennials.
Watson is often seen as a moral compass for her generation.
Thiam, 57, resigned from his position at Credit Suisse in February following a scandal involving internal espionage of former executives of the bank, of which he said he had no knowledge.
"Throughout his career, Mr. Thiam has led organisations in both the private and public sectors, and has developed projects and programmes that stimulate businesses and economies," Kering said.
The appointment of Jean Liu, 42, president of the mobile transport platform Didi Chuxing, means that China, a crucial country for Kering in terms of sales, is represented on the board for the first time, said Sophie L'Helias, lead independent director.
Kering chairman and CEO Francois-Henri Pinault -- who is married to Hollywood star and activist Salma Hayek -- welcomed the appointments.
"Their respective knowledge and competences, and the multiplicity of their backgrounds and perspectives will be invaluable additions," he said.
"The collective intelligence that comes from diverse points of view and the richness of different experiences are crucial to the future of our organisation."
The Kering group employed more than 38,000 people worldwide at the end of 2019. Its turnover stood at 15.9 billion euros ($17.9 billion) last year, for a net profit of 2.3 billion euros.
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