It seems like during quarantine, everyone has taken up cooking. Some people have been baking bread. Others have been perfecting their pie crust. Even my brother, who I’ve never seen cook a thing in his life, made a chicken pot pie the other day. But berry season is almost upon us and so, I have been prepping my jam making skills. 

While jelly is translucent and made from the juice of fruits, and marmalade is made from citrus fruits and can be overly complicated, jam is fairly easy to make. It’s made with whole or cut fruit and cooked with sugar, and can end up either chunky or completely smooth, depending on how you like yours. 

Jam is all about being assertive, about testing out different add-ins and sugars. To help you get the most out of the berry season, we’ve rounded up everything you need to make ideal jam.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

This week, new claims about the accuracy of the Garden of Eden story emerged online and in tabloid magazines. Professor Tom Meyer, a scripture expert known as the Bible Memory Man, argues that there are two artifacts—a 4,000-year-old seal and roughly 3,600-year-old stone—that provide evidence both for the location of the Garden of Eden and the Adam and Eve story. But do his claims add up? (Spoiler alert: No)

In a story, reported this week in the Daily Express, Meyer, who teaches at his alma mater Shasta Bible College and University, refers first to a Sumerian king list, an inscribed Middle Bronze aged stone prism currently housed at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The prism dates to between 2100 B.C. and 1650 B.C. and was discovered in 1922 by Herbert Weld-Blundell during his excavations in Kish, the ancient capital of Sumer, in Mesopotamia. It was purchased by the Ashmolean shortly thereafter.

Meyer said, “In addition to enumerating the long reigns of pre-flood rulers, this prism lists Eridu—an ancient site in southern Iraq—as the first city ever built.” This is significant, he says, because “The ancient site of the Garden of Eden… is thought by some to be located at Eridu under a cluster of tels” (Tels are artificial hills).

Read more at The Daily Beast.

GAZIANTEP, Turkey—After five years fighting to preserve Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, Russia now appears inclined to dispose of its infamous client. Assad’s persistent brutality and corruption, and his inability to establish even the semblance of a functioning state, has grown to be a burden Moscow would prefer not to bear.

And then there’s the problem of Iran. Assad, members of his family, and his Alawite clansmen enjoy close, perhaps unbreakable, bonds to the regime in Tehran and to Iranian-backed militias in Syria. All of which undermines Moscow’s primary mission there: to rehabilitate the Assad regime as a symbol of stability capable of attracting hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign investment for reconstruction, which Russian firms would then be poised to receive. 

As long as Assad’s relatives continue to function as a mafia and give free rein to Iranian troops using Syria as base of operations to threaten Israel and plan attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq, those countries likely to foot the bill for Syrian reconstruction—the nations of Europe and the Gulf—are unlikely to come up with the cash. 

Read more at The Daily Beast.

“HOLY MOTHER OF GOD.” 

That’s how epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding began a since-deleted 14-tweet thread on Jan. 25 warning about the “thermonuclear pandemic level bad” infectiousness of the coronavirus that broke out in Wuhan, China.

The first confirmed U.S. case had been announced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) days earlier outside Seattle. But the disease was not widely understood to be a potentially nightmarish pandemic. Many infectious disease experts had been ignored despite warning for years that the U.S. was not prepared for a seemingly inevitable health crisis. Feigl-Ding, a visiting scientist at Harvard’s Department of Nutrition, wanted to help ensure their message was heard.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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On Tuesday the president took his first trip since the coronavirus grounded the country, to a Honeywell factory in battleground state Arizona. This particular Honeywell factory produces N95 masks. Pictures of the trip immediately surfaced on the internet, and they showed a president sporting his usual mango-tinted, ever-tan skin, his usual topiary-structured hair tinted a baffling yellowish, and a pair of clear safety goggles.

But what was missing? What we did not see on the president’s face was a mask. While the rest of us cover our faces as recommended by the CDC, the president does not. In fact, we have never seen a mask on the president, despite the president’s love of masking himself when it comes to his tax returns, his sexual assault allegations, and his financial dealings.   

On Wednesday, when pressed on his decision not to wear a mask at a mask factory, the president responded with the very fishy, “I had a mask on for a period of time, I had it on back, backstage. But they said you didn’t need it, so, I didn’t need it. And by the way, if you noticed, nobody else had it on that was in the group.” Okay. Whatever you say. 

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Five Australian hospitals are set to receive the experimental coronavirus drug, remdesivir. Sydney's St Vincent hospital has been confirmed as one location, according to a report from The Guardian. More »

Last year, Google turned the mid-range phone market on its head by introducing the ludicrously-priced and well-specced Pixel 3a. A few other brands have followed suit since then, but none have been quite as exciting as the new iPhone SE. Now it truly seems like flagship inclusions at lower price points are here to stay - and it's about damn time. The trend of $1,500 - $2,000 becoming the norm for new phones over the last few years has been bad for buyers. A new middle ground has been long overdue and we welcome it. But is the resurrected iPhone SE actually a good phone to buy in 2020? More »

Apple dropped its brand new 13-inch MacBook Pro overnight, which is exciting because the dreaded butterfly keyboard is now finally dead. For real. In its place you'll find the newer Magic Keyboard which has previously been added to the 16-inch MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air. Today is a good day. If you're keen to get your paws on the new laptop, here's how much it will set you back in Australia. More »

Back in early March Apple announced that it would closing the majority of its physical stores worldwide. Roughly seven weeks later Australian Apple stores will be re-opening their doors around the country later this week. More »

This week Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA) went live with its first 5G trial areas in Sydney. The telco is using 700MHz spectrum at a number of 5G-ready sites around the Parramatta area. In addition to being the only major company to confirm that it won't charge extra for 5G in Australia, it will also offer global 5G roaming... if and when we're allowed to leave the country again. More »

Over the past week we have been hearing about issues that some rural Australians are having installing the COVIDSafe app. This is because Telstra, unlike Vodafone and Optus, didn't have SMS over Wifi, which prevented 2FA texts from being received by people who don't have mobile phone reception. Importantly, is an issue that also impacts other 2FA SMS as well as emergency texts. During our investigation into this Telstra started quietly rolling the feature out. More »

Samsung just released the smaller version of its Galaxy Tab S6 tablet in Australia. Though it did appear in some online stores a little early, now it's official. Here's what its packing and how much it will cost in Australia. More »

Sennheiser has just released its second generation of its noise cancelling earbuds in Australia - the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 2. Here's what we know about them and how much they cost. Spoiler alert - they ain't cheap. More »

I'm a huge podcast tragic. From true crime to weird radio plays, I like shoving as much of them into my ear holes as possible. But despite my efforts, I realised that I don't listen to as many Australian podcasts as I'd like. Sure, I have a few favourites, but I could be doing more to support local creators. So I asked around the office to find out what the best Aussie podcasts are, and why I (and you) should be listening to them. More »

The cast of Community is reuniting for a virtual table read to raise money for coronavirus relief. Almost all of main cast will be back for the online event, including Donald Glover who left the show in season 5. It will also include a Q&A where fans can submit questions via social media. This is how you can watch it live. More »

While considering a new phone plan your first instinct may be to compare the big three - Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone. But over the past few years smaller telcos have come in swinging with plans that have high data allowances and smaller monthly fees. By looking a little deeper you can grab a great bargain. Here are five of our favourite deals these telcos are packing right now. More »

Researchers at a Sydney university have discovered how some female bees have managed to reproduce despite never doing the deed with another. More »

MONEY saving hacks are something which many people will look to adopt in their lives, be it for a financial milestone or for a rainy day fund. And, there may be a way in which some soon see their spare cash add up.

THE CORONAVIRUS lockdown is now causing serious damage to the UK's economy, Tory MP Steve Baker has warned - stressing he was now "gravely concerned" at the situation

APRIL saw 20.5 million job losses in the United States, the biggest rise in the jobless rate since the Great Depression.

COMPUTER services company PTC is using augmented reality , the enhanced visual technology seen in Pokemon Go smartphone games and Iron Man movies, to produce ventilators in record time for the NHS.

MERVYN KING, the former governor of the Bank of England, once issued a brutal analysis of the global banking system and argued for its reinvention, it can be revealed as the Government fine-tunes its economic response to the coronavirus pandemic.

कोरोना वायरस के मामलों में आई गिरावट के बाद देहरादून रेड जोन से निकलकर ऑरेंज जोन में आ गया है

केंद्रीय गृह मंत्रालय के आदेश के बाद अब हरिद्वार शहर से देहात तक कहीं भी खुले में थूकने, मास्क नहीं पहनने और शारीरिक दूरी का पालन नहीं करने वालों की खैर नहीं।

The UFC is set to return to return to action this weekend.

UFC 249 prize money - Express Sport breaks down how much Tony Ferguson and Justin Gaethje are set to pocket for their showdown in Florida.

Mercury is mostly iron, which may be because a series of close encounters with a young Venus billions of years ago stripped away its rocky outer layers

We may not have found alien life yet, but new methods and the discovery of exoplanets and extreme life on Earth is revolutionising the hunt, says the doyenne of SETI research

Strange blasts from space called fast radio bursts continue to puzzle astronomers with their odd behaviour, as they seem to come from a variety of galaxies

The Milky Way ate another galaxy called Gaia-Enceladus, and the waves passing through a star have shown us that it happened at most 11.6 billion years ago

At the centre of our galaxy, six strange clouds that look like dust and gas orbit a black hole so closely that if they were really just clouds they should have been sucked in by now

A strange supernova that’s 100 times brighter than it should be has long been a mystery, but it may be explained by the explosion slamming into a cloud of gas

The Solar Orbiter spacecraft, set to launch on 7 February, will give us our first clear views of the sun’s poles and help unravel the mystery of the solar wind

A group of astronomers has called for legal action to stop the launch of thousands of satellites designed by companies like SpaceX and OneWeb to beam high-speed internet around the world

Strange, powerful blasts of radio waves from space called fast radio bursts sometimes flash repeatedly, but never with any discernible pattern – until now

NASA has selected four potential future missions – to Jupiter’s fiery moon Io, Neptune’s icy moon Triton, and two that would explore the atmosphere and map the surface of Venus

Lettuce grown on the International Space Station has been served with tacos and cheeseburgers, and it turns out to be just as nutritious as the Earth-grown version

A huge black hole from when the universe was less than a billion years old is shooting a powerful jet at Earth, and studying it could help us understand the young cosmos

The ExoMars mission, a joint venture between the European and Russian space agencies, will be delayed for two years. It has already been plagued by issues and the coronavirus hasn't helped

Venus’s surface is covered in strange wiggling lines that may form when colossal stacks of lava are carved by gentle winds over hundreds of millions of years

Could life on Mars have hidden from extreme weather in a cavern on the Pavonis Mons volcano? This 2011 orbiter image of an otherworldly crater has NASA asking just that

When Earth and Venus formed, they both had global magma oceans deep underground. Earth’s has turned solid by now, but Venus’s may still remain hidden

An enormous rocky planet orbiting a distant star may be a gas giant that has had its atmosphere ripped off, which could help us understand how huge worlds like Jupiter form

Strange orbits of distant space rocks have been used to infer that the solar system has an unseen ninth planet, but those orbits may be less strange than we thought, meaning there is no need for a new planet

The coronavirus pandemic is making life feel slower than ever, but observing timescales across the universe can bring us some comfort, writes Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

The question of how the brain gives rise to subjective experience is the hardest of all. Mathematicians think they can help, but their first attempts have thrown up some eye-popping conclusions

Stars that are similar to the sun in every way we can measure are mostly more active than the sun, which hints that the sun’s activity may ramp up someday, risking solar eruptions

China just tested its biggest rocket yet, along with a new capsule designed to carry humans to its planned space station, the moon and beyond

About 80 per cent of stars in the Milky Way’s central bulge have relatively close encounters with another star, which can fling off any planets orbiting them