Lockdown-inspired coronavirus video game

While most nine-year-olds have been battling during lockdown with the vagaries of home schooling, Lupo Daturi has been waging war on Covid-19 itself, virtually. The fourth-grade pupil from the outskirts of Milan, where a lockdown is in place since March 8, created a video game to play with his friends.

“I had to stop all the sports I did because of Covid-19,” he says.

So Lupo turned his attention to programming, a passion that he shares with his father Marco. Lupo took some online tutorials and built his game — Cerba-20.

The aim of the game is a typical ‘seek and destroy’ with lasers, except in this case, the player is in the captain’s chair of the Cerba-20 spacecraft and the enemy is Covid-19.

Lupo plays with his friends and intends to set up a project to teach them how to programme.

Dolphins glow in bioluminescent waves

A boat travelling off the California coast encountered an unusual side-effect of bioluminescent waves — glowing dolphins in the water.

Photographer Patrick Coyne, who captured the video of this unusually bright bioluminescent waves crashing on Newport Beach, was off-shore in the same area with Newport Coastal Adventure’s Capt. Ryan Lawler when they spotted the dolphins. Coyne captured video showing the glowing dolphins just under the surface of the water. The video was posted to Newport Coastal Adventure’s Facebook page. The glowing effect is caused by bioluminescent algae in the water.

Snake named after Harry Potter’s Salazar Slytherin

A new species of pit viper in India has been named Trimeresurus salazar, after Salazar Slytherin, a character with an affinity for snakes from the beloved Harry Potter book series by J.K. Rowling.

The new snake was discovered during a research trip from June to August 2019 to Arunachal Pradesh, part of the Himalayan biodiversity hotspot, and introduced to the world in an April 15 article published in Zoosystematics and Evolution.

The scientists explained their choice of name. “The specific epithet is a noun in apposition for J.K. Rowling’s fictional Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry’s co-founder, Salazar Slytherin. He was a Parselmouth that links him to serpents. Suggested common name: Salazar’s pit viper,” they wrote.

For those not familiar with the series, a Parselmouth is someone with the power to talk to snakes.

Woman fined for turtle walking in Rome

An Italian woman who took her pizza-sized turtle out for a walk has been fined 400 euros ($440) by the Roman police for breaking strict coronavirus confinement rules.

The Roman police said, “the 60-year-old woman was caught outside her home without a justifiable reason” and fined.

“The woman was walking with a turtle,” the police statement said.

Taking your dog out for a walk is viewed as a good enough reason to leave your home. But it seems taking your turtle out for one is not.

Published in Dawn, Young World, May 16th, 2020