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Now that people are finding themselves  working remotely  or setting up virtual parties to chat with friends and family while maintaining social distance, Zoom is quickly becoming the go-to source for those gatherings. But when you spend days quarantining at home, cleaning up for a Zoom call might be the last thing on your mind.  Verge  reviews editor Barbara Krasnoff has already told you how you can make use of  Zoom’s custom background tool  to hide messy backdrops or running children and pets. But if you need some resources on what backgrounds to use as your virtual teleconferencing room, here are a few places to browse, plus some of  The Verge  staff’s favorites. CANVA Canva is a design resource service, and it’s offered several free templates for you to use on Zoom to customize your virtual space. Choose from  animated backgrounds  (a word of warning that these will require more processing power to run smoothly) or stati...

By Dan Bilefsky Transnational migrants who shuttle between Vancouver and China confront loneliness, divorce and culture shock. But their children see advantages. VANCOUVER — Bonnie Ye, 42, left China four years ago to marry a Vancouver man she met on a Chinese matchmaking website. Soon, her husband was shuttling between China and two homes in Vancouver, leaving her alone for long stretches to care for their young daughter. Now, the two are divorced. Eson Zeng and his son meet with a customer at his food stand in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Mr. Zeng and his wife spent four years apart while he shuttled between Vancouver and China. Credit... Valerie Ng, 19, was so distraught as a child when her father left Vancouver to go work in Hong Kong, she bit his ear until it bled. But she and her mother came to dread his sporadic visits home: He was a “yeller.” After Valerie finishes college, her mother hopes to return to Hong Kong while her daughter plans to remain in Canada. These are...

By  Nesrine Malik hough Africa has fewer coronavirus cases and a slower rate of infection than the UK, many countries in the continent have passed dramatically more extreme measures to prevent its spread than Britain has. In my birth country of Sudan, after only one case and one death was registered, all schools and universities were shut down. Several other nations, such as Egypt, have taken the ultimate precaution and closed their airports. The ebola epidemic of 2014 is still fresh in the mind in sub-Saharan African countries.’ A man wears a mask while shopping in Johannesburg. Photograph: Luca Sola/AFP via Getty Images There is no denial here, no mixed messaging, and no unfounded promise of how soon we will send the virus packing. The tough and timely action is borne less out of political maturity than it is bitter experience, and an awareness that already overburdened public healthcare systems cannot sustain an onslaught. The ebola epidemic of 2014 is still fres...

Wuhan, the centre of the coronavirus outbreak in China, has begun to loosen its two-month lockdown on citizens as more countries issued new restrictions to contain the pandemic. Workers wearing face masks remove barriers on a street in Wuhan as the Chinese city has started to loosen its coronavirus lockdown Photograph: China Daily/Reuters On Monday, small groups of residents in the central Chinese city were leaving their residential compounds, going to grocery stores and walking along the streets for the first time in weeks. At the weekend, the first train arrived in the city ferrying more than 1,000 workers from elsewhere in the province back to the city for work. On Sunday, local authorities said residents could begin returning to work if they did not have a temperature and could provide a green health code, signifying their virus-free status as well as a certificate from their employer. Officials said the city would be “gradually” reopened and public transportation would ...

Apple  has pledged to donate 2 million industrial masks to help address the needs of health care workers in areas hit hard by the new  coronavirus , the Trump administration said Saturday.  Angela Lang/CNET "This is another story of great American industry," Vice President Mike Pence said Saturday at a  White House briefing  about the federal coronavirus response. "The president and I literally heard directly from Apple that they're donating 2 million industrial masks to this effort around the country and working with our administration to distribute those." Apple CEO Tim Cook alluded to the donation in a tweet later Saturday, saying  Apple is donating  "millions of masks for health professionals in the US and Europe." Apple didn't comment beyond Cook's tweet. "Our teams at Apple have been working to help source supplies for healthcare providers fighting COVID-19. We’re donating millions of masks for health professionals i...

The company is confirming fuller backwards compatibility on the PS5 Sony has issued an update to clarify its stance on backwards compatibility for the PlayStation 5, saying the upcoming console will support an “overwhelming majority” of the 4,000-plus existing PS4 titles. Prior to the update, Sony’s Mark Cerny, the system architect for the PS5 who detailed its full hardware specifications in a live-streamed presentation on Wednesday, said the console would support “almost all” of the top 100 PS4 titles.  “A quick update on backward compatibility — With all of the amazing games in PS4’s catalog, we’ve devoted significant efforts to enable our fans to play their favorites on PS5,” Sony writes in the update text, which it posted at the top of its tech specs announcement post from two days ago. “We believe that the overwhelming majority of the 4,000+ PS4 titles will be playable on PS5.” “WE BELIEVE THAT THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF THE 4,000+ PS4 TITLES WILL BE PLAYAB...

People who we meet for the first time decide whether they like us or not, as well as which things we are capable of, even before we start to speak. It happens subconsciously, sometimes in less than a second. It’s this first impression that is so hard to change later. We found out what conclusions people make about each other within the first seconds of meeting. Keep this information in mind because it can help you impress your new acquaintances. 1. How available are you? © depositphotos.com     © depositphotos.com   We don’t have very pleasant news for tattoo lovers. A graduate psychology major at the University of Texas, Lisa Oakes,  came to the conclusion  that  women with tattoos are perceived as more accessible and prone to a frequent change of partners and occasional sex.  However, t...