April 21, 2021

By: Chris McLeod

21/4/2021

5 Things You Need To Know

April 21st is the 111th day of 2021. There are 254 days remaining until the end of the year.

Former Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin was found guilty yesterday of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd.

He’s facing up to 75 years in prison.

One new positive COVID-19 case reported Tuesday by Chatham-Kent Public Health.

There was 1 recovery leaving the total active cases locally at 38.

There were 3,467 positive cases reported Tuesday in Ontario. It’s the first time in the last week that the positive cases is below 4,000. Hospitalizations and ICU patients climb to another pandemic high.

The Ontario Hockey League (OHL) has cancelled its 2020-21 season because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The league and the provincial government had reached an agreement on a return-to-play plan for the league in earlier this month but with the extended stay-at-home order, along with increasing cases across the province, officials determined it was impossible to have a season.

The OHL will be the only one of Canada’s three major junior hockey leagues not to hold a 2020-21 season.

Apple unveiled dozens of new products during their Spring Loaded event yesterday.

The announcements included…

  • New AirTag device (a Bluetooth locator to help find missing keys or wallets)
  • Apple Card updates (the card can now be shared with family members and includes parental controls)
  • Apple Podcasts app redesign (now includes subscriptions, recommendations, and more)
  • New iPad Pro (featuring more powerful chip, better camera, 16GB memory, 2TB storage, and 5G connectivity)
  • Larger 12.9-inch iPad Pro gets liquid retina XDR display
  • New iMac computers in multiple colors (redesigned with new faster chip, Touch ID, and powerful speakers)
  • New Purple model for the iPhone 12
  • New faster model of Apple TV 4K streaming device (with redesigned Siri remote including mute and power buttons; also allows for HDR with high frame rates)
  • Apple TV’s “Ted Lasso” starring Jason Sudeikis will return for a second season in July

Facebook announced several new tools for creating and sharing audio this week.

Facebook is working on its own live audio product, called Live Audio Rooms, and will test it in Facebook Groups. The company plans to make the feature available to everyone on Facebook this summer and incorporate it in its messaging app, Messenger.

Podcasts are also coming to Facebook. People will soon be able to listen to and discover new podcasts directly on the Facebook app.

Another new product is called “Soundbites. They are audio clips that are short-form like TikTok videos but are instead audio-focused with captions. The feature will first be available to a select number of creators.

Facebook also announced plans for creators to be able to make money with these new audio tools. This would include charging for access to Live Audio Rooms and using Facebook Stars, its tipping feature.

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