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Eye experts warn people not to take pictures of March 20 solar eclipse on a smartphone because of blindness risk.
The danger comes as people look directly at the Sun as they position themselves for selfies or other shots.
Inadvertently, glancing at the Sun – even briefly while setting up a shot – can lead to burns at the back of eye.
Experts advise indirect viewing, using pinholes and facing away from the Sun.
For many, this will be the first time they have witnessed the phenomenon in 15 years, but eye specialists say people should not use their camera phones to capture the event.
The safest ways to view the eclipse include using a pinhole camera to project an image of the eclipse on to a piece of card.
Other options involve using colanders to make multiple pinholes or using specifically designed eclipse viewing glasses.
Experts warn the glasses must be checked for damage first and should be put on before looking up at the sky.
It’s a Total Solar Eclipse in the Faroe Islands and Svalbard (Norway), and a Partial Solar Eclipse in Europe, northern and eastern Asia and northern and western Africa. The eclipse starts at 07:41 UTC and ends at 11:50 UTC.
The sky will darken but the Sun will still peek out from behind the Moon.
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Queen Elizabeth II popped up in the background as two Australian Commonwealth Games hockey players were posing for a selfie.
Jayde Taylor, 29, posted the picture on Twitter saying: “Ahhh The Queen photo-bombed our selfie!! #royalty #sheevensmiled #amazing.”
Queen Elizabeth II popped up in the background as two Australian Commonwealth Games hockey players were posing for a selfie (photo Twitter/Jayde Taylo)
That led to a series of other postings on social networks with England’s European and Commonwealth 110m hurdles champion Andy Turner, 33, and another Australia hockey player, Anna Flanagan, 22, uploading similar images.
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An elephant at UK’s West Midlands Safari Park took a selfie on a visitor’s phone when he dropped it, it has been claimed.
The 23-year-old visitor, named Scott Brierley, said he found a photo of African elephant Latabe on his phone after it was returned to him by keepers at West Midlands Safari Park, near Bewdley in Worcestershire.
Scott Brierley said he found a photo of African elephant Latabe on his phone after it was returned to him by keepers at West Midlands Safari Park (photo Scott Brierley)
Head keeper Andy Plumb said the picture was a first for the park.
Scott Brierley said he believed it was the world’s first “elfie” – or elephant selfie.
He said he was ordered to stay inside his car after his phone fell to the ground while he was taking pictures of the park’s elephant enclosure.
Scott Brierley said he saw the 22-year-old elephant walk towards his phone but thought she had mistaken it for food.
“I really couldn’t believe when the phone came back, I pressed the centre button to check it was still working and there it was – me and my friend were in shock,” he said.
Andy Plumb said the staff at the park were “very proud” of Latabe’s apparent photography skills.
“Lots of people have dropped their phones at our park but I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said.
A new research suggests that spending lots of time on Facebook looking at pictures of friends could make women insecure about their body image.
The more women are exposed to “selfies” and other photos on social media, the more they compare themselves negatively, according to US and UK experts.
Friends’ photos may be more influential than celebrity shots as they are of known contacts, the study says.
The study is the first to link time on social media to poor body image.
The mass media are known to influence how people feel about their appearance.
Young women are particularly high users of social networking sites and post more photographs of themselves on the internet than do men
But little is known about how social media impact on self-image.
Young women are particularly high users of social networking sites and post more photographs of themselves on the internet than do men.
To look at the impact on body image, researchers at the University of Strathclyde, Ohio University and University of Iowa surveyed 881 female college students in the US.
The women answered questions about their Facebook use, eating and exercise regimes, and body image.
The research, presented at a conference in Seattle, found no link with eating disorders.
But it did find a link between time spent on social networks and negative comparisons about body image.
The more time women spent on Facebook, the more they compared their bodies with those of their friends, and the more they felt negative about their appearance.
Ellen DeGeneres’ Oscars selfie has become the most re-tweeted image in Twitter’s history, even briefly crashing the service.
Oscars host Ellen DeGeneres posted a selfie including: Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Kevin Spacey, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Bradley Cooper, and best supporting actress winner Lupita Nyong’o.
It took less than 40 minutes to beat the previous record for most tweeted image – a photo of Michelle and Barack Obama, posted on his re-election in 2012.
Ellen DeGeneres’ Oscars selfie has become the most re-tweeted image in Twitter’s history
By the end of the Oscars ceremony, the celebrity selfie had been re-tweeted more than two million times.
Ellen DeGeneres encouraged those watching the Oscars – about one billion people – to make the image the most re-tweeted in history, and less than an hour later announced the target had been met.
“We crashed Twitter!” she joked, adding that the service was up again shortly after.
There have been more than seven million tweets using the hashtags #oscars and #oscars2014.
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Kim Kardashian has revealed her secrets in an ongoing online Q&A session on Mobio Insider.
Amid discussions with her fans, Kim Kardashian shared what makes a perfect selfie for her.
Kim Kardashian has revealed her secrets in an ongoing online Q&A session
Kim Kardashian, 33, noted that her favorite pictures are the ones where she looks the most glitzy, like her snaps from her travels around the globe as well as intimate shots of daughter North and fiancé Kanye West. She said: “I love a good selfie 😉 My favorite is a glam selfie, usually at a shoot when I have fab make up on! Love sharing all the makeup tips.”
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“Selfie”, “twerking” and “hashtag” top 2014 Lake Superior State University List of Banished Words.
LSSU collected suggestions from members of the public for its 39th annual list of words that should be banned.
It recommends the words be “banished from the Queen’s English” because of misuse, overuse or just being useless.
Last year it tried to ban expressions including “double down”, “bucket list” and “YOLO” (You Only Live Once).
For LSSU’s 2014 list, “selfie” received the most nominations.
Selfie, twerking and hashtag top 2014 Lake Superior State University List of Banished Words
The term, which refers to a self-portrait photo, was named word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries only last month.
“Twerk” (a dance move) similarly attracts LSSU’s opprobrium, even though it was also shortlisted by Oxford Dictionaries.
The college’s vocabulists also lamented the rise of “hashtag” and “Twittersphere”, terms from social media that have seeped into everyday speech.
Combination words using variations of -mageddon or -pocalypse, such as “snowpocalypse” or “budgetmageddon”, also ended up on the forbidden list.
It is not clear whether the LSSU’s roster will be a game-changer (an expression LSSU tried to ban in 2009).
Last year’s banned words remain stubbornly resilient in usage. And many of the terms banned in recent years, recorded on the complete list, such as “angst”, “24/7”, “no-brainer” and “spoiler alert”, continue to flourish.
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President Barack Obama was caught smiling and taking a selfie with his seat-mates, Denmark’s PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt and Britain’s David Cameron during Nelson Mandela’s massive memorial service in Johannesburg.
As the three of them smile for the camera, a stern-looking Michelle Obama can be seen staring straight ahead, hands clasped.
Michelle Obama’s reaction – not just to the “selfie” but to her husband’s chatting and joking with the young Danish prime minister – was priceless. In one picture, Michelle Obama could be seen glaring over at Barack Obama while he put his hand on Helle Thorning-Schmidt’s shoulder.
In another, it appeared the first lady and the president switched seats, putting Michelle Obama squarely between him and Helle Thorning-Schmidt.
Barack Obama was caught smiling and taking a selfie with Helle Thorning-Schmidt and David Cameron during Nelson Mandela’s massive memorial service
The photographer behind the “selfie” pic of the three dignitaries, though, later claimed that the first lady herself was “joking with those around her” a few seconds earlier.
“The stern look was captured by chance,” he wrote.
After the images surged through social media, the White House on Wednesday released its own set of photos of Barack Obama’s South Africa visit and among them was a picture of Obama, the first lady and the Danish prime minister.
But in this one, Barack Obama was talking to his wife, while Helle Thorning-Schmidt seemed preoccupied with her phone.
The “selfie” incident was the second unexpected controversy stirred up by the president in South Africa. Earlier, Cuban-American lawmakers publicly objected after Barack Obama – on his way to deliver his tribute to Nelson Mandela – shook the hand of Cuba’s President Raul Castro.
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Oxford Dictionaries has declared “selfie” as the word of the year in 2013.
The word “selfie” has evolved from a niche social media tag into a mainstream term for a self-portrait photograph, the editors said.
Research suggested its frequency in the English language had increased by 17,000% in the last year, they added.
Other shortlisted words included “twerk” – a dance move performed by Miley Cyrus – and “binge-watch” – meaning watching lots of TV.
“Schmeat”, meaning a form of meat synthetically produced from biological tissue, was also a contender.
The word of the year award celebrates the inventiveness of English speakers when confronted with social, political or technological change.
In 2004, the word of the year was “chav”, in 2008 it was credit crunch and last year it was “omnishambles”.
To qualify, a word need not have been coined within the past 12 months, but it does need to have become prominent or notable in that time.
“Selfie” is defined by Oxford Dictionaries as “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website”.
“Selfie” is defined by Oxford Dictionaries as “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website”
Its increase in use is calculated by Oxford Dictionaries using a research programme that collects around 150 million English words currently in use from around the web each month.
This software can be used to track the emergence of new words and monitor changes in geography, register, and frequency of use.
“Selfie” can be traced back to 2002 when it was used in an Australian online forum, according to Oxford Dictionaries.
A man posted a picture of injuries to his face sustained when he tripped over some steps. He apologized for the fact that it was out of focus, saying that it was not because he was drunk but because it was a selfie.
This year, “selfie” has gained momentum throughout the English-speaking world, helped by pictures such as one of the Pope with teenagers that went viral.
Judy Pearsall, editorial director for Oxford Dictionaries, said: “Social media sites helped to popularize the term, with the hashtag #selfie appearing on the photo-sharing website Flickr as early as 2004, but usage wasn’t widespread until around 2012, when selfie was being used commonly in mainstream media sources.”
“Selfie” was added to the Oxford Dictionaries Online in August, but is not yet in the Oxford English Dictionary, although it is being considered for future use.
Other words that were shortlisted included “showrooming” – examining a product at a shop before buying it online at a lower price – and bitcoin – a digital currency in which transactions can be performed without the need for a central bank.
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Pope Francis showed he is well in touch with what’s popular in society today by posing for a “selfie” with young Italian pilgrims in St Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City.
The head of 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide has already amassed more than three million followers on the social networking site Twitter, with his latest offering believed to be the first ever “papal selfie”.
Pope Francis posed for a selfie with young Italian pilgrims in St Peter’s Basilica
Around 500 teenagers had travelled from the Diocese of Piacenza and Bobbio for a pilgrimage, and shared a private audience with the pontiff.
Pope Francis was also presented a gift from his followers of a portrait of Jesus wearing a crown of thorns.
He has made a concerted effort to understand and integrate with worldwide youth since he succeeded Pope Benedict XVI.
This was demonstrated when Pope Francis attended Brazil’s World Youth Day, with tens of thousands of people greeting him as he urged young Catholics to “make disciples of all nations”.
Following his return to Vatican City from Brazil, Pope Francis Tweeted: “What an unforgettable week in Rio! Thank you, everyone. Pray for me. #Rio2013 #JMJ.”
The Pope has already charmed the masses with his informal style, simplicity and sense of humor.
Pope Francis has also being known to ring people up who have written to him asking for prayers or told him of personal tragedy.
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