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Snow has fallen in the Sahara Desert in north-western Algeria as temperatures plummeted to below freezing. For children from nearby towns such as Mekalis, it was a welcome relief from the scorching heat of the world's largest hot desert.

Our World in Data (OWID) is a scientific online publication that focuses on large global problems such as poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, and inequality.

Darkness. Total and complete. Few of us get to experience it. At the bottom of a cave, perhaps; or in a basement when the power shuts off. But there's usually some faint glow coming from somewhere.

"When I was a kid, I hated walking; nevertheless, my father always took me with him to the mountains.

Growing up as an only child, I was not lonely, nor did I want siblings, but I knew not to flaunt my only-child status. I understood that only children had certain known traits, and I felt compelled to prove that I wasn't the 'typical' singleton. 

It was late at night on 15 November 2019, on the Samoan island of Upolu – a tiny jade-green splodge in the Pacific Ocean, somewhere between Hawaii and New Zealand. Government officials were rushing to attend a meeting in the sleepy harbourside capital to discuss an urgent public health issue.

Take a globe and spin it to the meridian of longitude 170° East. Run your finger down to the parallels of latitude named by seafarers during the Age of Sail as the "Roaring Forties" because of their wild, westerly winds.

The way we think about sexuality is changing. Where there was once a single, well-known rainbow pride flag, today, a wide array of colourful flags fly to showcase the diversity of orientations.

Sixteen miles (26km) off the windswept coast of northern Scotland, the future of renewable energy is taking shape.

There appears to be an optimal bedtime - between 10pm and 11pm - linked to better heart health, say researchers who have studied 88,000 volunteers.

What is a data scientist? The job title sprang out of nowhere as technology firms have scrambled to find people to perform sophisticated analytical tasks over the last decade.

An explosion outside Liverpool Women's Hospital on Remembrance Sunday has been declared a terror incident by police. The cabbie, named locally as David Perry, was declared a hero by Liverpool Mayor Joanne Anderson for locking the suspect inside the vehicle.

Tackling climate change will require world leaders to take action on a global level. But as individuals we also contribute to damaging emissions. Here are some things you can do to reduce your personal impact.

In the wake of Facebook's recent rebranding, we've been hearing a lot about the word meta.

"It's just a little fish, not very colourful - there's not much interest in terms of global conservation," explains Gerardo Garcia. The species that the Chester Zoo conservationist is talking about - the Tequila fish - has now been returned to the wild after being declared extinct.

A conservation team in the US state of Virginia has opened a box containing Confederate war memorabilia believed to be more than 130 years old. It contained newspapers, books and ammunition dated to the US Civil War.

When I visited Mauritius as a child on family holidays I would see plenty of seashells on the beaches. But on my return to the archipelago to cover stories about the effects of climate change, the stretches of soft sand along the Indian Ocean have seemed bereft.

As we head towards the end of another extraordinary year, BBC Future is taking a look back at some of our favourite stories for our "Best of 2021" collection. Discover more of our picks here.

The late anti-apartheid campaigner Archbishop Desmond Tutu is to be aquamated - a process using water that is described as an environmentally friendly alternative to cremation. It was "what he aspired to as an eco-warrior," said Very Rev Michael Weeder.

The year 2021 has seen a fundamental shift in British defence and security policy. Up goes the budget for digital technology, artificial intelligence and cyber. Down goes the money for more traditional hardware and troop numbers.

To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.A $10bn glittering jewel recedes into the distance. This is the moment the James Webb Telescope came off the top of its rocket to begin its mission to image the first stars to shine in the cosmos.

Hundreds of years ago, the Lau people of the Solomon Islands built around 80 artificial islands in a lagoon, placing bits of coral and rock into the water, piece by piece. It took them centuries.

It was another stark reminder of how much she has changed my daily schedule and habits, including my increasing coffee consumption. But as a growing body of scientific research shows, she may in fact be influencing me on a much deeper level, far beyond my sleep patterns.

Borders are supposed to be simple in the Pyrenees. On the southern side of the mountain range, you're in Spain. On the northern side, you're in France. Visit Val d'Aran, though, and geopolitics takes a more complicated turn. Val d'Aran is on the wrong side of the mountains.

Discurras ti rumantsch? Despite Romansh being one of Switzerland’s four national languages, less than 0.5% percent of Swiss can answer that question – ‘Do you speak Romansh?’ – with a ‘yes’.

One of the seven holy pilgrimage centres in India, the city of Dwarka is not only of religious importance, but also archaeological.

My understanding is that nothing comes from nothing. For something to exist, there must be material or a component available, and for them to be available, there must be something else available.

Whenever Ethan Kross finds himself in a mental rut of worrying and negative self-talk, he walks five blocks to his local arboretum and contemplates one of the magnificent trees in front of him, and the astonishing power of nature.

Applicants can now apply for a 10-year-lease to run the pub and manage the island which is home to the ruins of a 14th Century and a campsite. Barrow Borough Council said the person would be "crowned" by having alcohol poured over their head.

Stephanie Jarvis credits YouTube with saving her vast French chateau. She had bought the 40-room, 16th Century home back in 2005 after pooling resources with a friend.

Gazing up at Leonardo da Vinci's Adoration of the Magi in the rarefied corridors of Florence's Uffizi Gallery, I began to feel unusual. My stomach tightened and my heart raced; my knees buckled and my palms felt clammy. Were the chicken liver crostini from lunch coming back to bite me? Probably.

If you have ever dreamed of earning money from a stellar music career but were concerned you had little talent, don't let that put you off - a man called Alex Mitchell might be able to help.

The last time Paul Thorn saw his parents, decades ago, they threw away the crockery he ate off out of fear of infection. When he was diagnosed with HIV, in 1988, he had to stop training as a nurse.

How do you solve a problem like bad information? When it comes to understanding science and making health decisions, it can have life-or-death consequences.

Hana Horka, 57, was unvaccinated and had posted on social media that she was recovering after testing positive, but died two days later. Her son, Jan Rek, said she got infected on purpose when he and his father had the virus, so she could get a recovery pass to access certain venues.

An international team of scientists has produced the most detailed three-dimensional map of the Universe yet. Within seven months, their Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has broken all 3D galaxy survey records.

Saudi authorities have warned that anyone spreading "baseless" rumours on social media could face up to five years in prison and a huge fine. It comes after a cancelled concert in Riyadh led to reports online that young women were being sexually harassed as they tried to make their way home.

Opposition to Covid vaccinations has come in many forms, but none stranger than the "sovereign citizen" defence. It uses defunct ancient English law to try to challenge regulations.

A group of inmates at a jail in the US state of Arkansas are taking legal action, saying they were unknowingly prescribed the horse deworming drug Ivermectin to treat Covid-19.Small doses of Ivermectin are approved for use on humans, but health officials have warned against its use for Covid.

Days of sightings of drones over key Swedish sites including nuclear plants have prompted the country's security service to take the lead in an investigation. Three nuclear sites have been targeted and sightings have been reported over airports and the royal palace.

All houses destroyed on an island devastated by deadly tsunami, Tonga government says in first words since volcano eruptedThis breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

A massive volcanic eruption in Tonga, on Saturday, triggered a tsunami that spread across the Pacific in a matter of hours.Waves hit Australia, New Zealand and Japan as well as the west coasts of North and South America.

They says $2 (£1.50) should be levied on every tonne of ships' fuel - to support research into clean engines. Shipping creates about 3% of the emissions that are over-heating the climate - equivalent to all of Germany's CO2.

To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.The US and Japan have advised people on their Pacific coastlines to get away from the shore as a precaution against tsunami waves caused by a volcano eruption in the South Pacific.

Raw sewage, microplastics and slurry are coursing through all of England's rivers putting health and nature at risk, a parliamentary report concludes. Agriculture and water companies are the biggest contributors to this "chemical cocktail", the Environmental Audit Committee warns.

The Netherlands' King Willem-Alexander has announced that Dutch royals will cease using a historic golden carriage amid a debate over slavery links. Critics say that one side of the horse-drawn carriage, called De Gouden Koets, is decorated with an image that glorifies the country's colonial past.

Former child prodigy Ruth Slenczynska is to release a new album at the age of 97, after signing a deal with the Decca record label. The pianist, who gave her first recital aged four, recorded My Life In Music last year, featuring music by Sergei Rachmaninoff and Frederic Chopin.

A photo of an indigenous man carrying his father on his back to take a Covid-19 vaccine in the Brazilian Amazon has gone viral, and became a symbol of the complicated vaccination logistics in one of the world's most remote areas.

The Duke of York's military titles and royal patronages have been returned to the Queen, Buckingham Palace has said. Prince Andrew, 61, will also stop using the style His Royal Highness in an official capacity, a royal source said.

It's understandable if the thought of a comet wiping out all life on earth might be an extra worry you just don't need right now. But if you've watched Netflix movie Don't Look Up, it might be hard to get the thought out of your mind.

Elon Musk has rejected claims that his Starlink satellite internet project is taking up too much room in space. His comments come after a claim by the head of the European Space Agency (ESA) that Mr Musk was "making the rules" for the emerging commercial space industry.

Intermittent fasting is championed by celebrities and CEOs alike for its weight loss and health benefits.

David Bennett, 57, is doing well three days after the experimental seven-hour procedure in Baltimore, doctors say. The transplant was considered the last hope of saving Mr Bennett's life, though it is not yet clear what his long-term chances of survival are.

The US space agency (Nasa) is calling it a historic moment - the first time a spacecraft has flown through the outer atmosphere of the Sun. The feat was achieved by the Parker Solar Probe, which dipped, for just a short while, into a region around our star that scientists call the corona.

TV adventurer Simon Reeve has admitted he sometimes feels like a "hypocrite" over the carbon footprint his travel documentaries leave behind. The presenter has journeyed around the world fronting travel shows for the BBC in far-flung locations including Australia, Cuba and the Caribbean.

"So now finally, we're on the map," says Philip Balhoa about Lüderitz, a town in southern Namibia, where harsh desert meets pale ocean. The port town has previously benefited from diamonds and fishing booms, but now struggles with high rates of unemployment and aging infrastructure.

Imagine working on a project you know you have no hope of seeing through to completion. Would you have the motivation to even get it going? Absolutely, says Ralph McNutt from Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU-APL) in the US.

As we head towards the end of another extraordinary year, BBC Future is taking a look back at some of our favourite stories for our "Best of 2021" collection. Discover more of our picks here. There should be no doubt about it: Covid-19 vaccines are saving lives.

The twin smokestacks of the Moss Landing Power Plant tower over Monterey Bay. Visible for miles along this picturesque stretch of the north Californian coast, the 500-foot-tall (150m) pillars crown what was once California's largest electric power station – a behemoth natural gas-fired generator.

As the quiet whirr of electric vehicles gradually replaces the revs and noxious fumes of internal combustion engines, a number of changes are set to filter through our familiar world.

Turkmenistan's president has ordered the extinguishing of the country's "Gateway to Hell", a fire that has been burning for decades in a huge desert crater. Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov wants it put out for environmental and health reasons, as well as part of efforts to increase gas exports.

It's done. The biggest astronomical mirror ever sent into space is assembled and ready for focusing. The golden reflector, the centrepiece of the new James Webb telescope, was straightened out on Saturday into its full, 6.5m-wide, concave shape.

A German man who killed and ate an apparently willing victim has been sentenced to life in prison after he was found guilty of murder. Armin Meiwes, 44, was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison in 2004 after being found guilty of the manslaughter of Bernd Juergen Brandes.

A German court has sentenced an ex-teacher to life in prison for murdering a man he met on an online dating site and desecrating his body.The judge in Berlin said Stefan R, 42, had killed the electrical engineer to "act out his fantasies of cannibalism".

A unique snapshot of life one midsummer night - just over 100 years ago - reveals, among other things, life in the real Downton Abbey, how slum families pleaded for better homes, and why a man from Yorkshire wasn't able to divorce his wife.

Not many people can say they have a doctorate in interplanetary navigation, but Tim Crain can. While working on his PhD in Austin, Texas, in the 1990s he hoped one day to work on missions to Mars and in 2000 he landed his dream job with Nasa, at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Three suspected pirates who were detained for six weeks on a Danish warship off West Africa's coast have been released at sea in a small dinghy. The three were captured in November after a fatal exchange of fire in the Gulf of Guinea.

French regulators have hit Google and Facebook with fines totalling 210m euros (£175m) over use of cookies. Data privacy watchdog the CNIL said both sites were making it difficult for internet users to refuse the online trackers.

Mission controllers are ticking off the final major deployments needed to set up the new James Webb Space Telescope. Wednesday saw the observatory's secondary mirror locked into position on the end of three 8m-long booms.

Pope Francis has suggested people who choose to have pets over children are acting selfishly. The Pope's comments came as he was discussing parenthood during a general audience at the Vatican in Rome.

The new James Webb telescope has passed a major milestone in its quest to image the first stars to shine in the cosmos. Controllers on Tuesday completed the deployment of the space observatory's giant kite-shaped sun shield.

Tattoo artists say that a new pan-EU ban on thousands of chemicals used in colouring inks could hurt their industry. The restrictions, which came into force on Tuesday, apply to substances that may cause cancer or other health issues and mainly affect coloured ink.

So far, so good. The US space agency says the post-launch set-up of the new James Webb telescope have gone very well. Engineering teams are in the middle of unpacking the observatory from its folded launch configuration to the layout needed for operations.

That is what Chinese model Cai Niangniang wrote in a recent impassioned social media post, after old pictures of her went viral for all the wrong reasons.

A Chinese fashion photographer has apologised for her "ignorance" after a picture she shot for French luxury brand Dior sparked outrage.Chen Man's photo showed a woman who some Chinese netizens said perpetuated Western stereotypes of Asian faces.

Like many of her peers, 23-year-old Ruxin scrolls her social media feed every day, but she is looking for something very specific - updates about cosmetic surgery.

Denmark's government has announced a goal to make domestic flights fossil fuel free by 2030. In her New Year's address, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she wants to "make flying green".

A Belgian scientific research station in Antarctica is dealing with an outbreak of Covid-19, despite workers being fully vaccinated and based in one of the world's remotest regions. Since 14 December, at least 16 of the 25 workers at the Princess Elisabeth Polar Station have caught the virus.

Inside the Colosseum's stone and mortar bowl, visitors have ample space to picture the roaring crowds of more than 50,000 that once thronged to the arena for events ranging from bloody gladiatorial battles to opulent processions and chariot races.

Many of the people on the FBI's cyber most wanted list are Russian. While some allegedly work for the government earning a normal salary, others are accused of making a fortune from ransomware attacks and online theft.

Archaeologists in Mexico have uncovered an altar dating back to the 16th Century near Plaza Garibaldi, the square in Mexico City famed for its mariachi musicians. The altar dates back to the time after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán.

To his listeners, William Neil "Doc" Gallagher was known as the "Money Doctor" - a charming financial guru who advertised his services on Christian radio, broadcast all over the American conservative 'Bible Belt' that stretches across North Texas.

The 3,500-year-old Gilgamesh Dream Tablet has gone on display in Iraq for the first time in three decades. The clay artefact bears part of the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the world's oldest surviving works of literature.

New Zealand will ban the sale of tobacco to its next generation, in a bid to eventually phase out smoking. Anyone born after 2008 will not be able to buy cigarettes or tobacco products in their lifetime, under a law expected to be enacted next year.

A US schoolteacher says she spent five hours in voluntary self-isolation in a plane's toilet after testing positive for Covid-19 mid-flight.Marisa Fotieo says she felt her throat hurt while travelling from Chicago to Reykjavik, in Iceland, on 20 December.

Confederate monuments taken down in Richmond, Virginia, will likely be moved to a black history museum and cultural centre, officials have said. An imposing statue of Confederate general Robert E Lee that was removed in September is expected to be among the monuments being transferred.

It's 20 years since the boy wizard Harry Potter hit the big screen. In November 2001, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was released in cinemas and it was cool for adults to be seen on beaches, buses or trains with their heads in one of the phenomenally-popular children's books.

Hold on to your sorting hat, the original cast of the Harry Potter series are to reunite on screen to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first film, Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone. The HBO Max special, titled Return to Hogwarts, will be released on 1 January, the network has said.

Two US Quidditch leagues are to change their names in order to "distance" themselves from Harry Potter author JK Rowling, following a trans row. Quidditch first appeared as a fictional sport, played by wizards on flying broomsticks, in her book series.

A TV special reuniting members of the Harry Potter cast has received mixed reviews from critics, with many noting the absence of author JK Rowling.There has been speculation that the writer was shut out of the programme after her previous comments about trans people divided public opinion.

The mummified body of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh has been studied for the first time in millennia after being digitally "unwrapped". The mummy of Amenhotep I, who ruled from 1525 to 1504 BC, was found at a site in Deir el-Bahari 140 years ago.

The birds, also known as budgerigars (budgies) were delivered in two batches by the son of their owner who had kept them in one room, in what the shelter called "a very unhealthy situation". A first batch of 497 birds - crammed into seven cages - were dropped off on 23 December.

Earlier this year, Raja and Priti Narasimhan kicked off a road trip across India armed with one message: stop spitting in public. The couple carried a loudspeaker and blared their message from inside a car covered in anti-spitting slogans.

To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.By the entrance to the new Uri Geller Museum, overlooking the sparkling sea in Jaffa, lies, appropriately enough, the world's largest steel spoon - 16.18m (53ft 1in) long.

As we head towards the end of another extraordinary year, BBC Future is taking a look back at some of our favourite stories for our "Best of 2021" collection. Discover more of our picks here.

To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.The $10bn James Webb telescope has left Earth on its mission to show the first stars to light up the Universe.The observatory was lifted skyward by an Ariane rocket from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been hoisted atop the rocket that will blast it into orbit. Weighing more than six tonnes, the $10bn successor to the legendary Hubble observatory was lifted by a crane and edged into position using guide lasers.

As we head towards the end of another extraordinary year, BBC Future is taking a look back at some of our favourite stories for our “Best of 2021” collection. Discover more of our picks here. It was 1642 and Abel Tasman was on a mission.

Wikipedia has for so long been plagued by climate change denial. But a group of dedicated volunteers around the world is working tirelessly to keep the deniers at bay.

To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.A poor weather forecast has pushed back the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope by a further day.Concerns about high-level winds at the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana mean it won't now happen until 25 December.

Now, research led by the California-based scientist has revealed that mother elephant seals can pick out their own baby's voice just two days after pups are born. This ability helps pups - and mothers - survive during a precarious time.

France and its 15 allies in Europe and Canada have condemned what they say is the deployment of Russian mercenaries to Mali. They said it could "further deteriorate the security situation in West Africa", which is battling Jihadist groups.

Scientists have compiled the world's oldest family tree from human bones interred at a 5,700-year-old tomb in the Cotswolds, UK. Analysis of DNA from the tomb's occupants revealed the people buried there were from five continuous generations of one extended family.

Imagine creating a timeline of your country’s whole history stretching back to its inception. It would be no small task, and simply weighing the relative importance of so many great people, technological achievements, and pivotal events would be a tiny miracle in itself.

An original Apple computer built by firm co-founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs in 1976 has fetched $400,000 (£294,990) at auction in the US. The rare Hawaiian koa wood-cased Apple-1 - still functioning - is one of only 200 made and sold in kit form.

Death row inmate John Ramirez does not want to die alone; he wants to be comforted as he passes, by the hands of his pastor. But that request was denied by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and now his final moments lie in very different hands - the US Supreme Court.

A 17-year-old girl whose disappearance while jogging in north-west France sparked a huge police hunt has been found alive.The teenager was found in a state of shock in a takeaway about 10km (six miles) from where she had gone running.

When monsoon clouds bring pelting rains to the village of Tyrna, Shailinda Syiemlieh takes the nearest bridge to reach the opposite bank of a gushing stream. The bridge is no ordinary structure made of concrete and metal.

When Swiss watch boss, Christoph Grainger-Herr, was unable to fly to a global trade show in China because of Covid-19 restrictions, he decided to beam in Star Trek-style instead.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has spoken of his regret at the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, revealing that he had to work as a taxi driver to supplement his income. Economic troubles triggered by the collapse forced many Russians to seek new ways to earn money.

John Cleese has cancelled an appearance at Cambridge University after a visiting speaker was banned for a Hitler impression. The star, who said he had done a similar impression on a Monty Python show, said he was "blacklisting myself before someone else does".

John Cleese has laid into the "cowardly and gutless" BBC after an episode of Fawlty Towers was temporarily removed from a BBC-owned streaming platform. In it, the Major uses highly offensive language, and Cleese's Basil Fawlty declares "don't mention the war".

Walkers out in the foggy conditions at the weekend captured an unusual weather phenomenon. Jonny Oldbury, who was walking solo for the first time in the Derbyshire hills, said it was "quite spooky" to see.

Dubbed Taste-the-TV, ten canisters spray flavour onto a "hygienic film" which is rolled over the screen for the viewer to lick. If made commercially, the TV would cost $875 (£735), he estimated.

Scientists have uncovered evidence for a large-scale, prehistoric migration into Britain that may be linked to the spread of Celtic languages. The mass-movement of people originated in continental Europe and occurred between 1,400 BC and 870 BC.

A Roman-era gold ring bearing an image used by early Christians to symbolise Jesus has been found by archaeologists off Israel's Mediterranean coast.

The rapidly changing state of the world makes planning in the face of complex interconnected problems a formidable challenge. Our ability to conceive adequate solutions and strategies is often undermined by our lack of understanding of the nature of problems in their wider context.

There is a prevalent way of managing people in a software process that involves a fair amount of work to ensure that each person gets tasks that are appropriate to their talent, knowledge, skill, and experience.

In the 15th and early 16th Centuries, a small island in Lake Titicaca was one of South America's most important religious sites. Revered as the birthplace of the Sun, the Moon and the Inca dynasty, Isla del Sol ("Island of the Sun") drew pilgrims from across the Andes.

The Chinese province of Henan is building a surveillance system with face-scanning technology that can detect journalists and other "people of concern". Documents seen by BBC News describe a system that classifies journalists into a "traffic-light" system - green, amber and red.

This July, gorged by days of rain, the Meuse River broke its banks, and the Belgian town of Liège was its victim. Waters the colour of old gravy raced through town, leaving residents floating in canoes as their homes vanished about them.

Every April during Khmer New Year celebrations, Sophy Peng, her four siblings and parents make the pilgrimage to Cambodia's most sacred mountain, Phnom Kulen. As the birthplace of the mighty Angkor Empire, fabled Kulen's gentle slopes hold a special place in the hearts of locals.

The European Medicines Agency has said no to approving a new drug for Alzheimer's disease in the EU. Aducanumab does not appear to be effective at treating adults with early-stage symptoms, the EMA said.

Considering a career in brain surgery or rocket science? It might well be within reach. Members of both professions aren't necessarily more clever than the general public, according to a study.

Miami already has a lot going for it - the sunshine, the beach, the Cuban coffee. Now the city's mayor Francis Suarez wants to put it on the map for another reason: he wants to be the first to create a new way of raising money for the city - through a new cryptocurrency.

Woke (/woʊk/ wohk) is a term, originating in the United States, that originally referred to awareness about racial prejudice and discrimination. It subsequently came to encompass an awareness of other issues of social inequality, for instance, regarding gender and sexual orientation.

Political correctness (adjectivally: politically correct; commonly abbreviated PC) is a term used to describe language, policies, or measures that are intended to avoid offense or disadvantage to members of particular groups in society.

Cancel culture or call-out culture is a modern form of ostracism in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles – whether it be online, on social media, or in person. Those subject to this ostracism are said to have been "cancelled".

To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.John Cleese has said he intends to put in a formal complaint about the "deception, dishonesty and tone" of a recent BBC interview he took part in.

Several US states have been hit by a devastating series of tornadoes, with an expected death toll of more than 100. These are extremely rare outside the spring and summer, in the US, but this December there has been a record number of tornado warnings.

A two-year BBC investigation into Black Axe - a Nigerian student fraternity which evolved into a dreaded mafia-group - has unearthed new evidence of infiltration of politics, and a scamming and killing operation spanning the globe.

Six months ago, if asked what they understood by "woke", most French people would have assumed it had something to do with Chinese cooking. And yet today in Paris, the notion of "le wokisme" is suddenly all the rage.

Indian police say they have foiled a plot by a man who tried to fake his own death to avoid being returned to jail. Officers in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh say Sudesh Kumar, 36, murdered a man and tried to pass the body off as his own with the aid of his wife.

Green Zone is a 2010 action thriller film[2] directed by Paul Greengrass. The storyline was conceived from a screenplay written by Brian Helgeland, based on a 2006 non-fiction book Imperial Life in the Emerald City by journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran.

Scientists have developed a hi-tech sleeping bag that could prevent the vision problems that some astronauts experience while living in space. In zero-gravity, fluids float into the head and squash the eyeball over time.

More than 40 camels have been disqualified from Saudi Arabia's beauty pageant for receiving Botox injections and other cosmetic enhancements. The contest is a highlight of the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival, where $66m (£45m) in prize money is at stake.

The find, made in 2015 on the northeast coast of Papa Westray, is being carefully examined as part of post-excavation work. Archaeologists have now identified it as a type of heavy sword associated with the 9th Century.

I learned several new words during my time in Shetland, the distant island chain drifting between Scotland and Norway. One of them was equinoctial. It means "of or relating to the equinox".

When Caroline was growing up, she pictured herself ending up surrounded by children. Now in her 50s, that is exactly how her life has turned out, except not in quite the way she imagined.

Jump to navigation Jump to search Iraqi defector Rafid Ahmed Alwan Born Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi 1968 (age 53–54)Iraq Nationality German, former Iraqi citizen Other names Curveball Alma mater Baghdad University Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi (Arabic: رافد أحمد علوان الجنا

The observatory will study planets around other stars to try to understand how these objects formed and how they have evolved through time. Aerospace giant Airbus will lead the construction, with the expectation that Ariel can be launched in 2029.

Teenage schoolgirls in Afghanistan have told the BBC of their growing desperation as they continue to be excluded from school more than three months after the Taliban takeover. "Not being able to study feels like a death penalty," says 15-year-old Meena.

The share of wealth owned by the world's richest people soared during the Covid pandemic, a major study on inequality has found. The World Inequality Report said that 2020 saw the steepest increase in billionaires' wealth on record.

The man who has identified himself as the creator of Bitcoin plans to provide further proof of his claim. Craig Wright's spokesman told the BBC that the Australian would "move a coin from an early block" known to belong to the crypto-currency's inventor "in the coming days".

Scepticism has greeted a claim by Craig Wright that he is the inventor of Bitcoin. His claim has been subjected to scrutiny on social media, discussion forums and message boards. Many say the evidence has been found wanting.

A computer scientist who claims he invented Bitcoin has won a court case allowing him to keep a cache of the cryptocurrency worth billions of dollars.A jury rejected claims that Craig Wright's former business partner was due half of the assets.As a result Mr Wright will retain 1.

Orange sand particles twinkled in the sun as a lone motorbike kicked up dust in its wake. It was 09:30 on a bright Monday morning and the temperature was already creeping past 30C. A family of toque macaque monkeys swung from verdant tree branches and rolled playfully in the hot sand in front of us.

The world's first and most secretive space base, Baikonur Cosmodrome, sits in the middle of a vast Central Asian desert, 2,600km south-east of Moscow and 1,300km from Kazakhstan's two main cities, Nur-Sultan and Almaty.

A climber who stumbled upon a treasure trove of emeralds, rubies and sapphires that had been buried for decades on France's Mount Blanc has now been given half of the gems he found in a box.The climber, who has not been named, discovered the precious gems in 2013.

Scientists have discovered marine animals living on plastic debris in an area of the open ocean dubbed "the Great Pacific Garbage Patch". Many of the creatures are coastal species, living miles from their usual habitats, on a patch halfway between the coast of California and Hawaii.

Maria says she grew up in a "loving" Catholic family on the east coast of America, with large Sunday dinners a weekly staple. Her parents had a good marriage and she wanted that respect and closeness in her own relationship. When she met her husband in her early twenties, it felt like love.

The first real world data showing the coronavirus variant Omicron may evade some of our immunity has been reported by scientists in South Africa. Scientists have detected a surge in the number of people catching Covid multiple times.

Scientists say they have made a dramatic step forward in efforts to store information as molecules of DNA. The magnetic hard drives we currently use to store computer data can take up lots of space and also have to be replaced as they age.

Efforts are about to get under way to drill a core of ice in Antarctica that contains a record of Earth's climate stretching back 1.5 million years. The project aims to recover a near-3km-long cylinder of frozen material.

Nasa is preparing to launch a space telescope that will see further into the Universe than anything else ever built. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has taken 30 years and $10bn (£7.5bn) to develop, and is being described as one of the grand scientific endeavours of the 21st Century.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is expected to step down as chief executive of the company, according to media reports. Mr Dorsey founded Twitter in 2006, and has been serving as chief executive of both Twitter and payment firm Square.

Mindfulness is said to do many things for our psyche: it can increase our self-control, sharpen our concentration, extend our working memory and boost our mental flexibility. With practice, we should become less emotionally reactive – allowing us to deal with our problems more calmly. 

Have you ever come across someone who is incredibly kind and morally upright – and yet also deeply insufferable? They might try to do anything they can to help you or engage in a host of important, useful activities benefiting friends and the wider community.

The glass of froth-topped coffee being offered by Perumal Gandhi looks like any other latte you might enjoy during a morning stop at a café. Except, the milk in this cup did not come from a cow – it was produced by fungi.

Our relationship with cheese is a strange one. It often ranks among people's favourite foods – there are entire festivals dedicated to cheese, where it is eaten or even rolled down hills. Tasting cheese and pairing it with wines, chutneys and biscuits has been turned into an art form.

As we head into 2022, Worklife is running our best, most insightful and most essential stories from 2021. When you’re done with this article, check out our full list of the year’s top stories.  Organising a playdate, or booking the kids’ medical check-ups.

As the volume of cocaine trafficked into the Netherlands through the port city of Rotterdam increases, so too does the number of young men employed by criminal gangs to retrieve the drugs from among freight arriving from Latin America.

We're back in familiar territory - growing concern about a new variant of coronavirus. It has been named Omicron by the World Health Organization, following the pattern of Greek code-names like the Alpha and Delta variants.

Steve Liddiard has been named overall winner of the Historic Photographer of the Year Awards 2021, for his photo of the Whiteford Point Lighthouse in the Gower Peninsula, Wales.

Steve Varze, from Hackney, east London, will receive the eye on Thursday at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. It is hoped the eye will be more realistic than a traditional acrylic prosthetic eye.

A Missouri man wrongfully convicted of a triple murder in 1978 and imprisoned for more than 42 years has been exonerated and released.Kevin Strickland, 62, has maintained his innocence since his arrest at age 18. He was sentenced in June 1979.

After a crime spree spanning decades, antique thief Thomas Gavin had just one explanation for his museum heists: he likes "collecting" old things. Mr Gavin, 78, has now been sentenced to one day in jail after being caught trying to sell a rare rifle dating back to the US Revolutionary War.

US defence officials have announced the launch of a task force to investigate reports of unidentified flying objects in restricted airspace. The group will assess objects of interest and "mitigate any associated threats", the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

Apple is suing Israeli spyware firm NSO Group and its parent company for allegedly targeting iPhone users with a hacking tool.

The CubeSat is a small but mighty bit of tech. About the size of a shoebox, the tiny satellites were invented by Professor Bob Twiggs in 1999 as an educational tool for students. "They couldn't put very much in it, which was the real challenge.

A manuscript with calculations made by Albert Einstein as he attempted to formulate his theory of relativity has sold at auction for $13m (£9.7m). The sale at Christie's auction house in Paris broke the record for an autographed scientific document.

Nasa's Dart mission wants to see how difficult it would be to stop a sizeable space rock from hitting Earth. The spacecraft will crash into an object called Dimorphos to see how much its speed and path can be altered.

To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.Tens of thousands of people have been marching in the Belgian capital, Brussels, to protest against anti-Covid measures. Some protesters threw fireworks at police officers, who intervened with tear gas and water cannon.

A hundred years ago, colonial Bombay (now Mumbai) was convulsed by one of the most unusual riots in Indian history. Hindus and Muslims fought together on one side, joining hands against other groups. Historian Dinyar Patel writes about the lessons that moment holds for today's India.

Fred MacMurray obsesses over the way an anklet digs into Barbara Stanwyck's leg in Double Indemnity. Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello melt from a marital fight into lustful, aggressive sex on a staircase in A History of Violence.

Physicists have drawn up construction plans for a large-scale quantum computer. These super-fast machines promise to revolutionise computing, harnessing the world of quantum mechanics to solve problems that are beyond reach for even the most advanced "classical" ones.

Quantum computing has taken a step forward with the development of a programmable quantum processor made with silicon. The team used microwave energy to align two electron particles suspended in silicon, then used them to perform a set of test calculations.

Google says an advanced computer has achieved "quantum supremacy" for the first time, surpassing the performance of conventional devices.

IBM has unveiled an advanced "quantum" processor that is part of an effort to build super-fast computers. These machines could revolutionise computing, harnessing the strange world of quantum physics to solve problems beyond reach for even the most advanced "classical" ones.

As world leaders met at the COP26 summit to debate how to tackle climate change, misleading claims and falsehoods about the climate spiralled on social media.

When Zhang Xiaotao woke up he was in a cave and somebody had lit a fire to keep him warm. He had no idea how he'd got there. Zhang's frozen unconscious body had been found by a passing shepherd who'd wrapped him in a quilt and carried him over his shoulders to safety. He was one of the lucky ones.

To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.Russia has carried out a missile test, destroying one of its own satellites. The action has caused international outrage because the debris could threaten the International Space Station (ISS) and satellites in low-Earth orbit.

Secret key material transfer After installing a to an iPhone 12 on iOS 15.

Carina, a yoga teacher in Vienna, is not vaccinated against Covid-19 and wants to remain that way. So she is now under lockdown, like around two million other unvaccinated Austrians.

The US has condemned Russia for conducting a "dangerous and irresponsible" missile test that it says endangered the crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The test blew up one of Russia's own satellites, creating debris that forced the ISS crew to shelter in capsules.

Peering down through my snorkel goggles, the turquoise water was so clear that I could make out the mantra ray cleaning station some 20m below us, where we'd observed one of these majestic kites of the sea dancing in the current as small fish nibbled at its vast white underbelly.

There have been warnings from doctors and the UK's Health Security Agency that waning immunity is leading to deaths even of people who have had two doses of a Covid vaccine. So how much protection are we left with? Let's nail some basics.

The fugitive behind one of America's most notorious bank robberies has been identified after a 52-year search, law enforcement officials have announced. Ted Conrad was working as a teller at the Society National Bank in Cleveland, Ohio when he robbed his employer in July 1969.

Austria is placing about 2 million unvaccinated people in lockdown from Monday amid record infection levels and growing pressure on hospitals. Unvaccinated people will only be able to leave home for a limited number of reasons, like working or buying food.

China has restricted construction of very tall buildings, calling them vanity projects. It comes at a time when offices across the globe are filled with empty desks and some workers are wary of sharing hermetically sealed spaces. So does the skyscraper still have a future, asks author Judith Dupré.

The Mediterranean island-nation of Malta may be small but its response to the pandemic has been mighty.

Stilton, Cheshire, red Leicester. There are more than 700 cheeses produced in the UK, but in parts of the English-speaking world, a certain type is so ubiquitous that it's simply referred to as "cheese". 

The US is no stranger to extreme weather, but the climate emergency is creating bigger extremes, with ever bigger bills.

A previously unheard song featuring two of The Beatles at the height of their fame has been given its world premiere after being rediscovered in a loft.The song, Radhe Shaam, was written and produced by broadcaster Suresh Joshi in 1968 and features Ringo Starr on drums and George Harrison on guitar.

The first Nasa mission since 1972 to put humans on the Moon's surface has been pushed back by one year to 2025. Few observers expected Nasa to make the previous 2024 date, because of a funding shortfall and a lawsuit over the landing vehicle.

Afghanistan's ex-finance minister has blamed the government's fall on corrupt officials who invented "ghost soldiers" and took payments from the Taliban. He said phantom personnel were added to official lists so that generals could pocket their wages.

To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.For almost 40 years Ken Smith has shunned conventional life and lived without electricity or running water in a hand-made log cabin on the banks of a remote loch in the Scottish Highlands. "It's a nice life," says Ken.

This week, I travelled back in time to visit the future. It has been about 10 years since I first entered the virtual world of Second Life, arguably the internet's first attempt at what every tech giant is now racing to build: the so-called metaverse.

An experimental pill to treat Covid developed by the US company Pfizer cuts the risk of hospitalisation or death by 89% in vulnerable adults, clinical trial results suggest. The drug - called Paxlovid - is aimed at the elderly and others at high risk of severe disease.

One of Facebook's earliest investors has labelled the social media giant's plans for a metaverse as "dystopian". Meta, as Facebook is now known, is investing billions in the project.

A group of leaders at COP26 will sign the climate change conference's first major deal on Tuesday when they promise to stop deforestation by 2030.Signatories in Glasgow will include Brazil, where large parts of the Amazon rainforest have been cut down.

The man was repeatedly attacked by the bull at the Fira de Onda festival, suffering a head wound and having an artery punctured in his left thigh. He died at a hospital in the nearby town of Villareal.

US wildlife researchers have discovered that two California condors, a critically endangered bird, gave birth without any male genetic DNA. The discovery that condors are capable of virgin births - formally called parthenogenesis or asexual reproduction - surprised scientists.

Archaeologists have discovered a wooden Mayan canoe in southern Mexico, believed to be over 1,000 years old. Measuring over 5ft (1.6m), it was found almost completely intact, submerged in a freshwater pool near the ruined Mayan city of Chichen Itza.

Tongans have been rushing to vaccinate themselves against coronavirus after the Pacific island nation confirmed its first case on Friday. The infection was detected in a fully vaccinated person who had arrived on a repatriation flight from New Zealand.

US intelligence agencies say they may never be able to identify the origins of Covid-19, but they have concluded it was not created as a biological weapon.

A new chapter in physics has opened, according to scientists who have been searching for a vital building block of the Universe.A major experiment has been used to search for an elusive sub-atomic particle: a key component of the matter that makes up our everyday lives.

Once known as "the eighth Wonder of the World", the Pink and White Terraces that cascaded down a hillside in New Zealand's geothermal Rotorua region would have been a spectacular sight to behold.

A judge in Spain has granted joint custody of a dog to a separated couple who went to court to determine who the pet should live with.The Madrid court considered that both parties were "jointly responsible" and "co-caretakers" of Panda the dog.

When we think about the different ways we can reduce our carbon footprints, our sex lives are not usually at the top of the list. Yet web searches for sustainable products such as vegan condoms and waste-free contraception have been steadily on the rise in recent years.

Blue Origin, the space tourism company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has announced plans to launch a commercial space station. Bosses said on Monday that they hope to operate the station, named "Orbital Reef," by the end of the decade.

Astronomers have found hints of what could be the first planet ever to be discovered outside our galaxy. Nearly 5,000 "exoplanets" - worlds orbiting stars beyond our Sun - have been found so far, but all of these have been located within the Milky Way galaxy.

There are no simple solutions to complex problems like climate change. But there have been times in the past when the world has come together to try to fix an environmental crisis.

Nasa's next-generation spaceship has been lifted onto the rocket that will take astronauts to the Moon this year or in early 2022.

The study published in Science magazine found that in Gorongosa National Park a previously rare genetic condition had became more common as ivory poaching used to finance a civil war pushed the species to the brink of extinction. Before the war, about 18.5% of females were naturally tuskless.

Seven students are suing a Texas school district over its dress-code policy banning boys from having long hair. According to the suit, school officials suspended a 9-year-old boy for a month, barred him from recess and normal lunch breaks as punishment for long hair.

Belarus has been accused of taking revenge for EU sanctions by offering migrants tourist visas, and helping them across its border. The BBC has tracked one group trying to reach Germany. The mobile phone camera pans left and right, but no-one moves.

There are more statues of animals in London than of named women, an audit by Art UK has found. There are about 1,500 monuments in the capital. Fifty of those depict specific women while nearly 100 are of animals.

Twitter amplifies tweets from right-leaning political parties and news outlets more than from the left, its own research suggests. The social-media giant said it made the discovery while exploring how its algorithm recommends political content to users.

An ancient object thought to be the world's oldest map of the stars is to go on display at the British Museum. The Nebra Sky Disc is widely believed to be 3,600-years-old, dating from the Bronze Age.

The fossilised remains of Big John, the largest triceratops dinosaur ever found, have been sold at an auction in the French capital. The skeleton fetched a European record price of €6.65m ($7.74m; £5.6m).

Those wispy white lines that crisscross the skies after an aeroplane flies overhead, are far less benign than their fluffy patterns might suggest.

US surgeons say they have successfully given a pig's kidney to a person in a transplant breakthrough they hope could ultimately solve donor organ shortages. The recipient was brain-dead, meaning they were already on artificial life support with no prospect of recovering.

Vikings had a settlement in North America exactly one thousand years ago, centuries before Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas, a study says. Scientists say a new dating technique analysing tree rings has provided evidence that Vikings occupied a site in Newfoundland, Canada, in 1021AD.

Last week, an Indian man was given a rare double-life sentence for killing his wife by making a cobra bite her. Soutik Biswas and Ashraf Padanna piece together the events leading to the grisly murder.

Plans by governments to extract fossil fuels up to 2030 are incompatible with keeping global temperatures to safe levels, says the UN. The UNEP production gap report says countries will drill or mine more than double the levels needed to keep the 1.5C threshold alive.

Online abuse against women is on the rise, but why aren't the police, the government and social media companies doing more to stop it? I'm the BBC's first specialist disinformation reporter - and I receive abusive messages on social media daily. Most are too offensive to share unedited.

The "mountains of garbage" dotting India's cities will soon be replaced with waste treatment plants, Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised earlier this month.

It's like an explosion underwater. Several camouflage groupers rush to release their sperm as a female fish drops a burst of eggs. This image taken at Fakarava Atoll in the Pacific has earned Laurent Ballesta the prestigious title of Wildlife Photographer of the Year (WPY).

Facebook is planning to hire 10,000 people in the European Union to develop a so-called metaverse. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been a leading voice on the concept.

The metaverse is a concept being talked about as the next big thing by tech companies, marketers, and analysts. It's attracting attention - and money - from some of of tech's biggest names, such as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Epic Games' Tim Sweeney.

The New Zealand city of Christchurch has cast its official wizard from the payroll after 23 years of service. Ian Brackenbury Channell, 88, was paid NZ$16,000 (£8,200; $11,280) a year to provide "acts of wizardry" and promote the city.

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Police in Kenya have arrested the husband of record-breaking long-distance runner Agnes Tirop who was stabbed to death at her home. Emmanuel Rotich, who was detained in the coastal city of Mombasa, will face charges once investigations are completed, an official said.

It was 2010 and Ganesh N Devy was concerned about the lack of comprehensive data on the languages of India. "The 1961 [Indian] census recognised 1,652 mother tongues," says Devy, "but the 1971 census listed only 109. The discrepancy in numbers frustrated me a lot."

Five sites in England and Scotland are in the final running to be the home of the UK's prototype fusion energy plant. The government is backing plans for the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (Step) with a final decision on its location expected at the end of 2022.

A Florida father has been arrested and charged over the fatal shooting of his girlfriend by the couple's two-year-old child in August.The toddler found Veondre Avery's loaded gun inside a children's backpack while mother Shamaya Lynn was on a work video call, police said.

Microsoft is shutting down its social network, LinkedIn, in China, saying having to comply with the Chinese state has become increasingly challenging. It comes after the career-networking site faced questions for blocking the profiles of some journalists.

Five women who were born in Congo and separated from their mothers by the colonial authorities are suing Belgium for crimes against humanity. The mixed-race women were taken away from their black mothers at birth 70 years ago solely on the basis of the colour of their skin.

In the summer of 1774, the United Kingdom's Astronomer Royal, Nevil Maskelyne, stood on the side of a Scottish mountain contemplating something far more profound than the view. He was trying to work out exactly how much the Earth weighed.

North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un should pay damages for a 1959-84 scheme that saw more than 90,000 people move there from Japan, a Tokyo court is hearing. The repatriation campaign was later condemned by some as "state kidnapping".

Nearly a year and a half since Covid-19 was detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the question of how the virus first emerged remains a mystery.

Prince William has suggested entrepreneurs should focus on saving Earth rather than engaging in space tourism. The Duke of Cambridge said great brains and minds should be "trying to repair this planet, not trying to find the next place to go and live".

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says a new taskforce may be the last chance to find the origins of Covid-19. It has nominated 26 experts to join the body, the Scientific Advisory Group on the Origins of Novel Pathogens (Sago).

The Rolling Stones have dropped Brown Sugar, one of their biggest hits, from their US tour. It follows unease with the depictions of black women and references to slavery in the song, which reached number one in the US in 1971.

An Indian man, who was convicted for killing his wife by making a cobra bite her, has been punished with a rare double life sentence. Sooraj Kumar was arrested last year after his wife, Uthra, died from a snakebite.

Ellen, who had spent her entire career working on Wall Street, almost choked on her coffee. “During the previous 18 months, I’d spent every single waking hour of the day doing nothing but hustle,” she explains. She was worried by what the comments implied for workers in her industry.

About 1,600 people live in the village of Pond Inlet, or Mittimatalik as it is known in the Inuit language Inuktitut. It is a community huddled between mountains, on a northern shore of Baffin Island, Canada – a place further north than the northernmost tip of mainland Norway.

A potentially risky laser treatment offered to menopausal women to rejuvenate the vagina is no better than sham or fake therapy, researchers say. They tested it in a trial to see if it might ease vaginal dryness and painful sex linked to going through the change.

An exquisitely carved maze of 3,500 steps, arranged in perfect symmetry, descends with geometrical precision to reach a well. Criss-crossed steps encircle the water on three sides, while the fourth side is adorned by a pavilion with embellished galleries and balconies.

Mexico City's governor has confirmed that a statue of an indigenous woman will replace the capital's Christopher Columbus monument. The statue was removed last year after indigenous rights activists threatened to tear it down.

But today, the 38-year-old strikes a different tone. For years, she says, she feels like she’s been overlooked for promotions and pay rises at work on account of her gender, particularly after becoming a mother in 2018.

Spanish right-wing politicians are rebuffing calls for Spain to apologise for dark chapters in its colonial past and have scorned US President Joe Biden's recent acknowledgement of the atrocities suffered by indigenous peoples.

North Korea's leader has vowed to build an "invincible military" in the face of hostile policies from the United States, according to state media. Kim Jong-un added that weapons development was for self-defence, and not to start a war.

The Czech Republic's colourful and provocative President Milos Zeman was rushed to intensive care just hours after a centre-right alliance narrowly won the country's parliamentary election. Mr Zeman, 77, is supposed to oversee the formation of a new government - a duty now thrown into doubt.

The head of the academy that awards the Nobel Prizes in science has said it will not introduce gender quotas. Goran Hansson, head of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said they want people to win "because they made the most important discovery... not because of gender or ethnicity".

A 1,500-year-old wine-making complex, said to have been the world's largest at the time, has been discovered in Israel, archaeologists say.Five presses were unearthed at the huge Byzantine-era winery at Yavne, south of Tel Aviv, which is estimated to have produced two million litres a year.

David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens have been awarded this year's Nobel prize for economics. The trio shared the prize for their use of "natural experiments" to understand how economic policy and other events connect.

Naked and sweaty, they laid inside grass-covered stone igloo-like structures in the remote fields of Ireland. Some were ill, others may have been having hallucinations, hatching plans to distil illegal alcohol or imagining they were the Vikings who once raided this country.

Reader Question: We now know from evolutionary science that humanity has existed in some form or another for around two million years or more. Homo sapiens are comparatively new on the block. There were also many other human species, some which we interbred with.

For almost 50 years, Sir Paul McCartney has shouldered the blame for breaking up the Beatles. The supposed evidence was a press release for his 1970 solo album, McCartney, where he revealed he was on a "break" from rock's biggest band.

About 30 years ago, just months after starting work as a prostitute, Maxine Doogan became pregnant. She had been with a new client at a massage parlour in Anchorage, Alaska, when she realised he had removed his condom surreptitiously during intercourse. Shocked, she ran to the bathroom.

The old habits of secrecy haven't left Kim Kuk-song. It has taken weeks of discussions to get an interview with him, and he's still worried about who might be listening. He wears dark glasses for the camera, and only two of our team know what we think is his real name.

The rock samples brought back from the Moon in December by China's Chang'e-5 mission were really young. It's all relative, of course, but the analysis shows the basalt material - the solidified remnants of a lava flow - to be just two billion years old.

There's an air of relief in the science team running the American space agency's (Nasa) Perseverance rover on Mars. The researchers are sure now they've sent the robot to a location that provides the best possible opportunity to find signs of ancient life.

On the westernmost tip of Australia in the aptly named Shark Bay, at least 28 species of shark swim through the clear waters and undulating seagrass meadows – the largest in the world. Tiger sharks in particular are common frequenters of the jagged inlets of Shark Bay.

The discovery of a small community in the Dominican Republic, where some males are born looking like girls and only grow penises at puberty, has led to the development of a blockbuster drug that has helped millions of people, writes Michael Mosley.

Viswanath Birje has been announced as the winner of the Royal Society of Biology's photography competition, for his image of ants feeding off honeydew excreted by a yellow aphid.

It is more than 150 years since scientists proved that invisible germs could cause contagious illnesses such as cholera, typhoid, and tuberculosis.

Ndakasi, a beloved mountain gorilla who went viral after posing for a relaxed selfie with rangers, has died after a long illness aged 14.

Ivermectin has been called a Covid "miracle" drug, championed by vaccine opponents, and recommended by health authorities in some countries. But the BBC can reveal there are serious errors in a number of key studies that the drug's promoters rely on.

Enveloped in a thick veil of grey mist, Nepal's remote Himalayan village of Parvathy Kund was nearly deserted. One of the few people in sight was an old woman sitting in the doorway of a wooden house, who flashed a welcoming, toothless smile at my friend and I.

Children across much of Africa are to be vaccinated against malaria in a historic moment in the fight against the deadly disease. Malaria has been one of the biggest scourges on humanity for millennia and mostly kills babies and infants.

Russian authorities are investigating allegations of torture and rape in the prison system, after leaked videos appeared to show inmates being abused. More than a thousand videos were leaked to the human rights group Gulagu.net, which claims the footage proves hundreds of people have been tortured.

An ex-CIA officer turned whistleblower against torture has called for the release of a suspected terrorist he captured nearly 20 years ago. John Kiriakou told the BBC that the torture and imprisonment of al-Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah has been "more than adequate punishment".

Stepping through Bab-al-Yaman, the enormous gate allowing access into Yemen's old walled city of Sana'a, was like stepping through a portal into another world.

Two scientists have been awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on building molecules that are mirror images of one another. German-born Benjamin List and Scotland-born David MacMillan were announced as the winners at an event in Stockholm.

On a cool October evening, Renu Saxena brought her newborn daughter home from hospital in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru. It struck her just how fragile her baby was, her tiny veins glowing through her translucent skin. She had been born early, at 36 weeks, and weighed only 2.4kg (5.3lbs).

Offering essay-writing services to students for a fee will become a criminal offence under plans to tackle cheating by "essay mills". The government says the move will protect students from the "deceptive marketing techniques of contract cheating services".

A California man is suing a psychic who he says falsely claimed she could remove a curse put on his marriage by a witch hired by his ex-girlfriend.

A former Facebook employee has told US lawmakers that the company's sites and apps "harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy".Frances Haugen, a 37-year-old former product manager turned whistleblower, heavily criticised the company at a hearing on Capitol Hill.

Three scientists have been awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work to understand complex systems, such as the Earth's climate. Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi were announced as the winners at an event in Stockholm.

An electrical implant that sits in the skull and is wired to the brain can detect and treat severe depression, US scientists believe after promising results with a first patient. Sarah, who is 36, had the device fitted more than a year ago and says it has turned her life around.

Some 216,000 children - mostly boys - have been sexually abused by clergy in the French Catholic Church since 1950, a damning new inquiry has found. The head of the inquiry said there were at least 2,900-3,200 abusers, and accused the Church of showing a "cruel indifference towards the victims".

The Australian founder of the global Hillsong Church will plead not guilty to charges of concealing child sexual abuse. Brian Houston, 67, was charged by police in Australia in August following a two-year investigation.

Artificial intelligence can tell whether it is going to rain in the next two hours, research suggests. Scientists at Google-owned London AI lab DeepMind and the University of Exeter partnered with the Met Office to build the so-called nowcasting system.

Frances Haugen, 37, who worked as a product manager on the civic integrity team at Facebook, was interviewed on Sunday by CBS. She said the documents she leaked proved that Facebook repeatedly prioritised "growth over safety".

“I have water air conditioning too, but I prefer sitting under my natural air conditioning. Reminds me of old times,” Mr Saberi said, gesturing to the badgir (wind catcher) that we were sitting under. “More chai?”

The city of Yazd in the desert of central Iran has long been a focal point for creative ingenuity.

Pioneering Scottish photographer John Thomson took some of the earliest pictures of China on record. He was born in Edinburgh in 1837 and set off for the Far East in 1862 where he spent the next decade capturing images from all walks of life.

Thousands of paedophiles have operated within the French Catholic Church since 1950, the head of a panel investigating abuses by church members says.

US radio host and prominent conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has lost another legal case after falsely calling a mass school shooting a "hoax". Twenty children and six adults were shot dead at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut in 2012.

Ancient Greek legend has it that in 720 BC, an Olympic athlete named Orsippus of Megara was competing in the 185m run when his loincloth slipped off. Rather than stop to hide his shame, Orsippus sprinted on and won the race. His triumphant example stuck.

Legend has it that the Ancient Greek athlete Milo of Croton was so strong he could break a cord tied around his head with only the force of his brow. In the 6th Century BC, he gained fame as a formidable wrestler, winning six times at the Olympic Games.

At the 1896 Olympics in Athens, the first organised marathon involved only 17 athletes. Marathoning has come a long way since. The winner ran a time of 2:58:50 – nowadays this would be a respectable time for an amateur, but it's almost an hour slower than the fastest runners today.

Anup Shah has been announced as the winner of the Nature Conservancy 2021 Photo Contest, for his image of a western lowland gorilla walking through a cloud of butterflies in the Central African Republic.

Europe's first mission to Mercury arrives at its destination in the coming hours. It'll be the briefest of visits, however.

As midnight approached on 31 December 2006, most of Spain was preparing to celebrate the new year. Zaid Ait Malek spent the night evading police. He and his cousin had just completed a five-hour ferry crossing from Morocco hidden inside a truck.

A cafe table where JK Rowling wrote sections of her Harry Potter books has been salvaged from a huge fire, which devastated the building.The blaze on Edinburgh's George IV Bridge last month badly damaged flats and businesses including The Elephant House cafe.

There are maps you can buy which show how light pollution blocks out the night skies. Look at the map for the UK, and English star-gazers have it the worst.

In a small room, painted a light shade of pastel pink, nearly a dozen men and women are hard at work, hunched over desks that line the walls, their fingers flying at a frenzied pace over clattering keys. The soothing rhythm of typing punctuates the incessant drone of traffic.  

The National Gallery has always given pride of place to Peter Paul Rubens’s Samson and Delilah, listing it among the “highlights” of its collection, since it purchased the picture at Christie’s in 1980 for a then record price.

Google Earth has launched a time-lapse feature that lets users wind back the clock and see how the world has changed over several decades. The feature uses millions of satellite images from the past 37 years to let people scroll through time.

Let's start by saying the Universe is big. When we look in any direction, the furthest visible regions of the Universe are estimated to be around 46 billion light years away. That's a diameter of 540 sextillion (or 54 followed by 22 zeros) miles.

Earthlings can breathe a sigh of relief after US space agency Nasa confirmed the planet was "safe" from a once-feared asteroid for the next 100 years at least. Nasa had deemed Apophis to be one of the most dangerous asteroids to Earth after its discovery in 2004.

Late this summer, UK author Kate Lister had a realisation that resonated.

For football fans around the globe the pinnacle of the sport is the World Cup final. But what if that match was ultimately just the precursor to a game between the best humans and the best robots?

The interior of the house made of mud bricks was cool, clean and calm. A man called Shamsullah, who had a small son clinging to his leg, ushered his visitors into the room where they received guests. A rug covered the floor and cushions ran along the walls that were at least two-feet thick.

When I'm on my social media, I sometimes feel like I'm in a modern, virtual version of the agora of ancient Greek city-states. This was the centre of town, physically, but also economically and socially – the place where business was conducted, goods were bought and sold, and ideas were exchanged.

Ahead of federal elections this weekend, conspiracy theories have been spreading online, including claims the poll will be invalid because the German state is illegitimate.

China's central bank has announced that all transactions of crypto-currencies are illegal, effectively banning digital tokens such as Bitcoin. China is one of the world's largest crypto-currency markets.

Humans reached the Americas at least 7,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to new findings. The topic of when the continent was first settled from Asia has been controversial for decades.

An ancient clay tablet displaying part of the story of a superhuman king has been formally handed over to Iraq by the US. Known as the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, the 3,600-year-old religious text shows a section of a Sumerian poem from the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Hybrid has been heralded as the future of work. Research shows the majority of employees want their organisation to offer a mix of remote work and in-office time, and many see the hybrid workweek model as a path to better work-life balance.

The Duke of Edinburgh's will is to remain secret for at least 90 years to protect the "dignity and standing" of the Queen, the High Court has ruled. It has been convention for over a century that, after the death of a senior member of the Royal Family, the courts are asked to seal their wills.

The US has admitted that a drone strike in Kabul days before its military pullout killed 10 innocent people. The youngest child, Sumaya, was just two years old.

Four space tourists have splashed down successfully in the Atlantic Ocean after three days orbiting Earth. They are the first all-civilian team to achieve this feat.

It's the longest unsolved child murder case in the recent history of the Metropolitan Police. Twenty years ago, a young African boy was murdered in a brutal ritual, his head and limbs removed, and his torso dumped in the Thames.

Turkmenistan is one of only a handful of countries, including North Korea, which says it has no coronavirus cases. But reports suggest it is experiencing its third and possibly strongest wave of Covid-19. Sayahat Kurbanov was suffocating.

The Taliban have excluded girls from Afghan secondary schools, after they ordered only boys and male teachers to return to the classroom. One Afghan schoolgirl told the BBC she was devastated. "Everything looks very dark," she said.

Sir Clive Sinclair, who has died aged 81, was one of Britain's most prolific innovators. Largely self-taught, he began inventing gadgets while he was still at school.

The father of a seven-year-old girl whose hair was cut by a teacher without parental permission is suing the school district and two staff members for $1m. Jimmy Hoffmeyer's lawsuit says the constitutional rights of his mixed-race daughter have been violated.

The contract has been signed that will see the first UK satellite go to the Moon in 2024. Lunar Pathfinder is a relay platform for telecommunications. It will feed the telemetry and data from other spacecraft at the Moon back to Earth.

It is a question that has dogged Donald Trump - fairly or otherwise - since he was elected president: is he mentally fit for office? The question has been raised again by the release of a new book by New York journalist Michael Wolff, which chronicles the first year of the Trump White House.

Prominent South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh has turned himself in to police for allegedly ordering a hit on himself so that his son could collect $10m (£7.24m) in life insurance.

Musfiqur Rahman has been named overall winner of this year's Mangrove Photography Awards, for his image of a wild honey gatherer subduing giant honeybees with smoke, in Bangladesh.

Inventor Sir Clive Sinclair, who popularised the home computer and invented the pocket calculator, has died at his London home aged 81. His daughter Belinda Sinclair said he passed away on Thursday morning after having cancer for more than a decade.

Art experts have identified Self Portrait (1889) as the only work painted by the Dutch master while he was suffering from psychosis. It was confirmed as authentic by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

An early landscape painting by Vincent Van Gogh has sold for €7m (£6.2m; $8.3m) at an auction in Paris. Painted in 1882, Fishing Net Menders in the Dunes depicts peasant women working on the land, inspired by countryside around The Hague in the Netherlands.

image copyrightGetty ImagesA letter penned by artists Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, which details their visits to brothels, has been sold at auction for €210,600 ($236,632; £188,538).The letter was bought by the Vincent Van Gogh Foundation at the Drouot auction house in Paris on Tuesday.

image sourceReutersA Vincent Van Gogh painting of a Paris street has gone on display for the first time after spending more than 100 years behind closed doors.A Street Scene In Montmartre has been owned by a French family for most of the time since it was painted in 1887.

A previously unseen Vincent van Gogh drawing of an exhausted old man has been discovered, a museum dedicated to the artist has confirmed.Study for Worn Out was drawn early in the artist's career in 1882, the Van Gogh museum said on Thursday.

Four "amateur astronauts" are about to launch into orbit in another landmark mission for space tourism. It's the latest flight to help open up access to space for paying customers, following on from launches by Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos.

A BBC Panorama investigation has found evidence that suggests one of Britain's biggest companies paid a bribe to the former Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe.

The UK, US and Australia have announced a historic security pact in the Asia-Pacific, in what's seen as an effort to counter China. It will let Australia build nuclear-powered submarines for the first time, using technology provided by the US.

A self-driving hydrogen-powered submarine is among the winners in a UK government competition to tackle emissions from shipping. A start-up consortium has been given £380,000 to develop the sub to deliver parcels without a captain or crew.

A series of camel sculptures carved into rock faces in Saudi Arabia are likely to be the oldest large-scale animal reliefs in the world, a study says. When the carvings were first discovered in 2018, researchers estimated they were created about 2,000 years ago.

Woolly mammoths roamed some of the coldest places on Earth before becoming extinct around 4,000 years ago, but a new bioscience company, has plans to bring them back.

The practice of dolphin hunting in the Faroe Islands has come under scrutiny after more than 1,400 of the mammals were killed in what was believed to be a record catch. The pod of white-sided dolphins was driven into the largest fjord in the North Atlantic territory on Sunday.

Snakes owe their success in part to the asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs, according to a new study. The impact caused devastation, with most animals and plants dying out.

The Cherokee Nation wants Jeep to stop using its name to sell the firm's classic sports utility vehicles. Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr said "it's time" for companies and sports teams to retire Native American iconography from logos, mascots and other products.

Genome editing, or genome engineering, or gene editing, is a type of genetic engineering in which DNA is inserted, deleted, modified or replaced in the genome of a living organism.

UK scientists have been given the go-ahead by the fertility regulator to genetically modify human embryos. It is the first time a country has considered the DNA-altering technique in embryos and approved it.

Jared Chaitowitz has a fleet of around 300 rental bikes in Cape Town, South Africa. He relies on a steady supply of spare parts - from pedals to bells - to keep them running. But there's a problem.

Like most people, Scottie Lantgen thought he’d be away from the office for just a couple of weeks when the pandemic began in early 2020. A year on, the 36-year-old, a senior copywriter at an advertising agency in Kansas City, Missouri, US, was finding home working tough.

At around 1,100 years old, and almost 11m (36ft) in girth, the Big Belly Oak is the oldest tree in Savernake Forest in south-west England.

An experiment that hung rhinoceroses upside down to see what effect it had on the animals has been awarded one of this year's Ig Nobel prizes. Other recipients included teams that studied the bacteria in chewing gum stuck to pavements, and how to control cockroaches on submarines.

A man kept the mummified corpse of his mother in a basement for over a year while continuing to receive her pension payments, Austrian police say.The 89-year-old woman, who reportedly had dementia, is thought to have died of natural causes in June last year.

The Khyber Pass is one of the world's great invasion routes - forbidding, steep and treacherous, stretching from the Afghan border to the Valley of Peshawar, 20 miles (32 km) below, in Afghanistan.

North Korea has tested a new long-range cruise missile capable of hitting much of Japan, state media said on Monday. The weekend tests saw missiles travelling up to 1,500km (930 miles), the official KCNA news agency said.

The FBI has released a newly declassified document that looks into connections between Saudi citizens in the US and two of the 9/11 attackers. Relatives of victims have long urged the release of the files, arguing Saudi officials had advance knowledge but did not try to stop the attacks.

Sri Lanka has experienced long queues to buy essential items amid tight lockdown measures to control the spread of Covid-19. Shelves at government-run supermarkets have been running low - some even empty - with very little stock remaining of imported goods like milk powder, cereal and rice.

It was sweltering inside the nightclub where Alexander was DJing, in the US state of Virginia. Though it was more than 40°C outside, the club’s air conditioning was broken.

As coronavirus cases surged in the city of Austin, Texas, last June, beleaguered public health officials instructed anyone with symptoms to act as though they had Covid-19.

The US space agency (Nasa) would like its rubber ducks back, please. Ninety bathtub toys were hurled into a drainage hole on the Greenland ice in September - an experiment to see how melt waters find their way to the base of the ice sheet.

One of the final deadly strikes by the US in its 20-year war in Afghanistan has been challenged by investigations in leading US media. The New York Times and Washington Post say the strike the US said targeted an Islamic State operative actually killed an aid worker on daily duties in Kabul.

Ethiopians are marking the start of a new year, with feasting in many homes despite the difficulties caused by rising prices and the war and hunger crisis raging in the north. Find out more about Ethiopia's unique calendar and cultural heritage.

The Taliban have swept through Afghanistan with remarkable speed. But as they sit in Kabul planning their new government, there remains a large thorn in their side: a small valley of anti-Taliban resistance just north-east of the capital, refusing to give up despite being entirely surrounded.

The paper was referring to an incident involving a motley team of explorers led by the one-armed, self-taught geologist John Wesley Powell.

Much ink has been spilled on the dangers of the narcissistic CEO. They tend to instil an individualistic culture throughout the corporation, which reduces collaboration and integrity.

It wasn’t long into the pandemic that Danielle, a 31-year-old public-school teacher in New Jersey, US, realized almost everything she loved about her job had disappeared. “I still loved teaching, but the circumstances didn’t allow me to do my job the way I wanted to do it,” she says.

The Taliban have announced a new government from Kabul, 20 years after they were driven from power. For a generation that grew up with education, international investment and hope in a democratic future, reading that line must feel scarcely believable.

The isolated mountain hamlet of Chamois is proof that it's possible to get to another world in just five minutes. The Italian village on the steep slopes of the Aosta Valley in north-west Italy is the country's only town not accessible by car.

Descendants of African slaves have told the BBC they will change their surnames, after a Dutch city decided to make the procedure free of charge.

I'd always thought I was pretty good at keeping my personal data safe, but I was wrong. My personal files were backed up onto two HDD external hard drives, and in the space of 24 hours in July, both drives failed.

The heroic age of Antarctic exploration reached its zenith in December 1911, when Norwegian Roald Amundsen beat Robert Falcon Scott to the South Pole. It ended, arguably, at 8.

What lessons, if any, have been learned from the 20 years of fighting terrorism across the world? What has worked and what hasn't? And today, as Afghanistan is once more ruled by the movement that sheltered al-Qaeda, are we any wiser than we were on the morning of 11 September 2001?

Afghan journalist Bilal Sarwary saw the Taliban toppled in 2001 and his country transformed. But in his view, as he explains here, the US missed an opportunity to try to bring lasting peace.

The US Supreme Court has stayed the execution of Texas inmate John Henry Ramirez, who requested the right to have his pastor hold him as he died. Ramirez argued a Texas policy of not allowing spiritual advisers to touch inmates during execution violated his right to practise religion.

Alarms have gone off on board the International Space Station after the crew reported smoke and the smell of burning plastic. The incident centred on the Russian-built Zvezda module which provides living quarters, Russian media report.

Almost 60% of oil and gas reserves and 90% of coal must remain in the ground to keep global warming below 1.5C, scientists say. The forecast is based on close analysis of global energy supply and demand.

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes "lied and cheated" for money and fame prosecutors alleged on the first day of the former Silicon Valley star's trial. Ms Holmes faces 12 fraud charges over her role at the now-defunct blood-testing firm which was once worth $9bn.

image copyrightGetty ImagesA master player of the Chinese strategy game Go has decided to retire, due to the rise of artificial intelligence that "cannot be defeated".Lee Se-dol is the only human to ever beat the AlphaGo software developed by Google's sister company Deepmind.

The prospects for developing nuclear fusion as a feasible source of energy have significantly improved, say experts. The UK government has recently announced an investment of £200m to deliver electricity from a fusion reactor by 2040.

In the early series of US corporate drama Mad Men, the maverick creative frequently saves the day with his astonishing flashes of inspiration for original campaigns.

When Spanish bishop Xavier Novell resigned last month, the Roman Catholic Church cited strictly personal reasons without going into detail. It has now emerged in Spanish media that he fell in love with a woman who writes Satanic-tinged erotic fiction.

An imposing statue of an American Confederate general in Richmond, Virginia, has been taken down. Governor Ralph Northam announced it would come down amid national protests after the death of George Floyd.

When you hear the word "shapeshifting" you probably think of a sci-fi or horror film, and not the climate. But that's what scientists say is happening to some animals in response to climate change.

It was 1971 when Rick Doblin first took LSD. A Saturday afternoon in Florida, a few weeks into his freshman year.

Squatting has a long history in Spain, often fuelled by high rates of homelessness. But there is now a darker phenomenon too - squatters who demand a "ransom" before they will leave a property.

Police in India's Maharashtra state have arrested five members of an upper caste for beating, stripping and parading naked a low-caste Dalit woman. The victim was attacked because her son had eloped with an upper-caste girl about a month ago.

"When you start coding, it makes you feel smart in itself, like you're in the Matrix [film]," says Janine Luk, a 26 year-old software engineer who works in London.Born in Hong Kong, she started her career in yacht marketing in the south of France but found it "a bit repetitive and superficial".

Six minor girls in central India were stripped and paraded naked as part of a village ritual to summon rains. The incident took place in a drought-parched village in the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh state.

Jean-Paul Belmondo's battered face, laconic style and roguish smile captured the imagination of French 1960s youth. Belmondo, who has died at his Paris home aged 88, was the cool rebel of the new wave of French cinema typified in Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 film classic, A Bout de Souffle.

Forget Halloween or Boxing Day with your family, the scariest time of the year is already here: spider season. But what may be a petrifying period for us is actually a blast for the arachnids as they're out looking for love.

The man accused of hatching the devastating plot to fly hijacked passenger planes into US landmarks 20 years ago is locked up awaiting trial. But could he have been stopped years before?

The US space agency's Perseverance rover has made another attempt to retrieve a rock sample on Mars. New images show the robot made a neat hole in a thick slab dubbed "Rochette".

Two divers are presumed to have died after they failed to return to the surface while exploring a wreck off the Cornwall coast. The pair were diving around the HMS Scylla which was sunk in 2004 to create an offshore reef.

Tuna are starting to recover after being fished to the edge of extinction, scientists have revealed. Numbers are bouncing back following a decade of conservation efforts, according to the official tally of threatened species.

China's ban on cryptocurrency mining has forced bitcoin entrepreneurs to flee overseas. Many are heading to Texas, which is quickly becoming the next global cryptocurrency capital.

When I was three years old, my parents took me to see Abba: The Movie at Hampstead's Classic Cinema. At that age, I was already a rabid fan. I'd learned Nina, Pretty Ballerina on recorder (sorry, neighbours) and my nursery school teacher was concerned that I kept writing the letter B backwards.

Chinese tech tycoon Jack Ma famously said it was a "blessing" for anyone to be part of the so-called "996 work culture"- where people work 9am to 9pm, six days a week. Now, China's authorities have issued a stern reminder to companies that such punishing work schedules are in fact, illegal.

Pop legends Abba have surprised and delighted fans by announcing their first studio album for 40 years. Abba Voyage will be released in November, before a "revolutionary" set of concerts where virtual avatars will play hits like Mamma Mia and Waterloo.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says it is investigating a deviation in the trajectory of Sir Richard Branson's recent spaceflight. The British billionaire fulfilled his life's dream on 11 July by riding his Virgin Galactic rocket plane, Unity, above 85km (52 miles) in altitude.

For 11 full minutes (complete transcript below, and back story here), Tom Basile of NewsmaxTV allowed Andy Bichlbaum (posing as Basile's "friend" Paul Wolfowitz) to tell hundreds of thousands of Newsmax viewers that the $2.1T war in Afghanistan, begun in 2001, was a complete waste of money.

So begins the tale of Hester Prynne, as recounted in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s most famous novel, The Scarlet Letter. As readers of this classic American text know, the story begins after Hester gives birth to a child out of wedlock and refuses to name the father.

"The UK will fight Islamic State by all means available," says Dominic Raab. The foreign secretary added that the UK would "draw on all elements of national power" to pursue the group's leaders.

Pictures have emerged of Taliban fighters with military equipment left behind by US forces at Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport. But US Central Command head Gen Kenneth McKenzie said it had all been rendered impossible to use.

There is now no country in the world that uses leaded petrol, the UN Environment Programme has announced. The highly toxic fuel has contaminated air, soil and water for almost a century.

Several thousand anti-Taliban fighters are reported to be holding out against the Taliban in a remote valley with a narrow entrance - little more than 30 miles or so from the capital Kabul.

Right across the globe, countries which have traditionally relied on American backing are suddenly starting to wonder if they should get themselves some re-insurance. Taiwan, which is almost daily subject to threats of invasion from China, is particularly worried.

Scientists say light pollution may be contributing to "worrying" declines in insects seen in recent decades. In a UK study, artificial street lights were found to disrupt the behaviour of nocturnal moths, reducing caterpillars numbers by half.

Halfway between the belly of Delphinus the Dolphin and the hind hoof of Pegasus the flying horse, a pristine pinwheel tumbles through space.

Ears of wheat prickled my shins and the sun beat down on my neck as I trudged through the tractor lines of a golden field on Wiltshire's Hackpen Hill.

image sourceGetty ImagesA disinformation campaign claiming that the Covid-19 virus originated from an American military base in Maryland has gained popularity in China ahead of the release of a US intelligence report on the virus origins.

How much of an impact on UK lifestyles will the government's goal of net zero carbon emissions really have? The study from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change says that limitations on flying would need people to cut their travels by plane by 6% by 2035.

The National Ignition Facility uses a powerful laser to heat and compress hydrogen fuel, initiating fusion. An experiment suggests the goal of "ignition", where the energy released by fusion exceeds that delivered by the laser, is now within touching distance.

When German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt first began excavating on a Turkish mountaintop 25 years ago, he was convinced the buildings he uncovered were unusual, even unique.

The Taliban are making rapid advances in Afghanistan as US and other foreign forces withdraw after 20 years of military operations. President Biden has said he wants all US troops out by 11 September.

"Thanks to God you are come," shouted an old man as my colleagues and I marched into Kabul on 14 November 2001, battling our way through the joyful crowds.

Engineers are trying to work out what went wrong when the US space agency's Perseverance rover tried to gather its first rock core on Mars. The robot's mechanisms seemed to work perfectly but when a metal tube expected to hold the sample was examined, it was found to be empty.

The Taliban has claimed victory in Afghanistan after taking over the capital Kabul, bringing to a swift end almost 20 years of a US-led coalition's presence in the country. Fighters have seized the presidential palace. The government has collapsed, with President Ashraf Ghani fleeing.

Taliban militants have reached the outskirts of the Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, after taking control of most of the rest of the country. The interior minister says negotiations have taken place to ensure a peaceful transition of power.

If you like neat lines, tidiness and admire symmetry, what's not to like about the decision of Joe Biden to pull American combat troops out of Afghanistan by 11 September 2021 - exactly 20 years on from 9/11?

Scientists have analysed the chemistry locked inside the tusk of a woolly mammoth to work out how far it travelled in a lifetime. The research shows that the Ice Age animal travelled a distance equivalent to circling the Earth twice.

The speed of the Taliban advance in Afghanistan appears to have taken many by surprise - regional capitals seem to be falling like dominoes. The momentum is clearly with the insurgents, while the Afghan government struggles to keep its grip on power.

Ugali, also known as fufu ugali bogobe pap, n'sima oshifima oruhere and nshima, is a type of maize or cassava flour porridge made in Africa.

Ethiopia's prime minister has called on civilians to join the army in its fight against rebels in the Tigray region. Abiy Ahmed asked "all capable Ethiopians" to "show their patriotism" by joining the war, which is raging across the north of the country.

Officially Christian since 330AD, Ethiopia claims to be the oldest Christian country in the world. And despite being ravaged by poverty, faith has remained strong over the centuries; Lalibela’s medieval rock-hewn churches are clear proof of that.

Rebels from Ethiopia's northern Tigray region have taken control of the town of Lalibela, a Unesco world heritage site in neighbouring Amhara region. Lalibela, home to 13th Century churches hewn from rock, is a holy site for millions of Orthodox Christians.

A sprawling network of more than 350 fake social media profiles is pushing pro-China narratives and attempting to discredit those seen as opponents of China's government, according to a new study.

The western Mexican state of Sinaloa is home to the country's most powerful and bloody drug cartel. The money it generates has left its imprint on the relationships between narcos and young women - and fuelled a local obsession with plastic surgery.

Scientists say they now have some absolute numbers to describe the internal rock structure of Mars. The data comes from the InSight spacecraft, which has been sensing quakes on the planet since early 2019.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said China's possible involvement in Afghanistan could be "a positive thing". He said this was if China was looking towards a "peaceful resolution of the conflict" and a "truly representative and inclusive" government.

Time stood still as Hōkūle‘a's scarlet sails pierced the Pacific horizon, painting an ancient scene long absent from Tahiti's shores. It was 4 June 1976 and Hōkūle‘a, a traditional Polynesian double-hulled sailing canoe, neared Tahiti's Pape'ete harbour after 33 days at sea.

image copyrightReutersA Roman Catholic cardinal who was once a close ally of Pope Francis has gone on trial in the Vatican, accused of misusing Church funds in a ruinous London property venture.

The Taliban have taken control of Afghanistan, almost 20 years after being ousted by a US-led military coalition. Emboldened by the withdrawal of US troops, they now control all key cities in the country, including Kabul.

Jeff Bezos has offered to cover $2bn (£1.4bn) of Nasa costs in order to be reconsidered for a key contract to build a Moon landing vehicle. In April, the space agency awarded the $2.9bn contract to Elon Musk, rejecting a bid from Bezos' company Blue Origin.

Norwegians have been left awestruck by what experts say was an unusually large meteor that illuminated the night sky in the country's south-east. Footage shows powerful flashes of light over Norway, followed by what witnesses described as loud bangs on Sunday.

A mysterious marketing agency secretly offered to pay social media stars to spread disinformation about Covid-19 vaccines. Their plan failed when the influencers went public about the attempt to recruit them.

Most parents never have to worry about being attacked by a violent child, but if it happens, they face a dilemma. They can't just walk out - and they may fear that seeking help will have repercussions for their child.

Stephen Harmon, a member of the Hillsong megachurch, had been a vocal opponent of vaccines, making a series of jokes about not having the vaccine. He was treated for pneumonia and Covid-19 in a hospital outside Los Angeles, where he died on Wednesday.

Bitcoin has jumped past $30,000 as Elon Musk said Tesla is "most likely" to start accepting it as payment again. The electric carmaker said in May that it would no longer accept the cryptocurrency for purchases.

Many popular websites fell offline on Thursday in a widespread global outage of service. Visitors attempting to reach some sites received DNS errors, meaning their requests could not reach the websites.

The meaning of life, or the answer to the question: "What is the meaning of life?", pertains to the significance of living or existence in general.

Ralph Waldo Emerson? Lynn H. Hough? Aerosmith? Anonymous? Life is a journey, not a destination.

Thomas Capone enjoys attending conferences where he can meet other tech-savvy entrepreneurs face-to-face. The boss of the New York Distance Learning Association always takes advantage of the opportunity to expand his network of contacts.

Artificial intelligence has been used to predict the structures of almost every protein made by the human body. The development could help supercharge the discovery of new drugs to treat disease, alongside other applications.

A woman stole diamonds worth £4.2 million from a jewellers by swapping them with pebbles using "sleight of hand", a court has heard.Lulu Lakatos, 60, allegedly posed as a gemologist who examined the stones from Boodles in central London.

Billionaire Jeff Bezos is about to blast into space in the first crewed flight of his rocket ship, New Shepard. He will be accompanied by Mark Bezos, his brother, Wally Funk, an 82-year-old pioneer of the space race, and an 18-year-old paying customer.

Nasa has chosen Elon Musk's company SpaceX to build a lander that will return humans to the Moon this decade. This vehicle will carry the next man and the first woman down to the lunar surface under the space agency's Artemis programme.

With the surge of the Delta variant in Indonesia, misleading claims about products claiming to be cures and preventions are on the rise.

It was simple curiosity that prompted retired Royal Navy diver Chris Murray a decade ago to plunge into the icy waters around a mysterious islet in a small loch on his home island of Lewis in the Scottish Hebrides.

Rights activists, journalists and lawyers around the world have been targeted with phone malware sold to authoritarian governments by an Israeli surveillance firm, media reports say.

Standing at the edge of a precipice, under a scorching sun in eastern Utah, you can see nothing but the state’s infamous red rocks and towering buttes for miles.

With urban legends like the Nullarbor Nymph, it's not too hard for tourists travelling the famous Australian east-west highway to get confused. But it's the three clocks at the Border Village roadhouse on the South and Western Australian borders that get the oddest looks.

One day, the writer and lawyer Deirdre Mask was lost somewhere in West Virginia. She had borrowed her father's car to drive to the home of an acquaintance, equipped with complicated directions. What made it particularly difficult was that the man she intended to visit had no address.

In any normal summer, Spain's famous Playa de la Castilla – a perfect 20km (12 mile) long stretch of sand backed by the Doñana nature reserve and close to the resort of Matalascañas, Huelva – would have been covered by the footprints of visiting tourists.

For more than 15 years, Virgin Galactic has been working to begin carrying paying passengers to the edge of space and back. Here, we track the long, winding road to realising Sir Richard Branson's dream.

Billionaire Sir Richard Branson has successfully reached the edge of space on board his Virgin Galactic rocket plane. The UK entrepreneur flew high above New Mexico in the US in the vehicle that his company has been developing for 17 years.

C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein), or simply 2014 UN271, is a large Oort cloud comet discovered by astronomers Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein in archival images from the Dark Energy Survey.[6][7] When first imaged in October 2014, the object was 29 AU (4.

Foreign video bloggers denouncing what they say is negative coverage of China on highly controversial subjects such as Xinjiang are attracting large numbers of subscribers on platforms like YouTube.

UK businessman Sir Richard Branson is about to realise a lifetime's ambition by flying to the edge of space. He'll ride his Virgin Galactic rocket plane on Sunday to an altitude where the sky turns black and the Earth's horizon curves away into the distance.

image copyrightEPAA statue of a Confederate general at the centre of a violent rally in Charlottesville nearly four years ago is to be removed on Saturday.The statue of General Robert E Lee and a nearby statue of General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson will be moved to storage, local officials say.

John Carter has only an hour to decide. The most important auto race of the season is looming; it will be broadcast live on national television and could bring major prize money. If his team wins, it will get a sponsorship deal and a chance to start making some real profits for a change.

It was a group of fishermen who noticed something strange was brewing at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. Before 1831, the waters off the south-western coast of Sicily had been best known for their coral, which is still prized by jewellers today.

image copyrightN Vivion"I had always wanted to do this," says Nick Vivion of his decision to live and work full-time in a mobile home or recreational vehicle (RV). "I took some house money and bought myself a house on wheels, with no mortgage and no rent. Then never looked back.

US authorities are searching for a grizzly bear that killed a woman in Montana after dragging her from her tent in the middle of the night. Leah Lokan, a 65-year-old nurse from California, had stopped over in the town of Ovando during a cycling trip.

There's a debate in Australia about how to deal with a huge plague of mice across the east of the country. Poison? Regulator says no. Snakes? That could create another problem. So what then? Steve Evans of The Canberra Times goes in search of answers.

Brazil is well known as the home of the dance-like martial art capoeira, but its roots in fact lie across the Atlantic. In Angola, one man is trying to resurrect an older style to help people reconnect with their heritage, writes Marcia Veiga.

The US military left Bagram Airfield - its key base in Afghanistan - in the dead of night without notifying the Afghans, the base's new commander said. General Asadullah Kohistani told the BBC that the US left Bagram at 03:00 local time on Friday, and that the Afghan military found out hours later.

Any foreign troops left in Afghanistan after Nato's September withdrawal deadline will be at risk as occupiers, the Taliban has told the BBC. It comes amid reports that 1,000 mainly US troops could remain on the ground to protect diplomatic missions and Kabul's international airport.

Are the first mines on the ocean floor coming a step closer to reality? The tiny Pacific nation of Nauru has created shockwaves by demanding that the rules for deep sea mining are agreed in the next two years.

Sir Richard Branson has named the date he'll fly to the edge of space. It will be 11 July, or very soon after. He'll be a passenger in the back of the Unity rocket plane his Virgin Galactic company has been developing in the US for the better part of two decades.

The last US and Nato forces have left Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, the epicentre of the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda for some 20 years. The pull-out could signal that the complete withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan is imminent.

The Mandelbrot set (/ˈmændəlbrɒt/) is the set of complex numbers c{\displaystyle c} for which the function fc(z)=z2+c{\displaystyle f_{c}(z)=z^{2}+c} does not diverge to infinity when iterated from z=0{\displaystyle z=0}, i.e.

In mathematics, a fractal is a subset of Euclidean space with a fractal dimension that strictly exceeds its topological dimension. Fractals appear the same at different scales, as illustrated in successive magnifications of the Mandelbrot set.

The mayor of Amsterdam in the Netherlands has formally apologised for the city's role in slavery, as the country reckons with its colonial past. Femke Halsema said it was "time to engrave the great injustice of colonial slavery into our city's identity".

In Pamukkale in western Turkey, an enormous white rock formation towers over the surrounding plain. The gleaming mountain of petrified limestone cascades to the valley floor, creased with frozen stalactites and tessellated with hundreds of pools of sparkling turquoise water.

Scientists have detected two collisions between a neutron star and a black hole in the space of 10 days. Researchers predicted that such collisions would occur, but did not know how often.

Scientists have identified a new contender for "patient zero" in the plague that caused the Black Death. The plague swept through Europe in the 1300s, wiping out as much as half of the population.

Webmention implementations are either senders or receivers. This section describes the conformance criteria for both. Listed below are known types of Webmention implementations.

It's not possible for life to exist in the clouds of Venus. It's simply too dry, says an international research team led from Queen's University Belfast, UK.

I have been curious to learn more about webmentions and the IndieWeb for a while now. Putting together my new blog seemed like an excellent opportunity to learn more about it. So keep in mind that I’m pretty new to this stuff, and just sharing my learning process as I go along.

It was an ambitious signal of green intent when Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky declared this month that a billion extra trees would be planted within three years, and a million hectares would be reforested in a decade.

image copyrightGetty ImagesA proposal by the South African government to legalise polyandry - when a woman has more than one husband at the same time - has led to howls of protest from conservative quarters.This does not surprise Professor Collis Machoko, a renowned academic on the topic.

Two more Catholic churches burned down in indigenous communities in western Canada early on Saturday. The fires at St Ann's Church and the Chopaka Church began within an hour of each other in British Columbia.

China's space agency has released video of its Zhurong rover trundling across the surface of Mars. The pictures were acquired by a wireless camera that the robot had placed on the ground.

FGM has been banned in Egypt since 2008, yet the country still has one of the highest rates of the practice in the world. Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of female genital mutilation (FGM).

The US government has said it has no explanation for dozens of unidentified flying objects seen by military pilots. It does not rule out the possibility that the objects are extra-terrestrial.

Can a generation be forgetful? It's certainly true that older generations can fail to remember what it was to be young. With age, there comes a predictable derision of youth that seems to afflict almost every demographic cohort over the age of 35 years or so.

Chinese researchers have unveiled an ancient skull that could belong to a completely new species of human. The team has claimed it is our closest evolutionary relative among known species of ancient human, such as Neanderthals and Homo erectus.

Scientists in Israel say they have found evidence that early humans deliberately stored bones from animals to eat the fatty marrow later. It is the earliest evidence that humans living between 200,000 and 420,000 years ago had the foresight to anticipate future needs, they say.

Researchers working in Israel have identified a previously unknown type of ancient human that lived alongside our species more than 100,000 years ago. They believe the remains uncovered near the city of Ramla represent one of the "last survivors" of a very ancient human group.

Astronomers have worked out when the first stars began shining. They say that this period, known as the "cosmic dawn," occurred between 250 to 350 million years after the Big Bang.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that Europe is "on thin ice" as the Delta variant of Covid spreads on the continent. Her warning came as EU health officials said the variant would account for 90% of the bloc's cases by late August.

Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has released its findings into more than a century of abuse in Indian Residential Schools. Between the 1880s and 1990s 150,000 aboriginal children were sent to institutions where they were stripped of their language and culture.

The attack took place during a disciplinary hearing against the 36-year-old priest on Wednesday afternoon, according to police. Three bishops are being treated in hospital for the burns, mostly on their faces.

At around midday on 11 May, Dario Kopenawa, an indigenous leader, received a desperate phone call from a remote village in the Brazilian Amazon. Palimiú has a population of about 1,000, who live in large communal houses on the banks of a river called Uraricoera.

While some Pentecostal preachers in eastern Nigeria set fire to statues and other ancient artefacts that they regard as symbols of idolatry, one Catholic priest is collecting them instead.

A highly anticipated US government report on UFOs (unidentified flying objects) has just been released. Here's what we know so far. The unclassified report was demanded by Congress after numerous reports from the US military of vehicles seen moving erratically in the sky.

Scientists have found evidence parts of Venus's surface move around like pieces of continent on Earth. And while this activity is probably not driven by plate tectonics, as on Earth, it could be a "cousin" of that process.

In 2016 North Korean hackers planned a $1bn raid on Bangladesh's national bank and came within an inch of success - it was only by a fluke that all but $81m of the transfers were halted, report Geoff White and Jean H Lee.

For a few weeks in the summer of 2020, if you had been looking up on a clear night, there is a chance you might have spotted a rare visitor to our part of the Solar System.

The body of a Belgian soldier with far-right views who went missing in May after taking weapons from a military base has been found, officials say. The body of Jurgen Conings, a shooting instructor, was discovered by walkers in a wooded area near the Dutch border.

Western forces are racing to leave Afghanistan this month. France has signalled a significant scaling back of its military commitment in Mali. In Iraq, British and other Western forces no longer have any major combat role.

Over the past few weeks, I've received several unsolicited messages on my phone. There was what appeared to be a bank, warning me of impending fraud: Request for NEW payee MR A HANKIN has been made on your account. If this was NOT done by you, visit…

As one of the most famous faces of the 2000s, people think they know the story of Paris Hilton. So, when the 40-year-old released a YouTube documentary about her life last year, many were shocked to learn about her decades-long struggle with trauma.

image sourceGeneral FusionA company backed by Amazon's Jeff Bezos is set to build a large-scale nuclear fusion demonstration plant in Oxfordshire. Canada's General Fusion is one of the leading private firms aiming to turn the promise of fusion into a commercially viable energy source.

My New York commute takes less than 25 minutes, but skirts the broad outlines of almost 250 years of American history. On the port side, I can peer across to the Statue of Liberty, that beacon of hope for millions of new immigrants.

Girls will be accepted for the first time at a church music school attached to one of Germany's most famous boys' choirs - the Regensburger Domspatzen. The Bavarian city of Regensburg has had a boys' choir at its Roman Catholic cathedral since 975. "Domspatzen" means "cathedral sparrows".

Australian entrepreneur Irene Falcone's enthusiasm is as bright as the labels on the non-alcoholic wine and beer that fill the shelves in her ground-breaking store - Sans Drinks - on Sydney's affluent Northern Beaches. The ground is - without question - shifting.

The stone - weighing 1,098 carats - was shown to President Mokgweetsi Masisi, two weeks after the diamond firm, Debswana, unearthed it. The huge gem is only slightly less heavy than the world's second-largest diamond which was also found in Botswana in 2015.

Massive spider webs stretching across trees and paddocks have formed near towns in Australia recently hit by floods. Residents in Victoria's Gippsland region say the gossamer-like veils appeared after days of heavy rain.

Alberto Sánchez Gómez, 28, was arrested in 2019 after police found body parts around his mother's home - some in plastic containers. The court rejected Sánchez's arguments that he was experiencing a psychotic episode at the time of the killing.

Earlier this year, the TV miniseries It's a Sin rightly won acclaim for its depiction of the Aids crisis in the UK during the 1980s and 1990s.

My French husband loves me. I know he loves me because he hands me a bouquet of flowers almost every weekend. And when I tell him I was at a party full of beautiful people, he charmingly says something about "birds of a feather".

In November 2020 I wrote a feature about us becoming more forgetful during the Covid-19 pandemic. My starting point was anecdotal reports from people telling me that their memories seemed to be letting them down more often during the lockdowns.

An activist whose efforts to protect land sacred to her indigenous group resulted in the creation of Peru's Yaguas National Park has been awarded a prestigious environmental prize.

The big worry for most people thinking about buying an electric car is how to charge the thing. But the real question you should be asking is how you're going to refuel your petrol or diesel vehicle if you don't go electric.

Ziona Chana, the head of a religious sect that practiced polygamy, died on Sunday, leaving behind 38 wives, 89 children and 36 grandchildren. The news was confirmed by Mizoram's chief minister, Zoramthanga, who offered his condolences on Twitter "with a heavy heart".

It is clear we are now dealing with a virus that spreads far more easily - probably more than twice as easily - as the version that emerged in Wuhan at the end of 2019. The Alpha variant, first identified in Kent, UK, performed a large jump in its ability to transmit.

The outgoing head of the Israeli spy agency Mossad has given a revelatory interview about the country's operations against Iran. Yossi Cohen gave details about the theft of Iran's nuclear archive.

Wish you were here! China's Zhurong rover has sent back a batch of new images from Mars - including a "selfie".

Vlaanderen onderzoekt of het haalbaar is een hyperloop te bouwen, een modern transportmiddel dat snelheden tot 1.000 kilometer per uur kan halen. Voorstanders denken dat de hyperloop onze manier van verplaatsen drastisch gaat veranderen, critici zijn minder enthousiast.

Nearly a century ago, acclaimed British cellist Beatrice Harrison performed one of the BBC's first live outside broadcasts, from her own garden in Oxted, Surrey.

When Melissa Heightman set up the UK's first post-Covid-19 clinic at University College London Hospitals (UCLH) in May 2020, she expected that the bulk of her time would be filled helping patients recover from the after-effects of spending many weeks on a ventilator.

People are increasingly likely to use strong swearing in their everyday life, says research from the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). The body, which gives age ratings to films, says about a third of people in the UK are more likely to use strong swear words than five years ago.

Dengue fever cases have been cut by 77% in a "groundbreaking" trial that manipulates the mosquitoes that spread it, say scientists. They used mosquitoes infected with "miraculous" bacteria that reduce the insect's ability to spread dengue.

Fastly, the cloud-computing company responsible for the issues, said the bug had been triggered when one of its customers had changed their settings. The outage has raised questions about relying on a handful of companies to run the vast infrastructure that underpins the internet.

A 92-year-old nun, who took a vow of silence, solitude and poverty, has died at the monastery where she lived for the past three decades - however the full story of Sister Mary Joseph's life is far from traditional.

An elderly California nun will plead guilty to stealing from the Catholic school where she worked for decades in order to support her gambling, according to US prosecutors.

Romance or romantic love is an emotional feeling of love for, or a strong attraction towards another person, and the courtship behaviors undertaken by an individual to express those overall feelings and resultant emotions.

Love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest interpersonal affection, to the simplest pleasure.

Before the pandemic, many couples lived like “two ships passing in the night”, says Houston, Texas-based sex therapist Emily Jamea. Previously overscheduled with out-of-home commitments, some partners found that pandemic-related lockdowns offered a much-needed respite.

Apple recently launched the latest version of its operating system, iOS 14.5, which features the much-anticipated app tracking transparency function, bolstering the tech giant’s privacy credentials. But iOS 14.5 also introduced support for the new Apple AirTag, which risks doing the opposite.

Apple has released a software update for AirTags following concerns they could be used to track people secretly. AirTags were released in April and were promoted as a way for people to keep track of their belongings.

In 1603, a Jesuit priest invented a machine for lifting the entire planet with only ropes and gears. Christoph Grienberger oversaw all mathematical works written by Jesuit authors, a role akin to an editor at a modern scientific journal.

The American space agency's Juno probe has returned some close-in views of Ganymede - one of Jupiter's four Galilean moons and the largest natural satellite in the Solar System. The imagery was acquired from a distance of about 1,000km.

El Salvador has become the first country in the world to officially classify Bitcoin as legal currency. Congress approved President Nayib Bukele's proposal to embrace the cryptocurrency, with 62 out of 84 possible votes on Tuesday night.

Los Angeles native Shanelle Sherlin always wanted to live close to nature in a place where, as a triathlete, she could run, bike and swim away from city noise.

The herd was seen resting near a village in Xiyang township after heavy rain slowed down its travels. The animals have been trekking the country for about 15 months in an extraordinary 500km (300-mile) trip away from their natural habitat.

The UK government website - gov.uk - was also down as were the Financial Times, the Guardian and the New York Times. Cloud computing provider Fastly, which underpins a lot of major websites, said it was behind the problems.

Apple employees have launched a campaign to push back against Tim Cook's plans for a widespread return to the office, according to reports. It follows an all-staff memo last week in which the Apple boss said workers should be in the office at least three days a week by September.

It's almost hard to imagine a time in which people spent at least 40 hours a week in a physical office (and often even longer to impress the boss).

A microscopic multi-celled organism has returned to life after being frozen for 24,000 years in Siberia, according to new research.Scientists dug up the animal known as a bdelloid rotifer from the Alayeza River in the Russian Arctic.

A painting of the Mona Lisa hangs above a fireplace in a London flat in the 1960s. Is this picture not only by Leonardo da Vinci, but also an earlier version of the world famous portrait that hangs in the Louvre Museum in Paris?

The Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has said he will fly to space with his brother on the first human flight launched by his space company, Blue Origin. In an Instagram post, Mr Bezos said space flight was something he had wanted to do "all my life".

The first new treatment for Alzheimer's disease for nearly 20 years has been approved by regulators in the United States, paving the way for its use in the UK. Aducanumab targets the underlying cause of Alzheimer's, the most common form of dementia, rather than its symptoms.

North Korea has recently introduced a sweeping new law which seeks to stamp out any kind of foreign influence - harshly punishing anyone caught with foreign films, clothing or even using slang. But why?

American author Naomi Wolf has been suspended from Twitter after spreading vaccine misinformation. Dr Wolf, well known for her acclaimed third-wave feminist book The Beauty Myth, posted a wide-range of unfounded theories about vaccines.

On the outskirts of Upington, in South Africa's Northern Cape, there lives a queen. The queen is elderly and when she dies it may not just be she who is gone, but an entire realm. Katrina Esau is 88. Her community crowned her Queen of the Western Nǁnǂe (ǂKhomani) San in 2015.

image copyrightGetty ImagesA US government report on sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) found no evidence of alien activity but does not rule it out, officials have told US media.The review of 120 incidents is expected to conclude that US technology was not involved in most cases.

What is someone from the United African Republic called? Uranium or Urea? The answer is keeping many Nigerians awake as they chew over a proposal to change the name of the country.

It's an extraordinary possibility - the idea that living organisms are floating in the clouds of Planet Venus. But this is what astronomers are now considering after detecting a gas in the atmosphere they can't explain.

As the plane rose from the runway for what was to prove a smooth and uneventful flight, the team breathed a sigh of relief.

A day after former Tokyo Olympics boss Yoshiro Mori made global headlines with his sexist comments, Momoko Nojo, 23, helped start a petition calling for action against him.

We have now seen what an out-of-control virus can do to our overpopulated, highly interconnected planet. Some 166 million people have been infected in just 18 months. Officially the death toll from Covid-19 is 3.

China has announced that it will allow couples to have up to three children, after census data showed a steep decline in birth rates. China scrapped its decades-old one-child policy in 2016, replacing it with a two-child limit which has failed to lead to a sustained upsurge in births.

"Why?" It's a simple question, and one that people ask Angela Maxwell frequently. Yet until recently, the American struggled to answer why, exactly, she upended a perfectly fine life in pursuit of a big dream. But for Maxwell, "why" is a question worth answering.

My daughter is obsessed with all things girly and pink. She gravitated to pink flowery dresses that are typically marketed for girls before she even turned two. When she was three and we saw a group of children playing football, I suggested she could join in when she was a bit older.

image copyrightReutersA mass grave containing the remains of 215 children has been found in Canada at a former residential school set up to assimilate indigenous people.The children were students at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia that closed in 1978.

If you love sea views and can live without pizza deliveries then a unique job opportunity could be for you. The historic island of St Michael's Mount, off the coast of Cornwall, is looking for a new castle officer.

Tarjan's strongly connected components algorithm is an algorithm in graph theory for finding the strongly connected components (SCCs) of a directed graph.

An international team of researchers has created the largest and most detailed map of the distribution of so-called dark matter in the Universe. The results are a surprise because they show that it is slightly smoother and more spread out than the current best theories predict.

image copyrightJeff McCurryA photo of the gorilla Harambe is being auctioned off as a non-fungible token (NFT) to mark five years since he was killed.The western lowland gorilla was shot dead at Cincinnati Zoo after a three-year-old boy fell into his enclosure.

Oil and debris from a container ship on fire off the coast of Sri Lanka have coated beaches on its west coast. Images of the beach in Negombo, a popular tourist destination, have generated outrage in the country.

Germany has officially acknowledged committing genocide during its colonial occupation of Namibia, and announced financial aid worth more than €1.1bn (£940m; $1.34bn). German colonisers killed tens of thousands of Herero and Nama people there in early 20th Century massacres.

Trundling across the surface of Mars as you read this is a remarkable machine. Perseverance – the car-sized rover that safely touched down on the Martian surface on 18 February this year – might only have a top speed of less than 0.

Pavel Kashin was attempting to do a backflip on a 16-story building when he lost his footing. When a parkour daredevil loses his balance on top of a tall building and has a brush with death, it’s a terrifying moment. When it happened to Pavel Kashin, it was fatal.

Aircrafts use an incredible amount of fuel. A Boeing 747-400 jumbo jet carries 63,000 gallons (240,000 litres) of jet fuel, equal to about a 10th of an Olympic sized swimming pool, and burns through it at a rate of 4 litres (0.9 gallons) per second.

After more than a year of social isolation during the pandemic, the sentiment may perfectly encapsulate the purported vibe of the coming months – a period in which people are swapping masks for a different kind of protection. Welcome to summer 2021: the summer of sex.

French cinema is still addicted to showing smoking on screen, as a new study reveals the practice features in nearly all the country's films. Smoking gets 2.6 minutes of screen time on average per film - the equivalent of six adverts, the French League Against Cancer found.

US President Joe Biden has ordered intelligence agencies to investigate the emergence of Covid-19, amid growing controversy about the virus's origins. In a statement, Mr Biden asked US intelligence groups to "redouble their efforts" and report to him within 90 days.

Initial results from a UK experiment could help clear a hurdle to achieving commercial power based on nuclear fusion, experts say. The researchers believe they now have a way to remove the excess heat produced by fusion reactions.

Russia has started vaccinating animals against coronavirus, officials say. In March, Russia announced it had registered what it said was the world's first animal-specific jab.

Iran has announced a four-month ban on the energy-consuming mining of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin after cities suffered unplanned blackouts. President Hassan Rouhani told a cabinet meeting the main cause of the blackouts was a drought that had affected hydro-electric power generation.

The government is planning new laws to protect statues in England from being removed "on a whim or at the behest of a baying mob", Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick has said. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, he said generations-old monuments should be "considered thoughtfully".

As we head into 2021, Worklife is running our best, most insightful and most essential stories from 2020. Read our full list of the year’s top stories here. A few years ago, 80 Parisians were given the chance to take part in the pilot of a new gameshow, called La Zone Xtrême.

Doctors in India have hit out against yoga guru Baba Ramdev over his controversial statements against modern medicine. He recently said that tens of thousands died of Covid after taking modern medicines and mocked patients for trying to get oxygen cylinders.

Gwyneth Paltrow's new Netflix series poses a "considerable health risk" to the public, NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens has said.

China has released the first pictures taken by its Zhurong rover on Mars. The forward view shows the landscape ahead of the robot as it sits on its landing platform; the rear-looking image reveals Zhurong's solar panels.

How would you feel about being able to pay to control multiple aspects of another person's life? A new app is offering you the chance to do just that.

Swedish ice-climbing instructor Markus Nyman warms up his students with an off-piste ski tour, snaking past pine trees so thick with powder that locals describe them as "snow ghosts".

image copyrightGetty ImagesA major new study published in the Lancet medical journal suggests falling fertility rates mean nearly every country could have shrinking populations by the end of the century, and warns of a "jaw-dropping" impact on societies.

The world is ill-prepared for the global crash in children being born which is set to have a "jaw-dropping" impact on societies, say researchers. Falling fertility rates mean nearly every country could have shrinking populations by the end of the century.

In normal times around 15,000 Christian pilgrims a day would be visiting the Sanctuary of Lourdes at this time of year. But Lourdes, as everywhere, has had to change with the times.

Archaeologists in Italy believe they have identified the body of a rescuer killed in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius almost 2,000 years ago. The skeleton of man, originally thought to be an ordinary soldier, was one of around 300 found in the early 1980s.

An area of forest the size of France has regrown naturally across the world in the last 20 years, a study suggests. The restored forests have the potential to soak up the equivalent of 5.

Archaeologists in Italy have discovered the remains of nine Neanderthals who may have been hunted by hyenas, in a prehistoric cave south-east of Rome. The fossilized bones, which include skull fragments and broken jawbones, were found in the Guattari Cave in the coastal town San Felice Circeo.

One of the most bizarre episodes of World War Two unfolded on a farm to the south of Glasgow on 10 May 1941. He was promptly arrested by a pitchfork-wielding local farmer who took him to his farmhouse before alerting the authorities.

Most children are exposed to online pornography by their early teenage years, a study warns. About 53% of 11- to 16-year-olds have seen explicit material online, nearly all of whom (94%) had seen it by 14, the Middlesex University study says.

Children are stumbling upon pornography online from as young as seven, a report has indicated. The survey, from the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), suggested three-quarters of parents felt their child would not have seen porn online but more than half had done so.

image copyrightBBC newsA father and a student campaigner are seeking a High Court hearing to consider whether the government should tighten youngsters' access to porn.

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos is now ready to take people into space. The US entrepreneur's Blue Origin company says it will launch a crew aboard its New Shepard rocket and capsule system on 20 July.

Peloton has recalled about 125,000 treadmills in the US after the death of a six-year-old child. In addition to the death, Peloton had 72 reports of injuries such as broken bones, cuts and grazes.

Think you can run 4.16666 miles in an hour? Probably. How about the hour after that? The legs might be feeling it by now.

image copyrightFernando FueyoA glimpse of human grief, at the loss of a child 78,000 years ago, has been revealed in the discovery of the oldest burial site in Africa.The Middle Stone Age grave - of a three-year-old child - was found in a cave in Kenya.

The Italian government has approved a plan to furnish Rome's ancient Colosseum with a new floor, giving visitors the chance to stand where gladiators once fought. Culture Minister Dario Franceschini announced the project to build the wooden, retractable floor on Sunday.

New York City's police (NYPD) say they will stop using robotic dogs following an outcry over their deployment. The NYPD says it has ended a contract with the Boston Dynamics firm for the remote-controlled Digidogs.

Footage has emerged of the head of the US National Rife Association (NRA) repeatedly shooting an elephant in Botswana, sparking outrage. First published by the New Yorker and The Trace on Tuesday, the 2013 video shows Wayne LaPierre firing at the animal from point-blank range.

On 28 December 1903, during a particularly harsh Russian winter, a pauper died of pneumonia on a trunk he had rented in a room full of destitute strangers.

As a child in newly independent Kazakhstan, I yearned to snack on candy bars, soft drinks and anything foreign and packaged. Instead, my mother would buy salty, sour snacks that resembled white chocolate truffles, but were in fact hardened balls of sour cheese.

Emergency services - including six fire appliances - were called to the Findhorn Foundation on Monday morning. The foundation said the community centre and main sanctuary were destroyed. No-one was injured.

It stands outside the gates of the Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy, the giant trade-show-meets-amusement-park intended to show off the might of Soviet industry and science. It was built at a time when the USSR was leading the space race.

The orgasm, it is generally accepted, is A Good Thing. An intensely pleasurable experience that can promote bonding between partners.

On 13 April 1961, Soviet newspaper Izvestia’s special correspondent Georgi Ostroumov meets the first man in space. A day after returning to Earth "space pilot" Yuri Gagarin is, reports Ostroumov, "in high spirits, hale and hearty…a wonderful smile illumines his face."

The ivory trade, loss of vital habitat and a deeper understanding of elephant biology have all combined to reveal a previously underestimated threat to Africa's elephants.

Anyone with a smartphone that uses facial recognition will know it does not really work with a mask on. That can be frustrating - but although masks have undoubtedly thwarted the facial-recognition industry, the technology has also adapted.

image copyrightGetty ImagesA new feature is being introduced to iPhones and iPads this week which is causing a huge rift between Apple and Facebook.It will allow device users to say no to having their data collected by apps.

The American space agency has completed a second helicopter flight on Mars. The small Ingenuity drone hovered 5m above the ground, tilted and moved laterally 2m, before then reversing and putting itself back down on the spot from which it took off.

US, British and Nato combat forces are leaving Afghanistan this summer. The Taliban are growing stronger by the day while al-Qaeda and Islamic State groups are conducting ever more brazen attacks.

Researchers are calling for people struggling to regain their sense of smell after falling ill with Covid-19 to undergo "smell training" rather than being treated with steroids.

About three months into lockdown in the UK, 26-year-old student Emma signed into a Zoom meeting with a group of people she’d only ever met through online chats.

Kežmarská chata (polsky Schronisko Kieżmarskie) stála na břehu Velkého Bílého plesa v Dolině Bílých ples ve Vysokých Tatrách. Zanikla v roce 1974. Dolina Bílých ples byla vždy navštěvována bylinkáři, myslivci i pytláky.

Zbojnícka chata je vysokohorská chata s celoročnou prevádzkou v závere Veľkej Studenej doliny v Tatrách. Veľkú Studenú dolinu, ako mnohé iné, v dávnej minulosti navštevovali hľadači pokladov i zlatokopi. O nich sa však nezachovali žiadne záznamy.

Votrubova chata, v turistickom žargóne Votrubovka (poľ. Schronisko Votruby, maď. Votrubamenedékház, Wotrubamenedékház, nem. Votrubahütte, Wotrubahütte) bola pôvodne vojenskou stavbou, neskôr chatou v Doline Bielej vody vo Vysokých Tatrách.

Uhorský karpatský spolok (UKS), (maď. Magyarországi Kárpát-egyesület, nem. Ungarischer Karpathenverein), (po jeho zániku pokračoval v činnosti novozaložený Karpatský spolok nem. Karpathenverein, poľ.

Kežmarská chata (poľ. Schronisko Kieżmarskie) stála na brehu Veľkého Bieleho plesa v Doline Bielych plies vo Vysokých Tatrách. Zanikla v roku 1974. Dolina Bielych plies bola v dávnych časoch navštevovaná bylinkármi, poľovníkmi i pytliakmi.

Chata pod Rysmi (2 250 m n. m.), známa v obmenách ako útulňa pod Rysmi, útulňa pod Váhou, chata pod Váhou, útulňa pod sedlom Váhy (poľ. Schronisko pod Wagą)[1] je najvyššie položená horská chata vo Vysokých Tatrách i na Slovensku.

Nikto sa s ním v horách nemohol stratiť. Preliezol v Tatrách veľa skál a pomáhal tiež zachraňovať životy vo veľhorách. Alojz Krupitzer.

An instrument on Nasa's Perseverance rover on Mars has made oxygen from the planet's carbon dioxide atmosphere. It's the second successful technology demonstration on the mission, which flew a mini-helicopter on Monday.

In 1983, two army officers stopped at a car rental office in Pasni, a small coastal town in south-west Pakistan. One of them asked the owner: "Do you have a good car? We have to take an Arab sheikh to Panjgur."

Artificial intelligence and machine learning exist on the back of a lot of hard work from humans. Alongside the scientists, there are thousands of low-paid workers whose job it is to classify and label data - the lifeblood of such systems.

image copyrightGetty ImagesA killer who may become the first person put to death in Nevada in 15 years has requested the use of a firing squad rather than lethal injection.

The Matterhorn (/ˈmætərhɔːrn/,[3][4]German: [ˈmatərˌhɔrn]; Italian: Cervino [tʃerˈviːno]; French: Cervin [sɛʁvɛ̃]) is a mountain of the Alps, straddling the main watershed and border between Switzerland and Italy.

I'm standing in the middle of Old Manheim village, but my phone is telling me otherwise. On one side of me I can see the old church, its windows boarded up. On the other, there's the village pub looking similarly abandoned. But Google Maps is adamant this place doesn't exist.

Australia's government has scrapped two sex education videos designed to teach teenagers about consent and sexual assault after they were widely panned. The online education campaign used metaphors such as smearing milkshake on someone's face in order to depict disrespect and abuse.

The American space agency has successfully flown a small helicopter on Mars. The drone, called Ingenuity, was airborne for less than a minute, but Nasa is celebrating what represents the first powered, controlled flight by an aircraft on another world.

After 20 years in the country, US and British forces are leaving Afghanistan. This month President Biden announced that the remaining 2,500-3,500 US servicemen and women would be gone by September 11th. The UK is doing the same, withdrawing its remaining 750 troops. The date is significant.

Raúl Castro says he is resigning as Cuban Communist Party leader, ending his family's six decades in power. Mr Castro, 89, told a party congress that he is handing over the leadership to a younger generation "full of passion and anti-imperialist spirit".

Monkey embryos containing human cells have been made in a laboratory, a study has confirmed. The research, by a US-Chinese team, has sparked fresh debate into the ethics of such experiments.

It was the smile that clinched it. The first cadre of Soviet space explorers gathered together numbered 20. Among them were Gherman Titov, still the youngest person to fly in space (aged 26), and Alexei Leonov, the first person to venture out of the safety of a capsule to conduct a spacewalk.

French lawmakers have moved to ban short-haul internal flights where train alternatives exist, in a bid to reduce carbon emissions. Over the weekend, lawmakers voted in favour of a bill to end routes where the same journey could be made by train in under two-and-a-half hours.

Christ the Protector in the southern city of Encantado will be 43m (140 ft) high with its pedestal, making it the world's third tallest Jesus statue. The idea came from local politician Adroaldo Conzatti, who died in March with Covid-19.

Imagine wearing high-tech body armour that makes you super strong and tireless. Such technology, more specifically called an exoskeleton, sounds like the preserve of the Iron Man series of superhero movies.

For the month of August, 2019, we published a series of blog posts to cover Drupal migrations. It covered basic concepts and different use cases. The posts are available English. We are currently working on translating them to Spanish and French. Many thanks to Agaric.coop, Drupalize.

Planned obsolescence tends to work best when a producer has at least an oligopoly.[4] Before introducing a planned obsolescence, the producer has to know that the customer is at least somewhat likely to buy a replacement from them (see brand loyalty).

The discovery of a 3,000-year-old city that was lost to the sands of Egypt has been hailed as one of the most important archaeological finds since Tutankhamun's tomb. Famed Egyptologist Zahi Hawass announced the discovery of the "lost golden city" near Luxor on Thursday.

Spending very long periods of time in space has something in common with extreme endurance swimming: both can cause the heart to shrink. That's the conclusion of a study that compared the effects of astronaut Scott Kelly's year in space with a marathon swim by athlete Benoît Lecomte.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has backed the Czech Republic in its requirement for mandatory pre-school vaccinations. The case was brought by families who were fined or whose children were refused entry to pre-schools because they had not been vaccinated.

From sticking a magnet on a fridge door to throwing a ball into a basketball hoop, the forces of physics are at play in every moment of our lives. All of the forces we experience every day can be reduced to just four categories: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force and the weak force.

Greenland's main opposition party has won an election which could have major consequences for international interests in the Arctic. The left-wing Inuit Ataqatigiit, which opposes a mining project in southern Greenland, secured 37% of votes.

The 2m by 1.5m slab (5ft by 6.5ft), first uncovered in 1900, was found again in a cellar in a castle in France in 2014. Archaeologists who studied patterns engraved on the 4,000-year-old stone say they believe the markings are a map of an area in western Brittany.

The asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs gave birth to our planet's tropical rainforests, a study suggests. Researchers used fossil pollen and leaves from Colombia to investigate how the impact changed South American tropical forests.

Today we will present an introduction to paragraphs migrations in Drupal. The example consists of migrating paragraphs of one type, then connecting the migrated paragraphs to nodes. A separate image migration is included to demonstrate how they are different.

Paragraphs is a powerful Drupal module that makes gives editors more flexibility in how they design and layout the content of their pages. However, they are special in that they make no sense without a host entity.

In recent weeks there has been an explosion in what has become known as deepfakes: pornographic videos manipulated so that the original actress's face is replaced with somebody else's.

On 3 October 2020, the White House published two photographs of Donald Trump, signing papers and reading briefings. The day before, Trump had announced he had caught the coronavirus and these photos were apparently released to show that he was in rude health.

Havana may be Cuba's most famous city, but tiny Trinidad is its most enchanting. With its cobblestone streets, pastel-coloured 18th- and 19th-Century palaces, and manicured Baroque plazas, the 500-year-old Unesco-inscribed marvel is one of the finest colonial towns in the Americas.

Hungary has become the first country in the European Union to give preliminary approval to the Russian coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V.

Thousands have flocked to a volcano in Iceland which erupted near the capital, Reykjavik. Lava started to burst through a crack in Mount Fagradalsfjall on Friday evening, in the first eruption of its kind in more than 800 years.

It's a longstanding mystery: how Mars lost the water that flowed across its surface billions of years ago. Scientists now think they have an answer: much of it became trapped in the planet's outer layer - its crust.

2nd March 2021If there is a God, would they be bound by the laws of physics? I still believed in God (I am now an atheist) when I heard the following question at a seminar, first posed by Einstein, and was stunned by its elegance and depth: "If there is a God who created the entire universe and ALL

Chinese rescue teams say it might be more than two weeks until they can save a group of miners trapped hundreds of metres underground. They have been trapped since an explosion closed the entrance tunnel to the Hushan gold mine in Shandong province on 10 January.

At first, the satellite images appear to be of grey blobs in a forest of green splotches - but, on closer inspection, those blobs are revealed as elephants wandering through the trees. And scientists are using these images to count African elephants from space.

The famous naturalist was haunted by the question of how the first flowering plants evolved. Darwin feared this inexplicable puzzle would undermine his theories of evolution, says Prof Richard Buggs.

Navigating the thronging streets of Lagos, Nigeria, is a challenge at the best of times. But during the rainy seasons, the city's streets can become almost impassable. Home to more than 24 million, Lagos is Nigeria's economic powerhouse, making it a destination for people seeking new opportunities.

Since Covid-19 upended our lives, employees around the world have settled into the rhythms of mandatory remote work. Now, as companies try to decide the best way forward for their workers, it’s clear that many employees don’t want to stuff the genie entirely back into the bottle.

When four years ago film-maker Ryan White heard about the airport assassination of Kim Jong-nam he knew the story was extraordinary but he had no intention of turning it into a film.

Elon Musk's car firm Tesla has said it bought about $1.5bn (£1.1bn) of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin in January and expects to start accepting it as payment in future. The news caused the price of Bitcoin to jump 17% to $44,220, a record high.

Pigs can play video games, scientists have found, after putting four fun-loving swine to the test. Four pigs - Hamlet, Omelette, Ebony and Ivory - were trained to use an arcade-style joystick to steer an on-screen cursor into walls.

Archaeologists have managed to get near-perfect notes out of a musical instrument that's more than 17,000 years old. It's a conch shell that was found in a hunter-gatherer cave in southern France.

Womxn - to the untrained eye it may look like a typo. But when the Wellcome Collection - a museum and library in London - sent a tweet promoting an event using the word it led to a Twitter backlash from hundreds of women, and an apology from the organisation.

The Matterhorn Ultraks is an international skyrunning competition held for the first time in 1982. It runs every year in Zermatt (Switzerland) in August, race valid for the Skyrunner World Series till 2010.[1]

Superstorm Sandy had many consequences, some easier to foresee than others. Millions experienced floods and power cuts, the New York marathon was cancelled, and pictures of sharks in the city appeared on the internet. Another outcome was to draw attention to the unique position of the number zero.

It was the dead of night in mid-November 1582. A sailor stepped onto the dock at the port of Alghero, Sardinia, and took in the view of the city for the last time. The unfortunate mariner is thought to have arrived from Marseille, 447km (278 miles) across the Mediterranean Sea.

Usually, by the time you read about scientific research on a news site like the BBC, it has gone through a period of scrutiny, development and evaluation.

Barrie Smith was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in his 50s, but 18 years before he was given his diagnosis, he developed a very strange and permanent symptom. One day he detected "a strong smoky smell, like burning wires", he says. Since then, he has never smelt anything again.

Near the end of every school year, junior high school teacher Amy Lou Linder Weems begins a month-long lesson in what she calls “service learning.” She tells her students in Monroe, Louisiana, to pick a social problem that interests them.

It’s the lacklustre associate who makes partner despite a poor record, even though you’ve been working around the clock at the same firm without even a glance from the bosses.

David Wyatt has worked in public relations for more than 20 years, having worked his way up to become a senior vice-president at an Austin, Texas-based firm. He recognises his privileges as a straight white man whose education was paid for.   

It could be a quick email to a colleague you dislike. Perhaps it’s some menial paperwork; a small tweak to a spreadsheet or an invoice that has to be filed.

Not since the 1970s has there been such an important discovery from the Great War in France. In woods on a ridge not far from the city of Reims, the bodies of more than 270 German soldiers have lain for more than a century - after they died the most agonising deaths imaginable.

A powerful hallucinogenic drug known for its part in shamanic rituals is being trialled as a potential cure for depression for the first time.Participants will be given the drug DMT, followed by talking therapy.

It's late morning and the teenagers in the house are still fast asleep long after you've got up. Should you rush upstairs and pull them out of bed by their feet? It may be tempting, but the answer is probably no.

An adventure athlete who cycled the world and survived falling down a mountain in India has been killed by a bus near his home in northern Israel. Roei Sadan, known affectionately as "Jinji", was 39 years old.

image copyrightProf Tony Freeth / UCLA 2,000-year-old device often referred to as the world's oldest "computer" has been recreated by scientists trying to understand how it worked.The Antikythera Mechanism has baffled experts since it was found on a Roman-era shipwreck in Greece in 1901.

China and Russia have announced plans to build a lunar space station. Russian space agency Roscosmos says it has signed an agreement with China's National Space Administration to develop research facilities on the surface of the moon, in orbit or both.

France concealed the true impact of its nuclear tests in the Pacific from the 1960s to the 1990s, a study has said. Researchers used declassified French military documents, calculations and testimonies to reconstruct the impact of a number of the tests.

The research claimed to have found evidence of an elusive subatomic particle Microsoft suggested could help the development of more powerful computers. But it now says mistakes were made.

The ancient sandstone carvings in Afghanistan's Bamiyan valley were once the world's tallest Buddhas - but they were lost forever when the Taliban blew them up 20 years ago.

Message platforms Signal and Telegram have both seen a huge surge in downloads around the world following a controversial update to WhatsApp's terms and conditions.

The US space agency's Perseverance rover has wiggled its wheels and undertaken its first Martian drive. It didn't move far - just 6.5m (21ft) in total.

About 100 high-profile figures have signed a letter to the Treccani Italian dictionary calling on it to change its definition of the word "woman". The campaign argues that derogatory terms such as "puttana" (whore) should be removed from the list of synonyms.

We’re browsing photo essays capturing the workdays of overstretched medical staff, consuming news about politicians breaking lockdown and celebrities jetting off to private islands. Some of us peek outside to see which neighbours wear masks to take out the rubbish.

Drive along the dusty dirt road that winds through Kenya's Hell's Gate National park, past the zebra, gazelles and giraffes, and you'll see a plume of steam shooting skyward in the distance.

The SpaceX company has managed to land one of its Starship prototypes at the end of a high-altitude test flight. Serial Number 10 (SN10) touched down in Boca Chica, Texas - in contrast to its predecessors SN8 and SN9, which crashed into the ground.

Google has promised not to develop any new way of tracking individual users for adverts once it phases out its current method. The tech giant is one of the world's largest advertising sellers and also owns the world's most popular web browser, Chrome.

Nasa's Perseverance rover landed on Mars at 20:55 GMT on 18 February after almost seven months travelling from Earth. Since then, it has sent back some amazing images from around its landing site, Jezero Crater, a 49km (30-mile) wide impact depression just north of the Red Planet's equator.

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has invited eight members of the public to join him for a trip around the Moon on Elon Musk's SpaceX flight. He said he will pay for the entire journey, so those who come onboard will fly for free.

I write in celebration of the New York moment: those exhilarating and enchanting experiences and encounters that make New York, New York.

Archaeologists in Italy have unveiled a ceremonial chariot they discovered near the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. The four-wheeled carriage was found near a stable where three horses were uncovered back in 2018.

Scientists have come up with a computer program that can master a variety of 1980s exploration games, paving the way for more self-sufficient robots. They created a family of algorithms (software-based instructions for solving a problem) able to complete classic Atari games, such as Pitfall.

You are living amid the first global mass trauma event for several decades. It's arguably the first of its kind since World War Two, and likely the first of such severity in your lifetime.

Should we burn waste plastic - or bury it? Since China refused last month to accept any more foreign waste for recycling, the UK is facing a challenge.

Consumer pressure to end plastic packaging in shops could actually be harming the environment, a report says. Firms are swapping to other packaging materials which are potentially even worse for the environment, an independent think tank warns.

Last week Sam Smith came out as non-binary and asked fans to use the pronouns they/them instead of he/him. It caused a debate online - especially after The Associated Press wrote up the story using he pronouns.

The classic toy's branding is being "reimagined for the modern consumer", its US maker Hasbro announced on Thursday. From later this year, the toy - launched almost 70 years ago - will be named Potato Head on packaging.

The nothing to hide argument states that individuals have no reason to fear or oppose surveillance programs, unless they are afraid it will uncover their own illicit activities.

Nasa's Perseverance rover, due to launch to Mars this summer, will search an ancient crater lake for signs of past life. But if biology ever emerged on the Red Planet, how will scientists recognise it? Here, deputy project scientist Ken Williford explains what they're looking for.

"People have always wanted to travel fast, ever since the first person galloped across the plains on horseback," says Mike Bannister.And he should know. Mr Bannister flew Concorde with British Airways for 22 years.

For decades, India has recruited Tibetan refugees to a covert unit dedicated to high-altitude combat. But the recent death of a soldier in the force has put the spotlight on this unit, reports the BBC's Aamir Peerzada.

"It was dreadful - the worst ever. Life changed into chaos at once," says Gul Mohammad. The 25-year-old teacher is struggling to recall how he managed to dodge shellfire and save the 25 members of his family from fighting raging once more in Helmand in southern Afghanistan.

In these times of turbulence and upheaval, I have often found myself turning to fiction – and particularly to alternate history.

The US has topped over 500,000 deaths in the Covid-19 pandemic. It will be the latest grim milestone for a country that has by far the highest death toll in the world from the virus.

Around 600,000 years ago, humanity split in two. One group stayed in Africa, evolving into us. The other struck out overland, into Asia and then Europe, becoming Homo neanderthalensis – the Neanderthals.

image copyrightDr S. Robert RozbruchEach year hundreds of people around the world are opting for long, often painful surgery to extend their legs in a bid to make themselves a few inches taller.

For much of 2020, the world has been trapped in the short-term: glued to 24-hour news cycles, pandemic announcements, or social media culture wars. With the virus and politics drawing almost all attention, it has been difficult to imagine next year – let alone further ahead.

Nasa has released stunning videos of its Perseverance rover landing on Mars. The movies cover the final minutes of last week's hair-raising descent, up to the point where the robot's wheels make contact with the ground.

Woody Allen and his wife Soon-Yi Previn have described a new documentary series about the US actor and director as a "hatchet job riddled with falsehoods". The first episode of Allen v Farrow aired on Sunday on HBO.

Bitcoin uses more electricity annually than the whole of Argentina, analysis by Cambridge University suggests. Cambridge researchers say it consumes around 121.36 terawatt-hours (TWh) a year - and is unlikely to fall unless the value of the currency slumps.

The American space agency has released an astonishing image sent back from Mars by its Perseverance rover. It shows the robot heading down to the ground on Thursday to make its landing. It was acquired by the rocket cradle that placed the vehicle on the surface.

There's a new robot on the surface of Mars. The American space agency has successfully landed its Perseverance rover in a deep crater near the planet's equator called Jezero.

As we head towards the end of another extraordinary year, BBC Future is taking a look back at some of our favourite stories for our "Best of 2021" collection. Discover more of our picks here.

The stakes could not be higher for the US space agency's Perseverance rover. The six-wheeled robot is fast approaching the end of its seven-month journey from Earth and will very shortly plunge into the atmosphere of Mars.

Facebook has blocked Australian users from sharing or viewing news content on the platform, causing much alarm over public access to key information. It comes in response to a proposed law which would make tech giants pay for news content on their platforms.

This is a list of the largest known epidemics and pandemics caused by an infectious disease. Widespread non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease and cancer are not included.

A priest in the Republic of Ireland has made "takeaway ashes" available for parishioners to administer at home on Ash Wednesday.Fr Brian Brady teamed up with a shop in Clonmany, County Donegal, to provide holy ashes in sauce containers.

Throughout her career as a yoga teacher, Seane Corn has been used to hearing students and colleagues rail against mainstream medicine. She even shares some of their concerns. But when the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020, Seane noticed a change.

Archaeologists in Egypt have unearthed what could be the world's oldest known beer factory, dating back about 5,000 years. They found a number of units containing about 40 pots used to heat a mixture of grain and water to make beer.

Nasa is sending a spacecraft to the icy world of Europa, which holds an ocean under its frozen outer shell. Scientists have long regarded the moon as one of the most promising targets in the search for life elsewhere in our Solar System.

Trail running is a sport-activity which combines running, and, where there are steep gradients, hiking, that is run "on any unpaved surface".[1] It is similar to both mountain and fell running (also known as hill running). Mountain running may, however, include paved sections.

The United Arab Emirates is celebrating its first mission at Mars. It has put a probe called Hope in orbit around the planet, making it only the fifth spacefaring entity to do so after the US, the Soviet Union, Europe and India.

The coronavirus has been responsible for a series of video-call stumbles and mishaps, and the phenomenon seemingly reached its zenith this week, when a Texas lawyer appeared before a judge as a cat, after being unable to change a video filter.

Reforestation (occasionally, Reafforestation) is the natural or intentional restocking of existing forests and woodlands (forestation) that have been depleted, usually through deforestation,[1] but also after clearcutting.

Endorphins (contracted from "endogenous morphine"[1][2]) are endogenous opioid neuropeptides and peptide hormones in humans and other animals. They are produced and stored in the pituitary gland.

What is truth? You can speak of moral truths and aesthetic truths but I’m not concerned with those here, important as they may be. By truth I shall mean the kind of truth that a commission of inquiry or a jury trial is designed to establish.

To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.International experts investigating the origins of Covid-19 have all but dismissed a theory that the virus came from a laboratory in China.

Facebook is facing criticism after it emerged it had conducted a psychology experiment on nearly 700,000 users without their knowledge. The test saw Facebook "manipulate" news feeds to control which emotional expressions the users were exposed to.

A computer program called Eugene Goostman, which simulates a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy, is said to have passed the Turing test at an event organised by the University of Reading.The test investigates whether people can detect if they are talking to machines or humans.

While Chirindo Chisubi was still mourning her husband, she was shocked by a question asked by the police investigating his death in Kenya's Kilifi County on the Indian Ocean coast. Her husband, Dzuya Chisubi, had been hacked to death over accusations that he practised witchcraft.

Myanmar's military rulers have shut down the country's internet as thousands of people joined the largest rally yet against Monday's coup. In the main city, Yangon, crowds chanted "Military dictator, fail, fail; Democracy, win, win".

The death of a six-week-old baby hours after a baptism ceremony in Romania has prompted an Orthodox archbishop to say such rituals will be analysed to avoid further tragedy. The baby had a cardiac arrest after he was immersed three times in holy water.

I felt a surge of emotion and, unexpectedly, shed a tear. For the next few minutes, the throbbing in my feet seemed to evaporate and the bag on my back felt lighter than it had all week. I had just seen the spires of Canterbury Cathedral bristling above the treeline for the first time.

“There is a density level in NYC that is destructive. It has to stop and it has to stop now. NYC must develop an immediate plan to reduce density.” So tweeted Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York when the state of New York first went into lockdown amid the Covid-19 crisis.

Fish has a reputation for being one of the healthiest foods we can eat. But the rising availability of plant-based alternatives, and increasing concerns about seafood’s sustainability and carbon footprint, have led some to question whether we need it in our diets.

What do you want from life? You’ve probably had the opportunity and the cause to ask yourself that question recently. Perhaps you want to spend more time with your family, or get a more fulfilling and secure job, or improve your health. But why do you want those things?

As we end another extraordinary year and start a new one, BBC Future is taking a look back at some of our favourite stories for our "Best of 2021" collection. Discover more of our picks here. Their eyes met across the rugged mountain landscape of prehistoric Romania.

A set of iconic photos from 2017 show brightly coloured fields which, at first glance, look like meadows filled with flowers in full bloom.

"Healthy, female workers between the ages of 20 and 40 wanted for a military site," reads the job advertisement from a 1944 German newspaper. Good wages and free board, accommodation and clothing are promised. What is not mentioned is that the clothing is an SS uniform.

One of the grand scientific projects of the 21st Century is 'Go!'. The first council meeting of the Square Kilometre Array Observatory has actioned plans that will lead to the biggest telescope on Earth being assembled over the coming decade.

image copyrightDanish Energy Agency A project to build a giant island providing enough energy for three million households has been given the green light by Denmark's politicians.

The US is to end its support for offensive operations by its allies in Yemen, which has been devastated by a six-year war in which more than 110,000 people are believed to have died. Under Mr Biden's two predecessors, the US backed a coalition led by Saudi Arabia against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Myanmar's military rulers have blocked access to Facebook, days after they overthrew the democratic government. Officials said the social media platform - for many in Myanmar the main source of online information - would be blocked for the sake of "stability".

It was supposed to be a slick, gleaming piece of transport infrastructure that could shuttle passengers from Singapore to Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur in 90 minutes. But at the start of this year, the $17bn (£12.

Public Health England is investigating cases of coronavirus with 'worrying' new genetic changes that have been found in some regions of the UK. Tests show they have a mutation, called E484K, that is already seen in the South Africa variant.

Archaeologists have unearthed 2,000-year-old mummies with golden tongues placed inside their mouths in northern Egypt, the antiquities ministry says.

Captain Sir Tom Moore has died with coronavirus. The 100-year-old, who raised almost £33m for NHS charities by walking laps of his garden, was admitted to Bedford Hospital on Sunday.

Earlier this month, the Olympics for hagglebots was held: the 11th annual competition for artificial intelligence (AI) that has been trained to negotiate.

It’s thought that Covid-19 originated in animals before jumping to humans. Now experts are warning that the chances are the next pandemic will, too.

There was a time when people with severe mental illness might be given an operation to sever connections in the brain.

Comedian Eddie Izzard has completed her 31-day virtual marathon run by raising over £200k for charity. Speaking from her treadmill after Sunday's double marathon, she said she felt "very honoured" by the support.

The Amber Room (Russian: Янтарная комната, tr. Yantarnaya Komnata, German: Bernsteinzimmer, Polish: Bursztynowa komnata) was a chamber decorated in amber panels backed with gold leaf and mirrors, located in the Catherine Palace of Tsarskoye Selo near Saint Petersburg.

Iceland's Skaftafellsjokull is a spur from the nation's Vatnajokull ice cap, which is Europe's largest glacier. In 1989, photographer Colin Baxter visited the glacier during a family holiday and took a picture of the frozen landscape.

Prehistoric teeth unearthed at a site in Jersey reveal signs of interbreeding between Neanderthals and our own species, scientists say. UK experts re-studied 13 teeth found between 1910 and 1911 at La Cotte de St Brelade in the island's south-west.

The US space agency's Perseverance rover is now just three weeks from arriving at Mars. The robot and the Red Planet are still separated by some 4.5 million km (3 million miles), but this gap is closing at a rapid rate.

Sara Stewart strolls into a small Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles and orders a torta, a type of sandwich. To pay she simply looks at her reflection in a small LCD screen attached to the cashier's counter. Then to add her preferred amount of tip she flashes a quick peace sign at the monitor.

Scientists have proposed 10 golden rules for tree-planting, which they say must be a top priority for all nations this decade.

British photographer George Logan documents the "natural beauty, drama and raw ferocity" of wild lions in Africa. Logan has spent the last 10 years photographing lions in Kenya, Ethiopia, Zambia, Malawi, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa.

34.226.66.3 is your IP address. Computers connected to a network are assigned a unique number known as IP Address. IP addresses consist of four numbers in the range 0-255 separated by periods (i.e. 228.179.173.100).

Jim Haynes was both an icon and a relic of the Swinging Sixties, an American in Paris who was famous for inviting hundreds of thousands of strangers to dinner at his home. He died this month. Last February, I took my last trip abroad before lockdown closed in on us.

The US space agency (Nasa) is about to put its latest rover, Perseverance, on Mars. But we shouldn't forget that the existing robot, Curiosity, is still there and working well following its landing in equatorial Gale Crater back in 2012.

Using Drupal For Digital Experiences Part One: User experiences are directed graphs What’s a graph? A graph is not a bar chart. Graphs are made of nodes and edges. Nodes are represented as empty circles and they typically correlate to some concept.

The Window Subsystem for Linux is very powerful. After exploring it for a bit, I wanted to push it even further. Wouldn't it be cool to run GUIs natively inside of Linux, on your computer running Windows? 🤯

Naples has pizza, Rome has cacio e pepe and Sicily has cannoli.

The Spanish workers of La Línea de la Concepción are at the ready to celebrate the removal of the Gibraltar border controls. And they have reason to. This small coastal town bordering Gibraltar is one of the poorest in Spain.

WhatsApp is forcing users to agree to sharing information with Facebook if they want to keep using the service. The company warns users in a pop-up notice that they "need to accept these updates to continue using WhatsApp" - or delete their accounts.

On 15 January 2001, two American entrepreneurs - Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger - launched an online encyclopedia. It was called Wikipedia. Despite much criticism early on about inaccuracies, it has gone on to be hugely successful.

More than 200 years after the electric eel inspired the design of the first battery, it has been discovered that they can co-ordinate their "zaps". Researchers working in the Amazon filmed eels gathering in packs to herd prey, then stunning them with a synchronised electric shock.

Blood doping is the practice of boosting the number of red blood cells in the bloodstream in order to enhance athletic performance.

Most people who have had Covid-19 are protected from catching it again for at least five months, a study led by Public Health England shows. Past infection was linked to around a 83% lower risk of getting the virus, compared with those who had never had Covid-19, scientists found.

We've all been there - brain fog makes us forget our password and after eight frantic attempts, we have just two left.

Hundreds of people rioted in Brussels on Wednesday night over the death of a 23-year-old in police custody at the weekend. Video from the scene shows King Philippe's car being hit by projectiles as it passed through the area.

The Tower of London's "queen" raven is missing and feared dead, according to staff at the fortress. Merlina, who joined the flock in 2007, has not been seen for several weeks.

Donald Trump has become the first president in US history to be impeached twice, after being charged with "incitement of insurrection" over last week's deadly storming of Congress. The House of Representatives accused Mr Trump of encouraging violence with his false claims of election fraud.

Tim Berners-Lee wants to put people in control of their personal data. He has technology and a start-up pursuing that goal. Can he succeed? Three decades ago, Tim Berners-Lee devised simple yet powerful standards for locating, linking and presenting multimedia documents online.

If the standout rocket launch of 2020 was the flight that took US astronauts back into orbit from American soil, then the major rocket event of 2021 must surely be the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. The successor to the mighty Hubble observatory is due to go into orbit on 31 October.

Large nature-themed murals have started to pop up in a Worcestershire town, painted on cling film. The impromptu works in Pershore have been created by a graffiti artist who goes by the name of Mr Sce.

A Chinese company has apologised and pulled an advertisement for make-up remover wipes after it sparked outrage for allegedly victim-blaming women. The ad by Purcotton, which has gone viral, shows a woman wiping away her make-up to scare off a male stalker.

Covfefe (/koʊˈfɛfi/ koh-FEH-fee)[2] is a word, widely presumed to be a typo, that Donald Trump used in a viral tweet when he was U.S. President. It instantly became an Internet meme. Six minutes after midnight (EDT) on May 31, 2017, Trump tweeted, "Despite the constant negative press covfefe".

It is perhaps fitting that the ancient ouroboros marks the beginning – and end – of Never Ending Stories, a major exhibition currently showing at Germany’s Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg.

In graph theory, a loop (also called a self-loop or a "buckle") is an edge that connects a vertex to itself. A simple graph contains no loops. For an undirected graph, the degree of a vertex is equal to the number of adjacent vertices.

Orthorexia nervosa /ˌɔːrθəˈrɛksiə nɜːrˈvoʊsə/ (also known as orthorexia) is a proposed eating disorder characterized by an excessive preoccupation with eating healthy food.[1][2][3] The term was introduced in 1997 by American physician Steven Bratman, M.D.

At an undisclosed location Airbus has spent months testing a radical looking plane. At 10ft (3m) wide, it is only small, but it could be the start of something very big in the aerospace industry. It looks like a flying wedge - known in the trade as a blended-wing design.

The president says he hates Big Tech. Yet he has loved using Twitter. He's used it as a way, for more than 10 years, to bypass the media and speak directly to voters.

Credit card giants Visa, Mastercard and Discover have blocked all payments to Pornhub, after the adult site was accused of being "infested" with child abuse and rape-related videos.

Elon Musk is developing a vehicle that could be a game-changer for space travel. Starship, as it's known, will be a fully reusable transport system capable of carrying up to 100 people to the Red Planet.

US President Donald Trump's Twitter account is "permanently suspended... due to the risk of further incitement of violence", the company says. Twitter said the decision was made "after close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account".

Extraterrestrial life[n 1] is hypothetical life which may occur outside Earth and which did not originate on Earth.

It has been described as Britain’s strangest town and the real-life answer to Twin Peaks. But East Grinstead hardly exudes a sense of dreamlike Lynchian terror.

Elon Musk has become the world's richest person, as his net worth crossed $185bn (£136bn). The Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur was pushed into the top slot after Tesla's share price increased on Thursday.

Elon Musk has just become the richest person in the world, overtaking Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur's net worth has crossed $185bn (£136bn) after an increase in the share price of the electric car company.

GatsbyJS plugin with the ability to retrieve various bits of Wikipedia data and reuse them in your site. Wikipedia is the most successful collaborative knowledge base ever achieved on this planet.

GatsbyJS plugin with the ability to retrieve various bits of Wikipedia data and reuse them in your site. Wikipedia is the most successful collaborative knowledge base ever achieved on this planet.

GatsbyJS plugin with the ability to retrieve various bits of Wikipedia data and reuse them in your site. Wikipedia is the most successful collaborative knowledge base ever achieved on this planet.

The US space agency (Nasa) has released an animation showing how its one-tonne Perseverance rover will land on Mars on 18 February. The robot is being sent to a crater called Jezero where it will search for evidence of past life. But to undertake this science, it must first touch down softly.

As we head into 2021, Worklife is running our best, most insightful and most essential stories from 2020. Read our full list of the year’s top stories here. After seven years of marriage, 29-year-old Sophie Turner and her husband filed for divorce.

On a hot and humid day in Hong Kong, local finance worker Wai Li is visiting Wong Tai Sin, the city’s busiest temple, to use a fortune-telling practice known as kau cim.

The new variant of Covid-19 is "hugely" more transmissible than the virus's previous version, a study has found. It concludes the new variant increases the Reproduction or R number by between 0.4 and 0.7.

As we head into 2021, Worklife is running our best, most insightful and most essential stories from 2020. Read our full list of the year’s top stories here. Fifteen years ago, the people of Italy experienced a strange kind of mass hysteria known as “53 fever”.

(This year, we published many inspiring and amazing stories that made us fall in love with the world – and this is one our favourites. Click here for the full list).

It’s one of the most impressive feats in modern engineering, and crossing the world’s longest sea bridge – the 55km (34 miles) Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge, which opened in October 2018 at a cost of $20bn (£15.9bn) – certainly has its benefits.

For Sudeep Choudhury, work on merchant ships promised adventure and a better life. But a voyage on an oil tanker in West Africa, in dangerous seas far from home, would turn the young graduate's life upside down.

Cooking oils are a kitchen staple. But there’s a lot of conflicting information regarding how healthy each of them are.

The science of nuclear fusion was proven in the early 1930s, after fusion of hydrogen isotopes was achieved in a laboratory. And we see fusion in action every day. The stars, including our Sun, are giant self-sustaining fusion reactors.

Hidden deep in the south-east corner of the Greek island of Evia, above a twisting maze of ravines that tumbles toward the Aegean Sea, the tiny village of Antia clings to the slopes of Mount Ochi.

As you enter the mountainous village of Pera Melana in Greece’s southern Peloponnese peninsula, you’re likely to hear the roar of scooters zooming down narrow roads and the chirps of birds stealing ripe fruit from trees.

Nestled within a narrow valley of the Meihuashan Nature Reserve in China’s south-eastern Fujian province, the ancient Hakka village of Guizhuping is sheltered from the cold north wind by a sacred forest.

image copyrightGetty ImagesA Catholic priest and nun have been sentenced to life in prison for the killing of another member of their convent in India nearly 30 years ago.

Two European mountaineers embark this week on a bitterly cold, week-long trek to reach base camp on the world's second highest mountain, in a bid to achieve something that no human has ever done before.

European nations have begun to impose travel bans on the UK after it reported a more-infectious and "out of control" coronavirus variant. Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium are all halting flights.

According to Valerius Maximus, the phrase was uttered by the ancient Greek mathematician and astronomer Archimedes. When the Romans conquered the city of Syracuse after the siege of 214–212 BC, the Roman general Marcus Claudius Marcellus gave the order to retrieve Archimedes.

Gravity (from Latin gravitas 'weight'[1]), or gravitation, is a natural phenomenon by which all things with mass or energy—including planets, stars, galaxies, and even light[2]—are attracted to (or gravitate toward) one another.

Cornwall, 1864. A hot spring is discovered nearly 450m (1,485ft) below ground in the Wheal Clifford, a copper mine just outside the mining town of Redruth. Glass bottles are immersed to their necks in its bubbling waters, carefully sealed and sent off for testing.

US entrepreneur Elon Musk has launched the latest prototype of his Starship vehicle from Texas. Codenamed SN8, the uncrewed rocket lifted away from the Boca Chica R&D facility on what had been billed as a brief flight to 12.5km (41,000ft).

image copyrightGetty ImagesThere's an ugly truth to the beauty products we slap on our faces and an unsavoury truth to the foods we eat: many are made with palm oil, which is responsible for the rapid deforestation of some of the world's most biodiverse forests, destroying the habitat of already end

image copyrightFamily handoutA video clip of a Kurdish-Iranian girl who died with her family attempting to cross the English Channel last month highlights their drive for a better life. The clip shows a nine-year-old girl crying and laughing.

Bitcoin has hit a new all-time high breaking through $20,000 (£14,800). The volatile virtual currency has gained more than 170% this year amid stock market turmoil.

There is not enough evidence that vitamin D supplements protect people against Covid-19, an expert panel says. Made up of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, Public Health England and the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, it said more research was needed.

Ten US states, led by Texas, are suing Google, accusing it of taking illegal steps to preserve its monopoly over the online advertising market. The alleged moves include striking a deal with Facebook to manipulate online advertising auctions, the states said.

The dream for photographer Elena Heatherwick was to work for non-governmental organisations (NGOs), documenting lives and seeing the pictures she had made being used to effect change. But commissions like this did not come overnight.

If our homes reflect our characters, then the home of an artist is likely to be particularly intriguing.

A castaway who says he spent 13 months lost in the Pacific told reporters he thought about killing himself twice, despairing from "hunger and thirst".In an interview to CNN Mexico, Jose Salvador Alvarenga said fear was what stopped him from suicide.

Police in the Marshall Islands have found their biggest drug haul ever, in an abandoned boat washed ashore on a small atoll. It's thought the vessel might have drifted across the Pacific Ocean from Latin America, spending possibly months out at sea.

Conspiracy theories thrive on cryptic symbols and covert visual signs.

Rev Matthew Barzare of St Anne Church in the rural community of Cow Island took up the suggestion of a parishioner to spray 100 gallons (378 litres) of holy water from a plane. His parish is spread over a wide area so Rev Barzare decided a crop dusting plane would be a quick solution.

China's Chang'e-5 mission has returned to Earth with the cargo of rock and "soil" it picked up off the Moon. It's more than 40 years since the American Apollo and Soviet Luna missions brought their samples home.

A team of 10 international scientists will travel to the Chinese city of Wuhan next month to investigate the origins of Covid-19, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.

The winning series, by French photographer Jonathan Jimenez aka 'Jonk', includes images of a coffee shop and theatre in Abkhazia, a hotel in Portugal and a swimming pool in Italy. The work was chosen from more than 2,600 submissions.

Working in Paris and India at the turn of the last century, Waldemar Mordecai Haffkine created the world's first vaccines for cholera and plague. Then an accidental mass poisoning derailed his life.

More than 370 religious leaders from around the world are calling for a ban on conversion therapy - the attempt to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity. The signatories to the declaration represent all the world's major faiths and many are known LGBT advocates.

Emerald-green waters and bobbing catamarans welcome one on the way to Pamban Island, also known as Rameshwaram, a sacred pilgrimage site in the state of Tamil Nadu.

Gatsby is a modern web framework for blazing fast websites. Go Beyond Static Websites. Get all the benefits of static websites with none of the limitations.

Anyone who’s built a React app of any appreciable complexity knows how challenging it can be selecting and configuring the multitude of libraries you’ll need to make it fast and performant.

If you're not familiar with GatsbyJS, then you owe it to yourself to check it out. It's an up and coming static site generator with React and GraphQL baked in, and it prides itself on being really easy to integrate with common CMS'es like Drupal.

Out of all the trends in today’s age of web development, the trend of high-end web performance is the one trend that singlehandedly offers the most reward and payoff to both users and web developers alike; with everyday users now expecting websites to offer blazingly fast page speeds, minimal load

Gatsby and Drupal : Match made in heaven? Gatsby is a popular static site generator that can communicate with any backend. The front-end landscape has exploded in the last three years. Today you have various libraries/front end frameworks like React, Angular, VueJS.

As you enter the mountainous village of Pera Melana in Greece’s southern Peloponnese peninsula, you’re likely to hear the roar of scooters zooming down narrow roads and the chirps of birds stealing ripe fruit from trees.

With a number of potential vaccines for Covid-19 now imminent, there are increasing concerns that misinformation online could turn some people against being immunized.

Nearly twice as wide as it is long, the Lockheed U-2 spy plane is one of the most distinctive aircraft in the United States Air Force – and the hardest aircraft to fly, earning itself the nickname “The Dragon Lady”.

At the start of the pandemic, we were warned: it takes years to develop a vaccine, so don't expect too much too soon. Now, after only 10 months, the injections have begun and the firms behind the front-runners are household names.

On Japan’s Okinawa Island, nicknamed the “island of longevity”, locals refuse to die.

Google is to restrict the number of advertising cookies on websites accessed via its Chrome browser, in response to calls for greater privacy controls. Cookies are small text files that are used to track users across the web.

In August 1957, Dr. Joseph Ballinger gave a nurse at a New York hospital the first H2N2-vaccine shot to be administered in the city. You may be surprised to learn that of the trio of long-awaited coronavirus vaccines, the most promising, Moderna’s mRNA-1273, which reported a 94.

One afternoon in April, Mandy Pang’s worst fears came true. She was summoned onto a Zoom with her boss on short notice. Due to the economic downturn from the pandemic, she was being made redundant at her marketing job.  

Scientists have been greeted by the sight of jet black chunks of rock and soil from an asteroid after opening a capsule that returned from deep space a week ago.

Google applications including YouTube, email and Docs have suffered a rare service outage, with users unable to access many of the company's services. The outage started shortly before noon UK time, lasting more than half an hour before services were restored.

Adult video site Pornhub has removed the majority of videos by suspending all unverified uploads, amid a row over illegal content. Mastercard, one of the world's biggest payment providers, pulled support for the site last week over the scandal.

The House of Wisdom sounds a bit like make believe: no trace remains of this ancient library, destroyed in the 13th Century, so we cannot be sure exactly where it was located or what it looked like.

Thoughts about Drupal 8, Drupal 7, Backdrop, the Drupal Community, DrupalCon's meteoric price increases, DrupalCamps, and the future of the framework/CMS/enterprise experience engine that is Drupal have been bubbling up in the back of my mind for, well, years now.

First of all, Drupal is not dead. But I would argue it's not in healthy place relative to competing projects as it was in its heyday, in the early 2010s.

Former top porn actress Mia Khalifa has called out pornography companies that "prey on callow young women". The 26-year-old says the corporations "trap women legally in to contracts when they're vulnerable".

Google has been fined 100 million euros (£91m) in France for breaking the country's rules on online advertising trackers known as cookies. It is the largest fine ever issued by the French data privacy watchdog CNIL.

As President Donald Trump's days in the White House wane, his administration has been racing through a string of federal executions.

Rugby World Cup winner Steve Thompson and seven other former players claim the sport has left them with permanent brain damage - and are in the process of starting a claim against the game's authorities for negligence.

Forty years ago, on 8 December 1980, the former Beatle John Lennon was shot dead as he returned to his home at the Dakota apartment building in New York. The BBC's Tom Brook was the first British journalist to report live from the scene.

The Kon-Tiki expedition was a 1947 journey by raft across the Pacific Ocean from South America to the Polynesian islands, led by Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl. The raft was named Kon-Tiki after the Inca god Viracocha, for whom "Kon-Tiki" was said to be an old name.

Tiwanaku (Spanish: Tiahuanaco or Tiahuanacu) is a Pre-Columbian archaeological site in western Bolivia near Lake Titicaca and one of the largest sites in South America.

The Mediacurrent team has been championing “Decoupled Drupal” for a number of years and believe that this approach is a good fit for many organizations.

Today I’m thrilled to announce the release of Incremental Builds on Gatsby Cloud. In January we announced Gatsby Builds, bringing you up to 60x faster builds for Gatsby sites compared to other solutions.

Spoiler alert: I'm a big fan of Gatsby. I've worked with it multiple times and I'm continually impressed with its power and flexibility. For those who aren't familiar, Gatsby is an open-source static site generator incorporating React and GraphQL.

React (also known as React.js or ReactJS) is a JavaScript library[3] for building user interfaces. It is maintained by Facebook and a community of individual developers and companies.[4][5][6]

Source plugin for pulling data (including images) into Gatsby from Drupal sites. Pulls data from Drupal 8 sites with the Drupal JSONAPI module installed.

Why use Drupal + Gatsby together? Using Drupal as a headless CMS with Gatsby is a great way to get an enterprise-quality CMS for free, paired with a great modern development experience and all the benefits of the JAMstack, like performance, scalability, and security.

This project enhances the experience of your Drupal content editors for Gatsby sites using Drupal as a data source. This module provides Gatsby live preview capabilities using your Gatsby Cloud Preview account or on your locally running Gatsby development server.

JavaScript frameworks are developing at an extremely fast pace, meaning that today we have frequently updated versions of Angular, React.js and another player on this market - Vue.js. Let’s have a look at the demand represented in Google Trends for the last 5 years.

Heard of GatsbyJS, but not sure what to make of it?   Here are five blazing-fast questions and answers with Front End Developer, Grayson Hicks, about everyone’s favorite front-end tool right now. 1:  What is Gatsby? GatsbyJS is a React-based, GraphQL powered, static site generator.

A capsule containing the first significant quantities of rock from an asteroid is in "perfect" shape, according to scientists.The container with material from a space rock called Ryugu parachuted down near Woomera in South Australia on Saturday evening (GMT).

TL;DR: In this article, you'll learn how to secure a basic Gatsby static site with Auth0. The finished code for this tutorial is at the gatsby-auth0 repository. I have a confession. Despite my public love of Angular, I have recently also fallen in love with the static site generator GatsbyJS.

The first large sample of rock and soil from an asteroid is making its way back to Earth. The sample container should deploy parachutes and land in the Australian outback this evening.

It's been described as the "ultimate book of the heavens" - a catalogue of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy assembled by Europe's Gaia Space Telescope. On Thursday, scientists gave an update on how its survey is progressing.

Pyramids, castles, palaces: symbols of power and status have taken many forms down the ages, and for the Vikings what really counted was the longship. This month Norwegian archaeologists hope to complete their excavation of a rare, buried longship at Gjellestad, an ancient site south-east of Oslo.

We've looked into some of the most widely shared false vaccine claims - everything from alleged plots to put microchips into people to the supposed re-engineering of our genetic code. The fear that a vaccine will somehow change your DNA is one we've seen aired regularly on social media.

France's Muslim Council is due to meet President Emmanuel Macron this week, to confirm the text of a new "charter of republican values" for imams in the country to sign.

One of biology's biggest mysteries has been solved using artificial intelligence, experts have announced. Predicting how a protein folds into a unique three-dimensional shape has puzzled scientists for half a century.

Euler's identity is named after the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler. It is considered to be an exemplar of mathematical beauty as it shows a profound connection between the most fundamental numbers in mathematics.

Benford's law, also called the Newcomb–Benford law, the law of anomalous numbers, or the first-digit law, is an observation about the frequency distribution of leading digits in many real-life sets of numerical data.

Imagine a well-known Westminster MP - a party leader - caught in a press scrum and being asked a question which is delivered in a thick Scottish accent. He looks at the journalist in mocking incomprehension, and says: "Sorry I didn't understand a word of that.

Elbow frontman Guy Garvey says the way artists are paid for audio streams is "threatening the future of music". The musician was giving evidence to a DCMS Committee inquiry into the streaming music market.

In December 2019, at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Vanuatu’s ambassador to the European Union made a radical suggestion: make the destruction of the environment a crime. Vanuatu is a small island state in the South Pacific, a nation severely threatened by rising sea levels.

It sounds like science fiction: giant solar power stations floating in space that beam down enormous amounts of energy to Earth. And for a long time, the concept – first developed by the Russian scientist, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, in the 1920s – was mainly an inspiration for writers.

Emma Rao spent almost three years on China’s notorious ‘996 schedule’: working from nine in the morning to nine in the evening, six days a week. Rao, who is originally from Nanjing, moved to financial hub Shanghai about five years ago to work for a multinational pharmaceutical company.

Have you ever had trouble thinking of someone’s name? Perhaps you can even see the face of the person in your mind’s eye, and you would immediately recognise the name if a friend suggested it to you. Although this happens frequently with names, it’s the same for any word.

Fülöppite forms a homologous series with other members of the plagionite group. The structures of these minerals differ by the thickness of a galena sheet which occurs in all of them. Fülöppite has the thinnest such sheet.[4]

Fülöpszállás község Bács-Kiskun megye Kiskőrösi járásában. A település népessége az évszázadok során többször is jelentősen lecsökkent és megváltozott.

Pinkafőtől 4 km-re nyugatra a régi magyar határ mellett fekszik. A régészeti leletek tanúsága szerint területén már a kőkorszakban is éltek emberek. Később a bronz, majd a vaskorban is folyamatosan lakott volt. A Wechsel-hegység lábánál a római korban is állt település.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is an international non-governmental organization founded in 1961 that works in the field of wilderness preservation and the reduction of human impact on the environment.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has vowed to "do more" after an internal investigation prompted by human rights abuse reports. The probe comes after a series of articles published last year by BuzzFeed News.

BuzzFeed News has reporters around the world bringing you trustworthy stories and explosive investigations. To help keep this news free, become a member.

Pour ne rien manquer de l’actualité africaine, inscrivez-vous à la newsletter du « Monde Afrique » depuis ce lien. Chaque samedi à 6 heures, retrouvez une semaine d’actualité et de débats traitée par la rédaction du « Monde Afrique ».

A long-awaited report on allegations that conservation rangers supported by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) committed violent abuses in several countries, including murder, has cleared the organisation’s staff of complicity but criticised it for serious shortcomings in oversight.

A new message said to be from al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden has blamed global warming on the US and other big industrial nations.The audio tape, broadcast on al-Jazeera TV, urges a boycott of the US dollar "to free humankind from slavery".

A top Taleban commander has said in a television interview that Osama Bin Laden and Afghanistan's former Taleban leader Mullah Omar are alive and well. "I am in contact with Mullah Omar and take directions from him," Mullah Akhtar Usmani told Pakistan's privately-run Geo television.

Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden has been killed by US forces in Pakistan, President Barack Obama has said. Bin Laden was shot dead at a compound near Islamabad, in a ground operation based on US intelligence, the first lead for which emerged last August.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's number two, has warned that Osama Bin Laden will continue to "terrify" the US from beyond the grave. The statement was posted on Jihadist websites.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says the US killing of unarmed al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden has left "a very uncomfortable feeling". Bin Laden died in a raid on a Pakistani hideout, and the US initially said he was armed but later corrected that.

An American man who claimed to be on a mission to hunt down Osama Bin Laden has been arrested in northern Pakistan, police say. They said that Gary Brooks Faulkner, 52, was detained in the mountains of Chitral district north of Peshawar.

British Airways has apologised after a photograph in a staff magazine showed a frequent flyer boarding pass in the name of Osama Bin Laden. The image appeared on the front page of LHR News and was meant to promote the benefits of online check-in.

Arabic TV channel Al-Jazeera has broadcast what it says is unseen footage of Osama Bin Laden meeting some of the 9/11 hijackers. The channel said it showed al-Qaeda leaders "preparing for the attacks and practising their execution".

Osama Bin Laden is said to be preparing to release a video message to the American people to coincide with the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The announcement was made on an Islamist website, where al-Qaeda's media arm frequently posts messages.

New details, including reports on Osama Bin Laden dating from 2006, have emerged from 90,000 US military files leaked to the Wikileaks website. Several files track Bin Laden, although the US has said it had received no reliable information on him "in years".

Rumours circulating on Twitter that Osama Bin Laden was a fan of The IT Crowd sitcom were an elaborate new media hoax. Here comedian Graham Linehan explains how he organised the ruse.

It has purchased an advance copy of an unauthorised account of the raid, No Easy Day, by a former Navy Seal. The book says Bin Laden was shot dead as soon as he looked out of his bedroom as Seals rushed up the stairs, AP says.

A Pakistani commission investigating the US raid that killed Osama Bin Laden says a doctor accused of helping the CIA should be tried for high treason.Dr Shakil Afridi is accused of running a CIA-sponsored fake vaccine programme in Abbottabad, where Bin Laden was killed, to try to get DNA samples.

President Barack Obama has said publishing photos of the dead Osama Bin Laden threatens US national security. The al-Qaeda leader was killed by US special forces in northern Pakistan on Monday. His body was buried at sea.

The US is to tighten security around the elite military unit that killed Osama Bin Laden, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said. Mr Gates revealed that the US Navy Seal team had expressed concerns over their safety and that of their families.

The death of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden near Islamabad has important implications for relations between Pakistan and the US. Pakistan has been the epicentre of the battle against al-Qaeda in its global jihad.

Osama Bin Laden's three widows and two eldest daughters have been charged and sentenced for living in Pakistan illegally, their lawyer has confirmed. They have received a jail term of 45 days in prison and been fined 10,000 rupees ($114; £71) each.

That is according to three US senators who outlined their objections to Zero Dark Thirty in a letter to the head of Sony Pictures Entertainment. Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar-tipped drama, their letter claims, is "perpetuating the myth that torture is effective".

I have to say that my reaction to the death of Osama Bin Laden was unequivocal and loud, though in the interests of impartiality, I shall decline to describe it further.

The niece of Osama Bin Laden has posed for provocative photographs for an American magazine. Wafah Dufour, an aspiring musician and model, is the daughter of the al-Qaeda leader's half-brother Yeslam.

China has denied a report that Pakistan gave it access to the wreckage of a US "stealth" helicopter used in the covert raid to kill Osama Bin Laden in May. Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate also denied the reports.

Arabic TV station al-Jazeera has aired a videotape in which Osama Bin Laden threatens fresh attacks on the US. The leader of the al-Qaeda network says the reasons behind the events of 11 September 2001 still exist.

The three widows and children of Osama Bin Laden have been deported to Saudi Arabia from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, officials say. It follows a year in Pakistani custody since the death of the al-Qaeda leader.

Only a few months after 9/11, American troops located Osama Bin Laden in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan - so how was he able to evade them?

Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was unarmed when he was killed by US troops on Sunday after resisting capture, the White House has said. The CIA said it did not tell Pakistan about the raid in advance over fears it would jeopardise the mission.

The death of Osama Bin Laden prompted jubilation across the US. The emotion was a reflection that not only was he the man behind the 9/11 attacks but also a shadowy figure who for 10 years had haunted the national psyche. His face became one of the most recognisable in the world.

The men who rescued two hostages from captivity in Somalia were part of the same elite special forces unit that killed Osama Bin Laden. Who are they? The Bin Laden raid was years in the planning but took just 40 minutes to execute.

An old, frail-looking man sits slouched on a floor, a television remote control in his hand. He strokes his grey beard and rocks gently as he watches himself on the screen.

BLANKChris Hedges, speaking at a Truthdig fundraising event in Los Angeles on Sunday evening, made these remarks about Osama bin Laden’s death.

The head of the US Central Intelligence Agency has said he has an "excellent idea" where Osama Bin Laden is hiding. But CIA director Porter Goss did not say when the world's most wanted man would be caught, nor his location. He told Time magazine there were "weak links" in the US-led war on terror.

The CIA ran a fake vaccine programme in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad to try to get a DNA sample from the family of Osama Bin Laden, media reports say. The Guardian newspaper says CIA agents recruited a Pakistani doctor there to organise the vaccination drive.

After 9/11, President George W Bush made an apparently simple statement about Osama Bin Laden: "Wanted - Dead or Alive." But the question whether to kill him or capture him was a subject of controversy in Washington for long periods during the 15-year hunt for the al-Qaeda leader.

Features and background Compound from the air When was Osama's hiding place built? Shock and grief Why Pakistanis were left numb by Osama death Long search for Bin Laden Hunt spanned three decades and two continents Obituary: Osama Bin Laden From obscurity to infamy Suburban fortress Bin Laden's com

Arabic TV station al-Jazeera has broadcast excerpts of a videotape of Osama Bin Laden addressing the American people.

An audiotape purported to be from Osama Bin Laden has been broadcast by the pan-Arab al-Arabiya and al-Jazeera satellite channels. In the tape the voice offers conditional reconciliation with Europe.

A recent controversial account of the death of Osama Bin Laden claims there was a conspiracy at the highest levels of the US and Pakistani government to assassinate him.

Extensive media coverage is to be expected following the execution of "Osama bin Laden" -- supplemented by socio-political analysis of every kind.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said he believes - as an engineer - the World Trade Center towers could not have been brought down by aircraft.

Osama Bin Laden died eight years ago during the battle for Tora Bora in Afghanistan, either from a US bomb or from a serious kidney disease. Or so the conspiracy theory goes.

Osama Bin Laden died eight years ago during the battle for Tora Bora in Afghanistan, either from a US bomb or from a serious kidney disease. Or so the conspiracy theory goes.

US Vice-President Joe Biden has said he supported carrying out the operation that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, a change from previous accounts.

US officials are investigating if potentially classified information about the killing of Osama Bin Laden was given to a film-maker. Representative Peter King, a New York Republican, said he was "pleased" that the Pentagon and the CIA had responded to a request he made in August.

The lawyer for a doctor accused of helping the US find Osama Bin Laden has told the BBC that he has quit the case after receiving frequent death threats. Lawyer Samiullah Afridi also cited US pressure on Pakistan for the release of Dr Shakil Afridi as another reason for his decision.

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has said he is "very concerned" about a Pakistani doctor arrested for providing intelligence for the US raid that killed Osama Bin Laden last year. Dr Shikal Afridi is accused of running a CIA-run programme in Abbottabad where Bin Laden was killed.

Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi has told state TV that Osama Bin Laden and his followers are to blame for the protests racking his country.

Regrets are now being expressed by the western media -- notably The New York Times as newspaper of record -- concerning their role in misrepresenting the threat of Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction [more | ].

Relatives of victims of the 11 September attacks have filed a trillion-dollar lawsuit against various parties, accusing them of financing Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network and Afghanistan's former Taleban regime.

The world will remember the Pakistani city of Abbottabad as the place where Osama Bin Laden was finally tracked down, but for the BBC's Mishal Husain it holds many happy memories, from long before al-Qaeda and its leader first emerged.

Last weekend, as the operation to strike Osama bin Laden's lair was first postponed, then greenlighted and then finally carried out, President Barack Obama and his administration appeared to have ice running through their veins.

Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden[a][1] (March 10, 1957[7] – May 2, 2011[8]), also transliterated as Usama bin Ladin, was a founder of the pan-Islamic militant organization al-Qaeda.

Online spammers using fake videos and photos of Osama Bin Laden's death have seen their phishing scam go viral. Since the al-Qaeda leader was shot and killed by American special forces there's been speculation about exactly how he died.

Pakistan has demolished the compound where US forces killed Osama Bin Laden in the north-western city of Abbottabad. Work began late on Saturday. Bulldozers and pneumatic machinery could be heard as the demolition continued.

US President Barack Obama has hailed the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden as a "good day for America," saying the world is now a safer and a better place. Bin Laden was killed in a raid by US special forces on a compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.

Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was in active control of the terror network from his compound in northern Pakistan, US intelligence services now believe. Reversing assessments that Bin Laden lived a nomadic existence, the US now says his Abbottabad house was a command and control centre.

Since the US raid on Osama Bin Laden's compound in Pakistan on 2 May, three of his wives and an unspecified number of his children have been detained by Pakistani authorities. This graphic highlights some details about the complex family network and its suspected links with al-Qaeda.

In the message, he praises the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and speaks of a "rare historic opportunity" for Muslims to rise up. The 12-minute audio message appeared on a video posted on Islamist websites, and has been translated by the US monitoring group SITE intelligence.

After receiving news that a team of US Navy Seals had shot dead Osama Bin Laden at a compound in northern Pakistan, President Barack Obama announced that justice had been done.

The United States sought to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden for more than 15 years before tracking him down to a compound in north-western Pakistan, not far from a large town and the country's military academy.

What happens when your surprise dinner guest turns out to be the world's most wanted man? A year on from the death of Osama Bin Laden, two men tell how they came to host the then leader of al-Qaeda.

US officials say Osama Bin Laden's body was treated with respect and buried at sea, but some Muslims argue there was no good reason for not burying it on land. Islamic tradition requires the dead to be buried as soon as possible, unless an autopsy is required.

The code name for the operation to capture Osama Bin Laden is thought to have been Geronimo. Why was it named after one of the best-known Native Americans? Geronimo. The Apache warrior's name conjures up an image of the American Wild West, the world over.

Pakistani forces had their best chance of capturing Osama Bin Laden last year, but they lost the trail, President Pervez Musharraf has told the BBC. Gen Musharraf said the intelligence services had their strongest indication about the al-Qaeda leader's whereabouts eight to 10 months ago.

Shakil Afridi was charged with treason and tried under the tribal justice system for running a fake vaccination programme to gather information. The US state department said there was "no basis" for the charges, but declined to make a specific comment on the doctor's sentence.

An Islamic seminary for women in Pakistan's capital Islamabad has renamed its library after Osama Bin Laden, the former al-Qaeda chief. The Jamia Hafsa Madrassa is linked to the Red Mosque, known for its alleged links with militants.

A senior Republican has called for an inquiry into reports the White House fed secrets about the killing of Osama Bin Laden to Hollywood film-makers.

President Jacques Chirac has ordered an inquiry into the leak of a French secret service memo claiming that Osama Bin Laden had died. Mr Chirac told reporters he was surprised the memo had been leaked, and refused to comment on the claim itself.

The charges are explosive - and cut against a heroic narrative that defined, in part, arguably the greatest foreign policy success of President Barack Obama's first term in office.

President Barack Obama has announced he will not release photos that show Osama Bin Laden with a bullet hole in his head, but a heated debate in the US about whether they should be publicly shown goes on.

A Spanish politician has said he was shocked to find out the FBI had used his photo for a digitally-altered image showing how Osama Bin Laden might look.Gaspar Llamazares said he would no longer feel safe travelling to the US after his hair and parts of his face appeared on a most-wanted poster.

Fed up with your current job? Feel you're not properly challenged? Bored of the 9-5 routine? Al-Qaeda has a job vacancy for you.

It might have been wiser for President Obama not to have announced the death of Osama Bin Laden so triumphantly but to have let the news leak out from “official sources” in the Pentagon, or from the Pakistan government, or even from Al Qaeda itself.

The Bin Laden letters released on Thursday provide an insight into the workings of the mind of the slain al-Qaeda chief, but they reveal precious little about his family life during the years in hiding in Pakistan.

As we mark Osama bin Laden's death, what's striking is how much he cost our nation--and how little we've gained from our fight against him. The most expensive public enemy in American history died Sunday from two bullets.

Most people hate and fear Osama Bin Laden. He is accused of being a mass murderer and an enemy of free people. That being said, the man is an amazing magician. He is undeniably, the most talented of all of the illusionists of today and for that matter, any day. Don't believe me? Read on.

A hardline cleric in Pakistan is teaching the ideas of Osama Bin Laden in religious schools for about 5,000 children.

Since the 11 September 2001 attacks, a number of video tapes, audio recordings, faxes and other statements have been attributed to Osama Bin Laden. But although the US has hunted the al-Qaeda leader using satellite tracking systems and sophisticated spying systems, Bin Laden remains at large.

The US military is trying to confirm whether insurgent fire brought down a helicopter in Afghanistan with the loss of 38 people, most of them Americans. The dead included Navy Seals, Afghan commandos, US Air Force personnel, a dog handler, the Chinook crew and a civilian interpreter.

In his final years, Osama Bin Laden urged his followers to remain focused on attacking the US, newly released documents show. US officials have published a trove of files found at his Pakistan hideout the night the al-Qaeda chief was killed.

A public row has arisen over which US commando fired the shot that killed Osama Bin Laden, more than three years after the al-Qaeda leader's death. Ex-Navy Seal Robert O'Neill, 38, has told the Washington Post in an interview that he fired the fatal shot.

Thirty US troops, said to be mostly special forces, have been killed, reportedly when a Taliban rocket downed their helicopter in east Afghanistan. Seven Afghan commandos and a civilian interpreter were also on the Chinook, officials say.

The death of Osama Bin Laden has dominated headlines across the world, but how will history remember him? Historian Michael Burleigh gives his view.

The Pakistani doctor who allegedly used a fake hepatitis B vaccination campaign to obtain DNA samples of Osama Bin Laden's family in Abbottabad a year ago may have become an unsuspecting pawn in the intelligence war between the United States and Pakistan.

After the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Osama Bin Laden was forced to flee the city of Kandahar, where he had been based since 1997. Several compounds were hastily vacated, including one, opposite the Taliban foreign ministry, where al-Qaeda bigwigs met.

A secretive household where women were never seen, run by two tall and aloof brothers who showed rare and unexpected moments of kindness to local children, is part of a picture that is slowly building up about life in the Bin Laden compound.

Osama Bin Laden was a fan of 9/11 conspiracy theories, according to a newly released list of English language books found in his Pakistan hideout. The list was among documents belonging to the former al-Qaeda chief published by the US government this week.

The death of Osama Bin Laden is a key moment in the history of the radical Islamist movement he spearheaded. But could he prove as dangerous dead as he was alive? Osama Bin Laden predicted he would never be captured alive - and that countless others would follow in his footsteps once he was gone.

A statement has appeared on an internet website used by a militant Islamic group in Iraq, declaring allegiance to al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. The group, Tawhid and Jihad, is led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Wheatfield with Crows is a July 1890 painting by Vincent van Gogh. It has been cited by several critics as one of his greatest works.[1][2] It is commonly stated that this was van Gogh's final painting.

A Korean palm oil giant has been buying up swathes of Asia's largest remaining rainforests. A visual investigation published today suggests fires have been deliberately set on the land. Petrus Kinggo walks through the thick lowland rainforest in the Boven Digoel Regency.

Despite Norway's green credentials, its infamous state wealth is due to its huge oil exports. This week, Norwegian youths are challenging what they describe as a double standard, in court. In the Barents Sea in June, the sun is still shining at 2am.

Turkmenistan's president has bestowed his favourite dog breed with the highest honour - a giant golden statue. Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov unveiled the 19ft (6m) statue of the Alabay dog in the capital Ashgabat on Tuesday.

Ongoing violence between the national army and forces loyal to the leaders of the northern Tigray region has prompted fears that Ethiopia is on the brink of a civil war.

Cet article est une ébauche concernant une femme politique belge. Vous pouvez partager vos connaissances en l’améliorant (comment ?) selon les recommandations des projets correspondants.

Elke Roex (born 29 June 1974) is a Belgian, Flemish politician and member of the Flemish Parliament for the Socialist Party – Different (Dutch: Socialistische Partij – Anders) (SP.A) since 2004 and a member of the City Council of Anderlecht.

Elke Roex (Ukkel, 29 juni 1974) is een Belgische politica voor de Vooruit in het Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest. Elke Roex is opgegroeid in Anderlecht en woont er nu nog steeds. Via haar grootmoeder heeft ze Sloveense roots.

The coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech appears to protect 94% of adults over 65 years old. More data released from their continuing phase three trial suggests it works equally well in people of all ages and ethnicities.

The second national lockdown is going to push sex workers "even deeper into crisis", according to a campaign group. The English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) has called for state support for workers in the coronavirus pandemic.

Charles Darwin had some rather good ideas. His most famous is the theory of evolution by natural selection, which explains much of what we know about life on Earth. But he also pondered many other questions.

The Capela dos Ossos (English: Chapel of Bones) is one of the best known monuments in Évora, Portugal. It is a small interior chapel located next to the entrance of the Church of St. Francis. The Chapel gets its name because the interior walls are covered and decorated with human skulls and bones.

Bordoni's husband and Paris producer Ray Goetz convinced Porter to give Broadway another try with this show.

The theremin sometimes seems like an instrument from Earth’s future or another world. Its music seems conjured from nothing, notes and tones teased and manipulated by hypnotic movements of hand and fingers through air. Meet the only musical instrument controlled entirely without physical contact.

The results come hot on the heels of similar results from Pfizer, and add to growing confidence that vaccines can help end the pandemic. Both companies used a highly innovative and experimental approach to designing their vaccines.

Most of the debilitating effects of statins are not caused by the drug, but by people believing it will make them sick, a UK study suggests. The phenomenon is known as the "nocebo effect" and may account for 90% of the ill health associated with the cholesterol-lowering drugs.

Anthony Judge, (Port Said, 21 January 1940) is mainly known for his career at the Union of International Associations (UIA), where he has been Director of Communications and Research, as well as Assistant Secretary-General.

Three contestants have spoken of their disbelief after being fooled into thinking they went into space for the UK reality show Space Cadets. The three believed they had blasted off from a cosmonaut training camp in Russia, but were in fact in a fake spaceship in a warehouse in Suffolk.

The second of two research ships bound for a huge "island" of plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean leaves San Francisco today. Ocean currents have pushed the refuse together in an area estimated to be larger than the State of Texas.

The shady phenomenon of freak waves as tall as 10 storey buildings has finally been proved, the European Space Agency (Esa) said on Wednesday. Sailors often whisper of monster waves when ships sink mysteriously but, until now, no one quite believed them.

Storm waves over 20m high are getting bigger, more frequent and eroding Britain's Atlantic coast, experts say. The waves rip huge boulders from cliff faces and sweep them up to 50m inland in exposed areas such as Shetland, Orkney and the Western Isles.

Tests on major brands of bottled water have found that nearly all of them contained tiny particles of plastic. In the largest investigation of its kind, 250 bottles bought in nine different countries were examined.

Friendly Floatees are plastic rubber ducks marketed by The First Years, and made famous by the work of Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer who models ocean currents on the basis of flotsam movements.

A container filled with millions of Lego pieces fell into the sea off Cornwall in 1997. But instead of remaining at the bottom of the ocean, they are still washing up on Cornish beaches today - offering an insight into the mysterious world of oceans and tides.

They were toys destined only to bob up and down in nothing bigger than a child's bath - but so far they have floated halfway around the world. The armada of 29,000 plastic yellow ducks, blue turtles and green frogs broke free from a cargo ship 15 years ago.

Theirs is an epic tale of resilience and pluck, a seafarer's yarn of high-seas adventure that has seen them brave some of the world's wildest waters in their 11-year odyssey from the Pacific Ocean toward landfall in Europe.

Scientists are investigating ways of dealing with the millions of tonnes of floating plastic rubbish that is accumulating in our oceans. They are a quirk of ocean currents - a naturally created vortex known as a gyre - where floating rubbish tends to accumulate.

Almost a year after the Japanese Tohoku earthquake and mega-tsunami, the Pacific Ocean is still dealing with the consequences of the catastrophe. Most of it headed eastwards, according to modelling work by the Hawaii-based International Pacific Research Center.

A consignment of thousands of rubber ducks is expected to wash up any day on the coast of New England - after more than a decade at sea.

AVON, Mass. -- July 14, 2003 -- It's a boat, it's a buoy, it's a... RUBBER DUCK?! Beachgoers in New England may be spotting more than shells on the shore this summer. Any day now, a flock of rubber ducks could waddle their way onto area beaches. The ducks have had a long journey.

Any day now, five-centimetre-high plastic ducks may start washing ashore in New England, on the United States east coast, 11 years after a container filled with 29,000 bathtub toys toppled from a cargo ship's deck into the north Pacific.

Plastic duckies, often referred to as "rubber duckies" in the press, have been floating in the ocean ever since 1992 when they were liberated from a container which was lost from a ship due to high seas. The process is closely monitored by Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer.

A boat made of 12,000 plastic bottles has set sail on a voyage from San Francisco to Sydney to spread awareness about pollution in the world's oceans.Environmentalist and banking heir David De Rothschild and a crew set out on the appropriately named Plastiki catamaran.

US researchers, writing in Science, suggest the volume of plastic appeared to have peaked in recent years. One reason could be tighter marine pollution rules that prevent vessels dumping their waste at sea.

The Gulf Stream does not appear to be slowing down, say US scientists who have used satellites to monitor tell-tale changes in the height of the sea. Confirming work by other scientists using different methodologies, they found dramatic short-term variability but no longer-term trend.

In 1903, 3,000 teddy bears were sent by ship from Germany to America only for them to disappear. Some claim the bears were the first ever made and would now be the most valuable in the world. So what happened to them?

The Great Pacific garbage patch (also Pacific trash vortex) is a garbage patch, a gyre of marine debris particles, in the central North Pacific Ocean. It is located roughly from 135°W to 155°W and 35°N to 42°N.

Tiny pieces of plastic and man-made fibres are causing contamination of the world's oceans and beaches, the journal Science has reported. Even remote and apparently pristine layers of sand and mud are now composed partly of this microscopic rubbish, broken down from discarded waste.

Around Antarctica, the total amount of debris is low, but the proportion of it due to humans is very high. The continent could be at particular risk from alien species floating in because of a double threat from global warming and a lack of alternative habitats for many of its species.

Curtis Ebbesmeyer is an oceanographer who tracks currents in the sea by studying what gets washed up where. He's calculated the trainers moved more than 450 miles in a month - up to 18 miles a day.

Deep sea fish species found in the north Pacific Ocean have mysteriously been caught in the southwest Atlantic, on the other side of the world. It is unclear how the animals, a giant rattail grenadier, pelagic eelpout and deep sea squid, travelled so far.

Thousands of sports shoes have been washed up on a Dutch island after a ship lost some of its containers in heavy weather. Residents of Terschelling island rushed to get the trainers, but were faced with having to search for shoes that matched in size and design.

And surveying the scene, it is easy to see why. We are in a playing field, in a small village in Austria, close to the Slovenian border.

The first effective coronavirus vaccine can prevent more than 90% of people from getting Covid-19, a preliminary analysis shows. The developers - Pfizer and BioNTech - described it as a "great day for science and humanity".

After four years of living in Berlin, I’ve learned to embrace Germany’s anything-goes sprit and more casual approach to nudity than where I grew up in the Midwestern US.

Amélie (also known as Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain; French pronunciation: ​[lə fabylø destɛ̃ d‿ameli pulɛ̃]; English: The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain) is a French 2001 romantic comedy film directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

Virgin Hyperloop has trialled its first ever journey with passengers, in the desert of Nevada. The futuristic transport concept involves pods inside vacuum tubes carrying passengers at high speeds.

Mast Upgrade could clear some of the hurdles to delivering clean, limitless energy for the grid. Fusion differs from fission, the technology used by existing nuclear power plants, because it could release vast amounts of energy with little associated radioactivity.

Karel Kryl (12. dubna 1944 Kroměříž – 3. března 1994 Mnichov[1], někdy také mylně uváděn Pasov[2]) byl básník a písničkář, hlavní představitel československého protikomunistického protestsongu v letech 1963–1989.

In graph theory, the strongly connected components of a directed graph may be found using an algorithm that uses depth-first search in combination with two stacks, one to keep track of the vertices in the current component and the second to keep track of the current search path.

In computer science, the time complexity is the computational complexity that describes the amount of computer time it takes to run an algorithm.

In the mathematical theory of directed graphs, a graph is said to be strongly connected if every vertex is reachable from every other vertex. The strongly connected components of an arbitrary directed graph form a partition into subgraphs that are themselves strongly connected.

In mathematics, and more specifically in graph theory, a directed graph (or digraph) is a graph that is made up of a set of vertices connected by directed edges often called arcs.

In graph theory, a cycle in a graph is a non-empty trail in which the only repeated vertices are the first and last vertices. A directed cycle in a directed graph is a non-empty directed trail in which the only repeated vertices are the first and last vertices.

In mathematics, graph theory is the study of graphs, which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of vertices (also called nodes or points) which are connected by edges (also called links or lines).

Italy has begun dismantling an ancient obelisk in preparation for its return to Ethiopia, following a 60-year dispute. The Axum obelisk, which stands in central Rome, was named after the northern Ethiopian city from where it was looted by invading Italian troops in 1937.

Tourists in Florence and Venice have been banned from sitting anywhere they like after officials decided that visitors needed to behave with more decorum around their historical sites. From Saturday, Florence and Venice have started fining people who sit down on the steps in front of their churches.

The ancestors of the bearers of the name Fulop were the ancient Britons that inhabited in the hills and Moors of Wales. This surname was derived from the personal name Philip. This name, which was usually Latinized as Philippus, was originally derived from the Greek name Philippos.

How did he know this in 1999? Genius. https://t.co/mRGaYlLT5I

Mgr. Pavol Hudák (* 7. október 1959, Vranov nad Topľou – † 18. január 2011, Poprad) bol slovenský básnik, novinár a publicista. Narodil sa 7. októbra 1959 v obci Vyšný Žipov (okres Vranov nad Topľou).

POPRAD. Pavol Hudák skonal v utorok na následky náhlej srdcovej príhody vo svojom popradskom byte. Posledná rozlúčka bude v piatok o 14.00 v evanjelickom kostole v Poprade-Spišskej Sobote. Pavol Hudák bol básnik, novinár a publicista.

Pavol Hudák je prvým blízkym priateľom, ktorého som pochoval. Pochoval som už niekoľko členov rodiny, ale kamaráta doteraz žiadneho. Príde mi celkom príznačné, že je to práve on, kto sa na toto prvenstvo podujal.

At 6.50am GMT on the morning of 20 November 1998, I was crouching behind a rock in the bitter cold of the Kazakh Steppe clutching a mobile phone to my ear. The snow-dusted ground blended into the grey of the sky.

Czechoslovakia, or Czecho-Slovakia[2] (/ˌtʃɛkoʊsloʊˈvækiə, -kə-, -slə-, -ˈvɑː-/;[3][4]Czech and Slovak: Československo, Česko-Slovensko),[5][6] was a sovereign state in Central Europe,[7] created in October 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary.

Neil Ansell became a hermit entirely by accident. Back in the 1980s, he was living in a squat in London with 20 other people. Then someone made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: a cottage in the Welsh mountains, with rent of just £100 ($130) per year.

The diabolical ironclad beetle is one tough critter, as its name might suggest. Equipped with super-tough body armour, the insect can survive being stamped on or even run over by a car.

image sourceSave Komodo NowA photo of a Komodo dragon facing a truck has raised concerns about a "Jurassic Park" attraction being built on an Indonesian island.The multi-million dollar site is part of the government's plans to overhaul tourism in Komodo National Park.

You're probably reading this on your phone. If not, take it out your pocket and look at it. It's a smartphone, isn't it? Think how often you use it and all the useful things it helps you do. Now, think back. How long since you bought your first smartphone?

Ruth Davies-Mourby is on a mission to get her friends talking about masturbation. The 21-year-old from London spoke to Radio 1 Newsbeat after Lily Allen kicked off the conversation earlier this week.

Ben Affleck's film Argo tells the bizarre story of how in 1980 the CIA - with Canadian help - sprang a group of Americans from Iran after they escaped a US embassy overrun by protestors.

Having dropped tantalising hints days ago about an "exciting new discovery about the Moon", the US space agency has revealed conclusive evidence of water on our only natural satellite. This "unambiguous detection of molecular water" will boost Nasa's hopes of establishing a lunar base.

image copyrightReutersA Nasa probe sent to collect rock from an asteroid several hundred million kilometres from Earth has grabbed so much that samples are spilling out.

Dairy milk has competition. Alternative “milks” made from plants like soya or almonds are increasingly popular. These alternatives are often vegan-friendly and can be suitable for people who are allergic to milk, or intolerant of it.

We have faced viral threats before, including pandemics, yet the world does not shut down for every new infection or flu season. So what is it about this coronavirus? What are the quirks of its biology that pose a unique threat to our bodies and our lives?

Faked nude images of more than 100,000 women have been created from social media pictures and shared online, according to a new report. Clothes are digitally removed from pictures of women by Artificial Intelligence (AI), and spread on the messaging app Telegram.

Earlier this month we covered the revelation that Ted Turner, founder of the news channel CNN, ordered a sign-off video ready to air in case the apocalypse were nigh. His pick? Rather pedestrian footage of a US Army band playing Nearer My God to Thee.

The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday, 18 June 1815, near Waterloo in Belgium, part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands at the time.

The Battle of Waterloo reenactment is an annual modern recreation of the 19th century Battle of Waterloo on the original battlefield in Waterloo, Belgium. It is held every June on the weekend nearest to the historic date of the Battle of Waterloo (18 June 1815).

What would totalitarian governments of the past have looked like if they were never defeated? The Nazis operated with 20th Century technology and it still took a world war to stop them.

The PMI-80 was a single-board microcomputer produced by Tesla Piešťany, Czechoslovakia, since 1982. It was based on the MHB 8080A CPU (a Tesla clone of the Intel 8080), clocked at 1.111 MHz.

The PMD 85 was an 8-bit personal computer produced from 1985 by the companies Tesla Piešťany and Tesla Bratislava in the former Czechoslovakia. They were deployed en masse in schools throughout Slovakia, while the IQ 151 performed a similar role in Czech part of the country.

The ZX Spectrum (UK: /zɛd ɛks/) is an 8-bit personal home computer developed by Sinclair Research. It was first released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982. Many unofficial clones were released around the world throughout the 1980s.

After a historic but awkward comet landing, the robot probe Philae is now stable and sending pictures - but there are concerns about its battery life. The lander bounced twice, initially about 1km back out into space, before settling in the shadow of a cliff, 1km from its intended target site.

The Philae robot, soon to try to land on Comet 67P, has taken another dramatic image of its quarry. The picture is very similar to the one it acquired in mid-September - only this one is much closer, snapped from a distance of just 16km.

Europe's comet lander Philae has been found. The little robot is visible in new images downloaded from the Rosetta probe in orbit around the icy dirt-ball 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

An image has been released that shows the hairy moment that the Philae comet lander bounced back into space. The robot touched down on 4km-wide 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in November, but not before rebounding twice.

When Philae first sent back images of its landing location on Comet 67P, researchers could see it was in a dark ditch. The Sun was obscured by a high wall, limiting the amount of light that could reach the robot's solar panels.

European Space Agency controllers will not give up on Philae. They will continue to listen for the little probe in the days ahead, hopeful that it will somehow become active again.

The European Space Agency (Esa) says its comet lander, Philae, has woken up and contacted Earth. Philae, the first spacecraft to land on a comet, was dropped on to the surface of Comet 67P by its mothership, Rosetta, last November.

The Philae lander on the distant comet 67P has sent another stream of data back to Earth before losing power. The little probe delivered everything expected from it, just as its failing battery dropped it into standby mode.

The Philae comet lander has fallen silent, according to scientists working on the European Rosetta mission. The fridge-sized spacecraft, which landed on Comet 67P in November, last made contact on 9 July.

Philae (/ˈfaɪliː/[6] or /ˈfiːleɪ/[7]) is a robotic European Space Agency lander that accompanied the Rosetta spacecraft[8][9] until it separated to land on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, ten years and eight months after departing Earth.

Fresh information is being obtained on the Philae obelisk, the stone monument that played such a key role in helping to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs. Today, the pink granite shaft stands on the UK National Trust's Kingston Lacy estate in Dorset, where it was brought from the Nile in the 1820s.

No new signals have been picked up from the Philae comet lander since a brief radio contact on Sunday. European Space Agency (Esa) controllers listened again on Tuesday night but heard nothing.

The European Space Agency (Esa) says it will conduct no more dedicated searches for its lost comet lander. The Philae probe made its historic touchdown on the 4km-wide "icy dirtball" 67P in November, but rapidly went silent when its battery ran flat.

Europe's comet lander has again been in touch with Earth. The Philae probe made three short contacts of about 10 seconds each at roughly 2130 GMT on Sunday.

The big day has been and gone. Little Philae bounced to a stop on the surface of an ancient wanderer and fell into a slumber.

UK Researchers received "rich" data from the Philae lander just before its power died. Scientists say they detected what might be complex carbon compounds on the surface of the comet the craft landed on two weeks ago.

The Philae lander has detected organic molecules on the surface of its comet, scientists have confirmed. Carbon-containing "organics" are the basis of life on Earth and may give clues to chemical ingredients delivered to our planet early in its history.

The Philae lander has attempted to drill into the surface of Comet 67P, amid fears that its battery may die within hours. The European Space Agency (Esa) says the instrument is being deployed to its maximum extent, despite the risk of toppling the lander.

Images of the Philae probe moments after its initial touchdown have been published by the European Space Agency. There was a nerve-wracking wait after the 100kg lander re-bounded 1km back into space following its first contact with Comet 67P.

Europe's Philae comet lander has been back in touch with Earth - its first contact since Sunday night (GMT). The communication was relayed by its mothership Rosetta, which is in orbit around the 4km-wide icy dirt-ball known as 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The European Space Agency (Esa) has released some pictures that may include its lost comet lander, Philae. Whether that really is the case is far from certain, however.

Efforts to find Europe's lost comet lander, Philae, have come up blank. The most recent imaging search by the overflying Rosetta "mothership" can find no trace of the probe.

High-resolution pictures have now been released of the Philae probe in the act of landing on Comet 67P last Wednesday. They were acquired by the Narrow Angle Camera on the Rosetta satellite, which had dropped the little robot towards the surface of the "ice mountain".

Philae Lander awakening from slumber on comet 67P as Sun's rays finally reach into the hole it fell in? @Philae2014 http://t.co/8vLppEv9xa

Philae Lander sits in a shadow on comet 67P with an empty battery. How feasible is it be to recharge @Philae2014 using a laser from Earth?

Scientists have found the first material that displays a much sought-after property at room temperature. It is superconducting, which means electrical current flows through it with perfect efficiency - with no energy wasted as heat.

Heineken's pubs business has been fined £2m by the industry watchdog after forcing tenants to sell "unreasonable levels" of its own beers and ciders. Star Pubs and Bars "seriously and repeatedly" broke rules for three years, the Pubs Code Adjudicator said.

Every Wednesday evening for the last year, I have been relearning Hindi, my third language after Bengali and English. Although it’s been wonderful to feel more connected to my culture, I’ve been surprised and somewhat disappointed to discover the gendered structure of my mother tongue.

Three new underground lakes have been detected near the south pole of Mars. Scientists also confirmed the existence of a fourth lake - the presence of which was hinted at in 2018.

When Theresa May announced in Downing Street that she would be standing down as British Prime Minister, it was her visible struggle to hold back tears that most captured the world’s headlines.

Whether or not we care to admit it, we’re all familiar with procrastination: waiting until the last minute to catch up with pressing tasks, often leading to subpar or incomplete work.

In mid-March, the 2020 PROMAX Europe conference was due to take place in Madrid, right as Spain locked down its entire country. As virus cases climbed, the annual entertainment-marketing conference - with its 500 attendees, 300 hotel rooms and £400,000 ($524,000) cost - was put on hold.

When scientists presented the first ever picture of a black hole last year, it was hailed as an extraordinary breakthrough. Well, now they've reassessed some of the image data that was acquired in the years running up to that historic snapshot.

The 20 km of Brussels (French: 20 km de Bruxelles, Dutch: 20 km door Brussel) is a 20.1 km running race that has been held each year in Brussels since 1980, usually in May.

From rock art in southern Africa to pyramids along the River Nile, humans have been leaving their mark across the continent for millennia.

Expo 2000 was a World Expo held in Hanover, Germany from Thursday 1 June to Tuesday 31 October 2000. It was located on the Hanover Fairground (Messegelände Hannover), which is the largest exhibition ground in the world.

Mark Chapman, the man who killed John Lennon, has apologised to the late Beatle's widow, Yoko Ono, 40 years after his death. Chapman shot Lennon four times outside his New York Manhattan apartment as Ono looked on, in 1980.

The Bulgarian sculptor who cast the 16-foot bronze statue of Vladimir Lenin located in Fremont has died, according to his son. Emil Venkov, the Bulgarian sculptor who created the statue of Vladimir Lenin that presides over Fremont, died on June 9 at the age of 79, according to his son Ivan.

The Statue of Lenin is a 16 ft (5 m) bronze statue of Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States.

The smashing of a statue of Lenin in Kiev by protesters leaves the city without a monument to the leader of the 1917 Revolution - but there are plenty left elsewhere. Here are five.

For much of history, reading was a fairly noisy activity. On clay tablets written in ancient Iraq and Syria some 4,000 years ago, the commonly used words for “to read” literally meant “to cry out” or “to listen”. “I am sending a very urgent message,” says one letter from this period.

At the time the Black Lives Matter campaign in the UK was drawing the national spotlight to the statues of slave traders, another activist was highlighting the way women are represented in civic statuary.

Darkness had fallen over Stockholm as a group of eight people entered Swahili Bobs, a tattoo parlour in the dark alleys of Sodermalm. By day there were tech entrepreneurs, students, web designers and IT consultants - but that night they were going to be transformed into cyborgs.

Moscow, 4 August, 1945. The European chapter of World War Two was over, and the US and the USSR were pondering their future relationship.

For Julie Helms, it started with a handful of patients admitted to her intensive care unit at Strasbourg University Hospital in northeast France in early March 2020. Within days, every single patient in the ICU had Covid-19 – and it was not just their breathing difficulties that alarmed her.

Last month I stepped into an aeroplane for the first time in five years. I was leaving my home in London and taking a flight across the Atlantic to join my partner in Costa Rica. The last time I flew was in 2014, while living in Bordeaux, France.

When his children were at preschool in Hackensack, New Jersey, building restorer and historian Tim Adriance taught them a simple nursery rhyme.

In January 2018, a falling meteorite created a bright fireball that arced over the outskirts of Detroit, Michigan, followed by loud sonic booms. The visitor not only dropped a slew of meteorites over the snow-covered ground, it also provided information about its extra-terrestrial source.

Outside Havana’s Hotel Nacional, the city is jubilant: this Spanish-founded port is in the midst of celebrating its 500th anniversary. Vintage Bel-Airs and Buick convertibles ply the roads, painted in gumdrop colours.

How do you go about finding “the one” – or, at least, the “next one” – in today’s dating world? And once you’ve met someone interesting, how do you decide whether you should commit to a monogamous partnership… or keep your options open?

Less than five years ago, animal charities heralded the end of animal sacrifice at a religious festival dubbed "the world's bloodiest". But on Tuesday, the Gadhimai festival began with the killing of a goat, rat, chicken, pig and pigeon.

More than 70 years after Israel declared statehood, its borders are yet to be entirely settled. Wars, treaties and occupation mean the shape of the Jewish state has changed over time, and in parts is still undefined. Here is a series of maps explaining why.

As Ben Field sat in the back of a police van after his arrest, he said: "I think I will get away with most of it." He had seduced two lonely neighbours - murdering one and defrauding the other - but now faces life in prison.

A man who led the war on improper use of apostrophes now admits defeat, saying his grammar vigilante campaign has been brought to an end by a culture of carelessness. So what now? The battle is over, bad grammar (as in the sign above) has won.

A Japanese student of ninja history who handed in a blank paper was given top marks - after her professor realised the essay was written in invisible ink.Eimi Haga followed the ninja technique of "aburidashi", spending hours soaking and crushing soybeans to make the ink.

We've seen recent spikes in measles infections. Some European countries, including the UK, lost their measles-free status and many developing countries, especially parts of Africa, Asia and Oceania are seeing frequent outbreaks.

Even though alcohol kills millions of people every year, humans have been imbibing for millennia. In the last few decades, wine, in particular, has gained a reputation for being good for our health. Red wine even has been linked with longevity and lower risk of heart disease.

Hydrogen fuel is a relatively green alternative to alternatives that produce greenhouse gases. The natural gas supply at Keele University is being blended with 20% hydrogen in a trial that's of national significance.

How do you get a teen to put down their phone and talk to you? Jamie Clarke went all the way to Mongolia to find out. Riding through a remote valley in Mongolia on the back of his motorbike, adventurer Jamie Clarke let the hum of the engine and the wind echo in his mind while his thoughts wandered.

Paul Austin and Matt Gillespie are trying to retrace their steps along a path shrouded by redwood trees.

Back in 1878, shortly after he had invented the phonograph, Thomas Edison hit upon an idea. Leaning over his new machine one day he recited the words: “Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow.

As millions of travellers take to the skies each year, economy seats continue to shrink. Trace the dreaded airplane seat from its wicker inception to its carbon fibre future.

The people behind Mali's marionette tradition, which has been used to pass on the folklore and culture of a community, are struggling to survive as the recent insecurity has stopped the vital income that came from visitors, as Clair MacDougall reports from Bamako.

At the ripe old age of 100, Dr Dolittle has been reincarnated in the form of Robert Downey Jr. In the latest screen version of the children’s literature classic, Dolittle, released in the US today, he is also Welsh… or at least Wales-adjacent.

At the south-eastern tip of Newfoundland, rugged cliffs rise imposingly above the sea. The craggy rocks are known as Mistaken Point, an homage to the many ships that met their untimely end there after sailors ‘mistook’ them for a different place.

The impact of humans on nature has been far greater and longer-lasting than we could ever imagine, according to scientists. Early human ancestors living millions of years ago may have triggered extinctions, even before our species evolved, a study suggests.

Research measuring if there is a difference in temperature between the left and right testicles is one of the winners of this year's spoof Nobel prizes. Fertility experts Roger Mieusset and Bourras Bengoudifa measured the temperature of French postmen's testicles, both naked and clothed.

Say you're walking your dog in the park, when he comes face to snout with another dog. An intricate dance begins, as if each movement was precisely choreographed. The dogs visually inspect each other, sniff each other, walk circles around each other. And then the fight begins.

To mark the end of a turbulent year, we are bringing back some of our favourite stories for BBC Future’s “Best of 2020” collection. Discover more of our picks here. Far from the protective embrace of the Sun, the edge of our Solar System would seem to be a cold, empty, and dark place.

In one night, Matt Taylor finished Tinder. He ran a script on his computer that automatically swiped right on every profile that fell within his preferences. By the morning, he had swiped through 25,000 people’s profiles.

The Vatican has opened its doors for its annual exorcism course amid increasing demand among some of the world's Catholic communities.

The bodies of seven people have been found in a mass grave in an indigenous area of Panama where members of a religious sect were believed to be performing exorcisms, officials say. The victims included a pregnant woman, 32, and five of her children, aged one to 11. The sixth was a neighbour, 17.

China's birth rate has fallen to its lowest since the formation of the People's Republic of China 70 years ago - despite the easing of the much criticised one-child policy. The birth rate was 10.48 per 1,000 in 2019 - the lowest since 1949, the National Bureau of Statistics said.

Just outside the remote Russian village of Dargavs lies a medieval necropolis fittingly called the “City of the Dead”.

President Donald Trump's action and words directed at Iran have led his critics to accuse him of breaking international law. But he's not the first US president to endure this criticism in the theatre of war.

As many countries urge populations to stay at home, many of us are paying more attention to our diets and how the food we eat can support our health. To help sort out the fact from the fiction, BBC Future is updating some of our most popular nutrition stories from our archive.

BBC Future has brought you in-depth and rigorous stories to help you navigate the current pandemic, but we know that’s not all you want to read. So now we’re dedicating a series to help you escape.

A Jewish teenager avoided death in occupied France thanks to the kindness and bravery of a doctor in a small Alpine resort. But it's a story local people seem reluctant to remember, Rosie Whitehouse discovers.

image copyrightGetty ImagesA string of horrifying climate-related disasters has brought a distinctly environmental theme to many people's New Year resolutions. Many have chosen to reduce their carbon footprint by flying less, or cutting out planes completely.

We don't buy DVDs any more and CDs are probably something your parents have on a shelf somewhere. It's also easier to buy video games online than physical copies now, through consoles or PC services like Steam.

Meetings at work should be seen as a form of "therapy" rather than about decision-making, say researchers. Academics from the University of Malmo in Sweden say meetings provide an outlet for people at work to show off their status or to express frustration.

An immunotherapy drug that could save some cancer patients from the ordeal of extreme chemotherapy may also help them live longer, researchers say. In a trial, pembrolizumab kept head and neck cancers at bay for an average of two years - five times longer than under chemotherapy.

One of the key findings over the past decades is that our number faculty is deeply rooted in our biological ancestry, and not based on our ability to use language. Considering the multitude of situations in which we humans use numerical information, life without numbers is inconceivable.

For centuries, scientists have obsessed over a primordial blob that can shape-shift, clone itself, and live indefinitely.

Ray tracing has always been the "holy grail" of computer graphics, says Jason Ronald, head of program management for the gaming console Xbox.

A boy of 11 called a German police emergency line to complain of "forced labour" after his mother told him to help clean the home.Police say the boy from Aachen, who has not been identified, spoke to an officer via the 110 number.They say he complained: "I have to work all day long.

Google, Microsoft, Twitter. Hitachi, Apple, Amazon. Chevron, Salesforce, Spotify. From the UK to the US, Japan to South Korea, these are all global companies that have, in the last few days, rolled out mandatory work-from-home policies amid the spread of Covid-19.

For millions of people worldwide, widespread lockdown has cast isolation as a negative – a loss of group engagement and communal hubbub.

Companies are looking at mining the surface of the Moon for precious materials. So what rules are there on humans exploiting and claiming ownership? It's almost 50 years since Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon.

For almost half a century, Benedictine monks in Herefordshire dutifully logged the readings of a rain gauge on the grounds of Belmont Abbey, recording the quantity of rain that had fallen each month without fail.

Astronomers are gathering measurements on a presumed interstellar comet, providing clues about its chemical composition. The object, C/2019 Q4 (Borisov), is only the second interstellar object ever identified, after 'Oumuamua, which was spotted in 2017.

Fans have flocked to a church in Germany to hear a chord change in a musical composition that lasts for 639 years. It is the first change in the piece, As Slow As Possible, in seven years.

I am standing outside my childhood primary school, near the front gates and the teachers’ car park. It is a bright sunny day and I am surrounded by my classmates. There must be more than a hundred of us.

When it comes to remote, the Faroe Islands has it all. Tucked between Norway and Iceland, in the dark waters of the North Atlantic, the 18 tiny islands are home to a population of just over 50,000.

It’s more than two millennia since the philosopher Socrates argued that humility is the greatest of all virtues. His timeless observation was that the wisest people are the first to admit how little they really know.

In the heart of the San Juan Basin, in the arid north-western corner of New Mexico, stands one of the greatest ancient treasures in the US: the remarkably preserved remains of a vast building complex believed to have been constructed between 850 and 1250AD that may have housed as many as 5,000 peopl

Democracy isn't dying, but it is having a very unpredictable mid-life crisis.

Dissatisfaction with democracy within developed countries is at its highest level in almost 25 years, according to University of Cambridge researchers. Academics have analysed what they say is the biggest global dataset on attitudes towards democracy, based on four million people in 3,500 surveys.

Nobel Prize-winning and eccentric physicist Richard Feynman has been called a buffoon and a magician, but is lauded as a man who could make science accessible and interesting for all. When I was a child I desperately wanted to be a scientist, but then it all went wrong.

One of the longest migrations recorded by any land bird is about to be completed. Using a satellite tag, scientists have monitored a cuckoo that has just flown more than 7,500 miles (12,000km) from southern Africa to its breeding ground in Mongolia.

The greatest male distance runner of all time would soon be launching his second attempt at making history - at becoming the first person to run a marathon in under two hours. All his preparations had gone to plan.

If we're ever to make regular journeys from Earth to Mars and other far-off destinations, we might need new kinds of engines. Engineers are exploring revolutionary new technologies that could help us traverse the Solar System in much less time.

It’s not easy to accurately predict what humans want and when they will want it. We’re demanding creatures, expecting the world to deliver speedy solutions to our increasingly complex and diverse modern-day problems.

In August 1991, an 11-year-old Canadian penned a brief note to his future self. Mitch Brogan got the idea from his late grandfather Charles - to answer a list of 11 predictions and seal them up in an envelope until 1 January, 2020.

Ever wondered why your village was suddenly flooded by a thunderstorm the weather forecasters hadn't mentioned? Or why they failed to warn you about the dense fog shrouding your home in the morning?

Google has launched a hieroglyphics translator that uses machine learning to decode ancient Egyptian language. The feature has been added to its Arts & Culture app. It also allows users to translate their own words and emojis into shareable hieroglyphs.

25th August 2020Psychologists have found a single habit that sabotages most goals – and the way to correct it.

Having a good relationship with our children is important. Research on attachment, for example, shows that the way parents connect to their children has wide-ranging consequences for their mental health, self-control and ability to create meaningful relationships with others.

It was a gigantic explosion. The blast tore through buildings and machinery, lighting up a huge refinery complex in Denver, Colorado. Gasoline production at the facility shut down for weeks as a result, leading to fuel reserves in Colorado quickly being used up.

New evidence has been found for epic prehistoric voyages between the Americas and eastern Polynesia. DNA analysis suggests there was mixing between Native Americans and Polynesians around AD 1200.

An 83-year-old French writer once feted by the Paris intellectual set now finds himself ostracised because of his writings about sex with teenage boys and girls. From the 1960s onwards, Gabriel Matzneff made no secret of his passion for seducing adolescents.

image copyrightEPAA major agreement governing the transfer of EU citizens' data to the United States has been struck down by the European Court of Justice (ECJ).The EU-US Privacy Shield let companies sign up to higher privacy standards, before transferring data to the US.

It couples thin, flexible, lighter solar sheets with energy storage to power buildings or charge vehicles off-grid. The company behind it, Solivus, plans to cover the roofs of large industrial buildings with the solar fabric.

This article was written and published before the Covid-19 pandemic. While limited air travel is possible between certain destinations, travellers are advised to check the latest travel advice and follow all Covid-19 precautions.

Behold the hot, energetic Universe. The image records a lot of the violent action in the cosmos - instances where matter is being accelerated, heated and shredded.

The veteran gravitational wave hunter from Glasgow University has come to the National Press Club in Washington DC to witness the announcement of the first direct detection of ripples in the fabric of space-time caused by the merger of two "intermediate-sized" black holes.

Imagine the energy of eight Suns released in an instant. This is the gravitational "shockwave" that spread out from the biggest merger yet observed between two black holes.

There is "unequivocal proof" that Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent, Germany has said. Chancellor Angela Merkel said he was a victim of attempted murder and the world would look to Russia for answers.

For many of Europe's naturists, and the tens of thousands of swingers among them, Cap d'Agde has become a traditional summer destination, but a coronavirus outbreak here has shone an uncomfortable light on their alternative lifestyle.

image copyrightGetty ImagesA US psychologist who helped develop the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" techniques has given evidence before a military tribunal in Guantánamo Bay.James Mitchell said he had only agreed to testify there because families of the 9/11 victims were present.

Scientists have identified the world's oldest asteroid crater in Australia, adding it may explain how the planet was lifted from an ice age. The asteroid hit Yarrabubba in Western Australia about 2.2 billion years ago - making the crater about half the age of Earth, researchers say.

Ethnic Mongolians in northern China have staged rare rallies against measures to reduce teaching in the Mongolian language in favour of Chinese. As schools began a new term on Tuesday some parents held children back in protest at the policy.

In the courtyard of a gift shop decorated with colourful ceramic frogs and dragonflies, it’s easy to overlook the historic marker. Perhaps that’s fitting for a secret site.

The global economy has been severely disrupted by Covid-19, with the virus wreaking particular devastation on the travel industry.

The Canary Islands’ subtropical climate, aquamarine waters and otherworldly volcanic and desert landscapes led more than 15 million people to visit the archipelago last year.

On 27 January 1945, Soviet troops cautiously entered Auschwitz. Primo Levi - one of the most famous survivors - was lying in a camp hospital with scarlet fever when the liberators arrived.

The European Space Agency is moving rapidly to develop its next Mars rover. It already has one vehicle set to go to the Red Planet in 2022, but is now pushing ahead with a second robot, which will depart in 2026.

Lockdown guidance on exercising for people in England will loosen on Wednesday. But Colin Johnstone is among those runners who have not allowed their strict exercise regimes to slip, even if it means going out in the middle of the night.

There is only one photograph in circulation of the Tibetan Gedhun Choekyi Niyima, one of the world's most famous "disappeared" persons. It is little more than a snapshot, taken when he was just six years old. It shows a boy with rosy cheeks and an impassive look on his face.

Despite being a reasonably experienced scuba diver, I had never seen a “bommie”, something Heron Island in the Great Barrier Reef is famous for. A couple of years ago, the chance to see one of these shaggy column-like mounds of coral finally took me there.

Astronomers say big cool patches on a "supergiant" star close to Earth were behind its surprise dimming last year. Red giant stars like Betelgeuse frequently undergo changes in brightness, but the drop to 40% of its normal value between October 2019 and April 2020 surprised astronomers.

You may not have noticed, but we are living in an intellectual golden age. Since the intelligence test was invented more than 100 years ago, our IQ scores have been steadily increasing.

You might have started seeing more of them on streets and in parks, gliding past you with a faint electric hum. As lockdowns lift and people avoid public transport, e-scooters – stand-up, electrically powered scooters – are becoming more popular.

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have unveiled a robotic colleague that has been working non-stop in their lab throughout lockdown. The £100,000 programmable researcher learns from its results to refine its experiments.

India and Russia have been declared joint winners of a major international chess tournament after two Indian players lost their internet connection during the final round. An online version of the Chess Olympiad contest is being held for the first time this year because of coronavirus.

image copyrightGetty ImagesA French woman has been arrested in India for making a video of herself naked on a sacred bridge in the northern city of Rishikesh.The video, shot on the Lakshman Jhula bridge, was posted on social media.

Marisa Papen posted the image of herself reclining naked on a rooftop overlooking the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The rabbi of the site described the incident as "grave and lamentable".

New pictures of the Sun taken just 77 million km (48 million miles) from its surface are the closest ever acquired by cameras. They come from the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter (SolO) probe, which was launched earlier this year.

Amid the global debate about race relations, colonialism and slavery, some of the Europeans and Americans who made their fortunes in trading human beings have seen their legacies reassessed, their statues toppled and their names removed from public buildings.

US Vice-President Mike Pence has said "faith in America is rising once again" - thanks to President Donald Trump. America's religious climate has shifted in recent years, but has it been in the direction Mr Pence suggests?

Televangelist Todd Coontz has a well-worn routine: he dresses in a suit, pulls out a Bible and urges viewers to pledge a very specific amount of money. "Don't delay, don't delay," he urges, calmly but emphatically. It sounds simple, absurdly so, but Coontz knows his audience extremely well.

This article originally appeared on The Conversation, and is republished under a Creative Commons licence. “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.

Scientists have fulfilled a mummified Egyptian priest's wish for life after death - by replicating his voice with artificial vocal cords. Nesyamun's voice has been reproduced as a vowel-like sound that is reminiscent of a sheep's bleat.

The wife of a Slovak man who died in Belgian police custody has called for a fresh inquiry after shocking images of his detention emerged. Jozef Chovanec was arrested at Charleroi airport in 2018 after causing a disturbance on his flight.

image copyrightPA wireA ring of large shafts discovered near Stonehenge form the largest prehistoric monument ever discovered in Britain, archaeologists believe.Tests carried out on the pits suggest they were excavated by Neolithic people more than 4,500 years ago.

China has launched its first rover mission to Mars. The six-wheeled robot, encapsulated in a protective probe, was lifted off Earth by a Long March 5 rocket from the Wenchang spaceport on Hainan Island at 12:40 local time (04:40 GMT).

A major DNA study has shed new light on the fate of millions of Africans who were traded as slaves to the Americas between the 16th and 19th centuries.

It was the middle of the night on 25 October 1962 and a truck was racing down a runway in Wisconsin. It had just moments to stop a flight. Mere minutes earlier, a guard at Duluth Sector Direction Center had glimpsed a shadowy form attempting to climb the facility’s perimeter fence.

Obesity should be defined by a person's health - not just their weight, says a new Canadian clinical guideline. It also advises doctors to go beyond simply recommending diet and exercise.

Terms like "heat death", "big rip" and "vacuum decay" don't sound all that inviting. And they aren't. They describe a few of the theories scientists have about how our universe will one day die.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says he wants a "clean" internet. What he means by that is he wants to remove Chinese influence, and Chinese companies, from the internet in the US.

The uncrewed test vehicle rose up on a plume of exhaust before deploying its landing legs and touching down softly. The flight was carried out at SpaceX's test site near the village of Boca Chica in south Texas on Tuesday evening.

image copyrightUniversity of Warwick / Mark GarlickA star has been sent hurtling across the galaxy after undergoing a partial supernova, astronomers say.

A large blast in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, has killed at least 70 people and injured more than 4,000 others, the health minister says.Videos show smoke billowing from a fire, then a mushroom cloud following the blast at the city's port.

Airbus-France will build the huge satellite that brings the first Martian rock samples back to Earth. This material will be drilled on the Red Planet by the US space agency's next rover, Perseverance, before being blasted into orbit by a rocket.

A 100-day DIY project, one musician's live-in transport and a couple's "staycation-mobile" - four people share their "advantures" and show us inside the fruits of their lockdown labour.

Water has long been at the centre of conflict in the northern regions of Mali, in West Africa. This vast water-scarce area spans 827,000 square kilometres (320,000 square miles) between the Sahara in the north and the Sahel in the south – in total, about two-thirds of the national territory.

In the heart of France’s idyllic Burgundy region, surrounded by manicured vineyards, fortified Renaissance chateaux and medieval hill towns, sits one of the bucolic area’s most mysterious attractions: a seemingly bottomless spring-fed pit in the small town of Tonnarre known as the Fosse Dionne.

The world's biggest nuclear fusion project has entered its five-year assembly phase. After this is finished, the facility will be able to start generating the super-hot "plasma" required for fusion power.

image copyrightVan Gogh MuseumA postcard has helped to find the probable spot where Vincent van Gogh painted what may have been his final masterpiece, art experts say.The likely location for Tree Roots was found by Wouter van der Veen, the scientific director of the Institut Van Gogh.

No-one knew where it was until Robert Phillips, 89, who was involved in those works, decided to return part of it. English Heritage, which looks after Stonehenge, hopes the sample might now help establish where the stones originally came from.

The origin of the giant sarsen stones at Stonehenge has finally been discovered with the help of a missing piece of the site which was returned after 60 years. Archaeologists pinpointed the source of the stones to an area 15 miles (25km) north of the site near Marlborough.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton said US founders viewed slavery as a "necessary evil upon which the union was built". His comments were criticised as an attempt justify the slavery of black people.

If you have ever doubted whether solar power can be a transformative technology, read on. This is a story about how it has proved its worth in the toughest environment possible.

Nasa's Perseverance robot will carry with it a meteorite that originated on the Red Planet and which, until now, has been lodged in the collection of London's Natural History Museum (NHM). The rock's known properties will act as a calibration target to benchmark the workings of a rover instrument.

With flights grounded and borders closed, some people have embarked on epic voyages to get home during the coronavirus pandemic. Here, we take a look at four such journeys - and the distances travelled just get longer and longer.

The United Arab Emirates' historic first mission to Mars is under way, after a successful lift-off in Japan. The Hope probe launched on an H2-A rocket from Tanegashima spaceport, and is now on a 500-million-km journey to study the planet's weather and climate.

The US dollar is the most widely used currency in the world. It is both the primary de facto global tender and the world’s unofficial gold standard.

Another telescope has entered the debate about the age and expansion rate of the Universe. This topic has recently become the subject of an energetic to and fro among scientists using different astronomical facilities and techniques.

The victim is a male hiker who was hit by a falling stone, while other people were injured. The navy has been deployed for a possible mass evacuation, with 70 people already evacuated.

The first thing Simon Farrell can remember, after being woken from a medically induced coma, is trying to tear off his oxygen mask. He had been in intensive care for 10 days, reliant on a ventilator just to breathe.

Pope Francis has said he's "pained" by Turkey's decision to convert Istanbul's Hagia Sophia back into a mosque. Speaking at a service in the Vatican, the Roman Catholic leader added that his "thoughts go to Istanbul".

In 2020, users from designers to developers to testers and open source contributors have a wide variety of local development environments to chose from.

Among the towering spires and ceramic inlaid stupas of Bangkok’s Wat Pho temple are a group of inscriptions from the 19th Century.

“I can't do any sort of work without touching someone. It is part of my profession,” says Joy Adenuga, a London-based makeup artist.

Dinosaurs are often thought of as giant creatures, but new research adds to evidence they started out small. The evidence comes from a newly described fossil relative found on Madagascar that lived some 237 million years ago and stood just 10cm tall.

Oxford English Dictionary Chief Editor John Simpson is to retire after 37 years at the famous reference work. Here he writes of a life hunting for the evidence behind the birth of words. Historical dictionaries are not just about definitions.

Before Mohammed, before Jesus, before Buddha, there was Zoroaster. Some 3,500 years ago, in Bronze Age Iran, he had a vision of the one supreme God.

(We have updated this story since it was first published last year to include new information, including where to eat Feltman's during the coronavirus pandemic.

Women fed up with being forced to cover up their breasts and nipples are challenging American laws about nudity and sparking a debate about the country's attitude to the naked female form.

The wind had dropped the night before, but the sea was still running pretty heavy, especially for a boat like the Lucette. The waves were about head height and in a small boat there was a real risk of going over the side. In the distance a shape in the sea moved towards the yacht.

Residents of Okinawa, otherwise known as the 'island of the immortals’, are more likely to live to 100 than people in most other regions of Japan.

‘The’. It’s omnipresent; we can’t imagine English without it. But it’s not much to look at. It isn’t descriptive, evocative or inspiring. Technically, it’s meaningless. And yet this bland and innocuous-seeming word could be one of the most potent in the English language.

Scientists have discovered the secret of how the ginkgo tree can live for more than 1,000 years. And, unlike many other plants, its genes are not programmed to trigger inexorable decline when its youth is over.

For thousands of years, the Indigenous people of Australia set fire to the land. Long before Australia was invaded and colonised by Europeans, fire management techniques - known as "cultural burns" - were being practised.

No British train station or high street would be complete without a Greggs bakery. The merchants of mass-produced pastries are as quintessential as they come. And last year they won plaudits for turning vegan. On the back of their success, other fast food brands shortly followed suit.

On her first day in a new job in the City, Kate (not her real name) didn't know what to expect. Now a successful executive, she remembers being ready to roll with the punches, anything in order to get ahead. What she didn't expect was unrelenting sexual innuendo.

Then a friend recommended a book on meditation. The 26-year-old started meditating at home in Nottinghamshire, before deciding she wanted to take things up a level.

I was only three years old when my parents, sister and I emigrated from Leningrad in the USSR to the United States in 1980 as “traitors”, losing our Soviet citizenship and turning our backs on Communism for the “evil capitalist West”.

Astronomers have observed a distant planet where it probably rains iron. It sounds like a science fiction movie, but this is the nature of some of the extreme worlds we're now discovering.

Stereotypes and myths about race abound, but this does not make them true. Often, these are not even expressed by overt racists. For many well-intentioned people, experience and cultural history has steered them towards views that aren't supported by human genetics.

One hundred years ago, a world recovering from a global war that had killed some 20 million people suddenly had to contend with something even more deadly: a flu outbreak.

As the government encourages "social distancing" in the fight against coronavirus, older people are facing the prospect of being told to stay at home for weeks. But what if a parent or older person in your life, doesn't already have access to video calling tech?

With the unfolding global coronavirus pandemic leading to people being confined to their homes, borders being shut and economic instability, it can be hard not to feel overwhelmed by the state of the world at the moment.

First there was the bizarre suggestion that it can be cured with cocaine. After the erroneous idea circulated widely on social media, the French government had to quickly issue a statement saying that it’s definitely pas vrai.

Judith Ariho does not shed any tears as she recalls the church massacre in which her mother, two siblings and four other relatives were among at least 700 people who died.

Around the world millions of people have abandoned their offices – their carefully organised desks, the fluorescent lights, the humming photocopier, the gossipy watercooler – as governments mandate that employees work from home.

Italy has banned funerals because of the coronavirus crisis. For many, the virus is now robbing families of the chance to say a final goodbye. In Italy, many victims of Covid-19 are dying in hospital isolation without any family or friends.

Step outside your door without a face mask in Hong Kong, Seoul or Tokyo, and you may well get a disapproving look.

Near the end of World War One, a nasty flu started spreading around the world. The virus responsible for the disease, which became known as Spanish flu, infected over a quarter of the world’s population.

The novel coronavirus pandemic, known as Covid-19, could not have been more predictable. From my own reporting, I knew this first-hand.

If I have sex can I catch coronavirus? You might have thought about it but been too embarrassed to ask. To separate the facts from myths, we've put your questions to health experts.

It could help diagnose tumours sooner, when they are easier to treat and, ideally, cure, experts hope. More than 99% of positive results are accurate, the team says, but it will be crucial to check it does not miss cases and provide false assurance.

BBC Future has brought you in-depth and rigorous stories to help you navigate the current crisis, but we know that’s not all you want to read. So, now we’re dedicating a series to help you escape.

Or, at least, it wasn’t. With the advent of the Covid-19 lockdown – and the concomitant reduction in crowds, road and air traffic – many places are now bathed in an unusual quiet.

A US university's claim it can use facial recognition to "predict criminality" has renewed debate over racial bias in technology.Harrisburg University researchers said their software "can predict if someone is a criminal, based solely on a picture of their face".

You probably know Post Malone for two things: massive hit singles and having loads of tattoos - some on his face. He's been chatting about his body art in a new interview, saying his tattoos come from "a place of insecurity".

Finding out how fast Antarctic ice is melting is critical to understanding the scale of the climate crisis. The BBC's chief environmental correspondent, Justin Rowlatt, is therefore joining scientists as they check the health of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Singapore's TraceTogether Tokens are the latest effort to tackle Covid-19 with tech. But they have also reignited a privacy debate.

Our brains are delicate and precious assets. Encased within the thick, bony shell of our craniums, they are largely protected from the damage that our everyday lives might inflict.

image copyrightGetty ImagesA number of supermarkets have removed some coconut water and oil from their shelves after it emerged the products were made with fruit picked by monkeys.

This article originally appeared on The Conversation, and is republished under a Creative Commons licence. In June 1348, people in England began reporting mysterious symptoms. They started off as mild and vague: headaches, aches, and nausea.

Astronomers have been baffled by the disappearance of a massive star they had been observing. They now wonder whether the distant object collapsed to form a black hole without exploding in a supernova.

Like the Black Death spreading along the trade-routes strung along the spine of 14th-Century Eurasia, Covid-19 emerged in China and spread extremely quickly along the modern-day Silk Roads: intercontinental flight paths.