Shared posts

04 Jul 09:39

Princes William and Harry set differences aside to unveil Diana statue

by Janet Davison
BRITAIN-ROYALS/DIANA-STATUE

Tensions have been high between Prince William and Prince Harry, but at a low-key ceremony to unveil a long-awaited statue of their late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, the brothers kept it civil. 

03 Jun 00:37

Cuba to begin constitutional reforms to formalise ''opening-up'

Presidential term limits and the legalisation of same-sex marriage are on the agenda in Cuba.
25 Nov 01:09

Mosque attack a reminder of threat to Canadian Sinai force

by Evan Dyer
Canadian soldiers deployed with MFO Sinai

The Egyptian chapter of ISIS that likely carried out today's horrific attack in Bir al-Abd, Sinai, has also become a growing threat to a multinational force of peacekeepers that includes a contingent of 68 Canadian soldiers.

14 Sep 15:12

Hurricane Max forms in Pacific, Acapulco may feel impact

by Reuters
Hurricane Max map

Max becomes a Category 1 hurricane, moving toward Mexico's tourist-laden Pacific coast and bearing down on a region that includes resorts like Acapulco, Zihuatanejo and Ixtapa.

05 Sep 12:51

Duchess wins damages over topless photos

A French magazine is ordered to pay 100,000 euros to the royals, who will donate the money to charity.
20 Aug 15:03

US PGA Championship: Justin Thomas wins maiden major at Quail Hollow

American Justin Thomas wins his first major with a thrilling two-shot victory at the US PGA Championship at Quail Hollow.
15 Jul 01:40

Diego Costa and Nemanja Matic left out of Chelsea tour squad

Diego Costa and Nemanja Matic will miss Chelsea's pre-season tour of the Far East amid suggestions both will leave Stamford Bridge.
18 Jun 13:39

Is Serena Williams having a girl? Venus certainly thinks so

The pregnant tennis star's sister appears to give away a family secret during a TV interview.
27 May 17:49

Light festival dazzles visitors in Sydney

Sydney is lighting up its landmarks in stunning colours for a light festival.
10 Feb 12:37

Mark Zuckerberg shows off prototype Oculus VR gloves

by Adi Robertson

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is showing off a new way to interact with the Oculus Rift headset: an Oculus glove. Today, he posted photos from a visit to the Facebook-owned VR company’s research lab in Redmond, Washington, where a team led by chief scientist Michael Abrash works on next-generation hardware. Most of the photos showed off the facility’s capabilities, but in one, Zuckerberg bragged about performing superheroics with a pair of white motion control gloves.

“We're working on new ways to bring your hands in virtual and augmented reality. Wearing these gloves, you can draw, type on a virtual keyboard, and even shoot webs like Spider Man. That's what I'm doing here,” he wrote in the caption. There’s not much detail beyond that,...

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06 Oct 13:57

Teenagers' brain connections 'make them learn differently'

Teenagers are better at learning from their experiences than adults, according to a American study of teen brains in the journal Neuron.
16 Sep 11:38

Lyft reportedly declined GM’s $6 billion acquisition offer

by Jordan Golson

General Motors expressed interest in an acquisition that would have valued Lyft at around $6 billion, including the company’s $1.4 billion cash pile, according to a report by The Information. That’s a long way from the $8–10 billion that Lyft was seeking, a source close to the company told The Verge.

Recent reports have suggested that Lyft was involved in acquisition discussions with a variety of companies, including Apple, Google, Uber, and Didi Chuxing. GM was suspected to be the most likely suitor, as it invested $500 million in Lyft earlier this year and the two companies have been working together to develop an autonomous car fleet. It isn’t clear if any of the discussions resulted in a written offer.

Lyft remains firmly in second...

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26 Aug 01:29

Massive new galaxy turns out to be 99.99 percent dark matter

by Angela Chen

Powerful telescopes have revealed that a nearby galaxy is 99.99 percent dark matter. That number is a new record and the galaxy’s existence could help us learn more about the properties of dark matter, which makes up about 27 percent of the universe but hasn’t been officially detected.

The galaxy, called Dragonfly 44, is 300 million light years away. It has the same mass as our own Milky Way but has a hundred times fewer stars. The lack of stars means that the galaxy is dim enough to have been hidden for decades. It’s not the only galaxy to be composed of almost all dark matter, but most of the other ones are tiny dwarf galaxies, not ones a trillion times more massive than our Sun.

Astronomers at Hawaii’s WM Keck Observatory spotted...

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25 Aug 16:11

WhatsApp users to receive adverts

WhatsApp changes its privacy policy so that businesses can send messages to people using the service.
26 Jun 23:29

Will Brexit affect touring musicians?

Musicians at Glastonbury grapple with the implications of leaving Europe for their upcoming tours, anticipating "big changes" ahead.
25 May 23:05

Lieberman named Israel defence minister

The controversial right-wing politician Avigdor Lieberman is to be named Israel's defence minister after agreeing to join the governing coalition.
17 May 20:22

Brazil's problem with sexism

Brazil has a sexism problem, which has been brought to international attention by the travails of suspended President Dilma Rousseff, says the BBC's Silvia Salek.
08 May 16:35

Afghanistan hangs six Taliban prisoners

Afghanistan executes six Taliban inmates - first since Ashraf Ghani became president - as the Taliban attacks police in Helmand province.
13 Dec 15:02

Poles march in anti-government protests

Tens of thousands of protesters march through the streets of Warsaw, accusing Poland's government of trying to manipulate state institutions.
12 Oct 14:37

Is this manga cartoon of a six-year-old Syrian girl racist?

Is this manga cartoon of a six-year-old Syrian girl racist?
11 Jun 17:42

US school finds 1917 board lessons

The traces of classroom lessons from nearly a century ago have been found preserved on blackboards at a school in Oklahoma City.
25 Jul 13:14

Welcome to the future

by Nilay Patel

Hello — again.

As you might have heard, I’m stepping in to be the next editor-in-chief of The Verge. I’m also excited to announce that my friend Dieter Bohn will be our new executive editor. We’ll be working with the amazing team that’s already in place and making The Verge happen every day, a team I think is the best in the industry.

This is going to be rad.

The Verge at its best is a window into the future — the future of technology, design, science, and culture. That’s the vision we had for the site when we launched it in 2011, and it’s the vision now. And the job of examining and understanding that future has become more important than ever. Technology has become a disruptive force in every sense of the word. Every story is a...

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25 Jun 12:34

Canada’s feeble response to injustice in Egypt: Neil Macdonald

by Neil Macdonald
EGYPT-ALJAZEERA/TRIAL

The government of Canada, on the day that one of its citizens was sentenced to a long prison term in Egypt for the crime of committing journalism, was moved to note that Egyptians are, after all, “progressing toward democracy,” writes Neil Macdonald.

30 May 16:46

HBO Greenlights 18 Episodes of Comedy 'Vice Principals' Starring Danny McBride

by Sara Bibel
Danny McBride, star of the hit HBO comedy series “Eastbound & Down,” will return to the network in the comedy series VICE PRINCIPALS
10 Feb 14:47

Spaceships worth more than $200,000 destroyed in biggest virtual space battle ever

by Rich McCormick

EVE Online has its own economics, politics, and trade systems, built almost entirely by players in the ten years the game has been running. It also has its own wars, as huge alliances vie for control of tracts of space in the massively multiplayer online game. One such conflict came to a head yesterday in the biggest battle in the game's decade-long history. More than 2,200 of the game's players, members of EVE's largest alliances, came together to shoot each other out of the sky. The resultant damage was valued at more than $200,000 of real-world money.

Most of that cost came from the destruction of more than 70 Titans. Titans are EVE's largest ships: they take weeks to construct, and are worth hundreds of billions of ISK (EVE's...

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12 Aug 11:41

Samsung undercuts Retina MacBook Pro with $1,399.99 Ativ Book 9 Plus

by Dante D'Orazio

Samsung's looking to offer laptop buyers a compelling alternative to Apple's machines with its new marquee Windows 8 ultrabook, the Samsung Ativ Book 9 Plus. The company has revealed today that the high-end machine will start at $1,399.99 and will go up for pre-order on August 18th. That price means the laptop is far from affordable, but the ultrabook is one of the best we've seen this year. Samsung's using an astounding 13.3-inch, 3,200 x 1,800 touchscreen in the machine's 0.54-inch-thick aluminum unibody shell.

Back when the company first showed off the (horribly named) laptop in June it promised an excellent 12 hours of battery life, which would make the Ativ Book 9 Plus a mighty competitor to the much lower-resolution MacBook Air....

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