Entebbe, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | An Ethiopian Airlines flight no. ET 338, a Boeing 737-800 Aircraft, which overshot the Entebbe International Airport runway on landing Thursday morning, has been removed from the runway. Flights in and out of Entebbe were halted from shortly after midnight, to 10am Thursday to …
Read More »DRC cuts internet to avoid ‘uprising’ after vote
Kinshasa, DR Congo | AFP | The DR Congo government said Tuesday it had cut the country’s internet services to avert a “popular uprising” as tensions rise pending the results of fractious presidential elections. The opposition accused authorities of cutting the internet on Monday to thwart activism, while leading Western …
Read More »NASA rings in New Year with historic flyby of faraway world
Tampa, United States | AFP | NASA rang in the New Year on Tuesday with a historic flyby of the farthest, and quite possibly the oldest, cosmic body ever explored by humankind — a tiny, distant world called Ultima Thule — in the hopes of learning more about how planets …
Read More »NASA spaceship zooms toward farthest world ever photographed
Tampa, United States | AFP | A NASA spaceship is zooming toward the farthest, and quite possibly the oldest, cosmic body ever photographed by humankind, a tiny, distant world called Ultima Thule some four billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers) away. The US space agency will ring in the New Year …
Read More »Instagram blames ‘bug’ for design change that prompted backlash
Washington, United States | AFP | Instagram said Thursday it accidentally rolled out a design change to a large number of users and quickly ended the test after complaints from users of the Facebook-owned social network. The redesign required users to swipe horizontally instead of the normal vertical scroll to …
Read More »Heavy screen time appears to impact childrens’ brains: study
Washington, United States | AFP | Researchers have found “different patterns” in brain scans among children who record heavy smart device and video game use, according to initial data from a major ongoing US study. The first wave of information from the $300 million National Institute of Health (NIH) study …
Read More »Three students killed in China university lab explosion
Beijing, China | AFP | Three students were killed in a laboratory blast at a Beijing university on Wednesday, the city’s fire department said. “There was an explosion at the experimental site during a scientific research experiment” on wastewater treatment in the Environmental Engineering Laboratory, the Beijing Fire Department said. …
Read More »Scientists create bee vaccine to fight off ‘insect apocalypse’
Helsinki, Finland | AFP | Scientists in Finland have developed what they believe is the world’s first vaccine to protect bees against disease, raising hopes for tackling the drastic decline in insect numbers which could cause a global food crisis. Bees are vital for growing the world’s food as they …
Read More »Dream of augmented humans endures, despite sceptics
Paris, France | AFP | Brain implants, longer lives, genetically modified humans: for the prophets of transhumanism — the scientifically assisted evolution of humans beyond our current limitations — it is just a matter of time. But many scientists insist that some problems are not so easily solved. Sooner or …
Read More »Cell-by-cell DNA science is ‘Breakthrough of 2018’
Tampa, United States | AFP | The US journal Science on Thursday coined as “Breakthrough of the Year” for 2018 new technologies that reveal how DNA cues individual cells to grow through time. Experts say these methods will transform science over the coming decades, allowing an ever clearer picture of …
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