Category: News

British inventor Nik Spencer believes household garbage is a valuable and underrated resource. That's because trash happens to be the perfect fuel for his latest invention: the Home Energy Resources Unit, or HERU. VOA's Julie Taboh has more. ...

Football fans are watching the World Cup on multiple screens in bars, on their phones while they should be working, on TVs at home with their friends. One day, they could be following the action in 3D. Researchers at the University of Washington are developing a way to watch soccer games and other sporting matches as if you were in the stadium, by using augmented reality devices. Faiza Elmasry takes a look at the new technology in this report, narrated by Faith Lapidus. ...

Temperatures around the world are rising as humans burn coal, oil and other fossil fuels for energy. Burning those fuels releases heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But it does more than that. CO2 is vital for plant growth. While having more of it sounds like a good thing, scientists are finding it is not always that simple. VOA's Steve Baragona has more. ...

Pangolins are the world's most illegally trafficked animal. Eight species of the elusive mammals are found in Africa and Southeast Asia, but as many as 300 are poached every day, destined for markets in Vietnam and China, where their meat is considered a delicacy and their scales believed to have medicinal properties. Researchers in the UK are hoping to deter pangolin poaching with fingerprint technology that's designed to identify poachers and bring them to justice. VOA's Julie Taboh explains. ...

Forty years ago this month, the first test-tube baby was born in what is now called in vitro fertilization. British baby Louise Brown was born July 25, 1978. She's married now with two children who were born naturally. A new exhibition at the Science Museum in London is showcasing the anniversary and the technological advances achieved through in vitro fertilization. VOA's Deborah Block has more. ...

Pacific nations Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands have signed on to a joint undersea internet cable project, funded mostly by Australia, that forestalls plans by Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd to lay the links itself. Wednesday's pact comes as China pushes for influence in a region Australia views as its backyard, amid souring ties after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull last year accused Beijing of meddling in Canberra's affairs. Australia will pay two-thirds of the project cost of A$136.6 million ($100 million) under the deal, signed on a visit to Brisbane by Solomon Islands Prime Minister Rick Houenipwela and Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O'Neill. "We spend billions of dollars a year on foreign aid and this is a very practical way of investing in the…

Social networking platform Twitter announced Wednesday it will be removing accounts it had deemed suspicious from user's follower counts, as part of a recent push to promote accuracy on the website. This could reduce the number of "followers" of some of the website's most popular users, including politicians and celebrities. The website had locked accounts of users where Twitter "detected sudden changes in account behavior," such as sharing misleading links, being blocked by a large number of accounts that account had interacted with, or a large number of unsolicited replies to other users' tweets, Twitter general counsel Vijaya Gadde wrote. The accounts are locked, preventing one from logging in and using the account until the account's owner verified their use. Wednesday's change will remove these locked accounts from users' follower…

Facebook will be facing its first fine in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the social media platform allowed the data mining firm to access the private information of millions of users without their consent or knowledge. A British government investigative office, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), fined Facebook 500,000 pounds, or $663,000 - the maximum amount that can be levied for the violation of British data privacy laws. In a report, the ICO found Facebook had broken the law in failing to protect the data of the estimated 87 million users affected by the security breach. The ICO’s investigation concluded that Facebook "contravened the law by failing to safeguard people’s information," the report read. It also found that the company failed to be transparent about how…

A federal court has charged a former Apple engineer with stealing trade secrets related to a self-driving car and attempting to flee to China. Agents in San Jose, California, arrested Xiaolang Zhang on Saturday, moments before he was to board his flight. Zhang is said to have taken paternity leave in April, traveling to China just after the birth of a child. When he returned, he informed his supervisors he was leaving Apple to join Xiaopeng Motors, a Chinese company in Guangzhao, which also plans to build self-driving cars. But security cameras caught Zhang allegedly entering Apple's self-driving car lab and downloading blueprints and other information on a personal computer at the time he was supposed to be in China on paternity leave. Neither the FBI nor Zhang's lawyers have…

Poverty, gender discrimination and digital illiteracy are leaving women behind as the global workforce increasingly uses digital tools and other technologies, experts warned Tuesday. The so-called "digital divide" has traditionally referred to the gap between those who have access to computers and the internet, and those with limited or no access. But technology experts say women and girls with poor digital literacy skills will be the hardest hit and will struggle to find jobs as technology advances. "Digital skills are indispensable for girls and young women to obtain safe employment in the formal labor market," said Lindsey Nefesh-Clarke, founder of Women's Worldwide Web, a charity that trains girls in digital literacy. She said "offline factors" like poverty, gender discrimination and gender stereotypes were preventing girls and women from benefiting from…

After hoax messages on WhatsApp fueled deadly mob violence in India, the Facebook-owned messaging platform published full-page advertisements in prominent English and Hindi language newspapers advising users on how to spot misinformation. The advertisements are the first measure taken by the social media company to raise awareness about fake messages, following a warning by the Indian government that it needs to take immediate action to curb the spread of false information.   While India is not the only country to be battling the phenomenon of fake messaging on social media, it has taken a menacing turn here — in the past two months more than a dozen people have died in lynchings sparked by false posts spread on WhatsApp that the victims were child kidnappers.   Ironically, the digital media giant…

Senior citizens - adults 65 and older - will outnumber children in the United States for the first time by 2035, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.As their number increases, the demand for elder care is also growing. For the past 12 years, SenCura has been providing non-medical in-home care for this segment of the population in Northern Virginia.Company founder Cliff Glier says its services "include things as bathing, dressing, companionship, meal planning and prep and transportation, pretty much everything in and around the home that seniors typically need help with.”  Hollie, one of SenCura’s professional caregivers, visits 88-year-old Olga Robertson every day for three hours.She cooks for her, takes her to appointments, plays some brain games with her and goes walking with her around the neighborhood or in the…

In this age of the smart machine, robots are increasingly playing roles in different fields, from construction and hospitality to the military and art. When it comes to caregiving for the elderly, which depends mainly on human interaction, it turns out robots can also help. But will they replace humans? Faiza Elmasry went searching for an answer. Faith Lapidus narrates. ...