If you’ve ever wondered what my nightmares are like, they pretty much go like this. On Sept. 27, a group of hikers was enjoying the fall weather on the Japanese volcano Mount Ontake. Suddenly, the volcano erupted, letting loose an incredible pyroclastic flow, a torrent of superheated ash that barrels down the slopes of the volcano like a thundering wall of death. The hikers tried to get away, but the […]

Menlo Park, CA — At a press conference this morning, Facebook rolled out their new monthly service plan. Beginning November 1st of this year, the social media giant will start charging members $2.99/mo to use services that users currently enjoy for free. “We thought long and hard about this decision, but at the end of the day, we had no choice but to add this monthly fee,” Facebook founder and […]

San Mateo County Court Judge Barbara Mallach has ruled against Silicon Valley billionaire Vinod Khosla in a lawsuit over public access to Martin’s Beach. According to the ruling, Khosla will be required to seek a permit from the California Coastal Commission before locking gates at the beach, as well as to consult with the community to determine changes to the property and public access to the beach. “Today’s court decision […]

Brazilian researchers in Rio de Janeiro have released thousands of mosquitoes infected with a bacteria that suppresses Dengue fever. The hope is they will multiply, breed and become the majority of mosquitoes, thus reducing cases of the disease. The initiative is part of a programme also taking place in Australia, Vietnam and Indonesia. The intercellular bacteria, Wolbachia, being introduced cannot be transmitted to humans. The programme started in 2012 says […]

 Yahoo working on its own online document creation and collaboration software? That’s the question which immediately comes to mind upon hearing news that the company has now picked up a Bangalore-based startup called Bookpad, makers of Docspad, a service aimed at developers looking to add document viewing, annotations and editing features within their own applications. What differentiates Docspad from rivals like Google Docs, however, is that instead of being aimed […]

He’s just five-years-old but Karan Singh is already 5ft 7in tall. Karan, made it into the Guinness Book of World Records in 2008 for being the tallest and heaviest baby, weighing a whopping 7kg and measuring over 2ft – and he hasn’t stopped growing since. Not surprisingly, height runs in the Singh family. Karan’s father Sanjay is 6ft 6in, and his wife, Shweatlana, is even taller, standing at a height […]

Washington: Al Qaeda, which has announced the creation of a separate wing for India, wants to portray Prime Minister Narendra Modi as an enemy of Islam and as such India should take its threat “very seriously”, a well-known American counter-terror expert said on Friday even as the US tried to downplay the terrorist outfit’s capabilities. “This video, the first from (al Qaeda leader Ayman al-) Zawahiri this year, should be […]

Research that investigated why bananas are slippery when you step on them has won one of this year’s Ig Nobel prizes. The spoof awards that have become almost as famous as the real Nobels were handed out at their annual ceremony at Harvard University, US. Kiyoshi Mabuchi’s Japanese team measured the friction of banana skin in the lab, and showed why apple and orange peel are not quite so hazardous. […]

People in Scotland will vote later on whether the country should stay in the UK or become an independent nation. Voters will answer “Yes” or “No” to the referendum question: “Should Scotland be an independent country?“ With 4,285,323 people – 97% of the electorate – registered to vote, a historically high turnout is expected. Votes will be cast at 2,608 polling places across the country between 07:00 and 22:00 on […]

In his 2008 book Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism, the historian Michael Burleigh observes in passing that jihadist martyrdom videos have a similar structure to porn movies. He doesn’t dwell on the point, although he does allude to the climactic “money shot”: in the jihadist case, the moment when the bomber detonates his explosives. In light of the many ISIS propaganda videos that have circulated this summer, […]