Two mythical creatures, a giant spider and a huge dragon, have faced one another in battle at Beijing's Olympic Park.

Version:next-20141020 (linux-next) Released:2014-10-20

The WHO is expected to declare Nigeria free from Ebola on Monday with no reported cases of the virus for six weeks due to a rapid and thorough response from healthcare professionals.

The stand-off between protesters and police continues in Mong Kok, Hong Kong.

Version:3.18-rc1 (mainline) Released:2014-10-20 Source:linux-3.18-rc1.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-3.18-rc1.tar.sign Patch:patch-3.18-rc1.xz

BBC Inside Out examines whether health fears over plastic food packaging are justified and asks if BPA should be banned in the UK.

Thousands of residents in the community of St George have signed a petition urging the creation of a new city separate to Baton Rouge. Are bad schools or race the motivation?

A chip card and the inside of a card's chip. Explain That Stuff

On Friday, President Obama signed an executive order to speed the adoption of EMV-standard cards in the US. The transition to EMV—an acronym eponymous of Europay, MasterCard, and Visa, the companies that developed the standard—has been slow to gain traction in the US. The EMV standard will require credit card companies to stop relying on the magnetic stripe cards that are common today and move toward cards with embedded chips that will offer more secure credit card transactions.

Lawmakers and credit card companies confirmed earlier this year that the US would make the transition to EMV cards in October 2015. But over the past several months, retail stores like Target, Home Depot, Michaels, Neiman Marcus, and more have sustained major hacks that caused the retailers to lose credit card information and personal information of millions upon millions of customers, giving new urgency to the call for more secure credit cards.

Speaking at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Friday, President Obama said that the federal government would apply “chip-and-PIN technology to newly issued and existing government credit cards, as well as debit cards like Direct Express.” The White House also said that all payment terminals at federal agencies will soon be able to accept embedded chip cards.

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a list of the best technology to buy. Read the full article below at TheWirecutter.com.

The HooToo HT-UH010 seven-port hub ($40) is our favorite USB 3.0 hub because it’s compact, reliable, and has well-placed ports aplenty. But its main strength is its usability and design—we looked at many other hubs that were larger, had fewer ports, and weren’t as easy to use. We determined the HooToo is the best hub for most people after 100 hours of research, testing, and consulting with electrical engineers to learn about how power flows through USB hubs and where things commonly go wrong.

Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock

Last November, my father took his own life. I'm frequently aware of the fact that the depression which helped drive him to that dark fate lives on in my genes. That's a doozy of a legacy to inherit, but it's one that has not been wholly negative for me.

Getting to the point where I could write this article involved a series of debates. I debated talking about my father’s suicide; I debated “outing” myself as a depression sufferer; I debated not talking about it and what that meant. I decided in the end that I would be the worst kind of hypocrite if I believed that dialog about depression was essential but was unwilling to start that dialog myself. I hope that my story can help others understand why the traits that cause depression have been both a plague and a gift to so many.

Nothing's easy when talking about depression. Navigating this sensitive topic is fraught with traps and taboos that can make Israel the good option at dinner discussion. But this dialog is important, and hopefully we can lift the grim veil that hangs over this subject before disaster strikes someone we know and love. Even as it goes underreported, suicide now kills more people than car accidents in the US.

Read 52 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Rescue teams in Nepal say that there are now no trekkers left stranded after completing their search for survivors of a devastating Himalayan storm.

NASA

NEW YORK—What do you do after you’ve achieved the ultimate goal of your avocation—not once, but three times? That’s the question facing Chris Hadfield, who capped 25 years of NASA service by commanding both the International Space Station and an audience of millions on YouTube and Twitter. Hadfield gave a partial answer recently during a public talk at the American Museum of Natural History: get as many people as possible to understand the experience and try to use that to keep the public supporting a program of space exploration.

Hadfield may be an unassuming looking man—he’s got nothing like the imposing build of astronaut and former football player Leland Melvin—but you don’t get sent to space three times without having an imposing set of talents. He said that, in addition to the expected job skills, he spent time in a Texas emergency room, stitching up and intubating people as part of the preparations to handle anything that might come up while in space. And millions saw his musical and photographic skills on display since.

Now you can add “performer” to Hadfield’s long list of accomplishments. He wove together a series of anecdotes into a coherent, compelling show, gesturing animatedly and lying back on the floor to demonstrate the Soyuz launch posture. Parts of it might have been scripted or at least well practiced, but there were others that seemed spontaneous. While an orbital photo of San Francisco was on the screen, someone from the audience had to tell him that both the bridge and the large park were named Golden Gate. At that point, he called everything visible "Golden Gate" something or other, including New York’s Central Park when it appeared in the next picture. He was also just as easygoing and clear when handling questions from the audience.

Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Local media say five people have died after two and a half hours of heavy rain on the islands of Tenerife and La Gomera.

Even The Flash can't deliver gigabit speed data networks. JD Hancock

The Federal Communications Commission is starting to plan for cellular networks that can send users gigantic streams of data, but there are technical challenges to be solved and years of work ahead.

A Notice of Inquiry issued unanimously by the commission on Friday identifies frequencies of 24GHz and above as being able to provide gigabit or even 10Gbps speed. This would be a major change because today’s cellular networks use frequencies from 600MHz to 3GHz, with so-called “beachfront spectrum” under 1GHz being the most desirable because it can be used to deliver data over long distances. AT&T and Verizon Wireless control the most beachfront spectrum.

"It was long assumed that higher spectrum frequencies—like those above 24 GHz—could not support mobile services due to technological and practical limitations," the FCC said in a press release. "New technologies are challenging that assumption and promise to facilitate next generation mobile service—what some call '5G'—with the potential to dramatically increase wireless broadband speeds."

Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

A man has been rescued from a burning house in California in the US.

The BBC's Celia Hatton reports on why pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong see the Mong Kok district as key to their movement.

Keith Alexander, the founder of IronNet Cybersecurity, served as the director of the NSA for nearly a decade. Department of Defense

The National Security Agency is now conducting an internal investigation of a top official’s part-time work for a private cybersecurity firm, according to Reuters.

That company, IronNet Cybersecurity, was founded by Keith Alexander. Alexander served as the head of the spy agency from August 2005 until March 2014. IronNet Cybersecurity currently offers protection services to banks for up to $1 million per month.

Last Friday, Reuters cited Alexander himself as well as other intelligence officials, reporting that current NSA CTO Patrick Dowd can work up to 20 hours per week for IronNet Cybersecurity.

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

There were spectacular scenes in Yuctan, Mexico, this Saturday for the final event of the 2014 Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series.

Authorities in West Africa are struggling to deal with the Ebola outbreak which has already claimed thousands of lives in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

When Islamic State militants swept across northern Iraq during the summer, people from Christian communities were threatened with death if they refused to convert to Islam.