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VIDEO: Fire engulfs Russian tower block

BBC World - Sun, 2014-09-21 05:39
Firefighters are trying to contain a fire that has engulfed a residential building in the Russian city of Krasnoyarsk, according to Russian media.
Categories: News

VIDEO: At scene of Cairo bomb blast

BBC World - Sun, 2014-09-21 04:54
A bomb explosion near the Egyptian foreign ministry in Cairo has killed at least two police officers, security officials say.
Categories: News

VIDEO: SpaceX lifts off for ISS with supplies

BBC Tech - Sun, 2014-09-21 00:28
A SpaceX cargo ship rocketed toward the International Space Station on Sunday, carrying the first 3D printer for astronauts in orbit.
Categories: Tech

VIDEO: SpaceX lifts off for ISS with supplies

BBC World - Sun, 2014-09-21 00:28
A SpaceX cargo ship rocketed toward the International Space Station on Sunday, carrying the first 3D printer for astronauts in orbit.
Categories: News

VIDEO: Prohibition plans for Kerala

BBC World - Sat, 2014-09-20 23:42
The southern Indian state of Kerala has said it will ban the sale and consumption of alcohol to tackle the problem of excessive drinking.
Categories: News

VIDEO: Imams in hostage video appeal to IS

BBC World - Sat, 2014-09-20 21:13
Two high-profile imams in the UK make a direct appeal to the Islamic State militant group to free British hostage Alan Henning.
Categories: News

VIDEO: Argentina president in Vatican talks

BBC World - Sat, 2014-09-20 20:19
Argentina's president discusses global finance with the Pope in private talks at the Vatican prior to a UN meeting about spiralling national debt.
Categories: News

VIDEO: Yemen in UN truce with Shia Houthi

BBC World - Sat, 2014-09-20 18:30
Yemen has agreed to a UN-brokered truce with a Shia Houthi group after a week of mounting clashes in the capital Sanaa raised fears of a sectarian war.
Categories: News

VIDEO: Peruvian prison bank run by inmates

BBC World - Sat, 2014-09-20 17:55
Peru's largest prison has a bank run entirely by inmates, for inmates so they can save for their release and re-establish trustworthiness.
Categories: News

VIDEO: Ukraine deal with eastern rebels

BBC World - Sat, 2014-09-20 17:39
Ukraine's government and pro-Russia rebels have agreed a memorandum on a peace plan for the eastern conflict.
Categories: News

VIDEO: Singing the Western Sahara blues

BBC World - Sat, 2014-09-20 16:01
Aziza Brahim, a singer from the disputed territory of Western Sahara, uses haunting melodies to draw attention to the plight of her people.
Categories: News

VIDEO: Cheetah cubs unveiled in San Diego

BBC Tech - Sat, 2014-09-20 16:00
A pair of three-week-old cheetah cubs are unveiled at San Diego Zoo's Safari Park.
Categories: Tech

Lone Star Le Mans: Ars goes racing in Texas

ARS Technica - Sat, 2014-09-20 14:50

CN.dart.call("xrailTop", {sz:"300x250", kws:["top"], collapse: true});It's no secret that Cars Technica is a big fan of the World Endurance Championship. Thousand horsepower hybrids, racing versions of road cars like Porsche's 911 and Ferrari's 458, the sights, the sounds; we love it all. Once a year, the series visits the US, coming to the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, where it shares an event with our national endurance racing series, the Tudor United Sportscar Championship. Ars is in town for the races as part of a future feature, but in the meantime here's a gallery to give you a flavor of the event. Not pictured? The crushing humidity.

Audi's R18 e-tron quattro. Diesel power, flywheel hybrid, and a string of Le Mans victories

48 more images in gallery

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Categories: Tech

VIDEO: National party wins NZ election

BBC World - Sat, 2014-09-20 14:41
New Zealand's governing party has won the country's general election by an emphatic margin.
Categories: News

Home Depot ignored security warnings for years, employees say

ARS Technica - Sat, 2014-09-20 12:10

Former information technology employees at Home Depot claim that the retailer’s management had been warned for years that its retail systems were vulnerable to attack, according to a report by The New York Times. Resistance to advice on fixing systems reportedly led several members of Home Depot’s computer security team to quit, and one who remained warned friends to use cash when shopping at the retailer’s stores.

In 2012, Home Depot hired Ricky Joe Mitchell as its senior IT security architect. Mitchell got the job after being fired from EnerVest Operating in Charleston, West Virginia—and he sabotaged that company’s network in an act of revenge, taking the company offline for 30 days. Mitchell retained his position at Home Depot even after his indictment a year later and remained in charge of Home Depot’s security until he pled guilty to federal charges in January of 2014.

The Home Depot breach, which reportedly began in April of 2014 and went undetected until earlier this month, exposed an estimated 56 million credit card numbers. Home Depot spokesperson Stephen Holmes told The New York Times that the company maintains “robust security systems.” Home Depot officials have said that the malware used in the attack, BlackPOS, had not been seen before and would have been difficult to detect with its security scans.

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Categories: Tech

VIDEO: 66,000 cross from Syria into Turkey

BBC World - Sat, 2014-09-20 11:57
Since parts of the border were opened 66,000 people have crossed from Syria into Turkey in just 24 hours, a Turkish government official tells the BBC.
Categories: News

Oculus announces new virtual reality headset prototype, Crescent Bay

ARS Technica - Sat, 2014-09-20 11:08
Oculus' Crescent Bay Prototype. Oculus VR

Oculus VR announced a new prototype for its virtual reality headset at the Oculus Connect conference in Los Angeles on Saturday.

Some new features on the updated headset, called Crescent Bay, include improved optics, 360 degree head tracking (thanks to LED on the back of the headstrap), higher resolution, and a higher refresh rate. The headset is also lighter than the previous Oculus prototype. New built-in headphones, along with software from partner RealSpace3D, promise a virtual surround sound audio component to the Rift (though users will still be able to use their own headphones, if they wish).

While Oculus has yet to go into details on the tech specs of the new prototype, CEO Brendan Iribe said Crescent Bay's jump in performance over the latest Rift development kit is similar to the jump from last year's original DK1 dev kit to the new DK2. While this isn't the long-desired consumer version of the Rift headset, Iribe said it is closer than ever to being a consumer-ready product.

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Categories: Tech

VIDEO: Turkish IS hostages return home

BBC World - Sat, 2014-09-20 10:15
Dozens of hostages seized by Islamic State (IS) from the Turkish consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul have been freed and are back in Turkey.
Categories: News

There’s not a creativity deficit in science

ARS Technica - Sat, 2014-09-20 10:00

Not so long ago, on a website not so far away, an opinion was expressed: creativity was being suppressed in science. On the surface, the statistics support this: younger researchers are getting progressively less of the funding. Older researchers, it is asserted, tend to propose less risky and less innovative research. As with any good opinion in science, Nobel prize winners are wheeled as supporting cast. But, is it really true? Are we truly suppressing the creative side of science?

The answer is, overwhelmingly, no. Scientific papers are a crude measure for scientific progress, but never have more papers being produced per year than now. Clearly, something creative is going on here. If you don't like scientific papers, simply look at technological progress: your smartphone would not have nearly as much punch without the creativity of scientists; antiviral drugs were not found lying about on the ground; experimental stem-cell therapies were not accidentally attempted. Behind all of these new things lies a decade or more of scientific research. But, you know, thats not creative at all.

Maybe a lack of creativity manifests if we restrict ourselves to more fundamental breakthroughs, like... finding exoplanets, brown dwarfs, the anisotropy in cosmic microwave background, the Higgs Boson, Bose Einstein Condensates, or the acceleration of the rate of expansion of the universe. Not to mention very clever experiments that test the very nature of reality itself, like Wheeler's delayed choice experiment, and Bell inequality tests. Oh wait, all of those have happened in the last 20 years. Some have even garnered Nobel prizes for their work.

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Categories: Tech

VIDEO: Base jumpers leap from 370m bridge

BBC World - Sat, 2014-09-20 08:39
Base jumpers from around the world have been competing in Anshun city in China's Guizhou province.
Categories: News
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