The novel coronavirus, COVID-19, has put pressure on social media platforms to try to deal with floods of misinformation. Even getting a handle on the size of the problem is tricky because while social platforms are publicly keen to tackle the problem, they’re less forthcoming with numbers that might showRead More →
It can be annoying to run out of smartphone battery power — and even more irritating to find someone with a charging cable in the nick of time, only to discover it’s not compatible with your device. A solution may be coming from an unlikely source: the European Union. EU lawmakers agreedRead More →
Max Eisen, 90, has lived his life by stubbornly looking ahead. He survived losing his mother and siblings in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, and survived the camp himself, by focusing on getting through each day one hour at a time. He survived a 13-day death march by willing himselfRead More →
SpaceX completed the last big test of its crew capsule before launching astronauts in the next few months, mimicking an emergency escape shortly after liftoff Sunday. No one was aboard for the wild ride in the skies above Cape Canaveral, just two mannequins. The nine-minute flight ended with the DragonRead More →
In an undisclosed location in Toronto, Farhad Souzanchi spends his days toiling away at a computer, filling a void half a world away for a rare commodity: facts. Souzanchi runs an online platform in Persian called FactNameh (“Book of Facts”) that verifies claims made by Iran’s officials and media. For instance, before Tehran admitted toRead More →
The European Union said Wednesday that it will likely miss its target for reducing greenhouse gases by 2030, dealing a blow to the bloc’s efforts to be a leader in the fight against climate change. The European Environment Agency said existing measures put the EU on course to cut itsRead More →
The first plants on Earth were algae that lived in water, and moving onto land required completely new survival skills. Now a new study involving Canadian researchers shows plants got those skills by stealing genes from a totally different species — soil bacteria that had already been thriving on the land forRead More →
The U.S. government has launched a national security review of TikTok owner Beijing ByteDance Technology Co’s $1 billion US acquisition of the U.S. social media app Musical.ly, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters. While the acquisition was completed two years ago, U.S. lawmakers have been calling in recentRead More →
In many communities, residents are asked to separate food waste into bins for municipal composting. In theory, composting can create a circular economy of food: it is grown, it is eaten, the scraps are thrown out and turned into fertilizer sold to farmers, who grow more food. But most consumers are unaware ofRead More →
A misleading video claiming to show Prime Minister Justin Trudeau bragging about bribing Canadian media has been viewed more than 250,000 times online. The video actually shows Trudeau telling a joke during the Parliamentary Press Gallery dinner and removes important context — such as the less-than-flattering headlines about him that Trudeau cited asRead More →