Photo Albrecht Dürer’s “The Rhinoceros,” 1515. Credit From the National Gallery of Art It is a Sunday afternoon in a provincial town in France. Two men meet at a cafe. One of them, Berenger, is half-drunk. He is being berated by his companion, Jean. All of the sudden, they hear a great noise. When they and other townspeople crane their necks to figure out what’s going on, […]
Warning: If you haven’t seen the November 13th Westworld episode, “Trompe L’Oeil”, you’re about to be spoiled! The November 23rd episode of Westworld ended with a huge reveal, as viewers learned that Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) was in fact one of the robotic hosts built by Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins) – in a sequence that also had Ford order Bernard, who had no choice but to comply, to […]
JERUSALEM — An Israeli ministerial committee on Sunday approved a contentious bill that would allow for the retroactive legalization of Jewish settlement outposts built on privately owned Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank. The measure breaks a longstanding taboo, and in the view of many experts, it defies international law. The bill requires approval by Parliament before becoming law. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposed its advancement […]
Photo Members from the Free Syrian Army take part in a battle in northern Syria last month against Islamic State fighters. Credit Nazeer Al-Khatib/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images BEIRUT, Lebanon — The hours are ticking down to what the Syrian government and its main ally, Russia, say could be the most devastating aerial assault yet on besieged rebel-held districts in the Syrian city of Aleppo. The Obama […]
Titanfall 2 Electronic Arts PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC Four stars Robots just want to be our friends. Sure, there have been a few bad apples, such as the Terminators, Cylons and Ultron – but what about all the nice ones, such as Data from Star Trek and Rosie from The Jetsons? BT-7274, the co-star of Titanfall 2, just wants to be loved. Granted, this giant bucket […]
The Economic Wreckage The destruction in Yemen could cripple its economy long into the future, and it is unclear how the country will rebuild. Continue reading the main story “They have hit many factories on the basis of suspicion, but we never get the real reasons,” said Abdul-Hakeem Al Manj, a lawyer at the Sana Chamber of Commerce and Industry who is helping businesses document the strikes […]
Photo Speaker of the House Paul Ryan showing the president-elect, Donald Trump, and his wife, Melania, the speaker’s balcony at the United States Capitol on Nov. 10. Credit Zach Gibson/Getty Images The president-elect walked onto the stage before a crowd of euphoric supporters. It was his first public sighting since the networks called the election for him. Gone were his hoarse pleadings for support. His face bore […]
Photo Members of the Iraqi police tried to pull a body from a mass grave discovered in Hamam al-Alil on Monday. Credit Ahmad Al-Rubaye/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images GENEVA — Islamic State militants have summarily killed scores of civilians in the Iraqi city of Mosul in recent days, sometimes using children as executioners, and have used chemical agents against Iraqi and Kurdish troops, United Nations officials said […]
Photo An Egyptian street vendor in Cairo on Friday. The country is struggling with soaring inflation and shortages of staple foods. Credit Amr Nabil/Associated Press CAIRO — The International Monetary Fund approved a $12 billion loan for Egypt on Friday, in a move intended to stave off economic collapse in the Arab world’s most populous nation as it grapples with a plunging currency, soaring inflation and shortages […]
Round 3 brought more of the same, though the champion’s leg kicks seemed to be landing with more of a snap. Continue reading the main story As a championship fight, this bout was scheduled for five rounds, rather than three. And the crowd finally had something to cheer about in Round 4, when Kowalkiewicz stung Jedrzejczyk with a punch and put her on the back foot for […]
This all began in April, when Ferguson, a McDonald’s all-American, played in the Nike Hoop Summit in Portland, Ore. After the game, he said, his mother, Rachelle Holdman, delivered some unexpected news: A representative from an Australian team wanted to meet with them over dinner. Continue reading the main story At the time, neither Ferguson nor his mother knew that Australia even had a professional league. But […]
For Tom Lemming, a recruiting expert who has published Prep Football Magazine for nearly four decades, the ideal community for high school football “has got to be a town that doesn’t have a professional team, one that has a tradition for high school football, builds the kids up with youth leagues and youth programs — which towns in the South do much more than in the North.” […]
Conflicted Care When Dr. Rosecrans worked briefly at the Navy’s hospital at Guantánamo as a young psychiatrist in 1999, it was a sleepy assignment. She saw only a few outpatients each week, and there was no psychiatric ward on the base, which was being downsized. But after Al Qaeda’s 2001 terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon, and the subsequent American-led invasion of Afghanistan, detainees began […]
Photo A member of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a United States-backed Kurdish-Arab alliance, inside Syria. Credit Delil Souleiman/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump said Friday that he was likely to abandon the American effort to support “moderate” opposition groups in Syria who are battling the government of President Bashar al-Assad, saying “we have no idea who these people are.” In an interview […]
Photo United States goalkeeper Brad Guzan (12) could not stop a header by Mexico’s Rafael Márquez in the 89th minute of a World Cup qualifier in Columbus, Ohio. Credit Jamie Sabau/Getty Images COLUMBUS, Ohio — For years, the score was so ingrained it became a mantra. A rallying cry. A marketing device, even. Four straight times, the United States men’s soccer team faced Mexico in a home […]
Before he was elected to be the next US president, Donald Trump had garnered the support of just one prominent billionaire in Silicon Valley: billionaire Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and Facebook board member. The US technology industry had been shocked that one veteran from the Valley, which prides itself on liberal values, had supported, funded and even spoken for Mr Trump at his convention — and […]
By Heather Somerville | SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO The fledgling drone industry is in the throes of change as weak consumer demand and falling prices drive startups to shift their focus to specialized business applications. 3D Robotics – an early drone startup that raised more than$125 million from investors – has seen its consumer business all but crash. This week, it unveiled a new commercial strategy, announcing […]
Carnegie Mellon University plans to announce on Wednesday that it will create a research center that focuses on the ethics of artificial intelligence. The ethics center, called the K&L Gates Endowment for Ethics and Computational Technologies, is being established at a time of growing international concern about the impact of A.I. technologies. That has already led to an array of academic, governmental and private efforts to explore […]
When I went to Las Vegas last week I didn’t go to visit clubs, gamble or even take in a show. Those were activities for another trip. This time I attended the Automotive IQ System Safety conference. I met engineers, auto executives, and computer programmers who shared the same concern about autonomous vehicles: how safe is safe enough? Companies like Uber and Tesla are rolling out autonomous technology faster […]
By Edward Taylor and Eric Auchard | PARIS/FRANKFURT PARIS/FRANKFURT Alarmed by the threat posed by Silicon Valley firms to their businesses in developing autonomous driving systems, it was evident at the Paris Motor Show this week that carmakers are seeking to fight back by cooperating in areas of technology development where previously they might have tried to compete. Three big carmakers – BMW (BMWG.DE), Daimler (DAIGn.DE) and […]
An international research team discovered a human skeleton during its ongoing excavation of the famous Antikythera Shipwreck (circa 65 B.C.). The shipwreck, which holds the remains of a Greek trading or cargo ship, is located off the Greek island of Antikythera in the Aegean Sea. The first skeleton recovered from the wreck site during the era of DNA analysis, this find could provide insight into the lives […]
By Ben Gruber | CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. NASA scientists are putting the finishing touches on a spacecraft designed to rendezvous with Asteroid Bennu in 2018 to find clues about the origins of life. “We are days away from encapsulating into our rocket faring and lifting this spacecraft on to the Atlas V vehicle and beginning the journey to Bennu and back,” Dante Lauretta, the […]
Just months after its public launch, the self-driving truck startup Otto has been purchased by the ride-hailing giant Uber for an undisclosed amount. According to a Bloomberg estimate, the deal could be valued at about $680 million. Uber, whose “anyone-can-be-a-cabbie” business model has already shaken up the taxi industry, is also looking to provide autonomous car services in cities. Later this month, the company plans to begin […]
Researchers at the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, using the liquid crystal elastomer technology, originally developed in the LENS Institute in Florence, demonstrated a bioinspired micro-robot capable of mimicking caterpillar gaits in natural scale. The 15-millimeter long soft robot harvests energy from green light and is controlled by spatially modulated laser beam. Apart from travelling on flat surfaces, it can also climb slopes, squeeze […]
