2026 News Archive

Security camera footage shows doctors shielding a patient on the operating table as last month's magnitude 6.8 quake shook Kumamoto General Hospital.

Scientists trained artificial intelligence on libraries of DNA and then asked the model to create recipes for viral genomes. Sixteen of them were viable, yielding new viruses.

In Mato Grosso, Brazil, capybaras wandered into the building, but they were polite during the incursion.

Scientists made 16 successful viruses that had their genetic code designed by artificial intelligence.

NPR's science podcast rounds up new studies about a wandering black hole, humans' ability to detect AI-generated text, and the impact of cougars on vehicle-deer collisions.

Snails are slimy. But there's more to that goo of theirs than meets the eye. It's a fact that may help inspire the creation of new materials.

Amateur and professional astronomers pointed their telescopes at the impact site. Most did not detect anything.

Polls show most Americans think young adults today have it harder financially than past generations. A majority of parents help their grown children with expenses, even if it hurts their own finances.

Researchers say breakthrough offers hope for new medicines but also raises urgent biosecurity questions Scientists have made the first viruses designed by artificial intelligence in a milestone that raises hopes for new medicines but also concerns over how to ensure the technology remains safe. The viruses are specific kinds known as bacteriophages, which only infect bacteria and are used around the world to treat patients with persistent infections. In lab tests, a cocktail of the AI-designed viruses killed E coli bugs that were resistant to natural bacteriophages...

Move to raise levy on goods made with polysilicon aims to protect domestic US supply chains from China, the major producer Donald Trump has ordered a new 15% tariff on imported products made of polysilicon, an important ingredient in microchip manufacturing that is primarily produced by China. The new tariff, which will take effect on 4 December, is aimed at supporting US chip and solar panel supply chains to compete with Beijing on artificial intelligence and energy...

The retailer has been around for 50 years but struggled to compete with newer rivals such as Amazon. Can its new owners turn it around?

Scientists say global blazes account for 10% of UK’s particle pollution – and climate crisis could make the problem worse Smoke rising above wildlife habitats, thousands of people evacuated and homes and livelihoods reduced to ashes – this is fast becoming the defining image of Britain and European summers. Dr Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, said: “Recent wildfires in south-western Europe produced large quantities of smoke, which caused significant degradation air quality across southern France and central regions of Spain...

Under pressure from far-right factions, European Union politicians blamed Spain for the mass crossing at its border with Morocco last week. Their reaction missed the larger human tragedy at play, say migration researchers.

U.S. President Donald Trump signed two executive orders on Thursday in a new but narrower attempt to curtail birthright citizenship, once again challenging a provision of the U.S. Constitution after the Supreme Court rejected his previous effort.

Astronauts Anil Menon and Jessica Meir ventured out to install a mounting hardware for the future addition of solar arrays to the space station.

For something different in August, we bring you ideas, rituals and activities to add joy to your days.

Canada’s prime minister laughed off Trump’s description of Canada but suggested that trade talks between the two countries are acrimonious.

The Barbican, a once divisive housing complex in central London, is now considered an architectural masterpiece. Residents are fighting plans for a 20-story building next door.

The US president is suing the BBC over a controversial episode of Panorama broadcast in 2024.

Towle was known for chronicling her hopes and struggles as a young person living with cancer.

Cortis's plea has drawn mixed reactions in a fandom that's obsessed with capturing every moment.

Knox, who was convicted and later acquitted of the murder of a British student, said she does not downplay the seriousness of Meredith Kercher's death.

Hill says the band have gone through "an incredible healing process", raising the prospect of new music.

The first mRNA-based flu shot to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration will be ready for the upcoming flu season. Moderna, the vaccine's maker

Supplements are a $70 billion industry that's growing fast. But there's little evidence that many supplements actually do what they promise.

Parity for people with physical and psychological ailments has been promised for years. New neighbourhood clinics are a step in the right direction The rise in children and young people with mental health problems makes this week’s announcement of a new network of community clinics in England particularly welcome. A&E departments have recorded an increase in difficult-to-manage symptoms including aggression and hallucinations. New specialist walk-in mental health services should take some of the pressure off. The bringing forward of a deadline for ending out-of-area acute placements, and a pledge to reduce waiting times for children, are also positive. Declining mental health was among the key themes of Alan Milburn’s interim report on young people and work. It is a big factor behind the rise in claims for illness and disability benefits. Children’s anxiety and other psychological difficulties are also among the many challenges facing schools. Recent years have seen steep rises in emotionally based school avoidance, as well as in autism and neurodiversity. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please..

A die-off of seabirds has some experts thinking an El Niño weather pattern is to blame, a look at data centers and pollution, and more climate news.

When temperatures get to 40C inside, and French building regulations won’t even allow shutters, these tenants’ listed homes are simply unlivable The population of Firminy, south-east France, has been dwindling for decades. Its recent history is one of factory closures in a region built by steel, and locals tell me that many people leave for better opportunities in neighbouring Saint-Étienne, or to live in the Haute-Loire’s countryside. On the top of a hill, however, stands Firminy’s pride: l’Unité d’Habitation, an imposing tower of concrete designed by Le Corbusier. The architect’s final project is an oddity – a building for people, where two-thirds of the apartments are dedicated to habitations à loyer modéré (or HLM – social housing); but also a piece of history, whose facade and roof were listed as monuments historiques in 1993...

Much of the continent is battling wildfires and drought during a summer of extreme heat..

It was the fifth such deal struck by the administration to get companies to drop offshore wind projects.

Since April, the Defense Department has halted all military reviews for wind projects, stalling dozens of projects nationwide.

A new study is out that looked at various ways to try to tackle poverty in Ethiopia. Turns out, cash helps, but the impact of therapy is less clear.

Seoul's lunar orbiter captured images of the Moon before and after part of SpaceX's rocket hit its surface on Wednesday.

The president has called the extreme heat a "national disaster" and ordered agencies to mobilise all resources.

The bald eagle, who has gained worldwide fame as the protagonist of a nest live-stream in California, has been diagnosed with anaemia.

Habitats belonging to snakes and rare moths have been destroyed after the wildfires this summer.

Google Finance and Apple’s Stocks app have added new features over the years to make them more useful for tracking the markets and your investments.

The two men, users of the platform Kick, received suspended sentences and fines.

The move lifts a rule that said a single television-station owner could not reach more than 39 percent of U.S. households.

Unitree Robotics wants to raise about $900 million in an I.P.O. that tests market interest in humanoid robots, a technology that wows but has yet to prove its viability.

What might a modern day equivalent of Isaac Asimov’s laws of robotics look like? Guided by the author, I propose the three laws of AI Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk predicted in July that legions of AI-powered robots would dominate the physical world and that AI might not take orders from people any more. He also offered an alternative vision in which there would be agreement for a collective objective to make AI benign by imbuing it with a love of the truth and a desire for humanity to prosper, and that governments might have to enforce this objective. Governments around the world are belatedly starting to act on AI. In the US, President Trump’s administration is delaying and restricting the distribution of the most powerful frontier AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic. In the European Union, AI regulations promulgated in 2024 came into effect this year. However, these actions are a long way short of requiring the kind of guardrails that would imbue AIs with a desire for humanity to prosper...

Ruling comes as part of second phase of landmark trial that found social media company enabled harm against users A New Mexico court has ordered Meta, the parent company of Facebook, to pay $567m into a fund aimed at redressing adverse mental health impacts from the social media giant’s platforms. The Thursday ruling comes as a part of the second phase of a landmark trial the social media giant lost in March. At the time, a jury found that the company knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms, and imposed the maximum penalty: a $375m fine...

The time-honoured tradition of standing up with a drink, gossiping and putting the world to rights is under threat. If councillors ban it, we’ll all lose out It is unbelievable: unconscionable. Westminster Council is moving against “vertical drinking” in pubs, starting with Soho. It claims drinking standing up is noisy and disruptive. It makes pubs, the council says, boisterous places where customers crowd round bars, get drunk and become pains in the neck in the street outside. Westminster’s new draft licences would require pubs to be only for seating, to have “table service in place of open bar space”. Pub users should, presumably, sit down, shut up and wait to be served, like decent Westminster people who use wine bars. Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist..

The move aims to protect US firms as they face increasing competition from China's chip industry.

The airline industry wants passengers to be careful when travelling with lithium ion batteries.

Authorities say an explosive drone found near a jet in Leipzig was a "serious attack" on Germany - amid reports the Ukrainian aircraft was loaded with ammunition.

Vietnam is grappling with a surge in visitors, testing its Soviet-style criminal justice system as it tries to supercharge its economy through tourism.

The country’s new Trump-endorsed president takes office on Friday. Sweeping plans to target drug traffickers with U.S. help are already underway.

In interviews, more than 20 people who tried to break an Israeli blockade described beatings, electric shocks and other abuse after being captured. Israel denied the accusations.

As the harm caused by their products becomes more evident, manufacturers are resorting to denial and lawsuits to keep regulation at bay It is rare for people to drop dead holding the incriminating packaging, but there is no longer any serious doubt that consuming a diet of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) risks a catalogue of life-shortening illnesses from heart disease and stroke to diabetes and cancer. Because these diseases are degenerative over time, the food and drink industry has been able to argue for decades that its UPFs are fine in moderation. It would have us believe that there is no such thing as a “junk” individual food, only poor diets overall, and that its products therefore should not be subject to any restrictions. Just as with climate breakdown and smoking, the science on harm caused by foods high in fat, salt and sugar is now settled, but the industry continues to deny and distract to delay action. Two weeks ago, a new report highlighted the lengths to which big food has gone to stop governments implementing policies that would tackle the global crisis of diet-related disease. Felicity Lawrence is a former Guardian special correspondent, and is author of Not on the Label: What Really Goes Into the Food on Your Plate..

Iran's parliament is reviewing a plan to ban ships linked to the U.S., Israel and other "hostile countries" from transiting the Strait of Hormuz. The Trump administration has rejected the plan.

The motive is still under investigation, though there were reports he had been stressed in connection with school.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians in el-Obeid are being battered by relentless drone strikes and face critical water shortages and a worsening cholera outbreak, while women and girls are reporting high rates of sexual violence.

After deadly tremors a decade ago, Kumamoto built earthquake-resistant buildings and even trained locals in search and rescue.

The conflict may have slowed, but not stopped, Iran’s nuclear program, officials and experts said.

A student killed his grandparents before opening fire at his high school and shooting himself, the authorities said. The episode revived a debate about gun laws.

Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian reportedly met Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei in a dark, tinted-window car at a secret Tehran location, later asking whether the voice he heard truly belonged to the leader.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have called for an urgent scale-up of the community-led Ebola response in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with stronger early detection, contact follow up, access to care, support for frontline health workers and faster delivery of resources to affected communities.

‘Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here? We always take people from Somalia.” In this 2018 meeting with senators, President...

"If we do continue to advance the technology of these models then they’ll have a major positive impact on humanity."