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Drought in southern Africa is threatening electricity generation at Africa’s biggest hydropower plant, the Cahora Bassa dam in Mozambique. Water levels at the reservoir are dangerously low. Cahora Bassa was only 34% full as of the end of November, according to the National Water Directorate. Pedro Couto, head of the plant, told staff in November […]

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, a film that you will probably see, comes out on Friday in the United States. Yesterday, Disney’s Lucasfilm lifted the review embargo on the highly anticipated Star Wars prequel, unleashing a flood of takes—mostly positive, with a few glaring dissents. Taking place shortly before the first Star Wars film, […]

A Berlin, Germany, startup called Locomore has launched the world’s first crowdfunded train service. The renovated 1970s train, with retro orange-and-brown livery and the words “fair, ecological, cheap” emblazoned on the side, pulled out of Stuttgart station for its maiden voyage to Berlin via Frankfurt and Hanover on Wednesday morning. A one-way Stuttgart-Berlin ticket with […]

After a conversation with a bevy of tech leaders today, US president-elect Donald Trump will pull aside two of the country’s most admired corporate titans, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, for a separate meeting, a spokesman for the presidential transition said. The transition team also announced today that Musk would be […]

The tiny island of Idjwi in the Democratic Republic of Congo has a population of over 250,000 people. Yet until as recently as May of this year, fewer than ten households had a computer, and none had internet connectivity. Thanks to the efforts of a nonprofit organization called Ensemble Pour La Difference and an innovation […]

“Love” is a word rarely associated with commercial airlines, especially in the US. Consumers rank several carriers that dominate the American skies among the lowest in the world. There’s an exception: Virgin America. Less than a decade after its maiden flight in 2007, the airline has won top marks and awards (pdf) for flyer-friendly service, […]

A future where we can press a button, or tell a one-foot cylinder to order whatever we’re running low on, and have a flying robot deliver it faster than Domino’s can deliver a pizza is slowly coming into view. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced Dec. 12 that the company had completed its first fully autonomous […]

The koalas are growing up. Google’s parent company Alphabet announced today that its self-driving car project will be spun out into a new standalone business under the Alphabet umbrella, called Waymo. It had been gestating in X, the company’s “moonshot” lab, for the last few years. In a post on Medium, Waymo CEO John Krafcik […]Read More

Silicon Valley’s boldfaced names are heading east to pay their respects to the president-elect at Trump Tower. Among the expected attendees at the Dec. 14 closed-door meeting: Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty (who wrote […]

The ultimate goal of any conservation scientist is to make sure the planet maintains a healthy degree of biodiversity, or different types of life. That means keeping track not just of the number of animals, but also the number of species. The easiest way to define a species is to look at who mates with […]

Reindeer do not drive a flying sleigh on Christmas eve. But they may yet deliver great gifts to humans. Medical researchers are studying deer because they do something few other animals do: sprouting and shedding antlers annually. All male deer—and female reindeer too—regenerate antlers. With the antlers, the animals also grow new nerve cells, which […]

After US president-elect Donald Trump spoke with Kanye West during their intimate meeting at Trump Tower today, it seems that West has—out of courtesy, respect, or perhaps, intimidation—decided to push back his burgeoning presidential campaign by four years. “I feel it is important to have a direct line of communication with our future president if […]Read More