Nearly 50 years ago, three chemists named Mario Molina, Sherwood Rowland and Paul Crutzen found evidence that chlorofluorocarbons, chemicals known as CFCs and released from aerosol sprays, were weakening the ozone layer that functions as the earth’s natural sunscreen protecting humans, animals and plants from harmful radiation.

Swedish mobile telecoms company Ericsson has agreed to pay over $1billion to resolve probes into corruption, including the bribing of government officials, the U.S. Department of Justice said. The bribery took place over many years in countries including China, Vietnam and Djibouti, the department said Friday. The total charges include a criminal penalty of more than $520million, plus $540million to be paid to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in a related matter.

It is the stuff of financial nightmares. You get one digit wrong on the sort code, and send a huge amount of cash to the wrong person. They refuse to return it, and the bank washes its hands of the matter, blaming you for the mistake. That’s what happened to Peter Teich in a case that reveals shocking lapses in Britain’s banking system.

Even by the standards of the Reddit advice-sharing community, the story was a doozy: A poster named AwayPerformer, on the popular "Am I The Asshole" (AITA) subreddit, complained that his neighbor wouldn't cook dinner for him.

When humans started to tame dogs, cats, sheep, and cattle, they may have continued a tradition that started with a completely different animal: us. A new study—citing genetic evidence from a disorder that in some ways mirrors elements of domestication—suggests modern humans domesticated themselves after they split from their extinct relatives, Neanderthals and Denisovans, approximately 600,000 years ago.

The Russian government has blocked the stock photography website Shutterstock, according to the English-language news site Meduza. Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, explained that Shutterstock was blocked for “insulting state symbols” a likely reference to photos on the site showing miniature Russian flags planted in dogshit.

Apple has patented a new sound positioning system that may become a key part of its augmented reality Apple Glasses. And in fact, it may be crucial to turn its AR into a must have device. As Patently Apple reports, the patent recently filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office first describes the troubles of multiparty audio conference calls...

Members of London church group SPAC Nation were encouraged to commit fraud and financially exploited by pastors who signed them up as a guarantors for loans, it is alleged. The group has previously been lauded by police for diverting young people from gang culture, but ex-members tell a different story. SPAC Nation's Leader, Tobi Adeboyega, said there has been no wrongdoing or mismanagement on his part.

Fountains of virtual ink have been spilled over the Pixel 4's stamina and how the phone's battery life isn't all that it could be. Me? After living with the Pixel 4 for a few weeks now, I'm not quite as down on its staying power as some folks were whilst working up early reviews of the device. I think somewhere between "okay" and "borderline acceptable" sums up my experience with the phone's endurance thus far:

Though the term social network can mean the network of friends, family, and neighbors we deal with on a regular basis, it can be much more than that. Many people describing their own social networks may also include the people they interact with online, professional contacts, old classmates, or casual acquaintances.

The cartel members showed up in this verdant stretch of western Mexico armed with automatic weapons and chainsaws. Soon they were cutting timber day and night, the crash of falling trees echoing throughout the virgin forest. When locals protested, explaining that the area was protected from logging, they were held at gunpoint and ordered to keep quiet.

In any field of business or industry, the prevailing rule has always been that if there isn't a law against it, you are free to do it. If there are no rules protecting a resource, you are free to use or take as much of it as you want to further your own ends. Until regulatory measures are put into place, disruptors and innovators are free to regulate themselves, often to the extraordinary detriment of those who depended on those now-scarce resources.

An analysis of previously unpublished data raises serious questions about Stanley Milgram’s landmark obedience experiments. The findings, which have been published in Social Psychology Quarterly, indicate that many people were willing to engage in seemingly reprehensible behavior because they saw through the researchers’ cover story. Those who believed the cover story, on the other hand, tended to be more defiant.

Nearly a million people are living with dementia in the UK, towns from Skipton to Falmouth are becoming “dementia friendly” and care homes are engaging residents through poetry classes and pony visits. As the ignorance and stigma begin to fade, studies of the condition proliferate and it has developed from an unspoken possibility in literature – is King Lear a study of declining brain function? – to a major plot device.

By Rhi Willmot. Information we later discover to be false is harder to ignore when it fills an explanatory “gap” in a story.

People without religious belief continue to be persecuted and in some cases executed in countries around the world, says a new study. The 2019 Freedom of Thought Report by Humanists International has revealed 69 countries still have 'blasphemy' laws with severe penalties for those leaving a religion or expressing non-religious beliefs.