For recreational users, ecstasy has long been associated with a harmonious mindset. Now there’s research to back that up. In a new study of MDMA, ecstasy’s main ingredient, the drug indeed made people more cooperative—but only with trustworthy partners.

The next generation of wireless technology, fittingly known as 5G, is just around the corner. If you ask Verizon, it's already here. One thing the entire industry can agree on is it's going to change our lives. The industry, of course, really wants 5G to be a thing.

Electric-vehicle maker Workhorse announced today that it has begun initial production of a 100-mile range electric delivery truck called the NGEN-1000. The truck is meant to replace diesel-powered delivery trucks, but this vehicle weighs less than half of what a comparable internal combustion van usually weighs.

Pope Francis compared abortion to a mafia-style killing Wednesday, saying it's the equivalent of hiring a hit man to "take out a human life to solve a problem." Francis made the comments, among his strongest yet against abortion, during his weekly Wednesday audience dedicated to the commandment exhorting the faithful not to kill.

Sears, which was once the largest retailer in the world, is now reportedly facing bankruptcy. The company, which hasn’t turned a profit since 2010 and is $134 million in debt, recently approached several banks to prepare for bankruptcy filing, CNBC reported Wednesday. Shares plunged almost 20 percent on the news, and are set to open at a record low.

China has slashed the amount of cash some of its banks must hold in reserve as Beijing’s leadership seeks to bolster a flagging economy. As higher US interest rates and fears of a trade war piles pressure on economies around the world, China’s central bank said on Sunday that it was cutting the reserve requirement ratios (RRRs) by one percentage point from 15 October to lower financing costs and spur growth in the world’s second-biggest economy.

Death rates for female pigs in the US are rising fast, sending alarm bells ringing throughout the farming industry. The mortality rate rose from 5.8% to 10.2% on farms owning more than 125 sows between 2013-2016, according to one organisation that collects data across 800 companies.

Floodwaters on Friday breached a dam that contains a man-made lake connected to a Duke Energy power plant in North Carolina, possibly causing coal ash to flow into the nearby Cape Fear River, the company said. The floodwaters flowed from Cape Fear River into the northern side of Sutton Lake, an 1,100-acre reservoir built in 1972 to cool the L.V. Sutton Power Station. That water caused breaches in the dam on the south end of the lake, which was flowing back into the river, Duke Energy said in a p...

NASA has released the first image from its new space telescope. TESS, short for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, is helping scientists detect and study new planets in other solar systems. The telescope launched in April on a SpaceX rocket, and on July 25, TESS slipped into a unique orbit between Earth and the moon. The telescope is now scanning the night sky, staring down distant solar systems, and hunting for small, rocky, Earth-like planets.

Eager to make you uncomfortable, “Active Measures” piles on the ire as it outlines Russian efforts to manipulate world events, particularly the 2016 American presidential election. Directed by Jack Bryan, this documentary starts by summarizing Vladimir V. Putin’s career through the time of his election as Russia’s president. In the heaps of interviews, video clips and flow charts that follow, we hear of links between Mr. Putin and Donald J. Trump; of extensive work done by Paul Manafort,...

Gérard Depardieu, the enfant terrible of French cinema, has been spotted in the North Korean capital Pyongyang hours before the 70th anniversary of the country's birth. Journalists noticed the iconic actor in the Yangakdo hotel for tourists in the biggest city of the Communist state, which is due to mark its “Day of the Foundation of the Republic” on Sunday. A major military parade, huge rallies and the return of iconic “mass games” are expected. It is not known whether Mr Depardi...

If you know your way around a chemistry lab, you could help humanity set up shop on Mars — and make some serious cash in the process. NASA is challenging people throughout the United States to come up with a new and efficient way to convert carbon dioxide into glucose, a simple sugar. CO2 dominates the thin atmosphere of Mars, and energy-rich glucose is a great fuel for microbe-milking "bioreactors" that could manufacture a variety of items for future settlers of the Red Planet, NASA...

Climate change is one of the issues on which the late Sen. John McCain was roundly praised for bucking his party. But McCain was arguably the reason we don’t have a sane climate law in place right now. The Arizona Republican’s early work on climate change with then-Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.) was indeed groundbreaking, producing the 2003 and 2005 iterations of the proposed Climate Stewardship Act. While those bills had little chance of success, they were presented at a time when th...

It's a really important step to understanding the subtle ways genes actually work. In 2003, researchers sequenced the human genome for the first time, writing out all 3 billion of the DNA base pairs that dictate every aspect of our makeup. Now, a new team of researchers has figured out a way to create a 3D image of this valuable roadmap to human biology.

Electrically charged volcanic ash short-circuited Earth’s atmosphere in 1815, causing global poor weather and Napoleon’s defeat, says new research. Historians know that rainy and muddy conditions helped the Allied army defeat the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo. The June 1815 event changed the course of European history. Two months prior, a volcano named Mount Tambora erupted on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, killing 100,000 people and plunging the Earth into a...

A woman was detained in Dubai for three days with her four-year-old daughter after drinking a complimentary glass of wine on a flight from London, an NGO has said. Ellie Holman, a dentist originally from Sweden who lives in Sevenoaks, Kent, with her English partner, Gary, and their three children, was denied water and made to clean toilets while in custody, according to the human rights group Detained in Dubai.