Before the coronavirus pandemic hit, Saurav Dutt smoked up to six cigarettes a day. The 38-year-old author from London first took up the habit as a way to unwind from college exams. But as the years went by he found that it helped him focus, and it became essential to his writing process.

Planet-killing asteroids! Alien invasions! Sneaky dinosaurs! These were the existential threats that 45 years of summer blockbusters had pre-programmed us to expect. Instead, something rather more insidious wiped 2020’s May-to-August movie slate clean, depriving audiences of their usual buffet of unmissable communal spectacles and/or over-marketed idiotainment. Starved of popcorn entertainment, it seems natural to look back hungrily. So what were the most explosive movie summers of the past?

Are you interested in buying a home but don't have a significant income? Never fear with interest rates so attractive you could find yourself joining the ranks of homeownership to be easier than you originally thought.

A Dutch public broadcaster got rid of targeted digital ads—and its revenues went way up.

Starbucks has launched a new iced peanut butter drink that can be customized as vegan — the Peanut Butter Cup Frappuccino.

Facebook employees collected evidence showing the company is giving right-wing pages preferential treatment when it comes to misinformation. And they’re worried about how the company will handle the president’s falsehoods in an election year.

When I ate meat, if someone were to have asked me if I loved animals, I would have said an enthusiastic ‘yes!’ After all, I adored playing with dogs and cats I would come across, enjoyed feeding squirrels and birds with my grandmother and liked watching wildlife documentaries with my father.

A new analysis of ancient genomes suggests that different branches of the human family tree interbred multiple times, and that some humans carry DNA from an archaic, unknown ancestor. Melissa Hubisz and Amy Williams of Cornell University and Adam Siepel of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory report these findings in a study published 6th August in PLOS Genetics.

Simon Cowell is said to have undergone surgery after breaking his back in a fall from an electric bike in California. The music mogul’s spokeswoman said he was was in hospital and was “doing fine”. “Simon had a fall from his bike, testing his new electric bike in the courtyard at his house in Malibu with his family. He hurt his back and was taken to hospital. He’s doing fine, he’s under observation and is in the best possible hands,” she said on Saturday.

Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been critical of Big Tech, admonishing Facebook for mishandling misinformation and saying internet companies should lose a central legal protection. But his campaign has quietly welcomed onto its staff and policy groups people who have worked with or for Silicon Valley giants, raising concerns among the industry’s critics that the companies are seeking to co-opt a potential Biden administration.

Two tests by AAA during the past two years show that partially automated driving systems don't always function properly, so the auto club is recommending that car companies limit their use. Researchers with AAA recently tested systems from five manufacturers over a distance of 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers), and said they encountered problems every eight miles (13 kilometers).

In the runup to World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt enlisted the entire US economy in an effort to scale up production of war material. All of the country’s resources were bent to the task. In 1939, the US had 1,700 aircraft and no bombers; in 1945, it had 300,000 military aircraft and 18,500 B–24 bombers.

Plus: A Canon ransomware hack, a nasty Twitter bug, and more of the week's top security news.

Scientists put a price tag on guano's global benefits, which range from agricultural fertilizer to coral reef enricher

Over the past decade, Umeshwar Singh Amra has witnessed his homeland descend into a battleground. The war being waged in Hasdeo Arand, a rich and biodiverse Indian forest, has pitted indigenous people, ancient trees, elephants and sloths against the might of bulldozers, trucks and hydraulic jacks, fighting with a single purpose: the extraction of coal.

Gates said to understand the impact climate change will have, we need to "look at COVID-19 and spread the pain out over a much longer period of time."

A group of of ruling party lawmakers will reportedly push to restrict the app in the name of data security, but the government says it isn't considering a ban.

Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is an “ocean world” with a big reservoir of salty water under its frigid surface, scientists said in findings that raise interest in this dwarf planet as a possible outpost for life.

Lichtman was one of the few forecasters who projected in 2016 Trump win while also correctly predicting he would be impeached as president.

A U.S. federal judge sentenced Anthony Levandowski, the engineer who triggered a high-profile legal battle between Google parent Alphabet and Uber, to 18 months in prison Tuesday after being found guilty on one count of stealing trade secrets from Alphabet’s self-driving car unit Waymo before becoming the head of Uber’s self-driving car unit.