A little-known Indian company is launching the cheapest smartphone in the world today. The Freedom 251, manufactured by Ringing Bells, is priced at just Rs 251 (under $4). Affordable and feature-rich, it could play a significant role in connecting In ...

Duane Dimock once paid $450 for a box of cereal. But this wasn't the makings of a week of very expensive breakfasts: Rather, it was the box itself that he was after. Dimock belongs to a small niche group of hobbyists who collect cereal boxes, an ...

IN 2012, IBM Watson went to medical school. So said The New York Times, announcing that the tech giant’s artificially intelligent question-and-answer machine had begun a “stint as a medical student” at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. ...

More than two-thirds of the world's population faces water scarcity for at least one month during the year.

When Philip Seymour Hoffman died of an accidental drug overdose on February 2, 2014 at age 46, it felt like a huge part of the past two decades of cinema had disappeared as well, as if all the wonderful characters he created were on some level buried ...

There are few things as thrilling as a 60% off sign, particularly when it’s hanging above something you actually want to buy. But the tactics stores use to give you that heady “I just got a bargain!” rush are under siege. Chains from Kohl’s to Nordst ...

Bronson Blessington was just 14 when he committed one of Australia’s most shocking crimes. But is it right to put a child behind bars indefinitely?

Since 2014, at least 49 deaths have been precipitated by taking a selfie. Breaking down the data behind them yields an interesting story.

According to a new poll, Tom Hanks is America's favorite movie star. Hanks, whose latest film "The Bridge of Spies" is up for six Oscars, topped a Harris Poll...

The most drastic change to Facebook in years was born a year ago during an off-site at the Four Seasons Silicon Valley, a 10-minute drive from headquarters. Chris Cox, the social network’s chief product officer, led the discussion, asking each of the ...

A children's picture book about George Washington and his slaves has been pulled by publishers Scholastic. A Birthday Cake for George Washington tells the story of Washington's slave Hercules, a cook, and his daughter. It had been criticise ...

Cavendish bananas saved the entire banana industry a century ago. The then most planted variety “Gros Michel” was being wiped out by the soil-borne fungal pathogen Fusarium oxysporum. The fungus was causing Panama disease, severe and progressive wilt ...

There’s a hot new gadget from Japanese startup Logbar debuting at CES in Las Vegas this year, and while it’s brilliant by itself, the way the company demo-ed it was not quite.

In many parts of the US, Americans of different races aren't neighbours - they don't go to the same schools, they don't always have access to the same services.

“Hey, we need the police stat, to the hospital. We have a family member with a gun.” This is the call that a staff member at Tomball Regional Medical Center put in 11 months ago, when George Pickering of Pinehurst, Tex., angrily pulled out a 9 mm han ...

Ford and Google could be planning joint venture to get self-driving cars on road faster.

The British are supposed to have rotten teeth. Sure, Brits sometimes sound smarter than us, they know how to handle themselves around silverware and some of their apartments (nay, flats) are older than our form of democracy. But we have the better te ...

A trifecta of vulnerabilities has been found in software preinstalled on a number of Dell, Toshiba, and Lenovo consumer and enterprise PCs and tablets, affecting millions of users. A proof-of-concept that was posted online (which we are not linking t ...

I would have killed for a tarantula as a child. Tarantulas are furry, they come in way more colors than the capybara, and they're very, very strange — what's not to love! I never did receive one, to my sister's great relief, but I' ...

Mobile communications professor Harald Haas has theorized about using LED bulbs to transmit data for years. Now, the technology is a reality. If Harald Haas is right, in just a few years we’ll all be getting internet through our lightbulbs. Haas, a p ...