Melania Trump was all smiles as she welcomed her family’s final Christmas tree to the White House. The maskless first lady appeared in the festive spirit despite being caught on tape earlier this year complaining “who gives a f*** about Christmas stuff.”

Facebook has brought its might down upon a small but scrappy academic team who've done brilliant work in exposing the company's failures to contain scams, rip-offs, and political disinformation. If the team doesn’t fully dismantle its public-interest research project and delete its data by November 30, Facebook says, it “may be subject to additional enforcement action.” Why? Because the $775 billion company wants to protect our privacy.

The California pipevine swallowtail butterfly is a wonder to behold. It begins its life as a tiny red egg, hatches into an enormous orange-speckled caterpillar, and then — after a gestation period of up to two years — emerges as an iridescent blue beauty. Brimming with oceanic tones, the creature’s wings are considered by collectors to be some of the most magnificent in North America.

Attorney General William Barr is set to file suit against Google today for illegal monopolization of the search and ad markets, kicking off one of the largest antitrust cases in US history. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the case will focus on search and search-focused advertising, rather than the company’s broader targeted ad business.

Popular culture has given us lots of ideas of what extraterrestrials might look like, behave, and interact with us. (Mostly by killing us, though occasionally by phoning home.) But it turns out a lot of serious scientists have thought about it, too. Here’s what the scientists think.

PlayStation 5 is said to be “exceptionally quiet”…

Microsoft will next year offer a new perpetual release of Microsoft Office for Mac and Windows that doesn't require a subscription to use, according to the software giant (via Windows Central). "Microsoft Office will also see a new perpetual release for both Windows and Mac, in the second half of 2021," said Microsoft in a blog post announcing the next version of its Exchange server, confirming that a new version of Office available as a one-time payment purchase is coming next ye...

If the vote is close, Donald Trump could easily throw the election into chaos and subvert the result. Who will stop him?

A geneticist from RUDN University studied the effect of Bifidobacterium (intestinal bacteria) on the inflammatory process and discovered that their surface protein is capable of stopping excessive or uncontrollable inflammation, like the one observed in COVID-19 patients. A fragment of this protein can be used as an anti-inflammatory medication when treating coronavirus and other diseases. The results of the study were published in the Anaerobe journal.

Jair Bolsonaro smiles down from a propaganda billboard at the entrance to this scruffy Amazon outpost, welcoming travelers to his “route to development”. But 20 months into Bolsonaro’s presidency – and a year after a devastating outbreak of Amazon fires caused global outrage – the fires are back, and many fear Brazil’s leader is instead steering his country towards environmental ruin.

The world’s fastest data transmission rate has been achieved by a team of UCL engineers who reached an internet speed a fifth faster than the previous record.

After a prolonged delay, American aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company, SpaceX, launched its ninth operational flight of internet satellites ‘Starlink.’ The launch comes at the cost of three delays reaching back to late June due to weather and technical issues. The lift-off was at 1:12 a.m. ET (10:12 p.m. PT) on Friday, when the company’s Falcon 9 rocket ascended from Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

Donald Trump has claimed children are “virtually immune” to the novel coronavirus while pushing for schools to reopen nationwide amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The president repeated his assertion that young people do not suffer severe symptoms associated with Covid-19 during a Wednesday morning interview on the network’s morning show, Fox & Friends. He also noted that older teachers "shouldn't be going in" during the pandemic, or as he put it: "Until this thing goes b...

From today, messages that have been forwarded through a chain of five or more people will display a magnifying glass button alongside them in the chat thread. Users who tap the button will be asked if they want to search the web to try and find news results or other sources of information about the content they have received.

When the Covid-19 pandemic made face masks an everyday essential, Japanese startup Donut Robotics spotted an opportunity. They created a smart mask — a high-tech upgrade to standard face coverings, designed to make communication and social distancing easier.