As we head into 2019, leaving the chaos of this year behind, a major question remains unanswered when it comes to the state of Main Street, not just here but across the planet. If the global economy really is booming, as many politicians claim, why are leaders and their parties around the world continuing to get booted out of office in such a sweeping fashion?

Although wind turbines may be a valuable source of eco-friendly energy, they do have at least one drawback – bats are frequently killed by their spinning blades. A promising new system is designed to help keep that from happening, however, by producing an ultrasonic acoustic field. As most people likely already know, bats find their way around in the dark by emitting ultrasonic calls.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed “Nosey’s Law” on Friday, making it illegal to use wild and exotic animals, such as elephants, in traveling animal acts like circuses and carnivals. The law, named after a 36-year-old African elephant that suffered abuse during its time with a traveling circus, passed the New Jersey Senate with a 36-0 vote, and the state Assembly with a 71-3 vote, last month.

​An exciting new study has demonstrated how a new kind of CRISPR technique can increase the expression of certain genes, instead of the more traditional approach of cutting or editing DNA. The method was tested in mice, targeting genes associated with hunger, and stopped the animals becoming obese.​

The U.S. Department of Education is sending emails to about 15,000 people around the country telling them: You've got money. These are former students — and some parents of students — who took out loans for colleges that shut down between Nov. 1, 2013, and Dec. 4, 2018. About half attended campuses run by Corinthian Colleges. They will get their money back or have their debt forgiven — an amount estimated at $150 million, all told — under a provision called Automatic Closed School D...

Google chief Sundar Pichai has faced accusations of political bias from US politicians. Mr Pichai was being quizzed by members of the House Judiciary Committee about the way his tech firm runs it business. Google was accused of having "programmed" bias against conservative views into its algorithms. Mr Pichai denied the accusation saying he had "issues" with studies that claimed to show the firm's search results excluded right-wing views.

The San Diego man who gave away more than one-million-dollars of his own money to the victims of the Camp Fire shared with News 8 why he did it. Last month, Rancho Santa Fe developer Bob Wilson, 90, handed out $1,000 checks to 980 students and 105 teachers at Paradise High School, near Chico, California.

When Mark Zuckerberg, the chairman, CEO, and co-founder of Facebook, appeared before the European Parliament in May, I suggested to him that he had lost control of his company. As one of the few politicians ever to have confronted Zuckerberg in person, I was happy for the opportunity. But, much to my frustration, I did not receive a direct verbal response to any of my questions.

Airlines are failing to take up the most efficient planes in sufficient numbers to make a significant dent in their carbon dioxide emissions, a new study has found. The most efficient new aircraft models, such as the Boeing 787-9 and Airbus A350-900 and A320neo, can achieve substantial carbon savings over older models, but no airlines have invested sufficiently in the new types to reach the top levels of energy efficiency, according to a ranking by Atmosfair, a German NGO.

Atari, in partnership with Nightdive Studios, has announced a remaster of the 1997-released horror first-person shooter Blood for PC. Here are the details, via Atari: About Blood Originally released in 1997, Blood is a first-person shooter that helped redefine the genre and first introduced many elements now accepted as commonplace.

“Are we ready to open the doors?” an event producer in a skintight catsuit asked into a headset. As EDM blasted over a PA system, hundreds flooded into the ballroom of San Diego’s Town & Country resort: tanned-and-toned millennials, a group of friends from Venezuela, an engineer from Lagos, Botoxed retirees, and elderly couples pushing Zimmer frames. They took their seats, awaiting the good news:

It is the mysterious substance that turns worker honeybees into queens and fills the shelves of health food shops which tout its unverified powers to fend off ageing, improve fertility and reinvigorate the immune system. Whether royal jelly has genuine health benefits for humans is a matter for more research, but in a study scientists have cracked one of the most enduring puzzles surrounding the milky gloop: the secret behind its queen-maker magic.

PlayStation Classic owners can easily tweak the settings of their console if they have the right keyboard. The PlayStation Classic launched yesterday, and as expected, people are poking around the hardware looking for ways to hack the console. It turns out it's as easy as plugging in a keyboard and hitting the Escape key while inside a game.

(CNN)Cigarette use among American adults is at the lowest it's been since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started collecting data on the issue in 1965, according to a report released Thursday. "The good news is that cigarette smoking has reached unprecedented lows, which is a tremendous public health win, down to 14 percent from over 40 percent in the mid-1960s," said Brian King, senior author of the report and deputy director for research translation at the CDC�...

Three men from Northern Virginia have been charged with defrauding the Department of Defense of nearly $9 billion in contracts. Abdul Huda Farouki, 75, of McLean, his brother Mazen Farouki, 73, of Boyce and Salah Maarouf, 71, of Fairfax all pleaded not guilty to eight counts each of fraud and violating sanctions against Iran.

The publishing phenomenon of the fall and now Michelle Obama's memoir has sold more than two million copies in North America in two weeks.

Ambitious dreams have now become a reality as the Ocean Cleanup deploys its $20 million system designed to clean up the 1.8 trillion pieces of trash floating in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Check out another Forbes piece on how Ocean Cleanup aims to reuse and recycle the ocean plastic. The floating boom system was deployed on Saturday from San Francisco Bay and will undergo several weeks of testing before being hauled into action.

Seven European consumer groups filed complaints against Google with national regulators on Tuesday, accusing the internet giant of covertly tracking users’ movements in violation of an EU regulation on data protection. The complaints cited a study by the Norwegian Consumer Council that concluded the internet giant used “deceptive design and misleading information, which results in users accepting to be constantly tracked”.

Brightness from outdoor light sources at night is causing insomnia among older adults, a study says. The study findings, published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, showed that "light pollution," or inappropriate or excessive use of artificial, outdoor light at night, can create an unusual and unhealthy effect on humans.

Bernie Sanders thinks there's a problem with TV news coverage of climate change. “This is an issue of huge consequence and you would think that ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox would be talking about this every day, having the debate, ‘What do we do? Where do we go?’” he recently told HuffPost. “Clearly you aren’t seeing that debate.” Bernie Sanders is right.

There’s been a major development over the past 24 hours: another member of Congress just came out in support of the House Congressional Review Act resolution to overturn FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s net neutrality repeal. This is a big deal and could help push other lawmakers do the same, but we have to act fast because the deadline is just over a week away.

A missing 13-year-old girl from North Carolina has been found alive in Oklahoma, authorities say. Aubrey Acree, who was reported missing on Monday, was found safe more than 900 miles away in Checotah, Oklahoma on Wednesday after an alleged abduction. Police arrested 23-year-old Jacob Gardea, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, after finding Acree, according to a statement from the FBI and Rutherford County sheriff’s department.

Everything falls the same, from the lightest feather to the heaviest star. That’s part of the foundation of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Now, observations of three stars orbiting one another have confirmed that it holds up even for some of the heaviest objects in the universe.

If you have never heard of Shirley Curry then you are definitely doing yourself a disservice, even if you’re not a Skyrim fan as I personally subscribed a while ago just to listen to her calm, homely demeanor. This gaming-granny is probably the most loved 82-year-old YouTuber on the internet due to her utter passion for playing Skyrim, but Shirley’s recent comment on a YouTube video regarding The Elder Scrolls VI release window, truly broke the gaming communities heart by saying...

The only light in the house came from the glow of three computer monitors, and Christopher Blair, 46, sat down at a keyboard and started to type. His wife had left for work and his children were on their way to school, but waiting online was his other community, an unreality where nothing was exactly as it seemed. He logged onto his website and began to invent his first news story of the day.