Searches of travellers' laptops and mobile phones at the US border have nearly quadrupled since 2015, digital rights groups have claimed in a federal lawsuit. The searches are often warrantless and therefore "unconstitutional", allege the plaintiffs. The lawsuit says that border agents are attempting to enforce laws beyond their purview of customs and immigration.

You probably don't know second leading cause of cancer, because the scientists have only recently made the connection.  It's obesity.

We have no place in our culture for this kind of grief. Gabrielle was still there – it just wasn’t the her I had loved

According to the agency, a contractor lied about the quality of its metals for years, causing two failed rocket launches.

Dangerous asteroids flying past Earth are not rare, and more meteor strikes happen than the public is aware of, the head of Nasa has said. At the International Academy of Astronautics’ Planetary Defence Conference on Monday, Nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine said: “I wish I could tell you these events are exceptionally unique … but they’re not.” He said more work is now underway to protect our planet from the impact of meteor strikes.

We project the future accumulation of profiles belonging to deceased Facebook users. Our analysis suggests that a minimum of 1.4 billion users will pass away before 2100 if Facebook ceases to attract new users as of 2018. If the network continues expanding at current rates, however, this number will exceed 4.9 billion.

The first organisms may have evolved before the rocky planets formed. By Mike Wall.

Fisherman in Norway raised alarm after white beluga whale sporting unusual strapping began harassing their boats

An asteroid slammed down and did away with all the dinosaurs, paving the way for such developments as the human race, capitalism, and posting on the internet: it’s the story we all know and love. Yet if things had shaken out differently—if the asteroid had stayed in its place, and the dinosaurs allowed to proceed with their business—what would things have looked like?

A new study by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University examined students’ genetic risk of alcohol use, roommates’ drinking habits and the perception of peer drinking.

Akihito, who said he was too old for the role, is the first Japanese emperor to stand down in 200 years.

When I was a kid, in the pre-internet days of the 1980s, my screen time was all about Nickelodeon. My favorite show was “You Can’t Do That on Television.” It was a kind of sketch show; the most common punchline was a bucket of green slime being dropped on characters’ heads. It was pretty dumb. It was also created by professional writers, actors, and crew, who were decently paid; many of them belonged to unions.

One day last June, Doug Boss pulled into a police-station parking lot to meet a stranger from Craigslist. His purpose: to buy used insulin pumps. Boss has type 1 diabetes, and he relies on a small pump attached to his body to deliver continuous doses of insulin that keep him alive. To be clear, he didn’t need to buy used medical equipment on Craigslist. Boss, who is 55 and works in IT in Texas, has health insurance. He even has a new, in-warranty pump sitting at home.

SpaceX just received approval from the FCC to launch 4,425 satellites into space to build a low earth orbit network of satellites to sell home Internet. Unlike current satellite Internet, these devices will be in a far lower orbit and offer far faster speeds without the data caps current satellite systems use.

Boys ages 10-17 killed themselves at a much higher rate in the month after Netflix's show about suicide was released in 2017. Researchers attribute an extra 195 deaths that year to the series.

Remember a couple of weeks ago when we learned that humans were monitoring Amazon Alexa commands, essentially spying on users in the name of product improvement? Well, we’ve got some more bad news about the always-on microphone that we’ve all invited into our homes. Employees at Amazon can “easily” discover any user’s home address.

China aims to complete and start generating power from an experimental nuclear fusion reactor by around 2040, a senior scientist involved in the project said, as it works to develop and commercialize a game-changing source of clean energy.

The Whanganui River in New Zealand is a legal person. A nearby forest is too. Soon, the government will grant a mountain legal personhood as well. Here's how it happened, and what it may mean.

A ground-breaking project in California could see 250,000 people freed from their criminal record this year.

A literature professor at Manchester Metropolitan University recently unearthed a legendary manuscript: a 200-page work titled The Clockwork Condition by A Clockwork Orange’s Anthony Burgess. Don’t get too excited, Droog lovers. Colin Dwyer at NPR reports that Condition is not a sequel to the cult novel, but rather a meditation on the “condition of modern man” that was to be structured similarly to Dante’s Inferno. The manuscript was also something of a cash grab. After the release and success of Stanley Kubrick’s film version of book in 1971, a publisher reached out to Burgess...

Internet blackouts deprive people of impartial information and crucial connections with loved ones, without delivering improved safety or stability.

Online shopping and the gig economy haven't just disrupted traditional brick-and-mortar business, they're disrupting the way U.S. job growth, wage data and inflation are tracked, asserts a new paper from the Dallas Federal Reserve. What it means: There has been an increase in the number of workers in the gig economy who are either working as contractors or are self-employed, but report themselves as employed. These workers often have less bargaining power and lower wages than full-time employees.

If this story is anything, it’s a reminder to spend time with your family, especially your grandparents. Soak up every second, because these are the Magical Moments that make life worth living. When a California teen didn’t have a date for prom, her grandfather stepped in. Kaylah Bell, 17, of Lancaster, said she didn’t land a date in time for the big dance, so she asked her grandfather, Alvin Bell, to take pictures with her. She didn’t expect him to show up in a matching suit.

The average job in the U.S. will expand its workforce by 7% through 2026, but not all industries will be lucky enough to be adding staff in the future. About 17% of the 818 occupations the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks will actually lose more workers than they add between 2016 and 2026. The number of metal and plastic machines workers is expected to drop 9% in that decade. While other careers, such as locomotive firers, typists and postmasters will suffer a worse fate.

How can I describe the fine of between $3 billion and $5 billion that Facebook is likely to pay to the Federal Trade Commission — which will doubtlessly be touted as its largest ever — to settle the government’s inquiry into what the social networking giant called “our platform and user data practices”? How about: It’s a parking ticket. Not a speeding ticket. Not a DUI — or a DUI(P), data under the influence of Putin. A parking ticket.

When navigating through dark environments, rats swish their whiskers against nearby objects to figure out where they are. As the animals explore, they use this sense of touch to build maps of unfamiliar places. Cockroaches and blind crayfish use their antennae in a similar approach. Now, the go-by-feel strategy has inspired the creation of a robotic catheter capable of finding its way through the beating heart of lives pigs during a surgical procedure without the help of a surgeon’s guiding hand.

The ‘smoker’s disease’ is affecting more and more people who have never lit up in their lives – and it is a particular problem among women. What do experts think is going on?

It's not the best layout, so why do most of us still use it?

These plastics can easily be disassembled to chemical building blocks.