Last year Australia’s central bank hoped that several interest-rate cuts would mark a turning point for its slowing economy. That was before the worst bushfires in Australia’s history hit tourism, consumer confidence and growth forecasts for this year. There is now a good chance the bank will cut interest rates again soon.

Germany plans to phase out coal power by 2038. The embattled Hambach Forest is now protected, but some villages will still have to make way for the last open-pit mines. Activists and local residents are appalled.

Germany will pay utility companies billions of euros to speed up the shutdown of their coal-fired power plants as part of the country’s efforts to fight climate change, the government said Thursday. The agreement reached after late-night deliberations between federal ministers and representatives of four coal-mining states removes a key hurdle in Germany’s plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decades.

President Trump’s latest environmental rollback was met with strong resistance from a number of Democratic lawmakers and nearly every major environmental group Thursday, with critics lambasting the administration for seeking to unwind a bedrock environmental law.

As society moves away from fossil fuels, we will need more radical new technologies for storing energy to support renewable electricity generation.

The primetime tournament delivers the second-largest same-day audience for any nonsports program so far this season.

For Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee Croshaw recounts the most significant games of the 2010s decade, perhaps including some of your favorites. Or not.

Software company Mirriad has developed a way for adverts to be “inserted” into films and television shows streamed online. It uses artificial intelligence techniques to recognise objects in a scene and spot slots where branded goods and posters can be added without looking out of place. The aim is to ultimately tailor the product placements to individual viewers' interests.

They came to pray with their president, though in truth many came just to worship him. Donald Trump’s Friday launch of his so-called “coalition of evangelicals”, an attempt to shore up the support of the religious right ahead of November’s election, had the feel of any other campaign rally, except this time with gospel music.

You're late for work because you forgot to set the alarm clock embedded in your forearm. Rushing out of bed, you give your family members, located thousands of miles away, a quick virtual hug, and hop into the car -- ordering your ape chauffeur to step on it. It's a stressful day, sure, but at least your vacation to the Moon is just a few days away.

Democrat JB Pritzker says pardons represent first wave of thousands expected under state’s new marijuana legalization law

Sonos has given new meaning to "programmed obsolescence" with its "Recycle Mode" trade-up program.

We've long been taught that helping others helps ourselves. As Charles Dickens wrote, "No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another." And science has shown that altruistic behaviors -- defined as putting the well-being of others before our own without expecting anything in return -- actually do improve our health.

Media in Russia have been speculating about whether a journalist was forced to resign because she asked Vladimir Putin a surprise question at his annual televised news conference and later posted on social media her thoughts about whether the president used botox.

I saw this comment today on the internet and loved it. How appropriate for the day preceding the holiday in which two billion people all over the world celebrate the virginal birth of a first century demi-god. It is so very good and so very true! Why is it that no matter how much evidence we present to Christians which debunks their silly superstitions, they always come up with convoluted excuses for holding on to them? Is it because they are stupid? No.

Russia has successfully tested a country-wide alternative to the global internet, its government has announced. Details of what the test involved were vague but, according to the Ministry of Communications, ordinary users did not notice any changes. The results will now be presented to President Putin.

The secret to cleaning up contaminated water may lie in the cheap, common polyurethane foam used in mattresses. In a study published in the journal Nature Sustainability this week, scientists tested the ability of the material, enhanced with a special coating, to soak up tiny droplets of oil suspended in water. They found that it consistently captured almost all of the oil in under three hours.

The homeless population in the US increased 2.7% this year largely because of a surge in unsheltered and chronically homeless individuals in California, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) said in a news release Friday.

Elcomsoft, a company which sells tools to law enforcement agencies to access locked iPhones, says that it is now able to extract some data from devices running any version of iOS from 12.0 to 13.3. It relies on the checkm8 exploit of a vulnerability present in most A-series chips, which made possible the Checkra1n jailbreak. Crucially, Elcomsoft says that the $1,495 tool works even when the iPhone is in its most secure state, known as BFU…

The media industry continued to execute cuts in December and November as Verizon, Gannett, Highsnobiety, and the CBC reduced headcounts. The cuts followed large rounds of layoffs and buyouts earlier in the year from companies including BuzzFeed and Vice Media.

The herpes simplex virus, commonly known as the cold sore virus, is a devious microbe. It enters the body through regions lined with mucous membranes—mouth, nose and genitals—but quickly establishes lifelong viral hideouts inside nerve cells.

Most of the world’s seas are in some kind of environmental trouble, but few have declined as quickly or from such precipitous heights as the Mediterranean’s eastern edge. Although it midwifed some of history’s greatest civilizations, the eastern Med has become a grubby embodiment of the current littoral states’ failures. Where the ancients sailed, many of their successors now junk industrial waste.

The article reported that an American Enterprise Institute survey of more than 2,500 Americans showed “little evidence of a … surge in religious interest” among millennials, even though many now are married with children and have mortgages. AEI’s survey reported that data suggested several key reasons...