Tag: All Regions

The closure of university chemistry departments and courses in the UK is leading to the emergence of ‘cold spots’, areas where the subject cannot be studied within a reasonable travel time, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has warned. Currently, these chemistry cold spots, where travel time by car to the nearest university with an active chemistry undergraduate course exceeds an hour (see figure below), are emerging in East Yorkshire and the Humber, with the closure of the University of…

By Emmanuel Kwada ‎TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media giant, is under fire again as Austria-based privacy group Noyb (None of Your Business) filed fresh complaints against the company on Thursday, accusing it of violating the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). ‎The complaints, also targeting AliExpress and WeChat, claim the companies failed to comply with data access requests, obstructing European users’ rights to understand how their personal data is processed. ‎Noyb, a prominent advocate for online privacy, previously filed complaints…

ATHENS – Greek police have arrested five people over the killing of a University of California at Berkeley professor who was shot dead in an Athens suburb earlier in July, police said. The professor’s ex-wife, who has denied any wrongdoing, her Greek partner, and three other people – one Bulgarian and two Albanian nationals – were arrested on Wednesday evening over the incident, a police official said on Thursday. The woman’s partner has confessed to shooting the academic, a 43-year-old…

WASHINGTON – In clearing the way for President Donald Trump’s efforts to transform American government, the Supreme Court has issued a series of orders that often lacked a fundamental characteristic of most judicial work: an explanation of the court’s rationale. On July 14, for instance, in letting Mr Trump dismantle the Education Department, the majority’s unsigned order was a single four-sentence paragraph entirely devoted to the procedural mechanics of pausing a lower court’s ruling. What the order did not include…

BRUSSELS – The EU’s General Court upheld on Wednesday a European Parliament (EP) decision requiring the estate of late French far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen to repay 303,200 euros ($352,380) for wrongly claimed expenses during his time as a member of the parliament. After Le Pen died in January 2025 aged 96, his daughters Yann and Marie-Caroline and granddaughter Marion continued the legal challenge he had begun in January 2024. Le Pen, who founded the National Front political party that…

BRUSSELS – The EU has imposed sanctions on eight people and one entity responsible for the targeting of Iranian dissidents for assassination on behalf of Iran’s government, the European Council said in a statement on Tuesday. The sanctions, over what it called “serious human rights violations” and “transnational repression”, included asset freezes and travel bans, the council said. The Council listed the Zindashti Network, which it said was a criminal group connected to the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security…

Employees at the embattled US National Science Foundation (NSF), which supports fundamental research, were all set to follow the lead of workers at two other science agencies and publish a statement warning about concerning developments under the Trump administration. But that effort has been indefinitely delayed. The Alexandria Declaration, named after the agency’s headquarters in Virginia, was expected to be issued on 14 July but is on ‘indefinite hold’, according to Stand Up for Science, which is organising the effort….

Uber and China’s Baidu will partner to deploy thousands of Baidu’s Apollo Go autonomous vehicles on the Uber platform across several international markets outside the US and China, the companies said on July 15. The first roll-outs are expected in Asia and the Middle East later in 2025. The tie-up brings together Uber’s massive ride-hailing network with Baidu’s fleet of more than 1,000 fully driverless vehicles across the world. It is the latest in a series of efforts by Uber…

Black eye makeup, or kohl, used between the 9th and 7th centuries BCE in the north-west of Iran contained natural graphite and manganese oxide, according to analysis carried out at the University of Tübingen, Germany. The results provide the first material insight into cosmetic practices in the Iron Age Middle East, the researchers said. For ancient Egypt, kohl recipes have been well-studied and known to use a range of inorganic and organic materials; however, for the ancient Near East and…

By Lucia Sinatra at brownstone dot org. It was nerve wracking, to say the least; having a high school student who had gotten into his dream college in mid-December 2020 but was uncertain if he could attend the following fall due to Covid-19 vaccine mandates. Those harrowing days and nights we spent focusing on little else as we scoured college websites to eventually find what we pretty much expected would come to pass. It started in April of 2021 when…

Delta Air Lines Inc., headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, has agreed to pay $8,100,000 to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by awarding compensation to certain corporate officers and employees that exceeded the compensation limits Delta agreed to as part of its participation in the Department of the Treasury’s Payroll Support Program (PSP). The PSP was established by Congress in March 2020 under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act to provide payroll support to passenger and…

WASHINGTON – For many years, Netflix executives bristled at the notion that the company really had a rival. Not Hollywood powerhouses like Disney, nor tech giants like Amazon. Instead, Mr Reed Hastings, the company’s co-founder, insisted at one point that Netflix competed with people’s desire to socialise, or to go to sleep. But there’s no hiding from YouTube. Netflix and YouTube are increasingly locked in a fierce battle for control over the television set, a rivalry that even Netflix’s executives…

AUSTIN, Texas – The official tally of storm-related deaths across Texas rose to 131 on July 14 as authorities warned of yet another round of heavy rains 10 days after a Hill Country flash flood that transformed the Guadalupe River into a killer torrent. A National Weather Service flood watch forecasting heavy downpours of up to half a foot of rain was posted until July 15 morning for a wide swath of central Texas extending from the Rio Grande east…

WASHINGTON – The US Supreme Court on July 14 cleared the way for President Donald Trump’s administration to resume dismantling the Department of Education, part of his bid to shrink the federal government’s role in education in favor of more control by the states. In the latest high court win for Mr Trump, the justices lifted a federal judge’s order that had reinstated nearly 1,400 workers affected by mass layoffs at the department and blocked the administration from transferring key…

Ekiti State Government has advised all residents to remain vigilant and adhere strictly to preventive measures against diphtheria, in light of the rising number of confirmed cases across Nigeria. The State Commissioner for Health and Human Services, Dr. Oyebanji Filani, in a statement made available to newsmen in Ado Ekiti, assured that Ekiti has not recorded any confirmed case of diphtheria this year. He added that the advisory was borne out of Government’s commitment to ensuring that the state remains…

TORONTO – Over two months, Canadian officials scrambled to advise and reassure Canadians wanting to travel to the U.S. after President Donald Trump’s executive order on gender, documents show. The order, issued January 20, states the U.S. only recognizes two sexes, requires the government use the term “sex” rather than “gender” and mandates identification documents issued by the government, including passports and visas, be based on what it described as “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.”…