Pollen has a natural tendency to adsorb mercury and forms the basis of a new class of tiny robots that speed through toxic water to purify it

Is our love affair with AI really about building a new kind of deity to meet human needs no amount of rationality can fill? Max Barry's disturbing novel Providence lays out the case, says Sally Adee

Glass has an unusual atomic structure that resembles a liquid frozen in place, making it hard to predict how it will behave. DeepMind has developed an AI capable of doing so, which may also be able to predict traffic jams

The video game Resident Evil 3 was in development long before the coronavirus outbreak, but it holds up a mirror to the strange times we live in today

A program that combines artificial intelligence and geometrical modelling can create an accurate 3D model of your face from a single 20-second video

Businesses, individuals with land, and local governments are competing to host an underground nuclear waste facility in the UK, and receive a yearly £2.5 million incentive

Qubits are often stabilised by being supercooled, which makes quantum computer chips hard to scale up. Now they have been operated at above -272°C for the first time

The US Navy is researching how to use lasers to form plasma into 2D or 3D infrared images of aeroplanes that can distract heat-seeking missiles

A cheap, lightweight smartphone-heated device can test for DNA in blood, urine and other samples in a fraction of the time it takes to test in a lab

Psychologist Pete Etchells explores what the scientific research has to say about game violence and addiction and busts some myths

In TV series Devs, a tech company has built an extremely powerful quantum computer. The show is both beautiful and captivating, says Rowan Hooper

A robot that uses artificial intelligence to find and remove weeds could eventually be used as an alternative to chemical insecticides

Martha Wells's action-packed novel Network Effect puts you inside the head of a Murderbot. It raises fascinating questions you will think about for a long time, says Sally Adee

In a new photography book, the home computer revolution of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s is told through nostalgic industrial-design images

Telling Lies is a game where you sift through video calls to solve a mystery. Half the time you don't know what you should be doing, but that's part of the fun, says Jacob Aron

Four decades ago, we introduced a standard way of encoding digital sound. Its first ever upgrade could lead to new genres of music and ways of experiencing sound

TfL as in Transport for London. Greeeeeaaat.

Why? Because that’s our reality here in the year 2020.

The company could be preparing to release a new iMac, a new pair of AirPods, and an updated Apple TV 4K.

This unusual contraption recreates the sounds of an old-school mechanical typewriter on a modern keyboard.

As well as announcing reminders to stay away from each other, the robots also estimate how many people are in the park at any given time.

Please, I implore you: jump on this bandwagon.

Big Tech is coming for your transaction data.

Anything that encourages more people to enable two-step verification can only be a good thing.

It delivers almost all the functionality Apple promised, with a steep Apple-like price tag to match.

But can you still write "BOOBS" on it?

As a very ugly standoff develops between legacy cinemas and legacy studios, Disney appears to be playing its cards close to its chest.

While this experiment may sound odd, it could represent the start of a whole new field of research.

This film gives us insight into a community that’s already endured plenty even before the zombies arrived.

Google has been folding in a score of updates to help delineate Duo from the dozens of other video chat services available.

A South Dakota teenager has admitted to slaying a 16-year-old girl who “ran away” from home to live with him after they met on an online dating website, authorities said.

Michael Campbell, 17, pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter on Thursday for the death of Shayna Ritthaler, a 16-year-old from Moorcroft, Wyoming, who was reported missing from a local coffee shop on Oct. 3. Less than a week later, her body was found in the basement bedroom of Campbell’s home.

“We got into an argument and then I shot her,” Campbell said during a change-of-plea hearing on Thursday, before referring to the teenager as his girlfriend, according to the Associated Press. “I shot her in the head.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Last week, former Vice President Joe Biden told the world that he “unequivocally” denied accusations by Tara Reade, a former staffer in his Senate office, that he sexually assaulted her in the early ’90s.

On Friday evening, Reade responded: Prove it.

“Joe Biden should take the polygraph,” Reade told former television anchor Megyn Kelly, in an interview that aired on Kelly’s YouTube channel. “I will take one if Joe Biden takes one, but I’m not a criminal.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Just after the prosecutor assigned to the case resigned on Thursday, the Department of Justice announced that it dropped the charges against Michael Flynn, the former national security advisor who’d already pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia. 

President Trump forecast this before it happened. Last week, he insisted that Flynn had been exonerated.  Apparently referring to his pardon power, Trump suggested that if the court did not do something he would use “a different kind of power.”

And now it’s happened. While the president has the broad power to pardon, he should not control individual prosecutorial decisions, especially those concerning a political ally. It is extremely unusual for the government to dismiss charges after a guilty plea. This is a sign that the historic independence of the Justice Department has been compromised. 

Read more at The Daily Beast.

The Queen gave a 75th anniversary VE Day speech Friday night that doubled as a rallying cry against coronavirus. “Never give up, never despair, that was the message of VE Day,” she told the British people.

Second World War heroes would “recognize and admire,” the sacrifices the British were making today in the fight against coronavirus, the Queen added. It was her second major coronavirus-themed speech to the nation.

“It may seem hard that we cannot mark this special anniversary as we would wish. Instead we remember from our homes and our doorsteps. But our streets are not empty,” the Queen said, “They are filled with the love and the care that we have for each other.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Adele posted a message to her social media channels this week thanking those on the front lines fighting COVID-19. In the process, the celebrated singer unveiled a thinner frame—and the internet had a lot of thoughts about it, almost all trash.

Enter Bill Maher, noted #MeToo skeptic, with perhaps the most garbage take of them all.

On Friday night, during the interview portion of his HBO show Real Time, the comedian began by placing the bulk of the blame for the high amount of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. compared to other countries on America’s obesity problem—not, say, the fact that the Trump administration didn’t do a single thing during the month of February to contain the spread of the virus.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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SAVANNAH, Georgia—Allegations Friday that a Georgia district attorney blocked police officers from arresting the killers of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery were just the latest blow to a local law enforcement apparatus that has been rocked by a series of troubling and deadly scandals.

Brunswick DA Jackie Johnson’s office allegedly prevented the Glynn County Police Department from arresting Travis and Gregory McMichael in connection with the shooting death of Arbery, an unarmed black man, in late February, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Johnson has recused herself from that case. But one Glynn County commissioner suggested she personally intervened in early plans to make arrests “to protect her friend” Gregory McMichael. McMichael was a former cop and investigator in the Brunswick DA’s office for 25 years who had reportedly investigated Arbery in the past. 

It is far from the first time the office—and local law enforcement more generally—had come under scathing scrutiny. 

Read more at The Daily Beast.

This week, new claims about the accuracy of the Garden of Eden story emerged online and in tabloid magazines. Professor Tom Meyer, a scripture expert known as the Bible Memory Man, argues that there are two artifacts—a 4,000-year-old seal and roughly 3,600-year-old stone—that provide evidence both for the location of the Garden of Eden and the Adam and Eve story. But do his claims add up? (Spoiler alert: No)

In a story, reported this week in the Daily Express, Meyer, who teaches at his alma mater Shasta Bible College and University, refers first to a Sumerian king list, an inscribed Middle Bronze aged stone prism currently housed at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The prism dates to between 2100 B.C. and 1650 B.C. and was discovered in 1922 by Herbert Weld-Blundell during his excavations in Kish, the ancient capital of Sumer, in Mesopotamia. It was purchased by the Ashmolean shortly thereafter.

Meyer said, “In addition to enumerating the long reigns of pre-flood rulers, this prism lists Eridu—an ancient site in southern Iraq—as the first city ever built.” This is significant, he says, because “The ancient site of the Garden of Eden… is thought by some to be located at Eridu under a cluster of tels” (Tels are artificial hills).

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Campaigns and consultants have spent the last four years worrying about the Trump campaign’s digital operation. Even before COVID-19 upended the election and forced candidates online, the Trump campaign was geofencing campaign rallies, micro-targeting digital ads, and amplifying deepfake videos.

And now, as both the crisis and the general election enter their third month, panic is beginning to set in about the startling digital gap between the two parties, amplified by the recent Trump campaign announcement of both a new app experience and the start of a $10 million digital push against Joe Biden. 

President Trump’s campaign manager has called what he’s built a “juggernaut” and is likening his digital infrastructure to a Death Star. In reality, what he's built is a trap.  

Read more at The Daily Beast.

This post contains spoilers for Dead to Me Season 2.

Maybe it’s the surreality of, well, everything lately—or maybe it’s just aged like the fine wines all of its characters toss back by the bottle. Whatever the reason, Dead to Me Season 2 hits even better than Season 1—fighting off a sophomore slump with a fresh batch of twists, dramatic ironies, and, most importantly, some more Christina Applegate angsting out to metal. Perhaps this season’s smartest move, however, is a trope pulled straight out of Soapy Dramas 101: Bringing James Marsden back to play his own twin.

Series creator Liz Feldman was sending the usual thank-you notes back and forth with cast and crew after Season 1 wrapped when she received a particularly amusing message from Marsden.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

CORONAVIRUS has forced people to re-evaluate their finances as income takes a hit and budgets are stretched. One of the first port of calls for change has been direct debits and new research reveals that some people may find themselves with more cash available once this all ends.

APRIL saw 20.5 million job losses in the United States, the biggest rise in the jobless rate since the Great Depression.

Chelsea news and gossip is coming in thick and fast so Express Sport is on hand to bring you all the very latest from Stamford Bridge.

Liverpool are looking to make Sadio Mane an offer that would tarnish Real Madrid's hopes of signing him.

Whether it was driverless cars, lab-grown meat or faster-than-light neutrinos, some things just didn't live up to the hype in the 2010s

Strange blasts from space called fast radio bursts continue to puzzle astronomers with their odd behaviour, as they seem to come from a variety of galaxies

China has connected the world’s first portable ground station for quantum communication to the Mozi satellite, and has plans to launch another quantum satellite soon

The brains behind the first plant ever to germinate on the moon explains how the Chinese mission succeeded

When asteroid Armageddon is upon us, we can't just call Bruce Willis. Meet the people who really do watch the skies – and make detailed plans for our survival

How can we get a picture of the whole Milky Way if we are inside it? Good sleuthing is needed to combine all the clues, writes Chanda Prescod-Weinstein