These findings suggest that scientists may need to broaden their definition of what a life-supporting planet might look like.

In addition to being a hotbed for pandemics, the cruise industry is an ethical and ecological abomination.

Scientists are speculating as to how the two creatures managed to become preserved in such an unusual way.

Sony has managed to best its top-of-the-line noise cancelling earbuds with a new, improved, and best of all, cheaper model.

However, this new arrival isn't exactly great news for the environment.

McDonald's is opening (some of) its doors next week, but if you want a bank holiday Big Mac fix, here's how.

With the acquisition of a start-up specialising in encrypted messaging and cloud services, Zoom will finally be able to make good on its claims of offering end-to-end encryption.

Because Amazon movie purchases are really just long-term rentals that can disappear from your library at any time.

Don't analyse them too closely, they didn't have HD in the 1970s.

Perhaps astronomers need help from something that thinks a bit less like a human.

Exhaust fumes and cold KFC?

Strange as it may sound, Animal Crossing: New Horizons feels like where Breath of the Wild should have ended up gameplay-wise.

No going out to buy ingredients you don't already have, though. Crumpets are treats.

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.

It does make several enormous assumptions about the future that now seem perilously flaky.

Please, I implore you: jump on this bandwagon.

Up until now mask-wearing had only been an unenforced suggestion by the company.

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.

"This government has failed to show any self-criticism whatsoever, when it is glaringly obvious to everybody that big mistakes have been made."

But can you still write "BOOBS" on it?

The revolution will be on a website for a midcentury modern bungalow.

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

The road to haircut hell is paved with good questions. Questions like: Is the coronavirus pandemic the Flowbee’s time to shine?

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.

This solar contact could provide a potential explanation for the asteroid's weird, two-tone surface.

Boba Fett has been on Lucasfilm’s to-do list for a while now.

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

The hacker in question hasn't even graduated high school yet.

If you think you’ve got something of value to share with the world – or maybe you just want a project to tackle to fill the hours – then we’ll take you through what you need to know.

Only the best images are used to create a mosaic of the entire planet, resulting in a super-crisp, high-definition view.

It’s quite the spectacle, but the light show is leading people to be less than cautious about social distancing.

The majority of these children have tested positive for the virus or seem to carry antibodies from an earlier infection.

X-37B? Sorry, I thought you said your name was X Æ A-12.

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.

Alison Roman’s latest comments about Marie Kondo have not sparked joy.

In an interview with The New Consumer about her increased popularity and the avenues she might pursue to capitalize on it, the popular food columnist discussed her hesitance to put her name on a product line—citing the Japanese organization maven and Chrissy Teigen as examples of what she did not foresee in her own future.

“I have a collaboration coming out with [the cookware startup] Material, a capsule collection,” Roman said. “It’s limited edition, a few tools that I designed that are based on tools that I use that aren’t in production anywhere—vintage spoons and very specific things that are one-offs that I found at antique markets that they have made for me.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Roy “Captain Roy D” Davis has devoted much of the last three years to the QAnon conspiracy theory, writing books pitching the concept to new fans and getting his car repainted with an enormous “Q” on the hood. Through it all, he’s been utterly convinced that former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn—a central figure to much of the Q community—was the victim of an anti-Trump cabal orchestrated by the leaders of the deep state. He corresponded with other Flynn supporters following his legal case, and donated proceeds from one of his books to Flynn’s legal fund. 

So when Davis saw on Thursday that the Justice Department would drop its charges against Flynn for lying to the FBI, Davis was euphoric.

“He’s a hero of mine,” Davis said. “I wouldn’t do all of these things just out of the blue.”

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.

Marissa Guale is like all too many Americans right now. Her husband and father of her two children, Raul, is on a ventilator in a hospital on Long Island, fighting for his life while sick with COVID-19. Raul, a 34-year-old nurse, likely caught the disease while working in a nursing home. When the National Institutes of Health announced an emergency use authorization for the experimental antiviral drug remdesivir, Marissa scrambled friends and family on Facebook to figure out how to get access for Raul, emailing hospital administrators, senators, and doctors. They pressed the Guale family’s case for a potentially lifesaving treatment on social media to anyone who would listen.

Her confusion about where and how to get access to the drug isn’t unique. All over the country, families, doctors, and hospitals are wondering how to get the drug and on what basis it’s being distributed. The Trump administration, which is in charge of allocation, hasn’t published any guidance on how it’s making decisions about the scarce supplies of the drug.

So who decides which hospitals get remdesivir? And what’s the most ethical way to prioritize access?

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Roy Horn, half of the iconic magician duo Siegfried and Roy, has died from complications of the new coronavirus in Las Vegas. He was 75.

Together with Siegfried Fischbacher, Horn, born Uwe Ludwig Horn, created one of the most widely known magic acts in the world, staging shows filled with sleights of hand and exotic animals for packed audiences in Las Vegas for more than a decade. At its height, the glitzy show grossed $45 million per year, according to The Hollywood Reporter, among the highest ever in Las Vegas.

“Today, the world has lost one of the greats of magic, but I have lost my best friend,” Fischbacher said in a statement. “There could be no Siegfried without Roy, no Roy without Siegfried.” Fischbacher thanked the doctors and nurses who cared for his friend.

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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On Friday afternoon, I had a fun, wide-ranging conversation with Rosie O’Donnell, the renowned comedian, daytime TV host, philanthropist, and Trump Enemy No. 1.

The occasion for our talk was I Know This Much Is True, an HBO miniseries premiering May 10 which sees the A League of Their Own star flex her dramatic muscles like never before as Lisa Sheffer, a no-nonsense social worker at a mental health facility housing Thomas Birdsey (Mark Ruffalo).

Over the course of our chat—which will run Monday, May 11—we touched on not only the show (she is excellent) but Trump’s years-long vendetta against her, the Tara Reade allegations, and the untimely death of SMILF amid claims of misconduct against creator and star Frankie Shaw.

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.

It seems like during quarantine, everyone has taken up cooking. Some people have been baking bread. Others have been perfecting their pie crust. Even my brother, who I’ve never seen cook a thing in his life, made a chicken pot pie the other day. But berry season is almost upon us and so, I have been prepping my jam making skills. 

While jelly is translucent and made from the juice of fruits, and marmalade is made from citrus fruits and can be overly complicated, jam is fairly easy to make. It’s made with whole or cut fruit and cooked with sugar, and can end up either chunky or completely smooth, depending on how you like yours. 

Jam is all about being assertive, about testing out different add-ins and sugars. To help you get the most out of the berry season, we’ve rounded up everything you need to make ideal jam.

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.

For the past two months, Katie Holliday has been cooped up alone in her Brooklyn apartment thinking longingly about an unlikely erogenous zone: the lower half of a stranger’s face. 

“I remember joking to my friend before all of this started, ‘Imagine if someone’s face becomes their most coveted body part?’” Holliday, who is 31, told The Daily Beast. “‘When someone removes their mask, is it a sign of trust? Is it like letting someone see you naked?’ I was kidding back then, but now it’s reality.”

Holliday doesn’t know exactly when it will be safe to start seeing people like she did before the pandemic began, but she’ll return to a singles scene unlike any other in history. “I’m picturing walking into a bar where everyone’s wearing masks,” she said. “I’ll meet someone whose face is covered. Are they cute or not? I don’t know!” 

Read more at The Daily Beast.