Life

Loo roll 2.0. Wipe your phone while on the toilet

TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) — Toilet rolls for wiping smartphones are the newest feature in Japan’s famously high-tech bathrooms, often equipped with bidets and heated seats. Japanese mobile phone company, NTT Docomo, has installed small rolls of screen-wiping sheets inside 86 toilet cubicles in Tokyo’s Narita International Airport for people to wipe their phones while they relieve themselves. The company cited a recent study carried out by “SPA!” a Japanese weekly magazine, revealing that smartphones were […]

Continue Reading →

Frenchman leads Alps dog sled challenge

PRAZ DE LYS-SOMMAND,  France (Reuters) —  High in the French Alps, musher Remy Coste has taken the early lead of La Grande Odyssee (The Great Odyssey) dog sled race. The race is an 11-day trek over a 670 kilometre (415 mile) course which organisers say feels more like 1,000 km for the dogs and their handlers because of its 20,000 meter elevation. Set among snow-capped mountains between Savoie and Haute-Savoie in France, 500 dogs will […]

Continue Reading →

Something ‘fishy’ going on at LA sushi restaurants: study

by Jocelyne ZABLIT LOS ANGELES, United States (AFP) — Next time you order halibut, red snapper or yellowfin tuna at a sushi restaurant in the Los Angeles area, you may want to ask for proof of what’s on your plate. According to a four-year study published on Wednesday by researchers at the University of California Los Angeles and Loyola Marymount University, nearly half of the fish served at more than two dozen highly-rated sushi restaurants […]

Continue Reading →

Baboons make vowel-like sounds, similar to humans

PARIS, France (AFP) — Baboons make sounds that are similar to the vowels a,e,i,o and u, researchers said Wednesday, suggesting that some monkeys have had the physical capacity for language for millions of years. The findings in the journal PLOS ONE add a new dimension to the long-running debate over how language began and evolved, by showing that baboons possess a tongue and larynx that allow them to make a series of vowel-like sounds. “This […]

Continue Reading →

Are concerts really worth it?

QUEZON City, Philippines (January 11) – An American poet once said that music is the universal language of mankind. With like two hundred songs stored in my smart phone, not to mention those songs that I have saved through my music app account, who am I to disagree? Listening to music is like hearing the most real thoughts, while singing along with it is like professing your rawest emotions. We cannot deny the fact that music […]

Continue Reading →

Smoking costs $1 trillion, soon to kill 8 million a year – WHO/NCI study

GENEVA, Switzerland (Reuters) — Smoking costs the global economy more than $1 trillion a year, and will kill one third more people by 2030 than it does now, according to a study by the World Health Organization and the U.S. National Cancer Institute published on Tuesday (January 10). That cost far outweighs global revenues from tobacco taxes, which the WHO estimated at about $269 billion in 2013-2014. “The report is important in at least two […]

Continue Reading →

BMW defends plans to open plant in Mexico

BMW’s chief of sales and marketing Ian Robertson defends the German automaker’s decision to open a new factory in Mexico in 2019, despite warnings from President-elect Donald Trump that he will impose a border tax on cars imported from the country. https://youtu.be/mBxBGYpWhL8

Continue Reading →

Nickelodeon to build Philippine underwater theme park

MANILA, Philippines (AFP) — American children’s television network Nickelodeon has announced it will build an underwater resort and theme park on an island known as the Philippines’ last ecological frontier, alarming environmentalists. The firm behind SpongeBob SquarePants and Dora the Explorer said the park on Palawan island would be part of a 400-hectare (1,000-acre) undersea development showcasing the area’s marine life that would give fans a chance to “interact with the brand and the iconic […]

Continue Reading →

Global warming is top threat to polar bears

WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — US wildlife authorities released on Monday a broad plan to try to save Arctic polar bears from going extinct, as global warming melts away their icy habitat an increasing pace. With just 22,000 to 31,000 polar bears estimated to be left in the world, the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Polar Bear Conservation Management Plan calls for a series of actions to save these iconic creatures. Above all, it calls […]

Continue Reading →

Study crashes main Moon-formation theory

by Mariëtte Le Roux Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) – The Moon, our planet’s constant companion for some 4.5 billion years, may have been forged by a rash of smaller bodies smashing into an embryonic Earth, researchers said Monday. Such a bombardment birth would explain a major inconsistency in the prevailing hypothesis that the Moon splintered off in a single, giant impact between Earth and a Mars-sized celestial body. In such a scenario, scientists expect […]

Continue Reading →

Highlights of 2017 Consumer Electronics Show

LAS VEGAS, United States (AFP) — Here are some key highlights of the 2017 International Consumer Electronics Show, which concluded Sunday: – Alexa everywhere – Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa was the surprise star of the show, with dozens of new products and services integrating the voice-accessed machine smarts into appliances, TVs, speakers, lamps, cars and more. Analysts said the gains for Alexa could help unify a fragmented market for connected devices, and bring artificial intelligence […]

Continue Reading →

Huge Antarctic ice block set to break off: scientists

by Marlowe HOOD Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) – A massive ice block nearly 100 times the area of Manhattan is poised to break off Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf, scientists reported Friday. A slow-progressing rift suddenly grew by 18 kilometres (11 miles) at the end of December, leaving the finger-shaped chunk — 350 metres thick — connected along only a small fraction of its length. The rift has also widened, from less than 50 […]

Continue Reading →
1 … 546 547 548 549 550 … 729