Breaking News, Latest Philippines Headlines, World, Entertainment, Politics, Weather & Video News
by Kang Jin-kyu Agence France-Presse SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) – In a crowded campaign office in Seoul, young, trendy staffers are using deepfake technology to try to achieve the near-impossible: make a middle-aged, establishment South Korean presidential candidate cool. Armed with hours of specially-recorded footage of opposition People Power Party candidate Yoon Suk-yeol, the team has created a digital avatar of the frontrunner — and set “AI Yoon” loose on the campaign trail ahead of […]
Star light, star bright, the James Webb Space Telescope has seen its first star (though it wasn’t quite tonight) — and even taken a selfie, NASA announced Friday. The steps are part of the months-long process of aligning the observatory’s enormous golden mirror that astronomers hope will begin unraveling the mysteries of the early Universe by this summer. The first picture sent back of the cosmos is far from stunning: 18 blurry white dots on […]
WASHINGTON, D.C., United States (AFP) – Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is set Thursday night to deliver an eagerly-awaited update on SpaceX’s Starship, a prototype rocket the company is developing for crewed interplanetary exploration. The tycoon will make his presentation at SpaceX’s Starbase facility near Boca Chica, south Texas, at 8:00 pm local time (0200 GMT Friday), against the impressive backdrop of the spacecraft in its fully-stacked configuration, standing 394 feet (120 meters) tall. It will […]
Up to 40 SpaceX high-speed internet satellites have been knocked out of orbit by a geomagnetic storm shortly after launch, but pose little threat to Earth as they burn up in the atmosphere, the company said. Geomagnetic storms are caused by ejections of the solar corona into space, resulting in disturbances to the Earth’s upper atmosphere and increased drag on objects in low orbits. The latest 49 satellites from the Starlink network launched from the […]
by Charles ONIANS Scientists in Britain announced Wednesday they had smashed a previous record for generating fusion energy, hailing it as a “milestone” on the path towards cheap, clean power and a cooler planet. Nuclear fusion is the same process that the sun uses to generate heat. Proponents believe it could one day help address climate change by providing an abundant, safe and green source of energy. A team at the Joint European Torus (JET) […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Lockheed Martin’s space division has won a NASA contract to build the rocket that will return the first Mars rock samples to Earth in the 2030s, the US space agency said Monday. The “small, lightweight rocket” will be the first to take off from another planet, bringing back “rock, sediment and atmospheric samples from the surface of the Red Planet,” NASA said in a statement. NASA’s Perseverance Rover has […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — A US intelligence agency said Wednesday that its newest spy satellite successfully launched into orbit atop a reusable SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The rocket took off at 12:27 pm local time (2027 GMT) from the Vandenberg Air Force base in California, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which is in charge of the US Space Force, said in a statement. After releasing the satellite, dubbed NROL-87, into orbit, the Falcon 9 […]
by Yann SCHREIBER Agence France-Presse CHAK TWENTY-SIX SP, Pakistan (AFP) – Agriculture entrepreneurs are bringing the digital age to Pakistan’s farmers, helping them plan crops better and distribute their produce when the time is right. Until recently, “the most modern machine we had was the tractor”, Aamer Hayat Bhandara, a farmer and local councillor behind one such project told AFP in “Chak 26”, a village in the agricultural heartland of Punjab province. Even making mobile […]
by Maddison Connaughton Agence France-Presse SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) – Australian researchers have discovered a strange spinning object in the Milky Way they say is unlike anything astronomers have ever seen. The object, first spotted by a university student working on his undergraduate thesis, releases a huge burst of radio energy three times every hour. The pulse comes “every 18.18 minutes, like clockwork,” said astrophysicist Natasha Hurley-Walker, who led the investigation after the student’s discovery, using […]
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) – German-owned luxury car brand Bentley said Wednesday that its first all-electric vehicle will be ready by 2025, as it unveiled major investment on becoming a fully carbon zero company. Its first battery-powered electric vehicle will be developed and built at its factory in Crewe, northwest England, Bentley said in a statement. The carmaker, owned by Volkswagen, added it was investing £2.5 billion ($3.4 billion, 3.0 billion euros) “in sustainability over […]
FRANKFURT, Germany (AFP) – The operating company behind the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany said Wednesday it has founded a German subsidiary as it seeks to get the pipeline up and running amid rising diplomatic tensions. “The new company is to become the owner and operator of the 54-kilometre section of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline located in the German territorial waters,” the Swiss-based Nord Stream 2 AG said in a statement. […]
PARIS, France (AFP) – The aviation industry looks at hydrogen-fuelled planes as a solution to decarbonise the sector, but a report by an environmental group released Wednesday found that they will only help limit CO2 emissions. Using hydrogen as fuel produces no climate-warming CO2 when it burns, just water. Automakers and planemakers alike have been looking at it as a means to reduce the climate impact of the transportation sector, although currently most production of […]
