Refugees who had previously planned to seek asylum in the United States are rerouting to Canada during the height of winter. At least 21 people crossed the US-Canadian border illegally Saturday (Feb. 11), arriving before dawn at Emerson-Franklin, a small border town with a population of 700, BBC reports. About 60 people have made the trip in the past three weeks.
Romantic love has long inspired artists, writers and musicians, and so has its consummation. In honor of Valentine’s Day, auction house Sotheby’s London is putting together its first-ever sale of erotic art. Titled “Erotic: Passion & Desire,” the auction is now showing 107 sexy lots from antiquity to modern days, which open for bidding on Feb. 16.
It’s that day of the year again, when people around the world are told it’s time to show their love. In some countries, Valentine’s Day typically means bouquets, balloons, and emotional public displays. For others, it can provoke calls for greater modesty.
Donald Trump has said he doesn’t like shaking people’s hands, and he seems to take his discomfort out on the people he has to greet. More than once, the US president has been seen yanking and twisting people’s arms when he’s supposed to be shaking them. He was at it again today, when he held, patted, and jerked around Shinzo Abe’s hand for a full 19 seconds.
It will be a busy night tonight (Feb. 10) for skywatchers in Europe, Africa, and the American east coast: if the sky is clear, they’ll be able to see a “snow moon,” a penumbral lunar eclipse, and a comet that flies by the Earth only once every five and a quarter years—all in a single evening.
A flashing green fireball whizzed through the sky near the midwest of the US early today. Footage from several police and security cameras captured a striking ball of light falling from the sky at about 7:24AM GMT (1:24AM CT), which disappeared after a final blast. It turns out to be a meteor, according to the American Meteor Society.
Republican leaders were making a solemn pledge to repeal Obamacare during a press conference on Capitol Hill Jan. 4, when House Speaker Paul Ryan made a slip of tongue that sent the group erupting in laughter.
Astronomy photography offers a glimpse of the wonderful universe beyond. It also reminds us how small we are in our own little world. The photo department at NASA recently selected its 66 favorite photos of 2016, including a stunning 10-frame composite showing the tiny International Space Station (ISS) drifting across the sun.
Singin’ in the Rain actress Debbie Reynolds, 84, passed away from a stroke yesterday, a day after her daughter, Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher, passed away at age 60 from cardiac arrest on Dec. 29.
Air pollution is getting so bad in Paris that the city tomorrow will allow free street parking for local residents.
In a reminder that our smart devices can also be used against us, police from Bentonville, Arkansas, are querying whether an Amazon Echo device heard what happened at a murder scene in 2015. They have asked Amazon to hand over the recording data of the voice-activated smart home machine to help investigate the crime.
Captain Niloofar Rahmani was the first female pilot to join Afghanistan’s air force. Now she says death threats have driven her to seek asylum in the United States, CNN reports.
It’s a rare sight to see Vladimir Putin sad, but the Russian president was captured with striking pathos at a memorial service for slain ambassador Andrey Karlov yesterday.
Where do common cuckoos spend their winter holidays ? There’s no way to know for sure—Yelp doesn’t track avian piña colada hotspots—until now.
The character of Santa Claus is believed to have originated from the 3rd-century Greek Saint Nicholas, and only emerged as the modern-day Santa after thousands of years. While today’s western image is one of a Caucasian, jolly old fat man wearing a beard and a red suit, some call for black Santas, or Santas with a more ethnically-identifiable images. Archival illustrations unearthed by Public Domain Review remind us that Santa Claus doesn’t always look the way we think he does.
Less than six months after the summer release of Suicide Squad, director David Ayers is reuniting with star Margot Robbie for a spin-off, an all-female-villainess DC Comics blockbuster called Gotham City Sirens.
Thousands of Syrian civilians and militants began evacuating from the rebel-held eastern Aleppo today under a ceasefire deal, after Syrian government forces recaptured the city and rebels agreed to withdraw.
Donald Trump held a meeting today with a group of Silicon Valley giants, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, SpaceX and Tesla’s Elon Musk and Alphabet’s Larry Page. While the meeting’s seating chart might offer a clue as to how much influence each tech exec will have on the president-elect, Trump’s praise and body language clearly singled out one favorite among them: billionaire Paypal founder Peter Thiel.
Before it became a ginormous ocean of information carrying over a zettabyte of physical transcontinental connections, the internet used to be a lot simpler. Half a century ago, the entirety of ARPANET, predecessor of the internet, was just 45 computers connected to 40 nodes.
When shown an animation generated by artificial intelligence, famed animator Hayao Miyazaki was not impressed.
Scientists have discovered a feathered dinosaur tail trapped in a piece of 99-million-year-old amber, bought from an amber market in Myanmar. The specimen is definitive proof that two-legged dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex had bird-like feathers.
Another knock against the robots.
Cleaning up after other people is a thankless, invisible job, and now we know what it looks like when those cleaners get fed up: Barcelona’s El Prat Airport.
One lucky Muslim comedian found himself sitting next to Eric Trump in first class yesterday, for a six and a half hour flight to Glasgow. Trump’s father, US president-elect Donald Trump, has called for a ban on travel to the US by Muslims, and his surrogates have discussed implementing a national registry of Muslim citizens.
