Life

NASA’s planet-hunter telescope, Kepler, runs out of fuel

by Kerry SHERIDAN Agence France Presse TAMPA, United States (AFP) — The US space agency’s Kepler space telescope has run out of fuel and is being retired after nine and a half years, having helped discover more than 2,600 planets, some of which may hold life, officials said Tuesday. The unmanned space telescope, which launched in 2009, revealed that billions of hidden planets are in space and revolutionized humanity’s understanding of the universe, experts said. […]

Crouching tigers, hidden cameras: Nepal counts its big cats

BARDIA, Nepal (AFP) — Thousands of camera traps help conservationists track Nepal’s wild tiger population, which has nearly doubled in recent years as the big cats claw back from the verge of extinction. On the front-line of the painstaking survey are trained locals in western Nepal’s Bardia National Park where tiger numbers have grown nearly five-fold.

OPM legend Rico Puno passes away at 65

(Eagle News) — Filipino singer and OPM legend Rico Puno passed away Tuesday morning, Oct. 30, at the age of 65. Puno underwent open heart surgery in 2015, and underwent angioplasty in December last year. His sister-in-law, Anna Puno, expressed her grief in an Instagram post. “Numbed with grief, I would like to call on all entertainers in the OPM Industry as well as his worldwide fans to stop for a moment and say a […]

Air pollution kills 600,000 children each year: WHO

GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — Exposure to toxic air both indoors and out kills some 600,000 children under the age of 15 each year, the World Health Organization warned Monday. Data from the UN health body shows that every day, 93 percent of children under the age of 15 — a full 1.8 billion youngsters, including 630 million under the age of five — breath dangerously polluted air. This has tragic consequences: In 2016 alone, some […]

Dogs can be trained to sniff out malaria: researchers

TAMPA, United States (AFP) — Dogs can be trained to sniff out certain cancers, people at risk of a diabetic coma and now, children with malaria just by smelling their socks, researchers said Monday. According to the findings presented at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene annual meeting in New Orleans, dogs were trained to sniff out malaria parasites in African children who tested positive for the mosquito-borne disease but did not have […]

NASA spacecraft breaks record for coming closest to Sun

TAMPA, United States (AFP) — NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which launched earlier this year, has set a new record for becoming the closest human-made object to the Sun, the US space agency announced Monday. “The spacecraft passed the current record of 26.55 million miles (42.73 million kilometers) from the Sun’s surface on Oct. 29, 2018, at about 1:04 pm EDT (1704 GMT),” said a NASA statement. “The previous record for closest solar approach was set […]

EU air quality slowly improving but still deadly: report

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AFP) — Air pollution is slowly easing in EU countries but still causes nearly half a million early deaths each year, the European Environment Agency (EEA) said in its annual report published Monday. Although pollution levels dropped slightly in 2015, they remain far higher than standards set by both the European Union and the World Health Organization, the report said. The findings come just weeks after an EU watchdog said most member states […]

China, France launch satellite to study climate change

BEIJING, China (AFP) — The first Franco-Chinese satellite was launched into orbit on Monday to study ocean surface winds and waves around the clock, better predict cyclones and improve scientists’ understanding of climate change. A Long March 2C carrier rocket blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China’s Gobi Desert at 0043 GMT to enter orbit 520 kilometers (323 miles) above the Earth, according to China’s State Administration of Science, Technology and […]

Damascus museum reopens with millennia-old lion in the garden

by Maher al-Mounes Agence France Presse DAMASCUS, Syria (AFP) — The antiquities museum in the capital of war-torn Syria reopened its doors after six years on Sunday, with a two-millenia-old lion standing proud in the garden. Its jaws ajar, the three metre stone Lion of Al-Lat towered over a fountain after surviving the country’s seven-year conflict and damage inflicted by Islamic State group jihadists. The lion was just one of the artefacts on show after […]

Independent filmmakers find their “place in the sun” at Excellence In Visual Media Awards International

LOS ANGELES, California (Eagle News Service) – In less than a week, the Excellence in Visual Media (EVM) Awards International of the Iglesia Ni Cristo (Church Of Christ) will arrive at the iconic Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, California. On Monday, October 29, 2018, the festivities will kick off with the VIP Red Carpet Arrivals at 4 p.m. followed by doors opening at 5 p.m. Ticket holders, film directors, producers, actors, cast, and crew, are […]

Twitter surges on profit, revenue growth

by Rob Lever Agence France-Presse WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Twitter shares flew higher Thursday after the social network reported a record quarterly profit that helped investors look past a drop in the number of users due to the weeding out of fake and abusive accounts. The San Francisco group delivered a $789 million profit, including one-time gains, compared to a net loss of $21 million in the previous year, as revenues grew 29 percent […]

Tigers dwindling: just six sub-species remain, says study

TAMPA, United States (AFP) — Six different sub-species of tigers exist today, scientists confirmed Thursday, amid hopes the findings will boost efforts to save the fewer than 4,000 free-range big cats that remain in the world. The six include the Bengal tiger, Amur tiger, South China tiger, Sumatran tiger, Indochinese tiger and Malayan tiger, said the report in the journal Current Biology. Three other tiger subspecies have already gone extinct: the Caspian, Javan and Bali […]