A quarter of all premature deaths and diseases worldwide are due to manmade pollution and environmental damage, the United Nations said Wednesday in a landmark report on the planet’s parlous state. Deadly smog-inducing emissions, chemicals polluting drinking water, and the accelerating destruction of ecosystems crucial to the livelihoods of billions of people are driving a worldwide epidemic that hampers the global economy, it warned.

World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee on Monday slammed the increasing commodification of personal information and appealed for internet users to strive to maintain “complete control” of their data. Berners-Lee, credited with creating the web in 1989, is on a mission to save his invention from a range of problems increasingly dominating online life, including misinformation and a lack of data protection. “You should have complete control of your data. It’s not oil. It’s not a commodity,” he told a small group of journalists gathered at Europe’s physics lab CERN, where he first came up with the idea for the web 30 years ago.

A text-generating “bot” nicknamed Tobi produced nearly 40,000 news stories about the results of the November 2018 elections in Switzerland for the media giant Tamedia — in just five minutes. These kinds of artificial intelligence programs — available for nearly a decade — are becoming more widespread as news organizations turn to them to produce stories, personalize news delivery and in some cases sift through data to find important news.

Facebook’s Regional Director of Public Policies in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Nashwa Ali announced that Facebook users jumped to 2.7 billion world wide, with 38 million daily users in Egypt. Ali added that the users of Facebook hit 181 million monthly in the MENA while users of WhatsApp, Instagram and Messanger totaled 2 billion a month.

Signify, previously Philips Lighting, considers Egypt as an important regional hub to increase its exports to North and East Africa in the company s growth plans for 2019. The company won a deal to install its smart lighting systems at five stadiums in Egypt where the African Cup of Nations 2019 will be held. The company s revenues were EGP 700m during last year, and it targets to reach EGP 1bn in 2019. Recently, Signify partnered with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities in order to illuminate Cairo s Mohamed Ali Palace with more than 600 LED lamps, as well as 80 flood lights and up lights, as a part of a series of projects to install low-energy LED lighting systems in a number of cultural and heritage sites and public facilities in Egypt, including the Egyptian Museum in central Cairo, the Baron Palace, and the Cairo Opera House.

France will introduce a bill Wednesday to tax internet and technology giants on their digital sales, and thus curb efforts to pay global levies in countries with lower tax rates. The bill, to be discussed by cabinet ministers before being submitted to parliament, is a proposal by Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire to have companies pay a tax of three percent on much of their digital sales in France. The government hopes the move will catch on abroad despite an earlier failure to reach consensus at the European Union level.

The Cabinet’s media center denied claims on Tuesday that the government has monitored chats across social media including Facebook and Twitter in accordance to the Information Technology Crimes Law. According to the media center’s statement, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology denied these rumors and stressed that the law was free from any articles stipulating to monitor chats of social media users.

When the misty skies cleared over southern France on the afternoon of Sunday March 2, 1969, the green light was signaled for the highly anticipated first ever flight of the Concorde. Journalists had been alerted two days earlier that the test flight was imminent; the world had been waiting since the futuristic aircraft, with its pointed nose and triangular wings, was publicly presented in December 1967.

NASA and SpaceX celebrated the successful launch Saturday of a new astronaut capsule on a week-long round trip to the International Space Station — a key step towards resuming manned space flights from US soil after an eight-year break. This time around, the only occupant on board SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule was a dummy named Ripley — but NASA plans to put two astronauts aboard later this year.

The Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Amr Talaat, witnessed on Wednesday a contract signing between Microsoft and Telecom Egypt (TE) to establish Microsoft s first date centre in Egypt which will improve the service provided to Microsoft s customers. The new collaboration will expand the services of Microsoft in Egypt, as well in Africa and the Middle East, the minister said on the side-lines of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

Samsung, the tech giant, unveiled on Wednesday a new line of smartphones-the Galaxy S10. The new smartphone comes with triple-cameras, ultrasonic in-display fingerprint sensors, and is the first mainstream phone to have one-terabyte (TB) of storage.

South Korean tech giant Samsung said it aims to expand production lines in Egypt for home appliances and mobile phones, a statement by the Egyptian investment and international cooperation ministry said on Tuesday. The Egyptian investment ministry quoted Samsung officials as saying during a high-profile Egyptian delegation s visit to the East Asian country that it has invested $265 million in Egypt in the past years.

Huawei unveiled a new foldable smartphone on Sunday on the eve of the world’s top mobile fair in Barcelona and hit out against Washington’s campaign to bar it from developing next-generation 5G wireless networks. China’s most successful global firm has booked a huge stand at the four-day Mobile World Congress and has sent a large delegation which includes its media-shy founder, Ren Zhengfei, and two rotating chairmen.

Minister of Higher Education Khaled Abdel Ghafar announced that a Russian insurance company has covered the costs for the third Earth observation satellite EgyptSat-A’s $100 million cost, following the loss of EgyptSat-2 in 2015. EgyptSat-A has been rotating around Earth for one hour and 20 minutes since its launch on Thursday, and would be able to send photos during this week, Ghafar said. The satellite weighs 1150 kilograms and is equipped with high technology enabling it to rotate around the country several times a day.

Samsung, the tech giant, unveiled on Wednesday a new line of smartphones-the Galaxy S10. The new smartphone comes with triple-cameras, ultrasonic in-display fingerprint sensors, and is the first mainstream phone to have one-terabyte (TB) of storage. The inauguration of the Galaxy S10 is considered to be the tech firm s most important event this year, as Samsung is fighting intense competition from China s Huawei and the US s Apple.

Hundreds of orange robots zoom and whiz back and forth like miniature bumper cars — but instead of colliding, they re following a carefully plotted path to transport thousands of items ordered from online giant Amazon. A young woman fitted out in a red safety vest, with pouches full of sensors and radio transmitters on her belt and a tablet in hand, moves through their complicated choreography. This robot ballet takes place at the new Amazon order fulfillment center that opened on Staten Island in New York in September.

A new map of the night sky published Tuesday charts hundreds of thousands of previously unknown galaxies discovered using a telescope that can detect light sources optical instruments cannot see. The international team behind the unprecedented space survey said their discovery literally shed new light on some of the Universe’s deepest secrets, including the physics of black holes and how clusters of galaxies evolve.

British lawmakers issued a scathing report Monday that accused Facebook of intentionally violating privacy and anti-competition laws in the UK, and called for greater oversight of social media companies. The report on fake news and disinformation on social media sites followed an 18-month investigation. The parliamentary committee that prepared the report says social media sites should have to follow a mandatory code of ethics overseen by an independent regulator to better control harmful or illegal content.

NASA is accelerating plans to return Americans to the Moon, and this time, the US space agency says it will be there to stay. Jim Bridenstine, NASA’s administrator, told reporters Thursday that the agency plans to speed up plans backed by President Donald Trump to return to the moon, using private companies. “It’s important that we get back to the moon as fast as possible,” said Bridenstine in a meeting at NASA’s Washington headquarters, adding he hoped to have astronauts back there by 2028.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA s Opportunity, the Mars rover that was built to operate for just three months but kept going and going, rolling across the rocky red soil, was pronounced dead Wednesday, 15 years after it landed on the planet. The six-wheeled vehicle that helped gather critical evidence that ancient Mars might have been hospitable to life was remarkably spry up until eight months ago, when it was finally doomed by a ferocious dust storm. Flight controllers tried numerous times to make contact, and sent one final series of recovery commands Tuesday night, along with one last wake-up song, Billie Holiday s “I ll Be Seeing You,” in a somber exercise that brought tears to team members eyes. There was no response from space, only silence.

US space agency NASA will make one final attempt to contact its Opportunity Rover on Mars late Tuesday, eight months after it last made contact. The agency also said it would hold a briefing Wednesday, during which it will likely officially declare the end of the mission. Opportunity landed on Mars in 2004 and covered 28 miles (45 kilometers) on the planet, securing its place in history after lasting well beyond its expected 90-day mission.