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.

Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) agreed on Tuesday to form a joint technical committee, aiming to study the establishment of a factory for medical waste disposal as part of the Egyptian government’s integrated plan of waste-recycling management. During a meeting held between Minister of State for Military Production Mohammed al-Assar and Chairman of Emirates Group for the Transformation Industries Badr bin Fares, Assar said that the factory would enhance the country’s environmental, health and life conditions.

It was only a matter of time until we d have scientists claiming they can read our minds. Certainly only a matter of time coming from the US, and especially the Zuckerman Institute at New York s Columbia University, which is renowned for research into neuroscience and the mechanics of the human brain. Scan their most recent headlines and you get the gist: "A new party trick: A hearing aid that reads minds" (…Studying how your brain picks individual voices from a crowd […] to build a better hearing aid that reads your mind.) Or: "Election Day: The brain science of making decision" (…Take a moment to ask yourself: How did my brain make this decision?)

The Accept for Technology and Payments announced a partnership agreement with valU, specialised in payment-on-instalment programmes, to avail the latter as an alternative payment method for online stores. The agreement offers online access to valU s client base and selling proposition that allows consumers to pay on instalments over tenures between 3 and 24 months. “We believe that by offering this solution to merchants in the country we are enabling businesses to reach their maximum growth potential, while embedding an indispensable payment method into the behaviour of the average Egyptian consumer,” stated the Co-Founder and CEO of Accept Payments, Islam Shawky.

Through improving the telecommunications infrastructure, establishing smart cities, and enabling citizens to use digital services, Egypt is looking into how this could impact the country in the future. This week, Amr Talaat, the minister of communications and information technology, said that “technology, including artificial intelligence, is a key discipline and will continue to be in the coming decade.” It came during a meeting held between Talaat and a team from Oxford Business Group (OBG), the global research and consultancy company. Egypt is one of three countries, alongside China and Mexico, to receive technical assistance from the Financial Inclusion Global Initiative community in order to promote digital financial inclusion.

Mark Zuckerberg said Monday he sees Facebook as a largely “positive” force for society as the embattled social network marked its 15th anniversary. Even as Facebook is facing a wave of criticism over issues of manipulation, misinformation, abuse and other social ills, Zuckerberg said it would be a mistake “to overly emphasize the negative” impacts of social media and the internet.

Over the years, Safer Internet Day (SID) has become an important event in the online safety calendar. It started as an initiative of the EU s Safe Borders project in 2004, and was taken up by the Insafe network as one of its earliest actions in 2005. The SID has grown to be recognised in 140 countries worldwide, and this year, the SID is celebrated on 5 February under the slogan “Together for a better internet”. It comes at a time when corporate privacy scandals, global ransomware epidemics, nation-state attacks, and the regrettably fast-expanding cybercriminal world all threaten to tear the internet apart.

Virtual Reality (VR) started to change gaming, music, and even the medical field, and it can now change architecture and the way architects create their designs. The VR was slowly adopted in many architectural fields, revolutionising the sector that used to be stable in the 21st century culture.

It’s a dilemma for European telecoms firms: Should they steal a march on competitors and rapidly roll out next-generation 5G mobile networks using equipment from top supplier Huawei? Or should they heed US-led warnings of security threats and sit tight, and possibly fall behind? Getting it right will have big consequences as 5G networks are the next milestone in the digital revolution, bringing near-instantaneous connectivity, vast data capacity and futuristic technologies.

The Head of Payment Systems at the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE), Ehab Nasr, said the CBE works within a large team in the government regarding digital transformation under the umbrella of the National Council of Payments. “The bank works within a general framework to produce a national payment card Meza card . We aim to increase the number of this card s users to about 20 million over the next two years, and provide 1m acceptance points within three years,” Nasr told Daily News Egypt.

A group of young Japanese snap selfies as they knock back a few drinks on a Friday night. But the backdrop to their photos is a mechanical claw stuffed with trash. They have chosen one of the more unusual spots in Tokyo for an after-work tipple: a local waste facility and incinerator.

A newly discovered FaceTime bug lets people hear and even see those they are reaching out to on iPhones even if the other person hasn’t answered their phone. When a phone number is dialed on FaceTime — the iPhone’s internet-based voice and video calling feature — the caller can swipe up from the bottom of the screen and tap an option to add a person, according to video demonstrations.

Huawei officially launched its 5G multi-mode chipset Balong 5000 , along with the first commercial 5G device powered by the company, the Huawei 5G CPE Pro. Together, these two new products are considered to have the world s fastest wireless connections, as the Chinese state-owned company seeks to outpace its competitors in the 5G race. The Balong 5000 chipset supports a broad range of 5G products in addition to smartphones, including home broadband devices, vehicle-mounted devices, and 5G modules. Adopting the new Wi-Fi 6 technology, the Huawei 5G CPE Pro delivers speeds of up to 4.8 gigabits per second (Gbps).

Researchers at 360 s Threat Intelligence Centre (360 TIC) identified attacks carried out by a group called DarkHydrus advanced persistent threat (APT), against targets in the Middle East of political value, luring them with Excel documents laced with malicious VBA code (macro). Macro are disabled by default in the Microsoft Office suite for security reasons, and they do not run unless the user enables the feature manually, but the written-in-Arabic Excel documents created by the DarkHydrus group enable macro, then the group do several additional steps to drop a backdoo

Amazon announced that customers in Egypt can currently purchase e-reader Kindle devices as they are now available on the online retail and marketplace souq.com. The Kindle comes in two models, Kindle, and Kindle Oasis-which is the advanced version of Amazon s e-reader devices.

Space debris is a bit like space itself: We know it s up there, but beyond that there s so much we know we don t know. The statistics are fun, though, if a little misleading. It s a bit of a safari crunching the numbers, but here goes. Since 1957, the year the Soviet Union sent Sputnik into space, there have been 4,900 space launches. So far so good.

The Chinese giant, Huawei, will introduce its MateBook X Pro laptop into Egyptian market, as the tech firm is seeking to rule out Apple s MacBook Pro from the market. The laptop has a 14in screen squeezed into a 12in laptop frame, a discrete graphics processing unit (GPU), and a camera which pops up from beneath the keyboard. The new thin and light laptop follows Huawei s 2017 MateBook X, and looks strikingly familiar to Apple s top-of-the-line notebook. With an aluminum body, the company has improved the notebook s features, which impressed the audience in the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018, where the laptop was officially released.

Pristol Braille Technology, a British tech company, plans to launch a new e-reader for the visually impaired people that would enhance their reading experience and spare them from lugging around hefty Braille books. The device, called Canute 360, will be available for customers by the end of the year, Bristol announced. The device is a desktop e-reader which will support all six-dot Braille codes, and will include 360 cells, and three page-navigation buttons. It was originally developed for educational purposes.

Here comes a total lunar eclipse and supermoon, all wrapped into one. The moon, Earth and sun will line up this weekend for the only total lunar eclipse this year and next. At the same time, the moon will be ever so closer to Earth and appear slightly bigger and brighter than usual _ a supermoon. "This one is particularly good," said Rice University astrophysicist Patrick Hartigan. "It not only is a supermoon and its a total eclipse, but the total eclipse also lasts pretty long. Its about an hour."

LG Electronics announced its strategy for 2019 which focuses on customer satisfaction, especially the after-sales service which is a key factor for buyers of electronic devices in Egypt, as LG is looking forward to acquiring a larger market share. LG will also invest $15m in Egypt, the most populated Arab country with millions of customers. The company s investments in Egypt are estimated at $240m. In 2018, LG Egypt exports reached about $200m.