Seven months after Huang Yu s pet cat Garlic died, the British shorthair was given a 10th life. Born on July 21, the new Garlic was created by Chinese firm Sinogene, becoming the Beijing-based company s first successfully copied cat. The pet-cloning outfit has made more than 40 pet dogs — a procedure that costs a hefty 380,000 yuan ($53,000), while the price for a cat comes in at 250,000 yuan ($35,000). Mi Jidong, the company s chief executive officer, told AFP that despite the high price tag, not all clients were high earners. “In fact, a large proportion of customers are young people who have only graduated in the last few years,” he said. “Whatever the origin of pets, owners will see them as part of the family. Pet cloning meets the emotional needs of young generations.” Huang, 23, was overjoyed on first seeing Garlic s second incarnation, saying the “similarity between the two cats is more than 90 percent”. “When Garlic died, I was very sad,” said Huang. “I couldn t face the facts because it was a sudden death. I blame myself for not taking him to the hospital in time, which led to his death.” The happy owner says he hopes the personality of the new Garlic is as similar to his old white-and-grey cat as its appearance. With a growing pet market in China, and a huge appetite among their owners for spending, Mi thinks the market for pet cloning is also set to rocket. According to a report by Pet Fair Asia and pet website Goumin.com, pet-related spending in China reached 170.8 bn yuan ($23.7 billion) in 2018. And the country s scientists have big aspirations for their next cloning challenge, working on the theory that if cats can be cloned, so can pandas. Chen Dayuan — an expert at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who has been researching giant panda cloning for 20 years — said there could even be scope for cats to give birth to cloned baby pandas, which are smaller than baby cats despite their large size when fully grown. Pet cloning is illegal in many countries but approved in countries including South Korea and the US, where singer Barbra Streisand announced last year she had cloned her dog. The first major success in animal cloning was Dolly the sheep, born in Britain in 1996 as the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. In 2005, researchers in South Korea cloned the first dog. The Sooam Biotech Research Foundation in Seoul says it has cloned some 800 pets and charges $100,000 each.

An artificial-intelligence app that allows users to insert their faces in place of film and TV characters has caused controversy in China. Zao has sparked privacy fears and suggestions it could be used to defeat systems using facial recognition. It appeared in China on 29 August and has proven wildly popular. But it has led to developers Momo apologising for its end-user agreement, which stripped users of the rights to their images. And as the app went viral, Zao s owners aired fears users were devouring its expensively purchased server capacity. Its popularity has also lead to assurances from Alipay, part of the Chinese web giant Alibaba, saying that it s impossible for so-called deepfake videos created by the app to be used to cheat its Smile to Pay facial-recognition system. What s Zao and why is it so controversial? Zao is a face-swapping app that uses clips from films and TV shows, convincingly changing a character s face by using selfies from the user s phone. But some users had noted the app s terms and conditions "gave the developers the global right to permanently use any image created on the app for free", Hong Kong s South China Morning Post reported. "Moreover, the developers had the right to transfer this authorisation to any third party without further permission from the user," the paper said, adding experts believed this broke Chinese law. Momo had subsequently deleted the controversial clause and issued an apology, saying its app would not store users biometric information nor "excessively collect user information", Shanghai-based The Paper said. But popular social media platform WeChat quickly banned users from uploading Zao videos via its platform, citing "security risks". The app may also be a victim of its own success, with Zao saying, on its Sina Weibo social media account, it had used up a third of its monthly server capacity, budgeted at 7m yuan (£805,000), on its first night. And the following day, as users complained of a slow service, it said, "with a heavy heart", servers were at fully capacity. Could Zao be used to defraud banks? Alipay, the world s largest mobile payment platform, with over 870 million users, has assured its users videos created in Zao cannot be used to defraud its systems. Many Alipay users take advantage of its Smile to Pay system, which allows payment verification by the user looking into a camera at a shop or restaurant s point-of-sale. Alibaba, which owns Alipay, says it uses sophisticated anti-spoofing algorithms to make sure it isn t fooled by still photographs or deepfake videos. "There is a lot of online face-changing software - but no matter how realistic, it is impossible to break through the facial payment system", the company said on its Weibo account. Even before the system attempts to match the face, it detects whether the presented image is a still, video or software simulation. "This avoids fraud caused by face-changing technology," Alibaba said. Dangerous AI offers to write fake news Fake news is reinforced by false memories Instagram has a plan to tackle fake news Momo also moved to calm fears Zao could be used for fraud, clarifying Alipay s point it only used and adapted still photographs for its deepfake videos. "The facial payment security threshold is extremely high, and face-changing technology realised by only one photo can t break through the security system," the developers said. It was "completely impossible" for deepfakes of this kind to threaten payment security, Momo told The Paper. And last year, academic Pan Helin told China Daily Alipay s facial recognition was "theoretically a more secure and convenient method than the conventional use of passwords". What s the reaction been? Concerns over the app reached state-run Chinese press. Global Times said it was another example of "concerning" AI-powered apps "which could be used maliciously". China was already considering tightening regulations governing AI face-stitching technology, the paper said. And lawyer Zhang Xinnian told it the laws governing phone apps terms and conditions needed to be tightened. Zao s initial terms "violated user privacy and once personal information is leaked and abused it could lead to criminal incidents", he added. Meanwhile, law professor Zhu Wei told state news agency Xinhua: "People are using a mobile client that involves information about personal identity, property, scan codes and mobile payments and they can t see exactly what information is obtained by the app, so it is very dangerous." A commentary in the Beijing News even asked whether the app could become "a threat to national security". With genuine concerns about national and personal security from Zao and future deepfake services, "it is necessary to regulate them as soon as possible with clear legal provisions", it added. A Guangzhou Daily editorial said: "Changing-face videos is fun but the potential security risks cannot be ignored." And The Paper said while Zao s popularity would be short-lived, its arrival had made it easier for dark actors to take advantage of face-changing technology. BBC Monitoring reports and analyses news from TV, radio, web and print media around the world. You can follow BBC Monitoring on Twitter and Facebook.

An engineer has discovered prototype code in Facebook s Android app which suggests it might test hiding the number of likes a post receives. Jane Manchun Wong found the code, which has not been activated. Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook, is conducting a similar test in seven countries including Canada and Brazil, where only the account holder in the trial can see the number of likes they attract. Facebook declined to comment. Some studies have suggested the pressures of social media popularity can affect mental health, particularly in young people. Are we addicted to the like button? Ms Wong wrote a blog post about her discovery, in which she emphasised that she does not work for the tech giant. "It takes time to develop, observe, research and release experimental features like this," she said. "Experimental features could come and go. But I am certain hiding the public like counts will be beneficial to the digital wellbeing of a large chunk of users." Venture capitalist Ellen Pao tweeted that the change - if it happens - is overdue. "Social platforms have known as early as 2014 that social media impacts mental health and only now is Facebook starting to hide like counts," she said. Instagram said it was not yet ready to share the results of its experiment. "We hope this test will remove the pressure of how many likes a post will receive, so you can focus on sharing the things you love," Mia Garlick, Facebook Australia and New Zealand director of policy, said in a statement when the Instagram trial was announced.

The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) revealed on August 29 figures about waste recycling in Egypt during the year 2017 in a report detailing statistics from the Egyptian governorates with the top five highest recycling rates. Gharbiya governorate came in first place with 97.9 percent, and Beheira came in second place with 97.5 percent. The three governorates Kafr al-Sheikh (92.3 percent), Qalyubiya (72.3 percent) and Daqahlia (0.5 percent) occupied the following three rankings. Last May, Egypt s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ordered concerned officials to design a new solid waste management system for overpopulated areas, aiming to enhance citizens lives on various levels, a prior statement by the presidential spokesperson said. In light of the new project, Sisi called for coordination between diverse ministries to secure the success of the solid waste management system, underscoring the importance of using accurately researched studies as well as prominent foreign expertise while working on it. Solutions for two major issues faced by Egyptian society, water and air pollution, are included in the new system s strategic plan, according to the same official statement. A meeting led by Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly followed up on the plan s implementation. During the meeting, he unveiled its three main programs and vowed that they would be launched as soon as possible. The first program s main goal is to establish eight trash sorting facilities in five of Egypt s governorates including Cairo, Daqahlia, Sharqiya, Fayoum, and Luxor. Another 15 will also be installed in the seven Egyptian governorates Qalyubiya, Damietta, Cairo, Ismailia, Beheira, Matrouh, and Beni Suef during 2019-2020. The second program will focus on financially supporting garbage services for waste collection, street cleaning and more. The third program will launch awareness campaigns across all the governorates and support the recycling sector.

Google will pay $150-200 million to settle allegations YouTube violated a children s privacy law while gathering data to better target its adverts, US media reports said Friday. The US Federal Trade Commission agreed the amount of the settlement against YouTube parent Google, which if approved by the Justice Department would be the largest settlement in a case involving children s privacy, the New York Times reported. The allegations against YouTube were made by privacy groups who said the platform had violated laws protecting children s privacy by gathering data on users under the age of 13 without obtaining permission from parents, Politico reported. The FTC is expected to announce its decision on the settlement in September, the New York Times said. US regulators have long argued Google fails to protect children from harmful content and data collection on its YouTube platform. Advocacy group The Center for Digital Democracy said in a statement that the proposed settlement would be “woefully low” given Google s size and revenue, and called on the FTC to “enjoin Google from committing further violations” of children s privacy law. Google remains the money-making engine for parent company Alphabet, with most of its revenue coming from digital ads, which accounted for $116 billion of the $136 billion the Silicon Valley-based company took in last year. In January, France s CNIL data watchdog slapped Google with a record 50-million-euro fine for failing to meet the EU s tough General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force early last year. Google is appealing the fine. Fellow US tech giant Facebook recently settled a record $5 billion fine with the US Federal Trade Commission for misusing users private data.

The Ministry of Environment is set to implement a new regulation plan on Egypt s natural resources, which includes applying a visiting fee according to a decision revealed by the Official Gazette. Many of Egypt s natural sites such beaches and waterfalls have seen a significant flow of visitors and trips, prompting Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly to assign the concerned ministries as well as governorates to put these newly issued administrative decisions into practice. The plan includes the application of a US$5 fee for foreigners and LE25 for Egyptians during the day, to be doubled during the night while car entry fees are set at $5 for small cars and $10 for big cars. The Ministry of Environment s Natural Reserves Sector is set to launch the fee service in the Red Sea as well Sinai natural sites, to be imposed on entries and various activities. These fees will include yachts, varying from $10 to $60 depending on their sizes. No further details were revealed regarding which particular sites would be affected.

The G7 has agreed to spend 20 million euros ($22 million) on the Amazon, mainly to send fire-fighting aircraft to tackle the huge blazes engulfing many parts of the world s biggest rainforest, the presidents of France and Chile announced Monday. The G7 club — comprising Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — has also agreed to support a medium-term reforestation plan which will be unveiled at the UN in September, France s Emmanuel Macron and Chile s Sebastian Pinera said at the G7 summit in southwest France. Brazil would have to agree to any reforestation plan, as would indigenous communities living in the Amazon. The initiative was announced after G7 leaders meeting in the resort of Biarritz held talks on the environment, focusing on the record number of fires destroying chunks of the Amazon. Macron had declared the situation in the Amazon region an “international crisis” and made it one of the summit s priorities. He has threatened to block a huge new trade deal between the EU and Latin America unless Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a climate change skceptic, takes serious steps to protect the forest from logging and mining. “We must respond to the call of the forest which is burning today in the Amazon,” Macron said Monday. Nearly 80,000 forest fires have been detected in Brazil since the beginning of the year, a little over half in the massive Amazon basin. Bolsonaro has lashed out at Macron over his criticism and suggested that NGOs could be setting the fires to embarrass him — without giving any evidence to back the claim. But at the weekend he finally caved into international pressure to save a region crucial for maintaining a stable global climate, deploying two aircraft to douse the fires and authorising the army to help tackle the blazes. Speaking in Biarritz, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said new planting was needed “to preserve this universal heritage, which is absolutely essential for the well-being of the world s population.” He said that the issue would be discussed during the UN General Assembly in New York in September.

Skimming low over the gleaming white glaciers on Greenland s coast in a modified 1940s plane, three NASA scientists, led by an Elvis-impersonating oceanographer, waited to drop a probe into the water beneath them. They are part of Oceans Melting Greenland — or OMG —- a mission that has flown around the vast island for four summers, dropping probes to collect data on how oceans contribute to the rapid melt of Greenland s ice. Dressed in a blue jumpsuit and with thick sideburns that give a hint of his occasional pastime impersonating Elvis, Joshua Willis, 44, is the oceanographer from NASA s Jet Propulsion Laboratory behind the project — and, along with his wife, its name. “We re looking at probably meters of sea level rise in the next hundred years and that s a huge threat to hundreds of millions of people around the world, so a bit of alarm and OMG is probably warranted,” he said. Passing over rocky fjords, dazzling glaciers and icebergs, some dozens of meters (feet) high looming out of the water, Willis and the crew took turns dropping the 1.5-metre cylindrical probes and watching as the data came in showing the ocean s temperature and salinity. Ice cube under a hair dryer Willis is investigating how warmer layers of water off the coast come into contact with glaciers and how this effects how quickly they melt. “A lot of people think of the ice here as melting from the air warming, sort of like an ice cube under a hair dryer, but in fact the oceans are also eating away at the ice s edges,” Willis said. OMG surveys Greenlandic glaciers in the winter, comparing it with the data they collect about the oceans in the summer over a five-year period, which Willis hopes will allow researchers to better predict sea-level rise. The island has three quarters bordering the Arctic ocean and is 85 percent covered in ice — if this ice sheet were to disappear completely, it would raise the ocean level by seven meters (23 feet). The Arctic region has warmed twice as fast as the global average, and Greenland, a resource-rich Danish possession, has become a focal point for climate research — as well an object of desire for US President Donald Trump, who scrapped a trip to Denmark over its dismissal of his attempts to buy the autonomous territory. Greenland a challenge NASA — best know for the moon landings and space travel — started to study the earth s climate in greater depth from the 1970s when its inter-planetary exploration budget was reduced, using its satellites to look at the earth. Today it has more than a dozen satellites in orbit monitoring earth s seas, ice, land and atmosphere, along with missions like OMG, which Willis hopes will provide data to give better predictions of sea-level rise around the globe. At the rear of the refitted DC3, built in 1942 for the Canadian air force during World War II, project manager Ian McCubbin took his turn by a chute holding the plastic probe, waiting for the order to drop it. Sucked out into the cold air below, the four-foot cylinder parachuted into the water and after a nervous wait, started transmitting data to the team on the plane. With 20 years experience flying with the JPL, McCubbin also organizes the mission s logistics from the remote airfields it flies out of during the summer. “Dealing with Greenland s remoteness is a unique challenge,” McCubbin said on a break between dropping probes, a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes. Limited communications and transport links and the island s unpredictable weather all make keeping the mission in the air more complicated, but McCubbin said he was happy to put up with the difficulties. “The relevance of this project makes it exciting to work on, given the importance to our society, our children, our children s children,” he said. Tough decisions ahead Ian Fenty, an investigator with OMG, sat in front of a laptop and a bank of electronics receiving the signals from the probes. After each probe hit the water, data started to upload almost immediately onto the small screen on the laptop on the tray table in front of Fenty. “The data we re collecting are super valuable because they re allowing us for the very first time to quantitatively relate ocean temperature changes with the melting of the ice sheet,” he said. After two hours in the air along the coast of eastern Greenland, the plane turned and headed back to base at the remote village of Kulusuk, flying low over icebergs and pods of whales in the sea below. After the flight, Willis, wearing Ray Bans, a leather jacket with the collar turned up and a guitar, gave a performance of his Elvis-inspired “Climate Rock” to diners and visiting journalists in the village s hotel, explaining the difference between the weather and climate. For Willis, the song, like his work with OMG, are all part of trying to get his message about climate change and sea-level rise across. “I feel like as a climate scientist I have a responsibility to explain what we re finding to the world,” he said. “We have some tough decisions ahead of us if we want to avoid the worst parts of climate change.”

An unmanned spacecraft carrying Russia s first humanoid robot to be sent into orbit failed to dock automatically at the International Space Station on Saturday, in a new setback for Moscow. “Russian cosmonauts issued a command to abort the automated approach of an uncrewed Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station,” the US space agency NASA said in a statement. “The craft was unable to lock onto its target at the station,” and “backed a safe distance away from the orbital complex while the Russian flight controllers assess the next steps,” NASA said. Russian flight controllers had told the ISS crew it appeared the problem that prevented automated docking was in the station and not the Soyuz spacecraft, NASA added. Moscow news agencies quoted the flight center control as saying the Soyuz craft had to retreat to a “secure distance” from the ISS. The docking had been scheduled for 0530 GMT but a live broadcast of the event on the website of the Russian space agency Roscosmos was interrupted when the Soyuz approached to about 100 meters (100 yards) off the ISS. “The Soyuz is on a safe trajectory above and behind the space station that will bring it in the vicinity of the orbital complex again in 24 hours and 48 hours,” NASA said. “Russian flight controllers have indicated the next earliest docking attempt could be Monday morning.” TASS news agency quoted the head of the Russian side of ISS, Vladimir Soloviov saying “telemetry analysis showed there were failings with radio equipment” on the station. “It can be corrected,” he said, adding that part of the equipment would be replaced and another attempt at docking made between 0500 GMT and 0600 GMT on Monday. “There is no threat to the station and its crew,” a Roscosmos statement said. Russia s space industry has suffered a series of setbacks from accidents and corruption scandals in recent years. Let s go, let s go Last October, a Soyuz rocket carrying an American and a Russian had to make an emergency landing shortly after lift-off — it was the first failure in the history of manned Russian flights. The life-size robot named Fedor, short for Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research, is the first ever sent up by Russia. Fedor blasted off Thursday in a Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft from Russia s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and was to stay on the ISS until September 7 learning to assist astronauts in the space station. Soyuz ships are normally manned on such trips, but this time no humans were travelling in order to test a new emergency rescue system. Instead of cosmonauts, Fedor, also known as Skybot F850, was strapped into a specially adapted pilot s seat, with a small Russian flag in its hand. “Let s go. Let s go,” the robot was heard saying during launch, repeating the famous phrase used by the first man in space Yuri Gagarin. The silvery anthropomorphic robot stands 180 centimetres (6 feet) tall and weighs 160 kilogrammes (350 pounds). Fedor has Instagram and Twitter accounts with posts saying it is learning new skills, such as opening a bottle of water. It was to trial those manual skills in very low gravity inside the space station. “The first stage of in-flight experiments went according to the flight plan,” the robot tweeted after reaching orbit. Fedor copies human movements, a key skill that allows it to remotely help astronauts — or even people on Earth — to carry out tasks while the humans are strapped into an exoskeleton. Fedor is not the first robot to go into space. In 2011, NASA sent up Robonaut 2, a humanoid developed with General Motors that had a similar aim of working in high-risk environments. It was flown back to Earth in 2018 after experiencing technical problems. In 2013, Japan sent up a small robot called Kirobo along with the ISS s first Japanese space commander. Developed with Toyota, it was able to hold conversations — albeit only in Japanese.

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Facebook is drawing back the veil to show what data it collects on users. Many may not like what they see. A feature in settings called Off-Facebook Activity will show all the apps and websites that send information about you to Facebook, which is then used to target ads more effectively. You will also be able to clear your history and prevent your future off-app behaviour being tapped. But one expert said the move was unlikely to have a big impact on the firm s profits. For now, it is rolling out very slowly, with only Ireland, South Korea and Spain getting access. But the goal is to eventually offer it globally. The initiative comes at a time when Apple and Mozilla have already taken steps to prevent Facebook and other services from tracking users from one online platform to another via their browsers. In addition, Germany s competition regulator had told the firm it needed to substantially restrict the way it collected and combined data about its members unless it sought more explicit consent than it had done. Shared interests Facebook collects data from beyond its platform either because you have opted to use the social media site to log in to an app or, more likely, because a website uses something called Facebook Pixel to track your activities. This is why when you browse a website for new shoes, you find an ad popping up in your Facebook Newsfeed half-an-hour later telling you about that nifty pair of boots you ve just been looking at. The Off-Facebook Activity setting will let you drill down into exactly what data various apps or sites are sharing about you - Facebook says the average smartphone user has 80 apps and uses 40 of them every month, so the list could be long. You will then be able to disconnect the data from your Facebook profile - either the whole lot or singling out individual sources. If you take advantage of this, it should mean that those shoe ads stop following you across the internet in quite such a persistent fashion. It is important to stress that Facebook will still collect the data, but it will be anonymised - they may know that lots of people have been looking at those boots but they won t know that they include you. Off-Facebook Activity has been more than a year in the making and fulfils a pledge made by Mark Zuckerberg at last year s F8 developer conference to give users greater control over how their data is used. But how will users react to this feature - and what will it mean for Facebook s advertising business? I suspect that those people who do use it will be pretty horrified. It is one thing to know that in principle you are being tracked, quite another to see it in black and white. "This is how much of the internet works," says Facebook rather defensively in a blog about the new tool. And in a briefing Stephanie Max, the product manager behind it, made the unlikely claim that the reason it collected the data was to help users "discover businesses they care about." If millions of users do investigate this new setting and then decide to disconnect the data, then that in theory could prove damaging to advertisers and to Facebook s bottom line. How much impact would there be, we asked Stephanie Max, if say 20% of users shut down the link between this stream of data and their Facebook profiles? "We didn t do any modelling of that," she replied, going on to say that there was a lot of evidence that users valued having a personalised experience and that was intertwined with the way Facebook works currently. It would seem bizarre that Facebook would not have worked out in advance what impact this new transparency might have on its revenues, but the company may be right to be pretty relaxed. For one thing, it looks likely that finding and then acting on the Off-Facebook tool will be a very niche activity. For another, an expert on Facebook s advertising business says it is changing in ways that make the precise targeting of users less important. Mat Morrison, planning director at marketing agency Digital Whiskey, says advertisers are gradually waking up to the idea that targeting 23 year old men in High Wycombe who like mountain-biking and sushi is not that useful. "Agencies are trying to tell clients to calm down about nano-targeting," he explained. "When we began using Facebook data we could easily create nano-target audiences - only 20 people. Of course, this turns out to be a waste of everyone s time and money." The story a few years ago was that the hugely expensive ad break in ITV s Coronation Street, which delivered a broad if poorly-defined audience, was being superseded by the precise targeting offered by social media ads. Now, says Morrison, the pendulum is swinging again and Facebook advertising is being valued for delivering a wide swathe of the population. "Creating a broad consensus in the audience is what advertising has always been about," he says. So even if some of the Facebook population revolts against the constant tracking of their wider online activities - and remember the social media site will still have lots of data about them - it is unlikely that advertisers will desert what has become the prime destination for their messages. It is worth noting that two of the countries where the new setting is making its debut are in the European Union. The tech giant can show EU regulators that it is giving users more control over their data, without doing any damage to its ad revenues. Job done...

Scientists working on an audacious mission to the ocean world of Europa can proceed with the final design and construction of the spacecraft, Nasa says. The Europa Clipper mission will target the ice-encrusted moon of Jupiter, which is considered a prime target in the search for life beyond Earth. Below its icy shell, Europa is thought to hold a 170km-deep body of water. This could have the right conditions for biology. Due to launch in 2025, the Europa Clipper mission has now passed a stage called Key Decision Point C, a crucial marker on the road to the launch pad. "We are all excited about the decision that moves the Europa Clipper mission one key step closer to unlocking the mysteries of this ocean world," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for Nasa s science mission directorate. Europa Clipper will carry out an in-depth investigation of the watery world, including whether it can support life in its subsurface ocean. Gravitational interactions with Jupiter generate tidal forces and heat, which keeps Europa s ocean liquid. The heating may even drive volcanic vents on the seafloor; on Earth, such vent systems support a wide array of life forms. But it has taken decades to bring a dedicated mission this far, in part because of cost considerations and the challenges posed by the space environment around Jupiter. Europa s orbital path takes it deep into belts of intense radiation that surround the giant planet. This radiation fries spacecraft electronics, which limits the durations of prospective missions to months or even weeks. So rather than orbiting Europa, Clipper will make repeated close flybys of the moon, to reduce its exposure to the energetic particles trapped by Jupiter s magnetic field. The spacecraft will carry nine science instruments, including cameras and spectrometers to produce high-resolution images of the moon s surface, a magnetometer to measure the strength and direction of its magnetic field (providing clues to the ocean s depth and salinity) and an ice-penetrating radar to determine the thickness of the icy crust above the ocean. The ice shell could be tens of kilometres thick. Luckily, scientists think there are several ways for ocean water to get up to Europa s surface. In recent years, the Hubble Space Telescope has made tentative observations of plumes of water-ice erupting from beneath Europa, much as they do on Saturn s ice moon Enceladus, which also has a subsurface ocean. The first concepts for missions to explore Europa were drawn up in the 1990s, around the time that data from the Galileo spacecraft helped build evidence for a subsurface ocean. Since then, however, one proposal after another has been thwarted, including an ambitious US-European mission along the lines of the Cassini-Huygens mission. But Clipper has had a key champion on Capitol Hill, in the form of Republican legislator John Culberson who, as chairman of the US House of Representatives appropriations committee that funds Nasa, channelled money to the mission. But last year, Culberson, who had become known for his advocacy on Europa exploration, was unseated in Texas 7th congressional district by Democrat Lizzie Pannill Fletcher. During the campaign, a pro-Democrat political action committee ran an ad saying: "For Houston, Lizzie Fletcher will invest in humans, not aliens." A follow-up mission to go and land on Europa has also been proposed. But the most recent federal budget request included no funding for the lander.

The Egyptian Antiquities Ministry s head of the Islamic, Coptic, and Jewish Antiquities Sector, Gamal Mostafa, denied social media speculation claiming that the interior features of the Baron Empain Palace in Heliopolis would be changed during restoration work. During a phone-call with the al-Hekaya (The Story) TV show on Sunday Mostafa slammed the rumors, saying “What is being said about the removal of the drawings in the ceilings and the demolition of the internal columns, is inconceivable and illogical.” Controversy first spread on social media following the circulation of palace restoration work photos showing the bricks being repainted into a reddish-brown color. “This color was studied, and is the original color of the palace,” he said, stressing that the restoration work is done according to previous studies conducted on the palace s history. Mostafa added that a team from the Antiquities Ministry is carefully following the restoration work on a daily basis, approving all details. The Arab Contractors Company, commissioned by the Engineering Corps of the Armed Forces in cooperation with the Ministry of Antiquities, began work on the development and restoration of the Baron Empain Palace in July 2017. The initial renovation work cost was set at LE113.738 million, funded by the Egyptian government. The Baron Empain Palace is a unique architectural masterpiece built by Belgian millionaire Edouard Louis Joseph, the Baron Empain, who came to Egypt from India at the end of the 19th century. The palace is located in the heart of Heliopolis in Cairo, and lays on an area of about 12.5 thousand meters. The palace is carefully designed so the sun can enter the rooms from all sides. The Baron s room includes a detailed painting depicting the wine making process. The Baron Empain s inspiration for the palace came from the Angkor Wat Temple in Cambodia and the Hindu Orissa temples. Completed in 1911, it was designed by French architect Alexandre Marcel and decorated by Georges Louis Claude.

Iceland on Sunday honors the passing of Okjokull, its first glacier lost to climate change, as scientists warn that some 400 others on the subarctic island risk the same fate. A bronze plaque will be unveiled in a ceremony starting around 1400 GMT to mark Okjokull — which translates to “Ok glacier” — in the west of Iceland, in the presence of local researchers and their peers at Rice University in the United States, who initiated the project. Iceland s Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir, Environment Minister Gudmundur Ingi Gudbrandsson, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson are also due to attend the event. “This will be the first monument to a glacier lost to climate change anywhere in the world,” Cymene Howe, associate professor of anthropology at Rice University, said in July. The plaque bears the inscription “A letter to the future,” and is intended to raise awareness about the decline of glaciers and the effects of climate change. “In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it,” the plaque reads. It is also labelled “415 ppm CO2,” referring to the record level of carbon dioxide measured in the atmosphere last May. “Memorials everywhere stand for either human accomplishments, like the deeds of historic figures, or the losses and deaths we recognize as important,” researcher Howe said. “By memorializing a fallen glacier, we want to emphasize what is being lost — or dying — the world over, and also draw attention to the fact that this is something that humans have accomplished , although it is not something we should be proud of.” Howe noted that the conversation about climate change can be abstract, with many dire statistics and sophisticated scientific models that can feel incomprehensible. “Perhaps a monument to a lost glacier is a better way to fully grasp what we now face,” she said, highlighting “the power of symbols and ceremony to provoke feelings”. Iceland loses about 11 billion tonnes of ice per year, and scientists fear all of the island country s 400-plus glaciers will be gone by 2200, according to Howe and her Rice University colleague Dominic Boyer. Stripped in 2014 Glaciologists stripped Okjokull of its glacier status in 2014, a first for Iceland. In 1890, the glacier ice covered 16 square kilometres (6.2 square miles) but by 2012, it measured just 0.7 square kilometers, according to a report from the University of Iceland from 2017. In 2014, “we made the decision that this was no longer a living glacier, it was only dead ice, it was not moving,” Oddur Sigurdsson, a glaciologist with the Icelandic Meteorological Office, told AFP. To have the status of a glacier, the mass of ice and snow must be thick enough to move by its own weight. For that to happen the mass must be approximately 40 to 50 metres (130 to 165 feet) thick, he said. According to a study published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)in April, nearly half of the world s heritage sites could lose their glaciers by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate. Sigurdsson said he feared “that nothing can be done to stop it.” “The inertia of the climate system is such that, even if we could stop introducing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere right now, it will keep on warming for century and a half or two centuries before it reaches equilibrium.” Iceland s Vatnajokull National Park, which was added to UNESCO s World Heritage List in early July, is home to, and named after, the largest ice cap in Europe. Image: NASA/AFP / – The Okjokull glacier in Iceland has melted away due to climate changea

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has reviewed the Dabaa project s safety measures in Egypt, said an official source with the Nuclear Power Plants Authority, adding that Dabaa has the safest design of its kind in the world. The source added that Egypt is particularly keen to secure safety measures for the plant, and that s why it selected the third generation developed reactors, the latest in the world. Egypt and Russia are cooperating with the IAEA, which monitors nuclear projects and ensures their compliance with international standards, the source said. According to the source, IAEA experts visited Egypt last January upon the invitation of the Egyptian Nuclear and Radiological Regulatory Authority and provided support in reviewing the Dabaa project documents, especially with regard to the site assessment and the project s radiological impact on the environment. Karim al-Adham, Professor at the Egyptian Nuclear and Radiation Control Authority, said that there is no legitimate fear of a nuclear explosion similar to that which occurred recently due to missile tests in the Russian city of Severodvinsk, pointing out that the technology used at Dabaa is the safest of its kind in the world. “It can withstand a seismic acceleration of up to 0.3 and a tsunami of up to 14 meters, as well as its ability to spontaneously turn off safely without human intervention”, the government issued a Facebook statement on Tuesday. The Dabaa plant is also equipped with a reactor trap to contain it once it melts, an incident that never exceeds one in 10 million reactors per year, the statement said. The government statement stressed that the Dabaa plant is also equipped with various other safety means, adding that the concerns raised by social media users regarding the Russian incident are misplaced and exaggerated. In December, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi signed a contract to begin work on El Dabaa Nuclear Power Plant. Construction is expected to provisionally start in 2020, according to Alexei Likhachev, Chief Executive Officer of Russia s state nuclear corporation Rosatom. The plant is expected to be fully-built by 2022. Russia will loan Egypt $25 billion to finance building and operating the plant. Egypt will pay an interest rate of 3 percent annually. Installment payments will begin on October 15, 2029.

Fossils in New Zealand have led to the discovery of a new species of giant penguin that could grow up to 1.6 meters tall. The penguin s closest relative is another giant penguin that was found in Antarctica. Scientists on Wednesday said the fossilized remains of a giant human-sized penguin have been found on New Zealand s South Island. The huge seabird was up to 1.6 meters (63 inches) tall and weighed up to 80 kilograms, some four times heavier and 40 centimeters taller than the modern-day Emperor penguin, researchers said. After the remains were discovered by an amateur paleontologist in 2018, a team from the Canterbury Museum and the Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, Germany, analyzed the bones and found they belonged to the previously unknown penguin species Crossvallia waiparensis. The penguin hunted off New Zealand s coast in the Paleocene era, 66-56 million years ago. The research identifying the new species was published this week in Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology. The closest known relative of the new species is the Crossvallia unienwillia, which lived around the same time and was identified from a fossilized partial skeleton found in the Cross Valley in Antarctica in 2000. Canterbury Museum curator Paul Scofield said finding closely related birds in New Zealand and Antarctica showed the country s close connection to the icy continent. "When the Crossvallia species were alive, New Zealand and Antarctica were very different from today — Antarctica was covered in forest and both had much warmer climates," Scofield said. A researcher at the museum, Vanesa De Pietri, said it was the second giant penguin from the Paleocene era found in the area. "It further reinforces our theory that penguins attained great size early in their evolution," she said. Scientists have raised the possibility that the mega-penguins died out due to the emergence of other large marine predators such as seals and toothed whales. New Zealand is known for having once been home to other large extinct birds, including the flightless moa, which was up to 3.6 meters tall, and Haast s eagle, which had a wingspan of 3 meters. Last week, the Canterbury Museum announced the discovery of a prodigious parrot that was 1 meter tall and lived about 19 million years ago.

LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists are a step closer to finding the first effective treatments for the deadly Ebola hemorrhagic fever after two potential drugs showed survival rate of as much as 90 percent in a clinical trial in Congo. Two experimental drugs – Regeneron s (REGN.O) REGN-EB3 and a monoclonal antibody called mAb114 – were both developed using antibodies harvested from survivors of Ebola infection. The treatments are now going to be offered to all patients in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. They showed “clearly better” results in patients in a trial of four potential treatments being conducted during the world s second largest Ebola outbreak in history, now entering its second year in DRC. The drugs improved survival rates from the disease more than two other treatments being tested – ZMapp, made by Mapp Biopharmaceutical, and Remdesivir, made by Gilead Sciences (GILD.O) – and those products will be now dropped, said Anthony Fauci, one of the researchers co-leading the trial. The agency said 49 percent of the patients on ZMapp and 53 percent on remdesivir died in the study. In comparison, 29 percent of the patients on REGN-EB3 and 34 percent on mAb-114 died. Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told reporters in a telebriefing the results were “very good news” for the fight against Ebola. “What this means is that we do now have what look like (two) treatments for a disease for which not long ago we really had no approach at all,” he said. The agency said of the patients who were brought into treatment centers with low levels of virus detected in their blood, 94 percent who got REGN-EB3 and 89 percent on mAb114 survived. In comparison, two-third of the patients who got remdesivir and nearly three-fourth on ZMapp survived. Ebola has been spreading in eastern Congo since August 2018 in an outbreak that has now become the second largest, killing at least 1,800 people. Efforts to control it have been hampered by militia violence and some local resistance to outside help. A vast Ebola outbreak in West Africa become the world s largest ever when it spread through Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone from 2013 to 2016 and killed more than 11,300 people. The Congo treatment trial, which began in November last year, is being carried out by an international research group coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO). Mike Ryan, head of the WHO s emergencies program, said the trial s positive findings were encouraging but would not be enough on their own to bring the epidemic to an end. “The news today is fantastic. It gives us a new tool in our toolbox against Ebola, but it will not in itself stop Ebola,” he told reporters. Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust global health charity, also hailed the success of the trial s findings, saying they would “undoubtedly save lives”. “The more we learn about these two treatments, …the closer we can get to turning Ebola from a terrifying disease to one that is preventable and treatable,” he said in a statement. “We won t ever get rid of Ebola but we should be able to stop these outbreaks from turning into major national and regional epidemics.” Some 681 patients at four separate treatment centers in Congo have already been enrolled in the Congo treatment clinical trial, Fauci said. The study aims to enroll a total of 725. The decision to drop two of the trial drugs was based on data from almost 500 patients, he said, which showed that those who got REGN-EB3 or mAb114 “had a greater chance of survival compared to those participants in the other two arms”. Reporting by Kate Kelland, additional reporting by Ankur Banerjee and Manojna Maddipatla ; Editing by Deepa Babington, Mark Heinrich and Arun Koyyur Image: FILE PHOTO: A health worker fills a syringe with Ebola vaccine before injecting it to a patient, in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, August 5, 2019. REUTERS/Baz Ratner

The Perseid meteor shower is as regular as clockwork. It peaks August 12, same as last year. This time we can expect to see twice as many shooting stars, perhaps even a "double peak." But there s loads we don t know. You could almost set your watch by it. The Perseid meteor shower is an annual event, about as regular as Christmas. The precise dates can vary depending on the relative positions of the Earth and the sun or if it s a leap year, but it s reliable. So we re as certain as science that the Perseid meteor shower peaks on August 12, and for more than a week we can expect to see spectacular things like bright lights and shooting stars in the northern night sky. These shooting stars, as magical as they may appear to be, are caused when the Earth passes through a stream of dust and rocks - meteoroids - left behind by the comet Swift-Tuttle as it orbits the sun. When you see a shooting star, you re seeing a meteoroid clash with the Earth s atmosphere and then burning up. This causes a short-lived trail of light called a meteor. The lucky ones survive our atmosphere and land to become meteorites. It fascinates us year in, year out. "The Perseids have a large number of bright meteors, many of which leave persistent trains," says Dr John Mason of the British Astronomical Association, "and people like to watch it on a warm summer s evening." This year we may even witness a "double peak." "The Earth is expected to pass through a number of dense filaments from the comet the night before the usual maximum. So we should get a short-lived outburst from late evening on August 11 to dawn on Friday , and then the main maximum the following night, Friday night into Saturday morning," says Mason. It s also predicted we will see twice as many shooting stars as usual during the peak. But Detlef Koschny, a member of the European Space Agency s Meteor Research Group and Near-Earth Objects expert, is not convinced. "I m curious to see whether that really turns out to be true," says Koschny. "If you ask: How many there are in absolute terms?… that s a problem." What we know Comet Swift-Tuttle is known formally as 109P/Swift-Tuttle. It was discovered in 1862 and has an orbital period of around 130 years. The last time it flew past the Earth was in 1992. When the comet passes, it lays down dense filaments of dust on its orbit. Each layer holds a wealth of knowledge about the universe. "We learn about the comet itself, about the evolution of dust in the solar system," says Mason. "The dust from comets is important [as] it s some of the most primitive material in the solar system." We know, for instance, that interplanetary dust particles can be rich in sodium. It is even possible to date the dust using computer models. "[They model] the comet as it evolves over thousands of years and work out the precise position of each dust filament laid down every 130 years. And then they look at how the planets perturb those dust particles, and they can work out when we will pass through those particular dust trails," Mason says. Scientists say the comet created the Perseids meteor shower because it appears to originate from the Perseus constellation of stars in the northern sky. The meteor stream is more than a million kilometers across, and the tiny dust grains that make it travel at about 60 kilometers per second. This is why they produce so much energy - they move so fast - and burn so bright when they hit the Earth s atmosphere. Why we need to know more So we know a fair bit about the Perseids, and yet there is more we need to know. First, it s basic science. Meteoroids come from comets, and comets - and other celestial objects like them - are about the closest we ll ever get to the big bang. "If we find traces of organic material in a meteoroid, then we can understand a bit better how life came on Earth," says Koschny. But we also need to understand more about the distribution of dust in the solar system because these tiny objects pose a threat to our spacecraft. "When one of these particles hits a spacecraft, it can generate an electric charge, a little plasma cloud, and that can shortout a satellite," says Koschny. "[Satellites] are very sensitive and not grounded like all the equipment on Earth. So a change in the electrical potential can do damage." Then there s that matter of absolute numbers. It s only been the past five to 10 years that scientists have tried to predict the numbers of particles, to estimate how many shooting stars we see. But it s still very "relative," says Koschny. "A model may predict [...] 200 per hour and then people go out and see 50 per hour, or the other way around," says Koschny. "So that s what everyone is working on now, what we call the flux density." Koschny is currently working on a paper he hopes will provide new answers. And not just so we know how great the annual spectacle will be. "It s very relevant for this impact threat to satellites," he says. "The spacecraft operators want to know whether there s a chance of being hit once a year or once every 10 years." How space-based observation could help Speaking of satellites raises the question why so much observation is done from Earth. If we need to learn more about meteoroids, shouldn t we get to them before they burn up? "For a long time, we ve been trying to get cameras into space that observe meteors too," says Koschny. "Even better would be a camera permanently recording the sky, looking down, say, from a space station. And if I add a spectrograph, an objective grating in front of my camera, I get a spectrum, and I can ascertain the chemical composition of the object, and that tells us what it is made of." All you would need is a "simple" video camera, recording at 25 frames per second to pick up movement, and a two-dimensional sensor. John Mason agrees there are advantages to space-based observation, but he has reservations. "What we can t do from the ground is collect the dust grains and analyze them before they reach the atmosphere, as opposed to observing the luminous trails in the atmosphere from above," says Mason. "But you wouldn t need a camera to do that. There are lots of dust particle detectors that have flown on many other cometary missions, which would do the job very well."

The only hint that something extraordinary lay inside the plain wooden drawer in an unassuming office behind Nairobi National Museum was a handwritten note stuck to the front: “Pull Carefully”. Inside, a monstrous jawbone with colossal fangs grinned from a bed of tattered foam — the only known remains of a prehistoric mega-carnivore, larger than a polar bear, that researchers only this year declared a new species. “This is one-of-a-kind,” said Kenyan paleontologist Job Kibii, holding up the 23-million-year-old bones of the newly-discovered giant, Simbakubwa kutokaafrika, whose unveiling made headlines around the world. But the remarkable fossils were not unearthed this year, or even this decade. They weren t even found this century. For nearly 40 years, the specimens — proof of the existence of Africa s largest-ever predator, a 1,500 kilogram (3,300-pound) meat eater that dwarfed later hunters like lions — lived in a nondescript drawer in downtown Nairobi. Museum staff knew the bones were something special — they just didn t know what exactly. A source of intrigue, dusted off on occasion for guests, Simbakubwa lay in wait, largely forgotten. How did these fossils, first excavated on a dig in western Kenya in the early 1980s, go unrecognised for so long? Kibii — who presides over the National Museums of Kenya s paleontology department, a collection unrivalled in East Africa and one of the world s great fossil treasuries — has a pretty good idea. “We have tonnes and tonnes of specimens… that haven t been analysed,” he told AFP. “Definitely there are things waiting to be discovered.” Out of space The main wing has changed little since legendary paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey first started stockpiling his finds there in the early 1960s. A card-based filing system is still used to find a specific fossil among the trove, the entries written by hand. But the collection has grown exponentially, faster than Kibii and his team can keep up. “We ve run out of space,” said Kibii, pausing between dusty archival shelves crammed floor to ceiling with finds, dating back more than half a century. “In this section alone, we have more than a million specimens.” Gigantic skulls of ancient crocodiles compete for space with a bygone species of horned giraffe. Nearby, the behemoth tusks of an early African elephant take up valuable real estate. Even the windowsills are littered with the petrified remains of all manner of weird and wonderful creatures. Between 7,000 and 10,000 new fossils arrive at the lab every year, Kibii says, overwhelming his 15 staff who must painstakingly clean and log each specimen. By law, fossils uncovered in Kenya must go to the museum for “accessioning” — the process of labelling, recording and storing for future generations. The backlog is enormous. Chipping away In a dark room, a lone staffer in a protective mask blasts away rock from fossil using an air-powered brush, as Kenyan pop tunes crackle through an old radio. Outside the door, metal chests sent from dig sites filled to the brim await his magic touch — literally years of work stretching before him. If a specific expert is not on hand to identify a specimen, things can get wrongly categorised or waylaid. In some cases, they re sent to the dreaded “waiting area”, where faded cardboard boxes, sagging with unknown and abandoned fossils, gather dust. “We have fossils from the 1980s that have not been accessioned,” said collections manager Francis Muchemi, chipping away at a giant elephant molar. Cradle of humanity Simbakubwa met a similar fate. Thought to be a type of hyena, it was filed away in a backroom and unstudied for decades, until stumbled upon by American researchers. Specific finds unearthed at one of Kenya s many digs by researchers writing academic papers are given priority and fast-tracked for assessment by the museum. Even today though, the museum lacks specialists and resources. Kibii is one of just seven paleontologists in Kenya. He trained in South Africa because there was no course available at home. “It s important because Kenya is the cradle of human evolution,” said Muchemi, who learned his skills on the job. “We have very few Kenyans doing this job. Ninety-nine percent of the people who work here are foreign.” Kibii said paleontology was considered a lower priority than conserving Africa s endangered wildlife. “This one has been in the ground for millions of years. What are you saving it from?” he said, of the prevailing attitude to the science. He hopes to acquire collapsable shelves to create space in the collection. Even better, a micro-CT scanner — a powerful tool driving breakthroughs in the world of paleontology — would allow a fresh look at the museum s most-forgotten corners. “I always wonder what lies in there on some of these shelves,” Kibii said. “Simbakubwa is telling a new story. What if, among these thousands, we have 10, 20, new stories that are lying, waiting to be told? That s always the mystery.”

The social network has said it "failed" its users after sharing data with advertisers without permission. The company says it has launched an investigation into who may have been impacted. Twitter said on Tuesday it may have shared user data with advertisers without permission. The social media giant said it found issues "where your settings choices may not have worked as intended." The company said "certain data" of mobile users such as country code may have been shared with advertising partners since May 2018 "even if you didn t give us permission to do so." Twitter also said since September 2018 it may have shown ads "based on inferences" made about users devices, without consent. A statement on the company s website insisted the data in question "stayed within Twitter and did not contain passwords or email accounts." The issues were "fixed on August 5" and Twitter says it is conducting an investigation into who may have been impacted.

Minister of Environment Yasmine Fouad announced that the Ministry is currently implementing a huge project aimed at reducing Egypt s pollution, achieving cleaner production through the use of agricultural and municipal waste as an alternate fuel for industrial purposes or through energy efficiency projects. The Ministry plans to focus on the Nile River and air pollution, she said. The project is funded by the European Investment Bank, the French Agency, the European Union and the KfW, provided that the National Bank of Egypt will bear the burden of repaying all loans, she added. The Minister expects that the project will pay off next year, and benefit large, medium, and small industrial facilities within the private and public sectors. The budget, allocated by donors from international organizations working in Egypt in 2019/2020 in coordination with the United Nations Development Program is expected to reach about US$56.6 million, with an increase of about $23 million from last year equal to about 68 percent. Yasmine pointed out that the expected results for this project are to adjust the conditions of industrial establishments and reduce pollution load by more than 75 percent, besides increasing the size of environmental financing programs, and providing soft financing packages for industries.