Egypt’s parliament has passed a law giving the state powers to block social media accounts and penalize journalists held to be publishing fake news. Under the law passed on Monday social media accounts and blogs with more than 5,000 followers on sites such as Twitter and Facebook will be treated as media outlets, which makes …

Scientists from Cranfield University in Britain have teamed up with the engineering firm Siemens to retro-fit a classic 1965 Ford Mustang with driverless technology. They recently tested it on a racetrack at the Goodwood Festival of Speed — considered the largest motoring garden party in the world. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more. …

Robots can do a lot of things people can do… but can they replace doctors? A London-based artificial intelligence company says its AI robot doctors can diagnose patients just as well as a human clinician. But some general practitioners say the service can never replicate the level of care given by human doctors. VOA Correspondent …

Social networking site Twitter Saturday suspended two accounts linked to 12 Russian spies indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. On Friday, a federal grand jury charged the 12 Russian intelligence officers with hacking Democratic computer networks in 2016 in the most detailed U.S. accusation yet that Moscow …

British inventor Nik Spencer believes household garbage is a valuable and underrated resource. That’s because trash happens to be the perfect fuel for his latest invention: the Home Energy Resources Unit, or HERU. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more. …

Football fans are watching the World Cup on multiple screens in bars, on their phones while they should be working, on TVs at home with their friends. One day, they could be following the action in 3D. Researchers at the University of Washington are developing a way to watch soccer games and other sporting matches …

Temperatures around the world are rising as humans burn coal, oil and other fossil fuels for energy. Burning those fuels releases heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But it does more than that. CO2 is vital for plant growth. While having more of it sounds like a good thing, scientists are finding it is not …

Pangolins are the world’s most illegally trafficked animal. Eight species of the elusive mammals are found in Africa and Southeast Asia, but as many as 300 are poached every day, destined for markets in Vietnam and China, where their meat is considered a delicacy and their scales believed to have medicinal properties. Researchers in the …

Forty years ago this month, the first test-tube baby was born in what is now called in vitro fertilization. British baby Louise Brown was born July 25, 1978. She’s married now with two children who were born naturally. A new exhibition at the Science Museum in London is showcasing the anniversary and the technological advances …

Pacific nations Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands have signed on to a joint undersea internet cable project, funded mostly by Australia, that forestalls plans by Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd to lay the links itself. Wednesday’s pact comes as China pushes for influence in a region Australia views as its backyard, …

Social networking platform Twitter announced Wednesday it will be removing accounts it had deemed suspicious from user’s follower counts, as part of a recent push to promote accuracy on the website. This could reduce the number of “followers” of some of the website’s most popular users, including politicians and celebrities. The website had locked accounts …

Facebook will be facing its first fine in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the social media platform allowed the data mining firm to access the private information of millions of users without their consent or knowledge. A British government investigative office, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), fined Facebook 500,000 pounds, or …

Senior citizens – adults 65 and older – will outnumber children in the United States for the first time by 2035, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.As their number increases, the demand for elder care is also growing. For the past 12 years, SenCura has been providing non-medical in-home care for this segment of the …

In this age of the smart machine, robots are increasingly playing roles in different fields, from construction and hospitality to the military and art. When it comes to caregiving for the elderly, which depends mainly on human interaction, it turns out robots can also help. But will they replace humans? Faiza Elmasry went searching for …

Google’s YouTube says it is taking several steps to ensure the veracity of news on its service by cracking down on misinformation and supporting news organizations.   The company said Monday it will make “authoritative” news sources more prominent, especially in the wake of breaking news events when misinformation can spread quickly.   At such …

Some students in Virginia who play the guitar are also learning how to build them. It’s part of an after-school program where middle and high school students learn about science and music through the design and function of an electric guitar. The workshops, sponsored by the nonprofit Music for Life, are free for those who …

While the Trump administration is putting tariffs on Chinese imports, another battle has been brewing about whether the United States should block Chinese investments in some U.S. companies that work in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and other key technology.   Some of these technologies have U.S. national security implications, argues the Department of Defense in …

U.S. policymakers are raising national security concerns about Chinese money flooding into U.S. startups in fields such as artificial intelligence and robotics. But in Silicon Valley, there is a sense that ties with China are mutually beneficial. Michelle Quinn reports. …

Nano technology researchers at the University of Cambridge are developing an intelligent toilet that might change the nature of medicine. It automatically analyzes a user’s urine to capture valuable medical data. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports. …

Key California lawmakers said Thursday they’ve reached an agreement on legislation to enshrine net neutrality provisions in state law after the Federal Communications Commission dumped rules requiring an equal playing field on the internet. California’s bill is one of the nation’s most aggressive efforts to continue net neutrality, and the deal comes after a bitter …

Republican Senator John McCain is perhaps the best known person who has brain cancer. His is a glioblastoma, the most deadly type. Since McCain announced the news last year, he has had surgery and chemotherapy. There’s no cure for this type of cancer, and even with treatment, most people don’t live longer than three years …

The Russian Internet company Yandex said Thursday that its public search engine has been turning up dozens of Google documents that appear meant for private use, suggesting there may have been a data breach. Yandex spokesman Ilya Grabovsky said that some Internet users contacted the company Wednesday to say that its public search engine was …

Orthopedic surgery can be tricky. So, researchers at Northwestern University are engineering new materials to make 3D printed bones that are a perfect match, ready for grafts. Faith Lapidus reports. …

Sophia, one of the world’s most advanced and perhaps most famous artificial intelligence (AI) humanoid robot, was a big hit at this year’s Information & Communication Technology International Expo in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Visitors, including various dignitaries, were excited to meet the life-like AI robot as she communicated with expo guests and expressed a wide …

When a CIA-backed venture capital fund took an interest in Rana el Kaliouby’s face-scanning technology for detecting emotions, the computer scientist and her colleagues did some soul-searching — and then turned down the money. “We’re not interested in applications where you’re spying on people,” said el Kaliouby, the CEO and co-founder of the Boston startup …

India has asked Facebook to prevent the spread of false texts on its WhatsApp messaging application, saying the content has sparked a series of lynchings and mob beatings across the country. False messages about child abductors spread over WhatsApp have reportedly led to at least 31 deaths in 10 different states over the past year, …