Displaced Iraq Christians in frontline prayer for return
Zartek, Iraq (AFP) Aug 6, 2015 -
Christian clerics prayed in the ruins of a monastery not far from jihadist positions in northern Iraq Thursday to mark a year since the exodus of Iraq's Christians from nearby ancestral lands.
"We want the good people to hear our prayers from this place so they hurry and liberate our areas as quickly as possible," Yohanna Boutros Moshe, the Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, told AFP.
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Military reinforcements enter Yemen from Saudi Arabia
Aden (AFP) Aug 6, 2015 -
Saudi Arabia has sent new military equipment including tanks into Yemen to support loyalists fighting Iran-backed Huthi rebels, tribal and military sources said on Thursday.
"Dozens of tanks, armoured vehicles and personnel carriers, as well as hundreds of Yemeni soldiers trained in Saudi Arabia, arrived in Yemen overnight" via the Wadia border post in the north of the country, a Yemeni mili ...
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IAEA chief fails to reassure US senators on Iran deal
Washington (AFP) Aug 6, 2015 -
Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker said lawmakers left a Wednesday briefing by the head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency "less assured" about the nuclear deal with Iran.
"The majority of members here left with far more questions than they had before the meeting took place," Corker told reporters after an hour-plus briefing by International Atomic Energy Agency director g ...
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India to launch 9 US satellites in 2015, 2016
New Delhi, India (XNA) Aug 07, 2015 -
India will launch nine U.S. satellites in 2015 and 2016, a senior space official said on Wednesday.
"Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch nine nano and micro satellites for the U.S. this year and next year from the southern spaceport of Sriharikota," the official said, on condition of anonymity.
The commercial arm of ISRO, Antrix Corporation Ltd, has already inked pa ...
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New hacks strike at heart of mobile innovations
Las Vegas (AFP) Aug 7, 2015 -
As fierce competition leads to rapid innovation in the smartphone market, hackers have pounced on cracks in defenses of developments on devices at the heart of modern lifestyles, experts say.
Smartphones have become increasingly targets for cyber criminals as people cram the gadgets with troves of personal information and go on to use them for work.
"Mobile devices are taking a bigger pl ...
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'Extremely difficult' for France to sell Mistral warships: experts
Paris (AFP) Aug 6, 2015 -
After cancelling the sale to Russia, France finds itself lumbered with two giant Mistral warships which it will find "extremely difficult" to re-sell and cannot afford to keep, say experts.
The pair of 200-metre (650-foot) amphibious helicopter-carriers were due for delivery to Russia by the end of this year in a deal worth an estimated 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion).
Instead, they ar ...
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Hackers turn Square readers into crime tools
Las Vegas (AFP) Aug 6, 2015 -
Hackers on Thursday showed how to turn the latest model Square mobile payments readers into crime tools.
Independent security researchers and self-described hackers Alexandrea Mellen and John Moore were at the Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas to demonstrate hacks targeting Square software or the dongle that plugs into audio jacks to read credit card magnetic strips.
"W ...
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Iran says claims of nuclear site cleanup 'preposterous'
United Nations, United States (AFP) Aug 6, 2015 -
Iran on Thursday dismissed as "preposterous" claims that it was cleaning up its suspected nuclear military site at Parchin ahead of inspections agreed under a historic nuclear deal with world powers.
Iran's mission to the United Nations said in statement that "extensive construction work" was underway to repair a road near the Parchin complex but denied this amounted to a "hasty cover-up." ...
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Obama warns rejecting Iran deal would spell war
Washington (AFP) Aug 5, 2015 -
President Barack Obama made an aggressive case for his signature nuclear deal with Iran Wednesday, telling lawmakers that rejecting diplomacy would lead to war and destroy US credibility.
Casting it as "the most consequential foreign policy debate" since the Iraq War, Obama said Congress must not waver under pressure from critics whom history had already proven wrong.
"Congressional reje ...
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Berlin to spend billions upgrading military hardware
Berlin (AFP) Aug 7, 2015 -
The German military is to invest billions of euros to fix recurring problems with its aircraft, helicopters and other military equipment, an official said on Friday.
"We will invest up to 6 billion euros ($6.5 billion) in the next seven to eight years to obtain improvements in these areas," a defence ministry spokesman told AFP.
Der Spiegel news weekly, which first revealed the investmen ...
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Myanmar flood death toll climbs to 88
Nyaung Don, Myanmar (AFP) Aug 7, 2015 -
The death toll from severe flooding across Myanmar has risen to 88, officials said on Friday, as rising waters swallowed more homes in low-lying regions in some of the poorest parts of the country.
More than 330,000 people have been affected by torrential monsoon rains that triggered flash floods and landslides, cutting off communications as the deluge engulfed roads and destroyed bridges. ...
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Nervous Burundians say quake portends all-out war
Bujumbura, Burundi (AFP) Aug 8, 2015 -
Already rattled by a political crisis that has claimed some 100 lives, many Burundians fear that Friday's earthquake portends the return of the brutal civil war that rent the central African nation.
The 5.6 scale temblor that struck the region was felt in Rwanda, DR Congo, Burundi and Uganda with casualties only reported from DR Congo so far.
But it spread dread and gloom in Burundi, wit ...
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Prosecutors to be punished if China graft suspects kill selves
Beijing (AFP) Aug 7, 2015 -
Chinese prosecutors will be punished if officials they are investigating for abuse of office commit suicide, authorities said, after several suspects caught up in an anti-corruption drive killed themselves.
Under President Xi Jinping, a much-publicised anti-graft campaign has ensnared a long list of senior and junior officials. Some have committed suicide, escaping possible criminal proceedi ...
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Hundreds of firefighters battle wildfires in Portugal
Lisbon (AFP) Aug 9, 2015 -
Nearly 1,000 firefighters as well as six helicopters and three planes were deployed in Portugal Sunday to battle forest fires raging in the north and centre of the country, authorities said.
The worst fire scorched Vila Nova de Cerveira in the northern Minho region and was continuing to spread due to "difficult to access terrain, wind, high temperatures and the ongoing drought," a fire serv ...
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Typhoon churns towards China after killing five in Taiwan
Shanghai (AFP) Aug 8, 2015 -
Typhoon Soudelor moved towards China on Saturday, weaker but still packing a punch, after killing at least five people and leaving a trail of destruction in Taiwan.
The typhoon ripped up trees and triggered landslides in Taiwan, and knocked out power to 1.5 million homes. Rivers broke their banks under torrential rain and towering waves pounded the island's coastline.
In mainland China, ...
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Hong Kong swelters on hottest day in history
Hong Kong (AFP) Aug 8, 2015 -
Hong Kong on Saturday recorded its hottest day since authorities began taking temperature readings 130 years ago, due to the influence of a nearby typhoon.
The daily maximum temperature hit 36.3 degrees Celsius, the Hong Kong Observatory said, with higher temperatures recorded in some parts of the city earlier in the day.
A layer of haze hung over the metropolis of seven million, as peop ...
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U.S. sets aside funding for marine power
Washington (UPI) Aug 7, 2015 -
Projects focused at the university level will share $7.4 million in research funds to develop components for marine energy, the U.S. Energy Department said.
The Energy Department said funding was made available to support the next generation of water power components necessary to support marine and hydrokinetic systems.
"Waves, tides, and ocean currents represent a largely untapp ...
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Fish off Australia's coast dive deep to avoid heat
Cairns, Australia (UPI) Aug 7, 2015 -
Humans retreat inside and blast the air conditioning when it's hot, but fish don't have such a luxury. New research shows a common predator species off the Australian coast dives deeper to avoid rising water temperatures.
Scientists at James Cook University tagged and tracked 60 redthroat emperor fish, plotting their movements and swimming depths for nearly a year.
The data point ...
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Africa's fires mean less rain during the dry season
Pasadena, Calif. (UPI) Aug 6, 2015 -
In any given year, half of all fires on Earth burned in Africa. Most are set by farmers to promote agricultural productivity and to clear land for planting.
But as a new study by NASA researchers shows, the fires are having distinct effects on the continent's weather. Smoke from Africa's agricultural fires suppress rain cloud formation and leads to less precipitation during the dry seas ...
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Everest trek route suffered minimal quake damage: study
Kathmandu (AFP) Aug 7, 2015 -
The vast majority of guesthouses and trails on the popular Mount Everest trekking route emerged unscathed from Nepal's devastating earthquake, said an assessment report released Friday.
Tourism-dependent Nepal had called in international experts to examine trekking routes in the Everest and Annapurna region following April's disaster to certify that they were safe for hikers.
A team of s ...
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Study to help suburbanites have a pretty and bee-friendly lawn
Lexington, Ky. (UPI) Aug 7, 2015 -
In suburban America, a clean slate of turf serves as the default for front and back yards.
But with bee and butterfly populations in decline, some homeowners are hoping to grow a lawn that's both attractive and eco-friendly. Researchers at the University of Kentucky are looking to give such homeowners and lawn caretakers a viable solution.
Specifically, researchers are trying to ...
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Faroe court convicts five anti-whaling activists
Copenhagen (AFP) Aug 7, 2015 -
A Faroe Islands court on Friday found five activists from the militant conservation group Sea Shepherd guilty of disrupting the region's traditional whale hunt, one of the activists said.
The five were arrested on July 23 in the Faroe Islands - an archipelago of 18 islands that make up an autonomous province of Denmark - as they attempted to stop and document the annual pilot whale cull. ...
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NASA Goddard Technology Helps Fight Forest Pests
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Aug 04, 2015 -
Northeastern forests in the United States cover more than 165 million acres, an area almost as big as Texas. Soon, millions of pine and ash trees in those forests could be wiped out, thanks in part to two types of voracious insects-each smaller than a penny.
A joint operation using technology developed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, will help the U.S. Forest ...
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Keeping algae from stressing out
Washington DC (SPX) Aug 05, 2015 -
While most people might know some algae as "pond scum," to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), they are tiny organisms that could provide a source of sustainable fuels. Like plants, they can convert light into energy-rich chemical compounds; unlike plants, they require less space and don't need arable soil to grow.
Some algae like Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (or "Chlamy," as it's known to i ...
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Honeywell search and rescue tech commissioned for defense customer
Ottawa, Canada (SPX) Aug 05, 2015 -
Honeywell reports that its Global Tracking business successfully commissioned a next-generation search and rescue (SAR) system for Canada's Department of National Defense.
The new SAR system helps operators in Mission Control Centers perform their life-saving duties more efficiently by quickly displaying location details of alerts and minimizing error-prone manual data entry, resulting in ...
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