World

Yesterday, at least four were killed and eleven were injured near the Slavyansky Bulvar Metro station in Moscow, Russia, after a bus ran down the steps at the entrance, officials stated. According to an emergency services source reported through state news media, fifteen were injured, and five died in the incident. The incident happened in an icy situation. The bus drove onto the pavement and down the steps leading to the station. The police reportedly arrested the driver. News agencies reported the driver was not under the influence of alcoho

On Monday, US-based tech company Apple, Inc. confirmed acquisition of UK-based song identification application Shazam. According to reports, the deal is worth US$400 million. "We are thrilled that Shazam and its talented team will be joining Apple [...] and we can't imagine a better home for Shazam to enable us to continue innovating and delivering magic for our users.", Shazam spokesperson Giovanni Bossio said. Shazam has over one hundred million users. Founded in West London in 1999 by Avery Wang, Chris Barton, Dhiraj Mukharjee, and Philip

At the request of Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló, the Puerto Rican Electric Power Authority (PREPA) yesterday announced it has cancelled a US$300 million contract with a Montana-based company called Whitefish Energy Holdings amid concerns it may have been awarded improperly and the prices may be unusually high. Whitefish was to have rebuilt parts of the United States commonwealth's energy infrastructure, which was recently destroyed when Hurricane Maria struck the island. According to Whitefish spokesperson Chris Chiames, Whitefish wa

After killing 30 people on a rampage through Honduras, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Nicaragua and dumping rain on the Yucatan in Mexico, Hurricane Nate reached the U.S. states of Louisiana and Mississippi on the north shore of the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday night. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) downgraded Nate to a tropical storm on Sunday morning. A state of emergency was declared parts of Louisiana, which saw damage from the significantly more intense Hurricane Harvey earlier this year; Alabama; Florida; and Mississippi. Nate made its

On Friday, Transport for London (TfL) announced US-based taxi booking application Uber would not get a renewed private hire operator license after their current permit expires at the end of the month. The regulatory body released an official statement on their website and stated Uber London Limited was "not fit and proper to hold a private hire operator license". TfL said Uber London "demonstrate[d] a lack of corporate responsibility" for reporting serious criminal offences, and for obtaining background of the drivers and medical certificates.

Just after sunrise on Sunday (1:21 UTC), NASA astronaut and biochemist Peggy Whitson, 57, returned to Earth in Kazakhstan, in a Soyuz capsule, after a 288-day mission in the International Space Station (ISS), bringing her lifetime total days in space to 665, the most for any U.S. astronaut, most for any female astronaut internationally, and eighth overall. Whitson was greeted with flowers, a pair of sunglasses and a medical team. All three arriving on the capsule, Whitson, fellow top-ten endurance astronaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, and NASA astrona

On Thursday, the California Supreme Court upheld a ballot measure, Proposition 66, approved by voters last November which speeds up the death penalty appeals process. The court, however, weakened a provision of the proposition setting a deadline for appeals. The plaintiff in the case, former El Dorado County supervisor Ron Briggs, claimed that the proposition was unconstitutional under the California Constitution which prevents ballot measures from addressing more than one subject. The court disagreed with Briggs' claim, writing that "Proposit

On Friday, several free knowledge, culture and open source oriented organisations — Creative Commons, Mozilla, and the Wikimedia Foundation, amongst others — collectively announced a three-year commitment for a free-culture fellowship to honour Bassel Khartabil's continuing influence on the open web, during the Wikimedia's annual conference Wikimania in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Palestinian-Syrian Khartabil was held in captivity under the Syrian government starting in 2012 and went silent in prison in 2015. Early this month his wife confirmed

Yesterday, the state government of Victoria, Australia announced their decision to trial self-driving vehicles on two of the state's major connecting motorways, the CityLink and Tullamarine Freeway. The trial is to use autonomous vehicles from automobile companies including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, and Tesla. The two-year trial is to have three phases. The cars are to drive alongside commuters, but in public testing a driver is always to be present, as Victorian law requires drivers always keep a hand on the steering wheel. However, in occas

Former governor of Texas, Mark White died at the age of 77 in Houston on Saturday, his son Andrew White told the Associated Press. The Democrat served as Texas' governor from 1983 till 1987. White was considered as an education reformer during his single-term in office for bringing some policies focusing on education. White had suffered from kidney cancer for several years. White's son, Andrew paid tribute to his father and said, "He [Mark White] cared about Texas deeply [...] He realized that this wasn't about getting re-elected. This wasn't

Robert Anker, a British dancer and member of troupe Diversity when they won the 2009 season of Britain's Got Talent, died in a car accident in Canada on Thursday. Anker died after a collision between his Chevrolet Cobalt and a Ford pick-up truck. The accident occurred in Vaughan, Ontario at around 6:00 AM Thursday morning, local time. Anker, who moved to Canada last year, was 27 years old. York Regional Police confirmed the accident had occurred and the driver of the pick-up truck was not injured. A spokesman for the British Foreign Office sai

On Thursday, Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese dissident, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate died in a hospital in China at the age of 61. He was on medical parole after he was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer while in prison for his active criticism of the Chinese government. Last month, Liu was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer and was moved to a hospital in the city of Shenyang in north-eastern China. He was monitored and kept under tight security. Before his death, countries including France, Germany and the US asked Chin