Category: Technology

WASHINGTON: The United States is accelerating efforts to deploy nuclear power reactors on the Moon and Mars, aiming to launch the first operational system by the end of the decade. According to a new NASA directive — first reported by Politico and reviewed by AFP — the agency has been instructed to appoint a “nuclear power czar” and select two commercial proposals within six months. The move is framed as essential to staying ahead of a joint Chinese-Russian programme. The memo, dated July 31 and signed by acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy,…

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OpenAI has made two of its latest AI models available for anyone to download free of cost and tweak as they like, in a move to challenge similar offerings by US and Chinese rivals. It’s a major shift aimed at giving researchers, developers, and curious users more freedom to explore and build with advanced AI tools. The release of gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b “open-weight language models” comes as the ChatGPT-maker faces growing pressure to reveal more about the inner workings of its software, in keeping with its origins as a nonprofit.…

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Meta on Tuesday announced that it has shut down nearly 7 million WhatsApp accounts associated with scammers in the first half of this year, intensifying its efforts to combat fraudulent activities on the platform. Clair Deevy, WhatsApp’s external affairs director, said: “Our team identified the accounts and disabled them before the criminal organisations that created them could use them.” Scams on Meta’s popular instant messaging app often involve organised gangs and include fraudulent cryptocurrency investments and get-rich-quick pyramid schemes, which typically require victims to pay upfront for promised returns — a…

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Billionaire Elon Musk has been handed a massive $29 billion share award by Tesla in a new pay deal, as the company looks to keep him at the top during a critical turning point in its future. The generous deal is meant to secure Musk’s leadership as Tesla shifts its focus from electric cars to robotaxis and humanoid robots — a bold move at a time when its core car business is facing tough times. The company described the “interim award” of the 96 million new shares as a first…

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Pakistan aims to send its first lunar mission by 2035, with the national space agency, Suparco, receiving formal instructions to lead the ambitious venture, Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal said. Iqbal made the remarks during a high-level meeting in Beijing with Shan Zhongde, Chairman of China’s Atomic Energy Authority and Space Agency on Monday. The discussion focused on expanding collaboration in space and nuclear energy to support Pakistan’s national development goals. He added that under the “Uraan Pakistan” initiative, space sciences have gained new momentum under the leadership of Prime Minister…

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WhatsApp has started rolling out a new feature that allows users to create and share status updates directly within group chats as part of its latest Android beta update. The feature, included in version 2.25.22.11 of WhatsApp for Android, is being made available to select users enrolled in the Google Play Beta Programme. This means users can now post updates that are visible only to members of a particular group, without the need to tag or notify them separately. Unlike regular status updates, which are shared with selected contacts, these…

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August is poised to captivate stargazers with a trio of celestial spectacles, the Full Sturgeon Moon, a rare Jupiter–Venus conjunction, and the dazzling peak of the Perseid meteor shower. The celestial festivities will commence with the Sturgeon Moon, the eighth full moon of 2025, reaching its maximum brightness at 3:55am EDT on August 9, according to Fox Weather. The term “Sturgeon Moon” has historical roots in Native American and colonial traditions, marking the time of the year when large freshwater sturgeon were abundant in North American waters. However, this August…

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WhatsApp is set to launch a feature enabling real-time voice chats with Meta AI, making interactions with the chatbot more dynamic and accessible. According to WABetaInfo, the new feature, available to some beta testers in the latest WhatsApp beta for iOS 25.21.10.76 update, which can be accessed via the TestFlight app for iOS, is set to be rolled out to more people over the coming weeks. With the new feature, users can initiate a voice session by tapping the waveform icon in the Chats tab. There is also an option in…

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WASHINGTON: Alphabet’s Google has been told by a US court in a unanimous ruling to change the way it runs its Play Store, after losing a legal fight against Fortnite maker Epic Games. Judges of the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that Google had been unfairly limiting competition by keeping tight control over how Android users get and pay for apps. The tech giant pleaded that the trial judge made legal errors in the antitrust case that unfairly benefited Fortnite maker Epic Games, which filed the…

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Plants and insects may communicate through sound, say Tel Aviv researchers, marking a breakthrough in understanding nature’s acoustic signals. The study, published in the journal eLife, suggests that female moths detect ultrasonic distress signals emitted by dehydrated tomato plants and use this information to decide where to lay their eggs. Moths usually lay their eggs on tomato plants to provide food for their larvae after they hatch. The research was led by Rya Seltzer and Guy Zer Eshel in the laboratories of Yossi Yovel and Lilach Hadany, both professors at…

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