181087068
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AmiMoJo writes:
Throughout the 20th Century, humanity demanded more and more land leading to the loss of vast areas of natural forest and grassland. Today, around half the world's land is farmed, used to grow crops or graze animals. However, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), global agricultural land use peaked in the early 2000s and has been slowly falling ever since. Around the world, farmland is being replaced by grasslands, trees and bush. Wild animals are returning to abandoned pasturelands in areas they had once dominated.
Reaching "peak agricultural land" does not mean the problem of deforestation is solved. Growing demand for products like beef, soy, cocoa and palm oil has put increasing pressure on land across South America, South East Asia and Africa. In the last decade, the world lost an area of tropical forest twice the size of Spain. Still, acre-for-acre across the world there has been yet more farmland abandonment, driven by reforestation in Europe and North America and the abandonment of pastures in Australia and Central Asia.
181057486
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AmiMoJo writes:
Scientists have used lab-grown microbes to bind loose desert sand into a thin, stable layer that wind cannot easily blow away. That stronger surface gives restoration teams time to plant shrubs and grasses before harsh winds and heat wipe out young plants.
On straw checkerboards laid across northwest China, a dark film spread over treated sand and stayed after seasonal dust storms.
Tracking those plots through heat and frost, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) documented how fast the film hardened. In trials near the Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang in northwest China, CAS teams saw crusts stabilize sand within 10 to 16 months. Even with that speed, planners focused on building the soil base first, so later plants could survive without constant replanting.
181055032
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AmiMoJo writes:
The co-founder of Super Micro Computer and two others were charged with diverting $2.5 billion worth of servers with Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips to China, in violation of US laws barring exports to that country without a license.
Yih-Shyan Liaw, known as Wally; Ruei-Tsang Chang, known as Steven; and Ting-Wei Sun, known as Willy, were charged with conspiring to violate export control laws, smuggling goods from the US and conspiring to defraud the US.
Liaw, who co-founded Super Micro Computer and served on its board of directors, was arrested Thursday in California and released on bail. Sun, a contractor, is held awaiting a detention hearing. Chang, who worked in the Taiwan office of Super Micro, remains at large.
180928372
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AmiMoJo writes:
In China, the world’s leading carbon emitter, a massive buildout of solar power is beginning to push coal into decline. Last year China saw its fossil fuel emissions drop, even as demand for energy rose.
Emissions from energy and industry dropped by 0.3 percent in 2025, while consumption of energy rose by 3.5 percent, according to official statistics. Last year, renewables supplied 40 percent of power in China, up from 37 percent the previous year, with solar accounting for most of the growth. The added renewable power more than met the uptick in demand, and as a result, coal power fell slightly.
“This is an encouraging signal, as it suggests that the sort of large-scale energy transition which China has been investing heavily in has begun to translate into measurable outcomes,” said Duo Chan, a climate scientist at the University of Southampton. “Whilst one year of lower emissions does not mean that the climate challenge is solved, the scale of China’s deployment of renewables can lead us to hope that this may be the start of a sustained decline in its emissions.”
180918294
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AmiMoJo writes:
Privacy-focused email provider Proton Mail provided Swiss authorities with payment data that the FBI then used to determine who was allegedly behind an anonymous account affiliated with the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta, according to a court record reviewed by 404 Media.
The records provide insight into the sort of data that Proton Mail, which prides itself both on its end-to-end encryption and that it is only governed by Swiss privacy law, can and does provide to third parties. In this case, the Proton Mail account was affiliated with the Defend the Atlanta Forest (DTAF) group and Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta, which authorities were investigating for their connection to arson, vandalism and doxing. Broadly, members were protesting the building of a large police training center next to the Intrenchment Creek Park in Atlanta, and actions also included camping in the forest and lawsuits. Charges against more than 60 people have since been dropped.
180867366
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AmiMoJo writes:
2000 m above ground level (AGL), winds are stronger and much, much more consistent than they are at surface. Even if the Earth were a perfect sphere, there’d be a sluggish boundry layer at the surface, but since it’s got all these interesting bumps and bits and bobs, it’s not just sluggish but horribly turbulent, too. Getting above that, as much as possible, is why wind turbines are on big towers. Rather than build really big tower, Beijing Lanyi Yunchuan Energy Technology Co. has gone for a more ambitious approach: an aerostat to take power from the steady winds found at high altitude. Ambitiously called the Stratosphere Airborne Wind Energy System (SAWES), the megawatt-scale prototype has recently begun feeding into the grid in Yibin, Sichuan Province.
180845450
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AmiMoJo writes:
New research published Thursday bolsters growing concerns that a handful of companies and countries are using the global atmospheric commons as a dumping ground for potentially toxic and climate-altering industrial waste byproducts from loosely regulated commercial space flights.
The new study analyzed a plume of pollution trailing part of a Falcon rocket that crashed through the upper atmosphere on Feb. 19, 2025, after SpaceX lost control of its reentry. The rocket was launched earlier that month, carrying 20 to 22 Starlink satellites into orbit.
The authors said it is the first time debris from a specific spacecraft disintegration has been traced and measured in the near-space region about 80 to 110 kilometers above Earth. Changes there can affect the stratosphere, where ozone and climate processes operate. Until recent years, human activities had little impact in that region.
Element-specific monitoring could be part of a broader effort to track how re-entry emissions spread and accumulate, the researchers noted, giving policymakers a chance to understand and manage the growing atmospheric footprint of spaceflight.
“I was surprised how big the event was, visually,” lead author Robin Wing, a researcher at the Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics, said via email. He said people across northern Europe captured images of the burning debris, which was concentrated enough to enable high-resolution observations and to use atmospheric models to trace the lithium to its source.
180841964
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AmiMoJo writes:
NASA says it will likely postpone until April or later a mission to send astronauts around the moon, citing a newly discovered technical issue. The agency had initially targeted a February launch, later pushed to March 6 at the earliest because of fuel leaks.
The mission is part of the US-led Artemis lunar exploration program, which includes Japan and several European partners.
NASA announced the latest delay on Saturday, attributing it to an interruption in the flow of helium needed to maintain the proper environmental conditions for the engine in the rocket's upper stage.
Officials say an April launch remains possible if the repairs proceed smoothly.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman acknowledged the repeated delays have disappointed many, and expressed determination to push the program forward.
180838246
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AmiMoJo writes:
Russia’s Supreme Court has upheld a ruling ordering Google to pay an extraordinary 91.5 quintillion rubles (about $1.2 quintillion)—a figure roughly one million times larger than the global gross domestic product, according to court materials, The Moscow Times reported on February 18. The Moscow Arbitration Court set the final penalty of 91.5 quintillion rubles ($1.2 quintillion) in spring 2025. For comparison, the World Bank estimates total global GDP at roughly $100 trillion, making the court-ordered sum vastly larger than the value of the entire world economy.
The legal dispute dates back to 2020, when pro-Kremlin media outlets Tsargrad and RIA FAN sued Google entities—including Google LLC, Google Ireland, and the Russian subsidiary “Google”—demanding restoration of their blocked YouTube accounts.
Russian courts sided with the plaintiffs, but Google did not comply with the ruling. Judges then imposed a progressive daily penalty that began at 100,000 rubles (about $1,315) and doubled each week the decision remained unenforced.
180821608
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AmiMoJo writes:
Dancing humanoid robots took centre stage on Monday during the annual China Media Group’s Spring Festival Gala, China’s most-watched official television broadcast. They lunged and backflipped (landing on their knees), they spun around and jumped. Not one fell over.
The display was impressive, but prompted some to wonder: if robots can now dance and perform martial arts, what else can they do?
Experts have mixed opinions, with some saying the robots had limitations and that the display should be viewed through a lens of state propaganda.
Kyle Chan, an expert in China’s technology development at Brookings Institution, a policy organisation in Washington DC, said Beijing uses these public robot performances to “dazzle domestic and international audiences with China’s technological prowess”. Pointing to intensifying competition in the tech space between China and the US, Chan added: “While China and the US are neck-and-neck on AI, humanoid robots are an area where China can claim to be ahead of the US, particularly in terms of scaling up production.”
Georg Stieler, the head of robotics and automation at the global technology consulting firm Stieler Technology and Marketing, also emphasised the symbolism of China’s prime time broadcast.
“What distinguishes the gala from comparable events elsewhere is the directness of the pipeline from industrial policy to prime-time spectacle,” Stieler said in a statement.
Comparing this year’s performances with last year’s – when viewers saw “fundamentally a single choreographic mode” with limited motions including walking, twisting and kicking – Stieler said one key signal of China’s robot progress is “the ability to run large numbers of near-identical humanoids in synchronised motion with stable gaits and consistent joint behaviour”.
180676624
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AmiMoJo writes:
Fully electric car sales in December overtook petrol for the first time in the European Union, even as policymakers proposed to loosen emissions regulations, data showed on Tuesday. U.S. battery-electric brand Tesla continued to lose market share to competitors including China's BYD and Europe's best-selling group Volkswagen, data from the European auto lobby ACEA showed. Car sales throughout Europe sustained a sixth straight month of year-on-year growth, with overall registrations, a proxy for sales, hitting their highest volumes in five years in Europe in 2025, though they remained well below pre-pandemic levels.
December registrations of battery electric, plug-in hybrid and hybrid electric cars were up 51%, 36.7% and 5.8%, respectively, to account collectively for 67% of the bloc's registrations, up from 57.8% in December 2024.
180649264
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AmiMoJo writes:
Dilara was on her lunch break in the London store where she works when a tall man walked up to her and said: "I swear red hair means you've just been heartbroken." The man continued the conversation as they both got in a lift, and he asked Dilara for her phone number. What Dilara did not realise was that the man was secretly filming her on his smart glasses — which look like normal eyewear but have a tiny camera which can record video. The footage was then posted to TikTok, where it received 1.3m views. "I just wanted to cry," Dilara, 21, told the BBC. The man who filmed her, it turned out, had posted dozens of secretly filmed videos to TikTok, giving men tips on how to approach women. Dilara also found out that her phone number was visible in the video. She then faced a wave of messages and calls.
Another woman, Kim, was filmed last summer on a beach in West Sussex, by a different man wearing smart sunglasses. He started a conversation by complimenting her on her bikini. He asked where she lived and tried to connect with her on Instagram. Kim, 56, was unaware she was being filmed and, as they chatted, shared details about her employer and family. Later, the man posted two videos online, under the guise of dating advice, which quickly amassed 6.9 million views on TikTok and more than 100,000 likes on Instagram.
180642468
submission
AmiMoJo writes:
The financial campaigner James Daley has launched a £1.5bn class action lawsuit against Apple over its mobile phone wallet, claiming the US tech company blocked competition and charged hidden fees that ultimately harmed 50 million UK consumers.
The lawsuit takes aim at Apple Pay, which they say has been the only contactless payment service available for iPhone users in Britain over the past decade.
Daley, who is the founder of the advocacy group Fairer Finance, claims this situation amounted to anti-competitive behaviour and allowed Apple to charge hidden fees, ultimately pushing up costs for banks that passed charges on to consumers, regardless of whether they owned an iPhone.
180605490
submission
AmiMoJo writes:
Suppliers of parts for Nvidia’s H200 have paused production after Chinese customs officials blocked shipments of the newly approved artificial intelligence processors from entering China, according to a report.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report, which appeared in the Financial Times citing two people with knowledge of the matter. Nvidia did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment made outside regular business hours.
Nvidia had expected more than one million orders from Chinese clients, the report said, adding that its suppliers had been operating around the clock to prepare for shipping as early as March.
Chinese customs authorities this week told customs agents that Nvidia’s H200 chips were not permitted to enter the country, Reuters reported.
180571928
submission
AmiMoJo writes:
Coal-fired power generation fell in both China and India in 2025 for the first time in more than five decades, as non-fossil energy sources grew fast enough in both countries to meet rising electricity demand.
Electricity generated by coal plants fell by 1.6 per cent in China and by 3 per cent in India last year, marking “a historic moment” since the early 1970s that coal power has dropped in both countries in the same year.
The shift, driven by record installations and softer demand growth, could mark a turning point for the world’s two biggest coal users.
