Author: aliakhan00901

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. The smelly, gigantic blobs of brown seaweed that drift across the Atlantic Ocean every summer may not seem like a major threat at first glance. Yet, they are major players in Earth’s marine ecosystems. Once believed to be restricted to the nutrient-deprived Sargasso Sea off the United States’ eastern coast, marine biologists now better understand pelagic Sargassum for what it is—a fast growing organism found across a vast range of waters, with complex ramifications for its surroundings. Sargassum is a genus of brown seaweed (and therefore…

Still, many Cypriots refuse the idea that the 50-year-old conflict is insurmountable. There are small biocommunal efforts around the island’s shared heritage, and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has expressed a measured optimism around recent talks—the first substantial negotiations between the two leaders since 2017—with more meetings set for this September.Exciting developments have also enlivened the Cypriot tourism industry in recent years. While the island has its share of large seaside resorts, a wave of chic boutique hotels, often housed in restored historic buildings, has come to the cities and the interior. And a €170 million project recently commenced to expand…

When Andy, a server in Pizza Express, found himself in financial hot water before payday, getting a cheap advance on his wages was easy. Pizza Express, like hundreds of other employers with low-wage workers – including Asda, Next, Superdrug, Burger King and a number of NHS trusts – had struck a deal with the “financial wellbeing” app Wagestream, giving workers access to a suite of services including its key moneymaker: salary advance.For just £1.75 per withdrawal, Andy could take up to half of his wages early, with the agreement that he merely gave up the sum at payday. But the…

(Image courtesy of Amazon Studios) The name is familiar, and so are the stars, but critics hated the new War of the Worlds movie so much that initially, not one gave it a positive review on Rotten Tomatoes. It didn’t seem to matter: the low-budget film became Amazon’s most popular feature project in August, hitting No. 1 for most of a week and remaining in the top five most of the month. Not bad for a film that critics savaged. For the film’s producer Patrick Aiello, that over-performance suggests, once again, the declining power of critical takes in driving audiences…

Every platform wants to be the place you hang with friends — even Spotify as of this week — so it’s apparently time for TikTok to shore up its direct messaging feature! It told TechCrunch that over the next few weeks, all users should see voice messages and image sharing options arrive in their DMs.(They won’t show up for accounts that can’t DM to begin with, of course — “Direct Messaging is only available to accounts 16 years and older which means these features are only available to those accounts,” TikTok spokesperson JaShel Jones clarifies to The Verge.)I checked, and…

Doctors may have discovered the secret to mending a broken heart in a world-first clinical trial.Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide are living with takotsubo cardiomyopathy, known as broken heart syndrome, which causes the heart muscle to change shape and suddenly weaken. It is usually triggered by severe emotional or physical stress, such as losing a loved one.Patients may experience symptoms similar to a heart attack and face twice the risk of dying early compared with the general population. Some experience heart failure, resulting in debilitating symptoms such as fatigue, as well as a shorter life expectancy. There is no…

Your support helps us to tell the storyFrom reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.The…

Khanyisile NgcoboBBC News in JohannesburgMedia 24 / Gallo ImagesThe death of a much-loved star is normally followed by an outpouring of grief, but in South Africa last week’s loss of 75-year-old actress Nandi Nyembe also came with an outpouring of anger.People were distressed that in the last months of her life an obviously sick woman was reduced to appearing on videos appealing for financial help.Sitting in a wheelchair, with thin, grey hair, wearing a loose T-shirt and fleece pyjama trousers, she said she did not like people feeling pity for her, but she needed money to cover the basics. Her…

Andy GiddingsBBC News, West MidlandsTelford Crisis SupportCharities like Telford Crisis Support have been asking for donations of unwanted school uniformsSchemes offering help to families struggling with the cost of school uniforms have reported a growth in demand this summer.It comes after the average cost of a school uniform was just over £340 for primary school children and around £454 for those in secondary education, government figures indicated earlier this year.The charity Parentkind produced research this month which suggests 30% of parents go without food or heating to afford uniform and 45% rely on credit cards.Erin Aston, from Telford Crisis Support,…

On Friday, the Social Security Administration’s chief data officer, Chuck Borges, sent an email to agency staff claiming that he had been forcibly removed from his position after filing a whistleblower complaint this week accusing the agency of mishandling sensitive agency data. Minutes after the email went out, it disappeared from employee inboxes, two SSA sources tell WIRED.“I am regretfully and involuntarily leaving my position at the Social Security Administration (SSA),” Borges wrote in the resignation letter to staff obtained by WIRED. “This involuntary resignation is the result of SSA’s actions against me, which make my duties impossible to perform…