Ada Lovelace Day (7 October) aims to raise the profile of women in science, technology, engineering and maths by encouraging people around the world to talk about the women whose work they admire. Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) was an English female writer and mathematician, widely held to have been the first computer programmer.Our...

The co-founder and former chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Steve Jobs has died yesterday at the age of 56, according to the company website. On August 24, Jobs resigned from his post as CEO. He has been fighting pancreatic cancer since 2004. Jobs, born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955, has built the most valuable ...

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has announced women will be allowed to vote in the country and run for municipal elections there. The modifications will apply from 2012. Abdullah made this announcement at the start of a new Shura Council term. In a speech, the king said "we refuse to marginalise women in society in all roles ...

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) ruled that Australia's Channel Seven has broken television regulations by showing a 15-second McDonald's advertisement during a children's program. The advertisement, a playground campaign, was shown 72 times in October and November 2010 during television broadcasts in...

Twitter users from across the Arab world paid tribute to the 3,000 victims of September 11 as the world recalled the horrors committed by Al Qaeda terrorists who flew four passenger jets into buildings in the US 10 years ago.  Saudi cartoonist Malek Nejer says September 11 is a hideous crime, no matter who the perpetrators ...

Heroreports is a non-profit project dedicated to crowdsourcing and mapping reports of citizen courage and positive social behavior. It started in Ciudad Juárez, México as an initiative of the MIT Center for Civic Media called “Crónicas de Héroes“, under the direction of Yesica Guerra, a researcher in urban design with a...

Ali Farzat, the Arab world’s greatest cartoonist – in fact one of the very best and bravest creative voices in the Arab world – was bundled into a van by Syrian regime filth last night. Some hours later he was found bleeding at the side of the airport road. First reports suggest that his hands have been broken.I’ve often used...

The wave of violence that Mexico is experiencing has reached the national sport par excellence. Last Saturday, August 21, 2011, during an official first division football match in the Estadio Corona (TSM), in Torreón, Coahuila, an armed confrontation took place outside the stadium. It led to the cancellation of the game and...

In a recently published article in the journal PLoS One, researchers at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory claim to have developed a new drug that has the potential to cure nearly all types of viral infections ranging from the common cold to highly deadly hemorrhagic fevers.The new drug, known as DRACO (double-stranded RNA activated ...

The New York State Legislature passed a bill Friday that legalizes same-sex marriage in the state. It was signed into law by Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo. New York now becomes the sixth and largest U.S. state with legalized same-sex marriage. The practice is legal in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire,...