Agriculture personnel cull geese at a farm in Chiayi county, southern Taiwan, January 11, 2015. A third highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza has been detected in southern Taiwan. The Taiwan Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine said Friday that for the first time in Taiwan avian influenza virus H5N3 has been identified on two goose farms in the southern cities of Kaohsiung... 

British government engaging in “cynical opportunism” following attack in France. The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, wants President Obama to pressure social media to cooperate with GCHQ, the British intelligence service that works closely with the NSA in the United States to surveil the internet and private electronic communication. Intelligence services are increasingly critical of encryption... 

Inactivity kills more than obesity. A new major study says exercise is beneficial for people of any age, warning that physical inactivity could kill twice as many people as obesity. A 12-year study of more than 300,000 European people, who had an average age of around 50, suggests that about 676,000 deaths each year were attributed to physical inactivity, compared with 337,000 associated to obesity. The... 

UK PM David Cameron may block encrypted messaging platforms Snapchat and WhatsApp if the Conservatives win May’s general election, as part of the party’s agenda to bolster surveillance powers following last week’s terror attacks in Paris. During a meeting with Britain’s security chiefs, the Prime Minister pledged to halt the use of communications platforms that can withstand snooping from... 

Nearly half of Britons hold anti-Semitic views, a survey has revealed. It also found that one in eight Brits surveyed (13 percent) thought Jews used talking about the Holocaust to get sympathy. A YouGov poll asked 3,411 UK adults about their attitudes toward UK Jewish citizens. It found that 45 percent polled believed at least one anti-Semitic view presented to them was “definitely or probably true.” Many... 

​The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the fourth largest local policing agency in the United States, has taken another step towards building the biggest biometric database outside of the FBI’s by inking a new $24 million contract. NEC Corporation of America, a Texas-based IT firm that provides biometric services to commercial entities, law enforcement groups, and governments around the... 

The White House proposal to encourage businesses to share data with the government on “cyber threats” would make it easier for law enforcement and other agencies to collect private information on Americans. President Obama announced his new Internet legislative proposal Tuesday, but privacy analysts warn it’s simply another CISPA-style government takeover of the Internet, including increased... 

Madrid wants to see changes made to the treaty governing the visa-free Schengen area, which would allow Spain to introduce border controls to stem the tide of Islamic militants returning from the Middle East, the country’s interior minister has said. “We are going to back border controls and it is possible that as a consequence it will be necessary to modify the Schengen treaty,” Interior... 

The Charlie Hebdo unity march in Paris served as a backdrop on Sunday for interior ministers who demand more internet surveillance. “We forcefully noted the need for greater cooperation with Internet companies to guarantee the reporting and removal of illegal content, particularly content that makes apologies for terrorism or promotes violence or hate,” said French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve. US... 

A woman walks past signs warning of Ebola in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Authorities in Sierra Leone have extended the Ebola lockdown in the northern Tonkolili district of the West African country for two weeks in a bid to contain the outbreak. “The lockdown is extended for another two weeks to intensify monitoring efforts by all sectors in the district as we need this mopping up operation until January... 

In March 2014, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, caused 77 earthquakes in a small Ohio town that had no previous experience with seismic activity, according to a new study. One quake was large enough to be felt in neighboring areas. Fracking in Poland Township, Ohio was halted two days after the area was hit with a magnitude-3 earthquake along a hidden fault in rock which was deep beneath a natural... 

A giant dark hole has appeared on the sun’s flaming surface, a recently-taken NASA picture has revealed. So far, scientists are stumped by why this spectacular phenomenon, known as a “coronal hole,” occurs. “The Sun starts 2015 with an enormous coronal hole near the South Pole,” scientists of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory wrote in their blog, having posted a picture of the flaming... 

Scientists have been baffled by mass deaths of seabirds, whose bodies are being found by the hundreds along the US Pacific Coast. According to reports, hundreds of Cassin’s aucklets, a small white-bellied gray bird, have been washing up dead on beaches from British Columbia to San Luis Obispo, California, since October. Generally during severe winter conditions, especially during large storms,... 

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has established a research and development program, known as the Fast Lightweight Autonomy Program (FLAP) which aims to develop new types of unmanned aerial vehicles—more commonly known as drones—for urban combat operations, according to the Washington Times. DARPA is preparing to dispense several initial $5 million contracts to... 

The German government insists it wants Greece to stay in the eurozone and isn’t drafting any contingency plans in case of ‘Grexit’. This shows Germany is adamant about keeping Greece under the domination of the ‘troika’, journalist Ernst Wolff told RT. “The goal of the German government, the European Union and even the government in Athens itself is to keep Greece in the euro zone,”...