Science & Technology News

By Steve Ginsburg REUTERS – The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s reputation of academic superiority is well chronicled. But the private research university is now excelling in a sector of society once deemed unthinkable for a bastion of brainpower: football. MIT is undefeated going into its last regular season game on Saturday against the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and headed to the Division III playoffs. …

By Cris Chinaka HARARE (Reuters) – Zimbabwe’s ruling ZANU-PF party suspended several senior officials aligned to Vice-President Joice Mujuru on Friday, weakening her position in an fierce battle to succeed ageing President Robert Mugabe. A ZANU-PF politburo meeting, chaired by Mugabe, suspended National party spokesman Rugare Gumbo, expelled war veterans leader Jabulani Sibanda and endorsed the suspension of half the party’s provincial chairmen, citing “disciplinary issues”. …

By Tony Jimenez BELEK Turkey (Reuters) – John Daly has rubbished the formation of a task force to examine ways of improving the dire recent run of the U.S. Ryder Cup team, urging his country to appoint Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson as player-captain. Daly, winner of the 1995 British Open and 1991 U.S. PGA Championship, has never played in the biennial team event but said it was “not rocket science” to work out why Europe had won eight of the last 10 editions. …

By Tony Jimenez BELEK Turkey (Reuters) – John Daly has rubbished the formation of a task force to examine ways of improving the dire recent run of the U.S. Ryder Cup team, urging his country to appoint Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson as player-captain. Daly, winner of the 1995 British Open and 1991 U.S. PGA Championship, has never played in the biennial team event but said it was “not rocket science” to work out why Europe had won eight of the last 10 editions. …

By Valerie Volcovici and Tommy Wilkes WASHINGTON/NEW DELHI (Reuters) – After this week’s carbon deal between the United States and China, No. 3 emitter India faces growing pressure to devise a clear strategy and step out of China’s shadow during pivotal global climate talks. India has given no sign what kind of commitment it will make to address climate change in a global agreement. Officials previously stressed that India would likely opt to slow emissions growth rather than set a peak year on the grounds it is entitled to economic growth. …

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Rising global temperatures may cause a big jolt in the number of lightning strikes in the United States over the rest of the 21st century in the latest example of extreme weather spawned by climate change, scientists say. Researchers forecast on Thursday that lightning strikes will increase by about 50 percent by 2100 in the continental United States because thunderstorms will become more explosive in the coming decades thanks to a warming planet. …

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Predators such as leopards and cheetahs are not the biggest mortal threat to baby Chacma baboons, large and aggressive monkeys that live across southern Africa. That threat comes from adult males of their own species. “Up to 50 percent of the infants might be killed by males in these populations, a massive impact more important than disease or predation,” University of Cambridge behavioral ecologist Dieter Lukas said. This behavior is not limited to these baboons. …

By Sue-Lin Wong SYDNEY (Reuters) – More than 400 protesters stuck their heads in the sand on Australia’s Bondi Beach on Thursday, mocking the government’s reluctance to put climate change on the agenda of a G20 summit this weekend. Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s perceived failure to address climate change is all the more galling in the wake of an agreement between the United States and China on Wednesday to limit their carbon emissions, they said. “Obama’s on board, Xi Jinping’s on board, everyone’s on board except one man,” activist Pat Norman, 28, bellowed into a megaphone on the Sydney beach. …

By Aditya Kalra RAIPUR India (Reuters) – The scene in the gloomy room where 83 women were sterilised last weekend is repeated routinely at makeshift contraception clinics across India: bloodstained sheets that aren’t changed between patients, and hasty two-minute surgeries. Only this time, something went tragically wrong. More than a dozen of the mostly poor and illiterate villagers operated on by Dr. R.K. Gupta have since died, and scores remain sick in hospital, many of them in intensive care. …