National / International News

Rory Cellan-Jones on TV and tech learning to co-exist

Footage has emerged from on board a plane that had to return to Heathrow Airport to make an emergency landing after black smoke was seen coming from an engine.

After a truck carrying a heavy load struck the side of a bridge that carries Interstate 5 over the Skagit River north of Seattle, the roadway collapsed. No one was killed. Dan Sligh and his wife were in a pickup. "You just hold on as tight as you can," he says of the fall they took.

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Bristol Academy's Siobhan Chamberlain and Arsenal's Steph Houghton answer fans' questions ahead of Sunday's FA Women's Cup final.

The UK Independence Party's only Welsh MEP says he will stand down next year for personal reasons.

Stephen Fry is one of three notables to be immortalised in sheet steel near Norwich railway station.

Until recently, Google's X Lab was kind of a secret compound, or at least a place that wasn't broadcasting it's tech experiments to the public. Google Glass, the company's web streaming spectacles, was born there.

The Bay Area facility was recently visited by Bloomberg Businessweek editor Josh Tyrangiel. He says the labs are a place where scientists can think big ideas, with a lot of freedom.

Click on the audio player above to hear more.

 

Recently The Associated Press, the Onion, and the Daily Telegraph suffered Twitter hacks by a group which calls themselves the Syrian Electronic Army. Now the social media company is offering an extra layer of security. It will send a code to your cellphone that you need to enter before logging in with your password.

Hackers are already claiming they can get around the two-step login process in a matter of minutes.

Will Oremus, who writes for the blog Future Tense at Slate magazine, joins Marketplace Tech host Ben Johnson to discuss.

What do radical Islamists actually believe in?

There have been multiple explosions at a fuel depot on the northern outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, with large flames and black smoke pouring from the building.

President Obama delivered his most detailed comments yet on the use of drones to kill reputed terrorists yesterday. The use of drones at home and abroad is controversial, and has led several Congressional hearings and sharp debate among law enforcement.

The President confirmed that drone strikes had killed Americans abroad. But he strongly defended the U.S. drone program, saying its use has been important to the war against terrorism.

"Simply put...these strikes have saved lives," Obama said.

John Villasenor, a professor of electrical engineering and public policy at UCLA, thinks it's a little more complicated.

"I don't think anyone disputes the program has been 'successful' in the sense of reaching targets," Villasenor says. "The question is the significant amount of collateral damage."

Despite controversy surrounding drone strikes abroad, many see a long list of potential positives for domestic unmanned aerial vehicles. Villasenor is a supporter.

"Here at home, unmanned aircraft can be used for agricultural spraying, they can be used for surveying, for search and rescue, for spotting hot spots in a wild fire," he says.

Domestic drone use could become much more commonplace in the next few years. A bill passed in Congress last year requires the Federal Aviation Administration to facilitate widespread use by 2015.

Russia says the Syrian government has agreed "in principle" to attend an international peace conference set to be held in Geneva in June.

A public appeal for help to recover the very first web page has unearthed a relic from 1991.

Two prison vans transporting defendants to the Dale Cregan trial are involved in a collision in Lancashire.

In an age when "extremely violent and sadistic imagery is two clicks away", school sex education is struggling to keep pace, suggests a study.

'Porn made me think sex was brutal'

The 2015 Europa League winners will qualify for the following season's Champions League, Uefa confirms.

The government defends security services against criticism they missed signs which might have helped prevent the murder of a soldier in London.

Final preparations to install overhead and underground cabling are being made for the city centre section of the Edinburgh tram line.

The Stockholm fire brigade tackles fires at at least two schools on a fifth night of rioting in the Swedish capital.