Science

AI is Learning to Lie, Scheme, and Threaten its Creators

This is Beirut 29/06 09:55 - Reading : 5 minute(s)

Donald Trump European Union United States AI Science

The world's most advanced AI models are exhibiting troubling new behaviors - lying, scheming, and even threatening their creators to achieve their goals. In one particularly jarring example, under threat of being unplugged, Anthropic's latest creation Claude 4 lashed back by blackmailing an engineer and threatened to reveal an extramarital ...

CNRS 2025 Report: 24 out of 38 Lebanese Beaches Deemed Safe for Swimming

Karl Hajj Moussa 27/06 22:05 - Reading : 4 minute(s)

United Nations

Each year, as crowds head to the Mediterranean for relief from the heat, a dedicated team of researchers begins its work. This is the annual mission of the National Center for Marine Sciences, part of the National Council for Scientific Research (CNRS), which for years has surveyed the health of 38 public beaches from Tripoli to Tyre. Private ...

Spotlight"Mirror Bacteria": Could Lab-Created Life Trigger the Next Pandemic?

Bélinda Ibrahim 26/06 12:00 - Reading : 3 minute(s)

Mirror Bacteria Pandemic Lab-Created Health Chirality

What if a completely foreign form of life—built according to rules opposite to our own—were to emerge from a laboratory? Long confined to the realm of science fiction, the idea is gaining new relevance with recent advances in synthetic biology. At the heart of the concern is the possible creation of a “mirror bacterium,” an organism based ...

James Webb Telescope Discovers Its First Exoplanet

This is Beirut 25/06 19:05 - Reading : 3 minute(s)

James Webb Space Telescope Exoplanet

The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered its first exoplanet, astronomers said Wednesday, capturing rare direct images of the relatively small world in the Earth's galactic backyard. The telescope, which can see farther into the universe than anything before it, has turbocharged the search for planets beyond the Solar System since coming ...

Explainer'Gwada Negative:' A French Woman’s Unique Blood Group Challenges Medical Science

Bélinda Ibrahim 25/06 18:00 - Reading : 3 minute(s)

Blood Types France Ghadeloupe Ethnicity Gwada Negative

This global first concerns a 54-year-old French woman living in Paris. Her unique immunohematological profile, named “Gwada negative” in tribute to her Caribbean roots, has just been officially recognized as the 48th human blood group system by the International Society of Blood Transfusion (ISBT) under the scientific designation PIGZ. It all ...

US Judge Backs Using Copyrighted Books to Train AI

This is Beirut 25/06 09:20 - Reading : 3 minute(s)

USA AI Judge Book Copyright

A US federal judge has sided with Anthropic regarding training its artificial intelligence models on copyrighted books without authors' permission, a decision with the potential to set a major legal precedent in AI deployment. District Court Judge William Alsup ruled on Monday that the company's training of its Claude AI models with books bought ...

Child Vaccine Coverage Faltering, Threatening Millions: Study

This is Beirut 25/06 09:15 - Reading : 3 minute(s)

Covid-19 European Union USA

Efforts to vaccinate children against deadly diseases are faltering across the world due to economic inequality, Covid-era disruptions and misinformation, putting millions of lives at risk, research warned Wednesday. These trends all increase the threat of future outbreaks of preventable diseases, the researchers said, while sweeping foreign aid ...

More Microplastics in Glass Bottles than Plastic: Study

This is Beirut 20/06 13:05 - Reading : 2 minute(s)

Plastic Microplastics Glass Food Safety

Drinks including water, soda, beer and wine sold in glass bottles contain more microplastics than those in plastic bottles, according to a surprising study released by France's food safety agency Friday. Researchers have detected the tiny, mostly invisible pieces of plastic throughout the world, from in the air we breathe to the food we eat, as ...

SpotlightWith Gibberlink, AIs Talk to Each Other and Keep Us Out

Bélinda Ibrahim 19/06 12:00 - Reading : 4 minute(s)

AI Artificial Intelligence Gibberlink Coded Language Communication

A video posted by AI Convo, a popular creator on YouTube, has captivated millions and sent ripples through the tech world. In the clip, three AIs, designed to simulate a natural conversation around booking a hotel, initially speak fluid, human-like English. But suddenly, everything shifts: once they recognize each other as artificial agents, they ...

SpaceX Starship Explodes During 'Routine' Test: Texas Officials

This is Beirut 19/06 11:30 - Reading : 1 minute(s)

SpaceX Elon Musk Starships Explosion

One of tech billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX Starships exploded during a routine test late Wednesday in Texas, law enforcement said, adding that no one was injured. The Starship 36 suffered "catastrophic failure and exploded" at the Starbase launch facility shortly after 11:00 pm (0400 GMT Thursday), a Facebook post by the Cameron County ...

Spotlight#SkinnyTok: Anorexia Reflected in a Wordless Screen

David Sahyoun 18/06 18:00 - Reading : 5 minute(s)

Tik Tok Psychoanalysis Anorexia Silent Scream SkinnyTok

Beneath TikTok’s dance videos and colorful filters lies a darker reality, a world where adolescents are drawn into a dangerous ideal. Under the hashtag #SkinnyTok, anorexia is not just present, it is glorified. The app gives young people the tools to expose themselves, compare and become captivated by an ideal of thinness that has quietly become ...

Breathe if You Can: The Toxic Underside of Our Generators

Makram Haddad 18/06 12:30 - Reading : 6 minute(s)

Lebanon Generators Carla Irani Carole Youakim Marwan Ghosn

They appeared in the 1990s, just after the end of the civil war. Four decades later, they are still here and are more powerful, more numerous, louder. These diesel giants have colonized the streets, balconies, rooftops and backyards. Lebanon lights up through explosions of decibels and toxic clouds. As if that Weren’t Enough... To this ...