Jem Stansfield travels to the Solar Furnace Research Facility in Southern France. He witnesses the incredible power generated by highly concentrated sunlight. Sunlight, focused intensely enough that it can (and does) burn any material on earth. Just how hot does it get in that ring of fire sunshine? Over 6,300 degrees Fahrenheit.  Read More »

A 4 November satellite image shows the site of North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear facility. Defence minister hints at deploying US weapons on his country’s soil for first time since 1991 after news of North Korean plant. South Korea’s defence minister today raised the possibility that US nuclear weapons could be deployed in his country for the first time in nearly 20 years, after it was... 

A Kolkata slum dweller talks on a mobile in India, where the phones have become more affordable. Council of elders feared women would use phones to arrange forbidden marriages. An Indian village has banned unmarried women from using mobile phones for fear they will arrange forbidden marriages that are often punished by death, a local official said today. The Lank village council decided unmarried boys... 

A group of tea party activists are firing back at a gay conservative group, claiming that they don’t speak for the movement. Last week, POLITICO reported on a letter that GOProud and several tea party activists sent to GOP congressional leaders urging them to pursue fiscal issues over social ones. Now, another group of tea party activists released their own letter to Republican leaders, calling... 

According to information in a new report coming out of Syracuse University’s TRAC, re-entry into the U.S. by unauthorized immigrants was the crime most prosecuted by federal authorities. In August there were 13,122 federal criminal prosecutions, and illegal re-entry accounted for 2,139 of those prosecutions. August’s information was the most recently released from the U.S. Department of Justice. The... 

North Korea bombarded a South Korean island near their disputed western border Tuesday, setting buildings ablaze and killing at least two marines after warning the South to halt military drills in the area, South Korean officials said. South Korea said it returned fire and scrambled fighter jets in response, and said the “inhumane” attack on civilian areas violated the 1953 armistice halting... 

French president Nicolas Sarkozy arrogantly snubbed Romanian president over Roma deportation issues The French-Romanian friendship on head of state level is not what it used to be. President Nicolas Sarkozy seems to have treated his Romanian counterpart Traian Basescu coldly, even impolitely, at the group photo with all NATO state leaders at the Lisbon summit. Basescu tried to stop his French counterpart... 

Actor Wesley Snipes was ordered on Friday to start serving a three-year prison sentence for failing to file income tax returns by a federal judge who rejected the Hollywood star’s bid for a new trial. “The defendant Snipes had a fair trial … The time has come for the judgment to be enforced,” U.S. District Judge Terrell Hodges said in his ruling. Revoking bail for the 48-year-old... 

Can’t get hired? You may just be in the wrong place. Bad interviews or a lack of experience may not be the reason you can’t land a job. Your location may be to blame. If you’re seeking employment, consider moving to Washington, San Jose, or New York. Those are the three best places in the nation for finding a job, according to Juju.com. Juju, a site that aggregates job listings,... 

Cheng Jianping retweeted the comment as ‘wangyi09’ adding ‘Angry youth, charge!’ A Chinese Twitter user has been arrested, on her wedding day, over a tweet. One week after Paul Chambers lost his appeal in the so-called Twitter joke trial here in the UK, Amnesty International reports that Chinese activist Cheng Jianping has been sentenced to a year of ‘re-education’... 

As America has been moving left, Europe is taking the opposite course. Social-Democratic parties have lost some of their dominance. These two maps plot political power. For countries with coalition governments, the holder of the Prime Minister or being the largest party in the coalition is used. Purple is where the Prime Minister and President are from different blocks (for countries where the President... 

Some 30 million Poles are eligible to vote in the elections Voting stations across Poland opened Sunday for municipal elections in which 48,000 regional leaders were to be elected. The elections are regarded as a political barometer ahead of parliamentary elections in 2011. Local elections in Poland have opened across the country, in a key test for the government ahead of parliamentary elections next... 

Ethnic violence in Guinea’s capital Conakry following a disputed presidential election has left at least seven people dead. The situation appears to have calmed, but simmering tensions remain. It was heralded as an election that would finally bring democracy to a coup-weary West African nation, but Guinea’s much-postponed Nov. 7 presidential runoff ended up exposing deep ethnic fault lines and... 

You thought Dubai and Shanghai had the craziest, most futuristic architecture in the planet. Sorry Taiwan, you and your Taiwan Tower—a 984-foot (300 meter) high structure with mechanized observation platforms that float using helium and propellers—win. Originally conceptualized by Romanian architect Stefan Dorin, the tower will be the tallest building in Taichung, Taiwan. At its base, the tower... 

Remember the 15-story hotel built in six days? Well, this 12-story apartment building fell down in three seconds. In fact, this apartment block was not built with pre-fab techniques and it’s certainly not Level 9 Earthquake-resistant. It’s just your typical brick and cement building. They first build the block, and then started to excavate an underground parking on the front. They placed...