Here's a trick question: where is Europe's spaceport? Answer: It's in Europe. Right? Well, yes. But actually … not quite. You see, "Europe's spaceport," as it is indeed sold, is in French Guiana. Technically, that is in Europe. French Guiana is a French colony, making it a European, or EU, jurisdiction - which is great if you happen to be there on a European cell phone plan because EU Roaming applies. Yeah! But geographically, the Guiana Space Centre is in South America, right next door to Brazil.

"And the third possibility is that it is aliens." Only the *third* possibility, mind. That s the assessment of Dr Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute (the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Life) in California. So what s all this speculation about aliens sending us signals from a faint star in our "neighborhood"? "On the basis of history, I would say the chances are not very great that it s aliens," Shostak told Deutsche Welle on Tuesday. "We go through this fairly frequently whenever anybody picks up an interesting signal - or anything unusual in the sky - and if you don t know what it is, one possibility is that it s aliens. Right? Well, look at history …"

Scientists described the case as a "mystery" but remain skeptical that the signal could be caused by intelligent aliens. "In case you are wondering, the recurrent aliens hypothesis is at the bottom of many other better explanations," Abel Mendez, director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico, said in a blog post.

Following the fuel subsidy cuts, ride-hailing service app Careem has increased their base fares on to start at LE5.5 — up from LE3.5 — and charge LE2.21 per kilometer, in order to balance the effect of the increase in fuel prices. The government announced earlier in July that 80 octane petrol and diesel will sell for LE3.65 ($0.20) a liter, up from LE2.35 ($0.13), while 92 octane petrol rose from LE3.5 to LE5 ($0.19 to $0.27) per liter. The company updated its fare rates for Cairo riders, announcing that the minimum fare rate would be increased to LE12 from LE10, and the price of ‘waiting’ per-hour to LE46. Careem also increased the airport surcharge to LE20 for riders commuting to and from Cairo International Airport.

So far, people who have problems climbing the stairs have had to rely on elevators or a stair-lift - but now American researchers have developed a new system. Yun Seong and his colleagues from the Missouri University of Science and Technology have designed suspension stairs that can buffer energy to re-release it when needed. This is intended to allow elderly people to climb up or down the stairs with greater ease.

The German Aerospace Center expressed readiness to provide Egypt with technical and logistic support to turn it into a main headquarter for the African Aerospace Agency, according to state-run news agency MENA. Egypt will officially implement this in January 2018, according to MENA. However, to reach this target Egypt has to seek international support.

The iPhone 8 might not be ready before its release date, a new report claims. Some central features in the new Apple handset still look like they will need more improvement at launch, according to Fast Company. As such, Apple might ship the hardware required to make them work, but not enable them until it can send a fix through a software update later on.

Ever since Louis Vuitton produced his first handcrafted leather luggage in 1854, his eponymous label has been synonymous with luxury. With the launch of Tambour Horizon, the French fashion house hopes to elevate the smartwatch in the same way it elevated the suitcase.

Apple Inc. is working on a feature that will let you unlock your iPhone using your face instead of a fingerprint. For its redesigned iPhone, set to go on sale later this year, Apple is testing an improved security system that allows users to log in, authenticate payments, and launch secure apps by scanning their face, according to people familiar with the product. This is powered by a new 3D sensor, added the people, who asked not to be identified discussing technology that s still in development. The company is also testing eye scanning to augment the system, one of the people said.

Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla and SpaceX, will embark on another ambitious project, with the aim to world s largest grid-scale battery within 100 days, the company confirmed on Friday. The 46-year-old South African-born entrepreneur had agreed in the spring to come up with a solution to South Australia s renewable energy crisis, which the two sides have since spent months firming up.

No one has ever witnessed a male baboon forcing a female to have sex with him. Now a French-English research team thinks they have found the reason: raping her is simply unnecessary. The males use a much more subtle and longer-term strategy to get the amount of sex they want. "When I was in the field and observing the baboons, I often noticed that males were directing unprovoked attacks or chases toward females [in heat]," says Alice Baniel, an evolutionary biologist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, France, and lead author of the study.

The rodents - which were engineered to lack a sense of smell, put on a high-fat diet and ate just much as their non-engineered counterparts - lost an average of 16 percent of their body weight. Mice with enhanced olfactory senses gained weight. It seems the smell of delicious food is enough to make you gain weight. "Weight gain isn t purely a measure of the calories taken in," lead researcher Andrew Dillin said. "It s also related to how those calories are perceived."

The Dubai-based online retailer Souq.com announced on Monday that its sale to e-commerce giant Amazon has been completed. The $650 million deal, initially announced in March, allows Amazon to capitalize on Souq.com’s leadership in Middle East and North Africa, which accounts for as much as 78 percent of e-commerce in the region.

Prices for internet ADSL services are scheduled to increase by 4 percent starting from September, a source from the communications ministry told state news agency MENA on Sunday. This increase is said to be part of a planned rise in value-added tax from 10 to 14 percent, which was introduced in September 2016, the source added.

The research and development departments of the world s defense companies have barely begun to explore all the different uses for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), or drones. And governments, aware of this, are growing increasingly keen to find out what else they can do. In early June, the European Commission came up with a new plan to hand out 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion) of taxpayers money to arms companies every year to develop new military technology.

It s usually a good idea when walking around town to look up and ahead. Occasionally you might also like to look left and right - for instance, while crossing a road. So put those phones away and soak up your environment. In Lindau, look up and you might even learn something. This small town on Lake Constance in southern Germany has a new "Science Trail," which aims to explain the science behind the discoveries that have won Nobel Prizes. There s even an app to go with it. So, okay, you can get those phones out again.

Lawmakers on Monday increased pressure in closed-door talks with auto industry leaders ahead of national elections in Germany on September 24. The government has demanded that the auto industry cover the costs and wants a solution to be presented before the elections. The transport ministry is in discussions with German auto industry associations VDA and VDIK as well as representatives from local governments to try and cut nitrogen oxide pollution by about 25 percent, sources told Reuters news agency.

Ask a stupid question, get a good answer, that s my method. And it worked in conversation with Nobel laureate W.E. Moerner. "Science itself is not an alternative fact. We have no alternative but to use scientific enquiry to make the proper choices to improve the world for the future," Moerner told DW at the 67th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. Moerner, a chemistry professor at Stanford University in the United States, won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Chemistry along with Eric Betzig and Stefan Hell. He s speaking on the panel of a Deutsche Welle Press Talk at Lindau called "Science in the Post-Truth Era."

Facebook Inc (FB.O) is in talks with Hollywood studios about producing scripted, TV-quality shows, with an aim of launching original programming by late summer, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. The social networking giant has indicated that it was willing to commit to production budgets as high as $3 million per episode, in meetings with Hollywood talent agencies, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. on.wsj.com/2scl2NV

A college project to re-distribute food for sale in retail outlets close to sell-by date is a remarkable success in Ireland, so the concept is catching on in Britain with the potential to be adopted throughout the world. Aoibheann O’Brien remembers that first box of food five years ago. O’Brien and co-founder Iseult Ward picked it up at a farmers’ market and dropped it off to a youth services centre in Dublin. “We thought, ‘we feel great about this.’ It was artisan sausages and really nice sourdough bread and I think there was raw milk as well,” O’Brien said.

Energy labels are hugely exaggerating the efficiency of televisions, fridge-freezers and dishwashers - with some appliances consuming almost twice as much energy as they claim to. That s according to a survey of European Union products, which show that domestic appliances seriously fail to measure up to their purported energy efficiency savings when tested outside the laboratory in real-world conditions. The findings are reminiscent of Dieselgate. The tests revealed that the current outdated official test formats on which appliances color-coded A to G gradings have been based are "vulnerable to misuse."