Burping cows are a massive contributor to emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane, which has reached record levels according to new research. The amount of methane in the atmosphere grew massively between 2000 and 2017, leading to what researchers believe could be a global warming increase of up to four degrees Celsius by the
Technology
Contact tracers in England have been locked out of their work accounts this morning, preventing them from reaching people who could have contracted coronavirus, Sky News understands. A Tier 2 COVID-19 contact tracer has told Sky News that anyone whose Amazon Web Services (AWS) account was activated on 13 May has been unable to log
Lord Browne of Madingley, the former BP boss, is to step down early as the UK chairman of Huawei Technologies as it faces a government ban on involvement in the UK’s 5G infrastructure. Sky News has learnt that Lord Browne gave two months’ notice of his resignation in the last few days, meaning he will
The British government is expected to take a new and final decision on the future 5G network today, further restricting the involvement of the Chinese telecoms firm Huawei. Boris Johnson will chair a meeting of the National Security Council later before the Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden makes a statement to parliament. An original decision, made
A freeze in Britain’s trading relationship with China triggered by banning the telecoms equipment manufacturer Huawei would depress UK GDP and spark inflationary pressures, one of the country’s leading economic think tanks will say this week. Sky News has obtained copies of separate reports to be published in the coming days by the National Institute
A COVID-19 vaccine could be rolled out across the country in the first half of next year if trials are successful, according to a leading UK scientist. Professor Robin Shattock, who heads a team developing a coronavirus vaccine at Imperial College London, has told Sky News that enough doses would be available for everyone in
Amazon said it mistakenly sent an email to employees telling them to delete the popular video app TikTok from their phones. “This morning’s email to some of our employees was sent in error. There is no change to our policies right now with regard to TikTok,” Amazon said in an emailed statement. Amazon had told
Online bank Smile is trying to reassure customers after days of technical problems with its website and app. On Wednesday, Smile – which is owned by Co-op Bank – said on Twitter that it was having “intermittent issues with our app and online banking”. The bank’s 100,000 customers were given a phone number to call
The iPhone apps for Spotify, Tinder and Pinterest crashed for users around the world on Friday due to a Facebook bug. The core issue was in Facebook’s software developer kit (SDK) for iOS which embeds Facebook functionality within other apps, for instance allowing people to log in to Tinder using their Facebook accounts. Launching the
Tesla is on the verge of joining the prestigious S&P 500 stock market index following a year in which its shares have risen by more than 580%. The electric car maker exceeded expectations for deliveries in the second quarter, according to an announcement last week, and analysts expect the company will announce a profit during
A scheme using drones to deliver coronavirus test kits and medical supplies to a Scottish island has received government funding to help tackle the pandemic. Skyports, the company behind the drones, ran a two-week trial delivering items essential to tackling the COVID-19 outbreak between the islands on Scotland’s west coast at the end of May
There could be mobile phone blackouts across the UK if the government forces phone companies to strip Huawei out of their networks, MPs have been told. BT and Vodafone executives today warned parliament that if the government forced them to completely remove Huawei’s equipment from their networks suddenly, it would cost billions of pounds and
Elon Musk says Tesla is “very close” to developing a completely autonomous driving system, the basics of which he is confident will be completed before the end of the year. During a video played at an AI Conference in Shanghai, Musk said the company had solved most of the problems associated with so-called Level 5
Scientists believe they may have stumbled on a new dinosaur species that lived in the Arctic 70 million years ago when the region was warmer than it is now. The findings are based on a “rare” piece of jawbone thought to belong to a juvenile dromaeosaurid dinosaur. The predatory animals were closely related to birds.
A newly-discovered species of seaweed is spreading rapidly and killing large patches of coral in one of the most protected ocean environments in the world, researchers have said. A study from the University of Hawaii and others says the seaweed, which is part of the algae family, is spreading faster than anything they have seen
German engineering company Festo has created robotic birds capable of amazingly realistic flight. The firm acknowledges that the robo-birds don’t have any business applications yet, but hopes one could be found in future. Until then, a whole fleet (or flock) of the birds have been unveiled in a video showing off how they can take