The UK will ban people from flying into the country with large electronic devices by Saturday. The Department for Transport said that it will implement the ban on laptops and tablets from a range of countries this week. Any large gadgets flying from a range of affected countries will have to be put into the luggage hold, and can't be taken onto the plane. Airlines are being told to implement the rules "over the coming days and no later than 25 March", a DfT spokesperson said. Passengers "should go to the airport with the expectation that the measures are already in effect", she said.

In the 1980s, a bioengineer named Norm Heglund was doing field work in Kenya, hoping to uncover the secrets of locomotion. Heglund and his team spent their days shooting wild animals with tranquilizer darts in Kenya's national parks then dragging them back to a research station, run by the East Africa Veterinary Research Organization, in nearby Muguga for testing. Every day, the wives of local colleagues stopped by the lab to chit chat. They carried impossibly huge bundles of food, clothing, or other supplies perfectly balanced on top of their heads. During one lunch break, a few weeks into his stay, he realized something.

Apple has released the iPhone in red, a brand new colour for its handsets. The special edition phone will help benefit (PRODUCT)RED, the AIDS charity. Apple has worked with the charity a number of times in the past, creating red products and supporting it in a range of different ways. It was unveiled alongside an update version of the smaller iPad Pro, and the removal of the old iPad Air. That tablet features a brighter display and improved performance, as well as being sold at an even cheaper price.

There's little doubt that the tech industry, like many industries, has unequal representation when it comes to gender. This has enormous impact across a range of areas, deeply affecting people's lives based on unconscious assumptions society should have moved away from. Melinda Gates noted at this year's Code Conference: "When I graduated 34% of undergraduates in computer science were women… we're now down to 17%." While the tech industry is building 3D printers and electric cars, it still hasn't built bridges for equal representation. As experts have noted, it's too easy to blame an absence of women or women having no interest in tech.

Four billion years ago, Earth was a lifeless place. Nothing struggled, thought, or wanted. Seawater leached chemicals from rocks; near thermal vents, those chemicals jostled and combined. Some hit upon the trick of making copies of themselves that, in turn, made more copies. The replicating chains were caught in oily bubbles, which protected them and made replication easier; eventually, they began to venture out into the open sea. A new level of order had been achieved on Earth. The tree of life grew, its branches stretching toward complexity. Organisms developed systems, subsystems, and sub-subsystems, layered in ever-deepening regression. They used these systems to anticipate their future and to change it. When they looked within, some found that they had selves--constellations of memories, ideas, and purposes that emerged from the systems inside. They experienced being alive and had thoughts about that experience. They developed language and used it to know themselves; they began to ask how they had been made. This, to a first approximation, is the secular story of our creation. It has no single author; it's been written collaboratively by scientists over the past few centuries. If, however, it could be said to belong to any single person, that person might be Daniel Dennett, a seventy-four-year-old philosopher who teaches at Tufts. In the course of forty years, and more than a dozen books, Dennett has endeavored to explain how a soulless world could have given rise to a soulful one. His special focus is the creation of the human mind.

The African smartphone market is gaining rapid traction. According to predictions, smartphones sold this year will outnumber feature phone sales, and mobile penetration is far higher than line-based internet access. Currently, most people in Africa use text messages to send money with a service called M-Pesa from the largest tech start-up in Kenya. Now, chatbots could potentially replace text-based transactions altogether. Budapest-based Hungarian start-up UXstudio has created a chatbot called Nuru.

The soon to be released Albert Einstein Robot from Hanson Robotics is displayed at their booth during the 2017 Consumer Electronic Show ( FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images) Many younger people only know of Albert Einstein through t-shirts with his wacky hair and tongue sticking out, or through one-off events that center around his intellectual achievements, like last year's celebration for the 100th anniversary of his General Theory of Relativity. Yet Einstein is more than just an eccentric genius. "Everyone knows Einstein is a great scientist," says Hebrew University's Professor Hanoch Gutfreund. "He also is an humanitarian who expressed his views in his writing, teaching, and public appearances. While not everyone may be a certifiable genius, there are several leadership tips that Millennials can borrow from Einstein in order to succeed at work and in life. "Einstein is a symbol of innovation, tenacity, and imagination," says Elan Divon, co-founder of Einstein Legacy Project (ELP), under the Canadian Friends of Hebrew University; an affiliate organization of The Hebrew University which was founded by Einstein in 1918 and to whom Einstein bequeathed his estate upon his passing in 1955. "We want to use his legacy to inspire minds all over the planet and empower a new generation of Einstein's.

Donald Trump's presidency got off to a bloody start in January, when a special operations forces raid against al-Qaeda in Yemen killed numerous civilians and a US Navy SEAL. The raid was a disaster, but it did not deter the US from launching more attacks using drones and other weapons platforms. In one week earlier this month, the Trump administration conducted about 40 strikes in Yemen, including 25 on a single day. Added to that, there was a drone attack in Pakistan, the first in the country since May 2016. Barack Obama was much criticised for his dramatic escalation of drone strikes in non-battlefield settings such as Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia. But Trump is already surpassing Obama's record.

Mark Hamill is here to rescue your weekend with some good old-fashioned nostalgia. The "Star Wars" actor shared a photo Saturday morning of himself as a young Luke Skywalker posing in the Tatooine desert on the first day of filming "Star Wars: Episode IV -- A New Hope." He stands with his hands folded across his heart. "Taken in Tunisia early morning day [number one] waiting for my [first] shot (emerging from home for robot auction)," he wrote. Hamill has played Skywalker since 1977's "A New Hope," the first installation in the Star Wars movie franchise.

In her SXSW session, titled Dark Days: AI and the Rise of Fascism, Crawford, who studies the social impact of machine learning and large-scale data systems, explained ways that automated systems and their encoded biases can be misused, particularly when they fall into the wrong hands. "Just as we are seeing a step function increase in the spread of AI, something else is happening: the rise of ultra-nationalism, rightwing authoritarianism and fascism," she said. All of these movements have shared characteristics, including the desire to centralize power, track populations, demonize outsiders and claim authority and neutrality without being accountable. Machine intelligence can be a powerful part of the power playbook, she said. One of the key problems with artificial intelligence is that it is often invisibly coded with human biases.