Technology

Battery-powered planes, solar planes, hydrogen planes — jet makers are working on myriad ways to make flying less damaging to the planet. Yet clean flying on a mass scale remains decades away. That’s despite growing pressure from regulators and from a blossoming environmental movement to shun air travel altogether . The problem, argue aviation powerhouses […]

BBC Click’s Paul Carter looks at some of the week’s best technology stories including: Facebook announces its new crypto-currency, Libra, but some lawmakers have expressed concerns Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei says international sales of the telecoms company’s handsets have fallen by 40% in the past month as a US-led backlash against the firm continues MIT’s

The Bank of England is open to letting new payment services such as Facebook’s upcoming Libra hold funds overnight with the central bank, something historically limited to commercial banks. In prepared remarks to bankers in London, the bank’s governor, Mark Carney, said it “makes sense to consider” extending access to new payment providers, as they

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Like other presidential hopefuls in Taiwan, Terry Gou has spent the past few weeks working on his public image by carrying toddlers, wrapping dumplings and helping farmers. Unlike the other candidates, he is a billionaire, the chairman of Foxconn, a major Apple supplier that operates vast factories in China. He has also

The Latest on a California Assembly hearing on vaccination legislation (all times local): 4:45 p.m. A California Assembly committee has advanced a bill to tighten the state’s rules on vaccination exemptions. But there remains disagreement about the measure among Assembly Democrats. Some members of the Assembly Health Committee say the bill will help protect children

“And that’s very, very sensitive data,” he added. The British Board of Film Classification, the regulator that would be responsible for ensuring compliance with the new laws, plans to provide certification for age verification companies. But the process would be voluntary and at least one company has already said that it will not apply for

Republican senators in Oregon engaged in a high-stakes game of brinksmanship Friday with Democratic lawmakers and prepared to remain absent from the Capitol for a second day to block a vote on a landmark climate plan that would be the second of its kind nationwide. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown deployed the state police Thursday to

“Sometime next year,” Elon Musk says, “you’ll be able to have the car be autonomous without supervision.” “None of us have any idea when full self-driving will happen,” counters Gill Pratt, an expert in robotics and the director of the Toyota Research Institute. Beyond Mr. Musk, who has said twice this year that Tesla could

European Union leaders failed Thursday to back a plan to make the bloc’s economy carbon neutral by 2050 in spite of promises to protesters across the continent to fight harder against climate change. Ahead of a U.N. meeting in the fall, the proposal was relegated to a non-binding footnote in the final statement of Thursday’s

Besieged by nearly five billion unwanted automated calls from telemarketers and scammers last month, Americans are poised to get relief from robocalls under a bipartisan compromise bill introduced in the House on Thursday. The measure would require phone carriers to offer screening technology to identify and block spam calls at no additional cost to customers