Telling Lies is a game where you sift through video calls to solve a mystery. Half the time you don't know what you should be doing, but that's part of the fun, says Jacob Aron

Four decades ago, we introduced a standard way of encoding digital sound. Its first ever upgrade could lead to new genres of music and ways of experiencing sound

While such a plan might sound appealing, it’s likely to provide a false sense of security

Scientists are speculating as to how the two creatures managed to become preserved in such an unusual way.

This solar contact could provide a potential explanation for the asteroid's weird, two-tone surface.

Alison Roman’s latest comments about Marie Kondo have not sparked joy.

In an interview with The New Consumer about her increased popularity and the avenues she might pursue to capitalize on it, the popular food columnist discussed her hesitance to put her name on a product line—citing the Japanese organization maven and Chrissy Teigen as examples of what she did not foresee in her own future.

“I have a collaboration coming out with [the cookware startup] Material, a capsule collection,” Roman said. “It’s limited edition, a few tools that I designed that are based on tools that I use that aren’t in production anywhere—vintage spoons and very specific things that are one-offs that I found at antique markets that they have made for me.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Last week, former Vice President Joe Biden told the world that he “unequivocally” denied accusations by Tara Reade, a former staffer in his Senate office, that he sexually assaulted her in the early ’90s.

On Friday evening, Reade responded: Prove it.

“Joe Biden should take the polygraph,” Reade told former television anchor Megyn Kelly, in an interview that aired on Kelly’s YouTube channel. “I will take one if Joe Biden takes one, but I’m not a criminal.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Just after the prosecutor assigned to the case resigned on Thursday, the Department of Justice announced that it dropped the charges against Michael Flynn, the former national security advisor who’d already pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia. 

President Trump forecast this before it happened. Last week, he insisted that Flynn had been exonerated.  Apparently referring to his pardon power, Trump suggested that if the court did not do something he would use “a different kind of power.”

And now it’s happened. While the president has the broad power to pardon, he should not control individual prosecutorial decisions, especially those concerning a political ally. It is extremely unusual for the government to dismiss charges after a guilty plea. This is a sign that the historic independence of the Justice Department has been compromised. 

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Marissa Guale is like all too many Americans right now. Her husband and father of her two children, Raul, is on a ventilator in a hospital on Long Island, fighting for his life while sick with COVID-19. Raul, a 34-year-old nurse, likely caught the disease while working in a nursing home. When the National Institutes of Health announced an emergency use authorization for the experimental antiviral drug remdesivir, Marissa scrambled friends and family on Facebook to figure out how to get access for Raul, emailing hospital administrators, senators, and doctors. They pressed the Guale family’s case for a potentially lifesaving treatment on social media to anyone who would listen.

Her confusion about where and how to get access to the drug isn’t unique. All over the country, families, doctors, and hospitals are wondering how to get the drug and on what basis it’s being distributed. The Trump administration, which is in charge of allocation, hasn’t published any guidance on how it’s making decisions about the scarce supplies of the drug.

So who decides which hospitals get remdesivir? And what’s the most ethical way to prioritize access?

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Adele posted a message to her social media channels this week thanking those on the front lines fighting COVID-19. In the process, the celebrated singer unveiled a thinner frame—and the internet had a lot of thoughts about it, almost all trash.

Enter Bill Maher, noted #MeToo skeptic, with perhaps the most garbage take of them all.

On Friday night, during the interview portion of his HBO show Real Time, the comedian began by placing the bulk of the blame for the high amount of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. compared to other countries on America’s obesity problem—not, say, the fact that the Trump administration didn’t do a single thing during the month of February to contain the spread of the virus.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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This week, new claims about the accuracy of the Garden of Eden story emerged online and in tabloid magazines. Professor Tom Meyer, a scripture expert known as the Bible Memory Man, argues that there are two artifacts—a 4,000-year-old seal and roughly 3,600-year-old stone—that provide evidence both for the location of the Garden of Eden and the Adam and Eve story. But do his claims add up? (Spoiler alert: No)

In a story, reported this week in the Daily Express, Meyer, who teaches at his alma mater Shasta Bible College and University, refers first to a Sumerian king list, an inscribed Middle Bronze aged stone prism currently housed at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The prism dates to between 2100 B.C. and 1650 B.C. and was discovered in 1922 by Herbert Weld-Blundell during his excavations in Kish, the ancient capital of Sumer, in Mesopotamia. It was purchased by the Ashmolean shortly thereafter.

Meyer said, “In addition to enumerating the long reigns of pre-flood rulers, this prism lists Eridu—an ancient site in southern Iraq—as the first city ever built.” This is significant, he says, because “The ancient site of the Garden of Eden… is thought by some to be located at Eridu under a cluster of tels” (Tels are artificial hills).

Read more at The Daily Beast.

By Rachana Pradhan and Fred Schulte | Kaiser Health News

The Trump administration has sent hundreds of millions of dollars in pandemic-related bailouts to health care providers with checkered histories, including a Florida-based cancer center that agreed to pay a $100 million criminal penalty as part of a federal antitrust investigation.

At least half of the top 10 recipients, part of a group that received $20 billion in emergency funding from the Department of Health and Human Services, have paid millions in recent years either in criminal penalties or to settle allegations related to improper billing and other practices, a Kaiser Health News review of government records shows.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

A 7-year-old boy from Westchester County is the second child in New York state to die from pediatric multi-symptom inflammatory syndrome tied to COVID-19 since the pandemic began. A 5-year-old boy died earlier in the week from the same syndrome at Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital in New York City.

The childhood ailment has affected at least 73 children in New York state and authorities are now looking for other potential cases across the country. Cases have also been reported in Washington, D.C., California, Delaware, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington state and New Jersey, where a 4-year-old died with symptoms last month.

It has been previously thought that children are less likely to suffer any serious complications from the coronavirus.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

It’s not going out on much of a limb to say that the single greatest line in any rock and roll song—shall we double down and say all music ever?—is “A-wop-bom-a-loo-mop-a-lomp-bom-bom!!”

Surely that says it all.

As with any truly oracular pronouncement, it inspires consternation in the first-time listener, and the second-time listener, and the third, the fourth, and on and on. The mystery never diminishes.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

BRITAIN'S summer holiday destinations will face some of the biggest economic hits of the coronavirus pandemic with fears of massive job losses in coastal communities, a study has claimed.

Liverpool are looking to make Sadio Mane an offer that would tarnish Real Madrid's hopes of signing him.

The Quadrantid meteor shower has a short peak period that lasts only a few hours, so midnight on 3 January is the best time to view in the UK

Two stars in the constellation Sagitta are predicted to smash together in the year 2083, producing an explosion that will outshine every star in the sky

When asteroid Armageddon is upon us, we can't just call Bruce Willis. Meet the people who really do watch the skies – and make detailed plans for our survival

China’s Yutu-2 rover has used radar to peer 40 metres under the surface of the far side of the moon and revealed how past impacts have shaped its geology

A team of researchers say they have discovered a protein molecule inside a meteorite, the first extraterrestrial example ever found, but others are sceptical

Exoplanet WASP-76b, which is about 390 light years from the solar system, has a strange iron signature in its atmosphere, suggesting the metal is raining down on the planet's night side

The Rosetta spacecraft’s measurements of comet 67P have revealed a hidden source of nitrogen that may help us learn how giant planets – and even life – formed

The Hayabusa-2 spacecraft bombed the asteroid Ryugu in April. Analysing the crater it left behind suggests Ryugu is a relative youngster at 9 million years old

A tiny meteorite found in Antarctica doesn’t match any asteroid or comet we know of. Instead, it must have come from a mystery parent body that’s full of water

An unusually round and symmetrical deposit on Mars may be the result of an impact that popped the surface of the planet, causing a volcanic eruption less than 200,000 years ago

Arrokoth, a strange two-lobed space rock, was hit by another rock at some point – the collision may have snapped Arrokoth’s narrow neck before it reformed again

A bunch of asteroids near Jupiter and Neptune with orbits perpendicular to the plane of the solar system may have come here from a different star system

Michigan can and will recover from the devastating COVID-19 pandemic - but not if Joe Biden wins the presidential election this November. The former vice president's radical policy platform is destined to sabotage America's second economic comeback, dooming the Great Lakes State to a bleak future of perpetual economic stagnation.

If he can win the battle for our screens, he can benefit from the death of the traditional presidential campaign.

There is something deeply unsettling about the lionization of Andrew Cuomo and his handling of the epidemic, especially in the light of the raw statistics

The overlooked epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic is our nation's nursing homes, veterans' homes, and other long-term care facilities.

In light of the newly declassified documents, it is clear that understanding what happened in that January 5 Oval Office meeting is essential to understanding the corrupt operation against the Trump administration.

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Skybot F-850 will spend a week on the ISS charming astronauts with its sense of humor

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The OpenAI project demonstrated "emergent behavior" by the AI players, including surfing

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Job postings from a NASA contractor suggest that a new humanoid robot is under development

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Researchers in Brazil are developing a drone that scouts for evidence—and want to use its footage to reconstruct crime scenes

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The topography and bathymetry payload for UAV