Hertha Marks Ayrton: 5 facts about the British engineer and inventor.

Hertha Marks Ayrton was a British mathematician, engineer, physicist and inventor who was awarded the Hughes Medal in 1906 by the Royal Society for her work on electric arcs and ripples in sand and water. Born in Portsea, Hampshire in 1854, she studied at Girton College, Cambridge, and registered 26 patents for mathematical divders, arc lamps and electrodes between 1884 and her death in 1923. As Google marks what would have been her 162nd birthday with a Doodle on its homepage, here are five facts...

Read More

Trump routs rivals in Northeast; Clinton carries four states

In a front-runner's rout, Republican Donald Trump roared to victory Tuesday in five contests across the Northeast and confidently declared himself the GOP's "presumptive nominee." Hillary Clinton was dominant in four Democratic races and now is 90 percent of the way to the number needed to claim her own nomination. Trump's and Clinton's wins propelled them ever closer to a general election showdown. Still, Sanders and Republicans Ted Cruz and John Kasich, vowed to keep running, even as opportunities...

Read More

24 dead in Mexico petrochemical plant blast, 8 still missing

The death toll from an explosion that ripped through a petrochemical plant on Mexico's southern Gulf coast is now 24, state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos reported. Pemex raised the toll late Thursday from the 13 fatalities previously known and said eight workers remained missing. It also said 19 people remained hospitalized, with 13 of them in serious condition. In a statement, the company said 12 of the bodies had been identified and eight of them delivered to family members. Earlier...

Read More

Three dead, dozens injured in blast at chemical plant in Mexico

A massive explosion rocked a major petrochemical facility of Mexican national oil company Pemex in the Gulf state of Veracruz on Wednesday, killing at least three people, injuring dozens more, and pumping a cloud of noxious chemicals into the sky. Luis Felipe Puente, head of federal emergency services, told Reuters that three people had died in the blast. The governor of Veracruz state, Javier Duarte, later said 105 were hospitalized, including 58 Pemex workers, according to his official Twitter...

Read More

Trump, Clinton win big in NY, push closer to nomination

Front-runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton swept to resounding victories in Tuesday's New York primary, with Trump bouncing back convincingly from a difficult stretch in his Republican campaign and Clinton pushing tantalizingly close to locking up the Democratic nomination. "The race for the nomination is in the home stretch, and victory is in sight," Clinton declared to cheering supporters. Trump captured more than 50 percent of the vote in New York and was headed toward a...

Read More

North Korea could be preparing for fifth nuclear test, South Korea’s Park warnsa

North Korea appears to be preparing to conduct another nuclear test, South Korean President Park Geun-hye said Monday, citing signs of increased movement near the North’s nuclear test site. With a much-hyped congress of the communist Workers’ Party to be held early next month, Kim Jong Un appears to be trying to burnish his credentials, and analysts say a fifth nuclear test would be a sure way to do that. “Recently, signs of preparations for a fifth nuclear test have been detected,”...

Read More

Quake kills 272 along devastated Ecuador coast

The death toll from Ecuador's biggest earthquake in decades soared to 272 on Sunday as survivors cobbled together makeshift coffins to bury loved ones, lined up for water and sought shelter beside the rubble of their shattered homes.The 7.8 magnitude quake struck off the Pacific coast on Saturday and was felt around the Andean nation of 16 million people, causing panic as far away as the highland capital Quito and destroying buildings, bridges and roads."Ecuador has been hit tremendously hard......

Read More

Major earthquake rocks Ecuador, kills at least 41

Ecuador's strongest earthquake in decades, a 7.8 magnitude tremor, struck off the Pacific coast on Saturday, killing at least 41 people and causing damage near the epicenter as well as in the largest city of Guayaquil.President Rafael Correa declared a national emergency and urged the Andean nation's 16 million people to stay calm."Our infinite love to the families of the dead," he said on Twitter, while cutting short a trip to Italy to return home.Authorities urged people to evacuate coastal...

Read More

POPE MAKES PROVOCATIVE TRIP TO GREECE AS EU DEPORTS MIGRANTS

Pope Francis is known for his symbolic gestures, but even by his standards, his visit to a Greek refugee detention center as the European Union implements a controversial deportation plan is as provocative as any he has undertaken. Francis and the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians will spend nearly an hour Saturday greeting some 250 refugees stuck on the Greek island of Lesbos. They will lunch with eight of them to hear their stories of fleeing war, conflict and poverty and hopes...

Read More

Winners and losers from the 9th Democratic presidential debate

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders debated in Brooklyn, N.Y., Thursday night, the first time the two had stood on the same stage in 36 days. I tweeted. The Fix posse annotated. And I also jotted down some of the best and worst from the night that was. Enjoy!WinnersHillary Clinton: Clinton didn't knock Sanders out. But she definitely won on points. She was ready when Sanders came at her on her judgment for voting for the war in Iraq, noting that the voters of New York as well as President Obama...

Read More

Cruz likely to block Trump on a second ballot at the GOP convention

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is close to ensuring that Donald Trump cannot win the GOP nomination on a second ballot at the party’s July convention in Cleveland, scooping up scores of delegates who have pledged to vote for him instead of the front-runner if given the chance.The push by Cruz means that it is more essential than ever for Trump to clinch the nomination by winning a majority of delegates to avoid a contested and drawn-out convention fight, which Trump seems almost...

Read More

Donald Trump, Losing Ground, Tries to Blame the System

Donald J. Trump and his allies are engaged in an aggressive effort to undermine the Republican nominating process by framing it as rigged and corrupt, hoping to compensate for organizational deficiencies that have left Mr. Trump with an increasingly precarious path to the nomination.Their message: The election is being stolen from him.On Tuesday, Mr. Trump berated the politicians he said were trying to stop his nomination and denounced the Republican Party, which he cast as complicit in the...

Read More

North Korea resurrects Abraham Lincoln to criticize Obama

North Korea has tried warnings of nuclear attack and racist diatribes to criticize U.S. President Barack Obama. Now it's turning to Abraham Lincoln. North Korea's state media have constructed an imaginary letter from the 16th U.S. president that attacks Obama's "deception" over Pyongyang's pursuit of nuclear weapons. It is the latest response from the North to rising animosity with Washington following Pyongyang's nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year. The letter, posted...

Read More

One woman helped the mastermind of the Paris attacks. The other turned him in.

All of Europe was looking for Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the planner of the Paris attacks, when two women approached his roadside hiding place, guided by the voice of someone secretly watching from a distance and giving directions by phone.“Go forward. Walk. Stop,” the voice said. “He can see you. He’s coming.”It was 9:30 p.m., two days after the bombings and shootings in November that left 130 people dead. France had closed its borders and launched a massive manhunt. But Abaaoud emerged from behind...

Read More