sciencehabit shares a report: The day that squeamish humans -- and exterminators -- have long feared may have come at last: Cockroaches are becoming invincible. Or at least German cockroaches (Blattella germanica) are, according to a new study. Researchers have found that these creatures, which have long been a prevalent urban pest, are becoming increasingly resistant to almost every kind of chemical insecticide. Not all insecticides are created equal. Some degrade the nervous system, whereas others attack the exoskeleton; they also have to be left out for varying amounts of time. But many insects, including cockroaches, have evolved resistance to at least one of the most commonly-used insecticides. And because cockroaches live only for about 100 days, that resistance can evolve quickly, with genes from the most resistant cockroaches being passed to the next generation. To test resistance in German cockroaches, researchers treated three different colonies in multiple apartment buildings in Indiana and Illinois over the course of 6 months. The populations were tested for their level of resistance to three different insecticides: abamectin, boric acid, and thiamethoxam. One treatment used all three pesticides, one after another, for 3 months before repeating the cycle. In another treatment, researchers used a mixture of insecticides over the full 6 months. A final treatment scenario used just one chemical that the selected roach population had a low resistance to for the entire time. Regardless of the different treatments, the size of most of the cockroach populations didn't drop over time, the researchers wrote last month in Scientific Reports.

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Slavery was state-sanctioned mass violence, despite what the College Board says.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon's taxes have become a campaign issue. In last week's Democratic debates, two different candidates (Cory Booker and Andrew Yang) called out Amazon for paying $0 in federal income taxes last year, even after listing $4 billion in profits. Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and President Trump himself have brought up the same point at various points on the campaign trail, always directed at Amazon. In a CNN interview after the second debate, Bernie Sanders singled the company out as an example of a broken tax code, saying simply, "I'm going to tax them." "We pay every penny we owe in corporate taxes including $2.6 billion over the past three years," Amazon said when reached for comment. "We've invested $270 billion in the US since 2010 and created more than 275,000 jobs." But there's an awkward truth behind the political back-and-forth: we don't know what Amazon's tax bill really is. Like every other company in America, Amazon's tax returns are private, legally considered to be a trade secret. We don't know which tax breaks they're taking, or how they've structured their finances to avoid various taxes in favor of others. If Amazon says its tax bill was lower because of investments, we simply have to take the company at its word.

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Several people have been killed and hundreds injured since Sunday's protest organisers called a 'million-man march'.

The first total solar eclipse since 2017 will pass over parts of South America on Tuesday.

PM Adel Abdul Mahdi issues decree demanding armed groups choose between political and paramilitary activity.

At least 23 civilians have been killed and 300 missing in the troubled region in the latest round of ethnic violence.

Germany's cyber-security agency is working on a set of minimum rules that modern web browsers must comply with in order to be considered secure. From a report: The new guidelines are currently being drafted by the German Federal Office for Information Security (or the Bundesamt fur Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik -- BSI), and they'll be used to advise government agencies and companies from the private sector on what browsers are safe to use. A first version of this guideline was published in 2017, but a new standard is being put together to account for improved security measures added to modern browsers, such as HSTS, SRI, CSP 2.0, telemetry handling, and improved certificate handling mechanisms -- all mentioned in a new draft released for public debate last week. According to the BSI's new draft, to be considered "secure," a modern browser must follow the following requirements, among others: Must support TLS, must have a list of trusted certificates, must support extended validation (EV) certificates, must verify loaded certificates against a Certification Revocation List (CRL) or an Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP); the browser must use icons or color highlights to show when communications to a remote server is encrypted or in plaintext, connections to remote websites running on expired certificates must be allowed only after specific user approval; must support HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) (RFC 6797). Further reading: Germany and the Netherlands To Build the First Ever Joint Military Internet.

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Analysts say the escalation comes after the LNA lost control of its forward base in Gharyan, south of Tripoli.

Being selected to exhibit at the Royal Society is one of the greatest honours a scientist can have.

Attorney general says the police chief and ex-defence secretary should be charged for failing to prevent Easter attacks.

New documents obtained by Motherboard using a Freedom of Information request show how Amazon, Ring, a GPS tracking company, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service collaborated on a package sting operation with the Aurora, Colorado Police Department in December. From the report: The operation involved equipping fake Amazon packages with GPS trackers, and surveilling doorsteps with Ring doorbell cameras in an effort to catch someone stealing a package on tape. The documents show the design and implementation of a highly elaborate public relations stunt, which was designed both to endear Amazon and Ring with local law enforcement, and to make local residents fear the place they live. The parties were disappointed when the operation didn't result in any arrests. The Aurora Police Department received 25 Amazon boxes, Amazon-branded tape, and Amazon lithium ion stickers as a part of the operation. It also received 15 Ring doorbell cameras and 15 GL300W GPS trackers from 7P Solutions. "Operation Grinch Grab," as it was called internally, involved seven Aurora zip codes. These companies spent days with the Aurora Police Department preparing them for the operation, and discussing local news coverage and rewriting press releases.

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Gene Kranz may be the most famous flight director in NASA's history. He directed the actual landing portion of the first mission to put men on the moon, Apollo 11, and led Mission Control in saving the crew of Apollo 13 after an oxygen tank exploded on the way to the lunar surface. Now Kranz, 85, has completed another undertaking: the reopening of Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. From a report: The room where Kranz directed some of NASA's most historic missions, heralding U.S. exploration of space, was decommissioned in 1992. Since then, it had become a stop on guided tours of the space center but had fallen into disrepair. Kranz led a $5 million multiyear effort to restore Mission Control in time for the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing on July 20. "I walked into that room last Monday for the first time when it was fully operational, and it was dynamite. I literally wept," Kranz said in an interview with NPR. "The emotional surge at that moment was incredible. I walked down on the floor, and when we did the ribbon-cutting the last two days, believe it or not, I could hear the people talking in that room from 50 years ago. I could hear the controllers talking." The room also brought back memories for Kranz of a shared sense of purpose. "That group of people united in pursuit of a cause, and basically the result was greater than the sum of the parts. There was a chemistry that was formed," Kranz said. "[The room] also has a meaning related to the American psyche, that what America will dare, America will do," Kranz said.

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Migrants were kept in overcrowded cells or outside with limited access to showers, NBC reports, citing DHS documents.

Long-time Putin critic Alexei Navalny jailed over role in unsanctioned Moscow rally held last month.