India is unveiling a 170 billion rupee ($2 billion) financial incentive plan to draw makers of laptops, tablets

UniSuper, one of Australia’s largest pension funds, has reported that investments across its A$115 billion ($77 billion) portfolio

Mars is often called the Red Planet, but a recent image captured by NASA’s Perseverance rover from the surface would go some way to contradicting that. Earlier this year, Perseverance snapped a sunset from Mars in which the Sun looks blue, a sight which would never be seen from our own planet. The photograph was taken on the rover’s 842nd day on the planet, and shows a Martian horizon with the sun setting behind causing an eerily cool glow. Because of Mars’ distance from the Sun, it gets less sunlight than we do on Earth. Even at its sunniest, it gets less than half our quota of light from the star. And the planet’s atmosphere, which is weaker than Earth’s, is mainly made up of carbon dioxide, with a small amount of nitrogen and a trace of oxygen. This gaseous mix and weak atmosphere causes the light to scatter in a blue haze across the sky. It’s the same process which gives us our blue sky during the daytime, when the light has less atmosphere to penetrate before it reaches our eyes. On Earth, this changes when the sun dips below the horizon, and the light has more atmosphere to penetrate, filtering our blue and violet wavelengths, leaving only reds and oranges. Meanwhile on Mars, the sunlight interacts with the dust hanging in the atmosphere, scattering red light during the day. At twilight, that red light is filtered away, leaving blues. Atmospheric scientist Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University told Science Alert: "The colours come from the fact that the very fine dust is the right size so that blue light penetrates the atmosphere slightly more efficiently. “When the blue light scatters off the dust, it stays closer to the direction of the Sun than light of other colours does. “The rest of the sky is yellow to orange, as yellow and red light scatter all over the sky instead of being absorbed or staying close to the Sun.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Elon Musk’s X has agreed to attempt to settle a lawsuit by former employees who say the company cheated them of severance pay following mass layoffs. After taking over Twitter, which he rebranded X recently, Mr Musk cut nearly two-thirds of the social media company’s workforce from about 8000 to 2,000, claiming he had “no choice” as the company was losing $4m per day. “Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50 per cent more than legally required,” Mr Musk said. Many laid-off employees, however, publicly announced they never got the severance they were due to get. In the months that followed, the company was hit by several lawsuits, including one alleging the layoffs disproportionately targeted women. Now, months after urging Twitter, the company has agreed to try and settle, according to a memo sent by Shannon Liss-Riordan, who represents the laid-off workers. The labour and civil rights attorney, representing nearly 2,000 ex-employees, said X would attempt to settle with the laid-off staff. “After 10 months of pressing them in every direction we have succeeded in getting Twitter to the table,” she wrote in the memo cited by Bloomberg. Further schedule for the mediation remains unclear, but reports suggest negotiations could happen on 1 and 2 December. X did not immediately respond to The Independent’s request for comment. Some ex-employees have alleged Twitter did not pay them promised severance either. One employee said earlier this year that he had “never even seen a severance letter let alone been offered severance”. While some former staff attempted to resolve the issue by first filing a class-action lawsuit against X, their contracts with Twitter, however, required that disputes be resolved via arbitration. “We are very proud to be representing nearly 2,000 former Twitter employees, in individual arbitrations as well as more than a dozen class action lawsuits in court,” Ms Liss-Riordan had earlier said in a statement, adding that lawyers and former staff were working to recover “what they are owed”. Read More Musk the messiah (or a very naughty boy?) Elon Musk ignores reporter after claims he stopped Ukrainian attack on Russia Elon Musk was on brink of death after catching malaria on South African safari, book claims Musk the messiah (or a very naughty boy?) Elon Musk warns of ‘civilisational risk’ posed by AI at historic gathering Musk was on brink of death after catching malaria on safari, book claims

By Abhirup Roy SAN FRANCISCO Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk on Wednesday set new targets for artificial intelligence

Eighteen private Jewish schools run by New York City’s politically powerful Hasidic community deprived thousands of students the required secular education in English, math, science and social studies

Amy Slaton has long been criticized for using beauty filters in her social media photos

Isn't it annoying when you need your daily dose of music, but your internet connection

Marzia Kjellberg, who has been married to PewDiePie for four years, recently shared family photos

The Securities and Exchange Commission asked Coinbase to halt trading on all cryptocurrencies except for bitcoin before it sued the company in June, Coinbase's chief executive told the Financial Times.

HANOI, Vietnam--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 19, 2023--

Temperatures are rising across the continent as wildfires destroy parts of a Spanish island and Germany issued red