Pilot missing after F-35 fighter jet crashes in Japan
Wreckage from a Japanese F-35A stealth fighter jet has been found a day after it disappeared off the radar over the Pacific, the country’s defence minister said Wednesday. There was no word yet on the fate of the one pilot on board the jet, Defence Minister Takeshi Iwaya said. It was the first reported case…
Taiwan abuzz with tale of live bees feeding on woman’s eye
A young Taiwanese woman received the shock of her life when she sought hospital treatment for a suspected eye infection and doctors extracted four live bees that had been feasting on her tear ducts. The 29-year-old, identified only by her surname He by Taiwan’s CTS news channel, said she had assumed that sand or dirt…
French minister denies ‘complicity’ in rehabilitating a ‘fascist’ over new Le Corbusier museum
France’s culture minister has been forced to deny "complicity" in rehabilitating a "fascist’ for backing a new museum in honour of France’s best-known architect, Le Corbusier. It has long been known that Le Corbusier, famed for his revolutionary concrete creations, including a housing project in Marseille called La Cité Radieuse, had some ties to France’s…
Black hole seen for first time in image showing matter being sucked into timeless oblivion
A black hole surrounded by swirling ring of fire has been pictured by scientists for the first time in an image described as ‘the gates of hell, at the end of space and time.’ The phenomenon which has never been observed before shows superheated matter being pulled towards the event horizon after which nothing can…
Mike Pence calls on United Nations to recognise Juan Guaido as Venezuelan leader
Mike Pence has urged the United Nations to withdraw their support for Nicolas Maduro and recognise his rival Juan Guaido instead, asking the UN member states to "speak with one voice". Mr Pence, in New York to discuss Venezuela at the UN Security Council, said on Wednesday that he had been sent on behalf of…
While You Were Offline: Hey Please Don’t Call Trump's New Hotline to Report UFOs
It's rare that the world experiences such a perfect storm of schadenfreude as the one offered up by #FyreFestival, the on-the-ground reports from an "exclusive" musical fest in the Bahamas gone terribly wrong. Even if the rest of the week had proved to a battle to maintain composure in an ambivalent and occasionally cruel world,…
While You Were Offline: Sean Spicer, Everyone. Round of Applause for Sean Spicer
In the past seven days, Nintendo abandoned its past, America's relationship with North Korea got appreciably worse (so did the country's relationship with Russia), and the internet had a lot of feelings about a Star Wars video. It's been quite the week. Do you have a sinking feeling that something escaped your notice during those…
The Fascinating Art of Hollywood’s Made-Up Languages, From Dothraki to Klingon
If you ever want to find a bathroom on Vulcan or ask for dressage lessons in Essos, you’ll need to learn a constructed language first. "Conlangs", as they're known, are common in genre movies and literature, and through them, a viewer or reader can better appreciate what it would be like to approach an Arwen…
The Incredible, Urgent Power of Remembering the Holocaust in VR
Pinchas Gutter has returned to Majdanek at least a dozen times, but this trip is his final one to the onetime Nazi concentration camp. His first was one he was 11, when he was taken to Majdanek; now he's 85 years old, and this is the last time he'll come here to tell people what…
Meet PatriotHole, the Onion's New Right-Wing-Skewering Mockery Machine
The best word to describe PatriotHole's launch probably won't ever apply to the site again: quiet. Sometime this morning, The Onion's spinoff brand ClickHole became PatriotHole, a new site promising to provide a "loud light in the darkness." True to claim, the site features a color—a shade of ’70s chain-restaurant orange Breitbart News readers might…