The most ancient type of molecule in our universe, which dates all the way back to the immediate aftermath of the big bang, has been found in space for the first time ever, an exciting new study has revealed.

A helium hydride ion (HeH+) was the first molecule that formed almost 14 billion years ago when a helium atom shared electrons with a hydrogen nucleus. It is thought to be the first chemical compound and formation of a molecular bond that took place when the universe was cooling after the Big Bang.

The molecule played an important role in the early development of our universe and set the stage for the creation of everything we know. “The chemistry of the Universe began with HeH+,” the study’s lead author Rolf Guesten told Chemistry World.

Until now, this important molecule has never been detected anywhere in the universe, casting doubts over our understanding of early chemistry. However scientists long believed it existed in the gas clouds which stars are made in and in the gas that stars expel when they die.

A team of scientists from the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) observatory, a project between Nasa and the German Aerospace Center, detected the elusive molecule in a ring of gas around a dying star, about 3,000 light years away, in the constellation of Cygnus.

Scientists had previously been hamstrung in their efforts to find HeH+ because of limits in spectrometer technology. The team overcame this by using the high-resolution German Receiver for Astronomy at Terahertz Frequencies (GREAT) spectrometer to detect the infrared signals emitted by helium hydride ions.

“This brings a long search to a happy ending and eliminates doubts about our understanding of the underlying chemistry of the early universe,” Guesten said in a statement.  

The findings were published in the journal Nature this week.

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Japan’s fleet of highly sophisticated F-35A jets has been plagued by problems in the last two years, resulting in at least seven emergency landings – including two by the unit that crashed in the Pacific Ocean earlier this month.

Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) had a fleet of thirteen F-35As, before one of the fifth-generation stealth fighters disappeared off radars and crashed off northern Japan on April 9. But the ill-fated jet had issues with its cooling and navigation systems even prior to the crash, Japan’s Ministry of Defense revealed this week.

Five of the jets in the fleet were forced to make seven emergency landings between June 2017 and January 2019. Four of the planes that experienced problems had been assembled by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd under a partnership with Lockheed Martin. The other jet was made in the US.

“Unplanned returns to base were made after the planes reported issues with systems relating to fuel, hydraulics and other parts,” Japanese daily Mainichi quoted the Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya as saying. “Excluding one case of an error by the aircraft’s monitoring systems, the remaining six saw the fighters inspected and parts replaced before they were confirmed safe.”

Japan has grounded the rest of its F-35A jets following the crash earlier this month and has embarked on a hectic search to recover the wreckage, believed to be lying on the ocean floor, to preserve its “highly classified” technical secrets. In the meantime, Japanese authorities pledged to “thoroughly” investigate the causes of the crash, hoping for cooperation from the American side.

Dead pigs’ brains have been partially revived in a study that upends established wisdom about what happens when we die, raising serious ethical questions even though researchers claim the brains never regained consciousness.

Disembodied pig brains subjected to an experimental preservative procedure showed some restored cellular and molecular function and even some synaptic activity, researchers discovered, observing these “signs of life” ten hours after the animals had been killed. The brains of ordinary pigs, taken from a slaughterhouse, were cleansed and cooled, then pumped full of a chemical cocktail designed to slow their deterioration, and the results – published Wednesday in the journal Nature – are striking.

“This is not a living brain, but it is a cellularly active brain,” Yale University neuroscientist Nenad Sestan told NPR, adding that the researchers were able to preserve tissue and cell structure and reduce cell death in addition to restoring vital neurochemical functions like glucose and oxygen uptake.

Researchers burned through hundreds of dead pig heads over a six-year period working to develop a technique – which they’ve christened BrainEX – to keep the brains supplied with oxygen, nutrients and other chemicals intended to halt their deterioration, because they were determined to study the organs in their original form. Previous experiments had already shown viable cells could be removed from brains hours after their owners were pronounced dead, but “once you do that, you are losing the 3D organization of the brain,” Sestan pointed out.

Despite researchers’ claim that the reanimated pig brains showed none of the electrochemical signals associated with consciousness, they deliberately made an effort to avoid “waking up” the brains. “It was something the researchers were actively worried about,” bioethicist Stephen Latham said, explaining the researchers had a plan of action in place to shut down the experiment immediately with “anesthesia and cooling” should the pig brains get too excited.

Specifically, a drug that dampens or blocks neuronal activity was included in the preservative solution because researchers thought the cells would be better preserved if their activity was minimized. But individual cells, cleansed of the solution and tested for electrochemical responses, appeared to be quite active, and even in their pharmacologically-dulled state, the preserved brains showed “spontaneous synaptic activity.” Researcher Stefano Daniele admits “we cannot speak with any scientific certainty” as to whether consciousness could be restored to the brains without the blocker, since “we did not run those experiments.”

Even without answering the consciousness question, the Yale experiment turns current science about “brain death” on its head, placing the practice of extracting organs for transplant from brain-dead patients in question – as well as current protocols regarding the handling of (possibly revivable) dead tissue from humans and animals alike.

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A strong earthquake hit eastern Taiwan’s Hualien County, disrupting air traffic and subway services. Witnesses report swaying and shaking building and that the tremor was felt in the capital, Taipei.

The earthquake struck northeast of Hualian City, a coastal community 162 kilometers from Taipei, according to USGS. Witnesses reported shaking buildings, but there is no official information on damage or casualties.

“Big sway & shaking in our Taipei office at 25th floor,” one person wrote on Twitter.

“People just ran. All the chandeliers and lights in the hotel moving,” another said.

A person livestreaming from the Hualien train station on Twitter said, “everything just started shaking really bad,” but added that he has not seen any ambulances.

Taipei airport and subway were shut down following the quake, according to local media.

Two tourists, a man and a woman, were hit by falling rocks in Taroko Gorge National Park in eastern Taiwan when the quake struck, local media reports.

In February 2018, a 6.5 earthquake hit Hualien, claiming the lives of 17 people. The quake, which was the most severe in the region in 67 years, was followed by more than 60 aftershocks within eight hours.

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Dozens of people have been killed across India and Pakistan as heavy dust and thunderstorms sweep through the region. While the worst is over, meteorologists expect the weather front will not stabilize until Friday.

The powerful storms unleashed dust, lightning, hail, rain and high winds across northern and central parts of India on Monday, uprooting trees, damaging homes and power lines across Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan states.

By Wednesday at least 64 deaths had been reported across the country, mostly from lightning strikes, tree falls, and people being electrocuted by loose power lines, the Times of India reports. At least 25 deaths occurred in Rajasthan alone, while another 21 fatalities were recorded in Madhya Pradesh, 10 in Gujarat and three in Maharashtra.

“The worst is almost over,” the head of India Meteorological Department, Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, said on Wednesday. “There will be a significant reduction in activity from tomorrow. By Friday it will all be over.”

Besides India, the “western disturbance” front also affected neighboring Pakistan, with at least 39 deaths and 135 injuries reported there by Wednesday, the National Disaster Management Authority said.

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A group of gunmen stopped a bus on a highway in southwestern Pakistan before forcing passengers off and executing 14 of them, according to local officials.

While there were nearly three dozen people on the bus in total, the assailants appear to have selectively targeted their victims. Before anyone was killed, the gunmen asked for the passengers’ ID cards, it has been reported. It is still unclear if a specific ethnic or religious group was sought out.

The attackers were wearing uniforms of the paramilitary Frontier Corps, the provincial home secretary, Haider Ali, told AFP. The Frontier Corps is a provincial auxiliary force of the Pakistani government that maintains security on the borders with Iran and Afghanistan.

Prime Minister Khan called the attack a “barbaric” act and urged authorities to make “every possible effort” to identify and bring the perpetrators to justice.

A group of ethnic minority Baluch separatists later claimed responsibility for the deadly assault. The separatists have been waging a low-level insurgency, and often target security services and people from Punjab.

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The Samsung Galaxy Fold smartphone is making headlines for all the wrong reasons, with multiple tech journalists reporting problems with the high-end device’s foldable screen. The company acknowledged receiving “a few” complaints.

Several journalists given Galaxy Fold units have reported serious problems with the phone, just two days after the hotly-anticipated device was distributed to reviewers. The revolutionary design – the first production model of a foldable smartphone – comes with a price tag approaching $2,000, and a lot is resting on its April 26 launch in the US.

At least two of the reviewers said their phones become unusable in just days due to issues with their screens that appeared for no particular reason. Two others admitted they mistakenly removed a clear plastic ‘screen protector,’ thinking it was discardable packaging, only to learn it was not supposed to be removed after their screens went black or began flickering, and Samsung has replaced their phones.

Samsung acknowledged the issue and intends to “thoroughly inspect [the review] units in person,” the company said in a statement on Wednesday, and has warned users against removing the transparent protective layer on the screen.

Before the Fold was shipped to reviewers, Samsung boasted the device could “outlast 200,000 folds and unfolds.” The company has not delayed the phone’s release date and it is being rolled out in the US before anywhere else.

The Galaxy Fold wouldn’t be the first Samsung smartphone to go down in flames. The Galaxy Note 7 was infamously recalled after multiple units burst into flames, resulting in customer injuries, lawsuits, and property damage.

Ecuador’s president Lenin Moreno claimed the expulsion and arrest of Julian Assange had nothing to do with the US pressure or himself seeking revenge for damaging leaks, telling RT these are all insinuations by his predecessor.

Assange spent almost seven years holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London until last week, when Moreno abruptly revoked his political asylum. The WikiLeaks co-founder was immediately arrested by UK police on charges of skipping bail and under a sealed US indictment.

Former president of Ecuador Rafael Correa, who was the one to provide protection to the journalist and publisher back in 2012, slammed Moreno for the move, calling him the “greatest traitor in Ecuadorian history.” The incumbent president acted because he wanted to receive benefits from the US and get revenge on Assange for publishing documents about Moreno’s “blatant corruption,” Correa told RT.

Yet, when RT Spanish correspondent Helena Villar asked Moreno to comment on those accusations, he replied that there was “no way” was going to do it. “I already refuted this in my statements and through the documents I presented,” the Ecuadorean leader stated. “Those are the typical schemes, which the former president likes to use so much to hide the fundamental truth. Don’t forget that an order for his arrest had been issued in Ecuador.”

A congressional probe was launched against Moreno in February after the release of the so-called ‘INA Papers,’ which got their name from an offshore company that had allegedly been used by the president for shady operations. WikiLeaks denied they had anything to do with the leak, but the Ecuadorian leader believes otherwise.

Moreno was talking to the press in Washington where he’d arrived for a five-day visit, which won’t, however, see him meeting any members of the Trump administration. The journalists, of course, wanted to know if the US had anything to do with him giving Assange up.

After all, the Americans want the journalist to be extradited from Britain and prosecuted for alleged conspiracy with former US Army soldier Chelsea Manning, who passed classified US military documents to WikiLeaks in 2010.

“The US had nothing to do with this decision,” the president assured the press, insisting that terminating Assange’s asylum was “a sovereign decision of the Ecuadorean people.”

The statement clearly goes against fresh reports from the Ecuadorean capital, Quito, where protesters clashed with police and demanded Moreno’s resignation over how he has treated the WikiLeaks founder.

In order to justify his decision, the president again accused Assange of violating all possible rules during his stay at the Ecuadorean embassy and “treating ambassadors, security personnel and other staff as if they were his servants.” He even claimed that Assange was “often visited by hackers, whom he instructed on how to distribute information on issues that were of interest to him and his sponsors.”

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Saudi Arabia has secretly beheaded two Indian nationals without notifying either the embassy or the men’s relatives of the brutal executions. To add to the shock, the Kingdom will not surrender the remains to the families.

Satwinder Kumar of Hoshiarpur and Harjeet Singh of Ludhiana were decapitated on February 28, in connection with the case of the murder of another Indian man back in 2015. The verdict was reached without the knowledge of the Indian embassy and without any prior warning issued to the men’s families.

The news of the capital punishment only surfaced after Satwinder’s wife, Seema Rani, approached the Indian government asking them to contact the Kingdom to seek clarification on her husband’s fate, after hearing rumors of his demise in a Saudi jail. This week, India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) finally confirmed the beheadings, which Punjab’s chief minister has called “barbaric and inhuman.”

“He had gone to Saudi Arabia in 2013 to work as a truck driver on a two-year contract. He was arrested in 2015 but the family came to know about his arrest several months later,” Rani said, blaming MEA for failing to intervene and prevent the executions.

To add more to the families’ shock, the MEA letter said that “under the Saudi system, the mortal remains of those who are executed are not handed over either to the embassy of that country or to the family members of the deceased.”

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Three US service members were injured in yet another traffic incident in Poland, as Washington and Warsaw are reportedly nearing a deal on permanent US presence in the eastern European country.

A military truck traveling in a convoy between Swietoszow and Luboszow in Lower Silesia caught fire on Wednesday, local media reported. The injured service members were taken to a hospital and military firefighters were on the scene. The cause of the fire was being investigated.

The incident comes amid reports that the US and Poland are close to reaching a deal on establishing a permanent US military base, which Polish President Andrzsej Duda joked would be called “Fort Trump” during his visit to Washington last fall.

This is the third mishap involving US troops struggling with rural Polish roads so far this year. Last month, two soldiers were injured when three army vehicles collided near the Hungarian border. In February, a bus carrying US service members overturned in Lower Silesia, putting six soldiers in the hospital.

Poland currently hosts around 4,000 US troops – including a tank brigade, an infantry brigade, and an Air Force detachment – as part of an ongoing NATO effort to “deter Russia” launched in 2015. The leadership in Warsaw has been eager for a permanent US presence.

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