NowMyNews

An airplane entirely powered by the sun landed in Washington on Sunday after a flight from St. Louis, the next-to-last leg of a journey across the United States intended to boost support for clean energy technologies. _0"> The Solar Impulse landed at Dulles International Airport outside Washington at 12:15 a.m. EDT, organizers said in a statement. It will remain in the U.S. capital until it takes off for New York in early July for the last leg of its historic trip.   If the spindly experimental aircraft completes the journey as planned, it will be the first solar-powered plane capable of operating day and night to fly across the United States. "It proves the reliability and potential of clean technologies, and this is crucial in pushing our message forward," Swiss pilot Bertrand Piccard said in the statement. Piccard founded the Solar Impulse project with fellow pilot Andre Borschberg. With the wingspan of a jumbo jet and the weight of a small car, the Solar Imp

AstraZeneca has chosen a science park on the southern outskirts of Cambridge, England, next to the world-renowned Addenbrooke's Hospital, for its new $500 million global headquarters and research center. Property industry sources told Reuters last month that the Cambridge Biomedical Campus (CBC) was the most likely site for the new facility, which will house some 2,000 employees - a decision confirmed by the drugmaker on Tuesday.   Transplanting the heart of the company to the university city is the centerpiece of a $2.3 billion restructuring plan unveiled by new Chief Executive Pascal Soriot in March, which also includes a 10 percent cut in overall staff numbers by 2016. Soriot is trying to turn around the group's fortunes after a series of drug development disappointments by investing more in research and bolt-on acquisitions, while reining in costs. AstraZeneca said at the time that it planned to establish a new global research and development center and corporate head

French start-up company Ynsect has identified a cheap, nourishing and locally sourced alternative to soybeans as a vital source of protein in animal feed. The clue is in its name. Ynsect is not alone in looking to invertebrates to meet a jump in demand for meat and fish, and so for feed, in coming decades. Black soldier flies, common housefly larvae, silkworms and yellow mealworms were named as among the most promising species for industrial feed output in a report last month by the FAO, the United Nations food agency.   "Given insects' natural role as food for a number of farmed livestock species, it is worth reconsidering their role as feed for specific poultry and fish species," the Food and Agriculture Organization's report said. Jean-Gabriel Levon, co-founder of Ynsect, said new protein sources were essential in a market where costs are set to climb. "Insects are an interesting source which can be bred locally," Levon said. "We are in the sa

The European Space Agency signed final contracts with Thales Alenia Space Italy for work on a pair of missions to assess if the planet Mars has or ever had life, officials said at the Paris Airshow this week. Until last year, the ExoMars program was a joint project between ESA and the U.S. space agency NASA. But NASA dropped out, citing budget problems. The Russian space agency Roscosmos stepped in to provide two Proton rockets to send an orbiting atmospheric probe and test lander to Mars in January 2016, and a follow-on rover in August 2018 that will drill below the planet's surface to look for spores and bacteria. Roscosmos also is providing a landing system for the rover and scientific instruments. "It took some time, some energy, some efforts from a lot of different parties. It was not easy to move from an ESA-NASA cooperation to an ESA-Roscosmos cooperation," Jean-Jacques Dordain, head of ESA, told reporters after signing a 230 million euros ($300 million) con

A start-up asteroid mining firm that launched a crowd-funding campaign to gauge interest in a planned space telescope reached its $1 million goal, company officials said on Thursday. Bellevue, Washington-based Planetary Resources intends to build and operate telescopes to hunt for asteroids orbiting near Earth and robotic spacecraft to mine them. The company, whose financial backers include Google's founders, also envisions a companion educational and outreach program to let students, museums and armchair astronomers make use of the first telescrope that Planetary Resources plans to build, called Arkyd. Three weeks ago, Planetary Resources launched a crowd-funding initiative on Kickstarter to assess interest in the project and set a goal of raising $1 million by June 30. "It surpassed that amount Wednesday night," company spokeswoman Stacey Tearne wrote in an email. "We currently have 12,000-plus backers who have pledged just over $1.07 million," Tearne s

A budget shortfall has forced a Pentagon security unit to sharply cut back on regular investigations used to update security clearances for defense contractor employees. In a little-noticed announcement posted on its website on June 7, the Defense Security Service said that "due to a funding shortfall," it has been obliged to suspend "most" routine re-investigations of defense contractor employers cleared at the "Top Secret" level, at least through the end of September.   The announcement came two days before Edward Snowden went public in a video released by Britain's Guardian newspaper as the source of leaks about the U.S. government's top-secret surveillance of phone and Internet activity. Snowden was a contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton working as a systems administrator at a National Security Agency facility in Hawaii. The leaks have alarmed the U.S. intelligence community and have raised questions about whether the government is doing en

U.S. talks with the Taliban are likely to be held within the "next few days" in Qatar, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday, after delays caused by tensions over the naming of a new Taliban office in the capital, Doha. _0"> A senior U.S. official told Reuters on Tuesday the talks would take place on Thursday.   Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Wednesday his government would not join the peace talks with the Taliban, angered by a banner on the front of the new offices referring to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan , the name the Taliban used during their rule. Later, a statement from Karzai's office said the banner had been taken down. (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Eric Beech)