News // Society

The short term losses for the Russian economy from the heat wave and consequent drought and wild fires may amount to 1% of 2010 GDP, or around $15 billion, analysts told Kommersant business daily in a report published on Tuesday.

Google has stopped censoring its search results in China, ignoring warnings by the country's authorities.

Ever since Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary 25 years ago last week, the world has compared China’s successful economic reforms, which were first set into motion in late 1978 under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, with the Soviet Union’s and then Russia’s largely unsuccessful attempts to overhaul its economy.

Cooking is something we all take for granted but a new theory suggests that if we had not learned to cook food, not only would we still look like chimps but, like them, we would also be compelled to spend most of the day chewing.

One of the biggest puzzles in biology – how and why living cells age – has been solved by an international team based at Newcastle University, in north-east England.