Divine Comedy: Robot Ai-da creates a poem to honour Dante

Ivermectin was called a Covid “miracle” drug, championed by vaccine opponents, but research has shown that more than a third of 26 major trials of the drug for use on Covid have serious errors or signs of potential fraud. Dr Kyle Sheldrick, of the University of New South Wales, who was one of the group…

There can be lots of psychological reasons to enjoy fiction that is fearful, the writer Stephen King has said. “A lot of people enjoy horror stories because it allows them to express their anxieties in ways that don’t have anything to do with the real world,” he told BBC Hardtalk. But fiction that address subjects…

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said it will work with Japan “before, during and after” the country’s plan to release one million tonnes of contaminated water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea. The director general Rafael Mariano Grossi told BBC World News that whatever option was taken it was about…

As coronavirus vaccine programmes are rolled out, governments around the world are looking for ways to ease us back into pre-pandemic life – getting people back to sporting fixtures, theatres and other crowded public places. One solution being considered is a digital Covid-19 “vaccine passport” but many have called them discriminatory and some say it…

The US diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics was not about lecturing China but about “standing up for human rights”, the US climate envoy has said. John Kerry told Stephen Sackur, of BBC News’s Hardtalk programme, that addressing climate change was so important, it should be kept separate from other areas where there is…