Gadget reviews: Smart cool boxes and neck fans

A former British diplomat and long-standing friend of Myanmar’s elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, says he has heard nothing from her since she was put under house arrest. Sir Robert Cooper told BBC World News: “I don’t know how she is. She’s kind of use to this. She doesn’t give in easily, but what…

China is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the ruling Communist Party with a crowd of about 70,000 people in Beijing’s iconic Tiananmen square. President Xi Jinping told the country that the Chinese people would not allow a foreign power to bully or subjugate them and that China would resolve the “Taiwan question” to achieve complete…

Nasa has said it will send two missions to Venus at the end of the decade in order to examine the planet’s atmosphere and geological features. Dhara Patel, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich told BBC World News on Thursday that the missions could shed light on why Venus, which had very similar…

There are some hard and difficult lessons to be learned about the recent events in Afghanistan, Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said. It was a tragedy that the Afghan security forces collapsed so quickly, Mr Stoltenberg told BBC World News. He blamed a lack of leadership and logistics from the Afghan government, rather than…

Four Iranian intelligence officials have been charged with plotting to kidnap a New York-based journalist critical of Iran, US prosecutors have said. While the indictment did not name the target, Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-American author and activist, has said it was her. She told BBC World News about learning she was a target for kidnapping…

The presence of Nato in Afghanistan in the past 20 years produced mixed results, a former president of Afghanistan has said. The reconstruction of the country’s infrastructure, helping with education and other areas was very welcome, and produced good results for the country, Hamid Karzai told BBC World News. But the military plans to fight…