The children of IS: 'It's a disaster we cannot deal with'

North Korea has announced it fired a new long-range cruise missile over the weekend. Despite international condemnation, the East Asian country keeps testing missiles, some of which are in violation of UN Security Council resolutions and have resulted in tough sanctions. Why does Pyongyang continue with these launches, if they come at such a hefty…

Seeds from genetically modified barley plants are being used in a process which creates lab-grown meat. A protein in the seeds, called a growth factor, is harvested, milled and purified before it can be used. While the first growth factors came from animals, it is hoped this barley plant method will be cheaper and scalable….

Auction house Christie’s New York recently sold a digital-only artwork by the artist known as Beeple for $69m (£50m). The artwork was sold as a non-fungible-token (NFT) which uses blockchain technology to create a unique digital certificate which states who owns it. It is part of a wider trend which has seen an animated Gif…

Nuns, imams and Buddhist monks are among those sharing successful – and often fun – short-form videos on social media. On TikTok, the hashtags #ChristianTikTok, #Diwali and #Islam have been used billions of times. The “media nuns” of the Daughters of St Paul in Boston, London imam Sabah Ahmedi, and Orthodox Jewish influencer Melinda Strauss…

LJ Rich looks at some of the best technology news stories of the week including: Royal Mail announces a trial of autonomous drones to deliver packages remotely from the mainland UK to the Isles of Scilly Tesla suspends the option to purchase its vehicles using Bitcoin due to climate change concerns, its CEO Elon Musk…

Climate change activist Greta Thunberg said it was “very unclear” whether she had been officially invited to the climate change summit in Glasgow. In an interview with the BBC’s Andrew Marr, she also spoke about how some countries were sending many delegates to COP26, while others were “under-represented”.