When Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman directed authorities to develop land in the kingdom’s arid northwest, he demanded something as ambitious as Egypt’s pyramids. What urban planners came up with in response are plans for the world’s largest structure: two buildings up to 1,600 feet tall, running parallel for 75 miles in a line across coastal, mountain and desert terrain, connected via walkways, according to hundreds of pages of confidential planning documents that lay out the idea for the first time in detail. The project—dubbed the Mirror Line—builds on a previous announcement by Prince Mohammed of plans to create a linear community and is expected to cost up to a trillion dollars and house about five million people when fully completed, according to people aware of the project.
The internal records are detailed in an investigation published in October, 2015 by InsideClimate News, a Pulitzer Prize-winning news organization covering energy and the environment, ahead of the Climate Change conference in Paris where, after weeks of negotiations diplomats in France unveiled a landmark deal to tackle climate change and reduce greenhouse gases. The accord aims to limit the rise in global temperatures to less than two degrees Celsius.
Jeff Bezos followed up his 11-minute flight to the edge of space with an extended press appearance in which he announced the gift of $100 million each to CNN political contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres. “They can give all to their own charity or they can share their wealth. It’s all up to them,” Bezos said. “Sometimes dreams come true,” Jones said, adding that “the headlines around the world should be, anything is possible if you believe.” Andres, who started a non profit to feed those affected by natural disasters, said, “This award itself cannot feed the world on its own, but this is the start of a new chapter for us.” Anderson Cooper, who has been anchoring CNN’s coverage of the flight of the Blue Origin spacecraft, said “quite a surprise. Obviously none of us knew anything about it.”
No one knows exactly how drone delivery will fit into the future of logistics, but one thing is for sure: The aircraft aren’t going to drop off important payloads directly onto someone’s lawn. Matternet’s Station, an automated landing space and payload control tower, may be the solution, and the flower-like structure has finally made the jump from render to reality at a medical facility in Switzerland. The Station was teased early last year, but one never knows with these concept renders whether the final result will be anything like the idea. In this case it’s dead on, looking for anything like a prop from a ’60s sci-fi flick. The unusual shape serves a purpose, however, providing a safe place for a cargo drone to land and swap its battery out, protected from the elements and the type of ne’er-do-wells who would snatch a medical payload from an innocent robot.
Activist groups are calling on governments to step in to regulate the sale of spyware after data was leaked to major news outlets showing hundreds of journalists, activists, dissidents and lawyers around the world likely had their phones targeted by invasive surveillance software was leaked to major news outlets. “The industry has shown that it is incapable of policing itself, while governments—including democratic states—are hiding behind national security to whitewash these surveillance abuses,” said the digital rights group Access Now in a statement. “We need regulation, transparency, and accountability now.”
