Science & Technology

Pigeons in London have a bad reputation. Some people call them flying rats. And many blame them for causing pollution with their droppings. But now the birds are being used to fight another kind of pollution in this city of 8.5 million.

"The problem for air pollution is that it's been largely ignored as an issue for a long time," says Andrea Lee, with the London-based environmental organization ClientEarth. "People don't realize how bad it is, and how it actually affects their health."

Five weeks ago, a 1-year-old German shepherd-husky mix with startling blue eyes fell off a fishing boat in the Pacific Ocean north of San Diego. The dog, named Luna, was miles from land.

She was reported missing on Feb. 10 by her owner, fisherman Nick Haworth, who told authorities that Luna was a strong swimmer and would head toward land. But the nearest shoreline was San Clemente Island, home to a U.S. naval facility and about 2 miles from where the dog fell into the water.

One of two eggs laid by a mated pair of bald eagles in Washington, D.C., is hatching, according to officials watching the nest at the U.S. National Arboretum.

"We have a pip in process!!" said an update sent by the American Eagle Foundation on Thursday morning, which clarifies, "It's not technically a full pip until there is a full hole."

The hole in the shell appears to have grown larger as of mid-afternoon Thursday, but the eaglet has yet to emerge. The group says it could take between 12 and 48 hours for the eaglet to fully emerge from the shell.

In a major concession to critics and animal welfare groups, SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment Inc. says it will stop breeding captive killer whales.

SeaWorld's treatment of its killer whales, or orcas, was put in the spotlight three years ago by Blackfish, a documentary that examined the death of SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau, who was killed by an orca named Tilikum. Since then, in a steady campaign on social media, critics have demanded SeaWorld end its orca breeding program.

The Federal Communications Commission is proposing, for the first time, privacy regulations for Internet service providers. The goal is to let consumers weigh in on what information about them gets collected and how it's used.

As they connect us to the Internet, ISPs have insight into our lives — websites we frequent, apps we download or locations we visit — and may use that data for their own promotions or sell it to data brokers to be used for marketing or other purposes.

Google Street View allows people to virtually walk through places from the Aeon Mall in Okinawa, Japan, to historic sites like Petra in Jordan without leaving their homes.

But type in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and you won't see anything. That's because the city is basically off the Google grid, as are many locations in developing countries.

A joint effort between the World Bank's Dar Ramani Huria and Swedish startup Mapillary aims to change that.

An artificially intelligent computer system built by Google has just beaten the world's best human, Lee Sedol of South Korea, at an ancient strategy game called Go. Go originated in Asia about 2,500 years ago and is considered many, many times more complex than chess, which fell to AI back in 1997.

Apple says the government "attempts to rewrite history" with its request for help unlocking an iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters by stretching the law far wider than the Constitution and the lawmakers have intended.

"The Founders would be appalled," Apple wrote in its last court filing before it squares off against the government in federal court in California at a hearing on March 22.

The five-game clash pitting man against machine is over, with Google's artificial intelligence program winning the series.The program — called AlphaGo — took four of five games against Korean Lee Sedol, an 18-time world champion of the board game Go.

"I feel a little regrettable because I believe that there is more that a human being could have shown in a match against artificial intelligence," Lee said following the final match.

A mated pair of bald eagles that have nested in the U.S. National Arboretum since 2014 are now starting a family, taking turns incubating two eggs — and one of them could hatch sometime Tuesday. Two webcams are currently trained on their nest in Washington, D.C.

You can watch the webcam online — we'll note that the American Eagle Foundation warns, "This is a wild eagle nest and anything can happen."