Happy Newyear 2017...

Jul 25,2016 Verizon announces $4.83 billion purchase of Yahoo.

Sep 25,2016 World's largest radio telescope at 500m wide in Guizhou Province, China begins operating.

Jun 25, 2016Verizon is buying Yahoo for $4.8 billion.

It's official: Yahoo's days as an independent company are over. Verizon has agreed to pay $4.83 billion for Yahoo (YHOO, Tech30), the companies said before markets opened Monday. The sale completes Yahoo's evolution from influential search pioneer and web portal juggernaut to, in the end, a once-dominant brand that lost its way.

Current Yahoo shareholders will keep the company's lucrative investments in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and Yahoo Japan. They will be spun into a separate, yet-to-be-named, publicly traded company. The deal also excludes some patents and Yahoo's cash. The Verizon deal must be approved by regulators and is expected to be finalized in the first quarter of 2017. The sale puts an end to Yahoo's 21-year history as an independent company
Yahoo will now be integrated with Verizon-owned AOL under Marni Walden, an executive vice president at the telecom company. It also ends a turnaround effort by Marissa Mayer, who joined Yahoo four years ago and promised to revitalize the company. Verizon and Yahoo have not commented on who will lead Yahoo once the deal is complete.

Sep 25, 2016: World's largest radio telescope at 500m wide in Guizhou Province, China begins operating.

China completes world's largest radio telescope. Boasting half a kilometre in diameter, it is the largest telescope dish in the world to date. The 500-metre Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), which has been under construction in the Guizhou Province in south-west.
The world's largest radio telescope began searching for signals from stars and galaxies and, perhaps, extraterrestrial life Sunday in a project demonstrating China's rising ambitions in space and its pursuit of international scientific prestige.
Beijing has poured billions into such ambitious scientific projects as well as its military-backed space program, which saw the launch of China's second space station earlier this month. Measuring 500 meters in diameter, the radio telescope is nestled in a natural basin within a stunning landscape of lush green karst formations in southern Guizhou province. It took five years and $180 million to complete and surpasses that of the 300-meter Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, a dish used in research on stars that led to a Nobel Prize.

China switches on world�s largest radio telescope "FAST" today to search for alien transmission

(Sunday, 25 September 2016) China is set to start operating the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, enabling astronomers to probe farther and darker regions of space for the faintest signs of life.

Installation of the 4,450-panel structure, nicknamed Tianyan, or the Eye of Heaven, started in 2011 and was completed in July. The telescope requires a radio silence within a 5-kilometer (3-mile) radius, resulting in the relocation of more than 8,000 people from their homes in eight villages to make way for the facility, state media said. Reports in August said the villagers would be compensated with cash or new homes from a budget of about $269 million from a poverty relief fund and bank loans. CCTV reported that during a recent test, the telescope received radio signals from a pulsar that was 1,351 light-years from Earth. China has also completed the construction of tourist facilities such as an observation deck on a nearby mountain, reports said. Such facilities can be a draw for visitors-the one in Puerto Rico draws about 90,000 visitors and some 200 scientists each year.
Earlier this month, China launched the Tiangong 2, its second space station and the latest step in its military-backed program that intends to send a mission to Mars in the coming years. In August, the country launched the first quantum satellite experts said would advance efforts to develop the ability to send communications that can't be penetrated by hackers