Alibaba opens first hotel with futuristic features

Beijing: Chinese Internet giant Alibaba on Tuesday opened its first hi-tech hotel in Hangzhou where guests can check-in by simply scanning their faces. FlyZoo Hotel in Hangzhou, capital of east China’s Zhejiang Province, where Alibaba has its headquarteres, is known as the company’s first “future hotel”. The facial recognition system installed in the hotel also enables customers to use their faces as key cards to open doors and access other hotel services. Users can also control the lights, television and curtains in the room via Alibaba’s voice-activated digital assistant, while robots are deployed to serve dishes, cocktails and coffee. PTI

Saturn losing its iconic rings rapidly: NASA

Washington: Saturn’s iconic rings are being rapidly pulled apart into a dusty rain of ice particles under the influence of the planet’s magnetic field, NASA scientists say. At this rate, the Saturn’s rings are likely to disappear in the next 100 million years.”We estimate that this ‘ring rain’ drains an amount of water products that could fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool from Saturn’s rings in half an hour,” said James O’Donoghue of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in the US. Saturn’s rings are mostly chunks of water ice ranging in size from microscopic dust grains to boulders several metres across. PTI  

Pope shakes up Vatican communications operations

Vatican City: Pope Francis announced a shake-up of the Vatican’s communications operations, replacing the longtime editor of the Holy See newspaper and naming a prominent Italian journalist to coordinate the editorial line of all Vatican media. Andrea Tornielli, Vatican reporter for Turin daily La Stampa, was named to the new position of editorial director for the Dicastery of Communications, responsible for coordinating the Vatican’s editorial operations. The Vatican’s media operations have been undergoing a problematic reform process aimed at reducing redundancies and improving coordination. AP