MOSCOW, Russia (PNN) - March 16, 2015 - More than 45,000 Russian troops as well as war planes and submarines started military exercises across much of the country on Monday in one of the Kremlin's biggest shows of force since its ties with the West plunged to Cold War lows.

SINGAPORE (PNN) - March 16, 2015 - Researchers at the University of Southampton and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore have found that fiber optics can be used to build low-power, high-bandwidth artificial neurons that mimic their biological counterparts. Used inside a properly designed chip, this technology could lead to computers that think and learn like a human.

MONTREAL, Quebec, Canada (PNN) - March 16, 2015 - When Neptune launched its grand idea for upending the smart phone ecosystem, many responses boiled down to: Huh?

Sure, the idea sounded downright radical: Instead of a smart phone streaming to devices like a smart watch, the Neptune Hub and Pocket were created with the opposite relationship in mind. There was Hub, a smart watch powerful enough to run apps, take calls, and send messages; and there was Pocket, a relatively dumb screen that fit in your pocket, like a smart phone, but was little more than an input device. Many people didn’t get it. “Most of the negativity was from people that don’t see this as a first start,” says Simon Tian, Neptune’s 20-year-old founder. “They thought we were just going to stop at the pocket screen.”

REYKJAVIK, Iceland (PNN) - March 16, 2015 - Iceland has dropped its bid to join the European Union, the Foreign Ministry in Reykjavik says. The announcement follows pledges made by the country’s euro-skeptic government since winning the 2013 election.

DENVER, Colorado (PNN) - March 11, 2015 - Within an hour of FOX31 Denver discovering a hidden camera, which was positioned to capture and record the license plates and facial features of customers leaving a Golden Post Office, the device was ripped from the ground and disappeared.

BEAVER COUNTY, Pennsylvania (PNN) - March 3, 2015 - A vending machine operated by a candidate for Beaver County Sheriff that distributes firearms ammunition is raising some eyebrows. The machine is installed inside the Beaver Valley Rifle & Pistol Club, offering both rifle and handgun ammunition and operating in the same fashion as vending machines commonly used to sell snack foods.

WAIHOPAI VALLEY, New Zealand (PNN) - March 8, 2015 - Near the heartland of New Zealand’s renowned wine country, there is a place that visitors are not allowed to go. The peculiar large white domes that protrude from the earth in the Waihopai Valley are surrounded by razor wire and shrouded in secrecy.

But now, newly revealed documents from the Amerikan Gestapo National Security Agency division whistleblower Edward Snowden shine a light on what is behind the security perimeter. The buildings there are crammed with sophisticated NSA spying technology, used by New Zealand to sweep up text messages, emails, phone calls, and other communications in bulk across the Asia-Pacific.

Strange signals suggest habitable planet exists 22 light years away

LONDON, England (PNN) - March 6, 2015 - Astronomers believe mysterious signals - previously dismissed as stellar bursts - are coming from an Earth-like planet.

The Gliese 581d planet has conditions that could support life, and is likely to be a rocky world, twice the size of Earth.

NEW YORK (PNN) - March 4, 2015 - Online privacy company Abine has announced the launch of Bitcoin Anywhere, enabling Coinbase wallet holders to make bitcoin purchases at any e-commerce site.

Bitcoin Anywhere, currently in beta and invite only, will enable Coinbase users to link their wallet to Abine Blur, a password control service.

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania (PNN) - March 4, 2015 - The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has long prohibited towns and cities from enforcing local firearm ordinances that impact the ownership, possession, transfer or transport of guns or ammo.

But gun-rights groups have long complained that scores of municipalities ignored the 40-year-old prohibition by passing their own, piecemeal gun control enactments, which rarely got tested in court.

So a new state law went into effect in Pennsylvania at the start of the year, making it easier for gun-rights groups to challenge such illegal local ordinances.