Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Two Delta planes collided on the taxiway at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, with the wing of one aircraft striking the cockpit window of the other. Delta Air Lines said that the “low-speed collision” happened between Endeavor Air Flight 5047, arriving from Charlotte, North Carolina, and Endeavor Flight 5155, scheduled to depart for Roanoke,…

The Spanish tourist resort of Benidorm is clamping down on shops that display lewd or “offensive” items in their windows – fearing that they tarnish the area’s image and upset passers-by. The items include joke t-shirts and souvenirs with sexual messages on them, which tend to be on display in its so-called “Guiri zone” –…

The ice cores were drilled from 2.8km down in the Antarctic ice sheet, and they arrived at the British Antarctic Survey at the start of the summer. Over the last few weeks, a team has been working round the clock to study the ice. The only way to do that is to destroy the precious…

At least two people have been killed in Morocco after police opened fire to prevent protesters from storming a police station in Lqliaa, near the coastal city of Agadir, state media says. These are the first deaths reported since huge youth-led protests broke out across Morocco on Saturday as anger grew over the government’s decision…

Olga Robinson & Matt MurphyBBC Verify and Yaroslava KiryukhinaBBC Russian BBC Ukraine has dramatically increased the number of attacks launched against Russian oil refineries in recent months, sparking fuel shortages and price rises in some parts of the country, BBC Verify and BBC Russian have found. Drone strikes on refineries – some deep inside Russia…

Getty Images When China first announced a new visa targeting foreign professionals in science and technology in August it largely went unnoticed. But the K visa, which went into effect on Wednesday, was thrust into the public spotlight last week, when an Indian outlet referred to it as “China’s H-1B” – a reference to the…

Two Kenyan human rights activists have gone missing in Uganda after reportedly being abducted by armed men while attending opposition leader Bobi Wine’s campaign event. Bobi Wine strongly condemned the “abduction” of Bob Njagi and Nicholas Oyoo, saying the pair had been “picked up mafia-style” at a petrol station and driven off to an unknown…

There are “no signs of life” under the wreckage of a collapsed Indonesian school where 59 people are still missing, rescuers have said. Hundreds of students, most of them teenage boys, were inside the two-storey Islamic boarding school in the town of Sidoarjo when it collapsed on Monday. At least five students were killed and…

Watch: Shutdown blame game as GOP and Dems point fingers Mass layoffs of US federal workers will begin within two days, the White House says, as lawmakers trade blame over the first government shutdown in almost seven years. The shutdown began on Wednesday after Republicans and Democrats in Congress failed to agree a new spending…

Andrew HardingReporting from Rouvroy, northern France BBC First came an email. Then, a month later, a baby. Each arrival, in its own way, marked a sharp swerve in the fortunes of a grief-bludgeoned Iraqi family that has spent the past 15 years darting around Europe in a state of legal limbo. Unable to secure asylum,…