By Duncan Geere, Wired UK

Update: Wired.co.uk has independently confirmed store referred to in the story to be an unauthorized Apple Store.

Chinese counterfeiters have a long history of cloning hardware from major tech manufacturers, but now they’re going a step further by cloning entire stores.

A US blogger living in Kunming in Southwest China noticed what appeared to be an Apple store pop up in her town, complete with the store’s trademark spacious, airy interior, blue-shirted staff, products to play with, and upstairs seating area.

“We proceeded to place a bet on whether or not this was a g...

The cataclysmic extinctions that scoured Earth 200 million years ago might have been easier to trigger than expected, with potentially troubling contemporary implications.

Rather than 600,000 years of volcanic activity choking Earth’s atmosphere with carbon dioxide, just a few thousand years apparently sufficed to raise ocean temperatures so potent greenhouse gases trapped in seafloor mud came bubbling up.

Much of everything alive on Earth was soon wiped out. Another half-million years of vulcanism were just icing on the cake. The immediate question: What lessons, if any, can be drawn?

“Scientist...