Georgia’s parliament has passed a controversial “foreign agents” bill despite widespread domestic opposition and warnings from the European Union that its enactment would imperil the country’s chances of joining the bloc. The new law will require organizations receiving more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as “agents of foreign influence” or face crippling fines. Opponents say that ...
Scientists have accomplished a whale of a feat. They’ve identified previously unknown complexity in whale communication by analyzing thousands of recorded sequences of sperm whale clicks with artificial intelligence. Variations in tempo, rhythm and length of the whales’ click sequences, called codas, weave a rich acoustic tapestry. These variables hint that whales can combine click patterns in multiple ways, mixing and ...
Chanu Gupta has lived in India’s financial capital Mumbai nearly his whole life, since arriving as a child from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. But when polls open in the city, the 59-year-old street vendor won’t be able to vote in the nationwide election – along with millions of internal migrant workers who are a major backbone of the ...
At least 14 people have died and dozens were injured after a huge billboard fell on them during a thunderstorm in India’s financial capital Mumbai, according to local authorities. The billboard collapsed on some houses and a petrol station next to a busy road in the eastern suburb of Ghatkopar following gusty winds and rain late on Monday. Scores were ...
Acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof says he has fled his home country to an undisclosed location in Europe after a court in Iran sentenced him to prison on national security charges. Rasoulof condemned the Iranian government in an Instagram post on Monday, calling it a tyrannical and oppressive regime, and posting a video that showed him crossing the country’s mountainous ...
The United Nations on Monday clarified that the overall number of fatalities in Gaza tallied by the Ministry of Health in Gaza remains unchanged, at more than 35,000, since the war broke out between Israel and Hamas on October 7. The clarification comes after the UN humanitarian agency OCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) published a ...
Scientists have identified proteins in the blood which could warn people of cancer more than seven years before it is diagnosed. Researchers found 618 proteins linked to 19 types of the disease, including bowel, prostate and breast cancers. Some 107 of the proteins were found in a group of people whose blood was collected at least seven years before diagnosis. ...
GCHQ now “devotes more resource to China than any other single mission,” according to the intelligence agency’s director, Anne Keast-Butler. China poses an “epoch-defining challenge” to the UK, she said at CyberUK, the National Cyber Security Centre’s conference in Birmingham. Last week, Sky News discovered China had hacked the Ministry of Defence’s payroll system and in March, Chinese hackers were ...
Astronomers have identified a planet as light and fluffy as candy floss – despite being far bigger than our solar system’s gas giant Jupiter. Scientists said WASP-193b is “basically super fluffy” because it has remarkably low density for its size. It’s thought to consist mostly of hydrogen and helium, according to a study published in Nature Astronomy. WASP-193b is the ...
Bumble has apologised after it appeared to make fun of celibate women in a new advertising campaign. The dating app ran a billboard campaign with slogans including “you know full well a vow of celibacy is not the answer”, and “thou shall not give up dating and become a nun”. Social media users called the campaign “unbelievably insulting”, “patronising” and ...