VATICAN CITY
No phones at Mass: pope
Pope Francis on Wednesday took snap-happy bishops, priests and pilgrims to task, telling them Mass was a time for prayer, not an opportunity to whip out camera phones. “At a certain point the priest leading the ceremony says: ‘Lift up our hearts.’ He doesn’t say: ‘Lift up our mobile phones to take photographs,’” the pope told those gathered in Saint Peter’s square for his weekly audience. “It’s so sad when I’m celebrating Mass here or inside the basilica and I see lots of phones held up — not just by the faithful, but also by priests and bishops. Please.” The 80-year old Argentine pontiff is no stranger to the world of social media, with more than 14 million followers on his English-language Twitter account alone, and often posing for selfies with enthusiastic young pilgrims. He has called the Internet, social media and text messages “a gift of God” if used wisely, but has also tried to persuade today’s youth to swap their smartphones for pocket-sized Bibles.
UNITED KINGDOM
Sheep recognize faces
Sheep have been trained to recognize the faces of celebrities, including former US president Barack Obama, by University of Cambridge scientists who hope it may help with understanding neurodegenerative diseases, such as Hungtington’s disease, that develop over time and affect cognitive abilities. In a specially equipped pen, sheep were shown pictures of people on two computer screens, on one side would be an unknown person and on the other would be one of four celebrities. The animal would receive a reward of food for choosing the photograph of the celebrity by breaking an infrared beam near the screen displaying it. If they chose the wrong photograph, a buzzer would sound and they would receive no reward. The sheep eventually managed to identify the familiar face eight times out of every 10. “We’ve shown that sheep have advanced face-recognition abilities, comparable with those of humans and monkeys,” professor Jenny Morton, who led the study, said in a statement.
CANADA
F-word no longer banned
It may be still be too blue for English speakers, but authorities have ruled that the F-word is no longer taboo on French language broadcasts as its use is so commonplace. The Canadian Broadcasting Standards Council had previously classified the word as being suitable only for adults in both French and English, banning its use on radio and television to beyond the evening watershed and even then, only with a warning. However, after complaints from listeners that the French-language Montreal radio station CKOI-FM had twice aired clips with the word this year, it changed its mind in a ruling released on Wednesday.
UNITED STATES
Man ticketed for honking
A St Louis man is feeling pretty ... pretty ... pretty ... pretty miffed over a recent traffic ticket. In an instance of life imitating art — in this case a recent episode of HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm — computer programmer Scott Smith said he was ticketed for honking his horn at a police officer. Smith told the St Louis Post-Dispatch that he repeatedly honked at the officer in an unmarked car on Friday last week because the light had turned green and the officer was not moving. He was pulled over and used his cellphone to record the heated exchange with the plainclothes officer, who asked: “Is your horn stuck?” Smith replied: “Is your brake stuck?” Smith was ticketed for excessive noise from a vehicle. He plans to file a formal complaint.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
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