UNITED KINGDOM
Porn rules implemented
Britain on Wednesday said it would become the first country in the world to introduce age-verification to access online pornography. The new law, which comes into force on July 15, requires commercial providers of Internet pornography to check on users’ ages to ensure that they are 18 or older. “Adult content is currently far too easy for children to access online,” Minister for Digital and the Creative Industries Margot James said in a statement, hailing the mandatory scheme as “a world-first.” Web sites that fail to implement the verification technology could have payment services withdrawn or be blocked for British users, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said. Research conducted as part of that outreach found that 88 percent of parents with children aged seven to 17 supported new controls, the department said, adding that the range of checks to be carried out by providers would be “rigorous” and go beyond users entering their date of birth or ticking a box.
PORTUGAL
Bus accident kills tourists
Twenty-nine German tourists were killed when their bus spun off the road and tumbled down a slope before crashing into a house on the island of Madeira. Drone footage of the aftermath of the accident showed the badly mangled wreckage of the bus resting precariously on its side against a building on a hillside, the vehicle’s roof partially crushed and front window smashed. Rescue workers attended to injured passengers among the undergrowth where the bus came to rest, some of them bearing bloodied head bandages and bloodstained clothes, others appearing to be more seriously hurt.
TURKEY
Ancient urine reveals past
Studying the traces of urine of sheep and goats is giving archeologists a glimpse into the domestication of the animals in a village 10,000 years ago. The innovative approach has provided new understanding of the transition from hunting and gathering to farming and herding by residents at the site called Asikli Hoyuk. The study by an international team of archeologists and geologists was published on in the journal Science Advances. The researchers studied salts from urine that was trapped in layers of sediment beneath the village to determine how much was produced by sheep or goats. The villagers appeared to have only had a few animals during the first hundred years of settlement at the dawn of the Neolithic era, but between 10,400 and 9,700 years ago, the amount of urine increased by a factor of 10 to 1,000. Eventually, there were more sheep and goats than people.
ARGENTINA
Dinosaur remains found
A site containing the 220-million-year-old fossilized remains of nearly a dozen dinosaurs has been discovered in western Argentina, researchers said on Wednesday. “There are almost 10 different individuals, it’s a mass of bones, there’s practically no sediment,” said Ricardo Martinez, a paleontologist from the University of San Juan. “It’s very impressive.” The fossils are about 220 million years old, belonging to “an era of which we know little,” Martinez said. “This discovery is doubly important because there are at least seven or eight individuals of dicynodonts, the ancestors of mammals, the size of an ox,” he said. He said there were also remains of archosaurs, reptiles that could be the ancestors of great crocodiles “that we do not know about yet.” The find was discovered in September last year in San Juan Province.
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
‘THE RED LINE’: Colombian President Gustavo Petro promised a thorough probe into the attack on the senator, who had announced his presidential bid in March Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, a possible candidate in the country’s presidential election next year, was shot and wounded at a campaign rally in Bogota on Saturday, authorities said. His conservative Democratic Center party released a statement calling it “an unacceptable act of violence.” The attack took place in a park in the Fontibon neighborhood when armed assailants shot him from behind, said the right-wing Democratic Center, which was the party of former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. The men are not related. Images circulating on social media showed Uribe Turbay, 39, covered in blood being held by several people. The Santa Fe Foundation
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
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