Archive for August 2025

A government-proposed framework to register same-sex partnerships has attracted unprecedented controversy in Hong Kong’s opposition-free legislature. Many lawmakers claim the Registration of Same-sex Partnerships Bill erodes the institution of traditional marriage. LGBTQ+ activists, meanwhile, criticise the bill for not offering enough protection, but also see it as a small step forward and are urging the Legislative Council (LegCo) to pass it.

Guests including Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk attend the Inauguration in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on January 20, 2025 in Washington, D.C.

With the exponential rise of generative A.I. systems, the greatest danger is no longer a flood of invective and falsehoods on social media. Rather, it is the slow, subtle and corrosive manipulation of online communication — propaganda designed not to shock, but to slip silently into our everyday digital discussions. We have entered a new era in international influence operations, where A.I.-generated narratives shift the political landscape without drawing attention.

Giovanna Hernandez, 24, was stopped by local police while driving on Tuesday morning in her hometown of Leeds, near Birmingham, according to her brother, Dilan Hernandez. She was taken to a county jail and is now in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody there, ICE’s detainee locator showed. Hernandez’s parents brought her to the U.S. from Mexico at age 7, her brother said. She was valedictorian of her high school class, has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work, and works with young people applying for college through a local non-profit organization, he said.

iPsych has extracted DNA from thousands of banked blood samples originally taken during the heel prick test, which is used to screen newborns for serious health conditions…. The team wanted to ensure that its study represented the Danish population. But asking people to give consent inevitably skews a data set toward those who are wealthier, older, and more educated, Mortensen says. This could produce spurious results, which would have an “ethical cost,” he says, so the iPsych team asked to waive this requirement. Danish law allowed a waiver, he says, providing a study doesn’t endanger or inconvenience participants and would be impaired if consent were required. In January 2012, a regional science ethics committee in Denmark agreed, giving iPsych permission to extract genetic data from the country’s newborn blood samples for the next decade without participants’ consent.