Social Media

Japan has passed laws that redefine rape and raise the age of consent in a landmark overhaul of sex crime laws. The definition of rape was broadened to "non-consensual sexual intercourse" from "forcible sexual intercourse", aligning Japanese law's definition with other countries. The legal age of consent, previously at only 13, has been raised to 16 years. Previous laws did not protect those coerced into having sex and deterred reporting of such attacks, critics say. They have also led to inconsistent court decisions, fuelling calls for change. The new laws were passed by the upper house of the Diet - Japan's parliament - on Friday. They explicitly outline eight scenarios where it is difficult for a victim to "form, express, or fulfil an intention not to consent" to sexual intercourse.

The countries with the world's largest penises have been revealed, but it's bad news if you are from the US or the United Kingdom. On average, men who live in Ecuador and Cameroon have the biggest members, with penises measuring nearly seven inches (17cm) from the root to the tip of the head when erect. The US and UK didn't even make the top 50, with America languishing at 60th with men having an average size of 5.4in (13.5cm) — nearly a third shorter. Britain was in 68th place, with a penis size of 5.2in (13.1cm). Full Article

Forum members reaction ?.....????

Just for info; 161,400 living in Isreal. Average age is 85.5, with over 1,000 over age 100; social equality minister notes urgency in providing assistance as some 40 survivors die each day Source A report to be issued this spring by The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the organization that annually negotiates with Germany for Holocaust reparations, will estimate that just 50,000 Holocaust survivors remain in the United States. (JewishTimes)

An American tourist was arrested in Germany Thursday for allegedly pushing two fellow American tourists down a steep slope – killing one of them – near a famous German castle. The incident took place Wednesday afternoon near the Marienbruecke, a bridge over a gorge that offers a view of the Neuschwanstein Castle. The 30-year-old man met the two American women, ages 21 and 22, on a hiking path and lured them onto a trail that leads to a viewpoint, police said.

Mercedes-Benz vehicles are known for their quiet cabins, but things are going to get a little louder in them soon. The luxury automaker has announced that it is launching a software update that will bring ChatGPT into its vehicles through a collaboration with the Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service., starting on June 16. The feature will be integrated into the MBUX infotainment system, which already offers a wide array of voice commands through the "Hey, Mercedes" voice assistant feature. ChatGPT will allow occupants to have "conversations with natural dialogues and follow-up questions" with the generative artificial intelligence platform.

Democrats in the House and Senate on Thursday introduced a bill that would give immigrants immediate access to a range of federal benefits instead of making them wait five years. Congress passed legislation in 1996 requiring most immigrants to wait five years after obtaining their official immigration status before they can access Medicaid, food stamps and other federal programs. That requirement was passed as part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which the House and Senate passed by 3-to-1 margins and President Bill Clinton signed into law. But under the bill from Reps. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and Tony Cardenas, D-Calif., and Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, that five-year waiting period would no longer apply. Democrats said the "arbitrary" five-year waiting period makes it harder for immigrants to obtain "critical benefits and services."

A Scots woman who lost her wife during the Covid pandemic has branded Boris Johnson's response to the damning Privileges Committee report "pathetic". The probe ruled the ex-prime minister committed "repeated contempts" of Parliament by deliberately misleading MPs over Partygate. Jane Morrison, whose wife Jacky died of Covid in May 2020, said the scandal was a "slap in the face" for the public. Mr Johnson has attacked the "deranged" findings of the report. Johnson deliberately misled on Partygate, MPs find Scots asked to share their Covid experiences Branding him the first former prime minister to have ever lied to the Commons, the Privileges Committee recommended a 90-day suspension which would have paved the way for a by-election if the former Tory leader had not already quit as an MP.

A US airman accused of leaking classified defence documents online has been indicted by a federal grand jury in the state of Massachusetts. Jack Teixeira, 21, faces six counts of retaining and transmitting classified information on a gaming website. He was arrested at his Massachusetts home in April but was not formally charged until Thursday. He remains in custody pending his trial. The young Air National Guardsman faces decades in prison if convicted. Mr Teixeira stands accused of leaking dozens of files online, including sensitive documents about US allies and military operations abroad. The documents include US assessments of the war in Ukraine as well as sensitive secrets about American allies including Egypt, South Korea and the UAE.

It is easy to overlook the fact that something larger is at stake amid the Conservative party’s midsummer mayhem. Something larger, for sure, than Boris Johnson’s petulance or Nadine Dorries’ attention-seeking. Something affecting us all, not just the Tory party. Something that underlies everything else about current British politics and will outlast the current excitement. That something is the future of Brexit. Yes, Johnson’s latest self-centred lord-of-misrule melodrama is remarkable even by his own standards. Yes, Dorries’ latest career move, going postal in parliament, on the run from her own resignation, is providing a suitably disturbing coda to an already dauntingly disturbing political career. And, yes, Rishi Sunak’s laboriously constructed authority as prime minister is again under threat from the intemperate disloyalty that has become the default setting of a section of the Tory party.

The European Central Bank has pressed ahead with another interest rate hike, aiming to crush inflation that is driving up the cost of groceries, utility bills and summer vacations. The ECB increased its benchmark rate by a quarter-percentage point, to 3.5 per cent on Thursday, a day after the US Federal Reserve took a break from its own string of increases. In Europe, it was the eighth straight increase since July 2022, an unprecedentedly swift campaign to tighten the flow of credit to the economy as the bank seeks to return inflation to its target of two per cent from 6.1 per cent. The decision was widely expected, and many analysts think one more quarter-point hike is in the cards for the bank’s next meeting on 27 July. ECB projections acknowledge that controlling inflation will take months longer, even after the rate has fallen from a double-digit peak late last year. “Are we done? Have we finished the journey? No, we’re not at the destination," she said at a news conference. "Do we still have ground to cover? Yes, we have ground to cover.”

A two-day Reddit protest is set to continue indefinitely, with the website’s volunteer moderators saying they will maintain the social media site’s blackout unless its owners back down over new user fees. A two-day Reddit protest is set to continue indefinitely, with the website’s volunteer moderators saying they will maintain the social media site’s blackout unless its owners back down over new user fees. As of Wednesday, more than 5,000 popular subreddits remained in private mode. The action has been in the works for weeks after Reddit announced in April that it would start charging third parties for its application programming interface (API).

The oil and gas giant claims it has already hit its 2030 target, because it sold its interest in a Texan oilfield in 2021. Shell is the latest fossil fuel company to scale back on its climate change pledges in order to increase payouts to shareholders. The oil and gas giant announced yesterday that it is dropping plans to cut oil production each year for the rest of the decade. In its 2021 strategy, the company said it would aim for “an expected gradual reduction in oil production of around 1-2 per cent each year”. And last year, former chief executive Ben van Beurden surprised some activists and investors by establishing a target of 2050 to reach net zero emissions. But it appears the potential profits - Shell made a record €36 billion in 2022 - are too appealing for the new CEO Wael Sawan and his team.

The historic indictment of former President Donald Trump, which includes 31 counts alleging violations of the Espionage Act, presents a crossroads. Republicans, including my colleagues in the House, can either perpetuate the former president’s lies about this investigation, effectively taking a wrecking ball to the rule of law, or they can join Democrats in condemning flagrant lawlessness that risks our nation’s secrets, war plans and the lives of our troops. If they embrace the former, we will see more political violence, potentially of the magnitude we saw on Jan. 6, 2021. If they choose the latter, they give our country what may be its last best chance to escape the vitriolic vortex the former president has sucked us into over the past eight years.

FRANCISCO (AP) — All major social media platforms do poorly at protecting LGBTQ+ users from hate speech and harassment — especially those who are transgender, non-binary or gender non-conforming, the advocacy group GLAAD said Thursday. But Twitter is the worst. In its annual Social Media Safety Index, GLAAD gave Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter low or failing scores, saying the platforms don’t do enough to keep their users safe. That said, most improved from a year ago. Twitter, which was acquired by Tesla CEO Elon Musk last October, was the only exception. GLAAD’s scorecard called it “the most dangerous platform for LGBTQ people” and the only one that saw its scores decline from last year — to 33% from 45% a year ago. Twitter‘s communications staff was eradicated after Musk took over the company and for months inquiries to the press office have been answered only with an automated reply of a poop emoji, as was the case when The Associated Press reached out to the company for comment.

Music publishers sued Twitter for more than $250 million in damages on Wednesday, alleging that the social media platform “breeds massive copyright infringement that harms music creators.” The lawsuit alleges that for years, Twitter has allowed users of its platform to share copyrighted songs without a license. It also claims Twitter’s misconduct has only gotten worse since Elon Musk bought the company for $44 billion last fall and slashed staff. Twitter’s alleged permissiveness around users sharing copyrighted songs, combined with the social network’s promotion of tweets with copyrighted music, has unlawfully helped fuel the company’s growth, according to the National Music Publishers’ Association, whose members include Universal, Sony and Warner Music Group.

A panel of outside advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration voted Thursday that Covid-19 vaccines should be updated for the fall as the pandemic continues to recede from daily life but the coronavirus shows no signs of slowing its evolution. The panel of 21 advisers voted unanimously that the new vaccine should protect against just one strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus – a departure from the currently available bivalent vaccines – and should target one of three that are currently circulating in the US. Called XBB.1.5, XBB.1.16 and XBB.2.3, they’re all sublineages of the Omicron variant.

Artificial intelligence will threaten our democracy ahead of upcoming elections in the United Kingdom and the United States, according to one of the world's leading computer scientists. Speaking on Beth Rigby Interviews... Dame Wendy Hall says AI's ability to damage democracy should be more of an immediate concern than any existential threat posed by the technology. The UK's AI skills champion told Beth: "Next year we will see a growth in disinformation, the deep fakes of this world, because AI makes it very easy to do that. "You can just get the tools off the internet and it's getting harder and harder to detect that a video, or a photo, or a piece of text has been faked."

The organization that handles claims on behalf of Jews who suffered under the Nazis said Thursday that Germany has agreed to extend another $1.4 billion (1.29 billion euros) overall for Holocaust survivors around the globe for the coming year. The compensation was negotiated with Germany’s finance ministry and includes $888.9 million to provide home care and supportive services for frail and vulnerable Holocaust survivors. Additionally, increases of $175 million to symbolic payments of the Hardship Fund Supplemental program have been achieved, impacting more than 128,000 Holocaust survivors globally, according to the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also referred to as the Claims Conference

A record $56.6 million (£44.7 million) in prize money will be available at this year’s Wimbledon, the All England Club announced on Wednesday. That represents an 11.2% increase on last year’s prize pot, with the men’s and women’s singles champions each receiving close to $3 million (£2.35 million) and the runners-up almost $1.5 million (£1.175).