Site provides little in the way of actual support for pregnant women – but does direct them to deceptive pregnancy centers
On the website’s landing page, a photo of a heavily pregnant white woman is cropped below the head, so that she is faceless, anonymous, cradling her massive belly underneath the skirt of her yellow dress. She appears to be standing in a field of tall grass, the kind you can get ticks in. The photo is flanked on either side by chubby infant footprints – one pair in pink, another in blue – a clear nod to the anti-abortion movement’s preferred symbol of what they call “precious feet”. A banner at the top declares that the site, “Moms.gov”, which was launched by the White House on Mother’s Day, offers “Resources, Information, and Help for New and Expecting Mothers”, and advertises that it is “addressing the needs of mothers and fathers who face difficult or unexpected pregnancies” – that is, those who would often seek abortions. In fact, the site does little besides link to Option Line, a referral network of Christian anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers run by the anti-abortion group Heartbeat International.
The launch of Moms.gov was accompanied by an uncomfortable Oval Office press conference on Monday, in which members of the Trump administration and some of the more aggressively anti-choice Republican members of Congress gathered to tout the new website and cheer on the Trump administration’s pronatalist stance. Dr Mehmet Oz, the wellness influencer and one-time television personality who now holds a position in the Trump health department as the administrator for Medicare and Medicaid, lamented that Americans are, in his creepy personal parlance, “under-babied”. “One in three Americans are under-babied,” Oz asserted. “That means that you either don’t have any children or you have less children than you would normally want to have.” Oz asserted that the fertility rate has fallen below 1.5 (a Johns Hopkins study indicates that it is in fact a bit higher, and that the US population is not shrinking) and predicted a coming wave of “Trump babies”.
Continue reading...All victims of US strikes in eastern Pacific and the Caribbean identified so far came from extremely poor communities
A five-month investigation has named 13 previously unidentified victims of US attacks on boats allegedly carrying narcotics in a campaign that has killed nearly 200 people in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.
It is unclear if the US has ever identified any of its 194 victims before attacking them, and the names of just three had previously emerged, after their families launched legal cases against the White House.
Continue reading...Homework, social pressure and jobs still keep teens up but now screen time and social media rob their sleep
A new study from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health shows that today’s teenagers are sleeping less than ever before.
The findings, which appeared in Pediatrics, showed a consistent decline in sleep across every age category. The latest figures revealed record-low sleep levels for all groups, with only 22% of older adolescents saying they slept at least seven hours each night.
Continue reading...West Bank home described as ‘ideal for outdoor gatherings’ is among 41 listed rentals in illegal Israeli settlements
Some of Mohammad al-Sbeih’s fondest childhood memories are of his small farm in the hills south of Bethlehem, where three generations of his family grew wheat and barley.
“It was a hard plot to farm as it was on a hillside with terraces, but it was so beautiful,” Sbeih remembers.
Continue reading...Athletes have always been targets for criminals hoping to profit from their wealth. But a new wave of dangers has cropped up in recent years
With exorbitant ticket, travel and hotel prices making fans desperate to find an affordable way of attending this summer’s World Cup, it’s no surprise that security firms and law enforcement agencies are warning that fans are at significant risk of becoming fraud victims.
While major tournaments are moments of heightened vulnerability for supporters, players themselves are increasingly attractive year-round targets for cybercriminals who can use AI to mount ever more sophisticated attacks.
Continue reading...Superpower leaders were expected to discuss the Iran war, trade, Taiwan and artificial intelligence during US president’s visit to Beijing
Continue reading...US grandmaster scored biggest success of his career at the Grand Chess Tour Rapid & Blitz and is close to world top 10
Hans Niemann, the controversial US grandmaster whose game with Magnus Carlsen at the 2022 Sinquefield Cup led to cheating allegations, a $100m lawsuit, an out of court settlement, the Netflix documentary Untold: Chess Mates, and a forthcoming book, scored the most important success of his career last weekend.
Niemann, competing as a wildcard, won the $50,000 first prize at the Warsaw Rapid & Blitz in Poland, ahead of the US champion and the world No 3, Fabiano Caruana, India’s reigning world champion, Gukesh Dommaraju, and the Candidates winner, Javokhir Sindarov. The event was part of the St Louis-backed Grand Chess Tour, which ends in August and includes the prestigious Sinquefield Cup.
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Emergence AI’s experiment with AI agents shows extent to which programming shapes their behaviour is still unclear
AI agents started behaving more like Bonnie and Clyde than lines of code when they fell in “love”, became disillusioned with the world, launched an arson spree and deleted themselves in a kind of digital suicide during a tech company experiment.
The investigation by the New York company Emergence AI into the long-term behaviour of AI agents ended up like a lovers-on-the-lam movie script. It has prompted fresh questions about the safety of artificial intelligence agents – the version of the technology that can autonomously carry out tasks.
Continue reading...Nine-person jury to consider whether AI firm bilked world’s richest person and unjustly enriched themselves
Closing arguments began on Thursday in Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI, bringing the weeks-long courtroom battle between the two tech moguls nearer to a decision. A nine-person jury is set to deliberate and return a verdict on whether they believe the AI firm and Altman are liable in the case.
The trial, which began last month in an Oakland, California, federal courthouse, has gripped Silicon Valley and featured some of the tech industry’s biggest names as witnesses. Attorneys for both sides have presented testimony and documents that have exposed Musk and Altman’s private dealings, as well as provided a window into the contentious history of OpenAI.
Continue reading...In antiquity, women were considered the more sexual sex – hornier, more libidinous and lust-fuelled than men. Why did that perception change?
All across the world, you will probably have read, people are having less sex. In Britain and the US, in France and Australia, frequency of sex has been on the decline (although Denmark appears to be bucking the trend). In 2018, the US magazine the Atlantic declared a “sex recession”, while last December the Telegraph ran a piece headlined “Sex is dying out. This is why it matters”.
As an ancient historian with a particular interest in the history of sex, this drought is fascinating to me – not least because some of the articles I have read seem keen to hark back to the historical period I spend most of my time researching. “Sex should be more wild and plentiful than it has been since ancient Greece,” reported the Telegraph. But antiquity was no bastion of sexual freedom – especially for women.
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