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Former Miss Universe Australia Maria Thattil has shared that she had an abortion in 2015. Maria, 29, shared a photo of herself just days after she had an abortion at 21 and said she cannot imagine how her life would've turned out if she had been forced to carry that pregnancy to term. The U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion in the U.S., means individual states can decide whether abortion can be made illegal. Posting to social media, Maria wrote: 'I was 21 when I had my #abortion and there isn't...

You know the way the world is going because you're happy it's happening. Out with the old ways of doing things -- going to work at an office, for example -- and in with doing your own thing. All the time, anywhere. I sense McDonald's understands this. It seems to have realized that people coming to work at its restaurants, greeting you as they take your order at the drive-thru and then quickly cooking your food is an outmoded concept. Instead, how about machines doing it all faster than humans ever could? Well, here's a little announcement the global burger...

...For at least 50 years, autonomy — the patient’s right to determine his or her own care — has been stressed by both the medical and lay communities as the paramount value in medicine. Self-determination is embedded in the American ethos and has a long tradition in American medicine, dating to a 1914 medical negligence case. Autonomy, often restated as “my body, my decision,” is the bedrock principle behind medical issues including abortion, physician-assisted death and informed consent to treatment......While most patients appreciate the emphasis on self-determination, some long for the “good old days” when doctors made the decisions for...

. Narrow AI and general AI are not on the same scale The kind of AI that we have today can be very good at solving narrowly defined problems.... But designing systems that can solve single problems does not necessarily get us closer to solving more complicated problems. The easy things are hard to automate [D]ecades of AI research have proven that the hard tasks, those that require conscious attention, are easier to automate. It is the easy tasks, the things that we take for granted, that are hard to automate. Anthropomorphizing AI doesn’t help The field of AI is...

Tucker Carlson has condemned American colleges and universities for requiring students to get vaccinated against COVID-19, arguing that such mandates 'forbid kids from getting an education'. The Fox News host - who has been clear that he is personally pro-vaccine - ripped into the mandates that have already been adopted by more than 100 schools on his show on Monday night. He asserted that schools forcing students to provide proof of vaccination is part of a larger campaign by Democrats to take bodily autonomy away from citizens.

The United States warned further measures were on the table to revoke its preferential treatment for Hong Kong, as Beijing imposed a controversial national security law on the city... The sweeping law would heighten the risk that sensitive US tech exports to the city – including metal alloys, high-powered computers and lasers – would be diverted for use by the Chinese military or the Chinese Ministry of State Security, Ross said... The US was Hong Kong’s second-largest trading partner in 2019, with trade worth HK$516 billion (US$67 billion), official data showed... “Further actions to eliminate differential treatment are also being...

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State of Mike Pompeo notified Congress on Wednesday that the Trump administration no longer regards Hong Kong as autonomous from mainland China. The notice sets the stage for the U.S. to withdraw preferential trade and financial status that the former British colony has enjoyed since it reverted to Chinese rule in 1997. “Hong Kong does not continue to warrant treatment under United States laws in the same manner as U.S. laws were applied to Hong Kong before July 1997," Pompeo said in a statement. Pompeo’s decision was not accompanied by a revocation of any specific privileges...

As can be seen in the region every day, it is not realistic to expect the Assyrians to be quiet and accept their "fate" under the tender mercies of Shiite or Sunni rule. The future Assyrian regional government could be an independent state or autonomous region like the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq. Even if it is city-state like Vatican City, it would be monumental in stopping the annihilation of Assyrian people and could also serve as a safe haven for other persecuted minorities. "Thank God that Jews, a historically persecuted people just like us, now have Israel......

URGENT: French President Hollande calls for broader autonomy for E.#Ukraine http://t.co/mTc6gAoI9J pic.twitter.com/bs4f105GjR — RT (@RT_com) February 7, 2015 Progress in solving Ukrainian crisis impossible to achieve through arms supplies - Merkel http://t.co/ULTe0it5p0 pic.twitter.com/6bgYJnGoRx — RT (@RT_com) February 7, 2015 French President Hollande calls for broader autonomy for E.Ukraine French President Francois Hollande called for “quite strong” autonomy for Ukraine’s eastern regions while speaking on France 2 TV. He also revealed part of the joint plan discussed in Moscow on the conflict’s solution. On Saturday, Hollande said that the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk need “rather strong” autonomy from...

Milton Keynes is set to begin tests of the Lutz self-driving pods next year.The four English locations picked to test driverless cars have been named.Greenwich, in south-east London, and Bristol will each host a project of their own, while Coventry and Milton Keynes will share a third. The decision was announced by the quango Innovate UK, after George Osborne's Autumn Statement. The chancellor also announced an additional £9m in funding for the work, adding to the £10m that had been announced in July. The businesses involved will add further funds. Bristol will host the Venturer consortium, which aims to investigate...

“While promising them liberty , they themselves are the slaves of corruption, for by what a man is overcome, by that is he brought into bondage” 2 Peter 2“Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your shackles!” Karl Marx“All the world over, so easy to see, that people everywhere just want to be free…”(The Young Rascals)We live in an age of revolution. Everywhere on this planet people have been “breaking off the shackles” in one “liberation movement” after another in the quest for that elusive goal, which is freedom. The American revolution was followed by the...

Hungary [...] wants autonomy for ethnic Hungarians living beyond its borders in central Europe, including Ukraine, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday. [...] "We regard the Hungarian issue a European issue," Orban said in his first speech to parliament since his reelection. "Hungarians living in the Carpathian basin are entitled to have dual citizenship, are entitled to community rights, and also autonomy." [...] "This is our clear expectation from the new Ukraine which is taking shape now," Orban said, adding the new administration enjoyed Hungary's support in its efforts to build a democratic Ukraine. [...] He said Hungary was...

Venetians have voted overwhelmingly for their own sovereign state in a ‘referendum’ on independence from Italy. Inspired by Scotland’s separatist ambitions, 89 per cent of the residents of the lagoon city and its surrounding area, opted to break away from Italy in an unofficial ballot. The proposed ‘Repubblica Veneta’ would include the five million inhabitants of the Veneto region and could later expand to include parts of Lombardy, Trentino and Friuli-Venezia Giulia. The floating city has only been part of Italy for 150 years. The 1000 year–old democratic Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia, was quashed by Napoleon and was subsumed into...

Silesians. They have their own language, a long history and they live in one of the richest regions of Poland. Today their calls for autonomy are echoing louder and louder. When they enjoyed unexpected success in regional elections last autumn for the first time in twenty years, Warsaw woke up to a problem in its territories along the Czech border. Katowice (Poland) A march organised by Silesian autonomists At the congress of the Movement for Silesian Autonomy, in Katowice, a triumphal mood reigns. Delegates, some hundred and thirty of them who arrived in early March, some in traditional Silesian garb,...

When Ukraine’s largely peaceful anti-government protests turned violent last November, President Viktor Yanukovych attempted to explain away the extreme response of riot police: He could not have protestors in the city center delaying setup for the Christmas tree and ice skating rink. Those comments became the focal point of jokes, but a new joke is going around: How long does it take a Ukrainian to change a light bulb? Two weeks. How long does it take him to build a barricade? Fifteen minutes. Kiev’s protests have escalated into a movement with military-style camps, barricades massive enough to keep out tanks,...

An ultra-Orthodox daily newspaper proposed the establishment of an autonomous zone within Israel where the strictly religious community could thrive, immune to the influences of the secular state. As the Knesset works on legislation that could see most ultra-Orthodox men required to serve in the IDF or other national service frameworks, and planned budget cuts threaten the community’s already strained economy, Hamodia, the mouthpiece of the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Yisrael party, suggested self-rule was the best answer to unwanted secular intrusion. “Autonomy means independent administrative rule for internal matters without sovereign political status, with legal and financial independence and police, but...

Hewlett-Packard Co. said that a British company it bought for $9.7 billion last year lied about its finances, resulting in a massive write-down of the value of the business. CEO Meg Whitman avoided calling it a fraud, but said Tuesday that there were “serious accounting improprieties, disclosure failures and outright misrepresentations at Autonomy Corporation PLC.” HP is taking an $8.8 billion charge in its latest quarter largely to align the accounting value of Autonomy with its real value. The revelation is another blow for HP, which is struggling to reinvent itself as PC and printer sales shrink. Its shares hit...

  Let Kids Find Their Own Path? Removing the Guardrails From Their Road David C. Stolinsky Aug. 18, 2011 While paging through Facebook recently, I came across a 13-year-old girl who declared that she was married to her girlfriend, whom she named. She didn’t say she planned to marry her friend when they grow older, but that she already was married. When I mentioned this to friends, they merely shrugged and asked what the problem was. ● The problem is not the girl’s sexual orientation. That is her business and no one else’s. ● The problem is lack of...

What’s wrong with a prominent professor’s incestuous relationship with his daughter. The story of David Epstein, the Columbia University political scientist and Huffington Post blogger now facing criminal charges of incest, has launched a very interesting discussion. What is fascinating about it, and deeply disturbing, is the inability of some commentators to articulate what is morally wrong about the act of incest. It is almost equally disturbing that a legal argument for a “right” to engage in adult, consensual incest stands on surprisingly firm footing, thanks to precedents the United States Supreme Court has already established in other cases on...

"As women, we have the right to make decisions regarding our bodies. These include decisions regarding the ability to control if and when we have children, regardless of whether we want several children or no children at all. Birth control is fundamental to our ability to have autonomy in our lives, and it helps us to understand our bodies and to enjoy our sexuality safely with men.” – Our Bodies, Ourselves 2005 The above quote captures the sentiment of many pro-contraceptive women, as well as men, non-Christian and Christian. The quote seems to make a good point. We do have...