Author: admin@primenews

A US congressional committee said it is investigating plagiarism allegations against Harvard president Claudine Gay. The Republican-led Committee on Education and the Workforce shared its plans to widen its scrutiny of Dr Gay’s handling of antisemitism on Harvard’s campus. Chairwoman Virginia Foxx said the inquiry would see if students and staff are held to the same academic standard. The BBC contacted Harvard’s governing body for comment. Ms Foxx, a Republican member of the House of Representatives, said in a letter to the leader of Harvard’s board on Wednesday that the prestigious institution could be violating the public’s trust. “Our concern…

Wham!, Sam Ryder and Mariah Carey are all vying for this year’s Christmas number one, in one of the most open festive chart battles of recent years. Thursday is the final day for streams and sales to count before the Christmas chart is revealed on Friday. Wham!’s 1984 classic Last Christmas is leading the way, with Ryder’s You’re Christmas To Me the top new release. YouTubers LadBaby have been Christmas number one for the past five years, but decided not to enter the 2023 race. The Christmas chart battle “feels much more exciting than it has done for a few…

Border officials in the UK and France have welcomed a “really significant” drop in the number of migrants crossing the English Channel this year in small boats. Official figures are down by over a third compared with 2022. The UK has helped to fund a doubling of French police patrolling the border along with other measures like drones. But tens of thousands of migrants remain ready to attempt the dangerous journey. On a cold, moonless night in December, a 17-year-old Iraqi girl named Faisa lay hidden in the sand dunes outside the port of Boulogne, clutching her 10-year-old sister’s hand,…

Social media platform X, formerly Twitter, suffered global outages for just over an hour on Thursday. According to Downdetector.com, which tracks outages by collating status reports, more than 47,000 US users faced access issues with X and X Pro. Some users in the UK and Asia were also unable to view posts on the site with a message that said “Welcome to X!” X, which is owned by Elon Musk, has been asked for comment. Mr Musk bought Twitter for $44bn (£35bn) last year. The hashtag #TwitterDown started trending within minutes of reports of the outages emerging. But the outage…

Western donors have pledged billions to help rebuild Ukraine, a country with a reputation for high levels of corruption. The task of reconstruction is expected to be the biggest of its kind since World War Two. But the government hopes a flagship project in Bucha, a town shattered at the start of the war, will show new standards for transparency have been set. At least 245,000 buildings are estimated to have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine, including many homes in Bucha, just outside Kyiv. Nearly two years ago, this town became a byword for some of the worst atrocities…

Three of the world’s biggest pornography sites have been told their users in the European Union may have to use age verification technology. Pornhub, Xvideos and Stripchat face stricter regulations because they have been assessed as having at least 45 million monthly users in EU countries. EU rules mean firms of that size have to take extra steps to protect children. It says that could mean the sites introducing age checking tech. “An example of efficient measures in this respect could be age verification tools, to prevent minors from accessing pornographic content,” a spokesperson for the European Commission told the…

The UK Supreme Court has upheld earlier decisions in rejecting a bid to allow an artificial intelligence to be named as an inventor in a patent application. Technologist Dr Stephen Thaler had sought to have his AI, called Dabus, recognised as the inventor of a food container and a flashing light beacon. But in 2019, the intellectual property office (IPO) rejected this, saying only a person could be named as an inventor. The decision was then backed by both the High Court and Court of Appeal. The IPO has argued, and courts have supported the view, that only “persons” can have…

How did a young man born 2,000 years ago near what is now southern Russia, end up in the English countryside? DNA sleuths have retraced his steps while shedding light on a key episode in the history of Roman Britain. Research shows that the skeleton found in Cambridgeshire is of a man from a nomadic group known as Sarmatians. It is the first biological proof that these people came to Britain from the furthest reaches of the Roman empire and that some lived in the countryside. The remains were discovered during excavations to improve the A14 road between Cambridge and…

In this year’s earnest and charming “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” titular preteen Margaret (“Transparent” star Abby Ryder Fortson) pleads with the divine about the vagaries of growing up, which in her case include the prospect of moving to a new town as well as her desperate wish to speed through puberty into womanhood. It’s a movie filled with small moments – finding friends at a new school, visits with grandma in the city – that add up to something much larger, tapping into a theme that kept coming up in entertainment this year: subtle, hilarious and heartfelt takes…

Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav met on Tuesday with Paramount Global Chief Executive Bob Bakish, and they broached a potential merger between the two companies, two people familiar with the matter told CNN. A potential merger of the two media giants would create an entertainment and news juggernaut, encompassing Warner Bros. and Paramount studios as well as CBS, CNN, and other cable television assets. The discussion over lunch, which was first reported by Axios, took place at Paramount’s global headquarters in New York City’s Times Square. Spokespeople for Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount declined to comment. Still, Warner Bros.…