Author: admin@primenews

An all-expense-paid, weekend (read: three days) vacation to the domestic destination of the winner’s choosing. Those were the stakes in a bet I made with my husband in the winter of 2021 into 2022, still in the throes of the pandemic, when “And Just Like That…” premiered. That premiere, of the continuation series picking up after six seasons of “Sex and the City” and two feature films, was conspicuously missing one element: Samantha Jones, one fourth of the quartet of women who famously cavorted through the streets of New York City – and their love lives – in the late…

The number of gender-affirming surgeries done in the United States nearly tripled between 2016 and 2019, a new study shows. The increase is probably due in part to changes in state and federal laws that require insurance to cover such care, in addition to some growing social acceptance of the trans community, according to the authors of the paper, published Wednesday in the journal JAMA Network Open. Earlier studies have detected an increasing trend in earlier time periods, but they typically captured only inpatient procedures. Many gender-affirming surgeries are outpatient, study co-author Dr. Jason Wright said. “There has been a general…

Dr. Jaimie Henderson had a single wish throughout childhood: for his father to be able to speak with him. Now a scientist and neurosurgeon at Stanford Medicine, Henderson and his colleagues are developing brain implants that might be able to make similar wishes come true for other people with paralysis or speech impairments. Two studies published Wednesday in the journal Nature show how the brain implants, described as neuroprostheses, can record a person’s neural activity when they attempt to speak naturally, and that brain activity can then be decoded into words on a computer screen, through audio speech or even…

If you’re at high risk of serious illness or death from Covid-19, it’s time to dust off those N95 masks and place them snugly over your nose and mouth to protect yourself from a recent uptick of the virus, according to a growing number of experts. That advice should go all the way up to 80-year-old President Joe Biden, said Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a cardiologist. “Octogenarians comprise the highest-risk group for complications following Covid infection,” Reiner said. “At least until the numbers start to drop again, it would be appropriate for President Biden to take some precautions and wear a…

US job growth during much of the past year was weaker than previously projected by a little more than 300,000 jobs, according to new federal data released Wednesday. As part of the agency’s annual benchmark review of payroll data, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised down March 2023’s employment gains by 306,000 positions. Despite the downward revision, which actually landed well below some estimates, America’s labor market remains historically strong. When spread through the prior year, that amounts to about 25,000 fewer net jobs added per month, meaning that the average monthly job gain for the 12 months ended in March 2023 was…

X has suspended an account that posted numerous anti-gay and antisemitic posts and was used by the man accused of killing store owner Lauri Carleton over her display of a Pride Flag. But the account had remained live two days after law enforcement publicly confirmed its existence on the platform formerly known as Twitter. The social media company finally suspended the account Wednesday evening. Alejandra Caraballo with the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard Law School posted on X Wednesday that she reported the account’s content, but received a reply from the company indicating: “After reviewing the available information, we want to…

Indians around the world have united with pride and excitement after the South Asian nation on Wednesday became the first country to soft land a spacecraft on the moon’s unexplored South Pole, and only the fourth country to reach the lunar surface. A lander named Vikram and a rover called Pragyan, robots from India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission, touched down on the moon just after 6 p.m. local time – a moment watched by 70 million people on the the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)’s YouTube page. “We have achieved soft landing on the moon,” said ISRO chairman S. Somanath to thunderous applause in the…

Russia is a country full of surprises. People here were shocked this summer after drones attacked the centre of Moscow on several occasions, causing explosions and damage to buildings. Then, the Russian rouble took an unexpected tumble – briefly tipping the dollar rate to over 100 roubles. Add to that, a failed mission to the Moon: Russia’s ‘Luna-25’ lander was lost in space, destroyed as it collided with the lunar surface last week. But today, as the news broke that Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plane had fallen out of the sky, crashing in a fireball in Russia’s Tver Region, most people were far…

Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin is presumed dead, having been named on the passenger list of a private jet that crashed north of the Russian capital, Moscow. A key ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, his private military company has played a key role in Ukraine following Moscow’s invasion in February 2022. But his relationship with Mr Putin soured after Prigozhin ordered his troops to march on Moscow in a day-long rebellion against Russia’s military leaders in June. The details of the crash are still emerging but here is what we know so far. What happened to the plane? Russian…

Louis Theroux has said it’s harder to get programmes made about risky subjects because broadcasters like the BBC are now “playing it safe”. The presenter said his documentaries had often been about “morally fraught” people whose stories “made me nervous”. Theroux was giving the annual keynote MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival. “I want to take the risk of going out speaking to people I profoundly disagree with and making documentaries about them,” he said. ‘Made me nervous’ He recalled making his name by “investigating worlds viewed as stigmatised or controversial”, including the porn industry, the far right, Nazis,…