Author: admin@primenews

Alexandra is a very attentive girlfriend. “Watching CUBS tonight?” she messages her boyfriend, but when he says he’s too busy to talk, she says, “Have fun, my hero!” Alexandra is not real. She is a customizable AI girlfriend on dating site Romance.AI. As artificial intelligence seeps into seemingly every corner of the internet, the world of romance is no refuge. AI is infiltrating the dating app space – sometimes in the form of fictional partners, sometimes as advisor, trainer, ghostwriter or matchmaker. Established players in the online dating business like Tinder and Hinge are integrating AI into their existing products.…

Dozens of news organizations on Sunday condemned a police raid on a Kansas newspaper and its publisher’s home, sending a letter to the local police department’s chief urging him to immediately return all seized materials. The four-page letter, sent by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press to Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody, was signed by 34 news and press freedom organizations, including CNN, The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and others. “Newsroom searches and seizures are among the most intrusive actions law enforcement can take with respect to the free press, and the…

Russian officials say multiple missiles were shot down over the crucial bridge connecting the annexed Crimea to the mainland on Saturday, the latest in a series of apparent Ukrainian attacks in the region. The bridge is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s pet projects and has frequently been targeted as a hated symbol of occupation. Two Ukrainian missiles were shot down on Saturday afternoon, the Russia-appointed Head of Crimea Sergey Aksyonov wrote in a post on Telegram, adding that the bridge was undamaged. Photos and videos circulating on social media platforms showed white smoke billowing from the bridge. CNN has…

As tens of thousands of Israelis continue to join weekly protests over the government’s highly controversial plans to change the justice system, as many as one in three citizens are thinking of leaving the country, according to a poll. Professor Chen Hofmann is one of them. Together with his wife and their children, they start the Jewish Sabbath with a meal together every Friday evening. Nowadays they end it at a huge anti-government rally. “It’s not our ritual to go and protest in the streets but we’re forced to because we’re losing our country, that’s how we feel,” says the…

A baby aged just 22 days, her 12-year-old brother and their parents were among seven people killed by Russian shells in southern Ukraine on Sunday. Bombs hit their family home in the village of Shyroka Balka in Kherson, Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said. The dead also included another village resident and two men in neighbouring Stanislav. “Terrorists must be stopped. They must be stopped by force,” said Mr Klymenko. “They don’t understand anything else.” The minister shared photographs of the aftermath of the attack on Shyroka Balka, showing black columns of smoke rising from buildings, and the digitally obscured bodies…

Elon Musk “isn’t serious” about holding a cage fight and “it’s time to move on”, Mark Zuckerberg has said. In a post on his social media site Threads, the Meta boss said he had offered Mr Musk “a real date” but the rival entrepreneur had made excuses. Mr Musk had earlier on Sunday suggested on his own messaging site X, formerly known as Twitter, that he was willing to fight as early as Monday. The billionaires agreed to the bout in June, sparking huge media attention. But despite egging each other on for months, the rivals have yet to secure…

Shares in skincare chain L’Occitane International have jumped in trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The global company confirmed on Friday that its controlling shareholder is contemplating a potential deal to take it private. L’Occitane’s billionaire chairman Reinold Geiger already controls almost three quarters of its shares. The retailer has over 3,000 outlets in 90 countries around the world and has more than 8,500 employees. Trading in L’Occitane’s shares were halted on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Friday after Bloomberg News reported that Mr Geiger was in advanced talks to take it private. The business news channel said…

A cosmic object in the shape of a glowing question mark has photobombed one of the latest images captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope — and scientists think they know what it might be. The original near-infrared image, released July 26, depicted a pair of young stars named Herbig-Haro 46/47. Found 1,470 light-years away in the Vela constellation within the Milky Way galaxy, the stars are still actively forming and closely orbiting each other. The two have been observed and studied by space and ground-based telescopes since the 1950s, but the highly sensitive Webb telescope allowed for the highest-resolution and most detailed…

A high school in north-eastern Cambodia has been forced to close temporarily after thousands of unexploded munitions were discovered. Cambodia remains one of the world’s most heavily mined countries, 48 years after the end of its brutal civil war. At that time, the Queen Kosomak High School in Kratie province was being used as a military station. Photos show tons of rusty explosives neatly stacked in rows, with grenades and anti-tank launchers among them. In total, more than 2,000 pieces of ordnance was discovered over three days – Heng Ratana, director general of the Cambodian Mine Action Centre, told AFP…

“It got more accessible for me, so I got addicted. Everyone around me was vaping at the time.” Coco, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, was 12 when she vaped for the first time. She’s now 15 and trying to quit. “She was angry,” she said, as she smiled at her mother sitting nearby. “My phone was taken away from me.” Coco had never brought the vapes home, but as she grew more used to the habit, she also wanted to vape after school. “What attracted me to it was more the flavours like ‘Peach ice’ or…