France outlaws sex with children aged under 15

A woman from California suspected of killing her 3 kids said Thursday that she drowned them to keep them away from their father. ’I drowned them...I didn’t want them to be further abused,’ said Liliana Carrillo. Court filings showed there was a bitter custody dispute between Carrillo and the children’s father, Erik Denton. Carrillo hasn’t been charged with the deaths pending further investigation.

Scientists have grown human cells in monkey embryos in a laboratory, in a study that has spurred a fresh debate into the ethics of such experiments. The embryos, known as chimeras, are organisms whose cells come from two or more ’individuals’, in this case, a long-tailed macaque and a human. The work could pave the way in addressing the severe shortage in transplantable organs.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) declared that he would no longer wear a face mask in the US Capitol or on the Senate floor. He said he decided this because ’everybody working in the Senate’ have received Covid-19 vaccinations. Talking to CNN, Cruz also referred to an earlier CDC guidance that said: ’Fully vaccinate people can visit with other fully vaccinated people indoors without wearing masks.’

According to the latest Global Fund Manager Survey by Bank of America, 74% of respondents believed bitcoin to be a bubble. Just 16% expressed confidence that it is not a bubble. Comparatively, only 7% think the stock market is a bubble. The results come from a survey of 200 panelists with $533B in assets under management. About 10% said they think bitcoin will outperform in 2021.

A Hong Kong court sentenced several of the city’s leading pro-democracy campaigners to between 8 and 18 months in prison over their roles in 2019 protests. Among those sentenced was Jimmy Lai, 72, who founded the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper. The judge said the defendants ’deliberately defied the law’ and the unauthorized protests posed ’a direct challenge to the authority of the police.’

CEO of Gravity Payments Dan Price announced six years that was raising the minimum annual salary of employees to $70,000. He took a cut into his own package. The move drew scorn from conservative voices. A Fox host called Price the ’lunatic of all lunatics.’ Rush Limbaugh called it ’pure, unadulterated socialism’. Today, Price’s company is worth $10 billion and the company has grown multifold.

An Australian court found Friday that Google broke the law by misleading users about personal location data collected through Android mobile devices. The decision was a partial win for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which has been prosecuting Google for broader alleged breaches of consumer law since October 2019. Google is considering an appeal

Amazon has announced that it is setting up a $250 million fund that will focus on digitizing small and medium businesses in India. A part of the fund will also be used for R&D in agriculture and healthcare technologies in the country. Amazon India also reiterated its long-term commitment towards the Indian government’s ’self-reliant India’ initiative called ’Aatmanirbhar Bharat.’

Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, said his country has started enriching uranium up to 60% purity in response to the sabotage at its Natanz nuclear facility. The attack, widely believed to have carried out by Israel, blew up the power grid, which affected some of the site’s centrifuges. However, Qalibaf didn’t say the amount of uranium Iran would enrich up to 60%.

Indianapolis police confirmed that at least 8 people were shot and killed at a FedEx facility near the airport Thursday night. The alleged shooter also died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. At least four others were hospitalized, while two were treated at the scene and released. The scene was declared a ’mass casualty, Level 1.’ An investigation is ongoing.

China reported a first-quarter GDP of 18.3%, slightly below expectations of a 19% increase. The surge in growth comes off a contraction in the first quarter of last year, when the economy shrank by 6.8% during the height of the outbreak of Covid-19. Retail sales rose 34.2% in March, while industrial production rose 14.1%.

Pakistan blocked access to all social media platforms for four hours on Friday in an effort to curb violent anti-French protests across the country raging for several days. The protests started when Pakistan banned a Islamist political party – Tehreek-e-Labiak – after its chief called for cutting ties with France over French President Emmanuel Macron’s backing of the Prophet Muhammad’s cartoons.

A Mexican lady, 70, was beaten and dragged across a bus in LA by an attacker who mistook her for Asian American. The victim was trying to get off a city bus Friday when another female passenger hurled an anti-Chinese slur at her. The assailant then grabbed the elderly woman to the front of the bus and pummeled her. Yasmine Beasley, 23, a black woman, was arrested on felony battery charges.

With IBM aiming to automate more business processes, the company announced that it will acquire process mining company myInvenio. While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, IBM said myInvenio could use its platform to find the best business processes to automate with AI. IBM has built out its automation portfolio for its AI unit and its hybrid cloud.

The Pentagon said a recently leaked video of flashing, triangle-shaped objects that flew over a US warship is real after a documentary filmmaker and a journalist released the footage and several other mysterious photos. Pentagon said photos and videos were taken by US Navy personnel. However, it declined to label them Unidentified Aerial Phenomena – the government term for UFOs.

A scientist from Colorado has taught various AI learning algorithms to flirt. Janelle Shane trained four versions of the GPT-3 AI – DaVinci, Curie, Babbage, and Ada - to generate pick-up lines. The biggest one, DaVinci, was apparently the ’most competent’ one, able to create arguably meaningful sentences. One of DaVinci’s pick up line was, ’You have the most beautiful fangs I’ve ever seen.’

Dell’s shares rose by as much as 9 percent after it announced that it will go ahead with a plan to spin off shares of VMware in a deal that should happen in the fourth quarter. It is believed that the move will help Dell pay down debt. VMware will collectively distribute a cash dividend worth $11.5 billion to $12 billion to shareholders, with Dell being set to receive $9.3 billion to $9.7 billion.

Google pledged it would provide 250,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines to ’countries in need’ Thursday when it announced that its tools to help people find vaccination centers have been expanded from the US to Canada, Chile, France, India, and Singapore. The tech behemoth said: ’Getting vaccines to everyone around the world is a challenging, but necessary, undertaking.’

Inclement weather on Thursday afternoon delayed rescuers from searching for the 12 people who have been missing from the industry boat Seacor Power that capsized off the coast of Louisiana. Marion Cuyler, who is engaged to the lift boat’s crane operator, told reporters that divers had to pause search due to stormy weather conditions. She also said all the 12 could well be inside the toppled boat.

Dr Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s chief executive officer, said People are likely to need a third dose of the Covid-19 vaccine within 12 months of getting the first two. Talking to CNBC, Bourla said variants of the virus ’will play a key role’ in how regularly people will need to have their booster doses. He drew parallels to how flu vaccines are updated and re-administered year on year.

Coinbase, the biggest US crypto exchange, is set to list on the Nasdaq on Wednesday. The listing is by far the biggest yet of a cryptocurrency company. Private market transactions had valued the company at around $68B this year, versus $5.8B in September. The crypto market remains buoyant ahead of the listing - Bitcoin is currently trading over $64000 with the entire market at $2.3 trillion.

Alex White from Sydney, Australia found a snake in a plastic-packed lettuce he bought from a supermarket. At first, he thought it was a worm until the writhing reptile flicked its tongue. It turned out to be a juvenile venomous pale-headed snake, which goes by the scientific name Hoplocephalus bitorquatus. Australian Museum says they are a ’shy but nervous species, easily agitated if cornered.’

A teacher at a North Carolina school was killed in a shooting after trying to rob the home of an Mexican drug cartel member. Barney Dale Harris and his brother-in-law were accused of robbing an alleged ’stash house’ belonging to Alonso Beltra Lara, a member of the Jalisco New Generation cartel. When Lara returned home, a shooting broke out that resulted in the death of Harris. Lara died too.

Rep. Jordan and Dr. Fauci got into a heated exchange Thursday over the country’s Covid-19 mitigation measures. Jordan pressed Fauci on the idea of herd immunity, and when Americans can expect to go back to normal. Fauci defended his recommendations as being consistent and based on CDC guidance. Jordan persisted on questioning Fauci, when Rep. Waters interjected and told him ’shut your mouth.’