Some apps in the virtual-reality metaverse are "dangerous by design," the U.K.'s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) has warned in response to a BBC News investigation.
A researcher posing as a 13-year-old girl witnessed grooming, sexual material, racist insults, and a rape threat in the virtual-reality world.
The children's charity said it was "shocked and angry" at the findings.
Head of online child safety policy for the NSPCC Andy Burrows added the investigation had...
Men with a high body mass index (BMI) in their upper teens had an elevated risk of severe COVID-19, requiring hospitalization, later in life, University of Gothenburg researchers show in a register study.
For some time, overweight and obesity have been recognized risk factors for severe COVID-19. To date, however, there has been no study to monitor large groups of individuals whose obesity was identified at an early age, and to find out how severely ill they...
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered troops into two rebel-held regions in eastern Ukraine, after recognizing them as independent states.
Russia said the troops have not yet been deployed but will be "peacekeeping" in the regions, which it has backed since 2014.
The U.S. said calling them peacekeepers was "nonsense", and accused Russia of creating a pretext for war, the BBC reports.
Several countries have announced sanctions in response.
Ukraine's president said his country was "not afraid of...
OnlyFans has been accused of conspiring to blacklist the social media accounts of adult performers working for rival websites, BBC News has learned.
Legal documents, previously unreported, claim OnlyFans directed an unidentified social media company to disable accounts of performers by placing their content on a terrorism database.
It is alleged that OnlyFans representatives paid bribes to the firm's employees to facilitate the practice. OnlyFans says it is aware of the legal claim and it has...
Canada's Parliament has backed the government's decision to impose emergency powers to deal with weeks-long protest blockades against COVID restrictions.
The motion passed with 185 votes to 151 on Monday, with the support of the Liberals and the left-leaning NDP, reports the BBC.
Over the weekend, police cleared the final protest site in Ottawa on streets around Parliament Hill.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act early last week.
Earlier on Monday, Trudeau defended the continued use...
Donald Trump's social-media platform, Truth Social, has launched, in a limited form, on the U.S. Apple App Store.
The app has similarities to Twitter, commentators noted. Trump was banned from Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube last year.
Some early users had difficulties registering accounts. Project lead and former congressman Devin Nunes said it was expected to be fully operational by the end of March.
Some of those trying to register were told: "Due to massive demand, we have placed...
A trio of researchers from the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand, Université de Lyon, and Sorbonne Université, respectively, has made the first official sighting of a quadruple asteroid system – an asteroid with three moons orbiting around it. In their paper published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, Anthony Berdeu, Maud Langlois, and Frédéric Vachier, describe how they spotted a third moon around asteroid Elektra and some of its characteristics.
The asteroid Elektra was first...
Ukraine's Russian-backed breakaway eastern territories have ordered military mobilizations amid a deadly escalation in fighting.
Men of fighting age in the self-declared people's republics of Donetsk and Luhansk are being put on standby.
U.S. President Joe Biden says he is convinced Russia will invade Ukraine, an allegation Moscow denies. Western nations have accused Russia of trying to stage a fake crisis in the eastern regions as a pretext to invade.
International monitors report a "dramatic increase" in attacks...
By University of Auckland
A process to convert personal protective equipment (PPE) waste into harmless byproducts is a potential game changer to the problem of PPE waste filling landfills and polluting oceans and rivers.
Shredded masks, gowns, gloves and plastic safety glasses go into a machine; hot, pressurized water, and compressed air are applied; water and acetic acid are the end-products. The PPE-to-liquid process is carried out at a temperature of 300C and takes about an hour...
The massive underwater volcanic eruption in Tonga has brought heated discussions concerning how it may affect the global climate.
A research team led by Prof. Xiong Wei from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has been monitoring and analysing the greenhouse gas concentrations before and after the volcanic eruption in Tonga with the Greenhouse Gases Monitoring Instrument (GMI).
They inverted the greenhouse gas monitoring data over Australia and New Zealand near the volcano in January...
