All posts tagged: carve

Politics Home | No “Carve Out” For Parents In LGBT Conversion Practices Ban, Says Minister

Politics Home | No “Carve Out” For Parents In LGBT Conversion Practices Ban, Says Minister

Published by Sam Flores

Olivia Bailey, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Equalities (Credit: House of Commons) 3 min read1 hr Parents who are found guilty of “abusively” trying to change their child’s sexuality or gender identity could be jailed under new legislation, a minister has confirmed. Olivia Bailey, the minister for equalities, said parents would not be given any “carve-out” from the government’s planned ban on “abusive conversion practices” that cause “serious harm” to the victim. Those found guilty of breaching the proposed law could be sentenced to up to five years in prison. Amid concern from religious and gender-critical campaigners that the draft Conversion Practices Bill could undermine parental autonomy, Bailey insisted the legislation will not prevent parents from choosing how to raise their children, as the courts will only convict people guilty of practices which meet strict thresholds for abuse. The minister told The House magazine: “This is about abuse; it is about a very specific form of abuse. It is not about policing opinions, it is not about policing how parents parent, and it is …

End regulatory carve outs for religious charities, NSS urges NI

End regulatory carve outs for religious charities, NSS urges NI

Published by Sam Flores

The National Secular Society has urged the Northern Ireland Executive to end regulation exemptions for specific religious charities. NI’s Department for Communities is consulting on amending the Charities Act to “modernise and strengthen” charity regulation. This includes giving the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland powers to issue official warnings to charities where there has been misconduct, mismanagement, or a breach of trust or duty. It also includes the power to direct trustees not to undertake certain actions during a statutory inquiry. However, charities with ‘designated religious status’ will be exempt from these powers. In response to the consultation, the NSS said that instead of exempting these charities, the ‘designated religious status’ should be abolished, pointing out that many of these charities are currently embroiled in safeguarding scandals or have promoted extreme homophobia. It also recommended a broader review of religious charities to prevent the charity sector being used to promote harmful religious ideology. Safeguarding ‘not a priority’ for Presbyterian Church ‘Designated religious’ status is available to religious charities which hold public worship as their principal …

How to Carve Hieroglyphs Just Like the Ancient Egyptians Did

How to Carve Hieroglyphs Just Like the Ancient Egyptians Did

Published by José Betancourt

In ancient Egypt, writ­ing hiero­glyphs was a high­ly spe­cial­ized skill, one com­mand­ed by only a small frac­tion of the pop­u­la­tion. The fact that there were more than 1,000 char­ac­ters to mem­o­rize prob­a­bly had some­thing to do with that, but the vari­ety of sur­faces on which hiero­glyphs were writ­ten could­n’t have made it any eas­i­er. Depend­ing on the occa­sion, ancient Egyp­tians used papyrus, wood, met­al, and pot­tery shards as writ­ing sur­faces. The most mon­u­men­tal or reli­gious­ly impor­tant texts, how­ev­er, got carved into stone, thus ensur­ing the words a kind of eter­nal life — a par­tic­u­lar con­cern in the cas­es of tomb walls and sar­copha­gi. There may be lit­tle call to write hiero­glyphs today, but the tech­niques to do so haven’t been lost. In the new video above from the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um, sculp­tor and stone carv­er Miri­am John­son demon­strates how to carve into stone the name of Pharaoh Khu­fu, who built the Great Pyra­mid (and indeed, was buried in it). The first step is to write that name, sur­round­ed by its car­touche, on a sheet …

NASA satellites help scientists observe how rivers carve the Earth

NASA satellites help scientists observe how rivers carve the Earth

Published by Jenni Sidey

A satellite built to measure Earth’s water has started answering a different kind of question. “What’s the shape of water?” Specifically, “How is water reshaping the ground beneath it?” NASA launched the Surface Water and Ocean Topography satellite, known as SWOT, in 2022. Its main job is to measure the height and spread of water across the planet. Now, Virginia Tech geoscientists say the same measurements can help you see rivers at work as builders and destroyers of landscapes. “We wanted to show how the satellite could be used in ways that it wasn’t primarily designed for,” said postdoctoral associate Molly Stroud, first author of a recent publication in the Geological Society of America Today. “How are rivers and streams moving sediment and shaping the Earth’s surface?” That question sits at the center of fluvial geomorphology, the field that studies how flowing water sculpts land. For years, this work often felt slow and local. Researchers might spend days measuring one reach of one river. They would map cross sections, estimate sediment movement, and try to …

With US-Iran talks, Turkey has “another opportunity to carve out its mediator role”

With US-Iran talks, Turkey has “another opportunity to carve out its mediator role”

Published by Sam Flores

Iran’s top diplomat said that his country’s missile and defence capabilities would “never” be on the negotiating table, as US President Donald Trump appeared to cool on threats of a strike after a military build-up in the region. He arrived in Istanbul earlier on January 30 for talks with Turkish officials, who have positioned themselves as intermediaries to try and de-escalate the situation. FRANCE 24’s Rochelle Ferguson Bouyahi tells us more. Keywords for this article Source link