All posts tagged: Escape

Lesbian Saudi woman defies the odds to escape arranged marriage to gain asylum and find love in the UK

Lesbian Saudi woman defies the odds to escape arranged marriage to gain asylum and find love in the UK

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the Well Enough newsletter with Harry Bullmore for tips on living a healthier, happier and longer life Get the Well Enough email with Harry Bullmore Get the Well Enough email with Harry Bullmore A Saudi lesbian woman, who was informed at 16 that she was “reserved” for an arranged marriage to a 40-year-old male cousin, has found profound relief after being granted asylum in the UK. Now 31, Al Hussain said that she “couldn’t be happier” and hopes “queer Saudi women know that there is hope out there”. Ms Hussain explained that she was unable to go through with the marriage, as the prospect “absolutely terrified” her, given her identity as a closeted LGBTQ+ person in her home country. Saudi Arabia outlaws same-sex relations, with punishments under Sharia law potentially including the death sentence, “100 blows of the whip”, or “banishment for one year”, according to Human Rights Watch. She recalled early conversations with friends and family, who reiterated that being LGBTQ+ was haram, meaning forbidden. One particular family member even declared they would …

The Escape Game by Marissa Meyer and Tamara Moss

The Escape Game by Marissa Meyer and Tamara Moss

Published by Jenni Sidey

Six months have passed since a contestant on The Escape Game was found dead inside a prop coffin during what should have been a season finale. The show survived. The case did not. And the girl the public decided was responsible is back for another round. The Escape Game by Marissa Meyer and Tamara Moss opens not in the middle of a puzzle room but in the moments just before one, and the decision pays off immediately. The prologue rewinds to the night of Alicia Angelos’s death, told from her sister Sierra’s perspective, and it establishes something useful quickly: this is a story about what gets remembered, what gets distorted, and who gets to carry the blame. By the time the present-day narrative begins, with four new contestants filing into auditions for season five, the reader already knows what the characters do not yet fully grasp. The game has consequences. The Four Contestants The book rotates between four points of view, each introduced through an audition video format that earns its keep. The gap between …

How much will US Hormuz blockade hurt Iran, and does Tehran have an escape? | US-Israel war on Iran News

How much will US Hormuz blockade hurt Iran, and does Tehran have an escape? | US-Israel war on Iran News

Published by Sam Flores

The United States naval blockade of Iran has come into effect as President Donald Trump’s administration tries to pressure Tehran into accepting its terms for an end to their war by trying to squeeze the Iranian economy. The blockade began at 14:00 GMT on Monday. Iran’s armed forces have called it “an illegal act” that “amounts to piracy”. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list Even though Iran has become accustomed to US sanctions and has continued to function during the war, a blockade like this could inflict significant damage to Iran’s economy, analysts said. How much can this blockade hurt Iran? Here’s what we know: How will the blockade hurt Iran’s oil revenue? Iran primarily exports oil and gas through its ports. Soon after the start of the US-Israel war on Iran on February 28, authorities in Tehran announced what amounted to a closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the only waterway out of the Gulf, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas supplies pass in peacetime. The near-shutdown of …

‘Paddington 4,’ ‘Escape From New York’ Reboot in Works at StudioCanal

‘Paddington 4,’ ‘Escape From New York’ Reboot in Works at StudioCanal

Published by Daniella Wilson

Escape From New York and Paddington are among the properties getting attention from StudioCanal. The production company’s CEO and Canal+ chief content officer Anna Marsh was joined by executive vp of global marketing and distribution Hugh Spearing for the presentation Monday as CinemaCon kicked off in Las Vegas with its first major event. Among the news shared in the presentation was Marsh announcing that a fourth film in the Paddington franchise is currently in development. The exec noted that a team of comedy writers are attached to pen the script, although the names of the scribes were not shared. Paddington in Peru hit theaters in 2024 as the third title in the series that originated with Paul King’s initial 2014 movie about author Michael Bond’s beloved literary character. Spearing also announced that the company is partnering with The Picture Company to develop a reimagining of John Carpenter’s 1981 cult favorite Escape From New York. Kurt Russell starred in the original as prisoner Snake Plissken, who will be granted a pardon if he can rescue the …

Meta Secretly Building a Photorealistic AI Clone of Mark Zuckerberg so No Employee Can Ever Escape His Watchful Eye

Meta Secretly Building a Photorealistic AI Clone of Mark Zuckerberg so No Employee Can Ever Escape His Watchful Eye

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Even for an executive long known by employees as the “Eye of Sauron,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is taking the concept of micromanagement to its final form, the Financial Times reports, by using AI to develop a “photorealistic, AI-powered 3D” version of himself to converse with and offer feedback to employees. The dystopian effort is part of a broader push to create avatars, based on public figures, that Meta’s customers can interact with in real time. It’s a concept that has struggled to catch on with the public, if the company’s previous forays into character chatbots are anything to go by. It could also quickly turn into a massive resource hog, as inside sources told the FT, putting even more strain on already-hard-to-come-by computing power. That’s not to mention widespread concerns over access to sexualized AI avatars landing in the wrong hands. The faux Zuckerberg AI will be trained on a wealth of imagery of the executive and …

Two cheetah cubs narrowly escape the illegal pet trade

Two cheetah cubs narrowly escape the illegal pet trade

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. In an intervention that might one day inspire the animated animal version of Argo, the Cheetah Conservation Fund and Somaliland’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change rescued two cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) cubs on the verge of a terrible fate.  The Cheetah Conservation Fund carried out the extraction after receiving urgent intelligence that traffickers in the Somaliland capital were about to load the two cubs onto a boat and illegally move them into the exotic pet trade. Just hours later, the organization put a rescue team in action and worked with local authorities to take possession of the cheetahs.  The next day, the cubs ended up at Somaliland’s Cheetah Rescue and Conservation Centre, where veterinary and wildlife experts will care for them. The conservation centre opened in Somaliland in 2016 by Laurie Marker for cheetahs pulled out of the illegal wildlife trade. At the moment, 125 rescued cheetahs live at the facility. Images: Courtesy of Cheetah Conservation Fund “This outcome …

ISIS fighters have escape camps in Syria, but families remain detained : NPR

ISIS fighters have escape camps in Syria, but families remain detained : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

Children ride a bicycle and play in the Roj camp in a Kurdish-held territory in northeast Syria in March. The detention camp houses wives and children of ISIS members. Claire Harbage/NPR hide caption toggle caption Claire Harbage/NPR ROJ CAMP, Syria — This isolated detention camp doesn’t look like it would be a legacy of the once-powerful militant group ISIS. Children play in the bare spaces between tattered tents. A boy kicks a soccer ball. A little girl covered head to toe in an all-enveloping cloak furiously peddles a bicycle. The camp is located in one of the last parts of Kurdish-held territory in Syria. For years, the issue of ISIS families has been an intractable problem. This January, it became a pressing danger as forces commanded by the new Syrian government advanced, leaving a security vacuum in parts of the region. Kurdish officials say it has sparked a resurgence of the ISIS militant group at the same time that U.S. forces have withdrawn. With children making up the majority of camp residents, it is also …

Beware, bees! This wildflower will trap you in a floral escape room.

Beware, bees! This wildflower will trap you in a floral escape room.

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. What’s fragrant, floral, and perfectly devious? If you’re confused, imagine what it must be like for the bees ensnared in the colorful clutches of a pink lady’s slipper (Cypripedium acaule). This large species of wildflower has ingenious pollinating tactics that were highlighted by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service on April Fools’ day. But this is no joke. Pink lady’s slippers are members of the roughly 28,000 member orchid family, and their bulbous flowers are generally pink. They grow throughout a significant part of the eastern U.S., usually blooming between May and July. Like many flowers, they draw bees in with their color and fragrance. But what happens next is more dramatic than one might expect. The bee enters the slipper-shaped flower pouch expecting to find nectar, but there is none.  “Instead, the bee is now inside a floral escape room with no exits… except one very specific exit,” the federal agency noted. “The entrance closes behind it, …

How Flipboard’s new Surf app lets you merge social feeds, YouTube, and RSS to escape the algorithm – finally

How Flipboard’s new Surf app lets you merge social feeds, YouTube, and RSS to escape the algorithm – finally

Published by skeptic

Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET’s key takeaways Can a new social network make it? Flipboard Surf has a shot. Surf combines social networks with text, video, and audio feeds. Think of Surf as the anti-algorithm, anti-AI-slop social network. I’ll give Flipboard, the once-popular tablet news aggregator site, credit for chutzpah.  Also: A Meta-powered investment scam is spreading across 25 countries – how to spot (and avoid) it After a year in beta, its new Android app and website, Surf, go beyond simple news aggregation to incorporate content from social networking protocols like ActivityPub, AT Protocol, and good old Real Simple Syndication (RSS), enabling you to craft custom feeds blending posts and blogs from social networks such as Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads.  But, wait, there’s more Surf also lets you blend in podcasts and YouTube channels, making it a one-stop shop for your web reading, listening, and viewing. As Mike McCue, Flipboard and Surf’s CEO, explained in a statement, Surf’s mission is to help “podcasters, creators, …

You Can’t Escape the AI Tax

You Can’t Escape the AI Tax

Published by Daniella Wilson

Recently, a Costco in Florida instituted a new store policy. An employee told me that he was asked to open up every desktop computer displayed in the electronics section and remove the memory chips. Otherwise, the RAM harvesters would get them. Elsewhere, criminal groups are misdirecting trucks carrying RAM in order to loot them. All of this is happening because of a generational shortage of a part used in practically every electronic gadget on Earth. RAM is your device’s short-term memory—storing the information it needs to handle any active tasks. (RAM stands for “random-access memory.”) To put this in intimately familiar terms, it is what your computer runs out of when you have too many browser tabs open. And right now, the price of RAM is skyrocketing. From September to February, the price of a single 64GB stick of RAM went from roughly $250 to more than $1,000. Gamers who build their own juiced computers were among the first to notice that something was off. Starting in the fall, it became so difficult for them …