All posts tagged: uncovers

‘Live and let live’: Northern Ireland historian uncovers surprising era of tolerance of gay men | LGBTQ+ rights

‘Live and let live’: Northern Ireland historian uncovers surprising era of tolerance of gay men | LGBTQ+ rights

Published by Sam Flores

Northern Ireland carved a grim reputation for homophobia for over half a century, a record of intolerance and bigotry so baroque it was turned into an opera. In the 1970s, Ian Paisley, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) and Free Presbyterian church, led a “save Ulster from sodomy” crusade to resist the decriminalisation of homosexuality. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Royal Ulster Constabulary used plainclothes officers to bait and catch gay men in parks and public toilets. In 2008, Iris Robinson, an MP and wife of the then DUP leader, Peter Robinson, told an interviewer that homosexuality was an “abomination”, which later became the title of a satirical opera. In 2011, more than a quarter of gay people complained about homophobia in the workplace. Northern Ireland held out against marriage equality until 2019. However, it may not always have been like this. Research suggests that in the Victorian era and early 20th century, Northern Ireland was much more tolerant and accepting of gay men. Tom Hulme, a historian at Queen’s University Belfast, …

Bulgaria Uncovers Cannabis Farm Inside Former Zinc Mine

Bulgaria Uncovers Cannabis Farm Inside Former Zinc Mine

Published by Sam Flores

SOFIA, April 29 (Reuters) – Bulgarian ⁠police ⁠have charged ⁠three people and are seeking ​a fourth after an ongoing investigation ‌into drug trafficking and ‌money laundering uncovered a ⁠cannabis ⁠farm built inside a former zinc mine, officials ​said on Wednesday. So far, about 70 kilograms (154.32 lb) of drugs, 600,000 euros ($701,400) ​in cash and 600 rounds of ⁠ammunition have ⁠been seized, said ⁠Emil ​Borisov, deputy director of the General Directorate ​for Combating ⁠Organised Crime.   “The former mine was equipped with high‑tech infrastructure and was likely used for large‑scale ⁠production intended for trafficking abroad,” Borisov said. The mine is ⁠located near the village of Garlyano, at the bottom of the Osogovo mountain, a few kilometers from the border with North Macedonia. Authorities said the ongoing investigation could take months, adding that ⁠the mine’s ownership and the full scope of the operation were being examined. (Reporting by Alex ​Lefkowitz and Ivana Sekularac; editing ​by Barbara Lewis) Copyright 2026 Thomson Reuters. Photos You Should See – April 2026 Source link

New imaging uncovers hidden text in ancient Christian manuscript

New imaging uncovers hidden text in ancient Christian manuscript

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — An international research team has recovered 42 lost pages from Codex H, a sixth-century Greek New Testament manuscript of St. Paul’s letters, using multispectral imaging and carbon dating. The new discovery, led by Garrick Allen, a professor of divinity and biblical criticism at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, offers insight into how early Christians read and understood Scripture — and provides a point of connection for contemporary Christians. Monks annotated the letters of St. Paul with poems, prayers and reflections at the remote Great Lavra Monastery on Mount Athos in Greece. Codex H is also one of the earliest-known examples of the Euthalian Apparatus, a system of chapter lists and headings to organize Paul’s letters, relied on long before the chapter and verse system used today.  “We mark up our own Bibles or make annotations or think about the complexities of these texts that were part of a much longer tradition of people who have been doing this same activity for 2,000 years,” Allen told RNS in an interview Monday (April 27), …

CBS News Investigation Uncovers Massive Medicare Hospice Fraud In L.A. County

CBS News Investigation Uncovers Massive Medicare Hospice Fraud In L.A. County

Published by Jenni Sidey

Authored by Bryan Hyde via American Greatness, An investigation by CBS News has discovered massive Medicare fraud at more than 700 out of 1,800 licensed hospice providers in Los Angeles County. The scam utilizes stolen Medicare numbers to fraudulently enroll healthy seniors in hospice with fake terminal diagnoses, billing Medicare an average of $29,000 per patient without delivering care, to the tune of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. CALIFORNIA HOSPICE FRAUD: There’s a stretch in Los Angeles with 500 registered hospice companies within just three miles of each other. And 89 in a single building. But when we visited, we found empty offices, piled-up mail, and phone lines dead. Watch CBS News’ exclusive… pic.twitter.com/ydb8v0RqxE — CBS News (@CBSNews) March 10, 2026 About 31 percent of hospice and home health companies in the U.S. are registered in L.A. County but when investigators visited the addresses listed, they found no clinics, patients or healthcare workers. Instead they found multiple red flags, including multiple hospices in one building, high rates of terminally ill patients later discharged alive, excessive billing, …

DNA study uncovers continental origins of Britain’s bronze age population

DNA study uncovers continental origins of Britain’s bronze age population

Published by skeptic

When ancient DNA studies began to gain attention, little more than a decade ago, the view took hold among geneticists that everything we thought we knew about the peopling of Europe by modern humans was wrong. The story was simpler than anyone was expecting: Europe was settled in just three massive migrations from the east. First came the hunter-gatherers, more than 40,000 years ago. Then, after 9,000 years ago, there was an expansion of farming people from Anatolia during the Neolithic age. Finally, from 5,000 years ago, the Corded Ware people expanded out of the Russian steppe to inaugurate the European bronze age. The Corded Ware were named after the cord-like impressions in their pottery and carried a distinctive genetic signature previously absent from most of Europe. Genetically, most present-day Europeans have some of each. This was always an over-simplification, however. Our new paper, produced with colleagues from the US and across Europe, has highlighted some of the more complex interactions between ancient populations that took place in north-west Europe. Our research untangles the origins …

New study uncovers the formative conditions that made Io dry and Europa watery

New study uncovers the formative conditions that made Io dry and Europa watery

Published by Jenni Sidey

A moon can sit next door to another and still feel like a different world. Around Jupiter, that contrast shows up fast. Io looks scorched and bone-dry, yet it is the most volcanically active moon in the solar system. Europa, just one orbit farther out, wears a shell of ice and is thought to hide a global ocean of liquid water beneath it. A new international modeling study co-led by Aix-Marseille University and the Southwest Research Institute argues that this split did not emerge later. The difference was there from the start, baked into the materials each moon accreted as they formed around Jupiter. “Io and Europa are next-door neighbors orbiting Jupiter, yet they look like they come from completely different families,” said SwRI’s Dr. Olivier Mousis, second author of an Astrophysical Journal paper detailing these findings. “Our study shows that this contrast wasn’t written over time — it was already there at birth.” A new international study co-led by Aix-Marseille University and Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) reveals that the striking contrast in the water …

AI Tool Uncovers Hundreds of Hidden Cosmic Oddities in Hubble Data

AI Tool Uncovers Hundreds of Hidden Cosmic Oddities in Hubble Data

Published by Jenni Sidey

A team of astronomers based at the European Space Agency demonstrated how artificial intelligence technology will alter existing methods of locating rare astronomical phenomena within our galaxy, the Milky Way, and beyond. David O’Ryan and Pablo Gómez designed an artificial intelligence-assisted technique that can quickly sift through the huge number of images produced by several decades of observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. Using this technique, O’Ryan and Gómez discovered more than 1,300 previously unanticipated exotic stellar systems or other astronomical phenomena that had not been previously described in the scientific literature. Much of the research utilized the Hubble Legacy Archive (HLA), which over the past 35 years has collected vast amounts of space-based astronomical data from tens of thousands of distinct observing programs. In the HLA, there are close to 100 million so-called “cutouts,” or small sections of the night sky captured by Hubble. Each cutout may contain one distant galaxy or another extended astronomical object. A human being would take many lifetimes to review all of these cutouts visually. Archival observations provided by …

Simple test uncovers PFAS contamination on firefighter gear

Simple test uncovers PFAS contamination on firefighter gear

Published by skeptic

A new scientific study has revealed a hidden hazard lingering on firefighter gear long after flames are extinguished. Researchers from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine have identified cancer-linked ‘forever chemicals’ on every piece of protective equipment they examined, including breathing equipment designed to deliver clean air. The findings are raising urgent questions about long-term PFAS exposure risks within the fire service and highlighting a practical new way for departments to identify contamination before it becomes a lasting health threat. A silent threat embedded in protective equipment Firefighter gear is designed to withstand extreme heat and toxic smoke, but the latest findings show it may also harbour invisible contaminants. Using a simple wipe-based screening method, scientists detected per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) across all tested equipment, including turnout coats, pants, gloves, and even breathing apparatus masks. PFAS are synthetic chemicals prized for their heat resistance and durability. Those same qualities, however, make them persistent in the environment and the human body. Once deposited on firefighter gear, they can remain for extended periods, transferring …

A group of 8 artists lived in a mall for 4 years — this documentary uncovers their secret world

A group of 8 artists lived in a mall for 4 years — this documentary uncovers their secret world

Published by Sam Flores

While shopping malls have been hit with hard times due to the ease of online shopping, back around the turn of the 21st century, they were desirable places to go and hang out — so bustling and packed with people that, in 2003, a group of eight artists, led by Michael Townsend, got away with living in a secret apartment they built and furnished in the Providence Place mall in Providence, Rhode Island for four years. The terrific new documentary “Secret Mall Apartment,” directed by Jeremy Workman (“Lily Topples the World”) and produced by Jesse Eisenberg, chronicles this amazing true story, which is described by one interviewee in the film as a “work of art,” “performance art,” “trespassing” and “a prank.” Townsend, along with his seven coconspirators — whose names had not been divulged until this film was made — regroup for the first time in 17 years to describe why they did it, and how they went undetected for so long. “It seems like you shouldn’t be able to pull it off,” one artist stated, but Townsend and …