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After escaping North Korea twice, being imprisoned in China, and tortured by the regimes, Timothy Cho is running for the Conservative council seat in Stockport, Greater Manchester.

The decision has been made amid an ongoing police investigation

A video shows the boy's family leaping into action to fend off the aggressive rodent and throwing it several feet through the air back into the water.

A small study found that a single 25mg dose of psilocybin produced measurable brain changes that were still visible a month later, along with reported improvements in psychological insight, wellbeing, and mental flexibility. The Guardian reports: Evidence for the changes came from specialized scans that measured the diffusion of water along nerve bundles in the brain. They suggested that some nerve tracts had become denser and more robust after the drug was taken. While the findings are preliminary, the scientists said the opposite was seen in ageing and dementia. "It's remarkable to see potential anatomical brain changes one month after a single dose of any drug," said Prof Robin Carhart-Harris, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and senior author on the study. "We don't yet know what these changes mean, but we do note that overall, people showed positive psychological changes in this study, including improved wellbeing and mental flexibility." [...] Writing in Nature Communications, the researchers describe another key finding. Those who had the largest spike in brain entropy after psilocybin were most likely to report deeper psychological insight and better wellbeing a month later, underlining the link between flexible thinking and improved mental health. "It suggests a psychobiological therapeutic action for psilocybin," said Carhart-Harris. Prof Alex Kwan, a neuroscientist at Cornell University in New York, said studies in mice had shown that psychedelics can rewire connections between nerves, a form of "plasticity" that could underlie their therapeutic effects. The big question is whether the same occurs in humans. "This study comes closer than most to addressing that question, by giving evidence of lasting changes in brain structure after psychedelic use," he said. But while the results were "exciting," the study involved a small number of people and DTI provides an indirect and limited view of brain connections, he said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Britto Lorence, 27, was seen to be exposing himself and carrying out a sexual act in full view of the young mother, who alerted cabin crew to his actions.

Russell F (previously) sends us a small one today. It's not just a representative line, it's a representative comment. More than that, it's a true confession. Russell wrote some code, you see, and the logic was confusing. So, a co-worker added a comment to explain what the code was doing:

'This is *supposed* to fail. If it fails to fail, it throws a failure message

Russell writes:

I have to confess that this one is my fault. The comment was added by one of my coworkers to clarify what I was doing, and made me realize how stupid I'd been.

"Failing to plan is planning to fail" becomes "failing to fail is failure message".

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Bonnie Tyler has undergone emergency bowel surgery after being rushed to hospital in Portugal, the Daily Mail can reveal.

Zoe Garbett, who was elected a member of the London Assembly in 2024, said she 'could not support' the proposed letter from City Hall to the Metropolitan Police .

It's just in time for the weekend!

Former bitcoin miner plans to build an easier cloudy AI on ramp while remaining a friend to FOSS

I am a retired expat living in Thailand. In early 2020, I booked return flights back to London to visit my elderly parents in April 2020. They never took off.

Sam Altman's management style came under scrutiny on the seventh day of Elon Musk's high-stakes OpenAI trial, as former OpenAI figures Mira Murati, Shivon Zilis, and Helen Toner took the stand to testify about their experiences working with him. Their testimony resurfaced many of the criticisms that first emerged during Altman's brief ouster as CEO in 2023. An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: The first witness was Mira Murati, OpenAI's former chief technology officer and now founder of her own AI shop, Thinking Machines Lab. Jurors watched a recorded video deposition of Murati, who was also OpenAI's interim CEO after the board briefly ousted Sam Altman. Murati's testimony focused on her concerns about Altman's "difficult and chaotic" management style. She said Altman had trouble "making decisions on big controversial things." He also had a habit of telling people what they wanted to hear. "My concern was about Sam saying one thing to one person and a completely different thing to another person, and that makes it a very difficult and chaotic environment to work with," said Murati. Murati said that her issue with Altman was not about safety, "it is about Sam creating chaos." She said she supported Altman's return to OpenAI because the company "was at catastrophic risk of falling apart" at the time of his ousting. "I was concerned about the company completely blowing up." Zilis said she was upset that Altman rolled out ChatGPT without involving the board. "It wasn't just me but the entire board raised concern about that whole thing happening without any board communication," she said. Zilis said she was also concerned about a potential OpenAI deal with a nuclear energy startup called Helion Energy because both Altman and Greg Brockman were investors. Although the executives had disclosed the investment to the board, Zilis said the deal talk made her uneasy. It "felt super out of left field," she said. "How is it the case that we want to place a major bet on a speculative technology?" In a video deposition, Helen Toner, a former member of OpenAI's board who resigned in 2023, said she first became aware of ChatGPT's release when an OpenAI employee asked another board member whether the board was aware of the development. [...] Toner also elaborated on why the board, including herself, voted to remove Altman as CEO in 2023. "There were a number of things -- the pattern of behavior related to his honesty and candor, his resistance of board oversight, as well as the concerns that two os his inner management team raised to the board about his management practices, his manipulation of board processes," said Toner. Recap: Brockman Rebuts Musk's Take On Startup's History, Recounts Secret Work For Tesla (Day Six) OpenAI President Discloses His Stake In the Company Is Worth $30 Billion (Day Five) Musk Concludes Testimony At OpenAI Trial (Day Four) Elon Musk Says OpenAI Betrayed Him, Clashes With Company's Attorney (Day Three) Musk Testifies OpenAI Was Created As Nonprofit To Counter Google (Day Two) Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Head To Court (Day One)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As Amandaland returned for a second series, anything less than comic excellence was bound to be a disappointment.

Soldiers from The King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery saved a Mallard duck and her six ducklings which had waddled too close towards an impending gun salute in Hyde Park, London.

Voters will cast their ballots on from 7am in elections that could reshape the political landscape across the county.

Voters will cast their ballots on from 7am in elections that could reshape the political landscape across the county.

The reality TV star, 28, and the actor, 30, packed on the PDA during their date at Madison Square Garden, despite her fans recently accusing him of ditching her at the Met Gala.

Robert Littlepage, 18, was arrested after he allegedly tried to carjack a woman, then stole a white truck and struck multiple vehicles before crashing into a playground.

Someone other than Meta is buying $1bn of its new AGI chips

Sir Tim said that banning the early morning travel ritual that so many Britons follow could lead to passengers being breathalysed before flying.