• 15-point plan: President Donald Trump said Iran has agreed to “most of” the 15-point list of demands from the US to end the war. He added he’s still considering whether to seize key fuel hub Kharg Island, and claimed there has been “regime change” in Iran.
  
  
• US troops:  Iran’s parliament speaker accused the US of “secretly planning a ground invasion” while talking of negotiations. The USS Tripoli — carrying 3,500 US service members — has arrived in the Middle East.
  
  
• Wartime diplomacy:  Pakistan said it is prepared to host talks between the US and Iran “in coming days,” after meeting with regional leaders in Islamabad to discuss efforts on de-escalating the conflict.
  
  
• and more on CNN. 
  

Quote:A new pope has taken the helm of the Catholic Church, after being elected in a two-day conclave in Vatican City.

Crowds of faithful erupted into cheers as Robert Prevost, 69, appeared at the balcony overlooking St Peter's Square for the first time.

He will now be known as Pope Leo XIV, and is the first American to be elected to the role.

"May peace be with all of you," he said to the crowds below.

Quote:Robert Francis Prevost, 69, will be the 267th occupant of the throne of St Peter and he will be known as Leo XIV.

 

He is the first American to fill the role of pope, although he is considered as much a cardinal from Latin America because of the many years he spent as a missionary in Peru.


Born in Chicago in 1955 to parents of Spanish and Franco-Italian descent, Prevost served as an altar boy and was ordained in 1982.


Although he moved to Peru three years later, he returned regularly to the US to serve as a pastor and a prior in his home city.


He has Peruvian nationality and is fondly remembered as a figure who worked with marginalized communities and helped build bridges.


He spent 10 years as a local parish pastor and as a teacher at a seminary in Trujillo in north-western Peru.


In 2014, Pope Francis made him Bishop of Chiclayo in Peru. He is well known to cardinals because of his high-profile role as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops in Latin America which has the important task of selecting and supervising bishops.


He became archbishop in January 2023 and within a few months Francis made him a cardinal.

Quote:Romulus and Remus are doing what puppies do: chasing, tussling, nipping, nuzzling. But there's something very un-puppy like about the snowy white 6-month olds their size, for starters. At their young age they already measure nearly 4 ft. long, tip the scales at 80 lb., and could grow to 6 ft. and 150 lb. Then there's their behavior: the angelic exuberance puppies exhibit in the presence of humans trotting up for hugs, belly rubs, kisses is completely absent. They keep their distance, retreating if a person approaches. Even one of the handlers who raised them from birth can get only so close before Romulus and Remus flinch and retreat. This isn't domestic canine behavior, this is wild lupine behavior: the pups are wolves. Not only that, they're dire wolves which means they have cause to be lonely.

The dire wolf once roamed an American range that extended as far south as Venezuela and as far north as Canada, but not a single one has been seen in over 10,000 years, when the species went extinct. Plenty of dire wolf remains have been discovered across the Americas, however, and that presented an opportunity for a company named Colossal Biosciences.

Relying on deft genetic engineering and ancient, preserved DNA, Colossal scientists deciphered the dire wolf genome, rewrote the genetic code of the common gray wolf to match it, and, using domestic dogs as surrogate mothers, brought Romulus, Remus, and their sister, 2-month-old Khaleesi, into the world during three separate births last fall and this winter effectively for the first time de-extincting a line of beasts whose live gene pool long ago vanished. TIME met the males (Khaleesi was not present due to her young age) at a fenced field in a U.S. wildlife facility on March 24, on the condition that their location remain a secret to protect the animals from prying eyes.
 

The dire wolf isn't the only animal that Colossal, which was founded in 2021 and currently employs 130 scientists, wants to bring back. Also on their de-extinction wish list is the woolly mammoth, the dodo, and the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger. Already, in March, the company surprised the science community with the news that it had copied mammoth DNA to create a woolly mouse, a chimeric critter with the long, golden coat and the accelerated fat metabolism of the mammoth.

If all this seems to smack of a P.T. Barnum, the company has a reply. Colossal claims that the same techniques it uses to summon back species from the dead could prevent existing but endangered animals from slipping into extinction themselves. What they learn restoring the mammoth, they say, could help them engineer more robust elephants that can better survive the climatic ravages of a warming world. Bring back the thylacine and you might help preserve the related marsupial known as the quoll. Techniques learned restoring the dire wolf can similarly be used to support the endangered red wolf.

"We are an evolutionary force at this point, says Beth Shapiro, Colossal's chief science officer, speaking of humanity as a whole. We are deciding what the future of these species will be. The Center for Biological Diversity suggests that 30% of the planet's genetic diversity will be lost by 2050, and Shapiro and Colossal CEO Ben Lamm insist that genetic engineering is a vital tool to reverse this. Company executives often frame the technology not just as a moral good, but a moral imperative a way for humans, who have driven so many species to the brink of extinction, to get square with nature. If we want a future that is both bionumerous and filled with people, Shapiro says, we should be giving ourselves the opportunity to see what our big brains can do to reverse some of the bad things that we've done to the world already."
 

The woolly mouse, to a minor extent, and the dire wolves, to a scientifically seismic one, are first steps in that direction. But not everyone agrees. Scientific history is rife with examples of newly introduced species becoming invasive species the doctrine of unintended consequences biting humans when we played too cute with other animals. An exotic pet escapes and multiplies, decimating native species. A toad brought in to kill off beetles ends up killing off the marsupials that eat the toads. And genetic engineering is still a nascent field. Nearly 30 years after Dolly the sheep was cloned, the technology still produces problems in cloned animals, such as large birth size, organ defects, premature aging, and immune-system problems. What's more, cloning can be hard on the surrogate mother that gestates the cloned embryo.

"There's a risk of death. There's a risk of side effects that are severe, says Robert Klitzman, professor of psychiatry and director of the bioethics master's program at Columbia University. There's a lot of suffering involved in that. There are going to be miscarriages."

Dependence on AI weakens critical thinking...

Quote:-Article 1-

Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University published research that says AI is causing the deterioration of cognitive faculties. The study involved 319 people who use AI tools at work at least once per week The survey-based study opens the door to deeper research into AI side effects Brain rot is usually associated with endless doom scrolling of low-quality online content, but a new Microsoft Research study suggests that overusing AI might be causing the deterioration of cognitive faculties. Oh no.

It found that while GenAI can improve worker efficiency, it can inhibit critical engagement with work and can potentially lead to long-term overreliance on the tool and diminished skill for independent problem-solving. The study added that people's jobs are becoming less about solving problems and more about making sure the AI has correctly solved the problem morphing our work from task execution to task stewardship which led people to feel like their ability to think critically isn't as sharp as it was before they started using AI.

Quote:-Article 2-

A survey of workers who use AI has revealed the tools could be slowly impairing our critical thinking skills. Artificial intelligence (AI) could be eroding its users critical thinking skills and making them dumber, a new study has warned. The research a survey of workers in business, education, arts, administration and computing carried out by Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University found that those who most trusted the accuracy of AI assistants thought less critically about those tools conclusions.

On its own, this isn't really that surprising, but it does reveal a trap lurking within AI is growing presence in our lives: As machine learning tools win more trust, they could produce dangerous content that slips by unnoticed. The researchers will present their findings at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems later this month, and have published a paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, on the Microsoft website.

Quote:Saudi Arabia has approved granting Saudi citizenship to scientists, doctors, researchers, entrepreneurs, and other individuals with rare skills, experience, and specializations.

According to a royal decree, the kingdom has offered citizenship to talented individuals in medical, scientific, cultural, sports, and technical fields to achieve its goals. The initiative is part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 programme to create an attractive environment for investing in human capital and attracting skilled labour.

This move is expected to help bolster the kingdom’s economic, health, cultural, sports, and innovation sectors by bringing in prominent experts and specialists.

In December 2021, Saudi leadership approved a similar initiative, granting citizenship to prominent individuals in these fields. This ongoing effort has underscored the kingdom’s commitment to enhancing its development across various sectors by leveraging global expertise.

1. Open Google Drive and sign in to your Google account.
   
2. Upload the large file to Drive.
   
3. Open Gmail and sign in to your account.
   
4. Click Compose to start writing a new email.
   
5. At the bottom of the window, you will see a Google Drive icon near the emoji icon; click that.
   
6. Find the large file and click the blue Insert button at the bottom left of the attachment window.
   
7. Now that your file is attached, compose your email and hit Send.
   

1. Again, upload the large file to Drive and log into your Gmail account.
   
2. Tap Compose to start writing a new email.
   
3. Tap Attach at the top right of your screen.
   
4. Choose Insert from Drive. ( If you are an iPhone user, simply choose the file from the Drive menu that you will see at this stage.)
   
5. Find the file and tap Select.
   
6. Complete your email and hit Send.
   

• How to use Google Take Me Home: Explained
  
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• Enabling or Disabling the On-Screen Keyboard on Chromebook: A Step-by-Step Guide
  

• Open Source.
  
• No advertisement or JavaScript.
  
• Requests go through the Nitter backend, no direct contact between client and Twitter.
  
• Support for RSS feeds.
  

Quote:Lunar New Year is a public holiday in several countries in East Asia.
Chinese Lunar Year begins at sunset on the day of the second New Moon following the winter solstice (21st December). This means the New Year can begin anytime from January 21st through to February 21st.