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Tan Eng Hong's voice wavers as he remembers his 12-year struggle against Section 377A, a law that criminalizes sex between men in Singapore. When he heard the announcement this month that the law would finally be repealed, he felt relief. "I thought I would die before I could hear this", he says. Thank god, that he is alive to witness such a landmark moment. It was in 2010 that Tan Eng Hong experienced one of the most difficult episodes in his life. He was arrested by police for having oral sex with a consenting adult man in a locked toilet cubicle at a mall in downtown Singapore after staff at a nearby restaurant reportedly called police.  Tan, then 47, was handcuffed, his bags were searched, and he was taken into custody. "My whole body was paralyzed. I was wondering how I was going to carry on," he says. Full article:  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/31/i-thought-i-would-die-before-this-moment-one-mans-fight-against-singapores-gay-sex-law

The first two patients to undergo experimental brain surgery for binge eating disorder say that one year later, they feel more in control of what they eat and have fewer cravings. "I am fully aware of my cravings", Robyn Baldwin, 58, of Citrus Heights, California, told NBC News. "Sometimes, I can just stop, take a breath, and say, 'Nope'". Baldwin, along with Lean Tolly, 48, of Elk Grove, California, underwent the surgery after failing to respond to other treatments for binge eating disorder. It is the first time deep brain stimulation has been used to treat binge eating disorder. In the study, surgeons implanted a device that learned to detect when the patient had a craving to binge eat, and then deliver a small zap to the brain to lessen the craving. Full article:  https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/experimental-brain-surgery-quelled-cravings-people-binge-eating-disord-rcna45245

  Scientists are using machine learning to eavesdrop on naked mole rats, fruit bats, crows, and whales and to communicate back. The naked mole rat may not be much to look at, but it has much to say. The wrinkled, whiskered rodents, which live, like many ants do, in large, underground colonies, have an elaborate vocal repertoire. They whistle, trill, and twitter; grunt, hiccup, and hiss. And when two of the voluble rats meet in the dark tunnel, they exchange a standard salutation. "They'll make a soft chirp, and then a repeating soft chirp", said Alison Barker, a neuroscientist at Max Planck Institute of Brain Research, in Germany. "They have a little conversation".  Hidden in this everyday exchange is a wealth of social information, Dr. Barker and her colleagues discovered when they used machine-learning algorithms to analyze 36,000 soft chirps recorded in seven mole rat colonies. Not only did each mole rat have its own vocal signature, but each colony had its o...

  Another Saudi Arabian woman has been sentenced to decades in prison by the kingdom's terrorism court for using social media to "violate the public order", according to court documents seen by a human rights group. Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani was sentenced to 45 years in prison after a specialized criminal court convicted her of "using the internet to tear Saudi Arabia's social fabric", according to documents that were obtained and reviewed by Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn), an organization founded by Jamal Khashoggi. Full article:  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/30/saudi-woman-given-jail-sentence-for-social-media-use-says-human-rights-group   

The last remaining member of an uncontacted indigenous group in Brazil has died, officials say. The man, whose name was not known, had lived in total isolation for the past 26 years.  He was known as "Man of the Hole" because he dug deep holes, some of which he used to trap animals, while others appeared to be hiding spaces. His body was found on 23 August in a hammock outside his straw hut. There were no signs of violence. The man was the last of an indigenous group whose other remaining six members were killed in 1995. The group lived in the Tanaru indigenous area in the state of Rondônia, which borders Bolivia.  Most of his tribe were thought to have been killed as early as the 1970s by ranchers wanting to expand their land. The "Man of the Hole" is thought to have been about 60 years old and to have died of natural causes.  There were no signs of any incursions in his territory and nothing in his hut had been disturbed, officials said, but police will still carr...

T-38 planes, a fixture of astronaut training at Nasa, fly over the SLS on launchpad 39B at Kennedy The American space agency is counting down to the lift-off of its giant new Moon rocket - the Space Launch System.  SLS is the most powerful vehicle ever developed by NASA and will be the foundation of its Artemis project, which aims to put people back on the lunar surface after a 50-year absence. Its job will be to propel a test capsule, called Orion, far from Earth. This spacecraft will loop around the Moon on a big arc before returning home to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean in six weeks. Orion is uncrewed for this demonstration, but assuming all the hardware works as it should, astronauts will climb aboard for a future series of ever more complex missions, starting in 2024. "Everything we're doing with this Artemis I flight, we're looking at through the lens of what can we prove out and what can we demonstrate that will buy down risk for the Artemis II crewed mission,...