Independent Media

This week marks a turning point in the UK’s approach to violent porn. The government has announced it will make publishing or possessing pornographic depictions of strangulation or suffocation – often known as “choking” – illegal. This bold move could transform the porn that appears on porn sites and social media platforms.

Reports of sometimes deadly encounters with brown bears and Asiatic black bears are being reported almost daily ahead of hibernation season as the bears forage for food. They have been seen near schools, train stations, supermarkets and at a hot springs resort.

Since April, more than 100 people have been injured and at least 12 killed in bear attacks across Japan, according to Environment Ministry statistics at the end of October.

On an unseasonably warm day in June, hundreds of people holding Palestinian and Irish flags spilled over the sidewalks outside Westminster Magistrates Court in central London. The crowd had gathered in support of Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, the 27-year-old member of Irish-language hip-hop group Kneecap charged by the British government with a terror offence for holding up a flag from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah at a concert last year.

When the Trump administration gave Immigration and Customs Enforcement access to a massive database of information about Medicaid recipients in June 2025, privacy and medical justice advocates sounded the alarm. They warned that the move could trigger all kinds of public health and human rights harms.

But most people likely shrugged and moved on with their day. Why is that? It’s not that people don’t care. According to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 81% of American adults said they were concerned about how companies use their data, and 71% said they were concerned about how the government uses their data.

A new study provides evidence that negative attitudes toward sexually expressive people may apply to adults of all ages, rather than being a bias specifically aimed at older adults. The research also suggests that an individual’s sensitivity to disgust can influence these judgments differently depending on whether they are evaluating a man or a woman. The findings were published in The Journal of Sex Research.

A string of US-style lobby groups with deep ties to fossil fuels are “duping” unsuspecting members of the public by falsely claiming to represent “ordinary Australians”, one of the nation’s top misinformation experts has warned.

Professor Daniel Angus said the groups — including anti-Indigenous Voice group “Advance” — were operating sham fronts, falsely claiming to be “grassroots” movements when they were in fact run by vested interests.

“They present themselves as a genuine grassroots initiative, in order to gather those who think that they are a friendly group that is there for their interests,” he said.

“They can actually dupe or gather genuine grassroots involvement unwittingly.”

People who regularly use ayahuasca, a traditional Amazonian psychedelic drink, may have a fundamentally different way of relating to death. A new study published in the journal Psychopharmacology indicates that long-term ayahuasca users tend to show less fear, anxiety, and avoidance around death—and instead exhibit more acceptance. These effects appear to be driven not by spiritual beliefs or personality traits, but by a psychological attitude known as “impermanence acceptance.”

With turnout breaking recent records, voters flocked to the polls in early voting and on Election Day Tuesday. While some absentee and mail-in votes have yet to be counted and the Board of Elections will certify results later, initial counts by neighborhood show where New Yorkers showed up for Democrat Zohran Mamdani, Republican Curtis Sliwa and independent candidate Andrew Cuomo.

Dick Cheney, the former vice president and one of the key architects of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, died Monday at age 84. Cheney served six terms in Congress as Wyoming’s lone representative before serving as defense secretary under President George H.W. Bush, when he oversaw the first Gulf War and the bloody U.S. invasion of Panama that deposed former U.S. ally Manuel Noriega. From 1995 to 2000, Cheney served as chair and CEO of the oil services company Halliburton, before George W. Bush tapped him as his running mate. As vice president, Cheney was a leading proponent of invading and occupying Iraq, which killed hundreds of thousands of people and destabilized the entire region. Dick Cheney also steadfastly defended warantless mass surveillance programs and the use of torture against detainees of the so-called war on terror. We speak with The Nation’s John Nichols, author of multiple books about Cheney, who says the neoconservative leader had a “very destructive” impact on the world.

Teen Vogue staffers have taken to social media to share the news they've been laid off, just as Condé Nast announced the outlet will be "joining Vogue.com, a transition that's part of a broader push to expand the Vogue ecosystem."

Teen Vogue covered fashion and celebrity, but also took in-depth looks at politics and social justice issues. Their writers have tackled everything from climate change to political pressures on universities, celebrity style to Billie Eilish's recent comments about billionaires.

“May Day 2028 will be the defining moment of our generation,” United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain declared in a recent Jacobin essay.

That date — when the UAW’s contracts at the Big Three auto manufacturers are set to expire — has emerged as a target for the activists hoping to orchestrate a massive strike across industries in the United States, more commonly referred to as a general strike.

General strikes involve workers across multiple sectors shutting down production simultaneously. The strategy is simple, but effective: disrupt routine services until workers’ demands are met.

"Workers across Alberta have begun the process of organizing a general strike after the province legislated an end to the teacher’s strike using the notwithstanding clause, according to the Alberta Federation of Labour.

Teachers across the province were on strike from October 6 until the government passed Bill 2 early Tuesday morning, forcing teachers to be back in classrooms the next day. Teachers were calling for better pay, more per-student funding in public education and smaller class sizes.

“Although this legislation will end the strike and lift the lockout, it does not end the underfunding and deterioration of teaching and learning conditions—our schools will not be better for it,” the union wrote on their website."

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil — October 28, 2025, will be remembered as one of the saddest episodes in recent Brazilian history, especially for residents of the state of Rio de Janeiro. At least 121 people were killed in the deadliest police operation in the country’s history.

The International Space Station is one of the most remarkable achievements of the modern age. It is the largest, most complex, most expensive and most durable spacecraft ever built.

Its first modules were launched in 1998. The first crew to live on the International Space Station – an American and two Russians – entered it in 2000. Nov. 2, 2025, marks 25 years of continuous habitation by at least two people, and as many as 13 at one time. It is a singular example of international cooperation that has stood the test of time.

Two hundred and ninety people from 26 countries have now visited the space station, several of them staying for a year or more. More than 40% of all the humans who have ever been to space have been International Space Station visitors.

The station has been the locus of thousands of scientific and engineering studies using almost 200 distinct scientific facilities, investigating everything from astronomical phenomena and basic physics to crew health and plant growth. The phenomenon of space tourism was born on the space station. Altogether, astronauts have accumulated almost 127 person-years of experience on the station, and a deep understanding of what it takes to live in low Earth orbit.

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For centuries the supernatural, and Halloween in particular, have been contested territory. Folklorists have interpreted Halloween as a relic of pre-Christian Celtic beliefs, when the turn of the seasons was thought to weaken the membrane separating the living and the dead. Some Christian evangelicals, especially in the US, view it as a sinister and sinful celebration of the occult. There’s also the perennial complaint that it’s nothing more than a recent, brash American import.

None of these claims is quite true. There may once have been an ancient festival at this time of year, but the evidence is from centuries later and doesn’t support the assertions that any celebrations had a supernatural dimension. Evangelicals’ fear reveals more about their own brand of Christianity than about why Halloween has its ghoulish associations.

PARIS — Two more suspects were charged on Saturday in the Louvre jewel heist case, three days after their arrests. A total of four people are now being held and charged with stealing $100 million worth of royal jewels from the Paris museum two weeks ago.

The jewels are still missing.

The prosecutor said in a statement on Saturday that two of the five people who were arrested on Wednesday have been charged. One, a 37-year-old alleged to be part of the four-man team that police believe carried out the heist, has been charged with organized theft and criminal conspiracy. Prosecutor Laure Beccuau said he was already known to judicial authorities. The other, a 38-year-old woman, has been charged with complicity in preparing the crime.

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The first thing most people recall about Nathan Gill is his imposing height.

At 193cm (6ft 4in), the one-time Reform UK leader in Wales towered over colleagues and opponents – and he was taller still in his favourite cowboy boots.

Other than that, the softly-spoken 52-year-old was a largely unremarkable presence among the more colourful characters in Nigel Farage’s parties.

Until recently, political profiles have dwelt on Gill’s politically quirky status: the teetotal member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who bore Ukip’s flag in the Senedd, even if opponents charged that he was often absent.

Yet his legacy is now a very different and disturbing one. This month he will be sentenced at the Old Bailey after pleading guilty to taking bribes to make statements in favour of Russia during his tenure as a member of the European parliament.

The Trump administration’s upcoming proposed regulation would make two hugely consequential changes to the Social Security Administration’s disability system, according to four SSA officials with knowledge of the plans. First, it would modernize the job listings that Social Security’s disability adjudicators and judges use to decide if there’s work available in the U.S. economy that a manual laborer could do despite physical impairments — like a low-skilled desk job at a computer or driving for Uber or DoorDash. Second, the new rule would almost entirely remove age as a criterion, in most instances making a 50-plus-year-old like Tincher no more eligible for assistance than a 20-something.

Dictionary.com has crowned a set of numbers as its 2025 word of the year.

It says it reserves that distinction for a word that reflects "social trends and global events that defined that year" and "reveals the stories we tell about ourselves and how we've changed over the year." The word of the year is both viral vernacular and a linguistic time capsule (last year's, for example, was "demure").

This year, that honor goes to "67" — pronounced "six seven" — a slang term that's been delighting kids, exasperating teachers and befuddling adults for months.

It has its roots in the song "Doot Doot (6 7)", which Philadelphia-based rapper Skrilla released last December.

Like haunted houses? Scientists do.

That's because they're an excellent place to study how humans respond to — and actively seek out — fear.

"Typically when we study things in the lab, we're exposing people to these repeated, low-intensity experiences. And that's not really the way we experience threat in the real world," says neuroscientist Sarah Tashjian, head of the Affective Neuroscience and Development Lab at the University of Melbourne. "Haunted houses have a benefit in that they're these really immersive experiences that have all of these sensations going on at the same time … so they're closer to what we might experience in the real world."

As Pax Americana ends, a multipolar order is emerging. The history of Southeast Asia holds lessons for what’s to come.

The liberal international order or Pax Americana, the world order built by the United States after the Second World War, is coming to an end. Not surprisingly, this has led to fears of disorder and chaos and, even worse, impending Chinese hegemony or Pax Sinica. Importantly, this mode of thinking that envisages the necessity of a dominant or hegemonic power underwriting global stability was developed by 20th-century US scholars of international relations, and is known as the hegemonic stability theory (HST).

Approximately 460 patients and their companions were killed in a horrific massacre at a hospital in el-Fasher, Sudan, on Tuesday, the UN reports, amid a takeover of the North Darfur capital by Rapid Support Forces (RSF) this week.

The casualties are among the 2,000 people estimated by Sudanese officials to have been killed since the paramilitary group’s takeover of the city on Sunday.

The Blackfeet Nation in Montana is preparing to feed the people during the government shutdown by distributing buffalo meat and organizing an elk hunt. In Rapid City, South Dakota, Lakota are organizing mutual aid. In North Dakota, the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Nation is keeping all its food programs going, with hot meals and bagged lunches, and making sure children, elderly and college students don't go hungry. On the west coast, an Indigenous restaurant owned by Crystal Wahpepah, Kickapoo, is serving up free bison tacos for young ones and elders in Oakland, California.

Slung across Chenab river canyon, the Chenab bridge is by all accounts considered a modern engineering marvel. Two decades in the making, it is at once a post-card moment, a monument to ingenuity, and a symbol of progress—everything one would expect from the biggest, strongest, best, and most challenging project for Indian Railways since 1947.