A U.S. study suggests 1 in 10 people are getting long COVID after an omicron infection, a lower estimate than earlier in the pandemic

There are many reasons to love video games. From Final Fantasy's sweeping adventures to Super

U.S. health regulators have given full approval to Pfizer’s COVID-19 pill Paxlovid

As the world mourns the loss of music icon Tina Turner, one of "The Best" singer's most famous friends, Oprah Winfrey, shared a moving tribute on her verified social media.

The state of South Carolina has outlawed abortion at roughly six weeks of pregnancy, extending the sweeping restrictions and outright bans on abortion care across the entire US South, and threatening legal access to care for millions of Americans. Republican Governor Henry McMaster signed legislation into law on 25 May after the bill’s final passage earlier this week. It goes into effect immediately. Republican lawmakers in neighbouring North Carolina recently voted to override the Democratic governor’s veto of a bill outlawing abortion at 12 weeks of pregnancy, restricting abortion access in a state that has been a haven for abortion care in the year after the US Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe v Wade. More than a dozen states, mostly in the South, have outlawed most abortions or severely restricted access within the year after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which revoked a constitutional right to abortion care that was affirmed for nearly half a century. Abortion rights restrictions in North Carolina and a six-week ban in South Carolina dramatically change the map for abortion access in the US, where abortions are banned in most cases from Texas to West Virginia and along the Gulf Coast, making legal access to care out of reach altogether across the Deep South. Abortion rights advocates and civil rights groups have filed a lawsuit to challenge South Carolina’s law in court. The lawsuit comes just four months after the state’s Supreme Court permanently struck down a nearly identical law, which the court determined ran afoul of the state’s constitution. Restrictions on abortion care “must be reasonable and it must be meaningful in that the time frames imposed must afford a woman sufficient time to determine she is pregnant and to take reasonable steps to terminate that pregnancy,” Justice Kaye Hearn wrote in the majority opinion on 5 January. “Six weeks is, quite simply, not a reasonable period of time for these two things to occur,” the judge added. Jenny Black, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, said in a statement that South Carolina lawmakers “have once again trampled on our right to make private health care decisions, ignoring warnings from health care providers and precedent set by the state’s highest court just a few months ago.” “The decision of if, when, and how to have a child is deeply personal, and politicians making that decision for anyone else is government overreach of the highest order,” she added. “We will always fight for our patients’ ability to make their own decisions about their bodies and access the health care they need. We urge the court to take swift action to block this dangerous ban on abortion.” Governor McMcaster has pledged to defend the law in court. “We stand ready to defend this legislation against any challenges and are confident we will succeed,” he said in a statement. “The right to life must be preserved, and we will do everything we can to protect it.” Read More Mother forced to give birth to stillborn son joins lawsuit against Texas abortion ban Senator who voted for anti-trans bill that passed by one vote admits she wasn’t paying attention Twitter's launch of DeSantis' presidential bid underscores platform's rightward shift under Musk Timeline: How Georgia and South Carolina nuclear reactors ran so far off course Georgia nuclear rebirth arrives 7 years late, $17B over cost

Saturn’s rings might disappear pretty soon astronomically speaking, according to new research. A new analysis of data captured by NASA’s Cassini mission, which orbited the planet between 2004 and 2017, has revealed new insights into when the seven rings were formed and how long they might last. During Cassini’s Grand Finale, when the spacecraft completed 22 orbits in which it passed between Saturn and its rings, the researchers observed that the rings were losing many tons of mass per second, which means the rings will only be around another few hundred million years at most. “We have shown that massive rings like Saturn’s do not last long,” said Paul Estrada, research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, and a coauthor of the studies, in a statement. “One can speculate that the relatively puny rings around the other ice and gas giants in our solar system are leftover remnants of rings that were once massive like Saturn’s. Maybe some time in the not-so-distant future, astronomically speaking, after Saturn’s rings are ground down, they will look more like the sparse rings of Uranus.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Saturn’s rings are made mostly of ice but have a small amount of rocky dust created by broken asteroid fragments and micrometeoroids colliding with the rings. The research also found that the rings appeared long after Saturn’s initial formation, and were still forming when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. “Our inescapable conclusion is that Saturn’s rings must be relatively young by astronomical standards, just a few hundred million years old,” said Richard Durisen, professor emeritus of astronomy at Indiana University Bloomington and lead author of the studies in a statement. “If you look at Saturn’s satellite system, there are other hints that something dramatic happened there in the last few hundred million years. If Saturn’s rings are not as old as the planet, that means something happened in order to form their incredible structure, and that is very exciting to study.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Regulators in the US and Europe are waking up to the mounting clothing waste problem that’s clogging local

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South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster on Thursday signed a bill into law that will limit most abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.

Earth has received the first ever ‘alien message’ after a simulation of what extraterrestrial contact could look like was sent out by scientists. The SETI Institute produced the simulation of a radio wave from a Mars orbiter and gave hint of how alien contact would be received. The exercise was conducted to prepare experts for the “profoundly transformational experience for all humankind”. The signal was successfully decoded after taking just 16 minutes to travel through space and be picked up by telescopes on Earth. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter It all took place as part of the A Sign in Space project led by Daniela dePaulis, who said during the live-streamed event: “It was very real. This is not the first time we have received a signal from TGO [ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter], but this one is a real message.” The signal had to be decoded, as it couldn’t be heard on Earth without being altered. Victoria Catlett is the GBO software engineer and she explained: “A radio signal is not inherently sound, but a light wave. “When we receive it with something like a car radio, that light wave gets translated into the up and down movement in the speaker - and that is what you hear.” Of course, there’s no evidence that aliens exist at this point, but it’s good to know that we’re prepared. It comes after it was revealed that aliens could be mapping out the planet via the signals mobiles are emitting. It’s all to do with the radio transmission towers which are key to millions of people communicating around the world. These towers are constantly pumping out microwave signals as we call and message one another, and they’re found across a huge area of the Earth’s surface. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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