Hurricane Erick has intensified into a Category 3 major hurricane threatening approaching southern Mexico’s coast with destructive winds and heavy rain, the U.S. Hurricane Center said Wednesday evening.

The Miami-based center warned Erick has maximum sustained winds of 120 mph (195 kph) after hours of rapid intensification, strengthening from a Category 1 storm earlier in the day.

The cyclone is in the eastern Pacific about 55 miles (90 kilometers) south-southwest of Puerto Angel in Mexico. It’s also about 160 miles (260 kilometers) southeast of Punta Maldonado and moving northwest at 9 mph (15 kph), the latest hurricane center advisory said.

Why are immigrants leaving Germany? A new study shows that other countries are more attractive to economically successful foreigners. Discrimination also plays a major role.

The German economy is weakening — and yet many sectors desperately need skilled workers, including the medical professions, especially nursing, as well as IT, and construction.

Germany also has a shortage of educators, cooks, and people who can drive trucks and buses. At the end of 2024, there were around 1.4 million unfilled positions in German companies nationwide.

At the same time, more and more immigrants are coming to Germany to work. In 2024, the proportion of foreign employees was just over 16%. It has more than doubled since 2010. Employment in medical professions is disproportionately high. More than one in six doctors is a foreign citizen. In nursing, employment growth since 2022 has been exclusively attributable to foreign personnel. Currently, one in five workers in this sector is an immigrant.

Applicants will be vetted for “any indications of hostility towards the citizens, culture, government, institutions or founding principles of the United States.”

Prisons have become a fragile link in many criminal justice systems, weakened by over-incarceration, overcrowding, poor conditions and chronic neglect – fuelling calls for urgent reform.

A decade ago, the UN General Assembly adopted the Nelson Mandela Rules — a set of 122 guidelines setting minimum standards for the treatment of prisoners, inspired by one of the world’s most influential former political prisoners – the South African civil rights icon, Nelson Mandela.

These rules aim to ensure safety, security and respect for human dignity, offering clear benchmarks for prison staff.

Despite this, prison systems worldwide continue to face deep-rooted challenges. The General Assembly convened on Friday to discuss how to better protect societies from crime by focusing on rehabilitation and preparing inmates for life after prison.

Brazil auctioned off several land and offshore potential oil sites near the Amazon River on Tuesday as it aims to expand production in untapped regions despite protests from environmental and Indigenous groups.

The event came months before Brazil is to host the U.N.’s first climate talks held in the Amazon. The protesters outside Tuesday’s venue warned of potential risks that oil drilling poses to sensitive ecosystems and Indigenous communities in the Amazon.

Nineteen offshore blocks were awarded to Chevron, ExxonMobil, Petrobras and CNPC. The oil companies see the area as highly promising because it shares geological characteristics with Guyana, where some of the largest offshore oil discoveries of the 21st century have been made.

A 20-year-old man has been arrested in Germany on suspicion of engaging in an online campaign of cybergrooming and virtual sexual abuse of children, including pressuring a 13-year-old American boy to kill himself and livestream the act, authorities said Wednesday.

The German-Iranian man was arrested Tuesday. The man, whose name was not made public in line with German privacy rules, was taken into custody at his parents’ apartment in the northern city of Hamburg. Prosecutors have yet to decide whether to bring formal charges. He denied wrongdoing in a closed-doors appearance before a judge, authorities said.

“The acts exceed human imagination,” Hamburg Attorney General Jörg Fröhlich said at a news conference Wednesday, German news agency dpa reported.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/36967473

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/36967472

Until now, we only had fragments of these cousins. Now we have face. Studying our evolutionary development and our sister-species is one of my favorite aspects of archeology. We’re constantly developing new information.

Side note: look up the initial presentation of Homo naledi. The leading archeologist did a phenomenal talk a couple of years ago (I think in December). It was really an exciting presentation. But I’m also pretty nerdy.

Unlike Iran, Israel is already a nuclear state, with a secretive programme that dates back to the 1950s

She dreamed of seeing the band Coldplay live in concert. She loved trying new foods and was learning Italian. She wrote poetry constantly and shared it with friends and family. She was so proud of having summited Iran’s highest peak, Mount Damavand, that she made sure to mention that fact to everyone she met.

Early Friday morning, as they slept, Parnia Abbasi and her family were killed by an Israeli strike on their apartment building in the Sattarkhan neighborhood of Tehran, among the first civilian deaths in a sustained assault that does not yet show signs of stopping.

Israel appeared to have been targeting a professor at Shahid Beheshti University, Iranian media reported. Pictures of the Abbasis’ building shared online appeared to match those of Abdolhamid Minouchehr, head of the nuclear engineering faculty at the university. The Israel Defense Forces declined to comment on Abbasi’s death but confirmed in a statement that the military had targeted and “eliminated” Minouchehr, whom it described as an expert on reactor physics.

North Korea will send thousands of workers to help rebuild Russia's war-torn Kursk region, Moscow's security chief has said.

Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu, who held talks with North Korea's Kim Jong Un in its capital Pyongyang on Tuesday, described the deployment as "fraternal assistance", Russian state media reported.

Neighbouring South Korea and Japan were quick to condemn the plan, with Seoul saying it was a violation of UN sanctions on the North.

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Research shows that immigrants tend to bring their prejudices with them, adopting the anti-immigrant sentiments of their new hosts. Middle-class immigrants may fear a loss of status. Others simply seek to distinguish themselves from a stigmatised group.

A civil society report by the organization Claim documented more than 3,000 anti-Muslim incidents in Germany in 2024.

The report links the surge to geopolitical events and warns of growing normalization and brutality in anti-Muslim racism.

Honda says growing expectations of a "data system in outer space" are going to increase the demand for rockets to launch satellites. So, the Japanese automaker quietly built one and tested it successfully.

Japan's second-largest carmaker, Honda, has successfully tested an experimental reusable space rocket on the nothern Japanese island of Hokkaido, the company said in a surprise announcement.

"The test was completed successfully, the first time Honda landed a rocket after reaching an altitude of nearly 300 meters (1,000 feet)," the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

The carmaker aims to achieve suborbital space flight in 2029. In 2021, Honda said it was studying space technologies such as reusable rockets but made no announcements prior to Tuesday's test