And Finally...

The Satanic Temple is once again announcing plans for the Sooner State after a bill was sent to the governor’s desk which could allow students to receive class credits for religious and moral instruction off school campuses.

House Bill 1425 would force school districts to adopt a policy which allows students to go off-campus to attend a religious or moral instruction course taught by an independent entity. The student would be allowed to miss up to three class periods per week to attend such a course.

Instructors of these courses would not need to be licensed or certified teachers.

...

In response to the bill being one step away from becoming the state’s newest law, The Satanic Temple is highlighting their own learning academy that Oklahoma students could use to possibly earn school credit.

In a post on social media, the religious group stated their Hellion Academy of Independent Learning (HAIL) could soon be available for Oklahoma students.

“The Satanic Temple believes that public schools should be free from religious influence,” the post said. “We are, however, prepared to ensure our members’ children receive the same opportunities as those participating in other religion’s programs. By not vetoing HB 1425, Governor Stitt will allow the state to grant elective credit for religious and morality classes taught by The Satanic Temple, making it possible for parents to invite TST’s HAIL program to their local public schools as soon as this fall.”

A book about book bans has been banned in a Florida school district.

Ban This Book, a children’s book written by Alan Gratz, will no longer be available in the Indian River county school district since the school board voted to remove the book last month.

Gratz’s book, which came out in 2017, follows fourth-grader Amy Anne Ollinger as she tries to check out her favorite book. Ollinger is told by the librarian she cannot, because it was banned after a classmate’s parent thought it was inappropriate. She then creates a secret banned-books library, entering into “an unexpected battle over book banning, censorship, and who has the right to decide what she and her fellow students can read”, according to the book’s description on Gratz’s website.

In a peculiar case of life imitating art, Jennifer Pippin, a parent in the coastal community, challenged the book.

Pippin’s opposition is what prompted the school board to vote 3-2 in favor of removing it from shelves. The vote happened despite the district’s book-review committee vetting the work and deciding to keep it in schools.

Indian River county school board members disagreed with how Gratz’s book referred to other works that had been taken out of school, and accused it of “teaching rebellion of school-board authority”, according to the Tallahassee Democrat.

A Massachusetts woman is facing multiple assault and battery charges for allegedly releasing a swarm of bees on a group of sheriff’s deputies, some of them allergic to bee stings, as they tried to serve an eviction notice, authorities said.

...

The Hampden County Sheriff’s Department deputies went to a home in Longmeadow on the morning of Oct. 12 and were met by protesters, according to the official department report.

Woods, who lives in Hadley, soon arrived in an SUV towing a trailer carrying beehives, the report said. She started “shaking” the hives, broke the cover off one, causing hundreds of bees to swarm out and initially sting one deputy, according to the report.

Woods, who put on a beekeeper’s suit to protect herself, was eventually handcuffed but not before several more sheriff’s department employees were stung, including three who are allergic to bees, the report said.

Women’s Final Four live updates: South Carolina defeats NC State ahead of Iowa vs. UConn When Woods was told that several officers were allergic to bees, she said “Oh, you’re allergic? Good,” according to the report.

If one has to consider one of the most chaotic places to be during an earthquake, the operating table of your own vasectomy is surely up there on the list.

For Justin Allen from Horsham, Pennsylvania, this was his exact reality on Friday when the New York City metropolitan area and its outskirts were shaken by a 4.8 quake. The earthquake was centered near Lebanon, New Jersey, according to the US Geological Survey, though people reported feeling its effects across New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.

“I thought maybe a train was passing by or it was just something that happens at that office, even when the doctor was like ‘I think this is an earthquake.’ I figured he was messing with me, but he had to stop because everything was shaking,” Allen told the Guardian.

Allen said the doctor operating on him “put the tools down for a moment”.

The mayor of an Italian island is attempting to solve an animal overpopulation problem with an unusual offer: free goats for anyone who can catch them.

Riccardo Gullo, the mayor of Alicudi, in Sicily's Aeolian archipelago, introduced an "adopt-a-goat" program when the small island's wild goat population grew to six times the human population of about 100.

Gullo said anyone who emails a request to the local government and pays a $17 "stamp fee" can take as many goats as they wish, as long as they transport them off the island within 15 days of approval.

cross-posted from: https://fedia.io/m/nottheonion@lemmy.world/t/671841

Turns out, even just a little bit of exercise can indeed help break up that bloated feeling: A post-meal stroll kick-starts digestion. “When you are moving, your GI tract is also moving,” Dr. Ganjhu tells SELF. This helps trigger gut motility, or movement of your intestines, which is essential for properly breaking down food. “There needs to be motion to help move the food along,” she says. “When you’re walking and moving around, you’re basically helping the motility part of the digestive tract.” (That might explain why you often feel so damn bloated after eating on an airplane or a train, where you can’t move around freely.)

And research backs this up: Post-meal activity has been shown to speed stomach emptying and colon transit, and, according to a separate study in the American Journal of Gastroenterology, even mild activity after a meal was enough to significantly reduce bloating. What’s more, boosting your gut motility and moving the food out quickly can also help with heartburn or gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), Dr. Ganjhu says—there’s simply less time for the digestive acids to do their thing.

As for the claim that a fart walk can protect against diabetes? Any type of exercise can help keep your blood sugar in check, Dr. Ganjhu says. And an after-dinner stroll might just be a great way to do it: A study in the journal Nutrients found that a walk after eating can help stabilize your blood sugar levels. That’s important, since repeated spikes over time can make your body less sensitive to insulin, which can increase your risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Earlier this year, Germany's environment ministry suggested there should be stricter limits on importing trophies from hunting animals.

Botswana's President Mokgweetsi Masisi told German media this would only impoverish people in his country.

He said elephant numbers had exploded as a result of conservation efforts, and hunting helped keep them in check.

Germans should "live together with the animals, in the way you are trying to tell us to", Mr Masisi told German newspaper Bild. "This is no joke."

Botswana is home to about a third of the world's elephant population - over 130,000 - more than it has space for.

Herds were causing damage to property, eating crops and trampling residents, Mr Masisi said.

Botswana has previously given 8,000 elephants to neighbouring Angola, and has offered hundreds more to Mozambique, as a means of bringing the population down.

"We would like to offer such a gift to Germany," Mr Masisi said, adding that he would not take no for an answer.

Botswana's Wildlife Minister Dumezweni Mthimkhulu last month threatened to send 10,000 elephants to London's Hyde Park so British people could "have a taste of living alongside" them.

In March, UK MPs voted to support a ban on importing hunting trophies, but the legislation has further scrutiny to pass before becoming law.

Hundreds of people have taken part in the annual World Coal Carrying Championships in West Yorkshire.

The event in Gawthorpe, near Ossett, sees runners haul sacks of coal across a distance of 3,320ft (1,012m).

Gawthorpe Maypole Committee, which organises the championships, said more than 400 people had signed up this year, including 200 children.

...

Traditionally, men carried 7st 12lb (50kg) sacks of coal and women carried 3st 2lb (20kg) from the Royal Oak pub to the village's Maypole Green.

However, this year Mr Smith said organisers had to make the switch to anthracite coal as house coal was banned from sale for environmental reasons.

...

Among those in the crowd this year was Gladiators star Jodie Ounsley, known to fans of the BBC One show as Fury.

She was there in support of her father Phil, a former winner of the men's open race in 2007.

Speaking after the event, he told BBC Look North: "I'd love to say I enjoyed it but I hated every minute of it.

"It was absolutely brutal and I remember now why I hadn't done it in the last 16 years."

...

This year's women's race was won by Danielle Sidebottom from Dewsbury, who took the title for the third time after completing the course in four minutes 45 seconds.

Andrew Corrigan from Driffield claimed his sixth win in the men's race, finishing in 04:22.

The women's veterans winner was Nicola Marr with a time of 05:19, while men's veterans winner Matthew Gillard crossed the finish line in 05:53.

The oldest contestant was 77-year-old David Page who finished the race to huge applause.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/12861354

Despite today’s date, this is not an April Fool’s prank. At a press conference in Tokyo last weekend, professor Hiroshi Yoshida from the Tohoku University Research Center for Aged Economy and Society, sounded the alarm bell for a looming crisis. By the year 2531, everyone in Japan will have the surname Sato.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/18606125

This spring, an unusual cicada double dose is about to invade a couple parts of the United States in what University of Connecticut cicada expert John Cooley called “cicada-geddon.” The last time these two broods came out together in 1803 Thomas Jefferson, who wrote about cicadas in his Garden Book but mistakenly called them locusts, was president.

The largest geographic brood in the nation -- called Brood XIX and coming out every 13 years -- is about to march through the Southeast, having already created countless boreholes in the red Georgia clay.

Soon after the insects appear in large numbers in Georgia and the rest of the Southeast, cicada cousins that come out every 17 years will inundate Illinois. They are Brood XIII.

An even bigger adjacent joint emergence will be when the two largest broods, XIX and XIV, come out together in 2076, Cooley said: “That is the cicada-palooza.”

cross-posted from: https://real.lemmy.fan/post/2041592

Spider Lamb, Spider Lamb, doing whatever a Spider Lamb can.

Michelangelo’s David has been a towering figure in Italy since its completion in 1504. But in the current era of the quick buck, curators worry the marble statue’s religious and political significance is being diminished by the thousands of refrigerator magnets and other souvenirs sold around Florence focusing on David’s genitalia.

The Galleria dell’Accademia director, Cecilie Hollberg, has positioned herself as David’s defender since her arrival at the museum in 2015, taking swift aim at those profiteering from his image, often in ways she finds “debasing”.

In that way, she is a bit of a David herself, up against the Goliath of unfettered capitalism with its army of street vendors and souvenir shop operators hawking aprons of the statue’s nude figure, T-shirts of it engaged in obscene gestures, and ubiquitous figurines, often in Pop Art neon.

At Hollberg’s behest, the state’s attorney office in Florence has launched a series of court cases invoking Italy’s landmark cultural heritage code, which protects artistic treasures from disparaging and unauthorised commercial use. The Accademia has won hundreds of thousands of euros in damages since 2017, according to Hollberg.

...

The decisions challenge a widely held practice that intellectual property rights are protected for a specified period before entering the public domain – the artist’s lifetime plus 70 years, according to the Berne Convention signed by more than 180 countries, including Italy.

More broadly, the decisions raise the question of whether institutions should be the arbiters of taste, and to what extent freedom of expression is being limited.

“It raises not just legal issues, but also philosophical issues. What does cultural patrimony mean? How much of a stranglehold do you want to give institutions over ideas and images that are in the public domain?’’ said Thomas C. Danziger, an art market lawyer based in New York.

A grandmother was left dangling upside down after her coat got caught in a shop's security shutters.

Anne Hughes, 71, was seen on CCTV being lifted 7ft into the air outside a convenience store in Rhondda Cynon Taf.

She has been dubbed "SuperAnne" in her home village in Wales and said the incident "could only happen to me".

Speaking at her home near the Best One shop in Tonteg, near Pontypridd, Ms Hughes said her thought at the time was "flipping heck".

The footage

Half of a beloved Lanarkshire garden centre's mascot named Gary the gorilla has returned home after 10 months.

The 8ft statue was nabbed from from his home outside Reynard's Nursery near Carluke in May last year. CCTV footage showed brazen crooks unbolting the huge fibreglass mascot before fleeing the scene with it in the back of a van.

At the time the owners were desperate for Gary to be returned and they have now partially got their wish.

On March 21, they received a message stating that the rear half of the silverback was discovered on the A92 between Dundee and Arbroath.

Gary's back has now been returned home, however, the search for the rest of the gorilla still continues.

In a TikTok posted on the centre's account, staff stated that they "have Gary's 'back' back" but they needed more help to solve the 'monkey puzzle'.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13642360

The decision to find a “respectful final disposition” for human remains used for a 19th-century book comes amid growing scrutiny of their presence in museum collections.

Of the roughly 20 million books in Harvard University’s libraries, one has long exerted a unique dark fascination, not for its contents, but for the material it was reputedly bound in: human skin.

For years, the volume — a 19th-century French treatise on the human soul — was brought out for show and tell, and sometimes, according to library lore, used to haze new employees. In 2014, the university drew jokey news coverage around the world with the announcement that it had used new technology to confirm that the binding was in fact human skin.

But on Wednesday, after years of criticism and debate, the university announced that it had removed the binding and would be exploring options for “a final respectful disposition of these human remains.”

Non-paywall link

A robotic dog is being thanked by state police in Massachusetts for helping avert a tragedy involving a person barricaded in a home.

The robotic dog named Roscoe was part of the Massachusetts state police bomb squad and deployed on 6 March in a Barnstable house after police were fired upon. Police sent in two other robots often used for bomb disposal into the house to find the suspect along with the robotic dog.

Controlled remotely by state troopers, it first checked the two main floors before finding someone in the basement. The person, armed with a rifle, twice knocked over the robotic dog before shooting it three times and disabling its communication.

The person then shot at one of the other robots and an outdoor swimming pool before police deployed teargas and arrested them.

“The incident provided a stark example of the benefits of mobile platforms capable of opening doors and ascending stairs in tactical missions involving armed suspects,” state police said in a statement. “In addition to providing critically important room clearance and situational awareness capabilities, the insertion of Roscoe into the suspect residence prevented the need, at that stage of response, from inserting human operators, and may have prevented a police officer from being involved in an exchange of gunfire.”

Boston Dynamics, the company that made the robotic dog known as a Spot robot, said in a statement that it was the first time one of them had been shot.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/16803418

An Australian man has been freed after spending 36 hours trapped in a drain network.

He first entered a drain in Brisbane on Saturday "while trying to retrieve his phone", according to authorities.

A leading doctor who has urged people not to eat an entire Easter egg 'in one go' has been branded "silly" for his remarks. Dr Andrew Kelso, medical director of a large NHS services provider, said people should enjoy their treats this Easter but warned them "Don't over do it."

He urged people to 'resist the urge to eat a whole egg in one go.' He issued the advice as part of his role as medical director at the NHS Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care Board.

The former consultant neurologist said: “Many people don’t realise that an average Easter egg contains around three-quarters of an adult’s recommended daily calorie intake. At a time like this when we are seeing significant increases in cases of obesity and Type 2 diabetes, as well as tooth decay, I urge people to enjoy their Easter eggs in moderation and resist the urge to eat a whole egg in one go.

...

He also warned that GP surgeries were closed over Easter weekend for those who may need help with their chocolate intake. Dr Kelso's remarks were met with criticism online by those who believed the comments were misguided and smacked of the 'nanny state.'

One posted on Facebook: "This doctor has obviously got to much time on his hands to be given such a silly interview. We all know that surgeries will be shut over Easter, they always have been.

"And we all know too much chocolate can lead to diabetes, being fat and tooth decay. Maybe if people could actually get into a doctors or dentist, there wouldn't be half so many problems."

Another said they were "sick of this country becoming a nanny state". The tradition of chocolate eggs on Easter Sunday, which is on March 31 this year, is from Christians exchanging eggs as a symbol of rebirth after Christ's resurrection.

His calm demeanour and wholesome vocation have apparently endeared him to one of the most authoritarian regimes in the world. But there is something about Alan Titchmarsh that North Korea’s censors can’t quite forgive – his jeans.

The green-fingered broadcaster and author of raunchy novels has been a fixture on state television since 2022, albeit with the addition of a blurred effect from the waist down.

By wearing jeans to potter about in Britain’s gardens in his BBC TV series Garden Secrets, Titchmarsh, 74, fell foul of a North Korean ban on the garments, which the regime has forbidden since the early 1990s because they are seen as a symbol of US imperialism.

Luton Town fans have called for Coldplay to change the lyrics of their song Yellow to match the football club’s orange home kit.

The plea came after the band were confirmed as headliners for Radio 1’s Big Weekend festival taking place at Stockwood Park, a 10-minute drive from the club’s ground, Kenilworth Road, in May.

Local people want the band to put a Lutonian spin on their hit song from 2000, saying it would honour the club and fans. Luton play in orange, navy and white. Just down the M1, Luton’s rivals Watford play in yellow.

...

Kev Harper, of the Luton Town supporters’ trust, said it would be an honour for the team and town if the band made the change.

“The crowd would love it,” he told the BBC, joking that Coldplay “should have called it Orange in the first place, it’s a superior colour”.