Author: aliakhan00901

If you’re trying to get someone to do something, what’s the best way to achieve that? Paying them probably comes to mind, and this intuition is a basic tenet of economic theory. In a massive 2018 study, researchers tested 18 ways to motivate people to do a simple task—and found that money worked best.In that work, economists at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago asked nearly 10,000 people on a crowd-work website to push the “A” and “B” buttons on their keyboard as many times as they could for 10 minutes. To motivate people, the researchers…

Your support helps us to tell the storyFrom reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.The…

Nardine Saad and Christal HayesBBC News, Los AngelesCalifornia Department of Corrections and RehabilitationLyle appeared virtually for the hearing, which spanned more than 10 hoursLyle Menendez has been denied parole one day after his brother Erik was similarly blocked from being freed from prison after more than three decades.The Menendez brothers, who were convicted in the 1989 killings of their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion, were both rejected for release after separate, lengthy hearings before California’s parole board.It marks a major setback for the pair who had seen recent court wins that brought them closer than ever to freedom.The elder…

How to solve today’s Wordle.SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images It’s Saturday at last! Huzzah! Time to enjoy another lovely summer weekend. Hopefully it rains. I know, I’m a broken record on the subject of rain, but it keeps getting all ominously cloudy and then . . . nothing. Such a tease. In any case, let’s solve today’s Wordle! Looking for yesterday’s Wordle? Check out hints, clues and the answer right here. How To Play Wordle Wordle is a daily word puzzle game where your goal is to guess a hidden five-letter word in six tries or fewer. After each guess,…

People in Mississippi can no longer use the social media platform Bluesky. The company announced Friday that it will be blocking all IP addresses within Mississippi for the foreseeable future in response to a recent US Supreme Court decision that allows the state to enforce strict age verification for social media platforms.According to Bluesky, Mississippi’s approach to verification “would fundamentally change” how users access the site. “We think this law creates challenges that go beyond its child safety goals, and creates significant barriers that limit free speech and disproportionately harm smaller platforms and emerging technologies,” the Bluesky team said in…

It was one of the most horrifying targets of Russia’s war on Ukraine so far. Reports showed a pregnant woman on a stretcher, her face ashen with shock, legs smeared with blood and a hand holding her bump. Behind her, the bombed-out ruins of Mariupol’s maternity hospital. More than a dozen people, including women in labour, were injured in the attack in March 2022. The woman photographed, Iryna Kalinina, later died along with her unborn baby.In the three years since then, maternity care in Ukraine has remained under constant attack, with more than 2,000 strikes on medical facilities, including 81…

A day after his younger brother was denied release from prison by the California Parole Board, Lyle Menendez’s steady march toward earning his freedom back 36 years after the two young men shot their parents to death in their Beverly Hills home suffered the same fate as he was also denied release.  Erik and Lyle Menendez have been in California’s prison system for over three decades now and they will remain there for three more years after separate hearings that were held for both. On Friday night, at the end of a 10-hour hearing, the Board agreed with an assessment…

Malik Beasley is no longer the target of a federal gambling investigation, according to his attorneys Steve Haney and Mike Schachter. Haney and Schachter told ESPN’s Shams Charania that they were informed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York that Beasley was not being investigated further as part of their probe. “Months after this investigation commenced, Malik remains uncharged and is not the target of this investigation,” Haney told ESPN. “An allegation with no charge, indictment or conviction should never have the catastrophic consequence this has caused Malik. This has literally been the opposite of the…

A viral story spread through the tabloids this week, proclaiming that a CEO of a technology company in China was in the midst of developing a “pregnancy robot.” A prototype of the bot would be ready by next year, the CEO projected, and would be designed to sustain a human pregnancy from conception to birth, around 10 months.The robot and the related story were — as you might have guessed — pure fiction. But the viral tale nonetheless raised questions about whether designing such a robot could be possible with today’s technology, and what ethical quandaries that possibility might raise,…

In the Atlantic islands of Cape Verde, off the coast of West Africa, recovery efforts are ongoing after Tropical Storm Erin brought torrential downpours. At least nine people were killed and hundreds more were displaced when the rainfall turned streets into raging rivers, triggering landslides and destroying vital infrastructure. Hundreds of families have lost their homes and livelihoods and are now wondering how they will get by.