Cindy Flash, who immigrated to be a voice for peace and advocate for Palestinian rights may have been kidnapped by militants during the Gaza violence

With a switch in seasons and jumper weather signalling a change of mood, the same can be said for the structure of your scent. Suddenly a spritz of watery notes, summery sugariness and barely there blossom feels hollow… it’s your senses telling you it’s time for something heavier to match the weight of your winter wardrobe. And with so many breathtakingly beautiful perfumes and long-lasting elixirs to engage with, now’s the time to focus on a fragrance with some oomph… 1. Jimmy Choo I Want Choo Forever Eau de Parfum, £50 for 40ml (100ml for £64 also available), Fenwick A fanfare of deep raspberry-rose, cassis and intense, spicy sweet nuances, this is a stand-out fragrance in the Jimmy Choo range – with a rich earthy note and vanilla sweetness aligned with pink peppercorn. Extremely attractive with floral touches and sensual vanilla on the drydown. 2. Akro BAKE Eau de Parfum, £80 for 30ml, Fenwick Alluring and mood boosting, the name is a bit of a giveaway and will take you to a happy place. With top notes of praline, rum, vanilla cream and press of lemon, it’s quite hypnotizing – and if this was a luxurious box of truffles and pralines, the first tray would be gone. Base notes of bourbon, brown sugar and vanilla make for a sweet ending. 3. Tom Ford Café Rose Eau de Parfum Spray, from £90.10 for 50ml (100ml for £127.50 also available, Escentual Fans of Fords’ original Café Rose will adore this reimagined classic which pulls at the heart strings with its bouquet of velvety roses combined with seductive spices, dark coffee notes, with a warm sandalwood accord and notes of rose essence as the fragrance evolves. Divine. 4. Van Cleef & Arpels Collection Extraordinaire THÉ AMARA Eau De Parfum, £145 for 75ml, Fenwick A contemporary take on a tea note – think a morning stroll through a tea plantation – with enticing green, dry leafy aromas complemented by bergamot, rose and uplifting sweet pea; at its base there’s white musk and cedarwood lending depth, finishing with fresh powdery nuances and touch of rose. 5. Ormonde Jayne Arabesque Eau de Parfum, £195 for 88ml, Ormonde Jayne Arabesque is inspired by a journey through the spice souks and a sensory feast of patchouli and oudh. Opulent and sexy, with a sensual combination of rose, jasmine, fruity accords, vanilla, musk and wood… think gourmand with a whiff of grown-up glamour. Read More Consistent lack of sleep may increase risk of future depressive symptoms – study World Osteoporosis Day: The risk factors and early warning signs everyone needs to know about How to support a child with a stammer From colourful gowns to drones, these wedding trends are set take over 2024 Call The Midwife ‘should come with a health warning’ Halloween: 10 wicked ways to kit out your haunted house

One of Tokyo's last handmade umbrella shops has weathered many storms and is now thriving thanks to booming demand for parasols as Japanese summers get...

X is shutting down Circles months after some users flagged glitches with the privacy-focused tool that lets users send posts to a select audience. The Elon Musk-owned company that was earlier called Twitter said on Thursday that Circles will be disabled by 31 October. “After this date, you will not be able to create new posts that are limited to your Circle, nor will you be able to add people to your Circle,” X wrote in a post. “You will, however, be able to remove people from your Circle, by unfollowing them,” the company said. Once unfollowed, users previously part of one’s Circle “can no longer see your past Circle Posts,” it said. The feature – similar to Instagram’s Close Friends stories – was officially launched in August 2022 when the platform was called Twitter, and before the Tesla billionaire took over the company. “Twitter Circle is a way to send Tweets to select people, and share your thoughts with a smaller crowd,” the company had said after the feature’s launch. “You choose who’s in your Twitter Circle, and only the individuals you’ve added can reply to and interact with the Tweets you share in the circle,” it had then said. Then in April, a software glitch exposed the private posts of some users to other followers and strangers not part of their Circle, sparking widespread privacy concern. Users began noticing their private Circle posts began appearing on the algorithmically generated “For You” timeline, meaning these posts were being noticed by people outside the intended audience. In some cases, users noticed their Circle posts were even reaching people who don’t even follow them. In emails sent to affected users, X said a “security incident” was behind the public display of their Circle tweets, adding that the issue was “immediately fixed” so these posts were no longer visible outside of the user’s Circle. “We’ve conducted a thorough investigation to understand how this occurred and have addressed this issue,” the company said. “We understand the risks that an incident like this can introduce and we deeply regret this happened,” it said at the time. The software bug added to the number of issues that plagued Twitter following Mr Musk’s takeover of the company and the multibillionaire laying off nearly two-thirds of its workforce. The glitch was likely due to the platform’s recommendation algorithm likely failing to filter out Circle posts before sharing them with others on the site, former Twitter engineer Theo Browne told TechCrunch at the time. Now, in a new update, X said in a post that it is “deprecating Circles as of Oct 31st, 2023”, without delving into why the company is shutting down the feature. Read More Two dead and dozens injured after bus carrying high school band crashes on I-84 in New York Tourist calls police after being charged £500 for chilli crab in Singapore Scientists discover world’s oldest human-built structure, built by an extinct species ChatGPT can now generate images and create illustrated books Man drives off bridge ‘following Google Maps’ Solar panel breakthrough could supercharge ‘miracle material’ production

Madonna’s family and friends feared she was going to die when she contracted a bacterial infection

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 24, 2023--

The meaning of life is the ultimate mystery – why do we exist? And is there a point to… well… anything? These are questions to which we may never find answers, but at least we can define what “life” means in scientific terms. And yet, our understanding of what life is is changing all the time, thanks to space exploration. As scientists continue to hunt for life beyond our own world, biologists are having to rethink the meaning of the word “life” itself. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Generally, biologists explain “life” as connoting a self-sustaining chemical system which is capable of performing functions such as eating, metabolising, excreting, breathing, moving, growing, reproducing, and responding to external stimuli. This definition works pretty well here on Earth (although there are some important exceptions, such as viruses), but experts have pointed out that if life exists elsewhere in the universe, it may not display the same properties that we’re used to. Indeed, it might be unrecognisable as life as we know it (forget those little green men). In which case, how will we spot it if it ever crosses our path? Astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker and chemist Lee Cronin think they’ve come up with a solution. The pair are now arguing that highly complex molecules found in all living creatures can’t exist thanks purely to chance. Therefore, they say, the universe must have a way of creating and reproducing complex information and retaining a “memory” of all of this.. In an interview with New Scientist, Walker, of Arizona State University, explained their radical idea on how objects come into existence. The concept, known as Assembly Theory, explains why certain complex objects have become more abundant than others by considering their histories. If the theory proves correct, it will redefine what we mean by “living” things and show that we’ve been going about the search for extraterrestrial life all wrong. In the process, we could even end up creating alien life in a laboratory, she stressed. In her discussion with New Scientist, Walker pointed out: "An electron can be made anywhere in the universe and has no history. You are also a fundamental object, but with a lot of historical dependency. You might want to cite your age counting back to when you were born, but parts of you are billions of years older. "From this perspective, we should think of ourselves as lineages of propagating information that temporarily finds itself aggregated in an individual." Assembly theory predicts that molecules produced by biological processes must be more complex than those produced by non-biological processes, as Science Alert notes. To test this, Walker and her team analysed a range of organic and inorganic compounds from around the world and outer space, including E. coli bacteria, urine, meteorites and even home-brewed beer. They then smashed up the compounds into smaller pieces and used mass spectrometry to pinpoint their molecular building blocks. They calculated that the smallest number of steps required to reassemble each compound from these building blocks was 15. And whilst some compounds from living systems needed fewer than 15 assembly steps, no inorganic compounds made it above this threshold. "Our system … allows us to search the universe agnostically for evidence of what life does rather than attempting to define what life is," Walker, Cronin, and others wrote in a 2021 Nature Communications article. The handy thing about this building block system – which they’ve dubbed the “'molecular assembly index” – is that it doesn’t rely on carbon-based organic materials to be identified. In other words, an alien could be made of entirely different stuff entirely and we’d still be able to spot it as life using the index. It also works regardless of what stage of “life” an extraterrestrial being is in – whether it is still in its infancy or has moved into a technological stage beyond our understanding. That’s because all of these states produce complex molecules which couldn’t exist in the absence of a living system. If all of this is hurting your head, let’s just get back to the basics: if there is a secret to life, it might all be down to what we do, not what we are. 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.

On a day when English soccer mourned the passing of Bobby Charlton, Manchester City and Liverpool got back on track with wins in the Premier League

Following the Golden State Warriors' productive offseason, here's a preview of what other teams can expect to go up against in clutch situations.

Three astronauts have returned to Earth after six months aboard China's orbiting space station

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 14, 2023--

Alex Bregman connected for a two-run homer with two outs in the ninth inning for his fourth hit of the game, Chas McCormick went deep twice and the Houston Astros rallied from a four-run deficit to defeat the Los Angeles Angels 9-8, despite Shohei Ohtani’s major league-leading 34th homer of the season