After 25 years of keeping the internet strong and stable, the nonprofit ICANN -- responsible for its technical infrastructure -- is warning that increasingly polarized geopolitics could start cracking...

Scientists have grown human kidneys in pigs, for the very first time. Researchers at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Wuyi University created human-pig chimeric embryos containing a combination of human and pig cells. When they transferred into 13 surrogate pig mothers, they developed kidneys that contained mostly human cells at a rate of 50 to 60 per cent, giving hope for potential transplants in the future. “Rat organs have been produced in mice, and mouse organs have been produced in rats, but previous attempts to grow human organs in pigs have not succeeded,” said the senior author Liangxue Lai. “Our approach improves the integration of human cells into recipient tissues and allows us to grow human organs in pigs.” The kidneys were not entirely human as they included vasculature and nerves made mostly from pig cells, meaning they could not be used for transplantation in their current form, but it is still a pretty impressive step. And apart from the kidneys, the embryos were dominated by pig cells, with very few human cells in the brain or central nervous system. Making brains using human and pig cells is very controversial for ethical reasons, so there are tight regulations for this kind of research. Meanwhile, pig cells tend to outcompete human cells during development, so previous experiments have created embryos that are almost entirely pig. The latest work, published in Cell Stem Cell, overcame this by genetically engineering a single-cell pig embryo so that it lacked two genes needed for kidney development. This created a gap within the embryo that could be filled by human cells. “We found that if you create a niche in the pig embryo, then the human cells naturally go into these spaces,” said Prof Zhen Dai of Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, another senior author. The scientists said that being able to incubate a fully human kidney inside a pig would be likely to take many years. “We would probably need to engineer the pigs in a much more complex way and that also brings some additional challenges,” said Miguel Esteban, also of the Guangzhou institute and a senior author. A central challenge would be to allow human nerves and vasculature to develop within the target organ without nerve cells developing in the central nervous system that could lead to a humanised brain. “Even theoretically it’s not clear how you’d do that,” said Ilic. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter 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.

(Reuters) -BlackRock, the world's biggest asset manager, on Thursday filed for a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) that would allow investors

The swift conviction of Donald Trump's former trade adviser Peter Navarro for contempt of Congress sent two warnings to the multiple co-defendants in the ex-president's approaching criminal trials.

The first Drag Story Hour took place in San Francisco in 2015 and the event is now held in several other nations

Preview of the Bundesliga encounter between Koln and Bayern Munich on Friday night as club football returns after the international break.

A son of Libya’s late leader Moammar Gadhafi, who has been held in Lebanon for more than seven years, has started a hunger strike to protest his detention without trial

The founder of Chile’s surging right-wing party bashed President Gabriel Boric’s plan for government control of lithium production,

Funding for schools, literacy programs and special education teachers in Oregon are in possible jeopardy after a nearly six-week Republican walkout has stalled hundreds of bills

Rome has decided to open to the public the ancient square where Julius Caesar was supposedly stabbed to death. It was reported that authorities in Rome are opening a new walkway on the ancient site on Tuesday in a historic decision. The remains of ancient structures – including the one where Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC – have been opened to tourists. Julius Caesar was assassinated by about 40 Roman senators on the “Ides of March”, or 15 March, in 44 BC. The stabbing was immortalised in Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, in which the Roman dictator’s famous last words were “Et tu, Brute? (You too, Brutus?)” after he saw his friend Brutus among his murderers. The real life Caesar died in the capital’s central Largo Argentina square, which houses the remains of four temples dating as far back as the third century BC. These four ancient temples stand in the middle of one of the modern city’s busiest crossroads. But now authorities are throwing open the “sacred area” on the edge of the site where Julius Caeser was assassinated to tourists and history buffs. Visitors will be able to move through the site at ground level on the walkway and see the structures up close from Tuesday, reported Reuters. With help of funding from Italian luxury jeweller Bulgari, the grouping of temples can now be visited by the public. The ancient temples were first discovered and excavated during the demolition of medieval-era buildings in the late 1920s as part of dictator Benito Mussolini’s campaign to remake the urban landscape. According to local media, the tourist attraction will now be open every day except Monday and during some major holidays. (Additional reporting by agencies) Read More Oppenheimer historian still ‘emotionally recovering’ from Christopher Nolan’s film Egyptian family awaits word on son as village mourns dozens feared drowned trying to reach Europe Sunak: Greek shipwreck shows need for deterring migrants from illegal routes Ancient Rome temples complex, with ruins of building where Caesar was stabbed, opens to tourists Johnson uses first column to discuss weight-loss drug amid claims of rule breach Putin’s threat of using tactical nuclear weapons is ‘real’, warns Biden

Cole Bridges, 22, shared tactical guidance in an attempt to help IS attack and murder US troops.

By Jamie McGeever A look at the day ahead in Asian markets from Jamie McGeever, financial markets columnist.