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After a Southern California school district rejected a state-endorsed social studies curriculum that includes material on gay rights, top state officials are vowing to buy a textbook in question and distribute it to students before the new school year.

(In JULY 13 story corrects to read Gotshal (not Gotschal), paragraph 1) By Chiara Elisei LONDON (Reuters) -Corporate distress among

Women’s football is continuing to set the standard for inclusivity in the sport as the men’s game lags far behind, according to a player from the London Unity League. While several of the big-name players preparing for the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand are openly gay or bisexual, the lack of LGBTQ+ representation in the men’s game is in stark contrast. Joshua Day, a 30-year-old striker for London Titans in the LUL – a league set up to give members of the LGBTQ+ community a safe environment to play competitive football – had previously been in a professional club’s academy. He quit, largely due to casual homophobia within the dressing room, and has since come out as gay and found his home in the LUL. A Chelsea fan, who has previously left matches when homophobic chants have been heard, Day believes the men’s game has a long way to go to catch up with the inclusive nature of their female counterparts. On Thursday, a Fulham supporter was fined and banned from football for three years after admitting a public order offence relating to homophobic chanting during a match at Stamford Bridge – the latest in a string of similar incidents. “I think there’s a lot that the men’s game can learn from the women’s game at the minute in terms of inclusivity,” Day told the PA news agency. “Fans can learn a lot more from fans in the women’s game, too. There is a better vibe, more inclusivity, more acceptance and that is something we need in men’s football. “Women’s football has players at the very top of the game who are open about their sexuality but that shouldn’t be the catalyst for change in men’s football. “For me, personally, I’m not even sure that (a top-level men’s player coming out) would change things. “If you look at the trans movement at the minute, trans people are under so much scrutiny by being more visible and fighting for their rights much more out in the open – that has brought more trans hate than a decade ago. “Football and sport fits into society and, until we get to a point in society where LGBT people in sport is being much more normalised – and I think that’s why the LUL is really important – I’m not 100 per cent convinced that would mean fans chanting or tweeting homophobic abuse would stop.” Day was part of a Nike advertisement campaign ahead of the Women’s Euros won by England last summer – it was the first time the company had included a gay kiss in an advert, with the online backlash against Day and Nike leading to the comments section being disabled on the post. Rather than having players come out, Day feels having more visible allies for potential LGBTQ+ professionals is key. For me, personally, I'm not even sure that (a top-level men's player coming out) would change things Joshua Day “Players could do more in the men’s game,” added Day. “You see the odd interview saying ‘we’d have no issue with players coming out’ but they are few and far between. “I think if we had more players come out in support of LGBT players, even in lower leagues, the fans are behind players and if players are visibly on board, that’s what I think might help fans change the way that they look at LGBT people in sport. “I remember my first Chelsea game when I was 13 – at that age, I knew that I was gay, I was just not out and I can remember hearing the chant, and just feeling so withdrawn in myself, and I felt so uncomfortable. “I never, ever wanted to feel like that again. No-one should feel like that at a football stadium and eventually that fight for equality will be won.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Football rumours: Barcelona looking to reunite with Thiago Alcantara Denise O’Sullivan not shying away from Republic’s momentous World Cup debut Rory McIlroy returns to Hoylake looking to end nine-year major drought at Open

Russian President Vladimir Putin is claiming that the Wagner private military company “simply doesn't exist” as a legal entity

It is possible for human beings to hear silence, according to a team of philosophers and psychologists, in a huge win for 1960s crooners Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. In a study published on Monday by Johns Hopkins University researchers, the team decided that it’s not just sound that human hears pick up: silence is, indeed, something we can hear too. Rui Zhe Goh, a Johns Hopkins graduate student in philosophy and psychology who was the study’s lead author, wrote: "We typically think of our sense of hearing as being concerned with sounds. But silence, whatever it is, is not a sound — it's the absence of sound. Surprisingly, what our work suggests is that nothing is also something you can hear.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Per the study, published in the journal PNAS, researchers had participants listen to an array of audio illusions. They also periodically substituted the noise for pure nothingness, the measure whether people’s brains would react in the same way. “Philosophers have long debated whether silence is something we can literally perceive, but there hasn’t been a scientific study aimed directly at this question,” said study co-author Chaz Firestone, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences and the director of the Johns Hopkins Perception & Mind Laboratory. “Our approach was to ask whether our brains treat silences the way they treat sounds.” "If you can get the same illusions with silences as you get with sounds, then that may be evidence that we literally hear silence after all." The 1,000 participants’ responses were measured across seven different tests. Across all of them, their brains reacted the same way to silence as they did to noise. “We show that silences can 'substitute' for sounds in event-based auditory illusions,” said the study. “Seven experiments introduce three 'silence illusions,' adapted from perceptual illusions previously thought to arise only with sounds.” “In all cases, silences elicited temporal distortions perfectly analogous to their sound-based counterparts, suggesting that auditory processing treats moments of silence the way it treats sounds. Silence is truly perceived, not merely inferred,” it said. “The kinds of illusions and effects that look like they are unique to the auditory processing of a sound, we also get them with silences, suggesting we really do hear absences of sound too,” added study co-author Ian Phillips, a John Hopkins philosopher and psychologist. Hello darkness my old friend… 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.

The Russian State Duma, or lower house of parliament, has voted in favor of a new law banning nearly all medical help for transgender people including gender reassignment surgery, in a raft of new anti-LGBTQ laws in Russia.

There seems to be a serious issue with the new episode's broadcast as there has been no word about it for the past three weeks

China has published new rules for generative artificial intelligence (AI), becoming one of the first countries in the world to regulate the technology that powers popular services like ChatGPT.

Daniel Levy met with Bayern Munich in London this week, with Harry Kane's future among the topics discussed.

'So, Angie, if you were wondering, ‘Will I fit in?’ Yes, you will! Perfectly,' Dylan Dreyer told Angie Lassman

Basketball star Russell Westbrook has revealed he is a part of the consortium led by 49ers Enterprises which is poised to take full ownership of Leeds. Los Angeles Clippers point guard Westbrook, who won the NBA’s most valuable player award in 2017, has followed American golfers Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas in becoming a minor stakeholder in Leeds. Westbrook, according to Forbes the 14th highest-paid athlete in the world, said he had invested in the Yorkshire club at a sports and entertainment summit held by Sportico. The 34-year-old said: “I was lucky enough to have conversations with some of the partners in this deal, who already have ownership, the 49ers. “So I was lucky enough to talk through that with friends, talking with my business partner as well about different things and having conversations, figuring out if this was the right deal and how we could make it different.” Westbrook, who signed with the Clippers from the Los Angeles Lakers in February, is a nine-time NBA All-Star. Three-time major winner Spieth has confirmed he and Thomas had become minority stakeholders in Leeds earlier this week, but fellow golfer Rickie Fowler pulled out of a deal when the club were relegated from the Premier League in May. Leeds’ joint-owners 49ers Enterprises, the financial arm of NFL franchise San Francisco 49ers, have bought former chairman Andrea Radrizzani’s majority 56 per cent shareholding. The English Football League is currently carrying out its owners and directors test before it sanctions the 49ers’ full takeover.

It’s been nearly a month since the Titan submarine tragically imploded on its descent down to the wreck of the Titanic, but social media’s morbid fascination with the event does not seem to have faded. A video outlining how the submersible imploded has gone viral, wracking up more than 10 million views since it was posted on YouTube at the start of July. The explainer goes into detail about how implosions differ from explosions, and what the disaster would have looked like. Titan began its journey towards the wreck of the cruise liner on June 18. Shortly after, it lost contact with people on the surface. The US Coast Guard later revealed the vessel had suffered a “catastrophic implosion”, after deep-sea robots found debris on 22 June. Officials later said “presumed human remains” were recovered from the site. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter The video simulating the implosion was posted by AiTelly, an account which specialises in “3D engineering animations”. The narrator explains that in the Titan’s case, the implosion was caused by “high hydro-static pressure of the surrounding water, which happened within a fraction of a millisecond”. “At the depth the Titanic rests, there is around 5,600 pounds-per-square inch of pressure. That’s almost 400 times the pressure we experience on the surface. “As the submersible is deep in the ocean it experiences the force on its surface due to the water pressure. When this force becomes larger than the force [the] hull can withstand, the vessel implodes violently.” The animation shows the submersible suddenly bucking under the pressure, noting that the debris was found just 1,600 feet from the Titanic wreck, in five different parts. It said that a possible design flaw with the Titan was that it used “mostly carbon fibres, which have the advantage of being lighter than titanium or steel”. However, it added: “The properties of carbon fibres for deep sea applications are however not that well understood. It can crack and break suddenly.” The victims were Hamish Harding, 58, Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son Suleman Dawood, 19, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, and Stockton Rush, 61. Social media users responded to the video in their droves. One person said: “Who in their right mind would consider going into one of those things? No matter how safe, you have to be pretty brave.” Another person said: “The whole world is on a morbid curiosity kick with this sub.” One commenter added: “The moments before the OceanGate imploded must’ve been a really scary and harrowing experience for the 5 people involved.” 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.