Negotiations to avert a catastrophic US debt default look set to go to the wire, with talks resuming Tuesday after President Joe Biden and the Republican speaker of the House failed to reach agreement...

A teenager pleaded not guilty on Friday to second-degree murder as a hate crime in the killing of O'Shae Sibley, a 28-year-old professional dancer who was stabbed to death at a Brooklyn gas station after dancing to a Beyoncé song.

Black holes are the most confusing things out there in the universe and no-one really knows what they are – at least, that’s our very basic grasp of it. Now, though, a new study has posited a theory that black holes are structures created by unseen cosmic dimensions - or topological stars. And just to make it a little more confusing, these topological stars exist purely in the hypothetical realms of mathematics. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have been exploring string theory, which posits that particles in the universe are actually tied to extra (hidden) dimensions through vibrating strings. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter According to their findings, hypothetical topological stars could exist for real in the universe and they’re essentially formations of nothing which could appear in space. The study finds that topological stars would appear “remarkably similar to black holes in apparent size and scattering properties, while being smooth and horizonless”. The study, which was published in Physical Review D, found that these stars which until now have only existed in hypothetical form, look an awful lot like the black holes out in the universe. “String theory is a theory that reconciles quantum physics and gravity into a quantum gravity theory,” study leader Pierre Heidmann said. Speaking to Motherboard, he said: “Usually when you have a new theory like that, you have new degrees of freedom that come with it, and you can try to see what new fundamental objects can arise from that.” Co-author of the study Ibrahima Bah added: “It’s an interesting question to ask: Are there things other than a black hole [that] will give you a hint about what new physics could look like?” “But before you get there, you need to know how to tell whether you have a black hole or not, and to do that you have some prototype examples of things that are not black holes to be able to compare." As ever, black holes remain the most mysterious, and the most fascinating things out there. 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.

Aryna Sabalenka reached the semifinals at Wimbledon for the second straight time with a one-year break in between because she was banned from the tournament in 2022

What happens when you put two of the world’s most outspoken commentators together? Two-and-a-half hours of self-congratulation, tedious repetition and outright lies, it transpires. Tucker Carlson jetted off to Romania to join Andrew Tate for a sit-down chat at his home on the outskirts of Bucharest, where the influencer remains under house arrest. Last month, the 36-year-old king of toxic masculinity was charged with rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to exploit women. However, he offered Carlson and his loyal ‘Tucker on Twitter’ viewers a very different version of the allegations against him. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter The former Fox News poster boy asked the self-styled “top G” to explain the accusations made against him. Tate responded by saying he’d been charged with “convincing” women to get TikTok. “I'm charged with being the head of an organised criminal group, which is in charge of recruiting girls to make TikTok videos, to steal the money from the TikTok views,” he told his sympathetic interviewer. He then elaborated: “The overall charge is that there's an organised criminal group [...], I'm the head of it. My brother is below me, and we use the loverboy method to convince women to do TikTok videos to make money so that we can steal the TikTok money.” What he means by the so-called “loverboy method” is when a man seduces young, vulnerable girls and boys over a period of time in order to sexually exploit them later on. "So, just to be clear, you are not accused of pandering, of pimping, of forcing women to have sex with anybody?" Carlson then asked. "No,” Tate replied. “Not forcing them to have sex, not for restraining their movement, not stopping them from living a full life, but the fact that we are somehow convincing them to have TikTok." We’d like to take this opportunity to “be clear” ourselves. Tate and his brother Tristan, 34, are charged with some of the most serious crimes imaginable. Last month, Tate was served with legal papers by lawyers representing four of his alleged victims who have accused him of rape and sexual assault. The four women, in their late 20s and early 30s, are pursuing civil proceedings against the former kickboxer over alleged offences occurring between 2013 and 2016 while he was still living in the UK, The Guardian reports. The legal letter sets out the four women’s accusations against him, including violent rapes, serious physical assaults, and controlling and coercive behaviour. One of the women claimed that after meeting Tate in 2014, he brutally assaulted her. She said: “While having sex, he began to choke me and choked me so hard that I lost consciousness. I thought I was going to die. When I woke up, he was continuing to rape me. It is difficult to say that because it is so upsetting, but that is what it was.” Meanwhile in Romania, prosecutors also confirmed last month that seven women had come forward with allegations against the Tate brothers, including some who say they were “misled” by “false claims of marriage and love”. The pair are accused of forming an organised crime group in early 2021 to commit human trafficking in Romania, the UK, the US and other countries. The alleged victims were later taken to buildings in Romania’s Ilfov county where they were intimidated, placed under constant surveillance and control and forced into debt, a statement from the prosecutors said. The two men then allegedly forced the women to engage in pornography which was later shared on social media. One of the alleged victims says she was raped twice in March 2022, according to the statement. Both Tate and Tristan vehemently deny the accusations against them and, in his interview with Carlson, the former went so far as to say they’d been fabricated by the media. He told the right-wing host: “The girls have come forward and said, ‘This is insane, you've just picked us because we're near Andrew and we're his friends’.” He continued: “But they (meaning the powers that be) are like, ‘Nope, you’re a victim, no matter what you say. We’re deciding you’re a victim.” He went on to accuse the “media machine” of offering thousands of pounds in bribes to anyone willing to badmouth the Tates. “The media machine, which works hands in hands with the justice machine [...] offered bribes effectively,” he told Carlson. “They'd call up and say, if you have anything bad to say about Andrew, we can pay you $50,000 for the story.” Suffice it to say, lawyers for four of the victims would categorically rubbish his outlandish claims. After serving the 36-year-old with the legal papers, one of the representatives for the women said: “Despite Tate’s outrageous claims that these women aren’t even real, on reading the papers, he should now recall how real they are. “Talk of the ‘Matrix’ and ‘false flags’ hold no weight in court. The survivors look forward to seeing him there.” 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.

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The Matildas' crushing Women's World Cup semi-final loss to England was the most watched television show in Australia on record, data showed Thursday, as...

The Kansas City Chiefs were shut out for the third consecutive game in a Super Bowl rematch with Philadelphia on Monday night, allowing the Eagles to rally for a 21-17 victory