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China will agree on another decades-long liquefied natural gas deal with Qatar in a further move to secure

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit reassures a region caught between the rival sides.

If you found water that was more than two billion years old, would your first instinct be to drink it? One scientist did exactly that after finding the oldest water ever discovered on the planet. A team from the University of Toronto, led by Professor Barbara Sherwood Lollar, came across an incredible find while studying a Canadian mine in 2016. Tests showed that the water source they unearthed was between 1.5 billion and 2.64 billion years old. Given that it was completely isolated, it marked the oldest ever found on Earth. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Remarkably, the tests also uncovered that there was once life present in the water. Speaking to BBC News, professor Sherwood Lollar said: “When people think about this water they assume it must be some tiny amount of water trapped within the rock. “But in fact it’s very much bubbling right up out at you. These things are flowing at rates of litres per minute – the volume of the water is much larger than anyone anticipated.” Discussing the presence of life in the water, Sherwood Lollar added: “By looking at the sulphate in the water, we were able to see a fingerprint that’s indicative of the presence of life. And we were able to indicate that the signal we are seeing in the fluids has to have been produced by microbiology - and most importantly has to have been produced over a very long time scale. “The microbes that produced this signature couldn’t have done it overnight. This has to be an indication that organisms have been present in these fluids on a geological timescale.” The professor also revealed that she tried the water for herself – but how did it taste? “If you’re a geologist who works with rocks, you’ve probably licked a lot of rocks,” Sherwood Lollar told CNN. She revealed that the water was "very salty and bitter" and "much saltier than seawater." 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.

Sanofi defeated Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH in an arbitration proceeding over legal responsibilities tied to controversial heartburn medicine Zantac.

With the heatwave stretching on this summer, festival-goers may be worried about handling the hot temperatures. The medical team at the Isle of Wight Festival said they saw fewer heat-related issues than expected, but there has still been a 15% rise in incidents since last year. With Glastonbury temperatures predicted to fall between 21 and 25 degrees, how can you make sure you stay safe? 1. Find shade – anywhere on the site When you see photos and videos of festival sites, it can look pretty exposed to the elements. “At festivals, seek shade in festival tents or near stages, or by going to bars… Even take a gazebo to go with your tent [if the festival allows],” says associate medical director of St John Ambulance, David Monk. When out in the field, take an umbrella or parasol if you are worried, Monk explains. And also, consider “wearing light layers and a cap”, he says. “Perhaps take a wet cloth to pop on the back of your neck, or wet the cap and wear it to cool you.” 2. Put sun cream everywhere “Make sure you wear a good head covering, at least SPF 30, and reapply regularly, so take it into the festival with you. When you get sweaty, it will need reapplying,” Monk explains. If you are dressing up in wild clothing, “apply sun cream before putting it on and reapply it, and make sure you take something to wear when it starts getting cooler”, he explains. “Put sun cream under make-up and glitter, and look at a sun cream spray for your scalp” – especially important if you don’t want to wear a hat. 3. Know what to look out for Knowing the signs of heatstroke and severe burns is vital. The main risks are sunburn, heatstroke and heat exhaustion. “Heat exhaustion is something you can self-treat by drinking lots of water or weak squash, and eating salty foods. If you think you have heatstroke, however, seek help from the medical teams,” Monk says. Signs include not sweating despite being hot, and a reduced level of consciousness, he adds. “If you get burnt, think how bad it is. If it blisters, you feel unwell or are shivering, seek help from the festival medical teams.” They should be fairly easy to find and signposted – ask around if you can’t see any. However, if it is less severe, just do lots of moisturising and rehydrating, he suggests. 4. Drink water and know how hydrated you are “Drink alcohol in moderation, and drink water alongside it. When you go to the loo, check how dark your urine is,” Monk suggests. This isn’t always possible in festival toilets, but you might detect darker and more dehydrated urine from its smell. 5. Pack the electrolytes When you sweat, you lose a lot of electrolytes, like salt. “Take an electrolyte drink with you – things like sports drinks, or Dioralyte, to replace whatever you lose,” says Monk. “Make sure you’re eating things with salt in, and carbohydrates, to give you energy.” 6. Keep an eye on drink and drugs “If people are going to take drugs, make sure those around you know what you have taken, in case they need to tell someone if there is a problem. Drugs and alcohol reduce your body’s ability to respond to the heat,” says Monk. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Regular daytime naps could be good for the brain, study shows Meghan ‘set to sign’ Dior deal: 4 times she’s worn the brand Designer JW Anderson wears Irish rugby top on the runway

Billionaire Infosys Ltd. co-founder Nandan Nilekani will donate $38.5 million to his alma mater Indian Institute of Technology

A multi-agency search is intensifying for a submersible that went missing with five people on board while touring the wreckage of the Titanic, as crews comb through choppy, remote waters in low visibility.

Future generations of artificial intelligence chatbots trained using data from other AIs could lead to a downward spiral of gibberish on the internet, a new study has found. Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT have taken off on the internet, with many users adopting the technology to produce a whole new ecosystem of AI-generated texts and images. But using the output data from such AI systems to further train subsequent generations of AI models could result in “irreversible defects” and junk content, according to a new, yet-to-be peer-reviewed study. AI models like ChatGPT are trained using vast amounts of data pulled across internet platforms that have mostly remained human generated until now. But AI-generated data using such models have a growing presence on the internet. Researchers, including those from the University of Oxford in the UK, attempted to understand what happened when several subsequent generations of AIs are trained off each other. They found the widespread use of LLMs to publish content on the internet on a large scale “will pollute the collection of data to train them” and lead to “model collapse”. “We discover that learning from data produced by other models causes model collapse – a degenerative process whereby, over time, models forget the true underlying data distribution,” scientists wrote in the study, posted as a preprint in arXiv. The new findings suggested there to be a “first mover advantage” when it comes to training LLMs. Scientists liken this change to what happens when AI models are trained on music created by human composers and played by human musicians. The subsequent AI output then trains other models, leading to a diminishing quality of music. With subsequent generations of AI models likely to encounter poorer quality data at their source, they may start misinterpreting information by inserting false information in a process scientists call “data poisoning”. They warned that the scale at which data poisoning can happen drastically changes after the advent of LLMs. Just a few iterations of data can lead to major degradation, even when the original data is preserved, scientists said. And over time, this could lead to mistakes compounding and forcing models that learn from generated data to misunderstand reality. “This in turn causes the model to misperceive the underlying learning task,” researchers said. Scientists cautioned that steps must be taken to label AI-generated content from human-generated ones, along with efforts to preserve original human-made data for future AI training. “To make sure that learning is sustained over a long time period, one needs to make sure that access to the original data source is preserved and that additional data not generated by LLMs remain available over time,” they wrote in the study. “Otherwise, it may become increasingly difficult to train newer versions of LLMs without access to data that was crawled from the Internet prior to the mass adoption of the technology, or direct access to data generated by humans at scale.” Read More ChatGPT ‘grandma exploit’ gives users free keys for Windows 11 Protect personal data when introducing AI, privacy watchdog warns businesses How Europe is leading the world in the push to regulate AI ‘Miracle material’ solar panels to finally enter production Meta reveals new AI that is too powerful to release Reddit user’s protests against the site’s rules have taken an even more bizarre turn

The Irish government is expected to approve more than £42.7m for several all-island projects today.

Former TV reporter and presenter Kateryna Fuglevych recalls her frightening journey out of Ukraine.

Grab Holdings Ltd. is preparing its biggest round of layoffs since the pandemic, as the internet company faces

The group holds weekly session in Oxford for young refugees forced to flee their homes by war.