Billionaire Elon Musk's Twitter rebranded 'X' has been reportedly blocked in Indonesia because of the country's laws on online pornography and gambling. Mr Musk announced on Sunday that Twitter has been rebranded to X as part of his plan to create an “everything app”. The Tesla CEO, who took over the platform in October 2022, replaced the famous blue bird with the new logo on Monday after crowdsourcing ideas from users over the weekend. The domain X.com which he previously used for PayPal will redirect to Twitter.com, Mr Musk said. Subsequently, millions of Indonesians were unable to access the social media platform, Al Jazeera reported. Indonesia’s ministry of communication and informatics said the site was restricted as the domain was previously used by sites that did not adhere to the country’s laws against "negative" content. The Indonesian government has been in contact with X to clarify the nature of the site, according to Usman Kansong, the director-general of information and public communication at the ministry. “Earlier today, we spoke with representatives from Twitter and they will send a letter to us to say that X.com will be used by Twitter,” Mr Kansong said. Twitter users trying to access the social media platform allegedly received a message on the screen saying that the website had been blocked by the ministry for violating local laws and regulations. Gatria Priyandita, a cyber policy analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told Al Jazeera, that Indonesia tends to block websites that are considered to be “offensive, criminal, or dangerous to social harmony". “These may include pornographic materials, sites that violate intellectual property laws, those that incite hate or are filled with false information.” “Given that Twitter can be freely used in Indonesia, I doubt removing X.com from the list of banned sites would be a great challenge, so long as Twitter can demonstrate that the domain name truly does direct to Twitter." Indonesia in 2022 threatened to block popular sites including Netflix, Google, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter if they did not make a submission to the ministry “detailing the content that appears on their platforms”. Read More Elon Musk takes control of @X account from user who had held it for 16 years Elon Musk’s ‘X’ already trademarked by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta for ‘social networking services’ Elon Musk wants to turn tweets into 'X's'. But changing language is not quite so simple Typhoon Doksuri heads towards China after causing destruction in Philippines Singapore prepares to execute first woman in 20 years Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi ‘moved to house arrest’ after more than a year in jail

RALEIGH, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 21, 2023--

U.S. officials say the Department of Energy is among a small number of federal agencies compromised in a Russian cyber-extortion gang’s global hack of a file-transfer program popular with corporations and governments

Alcohol addiction ruins millions of lives every year, but scientists may have found a cure for this terrible affliction. A new treatment for alcohol use disorder (AUD) has been trialled in monkeys with impressive results and, if these translate to human trials, the impact could be monumental. A team of neuroscientists and physiologists from across the US tested a new type of gene therapy to see if they could directly target the underlying brain circuitry associated with sustained heavy drinking. As they noted, in the journal Nature Medicine, people suffering from AUD commonly return to alcohol use even if they attempt to quit. This is largely to do with what’s known as mesolimbic dopamine (DA) signalling – meaning how the central nervous system circuit communicates the feelgood neurotransmitter dopamine. A protein called glial-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) is key to keeping these neurons in this reward circuitry functioning. However, experts have found that levels of GDNF are reduced in people with AUD during periods of alcohol abstinence, most notably in a region of the brain called the ventral tegmental area (VTA), as IFLScience notes. Therefore, the researchers decided to test whether using gene therapy to deliver more GDNF to the VTA could help reinforce this crucial dopaminergic signalling and prevent patients from suffering an alcoholic relapse. The team of scientists explained how alcohol consumption in non-addicts prompts the release of dopamine, creating a pleasurable buzz feeling, but chronic alcohol use causes the brain to adapt and stop releasing so much dopamine. “So when people are addicted to alcohol, they don’t really feel more pleasure in drinking,” Dr Kathleen Grant, a senior co-author of the study, said in a statement. “It seems that they’re drinking more because they feel a need to maintain an intoxicated state.” For their research, Dr Grant and her colleagues used eight rhesus macaque monkeys, who were exposed to increasing concentrations of alcohol over four 30-day “induction” periods. The monkeys then had free access to alcohol and water for 21 hours a day for six months, during which they developed heavy drinking behaviours. This was then followed by a 12-week abstinence phase, with the GDNF treatment performed four weeks in for half of the subjects. The gene therapy was delivered using a a viral vector containing a copy of the human GDNF gene injected directly into the primate’s VTA, according to IFLScience. And the results were truly jaw-dropping. “Drinking went down to almost zero,” Dr Grant said. “For months on end, these animals would choose to drink water and just avoid drinking alcohol altogether. They decreased their drinking to the point that it was so low we didn’t record a blood-alcohol level.” The most exciting aspect of their findings is the suggestion that gene therapy could offer a permanent solution for people with the most severe cases of AUD. This will be a welcome glimmer of hope to many, given that some 29.5 million people were diagnosed with AUD in the US alone in 2021, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Of these 29.5 million sufferers, almost a million (894,000) were aged between 12 and 17. It’ll likely be some time before we know for sure whether the gene therapy can be rolled out in humans, but it’s an important first step in tackling this devastating disorder. Sign up for 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.

Here's how to get Merlin in Call of Duty: Warzone

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LOUISVILLE, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 29, 2023--

There’s one college football conference sitting out the reshuffling going on among its big-money brethren: The Ivy League will start the season with the same eight members it has had since it formed in 1956

Meta's "year of efficiency" seems to be paying off. The Facebook-parent company on Wednesday reported revenue of some $32 billion for its quarter ending in June, marking a 11% increase compared to the same period last year and beating Wall Street's expectations.

Dr. Scott Atlas, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, was met with a flurry of boos, jeers and chants as he delivered a keynote speech during the graduation ceremony for the New College of Florida Friday night, amid a contentious conservative government takeover of the college.

PARIS Belgium's state secretary for digitalisation said on Friday he had asked Apple to upgrade the iPhone 12

The Japanese government aims to set up an official clearance system for accessing classified information related to economic