You’re not just getting older. Song lyrics really are becoming simpler and more repetitive, according to a study published on Thursday.

Lyrics have also become angrier and more self-obsessed over the last 40 years, the study found, reinforcing the opinions of cranky ageing music fans everywhere.
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“Across all genres, lyrics had a tendency to become more simple and more repetitive,” Zangerle summarised.

The results also confirmed previous research which had shown a decrease in positive, joyful lyrics over time and a rise in those that express anger, disgust or sadness.

The Taliban’s announcement that it is resuming publicly stoning women to death has been enabled by the international community’s silence, human rights groups have said.

Safia Arefi, a lawyer and head of the Afghan human rights organisation Women’s Window of Hope, said the announcement had condemned Afghan women to return to the darkest days of Taliban rule in the 1990s.

“With this announcement by the Taliban leader, a new chapter of private punishments has begun and Afghan women are experiencing the depths of loneliness,” Arefi said.

“Now, no one is standing beside them to save them from Taliban punishments. The international community has chosen to remain silent in the face of these violations of women’s rights.”

The test for German citizenship will in future include questions on the Jewish religion and the state of Israel in a move designed to filter out anti-Semites among applicants.

"Anti-Semitism, racism and other forms of contempt for humanity rule out naturalization," Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told Der Spiegel weekly in its Thursday, March 28, edition. "Anyone who does not share our values cannot get a German passport," Feaser said in the report first published on the magazine's website.

In the new citizenship test, which applicants must pass to acquire German nationality, candidates could be asked the name of the Jewish place of worship, the founding year of Israel or Germany's particular historical obligation to it, according to Der Spiegel.

The punishments for Holocaust denial and the membership requirements for Jewish sports clubs would also be among the possible questions, according to the magazine.

A presidential election is looming. Control of the Senate is uncertain. The window may be closing for the Democratic Party to replace the oldest Supreme Court justice nominated by a Democratic president.

Paul Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, remembers how this story went last time, and he’s begging for a different ending.

“Sotomayor has been an outstanding justice,” he said. “But the Ruth Bader Ginsburg precedent ought to be extremely sobering. … The cost of her failing to be replaced by a Democratic president with a Democratic Senate would be catastrophic.”

At 69, Sonia Sotomayor is the oldest justice on the Supreme Court to have been picked by a Democrat. And now, Democrats may be about to lose the Senate, White House or both. But on the left, there is little open debate about whether she should retire.

Several women have come forward on social media sharing incidents in which they said they were punched by men while they were walking the streets of downtown Manhattan in broad daylight in the last month.

Multiple videos — which were uploaded to TikTok — have picked up traction in the last week, with women online sharing their safety concerns in comments and reply videos. One woman said she was assaulted walking home from class. Another said she was assaulted on her way to work. A third woman said she was attacked walking her dog. At least two of the women described suspects with similar characteristics.

The videos have circulated amid widespread perceptions in the U.S. that crime is rising, despite recent FBI data that suggests it decreased last year.

Concerns over public safety have continued to loom in New York City. A series of recent high-profile crimes in the subway system prompted Gov. Kathy Hochul to send National Guard members to some of the busiest stations.

In February, police reported a decrease in shootings, murders and other crimes, like grand larceny, as opposed to February of last year. However, there was a 3.6% uptick in felony assault, with 1,968 incidents reported to police last month. According to crime statistics for this past week, misdemeanor assault is up 10.3% from this time last year, and it has gone up 15.7% in the past two years.

The Illinois governor announced the resignation of a member of the state’s prisoner review board on Monday, 10 days after a man who was released on parole was charged with attacking a former girlfriend and killing her 11-year-old son.

LeAnn Miller recommended the release of 37-year-old Crosetti Brand and conducted the hearing that resulted in him being granted parole, according to the governor’s office. CNN has reached out to Miller for comment.

Brand is accused of stabbing Laterria Smith, 33, and killing her 11-year-old son, Jayden Perkins, as the child was trying to defend her in their Chicago apartment on March 13, officials said during a news conference held two days later.

Smith’s 5-year-old son was also in the apartment and witnessed the stabbings, police said.

After more than 24 hours of letting the story run freely, Qatari mouthpiece Al Jazeera deleted the page featuring their former story, which accused Israeli soldiers of allegedly perpetrating rape against women during the IDF’s latest excursion against Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists who barricaded themselves inside the former hospital-cum-terror headquarters at Shifa Hospital.

Though the Qatari mouthpiece hasn’t officially referred to the retraction, all content related to the allegation has reportedly been deleted.

Al Jazeera columnist and former director Yasser Abuhilalah also tweeted, admitting that “It was revealed through Hamas investigations that the story of the rape of women in Al-Shifa Hospital was fabricated… The woman who spoke about rape justified her exaggeration and incorrect talk by saying that the goal was to arouse the nation’s fervor and brotherhood,” adding critically that “As if more than thirty thousand martyrs, ninety thousand wounded, about a million displaced people, and comprehensive destruction were not enough!”

After 15 years of deliberation, a team of scientists made the case that humankind has so fundamentally altered the natural world that a new phase of Earth's existence -- a new epoch -- has already begun.

Soaring greenhouse gases, the spread of microplastics, decimation of other species, and fallout from nuclear tests -- all were submitted as evidence that the world entered the Anthropocene, or era of humans, in the mid-20th century.

But the proposal was rejected in a contentious vote that has been upheld by the International Union of Geological Sciences, the field's governing body said in a statement published on its website on Thursday.

The decision "to reject the proposal for an Anthropocene Epoch as a formal unit of the Geologic Time Scale is approved", it said.

The IDF on Monday released audio recordings that it says incriminate two additional UNRWA employees who allegedly participated in the Hamas-led October 7 onslaught — bringing the total number of agency workers that Jerusalem says actively participated in the attacks to 14.

“I’m inside, I’m inside with the Jews,” Mamdouh al-Qali, an Islamic Jihad terrorist whom the IDF says was employed as a teacher in a UNRWA school, is heard saying in one recording.

“How will you get home?” he is asked in the phone call, and he replies with a laugh: “When I die.”

In another recording, an UNRWA teacher can purportedly be heard bragging about kidnapping Israeli hostages.

“We have female hostages, I captured one!” says Yousef al-Hawajara, a Hamas terrorist who worked as a teacher at a UNRWA school in Deir al-Balah, according to the IDF. “Everything’s fine I hope,” he later says in the recording. “We will enter Al-Aqsa Mosq