Romance and parenthood feel remote in Ukraine: 'I haven't had a date since before the war' Sitting in a wine bar in Kyiv on a Saturday night, Daria, 34, opens a dating app, scrolls, then puts her phone away. After spending more than a decade in committed relationships she's been single for a long time. I haven't had a proper date since before the war, she says. Four years of war have forced Ukrainians to rethink nearly every aspect of daily life. Increasingly that includes decisions about relationships and parenthood - and these choices are, in turn, shaping the future of a country in which both marriage and birth rates are falling.

Amid historically low birth rates and economic pressures from its aging population, China will eliminate a decades-old tax exemption on contraceptives. A visitor looks at condoms during the Beijing International Sex Supplies Exhibition. Amid historically low birth rates and economic pressures from its aging population, China will eliminate a decades-old tax exemption on contraceptives. China aims to impose a unique strategy to address a falling birth rate that threatens its long-term stability. As of January 1, 2026, the government will levy a 13 percent value-added tax (VAT) on various contraceptives, including condoms.

Malaria is one of the deadliest diseases in the world, every year millions of people become victims of this disease and many even lose their lives. Medical professionals and the government could take accurate measures to protect the people only when the disease dynamics are understood clearly. In this work, we propose a compartmental model to study the dynamics of malaria. We consider the transmission rate dependent on temperature and altitude. We performed the steady state analysis on the proposed model and checked the stability of the disease-free and endemic steady state. An artificial neural network (ANN) is applied to the formulated model to predict the trajectory of all five compartments following the mathematical analysis. Three different neural network architectures namely Artificial neural network (ANN), convolution neural network (CNN), and Recurrent neural network (RNN) are used to estimate these parameters from the trajectory of the data. To understand the severity of a disease, it is essential to calculate the risk associated with the disease. In this work, the risk is calculated using dynamic mode decomposition(DMD) from the trajectory of the infected people.

Called "Tokyo Futari Story," the city hall's new initiative is just that: An effort to create couples, "futari," in a country where it is increasingly common to be "hitori," or alone. While a site offering counsel and general information for potential lovebirds is online, a dating app is also in development. City hall hopes to offer it later this year, accessible through phone or web, a city official said Thursday. City Hall declined to comment on Japanese media reports that said the app will require a confirmation of identity, such as a driver's license, your tax records to prove income and a signed form that says you are ready to get married. 'MEET HOT, SINGLE FIREMEN, SCORE A PRIZE': NEWEST WAY WOMEN ARE FINDING THEIR LOVE MATCHES Marriage is on the decline in Japan as the country's birth rate fell to an all-time low, according to health ministry data on Wednesday.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government will launch its own dating app as early as this summer as part of government efforts to boost the dwindling national birthrate, an official said Tuesday. Users will be required to submit documentation proving they are legally single and sign a letter stating they are willing to get married. Stating one's income is common on Japanese dating apps, but Tokyo will require a tax certificate slip to prove the annual salary. "We learned that 70% of people who want to get married aren't actively joining events or apps to look for a partner," a Tokyo government official in charge of the new app said. "We want to give them a gentle push to find one."

Languages disfavor word forms containing sequences of similar or identical consonants, due to the biomechanical and cognitive difficulties posed by patterns of this sort. However, the specific evolutionary processes responsible for this phenomenon are not fully understood. Words containing sequences of identical consonants may be more likely to arise than those without; processes of word form mutation may be more likely to remove than create sequences of identical consonants in word forms; finally, words containing identical consonants may die out more frequently than those without. Phylogenetic analyses of the evolution of homologous word forms indicate that words with identical consonants arise less frequently than those without, and processes which mutate word forms are more likely to remove sequences of identical consonants than introduce them. However, words with identical consonants do not die out more frequently than those without. Further analyses reveal that forms with identical consonants are replaced in basic meaning functions more frequently than words without. Taken together, results suggest that the under representation of sequences of identical consonants is overwhelmingly a byproduct of constraints on word form coinage, though processes related to word usage also serve to ensure that such patterns are infrequent in more salient vocabulary items. These findings clarify previously unknown aspects of processes of lexical evolution and competition that take place during language change, optimizing communicative systems.

It's early autumn in central China, and the streets of Ding Qingzi's village are turning into gold. Thousands of husked corncobs lie in orderly rectangles in front of homes, their kernels drying in the sun. The harvest is one of the heartbeats of rural life in Anhui Province, a constant that Ding, 35, has known since childhood. Yet few other rhythms remain. Except for the corn, the streets are almost empty. The sounds of children have faded. And for years, Ding struggled to find a wife. Few young women still live in the village. Fewer still would marry a welder unable to buy a house or pay a bride-price. "My family is not rich," Ding says.

Elon Musk fathered two children in 2021 with Shivon Zilis, a top executive at his artificial intelligence company Neuralink, new court documents show. The world's wealthiest man now has nine known children, including five children with his first wife, Justine Musk, and two with the singer Claire Boucher, known professionally as Grimes. Court documents obtained by Insider and published on Wednesday showed that Elon Musk and Zilis filed a petition to change their twin babies' names to "have their father's last name and contain their mother's last name as part of their middle name". The petition was filed in Austin, Texas, where the babies were born, and was approved by the judge. Zilis reportedly gave birth in November 2021, weeks before Musk and Boucher had their second child via a surrogate.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed three "existential threats" he believes currently face humanity during a recent interview with Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Insider's parent company, Axel Springer. The richest man in the world said he fears religious extremism, a declining birthrate, and "artificial intelligence going wrong." Death, however, did not make his list. "I spent a lot of time talking about the birthrate thing," Musk said. "That might be the single biggest threat to the future of human civilization."

It could be argued artificial intelligence (AI) is already the indispensable tool of the 21st century. From helping doctors diagnose and treat patients to rapidly advancing new drug discoveries, it's our trusted partner in so many ways. Now it has found its way into the once exclusively-human domain of love and relationships. With AI-systems as matchmakers, in the coming decades it may become common to date a personalised avatar. This was explored in the 2014 movie "Her", in which a writer living in near-future Los Angeles develops affection for an AI system. The sci-fi film won an Academy Award for depicting what seemed like a highly unconventional love story.