NewsBytes

The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) said it will not invite Donald Trump to its annual convention next month, the first time the 116-year-old civil rights organization has not asked a sitting U.S. president to attend its convention. Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, accused the Republican President of working against the group's mission. "This has nothing to do with political party,” Johnson said in a statement on Monday. "Our mission is to advance civil rights, and the current president has made clear that his mission is to eliminate civil rights." Johnson said Trump has undermined American democracy by trying to consolidate power, has signed unconstitutional executive orders that oppress and undo federal civil rights protections and has turned the US military against communities. The group, which is nonpartisan, has invited presidents from both Republican and Democratic parties since President Harry Truman, a Democrat, in 1946, it said.

After years of delay, South Korea has ratified the Hague Adoption Convention, an international treaty meant to safeguard international adoptions, highlighting a significant policy shift decades after sending tens of thousands of children to the West through an aggressive but poorly regulated adoption system. The government's announcement came as it faces growing pressure to address widespread fraud and abuse that plagued its adoption programme, particularly during a heyday in the 1970s and '80s when the country allowed thousands of children to be adopted every year. Many adoptees have since discovered that their records were falsified to portray them as abandoned orphans, while others were carelessly removed — or even outright stolen — from their birth families. South Korea's Foreign Ministry and Health and Welfare Ministry, which handles adoption policies, issued a joint statement saying the country submitted the necessary documents to ratify the Hague Adoption Convention to the Dutch Foreign Ministry, the treaty's depositary. The treaty, which requires countries to strengthen state oversight and safeguards to ensure international adoptions are legal and ethical, will take effect in South Korea on October 1.

Finland is optimistic about finalising an agreement with India in 2025 to facilitate the movement of skilled professionals, students and researchers, Finnish Ambassador to India Kimmo Lähdevirta said. The ambassador hopes to replace the 2022 declaration of intent with a memorandum of understanding to boost skilled manpower migration. Lähdevirta identified ICT, healthcare, and services as in-demand sectors. India has signed around 18 mobility and migration agreements with other countries and similar agreements are under different stages of negotiations with several European countries. There are some 20,000 Indians in Finland working with global companies such as Nokia and in the startup sector.

Researchers have created a revolutionary robotic skin that brings machines closer to human-like touch. Made from a flexible, low-cost gel material, this skin transforms the entire surface of a robotic hand into a sensitive, intelligent sensor. Unlike traditional robotic skins that rely on a patchwork of different sensors, this material can detect pressure, temperature, pain, and even distinguish multiple contact points all at once. The researchers, from the University of Cambridge and University College London (UCL), developed the flexible, conductive skin, which is easy to fabricate and can be melted down and formed into a wide range of complex shapes. The technology senses and processes a range of physical inputs, allowing robots to interact with the physical world in a more meaningful way. Unlike other solutions for robotic touch, which typically work via sensors embedded in small areas and require different sensors to detect different types of touch, the entirety of the electronic skin developed by the Cambridge and UCL researchers is a sensor, bringing it closer to our own sensor system: our skin. Although the robotic skin is not as sensitive as human skin, it can detect signals from over 860,000 tiny pathways in the material, enabling it to recognise different types of touch and pressure - like the tap of a finger, a hot or cold surface, damage caused by cutting or stabbing, or multiple points being touched at once - in a single material.