The UK's outgoing chief medical officer has urged the government to ban food and drink on trains and buses in a bid to tackle child obesity, provoking outrage online from those who are against state intervention on such an issue.

Professor Dame Sally Davies, who stood down from her role last week, makes the recommendation in a report publishedon Thursday as one of the ways to meet the UK government's pledge to half child obesity by 2030.

Professor Davies contends that ministers have a "moral responsibility" to reverse the epidemic. On the issue of a proposed ban for trains and buses she cites Japan as an example of where it's been introduced.

"Japan, which is one of the least overweight of the rich nations, they don't allow snacking and eating on local transport."

It's safe to say the suggestion hasn't gone down well on social media, with many people mocking the idea that the state could remove their right to eat and drink on public transport.

Uganda announced plans on Thursday for a bill that would impose the death penalty on homosexuals, saying the legislation would curb a rise in unnatural sex in the east African nation.

The bill - colloquially known as "Kill the Gays" in Uganda - was nullified five years ago on a technicality and the government said it plans to resurrect it within weeks.

"Homosexuality is not natural to Ugandans, but there has been a massive recruitment by gay people in schools, and especially among the youth, where they are promoting the falsehood that people are born like that," Ethics and Integrity Minister Simon Lokodo told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"Our current penal law is limited. It only criminalises the act. We want it made clear that anyone who is even involved in promotion and recruitment has to be criminalised. Those that do grave acts will be given the death sentence."

'Dopamine fasting' is a craze making its way around Silicon Valley, as the technological elite cut down on smartphone usage, binge eating, and gluttonous porn consumption. But isn't penance by another name still penance?

The phrase 'Silicon Valley's latest trend' should be enough to set alarm bells ringing by itself. From venture capitalist Peter Thiel's reported interest in injecting young blood in a bid to live forever, to Mark Zuckerberg slaughtering a goat with a"laser gun" for its meat, our technological overlords partake in pastimes more deranged than yoga lessons or pottery classes.

The 'dopamine fast' is the latest such trend. Psychiatry professor Dr. Cameron Sepah coined the term in a LinkedIn post in August, and claims that he has popularized it among his mega-rich clients in Silicon Valley. Put simply, Sepah advises that we all limit our exposure to six overstimulating activities: "pleasure eating, browsing the internet or playing video games, gambling or shopping, viewing pornography or masturbating, thrill seeking and recreational drugs," so as not to burn out our ability to feel pleasure.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that rewards us with a spike of pleasure when something good happens. In a more primordial era, this kept us motivated to seek food and reproduce, hence why eating and sex feel so great. However, our smartphones and Netflix subscriptions give us this same dopamine hit. That 'one more page' buzz you feel when you scroll through reddit in bed and the satisfaction of having 300 people like your latest Instagram booty-shot (we all know it's not about fitness), that's dopamine in action.

On Monday, I was in a federal courthouse in Toronto, fighting for a free press in Canada. It marks the third straight week that my digital media organization, True North, has been fighting against Justin Trudeau's Liberals and his proxies for the right to report on the current federal election campaign. In one notorious case, Liberals even ordered police to pull my journalist — an experienced broadcaster named Andrew Lawton — out of an entry lineup at a Trudeau rally, even after Lawton had been officially registered, given a wristband by organizers, photographed, and placed on the admission list. This took place on the grounds of a public college.

True North has a business model that I believe will be followed by other digital-media enterprises — and which stands in stark contrast to the legacy media that the Canadian government has pledged to subsidize with a $600-million bailout fund. We are a registered federal charity with two major programs — one focused on traditional, non-partisan think-tank work, the other focused on investigative journalism, straight daily news and political analysis. Like other news outlets, we have an editorial position rooted in our worldview, which influences our selection of opinion pieces without compromising our news reporting. Our journalists and our audience tend to be composed of conservatives, classical liberals, contrarians, independent thinkers and the growing ranks of those who are simply skeptical of the mainstream media in Canada. While Canada's legacy media outlets are struggling with an outdated business model that relies on advertising and subscription fees, True North's revenue comes primarily through small donations from thousands of readers and supporters, supplemented by a handful of foundation grants.

Thanks to our charitable status and unique business model, we were able to crowdsource a fund that would allow Lawton to cover the election campaign across Canada, going wherever the story took him. We successfully hit our modest fundraising target of $10,000, and Lawton began his reporting in September. When the bombshell story of Trudeau's sordid history of blackface became public, I assigned Lawton to join the Liberal media bus alongside the dozens of other journalists providing daily coverage of that party's campaign.

At least five people have been injured in an explosion at a garbage disposal facility near the Linz airport, Austrian authorities said on Thursday.

Two people sustained serious burn injuries and were airlifted via helicopter to two hospitals, while three others were slightly injured in the blast, police said.

Images from the scene showed a thick column of smoke rising from the site.

The cause of the explosion was not immediately clear. A police spokesperson said there were no indications that the blast was caused by a terrorist attack.

The incident reportedly occurred shortly after 8:00 a.m. local time (0600 GMT) at the waste disposal plant, prompting a fire to break out.

An analyst with the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) employee has been arrested and indicted on federal charges of leaking top secret classified information to a journalist he was reportedly intimately involved with.

Henry Kyle Frese, a 30-year-old counter-terrorism analyst, had a top secret clearance at the DIA and worked there as a contractor since January 2017 before becoming a full-time employee.

A criminal indictment made public on Wednesday says that one reporter wrote at least eight articles based on the compromised intelligence reports leaked by Frese.

At least two protesters have died as Indonesian students have mobilized the largest demonstrations in two decades against a new set of proposed conservative laws they say will discriminate against women and minorities.

For International Safe Abortion day, "Gerakan28September" (the September 28th movement) organized an event in the backyard of the Sangkring Art Space in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta. However, it won't be full tonight — the topic is probably too difficult for many Indonesians.

In between colorful art exhibits, there are information stands for victims of sexual assault, on reproductive health and how to sew sanitary pads. Bands play protest songs and the mood is emotional.

Some attendees have punk haircuts and are getting new tattoos, while others wear conservative headscarves and flowing gowns. But they have one thing in common: They want to make decisions for themselves about their bodies.

A United Nations report says it has determined that 30 civilians were killed in U.S. air strikes on alleged drug-processing facilities in western Afghanistan four months ago.

The report published on October 9 said that five civilians were also wounded in air strikes on more than 60 sites. which U.S. forces identified as drug-production facilities in the Bakwa and neighboring Delaram districts.

UNAMA verified four additional civilian casualties but is still seeking to determine their current status as injured or killed, according to the document jointly produced by the UN mission and the UN Human Rights Office.

U.S. Forces-Afghanistan (USFOR-A) immediately disputed the findings, insisting that its "precision" strikes in Farah and Nimroz provinces on May 5 "did not cause deaths or injuries to non-combatants."

In an unprecedented move, nearly a million people have had their power cut in Northern California. The state's largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric or PG&E, is trying to prevent its wires from sparking wildfires, but that move is sparking anger.

The power outages began early Wednesday as California residents loaded up on essentials for what they say is a "man-made disaster."

PG&E has been forced to shut off electricity to customers because a forecast of high winds and bone dry heat is expected to put pressure on its aging and faulty infrastructure. It is a desperate attempt to avoid what happened in November when sparks from power lines ignited the fire that tore through the town of Paradise, killing 86.

Ron Blasingame lost his power at 2 a.m. and could be in the dark for days.

"This is ridiculous! They are a public utility. How do they pass on their mistakes to us?" he said.

Sandra was on break from her nightshift at the Amazon delivery station in Sacramento, California, when she saw the text that her mother-in-law had been put on life support. With her manager's permission, she left work early to go to the hospital. Her mother-in-law's condition worsened the next day, and Sandra, who asked that only her first name be used, notified Amazon that she had to remain at the hospital. Her mother-in-law died the next day, and Sandra called the warehouse again to request bereavement leave, of which Amazon offers three days.

But Amazon grants workers limited time off, even without pay, and the time spent in the hospital had overdrawn Sandra's balance by one hour before the bereavement leave set in. After she returned to work, her manager informed her that she was fired.

"I felt like I was in The Twilight Zone," Sandra says. "I'm dealing with a death in my family, and I'm going to lose my job over one hour?"

The firing galvanized other workers at the facility who formed a group called Amazonians United Sacramento. Early on the morning of September 30th, they submitted a petition to the site manager and Amazon human resources demanding that Sandra be rehired and workers be given paid time off.

"While Amazon is a trillion dollar company run by the richest man in the world, permanent part-time employees working 8 hour shifts are only allowed 10 days off a year for any reason," the demand letter reads. "This means that every day we use [unpaid time off] for family emergencies, sickness, or vacation, we are one step closer to termination."