Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s actions as a teenager are at the center of a public firestorm.

“I’ve been really troubled by the excuse offered by too many that this was a high school incident, and ‘boys will be boys,’ said Sen. Chris Coons during testimony by Christine Blasey Ford before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 27.

But Trump surrogates such as Kellyanne Conway have dismissed his actions are merely those of a "teenager.” The adult Kavanaugh cannot be held accountable, such logic goes, for these alleged youthful indiscretions.

Should we be afraid of artificial intelligence? For me, this is a simple question with an even simpler, two letter answer: no. But not everyone agrees – many people, including the late physicist Stephen Hawking, have raised concerns that the rise of powerful AI systems could spell the end for humanity.

Clearly, your view on whether AI will take over the world will depend on whether you think it can develop intelligent behavior surpassing that of humans – something referred to as “super intelligence”. So let’s take a look at how likely this is, and why there is much concern about the future of AI.

Once upon a time we all knew what censorship was, who the good and bad guys were, and what could be done to make the world a better place. Look up the noun “censor” in the Oxford English Dictionary and you’ll find an outline of a much-told story under definition 2 (b):

“An official in some countries whose duty it is to inspect all books, journals, dramatic pieces, etc, before publication, to secure that they shall contain nothing immoral, heretical, or offensive to the government.”

Attributing the first instance of this usage to the English poet John Milton, the lexicographers illustrated it with a quotation from his anti-censorship pamphlet, Areopagitica (1644):

Where do the Jewish people come from? This is a question that anthropologists, historians and theologists have studied for millennia.

According to mythology, the Judaeans descended from three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are buried in the Cave of the Patriarchs (Cave of Machpelah) in Hebron – a city in the Palestine region and a world heritage site located in the southern West Bank, 19 miles south of Jerusalem.

The worst effects of the UK’s housing crisis include rising levels of homelessness, and growing numbers of people being housed in unsafe or overcrowded conditions. According to the charity Crisis, 59,890 households were accepted as homeless in England in 2017. And according to recent statistics, 27% of privately rented homes and 13% of homes in the social housing sector are not classed as “decent”.

The Federal Court of Appeal decision that halted construction on the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion has thrown Canada into a tizzy.

While British Columbia First Nations and environmentalists are celebrating a rare court victory on this project, industry representatives, trade unions and many other First Nations who supported the expansion feel the decision is a nightmarish intervention in plans that were many years in the making.