Local mom stuck in Texas with little food and heat, no water
As the Philadelphia region prepares for another snowstorm, parts of the south are still at a standstill from last weekend's winter weather.
Pictures just won’t do these places justice.From Popular Mechanics
Maybe aliens are just better engineers.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says it’s targeting the fourth quarter of 2022 for the first flight of its orbital-class New Glenn rocket — which marks a major schedule shift. The company had previously planned to conduct its first New Glenn launch from Florida by the end of this year, although it was becoming increasingly clear that timeline wouldn’t hold. In a blog posting, Blue Origin said its team “has been in contact with all of our customers to ensure this baseline meets their launch needs.” Blue Origin noted that the updated timeline follows the U.S. Space… Read More
Older doesn’t mean better.
The latest crop of NASA-backed concepts for far-out space exploration includes “borebots” that could drill as far as a mile beneath the Martian surface in search of liquid water, and a nuclear-powered spacecraft that could intercept interstellar objects as they zip through our solar system. Researchers in Washington state are behind both of those ideas. The borebots and the interstellar-object checker are among 16 proposals winning Phase I funding from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, or NIAC. For more than two decades, NIAC (which started out as the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts) has backed early-stage projects that could… Read More
Twenty years after the first human genome sequence was published, an international research team has kicked the sequencing game to the next level with a set of 64 reference genomes that reflect much higher resolution and more genetic diversity. Since the Human Genome Project completed the first draft of its reference genome, decoding the human genetic code has been transformed from a multibillion-dollar endeavor into a relatively inexpensive commercial service. However, commercial whole-genome sequencing, or WGS, often misses out on crucial variations that can make all the difference when it comes to an individual’s health. “As a metric, 75% of… Read More
The shapes of fossilized teeth from 65.9 million-year-old, squirrel-like creatures suggest that the branch of the tree of life that gave rise to us humans and other primates flowered while dinosaurs still walked the earth. That’s the claim coming from a team of 10 researchers across the U.S., including biologists at Seattle’s Burke Museum and the University of Washington. In a study published by Royal Society Open Science, the team lays out evidence that an ancient group of primates known as plesiadapiforms must have emerged before the mass-extinction event that killed off the dinosaurs. (Technically, modern-day birds are considered the… Read More
Stoke Space Technologies, the Renton, Wash.-based company founded by veterans of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, has attracted $9.1 million in seed investments for extending rocket reusability to new frontiers. The first goal will be to develop a new kind of reusable upper stage, Stoke co-founder and CEO Andy Lapsa said. “That’s the last domino to fall in the industry before reusability is commonplace,” Lapsa told GeekWire. “Even right now, I think space launch is in a production-limited paradigm.” Rocket reusability is the watchword, to be sure — not only at Blue Origin, where Lapsa was an award-winning rocket… Read More
Expert-tested essentials for hunting deer, elk, ducks, birds, and beyondFrom Popular Mechanics
Six-packs. For your six-pack. From Popular Mechanics
Conservative Prime Ministers have pushed through more than 1,000 tax rises at a rate of roughly one every three days over the past decade, according to new research. The TaxPayers’ Alliance found that the Government has made 1,651 tax changes since 2010, 63 per cent of which - 1,034 - were tax rises. VAT, vehicle excise duty and income tax saw the most changes under a succession of Conservative Chancellors going back to George Osborne. The research will be seen as a surprise to some Tory voters who will have supported the party at general elections on its promise of keeping taxes down. However former Tory Cabinet minister John Redwood said: “I am not surprised. When I have voted for Budgets, I often have had to do so through gritted teeth.” He added: “The way to get more revenues is to have realistic and lower tax rates.” The total amount collected in tax will increase by £172 billion in real terms between 2009-10 and 2021-22, according to figures from the Office of Budget Responsibility. Since 2010, the most net tax rises happened during David Cameron’s leadership, with both the greatest number of tax changes and tax rises in a single year in 2012/13. Mr Cameron also oversaw the biggest number of tax cuts in a single year, cutting 83 taxes in the last full year before the 2015 election. Under Theresa May, there were over twice as many tax rises as there were cuts. Boris Johnson is so far the only leader since 2010 to introduce more tax cuts than rises. This is largely due to the temporary tax cuts and new reliefs to tackle the economic effects of covid-19. Indeed the only year since 2010 with more tax cuts than rises was 2020-21, with 78 of the 151 tax changes being cuts. Britain already has the highest sustained tax burden in 70 years and hiking taxes now would mean further austerity for taxpayers. In all Income Tax was the most fiddled with tax, being changed 180 times over the past 10 years. It went up 61 times, and was cut 119 times. National Insurance was changed 130 times - increasing 64 times and being cut 66 times, while alcohol duty was altered 125 times, the overwhelming majority - 114 - were increases in the tax. The Alliance is calling for a recovery budget on Wednesday, giving taxpayers a respite from rises, rescuing struggling sectors and reviving the economy. Labour has also called for Mr Sunak to avoid increasing personal taxes during the pandemic. John O’Connell, chief executive of the Alliance, said: “The tax burden is at a 70-year high, and it's not hard to see why after a decade of tax increases. “All too often we've seen Conservative chancellors give with one hand but take back a good deal more with the other, meaning every aspect of everyday life comes with a sizeable tax bill. “This Budget offers the government an opportunity to break with their predecessors from the last decade by giving taxpayers a respite from tax rises.” A Conservative source said: "Over the last year the government has stepped in to protect jobs and support people through this unprecedented crisis to the tune of almost £300billion. "We went big and we went early to help those hit hardest and there's more to come next week. "But the Chancellor is also going to level with people about what this crisis has meant for the public finances. The British people elect Conservatives because we have a track record of managing the public finances responsibly, and that's not going to change now."
Incident is latest in string of attacks in Oakland’s Chinatown
The population of monarch butterflies that arrived in Mexico's forests to hibernate this winter fell 26% from a year earlier, the country's Commission for National Protected Areas and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said on Thursday. Millions of orange and black monarch butterflies migrate to Mexico on a 2,000-mile (3,220-km) journey each year from Canada across North America. But the butterflies occupied only 2.1 hectares in December 2020, compared with 2.8 hectares the previous winter season, the conservationist group WWF said in a statement.
The 59-year-old motorcyclist was heading north on Boiling Springs Road in Lexington Wednesday when he struck the rear of a van that had slowed to make a turn, officials said.
Mike Pence is returning to his home state of Indiana to decide his future, but residents in his home town of Columbus are torn on his legacy, reports Richard Hall.
Republicans point to wages they earned as young people decades ago despite rising inflation that has outpaced Americans’ earnings
A man was killed by a rooster with a blade tied to its leg during an illegal cockfight in southern India, police said, bringing focus on a practice that continues in some Indian states despite a decades-old ban. The rooster, with a 3-inch knife tied to its leg, fluttered in panic and slashed its owner, 45-year-old Thangulla Satish, in his groin last week, police inspector B. Jeevan said Sunday. According to Jeevan, Satish was injured while he prepared the rooster for a fight.
More than 850 cows that spent months aboard a ship wandering across the Mediterranean are not fit for transport anymore and should be killed, according to a confidential report by Spanish government veterinarians seen by Reuters. The cows were kept in what an animal rights activist called "hellish" conditions on the Karim Allah, which docked in the southeastern Spanish port of Cartagena on Thursday after struggling to find a buyer for the cattle during the past two months. The beasts were rejected by several countries over fears they had bovine bluetongue virus.
This will be the cult leader’s tenth year speaking at the event