Thursday, Dec 25th
Last update08:33:56 AM GMT
There’s an orphan planet roaming our galactic neighborhood.
It’s a globe of gas about the size of Jupiter, astronomers say. And it’s out there by its lonesome, untethered to any star, drifting about 100 light-years from Earth. (In astronomical terms, that’s close.)
Astronomers have spied lonely planets before. But this newest object, seen near the southern constellation Dorado, is the closest to Earth yet found.
The State University of New York at Buffalo announced Monday that it was closing down its newly formed Shale Resources and Society Institute, which was devoted to the study of hydraulic fracturing, citing “a cloud of uncertainty over its work.”
The institute’s first study, released in May, drew sharp criticism for being biased in favor of the oil and gas industry.
In a letter addressed to the “university community,” President Satish K. Tripathi said he was closing the institute after an internal assessment that determined that it lacked “sufficient” faculty presence, that it was not consistent enough in disclosing its financial interests and that the credibility of its research was compromised because of questions over its financing.
The U.S. Health and Human Services Department released new rules Tuesday requiring health insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions.
Besides implementing provisions that would make it illegal, beginning in 2014, for insurance companies to discriminate against people with pre-existing or chronic conditions, the new regulations for the Affordable Care Act would make it easier for consumers to compare health plans and employers to promote and encourage employee wellness, the department said in a release.
Mitt Romney would approve of the current business meme: When management executives decide to stage a feeding frenzy on a company's wealth, ala Bain, it's best to chum the waters first, letting everyone know it's really someone else's fault. Labor unions, say.
If you look hard enough, in fact, you'll eventually see that labor unions are the cause of global climate change, Hurricane Sandy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Dubya- and Reagan-era federal deficit spending sprees, rising gas prices, Fukushima, fracking, the BP disaster in the Gulf, unhelpful phases of the moon...
A Manchester lawyer took a teenage girl to Canada, had her engage in sexual activity and convinced her to let it be filmed, according to federal indictments.
FBI agents swiftly arrested Lisa Biron yesterday morning as she awaited a hearing on child pornography charges at Manchester’s district court. About 9 a.m. FBI agents entered the courtroom, told Biron to leave her belongings and took her into an adjoining conference room where she remained for several minutes before coming out in handcuffs.
President Obama wasn't really born in Kenya after all. That was just a little good-natured political ruse, for the election, that was all. See, Obama was actually born on Venus.
OK, well, maybe Neptune, at the outside. But it's definitely down to one of those, right there.
Plus, you know what? Obama eats cloned stem cells for breakfast! By the end of this year, it'll be no more bacon-and-eggs for the rest of us -- you mark my words. He'll have us all eating the same glop, and maybe fetuses, too. Then, right after, we'll have to march around every day in socialist parades for an hour or two, singing about how much we love Chairman Marx and Comrade Obama.
The last rays of sun filter through the snow-covered spruces along the shore of Goldstream Lake, just outside Fairbanks, Alaska. Out on the lake Katey Walter Anthony stares at the black ice beneath her feet and at the white bubbles trapped inside it.
Large and small, in layer upon layer, they spread out in every direction, like stars in the night sky. Walter Anthony, an ecologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, grabs a heavy ice pick and wraps the rope handle around her wrist. A graduate student holds a lighted match above a large bubble; Walter Anthony plunges the pick into it.
An Israeli missile flattened a two-story house in a residential neighborhood of Gaza City on Sunday, killing at least 11 civilians, mostly women and children, Palestinian medical officials said, as Israel expanded a military offensive to target homes of wanted militants.
The attack, which Israel said targeted a militant, was the single deadliest incident of the five-day-old Israeli operation and hiked a toll Sunday that was already the highest number of civilians killed in one day, according to Gaza medics. The bloodshed is likely to raise international pressure for a cease-fire, with Egypt taking the leading role in mediating between Israel and Hamas.
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