TV News LIES

Officials are investigating whether a huge fire that destroyed a top marine science laboratory at the University of South Florida may have been caused by a lightning strike.

Despite a massive response from local fire crews the Marine Science Laboratory building was completely destroyed after the blaze began on Saturday.

Moez Limayem, the USF president, said that lightning storms in the area were being looked at as a possible cause of the enormous and devastating blaze at the advanced scientific institute.

“St Pete Fire and Rescue said there was lightning reported in the area around at the time the fire started, but the cause remains under investigation,” Limayem said in a statement.

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The highest levels of the federal government are paying attention to a list of people who have gone missing or died, citing concerns about their connections to scientific research, some of it potentially classified.

The list includes multiple scientists, spans several years and involves a patchwork of people from different backgrounds and circumstances. The White House, multiple federal agencies and members of Congress have said they are taking a closer look at whether there are connections between the list of about 10 cases.

The cases range from a retired Air Force general missing (authorities previously said there was no evidence of foul play) to an astrophysicist shot outside his home. It also includes a construction foreman at Los Alamos National Laboratory who vanished.

Congressmen James Comer and Eric Burlison, Republicans who chair the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy and Regulatory Affairs, respectively, said they are investigating the cases of missing or deceased people with "access to sensitive U.S. scientific information." It's not clear how many of the people on a list put out by the congressmen had such access.

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The US military said it killed four more people in a boat strike in the eastern Pacific ocean on Tuesday, marking the third deadly attack on vessels in the region in four days.

The US Southern Command, which oversees military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, announced the killings in a social media post, claiming, without providing evidence, that the men killed were “narco-terrorists”.

The US military’s boat strikes have now killed at least 174 people since September.

Military officials have consistently alleged that the targets of its lethal boat strikes were “engaged in narco-trafficking operations” but have not presented intelligence or specific details about the individuals to support those assertions.

Legal experts and human rights advocates have repeatedly condemned the strikes as extrajudicial killings that violate US and international law, saying the military cannot execute civilians whom it accuses of crimes.

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is making some of its staffers relocate and reassigning an even larger share of employees as part of its efforts to reorganize its scientific research.

The agency is reassigning a total of 124 staffers, 35 of whom are being asked to relocate.

The move comes as the Trump administration seeks to eliminate its Office of Research and Development and instead conduct scientific research in a new office housed within the office of the administrator.

An EPA spokesperson said via email Thursday that as part of the restructure, the agency “has issued reassignment notices to those employees who remain in the Office of Research and Development.”

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As millions of people held their breath, the four Artemis II astronauts flawlessly splashed down back to Earth in the Orion capsule, ending their history-making 10-day mission to the moon and back.

"We are back in the business of sending astronauts back to the moon. This is just the beginning," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said from the deck of USS John P. Murtha, which is acting as the recovery ship for the Orion spacecraft.

“I’m honestly still at a loss for words,” a jubilant Isaacman said. "The childhood Jared right now can’t believe what I just saw."

The splashdown, which happened in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego at 8:07 p.m. EDT / 5:07 p.m. PDT, followed a harrowing and dangerous reentry, where NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen, traveled at speeds up to 25,000 mph ‒ possibly faster than humans have ever traveled.

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The astronauts aboard NASA's Artemis II have now traveled farther from Earth than any other humans in history, breaking the Apollo 13 record.

"As we surpass the furthest distance humans have ever traveled from planet Earth, we do so in honoring the extraordinary efforts and feats as our predecessors in human space exploration," Reid Wiseman, the Artemis II commander, said from the spaceship. "We will continue our journey even further into space before mother Earth succeeds in pulling us back to everything we hold dear. While, we most importantly choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long lived."

This flight was to test life support on the spaceships and make observations of the moon's surface.

Artemis II will continue to travel the rest of Monday and this evening, they will become the first humans to view certain parts of the moon with unaided eyes, as well as hit the 252,760-mile mark from Earth, breaking Apollo 13's record by about 4,070 miles.

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