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Social media was buzzing on the night of August 11th when several people managed to snap photographs of what appeared to be an oval-shaped craft in the sky over Houston during stormy weather. Some of the images showed the object, which seemed to have a single point of light in its center, situated in the foreground with dark storm clouds looming menacingly behind it. The disc was pictured from several angles by different witnesses and seemed to change position in the air multiple times. "The more people who see it in different directions, the more likely we are to figure...

The future of commercial aviation may be upon us and it could resemble something out of a Marvel movie. A windowless jet concept by the name of the ‘Ixion’ was unveiled at the National Business Aviation Associate Show by a company named Technicon. The Ixion was instantly a hit with the crowd and it quickly created a buzz around the showroom floor. What was so amazing about this vehicle? It lacked windows. Two of the most common fears in the world are claustrophobia and the fear of flying. So should we really be surprised that people have reservations about flying...

USA Basketball officials announced they have canceled a trip to Senegal this month because of concerns about the Ebola virus. The World Health Organization has called the deadly disease a “public health emergency of international concern,” which USA Basketball Chairman Jerry Colangelo tells ESPN’s Marc Stein left him no choice but to cancel the August 27 trip to the West African nation. “Although the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] does not yet suspect any cases in Senegal, the country’s position as a neighboring country to Guinea and Dakar’s role as a gateway to West Africa heightened our concern,” Colangelo...

A man has died after 35 people - including children - were found in a shipping container at Tilbury Docks. The survivors - believed to be from the Indian subcontinent and suffering from severe dehydration and hypothermia - are being treated at nearby hospitals. They were discovered after a freighter arrived from Zeebrugge, Belgium at about 06:00 BST and was being unloaded. Essex Police has launched a homicide investigation and officers are being assisted by their Belgian counterparts. Police Supt Trevor Roe said staff at the docks were alerted to the container by "screaming and banging" from inside

Sprajc and his team found the massive remains as they further explored the area around Chactun, a large Maya city discovered by the Slovenian archaeologist in 2013. No other site has so far been located in this area, which extends over some 1800 square miles, between the so-called Rio Bec and Chenes regions, both known for their characteristic architectural styles fashioned during the Late and Terminal Classic periods, around 600 - 1000 A.D. One of the cities featured an extraordinary facade with an entrance representing the open jaws of an earth monster. The site was actually visited in the 1970s...

The black box recovered from the wreckage of the plane crash that killed Brazilian presidential candidate Eduardo Campos did not record his flight, Brazilian Air Force (FAB) says. It said the audio recording FAB experts had analysed was not related to the flight that crashed on Wednesday. A spokesman said they were trying to determine what the recording was. Mr Campos and six others died when his private jet crashed in bad weather in the port city of Santos near Sao Paulo. Experts from the Centre of Investigation and Prevention of Aeronautical Accidents in the Brazilian capital, Brasilia, have been...

If there really is a UFO conspiracy, it's surely the worst-kept secret in history. Roswell, Area 51, flashing lights, little green men, abductions – it's all been fed through the pop culture mill to the point of fatigue. Even the supposed enforcers of the secret, the "men in black", have their own movie franchise. But a new documentary, Mirage Men, unearths compelling evidence that UFO folklore was actually fabricated by the US government. Rather than covering up the existence of aliens, could it be that the real conspiracy has been persuading us to believe in them? Mirage Men's chief coup...

A Chinese national has been indicted by a federal grand jury on five felony offenses of computer hacking in a scheme involving the theft of trade secrets from American defense contractors, including Boeing. Su Bin, whose aliases include Stephen Su, Stephen Subin and Steven Subin, was named in the indictment returned Thursday and filed in United States District Court. According to the indictment, Su, a 49-year-old businessman, worked with two unindicted co-conspirators based in China to infiltrate computer systems and steal confidential information about military programs, including the C-17 transport aircraft, the F-22 fighter jet and the F-35 fighter jet....

Money moved from accounts of 3 passengers into 4th passenger's accounts Five months after the Malaysia Airlines flight went missing, mysterious withdrawals totaling 111,000 RM (£20,916) have been recorded, reports claim. A bank in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, reported the apparent discrepancies in their accounts on July 18, before lodging a police complaint, Assistant Commissioner to the crime investigation department Izany Abdul Ghany revealed. According to reports, the transactions were made on July 18 when money from the accounts of three passengers was transferred to the account of a fourth passenger before it was removed. 'We are investigating the case as...

The euro area's weaker-than-expected performance was announced a day after Japan, the world's third-biggest economy, reported that economic output fell 1.7% in the second quarter from the prior three months, a drop of 6.8% at an annual rate. Moreover, China's economy is showing signs of slowing at the start of the third quarter. Its pace of retail sales, investments, industrial production and new lending all softened in July compared with the previous month. All in all, the latest batch of disappointing news from East to West reinforces the view that global growth will be sluggish this year, and it increases...

HARARE— Zimbabwe's government is in a quandary as the country prepares to host a three-day Jehovah's Witnesses conference with 50,000 people from around the world expected to attend. Some delegates will come from West Africa, where there has been an outbreak of Ebola. Given the state of the host’s health care system, however, some delegates might be barred from attending. Dr. Christopher Tapfumaneyi, the principal director in Zimbabwe’s health ministry, says the country has not had an Ebola case, but that the government is aware of problems that the conference might present. Tapfumaneyi says with the advice of the World...

SEATTLE (AP) — Police in Washington state are asking the public to stop tweeting during shootings and manhunts to avoid accidentally telling the bad guys what officers are doing. ... "All members of the public may not understand the implications of tweeting out a picture of SWAT team activity," said Nancy Korb, who oversees the Alexandria, Virginia, organization's Center for Social Media. "It's a real safety issue, not only for officers but anyone in the vicinity," Korb said. Korb said she is not aware of any social media post that has led to the injury of a police officer, but...

In just a matter of days, the corona — a cloud of particles traveling near the speed of light — fell in toward the black hole. The observations are a powerful test of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which says gravity can bend space-time, the fabric that shapes our universe, and the light that travels through it. “The corona recently collapsed in toward the black hole, with the result that the black hole’s intense gravity pulled all the light down onto its surrounding disk, where material is spiraling inward,” said coauthor Michael Parker from the Institute of Astronomy ... NuSTAR...

We’re talking about a conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Venus. Venus has been dominating the dawn sky for 2014, and Jupiter is fresh off of solar conjunction on the far side of the Sun on July 24th and is currently racing up to greet it. We just caught sight of Jupiter for the first time for this apparition yesterday from our campsite on F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming. We’d just wrapped up an early vigil for Perseid meteors and scrambled to shoot a quick sequence of the supermoon setting behind a distant wind farm. Jupiter was...

Preliminary measurements by a dust detector aboard the Rosetta spacecraft show that dust is at least as frequent — or perhaps even more abundant — than what models have predicted. Meanwhile, as reported on Universe Today earlier this week, Rosetta’s COSIMA instrument is also doing dust measurements. Rosetta’s Grain Impact Analyser and Dust Accumulator (GIADA) has already detected four dust grains on its impact sensor. The detections took place between Aug. 1 and Aug. 5 at various distances as Rosetta approached the comet, starting from as far as 814 kilometers (506 miles) to as close as 179 kilometers (111 miles)....

The brawl started when Cowboys cornerback Morris Claiborne slammed Raiders tight end Mychal Rivera to the turf by the sideline, just a few yards from a section of the crowd that was predominantly Raiders fans. There was an agreement that there would be no tackling at the practice, but Claiborne said he decided to take Rivera down after the tight end lowered his shoulder. After Claiborne walked over Rivera and celebrated his tackle, Oakland receiver Greg Little rushed over to confront the cornerback. Within seconds, dozens of Dallas defenders and Oakland offensive players were brawling within reach of fans behind...

The plan being negotiated in the office of Gov. Jerry Brown could grant the automaker waivers for significant portions of the nearly half-century-old California Environmental Quality Act, Gaines said. The proposal is alarming some environmentalists. The governor's pitch also includes a number of tax breaks for Tesla that could be worth as much as $500 million, or about 10% of the project's total cost, said Gaines, a Republican representing the Sacramento suburb of Rocklin. He and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), are the coauthors of a proposed Tesla incentive bill that would put the package of incentives into...

<p>The new bridge will be taller --over 20 stories from the water surface... in order to accommodate the new mega cargo ships.</p> <p>John Pope is a spokesman for the port. He says "the budget has increased from the original estimates." Originally the new cable-stay bridge - approximately 8800 feet across with 515 foot tall towers - was supposed to cost 950-million dollars. That changed dramatically when all of a sudden, from out of the ground, they struck oil ... sort of.</p>

Is our climate cooling down or warming up? A new study of past climate data reveals that, despite previous belief, there has been a consistent global warming trend over the last 10,000 years, rather than a period of global cooling before humans intervened. "We have been building models and there are now robust contradictions," lead study author Zhengyu Liu, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a news release. "Data from observation says global cooling. The physical model says it has to be warming." Our current geological epoch is called the Holocene, and the problem Liu is describing is referred...

The London art museum says for five nights beginning Wednesday, people from around the world can get an after-hours tour online thanks to four roaming robots fitted with lights, cameras and sensors designed to let them move around the rooms in the dark. A live commentary will be streamed on the museum's website and viewers can get a chance to control the robots.