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NASA has confirmed dozens of eyewitness accounts in the Tampa Bay area of a fireball streaking across the sky on Tuesday evening. Amateur video filmed by local residents shows the fireball dramatically appearing to drop out of the sky and then exploding behind cloud cover. The national space agency said that it had received over 60 reports of the fireball from bay area residents, according to WFTS-TV.

“When you were researching your book Defending the Rock,” the BBC man asked, “did you come across any interesting document with an untold story?” I remembered then a beige file in the National Archives at Kew in London, with a 24-page closely-typed diary. The authorities called it ‘an alarming breach of security’ because it revealed some activities of S.O.E in Spain and Gibraltar. S.O.E, the Special Operations Executive, founded in June 1940, was one of the nine secret services that Britain maintained in the Second World War. Its role was sabotage, subversion and resistance to Nazi rule. ‘Set Europe ablaze!’...

For Vietnam veteran John Nugent, who served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, coming home to Newburgh, N.Y., meant some isolation, according to his son Chris, but his love of ham radio allowed him to reach out to other people throughout the world. "It was tough for him. The radio made him feel comfortable, and helped with his transition," Chris Nugent said. The veteran's call signal, WA2EQJ, came alive again Tuesday at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago, where the 75-year-old Nugent got his dying wish to broadcast on ham radio one more time....

If you're between 55 and 75 years old, you may want to try playing 3D platform games like Super Mario 64 to stave off mild cognitive impairment and perhaps even prevent Alzheimer's disease. According to the MRI test results, only the participants in the video-game cohort saw increases in gray matter volume in the hippocampus and cerebellum. Their short-term memory also improved. The tests also revealed gray matter increases in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and cerebellum of the participants who took piano lessons, whereas some degree of atrophy was noted in all three areas of the brain among those in...

The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) will stay attached to the International Space Station through at least 2020, NASA announced yesterday (Dec. 4). BEAM, which is owned by the Las Vegas-based company Bigelow Aerospace, launched toward the orbiting lab in compact form aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule in April 2016. It was attached and expanded shortly thereafter, to test the performance of such inflatable habitats — which can provide more internal volume per unit launch mass than traditional metallic modules — in the space environment. That work was originally supposed to last for two years, after which BEAM would...

On Wednesday December 6, Finland celebrates one hundred years of independence. Major festivities will make note of Finland's journey since 1917 – when the Finnish parliament proclaimed independence amid the Bolshevik revolution in Russia – from a poor provincial backwater to a global leader in technology, education and design, and a "social demographic triumph"as The Guardian put it.

However, when researchers considered how environmental and genetic limitations combined may affect the ability for us to reach these upper limits, our effect on the environment was found to play a key role. "This will be one of the biggest challenges of this century as the added pressure from anthropogenic activities will be responsible for damaging effects on human health and the environment." Prof. Toussaint predicts. "The current declines in human capacities we can see today are a sign that environmental changes, including climate, are already contributing to the increasing constraints we now have to consider."

The stonewall in Waco is starting to crumble. Lawyers keep throwing pieces of paper at it. The papers are heavy with words. Four defense lawyers in the Waco Twin Peaks Mass Murder case threw motions at McLennan County District Attorney Abelino Reyna yesterday. David Conrad Beyer who represents Billy Jason McRee; Brian Bouffard who works for Jorge Daniel Salinas; Robert G. Callahan, II acting on behalf of William Aikin; and Clint Broden for Matthew Clendennen all filed motions that make it incontrovertible that the District Attorney’s Office, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have...

CAMDEN, SC A Midlands woman offered to show a convenience store clerk her breasts in exchange for merchandise, but he called the police instead, according to the Camden Police Department. Stephanie Nicole Mayhew, 34, of Lugoff, was issued a trespass notice for the Dec. 2 incident, according to the Camden Police Department incident report. Around 8 a.m., police responded to a call about a suspicious white female in the store from the clerk on duty at the El Cheapo gas station, at 1024 W. Dekalb St., according to the incident report. The clerk said Mayhew entered the store and made...

The nation’s homeless population increased this year for the first time since 2010, driven by a surge in the number of people living on the streets in Los Angeles and other West Coast cities. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development released its annual Point in Time count Wednesday, a report that showed nearly 554,000 homeless people across the country during local tallies conducted in January. That figure is up nearly 1 percent from 2016. Of that total, 193,000 people had no access to nightly shelter and instead were staying in vehicles, tents, the streets and other places considered...

Although most of the mainstream media are reluctant to concede that President Donald Trump has been on a win streak lately, we have confirmation of this from a rather unlikely source: Charles Pierce of Esquire magazine. The politics section writer has been in a perpetual state of rage ever since the 2016 election. There are five stages of grief but Pierce skipped most of them to go directly from anger until he now seems to have reached the stage of acceptance in which he very grudgingly concedes that Trump has been "normalized" by winning a series of victories recently in President*...

We may still be looking for proof that aliens exist, but new research into some very curious ancient tools now reveals that humans were using extraterrestrial material long before mankind even dreamed of flying out of Earth’s atmosphere. The findings, which were published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, reveal that some incredibly old iron artifacts date to a time well before humans had the technological wit to smelt iron ore, and as it turns out, the iron used in their construction actually fell from the sky. Archaeologists have long suspected that the iron occasionally found amongst Bronze Age artifacts...

A maximum seven-year sentence for a former Volkswagen AG executive, handed down Wednesday, closes a long chapter in perhaps the largest and most expensive conspiracy in the global auto industry’s history. ... and fined $400,000

A new New Jersey ice cream shop called “Dairy Air” has shocked locals with its sexy cartoon cow logo — a bawdy beret-wearing bovine flaunting her curvy, branded derriere that one resident slammed as “offensive and sickening.” “This kind of marketing scheme is the reason we currently have a sexual predator in the White House,” Tingle continued, pleading in the note for the ice cream parlor to “reconsider” the logo design.

The issue is this: In the eyes of some, the Crusader nickname is offensive to non-Christians. Some folks see it as a symbol of slaughters during the 11th-century Holy Wars between the Christians and Muslims. Others would argue that a Crusader is simply someone who is fighting for a cause. Webster’s Dictionary uses both definitions.

Embattled NBC executives have been falling over themselves to insist they had no idea about Matt Lauer’s pervy past. But if anyone doubts that New York’s media elite was aware of Lauer’s reputation, they should look no further than a top-secret “roast” of Lauer that took place in October 2008. The notorious event — now legendary in New York media circles — pushed the outer limits of sexist, racist, homophobic and obscene jokes — and left little doubt that Lauer’s colleagues knew NBC’s biggest star had a troubled marriage and a wandering eye. Last week, NBC’s own Joe Scarborough, who...

Plunging temperatures have one very definite upside - they can change the landscape into a winter wonderland. And lakes and rivers can be transformed into beautiful natural ice rinks. These mesmerising images, from China to Canada with Europe in-between, show rinks that are all a paradise for skaters. And photographers, too, of course.

The 364-58 roll call Wednesday by which the House killed a resolution to impeach President Donald Trump. A "Yes" vote is a vote to kill the resolution.Voting yes were 126 Democrats and 238 Republicans. Voting No were 58 Democrats and 0 Republicans. X denotes those not voting. Present denotes those who voted they were "present" at the time of the vote but did not vote yes or no on the issue. There are 2 vacancies in the 435-member House. ALABAMA – All Yes ALASKA – Yes ARIZONA – All Yes ARKANSAS – All Yes CALIFORNIA – Dems who voted No:...

A rarely seen photo shows notorious lovebirds Bonnie and Clyde locking lips before their murderous crime spree came to a gruesome end in Texas. Along with the snap of the loved-up fugitives, another rare photo shows their bullet-riddled bodies after they were each shot more than 50 times. These and other photos capturing their final moments — including their shot-up car and police officers parading their bodies through town — are on display at the Photographs Do Not Bend (PDNB) Gallery in Dallas.