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Former President Bill Clinton and former senator, Secretary of State and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton were a little distant as they went on a hike in the Hamptons just after Bill's 77th birthday. The New York destination is about 115 miles east of the Clintons usual Empire State haven in Chappaqua. Hillary wore a kaftan style top, denim jeans and walking sneakers as they went on their walk on Sunday.

School leaders in rural northwest Oregon are worried about big budget cuts. The Oregon Department of Forestry is working on a plan to protect habitats for endangered species across 640,000 acres of state forest. The loss of timber revenue will affect local schools. The Jewell School District expects to be the most heavily impacted because it gets almost all of its funding from timber revenue. It could see budget cuts of 40 percent. The Jewell School District has about 150 students and a budget of $5 million. District superintendent Cory Pederson estimates the cuts will bring his annual budget down...

Owls, more owls and federal land grabbers Owls In response to a 2013 lawsuit by WildEarth Guardians on behalf of the Mexican spotted owl, a federal judge in Arizona has ordered a halt to timber operations on all New Mexico forests and one forest in Arizona (about 12 million acres). WildEarth Guardians Executive Director John Horning said, “With this decision, the agencies will finally be held accountable for ensuring that all forest management practices help, not hinder, owl recovery.” The attorney for the organization on this case explained that “certain timber projects will be paused in light of the...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Federal wildlife officials on Wednesday announced a proposal to classify one of two dwindling California spotted owl populations as endangered after a lawsuit by conservation groups required the government to reassess a Trump administration decision not to protect the brown and white birds. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed that California spotted owls that have their habitats in coastal and Southern California be protected under the Endangered Species Act. The other California spotted owl population, which lives in Sierra Nevada forests in California and western Nevada, would be classified as threatened, the agency said. The...

Life’s a beach for President Biden. Shortly after the president and first lady Jill Biden were taken to a safe house after a private plane violated the air space around the home they own in Rehoboth Beach, Del., on Saturday, he was spotted at a nearby beach in shorts. The photo of the president, wearing a ball cap and carrying a couple of tote bags through the sand around 3 p.m., was obtained by Fox News. A couple of hours earlier, the president was rushed to a fire station by the Secret Service after the plane was detected.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Political appointees in the Trump administration relied on faulty science to justify stripping habitat protections for the imperiled northern spotted owl, U.S. wildlife officials said Tuesday as they struck down a rule that would have opened millions of acres of forest in Oregon, Washington and California to potential logging. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reversed a decision made five days before Trump left office to drastically shrink so-called critical habitat for the spotted owl. The small, reclusive bird has been in decline for decades as old-growth forests disappear. The Associated Press obtained details on Tuesday’s...

Hillary Clinton is really drinking in New York City’s post-coronavirus atmosphere. The former secretary of state was seen using two hands to down a big glass of white wine at a posh Upper East Side restaurant Tuesday evening. Clinton was enjoying her beverage as she waited at Fleming by Le Bilboquet on 62nd Street near Madison Avenue for her hubby, Bill, and some pals, including rocker Sting’s wife, Trudie Styler, to arrive.

The last time the Russian "Doomsday Plane" was seen in the air doing its trademark loops at 27,000 feet telegraphing Vladimir Putin was somewhere nearby, was on March 31, just days after the formerly Ukrainian region was annexed by the Kremlin. Until today, when over the past 4 hours, the Tu-214 has been quietly circling in position just shy of Finland and the Baltics, where as it is known, NATO has been depositing hundreds of western soldiers in a "defensive" build up.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was in a helicopter flight on the way to a tour of northern Israel, when the IAF spotted what is believed to have been a Hizbullah UAV in the skies of Haifa Thursday. The prime minister's staff, in consultation with security elements, decided to take no chances and instructed the helicopter pilot to land for a short time, until the successful interception of the UAV. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) penetrated Israeli air space from Lebanon Thursday, and was shot down. At around 2:00 p.m. Israel time (11:00 GMT), IAF aircraft belonging to the aerial defense...

The headline-grabbing all-white adult killer whale spotted off Russia this month may well be one of a kind. But the sighting may not be the first time he's been caught on camera. Scientists were studying acoustic and social interactions among whales and dolphins off the North Pacific's Commander Islands (map) when the team noticed a six-foot-tall (nearly two-meter-tall) white dorsal fin jutting above the waves—hence the whale's new name: Iceberg. "The reaction from the team for the encounter, which happened on an ordinary day for spotting and photographing the whales, was one of surprise and elation," researcher Erich Hoyt said...

Amateur sightings prompt call for a network of backyard astronomers.On August 20, for the third time in about a year, amateur astronomers spotted a fireball above Jupiter's atmosphere. The discovery suggests the planet gets walloped more often than previously thought, say astronomers, some of whom are calling for a global "volunteer army" of backyard Jupiter watchers. The recent flash follows on the heels of July 2009 and June 2010 fireballs over the gas giant planet. (See "Bright Fireball Slams Into Jupiter" [June 2010] and "Jupiter Impact Creates Huge New Spot" [July 2009].) Astronomers speculate that the August 20 flash was...

HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro made his first known public appearance since falling ill four years ago in a visit this week to a Havana scientific facility, a blog reported on Saturday. Photographs taken with a cell phone and posted with the pro-government blog showed a smiling Castro, 83, chatting with people said to have gathered around him as he was leaving the National Center of Scientific Investigations. ... The blogger, Rosa C. Baez, wrote that Castro was spotted making a "surprise visit" to the center on Wednesday and stopped to greet and "throw kisses" to the...

The chemical fingerprints of potentially life-building molecules have been detected in the Orion nebula by Europe's Herschel Space Observatory. The Orion nebula is a nearby stellar nursery, brimming with gas, dust and infant stars. It is known to be one of the most prolific chemical factories in space, although the full extent of its chemistry and the pathways for molecule formation are not well understood. Researchers have used one of Herschel's instruments, which looks at the cosmos in the far infrared wavelengths of light, to provide more insight into how organic molecules form in space. By sifting through the pattern...

GRANTS PASS, Ore. – Scientists want to determine if killing the aggressive barred owl that has invaded old growth forests of the Northwest would help the protected spotted owl. Federal biologists are doing a formal study to decide whether to do the experiment, and laying out the terms if they go ahead. The study will be available for public comment and is expected to be completed by fall 2010. "This is to be done experimentally so we can nail down whether, in fact, removing barred owls could improve spotted owl demographics, and also to look into the feasibility of doing...

<p>Did anyone else read this story in the New York Post about wolves in Connecticut?</p> <p>Once native to the state, Wolves were hunted out. However, Wolf sightings have increased dramatically across the state, as Wolves make their way back into Vermont, Maine, etc.</p>

Astronomers have spotted small galaxies near the beginning of time that resemble ancestors of our own galactic home. The tiny galaxies are about one-tenth to one-twentieth the size of the Milky Way and have 40 times fewer stars. Light from the ancient clusters was emitted about 2 billion years after the Big Bang, the theoretical beginning to the universe that occurred about 13.7 billion years ago. So the galaxies are seen as they existed in a very young universe. The galaxies are not the most distant seen by the Hubble Space Telescope, but astronomers consider them to be the best...

PARIS (AFP) - Astronomers on Wednesday announced they had spotted the first planet beyond the Solar System that has water, the precious ingredient for life. The watery world, though, is far beyond the reach of our puny chemically-powered rockets -- and in any case is quite uninhabitable. It is made of gas rather than rock and its atmosphere reaches temperatures hot enough to melt steel, which means the water exists only as superheated steam. The find, named HD189733b, is about 15 percent bigger than our Jupiter and orbits a star in the constellation of Vulpecula the Fox, according to a...

RENO, Nev. - A fugitive wanted in the killing of his wife and sniper shooting of a judge arranged to turn himself in at a U.S. consulate in Mexico on Thursday but failed to show up, authorities said. Darren Mack was believed to be on Mexico's west coast, and had been spotted in the Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas areas, Reno Police Chief Michael Poehlman said. It was the most significant break in an international manhunt since the ex-pawn shop owner allegedly killed his estranged wife 10 days ago and shot the family court judge who had been handling...

Resale of Meals, Ready to Eat questioned after eBay trading spottedBy Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes Mideast edition, Saturday, February 18, 2006 WASHINGTON — Meals, Ready to Eat, the prepackaged rations infamous among servicemembers, remain hot collectibles on the online trading site eBay.com, despite defense officials’ efforts to stop the practice. MREs typically cost about $4.50 to produce, and are intended solely for use and distribution by members of the military, according to Defense Department rules. But the water-activated rations are being marketed on the site as both survival gear and collector’s item, with some cases of 12 going...

Beagle 2 probe 'spotted' on Mars By Pallab Ghosh BBC science correspondent Three dark triangular features in the centre could be airbagsThe scientist behind the British Beagle 2 mission to the Red Planet says the craft may have been found in pictures of the Martian surface. Colin Pillinger says the images suggest the mission very nearly worked, but Beagle somehow failed to contact Earth. He thinks the craft may have hit the ground too hard - as the atmosphere was thinner than usual because of dust storms in that region of Mars. This may have damaged onboard instruments, preventing the...