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Space is like any other destination: you either pay to go there or you get paid to go there. You’re either a passenger or a pilot. But though it’s only 100km away, neither option is easy. Being a passenger requires a lot of money. This month, Nasa announced it would allow “private astronaut missions” to the International Space Station, for which it will charge $35,000 a night; getting there, in a capsule operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, will cost about $52m. Even the briefer excursions offered by Virgin Galactic — six minutes of weightlessness more than 50 miles above the...

Joe Biden’s self-inflicted wound praising segregationists led to the sharpest criticism from his fellow Democrats in this still-young campaign season. For the former vice president, the blunder was the equivalent of an own goal in soccer. Comments at closed-door fundraisers should never drive news cycles. They are entirely avoidable. For his opponents, it was an easy lay-up in their quest to bring the frontrunner down to earth. In a road this long and winding, the brouhaha could soon be overwhelmed by events. The situation with Iran appears to be worsening, and next week will be dominated by the two-night presidential...

Circuit Circuit Paul Ricard First Grand Prix1971 Number of Laps53 Circuit Length5.842km Race Distance309.69 km Lap Record1:34.225 Valtteri Bottas (2018)

As Congress holds hearings on the possibility of reparations for African-Americans whose ancestors were slaves, the lines are being drawn regarding what is appearing to be a major 2020 election issue. It isn’t just the Democratic candidates for president who are talking reparations. It’s Democrats preparing for their Capitol Hill races, whether current or future candidates. Reparations are a pay-for-vote issue. This is only barely disputed by mainstream media who have tried to frame it as, “Yes, it’s an election ploy but that doesn’t make it wrong.” Yes, it’s wrong. Today’s Americans are neither complicit nor affected by the sins...

Over 600 American companies have signed a letter in support of President Donald Trump's tariffs on China, citing a boost to American jobs and reducing costs for their businesses.The letter will be submitted during testimony Friday before the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). China This week, the USTR has been conducting hearings regarding proposed tariffs on approximately $300 billion of Chineses goods.Chief Economist of the intention of Coalition for a Prosperous, Jeff Ferry, will present the letter Friday morning during his testimony to the USTR.

Shortened title. Full title: 'Gagging' and 'dry-heaving': The left's love affair with public transit collides headlong into its homeless problem in Seattle It's well-known that the left is all-in for forcing the public out of their cars and into public transit. Green New Deal co-author Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, is a big champion of public transit and calls for greater investment and spending on it to get the public to ride it, though in New York, she's taken flak for not doing it. She didn't mean herself. Well, now we come to the reality of public transit, in ultra-blue Seattle,...

President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign manager predicted in an interview with CBS News that the president would win multiple swing states, including at least three he lost in 2016, if the presidential election were held this week. Brad Parscale, Trump’s campaign chief, said the president would win Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, Florida, South Carolina, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Nevada if the election were held this week. All eight are considered to be up for grabs, to varying degrees, in 2020 and the latter three were all won by Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. and Trump won Florida by 1.2...

THE POLITICAL POPE (By George Neumayr) "From the first moment I saw him, I knew that he was going to be a Modernist wrecking ball..." - George Neumayr. While reviewing The Political Pope, a noted Catholic writer claimed the author of this book about the current pope was "...relentlessly ideological, and too systematic for such a free-wheeling figure." That description puzzled me, for Neumayr had only described events that demonstrated his deep-seated conviction the current Pontifex Maximus was nothing more - or less - than a revolutionary cleric, whose actions served as a wrecking ball to the Church's historical past and traditions....

Bank of America Opens a New Window. CEO Brian Moynihan spoke this week about embracing digital payment transactions while moving toward a cashless society. Moynihan made the comments Wednesday during Fortune’s Opens a New Window. Brainstorm Finance conference in New York. The CEO spoke about Zelle, Google Pay and Apple Pay and its increasing popularity. He said Bank of America “will continue to move” toward digital banking transactions. “We want a cashless society,” Moynihan told Fortune’s Shawn Tully. “We have more to gain than anybody from a pure operating costs (perspective).”

The Indian Navy is sending two warships to the Gulf of Oman to protect the country’s shipping in the wake of a series of attacks on tankers there in the past six weeks. The guided-missile destroyer INS Chennai and the patrol vessel INS Sunayna “have been deployed in the Gulf of Oman and Persian Gulf to undertake maritime security operations,” an Indian Navy statement said. Surveillance aircraft are also being dispatched in what India is calling Operation Sankalp. India announced the operation Friday, one day after Iran said it shot down a US spy drone over the Gulf of Oman....

Mayor Pete Buttigieg endorsed a federal identification card for illegal immigrants on Friday, allowing them to access government services. “I do believe that it is the responsibility for the federal government to make sure anyone who lives here regardless of their immigration status has the means to demonstrate that they are who they say they are,” he said at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials presidential forum on Friday morning.

Why Did You Leave Canada? A man in a Florida supermarket tried to buy half a head of lettuce. The very young produce assistant told him that they sell only whole heads of lettuce. The man persisted and asked to see the manager. The boy said he'd ask his manager about it. Walking into the back room, the boy said to his manager, "Some asshole wants to buy half a head of lettuce." As he finished his sentence, he turned to find the man standing right behind him, so he added, "And this gentleman has kindly offered to buy the...

A TRAUMATISED mum has described how she was brutally raped in front of her three kids after a gunmen broke into their farm in South Africa. Brave Nicky, 45, says she endured a four-hour "living nightmare" as Sebenzile Simane also molested her daughter and threatened to kill her son in March last year. The evil former farm worker felt he had been wronged by her husband Heine, 44, and shot his way on to the property determined to “chop him into pieces”, tying up his family and stealing their money. He has now been sentenced to two life sentences in...

Our latest privacy experiment found Chrome ushered more than 11,000 tracker cookies into our browser — in a single week. Here’s why Firefox is better. Over a recent week of Web surfing, I peered under the hood of Google Chrome and found it brought along a few thousand friends. Shopping, news and even government sites quietly tagged my browser to let ad and data companies ride shotgun while I clicked around the Web. This was made possible by the Web’s biggest snoop of all: Google. Seen from the inside, its Chrome browser looks a lot like surveillance software. Please follow...

I've noticed some discussion over this in various places and figured a genius freeper might have the answer, or at least enjoy speculating.

Most schools can’t give a child an aspirin without getting a parent’s OK. But in Vermont, kids are about to get a whole lot more than Tylenol. Under a new rule, they’ll be able to get entirely new bodies—in some cases, without ever calling home. If you thought the war on parents’ rights was bad now, just wait. The Green Mountain State just dropped a massive bombshell in the transgender fight. According to local media, Vermont’s health insurance regulators are about to overhaul the state’s Medicaid rules, forcing taxpayers to cover the cost of everything from genital surgery to a...

Vatican City, 21.06.2019 (KAP) Pope Francis has demanded more Jewish and Islamic elements in Catholic theology studies. Students need to be educated to dialogue with other religions in order to build a society that values ​​diversity, he said Friday in Naples. Especially in the Muslims, it is important to see "partners for building a peaceful coexistence". ... According to Francis, the Mediterranean region is "open to encounter, dialogue and mutual inculturation" because of its natural environment. He warned the theological faculties of self-reference and operational blindness.

The Left is no longer keeping their love for communism a secret. They conveniently overlook the many millions that system has murdered and its consistent economic failures and now now promote it as something very desireable. The latest shtick in communism promotion is via the device of science fiction to look at a future of robot communism or "Fully Automated Luxury Communism" (FALC) in which people no longer need to work because robots take care of their needs. Ironically, such a future could never be attained under communism because the most advanced technology has always been developed under capitalism so perhaps...

Shortened title. Full title: What is Wrong with Jerry Nadler? Nadler Repeatedly Refers to Hope Hicks as “Ms. Lewandowski” During Face-to-Face Interview with Hicks What is wrong with Jerry Nadler? The Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee on Thursday released transcript of their closed-door interview with former White House Comms Director Hope Hicks. Hope Hicks arrived on Capitol Hill Wednesday morning to testify to the House Judiciary Committee after Chairman Nadler issued her a subpoena to compel testimony. House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, 72, repeatedly referred to Hope Hicks as “Ms. Lewandowski” during the face-to-face interview. “Ms. Lewandowski — sorry — Ms....

“We face a real situation where Roe could be overturned. And we know what will happen, which is that women will die. Thousands of women died every year pre-Roe.” — Leana Wen, president of Planned Parenthood, in an interview with WFAA of Dallas, March 6, 2019 [hugesnip] THE FACTS By 1959, a leading researcher wrote: “Abortion is no longer a dangerous procedure. This applies not just to therapeutic abortions as performed in hospitals but also to so-called illegal abortions as done by physicians. In 1957, there were only 260 deaths in the whole country attributed to abortions of any kind....