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The March flyby won't be nearly as stunning as the 2029 close approach; Apophis will come only one-tenth of the average distance between the Earth and the sun, more than 40 times as distant as the moon is from Earth. But scientists have big goals for Apophis' 2029 flyby, and in order to get the most out of that opportunity, they need to know as much as possible about the space rock. An animation shows Apophis' 2029 path compared to the swarm of satellites orbiting Earth. (Image: © NASA/JPL-Caltech) Apophis has been rattling around the inner solar system for millennia,...

2021 is the Year of the Ox according to Chinese zodiac. This is a Year of Metal Ox, starting from Feb. 12, 2021 (Chinese New Year) and lasting to Jan. 31, 2022. Ox is the second in the 12-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac sign. Years of the Ox include 1913, 1925, 1937, 1949, 1961, 1973, 1985, 1997, 2009, 2021, 2033.... ...It is said that Ox ranks the second among the Chinese zodiacs because it helped the Rat but was later tricked by it. The myth goes that the Jade Emperor declared the order of zodiac signs would be based...

TWO teenagers are facing homicide charges after a woman was savagely raped and beaten to death by a gang of up to 11 boys. Ee Lee, 36, was relaxing in a park when the teens dragged her under a tree, stripped and abused her in a sickening assault filmed on cell phones, prosecutors say. Kamare Lewis, 17, and Kevin Spencer, 15, each face a charges of first-degree intentional homicide, as party to a crime, and first-degree sexual assault. Ee was found half-naked and barely breathing by a pond at Washington Library Park in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on September 16 last year....

Republicans are "radicalizing against democracy" because they rely on our constitutional process when governing. This is the essence of Chris Hayes' recent Atlantic piece contending that the GOP is descending into authoritarianism. The MSNBC host notes, without any suggestion of self-awareness, that "the Constitution puts a wind at the backs of Republicans and makes them more competitive than they would be otherwise." What does "otherwise" mean here, exactly? A return to the British Empire? Or does it mean functioning as the centralized direct democracy that progressives covet, but that's never existed in this country? There is no "otherwise." The idea...

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is preparing to issue new guidelines to agents this week that could sharply curb arrests and deportations, as the Biden administration attempts to assert more control over an agency afforded wide latitude under President Donald Trump, according to internal memos and emails obtained by The Washington Post. While ICE’s new operational plans are not yet final, interim instructions sent to senior officials point to a major shift in enforcement. Agents will no longer seek to deport immigrants for crimes such as driving under the influence and assault, and will focus instead on national security threats,...

At his news conference Thursday, Gov. Larry Hogan said he hopes the coronavirus vaccine by Johnson & Johnson is approved by the end of February. The single-dose vaccine would be a game changer and help speed up vaccination statewide, but it’s different than the mRNA vaccines the public has heard so much about from Pfizer and Moderna. The J&J vaccine is already being manufactured at Emergent BioSolutions in East Baltimore in the hope that the FDA will grant them emergency use authorization in the next couple of weeks, but it’s very different from the vaccines already in circulation. “I think...

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WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers are rebutting the case made by House impeachment managers as they take their turn to present arguments on day four of his trial. The former president’s defense team has 16 hours to make their case but lead impeachment lawyer David Shoen said they would likely only use three to four hours to present their arguments.

Bloomberg News on Thursday began notifying a group of employees they were being terminated, according to three people familiar with the matter, the latest in an ongoing string of layoffs at media companies as they grapple with the economics of the digital age. Some staffers were given the sense the company hoped to enact a restructuring among a group of veteran editors, according to one of these people, who noted that some employees affected had been with Bloomberg for decades. Some employees at Bloomberg were of the belief, this person said, that the company was hoping to open its ranks...

Fox News host Tucker Carlson said his show was being targeted by groups funded by some of America’s most notorious liberal billionaires. Carlson said that within the past 24 hours and recent weeks, “the call to take this show off the air by groups funded — for real — by the Ford Foundation or by George Soros, by Michael Bloomberg, by Jeff Bezos has become deafening.” Carlson argued on the Feb. 11 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight that this hornet’s nest of billionaire-backed groups was going after the show’s “advertisers” and the “companies that carry” its signal into viewers’ homes....

China already ate America’s lunch — and Biden served it upIf a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, what does it mean when a phone doesn’t ring? This philosophical chestnut recurs whenever a new American president phones his allies and clients or, if you’re Joe Biden when the calls are to your deepest frenemy Benjamin Netanyahu or your ex-friend and now quasi-enemy Xi Jinping.Now and then, you are reminded that the Khomeinis and Khameneis, and the Osama bin Ladens too, have a point. America’s politicians are decadent and feckless. They substitute image for reality, and when...

Ted Lieu accidentally revealed the truth during the impeachment trial Thursday: Democrats are using the military to enforce political speech. Washington, D.C. looks like East Germany because President Trump won’t submit and say the words “the election wasn’t stolen.” They are “using the power of the state to change what you think,” said Stephen K. Bannon. “They are the authority and they don’t want you to challenge the authority,” he said. Raheem Kassam says the National guard is being “deployed for political ends” as if this was Beijing. CLICK ABOVE ARTICLE LINK FOR THE VIDEO...

The Biden administration on Friday announced plans for tens of thousands of asylum-seekers waiting in Mexico for their next immigration court hearings to be allowed into the United States while their cases proceed. The first of an estimated 25,000 asylum-seekers in Mexico with active cases will be allowed in the United States on Feb. 19, authorities said. They plan to start slowly with two border crossings each processing up to 300 people a day and a third crossing taking fewer. Administration officials declined to name them out of fear they may encourage a rush of people to those locations. The...

For some reason, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley was a speaker at the Republican convention on Monday night. Nobody is fooled by the unified front that Haley’s appearance presents. Haley was not at the RNC to signal her support for the populist agenda that Donald Trump ran on in 2016, and should run on in 2020 as well. She was there to advance her own ambitions, through superficial association with the Trump administration. These ambitions should be checked now. Allowing Nikki Haley to become a leader in the Republican Party would be a return to Bush-era conservatism, defined by...

Click here to read full articleLind­sey Gra­ham is try­ing to intro­duce Nik­ki Haley to big polit­i­cal donors and it’s not going well.The ambi­tious for­mer ambas­sador the Unit­ed Nations released a cal­cu­lat­ed break from Pres­i­dent Trump the same day his defense begins in the sham impeach­ment trial.The prob­lem: Haley is as unpop­u­lar among donors as she is among Repub­li­can voters.“Lind­sey Gra­ham is mak­ing this pitch for Nik­ki Haley and he’s call­ing around to peo­ple to ask if they will meet with her,” said Richard Baris, direc­tor of Big Data Poll.“These donors are angry and they do not want to sit down...

A Utah House committee voted Thursday in favor of a bill that would bar transgender girls from competing in female sports in public and private K-12 schools — even as a legislative attorney warned there was “significant risk” a court could find the law unconstitutional. Titled “preserving sports for female students,” the legislation from Rep. Kera Birkeland would require schools to categorize all athletic activities as “male,” “female,” or “coed.” Students of the “male sex” would not be permitted to join in sporting events designated as being for women, according to the bill, which defines sex as the “biological, physical...

A 12-year-old Texas boy who felt “sad and lonely” amid the coronavirus lockdown measures hanged himself, his father revealed in a report about the tragedy. Hayden Hunstable, of Aledo, took his own life three days before his 13th birthday in April 2020 because he didn’t know how to deal with the isolation and depression when the emerging disease caused a nationwide shutdown, the UK’s Metro reported. The boy’s 9-year-old sister, Kinlee, found him hanged in his bedroom, according to the outlet. Hayden’s heartbroken dad, Brad, 42, spoke to Metro to help prevent future suicides among the nation’s youth. “COVID killed...

U.S. Attorney for the District of Utah John Huber announced he will resign from his position, effective Feb. 28.The announcement, made Wednesday, came after Justice Department officials said they would ask U.S. attorneys who were appointed by former President Donald Trump to resign from their posts.

As he takes the green flag at Daytona on Sunday, by recognizing the gift of his second chance, Kyle Larson already stands as a winner in the race of life.As the NASCAR season kicks off with Sunday’s 63rd Daytona 500, two events will mark the “Super Bowl of Stock Car Racing.” First, as the event marks 20 years since the death of Dale Earnhardt, Sr., on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500, many in the auto racing community have focused on how Earnhardt’s death helped revolutionize safety innovations over the past two decades.Another storyline represents a comeback story...

In new research published in Microbiology & Infectious Diseases, immunologist J. Bart Classen warns the mRNA technology used in the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines could create “new potential mechanisms” of adverse events that may take years to come to light.Back in 1999, leading U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official Dr. Peter Patriarca contended that modern advances in vaccine technology were rapidly “outpacing researchers’ ability to predict potential vaccine-related adverse events.” Patriarca mused that this could lead to “a situation of unforeseen and unpredictable vaccine outcomes.”In a new research article published in Microbiology & Infectious Diseases, veteran immunologist J....