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Explanation: Globular star cluster 47 Tucanae is a jewel of the southern sky. Also known as NGC 104, it roams the halo of our Milky Way Galaxy along with some 200 other globular star clusters. The second brightest globular cluster (after Omega Centauri) as seen from planet Earth, 47 Tuc lies about 13,000 light-years away. It can be spotted with the naked-eye close on the sky to the Small Magellanic Cloud in the constellation of the Toucan. The dense cluster is made up of hundreds of thousands of stars in a volume only about 120 light-years across. Red giant stars...

John Kerry on Ukrainian refugee crisis: Wait until you hear about climate issues Another day, another tone-deaf US official sticks his foot in his mouth over the Ukraine war. US climate czar John Kerry, who had already made cringe-worthy comments at the start of the war, did it again this week — by using Ukraine’s burgeoning refugee crisis to shift the focus back to his cause.

National anthem protester and former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick posted a video to Twitter showing him training with the caption “still working.” In the video, the woke activist performs a quarterback drill ending with a pass to an unseen receiver. According to ESPN NFL reporter Adam Schefter, a source said Kaepernick is “in the best shape of his life. He wants to play. He’s ready to play. He would be a great fit for teams with QB vacancies to fill who want to win a Super Bowl.” The timing of the video is also conspicuous, considering it comes only six...

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Wednesday asked fossil fuel executives at a conference to increase production levels “to stabilize the market and to minimize harm to American families.” Granholm asked them to start “producing right now” during remarks at the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference taking place this week in Houston, which attracts energy leaders from around the globe.

The likelihood is increasing that Ukrainian forces could fight to a standstill the Russian ground forces attempting to encircle and take Kyiv. Russian forces also appear to be largely stalemated around Kharkiv and distracted from efforts to seize that city. Russian advances in the south around Mykolayiv and toward Zaporizhya and in the east around Donetsk and Luhansk made little progress as well in the last 24 hours. Russia likely retains much greater combat power in the south and east and will probably renew more effective offensive operations in the coming days, but the effective reach and speed of such...

I made a mistake yesterday. I read into the sudden shift in Russian policy about their internet as a sign that they are plotting a massive cyber attack that could take down the whole internet. By essentially quarantining themselves after making threats of counterattacks against any NATO interference in their war, I believed they were preparing themselves for an attack. That may still be true, but the one thing I didn't give enough consideration to is their knowledge of OTHER forces who may be planning a cyberattack. They may be simply trying to guard themselves against China, the US. or...

The Russian Embassy in London has claimed photos showing the aftermath of a strike on a Mariupol maternity hospital which left three people, including a child, dead, and 17 others, including women waiting to give birth, injured, were staged. Despite the attack being confirmed, the official Twitter account pushed a bizarre conspiracy theory that a women pictured in images of the attack which have gone viral is famous Ukrainian beauty blogger Marianna Podgurskaya posing, and that the maternity hospital had been taken over by the far-right Azov Brigade who told all staff to leave the building days earlier. Images posted...

The 92-year-old grandmother of Jussie Smollett took the witness stand on his behalf at his sentencing on Thursday, blasting into "the media" and telling the judge that if he goes to jail, she wants to go with him. "I ask you, judge, not to send him to prison," the petite woman said from the witness stand. Then she wagged a finger at him. "And if you do, send me along with him."

The firm that laid off nearly 900 employees on a mass Zoom call has reportedly fumbled another round of company layoffs. TechCrunch reported Tuesday that a portion of the 3,000 or so Better.com employees who were set to be laid off this week received pay slips for their severance checks — before they were told they were going to be laid off. The company uses the Workday payroll system, and the paychecks were put into the database on Tuesday, when the news of their layoffs was just hitting national headlines. No further information was provided to employees, an anonymous worker...

Basque hotels are where the locals eat, and in the rural west the locals prefer meat, potatoes, beans and dozen old-fashioned, garlicky side dishes, not tapas. This is why the Basque places seem locked in the past, because the people who eat at them are conservative in every sense of the word, ranchers, farmers, miners and the people who make their living servicing those industries. The Basque sheepherders, despite the barrier of language and religion, fit right in to the culture of the West. After 1876, the Basque most likely to come to America were the losers of the Carlist...

[Catholic Caucus] Ember Days in the Post-Vatican II Liturgical Reforms: An Accidental Elimination? This week in the traditional Roman Rite, we have one of its most ancient celebrations, the Ember Days. The Wednesday, Friday and Saturday of the first week of Lent are one of the four times during the liturgical year (hence the Latin title Quattuor Temporum) specially set apart by the Church for fasting and abstinence, as well as prayer for farming and harvests. The Ember Days also have a traditional association with the conferral of Holy Orders. Their antiquity is attested by Pope St Leo the...

[H/T Grey_Whiskers]ransomnote: This author describes his content as Curated "alternative news" items... and critical updates regarding the COVID-19 Vaxx.The linked PDF contains reference links and excerpts for those interested in scanning 'the latest' re the 'vaccine'. There is no article posted at the link - just the download which contains an overview and links.U.S. Post-Vaccination, Mostly Non-COVID Deaths Up 40% - America on Track for 1.4 Million Extra Deaths in 2022 from Vaccines...Samuel Robinson Kephart7 hr ago Silent Massacre: Us Post Vaccination, Mostly Non Covid Deaths Up 40%, Us On Track For 1146KB ∙ PDF FileClick to download PDF

A study showed a significant overall survival benefit with ribociclib plus endocrine therapy for postmenopausal patients with hormone receptor-positive (HR+) human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2-) metastatic breast cancer. The randomized Phase III MONALEESA-2 trial is the first demonstration of a survival advantage with a front-line CDK4/6 inhibitor in postmenopausal patients with HR+/HER2- advanced breast cancer. The results showed a median survival of 63.9 months with front-line ribociclib, a CDK4/6 inhibitor, and the aromatase inhibitor letrozole, compared to 51.4 months with hormone therapy alone. The estimated six-year survival rate was 44.2% with ribociclib, compared with 32% for placebo. Previously...

The former “Empire” actor was convicted on five counts of felony disorderly conduct for lying to police after his eight-day trial late last year. Smollett, 39, is facing up to three years in jail for the crimes but before Judge James Linn could hand down his sentence, he had to rule on a Hail Mary motion to vacate the charges filed by the artist’s legal team last month. Tina Glandian, one of Smollett’s attorneys, argued the court made 13 critical errors and constitutional violations, including wrongfully dismissing jurors based on their race and sexuality and depriving the actor of his...

Meta Platforms will allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion, according to internal emails seen by Reuters on Thursday, in a temporary change to its hate speech policy. The social media company is also temporarily allowing some posts that call for death to Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in countries including Russia, Ukraine and Poland, according to a series of internal emails to its content moderators. These calls for the leaders' deaths will be allowed unless they contain other...

Russian President Vladimir Putin invoked World War II to justify Russia's invasion of Ukraine, saying in televised remarks last week that his offensive aimed to "denazify" the country — whose democratically elected president is Jewish, and lost relatives in the Holocaust. "The purpose of this operation is to protect people who for eight years now have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime," he said, according to an English translation from the Russian Mission in Geneva. "To this end, we will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous...

Despite desperate please from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and pressure from lawmakers at home, President Biden killed the Polish plan to transfer MiG-29 jets to Ukraine, fearing the deal might be viewed as an escalation of tensions by Vladimir Putin. The diplomatic blunder that began with a top European Union diplomat promising the jets to Ukraine ended when Poland suggested it would give the jets to the U.S. to deliver to Ukraine, and the U.S. said that was Poland's responsibility. Then, U.S. defense officials killed the project entirely, saying they would not support either transferring the jets themselves or backing...

There’s a reason that stickers with Biden’s face and an “I did that” caption are ubiquitous on gas pumps around the country.Gas price averages keep skyrocketing upward in line graphs resembling Mount Everest, and it’s astonishing in light of the rosy way President Joe Biden painted the state of our union just last week during his eponymous speech.It’s almost comical to consider how Biden proudly and delusionally compared himself to his predecessor, under whom gas prices lived in the $2.00 territory — especially when you consider that Trump’s predictions about Biden being a presidential disaster have proved to be spot-on.Donald...

The World Health Organization has confirmed the emergence of a new variant, dubbed deltamicron or deltacron — a combination of delta and omicron. Five things to know: 1. Three COVID-19 infections in southern France were identified with a delta 21J/AY.4-omicron 21K/BA.1 recombinant, or deltamicron, according to a preprint published March 8 in MedRxiv. The study, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, found that the hybrid genome has signature mutations of the two lineages. It's similar to cases reported for 15 other patients sampled since January 2022 in Europe. The mutation is misidentified with current PCR variant screening, so researchers designed...

The U.S. Coast Guard is warning about the hazards of transporting discarded lithium batteries after a container illegally loaded them caught fire while en route to the Port of Virginia, where it was set to be loaded onto a ship.