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Explanation: Wind-sharpened rocks known as ventifacts cover this broad sloping plain in the foot hills of Mount Sharp, Gale crater, Mars. Dubbed gator-back rocks their rugged, scaly appearance is captured in these digitally stitched Mastcam frames from the Curiosity rover on mission sol 3,415 (March 15, 2022). Driving over gator-back rocks before has resulted in damage to the rover's wheels, so Curiosity team members decided to turn around and take another path to continue the rover's climb. Curiosity has been on an ascent of Gale crater's central 5.5 kilometer high mountain since 2014. As it climbs, the durable rover has...

Former President Donald Trump has endorsed best-selling author J.D. Vance, a vocal national populist, in the Ohio Republican Senate primary race. [cut] This is not an easy endorsement for me to make because I like and respect some of the other candidates in the race — they’ve said great things about “Trump” and, like me, they love Ohio and love our Country. I’ve studied this race closely and I think J.D. is the most likely to take out the weak, but dangerous, Democrat opponent — dangerous because they will have so much money to spend. [Emphasis added] However, J.D. will...

Listen to this article 0:00 / 2:31 1X BeyondWords Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., paid her daughter another $24,000 in campaign cash during the most recent quarter, Federal Election Commission records reviewed by Fox News Digital show. Karen Waters, who has been organizing slate-mailing operations to bolster her mother's re-election for nearly two decades, and her company, Progressive Connections, have received more than $1.2 million since 2003 for campaign services, including "slate mailer management" fees and "campaign managing services." A "Citizens for Waters" campaign committee filing from earlier this week shows that the younger Waters received $24,000 from the committee between...

“Democracy Dies in Darkness” is the motto of the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post. It may sound like a warning, but more and more it seems like a summary of the left’s aspirations to control debate and shut down any opposition. A recent example of those aspirations appeared in a column by former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich on Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s big buy of Twitter stock. The original headline — changed after widespread mockery — was this: “Elon Musk’s vision for the Internet is dangerous nonsense: Musk has long advocated a libertarian vision of an ‘uncontrolled’ internet. That’s also...

Nothing was more predictable about this most predictable of wars than the certain failure of Putin’s Coup de Main invasion to seize Kyiv and conquer Ukraine in one fell swoop. And yet its success was confidently predicted by Russia’s FSB domestic security service, which, instead of the SVR foreign intelligence, was given the task of sustaining the fiction that Ukraine is Russian. Perhaps it is not strange that Putin, himself a former FSB officer, did not question this reckless optimism. He knew that the CIA fully agreed with the FSB estimate, as did the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BDN) and the French...

In One South: An Ethnic Approach to Regional Culture (LSU Press, 1982), sociologist John Shelton Reed wrote convincingly of what he called "regional racism." The accepted definition of "racism" is "prejudice against members of a different ethnic group," with "ethnic" defined as a "subgroup ... with a common national or cultural tradition." By this definition, the South and the West, with their distinctive cultural traditions, may constitute "ethnic groups," and there is a great deal of prejudice in our national culture against both. The relationship of these ethnicities, and particularly of the South, with the nation as a whole, has...

Incumbent Republican Ken Paxton has established a large lead over Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush in the upcoming runoff for attorney general, according to a new poll released this week. According to a new poll from the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation, Paxton is leading the race for attorney general with 65 percent of support among “likely” voters, against Bush’s 23 percent. When the survey respondents are filtered to just be “almost certain voters,” Paxton’s lead grows to 71 percent versus 20 percent for Bush.

The updated quarantine order, which went into effect Friday, removes the quarantine requirement for members of the general public who come in close contact with an infected person and don’t have COVID-19 symptoms. The new rules come after the California Department of Public Health earlier this month updated its own quarantine guidelines, eliminating the requirement for asymptomatic people. L.A. County is aligning with the state in easing requirements, but with a few exceptions. County residents who know they were exposed to the virus no longer have to quarantine, even if they haven’t been vaccinated. But they are required to mask...

President Biden and first lady Jill Biden made a combined income of $610,702 last year while Vice President Harris and her husband made more than $1.65 million, according to documents published by the White House on Friday based on the couples’ 2021 tax returns. The president and his wife paid an effective federal income tax rate of 24.6 percent, the documents showed. Those figures are comparable to 2020, when the Bidens earned $607,336 with an effective federal income tax rate of 25.9 percent before taking office.

KYIV. April 15 (Interfax-Ukraine) - Ukraine has enough supplies of staple food products and stocks for producing animal feed for several years, and no problems with food should be anticipated in the country in the near future, Ukrainian Agrarian Policy and Food Minister Mykola Solsky said in an interview published in Economichna Pravda (Economic Truth). "We have supplies of staple foods for several years. We have enough vegetable oil even for ten years. It should also be added that, since we have a lot of grain and some of it serves as animal feed, we certainly have meat and dairy...

The prime ministers of Sweden and Finland, Magdalena Andersson and Sanna Marin, both signaled Wednesday that they will likely be applying for membership in NATO. The “prospect” is most “welcome,” says The Washington Post: “Finland and Sweden Should Join NATO.” The editorial was titled “A Way to Punish Putin.” Before joining the rejoicing in NATO capitals, we might inspect what NATO membership for these two Nordic nations would mean for the United States. Finland is a nation the size of Germany, but with a population only 4% of that of Russia and a border with Russia that is 830 miles...

Los Angeles police called the incident 'random and unprovoked' ... Los Angeles detectives are seeking information Friday following the unprovoked stabbing of a man who was killed while talking to his brother on a FaceTime call. The police have called the incident, which occurred on April 8, "random and unprovoked" when 34-year-old Sergio Santay was attacked while walking on Bonnie Brae Street. ... Police say the suspect has been described as male and wearing a black fisherman hat with marijuana leaves, a turquoise t-shirt, light-colored shorts with dark shoes.

Archaeologists in Guatemala have discovered the oldest evidence of the Maya calendar on record: two mural fragments that, when pieced together, reveal a notation known as "7 deer," a new study finds. The two "7 deer" fragments date to between 300 B.C. and 200 B.C., according to radiocarbon dating done by the research team. This early date indicates that this Maya divination calendar, which was also used by other pre-Columbian cultures in Mesoamerica, such as the Aztecs, has been in continuous use for at least 2,300 years, as it is still followed today by modern Maya, the researchers said. (Notably,...

Ukraine's use of drones to counter Russia's invasion is changing the nature of war. The United States has sent 600 more AeroVironment Switchblade drones to help the Ukrainian military counter Russia's invasion, the US Defense Department revealed Thursday. That's a major increase from the 100 drones the US sent in March. The drones are "loitering munitions" that can circle above a battlefield before in effect becoming missiles that attack specific targets. They're included in the Pentagon's new $800 million in military aid to Ukraine, a package that brings the country's total contributions to $2.6 billion in security assistance. The US...

The information war continues raging…. On one battlefront we have Elon Musk trying to push back against quasi-government control mechanisms that constrict information and the flow of discussion and ideas. On a lesser, albeit similar battlefield, we see this. DuckDuckGo used to be the preferred search engine for those who wanted privacy on-line and unfiltered, ie organic, search engine responses. Unfortunately, CEO Gabriel Weinberg is now stating he will change the algorithm to remove independent information and media outlets and will replace them with only approved MSM results. “Like so many others I am sickened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine...

The Center for Disease Control’s announcement it is extending the federal mask mandate for planes and trains until (at least) May 3 continues the use of the mask as the emblem of a relatively new form of what we might call American communism. No real proof exists that masks actually work to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Further, airplanes are known to have some of the most virus-free air extant through HEPA filtration. So the mask is not a medical necessity, it is a symbol of something and that something is acquiescence to government control. It has become our version...

The Interior Department on Friday announced another round of oil and gas lease sales on public lands as well as an increase in royalty rates. The administration initially froze new leasing on public lands shortly after President Biden took office, but a federal district court that summer issued an injunction against the order. The department cited that injunction in announcing the lease sales. In the announcement, the department said the Interior Department will issue final sales notices for the upcoming sales Monday. The Interior Department also announced a royalty hike, increasing rates from 12.5 to 18.75 percent. “How we manage...

Activists from the western Russian city of Smolensk have petitioned the country's parliament, the Duma, to demolish a symbolic memorial site to the Katyn massacre and a cemetery for its victims, Russian daily Kommersant has reported. Images posted online showed heavy machinery, bearing the pro-war 'Z' and 'V' symbols, approaching the Katyn monument in an apparent bid to destroy it. The memorial site and monument commemorate the Katyn Forest Massacre in western Russia, a series of mass executions of Polish POWs, mainly military officers and policemen, carried out by the Soviet NKVD security agency in April and May 1940. The...

Built some time between 200 BC and 60 BC, the Antikythera mechanism is the oldest known computer mechanism in existence. This ancient, geared device for tracking the heavens is in pretty bad shape after all that time. But, despite the rust, researchers may have finally revealed a possible date it was first set ticking—also known as "Day Zero." For a clock like this the calibrations would require a start date to ensure the device’s accuracy. Recent advancements have pointed to the calibration date having been around the time the moon was in its apogee position, its furthest position in orbit...

A plurality of Americans expect inflation to worsen over the course of the next six months, a survey from YouGov/The Economist found. This week, the Labor Department revealed that U.S. inflation jumped 8.5 percent over the course of the last year — the highest increase since 1981. Americans have been feeling the change at the grocery store and gas pump, as many say increased prices have forced them to change their behaviors, even cutting back on groceries in order to pay for gas in President Biden’s America. And according to the latest YouGov/The Economist survey, many expect it to only...