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ON A SERIES of 70-year-old photographic plates containing images of the night sky, a few astronomers say they’ve found something weird: flashes of light that appear and then disappear, like ghosts. There isn’t any readily available astronomical explanation for what these vanishing points of light, which the researchers call transients, might be. The dots might be defects in the photographic emulsions or image artifacts from when astronomers first scanned the plates. But in a series of recent papers, Villarroel and a small team of astronomers have been more seriously probing the possibility that the flashes might be something more exciting...

@mtracey Biden keeps making these clear, direct statements of policy intent, and the idiot media just regurgitates whatever White House PR handlers email them afterwards. Maybe because they don't want to believe Biden really is shredding decades of precedent to antagonize China and Russia (RE: Taiwan statement). When people say "US policy hasn't changed," they're just talking nonsense. There is no such thing as some official US foreign policy that exists separate from the president. He sets the policy! If he doesn't want "strategic ambiguity" anymore, he can simply say so. And now he has Same exact thing happened when...

In 1958, a combine carrying a full load of freshly harvested crops might weigh 8,800 pounds (4000 kg). Today, a fully loaded combine can clock in at 80,000 pounds (36,000 kg). The story of increasingly large farm vehicles isn't necessarily bad. The invention of these huge machines — along with advances like new fertilizers and genetically modified crops — mean that today's farmers can grow far more food than ever before. But there's reason to worry that equipment manufacturers have begun pushing the envelope too far. In a paper published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal PNAS, researchers show that farm...

US home prices were growing at a near 20% YoY rate for the latest Case-Shiller National home price index report. But mortgage rates have soaring like a SpaceX missile shot. The result? Closed sales for April 2022 are down -9.5% YoY. Of course, I am moving to one of the metro areas in the USA where closed sales fell only -1.10% YoY in April: Columbus Ohio. I should move to San Diego CA where closed sales fell -21.4% YoY. Of course, the US still suffers from lack of available inventory for sale. April new listings are down -5.7% YoY. Columbus...

Te world only has 10 weeks worth of grain left, the lowest levels ever seen, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine is creating a "seismic" threat to global food supplies, Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker told the United Nations Security Council. "[T]he Russia-Ukraine war did not start the food security crisis. It simply added fuel to a fire that was long burning. A crisis we detected tremors from long before the COVID 19 pandemic exposed the fragility of our supply chains," Menker told the United Nations. Her software company, Gro Intelligence, uses human and artificial intelligence to predict food security and...

The discovery of pottery from the ancient Lapita culture by researchers at The Australian National University (ANU) has shed new light on how Papua New Guinea (PNG) served as a launching pad for the colonization of the Pacific—one of the greatest migrations in human history.The new study makes clear the initial expansion of the Lapita people throughout PNG was far greater than previously thought.The study... is based on the discovery of a distinctive Lapita pottery sherd, a broken piece of pottery with sharp edges, on Brooker Island (200km east of mainland PNG) in 2017 that lead researcher Dr. Ben Shaw...

In 2019, the Democrat-controlled Colorado Senate joined a liberal-state pact designed to eliminate our nation’s Electoral College system. Now a Colorado gubernatorial candidate is, far from just mounting a defense against this, taking the offense: He has proposed instituting an electoral college within his state. It’s an idea that not only could help rural Centennial State counties, but also could virtually neutralize vote fraud’s effectiveness. The Washington Examiner reports on the story: One candidate in Colorado’s gubernatorial election has called for eliminating its one-person, one-vote approach in favor of a state-level electoral college…. Greg Lopez, a Republican candidate for Colorado’s...

A unique confluence of archeology, molecular genetics and serendipity guided a collaboration of Mexican and Penn State researchers to a deeper understanding of how modern corn was domesticated from teosinte, a perennial grass native to Mexico and Central America, more than 5,000 years ago.There is much interest in how ancient agriculturists transformed the wild grass teosinte into modern corn, one of the most important and successful crops on earth, according to team leader Jonathan Lynch, distinguished professor of plant nutrition. For decades, his research group in the College of Agricultural Sciences has been uncovering how roots play a critical role...

Kyrylo Budanov, the head of the Chief Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine's Ministry of Defence, said there was an attempt to kill the Russian president Local media claims Budanev said assassination attempt was two months ago Putin is said to be fearful of an assassination attempt against him since his decision to invade Ukraine Vladimir Putin survived an assassination attempt not long after starting his war in Ukraine, the country's intelligence chief has claimed. Kyrylo Budanov said Putin was 'attacked.. by representatives of the Caucasus' - a region that includes Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and parts of southern Russia - around two...

all information on the number and personal details of the Ukrainian fighters who left the steel plant will remain confidential and will not be made public, the spokesperson said. “We will not share publicly the lists or names of people we visited, or those who we visit in the future,” she said. Hodeib made the remarks when asked how many Ukrainian soldiers from Azovstal, including those wounded, the ICRC has registered so far and whether their lists will be published, a figure that is unknown so far.

Former President Bill Clinton is arguing President Biden does not care about his popularity with the American people and is focused instead on solving problems the country faces. “In his first 16 months in office, Joe Biden has done exactly what he said he would do if elected—help America overcome an unprecedented pandemic, rebuild a battered economy from the bottom up and middle out so that it works for all of us, and restore our standing in the world,” Clinton said in a write up about Biden for TIME’s 100 Most Influential People of 2022.

The Biden administration is in talks to tap to into a federal diesel reserve to address energy shortfalls, an official with knowledge of the matter confirmed to The Hill Monday. An interagency team of officials has been monitoring East Coast diesel supplies and developing policy recommendations to address them, the official said. “The team has prepared emergency declarations for President authorize release from the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve if conditions deteriorate,” they added. “We would call this a bridge to deal with short term supply shortfalls.”

In a Monday virtual address before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky urged Western countries to impose “maximum economic sanctions” against Russia. “The world is united because of threats, the war, Russian aggression. I don’t want you to lose this unity,” Zelensky stated in the keynote address which was met with enthusiastic applause in approval. He called for measures which he said have still yet to be imposed, including a ban on Western companies operating in Russia. His words came simultaneous to a UN official at the WEF stressing that Russia’s continued blockade on Ukraine ports...

A long line of suppressed disclosures has shown that the federal government is indeed spying on Americans, and Congress still hasn’t done anything about it.Facing an increasing backlash against the Biden administration’s Disinformation Governing Board (DGB), Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas promised it would not monitor Americans. It was not enough. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security was forced to put the DGB on “pause,” and its director, Nina Jankowicz, resigned under public pressure. Now DHS says it is “reviewing” the board while “continuing” its “critical work…to address disinformation.” No matter what happens with the board, it is hard to...

A previously unknown stone circle has been uncovered close to a Cornish town. The discovery took place as archaeological surveys of Castilly Henge, near Bodmin, have been carried out as part of a project to conserve and better understand the site.New research by Historic England and the Cornwall Archaeology Unit (CAU) revealed a previously unknown stone circle inside the ancient henge. The sheer scale of it can be seen in pictures shared by Historic England in this article.The site has now been fenced, allowing it to be grazed by animals without damaging the structure at the site which is one...

Gun control! Gun control! Gun control! Tragedy strikes in [fill in the blank], and Democrats immediately seize the opportunity to attack the Second Amendment. Rinse, repeat. Tragedy, exploited. It’s one of the most tiresome themes in American politics. Recent events have certainly given Democrats their fair share of opportunities. Following the supermarket shooting in Buffalo, New York, President Biden again called for a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Nearly 40 left-wing advocacy groups are now putting pressure on the Biden administration to extend background checks to all gun purchases, with the liberal media all too willing to publish...

Forcing children to sleep and undress next to kids of the opposite sex effectively puts up a ‘Christian kids need not apply’ sign on public recreation activities.This spring I got an email from 4-H, a club I participated in as a child, effectively communicating that my Christian family need not apply to summer camps and other activities sponsored by the quasi-public organization. (County governments often sponsor 4-H activities.) This email was signed by a 4-H staffer who put pronouns in his signature and told me, “Youth are assigned cabins based on gender indicated on the 4-H camp application and registration,”...

The Russia-Trump collusion narrative of 2016 and beyond was a dirty trick for the ages, and now we know it came from the top—candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. That was the testimony Friday by 2016 Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook in federal court, and while this news is hardly a surprise, it’s still bracing to find her fingerprints on the political weapon. Mr. Mook testified as a witness in special counsel John Durham’s trial of Michael Sussmann, the lawyer accused of lying to the FBI. In September 2016, Mr. Sussmann took claims of a secret Trump connection to Russia’s Alfa Bank...

Despite a new CBS News poll showing growing concern about inflation and President Biden's handling of the economy, Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries expressed optimism Sunday that his party could still hold on to its narrow majority in Congress in November's midterm elections. The New York lawmaker, who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, told "Face the Nation" that the president's early actions to fight the COVID-19 pandemic helped create millions of new jobs and "rescued the economy." His assessment came shortly after the release of the CBS News/YouGov survey showing that nearly 70% of Americans say the economy is bad —...

Two millennia's worth of soot and dirt covered the ceiling frescoes in the temple of Khnum in the Egyptian city of Esna, protecting the colors underneath. Now, painstaking restoration work from archeologists has brought these incredible pieces of art back to life.The frescoes have 46 images of vultures, representing, in turn, the Upper-Egyptian vulture goddess Nekhbet and the Lower-Egyptian serpent goddess Wadjet, who is also depicted as a vulture with open wings, although keeping the head of a cobra and the crown of Lower Egypt. Nekhbet is wearing the Upper Egypt crown...Construction of the religious building had begun during Ptolemaic...