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Explanation: Viewed face-on, grand spiral galaxy NGC 5643 has a festive appearance in this colorful cosmic portrait. Some 55 million light-years distant, the galaxy extends for over 100,000 light-years, seen within the boundaries of the southern constellation Lupus. Its inner 40,000 light-years are shown in sharp detail in this composite of Hubble Space Telescope image data. The galaxy's magnificent spiral arms wind from a yellowish central region dominated by light from old stars, while the spiral arms themselves are traced by dust lanes, young blue stars and reddish star forming regions. The bright compact core of NGC 5643 is also...

It has become deeply embedded in American culture, requiring a herculean effort by Donald Trump to reverse.It is the most malignant foundation of progressive ideology. Elon Musk, among others, calls it a “mind virus.” And it appears the American people who were bullied into accepting it have finally had enough. It is the gospel of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), which was given birth by Barack Obama and then overwhelmed the country with remarkable ease and haste following the George Floyd affair in 2020 when liberals and conservatives alike were riven with anger. The rise of DEI was, in many...

President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for a return-to-office mandate for federal workers will face stiff resistance and union contracts that guarantee remote work.President-elect Donald Trump warned federal employees last week that they must return to the office — or else “they’re going to be dismissed.”The threat was the latest and loudest signal yet that Trump, his allies and Republicans in Congress are committed to ending a remote-work culture that became widespread for the civil service of 2.3 million during the coronavirus pandemic but that many conservatives now decry as an outdated taxpayer-funded perk that has hurt performance across the government.A quick...

The country’s prime minister said the incident, the latest in a series of disruptions to undersea infrastructure, underscored the danger of a so-called Russian shadow fleet.The Finnish police on Thursday boarded an oil tanker that the authorities said they suspected was involved in damaging vital undersea cables. They suggested the tanker was part of a shadow fleet used by Russia to avoid Western sanctions.The Estlink 2 submarine cable, which carries electricity between Finland and Estonia, was cut on Wednesday, Finland’s police said in a statement, the latest in a slew of disruptions to undersea infrastructure that are being investigated as...

Activists from prominent pro-Palestinian groups said Vice President Kamala Harris lost their support during the 2024 elections because they were dissatisfied with her stance on the war in Gaza. With pro-Palestinian Michigan voters rejecting the Democratic ticket in historic numbers on Election Day, Uncommitted co-founder Layla Elabed explained the trend by saying President-elect Donald Trump’s vow to bring peace in the region resonated with people frustrated by Harris’s association with former Republican Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney. “There’s been many ways in which Harris chose the path of Liz Cheney and the donor class on a range of issues, and abandoning...

Gen Z cashiers are infuriating their bosses when they take cash from customers. According to reports young workers are deeming some bills counterfeit when they are in fact legitimate. According to one boss of a frozen yogurt shop in Florida, teenage employees had to be told that the bills they had refused to accept because they were fake, were actually 'just old.' Sam, 22, told Newsweek that the £10 and £5 notes that were confiscated at the store were 'pre-1999 as far as dating goes, so at least 25-30 years old. 'The $5 is even older, maybe from the 60s'...

Trump's popular vote win and GOP redistricting gains have reshaped House battlegrounds, challenging Democrats' demographic strategy and midterm advantage.Donald Trump’s popular vote victory has eroded some of the demographic gains Democrats have been working on for years, giving Republicans hope they can break the historic trend of the president’s party losing seats in the first midterm election after winning the White House. Two years from now some 14 Democratic House members will be defending districts Trump won, compared to just three Republicans in districts carried by Vice President Kamala Harris. It’s a significantly better outlook than the GOP faced after...

Professional snowboarder Sophie Hediger was killed in an avalanche while snowboarding in her native Switzerland on Monday. The 26-year-old competed as part of the Swiss national team in the 2022 Olympics in Beijing and was a known figure on the international snowboard racing circuit. "The tragic death of Sophie Hediger has cast a dark shadow over the Christmas holidays. We are immeasurably sad," Walter Reusser, CEO of Swiss-Ski, Switzerland's ski federation, said in an online statement posted Tuesday. The incident resulting in Hediger's death occurred when she and a companion had gone snowboarding in the town of Arosa, in the...

Caitlin Clark was named AP’s Female Athlete of the Year without much competition, but one person who received votes was the cause for much controversy over the summer. A group of 74 sports journalists from The Associated Press and its members voted on the award. Clark received 35 votes, Olympic gymnast Simone Biles was second with 25. But Olympic gold medalist boxer Imane Khelif was third, getting four votes. Khelif qualified for the Paris Olympics, but Khelif’s gender was called into question following a disqualification from the 2023 championships before a gold medal bout over gender eligibility issues. IBA President...

A Florida pizza delivery worker was so angry over a tip she got from a customer that she stabbed the woman multiple times, according to police. Brianna Alvelo, 22, got ticked off Sunday after dropping off a pie at the Riviera Motel in Kissimmee when the customer gave her a stingy tip — so she returned with a pal and stabbed the woman, the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office said in a press release posted on Facebook. “Alvelo, who was armed with a knife, began attacking one of the victims,” the sheriff’s office said. “The victim was stabbed multiple times, and...

As is tradition, the NBA played five high-profile games on Christmas. When the ratings come out on the day's games, the NFL will almost certainly have drawn in more viewers. You can bet the NBA's stakeholders are very aware of that fact, to the point that one of them outright challenged the rival league in his postgame interview. Speaking to ABC's broadcast crew after a thrilling Los Angeles Lakers win, noted football fan LeBron James said, "I love the NFL. I love the NFL, but Christmas is our day." James' sentiment is likely shared around the league, though perhaps without...

"Dear Bob, Nice fake news network you have there. It would be a shame if anything were to happen to it. Love, Brendan." That isn't quite what incoming FCC chair Brendan Carr wrote to Disney CEO Bob Iger this week, but it was pretty dang close. Carr has served on the Federal Communications Commission since 2017 and is President-elect Donald Trump's choice to serve as chairman next year. And he's taking no gruff from Disney-owned ABC News, which just agreed to pay $15 million in damages (and another million in legal fees) for defaming Trump during a "This Week" segment...

Israeli Prime Minsiter Benjamin Netanyahu spoke Thursday, after the Israeli Air Force (IAF) struck multiple targets across Yemen, the fourth Israeli counterattack against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels and the most ambitious thus far. As Breitbart News reported earlier Thursday, Israel hit Yemen’s international airport in the capital city of Sana’a, and port facilities in Hodeida, after several days in which the Houthis fired ballistic missiles and drones at Israeli cities.

A landmark law signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday, Dec. 26, created a “Climate Superfund” requiring large fossil fuel companies to pay for critical projects aimed at protecting residents from severe weather impacts like flooding and extreme heat. The move is meant to shift the cost of climate resilience projects from New Yorkers to those most responsible for the pollution, Hochul’s office said. “With nearly every record rainfall, heatwave, and coastal storm, New Yorkers are increasingly burdened with billions of dollars in health, safety, and environmental consequences due to polluters that have historically harmed our environment,” Hochul said. “Establishing...

More than a dozen cars were broken into, and a 2019 silver Kia Sorento with Virginia license plates was stolen from the nearby Cobbles Elementary School parking lot, where churchgoers parked for the Christmas Eve Mass. Parishioners expressed their disbelief. “I mean, this is typically a safe area from what we understand,” said parishioner Mark Elsaesser. “We’ve been coming here a long time. Never seen anything like this happen, especially on the holidays, Christmas time. My wife and I got married here. We’ve had our daughter baptized here, so we’ve been coming here a very long time, and nothing like...

Sperm whales communicate with each other using rhythmic sequences of clicks, called codas. It was previously thought that sperm whales had just 21 coda types. However, after studying almost 9,000 recordings, the Ceti researchers identified 156 distinct codas. They also noticed the basic building blocks of these codas which they describe as a "sperm whale phonetic alphabet" – much like phonemes, the units of sound in human language which combine to form words. Pratyusha Sharma, a PhD student at MIT and lead author of the study, describes the "fine-grain changes" in vocalisations the AI identified. Each coda consists of between...

Alec Baldwin‘s manslaughter case is finally over. On Monday, special prosecutor Kari Morrissey announced she has withdrawn her appeal of a judge’s order dismissing the case. The decision came after the state attorney general’s office said that it “did not intend to exhaustively pursue the appeal on behalf of the prosecution,” the prosecutor said. In a separate statement Monday night, the attorney general’s office said that it “declined to appeal” the case “in light of the significant procedural irregularities” identified by the judge.

Film production has failed to bounce back after major strikes last year, and competition from other locales has gotten stiffer.The struggles have become a painful, recurring story line in Hollywood.A script supervisor visiting a food bank every other week. The cinematographer who moved to Georgia for better filming opportunities. An art department coordinator applying for administrative jobs to cover rent.The economic outlook of the Los Angeles area, with a population larger than most states, has been clouded in recent years by events that have upended the entertainment industry. Market saturation led to a shakeout among direct-to-streaming providers. Then the Covid-19...

resurfaced video shows Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) unveiling a plan for Congress to implement “civil war conditions” and disqualify former President Donald Trump if he wins the November presidential election. According to Legal Insurrection, Raskin’s comments were given in February during an appearance at the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C., prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling that individual states could not prohibit Trump from appearing on the ballot by using the 14th Amendment. “The court is not going to save us,” Raskin said. “And so that means the only thing that really works is people in motion amending...

The Constitution provides that an oath-breaking insurrectionist is ineligible to be president. This is the plain wording of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. “No person shall … hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” there is the bipartisan inquiry of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol....