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The identification of another ultra-large structure in remote space continues to defy our understanding of the cosmos. The Big Ring is made up of galaxies and galaxy clusters. Scientists have found an enormous ring-shaped structure called the Big Ring, positioned an astonishing 9.2 billion light-years away from Earth. This massive cosmic formation is made up of galaxies and clusters of galaxies, with a diameter of approximately 1.3 billion light-years and a total circumference of around 4 billion light-years. To help grasp its size, envision that if you could somehow observe the Big Ring directly, it would stretch across the night...

Two members a hip-hop group with ties to the Wu-Tang Clan were assassinated early Tuesday morning in Portland, Oregon, according to police. The deceased musicians were identified by relatives on social media as 12 O´Clock and Murdock, whose birth names are Odion Turner, 50, and David Turner, 45, respectively. The two were cousins who performed in the four-person project Brooklyn Zu. !2 O'Clock's younger brother Stephon Turner says the shootings were targeted, and believes they were motivated by 'jealousy and lust,' but did not comment further on who he believed was behind the killings. Police haven't released many details about...

WASHINGTON (AP) — For President Barack Obama, it's a week to invoke America's civil rights struggles from past to present. The nation's first black president plans a speech Saturday from the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, the site of one of the movement's stirring moments, and will refocus on last year's fatal shooting by a white police officer of a black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri.

In the post-news environment, media no longer exists to report, it exists to disseminate glib talking points that sound good at first, but don't stand up to examination. Fact checks, one of the latest media gimmicks, have become another vector for disseminating talking points. So have media blogs which began repeating the same ridiculous thing over and over again.

Last night, Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, Greg Kinnear and over one thousand other movie-industry types attended the Hollywood premiere of the “controversial” Kennedy miniseries that will start airing this Sunday on the ReelzChannel. I was also there, though, oddly, Tom and Katie never said hello. “The Kennedys” has been and will be the subject of much debate because it was scheduled to air on the History Channel before the History Channel caved to backchannel political pressure exerted by the Kennedy family (specifically Caroline Kennedy and Maria Shriver) and claimed that the epic, eight-part miniseries didn’t “fit the History brand.” Keep...

BOISE, Idaho • A private group that drew attention in 2007 by naming U.S. Sen. Larry Craig to its “Idaho’s Hall of Fame” amid furor over his sex-sting arrest has elevated Mount Rushmore sculptor and Ku Klux Klan member Gutzon Borglum to its 2010 class of honorees. Borglum, born in Idaho Territory in 1867, chiseled heads of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt into South Dakota’s Black Hills. In the 1920s, he was also in the Klan. Recently, America has been debating the ambiguous legacy of another ex-Klansman, U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat...

THEY were the words that launched one of the darkest episodes in Scottish history, remembered and resented to this day.• Clan Campbell murdered Clan MacDonald in Glencoe in 1692 Now the original handwritten order for the massacre at Glencoe "to fall upon the rebels ... and put all to the sword under seventy" goes on show in Edinburgh this week. Sent to Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, in 1692, the simple 20-line letter triggered the murder of 38 members of the MacDonald clan and is the centrepiece of an exhibition of cultural "treasures" at the National Library of Scotland. It is...

IT IS set to be the biggest ever celebration of Scotland's history, culture and tradition. Clan members from dozens of countries have been urged to head to Edinburgh this summer for a festival celebrating the best of Scotland, "past and present". But the thousands flocking to the capital for the world's biggest clan gathering this summer have today been told they risk arrest and up to two years in jail – for brandishing weapons.

Kennedy clan backs Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton By Toby Harnden in Columbia, South Carolina Last Updated: 2:14am GMT 28/01/2008 The Kennedy clan is to throw its weight behind Barack Obama's bid for the presidency following his victory in the South Carolina primary. The endorsements by John F Kennedy's daughter Caroline and brother Senator Ted Kennedy were a blow to Hillary Clinton, who suffered a 28-point humiliation in the Southern state. Caroline Kennedy has made public her support for Barack Obama Mrs Clinton had sought to get the Democratic establishment behind her bid to become America's first female president. But...

Posted on Thu, Apr. 05, 2007 Powerful, unchecked clan surges in Gaza By Dion Nissenbaum and Ahmed Abu HamdanMcClatchy Newspapers(MCT)GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Along the southern stretches of Gaza City, in a stronghold surrounded by concrete barriers and patrolled by armed guards, a powerful clan has evolved into a force that the Palestinian Authority is afraid to confront.Palestinian officials suspect Mumtaz Dagmoush and his extended family of 15,000 of involvement in every major recent crisis in Gaza, from the capture of an Israeli soldier last summer to the unresolved kidnapping of a BBC correspondent last month.Israel's security establishment...

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- Mogadishu's dominant clan said Sunday it has brokered a truce with Ethiopian military officials who are supporting Somalia's government, even as mortar shells continued slamming into the capital for a fourth day. Ahmed Diriye, the Hawiye clan spokesman, said fighting in Mogadishu should end within hours. Ethiopian officials were not immediately available for comment. Somali government troops and their Ethiopian allies have been waging a fierce offensive since Thursday to wipe out Islamic insurgents, sparking some of the heaviest fighting in 15 years in the capital. Untold numbers of civilians have been killed and hundreds wounded....

A paper recently co-authored by the academic dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government about the allegedly far-reaching influence of an "Israel lobby" is winning praise from white supremacist David Duke. The Palestine Liberation Organization mission to Washington is distributing the paper, which also is being hailed by a senior member of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization. But the paper, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," by the Kennedy School's Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, is meeting with a more critical reception from many of those it names as part of the lobby....

In a sworn statement to be made public Tuesday, University of Colorado President Elizabeth Hoffman said a four-letter word used toward women can sometimes be used as a "term of endearment." The comment comes from Hoffman's latest sworn testimony in connection with a federal lawsuit against the university. The suit was filed by women who say they were sexually assaulted by CU football players and recruits. A lawyer for one of the women asked Hoffman about former CU kicker Katie Hnida being called the "c- word" by a teammate. That player was later disciplined by coach Gary Barnett for making...

<p>So Mayor Gavin Newsom -- having sounded the trumpet in the battle over same-sex marriage -- walks into a room filled with the Bay Area's Irish Catholic old guard and a bunch of priests.</p> <p>Sounds like the setup to a corny joke, right? Well, no joke. It happened at the American Ireland Fund's annual dinner at the St. Francis Hotel, when Newsom, as well as his father, the Hon. William Newsom, a retired California appellate court justice, were honored with the charitable organization's Distinguished Leadership Award.</p>