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Discussion of both subjects by serious-sounding guy with beard stubble.

Tornadoes are becoming more frequent in populated parts of the United States and are often occurring as damaging clusters — a development seen in recent deadly outbreaks from Alabama to Michigan. The number, damage and deadliness of individual tornadoes has held roughly steady over the past 50 years, federal experts with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration told The Hill. But broad shifts in the patterns of how tornadoes occur will pose serious challenges to policymakers and emergency managers across the South and Midwest — even as risks remain in the traditional heart of Tornado Alley.

Republican Senator Mitt Romney wants to cut inflation by cutting Americans’ wages, including the wages earned by the GOP’s own voters. Sen. Romney (R-UT) urged the cuts in a November 10 Wall Street Journal op-ed, where he echoed Goldman Sachs’ May demand for more migration to cut inflation by cutting wages:

Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that expanding background check requirements for purchasing guns was “on the table” in the Senate negotiations on a gun package.

Senate Democrats are tamping down talk of expanding the Supreme Court if Republicans fill the seat held by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Progressive activists and some lawmakers have raised the idea since Ginsburg's death was announced on Friday night, arguing the party needs to be ready to take bold steps if they have the Senate majority and the White House next year while facing a 6-3 conservative court. The effort would tie together two controversial ideas: nixing the 60-vote legislative filibuster and then passing legislation to add seats to the Supreme Court, which has been set at nine...

This could change everything. Back in 2011, three astronomers were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery that the Universe wasn’t just expanding - it was expanding at an accelerating rate. The discovery led to the widespread acceptance of the idea that our Universe is dominated by a mysterious force called dark energy, and altered the standard model of cosmology forever. But now physicists say this discovery might have been false, and they have a much larger dataset to back them up. For a bit of background on the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics, it was shared between...

<p>A new poll conducted by Zogby Analytics after last week’s Republican presidential debate on CNN shows Donald Trump leading Dr. Ben Carson by 20 points.</p> <p>According to the survey, conducted September 18-19, made up of 405 likely Republican primary/caucus voters nationwide, Trump garnered the support of 33 percent, which is an increase of 2 percentage points since Zogby’s previous poll. Dr. Ben Carson remains in second place, but dropped 3 points to 13 percent.</p>

The circle of people who have come into contact with Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan is rapidly expanding, jumping from 18 to 80 early today and then leaping to 100, according to Texas health officials.

Is there definitive evidence for an expanding universe? by John Hartnett The spectral lines for this element still show the same distinctive pattern, but all have been shifted towards the red end of the spectrum. Expansion of the universe is fundamental to the big bang cosmology. No expansion means no big bang. By projecting cosmological expansion backwards in time, they assert, one will, hypothetically, come to a time where all points are the same. Since these points are all there is, then it logically follows that there is no space or time ‘before’ this moment. It is the singularity, and...

(CBS News) The Pentagon has expanded the list of potential targets for a U.S. military strike on Syria, based on intelligence indicating that the Assad regime has moved around equipment used to deploy chemical weapons in anticipation of a potential attack. A Pentagon official insisted to CBS News correspondent David Martin that the scope of the operation has not changed, which President Obama has described as limited and tailored. The military began adding new targets to the list as Syrian troops started moving equipment "they think might be targeted and hiding some of it so the U.S. cannot find it...

ANN ARBOR—Moonless nights outside the Cerro Tololo astronomical observatory in Chile are so dark that when you look down, you can't see your feet. "You can't see your hands," said David Gerdes, physics professor at the University of Michigan. "But you can hold them up to the sky and see a hand-shaped hole with no stars in it. It's really incredible." From this site in the Andes over the next five years, an international team will map one-eighth of the sky in unprecedented detail—aiming to make a time lapse of the past 8 billion years of a slice of the...

While preparing for overseas deployment with the U.S. Marines late last year, Staff Sgt. Nathan Hampton participated in a series of training exercises held at Camp Pendleton, Calif., designed to make him a more effective serviceman. There were weapons qualifications. Grueling physical workouts. High-stress squad counterinsurgency drills, held in an elaborate ersatz village designed to mirror the sights, sounds and smells of a remote mountain settlement in Afghanistan. There also were weekly meditation classes — including one in which Sgt. Hampton and his squad mates were asked to sit motionless in a chair and focus on the point of contact...

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission told a Congressional panel on Wednesday that a recent court ruling that the agency lacked authority to regulate the Internet should not prevent it from carrying out its plan to broadly expand the country’s high-speed Internet service. But the chairman refused to say if the commission would try to reclassify Internet service as a utility similar to telephone service to overcome the court decision, a move that some Democratic senators supported but that several Republican senators strongly warned against.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is weighing a possible temporary expansion of the US army to ease the strain from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, his press secretary said on Wednesday. Gates was discussing the idea, backed by Senator Joseph Lieberman, with senior officers to add 30,000 troops to the active-duty army, press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters. The possible expansion from the current strength of 547,400 would be designed "to get them through what is still a stressful period as we draw down in Iraq and continue to plus-up in Afghanistan," Morrell said.

SACRAMENTO – Eight years ago, 61 percent of California voters passed a novel initiative requiring treatment instead of jail or prison for tens of thousands of drug offenders. Supporters of that initiative are back with a follow-up measure that would require even greater leniency. Billionaire investor and liberal activist George Soros is helping fund Proposition 5 on the Nov. 4 ballot. The measure would prohibit sending paroled drug offenders back to prison for parole violations unless they commit a new felony, have a violent or serious record or are considered high risk by prison officials. The initiative would shorten parole...

Businesses are wary of a crop of new state health care proposals to reduce the number of uninsured, fearing the programs will drive up their expenses without solving the problem. Dissension already has surfaced: Maine's health insurers and businesses have balked at how the state's program to expand coverage has been funded and have filed several lawsuits over the policy. Smaller companies are especially worried, because they are less likely to provide health insurance than bigger concerns, and some of the proposals call for companies that don't provide coverage to pay into state funds. But experts note that if the...

Beijing builds ties with Latin countries China is expanding military and economic ties throughout Latin America, taking advantage of a wave of anti-American candidates who have come to power and a U.S. law barring military training and aid to a dozen Latin countries. "China's profile in the region has been ratcheting up sharply," said Thomas Shannon, assistant secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. Shannon traveled to China last month to discuss with Chinese leaders their country's growing role in the United States' backyard. He was the first U.S. official in his position to do so. "We thought it was...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 17, 2005 – Once used only for remote reconnaissance, unmanned aircraft technology has rapidly evolved in recent years. Such systems now feature strike capabilities and are being used for force-protection and signals-collection missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unmanned aerial systems "have helped reduce the complexity and time lag in the 'sensor-to-shooter chain' for acting on 'actionable intelligence,'" according to a document released earlier this month. The Unmanned Aircraft Systems Roadmap 2005-2030, released Aug. 4 with more than 200 pages, explains these diverse systems range from "micro air vehicles, weighing less than a pound, to massive aircraft weighing more...

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration on Thursday backed a measured expansion of the U.N. Security Council, saying it likely would support the addition of "two or so" permanent members including Japan. A wider expansion could be "possibly injurious" to the Council's effectiveness, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said. With several nations clamoring for seats in what would be the first major revision of the Council in 40 years, Burns said the administration also might back adding two or three nonpermanent seats. Currently, there are five permanent members of the Council - the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia -...

Booming economic growth in 2005 flies in the face of economic “soft patch” WASHINGTON, D.C. – Another good piece of economic news came today as the Commerce Department reported retail sales grew at a torrid 1.4 percent pace in April. The gains far outpaced analyst’s expectations of 0.8 percent growth and continue to paint a picture of long term, sustained economic growth. Many left-leaning pundits and journalists have claimed in recent weeks that the U.S. economy was slowing down, but reality sharply contradicts this pessimistic outlook. “I have to question the intellectual credentials of anyone who looks at this economy...