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Barack Obama's daughter, Malia Ann, has received some negative reviews over a debut short film that she both wrote and directed. The 25-year-old showed her 18-minute film, The Heart, at the Sundance Film Festival. The film, which tells the story of a grieving son tasked with an unusual request from his late mother, previously screened at film festivals in Telluride and Chicago, where it received recognition in the best live action short category. In a "Meet the Artist" video for Sundance, Malia Ann said that her project "is about lost objects and lonely people and forgiveness and regret." She added...

Using the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have characterised a bright quasar, finding it to be not only the brightest of its kind, but also the most luminous object ever observed. Quasars are the bright cores of distant galaxies and they are powered by supermassive black holes. The black hole in this record-breaking quasar is growing in mass by the equivalent of one Sun per day, making it the fastest-growing black hole to date. The black holes powering quasars collect matter from their surroundings in a process so energetic that it emits vast amounts of light....

Decimals in a trigonometry table in Tabulae primi mobilis B by Bianchini, written in the 15th century. (Van Brummelen, Hist. Math., 2024) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In 1593, German mathematician Christopher Clavius made a small mark that would change mathematics forever. In a sine table in his treatise on the astrolabe, Astrolabium, he indicated the fractionation of a whole number by writing what has come to be regarded as the very first use of the decimal point. There is, however, just one problem. According to new painstaking research by historian Glen Van Brummelen of Trinity Western University, this wasn't, in fact, its first...

DOLTON, Ill. — Illinois Attorney General has ordered a politician’s charity to stop soliciting money because it has failed to report how it spends funds and who has benefited. WGN Investigates previously reported on questionable spending by Dolton mayor Tiffany Henyard, who also serves as Thornton Township supervisor. Thousands of tax dollars have been funneled to the Tiffany Henyard Cares Foundation. Township and Dolton workers and vehicles have been used for the charity’s events. The foundation claims to help cancer patients; but hasn’t filed any of the required financial disclosures with the state of Illinois. The attorney general sent a...

A vocal critic of embattled mayor Tiffany Henyard believes her home was sprayed with bullets at the behest of the official during a bitter feud between them last summer. Two cars belonging to tenants of former Village of Dolton Trustee Valeria Stubbs, a retired member of the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, were riddled with at least nine shots last July. The raid, she believes, stemmed from her public attacks on Henyard, who has been accused of plundering the debt-ridden Illinois town’s coffers to pay for lavish travel, dinners and personal indulgences. Asked if she believes Henyard, 40, was behind the...

A 28-year-old man In China has won a lottery jackpot worth 680 million yuan, or around US$96 million. This is the biggest jackpot ever recorded in the country. The lucky winner is from Guizhou province in southwest China, according to the official website of the China Welfare Game, which organized the game. He bought 133 lottery tickets, each for two yuan (approximately 28 US cents). Surprisingly, he selected the identical set of seven numbers for each ticket. As a result, every single one of his tickets won, and he received a prize of 5.16 million yuan (about US$725,000) for each...

Tyla-Simone Crayton of Shark Tank fame, who started her Sienna Sauce at just 15 years old, recently suffered a setback when Target informed her that this spring its stores will no longer carry the condiment. The young entrepreneur and restaurant owner from Houston has been in the business for over five years, and she is now asking for help from the public. In a post shared on social media, Simone and her mother, Monique thanked supporters of the brand and urged them to empty Target’s inventory before the stores pull the product out of the shelves. Monique said that it...

The latest on the Baby Cyrus Anderson case and the pursuit of Ammon Bundy by Idaho medical conglomerate St. Luke's Hospital... The Pentagon now confirming the shoot down of a US Air Force drone by the Houthi forces in Yemen... The US Department of Justice selling the notion... In an interview with Blaze TV Tucker Carlson saying he was being pursued by the US National Security Agency... For the first time in days two attacks on a US base in Syria... US politics today Nikki Haley insisting... two polls in the state where Nikki Haley was Governor show President Donald...

Summer 2024 can't come soon enough.It’s not an exaggeration to say that humanity had to endure one of the darkest days in modern history in the summer of 2022 when the ice cream overlords at Klondike announced that they would be discontinuing the iconic Choco Taco. “Over the past two years, we have experienced an unprecedented spike in demand across our portfolio and have had to make very tough decisions to ensure availability of our full portfolio nationwide,” a Klondike representative told Food & Wine at the time, adding that discontinuing “a beloved item” was a “necessary but unfortunate part”...

VIDEOEverything was going Vladimir Putin's way with Ukraine on the military ropes so suddenly Alexei Navalny died in prison at a time that could only help the West. So why would Putin have him killed? Either Navalny died at an unlucky time for Putin or Putin is beyond stupid (which he isn't) by having him murdered. And if Navalny was murdered who really was behind it? No Jeffrey Epsteins were harmed during the making of this video report.

Thousands of patriots assembled at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex and Expo center on Friday the 9th of February, 2024. There was static in the air and the energy was beyond high. People started lining up as early as 1 p.m. in order to be able to hear President Donald J. Trump speak at 6 p.m. that evening. The NRA Presidential Forum marked the eighth time Trump has addressed National Rifle Association members and there are plans for the NRA to host him again at the upcoming NRA annual meeting in Dallas. Before Trump took to the stage and lectern...

The sale of a 39-year-old Los Gatos bakery sent one devoted customer into a frenzyLast week, out of complete desperation, Mike Metz of Los Angeles hopped a flight to the Bay Area for a slice of his favorite maple pound cake. And his wife’s must-have s’mores bar. Last week, out of complete desperation, Mike Metz of Los Angeles hopped a flight to the Bay Area for a slice of his favorite maple pound cake. And his wife’s must-have s’mores bar. Without so much as a second thought, the TV writer and father of two booked a hotel, flew into San...

The chairman of the Democratic National Committee said the idea of replacing President Joe Biden as the party's candidate and winning the election in November is "certifiably crazy actually." DNC Chair Jaime Harrison made the comment in a late-night reply Monday on X to a Biden-supporting poster who said it's "insane and frankly stupid" to think the party would "usurp the nomination" from Biden and choose a replacement behind closed doors, especially one who's not current-Vice President Kamala Harris. Calls for Biden to remove himself from the 2024 presidential race have risen in recent weeks following US special counsel Robert...

WikiLeaks founder and Australian citizen Julian Assange’s hearing at the High Court of Justice in London today could be his last attempt to stop extradition to the United States for publishing hundreds of thousands of classified documents. Assange’s lead lawyer told the court today, “Mr Assange is being prosecuted for engaging in ordinary journalistic practices of obtaining and publishing classified information which is true and of public interest,” maintaining Assange’s defense when he told a British court in 2019, “I do not wish to surrender myself for extradition for doing journalism that has won many, many awards and protected many...

Abraham Lincoln didn’t just free the slaves and preserve the Union. America’s 16th (and arguably greatest-ever) president also pardoned the current chief executive’s paternal great-great-grandfather after he was sentenced to hard labor at a military prison, newly unearthed documents show. President Biden’s ancestor, Moses Robinette, was put in the dock after he came to blows with one John Alexander, a fellow civilian employee of the Union Army, on March 21, 1864, according to records found by the Washington Post. Alexander, a brigade wagon master, was left bloodied by wounds that came from Robinette’s pocket knife and the presidential forebear was...

A plan by President Joe Biden, called an “extortion attempt,” would shield more criminal illegal aliens from deportation as data shows his Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has drastically cut interior immigration enforcement.Biden’s White House is threatening to cut deportations of even the most violent illegal alien convicts unless Congress approves billions in funding that passes through DHS before getting handed to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) helping facilitate illegal immigration.RJ Hauman, president of the National Immigration Center for Enforcement (NICE), told Breitbart News that the threat from Biden is echoed by the establishment media with claims that DHS needs the billions...

The Berger Action Fund, one arm of liberal Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss’ philanthropic empire, gave tens of millions to one of America’s most prolific Democrat-aligned dark money groups. The Berger Action Fund, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization, gave $35 million to the liberal dark money group Sixteen Thirty Fund in 2022, tax documents show. Sixteen Thirty Fund in 2022 poured tens of millions into Democrat-aligned PACs, groups supporting left-wing ballot measures and voter mobilization operations designed to increase turnout among Democrat-friendly demographics, according to tax forms. Wyss, a Swiss billionaire who made his fortune selling medical devices, had not disclosed publicly...

Angela Chao, CEO of Foremost Group and the sister-in-law of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, died after her car went into a pond on a private ranch about 40 miles west of Austin, Texas, authorities said Friday. Chao’s family on Wednesday announced she died in a car accident on Sunday, but did not disclose details of the incident at that time. On Friday, the Blanco County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that on Saturday, it “responded to a possible water rescue on a private ranch located in Blanco County, TX.” “On arrival Blanco County deputies along with Blanco County...

The philanthropy network steering the wealth of Democratic megadonor George Soros awarded a paid fellowship to the leader of a law school’s anti-Israel office facing a Senate investigation for promoting terrorist sympathizers, records show. Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans this month requested Rutgers University by Feb. 20 turn over funding and budget information on its Center for Security, Race and Rights, which the lawmakers accused of spreading “vile antisemitic propaganda,” while its advisory board included Adeel Mangi, a judicial nominee for the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Rutgers Law professor Sahar Aziz, who directs the center, pocketed $143,000 from the...

For the second time in a week, a plane from the Israeli flagship airline El Al was targeted by hostile elements trying to divert the aircraft from its planned course. The newest incident involved a plane traveling across airspace on Saturday night where the Iran-backed Houthis reside; Somalian sources insisted to the Israeli broadcaster Kann that a group in Somaliland that issued false instructions to the flight crew was responsible. Suggestions were made that the effort was an attempt to steer the plane toward dangerous areas. But the plane’s staff used other communication methods to avert any trouble, cross-referencing data...