Free Republic

Iran has begun producing uranium enriched up to 60% in its underground Fordow nuclear facility, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi said on Tuesday, bringing the country closer to weapons grade material. “Iran had started producing high enriched uranium – UF6 enriched up to 60% - using the existing two cascades of IR-6 centrifuge....

"The battalion still operates as a relatively autonomous entity. It has been prominent in defending Mariupol in recent weeks, and its resistance has been widely praised by members of the government."

If 2020 renewed calls for racial equality as Black Lives Matter protests exploded throughout Europe, 2021 brought in the backlash as parts of the political establishment waged a so-called "war against woke." Stripped of its original meaning of a person being awake to progressive issues, "woke" has been appropriated from the Black vernacular and turned into a political lightning rod in the West's culture wars. It is now used pejoratively by lawmakers and pundits from both left and right, criticizing the perceived excesses of social and racial justice movements. The politicization of the word, which has seen degrees of success...

Saturn's rings make it one of the most striking planets in the solar system, but scientists believe they could disappear in less than a 100 million years -- which isn't all that long when you consider that the gas giant itself is more than 4 billion years old. New research from NASA shows that the rings, made predominantly of water ice, are being pulled apart by the planet's gravity and onto Saturn's surface as deluges of "ring rain." "We estimate that this 'ring rain' drains an amount of water products that could fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool from Saturn's rings...