President Donald Trump's choice to head NASA faces a contentious Senate confirmation over his past comments dismissive of global warming as a man-made problem. Trump has tapped three-term Republican Rep. Jim Bridenstine of Oklahoma to oversee the space agency, a job that often goes to astronauts or scientists. If confirmed, Bridenstine would be the first member of Congress to lead the agency during its nearly 60-year existence. Both Republicans and Democrats forecast a battle over the nomination. "I think he faces a tough fight because he's been outspoken in some areas that having nothing to do with NASA," said Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., who has called talk that humans are responsible for global
We don't know much about the Air Force's latest X-37B space plane mission. Most of its payload is classified.
TOKYO (AP) — North Korea says it successfully detonated a hydrogen bomb in its latest nuclear test Sunday. Outside experts haven't been able to verify that claim, but say it's plausible. If true, it would represent a major step forward in North Korea'
With Hurricane Irma aiming squarely at Florida, up to a million people were told to evacuate coastal areas in the Sunshine State and neighboring Georgia on Thursday, amid worries that fuel shortages and traffic bottlenecks could thwart the mass exodus. In a state home to more than 20 million people, Governor Rick Scott warned residents on both coasts to be ready to get out before the monster storm strikes south Florida late Saturday. Experts hope to avoid mass casualties by ushering residents out of the riskiest areas, in what could be the largest US evacuation since Hurricane Rita forced 3.7 million people to leave Texas and Louisiana in 2005.
It’s the question at the center of the corruption trial of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and a Florida eye doctor that starts Wednesday in Newark and promises to put the very business of governing under a microscope. Menendez and Florida ophthalmologist Dr. Salomon Melgen are charged with a conspiracy in which, prosecutors say, Menendez lobbied for Melgen’s business interests in exchange for political donations and gifts that included luxury vacations, flights on Melgen’s plane and stays at his private villa in an exclusive Dominican Republic resort frequented by celebrities including Beyonce and Jay Z. The indictment also alleges Menendez pressured State Department officials to give visas to three young women described as Melgen’s girlfriends.
Ahead of Hurricane Irma, Space X successfully launched the Air Force's X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle.
Between her and her release stands a governor who has shown zero willingness to allow anyone involved in the Manson killings to go free. Van Houten, now 68, was found suitable for parole by the two-person state panel after a hearing on Wednesday. Now, she must still be approved by the state Parole Board, which is likely, but then must hope Gov. Jerry Brown won’t block her release as he did last year.
The co-chair of the New America Foundation told staffers Wednesday that neither Google nor its executive chairman Eric Schmidt---both donors to the think tank---played a role in the recent ouster from the foundation of an antitrust scholar who had been critical of Google. “Neither Google nor Eric Schmidt attempted to interfere” with criticism of Google by the researcher, co-chair Jonathan Soros wrote in a letter to New America staff and fellows. The researcher, Barry Lynn, was director of Open Markets, which had been affiliated with New America.
St. John's (Antigua and Barbuda) (AFP) - Hurricane Irma killed one person and left behind "total devastation" as the monster storm smashed into the tiny Caribbean island of Barbuda on Wednesday, the prime minister said. "It is just total devastation, Barbuda now is literally rubble," Prime Minister Gaston Browne said in the aftermath of the Category Five storm. Speaking later on CNN, Browne said 95 percent of properties in Barbuda were damaged, with up to 30 percent demolished.
By Tom Polansek CHICAGO (Reuters) - Monsanto Co pushed Arkansas authorities on Thursday to reject a proposed April 15 cut-off date next year for sprayings of the agricultural herbicide dicamba, which has been linked to crop damage across the U.S. farm belt. The company further said that Arkansas' plant board should allow farmers in the state to use Monsanto's dicamba weed killer, called XtendiMax with VaporGrip, on crops engineered to withstand it starting next year. Monsanto, BASF and DuPont sell dicamba herbicides under different brand names to be sprayed on U.S. soybeans engineered by Monsanto to tolerate the chemical.
Hours after his administration announced an end to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, President Trump appeared to have second thoughts as he was bombarded by negative headlines about the popular program. “Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do). If they can’t, I will revisit this issue!” Trump tweeted Tuesday evening.
Most in the local tech field believe that Boston is poised to be a leading player in a new generation of companies built around artificial intelligence. That theory got a major vote of confidence on Thursday when International Business Machines Corp. announced a 10-year plan to fund cutting-edge AI research at MIT. The $240 million investment will create the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, which will "carry out fundamental artificial intelligence research and seek to propel scientific breakthroughs that unlock the potential of AI," according to the announcement. The lab will also make it a priority to launch companies based on the technology its researchers develop. Focus areas of the lab include both
In an era of hacker attacks on critical infrastructure, even a run-of-the-mill malware infection on an electric utility’s network is enough to raise alarm bells. Symantec on Wednesday revealed a new campaign of attacks by a group it is calling Dragonfly 2.0, which it says targeted dozens of energy companies in the spring and summer of this year.
Lawmakers in the lower house of Congress voted 419-3 in favor of releasing the funds, which will mostly go to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The House also approved $450 million in disaster loans to help small businesses get back on their feet. The Senate is due to hold its own vote in coming days.
Elissa Wall’s lawyer said Wednesday that the decision lets attorneys investigate the secretive group’s bank accounts and property held in states all over the U.S. “This is hopefully to continue the attack on illegal and criminal conduct so they’ll comport their doctrines to what’s permissible under the U.S. Constitution,” said Wall’s attorney Alan Mortensen.
Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin have developed a device called the MasSpec Pen, which is capable of detecting cancer in seconds — thereby helping surgeons to remove tumors in their entirety during operations. “The user first touches the pen on the tissue and triggers the process using a foot pedal,” Dr. Livia Schiavinato Eberlin, one of the researchers on the project, told Digital Trends. Next, this droplet containing the biomolecule is transported to a mass spectrometer through a tube.
Officials say information accessed includes names, credit card numbers and more
About two dozen journalists saw the fire in Gawdu Zara village in northern Rakhine state on a government-controlled trip. The U.N. says about 146,000 Rohingya in the region have fled to neighboring Bangladesh in less than two weeks since Rohingya insurgents attacked police outposts in Gawdu Zara and several others Aug. 25. An ethnic Rakhine villager who emerged from the smoke said police and Rakhine Buddhists had set the fires.
SpaceX has successfully launched a classified Air Force drone from the NASA Space Kennedy Center as the ferocious Hurricane Irma caused severe weather. The company used the Falcon 9 rocket to launch the Air Force space plane around 10 a.m. E.T. on Thursday, despite warnings that the weather was only 50% favorable. Irma was thought to be around 900 miles southeast of the center at the time of lift-off.
My Twitter panic started somewhere in Spain. Six days into a 10-day vacation, the news about the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, started making its way to my phone. I wasn’t necessarily trying to unplug or do any kind of social media
Britain is sending two military vessels to help victims of Hurricane Irma and is earmarking £32 million ($41.8 million, 34.8 million euros) in aid, the government said Thursday. Prime Minister Theresa May announced an increase in aid from an initial budget of £12 million following an emergency cabinet meeting. The British fleet auxiliary Mounts Bay, carrying 40 Royal Marines, is already in the Caribbean region and will be joined by HMS Ocean, which is departing from the Mediterranean carrying a number of helicopters.
People as far south as Ohio and Indiana may be able to see the northern lights tonight (Sept. 6), thanks to a powerful sun storm. On Monday (Sept. 4), the sun blasted out a huge cloud of superheated plasma known as a coronal mass ejection (CME). This fast-moving CME is expected to slam into Earth overnight Wednesday, triggering strong geomagnetic storms. Such storms often supercharge Earth's auroras, the ghostly displays of dancing color also known as the northern and southern lights. And that could be the case Wednesday night through early Thursday morning (Sept. 7): Auroras are likely to extend southward into the continental United States, from Washington and Idaho in the West to Indiana and
On Wednesday, the House of Representatives did something that’s woefully uncommon these days: It passed a bill with bipartisan support. The bill, called the SELF DRIVE Act, lays out a basic federal framework for autonomous vehicle regulation, signaling that federal lawmakers are finally ready to think seriously about self-driving cars and what they mean for the future of the country. “With this legislation, innovation can flourish without the heavy hand of government,” said Representative Bob Latta, the Ohio Republican who heads up the Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection Subcommittee, in a floor speech just before the SELF DRIVE Act passed by a two-thirds majority.
“The bear just flat-out charged us,” said Tom Sommer, as he recovered in a Montana hospital on Tuesday afternoon. “It bit my thigh, ran his claws through my wrist and proceeded to attack my head,” Sommer said. Sommer said he and a hunting partner were looking for an elk they had been calling Monday morning when his partner spotted the grizzly in the southern end of the Gravelly Range, just north of the Idaho border.
Imagine a vaccine that protects against more than a half-dozen types of cancer—and has a decade of data and experience behind it. It’s the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, and it was approved for the U.S. market back in June 2006. On Wednesday, two researchers who completed fundamental work on these vaccines received one of this year’s prestigious Lasker Awards, a group of medical prizes sometimes called the “American Nobels.” Douglas Lowy and John Schiller, whose research provided the basis for the HPV vaccine, were selected alongside a researcher who separately unraveled key aspects of metabolic control of cell growth. Lowy and Schiller, who both work at the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), received the Lasker for their research on animal and human papillomaviruses—work that enabled the development of a vaccine against HPV-16 type, a form of the virus that fuels many HPV malignancies.