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NASA carried out a laser communications pointing test through two deployed CubeSats from space. The satellites recorded a flash of light from a laser communications platform aboard the Optical Communications and Sensor Demonstration spacecraft with a short-wavelength infrared camera within the CubeSat Multispectral Obs...
NASA criticized India for its recent test of a missile targeting a satellite in space. The agency said the debris could hit and damage the International Space Station, CNBC reported Wednesday. “I’m talking about small debris impacts to the International Space Station, the risk went up 44 percent over a period of 10 day...
Authorities in northwest Georgia found dozens of neglected animals living in “horrible conditions” in a home Thursday, just hours before the owner of that residence committed suicide.
Amid an investigation into reports of animal cruelty that involved a business in Tennessee, the Dalton Police Department served a search warrant at a home in the 800 block of Mattie Street, spokesman Bruce Frazier said in a statement.
They found 16 dogs, two baby goats, two turtles and a snake in the residence, and nine ducks in the backyard. They also found a dead turtle and several dead snakes, Frazier said.
All of the animals were malnourished and living in deplorable conditions. Many of the dogs were covered in their own waste, the statement said.
The Whitfield County Animal Shelter worked with rescue groups to find homes for the animals.
The investigation began Sunday when Dalton police talked to an Atlanta woman who said she agreed to meet Stephen Kinder, 42, to pick up her Great Dane, which she had sent to Kinder’s training business in Cleveland, Tenn., for seven weeks.
Abigail Eastburn told police the dog had lost 30 pounds, was vomiting and had diarrhea.
Dalton police referred the case to Bradley County authorities in Tennessee, leading to Kinder’s arrest Monday on four counts of animal cruelty.
Abigail Eastburn told police her dog had lost 30 pounds and was vomiting.
That’s when Dalton police received information that some of the animals from that business were being housed in the Mattie Street residence, Frazier said.
While on the scene Thursday morning, investigators were contacted by the Bradley County sheriff’s office, which said one of Kinder’s friends contacted them and said he was suicidal.
Stephen Kinder was arrested Monday.
Dalton police then contacted Kinder by phone just after noon. He told them he was fine and was on his way to Whitfield County and would meet them at the home, according to the statement.
Bradley County authorities called again just over an hour later and said Kinder had been found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Frazier said. He was located in the parking lot of an American Legion post in Cleveland, according to the Cleveland Daily Banner.
No charges have been filed in Dalton at this time, but the investigation continues.
Sun Network will invest Rs 150 crore in the first year.
MUMBAI: In 2018, it was reported that the Southern broadcast behemoth, Kalanithi Maran-owned Sun TV Network intended to travel to new language markets of the country - Marathi and Bengali. The broadcaster has now fixed 3 February as the launch date for its Bengali offering.
Sun Network has started promoting its channel, Sun Bangla, with the tagline ‘MonePraneBangali.’ Sun Group chief financial officer (CFO) SL Narayanan told analysts during a post-earnings conference call that it will invest Rs 150 crore on Sun Bangla in its first year.
In addition to this, in the earlier conference call, the Sun TV Network management had said that Sun Bangla is expected to achieve break-even within two or three years. The channel will have original commissioned content. The management has projected that the Bangla channel will achieve 10-12 per cent viewership within...
With massive drifts making travel impossible, Trent Thiele road a snowmobile 50 miles Sunday, checking a dozen pig facilities to ensure thousands of animals were getting feed, water and fresh air.
"It's been a lot of early mornings and late nights," said Thiele, who raises 15,000 pigs with five partners in northeast Iowa. "I'm worn out."
Blowing snow cut visibility, making it difficult to see rising drifts, Thiele said.
"I got thrown off the snowmobile hard, several times," he said. "You just couldn't see. You'd hit a snowbank, go flying and get back on again."
With February likely the second snowiest on record, this winter may go down as one of the toughest ever for thousands of Iowa livestock producers.
The statewide snowfall average is 21 inches so far this month, just short of the 1962 record of 22.2 inches, says Justin Glisan, the state climatologist.
The snowstorm coming Friday should dump another 1 to 3 inches across Iowa, Glisan said.
The forecast for early March shows below normal temperatures, he said.
Iowa's $13.6 billion livestock industry is among the nation's largest, leading the country in pig and egg production, and ranking seventh for raising cattle.
Iowa farmers raise about 48 million pigs each year, 57.5 million hens that produce 16.5 billion eggs, and 4 million cattle.
"It was hard to get to people this past weekend, and it was hard to get to animals," said Jeff Kaisand, the state veterinarian.
"Producers are resourceful. They will dig the roads out themselves so they can get to animals," he said. "There were farmers running tractors up and down the road where I live, trying to open up roads."
Thiele and others on his team used end-loaders and tractors to cut paths through drifts blocking roads Sunday, Monday and part of Tuesday so workers could get to the confinements.
The county's road graders and plows dug out pavedroads Monday before moving to clear gravel roads Tuesday, Thiele said. "Some roads still have 12-, 15-foot drifts," he said.
Those same drifts covered some of the fans that bring fresh air to the animals.
Each facility has eight fans. Thiele and his crew could be digging out and working on as many as half.
"It's overwhelming. It's a lot," he said.
The hog confinements have automatic water, feed and air controls. But "things happen. Machines break down," Thiele said.
Snow clogged an auger in one building that moves feed. "I was taking an auger apart in the blizzard," he said.
Dan Hanrahan crunched along the snow Tuesday to feed about 135 cows, including about a dozen that are close to calving.
He and his father, Richard, moved the cows close to the family's barns and sheds, where the animals can take shelter.
The entire herd gets added bales of hay and buckets of corn, depending on their age and how close they are to calving.
Hanrahan wants to make sure the cows are healthy, so they can withstand frigid temperatures and 60-mile-per-hour winds. That means a thick coat and fat layer.
A fourth-generation farmer, Hanrahan said raising cattle connects him to his family's roots. The cattle he's raising are descendants of his great-grandfather's original herd.
Soon, Hanrahan will begin checking on his herd in the middle of the night, as well as twice a day, making sure heifers delivering their first calves aren't experiencing trouble.
One cow surprised him with a calf Sunday morning. More will come as the Hanrahan's calving season continues.
Later this year, the 42-year-old will sell about 70 calves to feeding operations, and about 10 bulls to neighbors. He'll keep some heifers to replace older cows as well as grow his family's herd.
Hanrahan said it's difficult to describe how he feels, watching a newborn calf take its first wobbly steps to nurse. "It never ceases to amaze me," he said. "It's life-affirming."
April 16, 2019, 6:29 p.m.
Kipyegon Bett, Kenya’s world 800m bronze medal winner, has tested positive for the banned blood booster erythropoeitin (EPO).
The Athletics Kenya executive committee member Barnabas Korir said it received notification from the Athletics Integrity Unit on Thursday that the 20-year-old had submitted a positive sample. The AIU handles integrity and doping issues for the International Association of Athletics Federations.
If his positive test is confirmed, Bett, who finished just ahead of Britain’s Kyle Langford to win his medal at the world championships in London last year, will face a ban. He is already provisionally suspended for failing to submit to sample collection on 15 August.
“We had submitted defence for the case of ‘refusing or failing to submit to sample collection’ by Friday’s deadline. But last night, we received another notification about the new case,” Korir said.
“We have kicked off due process, accorded to every athlete as per the rules set by AIU. If the second test confirms the first one, then the athlete will have to face the consequences,” he said.
If his positive test is confirmed, Bett will join a growing list of Kenya athletes to have flouted anti-doping rules. The Milan marathon winner Lucy Kabuu tested positive for morphine earlier this month. Samuel Kalalei, the winner of Athens marathon last November, also tested positive for EPO on 4 June.
The Kenya-born Bahraini runner Ruth Jebet, the 2016 Rio Olympic 3,000m steeplechase champion, and the former Olympic and three-times world 1500m champion, Asbel Kiprop, were suspended after their samples tested positive for EPO in February. Kiprop denied wrongdoing.
Other Kenya athletes who failed dope tests are the 2016 Olympic marathon winner Jemima Sumgong and the former Boston City marathon winner Rita Jeptoo.
London: A stressful job could make you old and sick before time, as a new study suggests that people with high stress work tend to have shorter telomeres, which has been associated with several diseases.
Telomeres, located at the ends of chromosomes, serve as a type of protective cap to the ropy strands and their shortening has been linked to Parkinson's disease, type 2 diabetes , cardiovascular disease and cancer. The research led by Kirsi Ahola of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health measured the length of DN...
The study found that people suffering from the most job stress tended to have shorter telomeres. Telomeres assure that the genetic instructions carried by genes on the chromosomes are accurately translated so cells get the right messages. They shorten with age, oxidation and chemical insults.
Often, when telomeres reach a critically short length, the cell dies in a process called apoptosis, according to NBC News.
Some cells do not die, but rather become what scientists call 'senescent' — they start making genetic errors and causing damage. Ahola and her team analyzed blood cells called leukocytes, which are critical to immune function, in 2,911 people between ages 30 and 64. They found that workers who experienced severe exhaus...
Lyft driver Michael O'Connor waits at an official ride-sharing pickup zone at Chicago's Navy Pier in June 2016.
A recent federal appellate court ruling that favored ride-sharing firms like Uber and Lyft over the Chicago taxi industry also carried a powerful message to business: older companies beware!
The decision by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which backed the city's right to regulate ride-sharing firms differently than cabs, doesn't literally give that warning. It does, however, stress that many veteran industries are increasingly under fire from innovative upstarts while also signaling that the legal s...
"When new technologies, or new business methods, appear, a common result is the decline or even disappearance of the old," the ruling stated.
A federal appellate court on Friday struck down a taxi-industry challenge to ride-sharing companies in Chicago, rejecting claims that Mayor Rahm Emanuel's City Hall has stacked the regulatory deck in favor of app-based operations like Uber and Lyft.
I'll leave it to the legal experts to determine where this court decision will ultimately lead. But from a business perspective, it seems to indicate the courts are ready, willing and able to distinguish between emerging business models pioneered by the likes of Uber and Lyft, and legacy industries such as the taxi bus...
Moreover, it asserts that one-size-fits-all regulations don't always apply, even if the competing businesses are ultimately providing the same service. As a result, the city can impose different rules on cabs versus ride-sharing firms because each has its own business model and its relationship with the public is diffe...
One of the main distinctions: Ride-sharing firms pick up riders that contact them via app, while taxi customers typically flag a cabbie off the street. Ride-sharing firms have an ongoing relationship with their customers, who can rate their drivers and vice versa, while taxis operators typically don't have a clue about...
Therefore the city can regulate them differently because the services are different, said the court, which also noted customers also see a difference between the two and the industries are not interchangeable.
[The ruling] asserts that one-size-fits-all regulations don't always apply, even if the competing businesses are ultimately providing the same service.
This won't be the last time the legal system will have to referee a battle between old and new. Nearly every mainline industry — medicine, retail, media, travel, manufacturing, finance and even law — is bumping up against fresh-faced competition on an unprecedented scale.
Got a business? Yep, there's an app for that.
Yet among the most contentious issues to emerge is the rising impact of the "gig" economy, a fast-growing group of independent contractors who temporarily fill the employee ranks of Uber, Lyft and numerous other organizations.
There's no hard data yet on the size of this labor force. Some say it represents less than 10 percent of the domestic workforce but is growing rapidly, while other studies says it makes up nearly 25 percent. The U.S. Department of Labor is conducting a study to determine its size.
We do know the gig economy consists of workers from every discipline: drivers, tech specialists, software programmers, contract nurses, adjunct workers and so on.
Besides being major domestic airlines that serve the Chicago market, what else do United, American, Southwest and Delta have in common?
While full-time workers usually get steady hours, regular pay and employer-supplied benefits, gig economy workers get none of that bounty. However, they do get flexible hours and more control over their schedules while earning money.
Moreover, those whose skills are in demand get to bounce from various projects, which can make for a fuller career, says Ann Logue, an adjunct lecturer in finance who follows emerging economic trends at University of Illinois at Chicago.
"There's a lot to be said for the flexibility and freedom to do different projects," she says.
But there's also a gig economy dark side, a place where people are forced out of decent-paying full-time employment into multiple jobs just to make a living.
If you never had to take out a payday loan, then consider yourself lucky. Unfortunately, many folks are forced to tap this credit option, which is marketed as a short-term fix for fast and easy cash but often ends up being a long-term debt with ruinous sky-high interest rates.
Increasingly, that's occurring due to changing technology, but companies also want to get out from under the sticky requirements that come with full-time employees, including handling payroll taxes, workers' compensation claims and human resource matters.
New concerns, starting from scratch, have a better chance at accomplishing this, but older organizations already have many of these systems grandfathered into place, making it more difficult to dump.
None of this is going unrecognized or unchallenged.
Already some unions are at the forefront of fighting this tide by advocating for greater enforcement of regulation, trying to organize more employee bargaining units and suing employers who they believe are stripping workers of their rights.
And that brings us back to the recent federal court decision and a quest for guidance.
While not weighing in on gig economy matters, the appellate court did assert that business should not be insulated from competition, no matter how disruptive.
If that occurred, the judges' opinion said: "Instead of taxis, we might have horse and buggies; instead of the telephone, the telegraph; instead of computers, slide rules. Obsolescence would equal entitlement."
In the interval between a first set of lesser-known back catalogue numbers and a second made up of the whole of Simply Red’s most successful album, Stars, familiar tinny pop floated through the venue. It took a minute to realise that canned Simply Red music was the between-set sonic wallpaper at a Simply Red concert.
Mick Hucknall’s sanitised pop-soul has often sounded callously commercial, like shopping centre background music. Playing it, muzak-style, while the audience took their wallets to the bar and merchandise stalls might have been an act of funny, self-lacerating cruelty. More likely it was a reminder that Hucknall has rar...
Hucknall disbanded Simply Red in 2010 with a farewell tour, but returned to the live circuit last year, releasing a new record – Big Love – in the process. This outing marks the 25th anniversary of Stars, and before performing the full album, the band played a set that bravely omitted big hits such as Holding Back The ...
The cover of Talking Heads’ Heaven was shamelessly, almost obscenely luxurious but retained enough discipline and rhythmic snap to keep it just on the right side of saccharine melancholy. The breezy bounce of So Beautiful was louchely understated fun, and the breathy stabs of muted horns lifted it momentarily towards t...
Most striking of all was Hucknall’s voice. Especially in that more relaxed first half, it thrummed with a creamy, throaty, natural tone quite absent from the band’s pop records. He held the microphone a foot or more away from his mouth and let effortlessly soulful sounds drift out.
The second half was much less convincing, since the record opens with its big hits – the euphoric Something Got Me Started and Stars – and then sags badly. Even strong album closer Wonderland could not rouse a by-now subdued crowd into offering much more than polite applause at the end of the set.
The encore changed that, the audience responding with loud relief to the flashing primary coloured lights and counterfeit latin beat of Fairground. Sadly, Every Time We Say Goodbye closed the night on a cheaply sentimental note, those few deft, jazzy touches of the first set a distant memory.
The already-crowded field of Democratic presidential contenders grew by one yesterday as Senator Cory Booker told lawmakers he’s joining the race.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) on Thursday began calling members of Congress informing them he is running for president and is quietly making overtures to members for support, three congressional sources told The Hill.

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