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Science

Four Planets And The Moon Will Line Up In The Sky This Month Kids News Article

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Four planets and the Moon will be visible in the pre-dawn sky starting April 23, 2022 (Credit: Stellarium.org)

Stargazers, get ready! Starting April 23, 2022, Saturn, Mars, Venus, and Jupiter will form a straight line behind the crescent Moon. The perfect alignment will provide earthlings a relatively rare opportunity to see multiple planets in the sky with the naked eye. Experts say the celestial treat can be best observed by gazing southeast — in the direction of the sunrise — about an hour before the Sun comes out.

The planets will appear like sparkling, unblinking stars (Credit: Stellarium)

Saturn will be the first to appear above the horizon. It will be followed by Mars, Venus, and Jupiter. Mars will look like a reddish-orange speck below and to the left of Saturn, while Venus will shine as a bright light down and to the left of Mars. Jupiter, the largest of all planets, will be the lowest and leftmost in the sky. The Moon will appear farther south, just right of Saturn.

Though no special equipment is needed, a pair of binoculars or a small telescope will allow you to see Saturn’s famous rings and Jupiter’s four largest moons. Neptune is also part of the lineup, but its blue-ish icy distant world will only be visible through a powerful telescope.

The celestial show will get even more exciting when Venus and Jupiter, the Solar System’s brightest planets, meet in conjunction on April 30, 2022. A conjunction occurs when two astronomical objects appear close to each other because of the way they line up with Earth during their respective orbits. Though Venus and Jupiter are hundreds of millions of miles apart in space, they will appear like a single, spectacular star from Earth.

On April 30, 2022, Jupiter and Venus will appear like a single bright star (Credit: NASA/JPL)

While the Moon will be visible above the horizon only until April 29, 2022, the four planets will remain in their aligned positions for a few months. Mercury will join them in mid-June, and the five planets will be visible in the pre-dawn skies until early July.

Planetary alignments come about when the planets’ orbits around the Sun cause them to be in the same region of the sky when viewed from Earth. The last time the five planets lined up was in 2020, and the next time will not be until June 22, 2040 — so catch them while you can!

Resources: Solarsystem.nasa.gov, Livescience.com, NBCnews.com

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Business

Amazon slams Reliance takeover of Future stores as ‘fraud’ in India newspaper ads

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NEW DELHI, March 15 (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc has gone on the attack in its bitter dispute with two Indian retailers, accusing them of fraud in Indian newspaper ads on Tuesday after Reliance Industries (RELI.NS) suddenly took over many of Future Retail (FRTL.NS) stores.

Amazon has been contesting the planned $3.4 billion sale of Future Group’s retail assets to Reliance, first announced in 2020, and the case is currently before the Indian Supreme Court.

Reliance, India’s biggest conglomerate and retailer run by the country’s richest man, began taking over the prized real estate with utmost stealth on Feb.25 when its staff showed up at many of Future biggest stores to assume control, sources have told Reuters. read more

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In ads headlined “PUBLIC NOTICE” in leading Indian newspapers on Tuesday, Amazon said: “these actions have been done in a clandestine manner by playing a fraud on the constitutional courts in India.”

Future and Reliance did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Amazon’s public outcry comes even though on March 3 it offered to hold talks. The ongoing talks have raised hopes the dispute could be resolved. read more

Future has said in filings this month that it could not pay rent at many outlets given its distressed financial situation and that Reliance, which had taken over many of its leases, had issued it with termination notices.

Amazon is concerned that Reliance is continuing to take over Future stores even as the talks continue, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter who was not authorised to speak to media and declined to be identified.

The newspaper ads were aimed at alerting all stakeholders, including Future’s lenders, that the transfer of assets to Reliance is legally prohibited, the source added.

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Reporting by Aditya Kalra and Abhirup Roy; Editing by Edwina Gibbs

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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US

Sixty-five businesses sign ad in newspaper calling on Texas governor to abandon anti-LGBTQ+ initiatives

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Sixty-five companies including Apple (AAPL), Capital One (COF), Google, Ikea, Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), LinkedIn, Macy’s (M), Microsoft (MSFT), PayPal (PYPL), and Yahoo signed the open letter. “Discrimination is bad for business” the headline read in an advertisement in Friday’s The Dallas Morning News newspaper.

The letter was done in partnership with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

“Our companies do business, create jobs, and serve customers in Texas. We are committed to building inclusive environments where our employees can thrive inside and outside of the workplace,” the letter said. “For years we have stood to ensure LGBTQ+ people — our employees, customers, and their families — are safe and welcomed in the communities where we do business.”

“The recent attempt to criminalize a parent for helping their transgender child access medically necessary, age-appropriate healthcare in the state of Texas goes against the values of our companies,” the letter said. “This policy creates fear for employees and their families, especially those with transgender children, who might now be faced with choosing to provide the best possible medical care for their children but risk having those children removed by child protective services for doing so. It is only one of several efforts discriminating against transgender youth that are advancing across the country.”

The companies went on to “call on our public leaders — in Texas and across the country — to abandon efforts to write discrimination into law and policy. It’s not just wrong, it has an impact on our employees, our customers, their families, and our work.”

In February, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton declared gender-affirming surgical procedures and treatments in children, including prescribing drugs that affect puberty, to be considered “child abuse.”

In response to Paxton’s legal opinion, the governor directed the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) “to conduct a prompt and thorough investigation of any reported instances of these abusive procedures in the State of Texas.”

On Friday, Judge Amy Clark Meachum in Travis County blocked the state from enforcing Abbott’s order.

“The court finds sufficient cause to enter a temporary injunction,” Meachum said. She said Abbott’s order was “beyond the scope of his authority and unconstitutional” and that the parents of a transgender child and a psychologist who filed suit against the governor were likely to succeed at trial, which is set for July.

Paxton said on Twitter Friday that he is appealing.

CNN has reached out to Abbott’s office for a comment.



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Entertainment

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, wins latest court battle with UK newspaper publisher

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Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) had appealed against a previous judgment that the duchess had a reasonable expectation of privacy, but the Court of Appeal upheld the decision on Thursday.

ANL and the group’s tabloid, The Mail on Sunday, previously ​said they stood by the decision to publish excerpts from the handwritten letter and would defend the case vigorously.

In a statement, Meghan celebrated the judgment and outlined her hopes that it would help to change the UK newspaper industry.

“This is a victory not just for me, but for anyone who has ever felt scared to stand up for what’s right,” reads the statement.

“While this win is precedent setting, what matters most is that we are now collectively brave enough to reshape a tabloid industry that conditions people to be cruel, and profits from the lies and pain that they create.”

This is a breaking story, more to follow.

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Business

Chinese state newspaper blasts ‘worship of turnover’ after Alibaba’s Singles Day

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People walk along a main shopping area during the Alibaba’s Singles’ Day shopping festival in Shanghai, China November 11, 2021. REUTERS/Aly Song

SHANGHAI, Nov 12 (Reuters) – The focus of China’s Singles’ Day shopping festival should shift from a “traffic and sales war” to one of science and technology, a state-backed newspaper said on Friday, describing the “worship of turnover” as incompatible with China’s new development path.

The article in the Securities Daily comes a day after the annual shopping blitz spearheaded by Alibaba Group (9988.HK), which recorded 540.3 billion yuan in orders over the 11-day event.

The newspaper said the event had achieved many years of record breaking sales, but had also given rise to practices such as spam text messaging of users, unfair competition and merchants faking discounts. The model had become one in which it was hard to achieve “breakthrough innovations”, the paper said.

By using low prices as a selling point, platforms and merchants were stimulating “low-level” consumption, which was in not in line with China’s goals to achieve high-quality development, it added.

“The ‘worship of turnover’ is not only unsustainable in terms of digital growth but is also inextricably linked to chaos,” the newspaper said.

It said that it hoped to see Singles’ Day become a festival for platforms and businesses to showcase innovative achievements, and eventually even higher pursuits.

“I hope that one day, China’s Internet giants will no longer focus on the business of mom-and-pop shops, but will be able to walk towards space in their own private rocket,” the article’s writer said, pointing to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ and Tesla founder Elon Musk’s rocket projects as examples.

Alibaba and JD.com did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Alibaba turned China’s informal Singles’ Day into a shopping event in 2009 and built it into the world’s biggest online sales fest, dwarfing Cyber Monday in the United States.

It toned down the marketing hype this year amid regulatory scrutiny, doing away with a rolling tally tracking transactions that had taken centre stage in previous years and said it was focused on sustainability.

Rival JD.com (9618.HK), which also holds its own Singles Day shopping event, similarly did not publish real-time sales data.

($1 = 6.3898 Chinese yuan renminbi)

Reporting by Brenda Goh. Editing by Gerry Doyle

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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US

Capital Gazette: Man who killed 5 in newspaper shooting gets multiple life sentences

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Jarrod Ramos was sentenced to five life sentences without parole, plus one life sentence, plus 345 years, according to Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney spokesperson Tia Lewis.

The widow, Andrea Chamblee, wrote she felt like she was “surrounded by a river full of gasping, flailing people, destroyed by a gun violence, floundering until we each realized in our own time that the only way up and out was boosting everyone who was kicking and drowning to the top together,” according to the newspaper.

“The real victim impact is that he’s gone when he deserved to be here,” Chamblee’s prepared remarks read. “He deserved to enjoy seeing his recognition, to enjoy this time in his life, and I was so hoping to see it and experience it with him, and pay him back for all the kindnesses that he gave to me. Now I never will.”

Two of the six people who survived the shooting and more than a dozen family members spoke Tuesday morning in court, the Washington Post reported. They included Selene San Felice, a reporter who hid under a desk during the attack.

“There were days I wondered why I lived or if I should live at all,” she said, according to the Post. “I live to spread the truth.”

“We will press on.”

One of the daughters of slain staffer Wendi Winters told reporters outside the courthouse that the sentencing “brings us solace that the person that took her from us will never breathe freedom again.”

“We ran out of time with our mother. We lost the storyteller of our family, and as a community we lost the storyteller for everyone that is an Annapolitan,” Montana Winters Geimer said.

Montana’s sister, Summerleigh Winters Geimer, was 20 when her mother was killed.

“She will never see me fall in love, get married, have babies; she didn’t see me graduate college. My mom is missing out on every big event in my life. But I’m here for this big event in her afterlife, and Wendi was here with us,” Summerleigh said outside court.

Ramos held grudge against newspaper after article

Authorities had said Ramos held a grudge against the newspaper. Court documents showed Ramos filed a defamation suit in 2012 against the paper and a reporter over a 2011 article that detailed his guilty plea in a harassment case. A judge threw out that lawsuit, and an appeals judge in 2015 upheld that ruling.

Anne Colt Leitess, state’s attorney for Anne Arundel County and the lead prosecutor on the murder case, told reporters that justice was served at Tuesday’s sentencing.

“I think it became very clear that this case was not about the defendant … somehow (being) wronged by the Capital Gazette — but that he exploited his lawsuit, and his losing of the lawsuit, and killed innocent people just to feel better about himself,” the prosecutor said.

“And the jury saw through that, and the judge saw through it today” during sentencing, she said.

Those killed were McNamara, 56; Wendi Winters, 65; Gerald Fischman, 61; Rob Hiaasen, 59; and Rebecca Smith, 34.

Ramos had pleaded guilty but not criminally responsible

Ramos had pleaded guilty but not criminally responsible in October 2019 to 23 counts, including murder, setting up this year’s trial, at which a jury was asked to determine his mental state at the time of the shooting.
The trial began in late June following delays for a variety of reasons, including Covid-19, the Capital Gazette reported. The jury needed less than two hours to reach its verdict.

Heading into this week’s sentencing, Ramos faced five life sentences without the possibility of parole, plus one additional life sentence for attempted murder as well as lengthy sentences for gun charges.

CNN’s Connor Spielmaker and Michelle Krupa contributed to this report.

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Science

Did freak cosmic impact inspire biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah?

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A new study presents evidence that a Bronze Age city near the Dead Sea destroyed some 3,600 years ago could have been the inspiration for the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The 21 co-authors of the paper, published Monday in the journal Nature, researched the remains of Tall el-Hammam in an attempt to discover what destroyed the ancient city during the Middle Bronze Age.

During the period, there were roughly 50,000 people living in the area of the Jordan Valley in three cities: Tall el-Hammam, Jericho and Tall Nimrin, with Tall el-Hammam the biggest of the three. This means that until its destruction, it would have been the political center of the area.

Radiocarbon dating dates the destruction to within 50 years of 1650 BCE.

Examination of the remains revealed evidence of a destructive event that involved high temperatures, such as pottery pieces that were melted and boiled on the exterior, but normal on the inside.

The buildings of Tall el-Hammam were made of mud bricks. Some were five stories tall. In the upper part of the city, the destructive force demolished the buildings to the height of their foundations in the walls, and little mud-brick remained. Of the palace that was in this part of the city, the first floor walls and the upper stories are missing, and most of the mud-brick was pulverized.

In the lower part of the city, the buildings suffered more severe damage, and researchers found evidence of heat-fracturing in the remains.

The towers in the wall that surrounded the city were also destroyed with mud-brick remains only existing at the height of the towers’ foundation.

The researchers propose that the explosion was larger than the 1908 explosion over Tunguska, Russia, when an airburst of a stony meteoroid about 50 to 60 meters (160 to 200 feet) in size caused a massive 12 megaton blast.

The archaeologists and other researchers involved in the study conclude that the airburst hypothesis would make Tall el-Hammam the second oldest known city or town to have been possibly destroyed by an airburst after Abu Hureyra in Syria, which might have been hit by a comet 12,800 years ago.

The authors warn that cosmic events are expected to recur every few thousand years, saying that “although the risk is low, the potential damage is exceedingly high, putting Earth’s cities at risk and encouraging mitigation strategies.”

Reprinted with permission from i24NEWS.



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Science

Mars rocks collected by rover boost case for ancient life – Newspaper

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WASHINGTON: NASA’s Perse­ve­rance Mars rover has now collected two rock samples with signs that they were in contact with water for a long period of time, boosting the case for ancient life on the Red Planet.

“It looks like our first rocks reveal a potentially habitable sustained environment,” said Ken Farley, project scientist for the mission, in a statement on Friday.

“It’s a big deal that the water was there for a long time.” The six-wheeled robot collected its first sample, dubbed “Montdenier” on September 6, and its second, “Montagnac” from the same rock on September 8.

Both samples, slightly wider than a pencil in diameter and about six centimetres long, are now stored in sealed tubes in the rover’s interior.

A first attempt at collecting a sample in early August failed after the rock proved too crumbly to withstand Perseverance’s drill.

NASA hopes to bring the samples to Earth for in-depth lab analysis

The rover has been operating in a region known as the Jezero Crater, just north of the equator and home to a lake 3.5 billion years ago, when conditions on Mars were much warmer and wetter than today.

The rock that provided the first samples was found to be basaltic in composition and likely the product of lava flows.

Volcanic rocks contain crystalline minerals that are helpful in radiometric dating.

This in turn could help scientists build up a picture of the area’s geological history, such as when the crater formed, when the lake appeared and disappeared, and how climate changed over time.

“An interesting thing about these rocks as well is that they show signs for sustained interaction with groundwater,” NASA geologist Katie Stack Morgan told a press conference.

The scientists already knew the crater was home to a lake, but couldn’t rule out the possibility that it had been a “flash in the pan” with floodwaters filling up the crater for as little as 50 years. Now they are more certain groundwater was present for much longer.

“If these rocks experienced water for long periods of time, there may be habitable niches within these rocks that could have supported ancient microbial life,” added Stack Morgan.

The salt minerals in the rock cores may have trapped tiny bubbles of ancient Martian water.

“Salts are great minerals for preserving signs of ancient life here on Earth, and we expect the same may be true for rocks on Mars,” added Stack Morgan.

NASA is hoping to return the samples to Earth for in-depth lab analysis in a joint mission with the European Space Agency sometime in the 2030s.

Published in Dawn, September 12th, 2021

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World

Dainik Bhaskar: Indian tax officials raid newspaper that took on Narendra Modi

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The newspaper, Dainik Bhaskar, said that tax inspectors visited its offices in the capital New Delhi and the states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan in the early morning.

The paper shocked India with its reporting of dead bodies in the river Ganges during the brutal second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic this spring. It criticized authorities for under-reporting Covid-19 deaths and challenged state officials and the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi over their handling of the crisis.

“The government has clamped down on the group that represented an accurate picture of what happened to the country during the second wave of Covid-19,” the paper wrote in a report on the tax raid published Thursday on the homepage of its Hindi edition. The 63-year-old company also publishes newspapers in Gujarati and Marathi languages.

In its report, the paper added that tax officials also raided the homes of several Dainik Bhaskar employees, and seized the phones of those who were present in its offices.

“The government is doing its job, and we are doing our job,” Om Gaur, the national editor at Dainik Bhaskar told CNN Business. “The truth is always bitter, but we crosscheck all our facts before publishing,”

In May, Gaur had led the paper’s coverage of corpses floating in the Ganges, as the official death toll from Covid-19 began crossing 4,000 a day. However, both Indian and international experts say that these numbers do not show the true picture.

A working paper published this week by the US-based Center for Global Development found that the number of excess deaths during India’s pandemic could be up to ten times the official toll.

Between 3.4 million and 4.9 million estimated excess deaths were reported in India between January 2020 and June 2021, the US think tank said — compared to the Indian health ministry’s reported death toll of approximately 400,000.

“State officials have tried to stop our coverage several times in the past few days, and have even threatened us with a court case,” Gaur had told CNN Business in May.

A spokesperson for the Central Board of Direct Taxes did not respond to a request for comment from CNN Business. But several top opposition politicians said that the paper was being punished for publishing critical reports about Modi’s handling of the second wave.

“Nobody would have thought the Modi government would be so scared, ” the national opposition party, Congress, tweeted in response to the raid.
“The attack on journalists & media houses is yet another BRUTAL attempt to stifle democracy,” wrote Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of the state of West Bengal and leader of a regional opposition party, in a Twitter post. “#DainikBhaskar bravely reported the way @narendramodi ji mishandled the entire #COVID crisis and led the country to its most horrifying days amid a raging pandemic.”

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who is from a smaller opposition party, said that the raids were a clear signal that Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party will not forgive those who challenge it.

“This is a very dangerous way of thinking,” he added in a tweet in Hindi. Kejriwal also retweeted a post from Dainik Bhaskar’s account which said “I am Independent.”
The Press Club of India, meanwhile, said it “deplores such acts of intimidation by the government through enforcement agencies to deter the independent media from discharging their duty to serve the society.”
According to Reporters Without Borders, India is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists “trying to do their job properly.” It ranks India 142 out of 180 countries on its World Press Freedom Index.
In 2017, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation raided the offices and homes of founders of NDTV, a top broadcaster that is often seen as critical of Modi government. The agency said that it was investigating a bank loan, while NDTV had called it an attempt to undermine “democracy and free speech in India.”

— Esha Mitra contributed to this report



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Sports

Phil Mickelson says he won’t enter Detroit tournament again after newspaper report

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Phil Mickelson entered the Rocket Mortgage Classic this week in Detroit for the first time in the event’s three-year history, but he said on Thursday it will be his last appearance.

Mickelson said he won’t return because of a story published this week by The Detroit News, which obtained federal court records from 2007, detailing how a Michigan-based bookie allegedly cheated Mickelson out of $500,000.

“It was so much effort for me to be here and to have that type of unnecessary attack,” Mickelson said. “Not like I care, it happened 20-something years ago, it’s just the lack of appreciation. Yeah, I don’t see that happening. I don’t see me coming back. Not that I don’t love the people here, they have been great, but not with that type of thing happening.”

Mickelson’s comments came one day after his attorney, Glenn Cohen, told ESPN’s Bob Harig he took issue with the newspaper’s report.

“I’m disappointed they would curiously pick this week to write an article about a bet that was made over 20 years ago and a jury trial that took place in 2007, where the guy who was convicted is dead and where the only purpose for this article is to embarrass Phil Mickelson,” Cohen told ESPN.

The 51-year-old Mickelson shot a 69 on Thursday, marking the sixth time he has been under par out of 11 rounds since he became the oldest major winner at the PGA Championship in May.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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