This kind of story brings us back to the days of overthinking some school physics project, only to have one kid come in with the most simple solution and actually make it work. Here are some resourceful DIY solutions that have our respect.

It’s almost here! Tuesday morning at 10:30am Eastern, join us for the premiere of the long-awaited Peace Talks trailer. We’ll give you a couple hours to watch the trailer a half-dozen times and flail with all your friends about the explosive new details therein, then at 12:30pm Eastern, Jim and director Priscilla Spencer will be [...]

Today will be more explosive than a pyrofuego at a fireworks factory. The trailer is here, and we have massive news! And y’all are so passionate our website went down last night just from the anticipation of the trailer. If it happens again, we’ll be keeping you updated on twitter at @jimbutchernews, so you don’t [...]

NOTE: In our traditional April Fool’s posts, we endeavor to make them credible at the beginning, then crank up the nonsense until the joke becomes obvious. But these days, the idea of knowingly spreading misinformation (even when comically false) sounds exhausting. So here’s our notice ahead of time: This is 100% silliness! Hope it lightens [...]

This week is a bit scattered, but it’s SCATTERED AWESOME, so who are we to complain? We’ve got some great book deals, delightful new art, and some behind-the-scenes photos for the making of the trailer! April Fool’s Redux Last week’s prank of a re-release of the Peace Talks trailer with “improved” visual effects was ridiculously [...]

via http://anambitiousprojectcollapsing.blogspot.com/

Taking deep breaths and forcing a cough can help clear mucus, but these techniques are unlikely to prevent or treat coronavirus infections – here’s why

People born prematurely may have weaker hearts that recover less well after exercise, potentially explaining their increased risk of heart disease

A long-standing hypothesis suggests the BCG vaccine also serves to generally enhance the immune system, meaning it could protect against covid-19, and trials are under way to find out

The Pine Island glacier has three tipping points that could lead to the collapse of the entire West Antarctic ice sheet, potentially raising sea levels by 3 metres over centuries

Robots made of 3D-printed muscle and rat spines could help us understand conditions like motor neurone disease and the technique may eventually be used to build prosthetic devices

A well-preserved fossilised tail from Spinosaurus suggests this massive dinosaur may have been able to propel itself and hunt for prey in the water

Over half the world’s wild tigers now live 5 kilometres from a road, and infrastructure projects planned in Asia could fragment their habitat further

Vampire bats are social creatures that build relationships through grooming and food-sharing, but when they feel ill, they self-isolate and call out for contact far less

The Tully Monster is a famously odd 300-million-year-old fossil that looks like an alien, but a new analysis suggests it was a backboned animal like a hagfish or lamprey

People with rheumatoid arthritis often take medicines that can have damaging side-effects, but a system that uses red light to deliver drugs exactly where they are needed could help

The BCG tuberculosis vaccine boosts the production of immune cells and this may explain how it protects newborns from dying of sepsis

Finland’s two-year test of universal basic income has concluded that it doesn't seem to disincentivise working, and improves recipients’ mental and financial well-being

This looks like a good way to spend my time after classes are over, but I haven’t been able to find it in the Ikea catalog. Has it sold out already?

A university professor filed suit against his institution because it chastised him for inappropriate sexual behavior. He wasn’t fired, they just tut-tutted, put a black mark on his record, and told him not to do that anymore. He sued anyway, for his ego. During a class in 2013, a psychology professor at George Mason University […]

Skatje is working hard on her thesis in computational linguistics, and might not appreciate a joke about how easy it is. It’s hard enough that I don’t even understand what she’s doing when she tries to explain it!

This story is a bit on the nose. Hello, Peter Ludlow here, CEO of InGen, the company behind the wildly successful dinosaur-themed amusement park, Jurassic Park. As you’re all aware, after an unprecedented storm hit the park, we lost power and the velociraptors escaped their enclosure and killed hundreds of park visitors, prompting a two-month […]

Two big thick circles with a narrow slab in between are all it takes to make a stunning polymer vase like this one from Baltimore’s Linda Loew. The periwinkle and purple colors are lush, the edges are smoothed and there’s a freeform design in the circles’ centers. Why not show off some of spring’s bounty […] Read more

U.S. loses record 20.5 million jobs in the month of April; White House National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow weighs in on ‘America’s Newsroom.’

Meghan McCain, The View’s resident conservative host, tore into Kayleigh McEnany for “spinning propaganda” on Thursday morning after the new White House press secretary dismissed the need for increased coronavirus testing as the economy reopens.During her press briefing on Wednesday, McEnany said it was “nonsensical” to think that every American should be able to get tested for coronavirus, even though President Donald Trump said two months earlier that “anybody that wants a test can get a test.” The hosts of The View took the press secretary to task over those remarks.Co-host Sunny Hostin said she found it “shocking” that the White House spokesperson would say that considering recent news that one of the president’s personal valets just tested positive for the virus.“So it’s obviously important enough for everyone in the White House and surrounding the president to be tested for the coronavirus, but it’s not important to the press secretary and to the administration for Americans to be tested for the coronavirus,” she declared. “And so that tells me that she is just spinning lies to the American people rather than being honest with the American people.”After first saying there has been “mixed messaging” coming not just from the White House but from medical experts since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, McCain went on to blast McEnany as a propagandist.“I think in regards to Kayleigh McEnany, she was hired for this job because she’s good at spinning propaganda, and she was good spinning propaganda before she got hired,” she exclaimed. “And you can make the argument that’s the role of any press secretaries but it’s probably a little more egregious with this particular president.”The conservative co-host then worried aloud that we were reaching a tipping point on saving the economy, criticizing the Trump administration for not taking the necessary steps to safely reopen the country.“If we don’t start getting a plan to get testing, to somehow pull ourselves out of this and get America back to work,” she proclaimed. “This is going to be far more egregious than any crisis any of us have seen in all of our lifetimes.” “If the tests aren’t important, why is the White House, and everybody else getting tested before they go before the president?” McCain concluded. “I would like to go back to work. I know you would, and I would be comfortable doing that if we all had the capacity to get tested.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

A lower court had ruled that the prisoner’s gender-affirming surgery is a medical necessity, and denying it constituted a violation of the Eighth Amendment.

A New York town has launched a diet and exercise program to help residents lose weight to prevent reported risks of obesity and coronavirus outcomes.

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department's decision to drop the criminal case against Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump's former national security adviser, even though he had twice pleaded guilty to lying to investigators, was extraordinary and had no obvious precedent, a range of criminal law specialists said Thursday."I've been practicing for more time than I care to admit and I've never seen anything like this," said Julie O'Sullivan, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches criminal law at Georgetown University.The move is the latest in a series that the department, under Attorney General William Barr, has taken to undermine and dismantle the work of the investigators and prosecutors who scrutinized Russia's 2016 election interference operation and its links to people associated with the Trump campaign.The case against Flynn for lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador was brought by the office of the former special counsel, Robert Mueller. It had become a political cause for Trump and his supporters, and the president had signaled that he was considering a pardon once Flynn was sentenced. But Barr instead abruptly short-circuited the case.On Thursday, Timothy Shea, the interim U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia, told the judge overseeing the case, Emmet G. Sullivan, that prosecutors were withdrawing the case. They were doing so, he said, because the department could not prove to a jury that Flynn's admitted lies to the FBI about his conversations with the ambassador were "material" ones.The move essentially erases Flynn's guilty pleas. Because he was never sentenced and the government is unwilling to pursue the matter further, the prosecution is virtually certain to end, although the judge must still decide whether to grant the department's request to dismiss it "with prejudice," meaning it could not be refiled in the future.A range of former prosecutors struggled to point to any previous instance in which the Justice Department had abandoned its own case after obtaining a guilty plea. They portrayed the justification Shea pointed to -- that it would be difficult to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the lies were material -- as dubious."A pardon would have been a lot more honest," said Samuel Buell, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches criminal law at Duke University.The law regarding what counts as "material" is extremely forgiving to the government, Buell added. The idea is that law enforcement is permitted to pursue possible theories of criminality and to interview people without having firmly established that there was a crime first.James G. McGovern, a defense lawyer at Hogan Lovells and a former federal prosecutor, said juries rarely bought a defendant's argument that a lie did not involve a material fact."If you are arguing 'materiality,' you usually lose, because there is a tacit admission that what you said was untrue, so you lose the jury," he said.No career prosecutors signed the motion. Shea is a former close aide to Barr. In January, Barr installed him as the top prosecutor in the district that encompasses the nation's capital after maneuvering out the Senate-confirmed former top prosecutor in that office, Jessie K. Liu.Soon after, in an extraordinary move, four prosecutors in the office abruptly quit the case against Trump's longtime friend Roger Stone. They did so after senior Justice Department officials intervened to recommend a more lenient prison term than standard sentencing guidelines called for in the crimes Stone was convicted of committing -- including witness intimidation and perjury -- to conceal Trump campaign interactions with WikiLeaks.It soon emerged that Barr had also appointed an outside prosecutor, Jeff Jensen, the U.S. attorney in St. Louis, to review the Flynn case files. The department then began turning over FBI documents showing internal deliberations about questioning Flynn, like what warnings to give -- even though such files are usually not provided to the defense.Flynn's defense team has mined such files for ammunition to portray the FBI as running amok in its decision to question Flynn in the first place. The questioning focused on his conversations during the transition after the 2016 election with the Russian ambassador about the Obama administration's imposition of sanctions on Russia for its interference in the American election.The FBI had already concluded that there was no evidence that Flynn, a former Trump campaign adviser, had personally conspired with Russia about the election, and it had decided to close out the counterintelligence investigation into him. Then questions arose about whether and why Flynn had lied to administration colleagues like Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with the ambassador.Because the counterintelligence investigation was still open, the bureau used it as a basis to question Flynn about the conversations and decided not to warn him at its onset that it would be a crime to lie. Notes from Bill Priestap, then the head of the FBI's counterintelligence division, show that he wrote at one point about the planned interview: "What's our goal? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"Barr has also appointed another outside prosecutor, John H. Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to reinvestigate the Russia investigators even though the department's independent inspector general was already scrutinizing them.And his department has intervened in a range of other ways, from seeking more comfortable prison accommodations last year for Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, to abruptly dropping charges in March against two Russian shell companies that were about to go to trial for financing schemes to interfere in the 2016 election using social media.Barr has let it be known that he does not think the FBI ever had an adequate legal basis to open its Russia investigation in the first place, contrary to the judgment of the Justice Department's inspector general.In an interview on CBS News on Thursday, Barr defended the dropping of the charges against Flynn on the grounds that the FBI "did not have a basis for a counterintelligence investigation against Flynn at that stage."Anne Milgram, a former federal prosecutor and former New Jersey attorney general who teaches criminal law at New York University, defended the FBI's decision to question Flynn in January 2017. She said that much was still a mystery about the Russian election interference operation at the time and that Flynn's lying to the vice president about his postelection interactions with a high-ranking Russian raised new questions.But, she argued, the more important frame for assessing the dropping of the case was to recognize how it fit into the larger pattern of the Barr-era department "undercutting the law enforcement officials and prosecutors who investigated the 2016 election and its aftermath," which she likened to "eating the Justice Department from the inside out."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

The Iranian president said Wednesday that lifting a U.N. arms embargo on Tehran would be an “obvious right” and added a veiled warning of unspecified steps Iran could take if the embargo is extended, as the United States wants.

Nicola Sturgeon says the situation in care homes is "profoundly upsetting".

The Irish deputy PM says time is short to reach a trade deal this year, with much still to do.

Almost half a million people are at "high risk" of homelessness, local councils warn government.

Leave campaigners were accused by the Electoral Commission of breaking the law over spending limits.

Against her will, Sita Tyasutami became "case one", the face of Indonesia's coronavirus outbreak.

Fan clubs, players from all over the world and a former Spain international in charge, Atletico Madrid's Canadian venture is currently on pause.

Watford become the third team to publicly oppose the use of neutral venues when Premier League football returns.

The diagnosis comes one day after Trump's personal valet tested positive for the virus.

Thousands accused PM Janez Jansa of using the coronavirus crisis as a pretext to restrict freedoms.

An investigation details how extremists are trying to exploit the pandemic via the social network.

In a joint investigation BBC Click investigates the groups behind fake news about the pandemic.

A slickly-produced "documentary" has exploded across social media, peddling medical misinformation.

An investigation by BBC News Arabic has found how one Iranian airline contributed to the spread of coronavirus around the Middle East.

Yesenia Perez-Cruz started her career as a designer at Happy Cog Philadelphia. From the first day, her design gifts were unmistakable. As her career progressed, she moved from one challenging role to another. At companies like Vox Media and Shopify, and at conferences around the world, she has been a design team leader, a popular […]

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