Largest California wildfire seen from NOAA space satellite

The McKinney Fire has burned more than 55K acres and left 2 people dead

By Julia Musto | Fox News

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) geostationary satellites have captured the impact of California's largest wildfire.

Images from the GOES 17 satellite show smoke from the fire spreading on Saturday.

"@NOAA's #GOES17 was watching as California's #McKinneyFire showed explosive growth on Saturday," the agency said in a tweet. "The #wildfire has become California's largest fire of 2022, scorching more than 50,000 acres as thousands of residents are forced to evacuate."

The McKinney Fire has spread over 55,400 acres, burning through the Klamath National Forest.

WILDFIRES IN WEST EXPLODE IN SIZE AMID HOT, WINDY CONDITIONS

A satellite image of California's McKinney Fire

 (Credit: NOAA via Twitter)

Inclement weather has complicated firefighting efforts and the blaze remains at 0% containment.

The wildfire has also been worsened by the dangerous drought conditions that have parched the West.

The California fire has forced evacuations and crews responding to the fire found two deceased individuals inside a car that was burned in its path.

 

Smoke from the McKinney Fire in northern California

 (Credit: NOAA via Twitter)

CALIFORNIA’S MCKINNEY FIRE TURNS DEADLY AS 2 BODIES FOUND INSIDE BURNED VEHICLE

"The vehicle was located in a residential driveway along Doggett Creek Road, which is off of Highway 96, west of the Klamath River," the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

Authorities have also arrested two people on burglary-related charges within the McKinney Fire evacuation zone.

The fire, which has threatened hundreds of structures and forced evacuations, started on Friday in Siskiyou County.

 

The McKinney Fire burns in northern California

 (Credit: NOAA via Twitter)

Active wildfires also were burning over the weekend in Montana and Idaho.

Much of the Pacific Northwest remains under red flag warnings from the National Weather Service.

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured the Cartwheel Galaxy in vivid pinks

We can’t get enough of this telescope.

A large pink, speckled galaxy resembling a wheel with with a small, inner oval, with dusty blue in between on the right, with two smaller spiral galaxies about the same size to the left against a black background. 

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

COSMOS

A lenticular galaxy 500 million light years away has just been papped by everyone’s new favourite space telescope, and it looks incredible.

Taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the new image of the Cartwheel Galaxy highlights the galaxy’s two rings — a bright inner ring and a surrounding, outer ring which looks a bit like the spokes on a wheel.

The inner ring contains lots of hot dust, and the brightest areas are home to gigantic young star clusters. The outer ring, which has expanded for about 440 million years, is dominated by star formation and supernovas.

Astronomers believe the galaxy – located in the Sculptor constellation – was once a normal spiral galaxy, but a collision with a smaller galaxy created the wagon wheel effect.

The pink image is a composite from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) which is the main camera, and the Mid Infrared Instrument (MIRI). You can see the MIRI data in red in the composite image above, and in blue in the photo below

.

The Webb’s MIRI Cartwheel galaxy.

 Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team

The Cartwheel Galaxy has three companions… G1 – the smaller irregular spiral at the top and G2 – the compact spiral at the bottom. The third companion is further away and can’t be seen in this image.
Read more: Why is the James Webb Space Telescope such a big deal?

Finally, the image below shows what Hubble’s version of the Cartwheel Galaxy cluster looks like.

Hubble’s Cartwheel Galaxy. 

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA.

At the risk of making Hubble’s incredible feats over the last 30 years seem like a ‘before image’, JWST is able to see in infrared so it’s able to see further into the galaxy. In this case it’s been able to be highlight the ‘spokes’ of the wheel, and the galaxies central black hole.

You can learn more about these images, and download uncompressed versions here.

Scientists Just Detected the Oldest Dark Matter Ever Observed

This could change everything we know about the earliest history of the universe.

Image by NASA

Scientists at Nagoya University in Japan claim to have discovered dark matter that dates back 12 billion years ago, which would make it the earliest observation of the hypothetical substance to date.

Their findings — as detailed in a new paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters — could potentially offer some tantalizing answers about the nature of the universe.

Until now, observations of dark matter only went as far back as ten billion years. Any further than that, and the light was too faint to observe.

"Look at dark matter around distant galaxies? It was a crazy idea," said study co-author and University of Tokyo cosmologist Masami Ouchi, in a statement. "No one realized we could do this."

Dark matter is the mysterious stuff that makes up around 85 percent of the total mass of the universe. It's still one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in modern physics as it is extremely difficult to detect.

Conventionally, scientists use gravitational lensing to look across cosmically vast distances, taking advantage of the gravity of objects of enormous mass, like a galaxy, distorting nearby light into a kind of natural telescope.

Scientists can look through these "lens galaxies" to see the light of even older galaxies behind them. And because dark matter interacts with gravity, the more of it there is in those galaxies, the more distortion — which is something that scientists can measure.

But since visible light is too faint past ten billion years for current observatories to detect, the scientists turned to using the cosmic microwave background (CMB), remnants of the the oldest observable light in the Universe, to find answers.

The team used the data of 1.5 million lens galaxies in visible light, and then used the European Space Agency's CMB-observing Planck satellite to measure exactly how the dark matter in those galaxies distorted the CMB.

By synthesizing that data, the scientists were able to put together a picture of the distribution of dark matter just 1.7 billion years after the Universe was formed. To put that into perspective, scientists believe the universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old.

They found that the dark matter was significantly less "clumpy" than predicted in the broadly accepted Lambda Cold Dark Matter (Lambda-CDM) cosmological model, which posits that as the universe cooled after the Big Bang, galaxies were formed within these dark matter clumps, thanks to their gravitational pull.

The team admits a lot more work still needs to be done to confirm their conclusions.

"Our finding is still uncertain," said Hiranao Miyatake, the study's leader, in the statement. "But if it is true, it would suggest that the entire model is flawed as you go further back in time," adding that a revised new theory could "provide insight into the nature of dark matter itself."

More on dark matter: Scientist Says That Dark Matter May Be Information Itself

READ THIS NEXT

WALLED UP
Scientists Say Space Is Filled With Invisible Walls

TURN BACK TIME
Scientists Say There May Be a Mirror Universe in Which Time Runs Backwards

INTO DARKNESS
Inside NASA's Bold Proposal to Probe the Mysteries of Dark Matter

WAS AL WRONG?
New Evidence About the Universe Suggests Einstein Was Wrong

BIG SKY
Scientists Say New Experiment Will Determine "Fate of the

Parts of the moon may provide stable temperatures for humans, researchers find

By Rachel Fadem, CNN
8:00 PM ET, Tue August 2, 2022


The shaded areas of some pit craters on the moon have temperatures that are stable for humans, UCLA scientists revealed.


(CNN)In early human history, caves provided people with protection from the elements and a place to call home. Now, similar formations on the moon could provide pioneering astronauts with a lunar safe haven, thanks to their Earth-like temperatures.

The moon has pits with shaded areas that steadily hover around 63 degrees Fahrenheit (17 degrees Celsius), a temperate range that's stable for humans, found researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles. The journal Geophysical Research Letters published the study in July.

NASA makes contact with satellite that broke free of Earth's orbit

These pit craters, which may potentially lead to caves that could also provide human shelter, have temperatures that could make lunar exploration and long-term human habitation on the moon safer, as scientists would be able to set up thermally stable base camps.

"Humans evolved living in caves, and to caves we might return when we live on the moon," said study coauthor David Paige, professor of planetary science at UCLA, in a news release. Paige also leads the Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment, an instrument on NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Now that there is a better understanding of the pits and potential caves, scientists could possibly pick up the pace toward conceptualizing a workable permanent station, protected from the extreme conditions of the moon's surface.

"We could be able to establish a long-term presence on the moon sooner than may have otherwise been possible," said lead study author Tyler Horvath, a doctoral student in planetary science at UCLA.

Unlike the moon's surface, which heats up to 260 degrees Fahrenheit (127 degrees Celsius) during the day and drops to minus 280 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 173 degrees Celsius) at night, these lunar pits in the Mare Tranquillitatis region have a human-friendly, stable temperature.

(Mare Tranquillitatis, commonly known as the Sea of Tranquility, is where Apollo 11, the first mission to put humans on the moon, landed due to its smooth and relatively flat terrain.)

Artemis I rocket prepares for late August launch to the moon

The data comes from an analysis of images taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft and computer modeling.

"These (pits) are right at the resolution limit of the cameras that they're trying to use," said Briony Horgan, associate professor of Earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. "The fact that they are able to pull that data out and show that it was pretty convincing, I think it's a big step forward in looking at the moon."

Learning about these pits and probable caves helps scientists better understand how other extreme environments behave, such as the lunar polar regions where the Artemis mission is going, said Noah Petro, chief of NASA's Planetary Geology, Geophysics and Geochemistry Lab. The NASA Artemis program aims to return humans to the moon and land the first woman and first person of color on the lunar surface by 2025.

"Artemis has the goal of sending humans to the region around the South Pole, where we know there are some very cold places," said Petro via email. "Fortunately, we have a large amount of data for the south pole region where Artemis will visit."

Give me shelter
The extreme temperatures of the moon's surface have made it difficult for NASA to create fully operational heating and cooling equipment that would produce enough power to allow for longer-term lunar exploration or habitation, according to the news release. However, NASA may not need equipment as complex as currently assumed to make exploration and habitation a reality, this research has shown.
With the help of the lunar orbiter, scientists discovered pits on the moon in 2009, a finding that prompted scientists to wonder if there were connecting caves that could be explored or even used as shelters.

"About 16 of the more than 200 pits are probably collapsed lava tubes," Horvath said in the news release.

When a lava tube -- a long, hollow tunnel and cavelike structure formed by lava -- collapses, it opens a pit that can create an entrance to the rest of the cave.

There are at least two, likely three, pits that have overhangs that lead to caves, the release said.

Caves would be a stable environment for lunar habitats since they offer some protection from solar radiation and micrometeorite impacts, Horgan said. These formations could also provide a measure of protection against cosmic rays, according to NASA.

It would be helpful to build on the current research with radar data to find additional potential caves, Horgan added.

The research "gives engineers who are really thinking about how to design a habitat on the moon real numbers to work with," she said. "That'll be incredibly important going forward."

Currently, NASA has plans for robotic exploration on the moon through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. Starting in December 2022, cargo flights will deliver devices that navigate and map the lunar surface, conduct investigations, measure radiation levels and assess how human activity impacts the moon. These flights give scientists the ability to reach anywhere on the lunar surface, including Mare Tranquillitatis, Petro said.

"Continuing to map the temperature of the lunar surface is a high priority for LRO, as we'll be able to use that information not only to better understand the environment future missions to the surface will experience," Petro said, "but we can also learn about how different types of surface material respond to the changing lighting conditions at the lunar surface."

 

MONEY TO BURN

Warner Bros. shelves Batgirl movie after

spending $90 million on production

Warner Bros. executives have scrapped their upcoming Batgirl movie despite reportedly spending $90 million  on filming.

It was announced last year that In the Heights star Leslie Grace would be playing Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl, in the superhero movie, which was scheduled to debut on HBO Max later this year.

However, in a surprising twist, it was confirmed on Tuesday night that Warner Bros. had shelved the movie and would not be releasing it on any platform.

"The decision to not release Batgirl reflects our leadership's strategic shift as it relates to the DC universe and HBO Max," said a Warner Bros. spokesperson in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. "Leslie Grace is an incredibly talented actor and this decision is not a reflection of her performance. We are incredibly grateful to the filmmakers of Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt and their respective casts and we hope to collaborate with everyone again in the near future."

According to the publication, the unusual decision to shelve a movie that's in post-production is a result of a change of leadership at the studio. The new Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav is focusing on cost-cutting measures and theatrical, while former WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar prioritised developing projects for the HBO Max service.

Studio executives originally set a production budget of $75-80 million (£62-66 million) for Batgirl, but this reportedly escalated to $90 million due to Covid-19 protocols during filming, which wrapped earlier this year.

Batgirl was directed by Bad Boys for Life filmmakers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah and also starred J.K. Simmons as the superhero's father Commissioner James Gordon, Brendan Fraser as the villain Firefly, and Michael Keaton reprising his role as Bruce Wayne/Batman.

In addition to Batgirl, Warner Bros. officials have also decided to scrap Scoob!: Holiday Haunt, the follow-up to their 2020 animation Scoob!

The Batgirl news was first reported by The New York Post.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Robinhood Crypto fined $30m in New York for regulatory violations

BY:HAMZA FAREED MALIK

A Robinhood sign is seen on Wall Street (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Robinhood Crypto was hit with a $30m (£24.7m) for violating anti-money laundering, cybersecurity, and consumer protection requirements. 

New York’s financial regulator the Department of Financial Services fined the trading platform’s crypto business on Tuesday for “significant failures” in money laundering obligations and cyber security and violating “critical consumer and reporting requirements.”

Additionally, Robinhood Crypto must keep an independent consultant to evaluate the company’s compliance with the watchdog’s regulations.

“As its business grew, Robinhood Crypto failed to invest the proper resources and attention to develop and maintain a culture of compliance, a failure that resulted in significant violations of the Department’s anti-money laundering and cybersecurity regulations,”” said Superintendent of Financial Services Adrienne A. Harris.

“All virtual currency companies licensed in New York State are subject to the same anti-money laundering, consumer protection, and cybersecurity regulations as traditional financial services companies.”

DFS investigated and found that Robinhood’s anti-money laundering compliance program including its transaction monitoring system had “significant deficiencies.”

DFS said the company’s anti money laundering compliance system found to be inadequately staffed and failed to transition in time to a better monitoring system, as well as failing to properly addressing risks to the platform.

Robinhood was also found to not have complied with certain consumer protection requirements by not having a dedicated phone number on the website for consumer complaints.

UK

Tributes paid to 'symbol of courage' Roy Hackett who died aged 93

REST IN POWER

Wednesday 3 August 2022 

Roy Hackett was one of thousands of men who arrived in Britain in the 1950s in search of a better life and was eventually credited with helping to rewrite British law on race relations.

The activist has been described as a "symbol of courage" in his fight against racism and inequality in Bristol.

He was instrumental in the Bristol Bus boycott of 1963, which was called when the Bristol Bus Company refused to employ black and Asian drivers and conductors.

Mr Hackett was instrumental in the Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963

Four months later, the so-called 'colour bar' was quashed and the country's first boycott paved the way for the Race Relations Act of 1965.

In an interview before his death, Mr Hackett described himself as a 'community activist'.

"I never hurt or tried to hurt anyone", he said.

"I never abused anyone, and sometimes when they abused me I said 'well if you were my colour you would understand why I did what I did'."

This mural in tribute to Roy Hackett in St Pauls has been destroyed but the artist hopes to repaint it.

Credit: Michele Curtis

A shrine was built in tribute to him today at the St Werburghs Community Centre where he helped to establish a group for Bristol's West Indian community.

A symbol of courage, resilience and an example of what perseverance means"

Community activist Jendayi Serwah said he has inspired generations of people.

"Roy Hackett stands as a symbol of courage, resilience and an example of what perseverance and activism means, and a great example of the generations that came after", she said.

Lady V Maximen, a close family friend of Roy Hackett said he had been a part of the community for decades.

Lady V Maximen, a close family friend of Roy Hackett said he had been a part of the community for decades.

"When he won the bus boycott parliament brought in the race relations law and it's all due to him", she said.

"He's helped a lot of people. He was a gentleman's gentleman. Always in a suit and his hat and he was always dapper.

"I'll remember him being his cheerful self, with his happy laugh and just him."

Wiltshire firm Dyson fined more than a million pounds after machine falls on worker



Wednesday 3 August 2022 

Dyson headquarters in Malmesbury.

Credit: PA

Wiltshire engineering firm Dyson has been fined more than a million pounds after one of its workers was injured when a milling machine fell on him.

The company was ordered to pay £1.2m at Swindon Magistrates Court after admitting breaching health and safety laws.

A man at the site in Malmesbury was injured in the chest and head when the 1.5 tonne piece of equipment - the same weight as a standard car - fell on top of him in August 2019.

He and a colleague had been moving the the machine using a jack and were replacing some wheels with wooden blocks when it happened.

The incident at Dyson's factory in Malmesbury 'could have been fatal'.

Credit: ITV West Country

The worker only avoided being crushed because the machine landed on two toolboxes and the handle of another machine.

Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigators found that Dyson had not provided "suitable and sufficient information, instruction and training" to its staff.

It also did not have systems in place to ensure that the machine was moved safely.

Health and Safety Executive inspector James Hole said: "This incident could have been fatal.

"Those in control of work have a duty to assess the risks, devise safe methods of working and to provide the necessary information, instruction and training to their workforce.

"Had a suitable safe system of work been in place, this incident and the related injuries could have been prevented."

The injured man has been able to return to work at the factory.

Credit: Dyson

A spokesperson for Dyson said: "The health, safety and well-being of Dyson's people is our number one priority. Prior to this case, Dyson has had no convictions, or enforcement history, related to health and safety at work.

"We are thankful that the employee was not more seriously hurt and has been able to return to work at Dyson.

"As an engineering company, we use complex and often heavy equipment and take care to do so safely. We deeply regret that this happened and we accept the court's decision today."

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones says jurors in his defamation trial 'don't know what planet they're on'

Mark Bankston, lawyer for the parents of slain six-year-old Jesse Lewis, accused Jones of approaching the trial in bad faith, citing broadcasts where he said the trial was rigged against him

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones attempts to answer questions about his emails asked by Mark Bankston, lawyer for Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, during trial at the Travis County Courthouse in Austin. Picture: Briana Sanchez/Austin American-Statesman via AP, Pool

WED, 03 AUG, 2022 - 21:42
JACK MCQUEEN

An attorney for the parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook mass shooting showed a video to jurors in the defamation trial of Alex Jones on Wednesday in which the US conspiracy theorist tells his Infowars viewers the jury pool is full of people who "don't know what planet they're on."

Jones, founder of the Infowars radio show and webcast, is on trial in Texas to determine how much he must pay for spreading falsehoods about the killing of 20 children and six staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012.

Mark Bankston, lawyer for the parents of slain six-year-old Jesse Lewis, accused Jones of approaching the trial in bad faith, citing broadcasts where he said the trial was rigged against him.

Bankston showed a video of Jones saying in his broadcast on Friday that the jury pool was full of people who "don't know what planet they're on".

He also showed jurors an image from Jones's show that Bankston said depicted Judge Maya Guerra Gamble, who is overseeing the case, on fire. Jones responded that the image shows Lady Justice on fire, not Gamble.

Legal team 'messed up' and sent texts to prosecution

In an unusual development, Bankston said during cross-examination on Wednesday that Jones’ legal team had "messed up" and inadvertently sent the plaintiffs' legal team a file containing trial strategy notes and years of texts.

The parents, Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, are seeking as much as $150m from Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems LLC. Closing arguments were under way on Wednesday afternoon.

Judge Gamble admonished Jones on Tuesday for not telling the truth under oath after he falsely told the jury he was bankrupt and had complied with discovery in the case.

"It seems absurd to instruct you again that you must tell the truth while you testify," she said. "Yet here I am."

Jones has already been found liable for defamation by Gamble, who issued a rare default judgment against him in 2021.

Jones on Wednesday sought to distance himself from previous falsehoods that the shooting was a hoax, saying it was “crazy” of him to repeatedly make this claim.

Jones, who has previously acknowledged the shooting took place, told jurors that the shooting was “100% real.”

Heslin testified on Tuesday that the falsehoods Jones spread to his millions of listeners made his life “hell” and resulted in a campaign of harassment and death threats against him by people who believed he lied about his son’s death.

Lewis said she believes that Jones knew that the hoax claims were false but spread them anyway because they attracted listeners and helped him market his supplements and other products.

Free Speech Systems declared bankruptcy last week. Jones said during a Monday broadcast that the filing will help the company stay on the air while it appeals.

The Sandy Hook gunman, Adam Lanza, 20, used a Remington Bushmaster rifle to carry out the massacre. It ended when Lanza killed himself with the approaching sound of police sirens.

Biden predicts mid-term pro-abortion vote following Kansas referendum upset

Online News EditorAugust 3, 2022

Washington, Aug 3 (EFE).- President Joe Biden said Wednesday that the result of the referendum on abortion in Kansas is a sign that in the mid-term elections in November, voters will cast their ballots to protect women’s right to choose to terminate their pregnancies if they so desire.

“The voters of Kansas sent a powerful signal that this fall the American people will vote to preserve and protect the rights, and refuse to let them be ripped away by politicians,” Biden said at the start of the first meeting of his administration’s task force on reproductive health care, a meeting in which he participated virtually since he is still self-isolating after testing positive for Covid-19.

Biden called upon Congress to restore Roe v. Wade protections, which were overturned by the Supreme Court in June.

“If Congress fails to act, the people of this country need to elect senators and representatives who will restore Roe and protect the right to privacy, freedom and equality,” he said.

Biden, who has received much criticism for allegedly not doing enough to defend the right to abortion, on Tuesday signed an executive order in which he instructed the Department of Health and Human Services to provide coverage for patients seeing “reproductive health services” in states where such services are legal.

The order comes just hours after Kansas voters cast their ballots in favor of keeping the right to abortion intact in their state in the first state referendum on the matter since in June the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision, thus eliminating the federal right to abortion and providing states with the authority to legislate on the issue.

The Kansas referendum was especially relevant because it could set a precedent for other states where Republican lawmakers are working to limit or eliminate abortion.

Present at the White House meeting on Wednesday was Vice President Kamala Harris, who said that the people of Kansas “spoke loud and clear. They said this is not a partisan issue … this is a matter of defense of basic principles of liberty and freedom in America … And they spoke loudly in saying that they trust women to make decisions about their own lives and their bodies.”

Also present was US Attorney General Merrick Garland, who insisted that the Department of Justice will respond to every one of the laws being implemented by the states, a fight that will include the filing of lawsuits like the one announced yesterday against Idaho.

In the first DOJ action against a state since the high court ruling, Garland’s department said that Idaho had put in place a law “criminalizing” doctors and preventing them from freely interrupting pregnancies when the life of the mother is at risk.

Garland also said that the DOJ would move to dismiss a Texas lawsuit against the administration’s guidance reminding healthcare providers that US law requires them to provide abortions in medical emergencies.

The meeting on Wednesday was the first public session of the administration’s working group on reproductive rights – a group made up of members of various US government agencies, created after the Supreme Court decision and dedicated to evaluating “the changing panorama” of state laws.

Biden’s executive order establishes that patients who are seeking reproductive health services will be covered by Medicaid, the federal program subsidizing medical care for low-income people.

It also seeks to guarantee that providers of medical services abide by non-discrimination laws, especially amid the chaotic scenario and uncertainty opened up by decision of the high court, where a 6-3 rightist majority holds sway.

The executive order also seeks to promote research and the collection of data on the effects on mothers’ health of reducing access to reproductive services.

EFE pem/pamp/cpy/bp