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Message for the stars: NASA’s Europa Clipper mission to carry poem and names into space

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:20:57 GMT

(CNN) – You’ve heard about a ‘message in a bottle,’ but what about a message in a bottle that will end up… in space?!NASA is offering an extraordinary opportunity for space enthusiasts and poetry lovers alike to become part of its upcoming Europa Clipper mission. In a unique initiative, the space agency is inviting the public to contribute their names to an original poem penned by acclaimed U.S. poet Ada Limón titled “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa.”Come October 2024, when the spacecraft embarks on its momentous journey, the poem adorned with the names of participants will be on board. This poetic masterpiece will traverse billions of miles to reach its ultimate destination, Jupiter’s intriguing moon, Europa. The primary objective of the mission is to explore the potential of the vast ocean thought to exist beneath Europa’s icy crust and investigate its ability to support life.If you wish to be part of this cosmic endeavor, ma...

Friday is National Donut Day

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:20:57 GMT

(CNN) — The first Friday in June — June 2 this year — is National Donut Day.Started by the Salvation Army in Chicago in 1938, the day honors the group’s “donut lassies,” who served treats and provided assistance to soldiers on the front lines during World War I. (And this isn’t to be confused with National Doughnut Day, which is in November and honors the actual food; though both days are celebrated by eating doughnuts.)Doughnuts have been around since long before the First World War, and we have the Dutch to thank for them. The Dutch would make “olykoek,” which translates to oily cake. The first Dutch doughnuts didn’t have a hole, but they were fried in hot oil and the dough was sweet.It wasn’t until 1847 that the holed-out doughnut we know and love today appeared. Hanson Gregory, 16 at the time, claimed credit. Sick of doughnuts with a raw center, he used a pepper pot to punch out holes to help his doughnuts cook more evenly.By 1920, Adolph Levitt, a Russian living in New York, ha...

Police investigating fiery fatal crash in Lynn

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:20:57 GMT

Police are investigating a fiery crash in Lynn on Thursday night that left a person dead and a building damaged.Officers responding to a report of a car into a building on Boston Street around 11 p.m. found a pickup truck that appeared to have hit a building that housed a paint store and a dry cleaning business.Witness video showed the pickup fully engulfed in flames.Police later confirmed the driver died in the crash. Their name has not been released.No additional information was immediately available.The crash remains under investigation.This is a developing news story; stay with 7NEWS on-air and online for the latest details.

No school Friday at Winter Hill Community School in Somerville after concrete falls from ceiling

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:20:57 GMT

The Winter Hill Community Innovation School in Somerville will be closed Friday after a small section of concrete fell into a stairwell inside the building, school and city officials said. Officials said the concrete fell outside school operating hours, while the school was unoccupied. The stairwell was later closed to students and staff while a structural engineer was brought in and while city Department of Public Works staff responded, according to officials. Officials said DPW crews had “conducted minor repairs” and had been monitoring the building’s interior as of Thursday night. The planned closure on Friday now comes “out of an abundance of caution,” according to officials, to let engineers “conduct a more thorough review of the building.”In a message signed by Somerville’s Interim Superintendent of Schools Jeff Curley, Mayor Katjana Ballantyne and school principal Courtney Gosselin, officials said they are working on a plan to temporarily relocate classroo...

Summer Heat & Storms To Chilly Air

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:20:57 GMT

High heat made it in for many locations away from the coastline yesterday as inland temps soared into the lower 90s. While it was cooler at the coast, temps were still well into the 70s and 80s,allowing for a great beach day overall. Today, temps will be similar, 80s near the coast, low 90s inland. The difference today, more clouds build and scattered showers and storms break out this afternoon. After noon, scattered storms start to break out across the interior. Those storms will be most numerous inland early to mid afternoon. The risk for a shower or thunderstorm east of I-95 is highest late afternoon/early this evening. Widespread severe weather is not expected, although one or two storms could produce strong wind gusts and small hail. Localized downpours and lightning will generally be the main risks with storms. The steering winds that guide these storms are light, so slow moving downpours could produce localized street flooding. As a cold front swings through this evening, sca...

US jobs report for May could point to slower hiring as Fed rate hikes cool demand for workers

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:20:57 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s surprisingly resilient job market may have delivered yet another month of solid hiring and pay gains in May, if economists’ forecasts prove to be correct. Still, some signs of cooling could emerge in the government report being released Friday.Analysts have estimated that hiring slowed to a still-healthy pace of 190,000 added jobs last month, according to a survey by the data provider FactSet. That would mark a decline from the robust 253,000 jobs that were gained in April and would fall below the average for the previous three months of about 220,000. The unemployment rate is projected to rise slightly to 3.5% from a five-decade low of 3.4%.Companies have steadily slowed hiring since January, when the three-month average pace of gains was an unusually strong 330,000.Federal Reserve officials would welcome a more modest rate of job growth. The central bank has raised its benchmark interest rate 10 times in 14 months in an a...

Howie Carr: Why is the GOP race a three-ring circus?

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:20:57 GMT

Why are so many Republican has-beens, also-rans and never-weres jumping into the presidential primary race?It beats working.That’s my theory anyway. Just consider the latest losers who are parachuting into the fight. See if you can detect a pattern here.Next week, it’s former Vice President Mike Pence, who used to be a radio talk-show host in Indiana.Also next week, former NJ Gov. Chris Christie will be waddling into the field. In 2017, he failed a try-out to become a sports radio talk-show host in New York.Already running is Larry Elder, who used to be a radio talk-show host in Los Angeles.Two key words here: “radio” and “former.” As the old political joke goes, the job needs the man and the man needs a job.Politicians aren’t supposed to have problems getting jobs. Democrat politicians anyway.Just yesterday, wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Democrat party came up with new jobs for two of their loyal card-carrying fellow travelers. Both recently retired from elective politics due to...

Orioles’ 2023 attendance up 24% compared with last year at same point; MLB attendance up 6%

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:20:57 GMT

Michele and Dave Cookson’s first date was almost an Orioles game. He asked her out to one — but she opted to go to a Coldplay concert instead.Eighteen years later, their umpteen-hundredth date was, however, an Orioles game last week, and there are more on the way. The season ticket-holding couple from Woodberry has attended over 250 games together and they are now visiting Camden Yards more than they did during the team’s recent rebuild.They attended about 15 games a year during the Orioles’ down seasons, but now — with the team on the other side of a long rebuild — that figure has already jumped to 30. The Orioles last reached the playoffs in 2016.“It was painful, some of those rebuild years, to stay here and watch the games,” Michele said last week, donning recently acquired City Connect gear.That hasn’t been the case this season as Baltimore (35-21), despite a listless homestand this past week, currently has the third-best rec...

Cape Cod shark documentary ‘After The Bite’ will stream on HBO Max this summer: ‘We can find ways to coexist’

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:20:57 GMT

A documentary that explores the new normal of great whites sharks patrolling Cape Cod’s shallow waters as they hunt for seals, and the fallout from a young man being killed by an apex predator at a popular local beach, is coming to HBO Max this summer.Award-winning filmmaker Ivy Meeropol recently spoke to the Herald about her documentary, “After The Bite,” which dives into how the Cape’s coastal community is confronting dramatic changes to the marine environment and way of life.The explosion of the seal population along the Cape due to federal protections has sparked the phenomenon of great white sharks feasting on seals every summer and fall. As a result, there have been some shark and human encounters, including in 2018 when Arthur Medici was killed by a shark.During the years before that fatal shark bite, Meeropol like others had started to notice more seals in the area, and everyone was frequently talking about seals and sharks.“Then when Arthur Med...

Trump, DeSantis jab at each other on campaign trail in 1st dueling appearances as 2024 candidates

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:20:57 GMT

GRIMES, Iowa (AP) — Former President Donald Trump kept up a steady drumbeat of criticism of his chief rival Ron DeSantis on Thursday, jumping immediately on remarks by the Florida governor on the campaign trail to try to highlight his own strength as the leading GOP presidential candidate.Trump, appearing in Iowa as DeSantis campaigned in New Hampshire, made a point of telling about 200 members of a conservative club gathered at a Des Moines-area restaurant that they could ask him questions — an offer that came not long after DeSantis snapped at an Associated Press reporter who asked him why he wasn’t taking questions from voters at his events.“A lot of politicians don’t take questions. They give a speech,” Trump said to audience members, many of whom wore red “Make America Great Again” hats espousing his political movement. Trump, throughout the day, also repeatedly pushed back against DeSantis’ argument that it will take two terms in the White House to implement an age...