April 14, 2026

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Excerpt from phys.org

A team of astronomers at Nanjing University has found evidence that Mars likely has more potentially hazardous asteroids in its path than Earth. In their study, posted on the arXiv preprint server, the group investigated the number of potentially hazardous asteroids that are big enough to cause a major impact should they strike Mars and compared them to similar estimates for Earth.

A lot of work is currently being done to try to identify near Earth objects (NEOs)—asteroids or comets—that might be on a collision course with our planet. The hope is that if a large NEO is found that is likely to strike Earth, a means could be found to change its course. In this new effort, the research team looked at the same possible hazard for future humans living on Mars.

In their work, the researchers looked at a subset of NEOs called potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) that are large enough to cause problems if they strike Mars and that appear likely to do so—or to at least approach closely.

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Excerpt from www.unilad.com

Researchers from the University of Oxford and Harvard University were able to narrow down the creature that has the best chance of survival in a 2017 study which looked at the resilience of life to astrophysical events.

This study went beyond our atmosphere to look at potential threats to the planet, forgetting about deforestation, wildfires or nuclear war to instead focus on world-ending events that might come from space.

Focusing on events that would ‘completely sterilise an Earth-like planet’, the researchers looked at three astrophysical sources – supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, large asteroid impacts – and passing-by stars…

That creature is the tardigrade, and if you’ve never heard of it, don’t worry – people don’t exactly keep them as pets.

Also known as ‘water bears’ or ‘moss piglets’, tardigrades are near-microscopic aquatic animals with flat heads, eight legs and plump bodies.

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Excerpt from www.alaskasnewssource.com

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – An appeal by the State of Alaska has been denied by the state Supreme Court for a decision on when a law on more restrictive homeschool funding can be used.

Superior Court Judge Adolf Zeman ruled in April that reimbursements made under the state’s homeschool correspondence program violated a section of the State Constitution prohibiting public money from being spent “for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational Institution.

On May 2, Zeman granted a delay — known in the legislature as a “stay” — until June 30, which marks the end of the current fiscal year.

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Excerpt from medyanews.net

The Emergency Committee for Rojava, a New York-based organisation, is touring the West Coast of the United States during May, hosting a series of talks entitled, ‘Report from Rojava: Women’s Revolution, direct democracy, and social ecology in Northeast Syria.’

Debbie Bookchin and Arthur Pye introduce the tour in an interview with Medya News, providing a comprehensive overview of the organisation’s mission. They focus on the Rojava Revolution that emerged in the north of Syria during the Syrian civil war in 2012, and the broader implications of this Kurdish democratic confederalist movement for communities worldwide.

Formed after the invasion of Syria’s Afrin in 2018, the committee is the largest organisation in the US dedicated to Rojava solidarity work, Bookchin said. It has partnered with the Institute for Social Ecology for the tour, along with other sponsors.

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Excerpt from www.newsbytesapp.com

Three high-profile Indian ministries are collaborating to form an inter-ministerial taskforce, according to HT Mint.

The goal is to combat misleading and fraudulent advertisements on digital platforms.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, and the Ministry of Consumer Affairs are spearheading this initiative.

The taskforce will create a comprehensive regulatory framework for monitoring social media advertisements, ensuring compliance, and penalizing violators.

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Excerpt from www.newsbusters.org

On Friday, CBS finally joined the virulently anti-family liberal media’s rhetorical lynch mob fighting to convict Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker in the court of public opinion with a discussion during CBS Mornings and, while ABC moved on, NBC’s Today upped the intensity of its disgusting and hypocritical venom toward a speech about the importance of the family.

In other words, Butker stood up for something the three co-hosts on Today have personally and repeatedly discussed is paramount to their lives. Instead of scorning him, they could have mentioned the numerous charities Butker has supported, include Foster’s Outriders charity (which our Craig Bannister explained here).

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Excerpt from www.lifenews.com

The wave of state ballot initiatives seeking to impose unrestricted abortion-on-demand on states from coast to coast has encountered a serious problem: Voters are beginning to see them as a cynical ploy to elect Democrats. The news comes from reading between the lines of a story in Politico titled “National Dem strategy worries state abortion-rights leaders.”

“Democrats’ efforts to ride the coattails of abortion ballot measures put passage at risk,” declares the subheadline.

The abortion lobby apparently fears defeat if voters realize their state’s referendum serves as little more than a Democratic voter-drive scheme. “We haven’t won or beat back a single one of these ballot measures without significant [I]ndependent and Republican support,” Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL) told Politico. “We spent a lot of last year talking to candidates directly saying, ‘Don’t put things on the ballot just to enhance voter turnout for Dems.” A leader of the Nebraska abortion-expansion referendum, Taylor Givens-Dunn said, “We want to be clear that this is about people, not politicians.”

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Excerpt from cw33.com

(The Hill) — A clash is looming between anti-abortion red states and the blue state telemedicine shield laws trying to preserve abortion access.

More than a dozen states have laws shielding medical providers and others from out-of-state investigations and prosecutions regarding abortions and gender-affirming care. But six states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, California, Vermont and Washington — have gone even further.

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Excerpt from www.cbsnews.com

Pope Francis says hours spent consuming content every day, whether on smartphones or televisions, can take a toll on health — particularly for young people.

“What is social media doing to the world and our children?” CBS Evening News anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell asked Francis during a recent sit-down interview.

Francis said there are some benefits of communication media because they “have a conscience,” knowing how to report the news and also how to render criticism. That can help with development, he explained.

But, he admitted, there are also downsides.

“There are communication media that alienate young people, don’t they? It makes them live in an unreal world, made up of fantasy, or in an aggressive world or a rosy world … and so many things,” Francis told O’Donnell.

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Excerpt from readlion.com

A 14-year-old homeschooler from Ohio is winning track meets, setting records and making plans four years into the future.

“I want to run in the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles,” said Sean Reith, who won the mile run for middle school boys March 7 at the New Balance Nationals indoor track meet in Boston.

Reith set a meet record by finishing with a time of 4:24. He also won first place in the middle school boys 800-meter run by finishing in 2 minutes, setting another record.

However, Reith might never have taken up running competitively if it hadn’t been for his homeschool experience nurtured by his mother, Kristan Reith.

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Excerpt from newpittsburghcourier.com

Homeschooling is the fastest-growing education setting in the United States. More than 3 million students were educated at home in the 2021-22 school year, up from 2.5 million in the spring of 2019. Current estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau indicate that there are 3.62 million students homeschooled in the United States. That’s a meteoric increase from about 1 million in 1997.

Some experts, including Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet, find the increase a cause to call for greater regulation. University of Washington education policy professor David Knight agrees, citing a lack of accountability and measures of student progress. Knight also worries about an absence of certain disciplines such as social studies that public schools are required to teach.

For those of us who have researched the homeschool movement and studied its past, these are not new concerns. So what do we know about homeschooling and preparedness for college?

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Excerpt from www.bbc.com

The operator, a man named Johann Maelzel, would assemble a paying audience, open the doors of the lower cabinet and show an impressively whirring clockwork mechanism that filled the inner compartments beneath the seated figure. Then he would close the cabinet, and invite a challenger to play chess. The automaton – the robot, as we would say now – would gaze at the opponent’s move, ponder, then raise its mechanical arm and make a stiff but certain move of its own.

The thing was a sensation.

Before it was destroyed by fire in New York in the 1850s, it played games with everyone from Benjamin Franklin to, by legend at least, Napoleon Bonaparte. Artificial intelligence, the 18th Century thought, had arrived, wearing a fez and ticking away like Captain Hook’s crocodile.

I should rush to say that, of course, the thing was a fraud, or rather, a trick – a clever magician’s illusion. A sliding sled on well-lubricated castors had been fitted inside the lower cabinet and the only real ingenuity was that this let a hidden chess player glide easily, and silently, into a prone position inside. There was just a lot more room to hide in the cabinet than all that clockwork machinery suggested.

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Excerpt from fortune.com

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Reese’s Book Club dominates the literary landscape, five states will have abortion rights on their November ballots, and GM tries to salvage its $10 billion investment in self-driving business Cruise after a scary safety incident. Have a productive Monday!

– Safety first. As General Motors poured $10 billion into autonomous driving startup Cruise, GM CEO Mary Barra hoped that the investment would help the automaker pull ahead in the EV race. GM has manufactured electric vehicles since the 1990s, but has been outshone by Tesla—and GM’s strategy is still go to 100% electric by 2035. Barra believed in the technology so much she posted a video on her LinkedIn two years ago in which she was thrilled by her first ride in a Cruise car. “I can’t stop smiling,” she said at the time.

But a serious safety incident last year has put that all in jeopardy. In October 2023, a self-driving robotaxi in San Francisco hit a woman, ran over her, and dragged her for 20 feet. The car incorrectly labeled the incident a “side collision” and tried to pull over, not registering it was dragging a person along with it.

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Excerpt from www.wionews.com

To counter China’s increasing influence in the electric vehicle (EV) market, Japan and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are set to unveil their inaugural joint strategy for automobile production and sales within the region.

This collaborative initiative, as reported by the Nikkei newspaper on Monday, aims to establish a solid framework by 2035, focusing on several strategic areas including decarbonisation, mineral resource procurement, and investment in next-generation automotive technologies.

Scheduled for discussion during the economic ministers’ meeting between Japan and ASEAN members, potentially as early as September next year, the strategy will address the growing necessity for enhanced cooperation in personnel training and sustainable production practices.

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Excerpt from accelerationeconomy.com

While a news report last week speculating about Oracle landing a $10-billion cloud deal with Elon Musk’s xAI triggered great shock and wonder within the media, it turns out that Oracle chairman Larry Ellison offered a big, fat, and very public hint about this whole possibility two months ago.

Among the widespread media coverage last week, Investors Business Daily’s headline proclaimed, “Oracle Stock Jumps On Report of $10B Cloud Deal With Musk’s AI Startup.” The accompanying article said in part, “Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI is in talks with Oracle on a multiyear, $10 billion cloud-computing deal…. Musk’s xAI startup would become one of Oracle’s largest customers, according to the report.”

Okay, fair enough — AI is the hottest business topic in the world today, and the cloud is the engine that’s powering the AI Revolution, and Oracle’s unique approach to cloud data centers has made the company a highly disruptive and fast-growing player in the Cloud Wars.

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Excerpt from tokenpost.com

Shiba Inu, the popular meme coin, is experiencing a period of growth and increased utility. Amoré Orthodontic Aligners, a company that specializes in orthodontic care, recently announced that it will now accept SHIB as payment for braces, retainers, and other services.

Amoré Orthodontic Aligners, a prominent supplier of orthodontic care, has announced that it would now take Shiba Inu (SHIB) as payment for its services, demonstrating cryptocurrency’s expanding popularity. This revelation follows Shiba Inu’s sponsorship of the Blockchain Futurist Conference in Canada, which reinforces the meme coin’s potential for real-world applications, as per Coinfomania.

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Excerpt from insidethemagic.net

Disney CEO Bob Iger promised one thing when he returned to lead the Mouse House: he would slash budgets, lay off employees, and make investors money. He’s now keeping the first two parts of that promise by cutting yet more money for traditional television and pouring even more billions of dollars into the struggling Disney+ streaming service.

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Excerpt from thewest.com.au

The State’s largest producer of domestic gas is on the front foot to tout the credentials of the energy source amid ongoing environmental pressures.

Chevron’s Australia director of operations Danny Woodall told a media tour on Monday that a stable policy environment would ensure its $50 billion Gorgon project — located on Barrow Island off WA’s north-west coast — would be viable well into the future.

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Excerpt from progressivegrocer.com

Prices will be lower at Target this summer across more than 5,000 national and own brand products.

Target is helping its customers get ready for summer by lowering prices on more than 5,000 products throughout its stores. Price cuts have already gone live on 1,500 food, beverage and household essential items, with more price cuts planned throughout the summer.

New, lower prices will be reflected on everyday essentials like milk, meat, bread, soda, fresh fruit and vegetables, snacks, yogurt, peanut butter, coffee, diapers, paper towels, pet food and more. Price cuts will be seen across both national brands and Target’s own brands such as up&up, Everspring and Good & Gather.

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Excerpt from www.chicagotribune.com

Outside the 18th District Chicago police station, a group gathered Sunday afternoon waving Palestinian flags and wearing kaffiyehs in the first of many actions ahead of the Democratic National Convention being held in the city in August. In a contentious election year, the rally encapsulated a growing feeling of discontent with the political establishment.

The protesting coalition — which draws from many organizations across Chicago, from an antiwar committee to mothers who say their children have been wrongfully convicted — has a list of demands for politicians, but its main organizing principle is to stand in solidarity with Palestine and end U.S. aid to Israel.

“Our communities are diverse. Our strategies are diverse, but our goals are clear and we are steadfast,” said Amira Sohail, a recent graduate of the University of Chicago and co-chair of the Students for Justice in Palestine, which set up an encampment on the main quad of the campus. “We demand an end to the genocide. We demand an end to U.S. aid to Israel and we demand that the U.S. and Chicago stop investing in these systems that oppress us.”

Israel launched its bombardment of Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, where the group killed some 1,200 people and took 250 hostages. Since then, more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

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Excerpt from www.casino.org

Donald Trump has secured the financial backing of the Republican Jewish Coalition, which has pledged to commit over $5 million to his 2024 campaign. The RJC has long been supported by the Adelson family, which amassed tens of billions of dollars through the Las Vegas Sands casino empire. (Image: Bloomberg)

The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) works to strengthen ties between the Jewish community and GOP decision-makers. The nonprofit additionally focuses on improving relations between the U.S. and Israeli governments.

With unrest on college campuses and in major cities across the country regarding the Israeli war with Hamas in Gaza, with protests focusing on freeing Palestine, the RJC says it’s “more energized than ever” to support Trump’s candidacy for the White House.