Author: admin@primenews

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have imaged the structure of dust and gas around a distant supermassive black hole, quite literally finding a “shock” feature. The team discovered that energy heating this swirling cloud of gas and dust actually comes from collisions with jets of gas traveling at near-light-speeds, or “shocks.” Previously, scientists had theorized that the energy heating this dust comes from the supermassive black hole itself, making this an unexpected twist. The galactic home of this particular supermassive black hole is ESO 428-G14, an active galaxy located around 70 million light-years from Earth. The term “active galaxy” means that…

Tropical Storm Debby — which drenched parts of the Southeast after making landfall as a Category 1 hurricane in Florida’s Big Bend region earlier this week — has stalled off the South Carolina coast, where it is expected to make a second landfall, bringing with it heavy rain and a “major flood threat,” forecasters say. Where is the storm, exactly? According to an update from the National Hurricane Center on Wednesday evening, Debby was slowly churning in the Atlantic about 50 miles off the South Carolina coast. The slow-moving storm could reach the South Carolina coast early Thursday morning, NHC forecasters say. “Some strengthening…

(Reuters) -Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) will begin to roll out a gene therapy from Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics to treat rare blood disorder beta thalassemia, Vertex said in a statement on Wednesday. Casgevy, which requires administration through authorized treatment centers with experience in stem cell transplantation, will be made available to eligible patients from Aug. 7, the company said. The agreement between Vertex and the NHS comes as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) issued positive guidance recommending Casgevy’s use, Vertex said. About 460 patients in England with transfusion-dependent beta thalassaemia aged 12 and older…

Hours after Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country on Monday following mass protests, a development professional in the capital, Dhaka, received a panicked phone call from his cousin. Avirup Sarkar is a Bangladeshi Hindu, living in a country that is 90% Muslim. His widowed cousin lives in a sprawling joint family house in a mixed neighbourhood in Netrokona, a district crisscrossed by rivers, about 100km (62 miles) north from Dhaka. “She sounded terrified. She said the house had been attacked and plundered by a mob,” Mr Sarkar, a social protection specialist, told me on the phone…

When two American astronauts blasted off on a test mission to the International Space Station on 5 June, they were expecting to be back home in a matter of days. But things didn’t quite go to plan. In fact, Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams are still there, floating high above the Earth nearly two months later The pair – who are stuck indefinitely – now face the sudden prospect of missing the summer entirely and even spending Christmas and New Year in space. Mr Wilmore, 61, and Ms Williams, 58, flew a Boeing Starliner spacecraft to the station. It…

Within hours of Tim Walz being declared winner of the Democratic “veepstakes”, Republican accusations that he is pro-China came thick and fast. “Communist China is very happy,” Donald Trump’s former ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, said on Twitter/X. “No one is more pro-China than Marxist Walz.” Tom Cotton, a Republican senator, said Mr. Walz owed an explanation “about his unusual, 35-year relationship with Communist China”. MAGA War Room, an influential X account supporting Donald Trump, unearthed a 2016 video in which Mr. Walz told the farming policy outlet Agri-Pulse that the US and China did not need to have an…

Thousands of anti-racism protesters have taken to the streets across the United Kingdom to counter a spate of far-right rallies planned to target immigration centers, seeming to thwart what looked set to be another day of rioting. After days of violence spurred by disinformation around a deadly stabbing attack, police had braced for another night of unrest on Wednesday. Far-right groups on social media had called for protests to target visa processing centers and immigration lawyers’ offices at more than 100 sites around the country at 8 p.m. local time (3 p.m. ET). But by the early evening, thousands of counter-protesters…

Organizers have canceled three Taylor Swift concerts in Austria after authorities arrested two suspects for allegedly planning a terror attack during the Vienna leg of her blockbuster Eras tour. The extraordinary decision – which could come at significant cost to Vienna’s businesses – has devastated fans and renewed focus on the vulnerability of huge concerts as soft targets for terror networks and spree killers. Swift was scheduled to play three shows in the European city from Thursday to Saturday – which have all been canceled, according to Barracuda Music, the promoter for Swift’s concerts in Austria.“With confirmation from government officials of a…

Russia has accused Ukrainian troops of crossing the border into its Kursk region, which, if confirmed, marks the first incursion of its kind from Ukraine and puts pressure on Moscow in an area largely unaffected by the two-year war. The Russian Ministry of Defense, the Russian Investigative Committee and the Russian Ombudsman for Children all said Ukrainian forces had launched a “massive attack” on Tuesday, attempting to break through the Russian defenses on the borders of the Kursk region, which sits just north of Ukraine’s Sumy region. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the alleged incursion a “large-scale provocation,” saying Kyiv…

It was the first big day of the wrestle for the Midwest that is likely to decide the 2024 election, and someone important was missing — former President Donald Trump. The Republican nominee left it to his vice presidential pick, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, to troll the newly minted Democratic ticket through the critical swing state territory Wednesday as a fresh 90-day race for the White House burst into life. Vice President Kamala Harris and her new running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, held two high-energy rallies in Wisconsin and Michigan that showed the euphoria inside a once-despairing Democratic Party for its two new…