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The northern lights were heating up: Why haven't we seen them lately?

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:32:50 GMT

(NEXSTAR) - Earlier this year, those living as far south as Alabama were treated to a special celestial treat: not aliens, but the aurora borealis. Since then, most in the U.S. haven’t had the chance to see the northern lights, despite hopes that they would dance to the south amid an active space weather period. So where are the northern lights? “It’s a little bit of a crapshoot,” Bill Murtagh, program coordinator for the SWPC and seasoned space weather forecaster, tells Nexstar. “We’ve had just as many eruptions occur since [spring], but we just haven’t been lucky - or unlucky, whichever way you look at it.”Certain conditions have to be met for any part of the Lower 48 to see the northern lights. Coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, play a major role in that. CMEs are explosions of plasma and magnetic material from the sun, NOAA explains. While CMEs and solar flares (which can occur simultaneously) can impact navigation, communication and radio signals here on Earth, CME...

Kyle Police locate missing teen

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:32:50 GMT

KYLE, Texas (KXAN) — On Sunday, the Kyle Police Department said it found a 14-year-old boy who was reported missing.KPD said the teenager was found and is safe.

Emma Varvaloucas: Gen Z is dropping the college dream. It’s time for America to catch up

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:32:50 GMT

For years, we have lamented the spike in college costs and accompanying student debt bloat while we teach high schoolers to covet admittance to a tiny sliver of prestigious universities — ones that refuse to enlarge incoming class sizes despite endowments the size of some small countries’ gross domestic product.President Joe Biden’s first plan to relieve student debt is dead in the water, and the second is off to a slow start. Meanwhile, Americans’ confidence in higher education is eroding, and college graduates are surprised to find themselves still in the working class.Colleges are finally lying in the beds they made for themselves. According to data from the National Student Clearinghouse, undergraduate enrollment dropped 8% from 2019 to 2022 and doesn’t show signs of recovering post-pandemic. “The slide in the college-going rate since 2018 is the steepest on record,” The Associated Press reported this spring, going on to paint those numb...

Brown, Rottman: Claiming a ‘computer crime’ shouldn’t give police a free pass to raid newspapers

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:32:50 GMT

Last month, police officers in Marion, Kansas, crashed into the newsroom of the Marion County Record, a weekly newspaper, and the home of its publisher to seize computers, cellphones and documents. After several days of public outcry, the county attorney ordered the material returned.Newsroom searches are rare today because a 1980 federal law makes them almost always illegal.But the outcry goes back to colonial days, when British-loyalist redcoats raided revolutionary American pamphleteers.Such searches were seen as the ultimate attack on the free press. In the infamous 1971 search of the Stanford Daily, for example, Palo Alto, Calif., police were seeking photographs to tie Vietnam War protesters to a violent clash on campus. After the Supreme Court refused to offer protection from such raids, Congress passed the 1980 statute, making newsroom searches far less of a threat.Vague, sweeping “computer crime” lawsInstead, the Marion case highlights a separate, systemic threat...

David Brooks: The American Renaissance is already at hand

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:32:50 GMT

Two megatrends have shaped American life since the 1980s: The rise of China and the hollowing out of U.S. industry.China’s economic boom prompted a thousand predictions — that it will soon surpass us as an economic power; that the 21st century is going to be a Chinese century; that America is an aging, decadent nation destined for second place.The hollowing out of U.S. industry fed the sense that capitalism is betraying the middle class. America has a parasitic financial sector, but we don’t make things anymore. Manufacturing jobs got outsourced to China and Mexico, and wages stagnated.These two trends contributed to the sense that America is in decline — to the angry, gloomy pall that has settled over political life.But it’s beginning to look as if those two megatrends are reversing.The ossifying consequences of central controlChina does not look like a growing dynamic power, but a troubled, stagnating one. Growth rates are falling. The unemployment rate for those ages 16 to 24 in ...

Real World Economics: The cost of war? Well, let me tell you

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:32:50 GMT

Edward LottermanRobert E. Lee supposedly once remarked, although he may have been quoting someone else, that “It is well that war is so terrible – otherwise we should grow too fond of it.”And therein lies a terrible paradox. Everyone knows that wars can be terrible in their carnage. They generally are huge wastes of economic resources.Yet nations, including ours, still take actions likely to lead to war. It seems that we are, indeed, “fond of it.” But why? What benefits exist that motivate nations to wage war? Can they possibly outweigh the costs, human and otherwise? Or is either side of the equation overstated?Let me explain why these questions are in my mind. Some 18 months of news from Ukraine plus discussion of China’s threats to seize Taiwan have merged in my mind with seasonal ruminations about my own experience in Vietnam 53 year ago. The result is rueful musing about human cultures and innate human nature. Will rational thought or action ever change anything?Let me st...

Federal inaction contributes to NY migrant issues

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:32:50 GMT

ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) — This week on Empire State Weekly, New York's asylum seeker situation continues to develop. The New York City comptroller rejected the contract the city forged with DocGo to house and transport the incoming asylees. Get the latest news, weather, and sports delivered right to your inbox! Cianna Freeman-Tolbert, a lawyer with Whiteman Osterman & Hanna, explained that the Comptroller's letter on DocGo added to frustrations surrounding the migrant issue. Governor Hochul and City Mayor Eric Adams have called for a federal response to expand work authorizations for asylum seekers. Freeman-Tolbert speculates on why this action has yet to be taken."The fear of the federal government, I believe, is that more people are gonna come because 'oh, we can go to the U.S. and get work authorization and start working,' and you don't want to encourage that. You want to encourage only individuals that are fearing for their life to come to the U.S., so they have to balance t...

Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis apologize for “pain” their letters on behalf of Danny Masterson caused

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:32:50 GMT

LOS ANGELES — Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis apologized Saturday for character letters the celebrity couple wrote on behalf of fellow “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson before he was sentenced for rape this week.A judge in Los Angeles on Thursday sentenced Masterson to 30 years to life in prison for raping two women in 2003.In a video posted on Instagram, Kutcher and Kunis said they were sorry for the pain they may have caused with the letters, which were made public Friday.Kutcher said the letters that asked for leniency “were intended for the judge to read and not to undermine the testimony of the victims or retraumatize them in any way. We would never want to do that and we’re sorry if that has taken place.”Kutcher said Masterson’s family approached them after the actor was convicted in the rapes in May and asked them to write character letters describing “the person that we knew for 25 years.” The letters were posted online by The Hollywood Reporter and other digital pu...

2 LAFD paramedics among 4 hospitalized in overnight crash in Pacoima 

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:32:50 GMT

A crash involving an ambulance and a pickup truck sent four people to the hospital, including two responding paramedics, early Sunday morning. According to the Los Angeles Fire Department, an LAFD Paramedic Rescue ambulance was responding to a medical emergency when it was broadsided by the pickup at the intersection of Van Nuys Boulevard and San Fernando Road around 12:35 a.m. As a result of the collision, the pickup truck careened into a nearby utility pole, trapping two men who were inside the vehicle. A crash involving an ambulance and a pickup truck sent four people to the hospital, including the two responding paramedics. (Citizen App)“The two adult male occupants...were badly trapped in the wreckage of their severely damaged truck before being freed by a team of LAFD responders,” LAFD said in a release.  Escaped murderer on the run in Pennsylvania now spotted nearly a dozen times Both men were transported to a nearby hospital in critical condition. The two LAFD pa...

Meditating man shot on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:32:50 GMT

A man who was meditating on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood was wounded in an apparently random shooting early Sunday morning, authorities said. The victim, only identified as an approximately 44-year-old white man, was meditating just after 3:20 a.m. in the 6300 block of Hollywood Boulevard, according to Los Angeles Police. That’s when another man walked up to him and opened fire, striking him at least once, police said.The victim was taken to a local hospital where he was said to be in stable condition. No suspect description has been released. The victim was not homeless, LAPD said. Alexis Lewis contributed to this report.