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Suborbital space tourism finally arrives | FCC prepares to run public C-band auction | The big four in the U.S. launch industry — United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman — hope to be one of two providers that will receive five-year contracts later this year to launch national security payloads starting in 2022. | China’s launch rate stays high | The International Space Station is the largest ever crewed object in space.

Red History Museum in Dubrovnik, Croatia

The Red History Museum offers a distinctive interactive journey through the daily life of communist Yugoslavia—a significant era in Croatian history. Spanning 400 square meters, this innovative space combines modern and traditional technologies, inviting visitors to immerse themselves in the art, design, politics, secret agencies, and the Non-Aligned Movement of that period. Explore, listen to iconic music, witness historical moments recreated, and uncover the personal narratives of individuals living under the vigilant gaze of the Communist Party….

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Abandoned Casino in Hammam Lif, Tunisia

Hammam Lif is a lively town a stone’s throw south of Tunis. A thick network of narrow, crisscrossing roads run between old and new buildings. Along the beach there is an iconic casino, a testament to a time when Hammam Lif was a thriving multicultural center that attracted important events. The French administration commissioned the building of a casino in Hammam Lif toward the end of the 19th century to attract visitors. The structure’s Moorish design radiated elegance and opulence…….

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Bà Nà Hills in Hòa Vang, Vietnam

After being abandoned as a French resort built in 1919 in colonial Vietnam, Bà Nà Hills was rebuilt and redesigned as a theme park. The beauty of Bà Nà Hills is unmatched. Majestically rising from the Da Nang region below, the only way to access this place is through a cable car ride. Make no mistake, as this is one of the best and longest cable car rides in the world, offering a 360-degree view overlooking the greenery below…….

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Heksestein (The Witch Stone) in Bergen, Norway

In the quiet Nordnes neighborhood of Bergen, there is a small stone memorial known as Heksestein, or the Witch Stone. It remembers where 350 people condemned for witchcraft were burned at the stake during the country’s bloody witch trials in the 16th and 17th centuries. Located on a peninsula between Vågen and Puddefjorden, west of the city center, Nordnes is a neighborhood defined by religion, merchants, and the Norwegian royal court. Originally home to a monastery, Nordnes became a neighborhood……

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Basílica Santuari de Nostra Senyora de Meritxell...

The name “Meritxell” is well known throughout the little nation of Andorra. Even by microstate standards, it is a small village, with only 75 people. However, this village has one very notable feature: It is home to the patron saint of the country. Known as Our Lady of Meritxell, she’s a wooden statue that was very insistent on living in this little town. The legend goes that while villagers from Meritxell were traveling to mass in Canillo, they discovered……

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A chaotic US House is losing three...

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a single week, the Republican chairs of three House committees announced they would not be seeking reelection, raising questions about whether the chaos that has reigned this Congress is driving out some of the GOP’s top talent. What makes the retirements particularly noteworthy is that none of the chairs were at risk of losing their position due to the term limits that House Republicans impose on their committee leaders. They conceivably could have returned to…

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Wonder Is Everywhere: Vanilla Queens, an Ancient...

Wonder is everywhere. That’s why, every other week, Atlas Obscura drags you down some of the rabbit holes we encounter as we search for our unusual stories. We highlight surprising finds, great writing, and inspiring stories from some of our favorite publications. The Vanilla Queens of Mexico by Leila Miller, Los Angeles Times In Papantla, Mexico, the queen is crowned with vanilla. To celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi—May 30 this year—the stems of the Vanilla planifolia orchid are……

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Stitch3D is powering a new wave of...

Workers are increasingly using 3D files to do things like assess construction projects, understand damage from natural disasters, map out crime scenes, and more. But as the importance of 3D files has grown, the problems associated with sharing, analyzing, and even viewing them have become more apparent. The issue is that many popular cloud service providers aren’t compatible with 3D files. That means in order to preview a 3D scan, users need to download the files onto a desktop……

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A passion for innovation and education

Imagine you were planning a trek across Death Valley. Would you be better off setting out on foot with just a bottle of water in your hand, or in a vehicle loaded with supplies and a full tank of gas? That’s one of the metaphors Leon Sandler uses to describe the work of the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation — giving MIT researchers and aspiring entrepreneurs the tools they need to successfully spin out their technologies and have an impact……

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How to See Where Lunar X Marks...

The Moon is waxing now, culminating in a full micromoon at the end of this month. This is the opposite of a supermoon; a micromoon is a full Moon at its most distant location from Earth. Though brand-new crescents and glittering full Moons get the most attention, there’s something especially interesting to see this week, when our satellite is half-lit by the Sun. On Friday, Feb. 16, the Moon is at first quarter, and this month, the phase gives……

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The Obscure Presidential Cocktail That Made You...

Enough was enough. Someone had to challenge the current president for the Republican nomination, and it was going to be him. “My hat is in the ring,” former president Theodore Roosevelt told W. F. Eirick, a local politician in Cleveland, Ohio, on February 21, 1912. And thus began Roosevelt’s run for an unprecedented third term for the presidency. Eight years earlier, Roosevelt had soundly won the 1904 presidential election and thought he wouldn’t consider running again. He even issued……

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Live updates | Israeli troops raid main...

Israeli troops entered the main hospital in southern Gaza on Thursday in what the army said was a limited operation seeking the remains of hostages taken by Hamas. One patient died and seven were wounded when Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis came under fire on Wednesday, Dr. Khaled Alserr, one of the remaining surgeons at the hospital, told The Associated Press. Israeli troops, tanks and snipers have surrounded the hospital compound for at least a…

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MIT researchers remotely map crops, field by...

Crop maps help scientists and policymakers track global food supplies and estimate how they might shift with climate change and growing populations. But getting accurate maps of the types of crops that are grown from farm to farm often requires on-the-ground surveys that only a handful of countries have the resources to maintain. Now, MIT engineers have developed a method to quickly and accurately label and map crop types without requiring in-person assessments of every single farm. The team’s……

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The women’s scoring record belongs to Pearl...

FLORENCE, S.C. (AP) — Long before Iowa star Caitlin Clark hit her first long-range three or signed her first autograph, Pearl Moore set a scoring standard for women’s basketball that has stood for 45 years. The soft-spoken woman from South Carolina led her team at Francis Marion to the postseason four years in a row, averaging more than 30 points every season. The 5-foot-7 guard once scored 60 points in a game. She did it all under the radar…

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3 Questions: Why study theater in a...

Emily Goodling is a lecturer in German in Global Languages at MIT. She teaches class 21G.411 (Conflict, Contest, Controversy: A Literary Investigation of German Politics), a course that she developed with the help of an MIT Global Languages Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning (CLTL) Innovation in Language Pedagogy grant in summer 2023. With the support of an Artists in the Classroom grant from the Council for the Arts at MIT, she hosted virtual presentations to her class by……

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