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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.

6 Unexpected Treasures Found in Curious Places

In 2018, at a Goodwill store in Austin, Texas, a marble bust of a dour-looking man caught antique dealer Laura Young’s eye. She liked the look of him and bought the bust for $34.99, dubbing it “Dennis” after the self-obsessed character Dennis Reynolds in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Young guessed the statue was old, but never imagined it was a 2,000-year-old original. A Greek sculpture expert ​​at Sotheby’s deduced that Dennis was actually a Roman bust of Germanicus,……

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MIT Commencement Friday, May 27, 2022

The OneMIT Commencement Ceremony will take place on Friday, May 27 at 10:00 a.m. on Killian Court, located off Memorial Drive. This year’s guest speaker is MIT alumna Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala MCP ’78, PhD ’81, director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and former finance minister of Nigeria. An expert in global finance, economics, and international development, Okonjo-Iweala is the first woman and first African to lead the WTO. Known as a skilled negotiator and consensus builder, she has devoted her career……

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Rapper J. Cole to play pro basketball...

SCARBOROUGH, Ontario (AP) — Rapper J. Cole will play another season of pro basketball, this time in Canada. The Canadian Elite Basketball League tweeted Thursday night that the 37-year-old rapper will join the Scarborough Shooting Stars in the coming season as a guard. The season begins May 25. Cole, whose full name is Jermaine Cole, played with the Rwanda Patriots in the Basketball Africa League in 2021. He also played basketball in high school in North Carolina. Cole won…

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Thirteen from MIT awarded 2022 Fulbright Fellowships

Thirteen MIT undergraduates, graduate students, and alumni have been awarded Fulbright fellowships to pursue projects overseas in the 2022-23 grant year. Another MIT affiliate was offered an award but has not yet decided whether to accept, and others were named alternates and may be promoted in the coming weeks. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program offers grants in over 150 countries for independent research, graduate study, and English teaching. MIT students and alumni……

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Jordan king places ‘erratic’ half-brother under house...

JERUSALEM (AP) — Jordan’s king has gone public with a royal rift with his half-brother and formalized the former crown prince’s house arrest, calling him “erratic” in an unprecedented harshly worded letter published Thursday. King Abdullah II said in the letter that he had approved measures to detain Prince Hamzah in his palace and restrict his communications and movements, citing his half brother’s “erratic behavior and aspirations.” “We will provide Hamzah with all that he requires to live a…

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3 Questions: Provost Cynthia Barnhart on MIT's...

With the MIT values statement recently published and MIT’s Strategic Action Plan for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion nearly complete, Provost Cynthia Barnhart provides her thoughts on the importance of diversity within the context of MIT’s commitment to excellence.  Q: Why is MIT pursuing a plan to address diversity, equity, and inclusion? A: Over decades, MIT has taken important steps to foster a sense of belonging within our community. For instance: In the 1980s, inspired in part by Dr. Shirley……

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Biden has an eye on China as...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden departs on a six-day trip to South Korea and Japan aiming to build rapport with the two nations’ leaders while also sending an unmistakable message to China: Russia’s faltering invasion of Ukraine should give Beijing pause about its own saber-rattling in the Pacific. Biden departs Thursday and is set to meet newly elected South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Their talks will touch on trade, increasing resilience…

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Gunman targets Taiwanese faith with long pro-democracy...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The recent deadly shooting at Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church in California didn’t just violate a sacred space. Taiwanese Americans across the country say it ripped through their cultural bastion. It is where the congregation in Laguna Woods worshipped. But it was also where their native language and support for a democratic Taiwan thrived. Sunday’s mass shooting by man officials say was motivated by political hate of Taiwan has spotlighted the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan’s close…

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Celebrate good times with Kool & The...

Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.” toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Kool & The Gang at Wolf Trap (Part 1) $(function () { $(‘.fa-play’).on(‘click’, function(){ var audio_filename= $(‘div.wtop-audio-file’).data(“mp3-url”); ga(‘send’, ‘event’, ‘Audio’, ‘play’, audio_filename); }); }); Are you ready to get down on it and celebrate good times at Wolf Trap in Virginia? Kool & The Gang performs a double bill with Morris Day & The Time on June…

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Charting a safe course through a highly...

An autonomous spacecraft exploring the far-flung regions of the universe descends through the atmosphere of a remote exoplanet. The vehicle, and the researchers who programmed it, don’t know much about this environment. With so much uncertainty, how can the spacecraft plot a trajectory that will keep it from being squashed by some randomly moving obstacle or blown off course by sudden, gale-force winds? MIT researchers have developed a technique that could help this spacecraft land safely. Their approach can……

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From South Africa, a success story for...

Back in April 1994, the world watched a remarkable event: South Africa’s first democratic election with universal suffrage. The country whose Apartheid system had legalized racial segregation since the late 1940s went to the polls and elected a new national assembly. In turn, that assembly picked a Black president: Nelson Mandela, who, after decades in prison, became the South Africa’s new leader. Those events were a major part of the global 1990s-era shift toward democratic rule. But in recent……

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Congress dives into UFOs, but no signs...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress held its first hearing in half a century Tuesday on unidentified flying objects. And no, there is still no government confirmation of extraterrestrial life. Testifying before a House Intelligence subcommittee, Pentagon officials did not disclose additional information from their ongoing investigation of hundreds of unexplained sightings in the sky. But they said they had picked a director for a new task force to coordinate data collection efforts on what the government has officially labeled “unidentified…

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Eleanor Freund receives Jeanne Guillemin Prize

The daughter of an American diplomat, Eleanor Freund spent most of her childhood living abroad in such places as Madagascar, Ghana, South Africa, and Austria. These experiences, she explains, led to an early interest in politics and international relations. “Whether in South Africa, which was emerging from decades of racial discrimination and violence under apartheid, or Austria, which seemed practiced at navigating Cold War divisions between East and West, I was captivated by the import and impact of politics…….

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National Air and Space Museum names director

The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum officially has a director. Christopher Browne, who had been serving as acting director since January 2021, was named as the Smithsonian’s choice Tuesday. More D.C. News Browne joined the museum as deputy director in 2017, according to a news release, and helped lead the multi-year flagship building renovation in D.C. He’ll oversee both the flagship museum on the National Mall and the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. “I am incredibly…

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Zero-trust architecture may hold the answer to...

For years, organizations have taken a defensive “castle-and-moat” approach to cybersecurity, seeking to secure the perimeters of their networks to block out any malicious actors. Individuals with the right credentials were assumed to be trustworthy and allowed access to a network’s systems and data without having to reauthorize themselves at each access attempt. However, organizations today increasingly store data in the cloud and allow employees to connect to the network remotely, both of which create vulnerabilities to this traditional……

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