M35 and NGC 2158

Framed in this single, starry, telescopic field of view are two open star clusters, M35 and NGC 2158. Located within the boundaries of the constellation Gemini, they do appear to be side by side. Its stars concentrated toward the upper right, M35 is relatively nearby, though. M35 (also cataloged as NGC 2168) is a mere 2800 light-years distant, with 400 or so stars spread out over a volume about 30 light-years across. Bright blue stars frequently distinguish younger open clusters like M35, whose age is estimated at 150 million years. At lower left, NGC 2158 is about four times more distant than M35 and much more compact, shining with the more yellowish light of a population of stars over 10 times older. In general, open star clusters are found along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. Loosely gravitationally bound, their member stars tend to be dispersed over billions of years as the open star clusters orbit the galactic center.

First of many...

Briefing on first measles death reported in Texas child

Story by Sara Moniuszko

A child who was hospitalized with measles has died from the illness in West Texas, state and local health officials announced Wednesday. It is the first death in a measles outbreak that has infected more than 120 people since late last month. 

Lubbock health officials and the Department of State Health Services said the patient who died was an unvaccinated school-aged child who passed away in the last 24 hours.

As of Wednesday, the Texas health department reported at least 18 hospitalizations in the outbreak, which is primarily affecting children and teenagers. Nearly all of those who have been reported ill in Texas were unvaccinated. Nine cases have been reported in neighboring New Mexico.

As many as 1 in 20 children with measles will develop pneumonia, CDC data shows. In some cases, measles can cause severe infections in the lungs and brain that can lead to cognitive issues, deafness or death.

While most people's symptoms improve, about 1 in 5 unvaccinated people will be hospitalized, 1 out of every 1,000 will develop brain swelling that can lead to brain damage, and up to 3 of every 1,000 will die. 

Measles is one of the most contagious infectious diseases, but doctors and health officials say the vaccine, which is normally given as part of the combination measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, is highly safe and effective.

Dr. Céline Gounder, CBS News medical contributor and editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News, said recently on "CBS Mornings" that lower vaccination rates allow measles to spread, noting that even a slight dip in coverage can lead to outbreaks.

"This is a measles outbreak that began in a very close-knit, rural, Mennonite community that has very low vaccination rates. And unfortunately, we have seen vaccination rates exemptions ... really soar in Texas in recent years," she said. 

According to recent KFF polling, about 17% of parents say they have skipped or delayed a vaccine dose for their children. 

"This is up from about 10% just two years ago. So we're really seeing a lot of exemptions [and] concerns about vaccination that are not warranted," Gounder said. 

Before a vaccine became available in the 1960s, between 400 and 500 Americans — mostly children — died every year from measles.

NGC 6505

Do you see the ring? If you look very closely at the center of the featured galaxy NGC 6505, a ring becomes evident. It is the gravity of NGC 6505, the nearby (z = 0.042) elliptical galaxy that you can easily see, that is magnifying and distorting the image of a distant galaxy into a complete circle. To create a complete Einstein ring there must be perfect alignment of the nearby galaxy's center and part of the background galaxy. Analysis of this ring and the multiple images of the background galaxy help to determine the mass and fraction of dark matter in NGC 6505's center, as well as uncover previously unseen details in the distorted galaxy. The featured image was captured by ESA's Earth-orbiting Euclid telescope in 2023 and released earlier this month.

$4 million or $400 million???

More controversy...

Well isn't it nice to find that a Biden $4 million project has turned into a Orangutan $400 million tesla project...

Conflict of Interest I think....

More crazy bullshit.......

Is This the End of USPS?

Trump’s next target is the Post Office—which people actually like.

Alex Nguyen

President Donald Trump is taking aim at the US Postal Service. 

According to a Thursday report from the Washington Post‘s Jacob Bogage, the president plans to fire the members of USPS’ board and hand the keys to the agency over to the Department of Commerce.

Trump plans to make the move through executive order as early as this week, the Post reports. The board reportedly intends to take the administration to court if Trump carries out the firings or tries to take control, with postal experts telling the Washington Post that absorbing the independent agency would likely violate federal law. A White House spokesperson later denied the report.

After his re-election, Trump discussed privatizing the Postal Service with Howard Lutnick—later confirmed as Commerce Secretary—at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, according to a separate Post article from December.

But Trump’s new target is actually an old one. During his first term, the White House pushed to break up and sell off the Post Office—one of the most favorably viewed government agencies—in a 2018 plan: “A privatized Postal Service would,” among other things, “make business decisions free from political interference.” 

On February 20, Mark Dimondstein, the president of the American Postal Workers Union, which represents over 200,000 USPS employees and retirees, issued a statement calling Trump’s reported plan an “unlawful attack” that was “part of the billionaire oligarch coup.” The move would increase costs and threaten the livelihoods of more than 7 million workers, Dimondstein said. 

“Call your senator,” the union posted on X on Friday. “Urge them to block this unconstitutional takeover and ensure the Postal Service remains independent and in the hands of the people!”

I previously spoke with Dimondstein about the threat Trump and DOGE present to the Postal Service. People who rely on USPS for essentials like medicine could be particularly at risk if the agency is privatized or loses its political independence, Dimondstein told me. Instead of privatizing the USPS, Dimondstein thinks the government should consider expanding it, pointing to opportunities for offering financial services for tens of millions of Americans with low incomes who are unbanked or underbanked—long a norm in many other countries. According to the Center for American Progress, a public policy research and advocacy organization, USPS is an “equalizer institution” that could allow access to free or low-fee bank accounts, as well as loan and check cashing services. USPS also provides outsized job opportunities for women, Black workers, other workers of color, and veterans, he said. 

Then there’s the role USPS plays in elections. As my colleague Pema Levy pointed out at the time, Democrats wanted to increase funding for the service prior to the 2020 election, to help deliver mail-in ballots at the height of the Covid pandemic—but Republicans dissented. 

Louis DeJoy, the postmaster general of the USPS and a Trump donor who earlier this week announced plans to step down, caused an uproar during that time. DeJoy made significant changes just before the 2020 vote, including scaling back the number of mail sorting machines and limiting the ability of workers to make additional postal trips where they would draw overtime. Critics said that those decisions restricted the agency’s ability to serve mail-in voters during the pandemic—something that disproportionately hurt Democrats (according to the Elections Performance Index, 58 percent of Democrats voted by mail, while only 29 percent of Republicans did so in 2020). 

Despite the postal service’s mandate to exist independently—passed by Congress and signed into law by Richard Nixon in 1970—the agency may, if Trump can override Congress, become one more brick in the wall of expanded executive power.

You Can’t Ban DEI

Federal Judge to Trump: No, You Can’t Ban DEI

For now, the administration can’t “impede, block, cancel, or terminate” diversity and inclusion funds and obligations.

Jackie Flynn Mogensen

On Friday, a federal judge partly blocked President Donald Trump’s attempt to root out programs related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, within the government.

That includes at least one far-reaching executive order titled, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” in which the president claimed DEI programs are illegal. As my colleague Alex Nguyen reported at the time:

[The order] argues that DEI programs violate civil rights laws by illegally enforcing “dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences” that “deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement.” The White House also claimed that these policies are discriminatory because they select based on “how people were born instead of what they were capable of doing.”  

As the New York Times has reported in detail, Maryland District Judge Adam B. Abelson barred the Trump administration from any effort to “pause, freeze, impede, block, cancel, or terminate any awards, contracts or obligations” related to diversity and inclusion, noting that such programs have been seen as “uncontroversially legal for decades.”

A coalition of academic institutions brought the lawsuit. In the initial complaint, as the Associated Press reports, the plaintiffs argued that “ordinary citizens” would “bear the brunt” of Trump’s DEI crackdown: “Plaintiffs and their members receive federal funds to support educators, academics, students, workers, and communities across the country,” it read. “As federal agencies make arbitrary decisions about whether grants are ‘equity-related,’ Plaintiffs are left in limbo.” After weeks of chaos within the educational system, the plaintiffs were granted some relief. 

Traveling this week

 Out of the country, nice to see Gulf of MEXICO is still the worlds view...

Not funny.....

 

The Mango Menace....

 

She'll oppose

Patel on cusp of confirmation to run FBI as Collins says she'll oppose

The Senate will vote on Trump's controversial nominee to lead the federal law enforcement agency later today.

Hailey Fuchs

Kash Patel, President Donald Trump's controversial nominee to lead the FBI, is on track to be confirmed in a matter of hours to run the federal law enforcement agency — but at least one Republican will withhold support.

The Senate voted 51-47 to end debate on Patel's nomination on Thursday, setting up a final confirmation vote later in the afternoon. As that procedural vote was underway, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) announced she would vote against him, saying in a statement that his "recent political profile undermines his ability to serve in the apolitical role of Director of the FBI."

Democrats have echoed those concerns, rallying against Patel's bid to be the next FBI director on grounds that he would put fealty to the president over his responsibilities to lead a department that has traditionally operated independently of the executive branch.

But Patel, who served in the first Trump administration at the Department of Defense and National Security Council, is still expected to be easily confirmed, even with Collins' opposition.