Here’s what you need to know to Start Your Week Smart. (You can also get “5 Things You Need to Know Today” delivered to your inbox daily. You give us five minutes, and we give you five things you must know for your weekday, plus a Sunday edition to get your week started smart. Sign up…… MORE
A chilly celebration. Juggling monks. One brave young man. It’s time for this week’s politics-free news. Anything you can do, they can do…in robes People have been sharing ridiculously cool videos of Japanese monks doing ridiculously cool things while dressed in their traditional attire. The viral movement has really taken off this week, but it…… MORE
For the New Horizons spacecraft mission scientists, it has been a whirlwind week of discoveries and new views of the Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule — including the first 3D image of the object on Thursday. That pace is about to change. On Friday, the spacecraft will go almost directly behind the sun from the…… MORE
On Tuesday, the first image of the Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule taken by the New Horizons spacecraft revealed a bowling pin. On Wednesday, more distinct and color images revealed a snowman. Mission scientists said the first science data transmitted back from New Horizons has shown Ultima Thule to actually be two separate objects joined…… MORE
A baby boy was plucked alive Tuesday from the rubble of an apartment building leveled a day earlier by a suspected gas explosion in the Russian city of Magnitogorsk. Dramatic footage released by Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry showed rescue workers pulling away debris to reveal the child — described as “less than a year old.”…… MORE
The new year on Earth began with a record-setting space mission 4 billion miles away. Mission scientists from NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory have confirmed that the New Horizons spacecraft conducted a flyby of Ultima Thule, a Kuiper Belt object that’s a billion miles beyond Pluto. Although the flyby occurred at…… MORE
Get out of your East Coast mentality, America. Not everyone will start 2019 when you do. When it’s 5 a.m. ET on December 31, people in Samoa will already be shooting off their fireworks. Samoa is always the first country to ring in the New Year. American Samoa, its neighbor just 101 miles away, has…… MORE
A 14th person was arrested Saturday in connection with the beheading deaths of two Scandinavian tourists, according to the state-run Maghreb Arab Press. Moroccan authorities took the suspect into custody in the southwestern city of Marrakech. The news agency described him as a “Swiss man who holds Spanish nationality with residence in Morocco.” On December…… MORE
A Canadian citizen who was detained in China earlier this month has been released and is back in Canada according to Richard Walker, spokesman for Global Affairs Canada. The citizen, Sarah McIver, was detained due to a work permit issue related to her teaching job, CNN affiliate CTV reported. Global Affairs Canada declined to provide…… MORE
A 7.0 magnitude earthquake was recorded off the coast of the southern Philippines on Saturday, according to the US Geological Survey. The quake occurred at 11:39 a.m. about 120 miles southeast of Mindanao’s largest city, Davao, and approximately 62 miles southeast of the city of Pondaguitan. The US Pacific Tsunami Warning Center has warned of…… MORE
