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On 50th anniversary of Billie Jean King’s ‘Battle of the Sexes’ win, a push to honor her in Congress

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 18:32:27 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Billie Jean King’s victory in the “Battle of the Sexes” was a milestone moment as women pushed for equality on the playing field and beyond. On the 50th anniversary of that match against Bobby Riggs — still the most-watched in tennis history — King will move toward becoming the first female individual athlete to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.Three U.S. senators will introduce a bill Wednesday that would award the honor to King, the tennis Hall of Famer and activist who was a driving force behind the creation of the women’s pro tour and equal prize money for men and women.“She’s both a role model for women and girls everywhere, but she’s also a battle-tested warrior for women’s rights and equality,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, one of the bill’s leaders in the Senate along with Sens. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.King has already celebrated the 50th anniversaries this year of the WTA Tour a...

Michal Probierz succeeds Fernando Santos as coach of Poland’s national soccer team

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 18:32:27 GMT

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Michal Probierz has been appointed as coach of Poland, the president of the national soccer federation said on Wednesday.Probierz, who is promoted from the under-21 team, takes over from Portuguese Fernando Santos.Santos was fired last week with Poland fourth in its five-team European Championship qualifying group. Santos, who led his native Portugal to the Euro 2016 title, was dismissed after almost nine months in the job. “The Poland team coach is Michal Probierz,” federation president Cezary Kulesza wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “This is the best possible choice. I wish the new coach good luck.”Probierz, who will be 51 on Sunday, previously coached a string of teams including Greek side Aris Salonika and Polish clubs Gornik Zabrze and Widzew Lodz.A news conference with Kulesza and Probierz is due to take place in Warsaw at noon local time. Poland is behind leader Albania, Czech Republic and Moldova in Euro Group E qualifying after losing three of...

Will this computer lab do for the DC area what the PC did for Silicon Valley?

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 18:32:27 GMT

The ribbon cutting event for the National Quantum Lab on Sept. 19, 2023. (WTOP/John Domen) The ribbon cutting event for the National Quantum Lab on Sept. 19, 2023. (WTOP/John Domen) Quantum computing is the next big technological breakthrough and will likely be used to radically define people’s lives, helping to solve problems and make technology even smarter. But it’s not like the regular computer that you’re used to.In fact, there’s only a handful of legitimate quantum companies in the world, and none of them have labs like the one that just opened at IonQ in College Park, Maryland.It’s why University of Maryland President Darryll Pines called the D.C. area “the capital of qua...

Medina Alert: Dodge truck wanted in hit-and-run

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 18:32:27 GMT

DENVER (KDVR) — Denver Police have issued a Medina Alert for a truck that is wanted in a hit-and-run.Just after 3 a.m. Wednesday, the Denver Police Department tweeted about the incident. Officers are investigating a hit-and-run crash between a truck and a motorcycle that resulted in serious injuries. US 285 road rage shooting suspect sought near Conifer The hit-and-run took place in the 7500 block of West Yale Avenue in the Bear Valley neighborhood next to the Bear Creek Greenbelt.A Medina Alert has been issued for a 2008 red Dodge Ram truck that has the Colorado license plate JQE-032.Anyone who may have witnessed the hit-and-run or has seen the truck is asked to call 911 immediately.FOX31 has reached out to the police for more information and possible photos of the truck.

Scientists recover RNA from an extinct species for the first time

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 18:32:27 GMT

(CNN) — Geneticists have for the first time isolated and decoded RNA molecules from a creature that died out long ago.The genetic material — which came from a 130-year-old Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, specimen in the collection of the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm — has allowed scientists to better understand how the animal’s genes functioned. The researchers shared their findings in a study published Tuesday in the scientific journal Genome Research.“RNA gives you the chance to go through the cell, the tissues and find the real biology that has been preserved in time for that animal, the thylacine species, right before they died,” said lead study author Emilio Mármol Sánchez, a computational biologist at the Centre for Palaeogenetics and SciLifeLab in Sweden.About the size of a coyote, the thylacine was a marsupial predator. It disappeared about 2,000 years ago virtually everywhere except the Australian island state of Tasmania, where the popu...

What will Federal Reserve do next? Any hint of future rate hikes will be key focus of latest meeting

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 18:32:27 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve is set to leave its key interest rate unchanged Wednesday as it seeks to guide the U.S. economy toward a “soft landing” of cooling inflation without triggering a deep recession.Chair Jerome Powell and other Fed officials have made clear that they’re now inclined to move more gradually and cautiously toward their goal of 2% annual inflation. Their more deliberative approach follows the 11 rate hikes they unleashed beginning in March 2022, which substantially raised borrowing costs for consumers and businesses.Yet with inflation pressures still underlying the economy, Powell won’t be declaring victory on Wednesday, when the Fed’s latest policy meeting ends. The attention of investors and economists will instead focus on what signals the Fed may send about its likely next actions.The clearest signal will likely come from the Fed’s 19-member interest-rate committee in the batch of economic forecasts its members issue ea...

EU lawmakers pressure member countries to complete migration deal

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 18:32:27 GMT

BRUSSELS — The European Parliament blocked talks on key files of the EU’s migration pact in order to compel member countries into approving the final part of the package.The assembly announced on Wednesday the suspension of negotiations on two files that introduce stricter screening of migrants at the EU’s borders. “The files of the Pact are interlinked and making progress on some proposals rather than others risks leading to a bottleneck in the negotiations,” the European Parliament wrote in a statement on Wednesday, after a meeting between key EU lawmakers working on the migration pact and representatives from the European Council. Members of the European Parliament hope that this will put pressure on EU countries to break a deadlock over the last plank of the flagship asylum deal — the so-called crisis regulation — at a key summit in Brussels next Thursday. The strategy is to link the crisis regulation to tougher screening rules — a key priority for member countries across Europe...

Glyphosate should be allowed in farming for another 10 years, Brussels says

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 18:32:27 GMT

The European Commission proposes that EU countries authorize the use of the controversial agrichemical glyphosate in farming for another 10 years, according to a document published Wednesday.Glyphosate, a weed-killing chemical, is the most widely used pesticide in the world, but critics say it has been linked to cancer and can be harmful to wildlife. It was last approved for use in the EU in a highly controversial process in 2017, and the five-year license was extended for another 12 months last December.The Commission indicated in July that glyphosate should receive a full stamp of approval from member countries and be re-authorized for use in the EU, following a risk assessment by the European Food Safety Authority, which found “no critical areas of concern” from the use of the chemical in farming, but identified several data gaps.The application to extend the chemical’s EU license came from a group of companies collectively known as...

MIT researchers developing new living medical device for treating diabetes

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 18:32:27 GMT

A breakthrough in diabetes testing could mean no more needles for people in the future.A team at MIT says they have successfully reversed diabetes in mice using a living medical device with cells that produce insulin.The device for a human would be about the size of a stick of chewing gum.“What we’ve been able to show is that with a device just sitting under the skin we’ve actually been able to achieve a diabetic reversal that is kind of curing diabetes in an animal model for about a month now,” said researcher Siddharth Krishnan.The teams hopes to eventually move to testing the device in humans.

GTA gas prices plummet overnight to 2-month low

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 18:32:27 GMT

A day after the latest inflation numbers suggested rising costs for nearly everything — GTA drivers got a pleasant surprise at the gas pumps on Wednesday morning.Motorists looking to fill-up will find it costing them eight cents per litre less than the day before after a significant drop overnight. The average price at most stations is now 162.9 cents/litre, is the lowest in the city since July.It was only five days ago that the average price matched a yearly high of 173.9 cents/litre.Dan McTeague, President of Canadians for Affordable Energy, tells Breakfast Television the price drop can be attributed to the change over from summer gas to winter gas. The switch means a brief reprieve in the cost to fill-up despite rising oil prices that have recently hit a 10-month high.“In the summer, one of the additives is alkylate, a very pricy component,” he says. “During the winter, we use Butane, much cheaper.”Past month prices in the GTAExperts expect the price...