The study leveraged the MWA’s expansive field of view (FOV), enabling researchers to observe approximately 2,800 galaxies in a single session. The SETI Institute, Berkeley SETI Research Center, and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research have unveiled a groundbreaking study utilizing the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in Western Australia…
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First-of-Its-Kind SETI Study Probes 2,800 Galaxies for Alien Technology
Celebrating a martyr’s birthday in Gaza
On the morning of September 4, my eight-year-old niece Joody woke up bright-eyed and excited and suggested we celebrate her father’s birthday. It had been 25 days since we lost her father Moataz Rajab in the massacre the Israeli army carried out at the al-Tabin School in Gaza City. He was one of more than 100 civilian victims who had sought shelter at the school along with his family.
While Joody knew her baba was gone, it was clear she was trying to process a date in the calendar that had always been special to her and her siblings.
As the family – including my sister, Joody’s mom – was still very much in mourning, no one knew for sure how to manage the situation. We exchanged glances, hoping one of us would step in and handle the matter.
Everyone deals with shock differently, and each of us knew this was Joody’s way of coping with her father’s death.
Her grandparents gave her a hug and a kiss on her forehead and tried explaining that it is awkward to celebrate the birthday of someone who has passed away so recently. Other members of the family also told her it would be odd to sing a birthday song for someone who is sadly no longer among us. There was also no birthday cake to be found; bakeries in Gaza were struggling to make bread let alone produce such “luxury” items.
We knew the best way to handle this was not to get emotional, but be calm and try to reason with Joody.
Disappointed, my niece nodded her head in agreement and went about her day. But an hour later, she came back running to her mother with a counterproposal. “What if we celebrate baba’s birthday not by singing him a birthday song, but instead by reading the Quran?” a determined Joody asked.
We find refuge in the Quran in good times and in bad times, so we all thought it made sense to remember Moataz by reading holy verses.
We also managed to find a solution to the “birthday cake problem”. We found a lady who had some flour and was willing to bake seven pieces of a cake for the 14 of us.
A few hours later, we gathered in what was left of our home in the Shujayea neighbourhood. We sat down in a circle between walls strewn with bullet holes, damaged by artillery tank shells, and decorated with the drawings the children had made since the start of the war.
Joody began by reading Al-Fatihah, or the opening chapter of the Quran, standing under the damaged roof her grandfather had patched up with metal sheets to make our home a bit more habitable. As she recited the verses, both her mother and grandmother wept while everyone else sat solemnly, each of us trying hard to manage the profound feeling of loss.
As she read the verses aloud, I thought about the toll this war has taken on children. The Israeli army has killed more than 17,000 children, including more than 700 newborns. It has injured tens of thousands, including an estimated 3,000 who have lost one or more limbs. It has orphaned more than 19,000 children, condemning them to live the rest of their lives with the trauma of losing one or both parents at a young age. Our Joody is one of them.
Time heals all wounds, they say, but how do we, the adults around her, hold her hand and get her past the enormity of pain she feels while a genocide is still unfolding around us? How do we help children like her cope with psychological trauma that keeps growing with every Israeli air strike, every family massacred, every mama or baba lost?
Hundreds of thousands of childhoods have been stolen as Gaza’s children have been forced from their homes into lives of misery, with no education, no proper shelter and no feeling of safety. They roam streets filled with rubble, garbage and sewage, searching for food or water to survive, collecting firewood, and witnessing death and despair at every corner.
This genocidal war has revealed the cruel world we live in – a world that is more worried about ship container traffic in the Red Sea than the lives of 41,000 human beings.
But hopelessness is not part of the vocabulary of the Palestinian people. Resilience is.
After Joody finished reading the Quran, we took out the cake. Being so generous just like her father, she had insisted on paying the exorbitant price for it with her own savings.
We savoured each bite of the cake to make it last as long as we could – just as we cherished our memories of Moataz. Looking at Joody, I realised he lives on in the kind and bright children he left behind.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Milton to become a major hurricane Monday as it heads for Florida | The Excerpt
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Vance says a future Trump administration would defund Planned Parenthood
Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, confirmed to reporters Saturday that former President Donald Trump is “consistent” in his views on defunding Planned Parenthood.
A journalist asked Vance, R-Ohio, whether a future Trump administration would defund Planned Parenthood, the reproductive health care group that has garnered opposition from many conservatives for its pro-abortion-rights positions.
“On the question of defunding Planned Parenthood, look, I mean our view is we don’t think that taxpayers should fund late-term abortions,” Vance said after Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. “That has been a consistent view of the Trump campaign the first time around. It will remain a consistent view.”
In 2021, 93.5% of abortions were done at or before 13 weeks’ gestation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this year. About 5.7% of abortions were done between 14 and 20 weeks, and 0.9% were performed at or beyond 21 weeks.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to requests for further comment Sunday night.
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Jenny Lawson, executive director of the organization’s super political action committee, Planned Parenthood Votes, said in a statement Monday morning that a Trump administration move to defund the group’s health centers “would rob millions of people across the country of vital, affordable care.”
“As usual, he is spinning tall tales to make his case,” Lawson said said of Vance. “Here’s the truth: Federal funds cannot be used to provide abortion care at any point in pregnancy — but Planned Parenthood health centers do use federal funds to provide cancer screenings, birth control, STI testing and treatment, and many other essential reproductive health care services. ‘Defunding’ Planned Parenthood would only deepen and expand the public health crisis we’re already in thanks to Donald Trump, causing more people to suffer and die for lack of basic reproductive care.”
Lauren Hitt, a spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, blasted Vance’s comments, saying in a statement that “a second Trump term is too big a risk for American women and their families.”
“The only way to stop an unchecked Trump and his MAGA allies from ripping away freedoms from American women is to elect Vice President Harris, who will defend women’s access to health care and reproductive freedom,” Hitt continued.
Democrats have frequently highlighted Trump’s comments about abortion, asserting that he would work to ban it.
In response, Trump has tried to present a softened stance toward abortion, saying in a social media post Tuesday that he would veto a federal abortion ban.
And former first lady Melania Trump reportedly discussed her receptiveness to abortion rights in her coming memoir, with The Guardian reporting that she wrote, “Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body?”
“A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes,” she reportedly continued. NBC News has not independently verified the contents of the book, which has not yet been released.
Trump said last week in a Fox News interview that he and his wife “spoke about it, and I said, ‘You have to write what you believe. I’m not going to tell you what to do. You have to write what you believe.'”
An NBC News poll from September indicated that 54% of registered voters think Harris would be better at dealing with the issue of abortion, while 33% selected Trump.
Vance acknowledged voters’ comparative lack of trust in Republicans on abortion at last week’s vice presidential debate.
“I think that what I take from that as a Republican who proudly wants to protect innocent life in this country, who proudly wants to protect the vulnerable, is that my party, we’ve got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back on this issue, where they, frankly, just don’t trust us,” Vance said.
While Trump has attempted to move toward the center on the issue on the campaign trail ahead of the November election, his administration took several steps to limit access to the procedure.
He has praised the three Supreme Court nominees he appointed to the high court for voting to overrule Roe v. Wade, ending federal protections for the procedure.
“After 50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v. Wade, much to the ‘shock’ of everyone,” Trump posted last year on Truth Social, a sentiment he has echoed on the campaign trail.
In 2019, Planned Parenthood withdrew from Title X, a government family planning program, after the Trump administration passed a rule forbidding clinics participating in the program from providing abortion provider referrals.
Planned Parenthood was already prevented from using federal funds for abortions, though anti-abortion-rights groups have argued that it is impossible for the government to verify that the funding for other services does not help subsidize abortion services.
President Joe Biden reversed Trump’s rule, allowing clinics that provide abortion referrals to once again receive federal funds.
In 2016, then-candidate Trump said in a debate that he would end federal funding for Planned Parenthood, saying he would “defund it because I’m pro-life.”
Full-time NSF dies after being found unconscious in camp: Mindef, Singapore News
SINGAPORE – A full-time Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) national serviceman died after he was found unconscious and unresponsive in camp on the evening of Sept 27. The death was not training related, according to the Ministry of Defence (Mindef), and a spokesman said that the police do not suspect foul play, based on their preliminary
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President Joe Biden declared the U.S. must not retreat from the world, as he delivered his final address to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday as Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon edged toward all-out war and Israel’s bloody operation against Hamas in Gaza neared the one-year mark…
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FG Endorses Bakassi Deep Seaport Project Worth $3.5bn
The Federal Government has pledged to fully support the Bakassi Deep Seaport Integrated Project, a major infrastructure aimed at transforming Nigeria’s maritime sector and boosting the nation’s economy.
The post FG Endorses Bakassi Deep Seaport Project Worth $3.5bn appeared first on Economic Confidential…
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R.I.P., TikTok Music — Streaming Service to Shut Down in November Following 2023 Launch
R.I.P., TikTok Music: The namesake video-sharing giant’s standalone music streaming platform is now set to shut down at November’s end. ByteDance-owned TikTok confirmed its streaming service’s cessation of operations via a statement as well as an update on the appropriate website. The latter underscores the permanent nature of the move…
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Some players are already having doubts about their summer transfer calls, including Liverpool’s priority target and a striker Arne Slot made much better. Martin Zubimendi The emergence of Ryan Gravenberch as a potentially brilliant No. 6 has allowed Liverpool to quickly move on from their latest derailed summer transfer plans…
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