A federal judge has blocked the Town of Johnston, Rhode Island, from taking control of a 31-acre property planned for affordable housing. The judge ruled that town officials did not have the legal authority to seize the land. US District Judge Melissa R. DuBose overturned the town’s decision to take the property near George Waterman…

Deep in the Sahara Desert, where rain is rare and plants struggle to spread, an unlikely desert gardener may be at work. Researchers who sifted through hundreds of carnivore droppings found intact seeds from eight different plant species, suggesting that wolves and foxes may help desert vegetation spread across the landscape. If you have ever…

UK civil servant allegedly held five full-time jobs simultaneously. (Photo: Wikipedia) A UK civil servant accused of earning £349,378 across eight government jobs allegedly attended virtual meetings with his camera switched off, citing technical problems, a court has heard. According to a report by Personnel Today, Kashim Chowdhury, 55, is accused of lying to secure…

Image: Serget Ponomarev/NYT When a magnitude 8.8 earthquake ruptured a fault offshore from Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula in 2025, it sent tsunami waves across the Pacific Ocean. Now researchers have shown that clues to where it would strike may have been sitting in ground-motion measurements collected years earlier. By reanalysing older satellite positioning records, a new…

Representative Image of a hippo grazing on grasslands at night and transferring silicon to a river through its dung ( AI Generrated Image) Hippos spend their nights grazing on grass and their days resting in rivers. This daily routine also moves silicon from land into water, where it can influence the organisms that form the…

Representative Image of a NASA engineer testing a Venus probe model in a high-temperature ceramic-lined furnace ( AI Generrated Image) Nasa engineers have tested whether an engineering model of the DAVINCI Venus descent probe can protect its scientific instruments from the extreme heat it will encounter while travelling through the planet’s atmosphere. The model, roughly…

A veteran astronaut who has lived in orbit for nearly a year and flown around the Moon is now moving from the cockpit to the engineering leadership table. Christina Koch, an electrical engineer by training, will serve as acting deputy chief engineer at the Nasa from November 1. The appointment ends her eligibility for future…

Representative Image of the expansive Y Bar O Ranch, showcasing its varied terrain and cattle operation (AI-generated image) In the early 1960s, Midland oilman W.B. “Dub” Yarborough and his wife, Kay, began building the Y Bar O Ranch with a 3,520-acre tract in West Texas. Over the following decades, the family expanded it into a…