The News Centrals

Several european countries have banned, or are planning to ban, travel from the UK to prevent the spread of a more infectious coronavirus variant. The UK has reported a  further 35,928 coronavirus cases today , the biggest daily case total Britain has ever had. Official figures also revealed 326 more people have died, more than double the 144 deaths reported this time last week. UK  Health Secretary Matt Hancock  warned that the new strain of the coronavirus is “out of control” and suggested parts of England will be stuck in the new, highest tier of restrictions until a vaccine is rolled out. The Netherlands and Belgium have halted flights, with Italy to follow suit. Trains to Belgium are also suspended. Ireland is expected to restrict flights and ferries from midnight (23:00 GMT) on Sunday. France and Germany are among others considering similar action. “An infectious mutation of the Covid-19 virus is circulating in the United Kingdom. It is...

God is here. God is alive. In this world and in schools as well. Many teenagers participate in or witness religious activity on campus . Students retain a First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion and may voluntarily pray before, during and after school. A Pew Resaerch Center survey finds that about four-in-ten teens who attend public schools say they commonly (either “often” or “sometimes”) see other students praying before sporting events at school. This includes about half of teenage public schoolers who live in the South, where students are more likely than those in other regions to witness and partake in various religious expressions at school. In addition, roughly half of U.S. teens who attend public school say they commonly see other students in their school wearing religious clothing (such as an Islamic headscarf ) or jewelry with religious symbols (such as a necklace with a Christian cross or a Jewish Star of David). About a quarter of...

GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming singled out House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Twitter, suggesting that the phone call between President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart "is starting to seem like a political set up ." In her tweet, Cheney asked “what did you know and when did you know it?” of Pelosi while referencing the Democratic Speaker's "60 Minutes" interview in which she described talking to Trump about the call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky before it was released to the public. Cheney continued, "This is starting to seem like a political set up.” In a separate tweet, Cheney accused Democrats of “careening from one impeachment to another," adding that they “can’t even wait 24 hours to see the transcript. Lesson: Evidence doesn’t matter to them.” Pelosi launched an impeachment inquiry against Trump after Democrats expressed alarm over an August complaint accusing Trump of having "used th...

U.S. Department of Education has ordered the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University to remodel their joint Middle East studies program. The two universities inappropriately uses federal grants to advance "ideological priorities" promoting Islam and not highlighting "positive" imagery of Christianity and Judaism, according to the Trump administration, that is threatening to cut funding if they do not revise their joint Consortium for Middle Eastern Studies. The consortium received $235,000 from the grant last year, according to Education Department data. Assistant Secretary Robert King says the program lacks balance. It offers "few, if any, programs focused on the historic discrimination faced by, and current circumstances of, religious minorities in the Middle East, including Christians , Jews, Baha'is, Yadizis, Kurds, Druze, and others," King writes. The letter, published in the Federal Register, ...

Top position, again. Princeton University took the No. 1 title as the top national university — for the ninth consecutive year — in an annual list compiled by U.S. News & World Report. The private New Jersey school wasn’t the only Ivy League institution to occupy a top slot on the list unveiled Monday — Harvard University came in second place. The Big Apple’s own Ivy, Columbia University, as well as Connecticut’s Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — which is not an Ivy but known for its selectivity — tied for third. Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. took the top spot among national liberal arts colleges for the 17th year in a row, followed by Amherst College, also in the Bay State. Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and Wellesley College in Massachusetts tied for third. The University of California—Los Angeles occupies the No. 1 spot as the top public university, followed by the University of California–Berkeley and the University of Michi...

A  new study  found extreme changes in the atmosphere killed almost 100% of life on Earth about 2 billion years ago. Researchers sampled barite, a mineral more than 2 billion years old, in subarctic Canada's Belcher Islands. Rocks that old "lock in chemical signatures," helpful clues for researchers to uncover what the atmosphere was like when the rocks first formed, co-lead author and Stanford University Ph.D. candidate Malcolm Hodgskiss told. T he Great Oxidation Event The study focused on a phenomenon called the " Great Oxidation Event ". It goes like this: Billions of years ago, only micro-organisms survived on Earth. When they photosynthesized, they altered the chemical composition of the atmosphere, creating a glut of oxygen they ultimately could not sustain. Micro-organisms exhausted the nutrients they needed to create oxygen, which knocked the Earth's atmosphere off-kilter. This led to an "enormous drop" in the biosphere --...