Ask A Scientist: There Is Likely Life On Other Planets

A second flag of a type carried by rioters during the attack on the U. S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was displayed outside a house owned by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, The New York Times reported Wednesday. An “Appeal to Heaven” flag was flown outside Alito’s beach vacation home last summer.

The first time Elle Barbeito skinned an invasive Burmese python she almost lost her lunch. Twice. Initially she nicked the snake’s stomach with the razor and semi-digested prey spilled out. Things got even more disgusting farther down the digestive system. Despite the disgust, Barbeito was after beauty. And she found it, not only in the edgy fashion pieces she makes out of invasive Burmese pythons that she and her father catch, but in the larger process of removing a magnificent but highly destructive predator from her beloved Florida. It’s a blisteringly hot morning in her father’s backyard in Cutler Bay, south of Miami, and the 27-year-old Barbeito pinches the skin on the belly of a thawing 7-foot python and starts meticulously cutting.

By KEN SWEET (AP Business Writer) NEW YORK (AP) — The bank accounts of tens of thousands of U. S. businesses and consumers have been frozen in the aftermath of the abrupt shutdown and bankruptcy of financial technology company Synapse, which acts as a middleman between financial technology companies and banks. Synapse filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in April and has shut down its services to some of its fintech or bank partners, including Evolve Bank & Trust.

By SEAN MURPHY (Associated Press) OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A wind farm in southwest Iowa suffered a direct hit from a powerful tornado that crumpled five of the massive, power-producing towers, including one that burst into flames. But experts say fortunately such incidents are rare. Video of the direct hit on the wind farm near Greenfield, Iowa, showed frightening images of the violent twister ripping through the countryside, uprooting trees, damaging buildings and sending dirt and debris high into the air. Several of the turbines at MidAmerican Energy Company’s Orient wind farm recorded wind speeds of more than 100 mph as the tornadoes approached just before the turbines were destroyed, the company said in a statement. “This was an unprecedented impact on our wind fleet, and we have operated wind farms since 2004,” MidAmerican said. While there have been isolated incidents of tornadoes or hurricanes damaging wind turbines, fortunately such occurrences are extremely rare, said Jason Ryan, a spokesperson for the American Clean Power Association. Although requirements vary from state to state about how far turbines must be located from other structures, Ryan said the giant turbines are not placed directly next to homes and other occupied structures. There are currently nearly 73,000 wind turbines in operation across the country, he said.

In the space of 10 days, two of South Florida’s international airports have been the scenes of big airliners — including the Boeing 757 used by former President Donald Trump — involved in separate wing-clipping incidents while they rumbled their way to remote parking places. The Federal Aviation Administration acknowledged Wednesday it is investigating both episodes, neither of which involved any injuries. The most recent incident involved an Atlas Air Boeing 747 cargo jet.

FORT LAUDERDALE — Say your neighbor has a yacht so big that it dwarfs the dock behind his home. Do you call the city to complain? Michael Meldeau did. It wound up getting him sued by one Steven Howell, owner of the yacht. The two men live on Delmar Place in Fort Lauderdale’s upscale Las Olas Isles, just north of Las Olas and west of the Intracoastal. The yearslong feud isn’t your run-of-the-mill neighborhood dispute.