JQJO — General news · Page 17

Federal authorities are probing an ICE-involved shooting in Ontario, the second in a little more than a week amid enforcement operations. ICE says officers conducting a 6:30 a.m. vehicle stop on Vineyard Avenue fired after an unrelated driver reversed toward them; the driver fled. Family identified him as Carlos Jimenez, 24, a U.S. citizen, later hospitalized with a shoulder wound and taken into custody. A neighbor heard two or three shots and screeching tires. Advocates decried fear from unmarked, armed agents. Ontario police assisted afterward; DHS and the FBI are investigating. Rep. Norma Torres demanded transparency.

Survivors who fled el-Fasher after Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces seized the city described torture and killings as they trekked to Tawila. Ezzeldin Hassan Musa said men trying to escape were beaten and executed; Ahmed Ismail Ibrahim recounted four companions being killed and his wounds. At an MSF clinic, staff reported hundreds needing urgent care. The UN called the violence horrific; RSF leader Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo acknowledged violations and said they would be investigated, with some arrests reported. Aid groups fear many of the roughly quarter million people still in the city remain trapped amid a severe hunger crisis.

Scientists report two black hole mergers whose larger partners look like second generation survivors of earlier collisions. The LIGO Virgo KAGRA network recorded the events a month apart, each marked by rapid spins and sharp mass imbalances. GW241011, about 700 million light years away, included one of the fastest spinners; GW241110, 2.4 billion light years distant, showed a black hole rotating against its orbit, a first. The signals matched Einstein’s predictions, with GW241011 producing an overtone like hum and a clear view in the waveform of the larger hole deforming as it spun.

Asian equities edged toward record levels as upbeat results from Amazon and Apple rekindled risk appetite, nudging US equity futures higher after a brief lull in the global rally. MSCI’s regional gauge rose 0.4% and Japan gained 1%, while mainland China and Hong Kong slipped. Apple advanced in late trading after topping revenue estimates and offering a bullish holiday forecast. Amazon jumped 13% in extended trading after reporting its fastest cloud growth in nearly three years.

Canva unveiled Affinity by Canva, a single app that merges Photo, Designer, and Publisher, free to use with a Canva account while generative AI tools live behind its $120 per year plans. Version 3 runs natively on Intel and Apple Silicon Macs and on x86 and Arm Windows, with an iPad release "coming soon." Affinity says AI features respect privacy and won’t train models on users’ work. Older Affinity v1 and v2 apps remain downloadable but will not receive updates and are incompatible with v3 file saves.

An interstellar comet called 3I/ATLAS, confirmed on July 1, is giving scientists a fleeting chance to study material from beyond our solar system. International teams coordinated by Michigan State University’s Darryl Z. Seligman report nickel vapor in the comet’s gas, detected nearly four times farther from the sun than Earth, at temperatures where metals normally don’t vaporize. Observations from Chile’s SOAR and Very Large telescopes show the nickel signal rising as the comet drew closer. Researchers led by Rohan Rahatgaonkar and Thomas Puzia say continued monitoring could reveal where it formed and whether it is older than our solar system.

For more than a millennium, Alaska’s Inupiat hunters have known bowhead whales as ageless neighbors, even recognizing individuals at sea. Now scientists estimate some bowheads live up to 268 years, with harpoon points from the mid 1800s found in whales caught in the late 1900s. A Nature study led by University of Rochester researchers Vera Gorbunova and Andrei Seluanov reports the whales excel at repairing damaged DNA, aided by higher levels and fine tuned interactions of certain proteins. The work suggests similar tweaks could someday extend healthy human life spans. Bowheads can weigh over 88 tons.

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS has swung past the sun at about 126 million miles and is now heading out, briefly hidden from Earth behind the sun. Astronomers expect it to reappear in predawn skies for telescope users around November 11, with a safe closest pass to Earth on December 19 at roughly 168 million miles. As only the third known interstellar visitor, it’s under intense scrutiny: SPHEREx and the James Webb telescope detected water, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, carbonyl sulphide and ice, and early studies suggest it’s 3–11 billion years old. ESA missions also captured difficult glimpses.

A federal judge sentenced Taylor Taranto to time served for a hoax threat near Barack Obama’s D.C. home, after 22 months in jail; no explosives were found, though firearms and a machete were recovered. Judge Carl Nichols cited Taranto’s lack of criminal history after DOJ earlier moved to dismiss several Jan. 6 charges. The Justice Department sidelined two prosecutors and withdrew a sentencing memo that referenced the Capitol riot and a Trump repost, replacing it with a scrubbed version. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro declined comment. Taranto will serve three years’ supervision and undergo a mental health assessment.

In a coast-to-coast preview, the piece unveils a new high-resolution map projecting the top Division I team in each of 49 states for the next five months, built from the author’s Top 100 And 1 rankings and advanced metrics. Picks span from Arizona, Kansas and Kentucky to Duke, UConn and Purdue, with Houston tabbed as the national pacesetter and multiple rivalries and coaching changes shaping the landscape. The tour opens today and, if forecasts hold, will wind toward an April finish in Indianapolis.