Source: Phys.org

The compound, carbon tetrachloride, contributes to the destruction of the Earth's ozone layer, which protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation.

As a result, the production of carbon tetrachloride has been banned throughout the world since 2010 for uses that will result in its release to the atmosphere. However, recent studies have shown that global emissions have not declined as expected, with about 40,000 tonnes still being emitted each year.

The origin of these emissions has puzzled researchers for many years.

...

Their results, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, show that around half of the 'missing' global emissions of carbon tetrachloride originated from eastern China between 2009 and 2016.

Read more: https://phys.org/news/2018-10-large-mystery-source-ozone-depleting.html

Source: CNET

The New York Police Department removed thousands of officers' body cameras Sunday after one cop's camera exploded.

The Staten Island officer was on duty around midnight Sunday when the Vievu LE-5 camera started to smoke, the department wrote.

The police officer quickly removed the device, which then exploded on the ground. No one was injured, the department said.

The NYPD statement pointed to the camera's battery as a possible source of the problem, and said that the cause and scope of the defect are being investigated.

"All officers assigned LE-5 cameras were instructed to immediately remove the cameras and bring them back to their commands," the department said in its statement.

Read more: https://www.cnet.com/news/nypd-pulls-thousands-of-body-cameras-from-streets-after-cops-explodes/

Source: Axios

"The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a governmentwide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law," the N.Y. Times' Erica Green, Katie Benner and Robert Pear report.

What's happening: "[T]he Department of Health and Human Services is spearheading an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government financial assistance."

"The department argued in [a] memo that key government agencies needed to adopt an explicit and uniform definition of gender as determined 'on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.'"

From the memo: "Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth ... The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence."

Read more: https://www.axios.com/transgender-rights-trump-administration-rollback-9eace89b-ca1b-47d9-9323-427272225b09.html

Source: CNN

The American Bar Association will no longer review its "well qualified" rating of Justice Brett Kavanaugh now that the Senate confirmed him, an ABA official told CNN Monday.

The official, who declined to speak on the record, cited an ABA policy of ending its rating process once a nominee is confirmed.

"Per the published policy and historical practice of the Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, once a justice or judge is confirmed, the Standing Committee's rating process is closed," the ABA's website states.

The group had previously said that because of the allegations against Kavanaugh of sexual assault and conduct during his September 27 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, it would reevaluate its rating. Kavanaugh has denied the allegations against him.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/15/politics/kavanaugh-aba-review/index.html?utm_medium=social&utm_content=2018-10-15T17%3A16%3A43&utm_source=twCNNp&utm_term=image

Source: AP

A judge has sentenced Marion “Suge” Knight to 28 years in prison nearly four years after the former rap mogul killed a man with his truck.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ronald S. Coen handed down the sentence as expected Thursday for running over and killing businessman Terry Carter outside a Compton burger stand in 2015.

Members of Carter’s family addressed the court including daughter Crystal, who called Knight “a disgusting, selfish disgrace to the human species.”

Knight stared forward throughout.

Knight avoided a murder trial that was about to begin when he agreed two weeks ago to plead no contest to voluntary manslaughter and accept the sentence.

Read more: https://apnews.com/37cd9ab1720543aa93e59e72eb58f3b5?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter

Source: Vox

Leon Lederman won a Nobel Prize in 1988 for his pioneering physics research.

But in 2015, the physicist, who passed away Wednesday, sold his Nobel Prize medal for $765,000 to pay his mounting medical bills. The University of Chicago professor began to suffer from memory loss in 2011, and died in an Idaho nursing home.

In a lot of ways (and as others have observed) Lederman’s story represents the best and worst of America. Lederman was born in the 1920s to a father who worked in a laundry facility. He went on to discover the Higgs boson subatomic particle, the so-called “God particle” that you can read more about here.

But even an accomplished physicist and university professor isn’t immune from America’s sky-high health care prices. The United States routinely has health care prices well-above the rest of the world. A day in an American hospital, for examples, costs an average of $5,220 here — compared to $765 in Australia or $424 in Spain.

Read more: https://www.vox.com/health-care/2018/10/4/17936626/leon-lederman-nobel-prize-medical-bills

Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms signed a bill Wednesday officially renaming three city streets with Confederate in their names.

Confederate Avenue and East Confederate Avenue will be renamed United Avenue and United Avenue S.E., respectively and a third street, Confederate Court, will be renamed Trestletree Court, after apartment buildings that are on the street.

After a months-long campaign that included meetings, door-to-door canvassing and a ballot process spearheaded by residents who live along the streets, the renaming measure got the unanimous vote of the Atlanta City Council on Monday. In a small, private ceremony attended by City Council Member Carla Smith, who pushed the legislation through, Bottoms turned the page on a contentious issue.

Residents of the neighborhoods chose the new names and new street signs are expected to begin going up after Thanksgiving.

Read more: https://www.ajc.com/news/local/just-atlanta-confederate-streets-get-new-names/uStM5kDReX0Y5CmemAygrM/

Source: AP

Special counsel Robert Mueller is shedding more attorneys, another sign that his team of prosecutors has begun winding down parts of their investigation.

Two prosecutors detailed to the Russia investigation for the past year are returning to their duties in other parts of the Justice Department. They join two other attorneys who left the team, assigned to investigate potential ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, over the summer.

The departures are the latest indication that Mueller's team is wrapping up parts of the investigation and focusing its efforts on critical remaining strands, including an active grand jury probe of longtime Donald Trump associate Roger Stone.

Mueller spokesman Peter Carr says prosecutor Brandon Van Grack has already returned to the Justice Department's national security division but will continue to be involved in cases he was assigned to. That includes the investigation into former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn, who is scheduled to be sentenced in December.

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/mueller-shedding-more-attorneys-russia-investigation-212115823--politics.html

Source: Washington Post

A previously unknown dwarf planet circles through the far reaches of our solar system, the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center announced Tuesday. Officially designated 2015 TG387, the small and spherical object is probably a ball of ice. Astronomers first observed the dwarf planet on Oct. 13, 2015, from the Subaru telescope at Hawaii’s Mauna Kea Observatories. Embracing the near-Halloween October spirit — and for want of something pronounceable — its discoverers nicknamed 2015 TG387 “the Goblin.”

The Goblin is “about 300 kilometers in diameter, on the small end of a dwarf planet,” said Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington who discovered the object along with colleagues at Northern Arizona University, University of Hawaii and the University of Oklahoma. Dwarf planet Pluto, by comparison, is six times as wide.

Sheppard has embarked on an ongoing survey to find tiny planetoids on the solar system’s outer rim. He’s interested in the Goblin because it “always stays well beyond the giant planet region,” referring to the lineup of our solar system’s four biggest planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Because 2015 TG387 exists so far away, speaking in terms of miles becomes unwieldy. Instead, astronomers refer to its orbit in astronomical units, or AU, where 1 AU is the distance between the sun and Earth. Pluto sits at an average of 40 AU from the sun. The Goblin comes no closer than 65 AU.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2018/10/02/new-dwarf-planet-spotted-very-fringe-our-solar-system/

Source: New York Times

The White House has authorized the F.B.I. to expand its abbreviated investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh by interviewing anyone it deems necessary as long as the review is finished by the end of the week, two people briefed on the matter said on Monday.

The new directive came in the last 24 hours after a backlash from Democrats, who criticized the White House for limiting the scope of the bureau’s investigation into President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court. The F.B.I. has already completed interviews with the four witnesses its agents were originally asked to talk to, the people said.

Mr. Trump said on Monday that he favored a “comprehensive” F.B.I. investigation and had no problem if the bureau wanted to question Judge Kavanaugh or even a third accuser who was left off the initial witness list if she seemed credible. His only concerns he said, were that the investigation be wrapped up quickly and that it take direction from the Senate Republicans who will determine whether Judge Kavanaugh is confirmed.

“The F.B.I. should interview anybody that they want within reason, but you have to say within reason,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Rose Garden after an event celebrating a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico. “But they should also be guided, and I’m being guided, by what the senators are looking for.”

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/us/politics/trump-fbi-kavanaugh.html