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Oct. 7, 2025, 6:10 PM EDTBy Denise ChowA mysterious interstellar comet — just the third such object ever confirmed to have entered our solar system — streaked past Mars last week.A spacecraft in orbit around the red planet had a front-row seat and snapped new images of the comet, known as 3I/ATLAS, on Friday. The photos, released Tuesday by the European Space Agency, show a fuzzy white dot moving against the vast expanse of space.

admin - Latest News - October 7, 2025
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Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS — just the third such object ever confirmed to have entered our solar system — flew past Mars last week. A spacecraft got a photo.



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Oct. 7, 2025, 6:57 PM EDTBy Dan Slepian, Nick McElroy and Erik OrtizLawyers for Robert Roberson, the condemned man on Texas’ death row who faces execution next week, say the first episode of a “Dateline” podcast about his case contains “highly relevant” evidence that highlights judicial misconduct and supports their petition for a new trial.The ongoing claim before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals seeks to halt Roberson’s Oct. 16 execution for the 2002 death of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki. If executed by lethal injection, Roberson, 58, would be the first person put to death in the United States in a case of “shaken baby syndrome.”For more on this case, listen to episodes of the “Dateline” podcast “The Last Appeal”In a filing Monday, Roberson’s lawyers wrote that an interview with Nikki’s maternal grandfather conducted by “Dateline” anchor Lester Holt is “directly relevant to the judicial misconduct claim,” which alleges a “serious violation of Mr. Roberson’s fundamental right to a trial before an impartial tribunal — and before a tribunal that appears impartial.”“It’s shocking that we are discovering the truth about this glaring, undisclosed evidence of bias only by chance, from a podcast, days before Robert is scheduled to be executed for a tragedy that has been mislabeled as a crime,” Gretchen Sween, a lawyer for Roberson, said in a statement.Robert Roberson with his daughter Nikki.Courtesy Roberson familyIn January 2002, Roberson and Nikki fell asleep in their East Texas home and he later awoke, he said, after he heard a sound and found Nikki had fallen out of bed, according to court documents.Later that morning, when Roberson discovered his daughter was unconscious and her lips were blue, he rushed her to an emergency room.Within three days, a detective arrested Roberson on a capital murder charge.For the initial episode of “The Last Appeal” podcast, which was released Monday, Holt interviewed Larry Bowman, Nikki’s maternal grandfather.Bowman identified Anderson County Judge Bascom Bentley as the judiciary official who called the hospital, directing them to contact the Bowmans for permission to authorize removing Nikki from life support.“Matter of fact, Judge Bentley told ’em we were the parents,” Bowman said.But Roberson’s lawyers say the Bowmans did not have that authority, and Roberson had custody of Nikki and was appointed her sole conservator in November 2001, about two months before she died.Roberson had been a single father caring for Nikki after her mother lost custody because of personal issues.In addition to Bentley providing false information to the hospital, which allowed Nikki to be removed from life-sustaining care, according to the latest filing, he was the judge who signed Roberson’s arrest warrant based on the “shaken baby syndrome” diagnosis and then presided over all but one proceeding in Roberson’s criminal trial.Roberson’s lawyers say Bentley’s involvement in the early stages of Roberson’s case are material to their larger claims of judicial misconduct that they say tainted his trial.“Any objective member of the public, with knowledge of the new facts, would reasonably believe that Judge Bentley had prejudged Mr. Roberson’s guilt and, animated by that presumption of guilt, improperly circumvented the law governing parental rights and the guarantees of due process and thus should have recused himself from presiding over Mr. Roberson’s criminal case to preserve the appearance of impartiality,” the court filing says. “Judge Bentley’s failure to do so caused structural error and requires a new trial.”Robert Roberson.NBC NewsBentley died in 2017. The Texas Attorney General’s Office, which is now overseeing the prosecution against Roberson, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The office of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declined to be interviewed for the “Dateline” podcast.Roberson was nearly put to death a year ago, but a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers used their legislative power to help block his execution in a last-minute maneuver.State Attorney General Ken Paxton vowed to press ahead with a execution date, and has previously said Roberson murdered his daughter by “beating her so brutally that she ultimately died.”In filings this year, Roberson’s legal team has argued that there is new evidence of his innocence and that the medical and scientific methods used to convict him of so-called shaken baby syndrome, in which a child is shaken so violently that the action causes head trauma, have since been largely discredited.His team also claims that judicial officials in Anderson County, where a jury sentenced him to death in 2003, violated Roberson’s constitutional rights.Aside from the request in front of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Roberson filed a separate plea this month with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals for a stay of execution so that he could file a new legal challenge claiming his imprisonment is illegal because of “overwhelming evidence that he was convicted using discredited ‘science.’” That appeal is also ongoing.Previous attempts to stop Roberson’s execution have been unsuccessful, including as it relates to a 2013 “junk science” law in Texas that allows prisoners to potentially challenge convictions based on advances in forensic science.While doctors and law enforcement concluded that Nikki suffered blunt-force trauma and was shaken, Roberson’s defense team says a new understanding of “shaken baby syndrome” shows that other medical conditions can be factors in a child’s death, as it believes was the case with Nikki.Dan SlepianDan Slepian is an award-winning investigative producer and a veteran of “Dateline: NBC.” Nick McElroyNick McElroy is an associate producer for NBC News’ “Dateline.”Erik OrtizErik Ortiz is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital focusing on racial injustice and social inequality.
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Sept. 23, 2025, 11:30 PM EDT / Updated Sept. 24, 2025, 4:38 AM EDTBy Jennifer Jett, Peter Guo and Jay GanglaniHONG KONG — Streets in southern China were deserted Wednesday as Typhoon Ragasa, one of the world’s strongest storms this year, slammed into the region after having carved a deadly path between the Philippines and Taiwan.At least 14 people were confirmed dead in Taiwan after floodwaters from a barrier lake surged into Guangfu township in eastern Hualien County, Taiwanese media reported early Wednesday, citing officials. At least three deaths were reported a day earlier in the Philippines, where the storm also displaced thousands of people in the north of the country.China’s National Meteorological Center said Wednesday afternoon that Ragasa had weakened from a super typhoon to a strong typhoon, but that it was still packing winds of up to 112 mph. After making landfall in southwestern Guangdong later Wednesday, it was expected to move into the Gulf of Tonkin between South China and Vietnam, the forecaster said. Authorities warned of heavy rain and strong winds across southern China.The storm earlier passed near the Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macau, where fierce winds woke residents during the night, schools and flights were canceled and many businesses were closed. Residents had been stockpiling food and other supplies, while businesses taped their windows and lined sandbags along entryways. Callan Williamson, 36, who moved to Hong Kong five years ago and works as a brand manager at a consulting firm, said Ragasa was the first major typhoon he had experienced. “I have had water coming through the kitchen window,” he said. The Hong Kong Observatory issued storm warning signal No. 10, the highest in its weather alert system, at 2:40 a.m. local time (2:40 p.m. ET Tuesday), an hour after it issued its second-highest warning signal, No. 9. At 1:20 p.m. local time (1:20 a.m. ET), the signal was lowered to No. 8, the city’s third-highest.Maximum sustained winds as high as 120 mph were recorded on the island of Lantau, home to Hong Kong’s international airport.Macau, a major gambling hub, also issued a No. 10 warning signal early Wednesday, and casinos were closed.Firefighters preparing to remove an uprooted tree after Typhoon Ragasa hit Hong Kong on Tuesday.Tommy Wang / AFP via Getty ImagesRagasa, which means “scramble” in Tagalog, brought heavy showers and major storm surge to Hong Kong, and members of the public were advised to stay indoors and stay away from the shoreline and low-lying areas. The observatory said the storm surge caused a general rise of almost 5 feet in water levels across the city.By late morning, the storm was leaving Hong Kong, a densely populated international financial hub of 7.5 million, though hurricane-force winds persisted.The Hong Kong stock exchange was open after changing its policy last year to continue trading regardless of weather conditions.Hong Kong government officials said more than 800 people had sought refuge at dozens of temporary shelters. As of 3 p.m. local time (3 a.m. ET), there were 82 reported injuries, 700 reports of fallen trees, one reported landslide and 16 reports of flooding.In one incident, huge waves crashed through the glass doors of the oceanfront Fullerton Hotel on the south side of Hong Kong Island, flooding the ground-floor lobby and sweeping people off their feet, according to videos posted on social media that were verified by NBC News. Calls to the hotel were not answered on Wednesday.Elsewhere, CCTV video showed a succession of waves bursting through the doors of a restaurant in the Tseung Kwan O neighborhood in the New Territories, sending furniture afloat. The observatory said that as of 4 p.m. local time (4 a.m. ET), the storm was centered about 130 miles west-southwest of Hong Kong. It was forecast to continue moving west at about 14 mph as it approached the west coast of China’s Guangdong province, where it was expected to make landfall.On Tuesday, mainland Chinese officials elevated the typhoon emergency response to Level III in Guangdong, the country’s most populous province at more than 125 million people, as well as in the island province of Hainan. More than 1 million people had been evacuated from Guangdong as of Tuesday afternoon, Chinese state media reported.More than 10 cities in Guangdong have suspended classes, business operations and public transport, including high-speed trains, and flights have been canceled at major regional airports including in the cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen.Officials had said Ragasa could be even more destructive than Typhoon Hato in 2017 and Typhoon Mangkhut in 2018, which caused hundreds of millions of dollars in direct economic losses to the region.Hong Kong has experienced unusually severe rainfall this year, including four black rainstorms — the city’s highest tier of heavy rain — within eight days from late July to early August. On Aug. 5, the Hong Kong Observatory recorded more than 14.5 inches of rain, the highest daily rainfall in August since records began in 1884.Jennifer JettJennifer Jett is the Asia Digital Editor for NBC News, based in Hong Kong.Peter GuoPeter Guo is an associate producer based in Hong Kong.Jay GanglaniJay Ganglani is NBC News’s 2025-26 Asia Desk Fellow. Previously he was an NBC News Asia Desk intern and a Hong Kong-based freelance journalist who has contributed to news publications such as CNN, Fortune and the South China Morning Post.Jean Lee, Matteo Moschella and Larissa Gao contributed.
October 5, 2025
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Sept. 23, 2025, 5:16 PM EDTBy Curtis Bunn and Tyler KingkadeIn 2016, Charlie Kirk wasn’t yet a household name. The young activist had co-founded Turning Point USA four years earlier to help spread conservative ideas on college campuses. But shortly after President Donald Trump’s first election, the group launched an ambitious new project — the Professor Watchlist — aimed at highlighting what it saw as left-leaning bias in higher education. The list, easily available online, now has more than 300 professor names, listed under categories like “Terror Supporter,” “LGBTQ,” “Antifa” and “Socialism.” Once dismissed by critics as a fringe culture war stunt, education experts say the list helped kick off a movement that continues today to monitor and expose perceived ideological opponents. Since Kirk’s assassination earlier this month, that movement has accelerated, with conservative activists systematically outing people in what critics have decried as a right-wing version of “cancel culture.” The backlash has led to the removal or resignation of dozens of teachers and professors who allegedly disparaged Kirk or celebrated his death online.“If you make statements that right-wing politicians don’t like, then you can lose your job. Period. That is chilling,” said Isaac Kamola, director of the American Association of University Professors’ Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, who runs a project called Faculty First Responders that helps professors who have been targeted by Turning Point or other groups. “The Professor Watchlist planted that seed.”NBC News interviewed six professors on the watchlist, added between 2016 and 2023. Some are on it for work they published and others for outspoken social media posts. Once added, they received negative messages and comments; two said it escalated to death threats.This atmosphere, which intensified as social media culture evolved, changed how students and professors interact, said Peter Lake, director of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University College of Law. The watchlist was part of a shift that made “what had been a semi-private space — the classroom — into a place where statements or discussions could get national attention,” Lake said. Knowing a stray comment could go viral stifles free speech, he added.“When you step in the classroom, you might as well be in the studio,” he said. “People are going to record what you’re saying, they may publish it, they may take it out of context, they may share it with your enemies — anything can happen now and it frequently does.”Charlie Kirk near the campus of Georgia State University in Atlanta in 2024.Yasuyoshi Chiba / AFP via Getty Images fileThose forces were at work earlier this month, for instance, when conservatives circulated a video of a Texas A&M student confronting a senior lecturer in the English department for teaching about gender identity, citing Trump’s executive order recognizing only two genders. The lecturer, who was not on the Professor Watchlist, was fired and two administrators were removed from their posts. Last week, university president Mark Welsh also resigned amid the controversy.Some conservatives argue the watchlist was a necessary antidote to left-wing bias on campus and helped counter-balance the criticism of right-wing professors. It was “part of changing the way the right engaged with higher ed,” said Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. “The problem is not with the list,” he said. “The problem is that the list was ever necessary.”Turning Point USA did not respond to multiple requests for comment.Charlie Kirk himself defended the project as “an awareness tool” in a 2018 interview with “The Opposition,” a Comedy Central TV show.“It’s not ‘Professor Blacklist’ and it’s not ‘Professor Hitlist,’” Kirk said at the time. “We’re not calling for the termination of these professors — let the schools make their own decisions.”Some professors targeted by the watchlist said it sparked a campaign of harassment against them.Shawn Schwaller, an assistant history professor at California State University, Chico, was added to the list in 2021. His profile includes a long list of allegations, including that he had disparaged conservatives. In one article Schwaller wrote, he offered a defense of protesters at a right-wing Christian event who used flash bombs and bear spray, arguing that they were responding to the “intensely violent rhetoric of a white Christian supremacist.”Schwaller said he was surprised by the response he received online once his name went public. “I hope the professor gets some lead,” one post read. Another said, “He better get a third eye behind his head because its gonna get serious for him.”Preston Mitchum, a former Georgetown Law adjunct professor, found himself on the list after writing on X, formerly Twitter, in 2017, “All white people are racists. All men are sexist. Yes, ALL cis people are transphobic. We have to unpack that. That’s the work!” Mitchum had also appeared on a Fox News panel alongside Charlie Kirk to discuss issues around race after President Trump met with Kanye West in 2018. He said he had been receiving backlash from his tweets but the vitriol increased after the segment aired.He received unwanted calls and emails, Mitchum said, including death threats. “I’m a Black, queer man. I don’t scare often,” he said. He said he finds it hypocritical that Kirk is hailed as a champion of free speech yet created a tool he believes has been used to silence people. “The entire goal is censorship, like fundamentally, the goal is to get you to stop talking,” he said.Preston Mitchum said he received death threats after appearing on the Professor Watchlist and on a panel with Charlie Kirk.Kollin BensonFor some professors, being put on the list was a badge of honor. Charles Roseman, an associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, was added after co-authoring an article on sex and gender in Scientific American in 2023. “I’m quite glad to draw their ire,” he said. “I’m glad that they disapprove of me. That’s quite the compliment.”Kirk, in a 2016 interview with Time magazine, said the list was not meant to intimidate or “make these professors feel any less secure.” “The inspiration was just to shine a light on what we feel has been an unfair balance toward left-leaning ideas and biases in our universities,” he said.In the years since its inception, the watchlist seems to have inspired other groups. Right-wing influencers like Libs of TikTok now regularly spotlight individual faculty they believe want to indoctrinate students, while conservative parent groups like Moms for Liberty have advocated for state laws limiting what can be discussed in classrooms or shared in libraries. These activists are close allies of the MAGA movement.Republican governors, such as Ron DeSantis in Florida and Greg Abbott in Texas, have also made fights over “wokeness” in colleges a core component of their legislative agendas. Death of Charlie Kirk raises questions about future of free speech in America02:00John Wesley Lowery, an expert in higher education law who advises universities on compliance with federal regulations, said it’s simpler to share details about professors today than when the watchlist was first launched. “It is so much easier to crowdsource information now,” he said. And that’s not the only change, he said, noting that past activism targeted individuals. “What we’ve seen over the last week instead is far more concerted efforts to immediately place pressure on institutions to take action.”Lake, of Stetson University, said the watchlist was a catalyst in changing the way professors work. Among professors writ large, he said, there is an “air of fatalism — do the job long enough, and you could step on a land mine and that could be it.” It’s not only professors who limit what they say in class now, he said. The same is true among students. Lake brought up Kirk’s assassination a couple times in class recently, and there was “no reaction,” he said. “They don’t want to get caught up in a whirlwind.”Curtis BunnCurtis Bunn is a reporter for NBC BLK.Tyler KingkadeTyler Kingkade is a national reporter for NBC News, based in Los Angeles.Melissa Chan and Jo Yurcaba contributed.
September 22, 2025
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