Jessica Stiehm Editor-In-Chief President Trump’s inauguration was met with mixed reviews amongst the American public but one thing people on both sides of the political divide can agree on is that he has certainly hit the ground running. Trump has not even been in office for a month, but has dominated the headlines with an array of plans to make America great again. Most notably would be the ninety-day immigration ban directed at seven counties in the Middle East and its surrounding areas. Additionally, the new president's actions include the implementation of a 120-day ban on all refugees, no matter country of origin. Because the banned countries are predominantly Muslim, critics have accused Trump of blatant Islamophobia, despite the president claiming it an act of extreme vetting to guard against potential terrorists. Refugees coming from Syria were banned indefinitely. Thousands protested. In response to this executive action... Jake Gibson Staff Writer Love It or List It is a hit T.V show on the HGTV network. On Feb. 6, nobody expected to see none other than Ken Nagel on HGTV. Ken Nagel is an AP Environmental Science teacher and a marine ecology teacher at Apex High school. I sat down for an interview with Mr. Nagel. Bryce Cullen Staff Writer Are the days of flying cars coming sooner than we think? With the right effort they might just be. Uber has just recently teams up with an advanced aircraft engineer by the name of Mark Moore. Moore has spent the past three decades of his life working with NASA. He has served as chief technologist of on-demand mobility at Langley Research Center; he is testing the likely hood of being able to invent a Vertical Take-off, (VTOL). According to Bloomberg Technology, Uber’s head of product, Nikhil Goel stated, “Uber continues to see its role as a catalyst of the growing developing VTOL ecosystem,” They are so confident in the VTOL system they said these “flying cars” have the capability of taking someone from San Francisco to San Jose in fifteen minutes. On a normal day when someone takes a car, the trek takes around two hours. But if they are able to make VTOL cars a reality, it would change the way travel, work, and even live. However this is not their first attempt in quick easy aerial transportation; Uber once offered a helicopter service. This service was able to bring passengers from New York City to the Hamptons on Long Island or vice versa. Although this does not mean it was perfect, these services were often very expensive and temporary marketing gimmicks. This is how the VTOL planes fall into place, since they are much cheaper to operate. That leaves us with the fact Flying Cars are looking to be a thing of the not-so-distant future. Jake Gibson Staff Writer On Feb. 1, Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak at the University of California. However, the event was canceled after violent rioting, involving over 1,500 students, broke out. Milo Yiannopoulos is a thirty-three year old gay, Catholic, right-wing conservative, self-made millionaire and drop-out of Cambridge University. Milo is a Senior editor at Breitbart with his own tour known as “Dangerous.” In Milo’s tour, he travels to different Universities discussing Feminism, Muslim rights, and wide variety of other issues. Milo refers to himself as a troll, in an ABC interview with Terry Moran. Jake Gibson Staff Writer “Can you hear me?” is the newest telephone scam and is causing a lot of stir-up all across the nation. The scam has been reported in New York, Idaho, Florida, Wisconsin, Virginia and more states to come. The scammer will first ask “Can you hear me?” Unsuspecting callers will then answer “yes.” Once the scammer has your recording of your voice saying “yes”, they will generally then say you have agreed to purchase some sort of product. If you refuse, they will threaten legal charges. In some cases, the scammer will say, “Sorry, my headset must have fallen off.” Directly after, they will hang up. If you get one of these calls the best thing to do is hang up. However, be aware that the other end is not a real caller. If a caller asks, “Are you a robot?” the scammer will laugh and say, “I’m a real person.” The majority of these calls are from a sales department, consumer department, or other type sales pitch. The tricky part is that the caller I.D. is shown from the same area. Patrick LaLiberte Staff Writer The hands on the symbolic “Doomsday Clock” are now the closest they have been to midnight in over sixty years. After being pushed thirty seconds ahead, the clock now stands at two minutes and thirty seconds to midnight (midnight being the end of the world). The Doomsday Clock was made in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to show how close the world was to ending by an apocalypse of some kind. It had originally been created to warn people how close the world was to nuclear war; however the clock began to stray farther and farther from midnight as the years went on until just recently. The clock has not been as close to midnight than it is right now since 1953, when the clock was set at just two minutes to midnight due to Cold War tensions. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has stated that a number of factors has contributed to the Doomsday Clock being moved closer to midnight, including the recent inauguration of President Donald Trump. Bulletin executive director and publisher, Dr. Rachel Bronson, also claimed that concerns with the heightened tensions between the United States and Russia, which altogether possess about ninety percent of the entire world’s nuclear weapons, influenced their decision to move the clock thirty seconds ahead. Other reasons mentioned for the Doomsday Clock being set ahead are the lack of progress in fighting climate change and recent innovations in artificial intelligence and biology. Despite the Doomsday Clock being moved so close to midnight, the end of the world does not seem to be as close as the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists believe it is. Tensions of world-ending nuclear war were much higher in the 1950s than they are right now, and Donald Trump’s presidency and artificial intelligence does not ensure the end of the world is near. It seems like the world is still the same as it was before the clock changed, but only time will tell if the world really is that close to Doomsday. Jessica Dorcelien Editor-in-Chief President Donald J. Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by almost 2.9 million votes. Since the publicity of these voting discrepancies, Trump has claimed that a whopping three to five millions voters had voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election. This new allegation, according to major news source CNN, is said to have no statistical backing and has the potential to “erode the President’s credibility.” The Constitution includes the establishment of the Electoral College, a process for electing the next President and Vice-President of the United States. Considered a compromise between a vote in Congress and a popular vote of qualified citizens, the Electoral College consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes grants America its next President and Vice-President. But we, as American citizens, do not vote directly for the President; rather, we vote for a group of electors who pledge to vote for our candidate. Our Founding Fathers thought that a direct vote would be “too chaotic and prone to error.” Yet, a major recurring problem with the process is that the candidate who wins the presidency does not necessarily win the popular vote, meaning they may not have majority of Americans voting in their favor, as in the cases of our 19th, 23rd, 43rd, and now our 45th president, Donald J. Trump. According to many public news sources and officials, “Trump is [still] on a quest to prove his legitimacy.” Patrick LaLiberte Staff Writer For the first time ever, a bumblebee species in the United States is on the endangered species list. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made the announcement that the rusty patch bumblebee is officially an endangered species on Tuesday Jan. 10. There has been a massive drop in the population of bumblebees in the last twenty years, as the bumblebee population has dropped a staggering 87% percent since the late 1990's. Some of the main reasons for the rapid population loss are climate change, pesticide overuse, and habitat loss. Most people do not really care about insect and bug species, but most people do not realize how big of an impact bees have on their lives. Not only do bees pollinate 75% of all flowering plants, but it is also believed that one out of every three bites of food that a person eats is a result of pollinators like bees. Basically if bees go extinct, many types of food would go down with them. There are many things that everybody can do to help prevent the extinction of bumblebees. Some of these things include avoiding or limiting pesticide use, planting native flowers, and leaving grass and garden plants uncut after summer to provide habitat for overwintering bees. Bees are responsible for pollinating a lot of our food, so trying to help save the bees is kind of a big deal. Bumblebees are one of the most important pollinators of fruits like blueberries and cranberries and is one of the only insects to pollinate tomatoes. Unless you want to risk losing some of your favorite foods forever, I recommend helping save the bumblebees. Amanda Dybal Staff Writer Coral reefs are a huge attraction to many. The beautiful under the sea attractions are located all over the earth and are homes to many creatures. The massive ecosystems are slowly being destroyed by the constant over fishing that is effecting the sustainability of the environment. Blast fishing also destroys the reefs. Blast fishing is when you explosives to stun or kill many fish at once. This illegal act not only kills the fish, but it kills the reefs around them. Water pollution is also killing many of the reefs. Oil spills, fertilizers, human and animal waste harm the reef when they get in the water. These pollinations can change the chemical makeup of the water as well as block sunlight from all of the coral. Patrick LaLiberte Staff Writer Recently conducted studies show that a small adhesive sensor can find out quite a bit about your body based on your perspiration. The sensor can even send the information gathered from your sweat wirelessly to your smartphone. This sensor could potentially become the easiest way access someone’s health information in the near future, maybe even replacing blood tests. Sweat is obviously much easier to get than blood, which makes it very possible that these sensors could soon be used as an alternative to blood tests. Sweat can be used for a number of things including diagnosing diseases and uncovering drug use. Perspiration can be used for these things because it is a chemical full of molecules ranging from electrically charged ions to more complex proteins that can help show what is happening inside of a human body. |
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