SpaceX has put together a bloopers video showing “How NOT to land an orbital rocket booster.” Set to John Philip Sousa’s rousing march “The Liberty Bell,” the two-minute video posted Thursday shows rockets exploding at sea and over land. The opening blast, from 2013, is even synchronized to the music. SpaceX chief Elon Musk can afford to poke fun at his early, pioneering efforts at rocket recycling, now that his private company has pulled off 16 successful booster landings. The most recent occurred last week in Florida. “We messed up …

More than 50 local and national charities have raised more than $350 million in the nearly three weeks since Hurricane Harvey struck the Texas Gulf Coast, and the disparate groups are trying to decide on priorities while some storm victims still await help. Distrust of large charities such as the American Red Cross has driven many donors to smaller, local organizations. For instance, Houston Texans football star J.J. Watt has raised more than $30 million for his foundation, an effort he started by posting appeals on social media. One donor …

The Northland area of Columbus, Ohio was booming in the 1960s and 70s. About 65 square kilometers, the area was a shopping and dining destination. Its centerpiece was the Northland Mall on Morse Road. “You couldn’t get a parking space at the mall at Christmas time,” Dave Cooper, president of the Northland Area Business Association, told Columbusalive.com. In the early 2000s, the area fell on hard times. Retailers began to desert the mall – Columbus’s oldest – for newer shopping centers and in 2002, Northland Mall closed, ushering the whole Morse Road …

President John F. Kennedy’s granddaughter and Caroline Kennedy’s daughter Tatiana Schlossberg has gotten married at the family’s Martha’s Vineyard home. The New York Times reports the 27-year-old Schlossberg married 28-year-old George Moran on Saturday with former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick officiating. The couple met in college at Yale. Schlossberg was an environmental reporter for the Times until July. Moran is a medical student at Columbia University. Schlossberg is Caroline Kennedy’s second child. She has an older sister, Rose, and a younger brother, Jack. They are President Kennedy’s only grandchildren. He …

Scientists say DNA tests on a skeleton found in a lavish Viking warrior’s grave in Sweden show the remains are those of a woman in her 30s. While bone experts had long suspected the remains belong to a woman, the idea had previously been dismissed despite other accounts supporting the existence of female Viking warriors. Swedish researchers used new methods to analyze genetic material from the 1,000-year-old bones at a Viking-era site known as Birka, near Stockholm.   Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson of Uppsala University said Monday the tests show “it is …

Cardi B. has a breakthrough hit with “Bodak Yellow (Money Moves)” and the rapper said she’s ready to follow the single’s success with an album next month.   “I have an album coming. It will be dropping in October. I’m an October baby,” Cardi B., who turns 25 on Oct. 11, said in a recent interview. “I’m a little nervous to put the project out, but I think it’s going to be pretty good.”   Cardi B. said she’s nervous because there’s “a lot of pressure on” her after the …

The introduction of post-Brexit customs checks could cost traders more than 4 billion pounds ($5.28 billion) a year, according to a think tank report released on Monday. The British government has said it plans to leave the European Union’s customs union when it leaves the bloc, and it wants to negotiate a new relationship that will ensure trade is as free of friction as possible. In its report ‘Implementing Brexit: Customs’, the Institute for Government said the government needed to offer as much certainty as possible to business and help …

The kind of breakthrough performance where it’s immediately apparent that an actor is going to be a star for years to come is a rarity in movies. Think of Emma Stone in “Easy A” or Jessica Chastain in “The Tree of Life.”   But that kind of thunderbolt moment is striking now for 21-year-old Timothee Chalamet, a New Yorker with the talent to speak multiple languages, play numerous instruments and take the festival circuit by storm with a handful of performances  — including one assured of ranking among the finest …

The former chairman of the world’s largest meatpacker, whose testimony implicated Brazil’s president in corruption, turned himself in to police Sunday after the country’s Supreme Court ordered his arrest.   Joesley Batista has avoided prosecution under a plea bargain deal in which he described how meatpacking giant JBS had bribed dozens of politicians, including President Michel Temer.   Earlier this year, Temer was charged with corruption for allegedly orchestrating a scheme in which he would get payouts totaling millions of dollars for helping JBS resolve a business issue.   Temer …

More than 500 people have died so far in a cholera epidemic that is sweeping the Democratic Republic of Congo, the World Health Organization (WHO) said. Outbreaks of the water-borne disease occur regularly in Congo, mainly due to poor sanitation and a lack of access to clean drinking water. But this year’s epidemic, which has already hit at least 10 urban areas including the capital Kinshasa, is particularly worrying as it comes as about 1.4 million people have been displaced by violence in the central Kasai region. The WHO said …

Agrico, an agricultural company in the Middle East country of Qatar, is creating fertile soil through composting.  The reason:  Most crops can’t be grown in the Qatari desert, but with this specially-blended compost, vegetables are being cultivated in greenhouses.  VOA’s Deborah Block tells us about it. … From: MeNeedIt

Landfills are probably the oldest type of waste disposal – dumping trash in a midden or pit. But when a landfill is filled up, what can a community do with the site? A 30-year project to reclaim what was once the largest landfill in the world demonstrates the possibilities. Faith Lapidus reports. … From: MeNeedIt

It’s been only 10 years since Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs presented the first iPhone. Since then, the competition with other companies has evolved into a giant battle of smartphones, each trying to outsmart and outperform the others. Samsung and LG already released their new phones for this year, so expectations for the iPhone 8 are high. VOA’s George Putic looks at what features the new version may bring. … From: MeNeedIt

The White House’s decision this week to repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), carries enormous repercussions for the nearly 800,000 beneficiaries: The undocumented young people who were brought to the United States as children. But the cost, which is difficult to quantify for a workforce faced with the real possibility of losing their job and forced to leave the country, is evident to employers, who largely view both the moral and economic implications of ending the program as intertwined. “Losing [the economic contributions of DACA recipients] is a …

The White House’s decision to repeal DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, carries enormous repercussions for the nearly 800,000 beneficiaries who arrived in the U.S. as children. Over the next two years, more than 700,000 employed recipients will find themselves without a job. And for their employers, laying off a qualified workforce carries not only moral implications, but billions in lost revenue and an overall reduction in U.S. economic growth. VOA’s Ramon Taylor reports. … From: MeNeedIt

We know that fingerprints can be lifted off various surfaces. But now technology is available to steal fingerprints from a digital photograph. VOA’s Deborah Block explains how. … From: MeNeedIt

Hugh Jackman, Lupita Nyong’o, Aaron Paul and Demi Lovato will co-host this year’s Global Citizen Festival, an annual free event held in New York’s Central Park. Performers at the Sept. 23 event include Stevie Wonder, Green Day, The Killers, The Lumineers, The Chainsmokers, Pharrell Williams, Big Sean, Andra Day and Alessia Cara. The organization announced Friday that Frieda Pinto, Connie Britton, Deborra-lee Furness, Joan Smalls, Kal Penn, Malin Akerman, Mark Cuban and others will also co-host the multi-hour event. It will air live on MSNBC and Comcast NBCUniversal. Fans can …

Real estate experts say Hurricane Irma’s winds threaten 8.5 million homes and businesses in Florida. A report from data analysis firm CoreLogic says storm surges — floodwaters driven by high winds and low pressure — may also endanger 3.5 million commercial and residential properties. Standard & Poor’s analysts say they are still adding up the costs of Hurricane Harvey, but Irma seems likely to cost even more. Researchers at Barclays Bank say hurricane claims costs might rise high enough to wipe out a year of earnings for certain insurance companies. …

This is the Top Five Countdown! We’re taking aim at the five most popular songs in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart for the week ending September 9, 2017. You’ll be glad you joined us this week because countdown history is made – this is one for the record books. Number 5: Charlie Puth “Attention” Charlie Puth rebounds a slot to fifth place with “Attention,” which tops this week’s Billboard Pop Songs chart. How did Charlie know this song was a hit? His artist & repertoire partner Mike Beard …

About 143 million Americans could be affected by a cyberattack on the credit monitoring company Equifax. The Atlanta-based company said Thursday the hackers obtained names, social security numbers, birth dates, addresses of more than 40 percent of the U.S. population. “Based on the company’s investigation, the unauthorized access occurred from mid-May through July 2017,” the company said in a statement. The company said credit card numbers were also compromised for some 209,000 U.S. consumers, as were credit dispute accounts for 182,000 people. Additionally, limited personal information was also compromised for …

Scientists have accused the alcohol industry of misleading the public over the link between alcohol and cancer. Researchers looked at the websites of 28 global organizations representing the alcohol industry, and concluded that the vast majority distort or misrepresent the evidence of an alcohol-related cancer risk. “What you might see is that certain health problems related to alcohol consumption are mentioned on the website, but cancer is missing, or specific types of cancer are missing, particularly breast cancer or colorectal cancer,” said Mark Petticrew, professor at the London School of …

At least 1.4 million people uprooted by Boko Haram’s insurgency in northeast Nigeria are living in ‘cholera hotspots,’ prey to an outbreak of the deadly disease which is sweeping through camps for the displaced, the United Nations said on Thursday. An estimated 28 people have died from cholera in the conflict-hit region, while about 837 are suspected to have been infected with the disease, including at least 145 children under the age of five, said the U.N. children’s agency (UNICEF). The outbreak was first identified last week in the Muna …

After the last space shuttle mission ended, in July 2011, the activity at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, seemed to be waning. NASA’s next launch vehicle was still in the early stages of design, so launch activity was transferred to the Russian space center in Baikonur. But this opened new opportunities for the space center, and today it is booming with private business activity. VOA’s George Putic reports. … From: MeNeedIt

U.S. congressmen have approved a bill to deploy self-driving cars and prevent states from blocking them. The U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday passed the bill that would allow automakers to obtain exemptions to deploy up to 25,000 vehicles without meeting auto safety standards in the first year. That number would increase to 100,000 vehicles annually over the next three years. Automakers and technology companies hope to begin deploying vehicles around 2020. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports. … From: MeNeedIt

A Belgium-based start-up is on its way to making the world a bit sunnier, by printing the first 3-D sunglasses out of recycled plastic. The Antwerp-based company w.r.yuma – pronounced “We are Yuma” and named after one of the sunniest places on earth – began a month-long online crowd-sourcing campaign on Kickstarter on Wednesday. After two years of prototyping and testing different materials, it promises to transform old car dashboards, soda bottles, fridges and other plastic waste into different colored shades. “It’s the icon of cool, really, and when you …

Rockets that will take Americans back to space from U.S. soil for the first time since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011 could also launch new careers in space science. Faith Lapidus reports. … From: MeNeedIt