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Sphinxes, movie stars and 3m books: inside Los Angeles’s beloved art deco library
Los Angeles’s central library, an art deco landmark in the city’s downtown, has marked its 100th anniversary with celebrations that drew an estimated 12,000 visitors through its halls, courtyards and rotunda. The building, which opened in 1926, remains a much-loved civic institution and continues to feature prominently in popular culture, having served as a filming…
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Supreme Court showdown looms over St Michael statue blocked from public safety building
A legal dispute in Quincy, Massachusetts, over plans to install statues of St Michael and St Florian outside a public safety building appears to be heading towards the US Supreme Court. The statues, intended to honour police officers and firefighters, have been blocked amid objections that as religious figures they are inappropriate for placement on…
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After fixing its engine problems, Rolls-Royce is turning to its next big challenge
Rolls-Royce has resolved the durability problems that plagued its Trent aircraft engines and is now pursuing government backing to re-enter the huge narrowbody jet engine market. Chief executive Tufan Erginbilgiç, who called the company a “burning platform” on arriving in 2023, invested £1bn in improving Trent reliability and expanding maintenance capacity after cracking turbine blades…
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‘Back to the Future’ Meets James Bond in the Sci-Fi Blockbuster Leaving Streaming
Men in Black 3, the 2012 sci-fi comedy blending time-travel plotting with secret-agent spectacle, is due to leave Peacock in the US, giving viewers a limited window to catch it before it disappears from the service. The film stands out for balancing a complex, mind-bending time-travel narrative with mainstream, crowd-pleasing appeal, a combination rarely achieved…
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The grueling, 630-mile road race where the only fuel is sunlight
On 19 July, dozens of teams of American high school students set off on a five-day, 630-mile road race from Fort Worth to Fort Stockton, Texas, driving cars they built themselves that run solely on solar power. The Solar Car Challenge, marking its 30th anniversary this year, tasks students with designing and constructing their own…
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I worry less about screens than about the challenges today’s teens never face
An opinion piece for Fox News argues that concern over teenagers’ screen time is overblown compared with a bigger issue: the decline of formative experiences such as summer jobs. The author highlights that the share of 16-19-year-olds holding summer jobs has fallen to near the lowest levels recorded since tracking began after the Second World…
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8 Great Crime Shows Overshadowed by ‘Breaking Bad’
Collider has published a list highlighting eight critically acclaimed crime television series that, despite their own merits, have often been overshadowed by the enduring cultural dominance of Breaking Bad. The article argues that AMC’s series, which followed chemistry teacher Walter White’s descent into the drug trade, set such a high bar for the genre that…
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How to survive being attacked by Britain’s most dangerous spider: Venomous false widows are spreading in the UK – and a single bite can trigger agonising flesh-eating infections…
False widow spiders, considered Britain’s most dangerous arachnid, are continuing to spread across the UK, with health experts warning that their bite can in rare cases trigger serious flesh-eating infections. The report highlights growing concern among medical professionals about the spider’s expanding range and the potential for bites to cause severe secondary bacterial infections if…
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US retaliates with military strikes on Iranian defense systems following attack that kills two American troops
The United States conducted military strikes on Saturday night targeting Iranian missile storage facilities, air defense systems, and surveillance infrastructure operated by the Revolutionary Guard Corps. The action was
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Facebook, Instagram and Messenger down in widespread Meta outage
Meta’s services went down for users worldwide on Sunday morning, with Facebook showing an “Account Temporarily Unavailable” error from just before 9am BST. Instagram and Messenger were hit too. Services were answering normally again when checked at 10:52 BST, around two hours later.