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November 17, 2024

What Goes Around

This weekend marks America Recycles Day, which was founded in 1997 to promote products made from recycled materials and increase participation in recycling programs. The Environmental Protection Agency has set a goal of raising the recycling rate to 50 percent by 2030, meaning half of all municipal solid waste would be recycled or composted by then, up from about 32 percent in 2018, and just 6 percent in 1960.
Explanation of microplastics, small pieces of plastic, less than 5 mm (0.2 inch) in length, that occur in the environment as a consequence of plastic pollution. Microplastic. Climate change. Earth.
What Are Microplastics and Why Are They Everywhere?
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Interview with Matthias Egger, Head of Environmental and Social Affairs at nonprofit organization The Ocean Cleanup, discussing plastic pollution in the ocean, the Great Pacific Garbage patch, river and ocean clean up, protecting ocean life including plants and animals, and human affects on the Earth.
How the Ocean Cleanup Organization Tackles Plastic Pollution
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Demonstrators hold signs during the Earth Day "March for Science" rally on the National Mall on April 22, 2017 in Washington, D.C.
Timeline: Milestones in Environmentalism
Paul Morigi/Getty Images

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The Many Different Types of Recycling, from Metal to Wastewater
The Growing Threat of Electronic Waste

Now Showing

The theater offers a little something for everyone—from lighthearted fare to serious drama—as evidenced by these disparate productions that recently opened.

Tammy Faye

A musical about the life of Tammy Faye Messner, who rose to national prominence as the wife of televangelist Jim Bakker, opened on Thursday at the Palace Theatre on Broadway. The music was written by pop star Elton John. Messner, known for her over-the-top makeup, became one of the most recognizable American religious figures of the 1980s. But it all came crashing down in 1987, when the Bakkers lost their TV ministry following a series of high-profile sex and money scandals, with Jim Bakker convicted in 1989 of having bilked followers out of $158 million.

Waiting for Godot

A production of Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot opened at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles on Thursday. The revival features Rainn Wilson (The Office) as Vladimir, one of the play’s two main characters. Waiting for Godot, published in French in 1952, was considered the first success of the Theatre of the Absurd, a drama movement heavily influenced by existentialism.

King Lear

Celebrated Shakespearean actor Kenneth Branagh brings his production of King Lear to The Shed, an off-Broadway theater in New York, for a limited 50-show engagement. The play, which officially opened on Thursday and runs through December 15, marks only the third time Branagh has appeared in a show in New York City.

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Homemade firearm. A collection of guns created through 3D printing technology; along with guns that have been modified using 3D printed parts, are seen in the National Firearm Reference Vault, which holds thousands of guns, at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) National Services Center in Martinsburg, West Virginia, September 4, 2024. handgun
Ghost gun

These firearms are assembled by the owner, either from separately bought pieces or as part of a kit, and can also be made using 3D printers.

American novelist Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., c. 1965.
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Numerous writers have recounted or drawn from their war experiences to produce great modern works.

A goliath frog (Conraua goliath), South Cameroon, Central Africa. The largest living species of frog. amphibian
Goliath frog

The world’s largest frog species can grow as long as 12.6 inches (32 cm) and weigh as much as 6.6 pounds (3 kg) or more.

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These are urban areas where numerous people perform sex acts for money or participate in sexually evocative performances.

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Science & Tech

The merger of two black holes and the gravitational waves that ripple outward as the black holes spiral toward each other. The black holes-which represent those detected by LIGO on Dec. 26, 2015-were 14 and 8 times the mass of the sun, until they merged,
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High-oblique view of the extra-tropical unnamed cyclone that merged with Hurricane Earl is featured in this image taken by an Expedition 24 crew member on the International Space Station (Sept. 2010).
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Maria Tallchief
Maria Tallchief
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Animals & Nature

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