In many places throughout the world some old traditions hold steadfast, with Ireland being no exception to this phenomenon: Irish Teachta Dála (Member of Parliament) Danny Healy-Rae says that a persistent dip in a road running through his constituency in County Kerry is being caused by the presence of nearby "fairy forts", an arrangement of standing stones that, according to tradition, is associaread more
NASA has announced the creation of a new position within the space agency titled "Planetary Protection Officer" (PPO), and is currently looking for candidates suitably qualified to protect the Earth — and other planets — from possible biological contamination. The salary for this singular position will be between $124,406 to $187,000 per year, with the successful applicant being responsible for preventing the transmission of potential contamination to and from Earth by astronauts and space probes during their expeditions.
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Unknowncountry.com was hacked this morning. The site was restored within half an hour. The hack did not involve any viruses, etc., but rather a manual entry into the site’s back end and a small, almost unnoticeable change in a string of code. Our webmaster, James Beeson, managed to fix it even though he was for the most part locked out of the site by an associated exploit.
No personal information was compromised. Because Unknowncountry is a target for hackers, we do not keep your credit card information on the site. That is kept with our merchant bank on a PCI-compliant secure server. In our 20+ years of operation, we have never lost anybody’s credit card data or personal information.
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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is calling for a warm autumn in the United States, forecasting above average temperatures for August, September and October. In addition, an above average amount of rain is also forecast for portions of Alaska and the U.S. Southwest and South, with the Pacific Northwest seeing less precipitation than usual.
"You can see that across the entire United States, including Alaska, there is more of a chance that temperatures will be above normal," according to meteorologist Dan Collins, with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center-Operational Prediction Branch.
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