A sport in trouble

February 04, 2016 - Daily News Briefing

Super Bowl 50 is occurring amid growing concern about the physical toll the game is inflicting on players.

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Three Palestinians armed with automatic weapons, explosive devices, and knives killed an Israeli security officer and seriously wounded another in Jerusalem Wednesday before police shot and killed the attackers. It was one the most brazen attacks in nearly five months of near-daily Palestinian assaults, mostly stabbings, on Israeli police, soldiers, and civilians. Israel has struggled to contain the violence, despite sending troops to secure cities, expanding police powers, and toughening punishments for attackers.

Texas has a reputation for being tough on crime, but the state’s performance in 2015 shows its courts are trying to be tough on justice, too. US courts cleared a record 149 wrongful convictions in 2015, with 54 of them in Texas, according to a report released on Wednesday by the National Registry of Exonerations at the University of Michigan Law School. Texas led the pack for exonerating wrongful convictions, but New York had 17 exonerations, and Illinois had 13.

Luxembourg is serious about space, the country’s Ministry of the Economy announced Wednesday. The European country, which is smaller than the US state of Rhode Island, announced the first government initiative in Europe aimed at mining asteroids for minerals. The country says it will begin developing the legal framework necessary to extract and own minerals from space objects like asteroids. Proponents support asteroid mining as a sustainable solution to mineral mining on Earth. Not only would space minerals reduce the need for Earth’s diminishing resources, but it would also further outer space exploration.

Podcast star and convicted murderer Adnan Syed was in a Maryland appeals court Wednesday to argue for a new trial. In 1999, when he was 17, Mr. Syed was accused of strangling former girlfriend Hae Min Lee and leaving her body in a Baltimore park. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 2000. Syed’s case had been closed for years when Rabia Chaudry, a Syed family friend, brought the case to producer Sarah Koenig, a former Baltimore Sun reporter. Through a multiple series podcast, Ms. Koenig conducted interviews with suspects and witnesses associated with the case, ultimately questioning the fairness of Syed’s trial.

Controversy over a transgender Girl Scout selling cookies has led to national media discussion over the harms of bullying. Nine-year-old Stormi, who identifies as transgender and joined a local Girl Scout troop last fall, decided to sell Girl Scout cookies as part of troop activities, Buzzfeed reported. Stormi has been part of the foster child program in Illinois for three years and hoped to raise money from selling Girl Scout cookies to support foster children in the area. When a neighbor rejected her cookies, Stormi's foster mother Kim helped her open an online cookie-selling operation through the Girl Scouts' "Digital Cookie" site, where Stormi sold more than 3,000 boxes of cookies.

Ship noise in coastal habitats prevents endangered orcas from locating their prey, marine scientists conclude in a PeerJ article published Tuesday. It’s well known that commercial shipping raises the intensity of low-frequency noise underwater, interfering with the communication and feeding patterns of baleen whales such as the blue, humpback, and North Atlantic right whale species. In one case study, ship noise reduced foraging efficiency by 50 percent in Curvier's beaked whales. But a new study published Thursday suggests that ships raise underwater noise levels at medium and higher frequencies as well.

A new model from NASA shows the strange, swirling lines of plasma being shot around the sun’s magnetic field. The images and videos are hypnotizing, showing superhot plasma looping and twirling around the giant star. The plasma lines, also called coronal loops, reach from the sun’s interior to the solar atmosphere, or the corona. And while scientists know the sun’s magnetic field exists, they are still clueless as to what drives the sun’s magnetic field.

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