Scientists are using a UC Santa Cruz greenhouse to re-create the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs. They want to learn why some species survived. As bad days go, it’s hard to top the one 66 million years ago when a space rock the size of Paris slammed into Earth at 45,000 mph. The heat of impact generated massive fires that annihilated everything around them and sent colossal plumes of pollutants soaring into the atmosphere. Within a day or two, toxic clouds of pulverized rock, sulfate aerosols and wildfire soot had blanketed the planet, blocking all but a tiny fraction of the sun’s energy and bringing photosynthesis to a virtual halt for the only known time in history. No event before or since has so thoroughly devastated the basic processes that make life possible here. Earth became a dark, noxious landscape of dead vegetation littered with charred carcasses of dinosaurs, pterosaurs and other creatures. By the time the Cretaceous-Paleogene, or K-Pg, extinction event was over, about three-quarters of species alive at the time of impact had disappeared forever. Eventually, the first green shoots of life emerged from the detritus. No one knows exactly when these first buds appeared, but the fossil record tells us what they were: ferns. Lots of them. The dinosaurs’ demise gets all the attention, but the survival of plants is at least as important a chapter in the story of the planet. Why did ferns thrive when almost everything else was destroyed? And what could their extraordinary hardiness tell us about how today’s ecosystems might fare after another cataclysm?

Kroger is seeking refunds of bonus overpayments to dozens of local bakery managers. It's the latest in a series of payroll mistakes at the Cincinnati-based grocery giant.

Several state lawmakers awoke on Friday morning to find their houses defaced with messages protesting the end of a state program that provided motel rooms to homeless people. Rep. Martin LaLonde (D-South Burlington) was among those targeted, South Burlington Police Chief Shawn Burke confirmed. "Isn't it nice to have a home" was scrawled across his garage door, though by mid-morning, the words were only faintly visible.

Workers say Dollar General continues to understaff its stores and pay poverty wages. The alleged violations have gotten so bad that, this week, shareholders defied the company’s board of directors and approved a proposed third-party audit of safety conditions.

CEO Chris Licht felt he was on a mission to restore the network’s reputation for serious journalism. How did it all go wrong?

No, you can’t just cover the smaller screen that shows ads.

Did the veteran newscaster give Kissinger a pass on his hundredth birthday?

A South Carolina man robbed a convenience store with a fake gun from the Nintendo game Duck Hunt earlier this week, stealing $300 in cash. As reported by Charlotte, North Carolina-based news station WBTV, David Joseph Dalesandro held up a Kwik Stop store on Tuesday evening around 5:45 p.m. According to a statement from the York County Sheriff’s Office, witnesses said that Dalesandro came into the store wearing a mask, wig, and hoodie, flashed the cashier the pistol, and demanded money.

In a reversal of its election integrity policy, YouTube will leave up content that says fraud, errors or glitches occurred in the 2020 presidential election and other U.S. elections, the company confirmed to Axios Friday. Why it matters: YouTube established the policy in December 2020, after enough states had certified the 2020 election results. Now, the company said in a statement, leaving the policy in place may have the effect of "curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm."

Kansas City Chiefs superfan ChiefsAholic made KC Crimestoppers’ Most Wanted Fugitives list after skipping an Oklahoma court hearing in March.

Two new books call ‘private equity’ what it actually is, but neither offers much hope for emancipation from our eternal hostile takeover.

In what is a first in recent memory, prosecutors are openly charging people with felonies simply for being organizers within a bail collective.

An associate professor of mathematics at Morgan State University, a public historically Black college, sent Jeffrey Epstein a bizarre and self-serving business proposal while he was in prison on sex trafficking charges, in which he argued the disgraced financier and sexual predator should give him millions of dollars to help rehabilitate his image in Black communities. Dr. Jonathan Farley, a highly credentialed mathematician with degrees from Harvard and Oxford, wrote a colorful email in which he proposed that Epstein, with whom he’d previously had a meeting over Skype, donate money for an endowed chair at Morgan State for “women in mathematics,” and a separate amount to Farley personally, to allow him to become a lecturer at Oxford. (There is no evidence that either Morgan State or Oxford signed on to this scheme; neither university responded to a request for comment.) Epstein’s donations would, Farley wrote. “Our accepting your $5 million will show the world you are not a pariah,” he wrote, “and may help you avoid a conviction like Bill Cosby.”

Farley later flew to Turkey to meet her parents and after a three-year courtship, they married at the Towson courthouse. Within two weeks of getting married, Farley said his wife's behavior completely changed. "The arguments and insults," said Farley. "And the spending was incredible. We went to places like Walmart and she would spend $400. We went to Bed Bath & Beyond and she spent $900. I don't remember how much we spent at Ikea." He says the spending continued, as well as the insults, until he hit his breaking point three months into the marriage. His wife wanted a new coat. When Farley offered to go with her to make the purchase, she got angry.

More than 600,000 Americans have lost Medicaid coverage since pandemic protections ended on April 1. And a KFF Health News analysis of state data shows the vast majority were removed from state rolls for not completing paperwork. Under normal circumstances, states review their Medicaid enrollment lists regularly to ensure every recipient qualifies for coverage. But because of a nationwide pause in those reviews during the pandemic, the health insurance program for low-income and disabled Americans kept people covered even if they no longer qualified. Now, in what’s known as the Medicaid unwinding, states are combing through rolls and deciding who stays and who goes. People who are no longer eligible or don’t complete paperwork in time will be dropped.

The Australian comedian turns curator in a show about Picasso’s complicated legacy. But it’s women artists the exhibition really shortchanges.

Last term, the two centrist senators publicly shaped nearly every piece of major legislation. They revived the act on the debt limit — but this time, they stayed behind the scenes (someone told them to shut the fuck up and they did).

Arizona officials announced Thursday the state will no longer grant certifications for new developments within the Phoenix area, as groundwater rapidly disappears amid years of water overuse and climate change-driven drought. A new study showed that the groundwater supporting the Phoenix area likely can’t meet additional development demand in the coming century, officials said at a news conference. Gov. Katie Hobbs and the state’s top water officials outlined the results of the study looking at groundwater demand within the Phoenix metro area, which is regulated by a state law that tries to ensure Arizona’s housing developments, businesses and farms are not using more groundwater than is being replaced. The study found that around 4% of the area’s demand for groundwater, close to 4.9 million acre-feet, cannot be met over the next 100 years under current conditions – a huge shortage that will have significant implications for housing developments in the coming years in the booming Phoenix metro area, which has led the nation in population growth.

Search efforts for Cameron Robbins went on for approximately three days before being called off.

Left-wing extremist Lina E.has been found guilty in a German court of leading a series of violent attacks on neo-Nazis. The sprawling trial has sparked controversy and fears of extremism driven by leftist ideology.