On the first day nightclubs, movie theaters and other arts organizations hurt by the pandemic could apply for $16 billion in federal aid, the system malfunctioned. No applications got through. As the government prepared on Thursday to start taking applications for a $16 billion relief fund for music clubs, theaters and other live event businesses, thousands of desperate applicants waited eagerly to submit their paperwork right at noon, when the system was scheduled to open. And then they waited. And waited. Nearly four hours later, the system was still not working at all, sending applicants into spasms of anxiety. “This is an absolute disaster,” Eric Sosa, the owner of C’mon Everybody, a club in Brooklyn, tweeted at the agency. Shortly after 4 p.m., the Small Business Administration — which runs the initiative, the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program — abandoned its effort to salvage the broken system and shut down it down for the day. No applications were processed. “Technical issues arose despite multiple successful tests of the application process,” Andrea Roebker, an agency spokeswoman, said in a written statement. After discussions with the vendors that built the system, the agency decided “to shut down the portal to ensure fair and equal access once reopened, since this is first-come, first-serve,” Ms. Roebker said. “This decision was not made lightly as we understand the need to get relief quickly to this hard-hit industry.”

Prince Philip, the Queen's husband of 73 years, had recently spent time in hospital with an infection. In a statement shortly after midday, the palace said: "His Royal Highness passed away peacefully this morning at Windsor Castle." The duke, who was the longest-serving consort in British history, had returned to Windsor Castle on 16 March after spending a month in hospital. Boris Johnson said he "inspired the lives of countless young people". The palace said further announcements would be made "in due course". "The Royal Family join with people around the world in mourning his loss," the statement added.

Four people recently died after taking Russia's Sputnik V anti-corona jab in previously unreported cases, which are being taken "seriously" by the EU regulator, the European Medicines Agency. Six other Russians also had medical complications after taking the vaccine, according to internal case files from RosPotrebNadzor, a Russian body responsible for administering vaccinations, seen by EUobserver Three of the deceased were women aged 51, 69, and 74. The fourth one was not identified in the leaked files. The deaths were heart, lung, or blood-sugar related and might or might not have been caused by Sputnik V, the dossier of Russian documents indicated.

Norway’s prime minister, Erna Solberg, was fined 20,000 kroner ($2,350) for breaking her own government’s Covid restrictions in connection with a party celebrating her 60th birthday. The circumstances wouldn’t normally trigger a fine, but police suggested the country’s prime minister should be held to a higher standard. “Even though the law is the same for everyone, not everyone is the same,” Ole Saeverud of the south-east district police force, told reporters in Oslo on Friday.

“There must have been two ‘out-of-Africa’ dispersals of early Homo: the first is documented by the fossil evidence from the site of Dmanisi in today’s Georgia” about 2 million years ago, the researchers said in their email. “These Homo populations had primitive brains. The second dispersal is documented by the fossils from Java; these populations had modern brains.”

Stone tools and other artefacts common to the Initial Upper Palaeolithic — and distinct from typical Neanderthal and later human toolkits — could be a product of cultural exchanges or even mixed populations, she says. “We really want to better understand what happened, what was the historical process and how peaceful were those encounters.”

A 66-year-old Ohio woman who lost her home to foreclosure allegedly turned around and burned it down a day after a health care company purchased it, according to local reports.

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She grew up in Hungary, daughter of a butcher. She decided she wanted to be a scientist, although she had never met one. She moved to the United States in her 20s, but for decades never found a permanent position, instead clinging to the fringes of academia. Now Katalin Kariko, 66, known to colleagues as Kati, has emerged as one of the heroes of Covid-19 vaccine development. Her work, with her close collaborator, Dr. Drew Weissman of the University of Pennsylvania, laid the foundation for the stunningly successful vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. For her entire career, Dr. Kariko has focused on messenger RNA, or mRNA — the genetic script that carries DNA instructions to each cell’s protein-making machinery. She was convinced mRNA could be used to instruct cells to make their own medicines, including vaccines. But for many years her career at the University of Pennsylvania was fragile. She migrated from lab to lab, relying on one senior scientist after another to take her in. She never made more than $60,000 a year.

In two late-night Venmo transactions in May 2018, Rep. Matt Gaetz sent his friend, the accused sex trafficker Joel Greenberg, $900. The next morning, over the course of eight minutes, Greenberg used the same app to send three young women varying sums of money. In total, the transactions amounted to $900. The memo field for the first of Gaetz’s transactions to Greenberg was titled “Test.” In the second, the Florida GOP congressman wrote “hit up ___.” But instead of a blank, Gaetz wrote a nickname for one of the recipients. (The Daily Beast is not sharing that nickname because the teenager had only turned 18 less than six months before.) When Greenberg then made his Venmo payments to these three young women, he described the money as being for “Tuition,” “School,” and “School.”

Community members say they're ready to buy an entire mall — and have raised $28 million so far to do so.

Proud Boy figures control a web of limited liability companies hawking protein supplements, FAFO merchandise, and $200 bullhorns.

Brian Robson wants to find the two Irishmen who helped stuff him into a wooden crate in 1965 and ship him from Australia back to the U.K.

Recutting The Crap: The story of one fan's quest to pluck victory from the final Clash LP’s jaws of defeat

The coronavirus pandemic halted most jury trials of patent disputes as courts closed across the country -- except in Texas, where socially distanced juries have churned out a series of multimillion-dollar verdicts over the past year.

“We used the term ‘paper bottle’ to explain the role of the paper label surrounding the bottle,” Innisfree said in a statement. “We overlooked the possibility that the naming could mislead people to think the whole packaging is made of paper. We apologize for failing to deliver information in a precise way,” the brand said.

Instead of having his reputation reinstated with the Trump pardon, Arpaio was met with a fierce backlash. “I’ve got two new titles now,” Arpaio told us weeks after he was pardoned. “‘The disgraced sheriff,’ that’s everywhere, ‘disgraced sheriff.’ And the other one is ‘racist.’ … I lost my ‘America’s toughest sheriff’ title.”

The event will feature Texas congressman Louie Gohmert and the chair of the Texas GOP, as well as several QAnon “celebrities.”

The investigation into the grounding of a massive container ship that blocked access to the Suez Canal for almost a week has turned to the black box aboard the Ever Given. Osama Rabie, chairman of the Suez Canal Authority, said an analysis of the ship's data is underway and should provide crucial details surrounding the grounding. An initial report on the costly accident could be released this week, he said. Rabie also repeated his claim that the grounding cost his agency and Egypt $1 billion. That does not include losses faced by owners of more than 400 ships delayed by the blockage or the losses to owners of cargo on those ships. The blockage held up an estimated $400 million per hour in international trade, according to the German insurer Allianz. The Ever Given is docked in a canal holding lake while the investigation takes place. Rabie suggested that failure of the ship's owners to reach an accord on damages could trigger court proceedings and delay for a year or more release of the cargo – almost 20,000, 20-foot long containers carrying goods valued at more than $3 billion.

Scientists have come up with a natural cabbage-based alternative to artificial blue food colouring and used it to make blue ice cream and other foods