Black holes are getting stranger — even to astronomers. They've now detected the signal from a long ago violent collision of two black holes that created a new one of a size that had never been seen before.

“It’s the biggest bang since the Big Bang observed by humanity,” said Caltech physicist Alan Weinstein, who was part of the discovery team.

Black holes are compact regions of space so densely packed that not even light can escape. Until now, astronomers only had observed them in two general sizes. There are “small” ones called stellar black holes that are formed when a star collapses and are about the size of small cities. And there are supermassive black holes that are millions, maybe billions, of times more massive than our sun and around which entire galaxies revolve.

According to astronomers' calculations, anything in between didn't quite make sense, because stars that grew too big before collapse would essentially consume themselves, leaving no black holes.

Star collapses couldn't create stellar black holes much bigger than 70 times the mass of our sun, scientists thought, according to physicist Nelson Christensen, research director of the French National Centre for Scientific Research.

Then in May 2019 two detectors picked up a signal that turned out to be the energy from two stellar black holes — each large for a stellar black hole — crashing into each other. One was 66 times the mass of our sun and the other a husky 85 times the mass of the sun.

The end result: The first ever discovered intermediate black hole, at 142 times the mass of the sun.

Lost in the collision was an enormous amount of energy in the form of a gravitational wave, a ripple in space that travels at the speed of light. It was that wave that physicists in the United States and Europe, using detectors called LIGO and Virgo, captured last year. After deciphering the signal and checking their work, scientists published the results Wednesday in Physical Review Letters and Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Because the detectors allow scientists to pick up the gravitational waves as audio signals, scientists actually heard the collision. For all the violence and drama, the signal lasted only one-tenth of a second.

“It just sounds like a thud,” Weinstein said. “It really doesn’t sound like much on a speaker.”

This crash happened about 7 billion years ago, when the universe was about half its current age, but is only being detected now because it is incredibly far away.

Black hole collisions have been observed before, but the black holes involved were smaller to begin with and even after the merger didn't grow beyond the size of typical stellar black holes.

Scientists still don't know how supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies formed, Christensen said, but this new discovery may offer a clue.

Perhaps, like playing Legos, smaller blocks combine to make bigger ones and those combine to make even bigger ones, said Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who wasn’t part of the study but said the results chart new astronomical territory.

And indeed the bigger of the two black holes involved in this crash could have been the result of an earlier merger, both Weinstein and Christensen said, further bolstering that theory.

"It’s conceivable that this pair of black holes formed entirely differently, possibly in a dense system with lots of dead stars whizzing about, which allows one black hole to capture another during a fly by," said Barnard College astronomer Janna Levin, who wasn’t part of the research and is author of the book “Black Hole Survival Guide.”

On the other hand, scientists can't quite explain how merged black holes, flying around the universe, would meet so many others to merge again and grow ever bigger. It could instead be that supermassive black holes were formed in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang.

“In astrophysics we’re always faced with surprises,” Weinstein said.

In the face of a pandemic that has hit Black Americans harder than almost any other group, while the nation continues to confront the toxic legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, two Georgia women have come together to build a community that will be a place free of oppression, “a tight-knit community for our people to just come and breathe.”

They are calling it Freedom, Georgia, and draw their inspiration from Wakanda, the fictional comic-book country that was the setting for the movie “Black Panther.”

Ashley Scott, a realtor from Stonecrest, Ga., who was driven to seek therapy by her reaction to the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, a young Black man jogging in a white neighborhood, said that after several sessions she realized that her problem was 400 years of racial oppression and trauma dating back to the establishment of slavery in North America.

“We are dealing with systemic racism,” she wrote in an op-ed for Blavity last month. “We are dealing with deep-rooted issues that will require more than protesting in the streets.”

With her friend Renee Walters, an entrepreneur and investor, she founded the Freedom Georgia Initiative, a group of 19 Black families who collectively purchased 96.71 acres of rural land in Toomsboro, a town of a few hundred people in central Georgia, with the intention of developing a self-contained Black community. The space will have small homes for vacation use and will host weddings, retreats and recreational functions, and may eventually evolve into an incorporated, self-sustaining community.

“It’s now time for us to get our friends and family together and build for ourselves,” said Walters, who serves as the president of the organization, in an interview with Yahoo News. “That's the only way we’ll be safe. And that’s the only way that this will work. We have to start bringing each other together.”

“We really just want you to come and hang out and feel safe,” she explained. “You don’t have to worry about the Karens of the world and anything like that. You just come in and have fun. We’ll have a sportsman area, like a Black sportsman area with fishing, hunting, shooting range, ATV trails. We really just want to build a tight-knit community for our people to just come and breathe.” (“Karen” is a derisive nickname for white women who assert racial privilege in an offensive manner.)

Walters acknowledges the challenges ahead, as history hasn’t always been kind to Black Americans’ aspirations to own property.

America’s first Black town dates back to 1738, near what is now known as St. Augustine, Fla. Thirty-eight fugitive slaves seeking refuge formed a town named Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose. Historian Jane Landers explained, “As news of the foundation of Mose spread through the South Carolina plantations, groups of slaves broke loose and tried to make for Florida,” causing some to call it their “first Promised Land.” In response to numerous slave revolts, the English enacted a yearlong siege of Florida 一 finally capturing Fort Mose in 1740.

More than a century after the establishment of Fort Mose, and two years after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, in direct response to the Ebenezer Creek Massacre, Union General William T. Sherman attempted to create more Black towns with his promise of 40 acres and a mule. Ultimately, Abraham Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, a Democrat considered sympathetic to former slave states, overturned Sherman’s orders by returning the land to colonizers 一 inspiring freedmen to begin buying their own land.

By 1910, Black Americans owned more than 14 million acres of land 一 more than ever before in the history of the United States — but due to the Great Migration and the racist policies that accompanied it, 90 percent of that land was lost by the 21st century.

According to ProPublica, “the leading cause of Black involuntary land loss” has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as “heirs' property.” Heirs' property is land that has been inherited without a will, making the owners “vulnerable to laws and loopholes that allow speculators and developers to acquire their property.” It makes up “more than a third of Southern black-owned land — 3.5 million acres, worth more than $28 billion.”

In order to begin reclaiming Black-owned land and generational wealth, Scott believes Black Americans must create their own social, political and economic institutions. “Amass land, develop affordable housing for yourself, build your own food systems, build manufacturing and supply chains, build your own home school communities, build your own banks and credit unions, build your own cities, build your own police departments, tax yourselves and vote in a mayor and a city council you can trust,” she wrote. “Build it from scratch! Then go get all the money the United States of America has available for government entities and get them bonds. This is how we build our new Black Wall Streets. We can do this. We can have Wakanda! We just have to build it for ourselves!”

Wakanda is both a fictitious nation whose magic remains undisturbed by colonization and a cinematic embodiment of the benefits of separation, as opposed to segregation.

Walters said Chadwick Boseman, who died last week from colon cancer and played Black Panther in the film, “passed the torch” to the Freedom Georgia Initiative.

“I feel like now it’s up to us more now than ever that we can achieve this, because we saw it in the movie and why not just create that,” she said. “I feel like that’s where he would want us to do.”

Keeping money within the Black community is also a big part of the Freedom Georgia Initiative’s push.

“Just like for Black Wall Street, their dollars circulated around 11 times before it left the community,” Walters said. “That’s just something we want to bring back. We want to encourage businesses to come and we want to circulate our dollar within the community before it leaves out to someone else. We want to make everybody in our areas wealthy.”

Black Wall Street was the nickname for the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Okla., a prosperous Black neighborhood and commercial district that was terrorized and burned in the notorious race riot of 1921.

Overall, Walters says, the Freedom Georgia Initiative has been well received and embraced by others in the town. “Every time we go to the land and in the actual city, we haven’t received any backlash,” she said. “Everyone is really nice and welcoming.”

But she adds there are a host of “internet trolls” who have nothing good to say and claim segregation on the group’s behalf, which she vehemently disagrees with.

“We’re building where we can come and be safe,” she explains. “Chinatown has these areas. ... Why is it that when we build we’re considered racist or we’re segregating ourselves? Why can’t we have our own safe haven? Every community has them.”

She added: “Everyone is welcome in Freedom, but it’s based on seeing Black people flourish.”

Just over 150 years removed from slavery, Black Americans continue to push for equity and equality within the country. The Freedom Georgia Initiative is looking to spark change.

“Every time we tried to [flourish in history], somebody tried to burn it down ... and I’m just tired of that,” Walters said. “It’s time for us to build our own.”

New York City saw another huge increase in gun crimes last month as the NYPD's chief of crime control strategies says the agency is coping with the lowest number of cops on the street in six years.

"There is too much killing," said Avie Pope, a resident of Flatbush, Brooklyn. "I'm tired of it. Every night there's guns shooting."

The city saw a 166% increase in shooting incidents in August – 242 compared to 91 in August 2019, CBS New York reports. In addition, murders are up 47% for the month, with 53 this year versus 36 in August 2019.

Every New York City borough saw an increase in shootings except Staten Island.  

"Let's stop the violence. We have grandchildren, children, daughters, sons and it's just gonna get worse if something's not done," Flatbush resident Mitchell Rapp said.

The increase comes as the NYPD has seen a dramatic drop in manpower due to a combination of $1 billion in defund-the-police budget cuts, no overtime, no new police class, and a dramatic increase in the number of police officers retiring.

"We have calculated that approximately 2,000 to 3,000, maybe even 4,000 less officers are out on the streets for any given week," said Michael LiPetri, the NYPD's chief of crime control strategies.

About a quarter of shooting incidents in August were in just five Brooklyn precincts. LiPetri said the precincts were greatly affected by the loss of overtime. "That's where the overtime was going last summer. The overtime was going to the most violent commands in New York City," LiPetri said. Mayor Bill de Blasio said he is putting his faith in community violence interrupters, known as Cure Violence groups. "We've seen stunning success in the past. We know it will take root here again. But everyone is still trying to come back from a massive disruption. We're not going to see an overnight turnaround," de Blasio said. A.T. Mitchell is with the Cure Violence group "Man Up." "It's something that we can't take personal responsibility, which is an entire precinct's stats. Our work is concentrated in very small target areas," Mitchell said. The NYPD said it is sending additional manpower to the most violent precincts and it is proud of the fact that gun arrests have increased./ CBS

After nationwide protests against police brutality in which law enforcement officers wounded or blinded protesters, state and local lawmakers and an international police association are trying to restrict the use of “less lethal” weapons that caused the injuries.

At least seven major U.S. cities and a few states have enacted or proposed limits or bans on the use of rubber bullets and other projectiles. However, some efforts for similar actions have stalled in the face of opposition from police agencies or other critics.

Additionally, clashes between law enforcement officers and protesters in Portland, Oregon, and Washington, D.C., have triggered investigations by federal inspectors general.

After the George Floyd protests, “there was this new appetite from legislators at all levels of government to look at how to better protect protesters,” said Nick Robinson, a legal adviser at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law.

Amid calls for restrictions, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, which is based in Virginia and has 31,000 members in dozens of countries, plans to review its recommended policies on pepper spray and less-lethal “impact projectiles” as well as other aspects of crowd control, said Terrence Cunningham, the organization's deputy executive director.

“It became very clear to us that we need to revise those policies” in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, he said. Some law enforcement agencies “have done a great job managing the crowds and the protests. Others could have done a better job.”

The legislation and studies come after USA TODAY and Kaiser Health News documented dozens of injuries suffered after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville. Weapons used by local police or other law enforcement agencies included sponge and bean bag projectiles as well as“pepper balls filled with chemical irritants.

At least 30 people suffered eye injuries during protests in late spring, according to a study by the American Academy of Ophthalmology and the University of California-San Francisco’s ophthalmology department. About one-third of the cases resulted in complete loss of vision in one eye, the study found.

That’s the type of permanent injury that befell Shantania Love in California.

“Peaceful protests shouldn’t end in people being blinded or shot in the head,” said Love, who permanently lost sight in her left eye in May after being shot with a less-lethal projectile in Sacramento.

Doctors at Dell Seton Medical Center at the University of Texas were so shocked by “rubber bullet” wounds in Austin this year that they documented them in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine.

“All the injuries were bad. They made a hole in somebody. They broke bones,” said Dr. Jayson Aydelotte, the hospital’s chief of trauma surgery. “We wrote this to raise awareness so communities can make their own decisions about what to do with this information.”

The police chief in Austin, Texas, said his department would no longer use bean bag rounds on crowds after the projectiles – encased birdshot fired from a shotgun – caused many of the injuries seen at the hospital.

But many other U.S. law enforcement departments continue to use less-lethal weapons when confronting crowds during protests.

Police in Rochester, N.Y., have repeatedly used pepper balls on crowds this summer, including as recently as Wednesday. Officers from the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia Police fired sting balls and tear gas after protesters threw bricks, glass and smoke grenades at them during clashes last weekend, The Washington Post reported.

There are no national standards for police use of less-lethal projectiles and no comprehensive data on their use, said Brian Higgins, a former New Jersey police chief who’s now an adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

Police department rules vary widely. In some incidents this year, police appear to have violated their own rules, which typically authorize projectiles to be fired only at dangerous people.

In July, the International Association of Chiefs of Police held a webinar on lessons for law enforcement from this year’s protests and other recent demonstrations. It drew 800 participants, Cunningham said.

“It raised more questions than we had answers to,” he said. “For some of these practices, the policies that we have are pretty old, to be honest with you, and this is a great opportunity to rethink it.”

The association’s guidelines for sponge and bean bag rounds and other impact projectiles haven't been revised since 2002. Meanwhile, the technology and tactics of less-lethal weapons have substantially changed.

The police association's review eventually could lead to a congress of police executives and union leaders that produced a consensus policy on the use of force three years ago, Cunningham said.

One message in particular needs to be repeated and made clearer, he said. Less-lethal projectiles should be used only to subdue dangerous individuals and not fired indiscriminately into crowds, as happened in several instances that USA TODAY and KHN documented.

Crowd-control policies should be updated not just because of the injuries but to adapt to new tactics used by peaceful protesters and troublemakers, law enforcement officials said. Social media has transformed mass demonstrations, enabling marchers to assemble more quickly and in greater numbers, they said, and police need to respond.

“Some crowds have gone from a peaceful protest of 30 or 40 people to 1,000 strong within an hour,” said Larry Cosme, national president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association.

Few if any of the initiatives will generate instant change, independent experts cautioned. Law enforcement agencies oppose some restrictions on less-lethal projectiles, saying the weapons are a crucial tool to control uncooperative people that stops short of using deadly force.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police makes recommendations on police use of force but law enforcement agencies set their own policies. Even the best policies – including those set in law – are just slogans unless departments have the resources to carry them out, experts said.

"I’d be very curious to know what they’re basing any changes on, other than placating people,” Charles Mesloh, a certified instructor on the use of police projectiles and a professor at Northern Michigan University, said about the association’s initiative.

“Unless someone’s willing to pay for training that would make things better, this is just another piece of paper,” he said. “There are no magic solutions.”

Reform advocates suffered a setback this week when California's legislature failed to pass a bill that would have allowed police to use tear gas and riot projectiles only against dangerous individuals and only after warning the crowd they’re part of. It would have required police agencies to report their use of less-lethal force annually to the U.S. Justice Department.

Police groups opposed the bill, especially its limits on tear gas, which the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department told legislators can “prevent the escalation of physical force” by dispersing a crowd without the use of projectiles.

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, who sponsored the bill, says she’ll reintroduce it next year. Robinson, of the International Center for Not-for-profit Law, said he expects many new measures to be proposed across the country in January, when state legislatures convene.

Another stalled effort is in Minnesota, where lawmakers did not approve a proposal that would have prohibited law enforcement agencies and peace officers from using chemical weapons and kinetic energy munitions such as plastic wax, wood, or rubber-coated projectiles on civilian populations.

At the federal government level, a preliminary version of a proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act included restrictions on less-lethal munitions. But the restrictions were cut from the proposal before it was voted on and turned down.

Washington, D.C., officials in July enacted a sweeping police reform measure that bans the use of rubber bullets or tear gas against nonviolent protesters. Less-lethal munitions and chemical spray were used to disperse a crowd in June before President Trump walked through Lafayette Square to display a Bible in front of a historic church.

San Jose’s city council is considering new controls on such weapons. In June, the Seattle city council banned the weapons outright, but a federal judge blocked the law after the Justice Department argued it would take away law enforcement’s options to “modulate” the use of force.

As part of a larger police reform measure, Colorado banned law enforcement officers from firing less-lethal projectiles indiscriminately into a crowd or aiming them at someone’s head or pelvis. Language in a Virginia bill would ban their use by all law enforcement.

In addition, inspectors general at the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security are investigating the actions of federal law enforcement officers in Portland after lawmakers raised concerns. The DOJ inspector general also is investigating federal officials’ role during protests in Washington, D.C.

Amnesty International USA in August released a wide-ranging report on the protests, chronicling what it said were 125 instances of police violence against protesters, journalists, medics and legal observers in 40 states and Washington, D.C. in May and June. The group accused police of mishandling a litany of less-lethal devices, including sting-ball grenades, rubber pellets, and sponge rounds.

The organization called for the development of national guidelines for less lethal projectiles. The group said they should be independently tested for accuracy and safety, and they should be used only in situations of “violent disorder” where “no less extreme measures are sufficient” to stop the violence.

Cosme said he’s open to starting discussions about updating the national consensus policy to include more detailed standards for less-lethal munitions. He also supports requiring testing of devices to ensure accuracy and safety.

But he said less-lethal munitions are crucial tools for crowd-control because officers can target individuals from a distance.

Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a think tank for police leadership, said the protests in recent months could offer lessons for how police handle demonstrations. “We’ll be looking at this,” he said. Nevertheless, Wexler said he does not have a concrete plan or timetable for convening reviews of what happened, given the pandemic.

“The real key question is what kind of strategies can we develop that are the most humane for cops and for the community alike?” he said. “What did we learn? What are some of the cautionary tales? “What strategies were effective, where were injuries the least for demonstrators and cops alike?”

USA TODAY

ADANA

Several of Turkey's southern provinces saw the hottest September in history, according to the country's meteorological department on Thursday.

Adana registered 45.1 degrees Celsius (113.1 degrees Fahrenheit) which is the highest temperature in the province as the previous hottest September was recorded in 1994 with 43.2 degrees Celsius (109.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the Turkish State Meteorological Service said.

The temperature in other southern provinces -- Osmaniye 45.3 C (113.5 F), Mersin 41.5 C (106.7 F) and Hatay 42.6 C (108.6 F) -- broke previous records from 1994, 1946 and 1994, respectively.

Due to the high humidity and temperature, people preferred to stay at homes.

Referring to announcement of 2019 as the second-hottest year ever recorded, Levent Kurnaz, a Turkish climate scientist, had told Anadolu Agency in January that it was not a surprise as "every year after that will be hotter than the previous year."

Mentioning scientific predictions, he went on to say that from now on, "cool years" will be defined as an exception rather than "hotter years," which means the warmer trend will continue to worsen.

On Jan. 15, NASA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and World Meteorological Organization confirmed that 2019 was the second-hottest year ever recorded./aa

GENEVA

Major global drug companies on Thursday said no matter how urgently action is needed against the novel coronavirus, they will not cut corners and rush a vaccine.

The chief executive officers (CEOs) of Eli Lilly, Gilead, Pfizer, Roche, and Merck (MSD) spoke at a virtual news conference hosted by the Swiss-based International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA).

Some said vaccines had been politicized and that they were being pressured to rush out a vaccine.

"This is most important in the area of vaccines because we are concerned about the anti-vax movement, about confidence in vaccine and deaths," said IFPMA Director General Thomas Cueni.

"We do want the agencies to fulfill the highest possible standards," said Cueni, referring to regulatory bodies such as the FDA in the US and those in other countries.

Kenneth C. Frazier, chief executive officer of Merck (MSD), said the highest quality, safety, and efficacy standards must be upheld everywhere.

"I think we all understand we have to move with urgency. But we will not sacrifice safety under any set of circumstances.

"We will not submit for approval -- that is emergency use approval or for more general approval -- any vaccine candidate before we have approval through phase three studies that allow us to make a reasonable estimate of what the safety and efficacy of that vaccine is."

Albert Bourla, the CEO of the US company Pfizer, agreed with Frazer, saying that many people are skeptical because the science has been "so much politicized."

"Many people will feel that just for political games, things will be submitted, or not submitted. And this is the worst situation society can be in," he said.

Bourla said he wanted to assure everyone the "all political pressure is irrelevant."

"We will never submit for authorization, or approval, any vaccine before we feel that it is safe and effective."/aa