Here’s the finalized lineup for the third Democratic debate

Democrats aren’t letting just anyone onto their presidential debate stage anymore. Just 10 candidates qualified for September’s third debate: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Andrew Yang, and Julián Castro. Here’s the podium lineup: The 11 other candidates in the field all failed to meet a polling requirement imposed by the Democratic National Committee by the end of the day Wednesday. For the first time, this debate will feature all the qualifying candidates together on a single night: Thursday, September 12. It’s co-sponsored by and will be aired on ABC and Univision.

Candidates had to hit 2 percent in four recent polls from a specific list of organizations, and get donations from 130,000 people. By contrast, to get into the first debate, you had to hit 1 percent in three polls or get donations from 65,000 people — each threshold was lower, and you didn’t need to meet both of them. The polling threshold proved more challenging. Tom Steyer, Tulsi Gabbard, and Marianne Williamson all met the donor requirement. But Steyer fell one poll short, Gabbard fell two polls short, and Williamson fell three polls short. The rest of the candidates met neither requirement. The good news for those who narrowly missed out is that they’ll have another chance in October. The DNC is using the same qualification rules but extending the window to make the cut by another month or so. (So Steyer will still need just one more poll, Gabbard will need two, etc.)

Obria, the anti-abortion group that’s tapping into “wellness” culture, explained

Head to the clinic’s website and you’ll find a slideshow of images meant to make you feel welcome — a smiling woman in scrubs with a stethoscope around her neck, a diverse group of young people perhaps planning for their future, a college-aged patient in a flannel shirt looking anxious but hopeful. In a linked video, a young woman with a tear-stained face gazes at the camera as a warm female voice reassures her: “Sex, fertility, pregnancy, questions about your body? Those are the things we’re here to help you with.” “We’re here to listen to you,” the voice goes on. “To take every breath with you. Because your health matters to us.” The young woman takes a deep breath. She smiles in relief. This is the public face of Obria, a network of facilities in California and other states that purport to offer reproductive health care. Earlier this year, Obria received a $1.7 million federal grant through Title X, a program aimed at providing family planning services to underserved Americans. The program was designed, in part, to help people get affordable contraception like birth control pills and IUDs. But critics say Obria clinics don’t actually provide those things.

Instead, the group encourages “natural family planning,” a method of birth control that relies on tracking the monthly menstrual cycle and is generally less effective than hormonal contraception. Obria is run by an anti-abortion activist and has long been positioning itself as an anti-abortion competitor to Planned Parenthood. But instead of taking an explicitly religious or ideological tone, its public-facing materials seem calculated to court not just abortion opponents, but a wider millennial audience interested in “wellness” and “natural” remedies. The group positions itself as “holistic and anti-hormones,” Alice Huling, counsel for the Campaign for Accountability, an anti-corruption watchdog group that has produced a report on Obria, told Vox. “That is obviously something that has general appeal well beyond folks who have the same narrow view of reproductive rights and birth control access.” Now, thanks to the Trump administration, Obria’s influence is poised to grow. In addition to awarding the group a grant, the administration earlier this year gave Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health care providers an ultimatum: stop performing and referring for abortions, or give up Title X funding. Planned Parenthood decided to exit the Title X program, and now Obria is closer than ever to its goal of supplanting the group in the hearts and minds of Americans — and in the federal budget. For Obria, that means “transforming health care with a compassionate and holistic mindset.” But for reproductive-health groups and other critics, it means that patients around the country are going to get advice that’s not backed up by science, and may have more unintended pregnancies as a result.

Fracking may be a bigger climate problem than we thought

As greenhouse gases go, methane gets less attention than carbon dioxide, but it is a key contributor to climate change. Methane doesn’t stay in the atmosphere as long as CO2 and is reabsorbed into terrestrial cycles via chemical reactions within 12 years or so. But while it’s up there, it’s much more potent, trapping heat at roughly 84 times the rate of CO2. Scientists estimate that around 25 percent of current global warming traces to methane. When it comes to reducing CO2 emissions, the chain between cause and effect is frustratingly long and diffuse. Reduced emissions today won’t show up as reduced climate impacts for decades. But with methane, the chain of causation is much shorter and simpler. Reduced emissions have an almost immediate climate impact. It’s a short-term climate lever, and if the countries of the world are going to hold rising temperatures to the United Nations’ target of “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial baseline, they’re going to need all the short-term climate levers they can get. In the real world, though, the news about methane is bad and getting worse. It turns out that a mysterious recent spike in global methane levels that’s putting climate targets at risk may be coming from US oil and gas fracking. If that’s true, it’s bad news, because there’s lots more shale gas development in the pipeline and the Trump administration is expected to release a proposed rule Thursday rolling back regulations on the industry, per the New York Times. The mysterious spike in atmospheric methane may lead to America’s doorstep Global methane emissions rose steeply in the last decades of the 20th century and then leveled off. But around 2006, they started heading up again.

Why? What was the source? Scientists were baffled. (Jonathan Mingle wrote a great story for Undark on scientists’ search for answers.) There are two broad sources of methane emissions: biogenic (plant and animal-based) and fossil fuel production. The former is mainly about agriculture (cow burps, pig poop, rotting organic waste) and tropical wetlands. As for the latter, methane is leaked or deliberately “flared” (burned off) at virtually every stage of fossil fuel production and transport, a problem that is notoriously bad for fracked shale gas and tight oil. A few studies, including a major one in the journal Science in 2016, largely traced the recent spike in methane to biogenic sources, mainly because recent atmospheric methane has been “lighter,” depleted of its heavier carbon stable isotope (13C). Generally speaking, fossil fuel production produces heavier methane and biogenic sources produce lighter methane, so researchers have taken the trend as an indication that the recent spike is mostly biogenic in origin. But it was a perplexing finding, one that the Science authors characterized as “unexpected, given the recent boom in unconventional gas production and reported resurgence in coal mining and the Asian economy.” If you see a big boom in fossil fuel production happening alongside a big spike in methane, you might expect to find the two connected. In a new paper released in Biogeosciences, Robert Howarth of Cornell University has proposed a solution to the riddle. Howarth is a familiar name to those who have followed methane debates over the years. He and colleagues at Cornell have been arguing for years that natural gas methane emissions are much higher than the government estimates or the industry admits, high enough to wipe out its supposed climate advantage over coal. That is a controversial position, to say the least. (Estimates of methane leakage vary widely, but Howarth’s is at the very top end.) In his latest paper, Howarth is making a different point, springing from two facts he says previous studies have overlooked. First, 63 percent of the total increase in global natural gas production in the 21st century has come from shale gas. And second, shale gas production using modern hydrofracturing techniques tends to produce lighter methane than conventional natural gas drilling. Howarth finds that if the lighter methane of shale gas production is explicitly accounted for, “shale-gas production in North America over the past decade may have contributed more than half of all of the increased [methane] emissions from fossil fuels globally and approximately one-third of the total increased emissions from all sources globally over the past decade.” Since 89 percent of the shale gas production comes from the US (Canada produced the rest), that’s a whole lot of accelerated global warming tracing right back to America’s front door. It is worth emphasizing that this is only one paper in a very active field of research, from a controversial source, and it is sure to be debated and contested in coming years. But if it is right, or even only half right, it is bad news.

This BMW X6 is painted with the 'world's blackest black'

Can the most enigmatic of colours, black, become darker? Very much possible. In fact, it's already a reality. This is the Vantablack, touted as the "world's blackest black" by Surrey Nanosystems, a research firm specializing in nano technology that created the one of a kind shade. Here, take a look. Unlike other variations of the colour that we're used to, Vantablack is capable of absorbing "more than just visible light, and is equally-effective across a whole range of the spectrum that is invisible to the human eye." It's basically the black hole, in paint form. Vantablack has been used on masks, art installations, and now –– a BMW X6. Looking almost like a rendered image, the beastly car will be showcased at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September. It's the only car in the world to be coated with a Vantablack VBx2 paint finish.

Ben Jensen - who founded Surrey NanoSystems - revealed that automobile manufacturers have contact him to use the coating on their vehicles, but he believed the colour is not suitable for the road yet, and that the Vantablack X6 is a one-off project. "We turned down numerous requests from automobile manufacturers in the past. It took the BMW X6 and its unique, expressive design for us to entertain the idea. "I think it worked really well on the BMW X6, because of the size of the car, its distinctive shape, and how imposing it is. The BMW X6 in Vantablack looks absolutely fantastic," Jensen told Daily Mail. He added, "VBx2 with its one-percent reflectance provides just enough of a hint of shape. Add to that the contrast between the matt black surface and details such as the Iconic Glow kidney grille, the headlights and the windows - everything is just set off beautifully. "Developing a Vantablack VBx2 car paint durable enough for daily use is a huge technological challenge." But the X6's designer, Hussein Al-Attar, noted that if ever the shade becomes appropriate for commercial road use, the SUV would be the perfect for it. "BMW X6 drivers are among our most extrovert and free-spirited customers. If anyone were to opt for a Vantablack paint option, it would definitely be a BMW X6 driver." And when that happens, I hope my bank account is fat enough.

You Season 2: Release Date, Cast, and Details

In this post, we are going to talk about You season 2 release date, cast, and updates. As many of you would know that Netflix recently released a show called You on the streaming platform. Astonishingly, the show got the spotlight soon and it was one of the most talked shows. But not many people know that the show was not produced for Netflix from the beginning.
The show was made for Lifetime initially, and the first season was broadcasted on Lifetime which started broadcasting on 9 September 2018 in the US. Then Netflix released the show on 26 December 2018 for an international audience. But before even releasing the show on Lifetime, it was decided that the show will have a second season, announced on 26 July 2018.
Afterward, it was informed that the show will move to Netflix as a “Netflix Original” show, announced on 3 December 2018. The second season was also announced on You’s official Instagram page. So, when will the second season release? As we know that the show was originally renewed by Lifetime about six months ago,
I think that the production might have already started before Netflix took over. If I am right, then we can expect the show to hit the small screens in the early quarter of 2019. But if the production would have started after Netflix took over, which was a few days before, then it would take time.

Furthermore, the first season had 10 episodes, and the second season might also have the same number of episodes. Viewers have a lot of questions about the show. The second season will move to Los Angeles, and it would be interesting to see whether Joe can forget the tragedy happened in the first season. Take a look at the main cast below, from the previous season!
Updated on 5 April 2019:
We are waiting for the official details, but there are only a few details available which are reliable. Hence, we need to keep speculating as of now. Nevertheless, we do know that the second season was supposed to start filming in February 2019. Which means, the show might be under shooting phase as of now. It was announced by showrunner Sera Gamble, as she was being interviewed by NME.
I already told you that if the show would start production after Netflix acquired, then we will have to wait. Now that we know it is the case, we are expecting the show to return by the end of this year. I am expecting a Fall 2019 release date, and we will keep you updated with further details!
Updated on April 25, 2019:
The release date for the show has been speculated to be set in Fall of 2019. The show’s filming has begun in February. Usually, the show stays under filming for five to six months. After that pre-production takes one to two months.
This means that the release date of the show could be set around October 2019 at the earliest. The show could also be pushed to November, but I think that’s stretching it a bit. Regardless, we’re excited for the release of the show, and we think we might get a trailer by September 2019.