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On Friday morning, Sidney Crosby’s face made it tough to follow both of those. By Friday afternoon, Crosby’s mysterious case of horrific glandular swelling had benched him for at least two games. By Sunday morning, a set of CDC tests confirmed the obvious — Crosby was the 13th NHL player this season diagnosed with mumps. Other cases have come and gone either unconfirmed or unpublicized. It’s worth noting that mumps is a pretty basic viral infection that, beyond swelling, causes flu-like symptoms....

The death penalty in 2021 was “defined by two competing forces: the continuing long-term erosion of capital punishment across most of the country, and extreme conduct by a dwindling number of outlier jurisdictions to continue to pursue death sentences and executions,” according to the Death Penalty Information Center’s (DPIC) year-end report. The report says few jurisdictions performed or even scheduled executions in 2021, but those that did “undertook extreme measures that demonstrated a lack of concern for due process and a cavalier inattentiveness to execution preparation....

Through two weeks, Alabama has outscored two SEC opponents by a score of 125-3 and is the front runner barreling toward a fourth straight SEC championship and berth in the College Football Playoff. BENDER: If Butch Jones goes, who replaces him? “I really don’t care how many points we’ve scored in the last four games. I only care about how many points we score in the next game,” Saban said via al....

This leads to players engaging Alak-Hul during the Lightblade strike that was released with The Witch Queen expansion. While many veteran players likely understand the significance of Alak-Hul already, for new Lights this experience was something different entirely. Alak-Hul might not be the first Lightbearer Hive that players encounter, but he is the first Lightblade and a substantially large Hive Knight in general. This stature is nothing new for Alak-Hul, but despite his monumental size, his story up through The Witch Queen is very surface level with how it’s conveyed through gameplay....

Overview The word “steroid” is a broad-ranging term used to describe any compound with a specific molecular structure—in this case, composed of four fused rings of 17 carbon atoms. The function of steroids is to either maintain the integrity of a cell’s membrane or activate a receptor on a cell’s surface to regulate how it behaves. There are many different types of steroids found in nature, broadly classified as: Sex steroids, including estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone Corticosteroids, including glucocorticoids (such as cortisol), which regulate the immune function, and mineralocorticoids (such as aldosterone), which regulate electrolyte balance Secosteroids (such as vitamin D), which help regulate numerous biological functions Neurosteroids (such as DHEA), which aid in the synthesis of male and female hormones Sterols, also known as steroid alcohols, a subgroup of steroids....

Are Minecraft Worlds Really Infinite? You may have heard that worlds in Minecraft are infinite, but the size of a world in Minecraft depends on your device’s hardware. The game sets a limit based on what your computer can handle. It allows Minecraft worlds to be as big as possible without slowing down or crashing the game. What Is the Size of a Minecraft World? Theoretically, Minecraft worlds can extend 30 million blocks in each direction from the spawn point, but most computers can’t render worlds that large....

Since the early 1980s, the characterization of video games as a form of art has been a controversial debate. Notable figures of established media acknowledge the presence of artistic elements such as story, graphic art, and music may be present in a game, yet refuse to go as far as saying that video games are a form of artwork. While video games have since been legally protected as creative works by the Supreme Court of the United States as of 2011, various critics in this debate continue to bring the legitimacy of video games as art into question....

But the underlying meaning was hard to miss. While the overall economy boomed, only a tiny elite was blessed. So Brazil rose to become one of the top 10 economies—and one of the most unequal societies—in the world. Now Brazil may need a new metaphor. One of the most reliably abysmal income gaps in the world has finally started to shrink, and it may herald a region-wide shift. Thanks to a complex cocktail of economic gains such as the end of chronic high (at times hyper-) inflation and plummeting interest rates, soaring enrollments in primary schools and, more recently, plenty of well-targeted cash handouts going directly to the poorest households (bypassing wasteful welfare bureaucracies), Brazil managed to slash the number of people living on $2 a day or less from about 36 percent in 1992 to just over 19 percent last year....

In addition, WhatsApp also announced it would give you the option to fully encrypt your message backups, making your chats unreadable by both WhatsApp and third-party cloud services. This comes at a time when government entities around the world pose a threat to the safety of users’ online data, making this a significant move by WhatsApp. This article will cover how WhatsApp’s new end-to-end encryption feature works and why it is vital for your online security....

Hot on the heels, HTC’s latest flagship smartphone; the One has turned to be a stylish and beautiful device that has brought great fortunes to the company. The Taiwanese firm not only impressed users with its the One device but also the internet search giant- Google. Certain rumors are surfacing round the corner, suggesting that Google and HTC might be in talks to release HTC One Google Edition this summer....

Accommodations: The hotel’s 82 rooms ($520 to $720) and 10 suites ($1,500 to $2,500) all have balconies, many with oceanfront views of Ipanema Beach. Even the showers in the bathrooms all look east over the Atlantic. D é cor: Wood, glass and marble dominate the eight-story building. The glossy furniture and adornments designed by Starck and other local artisans, like Sergio Rodrigues, evoke Rio’s last golden age, in the 1950s and ’60s....

On October 18, the San Jose Police Department responded to the scene at the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel, USA Today reported this week. The dispute occurred between Southwest Airlines crew members at the hotel, where they were spending the night after a flight. The airline was informed about the incident. Southwest told Newsweek on Thursday that the pilot has been placed on leave while an internal investigation is continuing, pending the result of charges filed with local authorities....

Republicans have pushed for Omar, who is Muslim, to be censured over remarks she made in a tweet last week in which she highlighted “unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban,” in reference to an exchange she had with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “I asked @SecBlinken where people are supposed to go for justice,” she tweeted. In a follow-up statement, she said hadn’t intended to make “a moral comparison between Hamas and the Taliban and the U....

The first episode of House of The Dragon premiered on HBO Max on August 21, 2022, as the rest of the episodes will be released on a weekly basis. In addition, the plot so far seems to be consistent with the vibe of the Game of Thrones universe. House of the Dragon is based on George R. R. Martin’s Fire and Blood and is set 200 years prior to the events of Game of Thrones....

RELATED: Best Fantasy Series That Started In 2022, Ranked The Targaryens and their winged beasts marked a decadent time in the history of Westeros. There is undeniably an influx of bloodthirsty, fire-breathing dragons in the House of the Dragon, and while every one of them is magnificent in its own right, the show has established a pecking order in terms of their size. Arrax Arrax was the dragon ridden by Rhaenyra Targaryen’s secondborn son, Prince Lucerys Velaryon....

The penultimate episode of House of the Dragon’s first season, “The Green Council,” has been praised as the show’s most thrilling installment to date. The spin-off’s own game of thrones is well underway as Alicent has taken control, Ser Harrold has resigned in protest, Rhaenyra and Daemon have been sentenced to exile, Aegon has been coronated, and Rhaenys has crashed the party with her dragon just to send a message....

Texas Medical Center reported data stating there were 1,350 ICU patients in its health system as of June 30, including 480 patients with COVID-19. TMC indicated there is normally a 1,330 ICU bed capacity “under non-pandemic conditions,” known as Phase 1, but also stated that “TMC leaders are actively managing, and can adjust, elective procedures to ensure sufficient capacity for COVID-19 needs.” The current number of unused beds at TMC stands at 3,080....

The Texans will likely name Romeo Crennel as the interim coach, according to ESPN’s Dan Graziano. The Texans, which won the AFC South last year, have started 2020 with an 0-4 record. This comes with high expectations with a healthy J.J. Watt on defense and a contract extension for quarterback DeShaun Watson. The team started 0-2 by facing the two best teams in the entire league—the Kansas City Chiefs and Baltimore Ravens....

In “Great Wide Open,” Gibbs decided to stay in Naktok Bay, Alaska, and leave the NCIS team after finally finding peace following his family’s death. And the police procedural aired its first episode without the mainstay character on Monday night following his decision. So, how did the show deal with his exit and what did fans think of it? Did They Replace Gibbs on the NCIS Team? One big question that came up in “Face the Strange” was whether someone would take Gibbs’ job on the team, namely newcomer FBI Agent Alden Parker (played by Gary Cole)....

Chinese Communist Party officials regularly use the killing of George Floyd and last summer’s Black Lives Matter demonstrations to chide the U.S. for calling out widely reported human rights violations against Uighur Muslims. More recently, China’s foreign ministry began politicizing the Capitol Hill riots, comparing the storming of Congress to pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. Beijing’s delivery so far has been “awkward,” said Bryce Barros, China affairs analyst at the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy....