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Most households could safely agree they like butter on their crumpets.

Kosmos 482, a failed Soviet Venus probe, is expected to make an uncontrolled reentry in mid-May after orbiting Earth for 53 years. Gizmodo reports: The lander module from an old Soviet spacecraft is expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere during the second week of May, according to Marco Langbroek, a satellite tracker based in Leiden, the Netherlands. "As this is a lander that was designed to survive passage through the Venus atmosphere, it is possible that it will survive reentry through the Earth atmosphere intact, and impact intact," Langbroek wrote in a blog update. "The risks involved are not particularly high, but not zero." Kosmos 482 launched on March 31, 1972 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome spaceport in Kazakhstan. The mission was an attempt by the Soviet space program to reach Venus, but it failed to gain enough velocity to enter a transfer trajectory toward the scorching-hot planet. A malfunction resulted in an engine burn that wasn't sufficient to reach Venus' orbit and left the spacecraft in an elliptical Earth orbit, according to NASA. The spacecraft broke apart into four different pieces, with two of the smaller fragments reentering over Ashburton, New Zealand, two days after launch. Meanwhile, two remaining pieces, believed to be the payload and the detached upper-stage engine unit, entered a higher orbit measuring 130 by 6,089 miles (210 by 9,800 kilometers). The failed mission consisted of a carrier bus and a lander probe, which together form a spherical pressure vessel weighing more than 1,000 pounds (495 kilograms). Considering its mass, "risks are similar to that of a meteorite impact," Langbroek wrote. As of now, it's hard to determine exactly when the spacecraft will reenter. Langbroek estimates that the reentry will take place on May 10, but a more precise date will get clearer as the reentry date nears.

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Fans are convinced that Jennifer Garner made a thinly-veiled dig at Blake Lively just months before the It Ends With Us legal war kicked off.

Sebastian is now maintaining a huge framework which, in his words, "could easily be reduced in size by 50%", especially because many of the methods in it are reinvented wheels that are already provided by .NET and specifically LINQ.

For example, if you want the first item in a collection, LINQ lets you call First() or FirstOrDefault() on any collection. The latter option makes handling empty collections easier. But someone decided to reinvent that wheel, and like so many reinvented wheels, it's worse.

public static LoggingRule FindFirst (this IEnumerable<LoggingRule> rules, Func<LoggingRule, bool> predicate) { foreach (LoggingRule rule in rules) { return rule; } return null; }

This function takes a list of logging rules and a function to filter the logging rules, starts a for loop to iterate over the list, and then simply returns the first element in the list, thus exiting the for loop. If the loop doesn't contain any elements, we return null.

From the signature, I'd expect this function to do filtering, but it clearly doesn't. It just returns the first element, period. And again, there's already a built-in function for that. I don't know why this is exists, but I especially dislike that it's so misleading.

There's only one positive to say about this: if you did want to reduce the size of the framework by 50%, it's easy to see where I'd start.

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M&S has launched a gorgeous floral tea dress that looks remarkably like a £245 frock from Rixo - the designer label loved by the Princess of Wales.

It was the weirdest of love triangles - a king's brother, desperately in love with a married woman. His wife doing her best to befriend the mistress.

Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, from Carlisle, Cumbria, are on trial accused of felling the 19th Century Sycamore Gap tree in an act of 'mindless vandalism'.

Harrowing new details have emerged from Gene Hackman 's wife's autopsy after she died from a rat-borne virus.

Kerry Washington left little to the imagination in a racy look while attending a star-studded event in New York on Tuesday night.

And of course – sigh – they look like women with long blonde hair

Chinese carmaker Chery has started using its own humanoid robots as sales staff in its showrooms.…

The documentary - which EssexLive has contributed to - will dive into how Gavin Plumb plotted a horrific kidnap and murder of the ITV presenter

A boss has sparked outrage after accusing a work-from-home employee of not working because he noticed he appeared offline all day.

A team of volunteers survey the breeding sites almost daily throughout the season.

Organisers advise arriving from 10am, when registration and race day activities begin, to secure a prime viewing spot.

A team of volunteers survey the breeding sites almost daily throughout the season.

NANDO'S restaurant in Braintree has applied to make changes to the existing building, aiming to offer an easier take-away system.

There could be delays for drivers during the roadworks

Reclusive star Bridget Fonda Fonda and Danny Elfman were spotted together for the first time in years-just months after she was seen without her wedding ring. The pair appeared in high spirits.

Yet more strife for server-maker sees its share price slump by 15 percent

Supermicro shares slumped 15 percent in after-hours trading as the company warned next week’s quarterly results will see it miss forecast revenue by up to $1.5 billion.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: Daily exposure to certain chemicals used to manufacture household plastics may be connected to more than 356,000 cardiovascular-related deaths in 2018 alone, a new analysis has found. These chemicals, called phthalates, are present in products around the world but have particular popularity in the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia and the Pacific -- regions that collectively bore about 75 percent of the global death total, according to the research, published on Tuesday in the Lancet eBioMedicine. Phthalates, often used in personal care products, children's toys and food packaging and processing materials, are known to disrupt hormone function and have been linked to birth defects, infertility, learning disabilities and neurological disorders. The NYU Langone Health team focused in the analysis on a kind of phthalate called di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP), which is used to make items like food containers and medical equipment softer and more flexible. Scientists have already shown that exposure to DEHP can trigger an overactive immune response in the heart's arteries, which over time can be linked to increased risk of heart attack or stroke. In the new analysis, the researchers estimated that DEHP exposure played a role in 356,238 global deaths in 2018, or nearly 13.5 percent of heart disease mortality among men and women ages 55 through 64. [...] These findings are in line with the team's previous research, which in 2021 determined that phthalates were connected to more than 50,000 premature deaths each year among older Americans -- most of whom succumbed to heart conditions. But this latest analysis is likely the first global estimate of cardiovascular mortality resulting from exposure to these environmental contaminants [...]. In a separate report from the New York Times, author Nina Agrawal highlights some of the caveats with the data. First of all, the study relies heavily on statistical modeling and assumptions, drawing from prior research that may include biases and confounding factors like diet or socioeconomic status. It also uses U.S.-based risk estimates that may not generalize globally and focuses only on one type of phthalate (DEHP). Additionally, as Agrawal points out, this is an observational study, showing correlation rather than causation. As such, more direct, long-term research is needed to clarify the true health impact of phthalate exposure.

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