Spanish riot police clashed with Catalan voters in Barcelona

Spanish riot police clashed with Catalan voters in Barcelona on Sunday as the controversial referendum on breaking away from Spain began.

Spanish national police began to seize ballot boxes and voting papers from Catalan polling stations, the Interior Ministry said.

An Al Jazeera correspondent at one confrontation saw several people with bleeding faces after they were beaten by security forces. Some people who attempted to vote and fought with riot police were taken away in ambulances after being injured.
At another polling station, would-be voters chanted "we are people of peace" and "we are not afraid". Half a dozen armoured police vans and an ambulance stood ready nearby, the witness said.

Is coffee healthy?

go ahead and grab that cup of joe, or two, or more. Doing so may improve your health and help you live longer, suggests new research.

In a new observational study involving close to 20,000 individuals, people who consumed at least four cups of coffee daily had a 64% lower risk of early deathcompared to those never or rarely consumed coffee.

Melania Trump Tried to Donate Books to a School. Here's Why the Librarian Sent Them Back

A school librarian has kicked the First Lady out.
Just like Sam from Green Eggs and Ham before her, Boston school librarian Liz Phipps Soeiro took one look at the Dr. Seuss books Melania Trump donated to her school, and decided she "would not like them here or there."
The First Lady's office declared on Sept. 6 that Trump would donate Dr. Seuss books to schools across America that had been recognized for education excellence to celebrate National Read a Book day. Cambridgeport Elementary School was on the list, but the book slinger in charge there took issue with the gesture for two reasons — she didn't need free books, and they weren't right.

A Teacher Vanishes Again. This Time, in the Virgin Islands.

On Sept. 14, one week after Hurricane Irma swept through the Caribbean, a 32-year-old teacher named Hannah Upp left her apartment on St. Thomas, in the Virgin Islands, to go for a morning swim at a nearby beach. According to a note she left for her friends, she then planned to go to the Virgin Islands Montessori School, where she worked as a teacher. It seemed as if she’d be home before the curfew the government had imposed in the wake of the storm.

Want to live on Mars? Elon Musk is about to unveil SpaceX's new plans

Get ready for the next phase of Elon Musk's most fantastical idea.

The eccentric tech mogul is scheduled to appear Friday at the 2017 International Astronautical Congress in Australia, where he's expected to unveil a broad update to SpaceX's plans to colonize Mars.

It was one year ago at the same conference that Musk laid out the first blueprint.

Here's a quick recap of that plan:

Billboard calling for Trump's impeachment goes up in California

Drivers crossing the Bay Bridge from Oakland to San Francisco witnessed an in-your-face political statement Monday morning.

CBS San Francisco reports a billboard that calls for the impeachment of President Trump was constructed along the roadway.

The digital ad bears a giant photo of a brooding Mr. Trump with the word "Impeach" in huge yellow letters. It also has a URL for an online petition.

The billboard is the work of a group called the Courage Campaign, whose president says it's time to get the country behind the removal of Mr. Trump. They want to pressure the Republican-controlled Congress, which has shown no inclination to impeach the president.

• Melania Trump threatens lawsuit over English class billboard

"We are a grassroots organization. If we are not calling for impeachment, given what has happened, who is?" asked the organization's president and executive director, Eddie Kurtz.

Chinese company cloned Washington Post website

A lookalike of the Washington Post website emerged in China, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.

The website used the Washington Post masthead and distributed content not just from the Washington, D.C.-based newspaper, but also stories from the state news agency Xinhua, which were tagged as Washington Post copy, the report added.

The website was operated by Sun News, a Chinese client of the Washington Post News Service, the report said.

That agreement called for allowing Sun News to republish a limited number of the Washington Post's stories and did not allow Sun News to use the newspaper's brand "in the way they did," the Financial Times reported, citing Washington Post spokeswoman Kris Coratti.

She said the issue is believed to be a "simple misunderstanding about the contract," the Financial Times reported.

Sun Media told the Financial Times it had not breached its two-year contract with the U.S. news service. we could not reach Sun Media for comment.

The website has since been redesigned.

Washington Post did not immediately respond