two explosions take place at Texas chemical plant

Two explosions have taken place at a chemical plant in Crosby, Texas, that lost power due to flooding caused by tropical storm Harvey.

A sheriff’s deputy was taken to hospital after inhaling chemical fumes, and nine others have driven themselves to hospital as a precaution. The plant makes organic peroxides used in the production of plastic resins, polystyrene, paints and other products.

Arkema, the industrial chemical manufacturer that runs the plant, said it was notified at approximately 2am by the Harris County Emergency Operations Center of two explosions and black smoke.

“Organic peroxides are extremely flammable and, as agreed with public officials, the best course of action is to let the fire burn itself out,” the company said.

It Was an Uneasy Time for Immigrants in Texas. Then the Rains Came.

This has been a harrowing year for the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who have put down stakes in Houston.

Stepped-up enforcement of immigration measures put many on edge over deportations, while Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas signed one of the nation’s most punitive laws against cities that do not cooperate with federal immigration authorities. President Trump has amplified his harsh line on illegal immigration and renewed his promise to build a border wall.

Meet the realistic sex doll who's making hundreds of men in Ireland leave home for good sex (Photos)

Following the increasing demands for robots in some part of the country, an Irish brothel has claimed that they are now welcoming over hundreds of new customers after they began renting it out.

The Dublin establishment made headlines last month after advertising its lifelike sex doll for a reported €100-an-hour.

The robot, dubbed Passion Dolly, has been described as “Ireland’s most realistic sex doll” and was shipped here from the US, 

PHOTOS: Rare triceratops fossil found in Colorado at construction site

Colorado was once a hotbed of dinosaur activity. Thousands of species utilized Colorado's ever-changing landscapes millions of years ago, and today, we continue to find their remains. 

City of Thornton officials say they stumbled upon a rare find while breaking ground on a new fire and police substation.

According to Joe Sertich, curator of dinosaurs at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the find has been identified as a likely triceratops skull.

"Dinosaurs from the Denver area have been known for about 150 years, but most of Denver is covered by parking lots or houses, shopping malls, and so it's pretty unusual to get down to the original rock layers that Denver sits on," Sertich said. "And so whenever a construction site like this gets down to the right level, like it did here in Thornton, rocks that pre-date the extinction of dinosaurs, right before the dinosaurs go extinct, you have things like T-Rex and triceratops walking around the landscape, and so this construction site hit the right spot at the right time."

Storm Harvey Updates: Storm’s Wrath Shifts After Second Landfall (As the sun emerged)

As the sun emerged and water began to recede in parts of flood-ravaged Houston, Tropical Storm Harvey shifted its wrath to the Beaumont-Port Arthur area of Texas, hitting the region Tuesday and Wednesday with record-breaking rainfall and devastating floods.

“Our whole city is underwater right now but we are coming!” Port Arthur’s mayor, Derrick Freeman, said in a Facebook messageovernight, as desperate residents sent out calls for help on social media.

Water filled homes and submerged roads, evacuees crowded shelters, local officials urged people who needed rescue to hang sheets or towels from windows, forecasters warned that the storm could spawn tornadoes, and the Louisiana State Police closed Interstate 10 heading toward Beaumont, just a few miles from the state line. The rain was expected to continue until Friday.

South Beach's most infamous hotel: Inside the Versace Mansion

The world-famous Ocean Drive is one of the most photographed stretches of Miami Beach.

But, with its neon lights and sidewalk cafes serving beer-garitas for two, it's not known for being a high-end destination.

The exception, nestled amid low-rise Art Deco hotels, with streams of tourists strolling past, is the Villa Casa Casuarina -- better known as the Versace Mansion.

What many of those selfie-snapping tourists outside may not realize is that the former home of late fashion designer Gianni Versace isn't a museum or private home, but a hotel.

And it's a hotel where guests can sleep in what was Versace's bedroom. Or in the bedroom of his sister Donatella. Or perhaps the suite where Madonna used to stay when she visited Versace in the '90s and helped put the Miami Beach neighborhood of South Beach on the national scene.

If a $1,000-plus-a-night hotel room is out of reach, members of the public can indulge in the villa's Baroque grandeur with a dinner reservation at Gianni's, and an aperitif in the intimate, clubby Onyx Bar, in the space that used to be Versace's kitchen.     

A Game You Can Control With Your Mind

When you pull the headset over your eyes and the game begins, you are transported to a tiny room with white walls. Your task is to break out of the room, but you cannot use your hands. There is no joystick or game pad. You must use your thoughts
You turn toward a ball on the floor, and your brain sends a command to pick it up. With another thought, you send the ball crashing into a mirror, breaking the glass and revealing a few numbers scribbled on a wall. You mentally type those numbers into a large keypad by the door. And you are out.

Designed by Neurable, a small start-up founded by Ramses Alcaide, an electrical engineer and neuroscientist, the game offers what you might call a computer mouse for the mind, a way of selecting items in a virtual world with your thoughts.

Incorporating a headset with virtual reality goggles and sensors that can read your brain waves, this prototype is a few years from the market. And it is limited in what it can do. You cannot select an object with your mind unless you first look in its general direction, narrowing the number of items you may be considering.

Intercourse isn't everything for most women, says study -- try 'outercourse'

Many of us equate "sex" with "intercourse" and use those words interchangeably. Yet highly satisfying sex doesn't have to be limited to penetration -- and doesn't even have to include it at all

According to a recent study, many women report that they require clitoral stimulation to have an orgasm.

For the study, Debby Herbenick, director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University and a research fellow and sexual health educator at the Kinsey Institute, and her colleagues assessed data from 1,055 women ages 18 to 94 who answered a detailed online survey about their sex lives.

Tropical storm Harvey displaces 30,000 in Texas

More than 30,000 people are expected to be placed in temporary shelters in the US state of Texas due to widespread flooding caused by Tropical Storm Harvey, US officials said, with more rain expected in the coming days.

Brock Long, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said on Monday that 50 counties in Texas are affected by the floods, which were brought about by an estimated six months-worth of rain falling in the last three days alone.

"We have not seen an event like this. You could not draw this forecast up, you could not dream this forecast up," Long said.

Earlier, Texas Governor Greg Abbott deployed an additional 1,000 National Guard troops, on top of the 3,000 already sent in the flood-stricken state, which is the size of France, Belgium and Switzerland combined.

Texas officials said Monday that six more people are feared to have died in the Houston area as a result of the storm and flooding.

Houston inundated by water as Harvey pummels Texas

Around 13 million people are under flood watches and warnings stretching from Corpus Christi to New Orleans as the remnants of Hurricane Harvey menace drenched Texas and Louisiana.

"Catastrophic and life-threatening flooding" continues in southeastern Texas, where bands of storm have been repeatedly pummeling the same areas.

Over the next few days, Tropical Storm Harvey is forecast to head back into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will pick up moisture before moving back over Galveston and into Houston again, CNN meteorologist Karen Maginnis says, meaning at least four more days of rain.            

Floyd Mayweather retires with perfect record by stopping Conor McGregor in mismatch

Conor McGregor was eventually left bloodied and beaten by Floyd Mayweather Jr in Las Vegas but he proved his point by providing the now 50-0 all-time great with a few moments of panic, writes Declan Taylor.

This fight was described in the build-up as everything between a circus and the biggest event in combat sports history. In many ways it was both.

And what it was, without question, was entertainment, as McGregor, the mixed martial artist turned pure pugilist befuddled his experienced foe with an unorthodox style and switch hitting.

The Honor of Boxing Is at Stake

Everyone, or almost everyone, wants to be a tough guy. Americans are infinitely interested in the question of who can kick whose butt.

As a kid growing up on the New Jersey shore, I was often involved in heated debates as to who was my school’s biggest badass. Even though there was an automatic three-day suspension for fighting, this involuntary vacation was well worth the price to defend your status as someone not to be trifled with. It was a matter of honor; you had to throw hands with anyone who challenged you.

With one exception. It was not considered dishonorable to excuse yourself from a stairwell battle with a boxer. Back then, boxing was considered the supreme martial art. No one messed with boxers. That is precisely why I took up the sport.

Mike Tyson called himself “the baddest man on the planet,” and in his prime most everyone believed him. They believed that mano-a-mano, no judo moves or karate chops could defend against his superhero-like powers of pugilistic destruction.

North Korea fires three missiles into sea

North Korea has fired three short-range ballistic missiles, the US military says.

They were launched from a site in the North Korean province of Gangwon and flew for about 250km (150 miles), officials in South Korea said.

Since firing an intercontinental ballistic weapon last month, Pyongyang has threatened to aim missiles at the US Pacific territory of Guam.

Catastrophic Hurricane Harvey makes landfall in Texas

Hurricane Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 storm in Texas late Friday, bringing with it 130-mph winds and unleashing flash floods, storm surges and up to three feet of rain.

Harvey is the first major hurricane — classified as Category 3 or above — to hit the USA since Hurricane Wilma in 2005.

"This is going to be a very major disaster," said Gov. Greg Abbott, who declared a State of Disaster for 30 counties and requested 700 National Guard members to be activated.  Abbott announced late Friday that federal authorities granted his request for emergency disaster relief associated with the expected damage from Harvey.

He warned of record-setting flooding in multiple regions of the state and urged people to get out of harm's way. “You don’t want to put yourself in a situation where you could be subject to a search and rescue.”

Some forecasts are calling for as much as a mind-boggling 60 inches (that's five feet) of rain from Harvey.

 

NEW: #Harvey continues to intensify and is now a category 4 #hurricanewith maximum sustained winds of 130 mph. https://t.co/tW4KeGdBFbpic.twitter.com/7CkJkuafTb

— NHC Atlantic Ops (@NHC_Atlantic) August 25, 2017

As many as 1.25 million Texans could lose power from the storm, according to forecast models at Texas A&M University.

With some 700,000 people living in the hurricane warning zone — roughly half of them around Corpus Christi — traffic backups tied up heavily traveled roads such as Interstate 37 as people move toward San Antonio and other inland locations.

Fueled by the warm Gulf waters, Harvey jumped within hours from a Category 2 to Category 4 hurricane on Friday. 

Five ways to cope with migraine

Preventive therapies and treatments to manage severe migraine attacks range from common over-the-counter painkillers to complementary medicine approaches, such as acupuncture.Migraines are not just your average headaches. They can be debilitating, come unexpectedly, and be accompanied by a varied range of upsetting effects, such as extreme nausea, cognitive impairment, and eyesight disturbances. We have investigated the best ways of dealing with them.

According to recent reports, migraine is the seventh leading cause of "years spent with disability" worldwide.

Migraines are severe headache attacks that can last for between 4 and 72 hours. They are often accompanied by severe nausea and vomiting, acute sensitivity to light and sounds, and, in some cases, by temporary cognitive impairment and allodynia, which is when normal touch is felt as painful.

Individuals can start experiencing migraines from childhood, and their prevalence increases well into adulthood, until age 35 to 39. Migraines are up to three times more common in women than they are in men, and the attacks also last longer in women.

Multiple studies link chronic migraine with a decreased quality of life and disrupted activity levels. What, then, are the options of prevention and treatment available to people who face migraines? Here is a list of the five most cited approaches.