# data[].attributes.body
NFL combine is stacked with talent

# data[].attributes.body
You can drive a real tank and fire a real gun in Texas

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Uvalde, Texas (CNN) - Tired of a beach vacation? Bored of yet another museum tour?

May I suggest driving and blasting a World War II-era Sherman tank?

I did just that and more, and it turned out to be an interesting break from the global tensions I cover as CNN's senior United Nations correspondent.

My CNN colleagues and I traveled to the town of Uvalde, nearly two hours out of San Antonio in southwest Texas. The story was their idea, and they were coming to shoot the video. But I also needed them to drive me there because I don't drive. (I live in New York City. Who needs it?)

I will confess that I was quite concerned I would not come back with my body intact. Why? I shot a gun in China once in 1989, and I almost fell backward holding it.

Offering wannabe commanders a fleet of tanks from all over the world to operate, Drive Tanks claims to be the only place in the world where visitors can drive real tanks and shoot real tank rounds.

It's a fantastic experience even for experienced global thrill seekers, says co-founder Todd DeGidio.

"People say, after tank driving and shooting, (that) it's 'the best thing I've ever done in my life,'" DeGidio told me.

I didn't tell him this might be worst thing I'd attempted to do, already having mulled over instructions about how to get into the tank -- never mind learning how to drive or shoot. It looks so easy in World War II movies.

Feeling out of shape, I was concerned I would slip off the tank in my business suit and formal shoe wear. Why did my team suggest this outfit? I told them they would not be named in my will.

"We haven't lost one yet!" DeGidio told me after I asked him if I would survive the ride.

I guess it helped that there wouldn't be another tank shooting at me as I roared through the course. (Guests looking for a World War II faceoff in the Battle of the Bulge can purchase an encounter with a German Leopard tank when they visit.)

The Sherman is the park's most popular tank, with everyone from Russian and Indian visitors to soccer moms booking them for birthday surprises.

I felt like it took four people to load me into the driver opening. My tank didn't see World War II combat but may have been headed to Japan when hostilities ended.

As DeGidio gave me my last-minute instructions, I still worried -- as I had for weeks -- that I didn't have a driver's license. I had only driven a car a few times in 1978.

DeGidio said I was good to go. (Only later did he concede he was worried before we set out. Of course he was!)

I sat in a raised seat, with my head poking out from the tank, with Todd talking to me via headset while he sat in another seat.

During the war, I can guarantee you a tank driver did not have CNN producer Julian Cummings hanging onto the front of the tank in a harness videotaping its occupants.

The distraction of Julian was the reason I missed an early key turn right out of the tank hanger. I was struck by how hard I had to turn the wheel to get the tank to handle curves. And I had to put a lot of pressure on the gas pedal to get it moving. The clutch? Where's the clutch? Give me a break.

This was no miniature golf course. My eyeballs almost fell out when I saw a huge cliff like drop ahead of us. I was sure the tank would roll over, and this is not how I wanted to go.

DeGidio assured me over the headsets that the tank could handle it.

We were under attack! (Sort of.) A high explosive charge went off as we plunged into a small creek, followed by another blast. Soon, I heard machine gun fire from pillbox on a hill, all part of the simulated battlefield experience.

Feeling the heat, the aching legs and a bit of fear, guests may get a minimal understanding of what servicemen went through sitting in tanks under real fire out in the open, facing more powerful Panzer unit tanks in World War II.

They could be sitting ducks, outgunned and encircled in some of the big tank encounters.

It was peacetime on the Ox Ranch, where guests pay anywhere from a few hundred dollars for machine gun shooting to over $8,000 for the whole works -- tank driving, shooting and let's add the flamethrower.

I did three tours of the course, gaining confidence as I practiced the route. Too bad I can't drive it through Times Square.

I did have one bad moment.

As DeGidio screamed for me to floor it, I came up short going up a hill. It was a scary moment as we slid backwards, and I didn't breathe properly until we came to a stop. The tank may have been short of gasoline or I had probably failed to anticipate the incline.

After driving a tank for the first time in my life, my CNN team forced me to be the triggerman on the big gun on the tank, blasting a 15-pound projectile at an old shot-up car.

In combat, the cannon on top can penetrate armor of enemy tanks, although the World War II-era German tanks were sturdier and could out blast the US Sherman tanks from a distance.

DeGidio had promised a concussive experience, and he delivered. (I wore earplugs). He made me yell "Fire in the hole!" At first nothing happened and Todd then gave this rope a little tug and we heard a "BAM!" and saw flash of flame.

Then I blasted the tank's .50-caliber automatic machine gun, the bullets spitting out in rapid fire action. (I tried to aim away from my CNN colleagues. They all survived.)

The heat of the flamethrower made me feel I was on a grill.

"Of course, it's hot," DeGidio said. "It's a flamethrower."

The legs were wobbling as we left the ranch, the sun setting in West Texas. The first tank ride of my life was finally over.

If you want to follow in my tread marks, reservations are recommended. Would-be guests should not appear on the tank course unexpectedly.

DriveTanks,1946 Road 2485, Uvalde, Texas; +1 830 351 8265

CNN's Lawrence Crook III and Julian Cummings contributed to this story.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Uvalde, Texas (CNN) - Tired of a beach vacation? Bored of yet another museum tour? May I suggest driving and blasting a World War II-era Sherman tank? I did just that and more, and it turned out to be an interesting break from the global tensions I cover as CNN's senior United Nations correspondent.

# data[].attributes.body
A North Korean envoy rejected a Malaysian autopsy finding that VX nerve agent killed Kim Jong Nam, saying Thursday the man probably died of a heart attack because he suffered from heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure. Malaysia dismissed the claim.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Subscribe Today and Save 86%

Motor Trend Magazine is the World's Automotive Authority
Get Print Subscriptions Get Digital Subscriptions
Rear seat entertainment system gets an upgrade

Rear seat entertainment system gets an upgrade

No Obligation, Fast & Simple Free New Car Quote

Ford is making it easier than ever to watch live TV from the comfort of your vehicle. With the help of SlingPlayer, the all-new 2018 Ford Expedition can stream TV shows and live sporting events on the road.

The available system, called EVO, consists of two 8-inch monitors integrated into the back of the front-seat headrests, a wireless network hotspot, and an industry-first SlingPlayer that allows users to connect to a home cable or satellite system and watch live TV.

SlingPlayer software embedded into the EVO system allows passengers to connect to their Slingbox system at home and control their cable or satellite TV. Passengers can also use the DVD player, HDMI port, USB, or the SD card reader to view additional content. Additionally, streaming video can be sent to the display screens via the system's SmartStream app on compatible iOS or Android devices.

The available Wi-Fi hotspot supports up to 10 devices at once and isn't limited to the vehicle since it has a range of up to 50 feet. The system includes two wireless headsets, but it can also transmit sound through the vehicle's audio system.

As further evidence of the popularity of streaming music, the automaker is axing the CD player in the upcoming subcompact 2018 Ford EcoSport crossover. This will create room for a more upright touchscreen and more storage space for smartphones. Ford believes that the young EcoSport buyers will prefer sourcing music through the available Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, SiriusXM radio, and SYNC Connect instead of using a CD player.

Source: Ford

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
2018 Ford Expedition to Offer Live TV Streaming - Motor Trend

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Subscribe Today and Save 86% Motor Trend Magazine is the World's Automotive Authority Get Print Subscriptions Get Digital Subscriptions Rear seat entertainment system gets an upgrade No Obligation, Fast & Simple Free New Car Quote Ford is making it easier than ever to watch live TV from the comfort of your vehicle.

# data[].attributes.body
California plane crash survivor found in bedroom of home

# data[].attributes.body
FBI found evidence of a teacher who went missing 11 years ago.

# data[].attributes.body
10 biggest freak athletes at NFL combine

Myles Garrett, Leonard Fournette and David Njoku are just a few of the NFL prospects expected to showcase their athleticism in Indianapolis.

# data[].attributes.body
Thomas tallied 31 points (10-20 FG, 3-9 3Pt, 8-12 FT), five assists, two rebounds, two steals and a block over 34 minutes in Wednesday's 103-99 win against the Cavaliers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Celtics get their biggest win of the season vs. the Cavs -- here's why it matters

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If these two match up in the playoffs, the Celtics need it to look like this

# data[].attributes.body
Klimt's 'Bauergarten' flowers painted in 1907 sell for a record $59.3million

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Written by Anna Cummins, CNN

A painting by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt has become the third most expensive artwork ever sold at auction in Europe.

"Bauerngarten," Gustav Klimt's exuberant 1907 oil painting of a garden filled with poppies, daisies and other flowers, sold for $59.3m (£48m) during a Sotheby's evening auction of Impressionist, Modern and Surrealist works in London on Wednesday -- a record auction price for a landscape by the artist.

Billed by Sotheby's as "one of the greatest works by the artist ever to appear at auction," "Bauerngarten" had remained in a private collection since 1994, most recently going on display in 2016 at the Royal Academy of Art London's "Painting the Modern Garden" exhibition.

The only works that have sold for more money in London are Alberto Giacometti's "Walking Man," which sold for $104.3m (£65m) in 2010, and Peter Paul Rubens' "The Massacre of the Innocents," which sold for $76.7m (£49.5m) in 2002.

Other highlights during Sotheby's evening auction included the sale of Pablo Picasso's 1944 "Plant de Tomates," a painting of a tomato plant defiantly growing on the windowsill of his apartment during the Nazi occupation of Paris. The work came to signify hope and wartime resistance.

Having resided in a private collection for four decades, the work sold for $21.1m (£17m), above the top end of its estimate and marking an auction record for a still-life by the Spanish artist.

Eight works by Picasso were sold over the course of the evening for a total of $67.7m (£54.7m) with three topping $12.3m (£10m).

Meanwhile, "Effet de neige à Louveciennes," a winter scene by Arthur Sisley, sold for $9.1m (£7.4m) -- setting an auction record for a work by the impressionist landscape painter.

Sales overall totaled at $240.8m (£194.7m) -- an increase of 108% on the equivalent sale last year, marking a buoyant return to form for the global art market, after a difficult 2016.

Helena Newman, global co-head of Sotheby's Impressionist & Modern Art Department and chairman of Sotheby's Europe, described the evening's results as a new benchmark for London sales and "a statement on the momentum of the global art market in 2017."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
gustav klimt's 'bauerngarten' sells for $59.3m - cnn

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Written by Anna Cummins, CNN A painting by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt has become the third most expensive artwork ever sold at auction in Europe. "Bauerngarten," Gustav Klimt's exuberant 1907 oil painting of a garden filled with poppies, daisies and other flowers, sold for $59.3m (£48m) during a Sotheby's evening auction of Impressionist, Modern and Surrealist works in London on Wednesday -- a record auction price for a landscape by the artist.

# data[].attributes.body
Scientists are baffled by how little sleep elephants sleep, which then they started to track and record the day of one using the latest technology. The current pattern is that larger mammals sleep for shorter amounts of time, while smaller mammals sleep longer.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Wild African elephants sleep for the shortest time of any mammal, according to a study.

Scientists tracked two elephants in Botswana to find out more about the animals' natural sleep patterns.

Elephants in zoos sleep for four to six hours a day, but in their natural surroundings the elephants rested for only two hours, mainly at night.

The elephants, both matriarchs of the herd, sometimes stayed awake for several days.

During this time, they travelled long distances, perhaps to escape lions or poachers.

They only went into rapid eye movement (REM, or dreaming sleep, at least in humans) every three or four days, when they slept lying down rather than on their feet.

You might also like:
The war on elephants A way to lift an elephant's mood How to put an elephant to sleep
Prof Paul Manger of the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, said this makes elephant sleep unique.

"Elephants are the shortest sleeping mammal - that seems to be related to their large body size," he told BBC News.

"It seems like elephants only dream every three to four days. Given the well-known memory of the elephant this calls into question theories associating REM sleep with memory consolidation."

Elephants living in captivity have been widely studied.

To find out more about their sleeping habits in the wild, Prof Manger and his research team fitted the scientific equivalent of a fitness tracker under the skin of the animals' trunks.

The device was used to record when the elephants were sleeping, based on their trunk staying still for five minutes or more.

The two elephants were also fitted with a gyroscope to assess their sleeping position.

Both elephants were followed for five weeks, giving new insights into their natural sleep patterns.

"We had the idea that elephants should be the shortest sleeping mammal because they're the largest," said Prof Manger.

"Why this occurs, we're not really sure. Sleep is one of those really unusual mysteries of biology, that along with eating and reproduction, it's one of the biological imperatives. We must sleep to survive."

Dreaming sleep

Generally, smaller-bodied mammals sleep for longer than larger ones.

For example, sloths sleep for around 14 hours a day, while humans sleep for around 8 hours.

How elephants survive on so little sleep remains a mystery.

The researchers are planning follow-up studies on more elephants, including males.

They also want to find out more about REM sleep in elephants.

REM sleep is believed to be critical in laying down memories.

It is a type of sleep seen across the animal kingdom, in mammals and birds and even lizards.

Most mammals go into REM sleep every day.

Follow Helen on Twitter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Wild African elephants sleep for the shortest time of any mammal, according to a study. Scientists tracked two elephants in Botswana to find out more about the animals' natural sleep patterns. Elephants in zoos sleep for four to six hours a day, but in their natural surroundings the elephants rested for only two hours, mainly at night.

# data[].attributes.body
heart attack killed Kim Jong Nam, not his half brother

# data[].attributes.body
NISSAN TRANSFORMS CROSSOVER INTO A DOG SANCTUARY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Subscribe Today and Save 86%

Motor Trend Magazine is the World's Automotive Authority
Get Print Subscriptions Get Digital Subscriptions
Spoil your pet with leather upholstery, integrated treat dispenser

Spoil your pet with leather upholstery, integrated treat dispenser

No Obligation, Fast & Simple Free New Car Quote

Nissan has built a one-off crossover that any dog would love, perhaps with the exception of the built-in shower.

Nissan's European division has come up with a clever solution to keep dogs happy on the road. Based off the X-Trail crossover, or the Rogue as it's known here in the U.S., the concept features a bed, no-spill water bowl, and treat dispenser. A slide-out ramp makes it easy to get dogs in and out of the cargo bay, and clip-on harness hooks keep them safe while the vehicle is moving. An integrated shower and dryer make sure they don't track dirt into the cargo bay, although the leather upholstery was made to be easily cleaned and removed should any mishaps occur.

<

Perhaps the most curious feature of the crossover is its "dog-cam technology." With this feature, drivers and passengers can keep an eye on their pets through the 7-inch dashboard display, and dogs can view their caregivers via a 10-inch LCD screen in the cargo area of the vehicle. The system even includes an audio link so passengers can communicate with their furry friends during the drive.

The cargo area is meant to accommodate up to two dogs, Nissan says, but that probably depends on the size of the animals. All components were designed to be easily removed to free up cargo space for other items when the dog is not traveling with the family. The pet-friendly setup doesn't interfere with accessing the vehicle's spare tire, Nissan says.

We'd love to see this vehicle come to market, but unfortunately it's just a concept. Only of the concept's pet-specific features is actually available for purchase as a Nissan accessory: the dog guard above the rear seats.

Watch the video below for a closer look at the Nissan X-Trail 4Dogs.

Source: Nissan

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Nissan Transforms Crossover into a Dog Sanctuary - Motor Trend

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Nissan has built a one-off crossover that any dog would love, perhaps with the exception of the built-in shower.Nissan's European division has come up with a clever solution to keep dogs happy on the road. Based off the X-Trail crossover, or the Rogue as it's known here in the U.S., the concept features a bed, ...

# data[].attributes.body
Xbox Live Creators Program Hopes To Help Developers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Xbox Live Creators Program Hopes To Help Developers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Microsoft has been pumping out a lot of news this week. Adding to the news on the Xbox Game Pass, now Xbox wants to make it much easier to publish your games on the platform. In an Xbox Wire post, Chr

# data[].attributes.body
he 83-year-old man at the controls of a plane that crashed into two Southern California homes had loved to fly and had taken to the skies for many years, family members said.

# data[].attributes.body
Ohio father overdoses in car with infant, while mother overdoses at home with kids

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
An Ohio couple was arrested on child endangerment charges Tuesday after the husband and wife were discovered overdosed, according to police, in separate locations in the company of their children.

Nathan Carroll, 29, was discovered by police in his car with an infant in the backseat after his car veered off the road, and Samantha Schigel, 24, was found in their home, also overdosed, in the presence of other children.

Police in Lorain, about 30 miles west of Cleveland, said officers went to the couple's home to inform Schigel that they found Carroll overdosed, ABC News affiliate WEWS reported.

When they arrived, police said, a child answered the door and said that her "mommy was sleeping and they could not wake her up," according to WEWS.

Not all the children in the home had the same parents.

Police determined that Schigel was also experiencing a drug overdose.

Lorain Police Department

Both parents were given naloxone, a heroin antidote, and were taken to Mercy Hospital in Lorain.

When Schigel became responsive, she told police that she and Carroll had snorted a powder they believed to be heroin.

According to a police report obtained by WEWS, she told police that it was her first time using the drug and that she did it to treat pain.

Schigel was arrested on charges of endangering children, and Carroll was arrested for operating a vehicle under the influence, implied consent to test, endangering children, driving under suspension and failure to control, WEWS reported.

After children's services was contacted, five of the children were released to their respective paternal grandfathers.

It was unclear if Carroll and Schigel had attorneys.

The couple's incident comes as overdose death rates across the country haven risen to historic highs amid an opioid crisis.

In Ohio, more than 3,300 people died from accidental drug overdoses in 2015, up 21.5 percent from the previous year, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Ohio is among the five states with the highest death rates linked to drug overdoses.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ohio couple overdoses simultaneously in front of kids

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
An Ohio couple was arrested on child endangerment charges Tuesday after the husband and wife were discovered overdosed, according to police, in separate locations in the company of their children. Nathan Carroll, 29, was discovered by police in his car with an infant in the backseat after his car...

# data[].attributes.body
World's oldest microfossils found, researchers claim

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The discovery comprises tiny filaments and tubes formed by bacteria that lived on iron, according to a statement released Wednesday by University College London.

They were found in quartz layers in the Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt in Quebec, Canada, which contains some of the Earth's oldest known sedimentary rocks, it said.

"Our discovery supports the idea that life emerged from hot, seafloor vents shortly after planet Earth formed," said Matthew Dodd, a researcher at UCL Earth Sciences and the London Center for Nanotechnology and one of the report's authors.

Oldest life forms?

But questions have been raised over the credibility of those finds. Some suggested that what appeared to be fossils could have been formed by biological or non-biological processes, such as temperature or pressure changes in the rocks over millions of years.

The team of international scientists working in Canada said its discovery had clear signs of being biological in origin, including minerals "found in biological matter including bones and teeth," according to a statement from UCL.

"The microfossils we discovered have a range of traits that are similar to younger biological fossils," the study's lead author, Dominic Papineau, told CNN. "They have a twisted structure, a little bit like a corkscrew, and branching filaments. We don't have the genetic information yet, but we believe they are non-oxidizing bacteria."

According to Papineau, these microorganisms, which could breathe and eat, could be up to 4.28 billion years old. "If they are this old, this means that life developed very rapidly on Earth," Papineau said. "Just 250 million years after the Earth formed, life was already quite complex."

Not all scientists are convinced by the team's findings, however.

William Martin, head of the Molecular Evolution Institute at Dusseldorf's Heinrich Heine University, told CNN he is "unconvinced that this is biological material. There is no clear cut evidence that these were made by biology. It's not good enough that these things look like cells."

Papineau hopes that the team's findings will eventually be accepted by the whole scientific community. "We have been very specific with our nine independent lines of evidence," he told CNN. With this research, he added, "we have certainly documented evidence of early life better than anyone else."

Extraterrestrial life

As well as potentially shedding light on Earth's earliest life forms, the discovery could have implications for the search for life beyond our planet.

"If it happened very quickly here," Papineau told CNN, "it could have happened elsewhere in the solar system."

According to Papineau, the development of these life forms requires only water, volcanic activity and the presence of common chemicals such as carbon. These organisms could have developed at a similar time on Mars or the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, Papineau said.

If any signs of such life forms are detected, however, don't expect them to appear familiar.

One of our earliest ancestors ever discovered, Saccorhytus, from a category of creatures called deuterostomes dating from around half a billion years ago -- far, far more recent than the Canadian find -- looks more like something from "Alien" than anything seen on Earth today.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
World's oldest microfossils found, study says

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The discovery comprises tiny filaments and tubes formed by bacteria that lived on iron, according to a statement released Wednesday by University College London. They were found in quartz layers in the Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt in Quebec, Canada, which contains some of the Earth's oldest known sedimentary rocks, it said.

# data[].attributes.body
New Orleans' transgender community is on edge after two transgender women were murdered within 48 hours of each other.

# data[].attributes.body
Chicago's lack of snow in 2017 sets 146 year record.

# data[].attributes.body
New Orleans' transgender community is on edge after two transgender women were murdered within 48 hours of each other.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Chyna Gibson was gunned down Saturday night, while the second woman was found with multiple stab wounds Monday morning, CNN affiliate WDSU-TV reported.

No arrests have been made in the cases, which police said appear to be unrelated, but transgender activist Daphanie Dupree told WDSU the situation was scary.

"It's scary because like a lot of the girls in New Orleans, they're walking around like zombies, you know they have this little hidden fear that's inside them to even go anywhere and I hear a lot of them talking about like 'oh, I'm going to carry a gun," Dupree told the station.

"It's very heartbreaking and it's scary because it's too close to home, I mean it could happen to any of us but I'm like -- we hang in the same circles, we hang in the same area just like it happened to them it could happen to me."

'One is too many'

In a media conference broadcast by WDSU, police Cmdr. Doug Eckert said the two crimes in as many days showed an increase in violence against transgender people in the Louisiana city.

"I mean one is too many, and that's how we feel," Eckert said.

Eckert told WDSU that there was nothing to indicate the stabbing was a hate crime. "If we learn that it's a hate crime, of course, we'll pursue the charges of that," he said.

At Wednesday's briefing Eckert referred to the stabbing victim as a transgender woman but declined to name her.

Seven killings this year

The New Orleans deaths mean three transgender women were killed within a week in Louisiana. The third one was fatally shot in Monroe on February 19.

The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs said it had responded to seven reported killings of transgender women of color in the United States in the first two months of the year.

"As a society we can stop this epidemic by hiring trans women of color, making sure they have safe places to live and standing up when we see or hear them being demeaned and attacked and simply by valuing their lives," it said in a statement.

The Southern Poverty Law Center cited the Anti-Violence Project as saying the other four killings had been in Chicago; Canton, Mississippi; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and Toledo, Ohio.

Last year, the deaths of 27 transgender people were reported, more than any other year, according to GLAAD and other advocacy groups.

The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programsresponded to the homicides of 23 transgender and gender nonconforming people in 2016, the most it's ever recorded, said Sue Yacka with the New York City Anti-Violence Project.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
two transgender women were killed in new orleans in 48 hours - cnn

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Susannah Cullinane and Jeremy Grisham, CNN

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
2 transgender women were killed in New Orleans in 48 hours

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Chyna Gibson was gunned down Saturday night, while the second woman was found with multiple stab wounds Monday morning, CNN affiliate WDSU-TV reported. No arrests have been made in the cases, which police said appear to be unrelated, but transgender activist Daphanie Dupree told WDSU the situation was scary.

# data[].attributes.body
The Oklahoma-born country music superstar woke up Wednesday morning to the ravages of a severe storm in her Nashville neighborhood, and took to Twitter to shrug the whole thing off.

# data[].attributes.body
Two transgender women killed in 48 hours. No suspects have been arrested yet.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Chyna Gibson was gunned down Saturday night, while the second woman was found with multiple stab wounds Monday morning, CNN affiliate WDSU-TV reported.

No arrests have been made in the cases, which police said appear to be unrelated, but transgender activist Daphanie Dupree told WDSU the situation was scary.

"It's scary because like a lot of the girls in New Orleans, they're walking around like zombies, you know they have this little hidden fear that's inside them to even go anywhere and I hear a lot of them talking about like 'oh, I'm going to carry a gun," Dupree told the station.

"It's very heartbreaking and it's scary because it's too close to home, I mean it could happen to any of us but I'm like -- we hang in the same circles, we hang in the same area just like it happened to them it could happen to me."

'One is too many'

In a media conference broadcast by WDSU, police Cmdr. Doug Eckert said the two crimes in as many days showed an increase in violence against transgender people in the Louisiana city.

"I mean one is too many, and that's how we feel," Eckert said.

Eckert told WDSU that there was nothing to indicate the stabbing was a hate crime. "If we learn that it's a hate crime, of course, we'll pursue the charges of that," he said.

At Wednesday's briefing Eckert referred to the stabbing victim as a transgender woman but declined to name her.

Seven killings this year

The New Orleans deaths mean three transgender women were killed within a week in Louisiana. The third one was fatally shot in Monroe on February 19.

The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs said it had responded to seven reported killings of transgender women of color in the United States in the first two months of the year.

"As a society we can stop this epidemic by hiring trans women of color, making sure they have safe places to live and standing up when we see or hear them being demeaned and attacked and simply by valuing their lives," it said in a statement.

The Southern Poverty Law Center cited the Anti-Violence Project as saying the other four killings had been in Chicago; Canton, Mississippi; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and Toledo, Ohio.

Last year, the deaths of 27 transgender people were reported, more than any other year, according to GLAAD and other advocacy groups.

The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programsresponded to the homicides of 23 transgender and gender nonconforming people in 2016, the most it's ever recorded, said Sue Yacka with the New York City Anti-Violence Project.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
two transgender women were killed in new orleans in 48 hours - cnn

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Susannah Cullinane and Jeremy Grisham, CNN

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
2 transgender women were killed in New Orleans in 48 hours

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Chyna Gibson was gunned down Saturday night, while the second woman was found with multiple stab wounds Monday morning, CNN affiliate WDSU-TV reported. No arrests have been made in the cases, which police said appear to be unrelated, but transgender activist Daphanie Dupree told WDSU the situation was scary.

# data[].attributes.body
Two transgender women were killed in New Orleans

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Chyna Gibson was gunned down Saturday night, while the second woman was found with multiple stab wounds Monday morning, CNN affiliate WDSU-TV reported.

No arrests have been made in the cases, which police said appear to be unrelated, but transgender activist Daphanie Dupree told WDSU the situation was scary.

"It's scary because like a lot of the girls in New Orleans, they're walking around like zombies, you know they have this little hidden fear that's inside them to even go anywhere and I hear a lot of them talking about like 'oh, I'm going to carry a gun," Dupree told the station.

"It's very heartbreaking and it's scary because it's too close to home, I mean it could happen to any of us but I'm like -- we hang in the same circles, we hang in the same area just like it happened to them it could happen to me."

'One is too many'

In a media conference broadcast by WDSU, police Cmdr. Doug Eckert said the two crimes in as many days showed an increase in violence against transgender people in the Louisiana city.

"I mean one is too many, and that's how we feel," Eckert said.

Eckert told WDSU that there was nothing to indicate the stabbing was a hate crime. "If we learn that it's a hate crime, of course, we'll pursue the charges of that," he said.

At Wednesday's briefing Eckert referred to the stabbing victim as a transgender woman but declined to name her.

Seven killings this year

The New Orleans deaths mean three transgender women were killed within a week in Louisiana. The third one was fatally shot in Monroe on February 19.

The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs said it had responded to seven reported killings of transgender women of color in the United States in the first two months of the year.

"As a society we can stop this epidemic by hiring trans women of color, making sure they have safe places to live and standing up when we see or hear them being demeaned and attacked and simply by valuing their lives," it said in a statement.

The Southern Poverty Law Center cited the Anti-Violence Project as saying the other four killings had been in Chicago; Canton, Mississippi; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and Toledo, Ohio.

Last year, the deaths of 27 transgender people were reported, more than any other year, according to GLAAD and other advocacy groups.

The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programsresponded to the homicides of 23 transgender and gender nonconforming people in 2016, the most it's ever recorded, said Sue Yacka with the New York City Anti-Violence Project.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
two transgender women were killed in new orleans in 48 hours - cnn

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Susannah Cullinane and Jeremy Grisham, CNN

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
2 transgender women were killed in New Orleans in 48 hours

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Chyna Gibson was gunned down Saturday night, while the second woman was found with multiple stab wounds Monday morning, CNN affiliate WDSU-TV reported. No arrests have been made in the cases, which police said appear to be unrelated, but transgender activist Daphanie Dupree told WDSU the situation was scary.

# data[].attributes.body
A taxi driver who battled with an assassin in Burma is hailed as a hero

# data[].attributes.body
Obama Administration Rushed to Preserve Intelligence of Russian Election Hacking

# data[].attributes.body
researchers claim they found the

World's oldest microfossils

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The discovery comprises tiny filaments and tubes formed by bacteria that lived on iron, according to a statement released Wednesday by University College London.

They were found in quartz layers in the Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt in Quebec, Canada, which contains some of the Earth's oldest known sedimentary rocks, it said.

"Our discovery supports the idea that life emerged from hot, seafloor vents shortly after planet Earth formed," said Matthew Dodd, a researcher at UCL Earth Sciences and the London Center for Nanotechnology and one of the report's authors.

Oldest life forms?

But questions have been raised over the credibility of those finds. Some suggested that what appeared to be fossils could have been formed by biological or non-biological processes, such as temperature or pressure changes in the rocks over millions of years.

The team of international scientists working in Canada said its discovery had clear signs of being biological in origin, including minerals "found in biological matter including bones and teeth," according to a statement from UCL.

"The microfossils we discovered have a range of traits that are similar to younger biological fossils," the study's lead author, Dominic Papineau, told CNN. "They have a twisted structure, a little bit like a corkscrew, and branching filaments. We don't have the genetic information yet, but we believe they are non-oxidizing bacteria."

According to Papineau, these microorganisms, which could breathe and eat, could be up to 4.28 billion years old. "If they are this old, this means that life developed very rapidly on Earth," Papineau said. "Just 250 million years after the Earth formed, life was already quite complex."

Not all scientists are convinced by the team's findings, however.

William Martin, head of the Molecular Evolution Institute at Dusseldorf's Heinrich Heine University, told CNN he is "unconvinced that this is biological material. There is no clear cut evidence that these were made by biology. It's not good enough that these things look like cells."

Papineau hopes that the team's findings will eventually be accepted by the whole scientific community. "We have been very specific with our nine independent lines of evidence," he told CNN. With this research, he added, "we have certainly documented evidence of early life better than anyone else."

Extraterrestrial life

As well as potentially shedding light on Earth's earliest life forms, the discovery could have implications for the search for life beyond our planet.

"If it happened very quickly here," Papineau told CNN, "it could have happened elsewhere in the solar system."

According to Papineau, the development of these life forms requires only water, volcanic activity and the presence of common chemicals such as carbon. These organisms could have developed at a similar time on Mars or the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, Papineau said.

If any signs of such life forms are detected, however, don't expect them to appear familiar.

One of our earliest ancestors ever discovered, Saccorhytus, from a category of creatures called deuterostomes dating from around half a billion years ago -- far, far more recent than the Canadian find -- looks more like something from "Alien" than anything seen on Earth today.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
World's oldest microfossils found, study says

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The discovery comprises tiny filaments and tubes formed by bacteria that lived on iron, according to a statement released Wednesday by University College London. They were found in quartz layers in the Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt in Quebec, Canada, which contains some of the Earth's oldest known sedimentary rocks, it said.

# data[].attributes.body
Ex-CIA agent freed in Europe thanks Trump administration

# data[].attributes.headline
Mr. Kohl- Today, Snap Inc aka Snapchat  is coming out on the NYSE in the biggest US tech IPO in years. Shares are going for $17 a pop. Meaning the company’s valued at about $24 billion. Snap’s big moment comes a day after the Dow crossed the 21000 mark for the first time ever.

# data[].attributes.subject
Mr. Kohl- Today, Snap Inc aka Snapchat  is coming out on the NYSE in the biggest US tech IPO in years. Shares are going for $17 a pop. Meaning the company’s valued at about $24 billion. Snap’s big moment comes a day after the Dow crossed the 21000 mark for the first time ever.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Snapchat parent Snap, Inc. ( SNAP) has priced its initial public offering of 200 million shares at $17 per share, which means the company is raising $3.4 billion. This gives the social media giant a value of $23.6 billion.

The pricing is slightly above the $14-$16 range the company had been targeting, which would have given it a valuation of $19.5-$22.3 billion.

As Bloomberg notes, the $23.6 billion valuation for the company is based on 1.39 billion fully diluted shares outstanding, more than the 1.16 billion shares the company's filing indicates will be outstanding after the offering. This implies there are securities out there that can be converted into about 230 million new shares.

The debut of Snap, which in its prospectus called itself a camera company, not a social network, will be first tech IPO of 2017 and is the most highly-anticipated market debut since Alibaba. The last social media company to go public was Twitter back in 2013.

As Snap makes its debut in public markets, two issues are likely to be of concern for investors in the coming months and years: profits and voting rights.

Cost and user growth

In a post earlier this month, tech analyst Ben Thompson at Stratechery indicated that Snapchat has a burgeoning issue with its total costs per user rising and losses per user are also increasing.

"The biggest problem here is Snap's cost of revenue per user: it's going up, and it has been for a while," Thompson writes.

"This isn't quite as bad as it seems, because Snap's cost of revenue includes revenue sharing payments to publishers; once you back that out, though, the company has gone from paying ~$0.47/user in 2015 to ~$0.66/user in 2016, a 40% increase, and an amount (per user) that well exceeds that of Facebook or Twitter at the time of their IPOs. That means that to become profitable Snap has to not only grow users, it has to grow them faster than its costs are increasing, or grow revenue per users by that much more." (Emphasis added.)

The bull case for Snapchat, however, has been in the strength of its product team and the vision of its CEO Evan Spiegel. Innovation, then, is what's really being pitched.

In its prospectus, Snap disclosed that user growth slowed towards the end of the third quarter of 2016 as the result, the company said, of issues related to new products and app updates.

This, then, would seem to indicate that the required product innovation Thompson sees as necessary for the company to overcome its current cost issues are also at risk of costing the company the users it needs to be profitable.

That's why it's called a risk factor.

No vote for you

As for the voting issue, Snap's IPO will offer investors shares that have no voting rights.

In its filing, Snap said that Spiegel and co-founder Bobby Murphy will have control of 89% of the voting power at the company. "This concentrated control eliminates other stockholders' ability to influence corporate matters and, as a result, we may take actions that our stockholders do not view as beneficial," the company said in its filing.

"As a result, the market price of our Class A common stock could be adversely affected."

In a post on Wednesday, Yahoo Finance's Ash Bennington outlined why some analysts see this as making Snap's shareholder structure "banana republic governance."

In short, academic research says companies with a single-share class structure outperform those that feature the multi-class structure Snap will offer (and is currently offered by Google and Facebook).

Additionally, dual-class structures are not seen as being friendly for shareholder rights because, well, shareholders don't get a vote. Sure, shareholders get a cut of future profits, but are also most junior in the capital structure and have no say in management. Then again, you don't have to buy these companies.

The headline excitement around Snap's debut is and will likely remain focused on the product itself and its wunderkind CEO. But one of the most interesting, if in-the-weeds, investment stories is also playing out.

More on Snap:

-
Myles Udland is a writer at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @MylesUdland

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Snap prices IPO at $17 per share, valuing company at $24 billion

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Snapchat parent Snap, Inc. (SNAP) has priced its initial public offering of 200 million shares at $17 per share, which means the company is raising $3.4 billion. The pricing is slightly above the $14-$16 range the company had been targeting, which would have given it a valuation of $19.5-$22.3 billion