Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus will stage the final performances of “The Greatest Show on Earth” in May, ending a 146-year run.
The announcement comes after the show saw a steep drop in ticket sales, after the circus’ owners ended the use of live elephants in performances. The circus was involved in protracted legal battles with animal rights groups over the use of elephants in the show.
“Ringling Bros. ticket sales have been declining, but following the transition of the elephants off the road, we saw an even more dramatic drop,” Kenneth Feld, chairman and CEO of Feld Entertainment which owns the circus, said in a statement issued Saturday night.
Animal rights groups welcomed the news of the circus’ imminent end.
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A circus performer hangs upside down during a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus performance in Washington, D.C., on March 19, 2015. ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP – Getty Images
Britain’s Prime Minister finally laid out her plans for Brexit Tuesday, nearly seven months after the shock U.K. vote to quit the European Union (EU).
Theresa May, who came to power after the referendum result prompted the resignation of her predecessor David Cameron, said Britain will seek a so-called ‘hard Brexit’ — meaning the U.K. wants to quit the EU completely after four decades of membership, along with the single market for goods.
The European single market affords preferential rates between EU member states, something many in Britain saw as a key benefit of the trading bloc. However, it also requires the free movement of citizens across EU borders, leading to high levels of immigration. Populist concern over immigration was successfully exploited by the “Leave” campaign.
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Pound coins site beside dollar bills. Matt Cardy / Getty Images
After his election, Donald Trump quickly settled a series of business disputes — but just days before his inauguration, the president-elect’s company is still waging a legal battle against a Florida shop owner over an unpaid bill.
The matter could have been settled for what amounts to pocket change for a billionaire, but the Trump Organization decided to take its chances in court.
Now Trump stands to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. And if he wins, it could force a small businessman — one of hundreds who say they were stiffed by Trump over the years — possibly into bankruptcy.
That businessman, Juan Carlos Enriquez, owner of The Paint Spot, won the first round of the legal skirmish last summer when a judge found a lien he slapped on the Trump National Doral golf resort was valid.
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Then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump drives himself around the golf course on March 6, 2016, in Doral, Florida. Luis M. Alvarez / AP
Sen. Bernie Sanders haunted Donald Trump and Republicans with the ghost of Twitter past on Wednesday.
The Vermont senator printed an oversized tweet of Trump’s to use as a visual aid during the Senate’s debate over the future of Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act. The president-elect’s tweet from May 2015 claimed that he was the only Republican candidate “to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid.”
Trump punctuated the tweet with a jab at former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
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Senator Bernie Sanders addresses the Senate floor while displaying a poster of a tweet by Donald Trump. NBC News
Well before the family came in to the Batson Children’s Specialty Clinic in Jackson, Mississippi, they knew something was wrong. Their child was born with multiple birth defects, and didn’t look like any of its kin. A couple of tests for genetic syndromes came back negative, but Omar Abdul-Rahman, Chief of Medical Genetics at the University of Mississippi, had a strong hunch that the child had Mowat-Wilson syndrome, a rare disease associated with challenging life-long symptoms like speech impediments and seizures.
So he pulled out one of his most prized physicians’ tools: his cell phone.
Using an app called Face2Gene, Abdul-Rahman snapped a quick photo of the child’s face. Within a matter of seconds, the app generated a list of potential diagnoses — and corroborated his hunch. “Sure enough, Mowat-Wilson syndrome came up on the list,” Abdul-Rahman recalls.
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DNA double helix strand viewed with a phone Stanislaw Pytel / Getty Images
The world lost superstar musicians, stars of stage and screen, some of the greatest athletes of all time and larger-than-life political figures in 2016.
Here’s a look at some of the many famous figures who died this year. Click through to read full obituaries.
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Ron Glass
Ron Glass, 71, the veteran television and film actor known for his Emmy-nominated role as NYPD Det. Ron Harris on the classic cop sitcom “Barney Miller,” and later the deeply religious preacher Derrial Brook on the cult sci-fi show “Firefly,” died on Nov. 25.
Truvada, the other “little blue pill,” is taken daily to prevent HIV and has been touted as a miracle drug responsible for lowering HIV rates across the United States. But soon, the daily pill may be overshadowed by an even simpler method—a single flu shot-like injection at the doctor’s office, once every two months.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced last week that it was entering the first-ever global clinical trial of an injectable HIV-prevention drug called cabotegravir. The trial is taking place in eight countries across three world regions—the Americas, Africa and Asia—and researchers are enrolling 4,500 gay and bisexual men along with transgender women, pulling from groups with the highest rates of new infections.
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HIV, the virus that causes AIDS BSIP/UIG Via Getty Images
On Tuesday, 55-year-old Sara Kelly Keenan received something in the mail she’s been waiting for her entire life: an accurate birth certificate.
Keenan was born intersex, with male genes, female genitalia and mixed internal reproductive organs. Now, Keenan, who uses female pronouns, is making history. Hers is believed to be the first birth certificate ever issued in the United States that reads “intersex” in the gender field, instead of “male” or “female.”
Lambda Legal attorney Paul Castillo commended the New York City agency “for issuing an accurate birth certificate.”
“In the United States, birth certificates often provide access to a wide range of public services and critical identity documents, such as state IDs and passports,” Castillo said. “Having birth certificates with gender designations other than male or female provides an enormous sense of validation for a number of non-binary and intersex people.”
The death of Debbie Reynolds just one day after her daughter Carrie Fisher passed away is a reminder of the crushing effect grief can have on the body.
The 84-year-old Oscar-nominated performer reportedly suffered a stroke Wednesday. The official cause of death has not yet been disclosed.
“She wanted to be with Carrie,” her son Todd Fisher told Variety.
“Broken heart syndrome,” or stress-induced cardiomyopathy is a very specific medical condition that has been well-documented in recent years. It can be caused by an intense emotional event, like the death of a loved one, giving a public speech, or even from a surprise birthday party. And many times broken heart syndrome has been blamed in cases when one spouse dies soon after the other.
What scientific discoveries will 2017 bring? What technological innovations? Probably not time travel — or time-shares on Mars. But no one really knows for sure, and when we asked some of the biggest names in in science and technology to share their predictions for the coming year, there was a bit of pushback.
“I normally don’t make predictions for anything less than two trillion years in the future,” Arizona State University cosmologist Lawrence Krauss told NBC MACH. It’s easier to make predictions that far out, he added jokingly, when “no one will be around to check them.”
Ultimately, Krauss came through with some fascinating forecasts. Read on to see them, along with predictions from legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin and nine more thought leaders in science and tech (the submissions have been lightly edited).
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Scott Kelly / NASA
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Click link below for article and predictions for 2017:
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
A circus performer hangs upside down during a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus performance in Washington, D.C., on March 19, 2015. ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP – Getty Images
Jim Smeal/BEI/BEI/Shutterstock / Shutterstock
Scott Kelly / NASA
James' World 2 
