Kohl's is getting Black Friday started on Thanksgiving Day.
The department store will be open starting at 5 p.m. local time on Thanksgiving Day, offering Black Friday deals until 1 p.m. the next day.
These deals kick off online at 12:01 a.m. CT and run until 3 p.m. the next day.
To get customers in the mood, it will also be offering a limited selection of deals in stores and online on November 1.
Retailers have come under fire in recent years for kicking off their Black Friday sales on Thanksgiving. As a result, several have started to buck the trend and stay closed.
Earlier this month, Business Insider reported that at least 60 retailers including Costco, Home Depot, and TJ Maxx had confirmed they would remain closed on Thanksgiving. Phillip Dengler, head of editorial and content marketing for BestBlackFriday.com, told USA Today that this was the most confirmed closures it has had at this point in the year compared to previous years.
While some retailers are still hoping to capitalize on Black Friday sales early by opening during Thanksgiving, some have likely pulled back because the famous shopping day doesn't carry the same weight it once did. This is partly because consumers are increasingly shopping for deals online, which means they don't need to waste time lining up in stores for one big day of shopping. They are also used to having deals year-round, which takes pressure off of the day.
An online petition is calling for the street in front of the Saudi Embassy in Washington, DC, to be renamed "Jamal Khashoggi Way," in honor of the murdered dissident, according to The Washington Post.
Khashoggi was the Saudi Arabian reporter who was killed inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, last month.
Khashoggi had been an outspoken opponent of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has repeatedly denied playing a part in Khashoggi's killing despite having ties to the Saudi hit squad that allegedly strangled, then dismembered the writer.
The petition has collected over 1,500 signatures as of Wednesday evening and was created by DC residents who are hoping mayor Muriel Bowser will agree, so that Saudi officials won't easily forget that harming journalists is not tolerated in DC, the New York Daily News reported Wednesday.
Regulations in the district require that a person be deceased for at least two years before they can receive such an honor, but the petition is asking Bowser to make an exception.
Read more: Here's everything we know about the troubling disappearance and death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi
Council on American-Islamic Relations director Hihad Awad applauded the idea, telling the Daily News that the thought of Saudi Embassy workers having to put "Jamal Khashoggi Way" on their business cards is powerful.
"Imagine if their mail had to be addressed to Khashoggi Way?" Awad told the publication.
The Saudi government has changed its story about Khashoggi's death several times, but appeared to admit on October 25 that his killing was premeditated.
Khashoggi was last seen entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 2 after going there to collect marriage documents. He never returned.
It took the Saudi government more than two weeks to acknowledge that he had indeed died there.
Minnesota Timberwolves guard Derrick Rose shocked the NBA world by exploding for a career-high 50 points to help his short-handed team beat the Utah Jazz.
The performance came with the Wolves playing without Jimmy Butler and starting guard Jeff Teague, thrusting Rose, who had been playing a reserve role, into the spotlight.
Rose, who is playing on a one-year minimum contract with the Wolves, got hot, particularly in the fourth quarter, as he carried the Wolves down the stretch with 15 points in the final frame.
Rose looked like the vintage player who became the league's youngest MVP at 23, rocketing to the basket for a variety of tough finishes and even knocking down outside jumpers, never a strong point in his game.
Rose suffered a slew of knee injuries during his years when he was a perennial All-Star with the Chicago Bulls, then was traded to the New York Knicks in 2016 while he went through a civil rape trial (he was found not liable). He ended the season with another knee injury.
Rose told The Athletic's Shams Charania that he didn't have any contract offers going into the 2017-18 season before LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers called him, offering a deal. Rose took the contract, but had an up-and-down year that included an extended absence away from the team to evaluate his future. He was eventually traded to the Utah Jazz, who cut him, then signed with the Wolves, where he provided some good minutes for former Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau. He re-signed with the team this past summer.
All of which is to say, Rose's NBA career seemed very much in doubt in recent years. After a stunning breakthrough game on Wednesday, Rose was emotional.
When the final buzzer sounded, his teammates mobbed him, as Rose fought back tears.
Then, during his postgame interview, Rose got choked up, saying he had "worked his ass off" to keep his career alive.
After the game, Thibodeau alluded to Rose's tough path back, saying it was the first summer in five years that Rose didn't have to go through rehab.
The NBA has already seen four 50-point games in less than a month. But at the onset of the season, few could have predicted that Rose, who was nearly out of the league at various points in recent years, would be a candidate to go for the rare achievement in the NBA.
It's big, it's bronze, and it's brand new. But the Statue of Unity, a landmark that stretches nearly 600 feet tall and weighs more than 2,000 tons, is dividing India.
The Guardian reports that 5,000 police shadowed massive crowds on Wednesday, as they converged on a distant corner of Gujarat state to see Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi finally introduce the world to its newly minted, tallest statue.
In an elaborate ceremony complete with fighter-jet flybys and rose petal-spraying helicopters, there was no sign of the protests that the four-year, 30 billion rupee ($405 million USD) monolith has attracted right up to its unveiling.
This particular corner of Gujarat state is home to largely tribal groups with historic ties to the land and a supposedly special protected status.
The chiefs of more than 20 local villages produced a letter asking Modi to stay away from the inauguration of the statue that rises twice as high as the US's Statue of Liberty.
But, hailing the 600-foot, bronze-laden recreation of independence legend Sardar Patel a "huge" symbol of Indian prowess, Modi declared the Statue of Unity his "answer to all those who question the existence of India."
Read more: A photographer spent years exploring India's apocalyptic 'capital of coal' and returned with unreal photos
The big bronze Iron Man of India
Patel was India's first interior minister and deputy prime minister. He earned the title the "Iron Man of India" after uniting feuding states and principalities to form the greater Indian state after shedding the yoke of colonial Britain.
During its drawn-out construction, the Statue of Unity has been a source of sharp division. Lambasted as a profound waste of money and a white elephant that has discarded locals on a whim. The BBC reports that farmers and tribal protesters were detained as recently as Tuesday as violence flared over what has been something of a pet project for the prime minister.
The notoriously heavy handed Gujarat government reportedly relocated some 185 families to make way for India's latest tourism mecca, compensating them with 1,200 acres (475 hectares) of new land.
Modi certainly hopes the more than 2,000-ton, astonishingly detailed rendering, remotely located 125 miles from the state capital, Ahmedabad, will become a nationalist pilgrimage for about 2.5 million visitors every year.
China will be noting that it's South Asian rival has now well and truly eclipsed Henan's Spring Temple Buddha ( 鲁山大佛 ) which, at 420 feet was previously the tallest statue in the world — and it did so by employing hundreds of Chinese laborers.
Traditional retailers have already lost billions of dollars worth of sales to online rivals such as Amazon.
Unfortunately for them, things may soon get worse.
Online stores are continuing to steal sales from their brick-and-mortar counterparts. The bad news for traditional retailers, is that e-tailers' market share gains are increasing, according to a new report from Morgan Stanley.
"We expect e-commerce to continue to accelerate," Morgan Stanley analysts Kimberly Greenberger, Brian Nowak, Simeon Gutman, Vincent Sinisi, and Lauren Cassel said in the report.
American consumers are likely to spend about $2.6 trillion on what Morgan Stanley calls "core" retail products, which excludes building materials, cars, gasoline, and those sold outside of actual stores. Of that amount, about 20% will be spent online, according to the report. That's up from about 18% last year and just 12% in 2014.
But e-commerce's share will be even higher next year, hitting 22.4% of retail sales, according to Morgan Stanley. Overall core retail sales are only expected to grow only about 1% next year, much slower than e-commerce is expected to grow. That means online retail's gains will largely come at the expense of brick-and-mortar stores.
Morgan Stanley
The pace is increasing
That's bad enough, but the bigger problem for brick-and-mortar retailers is that the pace at which online stores are gaining share in the retail market has been increasing in recent years.
Read more: Amazon has spooked its investors — these 4 charts show why its growth is slowing
Earlier this decade, e-commerce was gaining about one percentage point of market share each year. In 2013, for example, its share went up about 1.13 percentage points — or 113 basis points — to about 11% of retail sales. In 2014, it rose another 1.1 percentage points.
But in 2016, it gained about 2 percentage points of market share. This year, Morgan Stanley expects it to gain 2.3 percentage points and then to add another 2.4 percentage points next year.
Morgan Stanley
Perhaps most worrisome for retailers, e-commerce sales tend to spike in the fourth quarter. The holiday period tends to be the most important time of year for retailers, because it's when they typically see the lion's share of their sales. The fourth quarter can often be the key factor in whether a retailer posts a profit or a loss for the year.
Online sales saw a big boom in the fourth quarter last year. The portion of total core retail sales accounted for by e-commerce vendors jumped more than four percentage points. Because of that rise, e-commerce sales in the holiday period hit nearly 21% of core retail sales — more than three percentage points higher than they accounted for the whole year.
Morgan Stanley is expecting a similar rise this year, forecasting that online sales will account for 23.3% of core retail sales this holiday season.
Morgan Stanley
That could spell bad news for traditional retailers, many of which are heavily laden with debt, have closed slews of stores, and have already seen slowing sales.
Former Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein is accused of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old model in New York in 2002, according to a class-action lawsuit.
"He then took off his pants and forcibly held Jane Doe while taking her hand and making her touch and massage his penis," court documents said, according to multiple news outlets.
The anonymous woman, who at the time was an aspiring model and actress, reportedly moved to the US from Poland. The woman claimed she met Weinstein at an event, and then three days later, went to his apartment in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan for what she believed was a business lunch.
The woman claimed she informed Weinstein she was only 16-years-old before entering his apartment.
Weinstein allegedly promised he would acquire a role for the woman in a movie, but never delivered after she rejected his sexual advances, BuzzFeed News said, citing the complaint.
The court filing went on to allege that Weinstein "threatened and pressured" the woman. Weinstein allegedly also claimed "that he had 'made' the careers of Penelope Cruz and Gwyneth Paltrow, and that neither would be working without him."
Read more: Harvey Weinstein says he offered acting jobs 'in exchange for sex' in since-retracted interview
Weinstein was said to have obtained her a role as an extra in the "Nanny Diaries" in 2004, but had also "ensured she never received work" because she rejected his advances, according to court documents.
Ben Brafman, Weinstein's attorney, described the allegation as "preposterous" and "patently false."
The woman's claim is included in a growing class-action lawsuit in which at least 10 women claim that Weinstein attempted to "engage in unwanted sexual conduct."
"Plaintiffs and members of the [lawsuit] had or wanted to have careers or wanted to make deals in the entertainment industry and correctly understood that Weinstein was a powerful force in the entertainment production world," the class-action lawsuit said in June.
"At all times, Plaintiffs and the Class operated under duress and the credible and objective threat of being threatened or blacklisted by Weinstein and major film producers ... if they refused Weinstein's unwanted sexual advances or complained about his behavior," the lawsuit added.
The disgraced Miramax cofounder was indicted in July after a grand jury in New York voted to charge him with two counts of predatory assault, with each charge carrying a minimum 10-year sentence. Weinstein faces six charges that includes rape in the first and third degree.
"If you are a survivor of the predatory abuse with which Mr. Weinstein is charged, there is still time to pursue justice," Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said in July.
Beringea, which has backed men's clothing startup Thread and electric car charging firm Chargemaster, plans to raise up to £80 million ($100 million) in new capital by issuing new shares.
The investment firm runs two publicly listed funds in the UK, known as venture capital trusts (VCTs), which invest in fast-growing startups and which any investor can put money into. This is slightly different to traditional venture capital funds, which are closed to direct public investment and have limited lifecycles.
The firm plans to raise the funding from December for its two VCTs listed on the London Stock Exchange, adding to its current $700 million (£549 million) under management across the US and the UK.
Beringea managing partner Stuart Veale said the company had an initial target raise of £60 million ($77 million), but would consider another £20 million ($26 million) depending on demand.
Read more: A mysterious Chinese fund that promised £600 million to UK startups fired its CEO and there's no sign of the cash
Beringea's portfolio of startups includes Chargemaster, which provides charging points for electric cars and was acquired by petrol giant BP in June for £130 million. It also backed online watch retailer Watchfinder, acquired in June by Swiss luxury goods retailer Richemont. More recently, Beringea backed Thread, a popular app that helps men buy clothes tailored to their particular taste.
Veale said Brexit uncertainty had not impacted Beringea's deal flow and, while there is no guarantee the firm would hit its target, the company had successfully raised millions in previous years.
"We're seeing a strong flow of new investment opportunities, we're definitely up on where we were last year," he said. "There is always competition for good investments, and we continue to see a really strong flow... We're still pretty confident."
While there is no proof that men's deodorant works better than women's deodorant, some women prefer deodorants created with men in mind.
On average, men's deodorant is cheaper per ounce than women's deodorant.
In theory, the fragrances used in men's deodorants might be better at masking body odor.
Anecdotally, some people who identify as women have long-preferred using deodorants marketed to men. Although some women rave about men's deodorants claiming they are better, stronger, and more powerful — there's actually no proof of this.
One of the main reasons there are distinctions between deodorants marketed towards men and women is because it makes sense from a marketing and financial standpoint for the companies who make the products.
As Kevin George, vice president and general manager for Unilever deodorants told USA Today "You have to differentiate yourself in the marketplace … If you're a brand for everybody, you're a brand for nobody." A unisex deodorant doesn't quite hold the same brand value to companies as gendered deodorants aimed at specific consumers.
HowStuffWorks.com reported that Canadian television series "Street Cents" did a study where they learned that deodorants marketed to a certain gender from the same brand have the same active ingredient in the same amounts — the only differences between the sticks were scent and packaging. If you read the ingredient lists for deodorants marketed to men or women of the same brand and you'll find the ingredients are nearly, if not entirely, identical.
Despite the fact that there is very little difference between deodorants marketed to men and women, here's why some women prefer "men's deodorant" and why you may consider making the switch.
Men's deodorant is cheaper
A 2011 study called "The Cost of Doing Femininity: Gender Disparities in Pricing of Personal Care Products and Services" showed that, on average, women's deodorants cost $1.44 per ounce while men's are $1.15 per ounce.
Men's deodorants take body hair into account
Men's deodorants typically glide and are gel-based because that delivery method is often better for men with armpit hair, but people of all genders can have armpit hair too. Deodorants marketed to women aren't always formulated to work well on armpits with hair.
Men's deodorant fragrances could be more desirable for masking body odor
Jennifer Chwalek of Union Square Laser Dermatology told New York Magazine that "deodorants technically only mask or neutralize the body odor caused by bacteria." Meaning, choosing a deodorant is basically just choosing what scent you'd like to mask your body odor with.
Many of "men's deodorants" have fragrances like "fresh," "pure sport," and "air", whereas women's brands often have fragrances like "summer berry," "blue fig," "French vanilla," and even "pumpkin spice."
Basically, it all depends on what you like — and that could be deodorant "for men."
But, of course, it depends on personal preference and judgment
All in all, men and women's deodorants have essentially the same formulas. But, men's deodorants are generally cheaper and could offer different scent options, depending on your preference. It's up to you to decide which deodorant is best for you, no matter what gender you identify as.
For more great stories, head to INSIDER's homepage.
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NOW WATCH: Scorpion venom is the most expensive liquid in the world — here's why it costs $39 million per gallon
Before making it as a WWE superstar, aspiring professional wrestlers first have to learn the fundamentals of working in the ring. The New York Wrestling Connection in Deer Park, NY offers the chance to get one-on-one instruction from a seasoned performer. Bull James spent three years working for WWE as "Bull Dempsey" in the company's NXT promotion. After being released by WWE in 2016, Dempsey became the head trainer at NYWC, which counts as alumni current WWE superstars like Tony Nese, Curt Hawkins, and Zack Ryder. We attended an intense practice session at NYWC and talked to Dempsey about what it takes to take the first step towards becoming a WWE superstar.
Following is a transcript of the video.Bull James: Okay, stop. So...Narrator: If you want to make it as a professional wrestler...James: Boom.Narrator: You've got to learn the basics of working in the ring.James: Schoolboy. Wait for me to take you.Narrator: Many WWE superstars start out at schools like this one: The New York Wrestling Connection in Deer Park, New York on Long Island. Some of the school's alumni are current WWE superstars like Tony Nese, Zack Ryder, and Curt Hawkins.James: No choking!Narrator: At NYWC, students get one-on-one instruction from former WWE superstar Bull James.WWE Announcer: Going to the top rope, maybe trying to put away Baron Corbin! Diving headbutt!Narrator: James spent three years in WWE's NXT promotion where he was known as "Bull Dempsey."Announcer: Dempsey grabbing hold of a steel chair!James: Best three years of my life, hands down. Just traveling the world with a great group of people. Learning from some of the best minds in the history of our industry.Narrator: After being released by WWE in 2016, James became the head coach at NYWC. The school charges students $200 for their first month of training. And $150 for each subsequent month, which comes out to around $1800 for a full year.James: Here, you are paying us to train, so it really just comes down to how bad that person wants it. If they want to put their all into it and be here every day and make the sacrifices and take the bumps and bruises, cool. And if they don't, then they don't. This right here is where the magic happens.Narrator: The students get to train in a real 18x18 foot ring.Graham Flanagan: How would you describe the surface of the ring?James: Hard! Everybody thinks there's like a spring underneath. Not true. It's wood and steel, padding maybe is that thick, so. Your body builds up a callus. If you can handle it, then you know, you got a shot.Narrator: The students learn the fundamentals of the sport.James: Give him a receipt.Narrator: The basic rolls, holds, and throws.James: Everything is based around having good footwork. I won't let them get in the ring unless their feet are right. Nope, do it again. It's all repetition. So, you're gonna do it over and over again the right way and then it just becomes muscle memory.Narrator: To make the in-ring battles look real students have to learn the art of "selling" or making it look like they're actually in pain.James: Reacting with your face and body in a way to make people emotionally invest in what you're doing. I don't think anybody can really ever teach selling. You either develop it or you don't. Every hold that you see is a real hold. If you are going to treat the hold properly during a match, you need to know what it feels like. Nobody's gonna get stretched to where they're hurt. You'll just feel a little bit and go, "Okay, yeah I don't want that on."Narrator: Advanced students get the chance to showcase what they've learned in real matches. Along with being a school, NYWC is an independent wrestling promotion that puts on shows in the Long Island area. One of the school's up-and-coming students is Jaden Valo. At only 18-years-old, Valo is already showing huge potential.Jaden Valo: Ever since the first time I watched it something drew me into it, you know? Wanting to entertain people, wanting to be a part of something like, something huge like this.Narrator: Jaden is a senior in high school and uses the money he earns from a part-time job as a lifeguard to pay to train at NYWC.James: Turn it up, Jaden!Valo: Being able to work with someone so often, especially, you know, three days a week, being able to spend these hours with him. He has so much knowledge. He has so much stuff to share with everybody else, every one of the new students. Having him as, like, a coach is kind of like one of the main things that is gonna help me in the future for sure.Narrator: NYWC offers the students the tools they need to get started in the business, but after that it's up to them to see it through.James: If you're coachable and you're willing to learn you're gonna go so much farther than somebody that shuts off and thinks they know everything. Why do I have this?Student: So you can control.James: When I have head-control you're going anywhere I put you. I don't let people fail. They can fail themselves but I won't fail them as a coach. Before you roll backwards grab his ankles and pull him over. You build confidence and trust from other people in you by just, simply just not quitting.
Some movie characters are so loathsome they're hard to watch.
Whether it's because they're so convincingly evil or just unbearably annoying, some characters make you beg for the moment they're no longer on-screen.
Here are some of the most viscerally detestable movie characters in cinematic history.
There are some movie characters whose scenes are difficult to sit through — the kind whose parts make you want to fast forward or take a bathroom break instead of watching.
They are so loathsome, whether because they're immensely annoying or horribly villainous, that throughout the entire movie we're rooting for them to just be gone already.
Here are some of the most hated movie characters of all time that we just can't stand.
Lucius Malfoy in "Harry Potter" was a constant thorn in our side throughout all eight of the movie installments. His cruelty gradually gave way to his cowardice as Lord Voldemort rose to power.
Dolores Umbridge in "Harry Potter" proved that someone could be equal parts malicious and irritating. She was the source of much of the fifth movie's plight against life at Hogwarts as we knew it.
Source: IMDb
Ralph Fiennes has said that in "Harry Potter," Lord Voldemort is more of a misunderstood character rather than purely evil, what with his troubled childhood, but it's hard to remember that with the atrocities he commits.
The Frontiers and Flight air show was held at McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas in early September. The crowd was treated to demonstrations of 70 military and civilian aircraft, including B-2 stealth bombers, A-10 Warthogs, KC-135 Stratotankers, and more.
The air show also included a demonstration of six F-16 Thunderbirds.
After the show, the Thunderbirds flew back home to Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, soaring over Lake Powell reservoir near the Grand Canyon in Arizona along the way.
Thousands of migrants hunkered down in the Mexican town of Juchitán de Zaragoza on Tuesday evening and watched a screening of the Disney movie "Coco" in a rare moment of levity on their weeks-long journey to the United States.
The migrants, many of whom are children, have largely been traveling on foot since they set out from Central American countries like Honduras in mid-October. They're still nearly 1,000 miles away from the closest point along the US-Mexico border.
Read more:Why the caravan is marching to the US border
A local church and municipal government officials organized the event, converting an unused bus terminal into a temporary shelter for the estimated 4,000 migrants, and served them dinner while the film played, the Arizona Republic reported.
The choice of film appeared significant — "Coco" explores Mexican traditions around the Día de Los Muertos holiday, which will take place on Friday in Mexico, and the enduring importance of family.
Reporters traveling with the caravan tweeted out photos and videos of the event:
The event came amid a raging political debate in the US over how to handle the caravan, if or when it reaches the southern border. The US military on Monday announced it was deploying 5,200 active-duty troops to the border in anticipation of the caravan.
Though the Trump administration has ramped up border-security measures as the caravan advances, its numbers are steadily dwindling and it's far from certain that large numbers will reach the US.
Though the caravan swelled to an estimated 7,000 migrants less than two weeks ago, some have already opted to return home or seek asylum in Mexico.
But other smaller caravans have already set out on separate journeys to reach the US, according to the Associated Press. On Monday, a group of roughly 1,000 migrants pushed its way into Mexico following violent clashes with police, and third and fourth groups of migrants have started traveling through Honduras and Guatemala.
The latest twist in the Trump-Russia story is an unexpected one that could bear significant legal implications for some of the parties involved.
On Tuesday, the special counsel Robert Mueller's office told Business Insider that it had referred to the FBI for investigation an alleged scheme by a GOP operative to pay women to falsely accuse Mueller of sexual misconduct and workplace harassment.
As details of the suspicious scheme spilled out, it emerged that men claiming to work for the GOP lobbyist Jack Burkman and Surefire Intelligence, a shady intelligence firm tied to the conservative firebrand Jacob Wohl, offered women 5-figure payments to accuse Mueller of sexual misconduct and to sign a sworn affidavit to that effect.
Shortly after the media reported on Burkman's and Surefire Intelligence's apparent plan on Tuesday, the far-right website Gateway Pundit published a document from Surefire Intelligence that purports to detail an allegation against Mueller by a woman who claims the special counsel sexually assaulted her at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City on August 2, 2010.
There is no evidence that the allegation holds any merit. Burkman also said on Tuesday that he will "reveal the first of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's sex assault victims" on Thursday at the Rosslyn Holiday Inn in Arlington, Virginia.
Read more:What we know about the shady 'intel agency' behind an alleged GOP scheme to pay women to falsely accuse Mueller of sexual misconduct
Rather than legally implicate Mueller, however, the alleged scheme may open Wohl, Burkman, and other parties up to legal exposure.
Journalists were first alerted to the scheme when a woman identifying herself as Lorraine Parsons reached out to them and told them she'd a man working for Burkman had offered her $20,000 to falsely accuse Mueller of sexual misconduct.
Parsons did not respond to any follow-up questions from Business Insider, and several other reporters said they found her to be unreliable, adding that she also refused to speak to them on the phone.
Burkman said on Tuesday that he had never met the woman.
But a second woman, Jen Taub, later came forward and told The Atlantic that someone working for Surefire Intelligence had also contacted her and made an offer similar to the one Parsons outlined.
Wohl and Burkman are known to peddle conspiracy theories, and both men frequently parrot President Donald Trump's claims that the Russia investigation is a politically motivated hoax and that Mueller is embarking on a fishing expedition to entrap the president.
'If the basic facts' of the scheme hold up ... 'Burkman is in jeopardy'
President Donald Trump at an Ohio rally Aug. 4, 2018.Carolyn Kaster/AP
Harry Litman, a former deputy assistant attorney general, said that "if the basic facts" of the scheme "hold up, and there is apparently at least one corroborating witness, [Taub], Burkman is in jeopardy."
The most "straightforward" charge, he added, is obstruction of justice.
"It's obviously a scheme designed to hamper or derail the investigation by discrediting Mueller publicly," Litman said.
Burkman could also face a charge of defamation, but the FBI would not investigate that because it's not a criminal charge.
The GOP lobbyist was also interviewed by the FBI, and Litman said that fact could form the basis for a false statement charge.
Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor from the Southern District of New York, echoed that statement and added that "any person who knowingly takes part in a scheme to fabricate allegations against Mueller could be subject to federal criminal charges" for witness tampering in addition to obstruction and making false statements.
Those charges could work on two levels. It's a crime to pay or solicit any witness to give false testimony in any case. Moreover, if the intent of that action is to derail Mueller's work on the Russia probe, that could expose the parties involved to additional liability.
If a second person, like Wohl, was knowingly involved in the alleged scheme, Litman said it could raise the prospect of a conspiracy charge.
When contacted by NBC News on Tuesday, Wohl said he didn't have any role in the matter.
But the outlet reported that Wohl's email address is the one listed in the domain records for Surefire Intelligence's website. Calls to a number on the website also reportedly went to a voice mailbox belonging to Wohl's mother.
The legal questions surrounding outside parties, like Trump allies who publicize unsubstantiated allegations against Mueller, depend on their knowledge and intent, Honig said.
"If the outsider knew the allegations were false and published or promoted them intending to interfere with or upend Mueller's work," Honig said it's possible — but not certain — that they could also face criminal liability.
The holidays are almost here, and so is peak shopping season.
Retailers often take the gloves off around the holidays, supercharging their online offerings with perks like free shipping and hot deals to get customers to shop with them over a competitor.
We compared the shipping offerings from four of the most popular online shopping destinations to see which one is offering the best options, all else being equal.
Olivia Reaney/Business Insider
Some stores, like Amazon and Walmart, have not announced any changes to their shipping policies for the holidays.
Walmart will still offer free two-day shipping with any order of $35 or more, a policy it enacted in early 2017. That's the highest order requirement among the major players.
Amazon will offer its standard-speed shipping for any order over $25 and is the slowest guaranteed time, in four to five days from the time of shipment.
Amazon Prime members will still get their two-day shipping guarantee, but as usual, the membership requires customers first spend $119 for an annual subscription or $12.99 for a monthly one.
Read more: Best Buy is making a bold move to capture a piece of over $10 billion in sales up for grabs
Both Best Buy and Target are offering special promotions this holiday season.
Best Buy is offering free shipping all season long, but it is not guaranteeing that customers will receive their packages in a set number of days. Customers will get a delivery date based on what they're ordering and where they're located. The promotion is valid through December 25.
Target has stepped it up this year, however, offering by far the best free shipping perk through the holidays. Not only is shipping completely free from November 1 until December 22 for all orders, with no minimum requirement, but the store is also guaranteeing that packages will arrive two days after shipment.
It makes sense that Target is pulling out all the stops to own the holiday season online.
Most of this year's sales growth is likely to come from online purchases. Forrester Research is predicting 14% sales growth online but only 1.7% growth in stores. Analysts estimated that Amazon took nearly half of all online retail sales in 2017, and that it will account for even more this year.
Forrester estimates that online holiday sales will account for more than 32% of all online sales for the year.
On Tuesday, University of Maryland's decision to reinstate football head coach D.J. Durkin was met with criticism by much of the sports world.
Durkin was placed on administrative leave in August following the death of 19-year-old offensive lineman Jordan McNair, who suffered from heat stroke during a June practice. The school launched an investigation that found there was a culture of fear and intimidation around the football team, but that it was not "toxic." Durkin received criticism and support from members and family members of the football team.
"I feel like I've been punched in the stomach, and somebody spit in my face," Marty McNair, Jordan's father, told ESPN's Heather Dinichand Adam Rittenberg.
According to ESPN, upon learning of Durkin's reinstatement, several members of the football team walked out of a meeting.
Hasan Murphy, the lawyer for the McNairs, told ESPN that the school had failed to protect its students, saying the reinstatement is "indefensible."
"The university has an obligation to protect, to educate and to nurture every one of its students," Murphy said. "Yet today, the board ratified and validated the heartbreaking actions by Coach Durkin and his staff toward Jordan in May by continuing the employment of the man who failed in his primary responsibility to Jordan. That is callous and it is indefensible."
According to ESPN, Maryland president Wallace D. Loh was not keen on retaining Durkin. However, according to ESPN, the board of regents insisted on keeping Durkin, believing he was incorrectly blamed for McNair's death, and threatened Loh's job if he did not keep Durkin.
"This is really not Dr. Loh's decision," a source told ESPN.
ESPN's college football expert Paul Finebaum ripped the school on Wednesday.
"This is why people don't trust big-time athletics," Finebaum said. "This is a complete and total sham. It's a travesty ... There's no rhyme or reason for this. There's no common sense. This is the big guys running the program."
Several Maryland football players also tweeted their criticism of the decision.
The decision has also been blasted by the media, from ESPN, The Washington Post, Sports Illustrated, USA Today, The Athletic, The Ringer, and more.
"I don't know when I've seen a case quite this egregious," Finebaum said on Wednesday, adding: "We have a young man who died here because of a culture at the University of Maryland.
"The thought that this board of regents would allow this coach — and this athletic director, who looked the other way in my mind — who wasn't paying enough attention, to continue, it just speaks volumes of the toxic nature of intercollegiate athletics."
42 years after Orson Welles was finally finished with his movie, "The Other Side of the Wind" (which took him 6 years to complete principal photography on), Netflix will release it on its streaming service Friday.
For movie lovers, it's the ultimate "lost movie," a work that the iconic director toiled over until his death on October 5, 1985, but never completed. For Welles fans, it's a glimpse into the evolution of their maestro. He will always be known for making "Citizen Kane," which many still regard as the greatest movie ever made, yet with this movie he proved he could make something as edgy and forward-thinking as the up-and-comers of the era like Dennis Hopper, Francis Ford Coppola, and William Friedkin.
But for those who have spent years (and in some cases decades) trying to get Welles' final film to the public, this weekend marks the time they can finally take a giant exhale.
"I'm thrilled to be done," producer Frank Marshall (behind the Indiana Jones and "Jurassic Park" franchises) told Business Insider with a laugh. He was also a production manager on "The Other Side of the Wind" when he was 25.
"It was a long and tortured road, at times," producer Filip Jan Rymsza said looking back. He worked the last nine and a half years trying to settle the copyright issues surrounding the movie.
In many ways, the story of how "The Other Side of the Wind" finally made it to audiences is as epic as Welles' ambitions for the movie itself.
6 years of 'the poor man's process'
In 1970, Welles was back in Los Angeles after living in self-exile in Europe for more than a decade. Sensing the independent film wave that was building in America following the success of Dennis Hopper's "Easy Rider," Welles was ready for a comeback, and the project that would bring the auteur back into the zeitgeist would be the strangely titled "The Other Side of the Wind."
It's a tale that feels as if Welles bottled everything that happened to him in the latter half of his life and spilled it into a script — though he always claimed the movie wasn't autobiographical.
You can be the judge.
The movie follows the final day in the life of famed director Jake Hannaford (played by a famed director, John Huston). Celebrating his 70th birthday, Hannaford is trying to get the finishing funds to complete his comeback movie after being in Europe for years. Told mostly using handheld, faux-documentary footage (some in color, some in black-and-white), the bulk of the movie takes place at his birthday party, where Hannaford has brought financiers, critics, filmmakers, and film students to come and see the footage of his movie (which is shot on pristine high-quality film).
Welles cast the party with real film students, real filmmakers (Dennis Hopper, Henry Jaglom, and Paul Mazurksy all appear chatting about the craft), as well as his good friend and fellow filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich in the role of Brooks Otterlake, a rising-star director who owes his career to Hannaford. This very much mirrored the real-life relationship Welles had with Bogdanovich. In fact, during the making of the movie, Bogdanovich went and made "The Last Picture Show," which would give him auteur status like his mentor.
Oja Kodar in "The Other Side of the Wind." Netflix As depicted in Josh Karp's book, "Orson Welles's Last Movie: The Making of the Other Side of the Wind," the six-year process to make "The Other Side of the Wind" was filled with many starts and stops as Welles constantly was looking for enough money to continue shooting. The script was changed almost daily by Welles, location shoots were often done without proper permits (a lot of it was shot at Bogdanovich's home during the years Welles lived there), and scenes were pulled off in low-budget ways.
Read more: This book on iconic filmmaker Orson Welles looks at his infamous final movie
Take, for instance, one of the movie's most memorable scenes: the sex scene inside a car featuring Welles' collaborator and mistress Oja Kodar as the rain is pouring outside.
"It was the poor man's process," Marshall said of the scene, which he was on set for the shooting of. "We were just shaking the car to make it look like it was moving, would walk by with lights so it looked like cars were passing by, and had a garden hose for the rain."
With Welles pinching pennies to get the movie finished, it was impossible to fathom how he'd find the money for post production.
Let's make a deal
For years, Welles was very much like Hannaford, searching for deep pockets to finish his movie. Even when Welles was honored with the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award in 1975, a portion of his acceptance speech was him pitching "The Other Side of the Wind."
Sadly, by the time of his death, Welles only had a 40-minute cut of the movie to show for the six years of effort he put into making it. Left behind, along with the cut, were hours of footage, notes on how to shape it all into a feature film, and mass confusion about who really owned it all.
When Welles died in 1985, he left many of his assets to his estranged wife, Paola Mori, and following her death a year later, they were inherited by their daughter, Beatrice Welles. But Welles also left assets, like "The Other Side of the Wind" and other unfinished projects, to Kodar. Then there was a third party who claimed ownership, Mehdi Bushehri, the brother-in-law of the Shah of Iran.
In Welles' search for self financing on "The Other Side of the Wind," which gave him the artistic control he craved, the director found a French-based Iranian group headed by Bushehri. Through years of tension between Welles and Bushehri's company during production, things only got worse when funding became non-existent after the Shah was overthrown in 1979. However, Bushehri continued to have an ownership stake in the movie.
This was the mess Marshall found himself in starting in the 1990s, when he tried to help Bogdanovich and others finish what Welles started. Though there was the 40-minute Welles cut they could show potential investors, most of the movie was locked away in a Paris vault.
(L-R) Frank Marshall, Peter Bogdanovich, and Filip Jan Rymsza. Getty "I kept meeting with financiers — people from Canada, people from Europe, people from Malibu," Marshall said. "They all had an idea of how to do this and the more we talked about it the more riskier it got for them. And then they would not come back."
Then, when it seemed someone could pull it off and get the money needed, the three parties that needed to agree — Beatrice Welles, Oja Kodar, and Mehdi Bushehri — couldn't.
"Everyone wanted the film to be completed," Rymsza said, "they just wanted it done on their own terms. It was a minefield. And if you made an enemy with this group you made an enemy for life, so that was the tricky part."
And as more and more potential financiers went to the wayside, the legend of "The Other Side of the Wind" only grew.
While writing the book, Karp was told stories of footage from the movie having been seen all over the world. The movie's cinematographer, Gary Graver, kept footage of the movie in his refrigerator. Karp even remembers one of the directors who made a cameo in the movie, Paul Mazurksy, telling him that one day at a farmers' market someone walked up to him and whispered, "Hey, you ever seen 'The Other Side of the Wind?'" and that he was given an address and a time to see it.
"The stories were just crazy," Karp said. "There was also stories of this mythical three-hour cut of the movie that people told me they saw that Welles was very close to completing."
However, Karp could never prove that such a print existed. It's just another story that elevated the myth of "The Other Side of the Wind."
Thanks Netflix, now open the vault
What finally led to the vault in Paris being opened so the movie could be completed and released was Netflix.
One of the biggest challenges a potential investor had to take, outside of the cost for the rights all three parties would agree on, was the unknown price tag for competing the movie. Both Marshall and Rymsza said they drew up separate budgets for the cost to complete post production, but without seeing the footage and its condition, they had one hand tied behind their backs.
"I didn't know it would be 100 hours of material," Rymsza said. "I had done a paper inventory and so I knew the amount of film elements but it's difficult to foresee how much material there is and a lot of these factors would drive the cost of post."
Behind the scenes on the set of "The Other Side of the Wind." Netflix Rymsza would not divulge how much his original budget was, only saying it was a "significant price tag" and that they did go over budget to complete the movie.
Netflix announced in August it would give the funds needed to compete the movie (it also greenlit the documentary, "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead," in which director Morgan Neville looks back on the making of the movie).
Along with a score being made for the movie, and special effects done to complete the drive-in movie scenes, there wasn't any sound for three weeks of shooting, so that was a major undertaking. Also, a team of negative cutters had to come in to reconstruct the original negative of the movie, which took months. However, Netflix never wavered in backing the project. "Netflix supported us above and beyond," Marshall said. "They were basically like, 'We know you bought an old house and you're going to have old house problems,' which is exactly what happened. And we would go in and explain what we needed and they would say, 'Okay.'"
So what is the movie really about?
"The Other Side of the Wind" is a fascinating look at a legend trying to get back on top. But is it autobiographical? It's hard to not come to that conclusion after watching the movie, which seems to also explore Welles' complicated relationship with Bogdanovich.
The most compelling moments of the movie are when Hannaford and Otterlake are having conversations about their work and their friendship. And on set, it was more than obvious to those who were there that Welles was putting his relationship with Bogdanovich on screen.
Take, for example, at the end of the movie in the drive-in, when Otterlake is speaking to Hannaford and at one point says to his mentor, "What did I do wrong, Daddy?"
"Huston wasn't there that day for that scene," Marshall recalled. "Peter was playing it to Orson. Orson was also directing him and his direction to Peter for that scene was, 'It's us.'"
Orson Welles. Netflix Bogdanovich didn't just drop everything to be in "The Other Side of the Wind" whenever he was called upon by Welles, or let him live in his home with his then-wife Cybill Shepherd, he also invested money in the movie to keep it going. Welles was grateful, but had a weird way of showing it sometimes, like the time he went on "The Tonight Show" and made fun of Bogdanovich with guest host Burt Reynolds.
But despite all that, Bogdanovich has never faltered in trying to accomplish his mentor's final request: finish "The Other Side of the Wind" if he died.
"Peter became a much more heroic figure to me in just how much he cared about Orson," Karp, who is also a producer on the documentary, said about talking to Bogdanovich for the book. "Welles took a lot from Peter and Peter got a lot from Welles. Welles truly loved him but in a way that probably didn't feel like he was being very appreciated at the time. But Peter is a true believer, and there's a lot to be said about that."
"The Other Side of the Wind" and "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead" are both available Friday on Netflix.
Facebook reported mixed third-quarter results on Tuesday.
The social-media giant said US daily active users held at 185 million.
Shares rallied more than 5% ahead of Wednesday's opening bell.
Watch Facebook trade live here.
Facebook was set to open higher by more than 5% Wednesday after reporting mixed third-quarter results.
The social-media giant announced Tuesday that it earned $1.76 a share, easily beating the $1.47 that Wall Street analyst surveyed by Bloomberg were expecting. Revenue surged 33% versus a year ago to $13.73 billion, but that was shy of the $13.80 billion that was expected.
Facebook said its US daily active users held at 185 million, coming as a relief to investors after a tumultuous few months. The company has been trying to repair the reputational damage done by the recent scandals, including Cambridge Analytica and the hack of 30 million users' sensitive data.
"Growth is decelerating, yet '19 seems to be a pivot point with investment stabilizing," the Jefferies analyst Brent Thill said in a note sent out to clients following the results.
"As we model out into '20 we see EPS growth accelerating into high teens and model $10+ in EPS in '21. It will probably take a few qtrs for sentiment to reverse, but with FB trading ~20x our '19 EPS (17x '20) we see more upside than down. We believe patient investors will be rewarded at these levels as FB turns the corner on investment in '19."
Last quarter, Facebook said its monthly active users in the US stalled and warned that revenue growth rates would decline by "high single digit" percentages in the coming quarters.
Shares had plunged 35% through Tuesday after that report, sending Facebook shares to their lowest level since April 2017.
Facebook's new political ad transparency tools allowed Business Insider to run adverts as being "paid for" by Cambridge Analytica, the political consultancy that dragged Facebook into a major data scandal this year.
The investigation demonstrates that political advertising on Facebook is still open to manipulation by bad actors, even with greater efforts at transparency. This is despite commitments from chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to solve the company's misinformation problem.
Vice first reported last week that the Facebook political ads tool could be manipulated, with the publication securing approval to buy fake Facebook ads on behalf of US Vice President Mike Pence, terrorist group ISIS, and 100 US senators.
Business Insider carried out a similar test, setting up false political ads that were captioned as being "paid for by Cambridge Analytica," the defunct political advertising firm which harvested Facebook data and weaponized it during the 2016 US election. Cambridge Analytica is banned from Facebook and has gone into administration.
Earlier this month, Facebook introduced a compulsory "paid for" disclosure for any advert relating to political issues in the UK. The feature has been live in the US since May and is also available in Brazil. The goal is to show users who is paying for ads that are attempting to sway their votes or opinions on significant political issues. Additionally, anyone who wants to post political adverts now has to clear several verification hurdles.
How we got fake ads on Facebook
The test involved Facebook approving Business Insider to place political ads on its services. That required verifying our driver's licence and a UK address.
Facebook's authorisation process for users wanting to post political ads on its site and apps. Shona Ghosh/Business Insider/Facebook
Once these were verified, we were temporarily approved to place political ads via a Facebook page.
Business Insider set up a page posing as an NGO, called "Insider Research Group," and ran two ads with the disclosure of "paid for by Cambridge Analytica."
We used existing ads that had been run by the Vote Leave and BeLeave campaigns during the UK's Brexit referendum in 2016. We accompanied them with inflammatory captions and links to the Vote Leave and Cambridge Analytica websites.
Here's a screenshot of one ad we ran:
Shona Ghosh/Business Insider
And the second ad:
Shona Ghosh/Business Insider
We chose to run the ads over two days to a limited local audience in east London to test whether Facebook's moderators or automated filters would pick up on the fake "paid for" disclosure or the Cambridge Analytica name.
Running a campaign and setting it live on Facebook requires further approvals from the company, separate from its requirements for running political ads. But at no point during the verification or approvals process did Facebook flag that the ads did not meet its standards.
Facebook confirmed that the adverts violated its policies, even though they were not caught during the approval process. The company did not explain how the adverts slipped the net.
A spokesman said: "This ad was not created by Cambridge Analytica. It is fake, violates our policies and has been taken down. We believe people on Facebook should know who is behind the political ads they're seeing which is why we are creating the Ads Library so that you can see who is accountable for any political ad. We have tools for anyone to report suspicious activity such as this."
Facebook said it takes both a proactive and reactive approach to approving the "paid for" disclosures. The two ads originally appeared in Facebook's archive of all UK political ads on its site, but have now been labelled as "disapproved." The company emphasised that it needs the help of users, journalists, and researchers to report suspicious activity.
Facebook's transparency tools are intended to help people become better informed about potential misinformation and inflammatory political advertising on its platform. The social network has come under close political scrutiny for its role in enabling misinformation during the US 2016 presidential election and, to a lesser degree, the UK's Brexit vote.
Business Insider's investigation follows UK politicians uncovering evidence of a shadowy ad campaign encouraging British citizens to lobby against Prime Minister Theresa May and her plan for Brexit. That campaign pre-dates Facebook's transparency tools, but Conservative politician Damian Collins stated that it was worrying "we have absolutely no idea who is behind it."
At the UK launch of the ad tools earlier this month, Facebook said the new service was not explicitly designed to catch malicious actors, but to provide transparency. But Business Insider's small test does raise questions about the efficacy of Facebook's verification processes.
One person died and three people were injured after an explosion at the offices of Russia's security services (FSB) in northern Russia on Wednesday, local news agencies reported.
A man entered the FSB building in the city of Arkhangelsk, and blew himself up at the entrance, a spokesperson for Russia's Anti-Terrorism Committee told state news agency TASS. The suspected died of his own wounds.
"According to preliminary data, the person, who entered the building, took an unidentified object from his bag, which exploded some time later in his hands," the anti-terror agency said, according to TASS.
"As a result, he received fatal wounds."
Bomb disposal experts are now reportedly working at the scene.
Three staff members were injured.
A source told state news agency TASS that the person who was killed was not an FSB officer.
Private equity firms are fighting to acquire a stake in the pizza chain Papa John’s, according to Reuters.
Shares of the pizza chain rallied 10% following the news.
Papa John’s is likely to be valued at $63.50 per share during a potential acquisition, Jefferies analyst Alexander Slagle recently said.
Watch Papa John's trade live.
Papa John's shares rallied 10% Tuesday after a Reuters report said private equity firms are fighting to acquire a stake in the pizza chain.
Reuters reports, Bain Capital and CVC Capital Partners are among the private equity firms competing to buy a stake. Private equity firms KKR & Co and Roark Capital have also been vying for Papa John’s, with binding offers expected in the next few weeks, according to Reuters' sources. Hedge fund Trian Fund Management, an investor in fast-food chain Wendy's that had expressed interest in Papa John’s, is said to be considering a potential investment should a deal for the sale of the company not be reached.
A special committee formed by Papa John’s board of directors is exploring a sale as part of a wide review of strategic alternatives, and there is no certainty that the company will agree to a sale, the sources added.
No matter who buys Papa John's, investors care most about what the pizza chain might be worth in the event of an acquisition. Jefferies analyst Alexander Slagle recently said that Papa John's is likely to be valued at $63.50 per share during an acquisition — 18% above where shares settled on Tuesday. Slagle made the conclusion by comparing Papa John’s potential deal with Inspire Brands' recent purchase of Sonic.
Astronomers just observed the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy sucking blobs of hot gas toward their doom at a blistering 30% the speed of light.
That's an incredible 201 million mph, which was enough to trigger three powerful bursts of radiation from the clouds. Researchers detected the flares from Earth using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) array in Chile.
Scientists behind the observations of Sagittarius A* (pronounced "A-star"), as the monster black hole is known, say the data is a "mind-boggling" closest-ever look near the edge of a black hole. It's not the traditional point-of-no-return, called the event horizon— from which light cannot escape — but a physical one where, if anything made of matter teeters too close, it will begin an inescapable death spiral.
The group published a study of its work on Wednesday in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
"Astronomers have observed material as close as you can get to a black hole without being consumed by it," Josephine Peters, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford who wasn't involved in the study, told Business Insider.
"Even though [Sagittarius A*] is our closest supermassive black hole, it is still incredibly mysterious," she added. "This marks the beginning of understanding more about our nearby astronomical monster."
Staring the 'monster' of the Milky Way in the eye
The highly active, star-choked region at the center of the Milky Way known as Sagittarius A.SO/S. Gillessen et al.Sagittarius A* is thought to be a black hole about 4.14 million times the mass of our sun, or 1.3 trillion times as massive as Earth.
Definitively proving either of those two facts is tricky, though, since the presumed black hole is some 25,000 light-years from Earth. It's also practically invisible because the gravity of black holes is so strong that not even light can escape beyond their event horizons, where Albert Einstein's calculations of the universe fall apart and Stephen Hawking's begin.
However, knowing as much about Sagittarius A* as possible is crucial for a number of good reasons.
On big scales, it's a window into the history and evolution of the Milky Way galaxy, which rotates its spiral arms of hundreds of billions of stars about the giant black hole at its center. That galactic story is also intimately tied to the emergence of the solar system and life itself. (And the same is true of the hundreds of billions of other galaxies in the visible universe— some of which may harbor aliens).
There's also its weirder utility: The closest supermassive black hole we know of is a laboratory for the physical laws of the universe. It is so massive and spins so rapidly, it dramatically warps and twists spacetime, and accelerates objects to relativistic or near-light-speed.
Nature gets very, very weird when this happens, but it happens nowhere near Earth. So being able to watch it, even from tens of thousands of light-years away, is like having a front-row seat to the cutting-edge of human knowledge.
This is why astronomers aimed an instrument called GRAVITY at Sagittarius A*.
The Very Large Telescope (VLT) is located in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. ESO
In uncomplicated terms, GRAVITY combines the light harvested by four 30-foot-diameter telescopes in the VLT array, which is operated by the European Southern Observatory.
GRAVITY does so as a super-precise, super-cooled instrument that allows researchers to extract more information from the incoming light. This turns the array into one very powerful "virtual" telescope equivalent to 425 feet in diameter.
This extra resolving power helped astronomers peer at a plane of gas and dust that's falling toward Sagittarius A*, a feature called an accretion disk. The disk is about 100 million miles wide, or a little wider than Earth is distant from the sun.
GRAVITY helped the team look for flares of infrared light, which astronomers had seen for more than decade. But this time — with incredible resolving power — they tried to stare at the innermost edge of the disk.
During observations on the nights of May 27, July 22, and July 28, GRAVITY saw three flares. The data suggested the flares came from a blob of hot gas circling clockwise around the black hole.
"As a cloud of gas gets closer to the black hole, they speed up and heat up," Peters said. "It glows brighter the faster and hotter it gets. Eventually the gas cloud gets close enough that the pull of the black hole stretches it into a thin arc."
This happened just outside the event horizon, in an area astronomers refer to as a physical point-of-no-return, called the "innermost stable circular orbit" or ISCO — a region not yet observed before.
Move a blob of matter closer than the ISCO, the thinking goes, and it can't escape. The gravity of a black hole will accelerate the blob of matter, giving it more energy, which will — as Einstein's work explains — give it a stronger gravitational force. This then pulls it faster toward the black hole, creating a feedback-loop of relativistic physics that ends in oblivion.
What the edge of our supermassive black hole might look like
This thin arc is shown in the ESO's picture at the top of this story, though the image is not a photograph.
Rather, it's a visual simulation that uses data collected by GRAVITY and other telescopes. Orange shows what researchers think is a blob of superheated gas, or plasma, while blue shows radiation that bleeds off the matter and occasionally bursts into bright flares.
The picture also illustrates the bending and distortion of light caused by the black hole warping spacetime with its concentrated mass, an effect called gravitational lensing.
ESO also created an animation of the gas cloud and flares, below.
The signal seen on Earth is in infrared light, which is just out of the range of human visibility, but it's not the only form of flare radiation.
"If you were close enough to observe these flares, you'd be in a lot of trouble," Tana Joseph, an astrophysicist and fellow at the University of Manchester who wasn't involved in the study, told Business Insider in an email. "We would see extremely bright flashes of optical light, and there would be lots of high energy radiation, like gamma rays and X-rays, that would be very damaging to our bodies."
Peters says flares have been seen coming from Sagittarius A* before. However, she added the new observations — which show the very edge of the black hole — are like going from the resolution of an old television to a high-definition flat-screen TV.
A flashing spacetime lens?
An artist's impression of a supermassive black hole.NRAO/AUI/NSF; D. Berry/Skyworks
What causes these flares is an active mystery.
One idea is that extreme forces around the black hole, primarily intense magnetic fields, will occasionally toss off and accelerate some of the hot plasma into jets, which then bleed off energy as flares.
"We see plasma flares associated with magnetic fields in many places, including our own Sun, but we don't yet fully understand the exact causes of such flares," Misty Bentz, an astrophysicist at Georgia State University at who also wasn't part of the study, told Business Insider in an email.
But something far weirder may be at play: large distortions in spacetime caused by the spinning of a black hole at some fraction of the speed of light. Such distortions might be focusing the energy that's bleeding off of orbiting blobs of hot plasma into a beam, and the beam occasionally flashes across the telescopes of Earth — creating a flare.
"The black hole is like this lighthouse lens that's causing this thing to flash at us as it goes around," Avery Broderick, an astrophysicist at the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics and the University of Waterloo, told Quanta. (Broderick first proposed this idea in 2005.)
The ESO's press release claims the flares "provide long-awaited confirmation that the object in the center of our galaxy is, as has long been assumed, a supermassive black hole."
This claim is likely over-blown, however, since it's virtually impossible to directly confirm the existence of a black hole, short of visiting one or "listening" to them crash together.
"One might argue that you can never prove the existence of an invisible object like a black hole," Bentz said. "But this new study with GRAVITY confirms that a compact object with a mass of 4 million suns is still the only way to explain all the observations."
Bentz is eager to know what the flares foretell. She also said the very circular orbit of the blob of plasma was unusual. This may suggest the rotational axis of Sagittarius A*, like a tilting spinning top, was aligned with the Milky Way a few million years ago, but has inexplicably pointed toward Earth.
If true, Bentz said, "that would be quite a puzzle."
