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NASA’s crewed Mars mission has been grabbing headlines since its announcement. Now, a House Committee gave a jolt to the space agency’s Journey to Mars initiative by saying that the space program needs a clearer plan to taste success in the deep space mission.

Members of the committee on Science, Space, and Technology said during a special hearing that current Mars plan of NASA doesn’t seem feasible for a long-term space mission. They also said that the space agency requires a huge amount of fund for the voyage- much more than it is currently receiving every year. Some, attending the hearing, also suggested that NASA could rethink about its Mars mission, or divert its attention to the moon before Mars.

Your favorite food may be something like pizza, but our ancestors, prehistoric cave-dwellers, never had such delicious nourishments. A new discovery at Qesem cave site in Israel has revealed that prehistoric human’s meals included a lot of tortoise.

The cave has been a site of research on early humans since it discovery over 15 years ago. Researchers found clues suggesting that ancient man occupied the cave more than 200,000 years ago, and enjoyed munching on roasted tortoise. They concluded that after finding remains at the cave’s levels.

About the archeological discovery at the Qesem cave site, archaeologist archaeologist Ran Barkai said, “The evidence shows they regularly ate turtle. It was a sort of supplementary dish, maybe like a dessert or an opener to dinner”.

‘Flying Saucer’, a planet-forming disk surrounding a young star, contains extremely cold planetary building blocks, so cold that these do not jive with current planetary formation models.

Astronomers have found that the star, named 2MASS J16281370-2431391, is some 400 light-years away from Earth in the Rho Ophiuchi star formation region. Sporting a protoplanetary disk edge-on to us, the star comprises a glowing halo with a dark band at the centre. The dark band is the one that has perplexed astronomers.

Charged with securities fraud and facing congressional inquiry, ex drug executive Martin Shkreli has replaced his legal team with Benjamin Brafman, the lawyer who was behind getting Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs set free of gun and bribery charges in 2001.

The move has been taken after Shkreli was lately called ‘the most hated man in America’ for the sky-high rates he set on life-saving medications, has boarded a risky strategy for repairing his image without any assistance of professional communications advisers.

On Tuesday, the Obama administration disclosed a $1.1 billion proposal to fight the heroin crisis, which includes $970 million dedicated to substance abuse treatment.

According to the White House, Maine may benefit more than other states because the funding formula would be weighted in a way, favoring rural states and the ones more affected by the crisis.

Though the proposal has to be approved by the Republican-controlled Congress, the funding may help hundreds or even thousands of Mainers, who presently have been facing difficulty in finding treatment. At the national level, the program may provide funding over two years for the treatment of nearly 150,000 to 200,000 addicts.

On Tuesday, the American Red Cross asked prospective donors who have travelled to Zika outbreak zones to wait for more than 28 days prior to donating blood, however, mentioned that the risk of the virus transmission through blood donations is ‘extremely’ low in the continental United States.

In a statement, the Red Cross said that the ‘self-deferral’ notice for blood donors is applicable on the ones who have travelled to Mexico, the Caribbean, or Central or South America in the previous four weeks.

The Washington-based nonprofit disaster relief agency also asked that donors who donate blood and then contract symptoms consistent with Zika in the time span of two weeks of donating must consult the Red Cross so that the product can be quarantined.