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On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that nine people in Minnesota and Wisconsin have got fallen ill during the most recent E. coli outbreak. Two of them have been admitted to hospital.

In River Falls in Wisconsin, the outbreak has been linked to Alfalfa sprouts from Jack & The Green Sprouts.

In an announcement regarding the outbreak, the CDC said, “Of the eight ill people who were interviewed, all eight reported eating or possibly eating alfalfa sprouts in the week before illness started”.

Symptoms of illness can be noticed two to eight days after consumption of contaminated food items. The symptoms include severe stomach cramps, diarrhea and vomiting. In most cases, people recover from the illness within a week.

As February heads into March, solar system’s largest gas giant Jupiter is all set to shine bright in the night sky. Stargazers will be able to see the king of all planets for the next several months, but during next few weeks, it will shine more bright and beautiful in eastern sky.

This week, Jupiter, a planet with mass one-thousandth that of the sun, is scheduled to set a celestial event for about an hour between 9:30 to 10:30 pm. Enthusiast sky gazers may get a glimpse of the planetary body positioned nearly half way up in the eastern sky, as per astronomers.

Sea sponge, a creature believed to be the first creature to inhabit the planet, has now some facts to support the notion. An analysis on 640-million-year-old rocks by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found a molecule from a simple sea sponge.

The new research has confirmed that the critter arrived on earth at a time much before than many other animals and the Cambrian Explosion. The belief that the sea sponge was the earth’s first creature is not new, and the new analysis has verified the notion by studying ancient molecular fossils.

On February 25, SpaceX cancelled its second attempt to launch Falcon 9 rocket, owing to issues pertaining apparently to the installation of booster containing super-cooled liquid oxygen.

The two-stage rocket was supposed to carry a powerful communications satellite. The SES-9 commercial satellite was scheduled to be launched at 6:47 p.m. from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The launch of Luxembourg-based company SES’ satellite had been earlier cancelled on February 24 as well.

Next week, American astronaut Scott Kelly will head back home after spending 11 months in zero gravity. Kelly has become the only NASA astronaut to spend 334 consecutive days in space on a single mission. But the 52-year-old astronaut says he could stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for one more year.

Kelly is scheduled to come back to earth on March 1 aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule along with Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, who was also part of year-long mission aboard the space station.

Undoubtedly, the impact of global warming has been felt in the recent years and it has been well documented by environment advocates. Global warming could lead to catastrophic consequences if not controlled by reducing greenhouse gases and pollution. Some environmental experts think earth is warming today, but during the early 2000s, global warming paused.

This is not the first time when global warming ‘hiatus’ has given rise to a debate over climate change. Last year, the debate was flared up when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that it didn’t find any evidence proving that global warming has slowed down since the early-2000s. That time, doubters accused the federal agency of hiding the truth on climate change.