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A $2.25m competition has been introduced by NASA in collaboration with National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, known as America Makes.

The competition has been kicked-off to design and build a 3D printed habitat for deep space exploration. The aim of the competition is to advance the construction technology that is required to create sustainable housing solutions both on Earth and in space. The 3-D printed habitat would also include NASA's journey to Mars.

NASA said, "Shelter is among the most basic and crucial human needs. But packing enough materials and equipment to build a habitat on a distant planet would take up valuable cargo space that could be used for other life- sustaining provisions".

On Tuesday, a California prostitute pleaded guilty to involuntary killing. It is related to the death of a playboy Google executive whom she killed by injecting with a fatal dose of heroin aboard his yacht. Alix Tichelman pleaded guilty to all charges in the six-count indictment. The case headed for a preliminary hearing in Santa Cruz County Superior Court. She was sentenced to six years jail by a judge.

According to a prosecutor, Tichelman who is a high-priced call girl didn't want to kill Forrest Hayes. She and the victim were partying together and Tichelman helped Hayes take injection that proved to be a lethal dose. It can be seen in the surveillance video that Tichelman was frightened as Hayes fell on the floor.

On May 12, Moody's Investor Service downgraded the credit rating of Chicago city, leaving the city's municipal bounds at 'junk' status.

Moody's Investors Service is the bond credit rating business of Moody's Corporation, which provides international financial research on bonds issued by commercial and government entities. The company ranks the creditworthiness of borrowers using a ratings scale that measures expected investor loss in the event of default. In the present case, the agency has relegated the rating of the City of Chicago, the city's school system and the park district.

Flawed Customer Services have weighed heavily on PayPal, with the Federal authorities seeking $25 million in penalties on account of defective credit service, deceptive advertising, and faulty payment method and for signing up customers for its credit service without their knowledge.

On Tuesday, PayPal, a subsidiary of eBay Inc., in a proposed settlement with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), has agreed to the consent order, which is now pending before a judge in U.S. District Court in Maryland.

The CFPB announced that the proposed settlement will see the eBay subsidiary refunding customers for a total sum of $15 million and pay a $10 million penalty, along with improvements in the company's policies and disclosures.

Altice SA announced that it is going to purchase about 70% of the telecommunications company Suddenlink Communications. The decision has been taken by the company as Patrick Drahi, head of the French telecom group Altice, has embarked on an expansion into the United States.

On Wednesday, Altice revealed that the purchase has placed an enterprise value of about $9.1 billion on Suddenlink, which is currently the seventh-largest United States cable company. Apart from buying Suddenlink stake, Drahi's investment vehicle Altice had made a takeover approach for larger Time Warner Cable Inc. Earlier, merger of Time Warner Cable Inc. was cancelled in April, as per reports.

According to a new study, boys who smoke marijuana are shorter than the boys who don't smoke cannabis. The new study presented at the European Congress of Endocrinology in Dublin revealed that the marijuana smokers could be about four-inches shorter than the boys who never smoked marijuana.

As per scientists from the Pir Mehr Ali Shah Agriculture University Rawalpindi in Pakistan, they analyzed the levels of certain hormones that are involved in growth. The studied had included about 217 boys who were marijuana addicted and 220 boys who never smoked cannabis. The scientists noticed that there were increased levels of puberty-related hormones like luteinising hormone (LH) and testosterone in the boys who used to smoke marijuana.