Latest news with #Veres
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
PSA to open first retail location inside new Burbank Sportscards store
PSA will open its first retail location inside the new Burbank Sportscards store. (Credit: PSA) Two of the biggest names in the trading card hobby are collaborating for a first-of-its-kind retail location later this month. On Friday, grading giant PSA announced it will open its first retail location on May 30 alongside the grand opening of the new Burbank Sportscards location. Advertisement The PSA storefront will be located inside Burbank Sportscards and be staffed by PSA employees. 'We're excited to partner with Rob [Veres] and team on the first-of-a-kind experience,' PSA president Ryan Hoge told cllct. 'We know customers value being able to interact with PSA employees at our popular local events. This gives us an always-on location now.' Burbank Sportscards owner Rob Veres told cllct on Friday that the new location will feel more like a sports card show than a shop. Already known as one of the largest and most popular card stores in the world, Burbank's new 14,000-square-foot location will feature an inventory of more than 40 million cards, as well as kiosks with access to cards that can be retrieved by store employees on-demand. Advertisement The store also plans to have more than 1 million cards available on the floor for just 25 cents, sorted by year and sport. According to Veres, the goal is to offer as many types of cards as possible to collectors in a more organized way than what they may find at other stores and card shows. When a customer arrives with a checklist, Veres wants Burbank to check off as many cards as possible. 'I want [customers] to feel like they have just entered the pulse of the hobby … we're melding the virtual experience with the physical experience,' Veres said. 'The best shops are the ones that can say 'yes' to more queries than anybody else, including card shows,' Veres added, 'and I think that's the experience people are going to get.' Advertisement PSA's retail location will accept grading submissions for trading cards, autographs, tickets, packs, Funko Pops and memorabilia. Items can also be submitted for storage in the PSA Vault or for consignment on eBay. The Burbank retail location appears to be the latest attempt by PSA to simplify the submission process for customers. PSA has greatly increased the number of pop-up events hosted at shows and card shops in recent months, which allow collectors to submit cards in person or have questions answered by PSA employees. It's currently unclear if PSA has plans to open other physical locations at other stores. A new location, including a PSA storefront, is the latest in a number of key moves for the Burbank brand in recent years. Veres stunned collectors during the 2024 National Sports Collectors Convention in Cleveland when he announced that Burbank was moving its full inventory of cards from eBay to the new Fanatics Collect marketplace in an exclusive deal. Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture. He was previously the Collectibles Editor at Sports Illustrated. You can follow him on X and Instagram @benmburrows.
BBC News
06-05-2025
- General
- BBC News
Celebral palsy: Headteacher who gives families 'hope,' gets special medal
The head of a unique County Tyrone school for children with cerebral palsy has been awarded one of Hungary's highest state Veres, from the Buddy Bear School, has received the Silver Cross of Merit of from Hungary, Ms Veres has lived in Dungannon for more than 30 Buddy Bear Trust School is the only one of its kind in Northern Ireland. First opened in 1993, the independent school relies on grants, fundraising and donations in order to palsy is a condition caused by a problem in the parts of a baby's brain used to control the can lead to symptoms like difficulty in walking or controlling movement, or speech Bear is the only school in Northern Ireland to offer an approach called conductive education, which aims to teach children greater control over their Veres was presented with her award at a ceremony in Parliament Buildings, Stormont by the Hungarian Ambassador in London, Dr Ferenc received the Silver Cross of Merit for her dedication to helping children with cerebral palsy. 'Very few facilities for these children' It is the first time the award has been given to someone in Northern and pupils, as well as Claire Sugden MLA and Baroness Foster, attended the Veres told BBC News NI receiving the Silver Cross of Merit was "a very humbling experience"."The school is important to the parents and the children," she said."From the early years there is very little facilities for these children, very few and far between therapies."At the Buddy Bear school we can work with those children from three months on."She said the school gave families "hope".And that is how parents Joanne and Neville Reid from Banbridge 13-year-old son Jack has cerebral palsy and has attended Buddy Bear since he was six months old."Jack wouldn't be here without that support and help that the school has given him throughout his difficult start in life and throughout his journey," Neville Reid said."We would be lost without the school and the intervention that they provide."The daily intervention is critical for children with cerebral palsy like Jack." No words to describe her impact Joanne Reid said she did not "have enough words to describe the impact" Ms Veres and the school had on Jack and the family."From the very first day we visited the school she was able to tell us the things that would help Jack," she said."She has tried everything with him."Ms Reid said the school, which does not receive core funding from the Education Authority (EA), needed "all the support that they can get.""We had to go through a tribunal to get Jack into the school," she said."It's vital for the other parents coming along after us that the school is still there." Mary Frances Loughran, whose son Finn attends the school, said it is a "lifeline for parents"."It's just the best place – it has so much for him," she told BBC News NI."My wee boy has come on so much in the short time he has been there. It's incredible – he's physically coming on leaps and bounds and it is such a positive mindset from when you walk through the front door," she said."It gives you so much hope for everything he is going to achieve," she added. Ms Veres first studied at the Pető Institute in Budapest where Dr Andras Pető pioneered a development programme for children and adults with cerebral she came to Dungannon, she brought that method to Buddy Hungarian Ambassador Dr Ferenc Kumin said the day was "really special"."It is a state honour that is uniquely given to those who provide a very special perfomance in the country and outside the country," he told BBC News Silver Cross of Merit is formally awarded by the President of Hungary, Dr Tamas Sulyok, but Dr Kumin travelled to Stormont to present it to Ms Veres."It is not easy to get a state honour like that," Dr Kumin said. He had previously visited Buddy Bear to meet pupils and parents and said the school had changed lives."By having this institution here, this hope started to emerge for many of these families," he said."For me it was a very revealing experience just to hear the very enthusiastic accounts of the parents, of how their lives have changed."We can point at Buddy Bear and tell the rest of the world 'look, if it is possible here, it is possible everywhere.'"
Los Angeles Times
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Under the Big Top: Cirque du Soleil's latest show to come to Laguna Hills
Penelope Elena is a hair suspension artist and insists her practice is not a trick. 'It is an ancient discipline, a circus discipline,' Elena said. 'People always think it's fake, but you actually really hang all your weight from your hair.' Elena has been doing dance and gymnastics since she was 4 years old and at the age of 8 began specializing in contortion. She went on to master aerial silks and hoops. About seven years ago she began to develop her hair suspension discipline. 'People always asks if it hurts and yeah, it hurts the first time you hang, but then you get used to it,' she said. Elena is among the talented performers featured in Cirque du Soleil's 'Echo,' coming to Laguna Hills from May 23 to June 29, when the world-renowned circus arts show raises the big top at the former site of the Laguna Hills Mall. 'Echo' is Cirque du Soleil's 20th tented, or big top, show, taking place under a large-scale circus tent rather than in a theater or stadium. It tells the story of a young girl named Future and her best friend, the Dog, as they explore a fantastical world with a mysterious cube at its center. The two friends discover how their actions shape the world while their story celebrates the bond between animals and nature. Each Cirque du Soleil show is unique with its own narrative and style and for 'Echo,' the creators aimed to build a new modern universe for a big top presentation. 'I think the aesthetics of 'Echo' is very different, it has a very contemporary design,' Elena said. 'Echo' includes new acrobatic feats, musicians, dancers, circus performers and jugglers. '[The show] is really accessible for all ages,' said Henrik Veres, a juggler featured in Cirque du Soleil's 'Echo.' 'Every act has something that certain ages can relate to.' Like Elena, Veres began honing his talent at a young age. 'I was actually born in a circus family,' Veres said. 'I am the sixth generation of circus performers in my family.' By the age of 12, Veres had focused on the discipline of juggling and was performing in front of a live audience by the time he was 14. He joined Cirque du Soleil in 2018 and has been on tour with 'Echo' for two years. Elena and Veres spent a recent afternoon visiting various Laguna area landmarks, including the beach and the Sawdust Festival Village, in full makeup and costume for photos to promote the upcoming show. They are excited to bring the tour to Orange County and look forward to inspiring audiences with their very real talent and the 'Echo' story. 'Every Cirque show has a message and this one kind of has the message that every action causes a reaction,' Veres said. 'I hope when they watch something like this they get inspired enough to know that everybody matters and doing good deeds in life will bring some good back to you as well.' Most regular tickets for Cirque du Soleil's 'Echo' cost $78 per person, with some shows priced at $68 and the 1 p.m. June 1 show priced at $83. There are also special group rates and VIP packages. Visit for details.
CNN
07-02-2025
- Science
- CNN
Elon Musk's Telsa Roadster was mistaken for an asteroid. Here's why
Seven years after SpaceX launched Elon Musk's cherry red sports car into orbit around our sun, astronomers unwittingly began paying attention to its movements once again. Observers spotted and correctly identified the vehicle as it started its extraterrestrial excursion in February 2018 — after it had blasted off into space during the Falcon Heavy rocket's splashy maiden launch. But more recently, the car spawned a high-profile case of mistaken identity as space observers mistook it for an asteroid. Several observations of the vehicle, gathered by sweeping surveys of the night sky, were inadvertently stashed away in a database meant for miscellaneous and unknown objects, according to the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center. An amateur astronomer noticed a string of data points in January that appeared to fit together, describing the orbit of a relatively small object that was swooping between the orbital paths of Earth and Mars. The citizen scientist assumed the mystery object was an undocumented asteroid and promptly sent his findings to the MPC, which operates at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a clearinghouse that seeks to catalog all known asteroids, comets and other small celestial bodies. An astronomer there verified the finding. And thus, the Minor Planet Center logged a new object, asteroid '2018 CN41.' Within 24 hours, however, the center retracted the designation. The person who originally flagged the object realized their own error, MPC astronomer Peter Veres told CNN, noticing that they had, in fact, found several uncorrelated observations of Musk's car. And the center's systems hadn't caught the error. '(The amateur astronomer) was correct. (The data points) really did belong together,' said Veres, who created the database entry for 2018 CN41. 'But again, we just receive the numbers — the positions, and even the astronomers (using) telescopes, they just see a dot that is moving. 'So from that perspective, if you don't know up front it's a Tesla Roadster, there is no way to tell,' Veres added. It was a remarkable case of mistaken identity. But it was far from the first, as a host of similar cases have troubled astronomers. The mix-ups highlight difficulties with tracking objects in deep space — a problem exacerbated by the growing number of human-made objects getting jettisoned into the ether. Rock or rocket? Objects traversing our solar system have been misidentified several times in recent years, NASA's Paul Chodas recalled to CNN. Chodas is director of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Space experts had mistaken a rocket body on a collision course with the moon for a SpaceX launch vehicle before it was confirmed in 2022 to be a rocket booster from one of China's past lunar missions. A piece of the Apollo 12 mission's Saturn V rocket, which carried three astronauts on the second crewed moon landing in 1969, baffled scientists in the early 2000s when it came back into Earth's orbit. Astronomers had to closely inspect the discarded hardware's bizarre trajectory to make an accurate identification. The University of Hawaii's Pan-STARRS1 telescope spotted another rocket part in 2020 that helped launch NASA's doomed Surveyor 2 lunar probe in 1966 during the height of the 20th century space race. The detection confounded researchers until the US government ordered a 'high-level inter-agency' effort to figure out what the object was, Chodas said. Interest, and sometimes urgency, in understanding and tracking deep-space objects stems from a desire to fundamentally understand the workings of the cosmos as well as helping policymakers and scientists understand threats — whether those threats are asteroids or foreign adversaries. Musk's sports car managed to sneak back up on the professionals charged with tracking objects in our solar system for several reasons. One key factor: Experts haven't been all that interested in keeping tabs on the vehicle. The car is not on a voyage of scientific pursuits. It was sent to space as a piece of deadweight on the inaugural test flight of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket, and the vehicle is now destined to spend eternity soaring aimlessly through our cosmic neighborhood. The car has an extremely small chance of ever impacting Earth. So as far as astronomers are concerned, it's just a hefty piece of space junk. Still, mistaking a spacecraft or human-made object for an asteroid is troublesome for the Minor Planet Center, which is tasked only with identifying naturally occurring objects. 'We don't want to receive (data about) any artificial objects at all,' Veres said. 'It's basically wasted time for us,' he added, referring to the MPC. The center is working with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to better integrate data from the agency's Horizons System database, which keeps close tabs on space rocks' trajectories and flags potentially dangerous asteroids. Veres said he wrote code that aims to better scan for human-made objects that may slip through the Minor Planet Center's filters by cross-checking with the NASA Horizons database. The fix was implemented this week, Chodas said. If that adjustment had been made earlier, he added, the patch almost certainly would have caught the error. 'Not bulletproof' Still, Veres added, updating code is not a catchall solution. 'It's still not bulletproof,' he said, 'and the issue is the number of new launches of spacecrafts.' Today, the world of spaceflight is driven as much by the commercial industry as it is by government agencies such as NASA, he noted. And private companies are not always transparent about exactly where the objects they send to space are going. It's a problem exacerbated by the fact that companies are launching far more frequently than government space programs ever have. SpaceX, for example, launched nearly 140 rockets in 2024 alone — more than NASA launched during the entire 30-year Space Shuttle program. The problem is not just satellites and spacecraft, Veres noted, but the rocket parts that are occasionally flung out into the abyss after they finish a mission. While both JPL and MPC focus squarely on cataloging and tracking natural asteroids, comets and other natural bodies — the day will come when astronomers must begin closely watching human-made objects in deep space as well, Veres said. Right now, Chodas estimates there are about 100 human-made objects in orbit around the sun, and 'most of (those objects) are lost because they're not tracked much,' he said. 'The bottom line is this: There's not a reliable database of orbits of these objects around the sun,' Chodas added. That lack of data could be a problem, as the increased traffic could muddy astronomers' view of space and complicate the work of tracking asteroids that could strike Earth. 'I think this topic will become more urgent in upcoming years,' Veres added. A mysterious pursuit One case in point: AstroForge is a bold startup based in Huntington Beach, California, that aims to one day mine rare metals in deep space. The company plans to launch a small spacecraft, called Odin, in late February to fly by an asteroid and snap images to investigate its surface. The mission marks one of the first times a private company has sent a spacecraft into deep space, or beyond the moon. At first, the company declined to publicly say which asteroid it would target, leaving open the possibility that observatories could unwittingly spot the spacecraft. AstroForge relented after pushback from the astronomy community, acknowledging in January that it aimed to send the vehicle to an asteroid called 2022 OB5 — a relatively small space rock that will pass less than 500,000 miles (800,000 kilometers) from Earth next year. But the company's CEO, Matthew Gialich, told CNN that things could change. 'One of the best things we have as a company is we can change targets at any time … so it's not a huge deal to me to say this one,' he said. 'Now, when we find this mythical asteroid that's purely platinum and is worth $1 trillion in actual material — am I going to tell the world which one it is?' Gialich said, 'Probably not.' Clouding the skies The president of the American Astronomical Society, Dara Norman, published a letter in September calling for better transparency among space operators. The document was a call to action for the global space community to come together to increase mutual understanding, highlighting several major concerns. The issues include how government-funded surveys of the night sky can be restricted because of national security concerns, the reality that commercial space companies aren't always transparent, and the general lack of regulation. In an interview with CNN on Friday, Norman said she believes the AAS put out that call as policy drivers the world over are just beginning to consider these issues. 'What we'd like to do is work in cooperation with those commercial entities to be able to make sure that science isn't impacted in some of the most egregious ways,' Norman said. 'If we're confused about whether something is an unknown asteroid or a Tesla Roadster, then it starts to cost us money to do things like tracking it or figuring it out.' That's why better coordination and transparency are crucial, Norman said, so that scientists can efficiently do their jobs — tracking potentially hazardous asteroids and attempting to gain a fuller picture of the objects that populate our solar system. 'As we start to have more players on the global scene,' Norman added, 'it's going to become even more important that we all are transparent with each other.'
CNN
07-02-2025
- Science
- CNN
Elon Musk's Telsa Roadster was mistaken for an asteroid. Here's why
Seven years after SpaceX launched Elon Musk's cherry red sports car into orbit around our sun, astronomers unwittingly began paying attention to its movements once again. Observers spotted and correctly identified the vehicle as it started its extraterrestrial excursion in February 2018 — after it had blasted off into space during the Falcon Heavy rocket's splashy maiden launch. But more recently, the car spawned a high-profile case of mistaken identity as space observers mistook it for an asteroid. Several observations of the vehicle, gathered by sweeping surveys of the night sky, were inadvertently stashed away in a database meant for miscellaneous and unknown objects, according to the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center. An amateur astronomer noticed a string of data points in January that appeared to fit together, describing the orbit of a relatively small object that was swooping between the orbital paths of Earth and Mars. The citizen scientist assumed the mystery object was an undocumented asteroid and promptly sent his findings to the MPC, which operates at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a clearinghouse that seeks to catalog all known asteroids, comets and other small celestial bodies. An astronomer there verified the finding. And thus, the Minor Planet Center logged a new object, asteroid '2018 CN41.' Within 24 hours, however, the center retracted the designation. The person who originally flagged the object realized their own error, MPC astronomer Peter Veres told CNN, noticing that they had, in fact, found several uncorrelated observations of Musk's car. And the center's systems hadn't caught the error. '(The amateur astronomer) was correct. (The data points) really did belong together,' said Veres, who created the database entry for 2018 CN41. 'But again, we just receive the numbers — the positions, and even the astronomers (using) telescopes, they just see a dot that is moving. 'So from that perspective, if you don't know up front it's a Tesla Roadster, there is no way to tell,' Veres added. It was a remarkable case of mistaken identity. But it was far from the first, as a host of similar cases have troubled astronomers. The mix-ups highlight difficulties with tracking objects in deep space — a problem exacerbated by the growing number of human-made objects getting jettisoned into the ether. Rock or rocket? Objects traversing our solar system have been misidentified several times in recent years, NASA's Paul Chodas recalled to CNN. Chodas is director of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Space experts had mistaken a rocket body on a collision course with the moon for a SpaceX launch vehicle before it was confirmed in 2022 to be a rocket booster from one of China's past lunar missions. A piece of the Apollo 12 mission's Saturn V rocket, which carried three astronauts on the second crewed moon landing in 1969, baffled scientists in the early 2000s when it came back into Earth's orbit. Astronomers had to closely inspect the discarded hardware's bizarre trajectory to make an accurate identification. The University of Hawaii's Pan-STARRS1 telescope spotted another rocket part in 2020 that helped launch NASA's doomed Surveyor 2 lunar probe in 1966 during the height of the 20th century space race. The detection confounded researchers until the US government ordered a 'high-level inter-agency' effort to figure out what the object was, Chodas said. Interest, and sometimes urgency, in understanding and tracking deep-space objects stems from a desire to fundamentally understand the workings of the cosmos as well as helping policymakers and scientists understand threats — whether those threats are asteroids or foreign adversaries. Musk's sports car managed to sneak back up on the professionals charged with tracking objects in our solar system for several reasons. One key factor: Experts haven't been all that interested in keeping tabs on the vehicle. The car is not on a voyage of scientific pursuits. It was sent to space as a piece of deadweight on the inaugural test flight of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket, and the vehicle is now destined to spend eternity soaring aimlessly through our cosmic neighborhood. The car has an extremely small chance of ever impacting Earth. So as far as astronomers are concerned, it's just a hefty piece of space junk. Still, mistaking a spacecraft or human-made object for an asteroid is troublesome for the Minor Planet Center, which is tasked only with identifying naturally occurring objects. 'We don't want to receive (data about) any artificial objects at all,' Veres said. 'It's basically wasted time for us,' he added, referring to the MPC. The center is working with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to better integrate data from the agency's Horizons System database, which keeps close tabs on space rocks' trajectories and flags potentially dangerous asteroids. Veres said he wrote code that aims to better scan for human-made objects that may slip through the Minor Planet Center's filters by cross-checking with the NASA Horizons database. The fix was implemented this week, Chodas said. If that adjustment had been made earlier, he added, the patch almost certainly would have caught the error. 'Not bulletproof' Still, Veres added, updating code is not a catchall solution. 'It's still not bulletproof,' he said, 'and the issue is the number of new launches of spacecrafts.' Today, the world of spaceflight is driven as much by the commercial industry as it is by government agencies such as NASA, he noted. And private companies are not always transparent about exactly where the objects they send to space are going. It's a problem exacerbated by the fact that companies are launching far more frequently than government space programs ever have. SpaceX, for example, launched nearly 140 rockets in 2024 alone — more than NASA launched during the entire 30-year Space Shuttle program. The problem is not just satellites and spacecraft, Veres noted, but the rocket parts that are occasionally flung out into the abyss after they finish a mission. While both JPL and MPC focus squarely on cataloging and tracking natural asteroids, comets and other natural bodies — the day will come when astronomers must begin closely watching human-made objects in deep space as well, Veres said. Right now, Chodas estimates there are about 100 human-made objects in orbit around the sun, and 'most of (those objects) are lost because they're not tracked much,' he said. 'The bottom line is this: There's not a reliable database of orbits of these objects around the sun,' Chodas added. That lack of data could be a problem, as the increased traffic could muddy astronomers' view of space and complicate the work of tracking asteroids that could strike Earth. 'I think this topic will become more urgent in upcoming years,' Veres added. A mysterious pursuit One case in point: AstroForge is a bold startup based in Huntington Beach, California, that aims to one day mine rare metals in deep space. The company plans to launch a small spacecraft, called Odin, in late February to fly by an asteroid and snap images to investigate its surface. The mission marks one of the first times a private company has sent a spacecraft into deep space, or beyond the moon. At first, the company declined to publicly say which asteroid it would target, leaving open the possibility that observatories could unwittingly spot the spacecraft. AstroForge relented after pushback from the astronomy community, acknowledging in January that it aimed to send the vehicle to an asteroid called 2022 OB5 — a relatively small space rock that will pass less than 500,000 miles (800,000 kilometers) from Earth next year. But the company's CEO, Matthew Gialich, told CNN that things could change. 'One of the best things we have as a company is we can change targets at any time … so it's not a huge deal to me to say this one,' he said. 'Now, when we find this mythical asteroid that's purely platinum and is worth $1 trillion in actual material — am I going to tell the world which one it is?' Gialich said, 'Probably not.' Clouding the skies National security concerns are another issue that can cloud astronomers' ability to see the cosmos clearly, as the president of the American Astronomical Society, Dara Norman, pointed out in a letter published in September that calls for better transparency. 'Some US government funded astronomical surveys have been restricted from publishing data … including deep space objects beyond 100,000 (kilometers),' Norman said in the letter. 'The practice … should be reviewed to determine if there are in fact any national security reasons for applying such restrictions.' The letter also states that, even though spacefaring countries and companies are required by a United Nations resolution to make public where objects they launch to space are heading, that mandate is 'largely ignored for deep space objects.' That, along with the fact that private companies are launching objects at unprecedented rates, is among the reasons scientists are concerned about their current abilities to track objects in our solar system, the letter noted. '(T)ransparency is essential for promoting space situational awareness, reducing interference between missions, avoiding interference with observations of natural objects, including observations of potentially hazardous asteroids,' Norman noted in the September letter, 'and ensuring the peaceful exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies.'
