Another major crack has appeared on the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica, satellite images have revealed. The new rift in one of the region’s biggest floating platforms of ice branches off from another major fissure, scientists have observed growing fast over the last year. The new crack is just over nine miles long and branches off the original 111 mile-long fissure.

Scientists with Project Midas, a U.K. based Antarctic research group, have been tracking changes to the Larsen C ice shelf for the past two years. In August 2016, when they were able to observe the ice shelf again after the polar night, they discovered the original crack had grown by 13.5 miles.

In January, they announced the rift had grown a further 11 miles. “Only a final 20km [12 miles] of ice now connects an iceberg a quarter of the size of Wales to its parent ice shelf,” they said in a statement at the time.

"When it calves, the Larsen C Ice Shelf will lose more than 10 percent of its area to leave the ice front at its most retreated position ever recorded; this event will fundamentally change the landscape of the Antarctic Peninsula." The iceberg, when it breaks away, will measure 3,100 square miles.

New satellite data has now shown the presence of a new nine mile-long branch along the rift, moving in the same direction as the larger rift.

“While the previous rift tip has not advanced, a new branch of the rift has been initiated. This is approximately 10km [6 miles] behind the previous tip, heading towards the ice-front,” Adrian Luckman, head of Project Midas, said in a statement.

The researchers said observing a new rift was the first significant change since February. Luckman said that though the original rift hadn’t grown in length for several months, it was growing wider, at a rate of more than three feet per day.

Larsen C ice shelf. Image taken December 2016.NASA/JOHN SONNTAG

“It is currently winter in Antarctica, therefore direct visual observations are rare and low resolution. Our observations of the rift are based on synthetic aperture radar interferometry from ESA’s [European Space Agency] Sentinel-1 satellites. Satellite radar interferometry allows a very precise monitoring of the rift development,” he added.

The Larsen C ice shelf is 217 miles thick and sits at the edge of West Antarctica, holding back the flow of glaciers feeding into it. Scientists believe that after the calving event, the ice shelf will follow the same fate as the Larsen A and B ice shelves, slowly disintegrating until nothing is left.

Image showing how the Larsen C ice shelf has grown.PROJECT MIDAS

Discussing Larsen B, Ala Khazendar, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California, said: "Although it’s fascinating scientifically to have a front-row seat to watch the ice shelf becoming unstable and breaking up, it’s bad news for our planet. This ice shelf has existed for at least 10,000 years, and soon it will be gone."A similar calving event took place at Larsen B in 2002 and 2003 and the ice shelf has been weakening ever since. In 2015, NASA released footage showing how the ice shelf was in its “final act” and will likely completely disintegrate by the end of the decade.

Current projections indicate that if the Larsen C ice shelf disintegrates, it could raise sea levels by up to 10cm.

Larsen C ice shelf. Image shows the 111 mile rift that has been growing over the last two years.JOHN SONNTAG/NASA

This new map shows how easily white Europeans associate black faces with negative ideas.

Since 2002, hundreds of thousands of people around the world have logged onto a website run by Harvard University called Project Implicit and taken an “implicit association test” (IAT), a rapid-response task which measures how easily you can pair items from different categories.

To create this new map, we used data from a version of the test which presents white or black faces and positive or negative words. The result shows how easily our minds automatically make the link between the categories – what psychologists call an “implicit racial attitude”.

Each country on the map is coloured according to the average score of test takers from that country. Redder countries show higher average bias, bluer countries show lower average bias, as the scale on the top of the map shows.

Like a similar map which had been made for US states, our map shows variation in the extent of racial bias – but all European countries are racially biased when comparing blacks versus whites.

In every country in Europe, people are slower to associate blackness with positive words such as “good” or “nice” and faster to associate blackness with negative concepts such as “bad” or “evil”. But they are quicker to make the link between blackness and negative concepts in the Czech Republic or Lithuania than they are in Slovenia, the UK or Ireland.

No country had an average score below zero, which would reflect positive associations with blackness. In fact, none had an average score that was even close to zero, which would reflect neither positive nor negative racial associations.

A screeshot from the online IAT test. IAT, Project Implict

Implicit bias

Overall, we have scores for 288,076 white Europeans, collected between 2002 and 2015, with sample sizes for each country shown on the left-hand side.

Because of the design of the test it is very difficult to deliberately control your score. Many people, including those who sincerely hold non-racist or even anti-racist beliefs, demonstrate positive implicit bias on the test. The exact meaning of implicit attitudes, and the IAT, are controversial, but we believe they reflect the automatic associations we hold in our minds, associations that develop over years of immersion in the social world.

Although we, as individuals, may not hold racist beliefs, the ideas we associate with race may be constructed by a culture which describes people of different ethnicities in consistent ways, and ways which are consistently more or less positive. Looked at like this, the IAT – which at best is a weak measure of individual psychology – may be most useful if individuals’ scores are aggregated to provide a reflection on the collective social world we inhabit.

The results shown in this map give detail to what we already expected – that across Europe racial attitudes are not neutral. Blackness has negative associations for white Europeans, and there are some interesting patterns in how the strength of these negative associations varies across the continent.

North and west Europe, on average, have less strong anti-black associations, although they still have anti-black associations on average. As you move south and east the strength of negative associations tends to increase – but not everywhere. The Balkans look like an exception, compared to surrounding countries. Is this because of some quirk about how people in the Balkans heard about Project Implicit, or because their prejudices aren’t orientated around a white-black axis? For now, we can only speculate.

The former police officer who fatally shot 15-year-old Jordan Edwards in a Dallas suburb on Saturday has been identified as Roy Oliver.

Balch Springs Police Department Chief Jonathan Haber released the officer's identity at a press conference Tuesday night while announcing that Oliver had been fired from his post. Oliver had been a member of the department for nearly six years.

Oliver was one of two officers who responded to a 911 call about "several underage intoxicated juveniles" at a residence in Balch Springs in Dallas County, Texas, on Saturday around 11 p.m. local time, according to police.

Upon arriving, the responding officers discovered a large house party at the location. While trying to locate the owners of the house, the officers heard "multiple gunshots" coming from outside, which caused a "chaotic scene" with people fleeing the area. The officers exited the residence to investigate the gunshots and confronted a vehicle backing down the street, police said.

Police initially said that the vehicle backed up in the direction of the responding officers "in an aggressive manner" despite multiple verbal commands. Oliver then opened fire and struck Edwards, a high school freshman who was sitting in the front passenger seat of the car. He was transported to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Police later said, however, that they had misspoken in recounting what occurred and that it appeared as though the vehicle Edwards was in was driving away from the officers when shots were fired, based on footage from police body cameras.

"I unintentionally, incorrectly said the vehicle was backing down the road," Haber said at a press conference Monday. "According to the video, the vehicle was moving forward as the officer approached."

Haber added, "After reviewing the video, I don’t believe that [the officer's conduct] met our core values."

The video footage will not be released to the public, Haber said.

According to a press release issued Tuesday night, the Balch Springs Police Department said it has "determined" that Oliver "violated several departmental policies." The department said it could not elaborate on which policies were violated since Oliver can appeal his termination.

Oliver was initially removed from duty and placed on leave. He has not been involved in any similar incidents, according to Haber.

The announcement of the officer's dismissal was welcomed by the Edwards family.

"We are grateful the decision has been made to terminate the officer responsible for Jordan's murder," the family said in a statement Tuesday night. "Over the past 24 hours Chief Haber has made commendable strides toward justice. However, there remains a long road ahead."

The family said they "anxiously await" the officer's "arrest for the crime of murder."

The Dallas County Medical Examiner has ruled Edwards' death a homicide. The cause of death was listed as a rifle wound to the head, according to ABC affiliate WFAA in Dallas.

The Dallas County Sheriff's Office is conducting an investigation into the fatal shooting, while the Balch Springs Police Department is conducting an internal investigation of its own.

Lee Merritt, the attorney representing the Edwards family, confirmed to ABC News on Monday that a rifle was used.

Citing the ongoing investigation, Haber would not answer reporters' questions at the press conference Monday. The police chief vowed to be "transparent" and "accountable" in the investigation.

ABC News has reached out to Oliver’s attorney for comment.

ABC News' Courtney Connley, Sabina Ghebremedhin, James Scholz and Kayna Whitworth contributed to this report.

(A SEAL during a training exercise.US Navy Photo)

The man who claims he was the SEAL Team 6 operator who shot Osama bin Laden in 2011 has written a new book, and his retelling of that raid shows the reason photos of the terrorist leader's body were never released.

The book, "The Operator" by Robert O'Neill, recounts the former Navy chief's career spanning 400 missions, though his role with the elite SEAL team's raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, has become his most consequential. The sixth anniversary of that raid is Tuesday.

According to O'Neill, he was walking behind his fellow SEALs as they searched bin Laden's three-story compound. Upstairs, they could roughly make out bin Laden's son Khalid, who had an AK-47.

"Khalid, come here," the SEALs whispered to him. He poked his head out and was shot in the face.

An unnamed point man and O'Neill proceeded up to the third floor. After they burst into bin Laden's bedroom, the point man tackled two women, thinking they might have suicide vests, as O'Neill fired at the Qaeda founder.

"In less than a second, I aimed above the woman's right shoulder and pulled the trigger twice," he wrote, according to the New York Daily News. "Bin Laden's head split open, and he dropped. I put another bullet in his head. Insurance."

(Photobucket/qr3ck)

O'Neill's book says the operators had to press bin Laden's head back together to take identifying photos. But that wasn't the end of the mutilation of bin Laden's body, according to Jack Murphy of SOFREP, a special-operations news website.

Two sources told Murphy in 2016 that several SEALs took turns dumping round after round into bin Laden's body, which ended up having more than 100 bullet holes in it.

Murphy, a former Army Ranger, called it "beyond excessive."

"The picture itself would likely cause an international scandal, and investigations would be conducted which could uncover other operations, activities which many will do anything to keep buried," he wrote.

After bin Laden's body was taken back to Afghanistan for full identification, it was transported to the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) for burial at sea. Somewhere in the Arabian Sea on May 2, 2011, a military officer read prepared religious remarks, and bin Laden's body was slid into the sea.

The Defense Department has said it couldn't locate photos or video of the event, according to emails obtained in 2012 by The Associated Press.

(Yahoo Finance)

"The Americans are deploying their tanks, airplanes and special forces battalions along the Russian border. And we are quietly 'seeding' the U.S. shoreline with nuclear 'mole' missiles (they dig themselves in and 'sleep' until they are given the command)," Baranetz wrote, according to a translation published in March by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a research organization co-founded by a former Israeli intelligence officer and an Israeli-American political scientist.