New York State

If you reached your 104th birthday, you might run out of ideas for to celebrate.

Not for one woman in upstate New York, who had a simple wish for her 104th birthday – she wanted to go to prison.

Loretta, from the village of Avon in New York State, was asked what she wanted to do for her birthday.

Her response was unusual for a centenarian: She ‘wanted to see the inside of our Jail.’

Two days after her birthday celebrations on February 8, this wish was granted by a nearby sheriff’s office.

Loretta was given a tour of Livingston County Jail full of fun, unique insights and birthday cake.

She started off the tour with coffee and cake, a treat not usually given to inmates.

There she was asked the secret to such a long life.

Her tongue-in-cheek answer was everyone looking to hit 100 should ‘Mind your business!’

The birthday girl was then given her 104th birthday tour of the New York jail.

The sheriff’s office posted pictures showing Loretta petting a police K-9, looking at a pair of handcuffs and examing security cameras footage with deputies.

‘Loretta had a great time touring our jail facility and we are so glad that we were able to make her birthday wishes come true,’ the sheriff’s office wrote on Facebook.

‘Thank you for all the laughs today and for being a great sport!’

The post has made a little local star our of the centenarian, with over 1,400 reactions and hundreds of shares and comments.

When Loretta was born in 1921, the life expectancy for a women was only 59 years.

She has outlived that prediction by 45 years. She has lived through the prohibition of alcohol in America, World War Two, the Cold War, 9/11 and even the Covid-19 pandemic.

Only 0.027% of the U.S. population are centenarians, according to Boston University.

There were 13,924 Brits who are aged 100 or older at the point of the 2021 census.

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Ruud van Nistelrooy insists Arsenal have a deep enough squad to cope with the absence of Kai Havertz’s ahead of their Premier League match against Leicester City on Saturday.

Mikel Arteta’s side were dealt a huge blow this week as Havertz was ruled out for the remainder of the season with a hamstring injury.

With Gabriel Jesus also sidelined with a long-term knee injury, Arsenal are without a recognised striker for the remainder of the campaign, while both Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli are also unavailable due to hamstring issues.

Arsenal travel to Leicester for Saturday’s 12.30pm kick-off in the Premier League and Van Nistelrooy believes Arteta still has plenty of options to cope without the Germany international.

When asked about Havertz’s absence, Van Nistelrooy said: ‘Well, the depth of their squad is clear.

‘Obviously, not having Saka and Havertz, they are absolutely top of the world, players that are in that level is something they will feel.

‘But the squad, when you look at that, they have enough player to replace them.

‘It’s clear that the difference between us and Arsenal is big. You can see that, it is in the table. The team is fighting for the title, is in the Champions League, so it’s a big challenge for us and something for us to look forward to.’

Van Nistelrooy also credited Arsenal for their impressive success from set-pieces this season.

‘They’ve been very successful on set-pieces but not just that,’ Van Nistelrooy said.

‘You can see the development in football, in the Premier League, with set-pieces, with set-piece coaches, and with the approach on all set-pieces, throw-ins, corners, free-kicks, penalties, everything.

‘The amount of training invested in this part also for us is increasing because games are decided on this and Arsenal are excellent in this part.’

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There would be only seconds to prepare before the fireball strikes.

A ‘city-destroying’ asteroid is currently on a path towards Earth and could hit as soon as 2032.

Now experts have modelled what the possible impact of 2024 YR4 – equal to 15,000,000 tons of TNT – could look like.

Scientists currently calculate there is a 2.3% chance, or one in 43, that the flying comet could collide with Earth and wreak havoc.

The potential for impact and scale of this asteroid strike is causing such fear among experts it was given a hazard-measuring Torino scale of 3.

This is the second highest rating ever given.

If it were to hit Earth, the energy released would be 100 times more powerful than the ‘little boy’ atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

An asteroid collision of this size would wipe out central London, with destruction reaching as far as Billericay and Guildford.

2024 YR4 was first picked up by scientists operating the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) station last December.

Then, experts gave the asteroid only a 1% chance of colliding with Earth, but in February analysis bumped that up to 2.3%.

But now scientists have made an even more chilling prediction about the asteroids course – it could plough straight into the moon.

Dr David Rankin, operations engineer for the University of Arizona’s Catalina Sky Survey, warned on Bluesky there is roughly 0.3% chance of 2024 YR4 striking the moon.

This collision could take place at a speed of 31,000 miles per hour, unleashing 343 times the size of the nuke dropped on Hiroshima.

As devastating as this sounds, scientists have actually said a lunar explosion of this kind could generate a beautiful meteor shower on Earth.

Gareth Collins, a professor of planetary science at Imperial College London, told New Scientist: ‘The impact flash of vaporised rock would be visible from Earth, even in the daytime.’

The staggering visuals of Asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting Earth were modelled by Alvaro Gracia Montoya, who specialises in 3D animation under the name MetaBallStudios.

He said: ‘I don’t think it’s going to happen, but certainly this kind of news generates a lot of speculation.’

Sixty-six million years ago, a 10 and 15 kilometres wide asteroid crashed into the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.

The consequences were a devastation and planetary-wide disruption which wiped out the dinosaurs for good.

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