Donald Trump May Have Just Committed an Impeachable Offense

China’s decision to gift the president a valuable trademark this week could violate the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.

Donald Trump gives a thumbs-up before boarding Marine One on his way to Mar-a-Lago on February 3, 2017.

By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

Pesident Donald Trump’s first month in office has been dogged by one misstep after another—botched executive orders and attacks on the judiciary, punctuated by bizarre, and often inappropriate, boasting about the size of his electoral victory and inauguration crowd. He has done little to address the cavalcade of scandals that have already become a defining feature of his presidency, from the shadow of intrigue hanging over his campaign’s dealings with Russia to his undiplomatic threats against U.S. allies, derailing any momentum on his inchoate legislative agenda. There’s an inquiry into his ownership of the Trump International Hotel just down Pennsylvania Avenue, a call to discipline his counselor Kellyanne Conway for giving his daughter Ivanka’s brand a “free commercial” on Fox News, and an investigation underway about whether or not there’s enough security in place at Mar-a-Lago after the president decided to review national-security documents on a terrace at the Palm Beach resort last weekend in plain view of prying dinner guests.

Still, there is some good news for Trump and his personal brand, if not for his already embattled administration. According to ABC News, Trump received a big, fat gift from China this week in the form of a 10-year trademark on his name for construction.

The award marks a sudden reversal of fortunes for Trump, who had reportedly been trying to win the valuable rights to his name for a decade. Interestingly, the Chinese government came through for him one month after he took the oath of office and a week after his conversation with Chinese president Xi Jinping during which he endorsed the One China policy. After years of battling to take back the rights to his name from a man named Dong Wei, Trump’s registration was made official on Tuesday and announced by China’s trademark office on Wednesday.

NASA Looks to Speed Timetable for Putting Astronauts in Deep Space

An artist’s rendition of NASA’s Space Launch System. NASA announced on Wednesday that it wanted to consider taking astronauts on the rocket’s first flight.

In the first public inkling of the Trump administration’s aspirations for space exploration, NASA announced on Wednesday that it wanted to consider taking astronauts on the first flight of its new heavy-lift rocket. That type of notable mission could speed up a return to the moon.

Robert M. Lightfoot Jr., the acting NASA administrator, said the agency was studying what it would take to add a crew to the first flight of the Space Launch System, a mammoth rocket under development for deep space missions.

Under current plans, the first launch was scheduled for late 2018 and did not include a crew for testing the systems aboard the rocket and the capsule, named Orion.

That would have been followed by a gap of several years before a second flight, with astronauts, that would take off no earlier than 2021.

Mr. Lightfoot spoke at a conference for companies working on the Space Launch System and Orion programs and also sent a memo to NASA employees.

“I know the challenges associated with such a proposition, like reviewing the technical feasibility, additional resources needed, and clearly the extra work would require a different launch date,” Mr. Lightfoot wrote in the memo. “That said, I also want to hear about the opportunities it could present to accelerate the effort of the first crewed flight and what it would take to accomplish that first step of pushing humans farther into space.”

Little Caesars founder quietly paid Rosa Parks' rent for years

Little Caesars founder Mike Ilitch passed away on Friday.

(CNN)Those who knew Mike Ilitch, the Little Caesars founder and Detroit Tigers owner who died last Friday, have spent the past few days fondly remembering his impact on friends, on Detroit residents, and on the sports community.

Ilitch also had an impact on the daily life of one of the most iconic figures from the civil rights movement.

For more than a decade, Ilitch had quietly paid for Rosa Parks' apartment in downtown Detroit, according to CNN affiliate WXYZ.

That story came to light thanks to Damon Keith, a Detroit native and federal judge.

"They don't go around saying it, but I want to, at this point, let them know, how much the Ilitches not only meant to the city, but they meant so much for Rosa Parks, who was the mother of the civil rights movement," Keith told WXYZ.

NINTENDO ANNOUNCES AND DETAILS THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD SEASON PASS

Nintendo has announced an "Expansion Pass" for Breath of the Wild, offering the first ever DLC in a main series Legend of Zelda game.

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Available from March 3 for $19.99 USD / £17.99 (Australian price unknown at time of writing), the Expansion Pass, which will be available for both the Wii U and Nintendo Switch versions of the game, will offer two extra content packs, to be released later in 2017, neither of which can be purchased individually. The details of each are:

Pack 1 - Summer 2017

• A new Cave of Trials challenge
• Hard mode
• "A new feature for the in-game map"

Pack 2 - Holiday 2017

• A new dungeon
• A new "original story"
• Additional challenges

We Are Wired To Be Outside

Science is demonstrating what we intuitively know: Nature makes us happy.

A young man dives into McDonald Creek at Glacier National Park in Montana. "The frontal lobe, the part of our brain that's hyper-engaged in modern life, deactivates a little when you are outside," says author Florence Williams. 

PHOTOGRAPH BY COREY ARNOLD, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

When we first see Elizabeth Bennett, in the 2005 film of Pride and Prejudice, she is walking through a field, surrounded by birdsong and trees. Nature, for Jane Austen’s heroines, is always a source of solace and inspiration. And as Florence Williams shows in her new book, The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative, modern technology is now revealing what goes on in our brains when we step outdoors—and why nature is so good for us. [Read Williams's National Geographic story "This Is Your Brain on Nature."]

When National Geographic caught up with Williams by phone in Washington, D.C., she explained why even a house plant can make us feel good, why the practice of “forest bathing” is now supported by the Japanese government, and how trees can lower the murder rate in our cities.

COURTESY W.W. NORTON

The Mappiness project was developed in the U.K. by a happiness researcher called George MacKerron. It’s a brilliant idea, which tries to capture in real time what people are doing and how it makes them feel. I downloaded this app onto my phone and used it for about a year. The way it works is, it pings you at random times a couple of times a day and gives you a list of options. Are you driving, doing childcare, cooking, hanging out with friends? Are you outside or inside and how are you feeling? Like, “I feel happy, not so happy.”

At the end of the year I got my data, which showed how I was spending my time and which activities made me feel a certain way. I try to spend a lot of time outside, make an effort to exercise. But I was shocked at how few times the app caught me doing those things; and how often it caught me doing things that didn’t give me a lot of satisfaction. Things like commuting or doing chores.