A U.S. government report says the impacts of climate change, including powerful storms, droughts and wildfires, are worsening in the United States.

The report, written with the help of more than a dozen U.S. government agencies and departments, frequently contradicts the statements and policies of U.S. President Donald Trump.

The congressionally mandated report was quietly issued Friday during a holiday weekend. The White House later dismissed the report as inaccurate, according to a Reuters report.

White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters told Reuters Friday the report was “largely based on the most extreme scenario, which contradicts long-established trends by assuming that…there would be limited technology and innovation, and a rapidly expanding population.”

The National Climate Assessment, totaling more than 1,000 pages, warned of more powerful and longer weather disasters triggered at least, in part, by global warming.

It said such weather disasters are becoming more commonplace around the country and warned that without aggressive action they could become much worse.

While the report avoids policy recommendations, it said humans must take measures to stop future weather disasters “to avoid substantial damages to the U.S. economy, environment, and human health and well-being over the coming decades.”

“Future risks from climate change depend primarily on decisions made today,” the report said.

It predicted that climate change will cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century if no efforts are made to curb its effects and said global warming would disproportionately hurt the poor.

This year’s National Climate Assessment is the fourth time the U.S. government has issued a comprehensive look at climate change and is the first assessment to take place during the Trump administration. The last report came in 2014.

11 Thirteen government departments and agencies, including the Department of Agriculture and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), were part of a committee of more than 300 researchers who compiled the assessment.

Several people involved in the report told The Washington Post that its release originally had been planned for early December. However, they said after a behind-the-scenes debate about when to make it public, administration officials settled on the Friday after Thanksgiving, traditionally one of the slowest news days of the year. 

During a press conference Friday, authors of the report said there had been “no external interference” in the assessment. Report director David Reidmiller said questions about the timing of the release were “relevant,” but said the contents of the report were more important.

The Trump administration has rolled back several environmental regulations put in place during former President Barack Obama’s administration and has promoted the production of fossil fuels. 

Last year, Trump announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris Agreement, which had been signed by nearly 200 nations to combat climate change. He argued the agreement would hurt the U.S. economy and said there is little evidence in its environmental benefit. 

Trump, as well as several members of his Cabinet, have also cast doubt on the science of climate change, saying the causes of global warming are not yet settled. 

Friday’s report cites other climate studies, which say that humans have caused more than 90 percent of the current global warming.
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As the impact of climate change becomes clearer, experts say the world needs to do more than just stop producing greenhouse gases. Aggressive steps also must be taken to pull them out of the atmosphere. While engineers puzzle over high-tech solutions, scientists say nature offers tools today. The world’s grasslands can soak up tons of carbon dioxide. VOA’s Steve Baragona visited a Texas cattle ranch working to restore overgrazed land so it can join the fight against climate change.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) says a campaign to distribute anti-malaria drugs to children in Nigeria’s Borno state seems to be making an impact, with fewer cases reported. Nigeria is still the world’s highest malaria-burdened country with 25 percent of all cases worldwide. As Timothy Obiezu reports from Maiduguri, there’s still far more that needs to be done to check the spread of the disease.
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A giant, plant-eating creature with a beaklike mouth and reptilian features may have roamed the Earth during the late Triassic period more than 200 million years ago, scientists said Thursday.

In a paper published Thursday by the journal Science, Polish researchers claim their find overturns the notion that the only giant plant-eaters at the time were dinosaurs.

The elephant-sized creature, known as Lisowicia bojani after a village in southern Poland where its remains were found, belonged to the same evolutionary branch as mammals.

Similar fossils from so-called dicynodonts have been found elsewhere, but they were dated to be from an earlier period, before a series of natural disasters wiped out most species on Earth.

“We used to think that after the end-Permian extinction, mammals and their relatives retreated to the shadows while dinosaurs rose up and grew to huge sizes,” said Grzegorz Niedzwiedzki, a paleontologist at Uppsala University in Sweden who co-authored the paper.

The discovery of giant dicynodonts living at the same time as sauropods, a branch of the dinosaur family that later produced the iconic long-necked diplodocus, suggests environmental factors in the late Triassic period may have driven the evolution of gigantism, the researchers said.

Christian Kammerer, a dicynodont specialist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences not involved in the find, said the size of Lisowicia was startling.

“Large dicynodonts have been known before in both the Permian and the Triassic, but never at this scale,” he said.

Kammerer said that while dicynodonts and dinosaurs existed at the same time, there’s no evidence yet that they lived in the same habitats. He also questioned the study’s conclusions about Lisowicia’s posture.

“However, overall I think this is a very intriguing and important paper, and shows us that there is a still a lot left to learn about early mammal relatives in the Triassic,” Kammerer said.
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The Leaning Tower of Pisa isn’t leaning so much anymore.

 After more than two decades of efforts to straighten it, engineers say the famed Tuscan bell tower has recovered four centimeters (1.57 inches) more and is in better structural health than predicted.

 

ANSA news agency quotes a consultant to the international committee monitoring the tilt, Nunziante Squeglia, as saying that while the progressive recovery of tilt is good news, the overall structural health of the tower is more important.

 

The 12th-century tower reopened to the public in 2001 after being closed for more than a decade to let workers reduce its slant. By using hundreds of tons of lead counterweights at the base and extracting soil from under the foundations, engineers initially shaved 17 inches off the lean.

 

 
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After a diagnosis of breast cancer, many women have surgery followed by chemotherapy and radiation. But a new study shows that if the cancer is caught early enough, women might be able to avoid the chemotherapy.

Since she was diagnosed with breast cancer last April, Amy Adam values family time even more.

“It made us aware that when it comes down to it, family is what matters,” she said.

Adam was lucky — a mammogram caught her cancer early… when the tumor was just three by four millimeters, smaller than the size of a pencil eraser. Her treatment — a lumpectomy… followed by radiation.

“No chemo, did not have chemo,” she said.

Dr. Emily Albright is a surgical oncologist at the University of Missouri Health Care. She says more women with early-stage breast cancer may be able to skip chemotherapy. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that genetic testing can determine the likelihood of the cancer returning.

The study found women with a low risk of the cancer recurring didn’t benefit from chemotherapy. Women with a high risk of recurrence do better with chemotherapy. But Albright says doctors didn’t know how to advise women in the mid-range.

“The recent results have clarified that for women at intermediate risk of recurrence, the majority of those do not benefit from chemotherapy,” she said.

With genetic testing, doctors can determine the likelihood of a woman’s cancer returning. Most people know that nausea, hair loss and fatigue result from chemotherapy, but chemotherapy can also cause heart and nerve damage.

Albright says the results of this study will help many patients whose breast cancer is caught early.

“As we learn more about the biology, weʼre able to tailor treatments to the specific type of tumor that a patient has, so there are some small tumors that may be more aggressive and there may be some larger tumors that are less aggressive,” she said.

Screening was key in catching Amy Adam’s cancer early. Mammograms can detect a lump two years before a woman can even feel it.

Adam said it was a huge relief not to have to undergo chemotherapy. Because of this study, more women will will be able to get treated without the negative side effects of chemotherapy.

 
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After a diagnosis of breast cancer, many women have surgery followed by chemotherapy and radiation. But a new study shows that if it’s caught early enough, women might be able to avoid the chemotherapy. VOA’s Carol Pearson has more.
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Suicide rates are rising among U.S. workers, and the risk may depend partly on the types of jobs people do, government researchers suggest. 

From 2000 to 2016, the U.S. suicide rate among those aged 16 to 64 rose 34 percent, from 12.9 deaths for every 100,000 people in the population to 17.3 per 100,000, according to the study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

The highest suicide rate among men was for workers in construction and mining jobs, with 43.6 deaths for every 100,000 workers in 2012 and 53.2 deaths per 100,000 in 2015, the analysis found. 

The highest suicide rate among women was for workers in arts, design, entertainment, sports and media, with 11.7 fatalities for every 100,000 workers in 2012 and 15.6 deaths per 100,000 in 2015. 

“Since most adults spend a great deal of their time at work, the workplace is an important and underutilized venue for suicide prevention,” said study co-author Deborah Stone, a behavioral scientist at the CDC in Atlanta. 

While the study wasn’t designed to prove whether or how specific types of jobs or workplace characteristics might contribute to the risk of suicide, lack of control over employment and a lack of job security can both be stressors that make suicide more likely, Stone said by email. 

Many factors outside the workplace can also influence the risk of suicide, including relationship problems, substance use, physical or mental health, finances or legal problems, Stone added. 

And ready access to guns and other weapons have a big impact on whether suicidal thoughts turn into actions with fatal outcomes, Stone said. 

Guns may explain the higher suicide rates among men than among women, said Gary Namie, director of the Workplace Bullying Institute in Boise, Idaho. 

“In America, with ready access to guns, men make the choice of death by gun, but it is the less likely choice by females,” Namie, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email. “Hence, it is possible that in moments of despair that might pass if friends or family could intervene, with a gun handy, the decision is too quickly implemented.” 

Data from 17 states

To assess suicide rates by occupation, the CDC examined data collected from 17 states in 2012 and 2015; the results are not representative of the nation as a whole. The results were published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.  

Although arts, design, entertainment, sports and media had the highest suicide rates among women, this category saw the biggest increase in suicide rate among men during the study. For women, the biggest increase in suicide rates was in the food service industry. 

One limitation of the study is that it didn’t examine suicide methods. It also excluded two groups of Americans that typically have stressors that can increase their risk of suicide: military veterans and unemployed people. 

Even so, the results suggest that employers can play a role in suicide prevention by offering worksite wellness programs, encouraging use of behavioral and mental health services, and training workers in the warning signs of suicide and how to respond, Stone said. 

Promoting social interaction rather than isolation in daily tasks on the job may also help with suicide prevention, along with creating a workplace culture of inclusion that does not allow for abusive conduct or bullying, Namie said. 

The road to suicide begins when one employee begins a “systematic campaign of interpersonal destruction against another employee,” Namie said. “Bullying is the most preventable predictor of suicide.” 
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A U.S. government agency said Wednesday that abortion rates among American women of all ages fell to a decade low in 2015, which both opponents and supporters of abortion rights attributed in part to individual states’ efforts to restrict women’s access to the procedure. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that statistics for 2015, the most recent year for which data are available, showed the abortion rate was 11.8 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44. That was down 26 percent from 2006, when the study began and the rate was 15.9 abortions per 1,000 women. 

Teens aged 15 to 19 experienced a greater decrease than older women, with the rate falling 54 percent from 2006 to 2015, the CDC said. 

“This decrease in abortion rate was greater than the decreases for women in any older age group,” the CDC said in a statement. 

The CDC did not provide any reason for the decline, but abortion rights advocates attributed it to increased use of contraceptives as well as decreased access to abortion services in some states. 

“Affordable access to the full range of contraception and family planning options is critical for people deciding if and when they’d like to become parents, develop their careers, plan for their futures and manage their health,” said Rachel Jones, a research scientist at Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research group that supports abortion rights. 

Opponents of abortion rights said the decrease was primarily the result of many states’ efforts to restrict women’s access to the procedure. 

“That is due, in a significant way, to pro-life legislation that seeks to provide life-affirming solutions to abortion, combined with pro-life efforts that educate Americans about the effects of abortion and the humanity of the unborn child,” Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, said in an email. 

Total yearly number sinks

The total number of reported abortions fell to 638,169 in 2015, from 842,855 in 2006, a 24 percent decrease. In 2015, there were 188 abortions per 1,000 live births, compared with 233 abortions per 1,000 live births in 2006, a drop of 19 percent. 

In 2015, all measures reached their lowest level for the entire period of analysis from 2006 to 2015, the CDC said of the annual study, Abortion Surveillance — United States 2015.  

Conservative state lawmakers are passing increasingly restrictive abortion laws in a challenge to Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 landmark decision that established that women have a constitutional right to have abortions. 

The Republican-controlled Ohio House of Representatives last week approved a measure that would ban abortions at six weeks, while an Iowa law banning abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected is tied up in a court battle. 

Such laws are designed to end up before the Supreme Court, which has become more conservative following President Donald Trump’s appointments of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. 

The CDC study also showed 91.1 percent of abortions performed in 2015 were in a woman’s first 13 weeks of pregnancy. There was also a shift toward earlier abortions, with the number performed at six weeks or less increasing 11 percent. 
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Some 115 years after the first powered flight, scientists have developed a radical new approach toward flying in the form of a small, lightweight and virtually noiseless airplane that gets airborne with no moving parts like propellers or turbine blades.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineers on Wednesday described successful flight tests at an indoor campus gymnasium of the unmanned airplane powered not by engines that burn fossils fuels but by ion wind propulsion, also called electro-aerodynamic thrust.

The aircraft, called Version 2 EAD Airframe, or V2, weighs only 5.4 pounds (2.45 kg) with a wingspan of 16-1/2 feet (5 meters).

“This is the first time that an airplane without moving parts has flown,” said MIT aerospace engineer Steven Barrett, who drew inspiration from fictional shuttlecraft from “Star Trek.”

Electrical field strength near an array of thin filaments called emitters at the front of the wing ionizes air, meaning electrons are removed and charged molecules called ions are created.

These positively charged ions are attracted to negatively charged structures on the plane called collectors. As

they move towards the collectors, the ions collide with air molecules, transferring energy to them. This creates a flow of air that gives the plane its thrust.

Only time will tell whether the test flights at the duPont Athletic Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will become historic like the 1903 test flights of the first airplane by Wilbur and Orville Wright at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. And the engineers readily acknowledge their V2 prototype is inefficient

and limited.

But it could lead to big things.

“I’m trying not to over-sell it, but there are some really exciting possibilities here,” said Barrett, who pointed to near-silent drones as a possibility within several years.

“In the long term, I’m hoping for ultra-efficient and nearly silent airplanes that have no moving control surfaces like rudders or elevators, no moving propulsion system like propellers or turbines, and no direct combustion emissions like you get with burning jet fuel,” added Barrett, who led the

research published in the journal Nature.

The researchers conducted 11 test flights in which V2 flew about 200 feet (60 meters), typically flying less than 6-1/2 feet (2 meters) off the ground.

The plane, defined as a solid-state machine because it has no moving parts, was built to be as light as possible using materials like carbon-fiber, balsa wood, a plastic called polystyrene, shrink-wrap plastic and Kevlar.
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The first flight of a SpaceX rocket tailored to fly astronauts to the International Space Station is set for liftoff from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on January 7, NASA said on Wednesday.

The launch test is a crucial milestone in the space agency’s Commercial Crew Program, which aims to launch humans to space from U.S. soil for the first time in nearly a decade.

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration said SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft — which will shuttle three astronauts to space from the same launch pad that sent Apollo 11’s three-man crew to the moon in 1969 — will make its debut flight atop SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket on January 7.

While NASA did not detail the flight path, it said the test would provide data on the performance of the Falcon 9, Crew Dragon capsule, and ground systems, as well as on-orbit, docking and landing operations.

SpaceX and Boeing Co are the two main contractors selected under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program to send astronauts to space as soon as 2019, using their Crew Dragon and CST-100 Starliner spacecraft respectively.

Since the U.S. space shuttle program was shut down in 2011, NASA has had to rely on Russia to fly astronauts to the space station, a $100 billion orbital research laboratory that flies about 250 miles (402 km) above Earth.

The Demo-1 launch is the latest test in a rigorous certification timeline imposed under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. While SpaceX is targeting early January, NASA spokeswoman Marie Lewis said the demo mission could be pushed back because “flying safely has always taken precedence over schedule.”

Founded by Tesla Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk, SpaceX said if the January 7 test is successful, it plans to launch its first crewed mission in June 2019, but the timeline may shift.

Boeing plans a similar test launch of the Starliner spacecraft atop its Atlas 5 rocket as soon as March, with a crewed mission following in August.

The Jan. 7 launch date announcement comes a day after NASA said it would conduct a “cultural assessment study” of the companies, “including the adherence to a drug-free environment,” prior to crew test flights.
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On a cold and rainy Saturday morning, hundreds of people have camped out all night in cars or huddled in sleeping bags, splayed out in a school parking lot that has been turned into a makeshift medical clinic in Charleston, West Virginia. 

By the time the doors open at 6 a.m., some will have been waiting for at least 14 hours to receive medical, dental, and vision care at this free mobile health clinic. Most here say they have no other health care option. 

“I’ve never had health insurance – never,” says Benny Cardenas, a construction worker who constantly worries he is an injury away from being in long-term debt. “This here, it’s free. It’s worth the sacrifice – a couple hours of no sleep (rather) than paying thousands of dollars.” 

Susan Stephenson, a truck driver from Houston, Texas, is already missing most of her upper teeth. Though she has medical insurance, she can’t afford to go to the dentist. “The copay is so outrageous, it’s like not having insurance at all,” says Stephenson, who drove four hours to attend the RAM Clinic. 

Insurance problems persist

Stephenson’s story is common. Most Americans get health insurance through their employers, or through government-provided insurance for older and lower-income people. Millions of other people have received health insurance in recent years under the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act. But many still cannot afford basic dental or vision services. 

Since the 2010 passage of the legislation known as “Obamacare,” the uninsured rate has fallen from 16 percent to less than 9 percent, according to figures by the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Census Bureau. 

But 23 percent of Americans have no dental coverage, according to the National Association of Dental Plans. 

Even with insurance, costs can be prohibitive. Over 44 percent of Americans report difficulty paying for dental care and 11 percent of adults age 18-64 have foregone needed dental work altogether because of costs, according to a recent CDC study.

Ashley Bowman, who needs two cavities filled, has a state-subsidized health care plan, but it doesn’t include dental coverage. “I’m not sure why,” she says. “It just doesn’t.” 

So she’s huddled under an awning with several of her friends in the middle of the night – a small price to pay, she insists. “Just for one filling, that’s already half your rent! That’s a lot just for one tooth.” 

Partisan deadlock over voters’ top issue

Perhaps unsurprisingly, health care is a major priority for U.S. voters. According to exit polls taken during midterm elections, 41 percent of voters identified health care as their top concern – beating out every other issue, including immigration and the economy.

It’s not hard to see why. The U.S. spends approximately twice what other high-income nations do on health care, yet has the highest infant mortality rate and the lowest life expectancy, according to a March study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. 

The high costs are not because Americans are getting more medical care. Rates of doctor visits are roughly equal to the 10 other countries in the study. Instead, it concluded health spending is being driven by factors including the steep costs of prescription drugs, administrative tasks, and physician and nurse salaries.

But any legislative movement on health care appears more unlikely than ever after the election, which saw Democrats take back the House of Representatives, creating a divided Congress. 

Many Republicans have called for a complete repeal of Obamacare, but would not be able to get such a plan through the Democratic-controlled House. 

More liberal-leaning Democrats have increasingly proposed a “Medicare for All” program to expand government-run health care plans to cover all Americans. But Republicans fiercely oppose the proposal, saying it amounts to an inefficient government takeover of health care. 

RAM filling the gap

Amid the partisan deadlock, privately-funded clinics like the one in West Virginia continue to provide free health care to as many people as they can across the country. 

Each year, Remote Area Medical operates more than 60 mobile medical clinics.  About 90 percent are in the U.S., mostly in rural areas.

RAM founder Stan Brock started holding the clinics in the 1980s in developing Latin American countries, such as Guyana, Mexico, and Haiti. It didn’t take long before he realized one of the biggest needs was at home. 

“You can blindfold yourself and put your finger on the map of the U.S. and we could go there and this will happen there,” says RAM’s Robert Lambert. “The need is just huge.” 

At this two-day clinic in Charleston, RAM provided about $300,000 worth of free medical care to 775 patients. That figure may be small when compared to the vastness of U.S. health care problems. But for people here, it’s a lifesaver. 

“If I didn’t have a place like this to get my glasses, I’d be totally lost,” says Rosemary Pauley, a retiree who says she’s “blind as a bat.” 

“I’d be sitting at home doing nothing,” she says.
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A global diabetes epidemic is fueling record demand for insulin but tens of millions will not get the injections they need unless there is a dramatic improvement in access and affordability, a new study concluded on Wednesday.

Diabetes — which can lead to blindness, kidney failure, heart problems, neuropathic pain and amputations — now affects 9 percent of all adults worldwide, up from 5 percent in 1980. The vast majority have type 2 diabetes, the kind linked to obesity and lack of exercise, and cases are spreading particularly rapidly in the developing world as people adopt more Western, urban lifestyles.

Researchers said the amount of insulin needed to effectively treat type 2 diabetes would rise by more than 20 percent over the next 12 years, but insulin would be beyond the reach of half the 79 million type 2 diabetics predicted to need it in 2030. The shortfall is most acute in Africa, where the team led by Dr Sanjay Basu from Stanford University estimated supply would have to rise sevenfold to treat at-risk patients who had reached the stage of requiring insulin to control their blood sugar.

“These estimates suggest that current levels of insulin access are highly inadequate compared to projected need, particularly in Africa and Asia,” Basu said.

​”Despite the U.N.’s commitment to treat non-communicable diseases and ensure universal access to drugs for diabetes, across much of the world insulin is scarce and unnecessarily difficult for patients to access.”

Global insulin supply is dominated by three companies — Novo Nordisk, Sanofi and Eli Lilly– which have various programs to try to improve access to their products.

Insulin, however, remains costly and prices can be especially out of reach in poorer countries where tortuous supply chains and high mark-ups by middlemen often make it unaffordable for many patients.

Overall, Basu and colleagues calculated that global insulin use was set to rise to 634 million 1,000-unit vials by 2030 from 526 million in 2018.

Their study, published in the Lancet Diabetes; Endocrinology journal and funded by the Helmsley Charitable Trust, was based on projections of diabetes prevalence from the International Diabetes Federation.

Dr Hertzel Gerstein from Canada’s McMaster University wrote in an accompanying commentary that it was important to estimate and ensure insulin supplies, but added the forecasts should be treated cautiously as they were based on mathematical models.
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Public health officials in the United States and Canada on Tuesday warned against eating romaine lettuce while they investigate an outbreak of E. coli that has sickened 50 people in the two countries, including 13 who were hospitalized. 

The alerts, issued as millions of Americans plan their Thanksgiving Day menus, covered all forms of romaine, including whole heads, hearts, bags, mixes and Caesar salad. 

Officials were uncertain of the source of the tainted lettuce. 

“Consumers who have any type of romaine lettuce in their home should not eat it and should throw it away, even if some of it was eaten and no one has gotten sick,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control said in its food safety alert. 

Refrigerator drawers and shelves where romaine lettuce had been stored should be sanitized, the CDC said. 

The Public Health Agency of Canada, which is investigating 18 of the E. coli cases, directed its romaine lettuce alert at consumers in Ontario and Quebec. 

In the United States, the CDC said the outbreak affected 32 people in 11 states between Oct. 8 and Oct. 31. No deaths have been reported, it said. 

Symptoms of the infection often include a moderate fever, severe stomach cramps, vomiting and diarrhea, which is often bloody, the CDC said. Most people get better in five to seven days, but it can be life-threatening, it said. 

The agency said the current outbreak is unrelated to another multistate rash of E. coli infections related to romaine lettuce earlier this year that left five people dead and sickened nearly 200. 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the CDC traced the origin of that contamination to irrigation water in the Yuma, Ariz., growing region. 
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Biologists are trying to save the last of the endangered Puerto Rican parrots after more than half the population of the bright green birds with turquoise-tipped wings disappeared when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico and destroyed their habitat and food sources.

In the tropical forest of El Yunque, only two of the 56 wild birds that once lived there survived the Category 4 storm that pummeled the U.S. territory in September 2017. Meanwhile, only 4 of 31 wild birds in a forest in the western town of Maricao survived, along with 75 out of 134 wild parrots living in the Rio Abajo forest in the central mountains of Puerto Rico, scientists said.

And while several dozen new parrots have been born in captivity and in the wild since Maria, the species is still in danger, according to scientists.

“We have a lot of work to do,” said Gustavo Olivieri, parrot recovery program coordinator for Puerto Rico’s Department of Natural Resources.

Federal and local scientists will meet next month to debate how best to revive a species that numbered more than 1 million in the 1800s but dwindled to 13 birds during the 1970s after decades of forest clearing.

The U.S. and Puerto Rican governments launched a program in 1972 that eventually led to the creation of three breeding centers. Just weeks before Maria hit, scientists reported 56 wild birds at El Yunque, the highest since the program was launched.

But the population decline is now especially worrisome because the parrots that vanished from El Yunque were some of the last remaining wild ones, said Marisel Lopez, who oversees the parrot recovery program at El Yunque for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

“It was devastating. After so many years of having worked on this project…,” she stopped talking and sighed.

The Puerto Rican Amazon is Puerto Rico’s only remaining native parrot and is one of roughly 30 species of Amazon parrots found in the Americas. The red-foreheaded birds grow to nearly a foot in length, are known for their secrecy and usually mate for life, reproducing once a year.

More than 460 birds remain captive at the breeding centers in El Yunque and Rio Abajo forests, but scientists have not released any of them since Hurricane Maria. A third breeding center in a forest in the western rural town of Maricao has not operated since the storm. Scientists are now trying to determine the best way to prepare the parrots for release since there are such few birds in the wild they can interact with, and whether Puerto Rico’s damaged forests can sustain them.

One proposal scientists will consider is whether to capture some of the remaining wild parrots in the Rio Abajo forest and place them in the same cage as birds that will be released to the wild, so they can learn to emulate their social behavior to ensure their survival, said Jafet Velez, a wildlife biologist with U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

Scientists are tentatively planning to release 20 birds next year in Rio Abajo.

Another proposal is to release more parrots in Maricao, which was not as heavily damaged by Maria.

“Our priority now is not reproduction. … it’s to start releasing them,” Lopez said, adding that breeding centers can hold only so many parrots.

But first, scientists need to make sure the forests can offer food and safe shelter.

Jessica Ilse, a forest biologist at el Yunque for the U.S. Forest Service, said scientists are collecting data about the amount of fruit falling from trees and the number of leaves shed. She said the canopy still has not grown back since Maria and warned that invasive species have taken root since more sunlight now shines through. Ilse said that many of the large trees where parrots used to nest are now gone and noted that it took 14 months for El Yunque’s canopy to close after Hurricane Hugo hit Puerto Rico in 1989 as a Category 3 storm.

Scientists also are now collecting new data on the number of predators at El Yunque, including el guaraguao, a red-tailed hawk that hunts Puerto Rico parrots. Without a canopy and proper camouflage, wild parrots have become an easy target.

Ilse said local and federal scientists plan to help the forest recover through planting. By the end of November, they expect to have a map detailing the most damaged areas in El Yunque and a list of tree species they can plant that are more resistant to hurricanes.

“People keep asking us, ‘How long is it going to take?'” Ilse said.

But scientists don’t know, she added.

“The damage is more extensive than [hurricanes] Hugo and Georges. … It’s been a complete change to the ecosystem.”
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Mars is about to get its first U.S. visitor in years: a three-legged, one-armed geologist to dig deep and listen for quakes.

NASA’s InSight makes its grand entrance through the rose-tinted Martian skies on Monday, after a six-month, 300 million-mile (480 million-kilometer) journey. It will be the first American spacecraft to land since the Curiosity rover in 2012 and the first dedicated to exploring underground.

NASA is going with a tried-and-true method to get this mechanical miner to the surface of the red planet. Engine firings will slow its final descent and the spacecraft will plop down on its rigid legs, mimicking the landings of earlier successful missions.

That’s where old school ends on this $1 billion U.S.-European effort.

Once flight controllers in California determine the coast is clear at the landing site — fairly flat and rock free — InSight’s 6-foot (1.8-meter) arm will remove the two main science experiments from the lander’s deck and place them directly on the Martian surface.

No spacecraft has attempted anything like that before.

The firsts don’t stop there.

One experiment will attempt to penetrate 16 feet (5 meters) into Mars, using a self-hammering nail with heat sensors to gauge the planet’s internal temperature. That would shatter the out-of-this-world depth record of 8 feet (2 { meters) drilled by the Apollo moonwalkers nearly a half-century ago for lunar heat measurements.

The astronauts also left behind instruments to measure moonquakes. InSight carries the first seismometers to monitor for marsquakes — if they exist. Yet another experiment will calculate Mars’ wobble, providing clues about the planet’s core.

It won’t be looking for signs of life, past or present. No life detectors are on board.

The spacecraft is like a self-sufficient robot, said lead scientist Bruce Banerdt of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“It’s got its own brain. It’s got an arm that can manipulate things around. It can listen with its seismometer. It can feel things with the pressure sensors and the temperature sensors. It pulls its own power out of the sun,” he said.

By scoping out the insides of Mars, scientists could learn how our neighbor — and other rocky worlds, including the Earth and moon — formed and transformed over billions of years. Mars is much less geologically active than Earth, and so its interior is closer to being in its original state — a tantalizing time capsule.

InSight stands to “revolutionize the way we think about the inside of the planet,” said NASA’s science mission chief, Thomas Zurbuchen.

But first, the 800-pound (360-kilogram) vehicle needs to get safely to the Martian surface. This time, there won’t be a ball bouncing down with the spacecraft tucked inside, like there were for the Spirit and Opportunity rovers in 2004. And there won’t be a sky crane to lower the lander like there was for the six-wheeled Curiosity during its dramatic “seven minutes of terror.”

“That was crazy,” acknowledged InSight’s project manager, Tom Hoffman. But he noted, “Any time you’re trying to land on Mars, it’s crazy, frankly. I don’t think there’s a sane way to do it.”

No matter how it’s done, getting to Mars and landing there is hard — and unforgiving.

Earth’s success rate at Mars is a mere 40 percent. That includes planetary flybys dating back to the early 1960s, as well as orbiters and landers.

While it’s had its share of flops, the U.S. has by far the best track record. No one else has managed to land and operate a spacecraft on Mars. Two years ago, a European lander came in so fast, its descent system askew, that it carved out a crater on impact.

This time, NASA is borrowing a page from the 1976 twin Vikings and the 2008 Phoenix, which also were stationary and three-legged.

“But you never know what Mars is going to do,” Hoffman said. “Just because we’ve done it before doesn’t mean we’re not nervous and excited about doing it again.”

Wind gusts could send the spacecraft into a dangerous tumble during descent, or the parachute could get tangled. A dust storm like the one that enveloped Mars this past summer could hamper InSight’s ability to generate solar power. A leg could buckle. The arm could jam.

The tensest time for flight controllers in Pasadena, California: the six minutes from the time the spacecraft hits Mars’ atmosphere and touchdown. They’ll have jars of peanuts on hand — a good-luck tradition dating back to 1964’s successful Ranger 7 moon mission.

InSight will enter Mars’ atmosphere at a supersonic 12,300 mph (19,800 kph), relying on its white nylon parachute and a series of engine firings to slow down enough for a soft upright landing on Mars’ Elysium Planitia, a sizable equatorial plain.

Hoffman hopes it’s “like a Walmart parking lot in Kansas.”

The flatter the better so the lander doesn’t tip over, ending the mission, and so the robotic arm can set the science instruments down.

InSight — short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport — will rest close to the ground, its top deck barely a yard, or meter, above the surface. Once its twin circular solar panels open, the lander will occupy the space of a large car.

If NASA gets lucky, a pair of briefcase-size satellites trailing InSight since their joint May liftoff could provide near-live updates during the lander’s descent. There’s an eight-minute lag in communications between Earth and Mars.

The experimental CubeSats, dubbed WALL-E and EVE from the 2008 animated movie, will zoom past Mars and remain in perpetual orbit around the sun, their technology demonstration complete.

If WALL-E and EVE are mute, landing news will come from NASA orbiters at Mars, just not as quickly.

The first pictures of the landing site should start flowing shortly after touchdown. It will be at least 10 weeks before the science instruments are deployed. Add another several weeks for the heat probe to bury into Mars.

The mission is designed to last one full Martian year, the equivalent of two Earth years.

With landing day so close to Thanksgiving, many of the flight controllers will be eating turkey at their desks on the holiday.

Hoffman expects his team will wait until Monday to give full and proper thanks.
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Most healthy children between the ages of four and 10 grow about five centimeters (two inches) a year. So, one family knew something was wrong when their son fit into the same clothes, season after season. Doctors were able to get him growing once again after testing for a growth hormone.

Eleven year-old Spencer Baehman is passionate about baseball. 

“My goal is to play college baseball,” Spencer said.

There was only one problem. Spencer was the shortest player on his team. It didn’t stop him from playing, but the height difference was noticeable. And it made Spencer feel different.

“I want to be as tall as these kids,” Spencer said.

At first, Spencer’s parents thought their son was just small, but gradually, they suspected something was wrong. His mom, Stephanie Baehman, became worried. 

“It really set in one year coming out of winter into spring when he got out his cleats for spring baseball and he put them on, and they fit. And they never should have fit. Those were from the spring prior,” Baehman said.

Spencer’s parents set up an appointment with Dr. Bert Bachrach, the chief of pediatric endocrinology at University of Missouri Health Care. Nurses measured Spencer’s height. 

After careful testing, Dr. Bachrach determined a growth hormone deficiency was causing Spencer’s growth failure. Hormones are basically chemicals that send messages from one cell to another. 

“Growth hormone just doesn’t affect your growth, it affects your muscle mass and fat distribution, so that affects your cholesterol, that affects you overall, it also affects your overall sense of wellbeing,” Bachrach said.

Growth hormone insufficiency is a disorder involving the pituitary gland which is a small, pea-sized gland located at the base of the brain. It’s this gland that produces human growth hormone, among others. 

Every day, Spencer’s mother gives him a daily hormone injection. Since he started getting these injections two years ago, Spencer has grown about 15 centimeters (six inches). But just in case he doesn’t grow tall, he has a reminder written in each of his baseball caps.

“It says HDMH, which means height doesn’t measure heart,” Spencer read. 

And heart is something Spencer has plenty of. 
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Most healthy children between the ages of four and 10 grow about five centimeters (two inches) a year. So, one family knew something was wrong when their son fit into the same clothes, season after season. VOA’s Carol Pearson reports doctors were able to get him growing once again after testing for a growth hormone.
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A new report has taken the results of thousands of papers on the impacts of climate change and put them together into a giant assessment detailing the multiple ways that climate change will impact humanity in the coming century.

Lead researcher Camilo Mora says the report shows what he calls a “massive domino effect” of bad news as climate change intensifies in the coming century if the world doesn’t mitigate the amount of carbon we are pumping into the atmosphere.

In the report being published Monday in Nature Climate Change, Mora says there is literally no place on the planet that’s safe.

Putting all the data in one place

The study is unique in that it doesn’t produce any new information, but is basically a mother of all spreadsheets that takes all of the predicted effects of climate change and puts them into one place.

Mora told VOA he and his team of dozens of researchers spent six months gathering and inputting data on climate change into their system and watching how all of these impacts would affect individual sites around the world.

What they came up with was exactly 467 ways that climate change is going to negatively impact the weather, from localized changes like more droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, and storms, to the global changes like sea level rise, and changes in ocean chemistry.

Mora also looked at how climate change is expected to impact everything from food supplies, to increased susceptibility to disease, as well as more difficult to gauge effects like climate insecurity’s impact on mental health.

What he found was surprising, “I couldn’t stop being mind blown every single day,” he told VOA, mainly by the fact that the dangerous and damaging effects of climate change are already impacting humans all over the globe.  “We think this is going to happen later,” he says, “but we found that this is already happening.”

“Last year, for instance, Florida recorded extreme drought, record high temperatures, over 100 wildfires, and the strongest ever recorded hurricane in its Panhandle: the category 4 Hurricane Michael,” Mora says.  “Likewise, California is currently experiencing ferocious wild fires and one of the longest droughts, plus extreme heatwaves this past summer.”

And he says if carbon levels in the atmosphere continue to increase on pace there will no place on earth that isn’t affected.

Take New York, for instance. Mora lays out a future scenario in which in 2100 New York will be constantly dealing with the potentially devastating effects of four different climate hazards, including extreme weather and sea level rise.

All of these effects are measurable and in the future a city like Miami might be dealing with drought, extreme heat, sea level rise and more numerous and more powerful hurricanes.  “Any coastal area in the tropics is going to be on fire” Mora says.  Sydney, Los Angeles, Brazil and Mexico City are all at risk as the effects of climate change stack up.”

Mora’s study is impressive in its detail, noting, “Planes can’t fly during heat waves … wires short circuit during heat waves,” Mora says.  And for people who work outdoors it can literally get too hot and “their livelihoods depend on their job ability to work out doors.”  

All of these impacts add up and have a profound economic effect.  Mora says they create stressed communities that have less economic ability to deal with change, plus higher financial costs thanks to the infrastructure damage and repair associated with predicted extreme weather events.

Is it too late?

But despite all of the bad news in this assessment, Mora is bullish on our ability to head off the effects of climate change.

“This is not game over,” he says. “We are not too late to turn this around and we have pathways to reduce emissions what we need to do is implement them.”

Mora says the solution to the world’s carbon problem will not come from the world’s leaders, despite agreements like the Paris Accord for which hundreds of the world’s leaders came together to commit to cutting their greenhouse gas emissions.

He says the real change to mitigate climate change through gradual cutting of emissions will come from the public, and he points to efforts like Hawaii’s decision to become a carbon neutral state by 2045 and to shift to 100 percent renewable energy.

Mora is also involved with tree planting efforts in Hawaii that he says if done worldwide could help the planet actually remove carbon from the atmosphere, not just stop putting it in.  He calls it one of “many simple steps to clean our footprint all together.”

 
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People in Finland are using social media to mock U.S. President Donald Trump’s suggestion that they “spend a lot of time raking” in forests in order to prevent wildfires.

Trump said Saturday while visiting the area of the deadliest wildfire in California history that Finnish President Sauli Niinisto told him of that method when the two met last week.

In an interview published Sunday in the Ilta-Sanomat newspaper, Niinisto said he only told Trump about the country’s warning system and had no recollection of discussing raking.

The reaction from Finland included many people posting on Twitter with the hashtag “haravointi,” Finnish for raking.

There were lots of posts rebranding Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan as “Rake America Great Again.”

Some took a more creative approach to the task, employing more efficiency to cleaning the forest floor.

 

And from Canada, a suggestion that the whole process could be even easier.

 

 
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Humans have been genetically modifying foods for centuries. Wild tomatoes or carrots for instance don’t look much like the mass produced foods we eat today. But in these days of genetic modification, consumers have tended to keep so called “Frankenfoods” at arms length. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports a new generation of precision editing techniques may change that.
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Hundreds of protesters have turned out in central London and blocked off the capital’s main bridges to demand the government take climate change seriously.

A group called “Extinction Rebellion” encouraged sit-ins on the bridges Saturday as part of a coordinated week of action across the country.

 

Metropolitan Police said emergency vehicles were hampered from getting across London because of the “blockade” of five bridges. The force said it had asked all protesters to congregate at Westminster Bridge where officers can facilitate lawful protest.

 

About two dozen people were arrested on Monday after protesters blocked traffic and glued themselves to gates outside the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

 
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