Posted: February 19, 2020
Far, far away in our galaxy lies a small icy world. It sits on the edge of our solar system, one billion miles beyond Pluto. It’s the most distant world ever explored. Now that icy “space snowman” has a name—Arrokoth.
Arrokoth is too small to be seen from Earth. After all, it’s four billion miles away from our planet! It’s one of many objects floating in the Kuiper Belt. That’s a large region on the outer Solar System. It’s home to Pluto and way too many other frozen objects and ices to count.
The Hubble Space Telescope discovered Arrokoth in 2014. This year, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew past it on New Year’s Day. That flyby made it the farthest object in the solar system ever visited by a spacecraft. New Horizons gave us a closer look at the snowman shaped world.
Scientists think two objects fused together to form Arrokoth. The smaller object is round like a snowman’s head. It’s nickname is Thule. The larger object is also round, but much bigger. It looks like the body of a snowman. It’s nickname is Ultima. Since 2014, scientists referred to the unusual space object as Ultima Thule. We like its new official name much better!
Scientists asked for permission from Native American Powhatan Tribal elders to use the name Arrokoth. In their language, the word means “sky.” Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” Scientist Alan Stern says, “The name ‘Arrokoth’ reflects the inspiration of looking to the skies and wondering about the stars and worlds beyond our own.”
The Kuiper Belt is full of other floating objects. New Horizon’s mission is to observe more of these things. As the spacecraft makes its way deeper into space, who knows what else it will find. A snowman shaped world sounds far-fetched. But we know who set it in orbit and calls it by name.
“Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of His might and because He is strong in power, not one is missing.” Isaiah 40:26
Posted: February 17, 2020
When it comes to baby bears, the best advice is usually, Stay far, far away. Mama bears are jealous and dangerous. But this black bear cub was orphaned. A dog saved its life.
The dog turned up at its owner’s home in Washington County, Virginia, with a cub in its mouth on February 5. The male cub wasn’t hurt by the dog.
People guess the cub is two to three weeks old. It was taken to the Virginia Wildlife Center in Waynesboro for treatment. Eventually, people will resettle the cub with other bears. The center keeps female bears for this purpose. The bears wear monitors so conservation officers can keep track of them. Officers track the bears and listen for cubs making sounds in their dens. If they find a good match, staff members place orphaned cubs outside the dens.
The male cub was settled into an incubator earlier this week. He received constant care and feeding. He was bright and alert. Later, the cub was placed with a new mother. She was nursing three cubs of her own on Wednesday.
Mother bears usually adopt baby cubs as their own.
“The mothering instinct is just very strong in most animals,” wildlife biologist Bill Bassinger tells the Wytheville Enterprise. “Generally, most females will take the young back, even after it has been handled by humans.”
Posted: February 17, 2020
Wildlife officials in boats send pulses of electricity and sound through the water. The pulses herd schools of Asian carp toward 1,000-foot-long nets. It’s like a cattle drive . . . a slow-motion, underwater cattle drive.
The roundup on Kentucky Lake is a new part of an old battle. People in the United States have been fighting invasive Asian carp for 15 years. Asian carp eat the food supply of native fish. Those natives may starve if carp keep multiplying. The carp also wipe out endangered mussel and snail populations along the Mississippi River.
Will the fight against the fish be won? Wildlife officials are starting to doubt it. They want to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes. But the fish have already been spotted in Lakes Erie, Ontario, and Michigan. They’re also spreading east and west into the Missouri and Ohio rivers.
Asian carp were imported to the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s. People thought it was a good idea at the time. They saw the fish as a good way to get rid of algae, weeds, and parasites.
“It was a dumb idea,” says Joel Brammeier, president of the advocacy group Alliance for the Great Lakes. “Even back then, biologists understood the risks of bringing live, non-native animals into the country. It should never have happened.”
Greg Conover, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, noticed the invaders increasing over the years.
“At first there were no carp, then we were catching a few carp here and there, then eventually we were filling the nets with carp,” he says.
“Asian carp” can mean any of four different invasive species—bighead, black, grass, and silver carp. Some grow very big—maybe as big as you. (The largest type, bighead, can reach 110 pounds!) And all that weight can be dangerous. Silver carp jump from the water like missiles when startled by boat motors. They run into people. Collisions have broken people’s noses, jaws, and ribs. People have caught many of the carp in nets. But it won’t be easy to catch up to this fast-spreading fish. Females lay up to five million eggs at a time.
In Asia, people love to eat the bony carp. Will Americans acquire the taste? That may be the only way to make the pest useful.
Posted: February 14, 2020
Rita Alton has an unusual morning routine: Wake up. Get dressed. Go outside to see how much closer her house has come to tumbling down an 80-foot cliff into Lake Michigan.
Her father built the brick house 60 years ago on a huge yard. Erosion has devoured the ground around it. The lake is near its highest levels ever, hurling waves that break off huge chunks of the mostly clay bluff.
Now the jagged clifftop is only about eight feet from Ms. Alton’s back deck.
“At some point, I’m going to have to leave, because it’s going to go over, and I won’t have a choice,” she says.
Similar scenes are unfolding up and down the coast. Residents watch anxiously as the swollen lake gnaws its way closer to homes.
In fact, water is high across all five of the Great Lakes. The lakes are bursting at the seams less than a decade after reaching their lowest levels.
Millions of dollars’ worth of damage has been done. Residents are elevating or even moving houses inland.
That’s what Joe Bozynski is doing in Luna Pier, Michigan, along Lake Erie. He says flooding is always a concern.
Levels are always changing in the Great Lakes. They hold about 90% of the surface fresh water in the United States. The lakes typically decline in fall and winter. Then melting snow and rainfall replenish them in spring and summer.
Posted: February 13, 2020
A Japanese man with a sweet tooth has become the world’s oldest man. He broke the record when he turned 112 years and 344 days old.
Chitetsu Watanabe was born in Niigata in northern Japan in 1907. He received a certificate for his accomplishment on Wednesday at a nursing home in the same city.
Before now, a man named Masazo Nonaka held the record. He was Japanese too. He died last month. The oldest living person is also Japanese. Her name is Kane Tanaka. She is 117.
The population in Japan is getting older and older. Fewer babies are being born there. Meanwhile, older people are living longer. Nearly 70,000 centenarians live in Japan. (Centenarians are people 100 years old or older.) Japan has a higher percentage of people over 65 than any other country. At banks in Japan, workers keep extra reading glasses on counters for elderly people who need them. If you look for a train schedule in Japan, you may find one in large-sized print hanging next to the one in regular print. Many escalators are built so they can carry wheelchairs.
Until about a decade ago, Mr. Watanabe used to do bonsai, the Japanese art of raising small sculpted trees. These days, he loves desserts such as custards and cream puffs.
When he was young, Mr. Watanabe graduated from agricultural school. Then he moved to Taiwan for work. He lived in Taiwan for 18 years. He married Mitsue and they had five children.
After the end of World War II, Mr. Watanabe returned to Niigata. He worked for the government until retirement. He also grew fruit and vegetables on the family farm.
What’s his secret to long life? He gives this advice: Don’t get angry and keep smiling.
Gray hair is a crown of glory. — Proverbs 16:31
Posted: February 12, 2020
Whatever got a piece of gentle Titus in the North Carolina brush last March, it was trouble.
It may have been a pygmy rattlesnake or a copperhead. In any case, Titus’s back left leg turned red, purple, and black. It swelled up like a tennis ball.
“I thought he was going to lose a leg, or maybe even worse,” says Cassandra Carpenter, one of Titus’s owners.
A vet did some fast, excellent work on Titus. Now Titus is competing in the Westminster Kennel Club pooch pageant . . . with a large, dark scar on his ankle.
The scar sets him apart. Nearly each of the 2,630 of the dogs in the pageant is flawless. The dogs come from 204 breeds and varieties. The contest winner will be named America’s top dog.
The competition began Saturday. Breed judging started Sunday.
Titus’s owner is surprised he made it this far after getting injured. At first when he got hurt, she didn’t notice the bite. Titus had gone out toward some trees for a bit. He came back fine . . . or so it seemed. But over the next couple days, he had a high fever. He wasn’t his usual, happy self. His leg started to swell.
Veterinarian Jess Hunter lanced the wound. Titus spent months healing.
Despite the injury, Titus never lost his stride. By late last June, he slowly made his way back into the ring. He won best of breed in the National Dog Show on Thanksgiving Day.
Now tail-wagging Titus is among 16 bullmastiffs at Westminster.
Posted: February 11, 2020
This year, people in Australia have faced drought and terrible wildfires. What’s next? Floods!
Is flooding good news? It may be. Parts of Australia have had three whole years of drought. Rain can only help dried up rivers and parched soil. But experts say it will take some time to know how much good the rain will really do. The rain broke the drought in some areas. But it did not fall evenly on every dry part of Australia.
Drought badly affected an area of more than 580,000 square miles. That’s larger than the country of Ethiopia. Fire fighters celebrate the rain. It has extinguished or slowed down many wildfires. On Saturday, authorities declared the Currowan Fire south of Sydney was finally out. That fire destroyed more than 300 homes and 1.2 million acres of land over two-and-a-half months.
“This is the most positive news we’ve had in some time,” the New South Wales Rural Fire Service tweeted on Monday. “The recent rainfall has assisted firefighters to put over 30 fires out since Friday. Some of these blazes have been burning for weeks and even months.”
In all, Australia’s wildfires have destroyed more than 3,000 homes. The fires started major destruction in 2019. That year was the hottest and driest in Australia’s recorded history.
But these days Australia isn’t looking so dry. Coastal areas get heavy rainfall. Some spots get more rainfall than they have had in decades. And more rain is on the way.
Posted: February 10, 2020
Down they come!
NASA astronaut Christina Koch spent nearly 11 months on the International Space Station. Hers was the longest spaceflight by a woman. On Thursday, she landed safely in Kazakhstan. Two of her crewmates landed too.
A Soyuz capsule carried Mrs. Koch, station Commander Luca Parmitano, and Alexander Skvortsov to southeast of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 3:12 p.m.
This was Mrs. Koch’s first space flight. And it was a long one! She stayed in space for 328 days. Her lengthy mission gives scientists a chance to study what happens to a woman’s body when she spends a long time in space. This information should help when NASA officials send people to the Moon. Later, they hope to send people to Mars too. All those missions will require people to stay in space for long periods of time.
Mrs. Koch smiled and gave a thumbs-up as a support crew helped her get out of the capsule. They placed her in a chair for a quick checkup. The other astronauts were checked too. Russian space officials say all three were in good shape.
Mrs. Koch grew up in Jacksonville, North Carolina. Now she lives in Texas with her husband, Bob. She says taking part in the first all-female spacewalk in October was the highlight of her mission. She says she was excited that the walk could inspire future space explorers.
What’s next for the newly-landed astronauts? More flying. They will fly by helicopter to the city of Karaganda in Kazakhstan. After a flight to Europe, Mrs. Koch will go home to Texas.
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the Moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? — Psalm 8:3-4
Posted: February 7, 2020
Surf’s up! at this year’s Olympics.
A total of 20 men and 20 women surfers will qualify for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. Four athletes at a time will catch waves. They will ride for 20 to 25 minutes, surfing 10 to 12 waves. Judges will grade each surfer’s performance.
The United States, Australia, and Brazil are expected to be the favorites in Tokyo. Two members of the U.S. team, Caroline Marks and Kolohe Andino, are training at their home base of San Clemente, California.
Ms. Marks learned to surf with her brothers when she was just eight years old. She became the youngest surfer ever to qualify for the World Surf League Championship Tour. She was just 15 years old at the time.
Kolohe Andino grew up in San Clemente with a pro surfer dad. Kolohe won seven USA Surfing Champion titles and nine National Scholastic Surfing Association championships before he turned 18. Many of the local kids look up to Kolohe, now 25. Their hero is ranked as the world’s number one surfer.
Speaking of number one. There’s one big question for the Tokyo Olympics: Will there be big waves? Japan isn’t known for the mammoth waves found at surfing hotbeds like the North Shore of Hawaii or Big Sur in California.
We’ll see! The wind and the waves are controlled by God. (Luke 8:24) Even the ones we play in!
Posted: February 6, 2020
A male baboon in South Africa carries and grooms a lion cub. Now that’s something you don’t see every day! All young cats—big and small—get tongue-baths. But they usually get them from their moms, not baboons.
This unlikely baboon-lion duo happened in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. The baboon took the cub up into a tree. It cleaned it as if it were its own. Safari operator Kurt Schultz says he has never seen such a thing in his 20 years of watching animals.
“The baboon was grooming the lion cub as if it was a baby baboon,” he says. “Male baboons do a lot of grooming but the care given to this lion cub was the same care given by a female baboon to one of her own young.”
Mr. Schultz says the troop of baboons was excited that morning. It is possible they had just discovered the lion cub, he says.
The baboons had gathered in an area with granite hills and boulders. Lions and leopards have been known to hide their cubs there while they go hunting.
Baboons are strong animals. At the beginning, they were fighting over the lion cub. Mr. Schultz says the cub could have been injured. It was a hot morning and the cub was showing signs of dehydration too.
While the rest of the baboon troop settled down, the male “moved from branch to branch, grooming and carrying the cub for a long period of time,” Mr. Schultz says. “The cub seemed very exhausted.”
Others on safaris in the park watched the rare sight and took photographs. But the scene may not promise good things for the baby cub. It might not survive its time with the baboons—even though it seems to have met a nice one. Baboons often kill baby lions. They know by instinct that the little animals will grow up and become threats to them.
Posted: February 5, 2020
Three pygmy chameleons hatch at Britain’s Chester Zoo. The pencil tip-sized creatures are some of Africa’s smallest reptiles. They are found only in Tanzania’s coastal forests. Pygmy chameleons change color. They produce a line down their side to blend with leaves in their surroundings.
Workers at the zoo studied hard. They learned about the creatures in order to give them the best chance of surviving.
Ben Baker is a team manager of the reptiles department at the zoo. He says people know very little about bearded pygmy chameleons. But researchers do know this: Pygmy chameleons are one of the most threatened reptiles in Africa.
“The new clutch will play a vital role in establishing a new breeding program,” he says. (A clutch is a group of eggs.) “This will allow us to create a sustainable population.” Hopefully, what researchers learn from watching the chameleons will help people protect these and other creatures from extinction.
The three bearded pygmy chameleons were born after being incubated (kept warm) for 70 days. They are safe, snug, and out of sight for now.
All things bright and beautiful,
all creatures great and small,
all things wise and wonderful:
the Lord God made them all.
— “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” 1848, Cecil Frances Alexander
Posted: February 4, 2020
Conservationists search near the largest volcano on the Galapagos Islands. They make a great find: 30 giant tortoises. They’re not just any tortoises. They’re tortoises with famous ancestors. They descended from two extinct species.
The searchers find one young female tortoise from the Chelonoidis abingdonii species. The last of those tortoises was Lonesome George. He died in June 2012. People believe he was over 100 years old. They find another 11 males and 18 females. These belonged to an old tortoise family called Chelonoidis niger.
Forty five people work to find the tortoises. They search in the foothills of Wolf Volcano. They say pirates and whalers had taken tortoises from other islands and left them near the volcano.
The Galapagos once had 15 closely related species of tortoise. About 20,000–25,000 wild tortoises live on the islands today. At least four of the species are now considered extinct.
And those extinct species are still gone. None of the found tortoises were purebred. They were hybrids—part extinct species and part other species.
Posted: February 3, 2020
People driving on highways near Alaska’s Cook Inlet can sometimes spot a beluga whale out the window. But now those sightings are growing rarer. Belugas are disappearing faster than people once thought.
Every two years, workers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration count belugas in Cook Inlet. In the newest count, they estimated the population was around 280. They expected to find more. Three years ago, they counted 340. The whales also have a smaller range than they used to. (A range is the geographical area a species can be found in.)
Cook Inlet belugas are one of five beluga populations in U.S. waters. Cook Inlet stretches 180 miles from Anchorage to the Gulf of Alaska. That’s a big space. It should be able to support as many as 1,300 belugas.
Belugas are the smallest type of whale. They feed on salmon, smaller fish, crab, shrimp, squid, and clams. The whales turn white as adults. They can reach 15 feet long. Why are these big mammals in trouble? It’s partly because people used to hunt them. In 1999, new laws said people could not live by hunting whales anymore. But belugas didn’t bounce back. In 2008, they were added to the Endangered Species list. In 2017, whale numbers still didn’t look better. Officials admitted they didn’t know why.
What else may harm belugas? Here’s a list: natural disasters, oil spills, noise, blooms of harmful algae, loss of habitat, and people hunting whales without permission.
The sea is His, for He made it. — Psalm 95:5
Posted: January 31, 2020
This year, Australia’s fire season began early, and it began with fury. In late October, 2019, a lightning bolt sparked a giant fire in Gospers Mountain, New South Wales. New blazes broke out nearly every week. Firefighters fought to protect lives, homes, and businesses. They were also concerned about animals and forests. One crew of specialists even managed to save the last of an ancient tree species.
Once, the Wollemi Pine was thought to be long extinct. Then, a stand of the trees was discovered in 1994. (A stand is a community of trees.)
Matt Kean is the New South Wales Environment Minister. “These trees can be found nowhere else in the world,” he says. “In fact, there’s only 200 left on the planet, so we needed to do everything we could to protect them.”
Firefighters used fire retardant and irrigation systems to save the trees. Their work paid off.
In the future, hikers may trek through these woods. But they’ll likely never know they are walking through such rare growth. That’s because its exact location remains a closely guarded secret to help authorities protect the trees.
Only God knows how many plants and animals exist. Some are thought to be extinct. Others have yet to be discovered in the first place!
Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; His understanding is beyond measure. — Psalm 147:5
Posted: January 30, 2020
It’s time for cuteness overload in Berlin, Germany. Pit and Paule, the new star attractions at Berlin’s zoo, have taken their first steps into the limelight. They climbed and tumbled around their enclosure while people watched. And the cameras loved it.
It was the cubs’ first public appearance. Keepers had cub-proofed the glass-enclosed space for the twins. They took out any dangerous obstacles. They filled in a water basin to keep the giant panda cubs from being injured.
The cubs’ mother, Meng Meng, kept a close eye on Pit and Paule. When they climbed too high, she pulled them down.
The twins’ Chinese names are Meng Xiang und Meng Yuan. They were the first pandas to be born in Germany. They are on loan from China. Did you know every panda in the world belongs to China? Read about why in Panda Politics.
The Lord is good to all, and His mercy is over all that He has made. — Psalm 145:9
Posted: January 29, 2020
In France, transportation workers are on strike because government officials have changed rules about who can retire, and when.
With the Metro, buses, and trams shut down, many people in Paris have turned to rentable bikes from the company Vélib’. People are using the bikes three times as often as they did before the strike. And that means . . . a LOT of flat tires and bikes that need repair.
A French student Irene says, “It’s clear that since the strikes, there are no bikes that work, that is, 90% of the time I don’t take a bike. I have to walk!”
Another comments, “Recently, I’ve had to make whole journeys on foot because there are six, seven, eight stations, all empty, or with bicycles . . . sometimes there are ten of them but they’re all out of order!”
A frustrated man complains, “This one won’t unlock, this one doesn’t have a saddle anymore, this one’s punctured, and that’s it!”
Riders aren’t the only ones growing frustrated with the broken bicycles. Mechanics have seen quite enough of them too. So many damaged bikes come in that repairmen can’t even begin to fix them all.
“Bikes suffer far more damage: broken rear wheels, broken forks, V-boxes even disappeared,” says Frédéric Glace, a Vélib’ bike mechanic. Since the start of the strike we’ve repaired 10,000 punctures.” He says they would normally fix about 3,000 in that time.
“You have to tell it like it is,” says the mechanic. “When people have their own bike, they take care of it. When it’s not their own bike and it’s a rented bike, well, automatically it’s not the same thing. They don’t take care of it at all. They don’t care!”
People complain and complain. More and more tires pop. And still, the strike drags on and on.
Posted: February 19, 2020
Far, far away in our galaxy lies a small icy world. It sits on the edge of our solar system, one billion miles beyond Pluto. It’s the most distant world ever explored. Now that icy “space snowman” has a name—Arrokoth.
Arrokoth is too small to be seen from Earth. After all, it’s four billion miles away from our planet! It’s one of many objects floating in the Kuiper Belt. That’s a large region on the outer Solar System. It’s home to Pluto and way too many other frozen objects and ices to count.
The Hubble Space Telescope discovered Arrokoth in 2014. This year, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew past it on New Year’s Day. That flyby made it the farthest object in the solar system ever visited by a spacecraft. New Horizons gave us a closer look at the snowman shaped world.
Scientists think two objects fused together to form Arrokoth. The smaller object is round like a snowman’s head. It’s nickname is Thule. The larger object is also round, but much bigger. It looks like the body of a snowman. It’s nickname is Ultima. Since 2014, scientists referred to the unusual space object as Ultima Thule. We like its new official name much better!
Scientists asked for permission from Native American Powhatan Tribal elders to use the name Arrokoth. In their language, the word means “sky.” Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” Scientist Alan Stern says, “The name ‘Arrokoth’ reflects the inspiration of looking to the skies and wondering about the stars and worlds beyond our own.”
The Kuiper Belt is full of other floating objects. New Horizon’s mission is to observe more of these things. As the spacecraft makes its way deeper into space, who knows what else it will find. A snowman shaped world sounds far-fetched. But we know who set it in orbit and calls it by name.
“Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of His might and because He is strong in power, not one is missing.” Isaiah 40:26
Posted: February 17, 2020
When it comes to baby bears, the best advice is usually, Stay far, far away. Mama bears are jealous and dangerous. But this black bear cub was orphaned. A dog saved its life.
The dog turned up at its owner’s home in Washington County, Virginia, with a cub in its mouth on February 5. The male cub wasn’t hurt by the dog.
People guess the cub is two to three weeks old. It was taken to the Virginia Wildlife Center in Waynesboro for treatment. Eventually, people will resettle the cub with other bears. The center keeps female bears for this purpose. The bears wear monitors so conservation officers can keep track of them. Officers track the bears and listen for cubs making sounds in their dens. If they find a good match, staff members place orphaned cubs outside the dens.
The male cub was settled into an incubator earlier this week. He received constant care and feeding. He was bright and alert. Later, the cub was placed with a new mother. She was nursing three cubs of her own on Wednesday.
Mother bears usually adopt baby cubs as their own.
“The mothering instinct is just very strong in most animals,” wildlife biologist Bill Bassinger tells the Wytheville Enterprise. “Generally, most females will take the young back, even after it has been handled by humans.”
Posted: February 17, 2020
Wildlife officials in boats send pulses of electricity and sound through the water. The pulses herd schools of Asian carp toward 1,000-foot-long nets. It’s like a cattle drive . . . a slow-motion, underwater cattle drive.
The roundup on Kentucky Lake is a new part of an old battle. People in the United States have been fighting invasive Asian carp for 15 years. Asian carp eat the food supply of native fish. Those natives may starve if carp keep multiplying. The carp also wipe out endangered mussel and snail populations along the Mississippi River.
Will the fight against the fish be won? Wildlife officials are starting to doubt it. They want to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes. But the fish have already been spotted in Lakes Erie, Ontario, and Michigan. They’re also spreading east and west into the Missouri and Ohio rivers.
Asian carp were imported to the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s. People thought it was a good idea at the time. They saw the fish as a good way to get rid of algae, weeds, and parasites.
“It was a dumb idea,” says Joel Brammeier, president of the advocacy group Alliance for the Great Lakes. “Even back then, biologists understood the risks of bringing live, non-native animals into the country. It should never have happened.”
Greg Conover, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, noticed the invaders increasing over the years.
“At first there were no carp, then we were catching a few carp here and there, then eventually we were filling the nets with carp,” he says.
“Asian carp” can mean any of four different invasive species—bighead, black, grass, and silver carp. Some grow very big—maybe as big as you. (The largest type, bighead, can reach 110 pounds!) And all that weight can be dangerous. Silver carp jump from the water like missiles when startled by boat motors. They run into people. Collisions have broken people’s noses, jaws, and ribs. People have caught many of the carp in nets. But it won’t be easy to catch up to this fast-spreading fish. Females lay up to five million eggs at a time.
In Asia, people love to eat the bony carp. Will Americans acquire the taste? That may be the only way to make the pest useful.
Posted: February 14, 2020
Rita Alton has an unusual morning routine: Wake up. Get dressed. Go outside to see how much closer her house has come to tumbling down an 80-foot cliff into Lake Michigan.
Her father built the brick house 60 years ago on a huge yard. Erosion has devoured the ground around it. The lake is near its highest levels ever, hurling waves that break off huge chunks of the mostly clay bluff.
Now the jagged clifftop is only about eight feet from Ms. Alton’s back deck.
“At some point, I’m going to have to leave, because it’s going to go over, and I won’t have a choice,” she says.
Similar scenes are unfolding up and down the coast. Residents watch anxiously as the swollen lake gnaws its way closer to homes.
In fact, water is high across all five of the Great Lakes. The lakes are bursting at the seams less than a decade after reaching their lowest levels.
Millions of dollars’ worth of damage has been done. Residents are elevating or even moving houses inland.
That’s what Joe Bozynski is doing in Luna Pier, Michigan, along Lake Erie. He says flooding is always a concern.
Levels are always changing in the Great Lakes. They hold about 90% of the surface fresh water in the United States. The lakes typically decline in fall and winter. Then melting snow and rainfall replenish them in spring and summer.
Posted: February 13, 2020
A Japanese man with a sweet tooth has become the world’s oldest man. He broke the record when he turned 112 years and 344 days old.
Chitetsu Watanabe was born in Niigata in northern Japan in 1907. He received a certificate for his accomplishment on Wednesday at a nursing home in the same city.
Before now, a man named Masazo Nonaka held the record. He was Japanese too. He died last month. The oldest living person is also Japanese. Her name is Kane Tanaka. She is 117.
The population in Japan is getting older and older. Fewer babies are being born there. Meanwhile, older people are living longer. Nearly 70,000 centenarians live in Japan. (Centenarians are people 100 years old or older.) Japan has a higher percentage of people over 65 than any other country. At banks in Japan, workers keep extra reading glasses on counters for elderly people who need them. If you look for a train schedule in Japan, you may find one in large-sized print hanging next to the one in regular print. Many escalators are built so they can carry wheelchairs.
Until about a decade ago, Mr. Watanabe used to do bonsai, the Japanese art of raising small sculpted trees. These days, he loves desserts such as custards and cream puffs.
When he was young, Mr. Watanabe graduated from agricultural school. Then he moved to Taiwan for work. He lived in Taiwan for 18 years. He married Mitsue and they had five children.
After the end of World War II, Mr. Watanabe returned to Niigata. He worked for the government until retirement. He also grew fruit and vegetables on the family farm.
What’s his secret to long life? He gives this advice: Don’t get angry and keep smiling.
Gray hair is a crown of glory. — Proverbs 16:31
Posted: February 12, 2020
Whatever got a piece of gentle Titus in the North Carolina brush last March, it was trouble.
It may have been a pygmy rattlesnake or a copperhead. In any case, Titus’s back left leg turned red, purple, and black. It swelled up like a tennis ball.
“I thought he was going to lose a leg, or maybe even worse,” says Cassandra Carpenter, one of Titus’s owners.
A vet did some fast, excellent work on Titus. Now Titus is competing in the Westminster Kennel Club pooch pageant . . . with a large, dark scar on his ankle.
The scar sets him apart. Nearly each of the 2,630 of the dogs in the pageant is flawless. The dogs come from 204 breeds and varieties. The contest winner will be named America’s top dog.
The competition began Saturday. Breed judging started Sunday.
Titus’s owner is surprised he made it this far after getting injured. At first when he got hurt, she didn’t notice the bite. Titus had gone out toward some trees for a bit. He came back fine . . . or so it seemed. But over the next couple days, he had a high fever. He wasn’t his usual, happy self. His leg started to swell.
Veterinarian Jess Hunter lanced the wound. Titus spent months healing.
Despite the injury, Titus never lost his stride. By late last June, he slowly made his way back into the ring. He won best of breed in the National Dog Show on Thanksgiving Day.
Now tail-wagging Titus is among 16 bullmastiffs at Westminster.
Posted: February 11, 2020
This year, people in Australia have faced drought and terrible wildfires. What’s next? Floods!
Is flooding good news? It may be. Parts of Australia have had three whole years of drought. Rain can only help dried up rivers and parched soil. But experts say it will take some time to know how much good the rain will really do. The rain broke the drought in some areas. But it did not fall evenly on every dry part of Australia.
Drought badly affected an area of more than 580,000 square miles. That’s larger than the country of Ethiopia. Fire fighters celebrate the rain. It has extinguished or slowed down many wildfires. On Saturday, authorities declared the Currowan Fire south of Sydney was finally out. That fire destroyed more than 300 homes and 1.2 million acres of land over two-and-a-half months.
“This is the most positive news we’ve had in some time,” the New South Wales Rural Fire Service tweeted on Monday. “The recent rainfall has assisted firefighters to put over 30 fires out since Friday. Some of these blazes have been burning for weeks and even months.”
In all, Australia’s wildfires have destroyed more than 3,000 homes. The fires started major destruction in 2019. That year was the hottest and driest in Australia’s recorded history.
But these days Australia isn’t looking so dry. Coastal areas get heavy rainfall. Some spots get more rainfall than they have had in decades. And more rain is on the way.
Posted: February 10, 2020
Down they come!
NASA astronaut Christina Koch spent nearly 11 months on the International Space Station. Hers was the longest spaceflight by a woman. On Thursday, she landed safely in Kazakhstan. Two of her crewmates landed too.
A Soyuz capsule carried Mrs. Koch, station Commander Luca Parmitano, and Alexander Skvortsov to southeast of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 3:12 p.m.
This was Mrs. Koch’s first space flight. And it was a long one! She stayed in space for 328 days. Her lengthy mission gives scientists a chance to study what happens to a woman’s body when she spends a long time in space. This information should help when NASA officials send people to the Moon. Later, they hope to send people to Mars too. All those missions will require people to stay in space for long periods of time.
Mrs. Koch smiled and gave a thumbs-up as a support crew helped her get out of the capsule. They placed her in a chair for a quick checkup. The other astronauts were checked too. Russian space officials say all three were in good shape.
Mrs. Koch grew up in Jacksonville, North Carolina. Now she lives in Texas with her husband, Bob. She says taking part in the first all-female spacewalk in October was the highlight of her mission. She says she was excited that the walk could inspire future space explorers.
What’s next for the newly-landed astronauts? More flying. They will fly by helicopter to the city of Karaganda in Kazakhstan. After a flight to Europe, Mrs. Koch will go home to Texas.
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the Moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? — Psalm 8:3-4
Posted: February 7, 2020
Surf’s up! at this year’s Olympics.
A total of 20 men and 20 women surfers will qualify for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. Four athletes at a time will catch waves. They will ride for 20 to 25 minutes, surfing 10 to 12 waves. Judges will grade each surfer’s performance.
The United States, Australia, and Brazil are expected to be the favorites in Tokyo. Two members of the U.S. team, Caroline Marks and Kolohe Andino, are training at their home base of San Clemente, California.
Ms. Marks learned to surf with her brothers when she was just eight years old. She became the youngest surfer ever to qualify for the World Surf League Championship Tour. She was just 15 years old at the time.
Kolohe Andino grew up in San Clemente with a pro surfer dad. Kolohe won seven USA Surfing Champion titles and nine National Scholastic Surfing Association championships before he turned 18. Many of the local kids look up to Kolohe, now 25. Their hero is ranked as the world’s number one surfer.
Speaking of number one. There’s one big question for the Tokyo Olympics: Will there be big waves? Japan isn’t known for the mammoth waves found at surfing hotbeds like the North Shore of Hawaii or Big Sur in California.
We’ll see! The wind and the waves are controlled by God. (Luke 8:24) Even the ones we play in!
Posted: February 6, 2020
A male baboon in South Africa carries and grooms a lion cub. Now that’s something you don’t see every day! All young cats—big and small—get tongue-baths. But they usually get them from their moms, not baboons.
This unlikely baboon-lion duo happened in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. The baboon took the cub up into a tree. It cleaned it as if it were its own. Safari operator Kurt Schultz says he has never seen such a thing in his 20 years of watching animals.
“The baboon was grooming the lion cub as if it was a baby baboon,” he says. “Male baboons do a lot of grooming but the care given to this lion cub was the same care given by a female baboon to one of her own young.”
Mr. Schultz says the troop of baboons was excited that morning. It is possible they had just discovered the lion cub, he says.
The baboons had gathered in an area with granite hills and boulders. Lions and leopards have been known to hide their cubs there while they go hunting.
Baboons are strong animals. At the beginning, they were fighting over the lion cub. Mr. Schultz says the cub could have been injured. It was a hot morning and the cub was showing signs of dehydration too.
While the rest of the baboon troop settled down, the male “moved from branch to branch, grooming and carrying the cub for a long period of time,” Mr. Schultz says. “The cub seemed very exhausted.”
Others on safaris in the park watched the rare sight and took photographs. But the scene may not promise good things for the baby cub. It might not survive its time with the baboons—even though it seems to have met a nice one. Baboons often kill baby lions. They know by instinct that the little animals will grow up and become threats to them.
Posted: February 5, 2020
Three pygmy chameleons hatch at Britain’s Chester Zoo. The pencil tip-sized creatures are some of Africa’s smallest reptiles. They are found only in Tanzania’s coastal forests. Pygmy chameleons change color. They produce a line down their side to blend with leaves in their surroundings.
Workers at the zoo studied hard. They learned about the creatures in order to give them the best chance of surviving.
Ben Baker is a team manager of the reptiles department at the zoo. He says people know very little about bearded pygmy chameleons. But researchers do know this: Pygmy chameleons are one of the most threatened reptiles in Africa.
“The new clutch will play a vital role in establishing a new breeding program,” he says. (A clutch is a group of eggs.) “This will allow us to create a sustainable population.” Hopefully, what researchers learn from watching the chameleons will help people protect these and other creatures from extinction.
The three bearded pygmy chameleons were born after being incubated (kept warm) for 70 days. They are safe, snug, and out of sight for now.
All things bright and beautiful,
all creatures great and small,
all things wise and wonderful:
the Lord God made them all.
— “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” 1848, Cecil Frances Alexander
Posted: February 4, 2020
Conservationists search near the largest volcano on the Galapagos Islands. They make a great find: 30 giant tortoises. They’re not just any tortoises. They’re tortoises with famous ancestors. They descended from two extinct species.
The searchers find one young female tortoise from the Chelonoidis abingdonii species. The last of those tortoises was Lonesome George. He died in June 2012. People believe he was over 100 years old. They find another 11 males and 18 females. These belonged to an old tortoise family called Chelonoidis niger.
Forty five people work to find the tortoises. They search in the foothills of Wolf Volcano. They say pirates and whalers had taken tortoises from other islands and left them near the volcano.
The Galapagos once had 15 closely related species of tortoise. About 20,000–25,000 wild tortoises live on the islands today. At least four of the species are now considered extinct.
And those extinct species are still gone. None of the found tortoises were purebred. They were hybrids—part extinct species and part other species.
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