Posted: July 20, 2018

Have you ever seen flowing lava in person? Many people want to. So they travel to Hawaii. But then they run into a problem. Right now, actually seeing lava is really hard.

Hawaii’s Mount Kilauea has been erupting for 35 years. But now it is erupting differently than it used to. In the past, lava flowed from a different spot. It moved through land where no one lived. Tour guides could bring visitors to observe the flowing fire—from a safe distance. But now Kilauea is producing a lot more lava. It has destroyed hundreds of homes. The risks to visitors became clear this week. Lava flowing into the ocean triggered an explosion. A hot rock the size of a basketball crashed through the roof of a tour boat. Several people were injured.

Many people who live on Hawaii’s Big Island rely on tourism to live. But people planning Hawaii vacations get the bad news: “You probably won’t get to see lava.” They cancel their plans. Tour guides in Hawaii lose business. They fear their towns may suffer without the money tourists bring.

It’s hard to find a spot where a large group of people can gather to view the amazing sight of a lava flow and still be safe from flying rocks and dangerous gases. But Hawaiians want to find one—fast.

(AP Photo: Lava, lava, everywhere—but not a drop to see! You can see this lava in Pahoa, Hawaii, from the air. It’s a lot harder to get a glimpse on land.)

Posted: July 19, 2018

Collars on cats are about to start falling off. In the state of Connecticut, wildlife biologists are studying bobcats. These scientists study animals in their habitats. Last fall, 50 bobcats were given GPS collars to wear. The collars were programed to track these ferocious cats.

Why do scientists need to learn about bobcats? They want to protect other animals from them. Believe it or not, bobcats are Connecticut’s number one predator! They eat mice, chickens, small pets, and even deer. By tracking them, scientists have already made a big discovery: Many bobcats live in neighborhoods! They prey on squirrels that eat seeds from backyard birdfeeders. Bobcats can be a danger to pet cats living in neighborhoods. The felines may look alike, but their actions are very different.

Researchers are watching the clock. Soon the batteries on the collars will run out! The collars need to be recharged so scientists can study more bobcats. The collars are programmed to automatically detach and fall off the bobcats on August 1. Then people in Connecticut can start catching cat collars. Scientists hope to find all 50 collars and reuse them. Maybe they should look in their own backyards!

(AP Photo: Scientists measure a bobcat in North Branford, Connecticut, on June 7.)

Posted: July 18, 2018

This tiny cub is one of the last of her kind: a white African lioness.

Workers at the Tiger Creek Animal Sanctuary in Tyler, Texas, care for the lion cub. Her name is Luna. She drinks from a bottle every two to three hours. She needs lots of attention, exercise, and rest.

White lions are not albino. But they do carry a unique gene that makes them white. Fewer than 500 white lions live in the world today. Once, there were many more. People overhunted the rare creatures. Today, many white lions live in places where people pay to come hunt them.

But Luna has been rescued. She will probably live at Tiger Creek for the rest of her life. At six months old, she will move to her own habitat there. Lions in the wild live in groups called prides. Workers at Tiger Creek want Luna to get to live with other lions too—but she is not quite ready. It will take a couple years before zoo workers feel she is strong enough to move in with their other lion, an adult male.

(AP Photo: Jaymis Werner, park director, feeds milk to Luna, a seven-week-old white African lion cub. She made her public debut at Tiger Creek Animal Sanctuary last week.)

Posted: July 17, 2018

What’s floating beside this tiny Greenland village?

The iceberg broke off from a glacier. Locals worry. What if a big piece of the iceberg breaks off? It could cause a massive flood—right in their tiny village. On Friday, 33 residents of the village of Innaarsuit moved to higher ground.

Authorities watch the iceberg. Will it move closer to land? Will rain and warm temperatures cause it to break apart? People hope their new neighbor will wash away in a current. Otherwise, it could cause a tsunami. The iceberg is about as big as a sports stadium—and that’s just its tip. Most of the gigantic ice chunk is hidden under the water.

(AP Photo: An Iceberg near the village Innarsuit on the northwestern Greenlandic coast on July 12)

Posted: July 16, 2018

Open your eyes and hold your nose. The Michigan corpse flower is in bloom. People have waited for this for 18 years!

People planted the corpse flower it in 2000. It began blooming for the first time ever on Wednesday at a garden in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Garden staff nicknamed it “Putricia.” That sounds like putrid, which means “rotten-smelling.” And that’s exactly how you’d describe Putricia if you got a whiff. It smells like stinky rotting meat! Putricia stayed open for just a few days.

Corpse flowers are normally found in Indonesia and Sumatra. They are the largest flowering structures in the world. Putricia stands 4.5 feet tall. Not everyone finds her smell disgusting. Pollinators are drawn to it!

(AP Photo: Roxanne Anderson and her daughter, Raelin, 6, react as a corpse flower blooms at Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on July 12.)

Posted: July 13, 2018

A baby ant is an antling. A baby ferret is a kit. And a baby porcupine is a porcupette. This month, a prehensile-tailed porcupette was at Brookfield Zoo in Illinois for the first time ever.

The new baby porcupine is a boy. His prehensile tail can grasp objects. He weighed almost a pound on his birthday, July 2. At birth, his quills were soft. They hardened after a few days. His porcupine parents are named Lucia and Eddie. Normally, both father and mother porcupines help care for their young. Zoo officials kept track of the porcupine family for a while. They noticed Lucia wasn’t letting her baby nurse. Now veterinary workers feed the young porcupine with a bottle.

The baby porcupine is doing great. But he’s not ready for the spotlight yet. He will join his family at the Hamill Family Play Zoo when he’s around10 weeks old. He will probably have a name by then. What would you name this tiny porcupette?

(AP Photo: A baby porcupine at Brookfield Zoo. Prehensile-tailed porcupines like this one come from forests in South America.)

Posted: July 12, 2018

Hot summer sun beats down in Michigan. It’s time for a swim—in the mud!

Parks and Recreation workers dig a pit in a park in Westland, Michigan. It measures 75 feet by 150 feet. They dump in 20,000 gallons of water and 200 tons of topsoil. Thousands of children jump into the mud pit. Grownups do too. Some of the muddy grownups came to Mud Day when they were kids. Mud Day has happened in Michigan once a year for 31 years.

Does your city or town have a Parks and Recreation Department? These departments have workers who create and manage parks for people to enjoy. Mud Day is a chance for Westland’s park workers to have fun with citizens—and to remind them to come to the park more often. Kids love it. They get really dirty without getting in trouble. In fact, the dirtiest kids get crowned Mud Day King and Queen!

(AP Photo: Molly Kofahl, 4, left, and Charles Daviskiba, 3, were crowned Mud Day Queen and King on July 10, 2018.)

Posted: July 11, 2018

It’s naptime for the Kepler Space Telescope.

The Kepler rocketed into space in 2009. Scientists hoped it would discover new planets. And it did! Because of images sent back from Kepler, scientists have learned about nearly 3,000 planets. During its near-decade in space, Kepler has had mechanical failures. But it has kept chugging along. You can’t get around an empty gas tank though! Kepler is finally running low on fuel. No one is surprised. People thought Kepler would quit working years ago!

Flight controllers put the planet-hunter into hibernation last week. That will save its decreasing energy. The craft needs fuel to point its telescope. Kepler’s antenna must be pointed toward Earth to send its recently-gathered data back. So flight controllers say, “Go to sleep, Kepler! Save your energy to send us one last message.”

(AP Photo: An artist’s image shows the Kepler spacecraft.)

Posted: July 10, 2018

People waited for weeks to find out: Who would U.S. president Donald Trump suggest as the newest Supreme Court justice? Last night, President Trump chose Brett Kavanaugh.

Supreme Court justices have a lot of power in the United States. The newly-nominated justice, if confirmed, will work with the eight other Supreme Court justices. Together, they will decide the most important and difficult court cases in the country. Mr. Kavanaugh worked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who will retire at the end of July. Mr. Kennedy’s vote mattered a lot in the Supreme Court. The two sides of the court—conservative and liberal—often disagree on issues. When that happened, Mr. Kennedy’s vote often decided the outcome. If confirmed to be the next justice, Mr. Kavanaugh might also have that tie-breaker power.

Mr. Kavanaugh spoke in the White House Monday night. He pledged to preserve the Constitution. The Constitution is the highest law of the United States. Democrats do not think Mr. Kavanaugh is a good choice for that job. They fear he would rule against them on matters like gun rights and health care. Republicans and Democrats will watch the news closely for the next few months. American lawmakers will have to vote Mr. Kavanaugh in. Will the newly nominated judge actually become a Supreme Court Justice?

Most officials in the U.S. government serve for only a short time. (A president serves for only four years, for example, but may be reelected once.) But a Supreme Court justice can serve for the rest of his or her life. Once a person becomes a Supreme Court justice, he or she will probably be sticking around—and using his or her power to change the nation—for a long, long time.

(AP Photo: President Donald Trump talks with Judge Brett Kavanaugh and his family in the East Room of the White House on July 9.)

Posted: July 9, 2018

Scott Donaldson looks a little weary. You would too if you had just paddled from Australia to New Zealand in a kayak!

Mr. Donaldson is the first person ever to cross the scary stretch of water this way. The trip across the Tasman Sea took two months. His little boat crossed 1,300 miles of water. Mr. Donaldson survived a lightning storm—and a meeting with a large shark.

“On a good day, you're paddling for 16 hours," he says. “On a bad day, you're stuck in the cabin. And on a worse day, you're going backward.”

An Australian adventurer named Andrew McAuley tried to cross the Tasman Sea in 2007. His trip ended tragically. He made it almost the entire way before he disappeared into the water. Mr. Donaldson has tried the trip before too, in 2014. He could see the New Zealand Coast. But a storm hit. It forced him to abandon his journey.

But this time he made it all the way. He needs to get used to seeing people again after seeing only water for so long. He says he needs a shower too.

(AP Photo: Scott Donaldson paddles his kayak in the Tasman Sea. He arrived in New Zealand on July 2.)

Posted: July 6, 2018

People in Reykjavik, Iceland, watch the weather report closely. Will the rain ever stop?

This summer has been so gray and wet in Iceland that people have the rainy blues. They have not had a rainier summer in more than 100 years!

Other parts of Europe get a heatwave. People there splash at the beach and tan in the sun. But the high pressure causing that heat pushes clouds and rain toward Iceland. In May, it rained there every single day.

June weather is already strange in Iceland. The Sun shines at midnight! Tourists come to Iceland in the summer. Many sleep in tents. That’s not so pleasant in the rain. House painters can’t do their jobs without sunlight to dry their work. Ice cream sellers wait for customers. But in the soggy weather, no one seems hungry for ice cream.

The weather report for Thursday said the rain would stop for 11 whole hours. People made grand plans about what they would do with their one sunny day. But then the weather report changed: more rain.

(AP Photo: Switzerland tourists Etienne Evéquoz and Celine Evéquoz pitch a tent in  rainy Reykjavik, Iceland.)

Posted: July 5, 2018

People watch a sea turtle crawl through the sand toward the water. The turtle is finally going home!

People from the New England Aquarium in Massachusetts rescued five loggerhead sea turtles last year. The turtles were sick. Scientists at the aquarium helped them get healthy again. Now the turtles will help the scientists in return. They will teach them about the ways loggerhead turtles migrate.

Loggerhead sea turtles can weigh as much as 375 pounds. They get the name “loggerhead” because of their unusually big heads. The turtles are endangered. Many of their ocean homes have been destroyed. Scientists worry they will die out. So they study them. They glue electronic trackers to the turtles’ shells. Each turtle will travel with a tracker for six to nine months. The scientists want to know: How long do loggerheads stay at Cape Cod during the summer? How do they move in winter? Knowing more can help scientists better protect wild turtles.

 (AP Photo: One of five rescued loggerhead turtles is released back into the ocean wearing a satellite tag glued atop its shell in West Dennis, Massachusetts.)

Posted: July 4, 2018

Nearly 700 people flee from their village in Indonesia. That’s the smart thing to do. Mount Agung is erupting!

Explosions from the Mount Agung volcano started Monday night around 9 p.m. They lasted about seven minutes. The burning lava flowed across the land for more than a mile. It set forests on fire at the top of the mountain.

Mount Agung is on the island of Bali. Many people go to the Indonesian island for vacation. Mount Agung has not had a bad eruption since 1963. In that eruption, around 1,000 people died. Experts say this eruption is very mild compared to that one. But it sure didn’t look mild. Lava and ash shot 6,560 feet into the sky!

(AP Photo: Mount Agung spews ash and smoke in Karangasem, Bali, Indonesia.)

Posted: July 3, 2018

How old were you when you learned to swim? Kids in Mishawaka, Indiana, are learning early. Some are learning before they even become kids. They’re still babies!

Marci Harmon is a swim instructor at Little Fins Swim School in Mishawaka. She teaches babies as young as 6 months old to swim. Her students learn to breathe properly while swimming. They learn how to roll onto their backs to float.

Not everyone agrees that it’s safe to give babies swimming lessons. Officials at the American Academy of Pediatrics say kids should learn to swim when they turn four. But some parents are grateful for Ms. Harmon’s work. They say they feel safer. They like knowing their kids have a chance of saving themselves if they fall into a pool by accident.

(AP Photo: Instructor Marci Harmon works with 8-month-old Lydia Peter during an Infant Aquatics class at the Baymont Inn pool in Mishawaka, Indiana.)

Posted: July 2, 2018

Huge flocks of hungry birds scour the sand in New Jersey. They’re looking for tiny horseshoe crab eggs—and swapping viruses.

The birds migrate every year from South America to the Arctic. When they stop in New Jersey, scientists watch. They’re looking for clues. How does influenza (flu) develop and change? How can they protect people from future bird flus?

Researchers carefully step around the nesting horseshoe crabs. They scoop up the evidence: bird droppings. Some of the droppings may be carrying influenza. The samples are stored on ice then tested.

Most kinds of influenza come from water birds like wild ducks and migrating shorebirds. Usually the birds don’t get sick. They just trade viruses that live in their guts. But the viruses can infect turkeys, chickens, and people. If scientists can figure out which kind of flu is coming, they may be able to give people a tool to help: the right vaccine.

(AP Photo: Ruddy turnstones, larger birds, and semipalmated sandpipers walk near the shoreline at Kimbles Beach, Middle Township, New Jersey.)

Posted: June 29, 2018

Elizabeth Roble comes home from work sweaty and hot. She turns on the shower in her apartment in Caracas, Venezuela. Nothing happens. Her water runs for only an hour three times a day.

Ms. Roble and her neighbors decide to hire a company to dig a well beside their apartment building. They have water at last! Other wealthy Venezuelans do the same—even if it’s illegal. It can take two years to get a permit from the government to dig a well. Many are not willing to wait that long for water. By digging for water, they’re breaking the law.

But many Venezuelans are not wealthy enough to hire well-diggers. Venezuela’s socialist government has misused resources. Because of that, people suffer. Many make less than two dollars each month! Food and medicine run out. People fight in the streets. Power goes out frequently. And now faucets sputter too.

Caracas once had a world-class water system. It pumped water from far way. The water traveled over towering mountains into the valley that cradles the city. But now that water system has bursting pipes. No one cares for it—and people are just getting thirstier.

Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered. ― Proverbs 21:13

(AP Photo: Carmen Rivero lives in a shantytown in Caracas. She cannot afford a well. She fills a bucket from a large water tank inside her home. Ms. Rivero said the neighborhood went three months without tap water, and before that, a full eight months.)