Posted: January 16, 2019

Something smells fishy in Australia. It’s thousands of dead fish—maybe as many as a million! Yuck!

Australia is having a heatwave. Rivers run dry. Algae blooms, taking oxygen from water. People take water from rivers to irrigate crops. All this becomes very dangerous for fish. Thousands go belly-up in rivers and lakes.

What can people do? Government officials have a plan. They will use machines to pump oxygen into lakes and rivers. Did you know fish need oxygen to live? Fish don’t have lungs like people do. They take oxygen from water. Oxygen found in water is already dissolved and fish can use their gills to take it in.

Niall Blair is the Minister for Regional Water in New South Wales, the state where fish are dying. He knows oxygen machines won’t fix the fish problem in the long run. “They are a Band-Aid solution; we admit that,” he says. (Band-Aids can’t fix serious problems. They can just make you feel better for a little while.) Australian fish need water to flow properly again!

Dead fish along the Darling River bank in Menindee, New South Wales, Australia (AP Photo)

Posted: January 16, 2019

Twinkle, twinkle, little star. Eyes on the road if you’re driving a car! 

Up above the world so high, the Northern Lights fill up the sky.

Use your headlights. Drive with care. Icy roads are everywhere!

In Iceland, the police department has a message: Beware of roads in winter! More tourists are coming to Iceland. This means more traffic on roads. People come hoping to see the Northern Lights. This light show happens when the solar wind passes the Earth. Solar wind is a flow of charged particles that come from the Sun. These particles mix with gasses in Earth’s atmosphere. Suddenly, the sky is filled with bright color. Greens, purples, and yellows light up the night sky. This breath-taking, colored sky often stops traffic!  

Tourists come ready to see amazing colors. But they don’t come ready to drive dangerous roads. Drivers in Iceland are often sleepy. (Nighttime lasts up to 20 hours some days!) Most driving is done in the dark. Drivers are easily distracted. Many keep their eyes on the sky instead of the road. Some visitors even drive without headlights. That may help them see the sky better, but it is very dangerous! When drivers see the Northern Lights, they brake suddenly. (No one wants to miss the sky show!) Braking quickly can be very dangerous too. (Thankfully, visitors don’t always have to drive. They can take bus tours of the Northern Lights. On a bus, people can enjoy the lights without the danger of driving a car.)

Iceland has narrow roads. They twist and turn. Strong winds blow. Johannes Sigfusson works for the Akureyri Police Department. He says, “The weather in Iceland changes every five minutes.” Ice can cover a road quickly. With new drivers on the road, accidents happen quickly too. No wonder the police have issued a warning to drivers!

Hear instruction and be wise, and do not neglect it. ― Proverbs 8:33.

The Northern Lights appear in the sky over Bifrost in western Iceland on March 1, 2017.

Posted: January 15, 2019

A pack of wild dogs play near the beach at the Texas Gulf Coast. Scientists watch the dogs closely. Why? The animals have red wolf genes. That’s a big surprise. People thought red wolves went extinct in the wild almost 40 years ago!

Red wolves grow to weigh about 80 pounds—a medium size for a wolf. The wolves once lived all over Texas and in the southeast and northeast United States. The red wolves were declared extinct in the wild in 1980. But workers at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service saved some of the creatures. They captured a population from Texas and Louisiana. Those red wolves had babies in captivity. Then people moved them to the wild in North Carolina. But that group is shrinking. Only about 40 remain. Two hundred more red wolves live in zoos.

Not everyone gets excited about the idea of having more red wolves around. Some people fear extra wolves will attack their livestock—or themselves!

The canines found in Texas aren’t pure red wolves. They are part coyote. Scientists say until they do more tests, it’s hard to say for sure what species the animals really belong to.

Red wolf parents keep an eye on their seven-week old pup at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, North Carolina. (AP Photo)

Posted: January 14, 2019

In the United States, most people are done thinking about Christmas by the time January starts. Candy canes have disappeared from store shelves. Valentine’s candy replaces them. Meanwhile, across the ocean . . . Romanians get ready for their biggest holiday of the year, Epiphany.

Epiphany is a time observed by many Christians. In the West, it commonly celebrates the revelation of God incarnate as Jesus Christ, evidenced in the visit of the Magi. Eastern Christians commemorate the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River. In the Romanian village of Pietrosani, Epiphany also means: horse races!

Hundreds of people come together in Pietrosani for a day of freezing temperatures. The day ends in a bareback horse race across muddy, frozen, or snowy fields.

Some horse racing events are known for the fancy clothes worn by the watchers. (The Royal Ascot horse race in Great Britain has a dress code! Ladies must wear dresses and hats. Men must wear top hats, waistcoats, ties, and black shoes.) But at the Romanian Epiphany race, the horses dress up. They sport colorful cloth, leather, and brass accessories. Some of them wear Christmas tree decorations.

People stand on high ground as they gather in a field outside the village. They admire and photograph the colorfully-dressed horses. Owners warm up their horses for the race. Some show off the strength of their animals by making them pull tree trunks or concrete blocks in competitions. An Orthodox priest sprinkles water on the horses and owners. The race begins. Villagers wear no protective gear while they ride. They started their famous annual races 100 years ago!

Villagers compete in an Epiphany celebration horse race in Pietrosani, Romania, on January 6. (AP Photo)

Posted: January 11, 2019

How would you feel about a fish nibbling the dead skin off the bottoms of your feet? For some people, this treatment is a luxury!

Mahmoud Othman owns a café business in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory in the Middle East. But Mr. Othman’s café was in trouble. How could he save it? The internet gave him a unique idea. Online video showed tourists in Turkey getting fish pedicures. Mr. Othman ordered hundreds of small Garra rufa fish, or “doctor fish,” from Turkey. He added a fish spa to his café.

Doctor fish feed off the top layers of toughened, dead skin. People have used them in spas to peel dead skin for hundreds of years around the world. In Mr. Othman’s café, a 30-minute session costs 30 shekels. That’s about eight dollars. For people in Gaza, that’s a lot of money. They are surrounded by conflict. Israeli soldiers blockade the Gaza strip to prevent weapons from being smuggled in that could be used to attack Israel. That means they keep many goods from being brought in from other countries. In that environment, people struggle to make money. Many live in poverty. Mr. Othman says it took him longer than a month to get permission to bring the fish into Gaza.

But Mr. Othman’s fishy business is doing well even though people in Gaza are poor. He gets 30 to 40 customers each day. People come into a room lit by blue neon lights. They roll their pants up to the knee and dip their feet into glass tubs. The tiny fish cluster around their toes while the customers chat. Many customers see fish pedicures as a way to escape from the hard situation they live in.

A man soaks his feet in a tank stocked with fish in Gaza City. (AP Photo)

Posted: January 10, 2019

Black smoke rises above a dump in Accra, Ghana. You don’t want to breathe it in. It comes from burning electronics.

In Accra, many people do dangerous recycling work. They gather unwanted electronics. They strip them of their cables. They burn away the cables’ protective covers. Beneath, they find valuable copper.

It makes you think: What happens to old electronics when you’re done with them? Ghana imports about 150,000 tons of them each year. Most of the used gadgets come from Europe and North America.

Amin Edris comes from northern Ghana. As he picked through the electronic trash and burned it, he got a few too many lungfuls of the black smoke. “When I used to burn these cables, I felt ill,” he says. “That’s why I stopped burning.”

Instead, Mr. Edris brought the electronics to an organization called Green Advocacy Ghana. There he found a wire-stripping machine. For a fee, the machine slits open the plastic so the copper wires can be reached easily.  

“When I strip cables here, it looks much better than burnt copper,” says Mr. Edris. He says he will get higher prices for wire stripped by machines instead of burned.

Little by little, more people in Ghana turn to safer e-waste recycling. Openly burning waste is against the law in Ghana. But jobs are hard to find and it is hard for many people in Ghana to change their ways. When copper-harvesters breathe in the chemicals released by burning electronics, they often get serious diseases that give them trouble breathing. That’s a cost electronics burners can’t afford to pay.

 A man uses a wire-stripping machine to get to the copper and other metals in discarded electronic cables in Accra, Ghana. (AP Photo)

Posted: January 10, 2019

Say “CHEESE!” Something is snapping your picture from outer space!

NASA’s spacecraft Osiris-Rex started flying toward an asteroid called Bennu over two years ago. On New Year’s Eve, it started circling the asteroid. Days before that, it snapped this photo of home. (We are just seeing the photo now. It takes a long time for a photo to get all the way back to Earth from Bennu.)

See the big bright blob to the right? That is Bennu. The white dot on the left is Earth. The even smaller dot is the Moon. Can the Earth really be so tiny?

In a way, the photo tricks your eyes. Bennu measures about 1,600 feet across. For space, that’s not big at all. In fact, no spacecraft has ever orbited such a small space object. But Osiris-Rex flies much closer to Bennu right now than to Earth. Earth looks tiny because of the huge distance between it and the camera—70 million miles!

Does this picture make you feel small? Does it make you think about how big God must be?

Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the Earth. He does not faint or grow weary; His understanding is unsearchable. ― Isaiah 40:28

This image captured on December 19, 2018, by a camera on the Osiris-Rex spacecraft shows the asteroid Bennu about 27 miles from the spacecraft. The Earth and Moon, bottom left, are more than 70 million miles away.

Posted: January 9, 2019

People all over the United States flick on their TVs. President Donald Trump is giving a speech to the nation from his office—the Oval Office in the White House.

Did you listen in too? In his January 8 speech, President Trump said the United States needs better security along its southern border. When he was running for president in 2016, Mr. Trump promised he would lead Americans in building a border wall between the United States and Mexico. The wall would be designed to keep people from coming to the United States illegally. Back then, Mr. Trump said Mexico would pay for the wall. But now President Trump has asked Congress to set aside $5.7 billion for security improvements. Some of that money would go toward a wall. Some would provide more law enforcement and technology to make borders stronger.

In the speech, the President called the construction of a border wall a “common sense” solution. He believes his plan is needed for protecting the American way of life. Finally, he asked members of Congress to approve his budget request.

Many people agree with President Trump about the border wall. And many do not. The government is partly shut down until Congress members and the President can agree or compromise. The shutdown started on December 22. Many government employees—for example, people who work at parks, monuments, and museums—were told, “Go home.” Some government departments are not open. Workers will have to catch up and may be paid later when they go back to work. President Trump asks Congress members to approve his plan so the government shutdown will end. But people who disagree with President Trump have another idea: President Trump should end the government shutdown first. Then members of Congress could come to an agreement about security.

President Donald Trump speaks from the Oval Office of the White House on January 8, 2019. (AP Photo)

Posted: January 9, 2019

What happens to all that stuff that gets thrown out and flushed? People in a community in southwestern England will tell you: Sometimes it gets stuck!

A British official says a giant “fatberg” has been found blocking sewer drains in Sidmouth, England. What’s a fatberg? It’s almost too gross to talk about! This fatberg is a mass of hardened fat, oil, and baby wipes. It measures 210 feet long!

Andrew Roantree works for the South West Water company. He says it will take his sewer team around eight weeks to take apart the fat monster. Mr. Roantree urges people: Don’t pour grease down the drain! Don’t flush baby wipes! Don’t feed the fatberg!

This isn’t the worse fatberg Englanders have seen. In 2017, workers in east London had to deal with an 820-foot fatberg! A chunk of that later went on display at the Museum of London, nestled inside see-through boxes.

Ewww, gross! A photo from Britain's South West Water company shows part of the fatberg on January 8. (AP Photo)

Posted: January 8, 2019

This is a huge tuna fish. It weighs 612 pounds! But is it worth $3 million?

Somebody thinks so! The fish is a prized and threatened bluefin tuna. It went to the highest bidder at Toyosu fish market in Tokyo, Japan, for $3 million. That’s more than double what bluefin sold for at the New Year auction in 2013.

Who pays the big bucks for fish? Kiyoshi Kimura does. He owns a chain of sushi restaurants and has often won the auction in the past. He says he was surprised by the high price of tuna this year. But he still beams with joy. He says, “The quality of the tuna I bought is the best.”

People in Japan eat a lot of the torpedo-shaped bluefin tuna. And the more people eat it, the harder it becomes for the bluefin species to survive. Experts give warnings: “Bluefins could die out!” The governments of Japan and other nations work to rebuild bluefin populations. Yet a bluefin tuna auction happens every year at the famous market. Conservationist Jamie Gibbon says the bluefin tuna is in real trouble, and that the auction covers that up.

The famous fish market just moved, partly to make room for parking at the 2020 Olympics. Learn about the new market—where more than 400 kinds of seafood are sold!—in Tuna for Sale.

Psalm 8 says God has given people dominion over His creation, including “the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the sea.” What does that mean? It means He has given us His good creation to use. It also means He has given us the responsibility to care for it—tuna included!

Kiyoshi Kimura, left, stands near his bluefin tuna in Tokyo on January 5. (AP Photo)

Posted: January 7, 2019

A mysterious space object four billion miles from Earth has a new nickname: Space Snowman.

You read about the Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule in last week’s News Shorts. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft reached the small, icy body on January 1. At a news conference on January 4, scientists and others put on 3-D glasses to get a better view of the city-sized object. They saw what look like curvy ridges. And photos snapped by New Horizons show something stranger. The object has two reddish globes. One part is bigger than the other. They are joined by a narrow neck. Together, they look like a snowman! The combined objects rotate slowly—about once every 15 hours. Scientists say the two globes would rip apart if they spun fast.

Scientists are also interested by what they do not see in the photos: moons, craters, or rings. Scientist Mark Showalter guesses that at least a couple moons may exist a few hundred miles away. And scientist Alan Stern says he’d be surprised if New Horizons didn’t find some craters eventually too. If it does find some, scientists can study the craters to find out what’s inside Ultima Thule.

For the next several days, people will not be able to get more information from Ultima Thule. The Sun will be in the way—smack dab between Ultima Thule and Earth. And how long will it be before scientists get all the new information New Horizons has to offer? The huge distance between Earth and the spacecraft, and its low-powered transmitter, means it will take almost two years to send the data from its flyby!

Three images of Ultima Thule show information about its details and color. (NASA via AP)

Posted: January 4, 2019

Jean-Jacques Savin climbs into his barrel. He is headed all the way across the Atlantic Ocean!

Mr. Savin is 71 years old. He set off from Spain’s Canary Islands on January 2. He plans to travel 2,800 miles across the ocean. He won’t exactly be driving his “ship.” The sea’s winds and currents will just carry him along. He hopes his journey will take around three months.

Mr. Savin will drop markers from his barrel along the trip to assist oceanographers in their study of currents in the Atlantic Ocean.

What’s it like to cross the sea in a barrel? No one knows because no one has done it before! Mr. Savin’s barrel is smaller than a pickup truck. It measures 10 feet long and seven feet wide. He made it out of plywood. Inside, there is barely enough room to stand. But Mr. Savin does have a bunk, a chair, and a kitchen counter. A few small windows in the barrel give him a view of fish swimming by. The mattress he sleeps on has straps so rough waves won’t knock him out of bed.

Mr. Savin lets people know how his trip is going on Facebook. He says his first week was tough. The wind blew hard and he was still getting used to the way the barrel moves. He looks forward to next week when the wind forecast looks better.

(Jean-Jacques Savin stands on top of his resin-coated plywood barrel on December 22.)

Posted: January 3, 2019

Can you imagine being one of the first Europeans to discover the Grand Canyon? You stop dead in your tracks. You see an amazing system of canyons, huge cracks in the earth, and rock spires. What’s the first thing you say? How about, “Forget it. No one will ever visit this place!”

That’s what explorer Lieutenant Joseph Christmas said in 1858. Well, he actually said this: “Ours has been the first and, doubtless, will be the last party of whites to visit this profitless locality.” He used bigger words, but it’s the same idea. He thought the Grand Canyon was useless. He thought no one would care to see it!

That clearly wasn’t the way things worked out. In 2019, the Grand Canyon will celebrate its 100th anniversary as a national park. Now the once-empty canyon is crowded with visitors. More than 6 million tourists come to see it every year. They peer over the popular South Rim into the gorge a mile deep. They navigate river rapids. They hike the trails and camp under the stars.

Of course, the Grand Canyon is much older than 100 years. Native Americans have lived in it for centuries. Early explorers came to the Grand Canyon by boat, foot, and horseback. Native American guides often helped them. In the 1880s, the wealthy traveled there by stagecoach. Then people started coming in trains—but not to visit. They were mining copper. In the 1930s, people started to come to visit the way they do today—by car.

Soon enough, people used the canyon to make money. Some charged $1 to hike down the Bright Angel Trail used by the Havasupai people. (That group of Native Americans now have a reservation in the depths of the Grand Canyon.) Other entrepreneurs developed camping spots and built hotels. Tourists paid for drinking water and to use outhouses.

The Grand Canyon was clearly a money-maker. But U.S. officials decided to turn it into a National Park so its beauty would last. President Teddy Roosevelt gets credit for making it a national monument and a game reserve. (A game reserve is a large area of land where animals can live. If they are hunted, the amount they are hunted is controlled.) President Roosevelt famously said: “Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.”

Visitors to the canyon during the birthday year may get to see Teddy Roosevelt impersonators say the famous line in person.

A mule train winds its way down the Bright Angel trail at Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona in 1996.

Posted: January 3, 2019

What do you hear at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland? Cheers! Scientists and a crowd are celebrating loudly. The New Horizons spacecraft has zoomed past a space object called Ultima Thule (pronounced TOO-lee)—4 billion miles from Earth. Something man-made has never explored a world so far away!

New Horizons made it to Pluto three and a half years ago. Ultima Thule is a billion miles farther away than Pluto. At that distance, it takes hours for New Horizon’s radio signals to reach Earth. New Horizons zoomed by the object at 31,500 miles per hour around 12:33 a.m. on Tuesday. Scientists didn’t get the message until around 10:30 a.m. They were relieved. In order for the flyby to work, thousands of calculations had to work exactly right.

Ultima Thule is a tiny, icy object. At least, it’s tiny compared to other objects in space. New Horizon took a photo of the dwarf. The world seems to measure about 22 miles long and nine miles wide. To scientists on Earth, it looks kind of like a bowling pin. It appears to be spinning through space like a propeller. Ultima Thule’s name fits. Long ago, people drew an island called Thule on maps. They imagined Thule was the most northern part of Earth. Adding “Ultima” makes the name mean “beyond Thule.” That means “beyond what is known.”

For scientists, the Ultima Thule flyby is a great way to celebrate a new year. They expect New Horizons to send in more and more photos of the mysterious object.

 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

This NASA illustration shows the New Horizons spacecraft. NASA launched the probe in 2006. It’s about the size of a baby grand piano. (NASA via AP Photo)

Posted: January 2, 2019

They made it! They made it!

Have you been watching Paul Rudd’s and Colin O’Brady’s treks across frozen Antarctica? They set off on their difficult journeys on November 3.

Mr. Rudd is a captain in the British army. Mr. Brady is an American athlete. The two began their 900-mile trip on the same day. But they started a mile and half apart from each other. The two men were completely alone. They did not get new supplies or help from the wind for the whole trip. In the end, Mr. O’Brady finished two days before Mr. Rudd. Mr. O’ Brady won after he covered the last roughly 80 miles in one big push. He traveled as fast as he could for a whole day. Mr. O’Brady says those hours were some of the most challenging—and best—hours of his life.

Was Mr. Rudd disappointed that Mr. O’Brady beat him across the continent? It doesn’t seem like it. He congratulates Mr. O’Brady for his achievement. He says he never felt like he was in a race. “It’s always been about completing the journey,” he says. And for Mr. Rudd, the journey was very personal. His friend Henry Worsley died trying to make the same trip in 2016. Mr. Rudd carried Mr. Worsley’s family crest across Antarctica to honor him. (A family crest, or coat of arms, is a collection of symbols that show a family’s history.) “What matters most to me is that I've completed my expedition and honored Henry’s memory,” he says.

Louis Rudd’s expedition was inspired by another famous journey—Ernest Shackleton’s. Learn about Mr. Shackleton’s heroic journey in Time Machine. And find out why Antarctica is divided like a pie in the Antarctica interactive.

Endurance produces character. ― Romans 5:4

Colin O'Brady, of Portland, Oregon, speaks on the phone in Antarctica on December 26. He has become the first person to cross Antarctica alone without any assistance. (AP Photo)

Posted: December 21, 2018

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.” Americans had heard those words many times before—but never from outer space!

Fifty years ago on Christmas Eve, three astronauts on Apollo 8 read from the book of Genesis on live TV. They were orbiting the Moon! To this day, their mission is probably the most dangerous mission NASA astronauts have ever taken. Scientists didn’t have much time to prepare for the mission—just four months! Americans were in a hurry to get to the Moon. They wanted to get there before the Soviet Union did. So they scrambled. Commander Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders got to the Moon just before 1968 ended.

Humans had never set eyes on the far side of the Moon until that trip. Now 50 years have passed. Only 24 astronauts have flown to the Moon and seen the amazing sights since that time. The Apollo 8 crew is still around. Mr. Borman and Mr. Lovell are 90. Mr. Anders is 85.

NASA officials decided to change the space mission at the last minute. At first, they were going to send astronauts to orbit Earth. Instead, Mr. Borman and his crew would fly to the Moon—even though a previous test rocket lost parts and engines failed.

The stakes were high. Apollo 8 would be orbiting around the Moon on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The whole world was watching for the result of the spaceflight. If it failed, it could ruin Christmas for everybody!

Mr. Borman wanted to get to the Moon and get back fast. But his bosses insisted on more. In the end, scientists decided the astronauts would circle the Moon 10 times.

On Christmas Eve, the spaceship successfully slipped into orbit around the Moon. Before bedtime, the astronauts read the first 10 verses from Genesis. It was Mr. Borman’s job to decide what to read. Genesis seemed like the right thing to read while staring at God’s creation in a way no one had ever been able to before.

Mr. Borman ended his space broadcast with these words: “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.”

On Christmas morning, their spacecraft went around the Moon for the final time. Before leaving space, Mr. Anders snapped a famous photograph of the Earth “rising” in space. Mr. Anders said, “There's the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty!”

Before the flight, no one had thought about photographing Earth. The astronauts were under orders to get pictures for places to land on the Moon in later missions. “We came to explore the Moon,” he says, “and what we discovered was the Earth.”

Mr. Lovell is still amazed by the view of Earth from the Moon. When he held up his thumb, he could cover the whole planet! “Over 3 billion people, mountains, oceans, deserts, everything I ever knew was behind my thumb,” he says.

By July 1969, Apollo 8 was overshadowed by another mission: Apollo 11. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon during that mission.. But people figured out how to get to the Moon during Apollo 8. Without Apollo 8, Apollo 11 may not have happened!

Apollo 8 astronauts, from left, James Lovell, command module pilot; William Anders, lunar module pilot; and Frank Borman, commander, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on December 18, 1968 (AP Photo)