Growing water scarcity could hamper the expansion of lithium mining in the U.S., deepening its reliance on foreign imports over the coming decades, a new study finds.

Lithium is used in electric-vehicle and energy-storage batteries due to its high energy density and low weight compared with other minerals, but mining it requires a huge amount of water. Currently, the U.S. has only one active lithium mine, in Nevada, and with demand for the metal projected to explode over the next few years, the government and private companies are planning to open at least 115 new mines across the country, according to the study.

However, most of the proposed mines that are in advanced stages of development overlap with water-stressed areas, specifically in the western U.S. In the new study, published May 28 in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, scientists found that if lithium mines start operating in these regions, they will compete for water not only with households, agriculture and industry, but also with one another and with other proposed mineral mines.

"Future water availability under climate change may constrain whether new lithium mines will have sufficient water to operate," study senior author Jennifer Dunn, a professor of chemical and biological engineering and the director of the Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience at Northwestern University in Illinois, told Live Science in an email.

The U.S. imports more than 50% of its lithium, mostly from Chile and Argentina. Policymakers and corporations want to reduce this dependence, but even with the existing Nevada mine and the 22 proposed mines that are the closest to coming online, the U.S. won't have enough lithium to meet domestic demand, Dunn said.

"Every mine produces a different amount of lithium — depending on its deposit type, lithium grade, and final product — so we are unable to determine how many mines exactly would be needed," she said. "Our analysis estimated that if all 22 advanced [stage] proposed mines and the sole operating mine continued operation into 2050, 0.14 [to] 0.25 million metric tons [0.15 to 0.28 million tons] of lithium content in products could be produced per year."

This range falls short of the 0.83 million to 1.9 million tons (0.75 million to 1.7 million metric tons) of lithium per year that other researchers previously estimated the U.S. would need to cover its own demand.

However, the water demand to produce more lithium would be astronomical. That's because lithium is typically extracted from brines and rocks known as pegmatites, which require large-scale evaporation and aggressive processing with fresh water, respectively.

To find out if the U.S. would have enough water to support additional lithium mines under intensifying climate change, the researchers calculated the future water use of the 23 lithium mines most likely to be active in 2050, using data from mining companies. Then, they layered this projected water use on top of projected water uses from other sectors, such as agriculture and manufacturing, under four modeled socioeconomic-climate scenarios between 2040 and 2060.

The researchers found that the available water supply will, in most cases, be insufficient to support new lithium mines. The starkest example was Southern California's Salton Sea, which contains roughly 4.5 million tons (4.1 million metric tons) of lithium. The Salton Sea is fed by the Colorado River and showed the least water available to support lithium mining and other water demands, owing to the river's dwindling flow.

Lithium deposits in the U.S. are clustered in Nevada, Arizona and California. These are also some of the most arid and water-stressed states. Although the study found an increase in rainfall under a high emissions, "business as usual" climate scenario, these regions likely won't have enough water to support other activities, let alone additional lithium mining, Dunn said.

There were four exceptions in the study, including lithium-rich sites in North Carolina and Arkansas, which may have enough water to support future mines. However, there are other concerns related to lithium mining.

"Many of the lithium deposits in the United States reside near federally-recognized Indigenous and Tribal reservations, and the mines could violate Indigenous rights," Dunn said. "Lithium mining could also disturb sensitive ecosystems and biodiversity. And, like many other mineral mines, pollution, soil erosion, and water contamination are concerns."

Together, the findings highlight a catch-22 in the quest to source lithium: Lithium is essential to support a green energy transition and curb climate change, but shrinking water availability due to global warming is making it harder to extract lithium.

The study did not explore potential improvements to water-use efficiency that could reduce the pressure on some water resources and increase the availability for activities such as lithium mining. Nor did the researchers include water exchanges known as interbasin transfers (IBTs) in their analysis, due to the lack of studies about these transfers under climate change.

"IBTs could help supply water to arid or water-stressed regions," Dunn said.

Still, there is likely an upper limit on how much water can be allocated to lithium mining in a warming world, according to the study. This means the U.S. will probably continue to partially rely on foreign supply chains for lithium and other critical minerals.

Archaeologists have discovered an iron cannonball fired by Texans at the Battle of the Alamo in 1836. This is the second intact cannonball they have discovered from the famous conflict. The first one, a bronze cannonball, was found earlier this year and was likely fired by the Mexican army.

"It's a huge deal," Tiffany Lindley, director of archaeology at the Alamo, said in a video statement from Alamo Trust. "We all thought, 'There's no way we can top it,'" she said, referring to the bronze cannonball discovered March 5, just a day before the 190th anniversary of the conflict that killed Davy Crockett, "and then we found another one."

Both cannonballs were recovered from the northeast corner of the church at the Alamo, which was originally built in 1718 as a Spanish mission and fortress in what is now San Antonio. But the Alamo is better known as the location of an 1836 battle during the Texas Revolution, in which Anglo-American settlers and Hispanic Texans known as Tejanos seceded from the Republic of Mexico.

In a 13-day siege culminating in a deadly assault on March 6, 1836, Mexican troops, commanded by Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna, surrounded the Alamo and killed the 180 Texan rebels defending the structure, including Davy Crockett. The cry "Remember the Alamo!" was used in later skirmishes in the Texas Revolution as soldiers fought Mexican troops for independence.

The newly excavated iron cannonball was found June 2, according to a statement from Alamo Trust.

Of the two cannonballs, "the newest one is slightly larger" and was likely fired from a cannon that shot 6-pound [2.7 kilogram] cannonballs, Kolby Lanham, a senior researcher and historian at the Alamo, said in the statement. "The likelihood is that the bronze one belonged to the Mexican Army and the iron one belonged to the Texans."

Over the years, archaeologists have found numerous pieces of ammunition and shrapnel at the Alamo, Lindley said, but these cannonballs are the first examples of solid shots — spherical projectiles fired from a gun or cannon — they have ever found.

"It's just a huge kind of once-in-a-lifetime deal," Lanham said. "But obviously, it's happened twice."

The Mexican and Texan cannonballs were found near each other, so they are likely the historic remains of the two sides shooting at each other in the fateful siege nearly two centuries ago.

"Whenever they were dropped the very first time — possibly in 1836, probably — they haven't been touched since, and that's what makes them extra special," Lindley said. "I don't think you can undersell it."

The Alamo remains an active archaeological site, where experts have discovered artifacts that span its centuries of history, from Indigenous stone tools that predate the Spanish mission through the late 19th century, when the structure was converted into a general store and warehouse.

Can you identify these historical objects of war? Test your smarts with our weapons of the world quiz!

Two indentured servants and an 8-year-old boy who was possibly enslaved were buried alongside distinguished local families in Maryland's first Colonial settlement, a new study finds.

The boy, who died sometime between 1667 and 1704, had largely African-derived ancestry, with around 25% to 30% European ancestry. He was wrapped in a shroud and buried in a gable-lidded coffin, according to the researchers. Based on the chemical signature of isotopes in his skeleton, he was born in America.

The discovery of a young boy with majority African ancestry who was buried alongside European-ancestry individuals is a "significant finding that warrants additional consideration," the researchers wrote in a study published Thursday (May 14) in the journal Current Biology.

The investigation, which looked at the DNA of a few dozen 17th-century skeletons, also detailed that the Maryland colony was established by people with genetic ancestry from western England and Wales.

St. Mary's City was founded in 1634 as the capital of the British colony of Maryland. Around 300 people of mostly English ancestry settled the area after fleeing religious persecution and, by 1667, had erected a small church known as the Brick Chapel. Archaeological excavations over the past three decades have revealed dozens of Colonial-era burials, including three rare lead coffins, inside and surrounding the Brick Chapel.

Although historians have found numerous records on the founding families of St. Mary's City, it was unclear who exactly was buried at the Brick Chapel and where they came from.

In the new study, researchers detailed their analysis of the genomes of 49 people who were buried at the Brick Chapel between 1634 and 1730. They discovered that two eminent men — Thomas Greene, the second colonial governor of Maryland, and Philip Calvert, the fifth colonial governor of Maryland — were buried there along with their families. Calvert was interred in a lead coffin, as was his first wife, Anne Wolseley Calvert, and Philip Calvert's infant son with his second wife.

Although researchers had already known about Calvert and his family's burials, Greene had been unidentified until now. He was identified by comparing his DNA to the 23andMe genetic database and by analyzing genealogical records.

"This is the first time that ancient DNA has been used to help identify unknown individuals, without any prior knowledge of who they might have been," study first author Éadaoin Harney, a senior scientist at the 23andMe Research Institute, said in a statement. "And it just so happens that one of those individuals [Greene] turned out to be one of colonial Maryland's most prominent figures."

The majority of the skeletons from the Brick Chapel revealed ancestral ties to Wales and western England, and by cross-referencing those genomes with data contributed by 23andMe research participants, the researchers discovered that there are over 1.3 million living genetic relatives of this founding Colonial population. The largest number of close relatives of this founding group — over 200 people — have ancestral ties to Kentucky, likely due to the migration of Maryland Catholics to Kentucky after the Revolutionary War.

"Detecting such a clear genetic signal of this documented historical migration to Kentucky highlights the power of our approach," Harney said.

Enslaved people and indentured servants

Three of the 49 skeletons were a bit unusual, though. This included the 8-year-old boy with African ancestry and two young men. The men were in their 20s when they died sometime between 1634 and 1667 and had chemical signatures suggesting they were recent immigrants from Ireland. Neither was buried in a coffin, and both of their skeletons showed signs of heavy physical labor and poor health. "Although their status of bondage is unknown, these features are consistent with the profile of indentured servants," the researchers wrote.

Indentured servitude was a common practice in Colonial America, making up about 80% of white immigrants, according to Anna Suranyi, a historian at Endicott College in Massachusetts who was not involved in the study.

"Servants were quite different from slaves in that the period of servitude was limited, usually four or seven years, and afterwards, they were expected to join colonial society," Suranyi told Live Science in an email.

Both indentured servants and enslaved people often lived in the same household as their masters and mistresses, she said. But in terms of cemeteries, "white people, including indentured servants, were generally buried in segregated cemeteries, with enslaved people sometimes being buried in isolated and unmarked locations."

The fact that the boy with African ancestry was buried in the Brick Chapel cemetery in line with English customs may indicate he was not enslaved. The distinction between indentured servant and enslaved person was more fluid in the 17th century, Suranyi said, "with some people of African ancestry being treated more like indentured servants, though with longer periods of servitude — 20 years, for instance."

The results of this project have been years in the making, study co-author Douglas Owsley, curator of biological anthropology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, said in the statement. The lead coffins containing Philip Calvert and his family were first discovered in the 1990s, but their genomes have been formally published for the first time in the new study.

"This work highlights the power of ancient DNA analyses to fill in gaps in the historical record," study co-author David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard University, said in the statement. "While written records are extraordinarily rich, genetic data can still address gaps in that record and yield surprises."

How much do you know about the first people to reach the Americas? Find out with our First Americans quiz.

Indigenous people in the western United States invented dice more than 12,000 years ago, offering archaeologists the world's oldest evidence of gambling and possibly the oldest use of probability, a new study reveals. But the purpose of these games of chance was very different from modern-day gambling, as the games helped people — mostly women, evidence hints — interact with new acquaintances and redistribute goods and wealth.

"There is a deep history of dice, games of chance and gambling in Native America," Robert Madden, an archaeologist at Colorado State University, told Live Science. "This precedes any evidence we have of dice in the Old World by 6,000 years."

In a study published Thursday (April 2) in the journal American Antiquity, Madden looked at more than 600 sets of Native American dice from 45 prehistoric archaeological sites in the western U.S. from 13,000 to 450 years ago. He discovered that dice were present at Indigenous sites on both sides of the Rocky Mountains throughout this lengthy period.

"This is the first evidence we have of structured human engagement with the concepts of chance and randomness," Madden said. "We're seeing really complex practices and an intellectual accomplishment here."

To identify the prehistoric dice, Madden first turned to a century-old book called "Games of the North American Indians" by Stewart Culin, an anthropologist who gathered historic accounts of Native American games. Culin described the dice as "binary lots" where one side of the flat or curved object was marked with a specific pattern or color and the other side was blank. Tossing a binary lot and allowing it to fall at random is similar to flipping a coin, and Indigenous people would often toss multiple lots to produce mathematically complicated outcomes.

Using Culin's descriptions, Madden searched archaeological archives for artifacts that could be dice. He found 565 "diagnostic" examples of dice and 94 "probable" examples across 58 archaeological sites in the Great Plains and the Rockies. But there were no dice in the eastern half of the U.S. until after the arrival of Europeans.

"The dice tend to show up in liminal spaces where you have a lot of high mobility," Madden explained. "It might have something to do with how separated these people are and the need to relate to people you don't see very often." That is, dice games may have been invented as a "social technology of integration," he said, or an icebreaker for strangers who wanted to exchange goods, information or mates.

The three earliest dice that Madden discovered came from Folsom culture sites in Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico dating to nearly 12,900 years ago. These people were hunter-gatherers known for a distinctive stone tool called the Folsom point. "Folsom people liked exotic, beautiful materials," Madden said, and they traveled great distances to source stones like flint and chalcedony (a variety of quartz). Games of chance may have allowed the Folsom people to trade for their preferred stones.

Whereas modern gambling is often undertaken by one person against the "house" — such as using a slot machine at a casino or placing a bet on a horse race — Indigenous gambling was more of a one-to-one, personal interaction, Madden said, where the odds tended toward 50/50 over time and where the stakes were trade items like a set of hides or semiprecious stones.

"It's a kind of leveling device that you see in a lot of cultures with egalitarian social structures," he said.

Based on historical accounts of Indigenous gambling, in more than 80% of dice games the participants were exclusively women, Madden said. It is unclear if that figure can be extended into the deep past, but Indigenous "women may have been on the front end of trying to use this social technology to create connections between people," he said.

One of the most significant findings of the study is that the earliest Native American dice predate those found in Eurasia by several thousand years, Madden said. Somewhere around 5,500 to 7,000 years ago, dice showed up in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and the western Caucasus. Historians of mathematics often point to the invention of dice as a crucial step in humans' discovery of the random and probabilistic nature of the universe.

"But we see this happening in hunter-gatherer Native American societies in the Late Pleistocene" (126,000 to 11,700 years ago), Madden said. "It shows significant intellectual accomplishment as a social technology" and reveals that the understanding and use of probability may have originated in the New World, he said.

First Americans quiz: How much do you know about the first people to reach the Americas?

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A figure commonly cited to compare the risks of pregnancy and abortion in the U.S. could be grossly underestimating the risk of death from pregnancy, according to a new analysis.

The research, published Jan. 21 in the journal JAMA Network Open, suggests that the risk of pregnancy-related death might be at least 44 times higher than the risk of abortion-related death. Previously, pregnancy was estimated to carry a roughly 14 times higher risk of death, making the new estimate over three times higher.

"It was already fairly alarming that you face a 14-times greater risk of death from continuing a pregnancy [compared to getting an abortion]," lead study author Maria Steenland, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland's School of Public Health, told Live Science. "But the statistics we report here suggest that this risk is really much, much higher."

The updated figure could help steer conversations surrounding abortion access in the United States, the study authors hope.

"What we're showing in the paper is quite simple: Taking away the option to end a pregnancy exposes people to a much greater risk of death," she said.

A stat based on 20-year old data

When tracing the original estimate of risk back to its source, Steenland and her colleagues realized the statistic was based on a single 2012 study using data that is now almost 20 years old.

That study looked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System for records of deaths that had happened within a year of birth; the data covered about 32,350,000 live births in the United States, between 1998 and 2005. Those data were compared with records of abortions-related deaths collected by the CDC across those same years, which totaled to 65. That was out of about 10 million total abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research nonprofit that monitors abortion surveillance data in the U.S. and globally.

"You don't have to know a lot about maternal health in the U.S. to think, 'Perhaps that statistic has changed since then,'" Steenland said. A quick "back of the envelope" calculation tipped the researchers off that this ratio might now be critically outdated, she added.

To establish an updated risk ratio, the study authors scoured national databases to pool stats collected between 2018 and 2021. The databases included the CDC's National Vital Statistics System, which provided the total number of births and pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S., out to a year postpartum. The CDC's Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System documented the number of abortion-related deaths per year, while the total number of abortions per year was obtained from the Guttmacher Institute.

The study authors included both live births and stillbirths in the total number of births, which was not done in the 2012 study. This enabled the researchers to roughly approximate the total number of pregnancies in the U.S., which isn't currently tracked.

While this metric is the next best thing to a count of pregnancies, it still misses some, such as ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages, Steenland noted. Since they couldn't confidently count those earlier-stage pregnancies, the researchers also excluded deaths that occurred in those stages from the overall count, she said; they wouldn't have been able to generate an accurate risk ratio with the missing data.

The study found an annual average of 32.3 maternal deaths per 100,000 births in the U.S. between 2018 and 2021. That included at least 3,662 pregnancy-related deaths over the four years, out of about 15 million births. For comparison, that's at least twice the pregnancy-related mortality rate reported in the 2012 study, which ranged from 8.8 to 14.5 per 100,000 live births.

The increased rate may come down to improved tracking of pregnancy-related deaths, the study authors suggested. Notably, a 2003 revision to U.S. death certificates, which was fully implemented in 2018, introduced a "pregnancy" checkbox.

The risk of abortion-related death reported in the new study remained very low, with 17 abortion-related deaths documented between 2018 and 2021 out of more than 3.5 million documented abortions in the U.S. That put the abortion-related mortality rate at about 0.46 deaths per 100,000 abortions, which is marginally lower than the figure of 0.60 per 100,000 abortions reported in the 2012 paper.

A higher death toll linked with pregnancy

Taken together, the 2026 analysis suggests that the risk of death related to pregnancy is at least about 44 times higher than the mortality risk linked to abortion — a figure that towers over the commonly reported statistic suggesting pregnancy is 14 times more likely to result in death than an abortion is.

But, of course, this new figure captures only part of the story, Stephen Burgess, a statistician at the University of Cambridge who was not involved in the study, told Live Science.

The risk of death from pregnancy is known to vary by the age and socioeconomic status of the pregnant person, as well as their access to health care, he noted. Those factors can make a big difference in how well a pregnancy goes and whether it leads to complications that can result in death. The risk ratio itself is also "highly dependent" on the dataset being used to capture abortion rates across the U.S., he noted.

Of note, the Guttmacher Institute did not report the number of abortions in the U.S. in 2021. In the new study, the study authors duplicated the stats from 2020 for the number of abortions in the U.S. in 2021, making the assumption that they were about the same.

Burgess welcomed the new work, saying it provides a more accurate measure of the mortality risk tied to pregnancy, including postpartum care. However, he questioned whether the figure would be "useful in helping either mothers or policymakers to make good decisions."

But for Steenland, the overarching message is clear.

"I think people should know what they're facing, and policymakers should be required to try to make it possible for everyone to access the highest-quality maternity care, to have the best outcomes that they possibly could have," she said.

Maternal care in the U.S. has been on a steady decline in recent decades, with maternal deaths increasing consistently since the 2000s, per a 2024 report from The Commonwealth Fund. Most of these deaths are likely preventable, the report said.

The 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization — which overturned Roe v. Wade — also opened the door for states to ban or heavily restrict abortion. The impacts of that decision are already being felt and are anticipated to prevent improvements in the maternal mortality rate in the near future. This disparity is most keenly felt by certain populations, with Black mothers being 3.3 times more likely to die in states that restrict access to abortion than white mothers in those states.

A recent study also suggests that infant deaths have been on the rise since the abortion bans went into effect.

Steenland noted that going forward, it might be difficult to track pregnancy-related deaths, as "it's very unlikely that CDC will continue to release abortion related mortality statistics," following large cuts to the CDC's Division of Reproductive Health staff in 2025.

"That limitation, along with other reductions and publicly available information that can be used to measure these outcomes," she said, "will limit for sure what we can know about how the ratio has changed or will have changed."

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

Humans have found lead useful for thousands of years, but the metal's toxic effects didn't become well known until the 20th century. Now, using historical hair samples, researchers have shown that regulations targeting heavy-metal pollution were extremely effective at reducing the public's exposure to lead once its dangers were known.

"We have hair samples spanning about 100 years," study co-author Ken Smith, a demographer at the University of Utah, said in a statement. The study focused on people living in Utah.

"Back when the regulations were absent," Smith said, "the lead levels were about 100 times higher than they are after the regulations."

In the new study, published Monday (Feb. 2) in the journal PNAS, the researchers detailed their analysis of hair samples from 47 people who lived in the Greater Salt Lake City region as children and as adults. The study participants provided locks of their baby hair that had been preserved in family scrapbooks, as well as a current hair sample. The researchers analyzed the hair for lead using mass spectrometry, a technique that identifies chemical compounds in a sample.

Lead exposure is detrimental to human health, causing damage to the nervous system that can lead to developmental delays, seizures and learning problems, while also raising the risk of fertility issues and high blood pressure. There is no known safe level of lead exposure, the researchers wrote in the study.

A major source of toxic lead exposure in the first half of the 20th century was leaded gasoline. In the 1920s, tetraethyl lead — a compound containing carbon and lead — was added to gasoline to reduce engine "knocking," the pinging sound caused by the premature ignition of fuel. Although the U.S. Public Health Service realized as early as 1925 that leaded gasoline was causing health issues, the fuel additive was not fully banned in the U.S. until 1996.

However, key regulations on lead were established before the 1990s. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which was created by then-President Richard Nixon in 1970 to address multiple air and pollution problems, resulted in an immediate decline in lead exposure, the researchers found in the new study.

Concentrations of lead in human hair from the Salt Lake City region were extremely high from 1916 to 1969, in part due to a lack of EPA regulation and in part because of two active lead smelter sites in the area. But from the 1970s to the 1990s, after the EPA was established and the smelting plants were shuttered, the average values declined by two orders of magnitude.

"Current concentrations of lead in hair from this population average almost 100 times lower than before the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency," the researchers wrote.

One caveat is that the values of lead in hair do not correspond exactly to levels in the blood, which is physicians' typical standard for identifying people who need treatment for lead toxicity.

A hair sample "doesn't really record that internal blood concentration that your brain is seeing, but it tells you about that overall environmental exposure," study co-author Thure Cerling, a geologist at the University of Utah, said in the statement. So overall, the study showed that people were taking in a significantly larger amount of lead prior to 1970.

"It's just coming out of the tailpipe, goes up in the air and then it comes down," Cerling said. Lead lingers in the air for days and "it absorbs into your hair, you breathe it, and it goes into your lungs."

The researchers noted that, although their study demonstrates the effectiveness of environmental regulations in controlling toxic pollutants, such as lead, these regulations are now in danger of being rolled back.

Specifically, the researchers pointed to a March 12, 2025, announcement by the EPA and President Donald Trump that would deregulate many of the EPA's provisions that currently ensure U.S. residents have clean air, land and water. Although lead pollution is not specifically mentioned, experts have suggested that the announcement is a "roadmap" for rolling back regulations on air pollution in the manufacturing sector and wastewater from coal plants, among other things. At least one federal lawsuit has already been filed to overturn "presidential exemptions" to the EPA's Clean Air Act.

"We should not forget the lessons of history," Cerling said. "Those regulations have been very important," as evidenced by the EPA having "really, really positive effects" quite soon after it was established.

The historic hair study shows that the lax environmental standards of previous decades resulted in unhealthy lead levels but that these levels can be reined in with "science-based regulations," the researchers wrote.

Periodic table of elements quiz: How many elements can you name in 10 minutes?

Just over 40% of Americans are obese based on their BMIs, and that number has been on the rise since the mid-1970s. But a few new statistics suggest that the obesity rate is now plateauing, or even declining.

Could this mean America has hit its heaviest weight on the scale? Experts aren't so sure.

The apparent plateau is short-term, the data incomplete and the share of people with severe obesity still rising. The childhood obesity rate also continues to rise. In addition, nutrition data suggests that Americans are still eating large amounts of ultraprocessed foods, which can fuel obesity.

For researchers, none of this news points to a change in the obesity trend.

"It's not a moment to relax," Niyati Parekh, a professor of public health nutrition at New York University, told Live Science.

The latest numbers

Obesity is defined as a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher, while "severe" obesity, also called Class III obesity, is defined as 40 or higher. This measure of body fat based on height and weight is imperfect for diagnosing individual health — for instance, someone with a very muscular build might qualify as overweight or obese despite having a healthy body composition. But it is used by public health officials to get a sense of how much of the population is overweight and obese.

Obesity, in turn, is linked to chronic health problems such as sleep apnea, cardiovascular disease, liver disease and diabetes.

The rate of obesity began rising in the U.S. across all groups starting in the late 1970s, according to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 1980, 13.4% of U.S. adults were obese. By 2008, 34.3% were. The latest data, collected between 2021 and 2023, shows that 40.3% of adults are obese.

That recent age-adjusted increase was not a statistically significant change compared with the decade prior, suggesting that the obesity rate is no longer rising. But the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from which these numbers emerge is limited, said Barry Popkin, a nutrition professor at the University of North Carolina whose work focuses on evaluating policy related to food labeling and obesity.

While the survey is a national sample, the North is surveyed in the summer and the South in the winter, making regional and seasonal comparisons impossible, Popkin said. More importantly, the survey compares the 2021-2023 numbers to a decade ago, which is only two data points.

"We have seen some short-term plateaus earlier at different points," Popkin said. There was a pause in the rise between 2009 and 2012, for example, that turned out to be a temporary bump in a continuing upward trajectory.

The most recent Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index, released Oct. 28, found an overall obesity rate of 37% in U.S. adults in 2025, down from a high in the same surveys of 39.9% in 2022. But there are questions about this data, too, said Justin Ryder, an associate professor of surgery and pediatrics at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine and vice chair of research for the department of surgery at Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago.

Gallup surveys about 5,000 adults each quarter, but it's not clear how many individuals in that sample have BMIs in the obese range, given that the participants are not chosen to be nationally representative by weight status.

Small sample sizes can skew the picture, Ryder said. Over a decade ago, he said, there was data suggesting the obesity rate was dropping in 2- to 5-year-old children. But that trend turned out to be based on only 700 children, and in the next year of data collection, the findings evaporated. Ryder told Live Science he was skeptical of the Gallup data for a similar reason.

"I don't believe it," he said.

The role of GLP-1s

In reporting the results of the survey, Gallup suggested that new medications that target the glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor might be making an impact on America's obesity rate. These medications, known by brand names such as Ozempic and Zepbound, help regulate blood sugar levels and slow the emptying of the stomach, leading to weight loss.

In Gallup's nationally representative sample, 12.4% of adults reported currently using one of these GLP-1 drugs, up from 5.8% in February 2024. The biggest reductions in obesity rates in Gallup's numbers were in people ages 40 to 64, matching the highest uptake of GLP-1 medications.

Overall, though, it's early to say whether these medications are having a nationwide impact, Popkin said. Gallup's data is not a comprehensive look at the number of people using GLP-1s, nor does it cover whether the treatment was successful, how long they used the medication, or if the users dropped enough weight to move between weight categories. Because of off-label prescriptions and the drugs' use in controlling diabetes, it's also difficult to know if people reporting taking GLP-1s are obese, overweight, or a healthy weight, per their BMI category.

Until recently, more affordable, compounded versions of some of the most popular GLP-1 medications were widely available from local pharmacies because some brand-name medications were in shortage. Those shortage rules have now been lifted, making it harder to get inexpensive versions.

Because of lack of insurance coverage and cost, only a small percentage of people eligible to use the medications are on them, Ryder said. Looking at the situation beyond the Gallup numbers suggests the number being successfully treated is not likely enough to move the needle on national obesity numbers, he said.

The latest NHANES data raises another question: why is the severe obesity rate still rising if GLP-1s are reducing obesity, overall? The data suggests that 9.4% of the population has a BMI of 40 or higher, a number that rose from 7.7% in 2013-2014. In addition, the diagnosis of diabetes is at an all-time high according to Gallup's numbers, at 13.8% of the population.

People with BMIs over 40 and those with diabetes should be the ones most likely to be prescribed a GLP-1, according to medical criteria. There's a question as to why those numbers aren't going down as the number of people prescribed GLP-1s goes up, Popkin said, again raising questions about the data's limitations.

Medicare and Medicaid only cover the medications for patients with diagnosed diabetes or with obesity along with cardiovascular disease. On Nov. 4, the Trump Administration announced a deal to enable Medicaid and Medicare coverage of some GLP-1s for weight loss, alone for people with obesity and no related conditions. But whether this move will expand access will depend on the ultimate out-of-pocket cost for consumers, Ryder said.

"While I'm very hopeful that we'll start to see obesity prevalence decrease," he said, "that's going to coincide with better access to medications."

Changing the environment

Also adding to experts' skepticism about a turn in the obesity rate is the fact that little has changed about the food system in America. Policies put the onus on consumers to avoid prepackaged snacks high in sodium, saturated fat and added sugars, Parekh said.

"It's much cheaper to be unhealthier and buy unhealthy foods," she said.

For many, it's also a challenge to buy healthier foods. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that 18.8 million Americans live in "food deserts" where it is difficult to access a full-service supermarket.

According to CDC data, 55% of the calories Americans consumed between 2021 and2023 were ultraprocessed, a somewhat nebulous category encompassing foods that are formulated from substances derived from foods — such as pure starch or fat — but that contain very little in the way of whole ingredients. These foods also tend to include additives not found in home kitchens, such as stabilizers and preservatives. They initially became a larger part of the American diet in the late 1970s, when the obesity rate started its rise.

Clinical and observational studies link high consumption of ultraprocessed foods to the development of obesity. This may be in part because they are hyperpalatable — in other words, very tasty — and thus encourage overconsumption, said Filippa Juul, an epidemiologist at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in New York. It may also be because the body may more easily break down these foods and use all their fats and sugars, compared to whole and less-processed foods that take more energy to digest.

"Even though you may think you're eating the same calories in almonds and potato chips, according to the label, you're actually eating less calories when you're eating the almonds, because you're not digesting it all," Juul told Live Science.

The Make America Health Again (MAHA) movement spearheaded by health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has drawn attention to ultraprocessed foods. But experts say there is little chance that MAHA will make major changes to how such foods are regulated.

There was initially interest from Trump's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in looking at new labeling requirements for ultraprocessed foods, said Popkin, who was part of those conversations. However, when the administration released its MAHA Strategy in September, there was only one reference to labeling, which committed only to exploring the issue.

Popkin and his colleagues have found that clear warning labels can change real-world consumer purchases by alerting consumers to high levels of saturated fat, sodium, or sugar on the front of a product. Labels that use a red-yellow-green color-coded system to convey information about healthfulness are also effective, they have found.

But "instead of using our approach, which was valid and used in other countries, they are going back and saying we need more research," Popkin said. That position suggests it's unlikely that the U.S. will put new labeling regulations into play anytime soon, he said.

Meanwhile, the fate of the long-running NHANES survey that allows federal researchers to track the obesity rate is in the balance given ongoing cuts at the CDC. On Oct. 10, the team that runs the survey was fired. The next day, the decision was reversed for half of that team. A federal judge later blocked the remaining layoffs because they occurred during a government shutdown.

When it comes to ultraprocessed foods, "the MAHA movement is toothless," Popkin said. "Lots of talk, no policies or laws."

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

Editor's note: On Oct. 6, 2025, the CDC adopted the new recommendations set forth by ACIP, which are described below.

Staff changes at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ushered in changes in which populations were advised to get this year's updated COVID-19 vaccine. People under age 65 faced confusion and uncertainty over whether they and their children were eligible for the 2025-2026 shot, where they could get it and whether their health insurance would cover the cost.

On Friday (Sept. 19), an influential CDC committee — the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) — said that everyone over 6 months old can get this year's COVID-19 vaccine and have the cost covered by insurance, provided they or their caregiver talk with their pharmacist or another health care provider about the shot's risks and benefits.

This was an unexpected result after an at times contentious and confusing two-day meeting, during which the ACIP members weighed heavily restricting American's access to COVID-19 vaccines. They debated whether to require everyone to get a prescription prior to seeking the shot, for instance.

Here's what to know about the ACIP's recommendation and what it might mean for people seeking the vaccine this year.

Related: Have you gotten this year's COVID vaccine? (Poll)

• Asthma
• Blood cancers
• Blood disorders (including sickle cell disease)
• Cerebrovascular diseases
• Chronic kidney disease
• Some chronic lung diseases
• Some chronic liver diseases
• Cystic fibrosis
• Type 1 and 2 diabetes
• Gestational diabetes
• Disabilities, including Down syndrome, ADHD, autism, cerebral palsy
• Heart conditions
• HIV or tuberculous infection
• Mood disorders, including depression and schizophrenia
• Dementia or a neurologic condition
• Parkinson's disease
• Obesity
• Physical inactivity
• Chronic liver disease
• Kidney disease
• Current or recent pregnancy
• Primary immunodeficiencies
• Tuberculosis
• Current or former smoking
• Substance use disorder
• Solid organ or blood stem cell transplant recipients
• Use of immunosuppressive drugs

As of Sept. 16, Blue Cross Blue Shield said its current vaccine coverage aligns with the most recent recommendations from multiple medical groups and includes COVID-19 vaccines, a spokesperson told Live Science in an email. The company bases its coverage decision on the recommendations made by professional associations such as the AAFP and AAP, as well as the CDC's ACIP.

Aetna CVS Health provides coverage for approved vaccines, including COVID-19 shots, in compliance with applicable state and federal cost-sharing requirements, a spokesperson told Live Science in an email. Its members who are eligible may be vaccinated against COVID-19 at no out-of-pocket cost to them.

In addition, state pharmacy laws govern where CVS Pharmacy can vaccinate, a spokesman said via email. Based on Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval and recent regulatory action by certain states, CVS Pharmacy currently can offer COVID-19 vaccines in 43 states without a prescription from an outside provider, not including the following: AZ, DC, FL, GA, LA, OR, UT and WV. If the ACIP recommendations are approved, a prescription will no longer be required for the vaccine in those last seven states.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

The Pawnee Star Chart is a series of crosses sprinkled around an oval piece of elk skin. Likely made in the early 17th century by the Skiri (also called the Skidi) band of the Pawnee Nation, the chart is a fairly accurate representation of the night sky, but the meaning of the chart is still debated.

According to amateur astronomer Ralph Buckstaff, who published a study about the chart in 1927, it was discovered in a sacred bundle in 1902 by Skiri anthropologist James Murie, who passed it on to the Field Museum in Chicago. At the time, the chart was estimated to be at least 300 years old. The piece of tanned elk skin measures roughly 15 by 22 inches (38 by 56 centimeters), and hand-drawn stars cover the surface.

Buckstaff interpreted the chart as a depiction of the night sky, separated into two halves by a centerline of very small stars possibly representing the Milky Way. On the left side, the stars line up into Northern Hemisphere winter constellations, while the right side features summer constellations. This suggested to Buckstaff that the Pawnee recognized the seasonal shift of the stars.

Although Buckstaff attempted to show that the Pawnee identified star patterns like the Pleiades and Ursa Minor in the same way as European astronomers did, this claim was refuted by astronomer Von Del Chamberlain in his 1982 book "When Stars Came Down to Earth: Cosmology of the Skidi Pawnee Indians of North America" (Ballena Press). Chamberlain examined Murie's early 20th-century journals and discussed the chart's potential ties to a Skiri Pawnee "star cult" first reported in a 1902 study. Chamberlain wrote that the chart was probably never intended for use as a star map but rather as a conceptual depiction of the heavens used perhaps by Skiri priests.

Related: Kneeling Bull: A 5,000-year-old hybrid creature from Iran with a mysterious purpose

In a 1985 response to Chamberlain, anthropologist Douglas Parks, an expert on the Pawnee, agreed with Chamberlain that the star chart was most likely made as a kind of mnemonic device. The chart may have been used by priests or knowledge keepers to recount the origin myth of the Skiri world, rather than being a precise recording of the position of stars, Parks wrote.

The exact meaning of the Pawnee star chart and its date of manufacture are still debated. But it remains an object of deep interest to anthropologists and astronomers alike because, "as a portrayal of stars in the heavens, it is unique for aboriginal North America," Parks wrote.

Jordyn Albright's pregnancy-and-delivery journey was difficult from the start. Her pregnancy was high risk, due to both in vitro fertilization (IVF) and high blood pressure during pregnancy. She was induced three weeks early and went through 60 hours of labor before delivering.

With her son in her arms, the worst should have been behind her. But within moments, her doctor realized her placenta was stuck to her uterine wall. Hospital staff gathered around her, trying to remove the placenta manually — "a horribly painful experience," Albright, 32, said. She wouldn't stop bleeding.

Mere minutes after giving birth, Albright passed out from blood loss. What she didn't hear was her care team calling for a rapid response, which is an alert in labor-and-delivery units that brings an emergency team of doctors and nurses rushing to the room. This team saved Albright's life with 4 pints of blood (she would later need 2 more) and whisked her to emergency surgery to remove the retained placenta.

This harrowing experience was followed by a traumatic few days in the intensive care unit (ICU) and separation from her newborn. It was compounded by weeks in the neonatal ICU for the new baby, who contracted a rare bacterial infection after birth. But Albright and her husband, Jeffrey Albright, credit their care team with saving both mom and child.

"This could have been so much worse," Jeffrey Albright, 32, told Live Science. "In any way you can think of it, it could have been worse."

For too many families, it is worse. A higher percentage of people die in pregnancy, childbirth or the postpartum period in the U.S. than in comparable wealthy countries. It's a problem of health disparities, access to health care, and how individual hospitals handle emergencies — and the problems could deepen with recent policy decisions in the U.S., experts say.

Despite the bleak numbers, there is hope. Evidence suggests that most of these deaths are preventable and that some relatively straightforward interventions could slash the maternal death rate. Those measures include better prenatal monitoring to prevent emergencies in the first place, as well as more training for hospital personnel to react when emergencies do happen.

"We know what to do," said Jeanne Conry, past president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics. "We just have to implement it."

Causes of maternal death

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines maternal mortality as the death of a patient during pregnancy or up to 42 days after delivery from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or pregnancy care. For example, someone who dies in a car wreck during pregnancy wouldn't be counted, but someone with a preexisting heart condition whose condition worsened due to pregnancy would be.

Although maternal death is rare in the U.S., the rate is higher than in other wealthy nations. Provisional CDC data suggest that in 2024, there were 19 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births, compared with 8.4 per 100,000 in Canada, 8.8 per 100,000 in South Korea, 5.5 per 100,000 in the U.K. and zero in Norway, according to The Commonwealth Fund, a health policy foundation.

The U.S. has long been an outlier among its wealthy peers in maternal mortality, even though the country spends about twice as much per person on health care as other large, wealthy nations do, according to the Peterson Center on Healthcare and the health policy organization KFF, a health policy research organization.

"We rank very poorly on the world stage," said Dr. Monique Rainford, an assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the Yale School of Medicine and the CEO and co-founder of Enrich Health, a startup that aims to provide evidence-based prenatal care.

According to The Commonwealth Fund, about half of U.S. maternal deaths happen the day after birth, and about a third occur during pregnancy. During pregnancy, one-third of the deaths are due to stroke and heart conditions, according to the March of Dimes, while emergencies such as hemorrhage cause the most deaths during labor and delivery. Bleeding, high blood pressure (including pregnancy-induced conditions such as preeclampsia, a life-threatening persistent rise in blood pressure that can develop during pregnancy or up to six weeks postpartum), infection and cardiomyopathy (a weakening of the heart muscle) cause the most deaths after delivery.

"What's coming out of our research is that cardiovascular disease is really increasing," Conry told Live Science.

While the U.S. has high rates of certain conditions that increase the risk of complications during pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period — such as obesity — other countries with high rates of these risk factors have much lower rates of death than the U.S.

Maternity deserts

One factor in the U.S.' comparatively poor outcomes is that many women live in "maternity deserts" — areas where there is no nearby hospital that offers maternity services or neonatal specialists. Thirty-five percent of counties in the United States are maternity care deserts, according to the March of Dimes.

As of 2022, 52% of rural hospitals did not offer obstetric care, and the problem has worsened since then. According to 2024 research in the journal JAMA, 238 rural hospitals stopped offering obstetrics between 2010 and 2022, and only 26 rural hospitals added obstetrics to their offerings in that time period. (During the same period, 299 urban hospitals lost obstetrics, but 112 added in new offerings.)

In addition, a 2021 study of New Jersey maternity hospital closures found that women had a higher rate of maternal morbidity rate — a measure of serious and life-threatening complications around pregnancy and childbirth — if they gave birth after an obstetrical unit closed in a nearby hospital.

Lack of maternity care is a big problem in rural areas, but it's not exclusively a rural one. Around 35% of urban hospitals lack obstetric care. In addition, other health care access problems can make it difficult for women to get to prenatal appointments where problems can be spotted and managed early on.

Even in dense Chicago, "if your Medicaid provider is not in network, you're a lot of times forced to use public transport in horrible weather, often with other children, to get preventative care," said Star August Ali, a certified professional midwife and the executive director and founder of the Black Midwifery Collective in Chicago, which aims to train and support Black midwives.

Looming cuts

The Medicaid cuts in the "Big Beautiful Bill Act" signed into law in July could spell deep trouble for maternal mortality. The cuts are expected to hit rural hospitals hard, according to KFF, with the likely closure of 144 rural labor and delivery wards.

And about 41% of U.S. births are covered through Medicaid. While it's not clear how the cuts will affect enrollment during pregnancy, without that coverage, people may not have access to treatments and monitoring that could head off some life-threatening emergencies.

The impact of these policies is not equal. Medicaid covers about 28% of births to white mothers, 64% of births to Black mothers, and 67% of births to American Indian or Alaska Native moms. Younger women are also more likely to be covered by Medicaid than by private insurance, with almost 79% of births to moms under age 20 being covered by the government program.

If fewer pregnant women are covered, "we're going to see a huge uptick of emergency room utilization, a huge decrease in preventative care and early detection," during pregnancy, Ali told Live Science.

Racial disparities

The same groups that may lose the most coverage under the Medicaid cuts are also those that are at higher risk of poor outcomes for mom and baby. Black and Native American women are two to three times more likely than white women to die during pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period, according to KFF.

Some of this disparity has to do with access to care and poorer quality of care for people of color. A 2025 study of over 3,000 hospitals showed sparser staffing and worse mortality outcomes in hospitals that served predominantly Black patients compared with hospitals with lower percentages of Black patients. And the 2021 study on maternity unit closures also found that severe maternal morbidity was worse in hospitals that served many Black patients.

Research also suggests that American Indian and Alaska Native patients face serious gaps in their health care coverage, which could prevent them from accessing lifesaving preventive care.

Racial bias by health care providers may play a role as well. A 2017 review of studies on doctor-patient communication found that Black patients experienced "poorer communication quality, information-giving, patient participation, and participatory decision-making" compared with white patients. This could lead to a lack of trust between doctor and patient that affects clinical decision-making, the study researchers wrote. For example, the doctor may view the patient as less engaged and fail to give them important recommendations about how to care for their health.

Preventable deaths

Despite big-picture problems with the healthcare system, the data suggest that there are opportunities to prevent a large number of maternal deaths.

A 2024 study in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology looked at deaths across 42 states and found that over 90% of deaths from preeclampsia and eclampsia in the U.S. could have been prevented. So could more than 80% of deaths from hemorrhage and cardiovascular conditions and about 70% of deaths from infection. Harder to prevent are deaths from stroke or amniotic fluid embolism, an emergency in which amniotic fluid enters the maternal bloodstream, but even then, 40% of deaths were found to be preventable.

The fraction of deaths that could have been prevented with immediate improvements in medical care varied dramatically among states, from 45% to 100%, the study found.

"The number one finding is this variability," said study author Dr. Andreea Creanga, a public health researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

That variability is actually a cause for hope, experts say, because it suggests there are clear measures that states, hospitals and providers can implement to reduce maternal mortality.

Learning from each death

The first step in preventing these deaths is to study each death in detail, Rainford said.

States that have studied these deaths and used those lessons to make concerted efforts to reduce maternal mortality have seen success. California's long-running Maternal Quality Care Collaborative, for example, prompted a dramatic decline in maternal mortality in the decade after it was started in 2006, putting the state almost on a par with Canada.

The collaborative helps to investigate the causes of individual deaths, looking for preventable factors. "It's transformed things," Conry said.

But current policies and politics may be hindering efforts to learn from past experiences. After the investigative news organization ProPublica reported a series of preventable maternal deaths in Texas and Georgia likely caused by hospitals delaying care out of fear that doctors would be prosecuted under the states' strict abortion laws, Georgia abruptly fired every member of its committee on maternal deaths. The state will not disclose who is now on the committee. The board in Idaho, which also has a strict abortion ban, was dissolved by state lawmakers in 2023 before being reestablished in 2024, leading to gaps in analysis and methodology changes. Texas' committee skipped analyzing deaths in 2022 and 2023, the two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and enabled the state to enact laws restricting nearly all abortions.

The lack of transparency stemming from abortion politics is a barrier to reducing maternal mortality.

Standardizing care

Creating and implementing standards of care is another way to lower death rates. For instance, after the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative analyzed maternal deaths in detail, they found a clear pattern: Too many women were dying of postpartum hemorrhage, one of the most common causes of maternal mortality.

So they provided hospitals tool kits to handle emergency scenarios, including standardized drills, training, and instructions to stock a "crash cart" of supplies to handle postpartum hemorrhage.

The same concept of standardized care could be extended to other conditions beyond hemorrhage, Conry said. For instance, the Collaborative will soon release guidance on better recognizing sepsis, a type of life-threatening infection that can occur during or after childbirth.

There is also a need to improve monitoring before labor and delivery. Over time, the immediate causes of death have been shifting from rapidly-developing emergency situations, such as hemorrhage, toward chronic conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, Creanga said.

This underscores the importance of people receiving regular care through pregnancy and for increased monitoring of high-risk individuals. For example, Johns Hopkins has launched an initiative called The Maryland Maternal Health Innovation Program (MDMOM) that includes at-home, telehealth-supported blood-pressure monitoring for pregnant patients with high blood pressure. That could help catch patients whose health is deteriorating, before an emergency happens. (The Preeclampsia Foundation offers a similar program nationwide.)

Creanga and her colleagues are also working to improve education for health care professionals and community groups around warning signs for high-risk pregnancy. The goal is to get tools into the hands of patients and their families, Creanga said, and to move the U.S. into the company of countries like Norway, where maternal death is vanishingly rare.

"Maternal mortality is a marker of the health of your country," she said. "It's maybe the most important marker."

Disease name: La Crosse virus disease

Affected populations: La Crosse virus disease is a rare viral illness that is spread to humans via mosquito bites. The name comes from La Crosse County, Wisconsin, where the disease was first observed by doctors in the 1960s.

Approximately 30 to 90 cases of La Crosse virus disease are reported in the U.S. each year. Around 60% of those cases occur in males, and 90% affect people under 20 years old.

Transmission of La Crosse virus most often happens in late spring through early fall, when mosquito populations peak. Most cases of the disease occur in upper Midwestern, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern U.S. states. No cases have ever been reported outside the U.S.

Related: New York resident dies of eastern equine encephalitis — what is it?

Causes: La Crosse virus disease is caused by the La Crosse virus, which is spread to humans via the bites of mosquitoes carrying the germ. Most commonly, a species known as Aedes triseriatus spreads the virus to humans. As their name suggests, these mosquitoes typically breed in holes within trees, and they also lay eggs in outdoor containers that hold standing water.

People who live, work or spend recreational time in wooded areas have a higher risk of becoming infected with La Crosse virus than others, as they are more likely to come into contact with A. triseriatus mosquitoes.

Once inside the human body, the La Crosse virus can infiltrate the central nervous system, including the brain, and infect and damage neurons there.

La Crosse virus disease cannot be spread from person to person; the only way people can catch it is directly from mosquito bites. Mosquitoes can't pick up the virus from infected people, because it never reaches a high enough concentration in the blood. For this reason, humans are considered "dead-end" hosts of the La Crosse virus. (In the environment, mosquitoes pick up the virus from small mammals, such as squirrels and chipmunks.)

Symptoms: Around 96% of people exposed to La Crosse virus do not develop any symptoms. The small percentage who do may initially experience a fever, headache, nausea and vomiting. These symptoms can emerge within three to 10 days of being bitten by an infected mosquito.

For some people, especially children under 16, these symptoms can then progress to more severe disease. For instance, the virus may cause brain inflammation, known as encephalitis. Around 75% of the La Crosse cases that involve encephalitis occur in children.

The fatality rate from La Crosse encephalitis is less than 1%. However, between 5% and 15% of patients who recover from this condition can go on to experience recurring seizures after the initial infection has passed.

Treatments: There is no cure for La Crosse virus disease, nor a vaccine that can help prevent infection. However, patients with severe symptoms may be given supportive care in the hospital.

People can reduce their risk of being infected with La Crosse virus by avoiding mosquito bites in the first place. They can do this by using recommended insect repellents and wearing long-sleeved shirts and pants while outdoors, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

A strain of bird flu never seen before in the United States has been detected among poultry at a California farm.

The virus, called highly pathogenic H5N9, is a type of avian influenza, otherwise known as "bird flu." This is not the same type of bird flu that's already been spreading on dairy cow and poultry farms in the U.S., causing at least several dozen infections in humans. That virus is called H5N1.

So what is H5N9? How does it differ from H5N1, and should we be equally concerned about it?

Related: Bird flu strikes 1st child in the US — CDC says infection source unknown

What is H5N9?

H5N9 is a highly pathogenic avian flu (or bird flu) virus that bears some structural similarities to H5N1.

"Low pathogenic" H5N9 viruses have previously been detected in birds in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, dating back to the 1960s. However, these infections are usually associated with less-severe symptoms than "highly pathogenic" strains are. This is the first time highly pathogenic H5N9 has been seen in the U.S., and these deadlier strains are also fairly uncommon worldwide.

How did H5N9 emerge?

New subtypes and strains of influenza can emerge if viruses pick up random genetic mutations as they multiply, as well as if multiple viruses swap genetic information with one another. This latter process is known as genetic reassortment, and it usually happens when an organism is infected with at least two different viruses at the same time.

Some experts suspect that H5N9 may have emerged among the ducks in California due to genetic reassortment occurring between circulating H5N1 viruses and other flu viruses containing the N9 protein. ("H5" and "N9" are two proteins found on the surface of the virus that give the bird flu subtype its name.)

H5N1 was also detected in the birds at the farm, so this could be plausible, according to a Jan. 24 report from the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), which monitors disease outbreaks in animals worldwide.

Such reassortment can lead to "unpredictable new viruses," Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, wrote on X.

She added that ducks may be great host animals for genetic reassortment to take place because, unlike chickens, they don't get very sick from many avian flu viruses. Therefore, while an infected chicken would quickly die, ducks can survive and continue to spread the disease to new hosts.

Related: How to avoid bird flu

What's happening at the farm where H5N9 was detected?

In the Jan. 24 report, the WOAH announced that H5N9 had been identified at a duck farm in Merced County, California. The current outbreak, which the report says was confirmed on Jan. 13, is being closely monitored by officials.

"The USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), in conjunction with State Animal Health and Wildlife Officials, are conducting comprehensive epidemiological investigations and enhanced surveillance in response to the HPAI [highly pathogenic avian influenza] related events," the WOAH wrote in the report.

To prevent further spread of the infection, all of the nearly 119,000 birds at the farm have now been culled. These bird flu viruses are known as "highly pathogenic" because they are extremely deadly to certain poultry — like chickens — and culling an exposed flock is typically considered the best way of preventing additional flocks from getting sick.

Why is bird flu concerning?

Scientists have recently expressed increasing concern that a strain of bird flu could mutate into a form that easily spreads among humans, sparking a pandemic. This happened during historic pandemics, such as the "Spanish flu" in 1918 and the "Asian flu" in 1957.

Humans can become infected with avian influenza if the virus gets into their eyes, nose or mouth, or if it is inhaled in the form of droplets in the air. However, not all bird flu viruses are equipped to efficiently infect people and then spread between them. When given more chances to spread to new animals, the viruses have a higher chance of picking up that ability and harming humans.

Notably, over the past couple of years, H5N1 has spread to new countries, including the U.S. It's been widely infecting wild birds and poultry and has also jumped into various mammals, including cattle and domestic cats. Since its discovery, H5N1 has infected more than 900 people globally, and in the past year, at least 67 people in the U.S. have been infected. In December 2024, a woman in Louisiana became the first person in the U.S. to die as a result of an H5N1 infection.

Related: Bird flu could become deadlier if it mixes with seasonal flu viruses, experts warn

How does H5N9 differ from H5N1?

Avian influenza viruses come in different subtypes, which are named according to subtle variations in the structure of two key proteins on the surface of the virus: hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N). So H5N9 and H5N1 have the same hemagglutinin protein, but a different neuraminidase protein.

A virus's specific combination of H and N proteins determines a range of important traits, such as how good it is at spreading from one animal to another, how deadly it is, and whether it is resistant to antiviral treatment.

Besides the difference in their neuraminidase proteins, H5N9 differs from H5N1 in several other ways.

For example, H5N1 infections are more common among humans and are believed to be the deadliest of all the highly pathogenic avian influenza strains in humans and chickens.

Does H5N9 pose a risk to humans?

As of yet, little is known about whether H5N9 could spread to humans and potentially cause a pandemic.

On its website, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) currently states that the public health risk from H5 bird flu is "low" but that the agency is "watching the situation carefully and working with states to monitor people with animal exposures." The CDC's primary focus on that webpage is H5N1, but the agency is monitoring H5 viruses broadly, using its flu surveillance systems to watch for any cases in humans.

As of Jan. 18, there has been no evidence of H5 bird flu spreading from one human to another in the U.S.

"The combination H5N9 is not new and other versions, like H5N5 also exist," Florian Krammer, a professor of vaccinology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, told CBS News. "Just because this was now detected, doesn't mean trouble necessarily," he emphasized.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

A rare weather phenomenon rumbled across several eastern and central U.S. states this weekend as Arctic air continues to bring heavy snow and freezing temperatures to millions of Americans.

Thundersnow, also known as a winter thunderstorm, happens when a snowstorm is accompanied by thunder and lightning. As of Monday (Jan. 6) morning, the phenomenon has been reported across much of the southern Midwest as well as in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

The National Weather Service (NWS) in St. Louis, Missouri, shared satellite imagery taken from NASA's GOES-East in space showing lightning flashes across Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri on Sunday (Jan. 5).

"We are getting thundersnow/thundersleet," NWS representatives wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter. "This just underscores that snow/sleet rates are pretty heavy - avoid travel if at all possible!"

Meanwhile, footage of Kansas meteorologist Jim Cantore reacting to the rare phenomenon has received thousands of views on the site.

What causes thundersnow?

Thunderstorms occur when warm, moist air rises and condenses in cooler, dryer air above it, forming towering cumulus clouds. Inside these clouds is a combination of light ice crystals, which float upward, and soft hail known as graupel, which is denser and falls downward. This causes both particles to bang into each other, causing electrons to be transferred from the ice crystals to the graupel. The end result is a cumulus cloud with positively charged ice crystals at the top and negatively charged graupel at the bottom, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

This builds negative charge at the base of the cloud, repelling electrons in the Earth beneath it. The charge difference between the cloud and the ground builds up until eventually the potential energy is discharged as a bolt of lightning.

The energy from this strike heats up the surrounding air, causing it to explode outward and creating the rumbling sound we know as thunder.

Thundersnow occurs when this weather system occurs in the midst of a snowstorm.

Why is thundersnow so rare?

The conditions required to create thunderstorms rarely occur during the winter months.

"In winter (especially when the weather is cold enough for snow to fall), there is much less energy in the atmosphere and the heating of the surface is much reduced," Jon Shonk, a Senior Scientist at the UK's Met Office and researcher at the University of Reading, told Live Science in an email. "Thunderstorms form more readily in summer when the atmosphere is warmer and can hold more energy and moisture."

In the rare cases when thundersnow does occur, it tends to be around the Great Lakes. "In the United States, thundersnow occurs more often in the central part of the country, Intermountain West and across the Great Lakes region," Jesse Ferrell, AccuWeather senior weather editor and meteorologist, told AccuWeather "Intense lake-effect snow bands, which have pockets of rapidly rising air due to the sharp contrast between cold air aloft and the warm lake water, often produce thundersnow."

However, FOX Weather Meteorologist Kendall Smith — who saw the phenomenon in Kansas City on Sunday — said that it was very unusual to see thundersnow so far south, describing the event as "historical."

Related: Polar vortex could bring deadly winter storms and coldest weather in more than a decade to US

The cold weather that the U.S. is currently experiencing has been driven by large-scale atmospheric pressure changes and a shift in the band of strong winds that normally keep cold air in the Arctic, known as the polar vortex. This shift causes freezing air to dip much further south than normal, resulting in the frigid temperatures that the U.S. is currently experiencing. And when this rush of freezing air bumps up against warmer, tropical air from the south, it can create the appropriate conditions for thundersnow.

"A significant surge of moisture lifting from the Gulf of Mexico got ingested into the developing low pressure, and then lifted vertically to induce elevated instability," Josh Weiss, a forecaster at NOAA's Weather Prediction Center, told Live Science in an email. "Where atmospheric ascent was most pronounced (usually on the north/northwest side of these intense cyclones), this resulted in an intense band of snow accompanied by lightning and thunder: thundersnow!"

Is thundersnow dangerous?

"Like any storm that produces lightning, thundersnow can be dangerous," Weiss said. "However, lightning and thunder that accompanies a snowstorm is usually less frequent and less intense than in summer-time thunderstorms."

Unlike thunderstorms in the summer, in which thunder can be heard from miles away, snow tends to muffle its sound, limiting the distance at which it can be heard. Thus, people may be less cautious of an impending storm and more at risk of unexpected lightning strikes.

Shonk added that, while the strike rate of lightning during a winter thunderstorm is much lower than during summer storms, they can also be more damaging.

However, both Weiss and Shonk said that the most significant risk of thundersnow is the accompanying heavy snowfall. "Thundersnow usually occurs only during the most intense snowfall," Weiss said, which can lead to poor visibility and dangerous travel conditions.

As of Monday (Jan. 6), winter storm warnings were still in place across the Central Plains through to the Mid-Atlantic, with disruptive storm conditions expected to last until Monday evening, the NWS said. A state of emergency has been declared in Arkansas, Kansas, New Jersey, Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia, and 18 inches of snow fell in parts of Kansas overnight. NWS also predict up to 12 inches (30 centimeters) of snow by Monday evening across the Mid-Atlantic, including Washington, D.C.

Cervical cancer deaths have fallen sharply among young women in the United States since 2013, new research reveals.

According to data from the National Center for Health Statistics, a government agency, around 13 women aged younger than 25 died from cervical cancer between 2019 and 2021, compared to 35 between 2013 and 2015 — a 62% decrease in cancer-related deaths.

Researchers described their findings in a study published Wednesday (Nov. 27) in the journal JAMA. They say the study is the first of its kind to suggest that vaccination against human papillomavirus (HPV) is now preventing cervical cancer deaths in young women, specifically. HPV vaccination was introduced in the U.S. in 2006. It works by preventing high-risk HPV infections, the most common cause of cervical cancer.

"This is a critical milestone in the public health success story of this cancer prevention intervention," Ashish Deshmukh, study co-author and an associate professor at the Medical University of South Carolina, told Live Science in an email.

Related: New self-swab HPV test is an alternative to Pap smears. Here's how it works.

"The findings signify the importance of continued improvement in the HPV vaccination rates in the U.S.," Deshmukh said.

Cervical cancer develops in the cells of the cervix — the lowest part of the uterus that connects the organ to the vaginal canal. In most cases, cervical cancer is triggered by specific strains of HPV infecting cervical cells and thus altering their DNA so they grow uncontrollably.

The disease is the fourth-most-common type of cancer among women worldwide. However, it is highly preventable thanks to vaccination and regular cervical screening. It is also curable through treatments such as surgery and chemotherapy, if it is caught early enough. Unfortunately, because of health inequities, around 94% of deaths from cervical cancer occur in people living in low- and middle-income countries.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that both male and female children get vaccinated against HPV at age 11 or 12. Vaccination can be started as early as age 9 for certain people, such as those who are immunocompromised. And if someone wasn't vaccinated in childhood, they could get the shots as late as 26 years old, or even later, if their doctor recommends it. People who start the vaccine series before their 15th birthday typically need two doses; those vaccinated later need three.

Since the vaccine's introduction, HPV vaccination rates in the U.S. have increased steadily, with 2023 data suggesting that approximately 76.8% of adolescents ages 13 to 17 have received at least one dose of the vaccine. However, vaccination rates appear to have stalled.

"Unfortunately, the current rate [of HPV vaccination in the U.S.] is still suboptimal and way below the Healthy People goal of 80%," Deshmukh said. This goal was set by the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. The goal's original deadline was 2020, when the department aimed to increase HPV vaccination rates among females ages 13 to 15 to 80%. This feat, which was not achieved by 2020, strove to have at least 4 in 5 girls in that age group protected by at least two doses of the HPV vaccine.

The new study didn't directly compare cervical cancer deaths with rates of HPV vaccination, so from the data at hand, the researchers cannot say the latter drove down the former. However, numerous other studies have provided evidence that vaccination has dramatically reduced HPV infections along with cervical cancer cases, as well as deaths associated with the disease.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said on Nov. 18 that the elimination of cervical cancer is "within our reach."

"Unlike most other cancers, almost all these cases and deaths can be averted," he wrote. Addressing worldwide inequities in access to HPV vaccines, as well as diagnostic tests and treatments for HPV and cervical cancer, could make cervical cancer the first cancer to ever be eliminated, Tedros said.

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People in the U.S. are at a higher risk of catching dengue fever this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warns. 

In a new health alert issued on Tuesday (June 25), CDC representatives said that people should be extra vigilant about this potentially deadly viral infection, which is spread to people via the bite of an infected mosquito. 

U.S.-based doctors should also be on the lookout for the disease, particularly in travelers returning from places where it regularly spreads. As of June 24 this year, 745 U.S. travelers have been diagnosed with dengue — a "higher-than-expected" number. By comparison, an average of about 1,600 travel-related cases were reported for the full year in 2022 and 2023, and historically, annual numbers were lower than that. 

Common dengue symptoms include a fever with aches and pains, nausea and a rash that starts out flat and red and then later looks similar to a measles rash. Symptoms usually develop within two weeks of a person being bitten by an infected mosquito, and in most people, these symptoms disappear within a week. 

Related: Scientists release genetically modified mosquitoes to fight dengue in Brazil

However, infants younger than 1 year old, pregnant people, adults over age 65 and people with certain medical conditions, such as diabetes, are at an increased risk of developing severe dengue, which can be fatal. This life-threatening condition can cause blood vessels to leak and the number of clot-forming cells in the blood to fall, leading to shock, internal bleeding and organ failure.

There is no specific treatment for dengue fever, but drugs such as painkillers can help manage a patient's symptoms, and in severe cases, supportive care in a hospital and blood transfusions may be needed.

The CDC's new warning comes as dengue cases rise worldwide this year.

Dengue fever is endemic to tropical and subtropical regions of the world. This year, various countries, such as Argentina and Brazil, have reported higher-than-usual case numbers. Across the Americas, more than 9.7 million dengue cases were reported between Jan. 1 and June 24 this year — twice the amount recorded in the whole of 2023. 

Dengue fever is endemic in six U.S. territories and freely associated states: Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Republic of Palau. Earlier this year, Puerto Rico declared a public health emergency over surging cases of dengue fever, which now total 1,498, according to the CDC. This has already surpassed the total figure for 2023, which was estimated to be 1,293 cases. 

Local transmission — meaning the disease has been detected in people who have not recently traveled to a region where dengue is endemic — is usually rare in the U.S. However, small outbreaks or sporadic cases have previously been recorded in Florida, Hawaii and Texas, and in the past two years, local transmission of dengue has been confirmed in Arizona and California respectively. 

As global cases of dengue soar, experts expect that cases in travelers returning to the U.S. from dengue-endemic areas will also rise. 

"We expect that most dengue cases in the U.S. this summer will occur among travelers returning from areas where outbreaks are happening," Dr. Albert Ko, a professor of public health at Yale University, told Live Science in an email. 

"But we need to be prepared for transmission in regions of the U.S. where the virus has circulated in the past, such as Puerto Rico, and parts of Florida, Texas and California," he said. "We also need to be on the lookout for dengue in regions of the U.S. where transmission hasn't been detected, but the mosquito that can carry the virus is present and has expanded because of increasing climate change." 

Mosquitoes in the genus Aedes can carry dengue, and higher temperatures can expand the range of such mosquitoes and also affect their breeding and biting habits. 

The CDC recommends taking measures to help prevent mosquito bites, such as wearing loose-fitting, long-sleeve pants and shirts while outdoors, using EPA-registered bug sprays, and controlling the spread of mosquitoes at home using window screens to stop the insects from getting indoors. 

Anyone with a fever or dengue symptoms who has lived in or traveled to a region with outbreaks should seek medical care, the agency noted. 

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

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Annual deaths from drowning in the U.S. have increased for the first time in decades, new data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reveals. 

More than 4,500 people died due to unintentional drowning each year between 2020 and 2022 — an increase from 2019, when about 4,000 people died from drowning. The biggest increase in deaths occurred in groups who were already at a higher risk of drowning; these include children below age 4 and adults over 65 of all races and ethnicities, as well as Black people of all ages. 

Broken down by age group, the highest overall drowning rates occurred among children between 1 and 4 years old. Drowning is the leading cause of death in that age group. By race and ethnicity, the highest rates were seen among Black and Native American or Alaska Native people. 

The recent surge in deaths may be tied to disruptions to infrastructure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers suggested in a report published online on May 14. Namely, access to lifeguards, swimming lessons and supervised swimming settings decreased as people spent more free time in or near water, they said.  

"I've seen firsthand the effects of drowning: families forced to say goodbye to their loved ones too soon," Dr. Debra Houry, chief medical officer for the CDC, said in a statement. "Understanding the barriers people face to accessing basic swimming and water safety skills training can help us better understand how to address those barriers, decrease drowning rates, and save lives."

Related: COVID pandemic knocked 1.6 years off global life expectancy, study finds

To get the new figures, the researchers analyzed data from the National Vital Statistics System, which contains the most complete record of U.S. deaths and their causes. For the new report, CDC researchers compared the unintentional drowning death rates reported in 2019, before the pandemic began, with those recorded in 2020, 2021 and 2022. 

Compared with 2019, children ages 1 to 4 saw a roughly 28% jump in drowning deaths in 2021 and 2022, the researchers found. Adults ages 65 and older had the second-highest drowning rate in all the years and also experienced significant upticks compared to 2019. For instance, people ages 65 to 74 years old were 19% more likely to drown in 2022 than in 2019, and those over age 85 had a nearly 50% higher chance of drowning in 2021 than 2019. 

People ages 15 to 34 experienced the biggest surge in drowning deaths between 2019 and 2020. Based on prior data, the researchers suspect alcohol use may have factored into this uptick, although alcohol use wasn't specifically accounted for in the new study.

Drowning rates among Native American or Alaska Native people didn't increase between 2020 and 2022, but these individuals were still more likely to drown than any other race or ethnicity, as has been seen in past reports, the CDC found. The second-highest drowning rates by race were among Black people — with a 28% increase in 2021 compared with 2019. 

The CDC also assessed people's swimming ability with a national survey. The agency estimates that around 40 million U.S. adults don't know how to swim, based on 15.4% of survey respondents saying they didn't know how to do so. More than 50% of respondents said they have never taken a swimming lesson. 

Social and structural barriers still limit people's access to training in swimming and water safety, the CDC wrote in the report. This lack of access reflects disparities in drowning rates — for example, more Black adults than white adults report not knowing how to swim or having never taken a swimming lesson. Addressing these barriers could help reduce drowning rates, the CDC said. 

In the meantime, the agency recommended several ways in which people can protect themselves and their loved ones from drowning, such as installing four-sided pool fencing, ensuring that children are always supervised while in the water and using life jackets while boating. 

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

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The polar vortex circling the Arctic is swirling in the wrong direction after surprise warming in the upper atmosphere triggered a major reversal event earlier this month. It is one of the most extreme atmospheric U-turns seen in recent memory.

In the past, disruptions to the polar vortex — a rotating mass of cold air that circles the Arctic — have triggered extremely cold weather and storms across large parts of the U.S.. 

The current change in the vortex's direction probably won't lead to a similar "big freeze." But the sudden switch-up has caused a record-breaking "ozone spike" above the North Pole.

The polar vortex is most prominent during winter months and extends into the stratosphere — the second layer of the atmosphere up to around 30 miles (50 kilometers) above the surface. The vortex spins counterclockwise with wind speeds of around 155 mph (250 km/h), which is around the same speed as a Category 5 hurricane, according to the U.K. Met Office. A similar vortex also encircles Antarctica during the southern winter.

Polar vortices occasionally reverse temporarily. These events can last for days, weeks or months and are caused by sudden stratospheric warming (SSW), when the temperatures in the stratosphere climb by as much as 90 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius) in the space of a couple of days, according to the Met Office. 

Related: 'One of the biggest on record': Ozone hole bigger than North America opens above Antarctica

The sudden warming is caused by "planetary waves" in the atmosphere — compression waves formed when air rises into a region of different density and is pushed back downward by the force of Earth's spin. This process disrupts or reverses the vortex flow.

The current reversal event in the Arctic began on March 4. However, the winds are starting to slow down, hinting that the vortex will return to its normal trajectory soon, Spaceweather.com reported.

"It was a substantial reversal," Amy Butler, a climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and author of NOAA's new polar vortex blog, told Spaceweather.com. The speed of the reversed winds puts the event in the top six on record, she added.

Disruptions to the polar vortex can impact weather in the U.S., such as in 2019 when a massive cold front descended across the Midwest. These extreme weather events occur when the polar vortex deforms the jet stream — an air current that surrounds the polar vortex — exposing lower latitudes to large blobs of icy Arctic air. 

This month's disruption did not change the shape of the jet stream, so weather patterns are expected to remain largely unaffected, according to Spaceweather.com. 

However, the change in air temperature around the Arctic has sucked up large amounts of ozone from lower latitudes, creating a temporary ozone spike — the opposite of an ozone hole. Currently, there is more ozone surrounding the Arctic than at this time during any other year on record, according to Spaceweather.com. However, this ozone spike will disappear after the polar vortex returns to normal 

The current reversal is the second of its kind this year, following a smaller event in January that did cause a brief cold snap in some states, Butler wrote in NOAA's polar vortex blog.

Historical records show that SSW events are more likely to occur during El Niño or La Niña, the two contrasting phases of a natural cycle of planet-wide warming and cooling. During these phases, global weather systems become more unstable, which sets the stage for more frequent reversal events, Butler wrote in the NOAA blog.

We are currently in the midst of a major El Niño, which could make further reversals or disruptions more likely over the next year or so.

Scientists experienced an "incredibly rare event" last week when they saw a gray whale cruising through New England's coastal waters.

The gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) was believed to be extinct in this part of the Atlantic Ocean; the species has not been spotted there in more than 200 years, according to a statement from Boston's New England Aquarium.

The gray whale is known for its mottled gray body and supreme size — females top out at 49 feet long (15 meters) and weigh 90,000 pounds (41,000 kilograms), on average. It lacks a dorsal fin; instead, it has a dorsal hump on its lower back, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

While conducting aerial surveys on March 1, researchers from the aquarium noticed the lone whale swimming 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of Nantucket, Massachusetts. The animal, which appeared to be hunting, "dove and resurfaced," enabling those on board the plane to photograph the whale in action. The scientists had an idea of what they were seeing, but they didn't know for sure until they returned to the aquarium to review the images.

"I didn't want to say out loud what it was, because it seemed crazy," Orla O'Brien, associate research scientist at the New England Aquarium's Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, said in the statement.

Related: Scientists finally figure out why hundreds of gray whales keep washing up dead along US coast

O'Brien shared her photos with fellow researchers, who confirmed that her suspicions were correct.

"My brain was trying to process what I was seeing, because this animal was something that should not really exist in these waters," Kate Laemmle, a research technician at the aquarium, said in the statement. "We were laughing because of how wild and exciting this was — to see an animal that disappeared from the Atlantic hundreds of years ago!"

While gray whales are common in the Pacific Ocean, the last recorded sighting in this part of the Atlantic occurred in the 18th century. In the past 15 years, only five of the creatures have been spotted in Atlantic and Mediterranean waters, including a rare sighting in December off the coast of Florida. Scientists think this could be the same whale. 

Experts are unclear as to why the whale traveled so far north, but they think climate change could be partially to blame. That's because the Northwest Passage, a sea lane in Canada connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, has been "regularly ice-free " in recent years, partly due to rising global temperatures," according to the statement.

"These sightings of gray whales in the Atlantic serve as a reminder of how quickly marine species respond to climate change, given the chance," O'Brien said in the statement. 

Scientists have uncovered more than 275 million previously unknown gene variants in the U.S. population, thanks to an ongoing project that aims to increase the diversity of the human genetic data available in medical research. 

The newfound variants were discovered in an analysis of nearly 250,000 complete genome sequences from more than 413,000 people, 77% of whom belonged to groups that have historically been underrepresented in biomedical research. These include, for example, people in minority ethnic and racial groups, people living in poverty, and those over age 65. 

The participants volunteered to have samples of their DNA taken and analyzed as part of the All of Us Research Program, a National Institutes of Health project intended to collect and study data on more than 1 million people in the U.S. Its goal is to provide a better representation of the demographic makeup of the country than genetic analyses based mostly on white people have historically done. The researchers behind the project believe that resources like All of Us could make drug development more relevant for a wide range of people. 

"All of Us is really meant to represent the full diversity of America," Dr. Alexander Bick, one of the scientists who collaborated on the project and an assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee, told Live Science. 

Related: 1st draft of a human 'pangenome' published, adding millions of 'building blocks' to the human reference genome

The new findings were described by Bick and colleagues in a paper published Monday (Feb. 19) in the journal Nature. Beyond showcasing the All of Us database as a "great research tool," four companion papers published at the same time also highlight the database's potential to tangibly affect people's health, Bick said. 

One paper published in the journal Nature Medicine, for instance, used All of Us data to calculate more-reliable estimates of people's risk of developing 10 chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, obesity and cancer. These risk predictions were based on an analysis of their genes. After conducting these calculations with the All of Us data, the researchers could predict future disease risk in 25,000 adults and children in a separate group of diverse ancestry, at least 35% of whom belonged to a racial or ethnic minority or medically underserved population. 

Another study, published in the journal Communications Biology, revealed that the rate of mutations in 73 genes associated with an increased risk of disease is lower in people of African ancestry (1.62%) than in people of European ancestry (2.26%.) These diseases included breast cancer and hypercholesterolemia, a condition in which a person has too much "bad" cholesterol, or low-density lipoprotein (LDL), in their blood. This discrepancy is largely caused by a lack of diversity in existing clinical datasets that didn't include enough people of non-European descent to confirm if these mutations were linked to disease in these individuals or not, Bick said. 

The All of Us project is one of a few initiatives globally that have been working to increase the diversity of genetic databases; until recently, most databases have been focused primarily on people of European ancestry. 

The project started recruiting participants in 2018 and has since been working with more than 50 health systems and community partners across the country to recruit as many people as possible, Bick said. Samples of blood, urine and saliva are donated by participants and then stored in a repository at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota so they can be used in future research. 

"The enhanced genetic diversity described in this new report by the All of Us research program, combined with related research efforts in the United States and globally, is an important first step toward ensuring equity in precision medicine," Malia Fullerton, a professor of bioethics and humanities at the University of Washington School of Medicine who was not involved in the research, told Live Science in an email. Precision medicine refers to treatments that are tailored to specific patients based on their genetics, environments and lifestyles.

"The next challenge will be to work in close collaboration with underrepresented communities to ensure that the predictive tests and therapies made possible by such datasets will be accessible to all," she said.

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Giant, invasive Jorō spiders have spread across several U.S. states during the last decade. Now, scientists have discovered these palm-size critters are potentially much more tolerant to living in cities than other species and appear to thrive alongside major roads, which could help give them a foothold (or eight) in major cities along the Eastern Seaboard.

Jorō spiders (Trichonephila clavata) are a species of orb-weaving spiders — a group known for creating highly symmetrical, circular webs. Jorōs are easily recognizable thanks to the distinctive yellow bands that adorn their otherwise black legs. They also build unique webs that can be more than 6 feet (1.8 meters) across and appear golden when they reflect sunlight. 

Female Jorōs, which can grow to around 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) across — around double the size of males — also have blue stripes and red patches on their predominantly yellow abdomens. 

After mating in early autumn, female Jorōs lay large, web-bound clusters of up to 400 eggs before dying off at the start of winter, along with the males. When the eggs hatch in spring, the baby spiders create parachute-like webs that enable them to fly up to 100 miles (160 kilometers) away from where they were born. 

Jorō spiders are endemic to Asia, and until recently they were only found in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China. However, in 2014, researchers spotted several Jorōs in the U.S. near Atlanta, Georgia. Experts believe these invasive individuals were accidentally brought to the U.S. inside a shipping container, according to a 2015 study. 

In the years since, Jorō spiders have quickly multiplied and spread in the U.S. thanks to their ability to widely disperse after birth. They are now found across Georgia, as well as in South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee. Additional sightings have also been reported in Alabama, Maryland, Oklahoma and West Virginia, and experts believe they could spread across the entire U.S. East Coast in the future.

Related: What is the deadliest spider in the world?

Since their arrival, researchers have noticed that Jorō webs are often located in close proximity to major highways. This is surprising because the vibrations caused by busy roads normally interfere with spiders' ability to hunt: When smaller critters get trapped in spider webs, they struggle to get free, which alerts the spiders to their presence, but busy roads can drown out these vibrations. Spiders are also very sensitive to vibrations in general.

In a new study published Feb. 13 in the journal Arthropoda, researchers investigated how vibrations impacted Jorō spiders. In the laboratory, the study team used tuning forks to simulate the vibrations given off by highways to see how it impacted the arachnids' ability to hunt simulated prey placed in their webs.

Across 350 trials, vibrated Jorōs attacked simulated prey 59% of the time, while non-vibrated Jorōs pounced on the dummy prey 65% of the time. The trials also showed that the "roadside" spiders were able to maintain a similar healthy body weight to the other spiders, indicating that the vibrations were not impacting them in the long term.

"The spiders seem to be able to make a living there," lead study author Andy Davis, an ecologist at the University of Georgia, said in a statement. They are surprisingly "urban tolerant," he added.

It is unclear what long-term effects Jorō spiders will have on the ecosystems they invade. Last year, researchers revealed that the spiders are unusually shy and non-aggressive toward other spiders. However, without a natural predator seeking them out, their numbers will likely continue to rise, which could help them outcompete other species for resources.  

But whatever their ecological effects, the new findings suggest these arachnid invaders aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

"I don't know how happy people are going to be about it, but I think the spiders are here to stay," study co-author Alexa Schultz, a third-year ecology student at the University of Georgia, said in the statement. And they could end up in places "where you wouldn’t imagine a spider to be," she added.

It may occur only from within a path 115 miles (185 kilometers) wide and 10,000 miles (16,000 km) long, but the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, will be one of the most urban eclipses for decades.

"The total eclipse of the sun next April 8 will envelop many millions of people," Michael Zeiler, eclipse cartographer at GreatAmericanEclipse.com, told Live Science's sister site Space.com in an email. "31 million people already live inside the path within the U.S., and when you add the millions more Mexicans and Canadians in the path, plus the visitors who come to see totality, between 40 and 50 million people will witness the total solar eclipse."

From Mazatlán and Torreón in Mexico via big cities in Texas, Indianapolis and Montreal in Canada, millions of city-dwellers across North America will witness totality from a city. About 10 million will be in just 10 cities, each with populations above 500,000.

Here are the most significant 10 cities in the path of totality — and what's being planned in each of them:

All times, totality durations and historical cloud statistics for April 8, 2024, come from the Eclipse Calculator — City Lookup on Timeanddate.com and eclipse expert Xavier Jubier's interactive Google Map.

MONTRÉAL, QUEBEC, CANADA

Montreal is right on the northern edge of the path of totality. The North Shore and even Laval must be avoided, with only the southern half of Île de Montréal within the path of totality. Totality will last longest close to the St. Lawrence River and peak at about 2 minutes at the Île aux Hérons Migratory Bird Sanctuary. It's been cloudy in Montreal on April 8, about 69% of the time since 2000.

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS, U.S.

Like Montréal, this city is split in two by the edge of the path of totality, in this case, the southern limit. However, unlike Montréal, the center of San Antonio lies outside of the path, with only its northern and western suburbs within it. It's been cloudy in San Antonio on April 8 about 55% of the time since 2000.

DALLAS-FORT WORTH METROPLEX, TEXAS, U.S.

Although it comes third on this list, the population of the wider metroplex includes more than 60 cities and over 8 million people. About 1.5 million visitors are expected to a region with the largest selection of hotels anywhere in the path of totality. Organizers are now adding new observing events all the time, with confirmed events including the Frontiers of Flight Museum and the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden. It's been cloudy in Dallas on April 8 about 60% of the time since 2000 and in Fort Worth about 49%.

AUSTIN, TEXAS, U.S.

Although many will stay in Austin and drive into the Texas Hill Country for a longer totality, central Austin will experience a relatively long totality. Just be sure to avoid its southeastern suburbs and Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, which will be outside the path. It's been cloudy in Austin on April 8 about 59% of the time since 2000.

INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA, U.S

A few big cities in the Midwest are close to the path of totality — among them Columbus, St. Louis, and Cincinnati — but only Indianapolis will experience totality There are big plans for Indy's 2024 Solar Eclipse Weekend, including events at Indianapolis Zoo, The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, Conner Prairie and Indiana State Museum NASA will broadcast internationally from a huge public event at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It's been cloudy in Indianapolis on April 8 about 60% of the time since 2000.

VICTORIA DE DURANGO, DURANGO, MEXICO

With a primarily dry climate year-round, this large city — the capital of Durango — will be where many tour groups are based. It could also be a venue for eclipse-chasers in Mazatlán, who must find clear skies if forecasts are poor. In a mountainous region and slightly south of the centerline, the city has a historic center with several well-preserved baroque buildings. It's been cloudy in Durango on April 8 about 30% of the time since 2000.

HAMILTON, ONTARIO, CANADA

A prominent port city on the western tip of Lake Ontario, Hamilton is part of Canada's Golden Horseshoe. It's set to be extremely busy on the day of the eclipse, despite only just being inside the northern limit of the path of totality, because of its proximity to Toronto, a city of 3 million that completely misses out on totality. It's been cloudy in Hamilton on April 8 about 61% of the time since 2000.

TORREÓN, COAHUILA, MEXICO

Given its higher chance of clear skies, this eclipse could go down in history as the Great Mexican Eclipse. If it does, a high proportion of Mexicans who experience the nation's first totality since 1991 will do so from the environs of this industrial town in the country's northwest. It's been cloudy in Torreón on April 8 about 27% of the time since 2000.

MAZATLÁN, SINALOA, MEXICO

Although it comes last on this list, the beach-blessed colonial town of Mazatlán in northwest Mexico has been in the plans of many eclipse-chasers for several years because of its low chance of clouds. While tourists will fill its resorts, locals will swarm its 4-mile (7 km) paved malecón boardwalk to be the first people in North America to see an eclipsed sun. It's been cloudy in Mazatlán on April 8, about 28% of the time since 2000.

The parasitic disease leishmaniasis used to crop up in the U.S. mostly among people who had traveled to tropical regions. But now, a unique, local strain of the parasite may be gaining a foothold in the country, a new study suggests.

In addition, there are potential concerns that imported dogs may be driving the spread of another form of the disease, a second research group has cautioned. 

Leishmaniasis is a neglected tropical disease caused by parasites; it spreads to humans through the bites of female sand flies (Phlebotomus), although in rare cases it can also spread via blood transfusions or through sharing contaminated needles. The most common form of the disease, called cutaneous leishmaniasis, causes skin sores and ulcers to erupt where someone is bitten, and if left untreated, these can become disfiguring scars. 

Cutaneous leishmaniasis has been detected in the U.S. before, notably in Southern states, such as Texas. However, such cases have been sporadic and seen mainly in people who have returned to the U.S. from countries where it's endemic, meaning where it typically spreads, such as parts of Central and South America, the Middle East, the Mediterranean and Central Asia. 

In the first of two presentations given Thursday (Oct. 19) at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) in Chicago, researchers reported that they detected a genetically distinct strain of a Leishmania parasite that causes cutaneous leishmaniasis. The newfound strain belongs to the species Leishmania mexicana, and it's different from strains that typically cause imported leishmaniasis cases in the U.S.

That suggests that the new strain is being spread by U.S. sand flies, Vitaliano Cama, one of the study's leaders and a senior adviser with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Parasitic Diseases and Malaria, told Live Science.

Related: Tick-borne parasite is spreading in the Northeast, CDC says

To arrive at these findings, the researchers genetically sequenced more than 2,000 tissue samples from patients with suspected cutaneous leishmaniasis across 50 U.S. states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands between 2005 and 2019. As of 2018, more than 80 cases of locally-caught human leishmaniasis have been reported in the U.S., but it's difficult to accurately estimate the case numbers. 

That's because, while cutaneous leishmaniasis is a reportable condition in Texas, meaning diagnoses must be reported to local public health officials, this isn't the case nationally. The new analysis therefore acted almost as a proxy for surveillance, allowing researchers to get a sense of how often the disease occurs, Cama said. 

Leishmania parasites were identified in 1,222 of the more than 2,000 tissue samples; more than 1,100 of the samples were from people who had traveled internationally, while 86 were from nontravelers. Of these 1,222 samples, 164 were L. mexicana, of which 52 cases, or 32%, occurred in Texas. L. mexicana was the most common species found among nontravelers, with more than 60% testing positive for it.   

The team detected two distinct strains of L. mexicana: ACT and CCC. The first appeared dramatically more prevalent in travelers, while the latter was much more common in nontravelers, especially those in Texas.

"These findings offer evidence that leishmaniasis may be endemic in the United States," the authors wrote in their abstract.

It is still unknown what pressures caused the CCC strain to evolve or whether it can spread between sand flies and humans more easily than other strains, Cama said. But the team hopes that their analysis will make it easier to detect locally-acquired cutaneous leishmaniasis cases if they crop up in additional regions of the U.S. 

There are also concerns that a different, deadlier form of the disease, called visceral leishmaniasis, may start spreading in the U.S., a second research group said at the ASTMH meeting. 

Visceral leishmaniasis is usually caused by the species L. donovani and L. infantum. The disease can cause fever, weight loss, anemia, and spleen and liver enlargement, and it's fatal in more than 95% of cases that aren't treated. In their presentation, the researchers cautioned that U.S. sand fly populations could be picking up L. infantum by feeding on imported dogs that carry the parasite.

"There's been a slow trickle of [infected] dogs being imported into the U.S.," specifically from countries where L. infantum is endemic, such as Turkey, Christine Peterson, director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the University of Iowa, told Live Science. Indeed, there have been past reports of L. infantum-carrying dogs being imported to the U.S. and Canada, and it's known that at least some breeds can pass the parasite to their puppies during pregnancy. 

"It turns out, because of where they came from, and exposures that usually their mom had, [these dogs] have had Leishmania infantum," Peterson said.

Peterson suspects that this issue could come to a climax due to several factors, including an uptick in people rescuing dogs from endemic countries, a lack of screening for these imported dogs, and a warming climate that could allow sand flies to expand their range. For these reasons, Peterson and her colleagues proposed a new risk assessment tool that could be used by veterinarians and public health officials to screen imported dogs and help control infection.

The new tool has yet to be tested, but Peterson said that her team will be providing it to state veterinarians and agencies for immediate use.

In the meantime, "the most straightforward way to control this disease, because dogs really are the reservoir, is to put the basic flea- and tick-insecticide impregnated collars on them or use some of the topical or oral ones," Peterson said. 

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

While descending to the moon's surface on July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin struggled with alarms from an overwhelmed computer and spotty communication with mission control in Houston, where controllers frantically flipped through notes to identify error codes. After enduring a nerve-wracking 13 minutes and overshooting their landing site by 4 miles (6 kilometers), the crew managed to touch down unharmed near the moon's equator with just 15 seconds' worth of fuel left, and radioed home a much-awaited message: "The Eagle has landed."

Between 1969 and 1972, the U.S. landed 12 astronauts on the moon as part of the Apollo program, which was formed primarily to beat the former Soviet Union to the moon in the heat of the Cold War. Now, more than 50 years after the first human landed on the moon, interest is once again surging to visit our celestial neighbor. This time, though, spacefaring nations are eyeing the lunar south pole, which has become a hotspot for both short- and long-term space exploration. 

Related: Scientists map 1,000 feet of hidden 'structures' deep below the dark side of the moon

Why focus on the lunar south? Because there, scientists think countless permanently shadowed areas host abundant deposits of frozen water that could be mined for life support and rocket fuel.

However, "it is speculation really; nobody knows" if there's plentiful water there, Martin Barstow, a professor of astrophysics and space science at the University of Leicester in the U.K., told Live Science. "And that's why it is important to go look."

Recently, multiple nations have been trying to do just that. 

Race to the lunar south

Russia's Luna 25 lunar probe attempted to land near the south pole on Aug. 19 but crashed after erratic communications following an important orbit maneuver, creating a 33-foot-wide (10 meters) crater on the moon's southeastern region.

A rare glimpse of success in the moon-landing pursuit came on Aug. 23, when India became the first nation to touch down near the lunar south pole with its Chandrayaan-3 mission. There, the country's robotic lander-rover duo spent a lunar day exploring the nearby region. The solar-powered explorers confirmed the presence of sulfur, an infrastructure-building ingredient that could be key to future camps; measured lunar temperature by inserting a probe into the soil for the first time; and likely detected a moonquake. In early September, the mission team put the duo into sleep mode, in hopes that fully charged batteries would push through the bitter night and wake up at the next lunar sunrise.

In 2026, China is planning to send its Chang'e-7 spacecraft on an ambitious endeavor to the lunar south pole. According to the mission plan, the spacecraft will consist of an orbiter, a lander, a rover, and a small, flying probe that will hunt for water ice in shadowed regions. Later this decade, NASA's Artemis moon program aims to land a crew near the south pole for a weeklong mission, with an Australian rover piggybacking on one of the missions.

Home, home on the moon?

For many nations engaged in the new space race, the goal is not just to visit the south pole — but to build a permanent presence there.

"With 50 years of technological progress, anybody can go to the moon — this time, to stay," Jack Burns, director of the NASA-funded Network for Exploration and Space Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder, told Live Science.

NASA's Artemis program, for example, aims to build a cabin on the moon for astronauts to live and work for two months at a time, when they will hone technology by using local resources, like water ice, for life support and rocket fuel generation.

"The idea of manufacturing in space is very interesting to a lot of people, but nobody has really done it yet," Barstow said. "And that, I think, is where we are sitting right now. We all know what we want to do. We can even conceive how we might do it. But we have to do those first engineering tests and see if we actually can."

Related: New poppy seed-sized fuel pellets could power nuclear reactors on the moon

Future space missions will grapple with the challenge of building materials that are both lightweight and strong enough to sustain launch loads. "We don't yet have the facilities to do that," Barstow said. Although getting to the moon's south pole is more challenging than a straightforward path to its equator, we already have the technology to do so. For example, the only way to land on the moon's south pole would be to perform a rocket-powered controlled descent. "The principles of that are fairly straightforward," Barstow said. The more pressing challenge will be nailing down how to land safely.

Ultimately, the pursuit to establish a sustainable presence on the moon will also serve as a stepping stone to get to Mars, scientists say. 

Although we may have the technology to send humans to visit the Red Planet, the costs involved are extremely high, and "no one government has the appetite for investing that amount of money that it requires just now," Barstow said. The logistics and human cost of establishing a Mars colony are also an open question in need of extensive research. With the race back to the moon finally kicking off in force, it may still be decades before any "Eagle" lands on Mars.

Around 200,000 Americans may die every year if global warming raises average temperatures to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial temperatures and cities don't prepare, a new study suggests. 

In 106 cities across the U.S., where 65% of the population lives, an average of 36,444 people died every year between 1987 and 2000 of temperature-related causes. Three-quarters of these deaths were in people who were age 75 or older. 

If warming reaches 5.4 F — which some climate experts warn may happen by the end of the century — and the country's proportion of elderly people increases as expected, this annual death toll could increase more than fivefold, the study predicted. This would amount to about one-third of the number of people who currently die from cancer each year in the country.  

Most of these additional deaths would occur in northern states, whose cities aren't well adapted to high temperatures.

However, cities that adapt to the heat, for instance by increasing access to air-conditioning (AC), could reduce these deaths by 28%, the authors of the study wrote in a paper published Aug. 15 in the journal GeoHealth. 

Related: This was the hottest summer ever recorded on Earth

"Climate change is going to pose a number of challenges to humanity; one of them will be temperature-related mortality," Andrew Dessler, study author and professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, told Live Science in an email. "We expect a large increase in the number of temperature-related deaths over the coming century, due primarily to an aging population." 

If the average temperature rises less than 5.4 F, climate change will slightly decrease temperature-related deaths as fewer people will die from cold weather, the study found. 

"Climate change will affect people differently depending on where they live and how much warming we get," Dessler said. "In general, the northern U.S. will see increases in temperature-related mortality, while the southern U.S. will see fewer deaths." This is because the southern U.S. is already well adapted to hot temperatures, he said, so will be able to handle more extreme heat better than northern states.

The study has several limitations. Firstly, it doesn't address other causes of death impacted by climate change, like those tied to pest-spread diseases or major hurricanes, for instance. The authors also grouped "temperature-related deaths" together by modeling how the average number of daily deaths fluctuates in relation to changes in average daily temperatures, meaning they weren't able to specify precise causes of death, such as by heat stroke. By focusing on medium-to-large cities, it also doesn't address how warming might affect rural areas.

Nevertheless, Vivek Shandas, a professor of climate adaptation at Portland State University who was not involved in the research, told Live Science that this study reinforces the need to rapidly change infrastructure, landscapes and communities to account for hotter summers, especially in the North. This may include allowing for greater shade and movement of air in building plans, shoring up the energy grid and expanding green space and tree canopy, he told Live Science in an email. 

Although it is important to be better prepared for more extreme temperatures, it is also crucial to tackle the underlying issue of reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to near zero to stabilize the climate, Dessler said.

"High temperatures this year have gone a long way in increasing the awareness of heat risks in the population and long-scale, cohesive policies would go a long way in helping minimize future health impacts," Stephen Fong, director for the Center for Integrative Life Sciences Education at Virginia Commonwealth University who was not involved in the research, told Live Science in an email. 

"While installing air conditioning may be an obvious short-term solution, it is more akin to a bandaid fix and we collectively need to address underlying issues including those leading to the increases in temperature," he said. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a health alert warning people about the risks of flesh-eating bacteria across the U.S. East Coast after five people died following infection. 

One person in Connecticut, another in New York and three people in North Carolina, died between July and August this year as a result of infection with Vibrio vulnificus, a deadly species of bacteria that lives in coastal waters. 

In a statement issued on Friday (Sep. 1), the CDC urged healthcare professionals and members of the public to be on high alert. 

"People who are at increased risk for V. vulnificus infection should exercise caution when engaging in coastal water activities," the CDC wrote. "Prompt treatment is crucial to reduce mortality from severe V. vulnificus infection."

Related: 'Flesh-eating' bacteria kill 3 in New York and Connecticut

Vibrio bacteria normally live in salt or brackish coastal waters. People become infected after being exposed to the bacteria, either through an open wound that has been in contact with infected water or raw or undercooked shellfish, or most commonly, by directly eating the latter. There are about a dozen Vibrio species that can make people sick, and around 80,000 people are infected with Vibrio bacteria in the U.S. every year, according to the CDC. Symptoms include diarrhea, stomach cramps, nausea and fever. 

Infection by V. vulnificus can also be fatal, and around 1 in 5 people die following infection, sometimes within a couple of days of getting sick, the CDC noted. People who have underlying health conditions, such as liver disease, diabetes and conditions that weaken the immune system, are at a higher risk of infection.

"V. vulnificus wound infections have a short incubation period [the time between infection and when symptoms first show] and are characterized by necrotizing [tissue killing] skin and soft tissue infection," the CDC noted. In some cases, people may also develop bleeding blisters. If left untreated, infection can spread throughout the body and cause blood poisoning. 

V. vulnificus normally thrives in warmer waters, especially between May and October, the agency said, with infections in the U.S. predominantly reported on the Gulf Coast. However, increased coastal sea surface temperatures and widespread heatwaves this summer have coincided with the reported infections across the East Coast. Indeed, rising coastal water temperatures associated with climate change have been previously linked with increasing rates of Vibrio infections, with the northern geographic range of V. vulnificus infections having increased by 48 kilometers a year between 1988 and 2018. 

Extreme weather, including hurricanes, floods and storms, can also push coastal water inland and increase the risk of infection, as was seen with Hurricane Ian last year. 

The CDC recommends that people stay out of salt or brackish water if they have an open wound, and to leave the water immediately if they are cut while swimming. Wounds should be covered with a waterproof bandage and washed thoroughly with soap and clean, running water. The agency also advises that raw oysters and other shellfish are cooked before eating, and that people wash their hands with soap and water after handling raw shellfish. Anyone with an infected wound should seek immediate medical attention, it said. 

A rare, mosquito-spread virus that can inflame the brain recently sickened two people in Alabama, one of whom died.

Both cases of the viral disease, called eastern equine encephalitis (EEE), occurred in Baldwin County, a coastal county just west of the Florida Panhandle, the Alabama Department of Public Health reported Monday (Aug. 21).

One case occurred in the city of Spanish Fort, and the other happened near the city in an unincorporated area, Spanish Fort Mayor Mike McMillan told the local news site AL.com. In a Facebook post, city officials noted that the streets and roadways are sprayed for mosquitoes weekly, but residents should still take precautions to protect themselves from bites.

The county and state health departments are also working with the city to set mosquito traps, in order to test the pests for the EEE virus.

Related: Should we kill every mosquito on Earth?

The EEE virus is endemic to, or found in North America and the Caribbean, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Birds in freshwater hardwood swamps carry the virus, and a mosquito species (Culiseta melanura) that mostly feeds on bird blood picks up the pathogen and spreads it to other birds. Then, mosquitoes that bite both birds and mammals act as a bridge, passing the virus from infected birds to horses and to humans.

There's an EEE vaccine available for horses, but there isn't one for humans. That's partly because humans rarely become sick when infected with the EEE virus. "Overall, only about 4-5% of human EEEV infections result in EEE," the CDC states.

For those who do get sick, there are no specific treatments available; medical care involves measures like intravenous fluids and pain medications.

People's symptoms usually appear about four to 10 days after a mosquito bite. Some people develop only symptoms of fever, which can cause chills, body aches and joint pain, and they typically recover. Others develop both fever and neurological symptoms, including headache, vomiting, diarrhea, seizures, behavioral changes, drowsiness and coma. These are signs that the virus is causing brain inflammation (encephalitis) or inflammation in the tissue that surrounds the brain and the spinal cord (meningitis).

One-third of people who develop encephalitis due to EEE die, often two to 10 days after their first symptoms, the CDC estimates. Those who recover typically have long-term impairments, ranging from mild brain dysfunction to severe intellectual impairment, seizures and paralysis. Many require ongoing medical care and die within a few years.

Across the whole U.S., an average of 11 cases of EEE are reported each year. But the exact number of annual cases can vary — for example, 38 were reported in 2019, compared with only one in 2022.

The CDC's data for 2023 shows that one case has been reported in Louisiana, so far, but as of Aug. 23, the tracker has not yet been updated to reflect the two new Alabama cases. That said, the CDC noted that the agency had already received reports of "non-human activity," meaning mosquitoes or animals infected with the EEE virus, in both Baldwin County, Alabama and the neighboring county of Mobile.

A rare case of mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), has been detected at a slaughter plant in South Carolina but poses no threat to humans or other cattle. It is only the seventh confirmed case of the extremely deadly disease ever recorded in the U.S. 

Officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the discovery in a statement released May 19. A 5-year-old beef cow belonging to a herd from Tennessee tested positive for BSE after being deemed unfit for slaughter and undergoing routine testing.

"This animal never entered slaughter channels and at no time presented a risk to the food supply or to human health in the United States," USDA representatives wrote in the statement. An investigation into the exact cause of the infection is ongoing, but it is likely an isolated case, they added.

BSE is a progressive neurological disorder of cattle caused by proteins called prions; prions are found on the surface of cells, but in diseases like mad cow, these proteins fold abnormally and can cause other, healthy prions to do the same. In BSE, the prions affect proteins in the brain and central nervous system, causing a range of symptoms, including behavioral changes, coordination problems, weight loss, decreased milk production and eventually, death, according to the USDA.

There are two forms of BSE: classical BSE, which develops when a cow ingests infected material, such as meat or bone meal, made from an infected cow in their feed; and atypical BSE, which develops spontaneously in older cattle. The recently diagnosed cow had atypical BSE, which poses less of a concern for animal welfare officials. 

Related: Cows fed hemp act stoned and produce milk containing THC

There are two forms of BSE: classical BSE, which develops when a cow ingests infected material, such as meat or bone meal, made from an infected cow in their feed; and atypical BSE, which develops spontaneously in older cattle. The recently diagnosed cow had atypical BSE, which poses less of a concern for animal welfare officials. 

 Atypical vs. classical BSE 

Both classical and atypical BSE are caused by prions, but each of the two forms has a unique prion structure and is triggered in different ways. 

Classical BSE was first discovered in 1986 in the U.K.. The BSE outbreak peaked there in January 1993,  when cases spiked to around 1,000 a week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Scientists eventually discovered that the prions were being transmitted through the cows' feed, which contained infected brain and spinal tissues left over from the butchering of the animals. In 1997, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned the use of use of ruminant  — a group of hoofed, herbivorous grazing mammals that includes cattle, bison, goats, sheep and deer — protein in feed for other ruminants, and it later prohibited the use of certain high-risk cattle tissues in feed for all animals, according to the USDA.

Atypical BSE appears to sometimes form spontaneously in cattle that are normally older than 8 years, which makes the disease's emergence in a 5-year-old cow unusual. It is currently unclear what triggers atypical BSE.

It can take three to six years for the symptoms of either BSE form to appear after infection, and there is currently no cure or vaccine for the disease, according to USDA.

Can humans get mad cow disease? 

Humans cannot get BSE directly, but they can develop a similar and equally deadly type of prion disease known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) by eating food products made from infected cattle.  vCJD causes symptoms similar to BSE and also results in death. However, it is extremely rare. As of 2019, only 232 people worldwide have ever been diagnosed with vCJD, according to the FDA. 

In an unusual case, a lab technician in France died in June 2019 from vCJD after accidentally injecting herself with BSE prions through her protective equipment as she was studying the disease in 2010.

The World Organisation for Animal Health recognizes the U.S. as having negligible risk for BSE, and this new case will not change that, USDA representatives wrote.

An extremely rare litter of critically endangered red wolf pups has been born in the wild for the second time in five years. The wolf parents have also adopted a captive-bred pup into the new brood for the first time, further raising hopes that the species can be saved from extinction.

The litter consists of three females and two males and was born in early April in Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Red Wolf Recovery Program (RWRP). The RWRP announced the news May 10 on Facebook, along with images of the adorable pups.

The mother, known as 2225, and father, known as 2323, had another litter of five in 2022, which were the first documented wild births since 2017. The pups from the 2022 litter have remained with their parents and are expected to help rear their baby siblings, according to RWRP representatives.

Due to the parents' success at raising their first litter — and the added support their first litter will provide — conservationsits were confident that a sixth pup could be introduced into the pack. A few weeks after the litter was born, a male pup, which was born at the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Washington state, was introduced to the litter and adopted by the parents. This brings the pack to 13 individuals, making it the largest known red wolf group in the wild.

Related: Twin polar bear sisters reunited years after mother rejected one of them 

The new litter is "a cause for joy and celebration," RWRP representatives wrote on Facebook. "Every generation yields a newborn hope for [the] recovery of the red wolf."

Red wolves (Canis rufus) are currently listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. There are only between 20 and 30 individuals in the wild, not counting the new pups. The red wolf population lives exclusively in North Carolina, but the canines once roamed the southeast and south-central U.S. in great numbers before being driven to the brink of extinction by hunting, habitat destruction and hybridization with coyotes, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

There are also around 270 captive red wolves in zoos across North America, according to The Wildlife Society. Continuing to introduce captive wolves into the wild, either by releasing adults or fostering pups into wild packs, will be necessary to increase genetic diversity in the wild and prevent inbreeding, which can lead to genetic conditions that impact survival.

In the future, cloning could also potentially be used to help increase the population of red wolves. In September 2022, scientists in China announced that, for the first time, they had successfully cloned an Arctic wolf pup (Canis lupus arctos), which was born to a surrogate beagle mother. But there are no current cloning projects for red wolves.

Red wolves are not the only U.S. species struggling to survive in a rapidly changing world. In February, NatureServe, a conservation group focused on biodiversity in North America, released a report that revealed up to 40% of animal species and 34% of plant species are at risk of going extinct in the country. 

In 2021, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed 23 species from the Endangered Species Act because they had not been seen in the wild for decades and have most likely gone extinct.

A bizarre, aurora-like phenomenon known as STEVE made several appearances across the United States and parts of the United Kingdom last week, after a powerful solar storm slammed into Earth without warning. 

STEVE, also known as a "strong thermal emission velocity enhancement," is a rare phenomenon that was officially discovered in 2016. During STEVE, a long, thick ribbon of light — usually white, purple or green in color — appears to hang in the sky for up to an hour. Although it looks very similar to auroras, or northern lights, and often appears at the same time, STEVE is not an aurora.

On March 23, a surprise coronal mass ejection (CME) — a gargantuan, fast-moving blob of plasma and magnetic field released from the sun — erupted from a massive hole in the sun that was wider than 20 Earths. Astronomers did not see the stealthy storm coming because it traveled much slower than normal CMEs and was therefore almost impossible to track. The resulting geomagnetic storm on Earth was the most powerful for six years and triggered spectacular auroras across the globe.  

Related: Blood-red aurora transforms into 'STEVE' before stargazer's eyes

The sneaky solar storm also triggered unusually widespread sightings of STEVE. The phenomenon was photographed in South Dakota, Washington state, Idaho, Montana (twice) and in Scotland in the U.K., and it may have been visible in other places as well, according to Spacewaether.com.

During auroras, highly energetic particles from solar storms and solar wind break through the planet's magnetic field, or magnetosphere, and excite molecules of gas in the upper atmosphere. This creates swirling lights that ebb and flow over time. But STEVE is not triggered by high-energy particles and can occur much further away from Earth's poles than auroras tend to appear — although scientists are still unsure why. 

Instead, STEVE is caused by a river of hot plasma, or ionized gas, that breaks through Earth's magnetosphere and into the ionosphere thanks to magnetic disturbances during solar storms. This plasma travels at around 13,300 mph (21,400 km/h), which creates friction with the surrounding air and excites molecules to glow in the same way as an aurora. But the constant flow of plasma causes an unmoving visual phenomenon for an observer compared with the dancing lights of auroras. 

STEVE can also be accompanied by streaking green lights, or "picket fences," that flash in the sky for around 30 seconds before disappearing. Experts believe these picket fences form in a similar way to auroras, but the streaking lights are not fully understood.

This is not the first time STEVE has made an appearance above North America. In August 2022, STEVE was spectacularly photographed after it emerged in the skies above southern Canada after another surprise solar storm hit Earth. 

The fungus Candida auris, which causes a highly infectious and potentially deadly infection, is spreading faster in U.S. health care facilities and likely becoming more resistant to treatments, a new study shows. 

C. auris is a fungal species of yeast that can infect humans and spread in the blood to major organs. The infection occurs most often in healthcare settings and long-term care facilities and is rare in healthy individuals. But for people who are immune compromised or receive regular invasive treatments for other illnesses, it can often be fatal.

The first C. auris infection was documented in Japan in 2009 and the fungus has since been found in many other countries, including the U.S., which had its first confirmed case in 2016. The disease made headlines back in 2019 when the number of cases began to sharply climb worldwide, and it still "presents a serious global health threat" today, according to the Centers for Disease Control and and Prevention (CDC). 

In the new study, published March 21 in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers conducted a new assessment of C. auris cases recorded in the U.S. between 2019 and 2021. In total, 10,683 cases were recorded during this period: 3,270 of the cases were clinical infections, meaning the patient showed symptoms before being tested, and 7,413 cases were screening colonizations, meaning that people carried the fungus but showed no symptoms before being tested during routine screening. People carrying the fungus can still spread the pathogen, and they may develop symptoms of illness later on.

Related: Cause of mysterious brain-invading-fungus outbreak finally discovered 

The number of clinical infections increased year on year during the study period. In 2019 there was a 44% increase compared with 2018; in 2020 there was a 59% spike compared with 2019; and in 2021 there was a 95% surge compared with 2020. (The study did not include data on the number of fatalities among clinical infections.)

This shows that the rate of transmission is likely increasing, study lead author Dr. Meghan Lyman, a medical officer at the CDC, told Live Science in an email. "The number of cases has continued to increase since 2021," she added.

The number of screening colonizations also increased significantly during the study period. But this is partially due to an increase in the number of screening tests. In 2019, there were 19,756 tests conducted nationwide, but in 2021, there were more than 40,000 tests. This suggests that the number of colonizations could be underreported due to a lack of screening tests, which could be helping the disease to spread, Lyman said.

The number of states that have recorded C. auris cases has also increased, from 10 states in 2018 before the study began to 27 states in 2021.

Another key finding of the new study is that C. auris is becoming increasingly resistant to treatments. 

"There are only three main classes of antifungal medications used to treat Candida infections: azoles, polyenes and echinocandins," Lyman said. A majority of C. auris cases are resistant to azoles and a high percentage are also resistant to polyenes. But the number of cases of echinocandin-resistant C. auris has remained very low and, as a result, echinocandins have become the preferred treatment option for C. auris, Lyman said. 

However, the number of echinocandin-resistant cases has increased in recent years. Six cases were reported between 2016 and 2019, another six cases were reported in 2020, and 19 were reported in 2021, which suggests the fungus is slowly becoming more resistant to this treatment. But new antifungals are in the early stages of being developed to help treat future infections, Lyman said.

Since C. auris is mainly transmitted in hospitals and other healthcare settings, researchers suspect that the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic may have played a role in the fungus' spread.

"Gaps in case detection and infection control existed before the COVID-19 pandemic, but pandemic-related strain on the health care and public health systems likely contributed to [increased] transmission," Lyman said. 

However, for healthy people who are not regularly exposed to a healthcare setting, the risk of being infected or colonized by C. auris remains "low," Lyman said. But increased screening and better transmission control in healthcare settings are needed to keep the fungus under control, she added. 

The U.S. Navy has confirmed that a wreck off the Japanese island of Hokkaido is that of USS Albacore, one of the most successful U.S. submarines of World War II.

The submarine is thought to have sunk on Nov. 7, 1944, when Japanese surface ships recorded an underwater explosion in the area, probably after the sub struck a naval mine. The Albacore was on a wartime patrol at that time, and all 85 crewmembers on board were killed when the submarine went down.

A team of Japanese researchers working for a nonprofit group found the wreck last year. Tamaki Ura, a professor emeritus of engineering at the University of Tokyo and the director of the La Plongée Society for Deep Sea Engineering, told Live Science that the main reason for searching for the wreck was that so many lives were lost in its sinking.

The research for the project started in 2019, but an initial survey scheduled for 2020 had to be postponed until 2022 due to COVID-19 restrictions, Ura said in an email.

Related: 30 incredible sunken wrecks from WWI and WWII

 Submarine wreck 

According to U.S. Navy records, USS Albacore (SS-218) was one of the most successful American submarines of World War II, with 10 confirmed sinkings of enemy vessels and three unconfirmed sinkings. Six of the 10 confirmed sinkings were combat ships, and the submarine was awarded nine battle stars and four Presidential Unit Citations for extraordinary heroism.

The Albacore's most famous engagement was its June 1944 sinking by torpedo of the aircraft carrier Taiho — at that time, the newest and largest of Japan's aircraft carriers — near Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, which were then occupied by the Japanese but are now a U.S. commonwealth.

Strong currents, marine growth and poor visibility at the site have made it challenging to fully document the wreck, according to a statement from the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC).

But several distinctive modifications, including a radar dish and a row of vent holes on the superstructure, have enabled researchers to confirm that the wreck is that of USS Albacore, the statement said.

War grave

A U.S. Navy spokesperson noted that the loss of the Albacore's 85 crewmembers means the wreck is a war grave and protected under U.S. law.

"It is a hallowed site that represents the last resting place of American sailors who made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our nation," Lt. Ian McConnaughey, a spokesperson at the NHHC told Live Science in an email. "When we find a ship like this, it's akin to Arlington National Cemetery for the Navy."

The depth of the wreck means it's almost impossible for divers to get there, and McConnaughey said the NHHC has no plans to investigate it further.

"It is our hope that the known location of Albacore provides some measure of closure to surviving family members of its crew," he said. 

According to CNN, since the submarine's discovery, the Pearl Harbor-based group On Eternal Patrol has been able to locate and notify relatives for 76 of the 85 crew on board USS Albacore when it sank.

Sea levels are likely rising faster than previously thought, meaning low-lying coastal cities in the U.S. could flood far more regularly in the coming decades, a NASA study has revealed.

According to the study, which analyzed three decades of satellite observations, by 2050, sea levels along the coastlines of the contiguous U.S. could rise as much as 12 inches (30 centimeters) above current waterlines, the research team said in a statement. The Gulf Coast and Southeast are expected to be most severely impacted, and will likely experience increased storm and tidal flooding in the near future, according to the study, published Oct. 6 in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

The findings support the "higher-range" scenarios laid out in February in the multi-agency Sea Level Rise Technical Report. The report suggested that "significant sea level rise" is liable to hit U.S. coasts within the next 30 years, predicting 10 to 14 inches (25 to 35 cm) of rise on average for the East Coast; 14 to 18 inches (35 to 45 cm) for the Gulf Coast; and 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 cm) for the West Coast."

NASA's study built on methods used in the earlier multi-agency report, and was headed by a team of researchers and scientists based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, which is dedicated to both exploring the deepest recesses of space, and also using satellites to "advance understanding" of Earth.

NASA's research harnessed satellite altimeter measurements of sea surface height and then correlated them with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tide gauge records dating back over 100 years. As a result, NASA can confidently state that its satellite readings are not anomalous, and are fully supported by findings on the ground.

Related: Climate summit agrees to 'historic' loss-and-damage fund — but misses warming goals

While the new study's findings are undoubtedly cause for concern, Jonathan Overpeck, an interdisciplinary climate scientist at the University of Michigan who was not involved with the research, suggested that the projections have by no means come out of the blue. 

"NASA's findings appear robust and they are not surprising. We know that sea level rise is accelerating and we know why," he told Live Science in an email. "More and more polar ice is melting, and this is on top of the oceans expanding as they warm. Clearly, the sea level rise will get worse as long as we let climate change continue."

This viewpoint is shared by David Holland, a physical climate scientist and professor of mathematics at New York University who was not involved with the study. "The quality of the satellite data is excellent, and so the findings are reliable," Holland told Live Science in an email. "The study shows that the global ocean is rising, and more than that, the rise is accelerating. The projected rise for the Gulf coast of about 1 foot by 2050 is enormous. This can make hurricane-related storm surges even worse than is presently the case."

Other factors may also contribute to rising sea levels along the U.S. coastline. The study indicated that the issues associated with rising sea levels could be "amplified by natural variabilities on Earth," such as the effects of El Niño and La Niña by the mid-2030s, with every U.S. coast set to encounter "more intense high-tide floods due to a wobble in the moon's orbit that occurs every 18.6 years," according to the statement.

The effects of El Niño — the warming of surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean near South America which can lead to increased rainfall — and La Niña — the cooling of surface ocean waters in the Pacific — can make accurately forecasting sea level rise a challenge, and can potentially skew readings. Ben Hamlington, leader of the NASA Sea Level Change Team, noted that natural events and phenomena will always need to be taken into consideration, and said that all forecasts will inevitably be refined as satellites gather data over time.

Despite the study's bleak findings, some experts are hopeful that impactful, high-profile research such as this will compel decision-makers to focus on addressing the ongoing climate crisis and encourage the public to demand effective measures be introduced.

"It is impossible to ignore. I think this [increased flooding] is catalyzing action, as many coastal communities are discussing these issues and how they respond," said Robert Nicholls, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the U.K., who was not involved with the study. "We have the means to deal with this challenge in terms of mitigation to stabilize global temperatures and slow — but not completely stop — sea level rise, which, unfortunately, will continue for centuries due to the warming we have already experienced."

Ultimately, humanity will need to adapt as climate change alters our planet's oceans and seas. 

"This could involve retreat in some places, raising land in other places, and defenses elsewhere," Nicholls told Live Science. "There is no one solution that will be applicable everywhere. If we follow this path the future is manageable. Equally, if governments and society ignore these issues, the future will be a real mess."

After nearly a decade with no reported polio cases in the U.S., a resident of Rockland County, New York has tested positive for the viral disease, state and county health officials announced Thursday (July 21).

The infected individual caught a strain of poliovirus known as "revertant polio Sabin type 2 virus," tests performed by the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) revealed. Unlike wild polioviruses, this type of virus derives from the live oral polio vaccine, which has not been administered in the U.S. since 2000.

The U.S. and many other countries discontinued use of the oral vaccine because the shot contains live, but weakened, polioviruses that can be shed in the stool of vaccinated people, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). In rare instances, these weakened viruses have evolved to behave more like wild, naturally-occurring polioviruses that can cause illness in people who aren't fully vaccinated. Due to this risk, the U.S. now only administers "inactivated" polio vaccines, and for polio to be fully eradicated, all countries will eventually need to halt their use of the oral vaccines.

Because the New York resident tested positive for a vaccine-derived poliovirus, this suggests that "the virus may have originated in a location outside of the U.S. where [oral polio vaccine] is administered, since revertant strains cannot emerge from inactivated vaccines," the health department statement notes. The last polio case reported in the U.S. occurred in 2013 and was also caused by a vaccine-derived strain.

Related: Poliovirus detected in London sewage, UK officials warn 

"Based on what we know about this case, and polio in general, the Department of Health strongly recommends that unvaccinated individuals get vaccinated or boosted with the FDA-approved IPV polio vaccine as soon as possible," State Health Commissioner Dr. Mary T. Bassett said in the statement. 

"The polio vaccine is safe and effective, protecting against this potentially debilitating disease, and it has been part of the backbone of required, routine childhood immunizations recommended by health officials and public health agencies nationwide," Bassett said.

The polio vaccine is part of the required school immunization schedule for all U.S. children, so many people are protected from a young age. However, completely unvaccinated individuals and those who have not completed their polio vaccine series should seek vaccination, NYSDOH recommends. In addition, people who are already vaccinated but are at risk of exposure should seek a booster shot.

On Friday (July 22) morning, Rockland County will host a polio vaccination clinic at the Pomona Health Complex (Building A) at 50 Sanatorium Road in Pomona, New York. A second clinic at the same location will be held in the afternoon on Monday (July 25). 

New Yorkers can pre-register for a free appointment here or call 845-238-1956 to schedule. Walk-ins will also be accepted. Vaccines are also available through local healthcare providers, including Federally Qualified Health Centers. 

Originally published on Live Science.

Doctors diagnosing monkeypox should be on the lookout for symptoms that don't quite match the typical descriptions of the disease, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned June 14.

The monkeypox virus belongs to the same family and genus as the virus that causes smallpox and triggers similar, but milder, symptoms, according to the CDC. At the start of the infection, people usually develop fever, headache, muscle aches, swollen lymph nodes and fatigue. Then the characteristic rashes associated with monkeypox begin to appear. These rashes typically progress through several stages, initially looking like discolored patches of skin then raised bumps, then blisters and finally large, pus-filled pimples; eventually, these skin lesions scab over and fall off.

Historically, monkeypox rashes tend to erupt around the face and in the oral cavity, first, and then may progress to the extremities, including the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. However, some of the recent monkeypox cases in the U.S. have diverged from this pattern, the CDC reported. 

Many U.S. patients' rashes have initially appeared around the genitals and anus, as well as the tissues lining the mouth. In some patients, these rashes have caused pain in the anus and rectum, rectal bleeding, painful inflammation of the rectal lining (proctitis) and the sensation of having to pass stool when the bowels are empty (tenesmus). These symptoms are not included in the typical descriptions of monkeypox.

Related: The deadliest viruses in history 

In some cases, patients' rashes have either been "scattered or localized to a specific body site," apart from the face and extremities, the CDC noted. Rashes in different stages of progression have sometimes appeared alongside each other at the same body site. And the usual flu-like symptoms of fever, swollen lymph nodes and fatigue "have not always occurred before the rash if they have occurred at all."

Similarly odd presentations of monkeypox have been seen in other countries impacted by the current outbreak. "It’s now clear that there is an unusual situation, meaning even the virus is behaving unusually from how it used to behave in the past," Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General, said at a briefing, according to NBC News.

In general, symptoms of monkeypox infections can resemble those caused by the Varicella zoster  virus, which causes chickenpox, and they can also look like certain sexually transmitted infections, such as syphilis and herpes, the CDC noted. If a patient appears to have one of these illnesses, clinicians should perform a thorough examination of the skin and mucosal tissues, including the anal, vaginal and oral tissues, to rule out monkeypox as a diagnosis. 

People who develop potential symptoms of monkeypox should contact their healthcare provider, especially if they meet the following criteria:

• Have traveled to countries where monkeypox cases have been reported 
• Had recent contact with a person who has a similar rash or received a diagnosis of confirmed or suspected monkeypox 
• Had close or intimate in-person contact with individuals in a social network experiencing monkeypox infections 

"Any person, irrespective of gender identity or sexual orientation, can acquire and spread monkeypox. In this outbreak, however, many of the reported cases in the United States are among gay, bisexual, or other men who have sex with men," the CDC noted. For this reason, the health agency has emphasized that men who have sex with men should be aware that the virus may be spreading within their social networks. 

As of June 24, just over 4,100 monkeypox cases have been detected in 47 countries and territories, according to the CDC; this global case count, which is subject to change, includes both confirmed monkeypox infections and infections attributed to an Orthopoxvirus — the genus of viruses that includes monkeypox. 

In the U.S., 201 such cases have been identified in 25 states and the District Of Columbia, so far, the CDC reported. 

Originally published on Live Science. 

U.K. health officials are investigating dozens of cases of unexplained hepatitis, or liver inflammation, that have recently emerged among young children there. Similar cases of pediatric hepatitis have also been reported in the U.S. and Spain.

Some of the affected children in the U.K. have required assessment at specialized centers and a "small number" of kids have undergone liver transplantation procedures, the U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA) announced on April 8. Although hepatitis viruses (hepatitis A, B, C, D and E) are often the cause of hepatitis, these viruses have been ruled out, the statement said. Potential complications of hepatitis include liver failure and death, and liver transplants are typically used to treat end-stage liver failure, according to Stanford Children's Health.

"That's the only definitive treatment for acute liver failure," said Dr. Rachel Tayler, a pediatric gastroenterologist at the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow. 

Tayler and her colleagues authored a report about recent hepatitis cases among children in Scotland, which was published Thursday (April 14) in the journal Eurosurveillance. In most of these cases, the children recovered with only supportive care in the hospital, which involved maintaining their fluid levels and nutrition and monitoring for blood clots. However, in a minority of cases, children needed to be assessed for potential liver transplants, and in some cases, underwent transplant surgery, Tayler told Live Science.

Related: Nobel Prize in Medicine goes to discoverers of hepatitis C

As officials continue to investigate the cause of these severe acute hepatitis cases, clinicians have been urged to look out for potential signs and symptoms of liver inflammation in pediatric patients, the UKHSA statement reads. The condition is sometimes preceded by gastrointestinal symptoms, including vomiting and abdominal pain, and affected children often develop jaundice, meaning yellowing of the skin or the whites of the eyes. "In milder cases, it can be quite difficult to see," Tayler noted. 

Other potential symptoms of hepatitis include dark urine, pale feces, itchy skin, joint stiffness, muscle pain, fever, nausea, abdominal pain, lethargy and loss of appetite, according to the UKHSA statement.

"Parents should be cautioned to take seriously children who have severe vomiting or who develop jaundice and should seek medical attention immediately if these occur," Dr. Jeremiah Levine, director of the Division of Pediatric Gastroenterology at NYU Langone Health, who was not involved in the investigation, told Live Science in an email. Children should wash their hands to prevent potential exposure to viruses that can cause hepatitis, Tayler said. If any kids catch an infection, they should be kept home to prevent spread of the germ, she added.

As the investigation unfolded in the U.K., another cluster of unexplained pediatric hepatitis cases was reported in the United States. 

Dr. Hannah Kirking, a medical epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), informed the Eurosurveillance report authors that the U.S. agency is investigating a cluster of hepatitis and adenovirus cases among children in the country. Specifically, nine such cases have been reported in children ages 1 to 6 in Alabama, according to STAT. These cases occurred between October 2021 and now.  

Three additional hepatitis cases have been reported in Spain, in children between 22 months and 13 years old, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported Friday (April 15). Five more confirmed or possible cases have been reported in Ireland and are now under investigation, the WHO noted.

In general, severe acute liver disease in children is "relatively uncommon but occurs occasionally," Levine said. These bouts of severe liver disease tend to be caused by an infectious agent, like a virus, but that said, affected children should undergo a complete evaluation to check that they don't have an underlying metabolic disorder, Levine added.

In regard to the hepatitis cases in U.K. children, "what is unusual is the number of patients affected and the clustering of cases in the U.K.," Levine said. "The severity is unfortunately relatively typical."

Related: How do you die from hepatitis A?

In England, there are 60 cases of pediatric hepatitis under investigation, most in children ages 2 to 5, according to UKHSA. And so far, 13 cases have been identified among young children in Scotland, according to the Eurosurveillance report.

The first cases in Scotland were reported on March 31 by the Scottish NHS. Within a three-week period, five children, ages 3 to 5, had been brought to the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow with severe hepatitis of unknown cause. In a typical year, fewer than four unexplained hepatitis cases are reported in Scotland, the report notes. 

"Very quickly, over the course of a week, I had seen four, and then five [cases]," Tayler told Live Science. "The initial cases all presented with jaundice … what the parents picked up is that the children had just gone yellow." 

After the NHS issued its alert about the cases, Public Health Scotland (PHS) launched an investigation into these first five cases, which are described in detail in the Eurosurveillance report.  Clinicians tested the children's blood upon admission and found "exceptionally high" levels of alanine aminotransferase, a liver enzyme whose quantity tends to increase in the blood after liver damage.

Three out of the five children were transferred to specialized centers in England to be evaluated for liver transplant, and one child received a transplant.

After investigating these five cases, the PHS team launched a wider investigation to see if any other children had been admitted to Scottish hospitals with unusually high liver enzyme levels or jaundice of unknown cause. Through this search, they identified eight additional cases of acute hepatitis of unknown origin in children between 3 and 5 years old, bringing the total number of cases to 13. Twelve of these cases occurred in March and April, and the other case occurred in January. 

All the children had been admitted to a hospital for at least six days as of April 14, and five were still hospitalized, including the one who'd undergone transplant surgery in England.

Four of the 13 children had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in the weeks or months before their hospitalization; and one tested positive on a rapid test for the coronavirus upon their admission, but this result was not confirmed with a PCR test. Five of 13 children tested positive for adenovirus on a PCR test of their blood, stool or throat swabs at the time of admission. 

What is causing these cases? 

The cause of these hepatitis cases remains unknown, but officials suspect that the culprit to be an infectious pathogen or a toxic exposure to contaminated food, drinks or toys, the Eurosurveillance report noted. An infectious agent is considered the more likely cause at this point, based on the nature of the cases and their timing, the report added. Levine told Live Science that he also thinks "an infectious etiology is more likely than a toxic exposure."

The leading hypothesis, for now, is that an adenovirus might be the underlying cause, the Eurosurveillance report authors wrote. This adenovirus might be "either a new variant with a distinct clinical syndrome or a routinely circulating variant that is more severely impacting younger children who are immunologically naïve," they noted.

"With all the social distancing, children for the last two years may not have been exposed to the common viral pathogens and that may lead them to be more susceptible to adenovirus or other similar viral infectious [agents]," Levine told Live Science. 

"We have a group of children [whose] immune system has evolved in a very different way to what it would have done normally, in terms of exposure to common viruses," Tayler said, echoing Levine's sentiment. 

That said, as an alternate theory, "this may be related to some new SARS-CoV-2 variant," Levine suggested. U.K. children below age 5 are not currently cleared to receive any COVID-19 vaccines, so none of the children in their report had been vaccinated against the virus, Tayler noted. 

Analyzing samples of liver tissue from the children, especially those who required transplants, may help reveal the underlying cause of the disease, Levine said. These sorts of analyses are being conducted in England, Tayler confirmed.

Originally published on Live Science.

The Bataan Death March was an atrocity perpetrated by the Imperial Japanese Army on Allied POWs in the Philippine Commonwealth from April 9 until April 15, 1942. In the aftermath of Japan's invasion of the Philippines on Dec. 8, 1941 — the day after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor — the American and Filipino defenders that formed U.S.A.F.F.E., or the United States Armed Forces in the Far East, fought on in the Bataan Peninsula for three months but surrendered in the first week of April. 

Nearly 80,000 prisoners of war marched into captivity and were made to travel on foot from the Bataan Peninsula, located northwest of the Philippine capital Manila, to internment camps in the Luzon plains some 62 miles (100 kilometers) away. It is estimated as many as 20,000 perished in the Bataan Death March from sickness, starvation, and violence.

Battle of Bataan

After the Japanese invasion of the Philippines on Dec. 8, 1941, as part of WWII's Pacific War, the U.S.A.F.F.E. were quickly overwhelmed and on the back foot. On paper the Allied forces in the region were an impressive overseas army trained and led by Americans and furnished with airplanes, howitzers, ships, and tanks. Thousands of Filipino conscripts meant it had the manpower and resources to beat a full-scale Japanese invasion.

In reality, the Japanese soon achieved air superiority over much of Luzon, the large northern island of the Philippine archipelago. They landed their troops in several locations, with minimal resistance encountered, all before Christmas Eve.

Carefully drawn plans for stopping the Japanese proved unfeasible, but U.S. officers falsely reassured their troops that help was arriving soon. As early as Dec. 9, a naval convoy sailing for Manila was re-routed by the Department of War to Hawaii and then Brisbane, Australia, according to Louis Morton's book "The Fall of the Philippines" (St. John's Press, 2016). No other efforts to resupply the Philippines were carried out.

In a last bid to hold out against the enemy the commander of U.S.A.F.F.E., Gen. Douglas MacArthur ordered the initiation of War Plan Orange or WPO-3, which meant a phased retreat to the Bataan Peninsula that guarded the entrance to Manila Bay. 

On Dec. 26 the capital Manila was declared an "open city" by President Manuel L. Quezon following the advice of MacArthur to "spare the Metropolitan area from possible ravages of attack", according to Official Gazette, the official journal of the Republic of the Philippines. 

The Japanese 14th Army under Lt. Gen. Masaharu Homma routed the Allies in the Luzon plains and took Manila. In early January 1942, the 14th Army concentrated its efforts on Bataan, where as many as 80,000 Allied troops were now trapped. The Allies' plan was to hold out until the promised reinforcements from Australia and Hawaii could arrive. 

The Bataan landmass was split into two sectors each held by a corps-sized formation. Gen. Edward P. King was on the ground organizing layers of defenses that repulsed Japanese attacks on land and sea until March, 1942.

The struggle for Bataan was bitter yet futile, although it did inspire Allied propaganda around the "Battling B*****ds," a title American troops embraced after Gen. MacArthur and his staff escaped the Philippines on March 11. 

"The Allied troops in the Bataan Peninsula were suffering not only from fatigue and disease but also from the feeling of abandonment," wrote Stephen Bye, a U.S. Army historian. 

Eventually supplies of canned meat and juice, then ammunition and medicine, dwindled. Disease spread among the Americans because of foul drinking water, spreading tropical dysentery that roiled their bowels. On April 3 the Japanese Army, reinforced with fresh divisions from mainland China, the Dutch East Indies, and Malaya, launched an attack by air and land. 

The opening bombardment caused brush fires that so terrified the Filipinos the entire Bataan front fell to pieces. "Stragglers poured to the rear...until they clogged all roads. Units disappeared into the jungle...an army evaporated into thin air," wrote Morton.

Days later, Gen. King met with the Japanese and set terms of surrender. The men and women under him did not have large enough ships to escape Bataan by sea. Although a few thousand, including many exhausted nurses, reached the nearby island fortress of Corregidor where Gen. Wainwright's headquarters still held on. By this point in time, Gen. MacArthur and staff were gone.

Between Jan. and April 1942, the Japanese besieged fortress Corregidor with artillery and airstrikes, leaving the island in total ruin. "The face of Corregidor, once almost gardenlike, a kind of military resort with flowers and lawns and clubs and pools...was now a wasteland, denuded of its natural beauty reduced to gray rubble and piles of dust in the crosshairs of a hundred thundering cannon," wrote Elizabeth Norman in "We Band of Angels" (Random House, 2013).

Meanwhile in Bataan, the Allied troops destroyed their heavy weapons to prevent the enemy from capturing them. "Knots of tired refugees and straggling soldiers clogged the road and the trucks, buses, jeeps and battered sedans that carried many of the women either broke down or were stuck in traffic," wrote Norman.

The Death March begins

Once the Americans and Filipinos were relieved of weapons their captors berated them for surrendering. "The rabid militarists who took over Japan inculcated in their soldiers a contempt for the defeated and a hate for other races, the white race included," wrote Norman. This explained the scorn and ill-treatment the Japanese exhibited toward Allied POWs.

On April 7 the U.S.A.F.F.E. remnants mustered in the foothills of the Bataan Peninsula's dormant volcanoes long overgrown by wilderness. The Japanese moved freely as they collected the surrendered. All in all, the official post-war tally of POWs in Luzon in 1942 puts it between 10,000 to 12,000 Americans and between 60,000 to 70,000 Filipinos. 

The total casualties from the Bataan Death March is estimated at 11,000, according to the U.S. Army's official history, with the majority being Filipinos. The death toll among the Americans varies from approximately 1,000 to as high as 5,000.

In May, 1942, another 12,000 Americans marched into captivity after Corregidor surrendered. This was the largest internment of American forces in wartime. By comparison, during the entire length of the United States' commitment in the Vietnam War (1965-1973) less than 800 prisoners were taken captive by the North Vietnamese.

In 1942 almost a hundred thousand Americans — soldiers, civilians, women and children — were held as POWs by the Japanese in varying circumstances. 

The movement of POWs from the Bataan peninsula to the Central Luzon plain, where Camp O'Donnell was located along with the secondary internment area Camp Cabanatuan, began on April 9. The majority of the POWs were still able-bodied but the addition of so many walking wounded, the sick and the diseased, would portend the difficulties to come. 

The Japanese Army did not spare the trucks needed to move the POWs. The awful part was the nearest railway depot in San Fernando was at least 31 miles (50 km) away from Mariveles, which was the tip of the Bataan peninsula. 

In April 1942 the heat in the region was compounded by mud and dust as columns of prisoners began their march toward the railway.

Eyewitness accounts

The Bataan Death March lasted a full week, from April 9 until 15, but dragged on for several more days because of the thousands involved. The American POWs were exhausted by the time they left their former stronghold. The Filipinos managed a little better under their Japanese captors although they were not spared scorn and punishment. 

Many of them were raised in the countryside, meaning they knew how to forage fruit and edible leaves. American POWs had the opposite experience. Once they were in captivity these soldiers went through a hard day's march with just muddy water for sustenance. 

"Some of the men had reached a state of mind bordering insanity, from the lack of water. In desperation they would scoop it up from stagnant pools in the road ditches...a stagnant pool is virtually alive with dysentery germs," wrote Ernest Miller, a colonel and former POW who survived the event, in his book "Bataan Uncensored" (Barajima Books, 2020), one of the most detailed accounts of the march. 

When the prisoners reached the San Fernando railway terminal the Japanese packed scores of them inside boxcars without ventilation on the brief three-hour journey north to Camp O'Donnell. Another account recalls the brutality the guards unleashed on their prisoners.

Eyewitness Corporal James Bollich, later recalled one of his fellow prisoners being punished when he was caught with an empty water bottle. "They beat him over the head with the bottle until it broke and kept on beating him with the broken glass. I don't know if he survived," Bollich wrote in his memoir, "Bataan Death March: A Soldier's Story" (Pelican, 2003).

Prisoner deaths

Those prisoners who made it to Camp O'Donnell were kept in their former barracks, now overcrowded with exhausted POWs. "Dysentery spread… because of the open latrines and the millions of flies around them," wrote Bollich. "Sick men were also covered [in flies], especially those near the latrine, because the latrine itself held the greatest number. It is no wonder, under these conditions, that so many of the prisoners died."

Another eyewitness to atrocities during the Bataan Death March was the American spy Claire Phillips whose husband perished in Bataan. Recovering from malaria while in hiding, Phillips watched the POWs from a distance through binoculars and later tried organizing burial parties for the corpses left behind.

Phillips claims she witnessed the Japanese executing prisoners. "Occasionally a man would drop and then one of his little tormentors would run a bayonet through him and kick his body down the road," wrote Phillips in "Manila Espionage" (Lulu.com, 2017). Her account matches the testimonies of other survivors who saw executions and homicides by Japanese soldiers up close.

It was later estimated between 20,000 to 24,000 POWs died in their captivity along with unspecified civilians. More Filipinos were killed in the march than Americans, which explains the catastrophic death toll. By the summer of 1942 Filipino POWs were granted a form of amnesty as long as they joined the local police force under Japanese leadership. 

Beginning in July the U.S. prisoners who recovered from illness and starvation were sent to Japan aboard merchant vessels once used for hauling cargo repurposed into pens for human chattel. Survivors of these journeys described their ordeal. "They [American GIs] went crazy, cut and bit each other in the arms and legs and sucked their blood," survivor John M. Jacobs recalled to "Prologue Magazine". 

Gen. MacArthur and the U.S. Army began their reconquest of the Philippines in Oct. 1944, according to the Official Gazette. After five months the Japanese were either wiped out or routed from island after island and as many as 4,000 Allied prisoners were rescued in places such as the University of Santo Tomas and the Manila City Jail. On its own, the U.S. Army organized separate war crimes trials in late 1945 and this meant Gen. Homma was prosecuted and sentenced to death by firing squad, which was carried out on April 3, 1946. His downfall, in the eyes of his judges, were the thousands who perished in the Bataan Death March.

Today the Philippines reserves April 9 as a special holiday — "Araw ng Kagitingan" or Day of Valor i— to remember those who perished in Bataan and Corregidor. Since 1989 active service members of the U.S. military along with volunteers have participated in the annual Bataan Memorial Death March at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The marathon attracts thousands of participants each year who brave a 25 miles (40 km) hike over rugged desert terrain. Survivors are known to participate well into their 90s and centenaries.

Additional resources

If you want to know more about how America became involved in World War II to begin with, you should read about the Pearl Harbor attack.

America's involvement in wars in the Pacific didn't end with World War II as the Korean War followed just a few years later and there's much to learn about that too.

Bibliography

• "Bataan Death March: A Soldier's Story" by James Bollich (Pelican, 2003)
• "Bataan Survivor: A POWs Account of Japanese Captivity In World War II" by David L. Hardee (University of Missouri, 2017)
• "Bataan Uncensored" by Col E.B. Miller (Barajima Books, 2020)
• "We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of the American Women Trapped On Bataan" by Elizabeth M. Norman
• "Manila Espionage" by Claire Phillips (Lulu.com, 2017)
• "The Fall of the Philippines" by Louis Morton (St. John's Press, 2016)
• "The Japanese “Hell Ships” of World War II" Naval History and Heritage Command
• "Bataan Death March Survivor Shares Story" United States Air Force
• "Masaharu Homma" World War II Database
• Bataan Project 
• "Aftermath of the Bataan Death March" National Museum of the U.S. Air Force
• "Philippine Army and Guerrilla Records" National Personnel Records Center
• "Proclamation Making Manila an Open City, December 26, 1941" Official Gazette
• "The Fall Of Bataan" Official Gazette
• "Death march survivor has a grateful nation's thanks" University of Louisiana Lafayette
• "American POWs on Japanese Ships Take a Voyage into Hell" Prologue Magazine

The Cold War was an ideological conflict between the capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union, and their respective allies. Despite being called a war, it was not a direct military confrontation between the two sides. Merriam Webster defines a cold war as a "conflict over ideological differences carried on by methods short of sustained overt military action and usually without breaking off diplomatic relations."  

Tensions and hostilities between the two superpowers fluctuated throughout the 20th century, becoming stronger at the end of World War II, before the conflict finally collapsed in the early 1990s. 

Who started the Cold War?

The Cold War was not a war in the traditional sense, though it did feature outbreaks of armed conflict such as in Vietnam and Korea. According to Odd Arne Westad, professor of history at Yale University, the instigator of the Cold War is tricky to identify, because the conflict emerged gradually from ideological differences. 

"To me, the Cold War is primarily a conflict about how best to organize society between liberal capitalist ideas and socialist ideas that come out of the period of industrialization in the late 19th century," Westad told All About History magazine. "Sometime during the Second World War this ideological conflict became a conflict centred on two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union."

The arms race

In August 1945, the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This event signaled the end of World War II, following VE day earlier in the year. 

By 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic bomb. No longer the world's only nuclear power, the U.S. began building its stockpile of nuclear bombs and developing larger, more destructive weapons. President Truman approved the development of the hydrogen bomb only for the Soviet Union to once again quickly catch up, according to History Today.

The Korean War

The first hotspot of the Cold War, when the two sides came into military conflict — albeit indirectly — was the Korean War, which took place between 1950 and 1953. At the end of World War II, Korea, a former territory of Japan, was divided along its 38th parallel, and an internal border was established between the communist North Korea backed by the Soviet Union and the Western-leaning South Korea, according to the Imperial War Museum. 

On June 25, 1950, North Korea, with support from the USSR (including covert operations and providing aircraft and medical support), invaded South Korea. The United Nations quickly arranged support for the south, and troops from the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and South Africa, among others, were sent to oppose North Korea. In 1951, China, another communist nation, sent troops in support of North Korea, and the two sides reached a stalemate. In 1953 an armistice was agreed  that established a new border close to the 38th parallel. 

The Space Race

As the arms race continued on the ground, another technological race was taking place to reach space. The space race began in 1955 when the U.S. announced that it intended to launch its first satellite. The Soviet Union responded by declaring it intended to also launch a satellite, according to the Royal Museums Greenwich. 

In 1957 the Soviet satellite  Sputnik 1 was successfully launched into orbit. On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to travel to space, orbiting the Earth once and returning safely in the spacecraft Vostok 1. 

However, in 1969 the U.S. achieved one of the most significant victories in the space race when Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. The space race came to a symbolic end in 1975 when the first joint U.S.-Soviet mission was launched and Tom Stafford and Alexi Leonov shook hands in space. 

Berlin and the Cold War

Following the defeat of the Nazis on VE Day — the end of World War II in Europe — Germany and Austria were divided into four separate zones governed by France, the U.K., the U.S. and the Soviet Union, according to the National Army Museum in London.

Berlin was similarly divided into four zones of occupation, despite the city falling within the Soviet Zone of the country. In June 1948, the first major international crisis of the Cold War occured when the Soviet Union blockaded West Berlin from the rest of the country following controversial currency reforms, according to the Imperial War Museum in London. With food supplies running out in West Berlin, a massive airlift was organized by the U.S. and its allies, which continued until May 1949 when the blockade was lifted. In total, the U.S. and its allies delivered about 2.3 million tons of cargo.

According to NATO, between 1949 and 1961 3 million citizens of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the Soviet-operated zone fled into the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), which was formed in 1949 when the American, British and French zones of Germany were unified. The loss of so many workers caused major economic issues for East Berlin, so in response to this exodus the Soviets constructed the Berlin Wall in the early hours of Aug. 13, 1961, which physically divided the city and stopped East Berliners from leaving freely. 

"This is a city that has to be taken apart and put back together again," journalist Mildred Raynolds Trivers wrote in The Virginia Quarterly Review in 1962. "Berlin is not even one city, it is two cities, each with its separate government, separate currency, separate telephone systems, separate transportation systems." 

McCarthyism and The Red Scare

Senator Joseph McCarthy, a right-wing Republican caused a nationwide panic during the late 1950's when he launched a number of probes into communist infiltration of various state departments and organisations, including the White House and the U.S. Army, according to The Miller Centre. What resulted was not just a governmental panic, but a witch hunt across the entire United States.

One of the most highly publicised aspects of the 'Red Scare' was the impact upon Hollywood. McCarthy's House of Un-American Activities investigated a number of Hollywood artists suspected of having communist links. The 'Hollywood Ten' were the ten most prominent figures, who were placed on a blacklist and forbidden from working in Hollywood until they were cleared of charges. 

According to Stanford Business, artists who worked with those who had their name on the blacklist saw their chances of employment dropping by 13%. The effect of the blacklist would only be broken when one of its key victims, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, was hired to write the screenplay to the 1960 Kirk Douglas film Spartacus, according to The Guardian.

The Cuban missile crisis

In 1959, Fidel Castro took control of Cuba following a long revolution against the island’s capitalist government and aligned his country with the Soviet Union. This intensified tensions between Cuba and the U.S., and the U.S. responded by becoming involved in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion —  an attempt by exiled Cubans backed by U.S. intelligence services to land in Cuba and overthrow Castro’s government. 

According to John T. Cortell at the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. spy planes first discovered Soviet nuclear missile bases in Cuba on Aug. 29, 1962 and then discovered ballistic missiles in October. These followed a number of intelligence reports gathered over the preceding years which provided further evidence of missiles on the island. The missiles were discovered to be able to reach U.S. shores. 

U.S. president John F. Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of Cuba, and on Oct. 22 he briefed the nation on the gravity of the situation, according to the JFK Library. 

"Neither the United States of America nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small. We no longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation's security to constitute maximum peril. Nuclear weapons are so destructive and ballistic missiles are so swift, that any substantially increased possibility of their use or any sudden change in their deployment may well be regarded as a definite threat to peace," Kennedy said in his address to the nation. The naval blockade was underpinned by a threat of military retaliation and Kennedy was supported by a number of nations.

After a tense five-day standoff, the Soviet Union agreed to remove its missiles from Cuba. However, in a deal that remained secret, the U.S. similarly agreed to remove all nuclear weapons from its bases in Turkey. "Kennedy privately offered a hedged promise on 27th October to withdraw the Jupiter Missiles from Turkey at a future time," Barton J. Bernstein, professor emeritus of History at Stanford University, wrote in 1980 in the journal Political Science Quarterly. The years following the crisis saw a distinct relaxation of tensions, at least directly, between the USSR and the U.S., and led to the Limited Test Ban Treaty which prohibited the testing of Nuclear Weapons.

The global Cold War

The Cold War wasn’t just a conflict between two superpowers; instead, the two superpowers each had a sphere of influence that drew multiple countries into the conflict, and the war’s  effect reached almost every corner of the globe. "Some of the most significant effects of the Cold War were outside of Europe and the two superpowers, in Africa, in Asia and in Latin America," Westad told All About History. "Not in a sense that the Cold War came in from the outside but because it had some kind of effect everywhere. It influenced most things, and mostly for the worse, particularly during the latter phase of the 20th century," he said. 

One of the key aspects to the global Cold War was the interventions in other countries undertaken by the United States, the USSR and other powers. But what forms did these interventions take? "They are diplomatic and propagandist and you also have a lot of covert operations which are not just military operations," Westad explained. "So when we talk about intervention we are not talking purely about military intervention. Perhaps the most noticeable one from today's perspective, as the after effects have not entirely gone away, is the combined British and American operation in Iran in the early 1950s. The aim was to unseat the government there and replace it with a government led by the then Sha, much more to Western liking. There was a covert operation with people on the ground but also a massive propaganda campaign and economic pressure," Westad said.

What was détente?

During the 1970s the Cold War entered a phase known as détente, described as "an improvement in the relationship between two countries that in the past were not friendly and did not trust each other," according to the Cambridge online dictionary. 

Détente represented a new chapter in diplomatic relations between the superpowers. "During the first half of the 1970s Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford responded to the aftermath of Vietnam by avoiding the extremes of the era: massive military retrenchment (left) and massive military escalation (right)," Julian E. Zelier, professor of political history at Princeton University, wrote in the journal Diplomatic History in 2009. Instead, a middle ground was reached, and there was significant warming of tensions between the East and the West occurred. 

In May 1972, according to the Nixon Foundation, Nixon met with the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev for the first of three major summits. In particular, as the Office of the Historian noted, this period was particularly important in terms of arms regulation and led to several important treaties, including the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties I and II. 

Soviet war in Afghanistan

By the end of the 1970s détente was beginning to wane, and hostilities between the two superpowers became more intense. One of the key events that led to this cooling of relations was the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. The USSR sent 1000,000 troops into the country to support the communist government that was under threat from mujahideen rebels, covertly supported by the United States. After a nine-year war in which 122,500 people were killed, the Soviet Union was forced to withdraw. 

Many historians have named the Soviet Union’s failed intervention in Afghanistan as the event that marked the beginning of the end for the USSR. "Failure in Afghanistan led to the abandonment of the Brezhnev Doctrine, which mandated Soviet intervention to save communism from counter-revolution in neighboring states,” David C. Gompert, a former U.S. diplomat and acting director of national intelligence, wrote in "Blinders, Blunders, and Wars: What America and China Can Learn" (RAND Cooperation, 2014). “It also set the stage of Mikhail Gorbachev's futile attempt to reform Soviet Politics and economics, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the abandonment of communism and the dissolution of the USSR," Gompert wrote. 

The Reagan administration

In response to the war in Afghanistan, President Ronald Reagan, who was elected on Nov. 4, 1980, sought a more aggressive approach to Soviet-U.S. relations.

Reagan's strategy was to intensify the arms race. On June 18, 1980, prior to his election, he told staff at the Washington Post that, "it would be of great benefit to the United States if we start a build up [of nuclear weapons]," believing that the USSR would be unable to compete, Lou Cannon, a journalist and biographer, wrote for The Miller Center. Once elected, Reagan openly pursued a more hardline approach toward the USSR, and in a famous speech on March 8, 1983, he referred to the Soviet Union as an "evil empire." 

In 1983, Reagan also proposed the Strategic Defence Initiative, a space-based anti-missile system nicknamed "Star Wars" and described by the Atomic Heritage Foundation as "an anti-ballistic missile program that was designed to shoot down nuclear missiles in space." Although never developed, the concept was intended to threaten the USSR by demonstrating both technological and financial advancement. 

Perestroika and glasnost

Mikhail Gorbachev took over as president of the Soviet Union in 1985 and ushered in a number of reforms, perhaps the most famous of which was the policy of glasnost. The word glasnost is a,"Russian word, commonly translated in English as 'openness',” Joseph Gibbs, journalism professor at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, wrote in "Gorbachev's Glasnost: The Soviet Media in the First Phase of Perestroika" (Texas A&M University Press, 1999). “Gorbachev aggressively promoted glasnost as a component of his program of reconstruction, or perestroika, of the USSR's sagging economy and inefficient governmental system," Gibbs wrote. 

Glasnost allowed Soviet citizens to reflect critically on the country’s own past for the first time, particularly the October Revolution of 1917. "The policy of glasnost in the perestroika era and its continuing, unstoppable momentum allow us to look at ourselves with open eyes, providing us with new knowledge about the many-sided nature of October and its consequences, and enabling us to reflect on many aspects of post-October developments in their true dimensions and significance," Gorbachev wrote in "On My Country and The World" (Columbia University Press, 1999). 

Glasnost and the other reforms were intended to modernize the USSR, but they ultimately helped bring the Soviet Union to an end. The policy soon "expanded into pressure for democratization of the Soviet political system," a report from the research organization RAND said in 1990.

Fall of the Berlin Wall

Due to Glasnost and Gorbachev’s policies, by 1989, Cold War tensions had begun to thaw across Europe, including in East and West Germany. An increasing number of public protests had led to the decision to loosen border restrictions between east and West Berlin, though the intention was never completely. On the evening of Nov. 9, 1989, East German official Gunter Schabowski announced that border restrictions between East and West Berlin would be permanently relaxed. 

"East Germans will be able to obtain exit visas without delay, allowing them to cross into the West through all border points within Berlin and along the border with West Germany. Tourists who want to return to East Germany can also obtain immediate permission," journalist Anna Tomforde reported in The Guardian at the time.

However, excited Berliners did not wait for visas. By 9pm local time crowds had flocked to the wall, and at midnight the borders were opened fully and people began to chip away at the wall. 

Eleven months later the reunification of Germany occurred and it would not be until 1991 that the Soviet Union collapsed, but for many the fall of the Berlin Wall symbolically marked the end of the Cold War. "Ordinary people demanding change took matters into their own hands. They brought down the wall, not armies or world statesmen. And then they danced upon it," Michael R. Meyer, former dean of the Graduate School of Media and Communications at Aga Khan University in Kenya and speechwriter for U.N. secretary general Ban Ki-moon, wrote in "The Year That Changed the World: The Untold Story of the Fall of the Berlin Wall" (Scribner, 2009). 

The end of the Cold War

By 1990, Gorbachev had acquiesced to the reunification of Germany and removed all Soviet soldiers from the country. By this time the Soviet Union had also been forced to grant many of its satellite countries independence, such as Ukraine in 1991, according to the Wilson Center. An unsuccessful coup against Gorbachev by communist hardliners further increased support for Boris Yeltsin, who was standing for the pluralist movement and advocated increased liberalization and reforms. Yeltsin led a short campaign of civil resistance which ended the Coup and simultaneously weakened Gorbachev’s influence. On Dec. 25, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned — effectively ending the Soviet Union, and the conflict with the U.S.

"The Cold War, within the international system of states, ended very clearly with the collapse and fall of the Soviet Union," Westad said.

Additional resources

The John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum contains a number of articles and papers relating to JFK's time in the White House and the Cuban Missile Crisis. For those interested in the role played by nuclear weapons during the Cold War, Atomic Heritage Foundation has a variety of interesting sources. The Hoover Institution contains a wealth of information regarding the Red Scare.

Bibliography

• History Today
• Imperial War Museum
• Royal Museums Greenwich
• National Army Museum
• "Building the Berlin Wall" NATO  official site
• The Virginia Quarterly Review
• The Miller Centre
• U.S. Department of Defense
• JFK Library
• Political Science Quarterly.
• Nixon Foundation
• Office of the Historian
• David C. Gompert; "Blinders, Blunders, and Wars: What America and China Can Learn" (RAND Cooperation, 2014)
• Joseph Gibbs; "Gorbachev's Glasnost: The Soviet Media in the First Phase of Perestroika" (Texas A&M University Press, 1999)
• Michael R. Meyer; "The Year That Changed the World: The Untold Story of the Fall of the Berlin Wall" (Scribner, 2009)

A highly pathogenic strain of bird flu was detected in a commercial turkey flock in Dubois County, Indiana, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported on Wednesday (Feb. 9). State officials said that 29,000 turkeys have now been culled to prevent the virus's spread, Reuters reported.

Avian influenza, or bird flu, can infect poultry, such as chickens and turkeys, as well as free-flying waterfowl like ducks, geese and shorebirds, the USDA statement notes. The highly pathogenic strain detected in Indiana turkeys is known as H5N1 and was first spotted in wild bird populations in North and South Carolina last month, according to the Des Moines Register. Wild birds in eastern Canada also tested positive for the virus around that time, MPR News reported. 

Then, on Monday (Feb. 7), an Indiana farmer found about 100 dead turkeys in one of his barns and saw that the surviving turkeys appeared lethargic, the IndyStar reported. The farmer called in a vet to collect samples from the birds, which were then processed at the Indiana Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory at Purdue University and confirmed at the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) National Veterinary Services Laboratories in Ames, Iowa. These tests revealed that the birds had been killed by highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI).

Related: Going viral: 6 new findings about viruses 

"This is the first confirmed case of HPAI in commercial poultry in the United States since 2020," the USDA statement reads. And it's Indiana's first case of H5N1 infection amongst commercial poultry since 2016, Reuters reported. During that 2016 outbreak, more than a dozen commercial flocks in the state were affected and upwards of 400,000 birds were culled, according to the IndyStar.

State officials soon instituted a quarantine at the affected farm and all farms within a 6.2 mile (10 kilometers) radius, the IndyStar reported. The quarantine has affected 18 operations in total and likely a few hundred thousand birds, Denise Derrer Spears, the spokeswoman of the Indiana State Board of Animal Health, told the IndyStar. Farms in this quarantine zone must test their birds for avian flu at least once a week; so far, no additional cases beyond the original farm have been detected, Derrer Spears said. 

In addition to the serious threat it poses to the poultry industry, this strain of avian influenza is a concern because on rare occasions, humans have caught H5N1 "after direct or close contact with sick or dead poultry that were infected with the virus," according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In humans, H5N1 can cause severe respiratory illness, including pneumonia and respiratory failure, and can cause death in some people. It does not spread easily between people. 

Regarding the current U.S. outbreak, "avian influenza does not present an immediate public health concern. No human cases of these avian influenza viruses have been detected in the United States," the USDA notes. No birds from the affected flock in Indiana will enter the food system, the statement notes. 

And "as a reminder, the proper handling and cooking of poultry and eggs to an internal temperature of 165 F [73.8 degrees Celsius] kills bacteria and viruses," so safe food handling practices would be enough to kill off the H5N1 virus, according to the USDA.

Originally published on Live Science.

The first recorded death from COVID-19 in the U.S. occurred a month earlier than previously thought: A Kansas woman's death certificate was recently amended to say she died from the disease in January 2020, according to news reports.

The 78-year-old woman, Lovell "Cookie" Brown, died on Jan. 9, 2020 in Leavenworth, Kansas, several weeks before the first cases of COVID-19 were identified in the U.S., according to The Mercury News. Initially, Brown's death certificate said she died of a stroke and chronic obstructive lung disease. But in May 2021, her doctors quietly updated the certificate to add "COVID-19 pneumonia" as a cause of death, The Mercury News reported.

That makes Brown the first documented COVID-19 death in the United States. Until recently, the first known COVID-19 death in the U.S. was thought to have occurred on Feb. 6, 2020, in a woman living in San Jose, California, Live Science previously reported.

Related: How deadly is the coronavirus delta variant?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) official page for COVID-19 death counts now lists five COVID-19 deaths that occurred in January 2020. Brown's was identified as the first, according to The Mercury News. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) also lists a single COVID-19 death in the state on Jan. 9, 2020, two months earlier than the next reported COVID-19 death in the state, according to local news outlet WIBW.

Exactly why Brown's death certificate was changed, or what evidence led to listing COVID-19 as a cause of death, is unknown. Until this week, Brown's family did not know about the change, although they had long suspected that their relative may have died from COVID-19, according to The Mercury News.

Before her death, Brown had experienced symptoms of headache, fever, diarrhea and body aches, and on Christmas Day 2019, her family remembered Brown saying that her favorite foods tasted bland, The Mercury News reported. When she began gasping for air, Brown was rushed to the hospital, where she spent a week in the ICU before her death.

Brown had not traveled internationally before her death, her family told The Mercury News. Her main trips out of the house were for appointments for diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the newspaper reported.

Dr. Thomas Fulbright, a physician at Providence Medical Center in Kansas City, Kansas, who certified Brown's amended certificate, told The Mercury News that he could not talk about Brown's case or the reasons for the certificate change because of patient privacy laws.

The KDHE told WIBW that the person who died on Jan. 9, 2020, was not tested for COVID-19 because testing "was not widely available at that time." Indeed, a test for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, could not have been conducted in January 2020 because the virus genome sequence was not publicly released until Jan. 10, according to the CDC. The KDHE did not say whether COVID-19 testing was conducted at a later date, such as testing of stored tissue samples.

Originally published on Live Science.  

Four people in the U.S. have mysteriously fallen ill with a rare and sometimes deadly bacterial disease that's usually seen only in other countries with tropical climates, according to health officials. Yet none of these patients had traveled outside the country.

The four cases, which were identified between March and July, occurred in Georgia, Kansas, Texas and Minnesota, according to a statement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Two of the patients died and two were hospitalized for long periods of time. The first death occurred in Kansas in March, and the second death occurred last month in Georgia.

The patients were all diagnosed with melioidosis, a disease caused by the bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei. The bacteria grows in tropical climates, and it is most commonly seen in Southeast Asia and northern Australia. The only places in the U.S. where this bacterium is naturally found are Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands,  according to the CDC.

Related: 28 devastating infectious diseases

Only about a dozen cases of melioidosis are identified each year in the U.S., and these cases are nearly always among people who have traveled to places where the disease naturally occurs, the CDC says. That's why the current cases, which are not tied to recent international travel history, are so unusual, according to the statement.

Health officials are now trying to figure out how these people became infected. They have tested more than 100 samples from products, soil and water in and around the patients' homes, but nothing has turned up, the statement said.

Genetic testing has revealed that the bacterial strains infecting these four patients are very similar to each other, which suggests a common source for the infections, the statement said. The CDC suspects that the patients were infected through an imported product, such as a food, drink, personal care or cleaning product. After people are exposed to Burkholderia pseudomallei, it can take several weeks before they become sick, which can make it difficult for health officials to pinpoint the source of the illness.

Melioidosis can cause a wide range of symptoms. In the current cases, symptoms ranged from cough and shortness of breath to weakness, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, intermittent fever, and rash on the trunk, abdomen and face, the CDC said in an alert to doctors about the cases.

Two of the patients had conditions known to increase their risk of infection with Burkholderia pseudomallei, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and cirrhosis (liver disease), the CDC said. But the other two patients had no known risk factors.

Among those infected is a 4-year-old in Texas who fell ill in May. The child, Lylah Baker, spent a month in the intensive care unit at Children's Medical Center Dallas, according to The Dallas Morning News. She needed to be placed on a ventilator and has suffered brain damage, The Dallas Morning News reported.

"She was a healthy, typical little girl about to start pre-K in the fall — no underlying health issues previously. I mean just nothing," Ashley Kennon, the child's aunt, told the Dallas Morning News. "So it was definitely a major surprise to everybody not knowing where [the bacteria] came from." Lylah is now receiving treatment at Our Children's House Dallas, which provides transitional care to children after they are hospitalized but before they go home, The Dallas Morning News reported.

The CDC has alerted doctors to be on the lookout for cases of melioidosis, and to consider this diagnosis even in patients who haven't traveled outside the U.S.

Originally published on Live Science.  

Juneteenth is a federally-recognized holiday in the U.S. that celebrated on June 19. It commemorates the day in 1865 when the Emancipation Proclamation — the federal order ending slavery in the United States — was read to enslaved African Americans in Texas.  In 2023, Juneteenth falls on a Monday.

On June 19, 1865, Union troops led by Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Texas, where he announced the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery nationwide. The war had ended just two months earlier, when Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865; and it had been two years and nearly six months since the proclamation ending slavery was signed by President Abraham Lincoln, on Jan. 1, 1863. 

However, Confederate states that were still in open rebellion against the federal government in 1863 didn't recognize President Lincoln's authority, and many slaveholders didn't comply with the order until Union troops arrived to enforce it, according to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). 

After learning they were free, formerly enslaved African Americans in Texas adopted June 19, nicknamed Juneteenth, as a day to celebrate freedom. In the following decades, the holiday — also known as Emancipation Day and Black Independence Day — was embraced by African American people across the country, the NMAAHC says.

In June 15, 2021, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a bill making Juneteenth a federally recognized holiday, with the House of Representatives following suit on June 16. The bill was signed into law by President Joe Biden on June 17, 2021. According to NPR, "The recognition of Juneteenth as a legal holiday comes amid a broader national reckoning on race and the racism that helped shape America." 

Related: 4 myths about the history of American slavery

Meaning of Juneteenth

On June 19, 1865, Maj. Gen. Granger read from Lincoln's General Order Number Three to people in Galveston, Texas, one of the busiest port cities in the U.S. at the time. The document declared that "the people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them became that between employer and free laborer," according to the Obama White House Archives.

Many Texan slaveholders and enslaved people likely already knew about Lincoln's order when it became a law two years earlier, but without Union troops to enforce it, slave ownership in Texas "was business as usual" into 1865, said Michael Hurd, director of the Texas Institute for the Preservation of History and Culture at Prairie View A&M University in Prairie View, Texas.

During that two-year window, "Texas was considered a safe haven to practice slavery," and slaves who were brought to Texas from other states helped to spread the word among enslaved African Americans about emancipation elsewhere in the failing Confederacy, Hurd told Live Science. 

"I think a lot of people, Black and white, knew about the emancipation," Hurd said. "But the people in power — slave owners — made no effort to free their slaves until they absolutely had to, when the Union troops came through."

History of Juneteenth

The first Juneteenth celebrations took place in 1866 throughout East Texas — from Texarkana in the northeast down to Houston — because that's where the majority of the state's African Americans settled after emancipation, Hurd said. Churches often hosted Juneteenth celebrations, and as African Americans became landowners, they donated and dedicated land for Juneteenth festivities, according to Juneteenth.com, a web portal for Juneteenth information and history.

Some formerly enslaved people who left Texas for Mexico after the Civil War brought the holiday with them, where it is still observed today, said Kelly Navies, a Museum Specialist in Oral History for the NMAAHC.

"You will find it celebrated on June 19th in some parts of northern Mexico, as el Día de los Negros," Navies told Live Science.

African Americans observed Juneteenth with feasting, music, pageants and parades, with many dressing in fine clothes — a luxury denied when they were enslaved. But the holiday was also an opportunity to hold political rallies so that newly freed African Americans could learn about voting rights, according to the Texas State Historical Association. 

A newspaper article from Austin, Texas, in 1869 described that year's Juneteenth celebration, mentioning a procession led by a parade marshal through local barbecue grounds, said Daina Ramey Berry, a Radkey Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin.

"They had drummers; a flag bearer; they were holding the Stars and Stripes. Many of the men on horses were decorated with bright-colored ribbons," Berry told Live Science. 

Many of the first Juneteenth celebrations were also oral history events during which speakers would talk about life under slavery, Berry explained. 

"In the early festivals in the 1860s and 1870s, when you had formerly enslaved people still alive, those elders would speak at these ceremonies and educate the young generations," she said. "It's like a public oral history lesson, where the community is learning about a difficult part of our history, but it is a part of our history that needs to be acknowledged."

And unlike the Fourth of July, America's national celebration of independence from British rule, Juneteenth commemorates freedom for all in America, Berry said. Frederick Douglass, the renowned African American writer and orator, delivered a keynote address at an Independence Day celebration in 1852, now known as "What to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July?" (it was formerly titled "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro"). In it, Douglass called out the hypocrisy of declaring a holiday devoted to freedom, in a land where approximately 4 million African Americans were not free. 

From the perspective of enslaved people, "your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless," Douglass wrote. For African Americans who embraced Juneteenth, the holiday "represents the Independence Day that they want to honor and celebrate," said Berry.

Spread of Juneteenth

During the 1920s and the decades that followed, millions of African Americans left the South and moved to cities in northern and western states, in what is known as the Great Migration — and the celebration of Juneteenth traveled with them. "Because of that, you started to see those celebrations grow in communities around the country," Hurd said.

Interest in Juneteenth surged again in the 1950s and 1960s, spurred by the activism of the Civil Rights movement. 

In 1979, the state of Texas passed a bill declaring June 19, "Emancipation Day in Texas," making it a legal state holiday starting in 1980, according to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. 

On June 15, 2021, the U.S. Senate passed another resolution meant to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. The House of Representatives followed suit on June 16, 2021, and on June 17 President Biden signed the legislation that officially declared Juneteenth a federal holiday, reported the New York Times.

Gaining federal recognition for Juneteenth "would mean that we're starting to come to terms with some of the important lessons of that time period of slavery and reconstruction that we've had a hard time as a nation confronting," Navies said in an earlier interview. 

"Juneteenth forces you to look at what the meaning of enslavement was, and what the meaning of being free means to African Americans today, and to 4 million African Americans at that time," she said. "It's a day where you're not just celebrating — you're reflecting on what's happened since the year 1865."

However, some saw the move to make Juneteenth a federally recognized holiday as a hollow action. Nneka D. Dennie, assistant professor of history at Washington and Lee University, was one such critic. In an article for Slate, she pointed out that other holidays, like Martin Luther King Jr. Day, were once rooted in Black history but have become disconnected from that past.

"Given the ways that Dr. King’s lifework and MLK Day have been distorted," Dennie wrote, "it seems valid to fear that making Juneteenth a federal holiday has the potential to diminish its significance, instead of generating further inquiry into the history of American slavery and emancipation."

Additional resources

• Listen to an interview with Clint Smith about why Juneteenth is important for kids to learn about in schools on WBUR.
• Read President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation here. 
• Watch a brief documentary about the history of Juneteenth, from the Minnesota Historical Society. 

The novel coronavirus may have already arrived in the U.S. by late December 2019, adding to the evidence that the virus was already lurking here at least a month before the country's first reported case, according to a new study.

The study researchers analyzed more than 24,000 blood samples collected in the U.S. from Jan. 2 to March 18, 2020, as part of the National Institutes of Health's All of Us program, a project that aims to gather health data from diverse populations.

The researchers identified seven participants from five states (Illinois, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Mississippi) who tested positive for antibodies against the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, prior to the first reported cases of COVID-19 in those states. The earliest detection came from a sample collected Jan. 7 in Illinois. Because it takes about two weeks for a person to develop these antibodies, the new findings suggest the virus may have been circulating in Illinois as early as Dec. 24, 2019, according to the study, published Tuesday (June 15) in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

"This study allows us to uncover more information about the beginning of the U.S. epidemic" of COVID-19, Dr. Josh Denny, CEO of All of Us and co-author of the study, said in a statement.

Related: 20 of the worst epidemics and pandemics in history

The first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the U.S. was reported on Jan. 20, 2020, in a resident of Washington state who had recently traveled to China. But researchers have suspected that the virus arrived in the U.S. earlier than this, and a previous study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also found evidence that the virus was in the U.S. in December 2019, Live Science previously reported.

Still, the new study has limitations. Although positive antibody tests suggest a prior infection with SARS-CoV-2, they cannot prove that a person had the virus. For example, even very accurate antibody tests still produce a small number of false positive results.

But the researchers did take steps to rule out false positives. They used two different antibody tests, and the samples had to test positive on both to be counted as positive results. The first test identified 147 samples that were positive for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, but of these, only nine also tested positive on the second test. (Two of these samples were collected after the first cases of COVID-19 were identified in the participants' respective states.)   

There's also a chance that the samples had antibodies against other, similar coronaviruses that "cross-react" in this test to give positive results, but this is uncommon. In 1,000 blood samples collected in the U.S. from January to March 2019, which was used as a control group for comparison, none tested positive for antibodies against SARS-CoV-2.

"It is unlikely all nine of these [positive] individuals are false positive," the authors wrote.

It's important to note that the authors did not have information on whether the people who tested positive had traveled recently, which would suggest whether they became infected within their communities or elsewhere. The researchers plan to follow up with the people who tested positive to ask about their travel history, according to The New York Times. They are also planning further research to pinpoint exactly when the novel coronavirus first appeared in the U.S.

"The exact month at which it probably came into the U.S. is still unknown," study lead author Keri Althoff, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the Times.

Originally published on Live Science.  

If you think of the deadliest day in the United States' history, your mind is probably drawn to the terrorist attacks of September 11, the calamity that followed Japan's strike on Pearl Harbor or perhaps a battle from the Civil War. Or maybe you think of more recent days during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The answer to the question of what was the deadliest day, it turns out, isn't straightforward. But when you take the death rate into account, it's likely none of the events mentioned above.

To put contemporary U.S. deaths in perspective, before COVID-19 began circulating in late 2019, approximately 7,700 people died every day in the U.S. for a multitude of different reasons, including things like car accidents and heart disease, said J. David Hacker, a demographic historian at the University of Minnesota.

Related: What's the deadliest day of the week?

The deadliest day in America's history is hard to pinpoint because, for one thing, America's population has grown considerably, from a mere 4 million in 1790 to in excess of 332 million today, Hacker said. So, comparing the absolute number of deaths from yesteryear with today is like comparing apples with oranges.

"Of course there are more overall deaths in a typical day today than there were in 1790, despite the fact that the death rate — deaths divided by the population — was undoubtedly much higher in 1790," Hacker told Live Science. But even if we decide that the death rate is the fairer way to make comparisons across the centuries, finding an answer to the "deadliest day' question is still more complicated than you might think.

"The deadliest day comparisons I've seen rely on different measures," Hacker said. If we're looking at a single attack or event, do we discount the people who also died on that day, but from other causes? Or do we include them? There's not much of a consensus among historians, and, on top of that, death records nationwide from 1776 to now are lacking, Hacker said.

That said, we can make a few educated guesses. "If it's just the total number of deaths in one day from a specific event on a specific day, I think nothing comes close to the Galveston Hurricane on Sept. 8, 1900," Hacker said. The hurricane, which struck Texas as a Category 4 hurricane with winds from 130 to 156 mph (209 to 251 km/h), is also known as "The Great Storm of 1900," and is often described as the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Between 8,000 and 12,000 people were killed during the hurricane, NOAA said in a 2011 report. Back in 1900, roughly 3,500 people died each day, on average, said Hacker, so the storm was an especially lethal event. 

Meanwhile, the Civil War, waged from 1861-1865, was an especially bloody time. It's estimated that 750,000 soldiers perished from injury and disease, according to a 2011 study in the journal Civil War History. And so, it's not too surprising that another event worthy of mention is the 1862 Battle of Antietam, which thwarted the Confederate invasion of Maryland and saw an estimated 3,650 soldiers killed from both sides. 

Related: Why does it say 'In God We Trust' on our money?

But here again we come across data problems — not all who fought in the battle and died did so on the day of the battle itself. "Men wounded in the one-day battle may have suffered for weeks or months before finally dying, and are likely not part of the estimate," Hacker said. "Counting Civil War deaths is not an exact science." 

Hacker roughly estimates that about 2,500 other people died in the U.S. due to other (non-war-related) causes on the same day as the Battle of Antietam. That means the battle dead more than doubled the death rate of that day, making it a pretty deadly day by anyone's reckoning. The tally was higher for the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 — where more than 7,000 soldiers were killed — but that happened over the course of three days, he said. 

Putting violence aside, the Spanish flu was another particularly lethal period. "About 6,000 people died each day during October 1918 from influenza, on average." Hacker said. If we had better data from that time, it might have been possible to say that the Spanish flu was responsible for the deadliest day in U.S. history because some days likely eclipsed that 6,000 figure. "If we knew the one-day peak number of deaths from influenza, alas we don't, and added that to the daily total from other causes," Hacker said, "then perhaps the deadliest day in U.S. history from all causes or events was in October 1918." However, we don't have the records to back that up, so it’s still possible that the Galveston Hurricane was a bigger killer; in the end it comes down to a judgement call more than an indisputable fact.

What about COVID-19? During the worst days of the pandemic in February 2021, approximately 3,300 people were dying each day from the novel coronavirus, which exceeds the close to 3,000 people who died on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists hijacked planes, which crashed into the Twin Towers in New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and in a field in Pennsylvania. 

If we add that COVID-19 figure to the approximate 7,700 other deaths that happen, on average, every day, we can say that close to 11,000 people in America were dying per day during the worst days of February 2021. While not detracting from the very real tragedy of COVID-19, the population in 1918 was one-third of what it is today, and so for that reason Hacker ranks the Spanish flu above COVID-19, even though in absolute numbers, the COVID-19 pandemic may have killed more people on its deadliest day. 

"For my money, the deadliest day in U.S. history was probably one of those days in October 1918," when you take the death rate into account, he said.

Originally published on Live Science.

More than two months after he was elected to be the 46th president of the United States, Joseph Biden will be officially sworn in to office on Wednesday Jan. 20, 2021. But if votes are cast in November, why does so much time elapse between the election and the inauguration ceremony?

While 10 weeks may seem like a long wait, past presidents had to contend with a much longer delay before taking up the mantle, historical records show.

This year's 59th inauguration ceremony will be only the 22nd ceremony held in January. Prior to the 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1933, every new president was expected to take office on March 4. There were exceptions however, such as if a vice president took the oath after the death of a sitting president. 

Related: Inauguration forecast: Frigid. (But it's been colder.)

The Continental Congress (the country's governing body prior to the first elections)  set the first Wednesday in March to be the date of the first presidential inauguration, in 1789, which happened to be March 4, according to Jim Bendat, author of "Democracy's Big Day: The Inauguration of Our President, 1789-2013" (iUniverse, 2011). But this was a logistical decision based on the the need for both Congress members and presidential transition teams to relocate to the capital. 

"Back in the early days of the country, it took a long time to travel, particularly from the West Coast to Washington, D.C.," Bendat told Live Science. "So, they needed a long period of time between the election and swearing in of the president to get everything in order."

Related: The 6 strangest presidential elections in US history

In fact, that first inauguration, in 1789, did not take place until April 30. Bendat said Congress couldn't get enough of its members to show up for the inauguration of George Washington, so the ceremony was pushed back to the end of April.

Following Washington's inauguration, Congress decided to keep March 4 as the date for all future ceremonies. In research for his book, Bendat said, he found that part of the explanation for this choice of date (beyond the time needed for the transition between presidencies) was that Congress' study of future calendars revealed that this date was least likely to land on a Sunday. This was important because the most religious of politicians wanted to avoid official business on Sundays whenever possible, Bendat said.

Today, if the inauguration date falls on a Sunday, there is a private swearing in on Sunday and a public ceremony on Monday — as was the case for Barack Obama's second inauguration.

By the 20th century, advances in technology and transportation meant people could travel around the country more quickly, and there was no reason for the "lame-duck" period between Election Day and the inauguration to be so long. Also, in times of national turbulence, the lame-duck period proved to be too long a wait. 

Related: The 15 Weirdest Presidential Inaugurations in US History

This long delay was particularly difficult during the middle of the Great Depression, said the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law's "Exploring Constitutional Law." During President Herbert Hoover's lame-duck period in 1932, Hoover and then-President-elect Franklin Roosevelt barely communicated, leaving the country waiting on the government to take action to curb economic devastation. In response, Congress proposed the 20th Amendment.

"There was a debate on when to change it, because it was decided pretty universally that four months was too long to wait," Bendat said. "The Senate originally wanted to change it to Jan. 15, and the House of Representatives suggested Jan. 24, and Jan. 20 was reached as a compromise."

Therefore, the 20th Amendment dictated that the president's term would begin at noon on Jan. 20.

Additional resources: 

• Learn more about what it takes to put the inauguration ceremony together from the Architect of the Capitol. 
• Find information on every presidential inauguration in U.S. history from the Library of Congress. 
• Read more about the history of inaugurations from The White House Historical Association. 

This article was originally published on Jan. 19, 2017 and was updated on Jan. 15, 2021 by Live Science reference editor Kimberly Hickok. 

The fast-spreading "U.K. variant" of the coronavirus could become the predominant strain in the United States by March, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

About 76 cases of the new variant, known as B.1.1.7, have been detected in 10 U.S. states so far, but its ability to spread more easily than other variants means it could take off rapidly here, according to a new computer model of the spread, detailed in a report Friday (Jan. 15) in the CDC journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. 

Even though this variant of SARS-CoV-2 (the coronavirus that causes COVID-19) is not thought to cause more severe illness, its projected rise is especially worrisome because more cases overall mean more hospitalizations and more deaths.

Related: Fast-spreading UK coronavirus variant: All your questions answered

The rollout of COVID-19 vaccines will eventually reduce COVID-19 transmission significantly, but this likely won't happen until after B.1.1.7 becomes the dominant variant, according to the model.

In the meantime, "increased SARS-CoV-2 transmission might threaten strained health care resources, require extended and more rigorous implementation of public health strategies and increase the percentage of population immunity required for pandemic control," the authors said.

To avoid a worst-case scenario, health officials find themselves once again stressing the need to slow the spread of the virus, with masks, distancing and adherence to quarantines, which can lessen the impact of B.1.1.7 and "allow critical time to increase vaccination coverage," the authors wrote.

In the new model, the researchers assumed that B.1.1.7 currently has a prevalence of 0.5% in the U.S. among all COVID-19 infections, and that it is 50% more transmissible than other variants. The model also assumed that about 10% to 30% of the U.S. population has immunity to COVID-19 due to previous infections, and that about 1 million COVID-19 vaccine doses are administered per day beginning Jan. 1, 2021. (As of Jan. 15, about 11 million doses have been given, working out to less than 1 million doses per day, according to the CDC.)

The model projects that B.1.1.7 prevalence will grow rapidly in early 2021, and become the predominant variant in March, meaning the majority of infections will be from this variant compared with others. In the model, the rollout of vaccines didn't change the early trajectory of the variant, but kicked in later, and eventually reduced transmission significantly.

The effect of vaccines on reducing COVID-19 transmission in the near-term was greatest when transmission was already decreasing, the authors said, which further underscores the importance of slowing the virus's spread now. 

This data shows "that universal use of and increased compliance with mitigation measures and vaccination are crucial to reduce the number of new cases and deaths substantially in the coming months," the authors said.

Enhanced efforts to track the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 and look for other variants of concern is also critical. The agency is currently working to bolster its surveillance in this area.

Originally published on Live Science.  

On Jan. 13, 2021, President Trump became the first president to face impeachment twice. 

Impeachment is the leveling of charges against an elected official by a legislative body. It's a fairly rare event in U.S. politics, particularly at the presidential level. But when impeachment proceedings do happen, they are guided by rules set out in the U.S. Constitution. And occasionally, they lead to elected officials losing their jobs. 

Even so, impeachment doesn't on its own mean "removal from office," but rather it's the filing of a charge against an elected official.

Article II, Section IV of the Constitution states that "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery and other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." The U.S. House of Representatives is responsible for impeachments, while the U.S. Senate's job is to try all impeachments while the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presides. 

According to the U.S. House of Representatives archives, impeachment proceedings have been opened more than 60 times in U.S. history, but only eight cases have led to the Senate removing the impeached officials. (All eight were U.S. judges.) Two presidents, Andrew Johnson and William Jefferson Clinton, have been impeached by the House, but neither was removed from office by the Senate. 

On Sept. 24, 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the beginning of a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, the first step in the impeachment process. And on Jan. 13, 2021, the House voted again to impeach Trump, making President Trump the first president in history to be impeached twice. 

Here's what impeachment means and how the process works. 

Who can start the impeachment process?

The House of Representatives is charged with the sole power of impeachment by Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. This means that any House member may introduce articles of impeachment as they would a regular bill, or that the legislative body may vote to launch an impeachment inquiry, or an official investigation of the elected individual. From this inquiry — typically carried out by the relevant subcommittees of the House — would emerge the charges, or articles of impeachment, for the House of Representatives to vote on.

What are the legal reasons for impeachment?

Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution lays out the reasons for impeachment: "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." 

According to the House of Representatives, the "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" language came from Founding Father George Mason of Virginia, who drew it from a British legal term referring to crimes by public officials against the government. This rather vague terminology has led to an ongoing debate over what misconduct qualifies as impeachable, according to Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute.The term does not necessarily require the elected official to break a specific law, but rather to break public trust, Jeffrey A. Engel, a presidential historian at Southern Methodist University and co-author of the book "Impeachment: An American History" (Modern Library, 2018), told Politifact in May 2019. This interpretation is backed up by Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Paper 65, which referred to impeachable offenses as those "which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust."

How impeachment works

The House can get the impeachment ball rolling in one of two ways. First, any member of the legislative body may introduce impeachment just as he or she would a regular bill. This process had been tentatively underway in the House before the announcement of a formal inquiry regarding Trump in September. In August, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) told CNN that his committee was investigating allegations that Trump obstructed justice during the Robert Mueller investigation into Trump's ties with Russia during the 2016 presidential election. In that interview, Nadler said he and his committee would decide whether to introduce articles of impeachment onto the House floor by the end of 2019, Politico reported.

However, a whistleblower report in September alleged that Trump asked the president of Ukraine during a phone call in July to look for damaging information on Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic presidential primary candidate Joe Biden who once sat on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, according to the Associated Press. The allegations that the president had asked a foreign power for help winning a federal election prompted Pelosi to declare a formal impeachment inquiry.

Related: The 6 Strangest Presidential Elections in US History

In her formal impeachment announcement, Pelosi directed six House subcommittees that were already investigating allegations against Trump to send their results to the House Judiciary Committee, which would then determine if and how to lay out articles of impeachment against the president. These articles of impeachment act as formal charges, much like an indictment in a criminal trial. 

Impeachment can also begin with a bill to authorize an inquiry. The House has passed such a bill in previous presidential impeachments. 

If the House ultimately votes to bring impeachment charges, those charges will then be handed over to the Senate for an impeachment trial. Chief Justice John Roberts would preside over this trial. Only if two-thirds of the Senate votes to convict would the president be removed from office. 

Who has been impeached?

According to the U.S. House archives, 15 federal judges have been impeached by the House, along with one cabinet secretary, one U.S. Senator and two presidents. In addition, U.S.President Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 ahead of a vote in the House that almost certainly would have impeached him over his role in the Watergate scandal, a break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. 

The first impeachment trial ever was that of U.S. Senator William Blount from Tennessee, in 1798. According to a U.S. Senate history, Blount tried to resolve some financial difficulties by concocting a scheme to have a force of Native Americans and white settlers attack Florida and Louisiana, then Spanish colonies, and turn them over to Great Britain. The Senate expelled Blount for this corruption in 1797 (which can be done without impeachment, by a two-thirds vote of the body) and then went on to formally impeach him the next year.

Related: Past Presidents: What Made Them Great?

William Belknap, the Secretary of War under President Ulysses S. Grant, was impeached by the House in 1876 over a kickback scandal at Fort Sill on the western frontier. Belknap resigned before being tried by the Senate, which nonetheless held the trial. The Senate found Belknap guilty with a vote of 35 to 25, failing to reach the crucial two-thirds majority needed for a conviction. 

The highest-profile impeachment cases, naturally, have been presidential. In 1868, Andrew Johnson would become the first U.S. president to be impeached by the House of Representatives. Johnson, a Democrat, had been actively blocking attempts by the House's Radical Republicans — a faction of the Republican party that pushed to eradicate slavery — to bestow rights on freed slaves and to prosecute former Confederate leadership, according to a U.S. Senate history. When Johnson fired his Secretary of War over opposition from Congress, which approves cabinet positions, the House brought 11 articles of impeachment (or sets of charges) against the president. The Senate fell one vote short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict, allowing Johnson to serve out his term. 

The second presidential impeachment also ended with a failure to convict in the Senate. In 1998, 130 years after Johnson's impeachment, the House of Representatives brought articles of impeachment against Democratic President Bill Clinton, charging that the president had lied to a grand jury and obstructed justice in the investigation surrounding his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The Senate failed to convict Clinton of either perjury or obstruction of justice, and he finished out his term. 

Additional resources:

• Read more about impeachment from the U.S. House of Representatives archives.
• Learn specific facts about the process of impeachment from the U.S. Senate.  
• Watch how U.S. lawmakers react to the Trump impeachment inquiry, from PBS Newshour. 

When armed supporters of President Donald Trump broke into and vandalized the United States Capitol on Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C., many were chanting "Stop the steal," referring to President-elect Joe Biden's victory in the recent election. Some wore sweatshirts reading "Civil War" with the date "January 6, 2021." Their fervent cries were fueled by encouraging words from the president and from Republican leaders, who for months have falsely claimed that Trump's loss to President-elect Biden — by more than 7 million votes — was invalid.

Trump's ongoing refusal to accept the election results, despite having no evidence that the process or results were fraudulent in any way, has led to speculation that he planned to remain in power not by lawful means but through a coup d'état, or coup — a French term describing the overthrow of a government. 

By urging invasion of the Capitol and refusing to activate the National Guard to repel the invaders, Trump appeared to embrace the notion of violence as a pathway to his continued power. This behavior is a hallmark of many leaders who have used violent coups to forcibly take control in nations around the world — even, once, in the U.S.

Related: 10 times the US Capital weathered political violence

During a coup, a government's executive authority is displaced or removed suddenly and by illegal means, according to the Coup D'état Project (CDP) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's Cline Center for Advanced Social Research.

Coups are not always violent, and they typically originate with small, elite groups already within the government. However, a coup can also be triggered by military actions, the involvement of operators representing foreign governments, or popular revolts "manifested by high levels of civil unrest," the CDP says.

The term "coup d'état," which translates as "stroke of the state," can be traced to the 17th century, but the first modern coup — in which coordinated efforts overthrow the government and install its replacement — is thought to be Napoleon Bonaparte's power grab in France in 1799, according to a study published in 1994 in the journal Terrorism and Political Violence.

Coups in modern history

By the 20th century, coups were "a key feature" in politics, with "170 successful and 141 unsuccessful coups in 79 countries between 1945 and 1986," the study author reported (13 of the coups were in Argentina alone). Cuba's coup d'état in 1952 saw the Cuban Army derail upcoming elections and install a military dictatorship; a military coup in Bolivia in 1979 toppled the country's first democratically elected government; and Mali's longstanding democracy was overthrown by a coup in 2012, to name just a few. 

There was even a successful coup in the U.S. on Nov. 10, 1898 in Wilmington, North Carolina by former Confederate colonel and U.S. congressman Alfred Moore Waddell, leading about 2,000 white supremacists. Enraged by "Negro domination" in local politics, the mob torched the offices of Wilmington's Black-owned newspaper "The Daily Record" and murdered dozens of Black people, according to the Zinn Education Project. 

Waddell then replaced recently-elected local officials with white supremacists, who elected him mayor. Wilmington's Black community was decimated, with many leaders imprisoned and hundreds of people "banished" from the city, according to A North Carolina History Online Resource (ANCHOR). The event "marked a turning point in North Carolina's history because more restrictions were placed on African American voters," according to ANCHOR.

Related: What is the 25th amendment?

More recently, on July 15, 2016, members of the Turkish military tried to unseat President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in an attempted coup that killed 241 people and injured more than 2,000. The coup was thwarted by thousands of citizens who mobilized in the streets, joining forces with police and loyalist soldiers to stop it, Al Jazeera reported in 2017.

However, even when coups are unsuccessful, they can still do lasting damage. A military coup in Spain in July 1936 sought to overthrow the Republic; while the rebellion went down in flames, it also sparked a civil war that lasted for three years, ending in another coup in March 1939, according to a paper published in 2019 by the Elcano Royal Institute in Madrid. 

And a failed coup in Russia in 1993 led to then-leader Boris Yeltsin consolidating power in the presidency, German news agency DW Akademie reported. In doing so, Yeltsin created a constitution and a presidential authority in which an "untouchable" president was capable of shaping public policy heedless of elections and votes — a position maintained by the nation's current leader, Vladimir Putin, DW Akademie says.

"We will never concede"

Was the Jan. 6 incident in Washington, D.C. part of an attempted coup? Prior to the storming of the Capitol, Trump spoke to thousands of his supporters at a rally outside the White House, saying "We will never give up; we will never concede," The Los Angeles Times reported. Trump then urged the mob to march on the Capitol and demonstrate to Republicans "the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country." 

After the Capitol was breached and the violence escalated, Trump ignored urgent calls to mobilize the National Guard, according to The New York Times; the Guard finally moved in only after they were authorized to do so by Vice President Mike Pence. 

"It was unclear why Mr. Trump, who is still technically the commander in chief, did not give the order," The Times reported. 

As the mob of Trump supporters swarmed the Capitol, they assaulted police, smashed Capitol windows and furniture, and vandalized offices. Three people died after suffering medical emergencies during the siege, and one woman was fatally shot while inside the building; police later recovered two pipe bombs and a cooler containing explosives from the grounds, The Washington Post reported.

Trump released a recorded statement late in the afternoon saying "we had an election that was stolen from us" and telling the rioters "we love you, you're very special." But by the day's end, President-elect Joe Biden's victory was certified by U.S. lawmakers, according to the BBC. On Jan. 7 at 3:50 a.m. ET, Trump issued a statement on Twitter via White House chief of staff Dan Scavino (Twitter had locked Trump's account for 12 hours the day before) saying "there will be an orderly transition on January 20th." 

However, Trump reiterated "I totally disagree with the outcome of the election," adding in a second tweet: "While this represents the end of the greatest first term in presidential history, it's only the beginning of our fight to Make America Great Again!"

Originally published on Live Science.

A wild mink in Utah tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and it may be the first "free-ranging, native wild animal" with a confirmed coronavirus infection, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

There's no evidence that the virus spread further than this one infected mink, but if SARS-CoV-2 begins circulating among wild animals, that could place humanity at risk for future pandemics, Live Science previously reported. Viruses often pick up mutations as they hop between animal species, and if this virus were to mutate significantly, COVID-19 vaccines may not protect well against the new version, should it spread back to humans.   

The infected critter was found near a mink farm in Utah, which has reported coronavirus infections among its animals, according to a Dec. 13 statement from the USDA National Veterinary Services Laboratories. Veterinarians collected a sample of the virus using a nasal swab and found the virus to be "indistinguishable" from samples collected from infected mink on the farm. This suggests that the wild mink picked up the infection from the farmed mink, potentially through wastewater runoff, Vox reported. Farmed mink can sometimes escape into the wild and could spread the infection in that way, Live Science previously reported.

Related: 20 of the worst epidemics and pandemics in history 

The USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has screened other animal species for the virus near mink farms in Utah, Michigan and Wisconsin, but so far those tests have come back negative, according to the statement. Just the one infected wild mink has been spotted so far, but it's possible that more may be out there, Stephanie Seifert, a researcher at Washington State University's School for Global Animal Health, told Vox.

It’s "very unlikely they swabbed the only wild mink with SARS-CoV-2," Seifert said.

If allowed to spread unchecked in wild animals, the coronavirus could evolve to infect a wider range of species than it currently can, Live Science previously reported. In addition, wild animals could potentially serve as a reservoir for the virus — a population in which the pathogen could continue to spread and mutate. The virus could potentially jump from this reservoir back into humans, sparking new waves of infection. 

"If it does [establish a reservoir], then we've got a long-term issue here, where this virus has the potential to be with us for millennia," Sarah Olson, associate director of the health program at the Wildlife Conservation Society, told Vox.

Originally published on Live Science. 

COVID-19 vaccines should dramatically drive down the rate of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the U.S. — provided that enough people get the shots.

According to a new model, posted Nov. 30 to the preprint database medRxiv, vaccinating just 40% of the U.S. population would cut the attack rate, or new infections from the virus, more than four-fold over the course of one year. That reduction would occur both by directly protecting those who get the shots and indirectly protecting others in the wider community. 

Without any vaccines, about 7% of susceptible people would get infected over the next year, the authors estimated. That's assuming people comply with measures like social distancing and mask-wearing; the attack rate would likely be higher without such precautions in place.

The low attack rate with vaccines translates to fewer hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19; with 40% of the population vaccinated, both ICU and non-ICU hospitalizations would fall more than 85%, according to the model. Deaths would fall by more than 87% compared with a year-long scenario with no vaccinations.

Related: 20 of the worst epidemics and pandemics in history 

Does that mean we can throw caution to the wind and stop social distancing if 41% of the population gets vaccinated? No, not exactly. 

About three-quarters of the population will likely need to be vaccinated before we can safely begin easing restrictions, given how easily COVID-19 spreads between people, said study author Meagan Fitzpatrick, an assistant professor and infectious disease transmission modeler at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. In addition, the new model has not yet been peer-reviewed, and in any case, it cannot perfectly predict what will happen once Americans are vaccinated. 

But the study does give us reason for hope, Fitzpatrick said. With such highly effective vaccines under review, "the strategy now is to try to get these vaccines into as many people as possible," she said.

Reason to hope 

The two leading vaccine candidates — one designed by Moderna and the other by Pfizer and BioNTech — are both more than 94% effective at preventing COVID-19, according to early analyses. That level of efficacy is "so much higher than any of us had a right to expect one year into the pandemic," Fitzpatrick said. "What our research confirms is that these vaccines with extraordinarily high efficacy really do have the potential to make a huge impact," she said. 

In their model, the study authors assumed that people with the highest risk of COVID-19 exposure and death would receive the vaccine first. These included a large proportion of all health care workers, people with existing medical conditions and individuals ages 65 and older. Individuals younger than age 65 received the vaccine next, and no individuals under 18 got the shots, since none of the leading vaccines have been tested thoroughly in children yet. 

In addition, the authors assumed that 10% of the population had already caught COVID-19 and developed natural immunity to the virus. "Ten percent is fair, but may be an underestimate in some places" where case counts have been particularly high, Stanley Perlman, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa, who was not involved in the study, said in an email. 

Related: Here are the most promising coronavirus vaccine candidates out there

Given these parameters, the model showed that vaccinating 40% of the population substantially reduced case counts, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19. 

The most dramatic drop occurred in people ages 65 and older, who experienced an 83% to 90% reduction in potential cases. People ages 20 and younger had half as many new infections, even though no one under 18 was vaccinated. In other words, while older adults got direct protection from the vaccine, young adults and children were indirectly protected as immunity increased in the community at large, Fitzpatrick said. 

After seeing the impact of 40% vaccination rates, the authors tested what would happen with only 20% of the population vaccinated. Again, the model prioritized vaccinating those at high risk of exposure and severe illness. Even with such low vaccine coverage, non-ICU hospitalizations fell by 60%, ICU hospitalizations by 62% and deaths by more than 64%. This suggests that, as vaccines begin to roll out, we may begin to see their positive impacts even before many people get the shots, Fitzpatrick said.

Models versus reality 

While the study highlights the power and promise of COVID-19 vaccines, the study authors cautioned that vaccines must be paired with other safeguards against the virus, such as masking, testing and contact tracing. If we drop those safeguards too soon, more people would need to be vaccinated to prevent a spike in new cases, they wrote.

"I think that we [will] need social distancing and masks for many months still," Perlman said. "Opening up restaurants and allowing mass gatherings will need to be done very cautiously until vaccination rates are high," he noted. 

If anything, contact-tracing efforts should ramp up as vaccines roll out, so health officials can quickly spot new outbreaks and identify communities that should be prioritized for vaccination, Fitzpatrick said. 

Reaching high-risk groups will be critical to stopping the pandemic, and this is one way in which the model might differ from reality. In the model, vaccination rates were assumed to be similar across the whole country, and those in high-risk groups always got their shots first. What's more, both of the leading vaccines require two shots given several weeks apart, and in the model, everyone in the model got both doses of the vaccine.

In reality, "vaccination programs often miss their targets," said Dr. Eric Schneider, senior vice president for policy and research at The Commonwealth Fund, a national organization that researches health and social policy issues, who was not involved in the study. "If, in reality, lower-risk individuals ... are more likely than higher-risk individuals to receive [a] vaccine, then the model overstates the effect of the vaccination program," Schneider said in an email. 

In other words, the model will reflect reality only if the U.S. follows through with its plan to give high-risk groups the vaccine first. To work, this plan must be well-coordinated at all levels of the government and health care system, and paired with clear communication about the vaccine's risks and benefits, according to a recent report by The Commonwealth Fund. 

And of course, once a vaccine becomes available, those offered access must agree to take it, Fitzpatrick said. "A vaccine only works if people take it." 

Recent surveys hint that many U.S. residents would probably or definitely get a COVID-19 vaccine if offered one today, but a smaller proportion say that they probably or definitely would not. These reports should be taken with a huge grain of salt, though, because "what someone says they're going to do in a survey doesn't always represent what they're actually going to do," Fitzpatrick said.

Thankfully, while we wait to see what happens, "I think there's a lot of reason to be hopeful," she added.

Originally published on Live Science. 

COVID-19 may have already arrived in the United States by December 2019, before the disease was even identified in China, a new study suggests.

The study researchers, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), analyzed more than 7,000 blood donations collected by the American Red Cross in nine states between Dec. 13, 2019 and Jan. 17, 2020. Of those, 106 samples tested positive for antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

The findings suggest "SARS-CoV-2 infections may have been present in the U.S. in December 2019, earlier than previously recognized," the authors wrote in their paper, published Monday (Nov. 30) in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Related: 20 of the worst epidemics and pandemics in history

Officials in China first reported a cluster of mysterious pneumonia cases in Wuhan, which would turn out to be caused by COVID-19, on Dec. 31, 2019. In the United States, the first confirmed case of COVID-19 was reported on Jan. 20, 2020 in a resident of Washington state who had recently traveled to China. 

But there have been hints that the virus was circulating earlier than recognized. A case of COVID-19 in China was reportedly traced back to Nov. 17, 2019, Live Science previously reported. In France, retrospective testing of samples from hospitalized patients revealed a patient infected in late December 2019. And researchers have found SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in blood samples collected in Italy in September, Live Science previously reported.

In the new study, of the 106 samples that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, 39 were collected from California, Oregon and Washington between Dec. 13 and Dec. 16, 2019; and 67 were collected from Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Rhode Island and Wisconsin between Dec. 30, 2019 and Jan. 17, 2020.

Positive antibody tests suggest a prior infection with COVID-19, but they cannot prove that a person was infected. There's a chance that antibodies against other coronaviruses may "cross-react" to give a positive result. But when the researchers performed additional tests to account for such cross-reactivity, they found that 84 out of 90 samples tested had antibodies that were specific for SARS-CoV-2.

The authors also used a highly accurate test for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. But even very accurate tests still produce a small number of false positive results. However, the number of positive results in the new study was higher than would be expected from false positives alone, the researchers wrote.

Overall, these findings "make it very unlikely that all reactive specimens [positive results] represent false positives," the authors concluded. In other words, at least some of these positives from December 2019 and early January 2020 were likely due to prior COVID-19 infections. 

However, even though the authors tried to measure antibodies that were specific to SARS-CoV-2, "cross-reactivity with other coronaviruses" can't be ruled out, Dr. George Rutherford, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, told Live Science. And even if these were true COVID-19 infections, the study cannot determine where the participants acquired the infection — it's possible that some blood donors in the study had recently traveled to China and were infected there, Rutherford noted. (The current study did not have information on if and where the donors had traveled.)

In addition, because of limitations of the study, the findings can't reveal how much the virus was circulating at that time.

To confirm the findings, human tissue, saliva or blood samples from that time should be tested for traces of genetic material from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the authors said. Rutherford added that donors could be contacted in future studies, which could provide information on whether they had traveled or experienced symptoms similar to those of COVID-19.

Originally published on Live Science.