Gas giant AB Aurigae b challenges science of planets

Planet AB Aurigae b is still in its "birthing" stages. But astronomists say it is already nine times the mass of Jupiter and it's forming in a unusual way.

An illustration of AB Aurigae b, a giant gas planet discovered with the help of the Subaru Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope

AB Aurigae b is still only a baby as far as planets go. It's a giant gas planet that scientists have discovered in the early stages of its formation. And it's already breaking records in astronomy. Astronomers say the planet is nine times the mass of Jupiter — and that it is challenging our understanding of how planets form.

Jupiter is our solar system's largest planet. It has a mass that's almost 320 times that of Earth and more than two-and-a-half times that of all the other planets in our solar system combined. It is, in other words, pretty darn heavy.

But AB Aurigae b makes Jupiter look like a little balloon.

"We think it is still very early on in its 'birthing' process," astrophysicist Thayne Currie of the Subaru Telescope and the NASA Ames Research Center told news agency Reuters.

Currie is the lead author of a study on the planet's discovery that has been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

"Evidence suggests that this is the earliest stage of formation ever observed for a gas giant," said Currie.

Gas giants have a small solid core. But they are mostly made up of gasses — hydrogen and helium — that swirl around that core.

Our solar system has two gas giants: Jupiter and Saturn. The Earth and Mars, for comparison, are known as rocky planets.
A planet with a massive host star

Researchers detected the new gas giant with the help of two telescopes — one on the ground and one orbiting Earth.

The Subaru telescope is located near the summit of an inactive Hawaiian volcano and the Hubble Space Telescope is in a low-Earth orbit.

As the scientists would have expected, AB Aurigae b has a star. When planets form they tend to have a host star. Planets orbit stars. And in this case, the star is called AB Aurigae.

It is itself a very young star. AB Aurigae is only about 2 million years old, whereas our sun (also a star) is roughly 4.5 billion years old.

A disc surrounds a newly discovered planet's host star, AB Aurigae

The planet is embedded in an expansive disk of gas and dust. Planets form from the materials in these disks, with small objects like grain and rocks swirling around, colliding and sticking together.

All that is quite normal. But there is something unusual about the planet and its star.
A planet and star far apart

The planet and its star seem to be far too far apart for any of those swirling bits to stick and form the planet.

AB Aurigae b is three times as far away from its star as Neptune is from our star, the sun. That's three times the distance that astronomers normally observe.

"This process cannot form giant planets at large orbital distance, so this discovery challenges our understanding of planet formation," Olivier Guyon, an astronomer at the Subaru telescope and the University of Arizona, told Reuters.

The researchers believe that the planet may have formed when the disc around its host star cooled and gravity caused it to fragment into one or more clumps ― one of which turned into the planet.

"There's more than one way to cook an egg," Currie said. "And apparently there may be more than one way to form a Jupiter-like planet."

Edited by: Zulfikar Abbany


EARTH-LIKE PLANETS AND OTHER CELESTIAL DISCOVERIES
Another planet Earth?
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has discovered a third Earth-like planet orbiting the star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our sun at four light years away. A planet is considered Earth-like if scientists suspect it provides conditions that could make life theoretically conceivable, such as a certain temperature range, gravity, an atmosphere and the possibility of water.
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GUESS THEY MISSED THE MESSAGE; BDS

In Israel, Ukrainian Eurovision band calls for end to war


AFP - 12h ago
© GIL COHEN-MAGEN

The frontman for the group representing Ukraine at the Eurovision Song Contest called Tuesday for people across the world to protest Russia's invasion of his country, as he visited Israel.

© GIL COHEN-MAGENUkrainian Jewish refugees cheer during a performance by Kalush Orchestra, Ukraine’s entry to the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest, at a hotel in Jerusalem

"Our message is this: everyone who hears us, who knows about the situation in Ukraine, can help us even if he doesn't solve these issues," said Kalush Orchestra's Oleh Psiuk.

The group is one of 24 Eurovision acts visiting the country for a four-day "Israel Calling" promotional event.

"Everyone has social networks... everyone can just speak about it and write about it, tag people in social networks, talk about how to stop the war in Ukraine," he told reporters.

"If everyone does that, this war will end very soon," he added. "If every day you do something to end the war, this war will not happen in other countries."

The six members of Kalush -- a favourite to win the Eurovision contest in the Italian city of Turin next month -- had to get special permission to leave Ukraine.

The visit was the first time since Russia's February 24 invasion that they could practise their Eurovision entry, hip-hop lullaby "Stefania", together in person after weeks of online rehearsals, Psiuk said.

Kalush Orchestra recorded their song contest "postcard" -- a video clip showcasing Italian scenery -- against a green-screen backdrop at the Jewish Agency headquarters in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

The group arrived in Israel a day earlier after the semi-governmental body, which is primarily in charge of processing immigration for Jews abroad, facilitated their arrival for the event, a Jewish Agency spokeswoman told AFP.

They also met with dozens of thrilled Ukrainian teen refugees who had immigrated to Israel, and performed two songs.

"It's like a therapy, also everybody will see that Ukrainian people (are) not like a tragedy or something," said Anastasiia Yeremenko, a Ukrainian Jewish refugee.

"We are brave, we are smiling, we love each other, we love this world and we don't want war," the 19-year-old said.

Recent arrival Sonya Yevgenieva, 18, said Kalush Orchestra was a big deal back home.

"We all really like their music... Of course we all know them and it's so cool that we can meet them and see them," she said.

Later Tuesday, Kalush thrilled dozens of Ukrainian refugees living in Jerusalem hotels with another short performance.

Kalush and the other 23 groups will be part of a show in Tel Aviv on Thursday, wrapping up "Israel Calling".

osh-dl-jjm/lg

Publisher signs over Russian printing houses to Nobel winner


Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov: 'Independent media are the antidote to war' (AFP/Dimitar DILKOFF) (Dimitar DILKOFF)

Tue, April 5, 2022

Norwegian publisher Amedia said Tuesday it was transferring control over its Russian printing houses to Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov, chief editor of independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

The announcement came as the media group also announced it was leaving Russia over the country's invasion of Ukraine.

"With what we are currently witnessing in Ukraine from the Russian authorities, it is impossible for Amedia to continue the printing business in the country," Amedia chief executive Anders Moller Opdahl said in a statement.

"Amedia is now withdrawing, in a way that leaves control to Peace Prize laureate Muratov," Opdahl added.

Board chairman Andre Stoylen said the company believed this was "the best possible solution given the prevailing circumstances."

"In this way, the printing houses will be able to continue being important for independent media in Russia in the future," Stoylen said.

Muratov, who together with Maria Ressa of the Philippines was awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, would have full control of daily operations and "exercise all shareholder rights at his own discretion" of the four printing houses wholly owned by Amedia's Russian subsidiary.

Novaya Gazeta, which was already using the printing presses of Amedia's subsidiary, announced in late March that it had suspended its publication until the end of Russia's military actions in Ukraine.

"This will support free expression of opinion, and all profits will be contributed to promoting it. Independent media are the antidote to war. We will take care of the open printing business and the employees," Muratov said in a statement, adding his paper welcomed the resource with "great gratitude."

Amedia also said it had written down the value of its Russian operations from 38 million Norwegian kroner ($4.4 million, 4 million euros) to zero.

In total the Norwegian publisher owns six printing houses in Russia, four of them wholly-owned and two together with Russian minority shareholders.

"Amedia is working on a solution with the minority shareholders in the last two printing companies, so that the group can withdraw completely from Russia," the company said, adding that funds from a potential future sale would be used to support independent media in Russia.

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THIRD WORLD USA
In a southern US capital, an unending water crisis


Children leave Wilkins Elementary school in Jackson, Mississippi, to use the bathroom at a neighboring school because theirs lacks the water pressure needed to flush the toilets

 

A blue bucket in a bathroom is full of water to be used for flushing the toilet at Wilkins Elementary School in Jackson, Mississippi

Cheryl Brown, principal of Wilkins Elementary School in Jackson, Mississippi, pulls back a curtain to show where they keep their bottled water for students 

The city of Jackson, Mississippi temporarily shut down the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant in November 2021 due to a bad batch of chemicals as well as faulty equipment 

Terun Moore fills a reusable jug with filtered water in Jackson, Mississippi 

Members of Operation Good distribute cases of water at an apartment complex in Jackson, Mississippi 

PHOTOS (AFP/Mark Felix)

François PICARD
Mon, 4 April 2022

Every morning, 180 students at a school in Jackson, Mississippi have to board a bus to be taken to another nearby school. The reason? Their school lacks the water pressure needed to flush its own toilets.

Cheryl Brown, the principal at Wilkins Elementary -- where 98 percent of the 400 students are African American and most come from underprivileged backgrounds -- doesn't hide her frustration.

"It's hard. It's very hard," she told AFP.

"It's taxing on the boys and girls," who spend much of the day at the other school before heading back to Wilkins in the afternoon. "It's taxing on the staff members," she said.

Jackson is undergoing a severe water crisis -- despite its status as a state capital in one of the richest countries in the world.

Late last year, President Joe Biden signed into law a $1 trillion package to address badly deteriorated infrastructure like Jackson's.

The city's water system has suffered "significant deficiencies" since 2016, reports from the southern state's health department found.

Both the causes and symptoms of the crisis are clear: water flows from old and unmaintained treatment plants -- one is 100 years old -- through leaking, century-old pipes. When it comes out of city taps, it's sometimes rust-brown -- and always contaminated with lead.

"The distribution lines are aging, and a master plan for pipe replacement... is not being implemented," the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wrote in a 2020 report.

It said the city loses as much as 50 percent of its water -- a stunning amount -- through the decrepit system.

As a result, "three local hospitals have drilled their own wells... to have access to reliable sources of drinking water."

- No isolated case -

Jackson, a city of 155,000, is not the only US city to face such a crisis.

One of the worst US public health scandals in years came when the details of poor water quality management were exposed in the northern industrial city of Flint, Michigan.

A budget crisis prompted that city to change its water source, leaving thousands of residents exposed to dangerously high lead levels.

Both Flint and Jackson are majority Black, which for many observers confirms the existence of "environmental racism" -- with African Americans disproportionately affected by pollution.

Brown, the Wilkins principal, does not like to dwell on the issue.

But after relying for weeks on portable toilets -- forcing students to stand in long lines to wait their turn -- she now worries that the daily bus trips to another school are cutting into instruction time.

Charles Williams, who will be retiring as Jackson public works director this month after a long, wearying battle with the water crisis, told AFP the problems facing Jackson are complex.

"This didn't happen overnight," he said. "This was delayed maintenance and lack of funding."

He estimated the cost of updating the city's water system at $3 billion to $5 billion -- no small sum for a medium-sized city.

How much help Jackson might get from the big US infrastructure package is not yet clear, though the EPA has encouraged "communities such as Jackson with critical water infrastructure needs" to apply.

A lengthy investigative article in the Mississippi Free Press by journalist Nick Judin identified two problems underlying Jackson's woes: a past drop in EPA funding for local water projects and a  WHITE   population exodus from the city to the suburbs.

Having lost a fourth of its population since 1980, Jackson's tax base has dropped accordingly.

Judin also blames the sometimes chaotic administration of the water system, which has resulted in some residents receiving bills intermittently while "some people don't get billed at all."

- 'This is not normal' -

In late 2012, the city contracted with German technology company Siemens to install new water meters, update the billing system and complete infrastructure work.

But early in 2020, the group agreed to reimburse the city $90 million after the city said Siemens had failed to ensure its water meters and software system were compatible.

An unusually cold winter then resulted in the main water treatment plant shutting down and numerous old water pipes bursting.

Since then, things have gotten no better, local residents told AFP.

"We haven't drunk the (city) water in about 12 years," said Priscilla Sterling, standing on the sidewalk of Farish Street in a once-prosperous Black business district.

"You're still taking a chance when you bathe in it."

Barbara Davis works in a Jackson church. She turns on a tap to show the rust-brown water flowing out.

"This is not how you're supposed to live," she said. "You know, this is not normal. It's not normal at all."

In one hard-hit neighborhood, an NGO called 501CTHREE has brought in a water filtration device where residents can fill jugs with clean water.

"Everybody can’t go to the store and buy water," said Terun Moore, who works with a local NGO, Strong Arms of Jackson.

The city, for its part, insists that Jackson water, brown though it may be, is safe -- except for pregnant women and children.

Not one local resident interviewed by AFP said they trust assessment.

str/iba/bbk/to/caw

MISOGYNISTIC FEMICIDE

Study finds higher homicide risk in homes with handguns

1968 EXPANSION OF HANDGUN RIGHTS
“But what this is showing that having a gun in the home is bad for people in the home.”

FILE - A sales clerk holds a pistol during an auction in Rochester, Wash., on Oct. 20, 2017. A study published in Annals of Internal Medicine on Monday, April 4, 2022, suggests people who live with handgun owners are murdered at more than twice the rate of people who live in homes without such firearms. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)


NEW YORK (AP) — Most U.S. gun owners say they own firearms to protect themselves and their loved ones, surveys show. But a study published Monday suggests people who live with handgun owners are shot to death at a higher rate than those who don’t have such weapons at home.

“We found zero evidence of any kind of protective effects” from living in a home with a handgun, said David Studdert, a Stanford University researcher who was the lead author of the Annals of Internal Medicine study.

The study has several shortcomings. For example, the researchers said they could not determine which victims were killed by the handgun owners or with the in-home weapons. They couldn’t account for illegal guns and looked only at handguns, not rifles or other firearms.

The dataset also was limited to registered voters in California who were 21 and older. It’s not clear that the findings are generalizable to the whole state, let alone to the rest of the country, the authors acknowledged.

But some outside experts said the work was well done, important and the largest research of its kind.

“I would call this a landmark study,” said Cassandra Crifasi, a gun violence policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University. “This contributes to our understanding of the potential causal relationship between guns in the home and homicides,” she said.

California is unusual in that it offers gun ownership data and other information not obtainable in almost any other state. That allowed the researchers to follow millions of people over many years to try to better establish what happens when a person begins living in a home with handgun, they said.

The study focused on nearly 600,000 Californians who did not own handguns but began living in homes with handguns between October 2004 and December 2016 — either because they started living with someone who owned one or because someone in their household bought one.

The researchers calculated that for every 100,000 people in that situation, 12 will be shot to death by someone else over five years. In comparison, eight out of 100,000 who live in gun-free homes will be killed that way over the same time span.

“The rates are low” and the absolute risk is small, but it’s important to consider the increase in a person’s risk of being killed, Studdert said.

Those numbers suggest the risk rises 50%, but Studdert said it’s actually higher: In a separate calculation designed to better account for where people live and other factors, the researchers estimated the risk was actually more than twice as high.

Separately, the researchers found that those who lived with handgun owners had a much higher rate of being fatally shot by a spouse or intimate partner. The vast majority of such victims — 84% — were women, they said.

The study was confined to California, but the risk is likely even greater in states with less stringent gun laws and where gun ownership is more common, Crifasi said.

Previous research estimated that nearly 3% of U.S. adults became new gun owners between January 2019 and April 2021, which translates to about 7.5 million Americans. Of those, about 5.4 million previously lived in a home with no guns.

For decades, studies have shown guns in the home raise the risk of a violent death. Much of that work, including an earlier study by Studdert and his colleagues, focused on suicide.

The new study goes further in addressing the perception that handguns are still worthwhile because of the safety they provide against being murdered, some experts said.

“The reason people have guns in their home is for protection from strangers,” said David Hemenway, director of the Harvard University’s Injury Control Research Center. 

“But what this is showing that having a gun in the home is bad for people in the home.”

___

The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Revolutionary changes in transportation could slow global warming if done right

By Alan Jenn, University of California Davis

A driver uses an electric car recharge station in Beijing. 

File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo

April 5 (UPI) -- Around the world, revolutionary changes are under way in transportation. More electric vehicles are on the road, people are taking advantage of sharing mobility services such as Uber and Lyft, and the rise in telework during the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the way people think about commuting.

Transportation is a growing source of the global greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change, accounting for 23% of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions worldwide in 2019 and 29% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.

The systemic changes under way in the transportation sector could begin lowering that emissions footprint. But will they reduce emissions enough?

In a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released Monday, scientists from around the world examined the latest research on efforts to mitigate climate change. The report concludes that falling costs for renewable energy and for electric vehicle batteries, in addition to policy changes, have slowed the growth of climate change in the past decade, but that deep, immediate cuts are necessary to stop emissions growth entirely and keep global warming in check.

The transportation chapter, which I contributed to, homed in on transportation transformations -- some just starting and others expanding -- that in the most aggressive scenarios could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions from transportation by 80% to 90% of current levels by 2050. That sort of drastic reduction would require a major, rapid rethinking of how people get around globally.

2 / 4Lexus' NX PHEV off-road concept car is displayed at an event in Tokyo. Electric, hydrogen fuel cell and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles from 14 companies were exhibited at the event. Photo by Keizo Mori/UPI | License Photo

Future of EVs

All-electric vehicles have grown dramatically since the Tesla Roadster and Nissan Leaf arrived on the market a little over a decade ago, following the popularity of hybrids.

RELATED CH4 responsible for more than 80% of recent atmospheric methane growth

In 2021 alone, the sales of electric passenger vehicles, including plug-in hybrids, doubled worldwide to 6.6 million, about 9% of all car sales that year.

Strong regulatory policies have encouraged the production of electric vehicles, including California's Zero Emission Vehicle regulation, which requires automakers to produce a certain number of zero-emission vehicles based on their total vehicles sold in California; the European Union's CO2 emissions standards for new vehicles; and China's New Energy Vehicle policy, all of which have helped push EV adoption to where we are today.

Beyond passenger vehicles, many micro-mobility options -- such as autorickshaws, scooters and bikes -- as well as buses, have been electrified. As the cost of lithium-ion batteries decreases, these transportation options will become increasingly affordable and further boost sales of battery-powered vehicles that traditionally have run on fossil fuels.


3 / 4Vice President Kamala Harris stands beside an electric vehicle while receiving a briefing about the Prince George's County electric vehicle fleet, during a visit to Brandywine Maintenance Facility in Brandywine, Md., in December. File Photo by Michael Reynolds/UPI | License Photo

An important aspect to remember about electrifying the transportation system is that its ability to cut greenhouse gas emissions ultimately depends on how clean the electricity grid is. China, for example, is aiming for 20% of its vehicles to be electric by 2025, but its electric grid is still heavily reliant on coal.

With the global trends toward more renewable generation, these vehicles will be connected with fewer carbon emissions over time. There are also many developing and potentially promising co-benefits of electromobility when coupled with the power system. The batteries within electric vehicles have the potential to act as storage devices for the grid, which can assist in stabilizing the intermittency of renewable resources in the power sector, among many other benefits.

Other areas of transportation are more challenging to electrify. Larger and heavier vehicles generally aren't as conducive to electrification because the size and weight of the batteries needed rapidly becomes untenable.

For some heavy-duty trucks, ships and airplanes, alternative fuels such as hydrogen, advanced biofuels and synthetic fuels are being explored as replacements for fossil fuels. Most aren't economically feasible yet, and substantial advances in the technology are still needed to ensure they are either low- or zero-carbon.


President Joe Biden answers questions from reporters after driving a Wrangler Unlimited 4xe Rubicon around the White House grounds during an event on electric vehicles last August. File Photo by Sarah Silbiger/UPI | License Photo


Other ways to cut emissions

While new fuel and vehicle technologies are often highlighted as decarbonization solutions, behavioral and other systemic changes will also be needed to meet to cut greenhouse gas emissions dramatically from this sector. We are already in the midst of these changes.

Telecommuting: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the explosion of teleworking and video conferencing reduced travel, and, with it, emissions associated with commuting. While some of that will rebound, telework is likely to continue for many sectors of the economy.

Shared mobility: Some shared mobility options, like bike and scooter sharing programs, can get more people out of vehicles entirely.

Car-sharing and on-demand services such as Uber and Lyft also have the potential to reduce emissions if they use high-efficiency or zero-emission vehicles, or if their services lean more toward car pooling, with each driver picking up multiple passengers. Unfortunately, there is substantial uncertainty about the impact of these services. They might also increase vehicle use and, with it, greenhouse gas emissions.

New policies such as the California Clean Miles Standard are helping to push companies like Uber and Lyft to use cleaner vehicles and increase their passenger loads, though it remains to be seen whether other regions will adopt similar policies.






Public transit-friendly cities: Another systemic change involves urban planning and design. Transportation in urban areas is responsible for about 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions.

Efficient city planning and land use can reduce travel demand and shift transportation modes, from cars to public transit, through strategies that avoid urban sprawl and disincentivize personal cars. These improvements not only decrease greenhouse gas emissions, but can decrease congestion, air pollution and noise, while improving the safety of transportation systems.

How do these advances translate to lower emissions?

Much of the uncertainty in how much technological change and other systemic shifts in transportation affects global warming is related to the speed of transition.

The new IPCC report includes several potential scenarios for how much improvements in transportation will be able to cut emissions. On average, the scenarios indicate that the carbon intensity of the transportation sector would need to decrease by about 50% by 2050 and as much as 91% by 2100 when combined with a cleaner electricity grid to stay within the 1.5-degree Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) target for global warming.

These decreases would require a complete reversal of current trends of increasing emissions in the transportation sector, but the recent advances in transportation provide many opportunities to meet this challenge.

Alan Jenn is an assistant professional researcher in transportation at the University of California, Davis.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

US Report: Initiative still allows advertising unhealthy foods to kids


Foods and drinks advertised to children still feature unhealthy options, according to a new report. File photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo

April 5 (UPI) -- More than one-third of food products advertised to kids, such as sugary cereals and sweet snacks, are not considered healthy dietary options, a report released Tuesday by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health at the University of Connecticut found.

Of the food products that can be advertised directly to children under the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, 37% do not qualify as healthy and do not include fruits or vegetables, the data showed.

Companies that participate in the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative still promote other unhealthy brands and products with marketing that appeals to children under age 12 years via packaging, websites, in-store displays and sponsorships, the researchers said.

In addition, young people ages 12 to 17 years are not protected from marketing under the current guidelines, and companies still can advertise brands directly to children, even when the majority of products offered by those brands do not meet nutrition criteria, they said.

RELATED Maker of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, other products to stop child ads

"We know that unhealthy food and beverage marketing has a profound effect on kids' diets and health," report co-author Melissa Jensen said in a press release.

"The Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative must address loopholes and apply stricter standards in order to make meaningful improvement," said Jensen, a post-doctoral fellow at the Rudd Center.

The Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative is a voluntary program enacted in 2006 that is designed to establish standards for food and beverage product advertising and marketing to children.

RELATED Beverage companies use tobacco strategies to snag young customers

Nineteen food and beverage companies have voluntarily pledged to limit unhealthy food advertising to children age 12 years and younger.

Previous assessments of the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative have found that children still see advertising for unhealthy items such as sugary drinks, fast food, sweet and salty snacks and candy.

However, new nutrition standards for the initiative went into effect in January 2020 that established limits on calories, saturated fat, sodium and added sugars in products that could be marketed to young people, according to BBB National Programs, which oversees it.

RELATED Food ads targeting kids decline, but most are still for unhealthy products

"For nearly 15 years, the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative has focused on ensuring that foods in advertisements directed to children under age 12 meet strict nutrition criteria," Maureen Enright, vice president of BBB National Programs, told UPI.

"As the report notes, over the years Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative has strengthened the program and its Uniform Nutrition Criteria in a number of ways [and] we remain committed to continued improvement," Enright said.

For this report, called FACTS 2022, Jensen and her colleagues evaluated the nutrition quality of the products allowed to be advertised to children under the initiative as of August 2020 by using a Nutrition Profile Index score.

The Nutrition Profile Index is an overall nutrition score based on the nutrient profiling model used to identify healthy products that can be advertised to children in the United Kingdom, the researchers said.

For all products on the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative's advertising list, the Nutrition Profile Index score improved to 68 in 2020, from 66 in 2017, they said.

More than three-quarters of beverages that can be advertised to children under the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative did not contain added sugar or unhealthy sweeteners, the data showed.

In addition, participating companies added healthier drinks such as water and milk to the advertising list, the researchers said.

However, to better protect children from marketing messages touting unhealthy foods, the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative should not allow drinks sweetened with added sugar and/or non-nutritive sweeteners to be advertised, they said.

The program should expand the types of marketing covered by company pledges to also require nutrition criteria for all products marketed directly to children, including on product packaging, according to the researchers.

It should also expand its child audience definition to include children up to at least age 14 years, who are unprotected under its current guidelines, the researchers said.

"While the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative's revised nutrition criteria are a step in the right direction, they fall short of what's needed to regulate the industry and keep kids healthy," Jensen said.

Hundreds of Ukrainian refugees wait in Mexico, hope to be allowed inside U.S.

BETTER CHANCES THAN ANYONE ELSE

Children from Ukraine look at a cellphone while staying at a makeshift camp near the San Ysidro Port of Entry of the U.S.-Mexico border in Tijuana, Mexico, on April 4, 2022. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI | License Photo

April 5 (UPI) -- Hundreds of Ukrainian refugees have made their way into Mexico and are lining up at U.S. border stations waiting, and hoping, to be among the 100,000 President Joe Biden has promised to let in due to the Russian war in Ukraine.

Many of the refugees have gotten tourist visas to enter Mexico and, once there, are making their way north to the U.S. border. Many have been waiting in Tijuana, which is a short distance away from the San Ysidro port of entry.

Earlier this week, volunteers said they saw more than 1,000 refugees waiting at the border. They also said that the United States is allowing about 150 refugees into the country each day on a case-by-case, humanitarian basis.

The humanitarian exception stems from Biden's pledge last month to take in Ukrainians fleeing violence in their home country. Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February and for weeks have been fighting to secure key strategic locations around the Eastern European nation.

The Ukrainian refugees are given a number near the border so they don't have to physically wait in line to see if they can enter the United States on humanitarian grounds. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI

Disturbing images coming out of Ukraine last weekend -- showing civilians killed by Russian troops and evidence of other atrocities -- have outraged the international community and strengthened the resolve for some to allow traumatized Ukrainians into the United States. They fueled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's appearance before the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday.

Some refugees are waiting for possible U.S. entry at hotels in Tijuana, and some are living at encampments around the U.S.-Mexico border.

"We had to come up with some very immediate decisions about how we were going to house, how we were going to protect our people from weather, how we can assist them with their journey to America, and how we can make them comfortable," volunteer Inna Levien told KNSD-TV.

One Ukrainian-American met her 17-year-old grandson at the San Ysidro port of entry. He'd traveled for more than a month to get there.

As some Ukrainians cross the border, federal immigration agents continue to turn away Latin American and Caribbean refugees at the same location. Volunteers say that some fleeing Russians have also showed up hoping to enter the United States, but they don't have the same guarantees as Ukrainians.

"We had a surprising influx in the past four days, mainly because after the conflict we started seeing arrivals as of March 11," Tijuana immigration official Enrique Lucero said according to CNN.

"They're processing like 100, 150 a day or even 200 a day and it takes nearly three hours to process them," he added. "That's the reason why we have seen this minicamp at the border."

INDOOR ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH

Pet poop and pee includes traces of cancer-causing toxins found in homes

By HealthDay News

Researchers found eight types of aromatic amines in stool samples of pets. They also found traces of the chemicals in more than 38% of urine samples taken from a separate group of pets. File Photo by Jaromir Chalabala/Shutterstock

Your pet's poop and pee may give you clues to how many cancer-causing toxins have taken up residence in your home.

"Our findings suggest that pets are coming into contact with aromatic amines that leach from products in their household environment," said study author Sridhar Chinthakindi, a postdoctoral fellow at NYU Langone Health in New York City.

"As these substances have been tied to bladder, colorectal and other forms of cancer, our results may help explain why so many dogs and cats develop such diseases," he said in an NYU news release.

Aromatic amines are the chemicals found in tobacco smoke and in dyes used in cosmetics, textiles and plastics. The study ruled out tobacco smoke as a major source of pet exposure in this study, but found that nearly 70% of dogs and 80% of cats had detectable levels of an aromatic amine that previous research has shown occurs when a common flea control medication breaks down.

In total, the team analyzed the samples for 30 different kinds of aromatic amines and nicotine. The researchers found eight types of aromatic amines in the stool samples. They also found traces of the chemicals in more than 38% of urine samples taken from a separate group of pets.

They found that cats had triple the concentrations of aromatic amines in their urine, though they do not break down many compounds as efficiently as dogs do.

The animals had similar exposure to the toxins whether they lived in homes, shelters or were staying at an animal hospital.

It's not clear what aromatic amine levels can be safely tolerated by pets, noted senior study author Kurunthachalam Kannan, a professor in the Department of Pediatrics at NYU Langone.

"Since pets are smaller and more sensitive to toxins, they serve as excellent 'canaries in the coal mine' for assessing chemical risks to human health," Kannan said in the release. "If they are getting exposed to toxins in our homes, then we had better take a closer look at our own exposure."

The findings highlight how common these substances are and how difficult they are to avoid, Chinthakindi said.

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The study authors had previously measured other hormone-disrupting chemicals, including phthalates, melamine and bisphenols in pet urine. Next, they plan to explore the link between aromatic amine exposure and bladder, thyroid and testicular cancer in pets.

The findings were published online recently in the journal Environment International.

More information

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The American Veterinary Medical Association has more on cancer in pets.

EPA proposes new rule to ban chrysotile asbestos

Michael Regan, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency speaks in Lorain, Ohio on February 17. He announced a new rule banning chrysotile asbestos on Tuesday. 

File Photo by Aaron Josefczyk/UPI | License Photo

April 5 (UPI) -- The White House said on Tuesday that the Environmental Protection Agency will announce new rules prohibiting the use and manufacturing of chrysotile asbestos, which has been tied to lung cancer and mesothelioma.

Chrysotile asbestos is commonly part of such items as roofing materials, textiles and cement as well some automotive parts that include brakes and gaskets.

The EPA said the new suggested rule would be the first risk management rule issued under the new process for evaluating and addressing the safety of existing chemicals under the 2016 Toxic Substances Control Act.

"Today, we're taking an important step forward to protect public health and finally put an end to the use of dangerous asbestos in the United States," EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement.

"This historic proposed ban would protect the American people from exposure to chrysotile asbestos, a known carcinogen, and demonstrates significant progress in our work to implement the TSCA law and take bold, long-overdue actions to protect those most vulnerable among us."

The proposal would correct a 1991 court decision that essentially overturned EPA's 1989 ban on asbestos significantly weakened EPA's authority to address risks to human health from asbestos and other existing chemicals.

"Use of asbestos in the U.S. has been declining for decades, and its use is banned in over 50 countries," the EPA said in a statement. "Although there are several known types, the only form of asbestos known to be currently imported, processed, or distributed for use in the United States is chrysotile."

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The agency said raw chrysotile asbestos currently imported into the United States is used exclusively by the Chlor-alkali industry but most consumer products that historically contained chrysotile asbestos have been discontinued.