AMERICAN COLONY

Environmental groups sue US over Puerto Rico dredging plan


DÁNICA COTO
Tue, August 16, 2022 

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the U.S government, accusing it of endangering wildlife and humans as it prepares to dredge and expand Puerto Rico’s biggest bay to accommodate massive tankers that will serve a new liquid natural gas terminal.

The Arizona-based nonprofit said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ $60 million project would remove 2.2 million cubic yards of seafloor sediment to deepen and widen San Juan Bay’s shipping channels.

Dredging would last more than a year, and some of the material could be transported to the nearby Condado Lagoon Estuarine Reserve, which is popular with locals and tourists who swim, snorkel and paddleboard its waters, where manatees and starfish are a common sight.

The lawsuit also states that several “overburdened environmental justice communities” near and around the U.S. territory’s north coast could be at risk from pollution, explosions and oil spills if the dredging is completed and the terminal starts operating. It noted that the Corps did not consult with communities that could be affected.

“This project will destroy corals and threaten communities and deepen the island’s dangerous dependence on fossil fuels,” Catherine Kilduff, an attorney for the center, told The Associated Press.

The center and two environmental groups — CORALations and El Puente de Williamsburg Inc. — filed the lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and others. They have 60 days to respond, and then both sides would make arguments before a judge issues a decision that can be appealed.

Spokeswomen for the Corps and for Fish & Wildlife Service said the agencies are unable to comment on pending litigation. The Corps previously stated that dredged materials in the Condado Lagoon would fill depressions and create seagrass habitat.

The lawsuit states that the Corps submitted an environmental assessment instead of a more rigorous environmental impact statement and accused it of reaching an erroneous determination in August 2018 that dredging would have no environmental impact.

The lawsuit noted that more than 1.5 million people live in eight cities and towns that surround the San Juan Bay: “The coastal economy Is connected to the bay and its health.”

If the dredging project is completed, tankers transporting petroleum and liquefied natural gas would carry about six times the capacity of vessels that currently use Puerto Rico’s busiest harbor.

It’s located in a bay that is part of a larger ecosystem made up of rivers, lagoons and a smaller bay that cover 3,400 acres and are home to threatened and endangered animals including four types of sea turtles, manatees and the yellow-shouldered blackbird.

Kilduff said the nonprofits are demanding an environmental impact statement in part because of new information on how dredging smothers corals.

“So much of Puerto Rico’s economy depends on coastal resources like tourism and fishing,” she said.

The lawsuit also warned that the dredging project would “hasten damage, weathering and erosion of the coast and structures” including two massive historic forts that guarded San Juan Bay during colonial times.

The nonprofits said a smaller project with more robust mitigation such as the use of sediment curtains and requiring new seals on barges could reduce environmental damage.

“The agency failed to take a ‘hard look’ at the direct, indirect and cumulative environmental impacts of its decision before acting,” the lawsuit stated.

The complaint is the latest hit on plans to build a liquefied natural gas import terminal in San Juan that has come under intense scrutiny. In June, a federal appeals court ruled that New York-based New Fortress Energy Inc. did not obtain the necessary permits before starting construction of the terminal and must face a review by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Environmental groups have long rejected construction of the terminal as they demand that Puerto Rico lessen its dependence on fossil fuels, which generate about 97% of the island's electricity. Natural gas represents roughly 44% and petroleum another 37%. Renewables account for only 3%.

South Africa's 'silent revolution' as those with cash go solar

Mon, August 15, 2022 
By Joe Bavier and Promit Mukherjee

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Thanks to his rooftop solar panels, Pierre Moureau only notices the blackouts that regularly plunge South Africans into darkness when complaints pop up on his Johannesburg neighbourhood's WhatsApp group.

"I have a certain standard of living," said the 68-year-old financial planner, who likes to unwind in his home sauna. "I want to be able to live according to the way I am."

As a worsening power crisis hobbles Africa's most industrialised economy, provoking public ire, President Cyril Ramaphosa has promised to cut through red tape to boost coal-addicted South Africa's use of renewable energy.

But many South Africans are not waiting for government action and their impatience has driven a boom in small-scale solar installations.

"I cannot be without power. It's as simple as that," said Moureau, whose panels power his home as well as his adjoining office. "Every minute I'm down costs me money."

In the first five months of this year alone, South Africa imported solar PV panels worth nearly 2.2 billion rand ($135 million), a Reuters analysis of customs data found. That amounts to over 500 megawatts of peak generating capacity, analysts say.

Once installed, the panels will increase the 2.1 gigawatts of estimated existing small-scale solar generating capacity by some 24%, surpassing what the government has managed to procure in a decade of its utility-scale solar strategy.

"It's completely unrecognised by the government as to how big an industry it's become," said Frank Spencer, spokesman for the South African Photovoltaic Industry Association. "It's a silent revolution."

It's also a missed opportunity.

In a country that requires 4-to-6 gigawatts of additional production to end widespread power cuts, known locally as loadshedding, most systems are not registered and feed nothing back onto the power-starved grid.

And their high cost means, for now at least, they are only a solution for the relatively well-off, deepening divides in what is already one of the world's most unequal societies.

"If you've got money, you can do it yourself," said Solly Silaule, who, like nearly half of South Africans, is unemployed. "But the people who are suffering have no money to buy those panels."

'WE'VE HAD ENOUGH'

Despite abundant solar and wind resources, South Africa's government has proved reluctant to adopt renewable energy. Until its relaunch in 2021, pressure from mining unions had ensured a programme of private, utility-scale projects was frozen for years.

But the decline of debt-crippled state power utility Eskom, which produces 80% of its power from coal, has increased the urgency of finding alternatives.

Tabi Tabi has witnessed that first-hand. In just one month last year, his solar company, Granville Energy, received 349 inquiries for rooftop systems.

"Over the past, I'd say 24 months, we've seen a continuous increase, month on month in demand," he said. "We're seeing interest across the board."

By the time one of his customers, Leigh Driemel, decided to install a 42-panel system at her swimming academy last year, her monthly power bill was running to around 26,000 rand and power cuts had begun forcing her to cancel classes.

"We were going to end up charging 300 rand for a swim lesson," she said. "Who's going to pay that? Our margins kept getting squeezed."

She's now insulated against blackouts and has cut her electricity bill by over 40%.

Across South Africa, private residents as well as businesses large and small are making similar calculations.

Cheaper solar PV and batteries, as well as the loosening last year of a regulation that had required government approval for systems of more than 1 megawatt, bolster the case for self-generated solar.

"Everyone is saying 'Okay, we've had enough. We need a solution,'" said Mark Evans, director of Partners in Performance, a South African business advisory company.

SELL-BACK ISSUE

Advocates of small-scale solar say South Africa has a long way to go.

On a wall in Granville Energy's main office, large screens show in real time how much power clients' solar systems produce. Having fully charged its battery, one home used just 20% of its generating capacity.

"It's sad and it's unfortunate that we're wasting so much capacity," Tabi said.

Announcing his planned reforms last month, Ramaphosa said Eskom will establish a pricing structure to allow those with solar panels to sell electricity they do not need back to the utility, a common practice in many countries.

As it stands, relatively few South African solar users feed power to the grid, and industry insiders say most small-scale systems have not been declared to the authorities, despite a legal requirement to register them.

In Johannesburg alone, it is estimated that there are more than 20,000 unregistered solar systems, most of them residential, an official from the city's power distributor said.

In the absence of attractive tariffs, those customers are increasingly going off-grid.

"They are lost to the energy system forever," the official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. "It is far better to keep them on the grid, to be part of a working grid community."

A fair power buy-back tariff could encourage more South Africans to register and plug in their systems and give Eskom breathing room.

But it will likely do little to overcome the main obstacle for most potential rooftop solar customers: cost.

While banks are beginning to help, with ABSA and Nedbank offering dedicated small-scale solar financing products, rooftop systems remain out of reach for most poor South Africans such as Prince Mkhize.

He works at a car wash in Alexandra, the low-income, high-crime township located just across a busy motorway from Sandton - the Johannesburg financial district dubbed "Africa's richest square mile".

When blackouts strike, Mkhize can't run his jet wash or vacuum cleaner and watches disappointed would-be customers come and go.

"We're standing here eight hours with no cars," he said. "When there's loadshedding, there's no work."

($1 = 16.2430 rand)

(Reporting by Joe Bavier and Promit Mukherjee; editing by Barbara Lewis)

Long-hidden synagogue mural gets rehabbed, relocated


The Lost Mural hangs in the entryway of Ohavi Zedek Synagogue, in Burlington, Vt., July 29, 2022. The mural painted in 1910 by a Lithuanian immigrant, that was later hidden behind a wall for years, has been rehabilitated and moved and is what experts say is a rare piece of art.

Story, AP Photo/Lisa Rathke

BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) —

A mural that was painted in a Vermont synagogue more than 100 years ago by a Lithuanian immigrant — and hidden behind a wall for years— has been termed a rare piece of art and has been painstakingly moved and restored.

The large colorful triptych painted by sign painter Ben Zion Black in 1910 shows the Ten Commandments with a lion on both sides, the sun beaming down, and columns and rich curtains at the borders. Now known as the “Lost Mural,” it’s a rare representation of a kind of art that graced wooden synagogues in Europe that were largely destroyed during the Holocaust, experts say.

“When I learned about the mural and what it is and the story behind the artist, I was completely amazed, and there is nothing like this elsewhere in this country,” said Josh Perelman, chief curator and director of exhibitions and interpretation at the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia.

It’s a representation of a style that was present throughout Europe but Perelman said he has never heard of anyone bringing that style to the United States.

“It makes it both a treasure and also a significant work, both in American Jewish religious life and the world of art in this country,” he said.

Black, who was also a musician, playwright and poet, as well as a sign maker, decorated the inside of what was then the Chai Adam Synagogue in 1910 in a Jewish neighborhood in Burlington known as Little Jerusalem. He painted the triptych — the Lost Mural — in the apse of the building, as well as other murals in the synagogue’s interior.

But the synagogue closed in 1939 when it merged with another one, Ohavi Zedek, and the original building went on to have other uses, including a carpet store, according to the Lost Mural website.

When the building was being turned into apartments in 1986, Ohavi Zedek archivist Aaron Goldberg and a fellow synagogue member got the owner to install a wall in front of the mural, according to the website. Black’s two daughters donated money to have archival photographs taken of the art, but it was unclear at the time whether the mural could be saved, Goldberg said.

More than 20 years later, the wall board was cut away, and photographs were taken and sent to museums around the country and world asking what should be done with the artwork, Goldberg said.

“The universal consensus then was that we needed to do everything we could and take all the possible measures to take out the original mural because of its uniqueness, because it really is a symbol for perhaps thousands of murals and this type of painting that were lost in Eastern Europe and and Western Europe,” Goldberg said.

The plaster was in poor condition and paint was flaking off in many sections. The plaster was stabilized and a conservator worked to reattach the paint. Then a temporary structure was built so that the building’s roof could be removed, the mural’s lathes reinforced, and the artwork could be encased in a metal frame for the move in 2015 by crane and then truck to the current Ohavi Zedek Synagogue.

In its new home, conservators restored damaged sections of paint and cleaned the entire mural, revealing its original vibrant color and detail. Paint was also matched and added where it had fallen off. That work took place this and last year, during the coronavirus pandemic, when the building was largely unused.

About $1 million was raised for the project through donations from local, state, national and international donors. The Lost Mural Project, an independent secular nonprofit, is still seeking donations to replicate the green corridors on the original painting that did not survive, said Goldberg, its president.

The renewed mural was unveiled this summer, and tours are ongoing.

Senior Rabbi Amy Small saw the beauty of the restoration step by step, when she came to the office or sanctuary, which she said was a reminder of how significant the mural is.

It’s significant not only to the Jewish community and the descendants of those early settlers of Burlington, but also to other immigrants in the United States, which offered safety for Jewish and other families fleeing from many parts of the world, she said.

“It’s both a Jewish story and an American story,” Small said, as well as a “universal story.”

Another part of the Lost Mural story is the “magnificent, creative and devoted people who have nurtured its preservation and its re-presentation to the world,” Perelman said. “The Burlington community, the Burlington Jewish community, the state of Vermont, have been marvelous in their sense of the importance of this work of art and their commitment to bringing it back to view.”

Monkeypox can spread to pet dogs, doctors report


A woman plays with a dog at sunset, Saturday, Nov. 6, 2021, at a park in Kansas City, Mo. In August 2022, health officials are warning people who are infected with monkeypox to stay away from household pets, since the animals could be at risk of catching the virus. 

(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)


NEW YORK (AP) — Health officials are warning people who are infected with monkeypox to stay away from household pets, since the animals could be at risk of catching the virus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for months has had the advice in place as monkeypox spreads in the U.S. But it gained new attention after a report from France, published last week in the medical journal Lancet, about an Italian greyhound that caught the virus.

The dog belongs to a couple who said they sleep alongside the animal. The two men were infected with monkeypox after having sex with other partners and wound up with lesions and other symptoms. The greyhound later developed lesions and was diagnosed with the virus.

Monkeypox infections have been detected in rodents and other wild animals, which can spread the virus to humans. But the authors called it the first report of monkeypox infection in a domesticated animal like a dog or cat.

Pets that come in close contact with a symptomatic person should be kept at home and away from other animals and people for 21 days after the most recent contact, the CDC advises.
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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.

Olympic champion Ellia Green finds liberation in transition

By DENNIS PASSA

today

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Ellia Green is pictured with his daughter Waitui in Sydney, Australia, Monday, Aug. 15, 2022. Green, one of the stars of Australia's gold medal-winning women's rugby sevens team at the 2016 Olympics, has transitioned to male. The 29-year-old, Fiji-born Green is going public in a video at an international summit aimed at ending transphobia and homophobia in sport. The summit is being hosted in Ottawa as part of the Bingham Cup rugby tournament. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Ellia Green with his partner Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts and their daughter Waitui pose in Sydney, Australia, Monday, Aug. 15, 2022.   (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

BRISBANE, Australia (AP) — Ellia Green realized as a young child -- long before becoming an Olympic champion -- that a person’s identity and a gender assigned at birth can be very different things.

Now, about 20 years later, one of the stars of Australia’s gold medal-winning women’s rugby sevens team at the 2016 Olympics has transitioned to male.

Green, who has kept the same name, told The Associated Press it was the best decision of his life. Realizing that sharing his experience could be lifesaving for others is what compelled Green to go public in a video shown Tuesday at an international summit on ending transphobia and homophobia in sport. The summit was hosted in Ottawa as part of the Bingham Cup rugby tournament.

The only other transgender or gender diverse Olympic gold medalists are Caitlyn Jenner, who transitioned nearly 40 years after winning gold at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, and Quinn, who goes by one name and was part of Canada’s winning women’s soccer team in Tokyo last year.

Seeing so few trans athletes at the elite level and so much negative commentary on social media, particularly since World Rugby’s decision to bar transgender women from playing women’s rugby, hastened Green’s push to highlight the harm those things can cause some children.

Most importantly, it’s an attempt to draw attention to a serious health issue -- some studies say more than 40% of trans youth had considered attempting suicide.

The 29-year-old Green has admitted to being in a “dark place” after retiring from rugby at the end of 2021.

“This is what happened to me,” Green told The AP. “Pretty much my rugby career ended and I had been in and out of mental health facilities for serious issues. My depression hit a new level of sadness.”

He’s in a much better place now with his partner, Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts, and their infant daughter, Waitui.

“Vanessa was pregnant and having to come to hospital to visit,” Green said. “I was having bad episodes. That’s the last time I want her to have to see me like that. But the only way to help heal is to talk about it . . . I’d like to help someone not feel so isolated by telling my story.”

The story has been a difficult one at times. Green, who was assigned female at birth, was adopted by Yolanta and Evan Green and moved to Australia from Fiji at age 3. Recalling later childhood memories of domestic violence, seeing Yolanta being abused in another relationship, Green said “caused a lot of long-lasting trauma.”

“I guess from witnessing that, I knew from an early age that was not (the kind of) relationship I wanted to have, but it shaped me to know how a woman should be treated,” Green said. “I do believe that even through traumatic circumstances there was a lot to learn from it.”

It was also a childhood that for Green was marked by an overwhelming realization.

“As a kid I remember I thought I was a boy in public, I had a short (haircut) and whenever we met new people they thought I was a boy,” Green says. “I always used to wear my brother’s clothes, played with tools, and ran around with no shirt on. Until I grew breasts, and I thought ‘oh no’.”

“My mom would dress me in girlie outfits . . . I always wanted to make her happy, so if she wanted me to wear a dress, I wore a dress.”

Yolanta also helped channel Green into sports, and excellence as a sprinter in track and field eventually led to a professional career in rugby. The all-action seven-a-side form of rugby made its Olympic debut at Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and the women’s competition was held first, with Australia beating New Zealand in the final to win the inaugural gold medal. Green, a flying winger, was among the stars of the show.

All the while, though, the deeper feelings were becoming clearer for Green and really peaked after announcing the decision to retire from rugby last November, a few months after missing selection for the Australian women’s team for the delayed Tokyo Olympics.

“I spent a lot of time after I finished up my career with Australian rugby just in the house, in a dark room, I didn’t have the confidence to see anyone,” Green says in the video pre-recorded for the summit.

“I was ashamed of myself, I felt I had let a lot of people down, especially myself and my mom. I felt like a complete failure, it was heartbreaking,” Green added, explaining the feelings that lingered after being left off the Olympic team. “The one thing that did keep me positive is that I had already planned my surgery and treatment towards my transition. It was something I was counting down the days with my partner.”

Now Green wants to advocate for others, emphasizing the harm that can be caused when sporting bans are introduced and how those policies can amplify negativity toward trans and gender diverse people.

“Banning transgender people from sport is disgraceful and hurtful,” Green says. “It only means the rates of suicide and mental health issues will get even worse.”

Green’s comments coincide with the release of a study by the University of British Columbia in Canada and Monash University in Melbourne, Australia which shows a disconnect between rugby’s leaders and the women who play rugby. The survey shows that while about 30% of women think trans women have an unfair advantage they overwhelmingly do not support banning trans athletes from rugby.

Playing rugby at any level, or even coaching, is not on Green’s radar for now. He’s currently working at the Sydney International Container Terminal -- “on the wharves,” he says, -- but is also studying for a university degree in international security and has ambitions to be advising companies on general and cyber security.

For now, Green says he’s a “full-time daddy, and it’s hard, maybe harder” than anything he’s done. He also credits partner Vanessa, who has a law degree and is now doing her doctorate -- “she’s inspired me every single day.”

Green hopes his story will inspire other trans people to be confident in their decisions about who they want to be.

“I just knew it was going to be the most liberating feeling when I had that surgery and to be in the body I knew I had to be,” Green says in the video. “That was a bright spark in my mind during these dark times facing demons, but I knew there was light at the end of the tunnel.”

He adds in the AP telephone interview: “I knew something that would make me really happy is that, No. 1, I am going to live the rest of my life with my partner and my daughter. And that I am going to live the rest of my life as her dad.”

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AP Sports Writer John Pye contributed to this story.

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More AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Scientists say new climate law is likely to reduce warming

By SETH BORENSTEIN

Employees of NY State Solar, a residential and commercial photovoltaic systems company, install an array of solar panels on a roof, Aug. 11, 2022, in the Long Island hamlet of Massapequa, N.Y. Massive incentives for clean energy in the U.S. law signed Tuesday, Aug. 16, by President Joe Biden should reduce future global warming “not a lot, but not insignificantly either,” according to a climate scientist who led an independent analysis of the climate package.

(AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Massive incentives for clean energy in the U.S. law signed Tuesday by President Joe Biden should reduce future global warming “not a lot, but not insignificantly either,” according to a climate scientist who led an independent analysis of the package.

Even with nearly $375 billion in tax credits and other financial enticements for renewable energy in the law, the United States still isn’t doing its share to help the world stay within another few tenths of a degree of warming, a new analysis by Climate Action Tracker says. The group of scientists examines and rates each country’s climate goals and actions. It still rates American action as “insufficient” but hailed some progress.

“This is the biggest thing to happen to the U.S. on climate policy,” said Bill Hare, the Australia-based director of Climate Analytics which puts out the tracker. “When you think back over the last decades, you know, not wanting to be impolite, there’s a lot of talk, but not much action.”

This is action, he said. Not as much as Europe, and Americans still spew twice as much heat-trapping gases per person as Europeans, Hare said. The U.S. has also put more heat-trapping gas into the air over time than any other nation.

Before the law, Climate Action Tracker calculated that if every other nation made efforts similar to those of the U.S., it would lead to a world with catastrophic warming — 5.4 to 7.2 degrees (3 to 4 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial times. Now in the best case scenario, which Hare said is reasonable and likely, U.S. actions, if mimicked, would lead to only 3.6 degrees (2 degrees Celsius) of warming. If things don’t work quite as optimistically as Hare thinks, it would be 5.4 degrees (3 degrees Celsius) of warming, the analysis said.

Even that best case scenario falls short of the overarching internationally accepted goal of limiting warming to 2.7 degrees warming (1.5 degrees Celsius) since pre-industrial times. And the world has already warmed 2 degrees (1.1 degrees Celsius) since the mid-19th century.

Other nations “who we know have been holding back on coming forward with more ambitious policies and targets” are now more likely to take action in a “significant spillover effect globally,” Hare said. He said officials from Chile and a few Southeast Asian countries, which he would not name, told him this summer that they were waiting for U.S. action first.

And China “won’t say this out loud, but I think will see the U.S. move as something they need to match,” Hare said.

Scientists at the Climate Action Tracker calculated that without any other new climate policies, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions in 2030 will shrink to 26% to 42% below 2005 levels, which is still short of the country’s goal of cutting emissions in half. Analysts at the think tank Rhodium Group calculated pollution cuts of 31% to 44% from the new law.

Other analysts and scientists said the Climate Action Tracker numbers makes sense.

“The contributions from the U.S. to greenhouse gas emissions are huge,” said Princeton University climate scientist Gabriel Vecchi. “So reducing that is definitely going to have a global impact.”

Samantha Gross, director of climate and energy at the Brookings Institution, called the new law a down payment on U.S. emission reductions.

“Now that this is done, the U.S. can celebrate a little, then focus on implementation and what needs to happen next,” Gross said.

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Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Scientists announce plans to resurrect extinct Tasmanian tiger


Colossal Biosciences announces it has started working to "de-extinct" the Tasmanian tiger, with plans to re-introduce the species within the next decade to its native Tasmania and Australia. Image courtesy of Colossal Biosciences

Aug. 16 (UPI) -- Like something out of Jurassic Park, a Dallas-based genetics company announced Tuesday it is working to resurrect Australia's extinct Tasmanian tiger, also known as the thylacine, to slow biodiversity loss and climate change.

Colossal Biosciences, which is already using genetic engineering to "de-extinct" the woolly mammoth, announced Tuesday it has the DNA and $10 million in funding for its second de-extinction project with the Tasmanian tiger -- the world's largest carnivorous marsupial, before it died off almost a century ago.

The Tasmanian tiger, which was native to Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea, appeared about 4 million years ago and went extinct as a result of hunting by humans. The last known thylacine died in 1936, with the species officially declared extinct in 1982.

Colossal's goal is to reintroduce a genetically-modified hybrid Tasmanian tiger, within the next decade, into parts of Australia to hunt non-native predators that prey on native herbivores in an attempt to re-balance the ecosystem.

RELATED Global extinction threat may be much higher than previously thought

Colossal's plan to de-extinct the woolly mammoth would reintroduce that ancient species to the Arctic to slow the permafrost melt.

"From a Colossal perspective, we are interested in pursuing de-extinction projects where the reintroduction of the restored species can fill an ecological void that was created when the species went extinct and help restore the degraded ecosystem," Ben Lamm, Colossal's co-founder, told Newsweek.

Colossal's other co-founder, George Church, is a renowned Harvard geneticist who has been dubbed the "father of synthetic biology."

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Church and Lamm are working with Andrew Pask, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Melbourne, who was the first to decode the thylacine genome in 2017.

Using the DNA, the scientists plan to take cells from a close-living relative, like the fat-tailed dunnart, and edit the differences to create a thylacine embryo.

"We're interrogating every single part of the thylacine genome," Pask said. "It's an expensive and time-consuming endeavor, but now we can figure out those essential DNA edits we need to make that thylacine."

While Pask says it starts with one Tasmanian tiger, the goal is to rewild the ecosystem.

"To bring a healthy population of thylacines back, you can't bring back one or five," Pask said. "You're looking at bringing back a good number of animals that you can put back into the environment."

Pask argues biotechnology is vital to speed the process of balancing the ecosystem, as current conservation techniques are not enough to save threatened species.

"We have to look at other technologies and novel ways to do that if we want to stop this biodiversity loss," Pask said. "We have no choice. I mean, it will lead to our own extinction if we lose 50% of biodiversity on Earth in the next 50 to 100 years."

Researchers propose plasma-based method of extracting oxygen on Mars


A team of researchers proposed using plasma reactors to extract oxygen from Mars' atmosphere in a study published Thursday.

 File Photo by NASA/UPI | License Photo

Aug. 16 (UPI) -- A group of scientists have developed a plasma-based method of producing and separating oxygen on Mars, according to a study published Thursday.

The team of researchers from the University of Lisbon, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sorbonne University, Eindhoven University of Technology and the Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research shared a method that can harness and process local resources on Mars to produce oxygen and other products, according to the study in the Journal of Applied Physics.

The Martian atmosphere is primarily made up of carbon dioxide that can be split to produce oxygen using electron beams.

"By converting different molecules directly from the Martian atmosphere, plasmas can create the necessary feed-stock and base chemicals for processing fuels, breathing oxygen, building materials and fertilizers," the study's abstract states.

Scientists said the method could serve as a complementary approach to NASA's Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or MOXIE, presenting the potential to deliver high rates of molecule production while sending less instrumentation to space.

Vasco Guerra, a University of Lisbon physicist who authored the study, said that creating and accelerating a beam of electrons is much easier on Mars, where the air is about 100 times thinner than Earth's.

"There is an ideal pressure for plasma operation," he said. "Mars has precisely this correct pressure."

He added that there are two major hurdles to producing oxygen on Mars that the method seeks to reduce.

"First, the decomposition of carbon dioxide molecules to extract oxygen. It's a very difficult molecule to break," said Guerra. "Second, the separation of the produced oxygen from a gas mixture that also contains, for example, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. We're looking at these two steps in a holistic way to solve both challenges at the same time. This is where plasmas can help."

Michael Hecht, an experimental scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also noted that the plasma device would need a portable power source and a place to store the oxygen it provides but said the approach could develop to avoid the bulk with the right investment.

"There's nothing wrong with the plasma technique other than it's a lot less mature [than MOXIE]," he said.

INSTITUTIONAL RACISM
Study: Tiny infants born to White mothers stand best chance of better care
By Judy Packer-Tursman


Very premature infants born to mothers of racial and ethnic minorities are less likely than their White counterparts to receive active medical interventions, such as antibiotic therapy, a new study says. 

Photo by Chief Warrant Officer 4 Seth Rossman/U.S. Navy

Aug. 16 (UPI) -- The rate of active medical interventions to save very premature infants increased significantly across the United States from 2014 to 2020, a new study says.

But such infants born to Asian/Pacific Islander, Black and Hispanic mothers were far less likely to receive this care at birth than their non-Hispanic White counterparts.

The researchers defined active treatment as interventions performed in an attempt to treat the infant, "including surfactant therapy, immediate assisted ventilation at birth, assisted ventilation more than six hours in duration and/or antibiotic therapy during the neonatal intensive care unit admission."

That's the gist of research led by Ohio State University published Tuesday in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study focused on extremely low birthweight infants, born before the third trimester of pregnancy, known medically as "periviable."

Only 4 of every 1,000 infants delivered in the United States in 2015 were born between 22 weeks, zero days and 25 weeks, six days gestation, the research paper said.

But these births accounted for roughly 40% of all neonatal deaths, the researchers said, and fully two-thirds of periviable infants were born to a mother who identified as either non-Hispanic Black or Hispanic in 2019.

The investigators reviewed data from the National Center for Health Statistics and found nearly 62,000 "periviable" babies, born alive and without congenital disorders between 2014 and 2020.

Of these births, 37% were Black, 34% white, 24% Hispanic and 5% Asian/Pacific Islander.

Overall, periviable births represented 0.2% of the nearly 27 million live births over the study's time period: 5% were Asian/Pacific Islander, 37% Black, 24% Hispanic and 34% White. And 14% were born at 22 weeks, 21% at 23 weeks, 30% at 24 weeks, and 34% at 25 weeks.

Just over half of these infants -- 52% -- received active medical treatment.

According to the researchers, there were regional differences in active medical treatment for these infants. For example, they pointed out that the rate of active treatment increased for all groups in the Midwest and South.

The researchers noted the inherent challenges in deciding whether to begin active life-saving treatment for such infants since, even if they survive, there is a high risk of potentially life-long adverse health outcomes.

They cited a recent meta-analysis of infants born at 22 weeks who received active treatment that found 29% of them survived, and only 11% survived without major complications.

The study's findings highlight the need for further research to understand the reasons behind such disparities in neonatal intervention "at the cusp of viability," Dr. Kartik Venkatesh, the study's lead author and a maternal-fetal specialist at Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center, said in a news release.

In fact, there may be more periviable births in the future, "and at earlier gestational ages, in light of recent changes to laws governing reproductive freedom and choice," said Venkatesh, who also is an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology.

He added that it is possible that "persistent racial and ethnic disparities that exist in maternal and neonatal care and outcomes could be worsened in this environment."

Venkatesh said he anticipates the study's findings will spur more clinical and public health strategies to address the problem.

The researchers noted their findings differ from a study of birth certificate data from California, Missouri and Pennsylvania from 1995 to 2005. This earlier data showed that periviable infants of Black and Hispanic individuals were actually more likely to be intubated compared with their White counterparts.

RIP
'Das Boot,' 'Perfect Storm' director Wolfgang Petersen dies

Wolfgang Petersen died Tuesday of pancreatic cancer. 

Photo by Laura Cavanaugh/UPI | License Photo


Aug. 16 (UPI) -- Director Wolfgang Petersen died Tuesday at age 81. His production company confirmed the news to Variety.

Deadline added that Petersen died of pancreatic cancer. He died in his Brentwood, Calif., home in his wife's, Maria Antoinette, arms.

After directing German film and television in the '60s and '70s, Petersen's 1981 film Das Boot brought him international acclaim. The story of a German U-Boat in WWII exists in a theatrical and director's cut, and a further extended TV miniseries version.

Petersen's next German production was the English-language family film The Neverending Story. The tale of a boy reading and interacting with the characters in a storybook brought Petersen to Hollywood.

Hollywood films like Enemy Mine and Shattered followed. Petersen directed Clint Eastwood's first starring role after his Unforgiven Oscar win with In the Line of Fire.

The film showed Eastwood as a Secret Service agent in his '60s. Having failed to stop John F. Kennedy's assassination, the agent gets a chance at redemption when he faces a new assassin (John Malkovich).

Petersen directed the hits Outbreak and Air Force One. The Perfect Storm was a blockbuster of the Summer of 2000, and pioneered visual effects that created the giant wave.

Petersen had another hit with the mythological epic Troy starring Brad Pitt as Achilles. Poseidon, a remake of The Poseidon Adventure, was his last Hollywood movie.

Petersen's last film was the 2016 German film Vier Gegen die Bank, or Four Against the Bank. It was his first German-language film since Das Boot.

Wolfgang Petersen, blockbuster filmmaker of ‘Das Boot,’ dies


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 German film director Wolfgang Petersen speaks during a press conference promoting his latest film "Poseidon," a remake of the 1972 film "The Poseidon Adventure," in Tokyo, on April 19, 2006. Petersen, the German filmmaker whose WWII submarine epic “Das Boot” propelled him into a blockbuster Hollywood career, died Friday at his home in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Brentwood after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 81. (AP Photo/Katsumi Kasahara, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Wolfgang Petersen, the German filmmaker whose World War II submarine epic “Das Boot” propelled him into a blockbuster Hollywood career that included the films “In the Line of Fire,” “Air Force One” and “The Perfect Storm,” has died. He was 81.

Petersen died Friday at his home in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Brentwood after a battle with pancreatic cancer, said representative Michelle Bega.

Petersen, born in the north German port city of Emden, made two features before his 1982 breakthrough, “Das Boot,” then the most expensive movie in German film history. The 149-minute film (the original cut ran 210 minutes) chronicled the intense claustrophobia of life aboard a doomed German U-boat during the Battle of the Atlantic, with Jürgen Prochnow as the submarine’s commander.

Heralded as an antiwar masterpiece, “Das Boot” was nominated for six Oscars, including for Petersen’s direction and his adaptation of Lothar-Günther Buchheim’s best-selling 1973 novel.

Petersen, born in 1941, recalled as a child running alongside American ships as they threw down food. In the confusion of postwar Germany, Petersen — who started out in theater before attending Berlin’s Film and Television Academy in the late 1960s — gravitated toward Hollywood films with clear clashes of good and evil. John Ford was a major influence.

“In school they never talked about the time of Hitler -- they just blocked it out of their minds and concentrated on rebuilding Germany,” Petersen told The Los Angeles Times in 1993. “We kids were looking for more glamorous dreams than rebuilding a destroyed country though, so we were really ready for it when American pop culture came to Germany. We all lived for American movies, and by the time I was 11 I’d decided I wanted to be a filmmaker.”

“Das Boot” launched Petersen as a filmmaker in Hollywood, where he became one of the top makers of cataclysmic action adventures in films spanning war (2004′s “Troy,” with Brad Pitt), pandemic (the 1995 ebolavirus-inspired “Outbreak”) and other ocean-set disasters (2000′s “The Perfect Storm” and 2006′s “Poseidon,” a remake of “The Poseidon Adventure,” about the capsizing of an ocean liner).

But Petersen’s first foray in American moviemaking was child fantasy: the enchanting 1984 film “The NeverEnding Story.” Adapted from Michael Ende’s novel, “The NeverEnding Story” was about a magical book that transports its young reader into the world of Fantasia, where a dark force known as the Nothing rampages.

Arguably Petersen’s finest Hollywood film came almost a decade later in 1993’s “In the Line of Fire,” starring Clint Eastwood as a Secret Service agent protecting the president of the United States from John Malkovich’s assassin. In it, Petersen marshalled his substantial skill in building suspense for a more open-air but just as taut thriller that careened across rooftops and past Washington D.C. monuments.

Seeking a director for the film, Eastwood thought of Petersen, with whom he had chatted a few years earlier at a dinner party given by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Eastwood met with Petersen, checked out his work and gave him the job. “In the Line of Fire” was a major hit, grossing $177 million worldwide and landing three Oscar nominations.

“You sometimes have seven-year cycles. You look at other directors; they don’t have the big successes all the time. Up to ‘NeverEnding Story,’ my career was one success after another,” Petersen told The Associated Press in 1993. “Then I came into the stormy international scene. I needed time to get a feeling for this work -- it’s not Germany anymore.”

Petersen considered the political thriller — which cast the heroic Eastwood as the tired but devoted defender of a less honorable president — an indictment of Washington.

“When John’s character says, ‘Nothing they told me was true and there’s nothing left worth fighting for,’ I think his words will resonate for many people,” Petersen told The Los Angeles Times. “The film is rooted in a profound pessimism about what’s unfortunately happened to this country in the last 30 years. Look around — the corruption is everywhere, and there’s not much to celebrate.”

After “Outbreak,” with Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo and Morgan Freeman, Petersen returned to the presidency in 1997′s “Air Force One.” Harrison Ford starred as a president forced into a fight with terrorists who hijack Air Force One.

“Air Force One,” with $315 million in global box office, was a hit, too, but Petersen went for something even bigger in 2000′s “The Perfect Storm,” the true-life tale of a Massachusetts fishing boat lost at sea. The cast included George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg but its main attraction was a 100-foot computer-generated wave. With a budget of $120 million, “The Perfect Storm” made $328.7 million.

For Peterson, who grew up on the northern coast of Germany, the sea long held his fascination.

“The power of water is unbelievable,” Petersen said in a 2009 interview. “I was always impressed as a kid how strong it is, all the damage the water could do when it just turned within a couple of hours, and smashed against the shore.”

Petersen’s followed “The Perfect Storm” with “Troy,” a sprawling epic based on Homer’s Iliad that found less favor among critics but still made nearly $500 million worldwide. The big-budget “Poseidon,” a high-priced flop for Warner Bros., was Petersen’s last Hollywood film. His final film was 2016′s “Four Against the Bank” a German film that remade Petersen’s own 1976 German TV movie.

Petersen was first married to German actress Ursula Sieg. When they divorced in 1978, he married Maria-Antoinette Borgel, a German script supervisor and assistant director. He’s survived by Borgel, son Daniel Petersen and two grandchildren.