Green & indigenous News

An international research team reports the analysis of new hominin fossils from the site of Thomas Quarry I (Casablanca, Morocco). The fossils are very securely dated to 773,000 +/- 4,000 years ago, thanks to a high-resolution magnetostratigraphic record capturing in detail the Brunhes/Matuyama boundary, the last main geomagnetic polarity reversal and precise temporal markers of the Quaternary.

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The origin of life on Earth becomes even more fascinating and complex as we peer into the mysterious world of viruses. Said to have existed since living cells first appeared, these microscopic entities differ greatly from other forms of life. Composed of only genetic material, they lack the ability to synthesize proteins, which are essential for carrying out cellular activity and, ultimately, for life by itself.

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The natural sands of beaches along the Firth of Forth are being mixed with significant amounts of human-made materials like bricks, concrete, glass and industrial waste, new research has revealed.

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A low-cost, simple robotic apple picker arm developed by Washington State University researchers may someday help with fruit picking and other farm chores.

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In the aftermath of the giant asteroid that crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula about 66 million years ago, approximately 75% of all species on Earth were wiped out, including the dinosaurs. Among those thought to have perished at this K-Pg (Cretaceous-Paleogene) boundary were the ammonites. These were coiled-shelled mollusks with long tentacles related to modern octopuses and squids, and they are known today for their distinctive spiral-shaped fossils.

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is facing strong public opposition to its proposed plans to extend closure deadlines until October 2031 for 11 coal plants across the country—three of which are in Illinois and one in northwest Indiana.

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January 7, 2026 – New Dietary Guidelines from the Trump administration largely warned against “highly processed” foods and added sugar consumption, while giving animal protein, full-fat dairy, and fats a boost.

Throughout the 10-page document issued Wednesday, the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans emphasize reduced consumption of highly processed foods that are high in added sugars, salt, and refined carbohydrates like chips, cookies, and candy. This theme was baked into other recommendations like those on protein, vegetable, fruit, and dairy consumption across age groups.

The DGAs not only provide recommendations that support dietitians and physicians in advising their clients. They also shape what’s served on the plates of school meals and underpin other federal nutrition programs.

The guidelines specifically state that “no amount” of added sugars should be considered healthy, but recommends that one meal should contain no more than 10 grams of added sugar. Previous guidelines have recommended limited added sugar consumption to no more than 10 percent of daily calories. For a 2,000 calorie diet, that equates to 200 calories or about 12 teaspoons of added sugar—which would roughly equal 50 grams per day.

Overall the guidelines prioritize meat, protein, full-fat dairy, vegetables, fruits, and fats. It distinguishes whole grains from other forms of carbohydrates, and it discourages the consumption of refined carbs like white bread, flour tortillas, and crackers.

Along with the guideline document, the administration released a new inverted food pyramid that puts meat, vegetables, dairy, fruit, and fats at the top. Whole grains make up a smaller portion of the recommended diet at the bottom of the pyramid.

The website promoting the guidelines calls this the “New Pyramid” and compares it to previous food pyramids, which recommended a larger share of carbohydrates in a diet. (The last food pyramid was replaced by MyPlate in 2011).

One of the biggest questions for health advocates ahead of the new guidelines was how they would treat saturated fats. Previous nutrition guidance has encouraged limited saturated fat intake. However, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others in the administration have argued this recommendation was based on inaccurate science.

During a press conference announcing the guidelines on Wednesday, Kennedy said the update was “ending the war on saturated fats.” Even so, the guidelines do not change the actual recommended limit of 10 percent of daily calories coming from saturated fats.

The new guidelines could inadvertently push more saturated fat consumption through their stance on red meat and full-fat dairy, which are higher in saturated fat. The guidelines also largely rejected recommendations from the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, the independent panel that reviews available nutrition science, to promote proteins from plants, including vegetables, beans, and lentils, over processed animal proteins.

“In this new guidance, we are telling young people, kids, schools, you don’t need to tiptoe around fat and dairy,” Food and Drug Administrator Marty Makary said during the press conference.

The guidelines are a win for industrial meat and dairy groups. But shortly after the guidelines were released, medical groups like the American Heart Association and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine cautioned against the emphasis on animal protein and dairy products that contain more saturated fats, though they celebrated the focus on whole foods and vegetables and cuts to foods high in sugar. (Link to this post.)

The post Trump Administration Dietary Guidelines Emphasize Animal Protein, Dairy appeared first on Civil Eats.

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A judge has ordered the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to pay $115,220 in attorney's fees to a retired Anchorage lawyer and wildlife advocate who successfully sued the state over a wolf-killing policy on the southern Kenai Peninsula.

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This story was published with The 74, a nonprofit education news site.

Chabeli Carrazana*The 19th*

Tucked in New Mexico’s new universal child care program is a less-talked-about provision that could expand access to free child care for some of the state’s most vulnerable caregivers: grandparents.

In most cities and states, child care is designed to help support working parents, and so caregivers need to prove they are working or going to school to access subsidized care. That’s the way it had been in New Mexico until government officials started asking families across the state about their child care needs.

Again and again for the past two years, they heard from grandparents who are raising grandchildren. Because most were retired, they didn’t meet the work or school qualifications to receive any of the government assistance the state was offering. Grandparents who were finding themselves once again in the role of parent lacked the financial support or even the physical ability to provide that caregiving.

New Mexico has the highest share of children in kinship care of any state. Between 2021 and 2023, 8 percent of kids in New Mexico were being raised by grandparents or other kin, more than double the national average of 3 percent. And that percentage has been going up, according to a report from the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Foundation, which supports public education and community development in seven counties and 18 tribal nations.

The state has been roiled by a substance abuse epidemic that affects about 16 percent of the adult, non-senior population. In 2021, New Mexico ranked first in alcohol deaths and sixth in drug overdose deaths, according to LANL’s report. That is a large part of the reason many grandparents are stepping in to take over children’s care. But those grandparents are also struggling financially. According to LANL, 1 in 3 are living at or below the poverty level. That’s a rate that is also almost twice the national average in a state where the average annual cost of child care is $13,500 for center-based care and $11,500 for home-based care.

The substantial share of grandparents caring for grandkids was a problem that the state was uniquely positioned to address as it formulated its new universal child care program, which launched last month with the aim of making child care free for all kids.

The way the new regulations are written, grandparents with legal custody or kinship guardianship are specifically exempt from work and school requirements, making them now newly eligible for free child care.

“We wanted grandparents to see that we see them and that we recognize they are doing hero’s work by taking care of their grandchildren,” said Elizabeth Groginsky, New Mexico’s cabinet secretary for early childhood education.

New Mexico is not the first state to give grandparents an exemption from work restrictions so they can access child care assistance — 21 states have some variation of an exemption for kinship caregivers, said Grace Reef, the president of the Early Learning Policy Group and an expert in child care policy who has analyzed all of the state exemptions.

But those exemptions are often tucked in a complicated part of the law that may make it difficult for families to understand that they even qualify. And no other state is offering anything as robust as universal care.

“New Mexico’s approach is simpler and more universally applicable to grandparents, helping reduce confusion and barriers for grandparents seeking child care access for their family,” said Anne Hedgepeth, the senior vice president of policy and research at Child Care Aware of America, a national child care advocacy organization.

Groginsky said the popularity of New Mexico’s universal program has also helped more residents become aware of the options available to them.

New Mexico became the first state to offer free child care this year, one of the most high-profile child care launches in the United States. The state had been preparing for the step over the course of years, establishing a fund in 2020 with money earmarked for early childhood education. Thanks to tax collections from the oil and gas industries, the fund has grown from $320 million to $10 billion. Latinas in New Mexico helped pass a constitutional amendment in 2022 that ensured a portion of a second state fund went specifically to universal child care.

What happens now in the state is expected to become a model for others to follow. Already, proposals for universal child care are being considered in New York and Georgia. Following New Mexico’s example, states could choose to include grandparents — nationwide, the share of grandparents caring for grandkids has been growing for the past 25 years, driven in part by the opioid epidemic.

About 916 children from grandparent-lead households received child care assistance in fiscal year 2025. In the three weeks since universal child care launched in New Mexico, 61 new grandparent-headed households have applied and been approved to receive funds.

Jovanna Archuleta, the early childhood program director at LANL, said what grandparents repeatedly expressed to them was the need for options.

In LANL’s report, one grandparent described her day like this: “My day consist[s] of jumping out of bed, starting breakfast, getting kids up and dressed. Kids are then fed, hair and teeth brushed. Jump in the car, drop one at school at 8 and the twins at 9. Hurry home, start laundry and wash dishes and pick up. At 1:30 p.m. return to school to pick up the 5-year-olds. Get home, make lunch and do any required school work and more household chores. At 3:30 pick up 7-year-old, fix snacks, do homework, start dinner. A short bit of playtime then dinner and dishes. Then it is bath, and bedtime… By the way I am 70 and a disabled vet, and a widow.”

Caring for young children is physically and mentally demanding for anyone, and especially for older people who were not expecting to take on that caregiving responsibility again later in life, Archuleta said.

“They don’t always need every day, full-day child care because a lot of grandparents are retired, but they need respite care. They need drop-in spots and times where they can just have time for themselves. That has carried into this universal child care conversation,” she said.

Before universal child care was opened up to grandparents, some providers like Barbara Tedrow, who owns five centers in Farmington, would have grandparents come in who had just taken custody of their young grandchildren asking for a spot at the center that they typically could not afford.

“I felt so bad, so I just gave them free tuition. … They were older, and they weren’t working — they were in their 70s taking care of a 2-year-old. There was no way they could afford the tuition. So we as providers, we’re normally just letting them come for free,” Tedrow said.

The change in the law was something providers had also been advocating for as a way to give those children, many of whom had experienced trauma, more consistency of care.

“Let this child at least stay during their core hours of their waking hours getting fed, getting nurtured, educated, playing with other children their age, and that’s what they say: ‘I’m 70. I don’t know where to go find 2-year-olds for my granddaughter to play with,’” Tedrow said.

Still, changing the regulation is a first step. For New Mexico’s program to be truly universal and accessible for grandparents — and caregivers more broadly — there needs to be child care slots for children.

Archuleta said groups like hers are working with the state to figure out how to build up that capacity, whether it’s in a center-based home-based child care program, so that every family that needs free child care and is eligible for it can actually access it.

Before New Mexico went fully universal, it had already reduced some of the eligibility criteria so that 80 percent of children were eligible for free child care. But still only about 35 percent of children under 5 who were eligible for child care assistance were actually receiving it. That could be because there were either not enough slots for those kids or because some programs chose not to accept state assistance.

The state reimburses programs for the cost of caring for each child, but because some charge more than the state reimburses, or they prefer to be paid upfront by parents, they choose not to take government assistance.

Now, families have to not only find a program that has a slot at a time when waitlists in New Mexico and across the country can be months-long, but find that slot at a program that takes government payment.

Part of the universal child care roll-out involves raising the state’s reimbursement rate and speeding up the payment process so more providers will be incentivized to participate.

But more centers and providers are still needed for families to really have ample choice — and that’s going to take time.

Already, slots in home-based child care have been falling for more than a decade nationwide. In New Mexico, from 2010 to 2025, the number of registered home-based providers fell from 4,840 to 821, according to the state. Now, New Mexico is projecting it will need to build 55 new centers and add 1,120 home-based child care options to meet the demand of its universal system. To do that, the state is offering low-interest loans from a $13 million fund to providers who want to build or expand centers, and it’s already reduced some barriers for those registering as home-based providers.

Easing the registration process for home-based providers may be the key to helping families find slots quickly, said Kate Noble, the president and CEO of Growing Up New Mexico, a state child care advocacy organization. In rural communities where there are already very few centers, home-based providers set up shop much faster. Many of those providers are also Latinx, which could be an attractive option for families looking for care that reflects their culture in a state where Latinx people make up half the population.

But that process is riddled with barriers for providers who need to obtain a fingerprint and background check and a home inspection. Those who are Spanish-speaking may be wary of going to a police station for a fingerprint or allowing inspectors into their home, said Lucy Leon, a former home-based provider in New Mexico. And the background check requirement applies not only to the provider but to every adult living in the home.

“The majority of those families, if not half, live with an uncle, a grandfather or a coworker because that’s how we support each other,” Leon said. “From the jump it’s like ‘There’s no way I’m going to do a background check for my husband, my son, and much less a coworker.’ That’s another great barrier — they don’t take that step.”

The whole process can take six months, she said.

If the state can build up the number of providers, it will then need the staff to run the expanded system. In addition to maintaining its current staffing levels, the state is projecting having to recruit at least 5,000 more educators. Part of the universal program includes higher reimbursement rates for providers that commit to paying staff at least $16 an hour.

To achieve the ramp-up to universal care, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is expected to request an additional $120 million from the state legislature next year for the program, a tall ask as states face budget shortfalls next year due to cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP. Already, states across the country have been cutting their child care budgets because of those budget pressures.

It’s an ambitious plan, but if it’s designed in a way that is responsive to the true needs families have — with expansive definitions of family that considers the role grandparents play — then it can be a model that’s worth perfecting, said Natalie Renew, the executive director of Home Grown, a national group working to expand home-based care access.

“If we are going to invest a huge amount of money into a universal child care system, let’s hold an ambitious goal for what it delivers to families,” Renew said. “I don’t think it’s going to be easy, but I think it is possible, and I really want the sector to be in this problem solving mode with them — what do you need to figure this out?”

This story was originally reported by Chabeli Carrazana of The 19th. Meet Chabeli and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

The post In New Mexico, grandparents caring for grandkids can also get free child care now appeared first on ICT.

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In recent decades, mangroves along the Atlantic coast of North America have expanded into areas traditionally dominated by salt marshes. This shift shows that climate change is already reshaping temperate coastal ecosystems, with consequences for biodiversity, carbon storage, and shoreline protection.

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Cell division is an essential process for all life on Earth, yet the exact mechanisms by which cells divide during early embryonic development have remained elusive—particularly for egg-laying species.

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Fungal infections kill millions of people each year, and modern medicine is struggling to keep up. But researchers at McMaster University have identified a molecule that may help turn the tide—butyrolactol A, a chemical compound that targets a deadly, disease-causing fungi called Cryptococcus neoformans.

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Globally, toxic algal blooms are becoming more frequent and severe, fueled by a warming climate and nutrient runoff. While satellites can easily spot the green carpets once they reach the surface, the "prequels" to these outbreaks remain hidden in the deep.

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NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers captured this image of lightning while orbiting aboard the International Space Station more than 250 miles above Milan, Italy on July 1, 2025.

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The extent and speed of ice moving off the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica into the sea—an important dynamic for climate and sea-rise modeling—has been captured over a 10-year period by satellites from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission.

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Alaska's glaciers are melting at an accelerating pace, losing roughly 60 billion tons of ice each year. About 4,000 kilometers to the south, in California and Nevada, records for heat and dryness are being shattered, creating favorable conditions for wildfire events.

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Sponges are among Earth's most ancient animals, but exactly when they evolved has long puzzled scientists. Genetic information from living sponges, as well as chemical signals from ancient rocks, suggest that sponges evolved at least 650 million years ago.

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A research team affiliated with UNIST has reported a new simulation tool to better understand how liquid-phase chemical warfare agents (CWAs) disperse and persist in urban environments. Their findings demonstrate that certain highly toxic chemical agents can remain dangerous even after initial deployment, mainly because droplets that settle on surfaces can evaporate over time and cause secondary exposure.

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Domestic pigeons have surprising cultural significance. They inspired Charles Darwin in his thinking about evolution, delivered wartime messages to save lives, and have symbolic meaning around the world.

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Sulfolobus islandicus, an archaeal model organism, offers unique advantages for metabolic engineering and synthetic biology applications owing to its ability to thrive under low pH and high temperature conditions. Although several genetic tools exist for this organism, the absence of well-defined chromosomal integration sites continues to limit its development as a cellular factory.

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Climate change has many culprits, from agriculture to transportation to energy production. Now, add another: the deep ocean salty blob.

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In Finland, farmers who have transitioned to regenerative agriculture are forming a regenerative professional partnership with nature in their decision-making, a new study from the University of Eastern Finland shows.

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MERANGIN, Indonesia — There wasn’t much Aris Adrianto felt he could do when the gold miners’ heavy vehicles broke into Bukit Gajah Berani, here in this remote pocket of Sumatra’s Merangin district. “They just kept going, like they were afraid of nothing,” said Aris, who is the head of the forestry office in Birun village in the Sumatran province of Jambi. Aris reported the deforestation of Bukit Gajah Berani, a forest whose name means “the hill of the brave elephant,” but nothing changed, he told Mongabay Indonesia. Heightened political risks and giddy company valuations propelled the international price of gold, traditionally viewed as a safe haven asset during nervy economic times, up by almost 70% last year to more than $4,500 per ounce. Around the world, that shine has likely induced a dangerous response as people on the ground, like Aris, report an expansion of illegal gold mining, undermining international commitments to curb deforestation and improve public health. In Bukit Gajah Berani, Aris watched on as the miners turned the forest upside down, altering the landscape from a deep green to a sallow muddy brown. The location of a former gold mine in the forest area of ​​Bukit Gajah Berani village. Image courtesy of LPHD Birun. The Bukit Gajah Berani forest is a buffer contiguous to Kerinci Seblat National Park, the largest old-growth rainforest in Sumatra — a high-conservation-value protected area and the largest intact habitat of the critically endangered Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae). The forest here is a…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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In a study involving more than 13,000 participants in the U.S., several messaging strategies were shown to move the needle—albeit slightly—in attempts to strengthen pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors regarding climate change.

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The first study from GreenDrill—a project co-led by the University at Buffalo to collect rocks and sediment buried beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet—has found that the Prudhoe Dome ice cap was completely gone approximately 7,000 years ago, much more recently than previously known.

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