Helene is threatening the Carolinas 66 years to the day after a storm with that same name brought heavy winds and rain to the same areas. Hurricane Helene raked the coast of the Carolinas on September 27, 1958, but did not actually make landfall, according to the National Hurricane Center. As it approached Charleston, S.C….
In the two days before it hit Florida, Hurricane Helene grew from a relatively weak tropical storm into a major Category 4 hurricane. When a storm gets powerful very quickly like that, scientists call it rapid intensification. Such rapid intensification is relatively normal for major hurricanes that form in the Atlantic, according to federal hurricane…
When people think of Bangladesh, they often think of poverty. It was one of the world’s poorest nations when it was created in 1971. And they probably think of political upheaval — this year massive protests led to the resignation of the prime minister. An interim government led by Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus is…
Some 25,000 dockworkers at East Coast and Gulf Coast ports, from Boston to Houston, could strike as early as October 1. Their union, the International Longshoremen’s Association, has been in contract talks with the United States Maritime Alliance, representing ocean carriers and port operators, for months. But the two sides have not met face-to-face since…
Before Helene even made landfall in Florida, authorities conducted a dramatic rescue operation: The U.S. Coast Guard saved a man whose sailboat started taking on water off the coast of Sanibel Island. His dog, wearing a fluorescent life vest, was with him too. Both were brought to safety and reported to be in good medical…
Valeria Levitin, aged 39 and hailing from Monaco, is known as the world’s thinnest woman at just four stone. Her emaciated figure is a stark warning about the perils of eating disorders. Valeria has received fan mail from girls eager to replicate her skeletal appearance, a fact she finds deeply disturbing, stating, “I’m not going…
Lately, Audrey Rowe has been a bit preoccupied with a girl named Elma. Rowe is a paleoecologist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. And Elma is a woolly mammoth she’s studying. The mammoth’s full name, Élmayųujey’eh, was given to her by the Healy Lake Village Council – the Mendas Cha’ag People –…
Neuroscientist Nathan Sawtell has spent a lot of time studying a funky looking electric fish characterized by its long nose. The Gnathonemus petersii, or elephantnose fish, can send and decipher weak electric signals, which Sawtell hopes will help neuroscientists better understand how the brain pieces together information about the outside world. But as Sawtell studied…
Oscar, Emmy, and Tony-winning actor Maggie Smith played everything from wistful ingenues in Shakespeare to Harry Potter’s Prof. McGonagall and the Dowager Countess in Downton Abbey. She died Friday at age 89. Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP Dame Maggie Smith – whose acting career spanned seven decades and traversed the stage and screen – has died at age…
Veronica, 17, drove with her mother nearly four hours from her home in Iowa to visit a doctor in Minneapolis in September. Iowa banned gender-affirming care for youth in March 2023. Selena Simmons-Duffin/NPR DES MOINES, Iowa – In the future, Veronica sees herself in a big city. “I like chaos and spontaneousness,” she says, and…