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WASHINGTON — As if the largest bug to ever live – a monster about 2.7 meters long with several dozen legs – wasn’t terrifying enough, scientists could only just imagine what the extinct beast’s head looked like.

That’s because many of the fossils of these creatures are headless shells that were left behind when they molted, squirming out of their exoskeletons through the head opening as they grew ever bigger — 2.4 to 2.7 meters and more than 50 kilograms.

Now, scientists have produced a mug shot after studying fossils of juveniles that were complete and very well preserved, if not quite cute.

The giant bug’s topper was a round bulb with two short bell-shaped antennae, two protruding eyes like a crab, and a rather small mouth adapted for grinding leaves and bark, according to new research published Wednesday in Science Advances.

Called Arthropleura, these were arthropods — the group that includes crabs, spiders and insects – with features of modern-day centipedes and millipedes. But some of them were much, much bigger, and this one was a surprising mix.

“We discovered that it had the body of a millipede, but head of a centipede,” said study co-author and paleobiologist Mickael Lheritier at the University Claude Bernard Lyon in Villeurbanne, France.

The largest Arthropleura may have been the biggest bugs to ever live, although there is still a debate. They may be a close second to an extinct giant sea scorpion.

Researchers in Europe and North America have been collecting fragments and footprints of the huge bugs since the late 1800s.

“We have been wanting to see what the head of this animal looked like for a really long time,” said James Lamsdell, a paleobiologist at West Virginia University, who was not involved in the study.

To produce a model of the head, researchers first used CT scans to study fossil specimens of fully intact juveniles embedded in rocks found in a French coal field in the 1980s.

This technique allowed the researchers to scrutinize “hidden details like bits of the head that are still embedded in the rock” without marring the fossil, Lamsdell said.

“When you chip away at rock, you don’t know what part of a delicate fossil may have been lost or damaged,” he said.

The juvenile fossil specimens only measured about 6 centimeters and it’s possible they were a type of Arthropleura that didn’t grow to enormous sizes. But even if so, the researchers said they are close enough kin to provide a glimpse of what adults looked like – whether giant or of a less nightmarish size — when they were alive 300 million years ago.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A NASA spacecraft is ready to set sail for Jupiter and its moon Europa, one of the best bets for finding life beyond Earth.

Europa Clipper will peer beneath the moon’s icy crust where an ocean is thought to be sloshing fairly close to the surface. It won’t search for life, but rather determine whether conditions there could support it. Another mission would be needed to flush out any microorganisms lurking there.

“It’s a chance for us to explore not a world that might have been habitable billions of years ago, but a world that might be habitable today — right now,” said program scientist Curt Niebur.

Its massive solar panels make Clipper the biggest craft built by NASA to investigate another planet. It will take 5 1/2 years to reach Jupiter and will sneak within 16 miles (25 kilometers) of Europa’s surface — considerably closer than any other spacecraft.

Liftoff is targeted for this month aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Mission cost: $5.2 billion.

Europa, the superstar among Jupiter’s many moons

One of Jupiter’s 95 known moons, Europa is almost the size of our own moon. It’s encased in an ice sheet estimated to be 10 miles to 15 miles or more (15 kilometers to 24 kilometers) thick. Scientists believe this frozen crust hides an ocean that could be 80 miles (120 kilometers) or more deep. The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted what appear to be geysers erupting from the surface. Discovered by Galileo in 1610, Europa is one of the four so-called Galilean moons of Jupiter, along with Ganymede, Io and Callisto.

Seeking conditions that support life

What type of life might Europa harbor? Besides water, organic compounds are needed for life as we know it, plus an energy source. In Europa’s case that could be thermal vents on the ocean floor. Deputy project scientist Bonnie Buratti imagines any life would be primitive like the bacterial life that originated in Earth’s deep ocean vents. “We will not know from this mission because we can’t see that deep,” she said. Unlike missions to Mars where habitability is one of many questions, Clipper’s sole job is to establish whether the moon could support life in its ocean or possibly in any pockets of water in the ice.

Supersized spacecraft

When its solar wings and antennas are unfurled, Clipper is about the size of a basketball court — more than 100 feet (30 meters) end to end — and weighs nearly 13,000 pounds (6,000 kilograms). The supersized solar panels are needed because of Jupiter’s distance from the sun. The main body — about the size of a camper — is packed with nine science instruments, including radar that will penetrate the ice, cameras that will map virtually the entire moon and tools to tease out the contents of Europa’s surface and tenuous atmosphere. The name hearkens to the swift sailing ships of centuries past.

Circling Jupiter to fly by Europa

The roundabout trip to Jupiter will span 1.8 billion miles (3 billion kilometers). For extra oomph, the spacecraft will swing past Mars early next year and then Earth in late 2026. It arrives at Jupiter in 2030 and begins science work the next year. While orbiting Jupiter, it will cross paths with Europa 49 times. The mission ends in 2034 with a planned crash into Ganymede — Jupiter’s biggest moon and the solar system’s too.

Europa flybys pose huge radiation risk

There’s more radiation around Jupiter than anywhere else in our solar system, besides the sun. Europa passes through Jupiter’s bands of radiation as it orbits the gas giant, making it especially menacing for spacecraft. That’s why Clipper’s electronics are inside a vault with dense aluminum and zinc walls. All this radiation would nix any life on Europa’s surface. But it could break down water molecules and, perhaps, release oxygen all the way down into the ocean that could possibly fuel sea life.

Earlier this year, NASA was in a panic that the spacecraft’s many transistors might not withstand the intense radiation. But after months of analysis, engineers concluded the mission could proceed as planned.

Other visitors to Jupiter and Europa

NASA’s twin Pioneer spacecraft and then two Voyagers swept past Jupiter in the 1970s. The Voyagers provided the first detailed photos of Europa but from quite a distance. NASA’s Galileo spacecraft had repeated flybys of the moon during the 1990s, passing as close as 124 miles (200 kilometers). Still in action around Jupiter, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has added to Europa’s photo album. Arriving at Jupiter a year after Clipper will be the European Space Agency’s Juice spacecraft, launched last year.

Ganymede and other possible ocean worlds

Like Europa, Jupiter’s jumbo moon Ganymede is thought to host an underground ocean. But its frozen shell is much thicker — possibly 100 miles (160 kilometers) thick — making it tougher to probe the environment below. Callisto’s ice sheet may be even thicker, possibly hiding an ocean. Saturn’s moon Enceladus has geysers shooting up, but it’s much farther than Jupiter. Ditto for Saturn’s moon Titan, also suspected of having a subterranean sea. While no ocean worlds have been confirmed beyond our solar system, scientists believe they’re out there — and may even be relatively common.

Messages in a cosmic bottle

Like many robotic explorers before it, Clipper bears messages from Earth. Attached to the electronics vault is a triangular metal plate. On one side is a design labeled “water words” with representations of the word for water in 104 languages. On the opposite side: a poem about the moon by U.S. poet laureate Ada Limon and a silicon chip containing the names of 2.6 million people who signed up to vicariously ride along.
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PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Thirteen pregnant Philippine women accused of illegally acting as surrogate mothers in Cambodia after being recruited online could face prison terms after giving birth, a senior Interior Ministry official said Saturday. 

Interior Ministry Secretary of State Chou Bun Eng, who leads the country’s fight against human trafficking and sexual exploitation, said police found 24 foreign women, 20 Philippine and four Vietnamese, when they raided a villa in Kandal province, near the capital of Phnom Penh, on September 23. 

Thirteen of the Philippine women were found to be pregnant and were charged in court on October 1 under a provision in the law on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation, she said. 

The law was updated in 2016 to ban commercial surrogacy after Cambodia became a popular destination for foreigners seeking women to give birth to their children. 

Developing countries have been popular for surrogacy because costs are much lower than in countries such as the United States and Australia, where surrogate services could cost around $150,000. 

The surrogacy business boomed in Cambodia after it was put under tight restrictions in neighboring Thailand, as well as in India and Nepal. 

In July 2017, a Cambodian court sentenced an Australian woman and two Cambodian associates to 1 1/2 years in prison for providing commercial surrogacy services. 

The new case is unusual because surrogates normally are employed in their own countries, not transported elsewhere. 

Cambodia already has a bad reputation for human trafficking, especially in connection with online scams in which foreigners recruited for work under false pretenses are kept in conditions of virtual slavery and help perpetrate criminal fraud online against targets in many countries. 

Details of the new surrogacy case remain murky, and officials have not made clear whether the women were arrested or whether anyone involved in organizing the scheme has been identified. 

Chou Bun Eng told The Associated Press that the business that recruited the surrogates was based in Thailand, and their food and accommodation in Cambodia were arranged from there. She said the authorities had not yet identified the business. 

She said the seven Philippine women and four Vietnamese women who were caught in the raid but who were not pregnant would be deported soon. 

The 13 pregnant women have been placed under care at a hospital in Phnom Penh, said Chou Bun Eng. She added that after they give birth, they could be prosecuted on charges that could land them in prison for two to five years. 

She said that Cambodia considered the women not to have been victimized but rather offenders who conspired with the organizers to act as surrogates and then sell the babies for money. Her assertion could not be verified, as the women could not be contacted, and it is not known if they have lawyers. 

The Philippine Embassy in Cambodia, in response to a local news account of the affair, issued a statement Wednesday confirming most of the details related to what it called the “rescue of 20 Filipino women.” 

“The Philippine Embassy ensured that all 20 Filipinos were interviewed in the presence of an Embassy representative and an interpreter in every step of the investigation process,” it said. 
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washington — The Federal Aviation Administration approved a license Saturday for the launch of SpaceX’s Starship 5 on Sunday after earlier saying it did not expect to make a decision until late November.

Reuters first reported this week the faster than expected timetable after the FAA in September had suggested a much longer review. 

SpaceX is targeting Sunday for the launch and said a 30-minute launch window opens at 7 a.m. CT (1200 GMT) 

The FAA said Saturday that SpaceX had “met all safety, environmental and other licensing requirements for the suborbital test flight” for the fifth test of the Starship and has also approved the Starship 6 mission profile. 

The Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket are fully reusable systems designed to carry crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon and beyond. 

The fifth test flight of the Starship/Super Heavy from Boca Chica, Texas, includes a return to the launch site of the Super Heavy booster rocket for a catch attempt by the launch tower, and a water landing of the Starship vehicle in the Indian Ocean west of Australia. 

The FAA said if SpaceX chooses an uncontrolled entry “it must communicate that decision to the FAA prior to launch, the loss of the Starship vehicle will be considered a planned event, and a mishap investigation will not be required.” 

On Friday, the FAA approved the return to flight of the SpaceX Falcon 9 vehicle after it reviewed and accepted the SpaceX-led investigation findings and corrective actions for the mishap that occurred September 28. 

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has harshly criticized the FAA, including for proposing a $633,000 fine against SpaceX over launch issues and for the delay in approving the license for Starship 5, which the company said has been ready to launch since August. Musk has called for the resignation of FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker and threatened to sue the agency. 
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The American Psychiatric Association says that as elections approach, stress levels go up, regardless of political affiliation. The constant stream of news, stressful arguments and concerns about the country’s future all put pressure on mental well-being. Some psychologists call it election stress disorder. Maxim Adams has the story. Videographer: Andre Sergunin
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YAOUNDE, CAMEROON — Humanitarian groups in Cameroon are visiting homes and villages in remote areas this week to mark Breast Cancer Awareness Month, advising women to go to hospitals for free screening and treatment.

About 60% of the more than 7,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer in Cameroon this year have died because they were late in getting to hospitals, officials say. Breast cancer deaths are highly unreported because families abandon women to die at home.

Thirty-year-old history student Emilie Nadege Atangana told a group of women and girls at the University of Yaounde 1 campus how she was psychologically and emotionally traumatized after receiving a diagnosis of breast cancer in 2020.

Most of her relatives, friends and fellow students said she would not live long and abandoned her, she said.

Atangana said she found hope when medical staff members of the Yaounde Gynaecology, Obstetrics and Pediatrics Hospital told her that 90% of early-stage breast cancers are curable.

Cameroonian government officials and humanitarian groups say cancer survivors such as Atangana have been sent to towns and villages as part of activities marking “Pink Month.”

The World Health Organization designates October as Pink Month, a time to teach people about cancer, including early identification and signs and symptoms.

Forty-two-year-old Mesode Ngwese Agbaw, a cancer survivor, said people should stop hiding cancer patients at home to die because of the false belief that cancer cannot be treated.

“You don’t need to hide alone with your pain,” she said. “Share it with somebody, and the people will be ready to help you. I was operated on and after the operation, I have been following treatment and till now, I am fine.”

This year’s theme for the month in Cameroon is “No one Should Face Breast Cancer Alone and Yes, No One is Expected to Fight Breast Cancer Alone.”

Ruth Amin, a public health specialist and project manager at the Yaounde-based Lifafa Research Foundation, said that sending people suspected of having breast cancer to hospitals would prevent many of the deaths caused because the women were abandoned or got to a hospital too late.

“We are calling on the men to support their spouses, to support their mothers, to support their sisters in raising awareness, in carrying them to the hospitals to be clinically examined by professionals,” she said.

“Women should speak up,” she said. “Women should go toward the health facilities to get examined because the earlier they are being diagnosed, the easier it would be for them to be treated.”

Amin spoke to VOA via a messaging app from Buea, a southern commercial city where humanitarian caravans were educating residents about breast cancer on Saturday.

Cameroon says it has equipped all hospitals with qualified medical staff members and equipment to diagnose breast cancer.

The World Health Organization estimates that Cameroon has about 20,000 new cancer cases, including breast cancers, each year, with 65% related deaths.
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chicago — With a neon-green net in hand, Annette Prince briskly walks a downtown Chicago plaza at dawn, looking left and right as she goes.

It’s not long before she spots a tiny yellow bird sitting on the concrete. It doesn’t fly away, and she quickly nets the bird, gently places it inside a paper bag and labels the bag with the date, time and place.

“This is a Nashville warbler,” said Prince, director of the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, noting that the bird must have flown into a glass window pane of an adjacent building. “He must only weigh about two pennies. He’s squinting his eyes because his head hurts.”

For rescue groups like the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, this scene plays out hundreds of times each spring and fall after migrating birds fly into homes, small buildings and sometimes Chicago’s skyscrapers and other hulking buildings.

A stark sign of the risks came last fall, when 1,000 migrating birds died on a single night after flying into the glass exterior of the city’s lakefront convention center, McCormick Place. This fall, the facility unveiled new bird-safe window film on one of its glass buildings along the Lake Michigan shore.

The $1.2 million project installed tiny dots on the exterior of the Lakeside Center building, adorning enough glass to cover two football fields.

Doug Stotz, senior conservation ecologist at the nearby Field Museum, hopes the project will be a success. He estimated that just 20 birds have died after flying into the convention’s center’s glass exterior so far this fall, a hopeful sign.

“We don’t have a lot of data since this just started this fall, but at this point, it looks like it’s made a huge difference,” Stotz said.

But for the birds that collide with Chicago buildings, there is a network of people waiting to help. They also are aiming to educate officials and find solutions to improve building design, lighting and other factors in the massive number of bird collision deaths in Chicago and worldwide.

Prince said she and other volunteers walk the streets downtown to document what they can of the birds that are killed and injured.

“We have the combination of the millions of birds that pass through this area because it’s a major migratory path through the United States, on top of the amount of artificial lighting that we put out at night, which is when these birds are traveling and getting confused and attracted to the amount of glass,” Prince said.

Dead birds are often saved for scientific use, including by Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. Rescued birds are taken to local wildlife rehabilitation centers to recover, such as the DuPage Wildlife Conservation Center in suburban Illinois.

On a recent morning, veterinarian Darcy Stephenson at DuPage gave a yellow-bellied sapsucker anesthetic gas before taping its wings open for an X-ray. The bird arrived with a note from a rescue group: “Window collision.”

Examining the results, she found the bird had a broken ulna — a bone in the wing.

The center takes in about 10,000 species of animals annually and 65% of them are avian. Many are victims of window collisions and during peak migration in the fall, several hundred birds can show up in one day.

“The large chunk of these birds do actually survive and make it back into the wild once we’re able to treat them,” said Sarah Reich, head veterinarian at DuPage. “Fractures heal very, very quickly in these guys for shoulder fractures. Soft tissue trauma generally heals pretty well. The challenging cases are going to be the ones where the trauma isn’t as apparent.”

Injured birds go through a process of flight testing, then get a full physical exam by the veterinary staff and are rehabilitated before being set free.

“It’s exciting to be able to get these guys back out into the wild, especially some of those cases that we’re kind of cautiously optimistic about or maybe have an injury that we’ve never treated successfully before,” Reich said, adding that these are the cases “clinic staff get really, really excited about.”
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The power of simple prayer to heal illness is not clear, according to scientists, and is difficult to study. Whatever your faith, when you’re sick, you should seek treatment from a doctor. But in Nigeria, some people choose spiritual healers and miracle cures over orthodox medicine and hospitals. That creates some dangerous situations. Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja.
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NEW YORK — Prepare to spot a rare, bright comet.

The space rock is slinging toward Earth from the outer reaches of the solar system and will make its closest pass Saturday. It should be visible through the end of October, clear skies permitting.

Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas should be bright enough to see with the naked eye, but binoculars and telescopes will give a better view.

“It’ll be this fuzzy circle with a long tail stretching away from it,” said Sally Brummel, planetarium manager at the Bell Museum in Minnesota.

What is a comet?

Comets are frozen leftovers from the solar system’s formation billions of years ago. They heat up as they swing toward the sun, releasing their characteristic streaming tails.

In 2023, a green comet that last visited Earth 50,000 years ago zoomed by the planet again. Other notable flybys included Neowise in 2020, and Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake in the mid to late 1990s.

Where did comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas come from?

The comet, also designated C/2023 A3, was discovered last year and is named for the observatories in China and South Africa that spied it.

It came from what’s known as the Oort Cloud well beyond Pluto. After making its closest approach about 71 million kilometers of Earth, it won’t return for another 80,000 years — assuming it survives the trip.

Several comets are discovered every year, but many burn up near the sun or linger too far away to be visible without special equipment, according to Larry Denneau, a lead researcher with the Atlas telescope that helped discover the comet.

How to view the comet

Those hoping to spot comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas should venture outside about an hour after sunset on a clear night and look to the west.

The comet should be visible from both the northern and southern hemispheres.
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UNITED NATIONS — More than 370 million girls and women alive today, or one in every eight worldwide, experienced rape or sexual assault before the age of 18, the United Nations children’s agency said Wednesday.

The number rises to 650 million, or one in five, when taking into account “non-contact” forms of sexual violence, such as online or verbal abuse, UNICEF reported, in what it called the first global survey of the problem.

The report said that while girls and women were worst affected, 240 million to 310 million boys and men, or around 1 in 11, have experienced rape or sexual assault during childhood.

“The scale of this human rights violation is overwhelming, and it’s been hard to fully grasp because of stigma, challenges in measurement, and limited investment in data collection,” UNICEF said in releasing the report.

It comes ahead of an inaugural Global Ministerial Conference on Ending Violence Against Children in Colombia next month.

UNICEF said its findings highlight the urgent need for intensified global action, including by strengthening laws and helping children recognize and report sexual violence.

UNICEF said sexual violence cuts across geographical, cultural, and economic boundaries, but sub-Saharan Africa has the highest number of victims, with 79 million girls and women, or 22% affected. Eastern and South-Eastern Asia follow with 75 million, or 8%.

In its data for women and girls, UNICEF estimated 73 million, or 9%, were affected in Central and Southern Asia; 68 million, or 14%, in Europe and Northern America; 45 million, or 18%, in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 29 million, or 15%, in Northern Africa and Western Asia.

Oceania, with 6 million, had the highest number affected by percentage, at 34%.

Risks were higher, rising to 1 in 4, in “fragile settings,” including those with weak institutions, U.N. peacekeeping forces, or large numbers of refugees, the report found.

UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell called sexual violence against children “a stain on our moral conscience.”

“It inflicts deep and lasting trauma, often by someone the child knows and trusts, in places where they should feel safe.”

UNICEF said most childhood sexual violence occurs during adolescence, especially between ages 14 and 17, and those who suffer it face higher risks of sexually transmitted diseases, substance abuse and mental health issues.

“(T)he impact is further compounded when children delay disclosing their experiences … or keep the abuse secret altogether,” UNICEF said.

It said increased investment in data collection was needed to capture the full scale the problem, given persistent data gaps, particularly on boys’ experiences.

UNICEF said it based its estimates of girls’ and women’s experiences on nationally representative surveys conducted between 2010 and 2022 in 120 countries and areas. It said estimates for boys and men were derived from a broader range of data sources and applied some indirect methods.
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As representatives of the signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity prepare to meet in Cali, Colombia, this month, residents of some Colombian islands in the Caribbean are calling for action because rising seas are threatening their homes, families, and way of life. Austin Landis traveled to Santa Cruz del Islote to hear their story. Camera: Jorge Calle.
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