📌 Parting Prescription, Palisades Fire, More

US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, who is closing out his tenure of two terms, offered a “Parting Prescription for America.”

He said his final wish was for Americans to choose community. “The fracturing of community in America is driving a deeper spiritual crisis that threatens our fundamental well-being,” Murthy wrote in his 32-page prescription.

As a physician, Murthy said he believes that health encompasses the whole person, not just the physical being cured through medication. He called the unhappiness ailing Americans “the erosion of our sense of community.”

Murthy is urging Americans to "recenter their lives around relationships, service, and purpose.” Relationships, Murthy said, reduce stress. Without them, he added, "we can experience loneliness.”

Murthy urged Americans to live in service to others to make us “feel more connected,” which can have profound benefits in reducing the risk of hypertension, stroke, early death, depression, and cognitive decline. He urged Americans to have an “overarching life aim that guides our decisions and actions.”

Murthy said: “America and the world need a new generation of community builders. … a fierce, unyielding commitment to each other and a clear-eyed, full-hearted recognition that we are kin, not enemies and that we fundamentally need each other.”

The Palisades fire had grown to more than 2,900 acres Tuesday evening, driven by ‘life-threatening and destructive’ winds.

The extreme wind event blasting Southern California is forecast to peak between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. (PT). “This event is not only not over, but it is just getting started and will get significantly worse before it gets better,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said in a briefing just after 4 p.m. Tuesday.

The fire ignited at Piedra Morada Drive at 10:30 a.m. and — fueled by intense wind gusts — had scorched 2,921 acres by early evening, forcing more than 30,000 residents to flee their homes. The National Weather Service predicts the windstorm will be the most destructive in the Los Angeles region since 2011.

The combination of extreme winds and critically low humidity creates a dangerous recipe for new fires to break out. ”We’re anticipating other fires happening,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom, adding that the state had strategically positioned resources in areas of high fire risk.

A fire broke out in the foothills of Pasadena and quickly grew to 20 acres. The Pasadena Fire Department expressed concern about the potential for rapid spread. Another fire broke out in the hills above Altadena near Eaton Canyon. The fire has burned around 400 acres by 8:14 p.m.

Although the worst of the winds were expected Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, fire danger will remain high throughout the week.

NASA is considering two strategies for returning Mars samples to Earth by the 2030s to reduce complexity, cost, and mission time.

The original Mars Sample Return program, devised with the European Space Agency, was deemed too costly and too long to implement. The new strategies will be decided by the second half of 2026 and could return samples as early as 2035, with costs ranging from $5.5 billion to $7.7 billion.

The NASA Perseverance rover has been collecting samples from Jezero Crater since February 2021, which could help determine whether life ever existed on Mars.

One strategy leverages the sky-crane method for landing the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers; the other involves a “heavy-lift vehicle” lander involving commercial companies. Both involve landing a Mars Ascent Vehicle to carry the samples to an ESA Earth Return Orbiter for delivery back to Earth.

NASA's focus is on simplifying the mission architecture, including a direct return to Earth and a smaller Mars Ascent Vehicle with improved power and heat systems.

“We are very confident that we can return all 30 samples before 2040 and for less than the $11 billion,” Dr. Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said. China's Tianwen-3 mission aims to return Mars samples by 2031, adding competitive pressure to NASA's efforts.

People who get their coffee hit in the morning reap benefits that are not seen in those who have shots later in the day, says a study.

Analysis of the coffee consumption of over 40,000 adults found that morning coffee drinkers were 16% less likely to die of any cause and 31% less likely to die from cardiovascular disease during a 10-year follow-up period than those who went without.

But the benefits to heart health appeared to vanish in people who drank coffee throughout the day, the researchers found, with medical records showing no significant reduction in mortality for all-day drinkers compared with those who avoided coffee.

“It’s not just whether you drink coffee or how much you drink, but the time of day when you drink coffee that’s important,” said Prof Lu Qi, an expert in nutrition at Tulane University in New Orleans. “We don’t typically give advice about timing in our dietary guidance, but perhaps we should be thinking about this.”

Meta is dropping independent fact-checkers on Facebook and Instagram, replacing them with X-style “community notes.”

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said third-party moderators were "too politically biased" and it was "time to get back to our roots around free expression” where commenting on the accuracy of posts is left to users.

Speaking after the changes to the US platforms were announced, President-elect Trump said he was impressed by Zuckerberg's decision and that Meta had “come a long way.”

Joel Kaplan, a prominent Republican who is replacing Sir Nick Clegg as Meta's global affairs chief, wrote that the company's reliance on independent moderators was "well-intentioned" but had too often resulted in censoring.

Ava Lee, of Global Witness, a campaign group describing itself as trying to hold big tech to account, said: “Zuckerberg’s announcement is a blatant attempt to cozy up to the incoming Trump administration, with harmful implications.”

Meta says it has "no immediate plans" to get rid of its third-party fact-checkers in the UK or the EU.

Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) committed genocide in the civil war in Sudan, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

Blinken said the RSF and its allied militias “have continued to direct attacks against civilians,” have “systematically murdered men and boys — even infants — on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence.

“Those same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies,” Blinken said, adding: “I have now concluded that members of the RSF and allied militias have committed genocide in Sudan.”

Blinken previously determined that the RSF and its allied militias committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing during the civil war. He also found that both the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) — the key parties to the conflict —had committed war crimes.

The ongoing civil war, which began in April 2023, has caused one of the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophes. Diplomatic efforts to bring the conflict to an end have failed.

Sanctions and visa restrictions were imposed on the RSF leader, Mohammad Hamdan Daglo Mousa (pictured), “for his role in systematic atrocities committed against the Sudanese people,” Blinken said. Sanctions were also imposed on seven United Arab Emirates-based companies and one Sudanese person with ties to the RSF.

Lead in the air might have caused an estimated 2.5- to 3-point drop in IQs throughout the Roman Empire, a study says.

The toxic metal polluting the air likely got into children’s blood, leading to “widespread cognitive decline,” scientists wrote in a peer-reviewed journal.

To estimate lead pollution levels in ancient Rome, the scientists turned to ice core samples taken from Greenland and Russia. Layers form over the years with chemicals and particles inside. By studying the layers, scientists can effectively look back in time.

The team noted an increase in lead pollution around the year 15 B.C.E., which lines up with the early years of the Roman Empire. The Romans extracted and smelt a lot of silver to make coins, processes known to emit large amounts of lead into the atmosphere.

Atmospheric modeling suggests 3,300–4,600 tons of lead were released annually, with lead levels high until 180 C.E. The scientists used modern data to estimate lead levels in the blood of Roman children. They then extrapolated how these accumulations might have affected their IQ.

Climate and environmental scientist Joe McConnell and study co-author said a 2.5–3-point reduction may sound small, but it affected a population for nearly 180 years. He said he would leave it to ancient historians and archaeologists to determine whether lead pollution was sufficient to change history.