Dill, Gherkin, and Jalapeño are the first offspring of the 90-year-old tortoise Mr. Pickles.
Credit: © Jackelin Reyna, Houston Zoo

Mr. Pickles, the 90-year-old radiated tortoise, now has three little tortoises to look after. Mr. Pickles and 53-year-old Mrs. Pickles live at the Houston Zoo in Texas. They welcomed Dill, Gherkin, and Jalapeño to their family in March. Radiated tortoises are native to Madagascar. They are a critically endangered species. Endangered species are living things threatened with extinction—that is, the dying off of all of their kind. Many zoos around the world have studied how to breed radiated tortoises to boost the population.

What’s the difference between a tortoise and a turtle? Tortoises are turtles that live only on land. Tortoises have stumpy hind legs and feet that look like those of an elephant, quite different from the flippers of sea turtles and the webbed feet of most freshwater turtles. Most tortoises have a high, domed shell. They pull their head, feet, and tail into the shell for protection from predators. Tortoises feed primarily on plants.

There are dozens of species of tortoises. Many live in hot, dry regions. Three species live in the United States. The desert tortoise is found in the deserts of the American Southwest. The Texas tortoise inhabits scrublands in southern Texas. The gopher tortoise lives in the sandhills of the Southeastern coastal plain. All three of these tortoises rest in burrows that they dig in the ground. Not all tortoises live in dry habitats. For example, the red-footed tortoise and the yellow-footed tortoise inhabit lowland tropical rain forests in South America.

Tortoises vary widely in size. One of the largest tortoises is the giant Galapagos tortoise, which lives on the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean. The largest Galapagos tortoises grow to 6 feet (1.8 meters) long. The speckled tortoises of southwestern Africa are among the smallest species. Speckled tortoises are only about 4 inches (10 centimeters) long when fully grown.

Like other turtles, tortoises lay their eggs in holes in the ground. When the eggs hatch, the young dig to the surface to fend for themselves. Most tortoises die in the first 10 years of life. Raccoons, foxes, and other predatory animals feed on tortoise eggs and young tortoises. Tortoises that survive the first several years can live an extremely long time. Some have lived more than 100 years in captivity.

Tortoise populations are declining quickly because people destroy the animal’s habitat and illegally kill tortoises for food. In addition, many tortoises die from diseases introduced by humans. Many countries forbid the capture or killing of tortoises.

August 30, 2017

Late last Friday night, on August 25, the deluge of Hurricane Harvey began soaking the central coast of Texas in the southern United States. Since then, the storm has continued to dump record rains, causing unprecedented flooding that has displaced some 30,000 people. More than 4 feet (1.2 meters) of rain has saturated the Houston area, submerging low-lying areas and swelling reservoirs to near-breaking points. As Harvey hovers and continues to dump torrential rains, the U.S. National Weather Service warns of “catastrophic” and “life threatening” flooding in southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana. As of today, 30 people have died in storm-related incidents.

On Aug. 27, 2017, members of the Texas National Guard evacuate Houston residents stranded by Hurricane Harvey’s record flooding. Credit: Lt. Zachary West, Army National Guard

Harvey’s floodwaters have affected 50 counties in Texas, and some 4,000 troops from the Texas National Guard have been deployed—along with thousands of police, firefighters, and other emergency responders—to help the storm’s many victims. Many civilian volunteers are helping, too, using their own boats, food, and other supplies. Numerous people and pets have been rescued by boat, high-water vehicles, and helicopter from automobiles, trees, homes, and rooftops. Hundreds of roads are blocked by high water, and Houston’s airports, schools, and office buildings remain closed. Storm damage is expected to top $20 billion, and repairs and reconstruction after the storm could take years. Some 450,000 people are expected to seek federal disaster assistance. Harvey is the strongest storm to hit Texas since Hurricane Carla in 1961.

On Aug. 24, 2017, Hurricane Harvey strengthens over the Gulf of Mexico prior to hitting the Texas coast late on August 25. Credit: NOAA/NASA GOES Project

Harvey’s pockets of tornadolike winds have caused some damage, but the storm’s winds—which have lessened enough for Harvey to be downgraded to a tropical storm—have not been the problem. Harvey’s great destructive force has been its rain generation. Very slow moving, Harvey has lingered over the Texas coast and the Gulf of Mexico, turning out multiple thunderstorms from a bottomless water supply. Torrential rains have hit coastal areas for days on end, and flooding and storm surges have not reached their peak potential. The worst may be yet to come before the storm crawls northeast and weakens over land in the coming days.

Harvey formed as a cluster of thunderstorms over the Atlantic Ocean before hitting the island of Barbados as a tropical storm on August 18. The storm fragmented as it crossed Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, but it redeveloped and gained strength over the Bay of Campeche. Water temperatures there and in the entire Gulf of Mexico are well above average, and storms like Harvey feed off those warm waters. An expansion of the subtropical high pressure belt gave Harvey a clear and gentle upper atmosphere in which to grow, and the storm coiled and flexed into a hurricane as it neared the Texas coast. The warmer waters and expansion of high pressure areas—as well as a superabundance of moisture in the air—are ripe conditions for hurricane creation. They are also consistent with the effects of anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change. The United Nations World Meteorological Organization linked Harvey’s enormous rainfall with climate change.

August 29, 2017

On Sunday, August 27, an all-star baseball team from Tokyo, Japan, won the Little League World Series by defeating a team from Lufkin, Texas, 12-2. The Little League World Series is a competition played each year in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania, among kids aged 11 to 13. The tournament, first played in 1947, includes 16 Little League teams from the United States and the rest of the world. Little League Baseball is the world’s largest organized youth-sports program, with nearly 180,000 teams.

On Aug. 27, 2017, young Tokyo ballplayers celebrate their Little League World Series championship at Howard J. Lamade Stadium in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Credit: Courtesy of Little League Baseball and Softball

The ballplayers from Tokyo’s Kitasuna Little League dominated the final at South Williamsport’s Howard J. Lamade Stadium, despite a lightning start by the boys from Texas. Chandler Spencer blasted the first pitch of the game from Tokyo starter Tsubasa Tomii for a long home run to left. Two batters later, first baseman Hunter Ditsworth tucked one inside the right field foul pole for another homer and a 2-0 lead. That was it for Texas, however, and Tokyo responded with three runs in the second inning and four in the third.

Tokyo continued the attack in the fifth, and the team’s lead quickly approached the 10 runs needed to win by the so-called “mercy rule.” After tallying four in the inning for an 11-2 lead, a single to right by outfielder Natsuki Yajima drove in the 12th run to end the game. After a quick celebration in front of their dugout, members of the Kitasuna team respectfully thanked their opponents. They then raced to the center field wall to rub the bronze bust of the stadium’s namesake, Howard J. Lamade—a longstanding tradition for the winning team. (Lamade was a Pennsylvania newspaper publisher and a key figure in the early years of Little League Baseball.)

The Tokyo all-stars rolled through the international bracket of the tournament, winning all five of their games by a combined score of 39-3, including a 5-0 win over Mexico to reach the Little League World Series final. The championship was the 4th for Tokyo in the last six years, and the 11th overall for teams from Japan. The Lufkin, Texas, squad fought through the tough domestic tournament, edging the all-stars from Greenville, North Carolina, 6-5 to win the United States title and reach the final. The tournament’s 32 games drew a total of nearly 500,000 fans.

May 27, 2015

Heavy rains and flooding over the last four days have killed 18 people in the southern U.S. states of Texas and Oklahoma. In Texas, the death toll stands at 17 people with an additional 11 people still missing. Two days ago, on May 25, a tornado struck Ciudad Acuna in Mexico, killing at least 13 people.

The city of Houston was hard hit by flash floods on Monday, May 25. Roads in the central  area of the city were impassable for much of Tuesday. I-45 near downtown Houston had flood waters at least 14-feet (4.2-meters) deep in some areas. Motors abandoned their cars along the road and left with rescuers. Flood waters filled the first-floor parking garage of a major shopping mall, the Galleria, trapping some workers in the mall over night. Many people in Houston had to climb onto the roof of their home and wait for rescue by boat. Most of those who died were caught in and swept away by rapid, swirling waters.

People kayak down a flooded street in Houston, Texas, on May 26, 2015. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

In the tornado that hit the border town of Ciudad Acuna, hundreds of homes were damaged and at least 13 people were killed when the storm, with wind speeds of 168-186 miles (270-300 kilometers) per hour, struck. Most of those killed were walking outside at the time.

This weather system is still expected to bring rain over the South, with more extreme weather predicted for tonight. It is also expected to move into Louisiana tomorrow, and perhaps cause flooding for that city.

October 21, 2014

The U.S. Supreme Court on October 18 rejected an emergency request from the U.S. Department of Justice to prohibit Texas from requiring voters to produce photo identification in order to vote. In a rare public dissent of the court’s decision not to take up a case, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg characterized the Texas photo ID law as discriminatory: “The greatest threat to public confidence in elections in this case is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law, one that likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters.” Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor joined Ginsburg in the dissent.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a fiery dissent countering the Court’s majority decision on the Texas voter ID law.

Republican state legislatures in several states have passed voter ID laws on the grounds that they are needed to prevent election fraud. The Democratic Party and such organizations as the American Civil Liberties Union claim that the laws were passed to discourage minorities from voting. Before the 2012 presidential election, Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai publicly stated that a recent voter ID law passed in his state “would allow Governor [Mitt] Romney to win Pennsylvania.” Critics claimed Turzai had unintentionally revealed the true objective behind such laws.

Additional World Book articles:

• Courts 2012 (a Back in Time article)
• Elections 2013 (a Back in Time article)

October 16, 2014

A second Dallas hospital nurse, Amber  Vinson, who treated Liberian Ebola victim Thomas Duncan before his death has tested positive for the deadly virus, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital confirmed yesterday. Public health officials in Texas continue to monitor some 48 contacts of Duncan and the health care workers who treated him. However, that number is rising.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) disclosed yesterday that Ms. Vinson flew on a commercial jet from Cleveland to Dallas on October 13. “She should not have traveled on a commercial airline,” CDC Director Tom Frieden subsequently stated. “The CDC guidance in this setting outlines the need for what is called controlled movement.” However, it was revealed today that Ms. Vinson did, in fact, contact the CDC before flying home to Dallas and reported that she had a fever with a temperature of 99.5 °F (37.5 °C). CDC officials did not stop her from boarding the plane because her temperature was below the range the CDC then categorized as dangerous. The CDC is currently attempting to contact the more than 130 passengers and crew aboard Frontier Airlines Flight 1143 on Monday.

Scientists remain unsure about the exact ways in which the Ebola virus (above) is transmitted. (Cynthia Goldsmith)

CDC Director Frieden has expressed regret about his agency’s initial response to the first Ebola case in Dallas. “In retrospect, with 20/20 hindsight, we could have sent a more robust hospital infection control team and been more hands-on with the hospital from Day 1.” The CDC has since issued stricter guidelines for U.S. hospitals with Ebola patients. The guidelines are closer to the procedures used by Doctors Without Borders, a Paris-based relief organization that is currently battling the Ebola epidemic that has killed some 4,500 people in West Africa.

Amber Vinson was flown last night from Dallas to Atlanta, where she entered Emory University Hospital. An American doctor and nurse, Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, who contracted Ebola while working in Africa, were successfully treated at Emory in September. The physician who oversaw their treatment, Sean G. Kaufman, today condemned the earlier CDC guidelines as “absolutely irresponsible and dead wrong.”

Additional World Book article:

• Disease Detectives (a special report)
• The Origin of New Diseases (a special report)

October 13, 2014

A nurse who treated Liberian Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan before he died has been infected with the virus. The case is the first known transmission of the Ebola virus on U.S. soil. The unnamed woman is in stable condition in an isolation ward in a Dallas, Texas, hospital.

Tom Frieden, head of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), stated yesterday that while the nurse wore full protective gear while treating Duncan, there obviously had been a clear breach of safety protocol. He informed the media that the CDC will carry out a complete investigation into how the infection had occurred, focusing on two “high-risk procedures”–dialysis and respiratory intubation–carried out on Duncan before he died.

The first known transmission of the Ebola virus in the United States has been  reported. (Frederick Murphy)

The Ebola virus causes a hemorrhagic fever, an illness characterized by fever, headache, diarrhea, vomiting, and massive internal bleeding. About 80 to 90 percent of all people who become infected die. The current outbreak, largely concentrated in the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, has resulted in the deaths of more than 4,000 people.

Additional World Book article:

• Disease Detectives (a special report)
• The Origin of New Diseases (a special report)

Two people have died in the massive Bastrop wildfire burning out of control about 30 miles (48 kilometers) southeast of Austin, the Texas capital. More than 700 homes have been destroyed in what is currently the largest of dozens of wildfires burning throughout the drought-stricken state. On September 4, a fire in east Texas killed a 20-year-old woman and her 18-month-old daughter trapped in their burning home.

At least 57 separate wildfires in Texas have burned across more than 100,000 acres (40,470 hectares) over the past week, Texas Governor Rick Perry announced at a September 6 news conference. According to the Texas Forest Service, one of the fires, the Bastrop fire, has burned across an estimated 30,000 acres (12, 140 hectares) in Bastrop County, forcing thousands of people to evacuate. A separate, smaller wildfire south of Austin has moved unchecked for at least 16 miles (25 kilometers) and has twice jumped the Colorado River.

Additional World Book article:

• When the Rain Stops (special report)