South Africa Overturns Diplomatic Immunity For Grace Mugabe

"It's unlikely that former Zimbabwean first lady Grace Mugabe will be making a trip to South Africa anytime soon."

"A South African court has overturned a government decision to grant the wife of former Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe diplomatic immunity in connection to her alleged assault of a South African model with an extension cord."

"The South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg described that decision as an "error of law," according to South Africa's News 24."

"Last August, Grace Mugabe was allowed to return to Harare after former minister of international relations and cooperation Maite Nkoana-Mashabane granted her immunity."

"'That the minister has the power to confer immunity on Dr Mugabe is neither doubtful or debatable,' the judge said, according to News 24. 'She, however, has to exercise this power in a manner that is constitutional and lawful.'"

Off Your Mental Game? You Could Be Mildly Dehydrated

"Was it hard to concentrate during that long meeting? Does the crossword seem a little tougher? You could be mildly dehydrated."

"A growing body of evidence finds that being just a little dehydrated is tied to a range of subtle effects — from mood changes to muddled thinking."

"'We find that when people are mildly dehydrated they really don't do as well on tasks that require complex processing or on tasks that require a lot of their attention,' says Mindy Millard-Stafford, director of the Exercise Physiology Laboratory at Georgia Institute of Technology. She published an analysis of the evidence this month, based on 33 studies."

"How long does it take to become mildly dehydrated in the summer heat? Not long at all, studies show, especially when you exercise outdoors."

"'If I were hiking at moderate intensity for one hour, I could reach about 1.5 percent to 2 percent dehydration,' says Doug Casa, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut, and CEO of the Korey Stringer Institute."

For an average-size person, 2 percent dehydration equates to sweating out about a liter of water.

Mugabe's Gone, But Zimbabwe Still Has A Serious Cash Shortage

"It's a little after 8 a.m. on a Wednesday morning in downtown Harare, and Brandon Moyo has been waiting in line for the ATM for over four hours already. He's hoping to withdraw $20 — but it's not looking promising. There are over 20 people in front of him and bank officials have already warned they might run out of cash before he gets to the front."

"Moyo is from a small farming town about 65 miles outside of Harare. He says banks in his town usually don't have any cash at all these days, so he takes a bus into the Zimbabwean capital city twice a week to wait in a line like this. He has to pay for that bus ride in cash, and if the bank runs out before he can get some, he sometimes has to stay overnight until he can try again."

"Zimbabwe has been facing a major cash shortage for the past two years, a symptom of the country's larger and longer economic crisis. After Robert Mugabe was ousted from power by the military last November, his replacement, Emmerson Mnangagwa, has claimed that Zimbabwe is now "open for business." But getting cash into the country is complicated, and access to physical currency hasn't improved with the leadership change."

What Friday's Extra-Long Lunar Eclipse Can Tell Us About The Earth

"Let's get the bad news out of the way first: You won't be able to see this Friday's epic lunar eclipse in person if you live in North America (aside from a very small portion of eastern Canada and parts of the eastern Caribbean)."

"But here's the good news: if you are almost anywhere else, you'll probably be able to see at least a portion of the event."

"Prime viewing is in eastern and southern Africa, the Middle East, eastern Europe and south Asia, based on a NASA map."

"The most noteworthy thing about this particular eclipse is its extraordinary length – in fact, NASA expects it to be the longest lunar eclipse this century. The total lunar eclipse is projected to last for an hour and 42 minutes, with the entire event lasting over 6 hours."

"To figure out precisely when the eclipse will hit your area, you can calculate it at Timeanddate.com."

14,000-Year-Old Piece Of Bread Rewrites The History Of Baking And Farming

"When an archaeologist working on an excavation site in Jordan first swept up the tiny black particles scattered around an ancient fireplace, she had no idea they were going to change the history of food and agriculture."

"Amaia Arranz-Otaegui is an archaeobotanist from the University of Copenhagen. She was collecting dinner leftovers of the Natufians, a hunter-gatherer tribe that lived in the area more than 14,000 years ago during the Epipaleolithic time — a period between the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras."

"Natufians were hunters, which one could clearly tell from the bones of gazelles, sheep and hares that littered the cooking pit. But it turns out the Natufians were bakers, too --at a time well before scientists thought it was possible."

"When Arranz-Otaegui sifted through the swept-up silt, the black particles appeared to be charred food remains. 'They looked like what we find in our toasters,' she says — except no one ever heard of people making bread so early in human history. 'I could tell they were processed plants," Arranz-Otaegui says, "but I didn't really know what they were.'"

Pizza Physics: Why Brick Ovens Bake The Perfect Italian-Style Pie

"The ideal Italian pizza, be it Neapolitan or Roman, has a crisp crust flecked with dark spots — marks left by a blazing hot oven. The dough is fluffy, moist and stretchy, and the toppings are piping hot. A pizzeria's brick oven pops these out to perfection, but intrepid home cooks attempting to re-create Italian-style pizzas have more than likely discovered facsimiles are nigh impossible to produce."

"'Even if you prepare [the pizza] the same way, you cannot get the same result with just your oven at home,' says Andreas Glatz, a physicist at Northern Illinois University and pizza enthusiast."

"The fact that you need a vaulted brick oven to bake a great Italian-style pizza is well-known, but Glatz and Andrey Varlamov, also a pizza-eater and physicist at the Institute of Superconductors, Oxides and Other Innovative Materials and Devices in Rome, wanted to know why. The secret behind a pizzeria's magic, they concluded in a paper published on arXiv.org last month, is in some unique thermal properties of the brick oven."

"They started off interviewing pizzaiolos, or pizza makers, in Rome who were masters of the Roman style of pizza. For this, the bake lasts 2 minutes at 626 degrees Fahrenheit. (Neapolitan pizzas usually bake at an even higher temperature — at least 700 degrees.) That turns out a 'well-baked but still moist dough and well-cooked toppings," Glatz says. The same settings in a conventional steel oven produce far less ideal results. "You burn the dough before the surface of the pizza even reaches boiling, so this is not a product you will want to eat,' he says."

Rome's Subway Expansion Reveals Artifacts From The Ancient Past

"All roads may lead to Rome, but once you get there, good luck taking the subway. The sprawling metropolis is expanding its mass transit system — a sluggish process made even slower as workers keep running into buried ancient ruins."

"'I found some gold rings. I found glasswork laminated in gold depicting a Roman god, some amphoras,' says Gilberto Pagani, a bulldozer operator at the Amba Aradam metro stop, currently under construction not far from the Colosseum."

"Pagani is part of an archaeological team at the site, a certified archaeological construction worker trained to excavate, preserve and build in cities like Rome, with thousands of years of civilization buried beneath the surface."

"The presence of ancient artifacts underground is a daunting challenge for urban developers. For archaeologists, it's the opportunity of a lifetime."

"'I think it's the luckiest thing that's ever happened to me, professionally speaking,' says Simona Morretta, the state archaeologist in charge of the Amba Aradam site. 'Because you never get the chance in a regular excavation to dig so deep. That's how we've found architectural complexes as important as this.'"

Photographer Captures The Contradictions Of Otherworldly Antarctica

"When WAMU photographer Tyrone Turner got the opportunity to travel to Antarctica, he thought he would be fascinated with the continent's wildlife."

"But instead, it was the ice — in its myriad shapes and textures, "bathed in polar light that morphed from powerfully sharp and blue, to gentle and pink" — that Turner says mesmerized him."

"'Antarctica just seemed to me absolutely 'the other world,'" Turner says. 'There is no other landscape like it.'"

"Turner's trip to Antarctica last November began in the Falkland Islands, where he boarded the National Geographic Explorer for a three-week journey."

Galileo Would Be Stunned: Jupiter Now Has 79 Moons

"More than 400 years after Galileo Galilei discovered the first of Jupiter's moons, astronomers have found a dozen more — including one they've dubbed 'oddball' — orbiting the planet. That brings the total number of Jovian moons to 79."

"The team of astronomers originally wasn't even looking for the 12 new moons. Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science says he and his colleagues had been trying to track down a giant planet they think may be lurking at the outer reaches of our solar system."

"As part of that search, Sheppard was using the 4-meter Víctor Blanco Telescope in Chile in March of last year and realized that Jupiter was right near the part of the sky he wanted to search."

"'So we could also search for Jupiter moons while looking for things that are well beyond Pluto,' Sheppard says."

"One thing that helped was the especially large camera attached to the Blanco telescope. '[That camera] allows us to search the whole area around Jupiter in a very few images,' he says."

A 4 Billion Light-Year Journey Ends At The South Pole

"Scientists for the first time have been able to pinpoint the source of an extremely powerful version of a neutrino, a ghostly particle that can travel virtually unimpeded through space."

"It's an achievement that opens a whole new way of looking at the universe."

"The neutrino was detected by a South Pole observatory called IceCube that was specifically designed to catch the particles. It consists of a cubic kilometer of ice festooned with more than 5,000 detectors."

"Neutrinos don't interact with much, but occasionally one will strike another particle, giving off a kind of light known as Cherenkov radiation that IceCube's detectors can pick up."

"When a particularly high-energy neutrino is captured, IceCube sends out an alert."

"'We had this neutrino alert in September 2017,' says Olga Botner, a particle physicist at Uppsala University in Sweden and a member of the National Science Foundation-funded IceCube scientific team. On Sept. 22, to be precise."

Scientists Find New Tricks For Old Drugs

"Most drugs have side effects, but sometimes they're actually good news."

"Researchers are now exploring whether some cheap and common drugs have side effects that could help people fight off the flu and other lung infections."

"This idea has a passionate advocate: Dr. David Fedson. About 10 years ago, this infectious disease specialist had a disturbing thought. He was working in the vaccine industry in France, and he started to wonder what would happen if, all of a sudden, the world was gripped with a flu pandemic."

"One hundred years ago, the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic swept the globe, killing 50 million people, or maybe more. Scientists fear a similar pandemic is only a matter of time. What then? Fedson wondered."

"'No company had a strategy for dealing with the pandemic,' he says. 'And also when you just looked at the arithmetic about how quickly they'd need literally billions of doses of the vaccine, which they couldn't make in time, it became very clear the you simply can't get there from here.'"

Starbucks: Goodbye Plastic Straws

"Starbucks announced on Monday it plans to eliminate plastic straws from its 28,000 stores worldwide by 2020."

"The company will broaden the manufacture and use of what some in social media have dubbed the "adult sippy cup." It's a plastic strawless lid that will come to replace single-use plastic straws that now inundate its coffee shops."

"The company says the move when fully implemented could mean a billion fewer plastic straws across its stores each year. And it's a part of Starbucks' $10 million investment in creating recyclable and compostable cups around the world."

"The strawless lid has already been in use at many of the company's stores for certain kinds of cold drinks like cold foam and 'draft nitro,' the coffee drink that comes out of a keg, mixed with nitrogen. Unlike straws, the new lid can be recycled, the company said."

"'For our partners and customers, this is a significant milestone to achieve our global aspiration of sustainable coffee, served to our customers in more sustainable ways,' Kevin Johnson, president and chief executive officer for Starbucks, said in a statement."

Searching For The Past In The World War II Wrecks Of Papua New Guinea

"Lloyd Woo eases a motorboat through the clear blue waters of the Bismarck Sea in the southwestern Pacific, to the edge of a coral reef. When he sights a specific cluster of coconut palms on the shore of one of Papua New Guinea's smattering of northern islands, he cuts off the engine. He turns to a couple of visiting scuba divers, tugging on fins and fiddling with their masks, and explains how to find the World War II-era airplane below."

"'Everything's still intact, the propeller's still there, the double wings,' he explains. 'You get to about 25, 26 meters [85 feet], you'll meet the plane.'"

"The Second World War ended 73 years ago, but history can feel very much alive in this corner of the South Pacific. Invaded and used as a Japanese military base in 1942, the Bay of Rabaul, on the northern end of Papua New Guinea's New Britain island, saw one of the most intense, sustained Allied bombing campaigns of the war in the years that followed. That legacy now helps fuel a modest tourism industry, as visitors from all over the world come to scuba dive around the wrecks."

"Underground tunnels, hewn into the ground, were used for shelter in the war years. Husks of downed planes are still being discovered in farmers' fields and deep underwater, prompting efforts to match the aircraft with the names of soldiers missing in action."

Many Look To Buddhism For Sanctuary From An Over-Connected World

"On the floor of a Zen Buddhist worship space in an apartment building in Washington, D.C., about 15 people recently sat on meditation cushions. They chant sutras and meditate, in complete silence, for a full 30 minutes."

"And then one of the lay leaders of the All Beings Zen Sangha, or congregation, conducted a 'little exercise.'"

"'It's very simple,' said Mark Stone. 'If you could take out your screens, stay on them for 12 minutes, doing what you usually do.'"

"The 'Zen Practice and Screen Use' workshop is one of a series that have been held at this zendo, or meditation hall, with the aim of helping participants have a more mindful experience online."

"It's a response to growing concern over the amount of time people devote to their screens. One recent study estimated that Americans are spending nearly six hours a day on their connected devices. Add television to that and the total rises to nearly 10 hours."

London Mayor Says 'Trump Baby' Blimp Can Fly In Protest Of President Trump's Visit

"The 'Trump Baby' blimp is nearly 20 feet tall, wearing nothing but a diaper and a grimace. A tuft of yellow hair tops his orange head. He is armed with a cellphone, ready to tweet."

"And now he is nearly ready to fly over Parliament in London."

"Mayor Sadiq Khan's Greater London Authority has given activists permission to launch the bouncing behemoth from Parliament Square Garden on July 13, when President Trump is set to arrive in London for a three-day visit to the U.K."

"'The Mayor supports the right to peaceful protest and understands that this can take many different forms. ... However the organisers will also need to receive the necessary approvals from the Metropolitan Police and national air traffic service in order for it to fly,' a spokesperson for Khan tells NPR."

"The blimp, which will be tethered to the ground, will be allowed to fly for two hours at a maximum height of about 100 feet, says organizer Leo Murray, who conceived of the idea of a Trump Baby blimp."

"Another protest organizer, Max Wakefield, says the London authority initially objected to the idea."

Scientists Hope Lab-Grown Embryos Can Save Rhino Species From Extinction

"Rhino embryos created in a lab are raising hopes that high-tech assisted reproduction may help save the northern white rhino, the most endangered mammal in the world."

"Only two of these rhinos are still alive, both females living in a sanctuary in Kenya and protected around the clock by armed guards."

"The last male, a rhino named Sudan, died in March. But before the males died off, wildlife experts collected and froze sperm. Now, in the journal Nature Communications, scientists say they successfully have used this stored sperm to fertilize eggs taken from a closely related subspecies, the southern white rhinoceros."

"The resulting hybrid embryos started to develop in a lab dish. Two were frozen for later implantation into a surrogate rhino, although the researchers note in their paper that 'the embryo transfer procedure has yet to be developed and validated in rhinoceroses.'"

"Still, the researchers are hopeful that once they get this working with hybrid embryos, they can use the same techniques to produce pure northern white rhino embryos."

"To make those, they'll need eggs from the two remaining northern white rhinos. Jan Stejskal, of the Dvur Kralove Zoo in the Czech Republic — where rhinos Najin and Fatu were born — says the team has requested permission to obtain the eggs, 'but it's not granted yet.' Still, he hopes the research team can go to Kenya to collect them by the end of the year."

One Song Glory

"There's an episode of The Johnny Cash Show from 1969 where the man himself makes a little speech with a pretty big error. 'Here's a song that was reportedly sung by both sides in the Civil War,' Cash says, guitar in hand, to kick off a performance of 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic.'"

"The real history on that point is clear: Julia Ward Howe wrote the song as a pro-Union, anti-slavery anthem. But then Cash goes on to say, ' .... which proves to me that a song can belong to all of us.' And about that, he's right."

"I should go easy on Cash for flubbing the history; I had it wrong, too. I didn't even know the "Battle Hymn" had ties to the Civil War up until recently, because I — and maybe you, if you grew up with a similar flavor of Christianity — only sang it in church. Little did I know the song, with its refrain of 'Glory, glory, hallelujah,' had been used to root for college football teams, or as an anthem for labor unions. Evangelist Billy Graham, who helped popularize the song among Christians, even took it to the Russian army chorus in 1992."

"'It's a good march,' says Sparky Rucker. A folk singer and historian who performs a show of Civil War music with his wife, Rucker says the 'Battle Hymn' rallies with its rhythm: 'It's just the right cadence to march along, if you're marching at a picket line or marching down the street carrying signs. ... It really gets your blood going [so] that you can slay dragons.'"

"Dragons are relative, however. Anita Bryant, the singer and conservative activist, used to perform the song at anti-gay rallies. During the 1964 presidential race, Republican nominee Barry Goldwater had to disown a campaign film that posed the election as a choice between two Americas — an "ideal" America, where the tune of the 'Battle Hymn' scored images of the founders and the Constitution, and a 'nightmare' America, featuring black people protesting and kids dancing to rock music."

Scientists Capture First Birth Of A Planet

"An international team of scientists has discovered a young planet — just 5 or 6 million years old — forging its own path through space and likely growing along the way."

"The scientists captured a photograph, which they say is the very first direct image of the birth of a planet still forming around a star."

"It's a major finding for those of us on Earth, a 4.5-billion-year-old planet."

"The newly discovered planet may be young, but it's huge: many times the size of Jupiter, which could fit 1,300 planet Earths inside."

"The images provide useful information about how planets, including those in our own solar system, form."

"A team of about 120 scientists worked on the research, published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics."

"'It's a long-lasting and careful process,' to characterize a young planet, says André Muller, who worked at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. 'We worked for at least a year on it on a daily basis.'"

"The planet's name? PDS 70 b. That's based on the name of the star it orbits, PDS 70."

Many Common Sunscreens May Harm Coral. Here's What To Use Instead

"Hawaii Gov. David Ige is expected this week to sign the world's first ban on the sale of sunscreens containing the chemicals oxybenzone and octinoxate. The state is banning the products because of concerns they may be harming one of the state's biggest attractions — coral reefs."

"While it doesn't kick in until 2021, the move is already prompting a public health pushback."

"That's because up to 70 percent of sunscreens on the U.S. market contain oxybenzone. Up to 8 percent contain octinoxate, which often shows up on labels as octyl methoxycinnamate."

"'We're taking away a product, or products ... that have been shown over the course of time to be safe and effective' against skin cancer and sun damage, says Jay Sirois director of regulatory affairs for the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, which represents sunscreen-makers."

"Indeed, both chemicals have had the Food and Drug Administration's OK for decades, but in recent years, some environmental research has suggested octinoxate can contribute to coral bleaching and that oxybenzone exposure leads to the death of baby coral."

Japan's Hayabusa2 Spacecraft Arrives At Its Asteroid Destination

"The Hayabusa2 spacecraft has made a successful rendezvous with the asteroid Ryugu, 177 million miles from Earth. Japan's JAXA space agency confirmed on Wednesday that the craft has taken up a position 12 miles off Ryugu. Up next for Hayabusa2: exploring the surface — and bringing a sample back to Earth."

"Hayabusa2 reached its destination 3 1/2 years after launching from Earth in late 2014. JAXA says the meetup went according to plan, as the craft used its thrusters to establish a constant distance from Ryugu, which can currently be seen zipping across the Gemini constellation."

"Japanese researchers will use Hayabusa2's current vantage point to study the asteroid and evaluate possible sites for collecting samples."

"'From a distance, Ryugu initially appeared round, then gradually turned into a square before becoming a beautiful shape similar to fluorite [known as the 'firefly stone' in Japanese],' said project manager Yuichi Tsuda. 'Now, craters are visible, rocks are visible and the geographical features are seen to vary from place to place. This form of Ryugu is scientifically surprising and also poses a few engineering challenges.'"