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Washington, D.C., is famous for the cherry trees whose pink and red blossoms draw more than one million visitors each year. The trees are more than just beautiful. They’re a symbol of the friendship between the United States and Japan. Recently, Japan’s prime minister reinforced that alliance by offering a generous gift.

On April 10, during an official visit to the U.S., Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida announced that Japan would give its ally 250 cherry trees. The Japanese government decided on the gift after learning that hundreds of Washington’s cherry trees will be removed this summer in order to rebuild a crumbling seawall around the Tidal Basin, a reservoir along which many of the trees are planted. When the city’s Potomac River floods, the water in the reservoir floods as well, damaging nearby trees.

Caitlin Clark may not have a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) title, but she’s already a basketball legend. Clark earned superstar status as a guard for the University of Iowa Hawkeyes. Now, she’s headed for the WNBA.

Clark scored 30 points in the championship game of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament. It wasn’t enough to win against the undefeated University of South Carolina, which beat Iowa 87–75. But fans recognized a once-in-a-lifetime talent. Almost 19 million viewers watched the game on TV or online, making the event the most popular in the history of women’s college basketball. In the stadium, the crowd gave Clark a round of applause when she was subbed out after it became clear that South Carolina would win.

The Colorado River is amazing. Flowing from the state of Colorado down to Mexico, the river provides water and electric power to people throughout the arid Southwest. This wouldn’t be possible without a feat of human engineering called the Hoover Dam. Built in the 1930s by the U.S. government, the dam harnessed the power of the unpredictable river, turning it into a valuable resource. But the Hoover Dam has also had negative environmental consequences. 

In a new book called The Wild River and the Great Dam, author Simon Boughton explores the construction of the dam and its impact on the natural world. The book is filled with historical photos and quotes from people who were involved in the Hoover Dam project. To mark Earth Day (April 22), In the News spoke to Boughton about how the dam has affected our planet. Here is a condensed and edited version of our conversation.

In the News: Why did you choose the Hoover Dam as your topic?

Simon Boughton: I had a childhood fascination with big things and big machines and building things. This book began with that childhood fascination with construction. I was interested in the audacious engineering story, just building this huge thing in the desert with new machinery. And it does turn out to be an engineering story about solving problems and building big things. The other thing that really spoke to me about it is that it turned out to be a really interesting human story as well as a piece of social history. I found it really fascinating.

ITN: In the book, you point out that the Southwest is largely desert. Why did people want to change that by building a dam that would supply water?

SB: It’s not an easy thing to settle in a desert. So, it was just a matter of practical necessity to support this flood of people that came from the East to the West during the late 19th century and early 20th century. In order for more people to live there, there has to be water.

ITK: This land had to be turned into something that was usable.

SB: Yeah, I mean, I’m very conscious when thinking about the story that I don’t think it was inevitable that this had to happen. It’s a story about something that, to some people, seemed like a good idea but turned out to have other consequences. I’m wary of sounding like it was something we had to do. It’s something we chose to do. 

ITK: It felt like from the government’s perspective that they believed that they had to do it. But that’s just one perspective. In your book, you quoted U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur. In 1930, he said the Hoover Dam would be “one of man’s greatest victories over nature.”

SB: Yeah, that’s particularly the language [of that era] of sort of bringing nature into subjugation. There’s also a quote about the river running wild through the West and resembling an untamed horse, and finally [after the dam was built], the horse being tamed and harnessed.

There are [also] these different ways that the word conservation came to be understood over the course of the 20th century. [At one time], if water reached the sea without being used, it was considered wasted, so that their version of conservation was that you had to put water to use. Today, we talk about conservation as something else—not using too much of a resource or being careful how we use it. 

ITK: Can you talk a little bit about the positive and negative impacts of the dam?

SB: The dam was a success in the short term. The amount of water that was stored by the dam and the amount of power that was generated by the dam was far in excess of what people thought they needed at the time. The impact of the building of the dam on the farming communities down river was almost immediate. Immediately, the supply of water became predictable and reliable and manageable. But because it was a success, it created a kind of hunger for more. I think what happened was that the government got caught up in this cycle of trying to squeeze more out of the river over the second part of the 20th century. The story became one of trying to get ahead of economic and population growth.

In the 15th century, a powerful duke abandoned his castle, leaving it to slowly decay. Archaeologists recently found the remains of this castle—along with artifacts its residents left behind.

The castle, known as the Château de l’Hermine, was built in the village of Vannes by John IV, Duke of Brittany, in 1381. Brittany is now part of France, but between the 10th and 16th centuries it was a feudal state, sort of like its own small country. Brittany was ruled by a series of dukes, and Vannes was its capital. The castle was used for about 100 years until it was abandoned by John’s grandson Francis II, also a duke. Another building was constructed on top of the castle ruins in the 1700s.

Parents often worry that kids and teens focus too much on their phones. But in a recent survey, many teens said they value time away from their devices.

Conducted in late 2023, the Pew Research Center survey gathered data from 1,453 U.S. teens aged 13 to 17, along with one parent or guardian per teen. Pew’s website says the survey aimed to get a sense of a generation in which teens are constantly online by seeking an answer to the question, “How are young people navigating this ‘always on’ environment?” Pew also wanted answers from parents, who are often concerned that spending too much time online might be harmful to kids.

Teen survey participants said they value their phones for many reasons. Sixty-nine percent of teens said their phones make it easier for them to pursue hobbies and interests, while 30 percent said the devices help them improve their social skills.

But the participants value time away from devices as well. Seventy-two percent of them said they often or sometimes feel peaceful without their phones, 44 percent said they sometimes feel anxious without them. Only 38 percent of the teens believe they spend too much time on their phones, while a little more than half said they think they strike a good balance between time spent on and away from their phones.

Meanwhile, some parents are keeping a close eye on their teens’ phone use, though this is mostly true for parents of younger teens. Almost 64 percent of parents of teens aged 13 to 14 look through their teens’ phones, while 41 percent of parents of teens aged 15 to 17 do so. Just under half the parents in the survey said they limit the amount of time their teens can be on their phones. 

Interestingly, parents and teens have different views of adult phone use. Thirty-one percent of parents said they often or sometimes get distracted by their phones while talking to their teens. But when teens were asked if their parents get distracted by their phones, 46 percent said yes.

Imagine being able to travel as fast as an airplane without ever taking flight. That’s the idea behind the hyperloop, a super speedy form of transportation technology that people have been hyping for years. Could the opening of a new test track mean the hyperloop is in our future?

Like a train, a hyperloop carries passengers in a pod, or car, along a track. But there are some key differences. Unlike train cars, hyperloop pods aren’t connected to one another, so a single pod can go in its own direction. Hyperloops are designed to travel much faster than a traditional train by moving with as little friction from the ground or the air as possible. This is achieved in a couple of ways. With help from electromagnets, the pods hover over the tracks. Also, technology sucks almost all the air out of the tubes. Some experts claim that hyperloop pods will be able to travel over 600 miles per hour (970 kilometers per hour).

Located at the Hyperloop Center in the Netherlands, the new test track is Europe’s longest so far, consisting of a 420-meter (1,400-foot) tube. There’s also a fork in the tube—a section where it splits into two directions. Experts say this is important if they hope to build tubes going to many places.

“[The fork] really creates a network effect where you sort of have a highway of tubes, and vehicles can take an on and offramp or they can take a lane switch to go to a different part of Europe or to a different destination,” Marinus van der Meijs, the technology and engineering director at Hardt Hyperloop, which built the test pod, told the Associated Press.

This isn’t the first time hyperloop hopes have been raised. In 2013, Elon Musk touted plans to open a hyperloop in California, but nothing has materialized so far. And in 2023, after spending several years developing technology, a U.S. company called Hyperloop One shut down. The new test track has revived the dream.

“I expect by 2030 you will have the first hyperloop route, maybe 5 kilometers (3 miles) in which people will actually be transporting passengers,” the Hyperloop Center’s director, Sascha Lamme, told the Associated Press.

Doubters say there’s not much chance the hyperloop will be successful. It would require governments to agree to build a network of tubes within countries and across borders. And that would cost a lot of money.

But Lamme is more optimistic.

“If you look at how highways were developed over time, it goes exponentially when the technology is ready,” he told the Guardian.

On April 8, North America will experience a rare event: a total solar eclipse. In some parts of Mexico, the United States, and Canada, the daytime sky will briefly go completely dark.

During a total solar eclipse, the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, blocking sunlight from reaching some areas of Earth. Along a narrow band on the surface of our planet, called the path of totality, the sky goes completely dark for a short time and only the outer edge of the Sun (called the corona) can be seen.

On April 8, totality, or complete darkness, will begin over the Pacific Ocean and pass over Mazatlán, a city on the west coast of Mexico at about 2:07 p.m. Eastern time. From there, the Moon’s shadow will move over Mexico and into the U.S. and then Canada. Totality in the United States begins in Texas just before 2:30 p.m. Eastern time and ends in Maine at just after 3:30 p.m. Eastern time. Each location in the path of totality will be completely dark for only a few minutes or even seconds. But things won’t go back to normal right away. Before and after totality, each location will experience a partial solar eclipse—a period when the Moon is partially blocking the Sun.

A high school student has invented a device that can detect and kill a harmful invasive species called the spotted lanternfly. Eighteen-year-old Selina Zhang’s invention, ArTreeficial, is a fake tree that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and electricity.

Zhang is from New Jersey, one of the 17 U.S. states where the spotted lanternfly has been damaging trees and crops since it arrived in the country aboard a ship from China a little over a decade ago. When Zhang learned about the insect, she began thinking about ways to get rid of it. She’s not the only one. Officials have tried battling the lanternfly with insecticides and other measures, but these solutions are harmful to the planet.

Could life beyond Earth exist in our own solar system?

Scientists have discovered that there’s an ocean hidden beneath the icy surface of Mimas, one of Saturn’s moons. The finding suggests there may be more liquid water—which is needed to support life as we know it—beyond Earth than scientists had previously thought.

Until recently, Mimas’s biggest claim to fame may have been that a large crater on its surface makes it look like the Death Star from the Star Wars movies. Other than that, astronomers thought it was just a ball of ice. But when scientists studied images and data collected by a spacecraft called Cassini, they learned that Mimas’s orbit around Saturn is affected by something in the moon’s interior. Further calculations revealed the existence of an ocean.

Scientists believe that the ocean is 12 to 18 miles (20 to 30 kilometers) under the icy surface of Mimas, and that the water is about 45 miles (72 kilometers) deep. With a diameter just under 250 miles (400 kilometers), Mimas is tiny. The ocean makes up about half of its volume.

Cole Brauer just became the first American woman to sail around the globe alone. Brauer placed second out of 16 competitors in the Global Solo Challenge, a 30,000-mile (48,000-kilometer) race around the world.

Brauer’s boat arrived at A Coruña, Spain, on March 7, 2024, after 130 days at sea. Setting out on October 29, Brauer sailed south along the west coast of Africa and rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of the continent. She then headed east to Australia and on to South America’s Cape Horn, where frequent storms make the waters notoriously rough and boats must steer clear of icebergs. Finally, Brauer sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to Spain.