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Sun bears are threatened with extinction. In the past 30 years, their population is estimated to have fallen by about 30 percent because of deforestation and illegal hunting. Scientists aren’t sure how many sun bears are left, but estimates range from 1,000 to 2,500.

Conservationists are hoping that the viral video of Angela will help shed some light on the uncertain future of sun bears.

“Sun bears are extremely rare and close to extinction,” Bosco Chan, conservation director at the World Wildlife Fund, told CNN. “Their forest habitats, where destruction…remains rampant, must be strictly protected.”

Food isn’t just something that fills our bellies. A country’s cuisine can tell us a lot about its history and culture. Chef Elena Reygadas understands this well. In 2023, her commitment to showing off Mexico’s many flavors won her the World’s Best Female Chef award from the website World’s 50 Best Restaurants.

Reygadas owns and runs four businesses in Mexico City, Mexico. There’s Rosetta Bakery, a casual restaurant called Lardo, and a bistro (a type of small restaurant) called Café Nin. Her most celebrated eatery is called Rosetta. There, she cooks with a mixture of Mexican ingredients that reflect Mexico’s past and present.

Some of these ingredients have been used for hundreds of years. They were eaten by Indigenous people long before the Spanish arrived in Mexico in the 1500s. Reygadas says she uses as many Mexican ingredients as she can in order to keep them alive and in use for as long as possible. From these and more modern ingredients, Reygadas has created a rich menu, including dishes like savoy cabbage tacos with pistachio pipián sauce, sweet potato ravioli with matcha, and corn tamales with smoked cream.

Reygadas tries to use ingredients that are naturally grown in each season. And that means her menu changes a lot. “It makes us sad because we became very attached to the ingredients, but that also allows us to continue our creativity and move into a new moment,” she told NBC News.

Reygadas says the climate crisis is changing the way we eat. As a chef, it’s hard not to be aware of this. “For example, last year we had very few wild mushrooms because rainfall was scarce due to climate change,” she told NBC News. “And that is very sad and serious.”

Food is connected to so many things. But Reygadas says her main goal is very simple. She wants her creations to make people feel good.

Humans aren’t the only animals that play. Dogs play, many birds play…and even rats play. In a recent study, researchers wanted to learn more about how animals’ brains are linked to their love of play. So, they tickled rats.

Researchers at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, played with and tickled rats on their backs and bellies while observing the animals’ brain activity. They found that if the rats were in a good mood, they actually enjoyed being tickled. There were a couple of signs that the rats were having fun. For one thing, they would seek out more tickling by chasing the hand that had just tickled them. In addition, a microphone enabled researchers to hear the rats making playful chirping sounds that they compared to human giggles.

Scientists found that when the rats were stressed, they didn’t giggle as much in response to the tickling. Previous studies have shown that humans who are stressed also giggle less in response to tickling because (even though some of the laughter is involuntary) they’re not enjoying it.

Scientists think that learning about play and why it’s important could help expand their understanding of how the brain adapts to difficult situations. And knowing what sparks joy in the brain could be helpful in treating certain conditions, such as anxiety and depression.

Instead of being stuck in traffic, what if you could fly over all those cars? That dream may soon become a reality. The U.S. government has just given a company called Joby Aviation permission to test flying taxis that may someday whisk people to and from airports.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has given Joby’s aircraft a Special Airworthiness Certificate. This means Joby is allowed to operate in U.S. airspace “for research and development purposes.” If all goes well, Joby hopes to begin selling rides in its flying vehicles in the United States in 2025.

Joby’s air taxis are what are known as eVTOL aircraft—eVTOL stands for “electrical vertical take-off and landing.” They run on electricity rather than gasoline, and they take off and land vertically, like helicopters. But Joby claims its aircraft are much quieter than helicopters. And since they run on electricity rather than gasoline, they’re greener than most cars.

Joby plans to create a ride-share service like Uber—customers would use an app to book a ride. But unlike Uber cars, Joby air taxis would be able to fly above traffic, getting customers to the airport fairly quickly. Companies in other countries, including Germany and the United Arab Emirates, are planning to launch similar services.

Some people have expressed concern that only the wealthy will be able to afford to use flying taxis. But Joby says the cost would be similar to the cost of an Uber or Lyft ride.

“Our goal is to actually be competitive with the cost of ground transportation, but to deliver you to your destination…five times faster and with a dramatically better experience,” Joby founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt told Bloomberg TV. Before that can happen, Joby will need full certification from the FAA. 

The video below shows Joby’s aircraft in action.

At beaches along the coast of New York state, unpiloted flying vehicles called drones sweep over the shoreline. Officials are using cameras on the drones to capture footage of what’s under the water. Specifically, they’re looking for sharks.

Sharks have always come close to shorelines, but in the summer of 2023, there’s been a higher-than-average number of human-shark encounters. Climate change has warmed the North Atlantic Ocean, making it more hospitable to sharks. And, in New York, state laws now protect bunker fish, a staple of the shark diet, making them more plentiful.

Did you know that the temperature of a building is affected by the color of its roof? Lighter colors reflect much of the Sun’s heat, while darker colors absorb it. With that in mind, a scientist at Purdue University in Indiana has invented a new white paint that’s designed to keep a building cooler, just by coating its roof.

White roofs aren’t a new idea. In fact, they’re widely used in many cities that experience hot temperatures because they’re known to decrease the need for air-conditioning. But most white paint reflects about 80 to 90 percent of the Sun’s rays. The rest of those rays are absorbed into the building.

A few years ago, Xiulin Ruan, a professor at Purdue University, set out to make a more reflective white paint. “We wanted to help with climate change, and now it’s more of a crisis, and getting worse,” Ruan told the New York Times. “We wanted to see if it was possible to help save energy while cooling down the Earth.”

It’s a welcome development at a time when record-breaking heat waves in North America, Europe, and Asia have made headlines.

The paint that Ruan and a team of scientists developed reflects more than 98 percent of the Sun’s rays. At midday, a surface that’s been covered with the paint remains up to 8 degrees Fahrenheit (4.5 degrees Celsius) cooler than the air that surrounds it. At night, it’s up to 19°F (10°C) cooler. According to Ruan, the paint can decrease the need for air-conditioning by up to 40 percent.

The Purdue scientists achieved this level of reflectiveness by making the paint from a very reflective compound called barium sulfate. One downside is that barium sulfate must be mined, which is bad for the environment. But Ruan pointed out that most paint is made with titanium dioxide, which also has to be mined.

On the plus side, the new paint could help address some of the effects of climate change, provided it’s used widely enough, by reflecting those warming solar rays back into space. Ruan and his team have since developed a thinner form of the paint that can be used on airplanes, cars, and other vehicles to reduce the need for air-conditioning, even if they’re sitting on a hot tarmac or in a sizzling parking lot.

So, when can people go out and buy the ultra-reflective white paint? Ruan says he hopes it will be available as soon as 2024.

Workers excavating the ancient city of Pompeii, in Italy, recently unearthed a fresco (a wall painting) showing a tray of food that includes a round, flat bread covered in toppings. The discovery has anthropologists, historians, and foodies alike wondering: Is that a pizza?

Today, pizza is among the world’s most popular foods. It’s not surprising to see it on a restaurant menu or at a party. But the fresco was painted about 2,000 years ago—long before modern-day pizza was thought to be invented. 

People who have studied the “pizza” say its true identity lies in the details. It appears to be a focaccia, which is a type of flat bread that originated in Italy, probably thousands of years ago. It’s topped with spices as well as a pomegranate and possibly a date. But something is missing. 

The pizza in the painting doesn’t have tomatoes or mozzarella cheese. Historians say people in Pompeii wouldn’t have known either of those ingredients. Mozzarella wouldn’t have been invented yet. As for tomatoes, they originated in the Americas and weren’t brought to Europe until about 400 years ago. Europeans avoided eating tomatoes for a long time after that, possibly because they believed tomatoes were poisonous!

Without tomatoes and mozzarella, does the food in the fresco qualify as pizza? Not according to a statement from the Archaeological Park of Pompeii.

“Whilst it looks like a pizza, this image from a Pompeian painting from 2,000 years ago obviously can’t be, since some of the most characteristic ingredients are missing, namely tomatoes and mozzarella,” the statement said.

But Gino Sorbillo, who owns one of the oldest pizza restaurants in Naples, which is near Pompeii, says it’s definitely a pizza. He says that, even today, people use all sorts of toppings on pizza and still call their creations pizza. 

“It was an ancient form of pizza,” Sorbillo told the Guardian. “[Today] you can use fruit, for example figs, or strawberries, if it’s a sweet pizza.”

When the world’s best women’s soccer players face off this summer at the FIFA Women’s World Cup, Haiti will be there. The Haitian women’s soccer team defeated Chile in the qualifying rounds in February, securing its spot in the world’s biggest women’s soccer event.  

Nineteen-year-old Melchie “Corventina” Dumornay scored twice in the 2–1 victory against Chile, proving to the world that Haiti, which ranks 53rd out of 188 countries in women’s soccer, is a force to be reckoned with. The players say their biggest strength is teamwork.

“We trust in ourselves,” team captain Nérilia Mondésir told Reuters. “We do everything together. Even when we lose, we fight for every blade of grass.” 

Athletes in Haiti face challenges that go beyond the soccer field. While many other teams have sponsors—companies or government agencies that help pay for their training and travel—the Haitian team does not. Poverty is widespread in Haiti, and it has been made worse by natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes. Because of an increase in crime, the nation’s professional soccer players play home games in neighboring country the Dominican Republic. 

But it would take a lot to dim Haiti’s enthusiasm for soccer. When the Haitian women’s team qualified for the World Cup, fans were elated. The fact that the women’s team had never qualified for the World Cup made it even more special. (The men’s team last qualified in 1974.) Though the event will take place in Australia and New Zealand, Haitian fans will be following all the action.

“Maybe they’ll reach the quarterfinals,” 13-year-old fan Noah Yann Hilarie told the Associated Press. “That would be huge, amazing. I hope that happens.”

In Haiti’s first game, on July 22, the team will face off against England, which is ranked fourth in the world. It’ll be a tough match-up, but the players will give it their all, knowing they’ve already made history.

“We’re battlers. That’s probably our best quality,” said Mondésir. “We battle to the end, even when our opponents are stronger than us on paper.”

About one-third of the food produced around the world—more than one billion tons—is lost or wasted every year. When the food ends up in landfills, it produces methane, a harmful gas that contributes to climate change. But South Korea is no longer part of the problem. Instead of throwing uneaten food in the regular garbage, South Korean residents recycle it.

Food recycling has been required by law in South Korea since 2013. No one is allowed to dump food waste into landfills. Instead, residents can compost their own food or place it in a certain type of bag and put it in a bin for curbside pickup. Every day except Saturday, trucks retrieve the bags and take them to processing plants. The food scraps are removed from the bags and turned into fertilizer, animal feed, and an environmentally friendly energy source called biogas.