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Environment and Science

New COVID vax available

NEW ULM — People age 12 and older are encouraged to get the new COVID-19 bivalent vaccine, which is now available to Brown County residents. Brown County Public Health Director Karen Moritz told the County Board Tuesday the updated COVID-19 booster can help restore protection that has decreased since previous vaccination and provide broader protection against newer variants. The new, updated — or bivalent — booster targets the most recent Omicron subvariants, BA 4 and BA 5, which are more contagious and resistent than earlier Omicron strains. Studies have found these variants ...

Blasts precede Baltic pipeline leaks, sabotage seen likely

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Denmark said Tuesday it believed "deliberate actions" by unknown perpetrators were behind big leaks — which seismologists said followed powerful explosions — in two natural gas pipelines running under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. European leaders and experts pointed to possible sabotage amid the energy standoff with Russia provoked by the war in Ukraine. Although filled with gas, neither pipeline is currently supplying it to Europe. "It is the authorities' clear assessment that these are deliberate actions -– not accidents," Danish Prime ...

NASA moon rocket back in hangar, launch unlikely until Nov.

NASA's moon rocket returned to the safety of its hangar Tuesday as Hurricane Ian approached Florida, its launch now unlikely before mid-November. Instead of trying to send it on its first test flight, the launch team moved the 322-foot (98-meter) rocket off the pad at Kennedy Space Center. The four-mile (6.4-kilometer) trip took all night. NASA official Jim Free said it would be difficult to upgrade the rocket and get it back to the pad for an October launch attempt. Putting in fresh batteries is particularly challenging, Free noted, making it doubtful a launch could be attempted ...

NTSB wants all new vehicles to check drivers for alcohol use

DETROIT (AP) — The National Transportation Safety Board is recommending that all new vehicles in the U.S. be equipped with blood alcohol monitoring systems that can stop an intoxicated person from driving. The recommendation, if enacted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, could reduce the number of alcohol-related crashes, one of the biggest causes of highway deaths in the U.S. The new push to make roads safer was included in a report released Tuesday about a horrific crash last year in which a drunk driver collided head-on with another vehicle near Fresno, ...

Minnesota Ojibwe harvest sacred, climate-imperiled wild rice

ON LEECH LAKE, Minnesota (AP) — Seated low in her canoe sliding through a rice bed on this vast lake, Kendra Haugen used one wooden stick to bend the stalks and another to knock the rice off, so gently the stalks sprung right back up. On a mid-September morning, no breeze ruffled the eagle feather gifted by her grandmother that Haugen wore on a baseball cap as she tried her hand at wild rice harvesting — a sacred process for her Ojibwe people. "A lot of reservations are struggling to keep rice beds, so it's really important to keep these as pristine as we can. ... It renews our ...