8 million Laundress detergent products recalled over bacteria ...

New York CNN —

The Laundress brand of detergent and household cleaning products has recalled about eight million products because of the possible presence of bacteria that could pose a health risk to consumers.

The recalled items, manufactured by the pricey boutique brand between January 2021 and September 2022, include its laundry detergents, fabric conditioner and cleaning products. The recall was announced December 1.

According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the affected products may contain one of several different types of bacteria, many of which are environmental organisms found widely in soil and water.

The CPSC warned that people with weakened immune systems, underlying lung conditions, or those who use external medical devices and are exposed to the bacteria could face the risk of a serious infection that may require medical treatment if the bacteria is inhaled or enters the body through the eyes or a break in the skin.

The Laundress recalled millions of units of its detergents and cleaning products because of possible bacterial contamination. From U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission

People with healthy immune systems are usually not affected by the bacteria, it said.

Eleven consumers have reported infections from of the bacteria, Pseudomonas, the commission said. The company said it is investigating the reports to determine if the infections were connected to its recalled products.

The CPSC said consumers who purchased the recalled product after January 2021 should immediately stop using it and request a refund (A list of impacted products is available here.) It said consumers should dispose of the product by closing the bottle tightly and placing it in a household trash and not empty the product prior to disposal.

The Laundress products were sold on TheLaundress.com, Amazon and at stores including Bloomingdale’s, The Container Store, Saks Fifth Avenue, Target, Nordstrom, Brooklinen, and other major retailers nationwide, through September 2022 for between $8 and $100.

Contigo Kids Cleanable Water Bottle: 5.7 million bottle lids recalled

Check your kids' lunchboxes and backpacks.

Contigo announced Tuesday that it is recalling the lids on 5.7 million of its Contigo Kids Cleanable Water Bottles because the spouts pose a potential choking hazard.

According to the voluntary recall notice posted on the Consumer Product Safety Commission website, the bottles were sold at retailers nationwide including Target, Walmart and Costco between April 2018 and June 2019.

"Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled water bottles, take them away from children and contact Contigo for inspection instructions and a free replacement lid," the recall notice states.

There have been no reported injuries, Contigo said in a statement on its website at www.gocontigo.com/recall.

However, Contigo has received 149 reports of the spout detaching including 18 spouts found in children’s mouths, according to the recall notice.

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"Contigo identified that the water bottle’s clear silicone spout in some cases may detach from the lid posing a potential choking hazard," the company statement said. "But, out of an abundance of caution, we encourage consumers to find out if they have an affected water bottle lid and order a free replacement lid."

The affected water bottles come in three sizes (13-ounce, 14-ounce and 20-ounce) and four bottle colors (solid color, graphics, stainless steel and stainless steel solid colors), according to the notice. They were sold individually and in packs of two and three.

The Contigo recall website outlines how to tell if you have one of the affected bottles and a step-by-step video.

For questions, call the Contigo consumer services team at 888-262-0622 Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET.

Follow USA TODAY reporter Kelly Tyko on Twitter: @KellyTyko

The Laundress recall: 5 eco-friendly laundry detergents to try

Eden Strong and Rachel Murphy

— Recommendations are independently chosen by Reviewed’s editors. Purchases you make through the links below may earn us and our publishing partners a commission.

The Laundress recently recalled more than 8 million units of its household cleaning supplies, leaving many customers scrambling to find clean alternatives. Among its most popular products impacted by the recall is The Laundress Laundry Detergent. If you’re one of the thousands in search of other similar options to try, you’ve come to the right place.

Gifts got you stumped? Sign up for Reviewed’s newsletter to get last-minute gift ideas and other holiday tips from shopping experts.

Here at Reviewed, we’ve been testing eco-friendly laundry detergents for years, looking hard at ingredient lists and performing hands-on testing at our labs in Cambridge, Massachusetts. These are our findings.

What you need to know about The Laundress recall

The Laundress said millions of units of its products may be tainted with bacteria strains including Burkholderia cepacia complex, Klebsiella aerogenes and multiple different species of Pseudomonas.

These bacterial strains can cause serious infections in individuals with weakened immune systems, external medical devices or underlying lung conditions when inhaled, entering the body through an open wound, or entering through the eyes. At least 11 people reported feeling unwell after using the products.

Check to see if your cleaning supplies are impacted by The Laundress recall. If so, tightly close the bottles and discard them in the trash and follow the steps on the website to obtain a refund.

While we grieve the loss of Laundress laundry detergent, here are 5 of the best eco-friendly laundry detergents you can try instead.

5 eco–friendly laundry detergent options to try instead of The Laundress

1. Method Liquid Laundry Detergent

Cruelty-, paraben- and phthalate-free, Method Liquid Laundry Detergents are plant based and offer a variety of invigorating fragrances. Utilizing a formula that protects and brightens fabric colors while keeping whites white, Method detergent won’t fade your clothes like some eco-friendly detergents can.

Part of the Method family of household cleaners, Method has been a staple in households for decades.

2. Tide Purclean

Backed by the Tide name, Tide Purclean is the clean version of the well-established Tide family of detergents. Created using 75 percent plant-based ingredients, the bottle uses 50 percent percent less plastic than other Tide detergents, and is produced using 100 percent wind power.

Ranking No. 1 overall in our testing for the best eco-friendly detergents, testers found no difference in performance when compared to non-eco-friendly Tide products.

3. Earth Breeze Liquid-less Laundry Sheets

An Amazon reviewer favorite, Earth Breeze Laundry Sheets are a staple in my own household and make doing laundry easy with their grab-and-toss laundry sheets. Carbon-neutral and completely eco-friendly from packaging to product, every Earth Breeze sale gives back to fund ocean cleaning missions and tree planting projects.

Robust in stain-fighting power, these laundry sheets are not only perfect for your daily load of laundry, but also for travel since they are waterless and totally flat, making them easy to pack in a suitcase or backpack.

4. Tru Earth Laundry Strips

A laundry strip product that offers an alternative to laundry pods, Tru Earth Laundry Strips are vegan, paraben- and phosphate-free and arrive in zero-waste compostable packaging. Able to be used in any type of washing machine, and on both cold or hot water settings, Tru Earth offers a 30-day money back guarantee if you aren’t 100 percent satisfied with their product.

With four fragrant scent options and one fragrance free option, over 20,000 Amazon reviewers have given the product 4.5 out of 5 stars for performance.

5. Seventh Generation Concentrated Free and Clear Fragrance-Free Laundry Detergent

The Seventh Generation Concentrated Free and Clear Fragrance-Free Laundry Detergent is one of the best eco-friendly laundry detergents we've tested. Top-notch in removing stains by utilizing a triple-enzyme stain fighting formula, this hypoallergenic detergent is EPA Safer Choice certified and USDA Certified to contain 96 percent bio- and plant-based ingredients—meaning that it’s not only good for sensitive skin, but also protective of the environment.

Seventh Generation laundry detergent is part of an entire line of highly-rated eco-friendly housecleaning supplies, offering a one-stop shop for all The Laundress products you need to replace.

The product experts at Reviewed have all your shopping needs covered. Follow Reviewed on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok or Flipboard for the latest deals, product reviews and more.

Prices were accurate at the time this article was published but may change over time.

More than 2 million MamaRoo swings, RockaRoo rockers recalled ...

More than 2 million infant swings and rockers are being recalled over entanglement and strangulation hazards after a 10-month-old baby died from asphyxiation.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission and Thorley Industries are recalling about 2 million MamaRoo swings and 220,000 RockaRoo rockers. The recall includes the 4moms MamaRoo Baby Swing (versions 1.0 through 4.0) and RockaRoo Baby Rockers.

“When the swing or rocker is not in use, their restraint straps can hang below the seat and non-occupant crawling infants can become entangled in the straps, posing entanglement and strangulation hazards,” according to a statement Monday from the CPSC about the voluntary recall.

4moms has received two reports of infants being caught in the strap under the MamaRoo infant swing after crawling under its seat, according to the statement. That includes a 10-month-old who died from asphyxiation and another 10-month-old who suffered bruising to his neck.

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The swings and rockers were sold at BuyBuy Baby and Target stores across the country, in addition to 4moms.com and Amazon, from January 2010 to August 2022.

The MamaRoo model number is found on the bottom of the product. The recall includes models that use a three-point harness: model Nos. 4M-005, 1026 and 1037.

The RockaRoo model number, 4M-012, is also on the bottom of the product. People who have infants who can crawl should stop using the swings and rockers and keep them away from infants. Consumers can contact 4moms for a free strap fastener, according to Monday's statement. You can find more information here.

Thousands of the products also were sold in Canada.

4moms CEO Gary Waters said in a statement to USA TODAY that "we are deeply saddened by the two incidents that occurred when babies crawled under the seat of unoccupied MamaRoo swings."

Dry shampoo recall: Independent lab finds 'troubling' levels of ...

CNN —

High levels of benzene, a cancer-causing chemical, have been detected in more brands and batches of dry shampoo products, according to a new report from Valisure, an independent laboratory.

Just last month, certain aerosol dry shampoos – including some Dove, Nexxus, Suave, TIGI and TRESemmé products – were voluntarily recalled because of the potential presence of benzene.

Then on Monday, Valisure sent a citizen petition to the US Food and Drug Administration in which the lab described that among 148 batches from 34 different brands of dry shampoo products, 70% of samples tested showed “quantifiable” levels of benzene.

According to their report, 11 samples showed levels over 10 times more than 2 parts per million (ppm), the FDA limit for drugs.

“However, the dry shampoos tested are not drugs and contain no active pharmaceutical ingredient for therapeutic purpose; therefore, any significant detection of benzene could be deemed unacceptable. Furthermore, Valisure shows data from the analysis of benzene by directly sampling contaminated air after spraying dry shampoo products, which suggests potential for short- and long-term inhalation exposure to high levels of benzene. The presence of this known human carcinogen in dry shampoo products that are regularly used indoors and in large volumes makes this finding especially troubling,” David Light, Valisure’s chief executive officer, and Qian Wu, Valisure’s head of global analytics, wrote in the FDA Citizen Petition.

The petition urges the FDA to “expeditiously request recalls” on the affected batches of products containing benzene and better define limits for benzene contamination in other products.

The FDA normally takes 180 days to respond to a citizen petition.

In summary, three lots of dry shampoo products from one brand contained spray with more than 100 ppm of benzene, according to the petition, and some samples tested by Valisure showed more than 10 times the FDA drug limit. The petition also mentions that Valisure has detected benzene in other commonly used products as well, including certain hand sanitizers and sunscreens.

CNN contacted the brands listed in the petition and reached out to the FDA for comment but did not immediately hear back from all of them.

In a statement, Church & Dwight, the maker of Batiste hair products said: “Consumer safety is of the utmost importance. When propellants had been reported to be the source of benzene in competitors’ recalled products, we contacted our propellant suppliers and confirmed with those suppliers that the propellants used in our Batiste products do not contain benzene. We will evaluate the report at the center of the recent claims.”

Haircare brand Not Your Mother’s, listed in the petition, told CNN in a statement, “The safety of our consumers is our highest priority. We are concerned about a recently published report linked to the dry shampoo category, raising questions about levels of benzene detected in propellent used in aerosol products manufactured on or before Fall 2021. This report is inconsistent with the data provided by our suppliers and the rigorous ongoing testing to ensure the safety and integrity of our products. These tests show no traceable amounts of benzene. We are committed to continuous evaluation to ensure the utmost safety and quality of all our products.”

Valisure’s Light said in a new release, “The detection of high levels of benzene in dry shampoos should be cause for significant concern since these products are likely used indoors, where benzene may linger and be inhaled for prolonged periods of time.

“These and other issues identified by Valisure, including the detection of benzene in body spray, hand sanitizer, and sunscreen products, strongly underscore the importance of independent testing and its need to be better integrated into an increasingly complex and vulnerable global supply chain.”

Get CNN Health's weekly newsletter Sign up here to get The Results Are In with Dr. Sanjay Gupta every Tuesday from the CNN Health team.

Last year, several deodorants and sunscreen products were recalled due to detections of benzene.

Benzene is formed from both natural and man-made processes. “Natural sources of benzene include volcanoes and forest fires. Benzene is also a natural part of crude oil, gasoline, and cigarette smoke,” according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The main way people are exposed is by breathing in air containing benzene,” according the American Cancer Society.

Jergens lotion recalled for possible bacterial infection | CNN Business

New York CNN Business —

Some types of Jergens moisturizer have been recalled because of possible bacterial contamination.

The Food and Drug Administration announced that Jergen’s manufacturer, Kao USA, wants customers to check if they have 3-ounce or 10-ounce products of Jergens Ultra Healing Moisturizer, because they could contain pluralibacter gergoviae.

Although the bacterium typically poses little medical risk to healthy people, the FDA noted pluralibacter gergoviae can cause infections in immunocompromised people. Numerous consumer products have been recalled for similar bacterial contaminations.

Kao USA is “urging consumers to discontinue use of the recalled lotion” as a precautionary measure.

The affected Jergens Ultra Healing Moisturizers were manufactured between October 1, 2021 and October 18, 2021. They’ve been already removed from the company’s warehouses and Kao USA is working with stores to remove them from shelves.

Customers can find out if their moisturizer is affected by looking for the lot codes on the back of the bottles. Each begins with “ZU.”

Lot codes for the 3 ounce size (UPC 019100109971 for single bottles and 019100267114 for pack of 3) include: ZU712851, ZU712871, ZU712911, ZU722881, ZU712861, ZU712881 and ZU722851.

Affected lot codes for the 10 ounce size (UPC 019100109988) include ZU722741, ZU722781, ZU732791, ZU732811, ZU722771, ZU732781, ZU732801 and ZU732821.

Kao USA said that if a customer has one of those bottles, they should call the company for a free replacement coupon at 1-800-742-8798. A postage paid label and plastic bag will be sent to consumers via mail to return the product.

Wilson's Burroughs leads Section V's field at states

James Johnson

ROC

Catarra Burroughs, a track and field athlete since her days in elementary school, had big plans when it came time to sprint in high school.

Those plans included at least one trip to the New York State Public High School Athletic Association championships.

Sometimes plans fail to take shape, and Burroughs still had a trip to the indoor track state meet on her wish list at the start of this school year.

"I wanted it this year even more,'' the Wilson senior said. "Go hard, or go home.''

Burroughs should be far from home on March 1, the date of the indoor track state meet at Cornell University in Ithaca. The sprinter won the 55-meter dash and 300 Thursday during the Meet of Champions, Section V's qualifier for the state championships.

"Proud,'' Burroughs said. "I felt the times I'm running this year, I should've run last year. I should be hitting the school and sectional records and beyond.

"I wasn't that motivated last year, and I had a lot of stuff going on, family-wise.''

Burroughs ran the 55 final in 7.27 seconds at Rochester Institute of Technology, after she covered the preliminary heat in 7.26, a new personal-best.

"She hasn't been there,'' Wilson indoor coach Joe Greene said. "Coming into the season, we said 'You have all of this talent and your best time is 7.6?' That's going to change.''

Burroughs, who won the 300 dash in 41.78 on Saturday, won her first Section V championships last week.

"I want people to remember me in a positive way,'' Burroughs said. "I was talking about (the upcoming season), recruiting kids to join the team with me, abs in the summer, jogging in the summer.

"I've been waiting since my freshman year to go to states. "This is a big step for me coming in first and going to states.''

This will also be the first indoor state meet for Livonia senior Tessa Artruc, one of the area's best in the high jump. Artruc tied her season- and personal-best when she cleared 5 feet-5 inches.

"I really want to try and hit 5-6, something I've been working for all season,'' Artruc said. "It would be awesome (to reset the school record and a personal-best).''

The top two finishers in each event advanced to states. A third competitor also qualified, if they met a performance standard. In some cases, a fourth individual in the 300, 600, 1,000 and 1,500 (girls)/1,600 (boys) also were eligible for states.

McQuaid's Austin Peters and Pittsford Mendon's Brady Woodward finished one-two in the boys 600. Penfield's Derek Swarthout ran that race in 1:25.27 to beat the performance standard. Victor's Jason T. Hall placed fourth and will be a member of Section V's medley relay at states.

Warsaw senior Karmen Auble, who has committed to pole vault at Xavier University, won the girls competiton at RIT with a jump of 11-6. That's an inch less than her best jump — second-best in the state — during sectionals last week.

"The season started off kind of rough,'' Auble said. "I was distracted. Things are starting to get better.

"I was whole school-decision thing. Once I signed (on Feb. 5), the weight was off.''

Webster Schroeder senior Bamidele Akinniyi put the weight he competes with out to 56-3 to win the boys shot put competition. That is Akinniyi's best put by 2 feet.

McQuaid sophomore Tobi Tella had a top long jump of 21-10, until his leap of 23-5 at RIT. Tella smiled when asked if his new season-best also became a new personal-record.

"When I jump, I get a lot of speed but no lift,'' the Fairport resident said. "So I go straight into the sand.

"I could tell something was different when I got high into the air. I was going further. I'm surprised. I wasn't quite sure I was going to make it (to states).''

JAMESJ@DemocratandChronicle.com

Twitter.com/jjDandC

Meet of Champions

New York State Public High School Athletic Association Section V indoor track state qualifier at Gordon Field House, Rochester Institute of Technology. *-Top relay and top two individuals, and third-place finishers who have met state qualifying standard, qualify for states. Medals to top three. Relay events not listed were not completed by publication time for this edition.

BOYS

55 meters: 1. Carnell Noble (Greece Olympia) 6.47*, 2. Andre Hunter (Charlotte) 6.53*, 3. Daekwan Garfield (Edison) 6.61*.

300: 1. Byron Hearst (Greece Arcadia) 35.12*, 2. Calvary Rogers (Greece Odyssey) 35.84*, 3. Anthony Smith (University Prep Rochester) 35.86*, 4. David Ingraham (McQuaid) 36.49* (intersectional medley relay).

600: 1. Austin Peters (McQuaid) 1:23.83*, 2. Brady Woodward (Pittsford Mendon) 1:23.86*, 3. Derek Swarthout (Penfield) 1:25.27*, 4. Jason T. Hall (Victor) 1:26.09* (intersectional medley relay).

1,000: 1. Nate Howe (McQuaid) 2:32.16*, 2. Nick Neamtu (Webster Thomas) 2:37.45*, 3. George Mertens (Victor) 2:38.57* (intersectional medley relay).

1,600: 1. Mickey Burke (Rush-Henrietta) 4:16.58*, 2. Jack Wesley (Pittsford Mendon) 4:31.86*, 3. Nick Neamtu (Webster Thomas) 4:32.97* (intersectional medley relay). 3,200: 1. Nick Ciolkowski (McQuaid) 9:34.14*, 2. Tyler Ranke (Hilton) 9:49.18*, 3. Keith Johnson (Webster Thomas) 9:53.86.

55 hurdles: 1. Alex Egeli (Batavia) 7.59*, 2. DJ Ohlson (Alexander) 7.77*, 3. Matt Barton (Victor) 7.99*.

Long jump: 1.Tobi Tella (McQuaid) 23-5*, 2. Alex Siracusa (Churchville-Chili) 22-2*, 3. Daekwan Garfield (Edison) 21-6*.

Triple jump: 1. Jimmy Shih (Webster Schroeder) 46-1¼*, 2. Da'Darrius Dillard (Edison) 45-3*, 3. Justin Butler (University Prep Rochester) 43-9.

High jump: 1. DJ Ohlson (Alexander) 6-6*, 2. Bryan Short (Greece Arcadia) 6-4*, 3. Justin Conklin (Bath) 6-2. Shot put: 1. Bamidele Akinniyi (Webster Schroeder) 56-3*, 2. Christian Johnson (Victor) 52-5½*, 3. Devon Koepp (Batavia) 45-9½.

Pole vault: 1. Max Curran (Williamson) 14-0*, 2. Nick Faber (Greece Olympia) 13-3*, 3. Kevin Palmisano (Canandaigua) 13-0*.

GIRLS

55: 1. Catarra Burroughs (Wilson Magnet) 7.26*, 2. Abby Frank (Penfield) 7.39*, 3. Olivia Robinson (Brockport) 7.57*.

300: 1. Catarra Burroughs (Wilson Magnet) 41.78*, 2. Emem Ikpot (Mercy) 42.45*, 3. Tiaja Jeffries (Rush-Henrietta) 42.60* (intersectional medley relay).

600: 1. Ceara Watson (Rush-Henrietta) 1:36.90*, 2. Annie Hanna (Pittsford Sutherland) 1:39.11*, 3. Adrianna VanCuyck (Wayne) 1:39.40* (intersectional medley relay).

1,000: 1. Sammy Watson (Rush-Henrietta) 3:00.44*, 2. Mary Barger (Pittsford Mendon) 3:01.26*, 3. Meghan Curtin (Wayland-Cohocton) 3:02.59*, 4. Heather Nortz (Fairport) 3:03.22* (intersectional medley relay).

1,500: 1. Alex Cooper (Rush-Henrietta) 4:45.93*, 2. Katie Lembo (Penfield) 4:48.47*, 3. Emily Scheck (Webster Schroeder) 4:52.47*, 4. Veronica Wojnowski (Eastridge) 4:56.99* (intersectional medley relay).

3,200: 1. Katie Lembo (Penfield) 10:05.57*, 2. Autumn Albrecht (Brockport) 10:43.85*, 3. Kennedy Jensen (Canandaigua) 10:49.15. 55 hurdles: 1. Alyssia Colson (Gates Chili) 8.47*, 2. Samantha Carro (Canandaigua) 8.56*, 3. Jenna Siracuse (Wayne) 8.66*

1,500 racewalk: 1. Olivia Harbol (Palmyra-Macedon) 7:21.51*, 2. Rebecca Wittlin (Pittsford Mendon) 7:23.27*, 3. Monica LaBorde (Mercy) 7:30:08*.

Long jump: 1. Imani Obieke (Edison) 18-¼*, 2. Alyssia Colson (Gates Chili) 17-10½*, 3. Justin Sanders-Schifano (Sodus) 17-5*.

Triple jump: 1. Davida Hawkes (Pittsford Sutherland) 37-11*, 2. Imani Obieke (Edison) 36-3½*, 3. Jenna Siracuse (Wayne) 35-8*.

High jump: 1. Tessa Artruc (Livonia) 5-6*, 2. Carissa Piesums (Warsaw) 5-4*, 3. Madelyn Schwartz (Wayland-Cohocton) 5-2. Shot put: 1. Victoire Kothor (Greece Odyssey) 39-6¼*, 2. Kierra Carter (Mercy) 39-4¼*, 3. Karmen Auble (Warsaw) 38-¼*.

Pole vault: 1. Karmen Auble (Warsaw) 11-6*, 2. Zoe Camillaci (Hilton) 11-0*, 3. Sarah Bronk (Mercy) 9-6.

1,600 relay: 1. Rush-Henrietta (Elvira Martinez, Emily Zeafla, Ceara Watson, Sammy Watson) 4:07.09*, 2. Wayland-Cohocton 4:13.07, 3. Fairport 'A' 4:15.98.

Complete results on-line at www.yentiming.com

Contigo water bottle recall: Replacement lids on 5.7 million kids ...

Nearly six months after Contigo recalled 5.7 million kids' water bottles because the spouts posed a "potential choking hazard," the company is recalling the replacement lids for the same reason.

On Wednesday, the company issued a voluntary recall on its Contigo Kids Cleanable water bottles and replacement lids sent to consumers as part of the August 2019 recall, according to the recall notice posted on the Consumer Product Safety Commission website.

"Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled water bottles and the replacement lids provided in the previous recall, take them away from children, and contact Contigo for a free water bottle," the recall notice states. "Consumers who received replacement lids in the previous recall should contact Contigo for the new water bottle."

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Report:Supermarkets should do a better job informing shoppers about product recalls

According to the notice, the company has received "427 reports of the spout detaching including 27 spouts found in children’s mouths."

Contigo Kids Cleanable water bottles

The base and cover of the clear silicone spout on all the affected water bottles and replacement lids are black, the notice states. The word Contigo is printed on the rim and along the front near the bottom of the bottle.

The affected bottles come in three sizes: 13-ounce, 14-ounce and 20-ounce. They come in four colors – solid color, graphics, stainless steel and stainless steel solid colors – and were sold individually and in two-packs and three-packs.

The bottles were sold at Costco, Walmart, Target and other stores nationwide and online April 2018 through Feb. 7 for between $9 and $24.

How to get replacement Contigo bottle

The Contigo recall website at https://recall.gocontigo.com outlines how to tell if you have one of the affected bottles and shows replacement bottle options. You can sign up for the recall and the return kit at the website.

For questions, call the Contigo consumer services team at 888-262-0622 Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET.

Follow USA TODAY reporter Kelly Tyko on Twitter: @KellyTyko

Clausen: Wegmans says Ex-Muslims group can buy cake

Todd Clausen

@ToddJClausen

Wegmans Food Markets reverses decision to deny service to the Ex-Muslims of North America.

Workers at a store in Fairfax, Virginia, took offense with group's name, according to leaders.

Wegmans Food Markets has done it again, fixing an issue raised by one of its customers.

The all-everything, 89-store chain recently reversed a somewhat odd decision by some bakery workers in Fairfax, Virginia.

It's where employees earlier this month refused to make a cake celebrating the third anniversary of the Ex-Muslims of North America, a nonprofit group of former followers of Islam with about 500 members in the Fairfax area. The group has about 24,000 total members.

The cake was to include the group’s name, logo and a celebratory "Congratulations on 3 years" message.

But a worker found the order somewhat questionable. A supervisor went a step further claiming it was offensive, the Ex-Muslim group said. They decided to refuse service, and offered little explanation for their decision.

It wasn't the message or the mirrored crescent moons of the logo that drew concern. It was the name Ex-Muslims of North America that was so bothersome.

The decision didn’t sit well with the group.

"There are some, however, who take our very existence as an affront to their faith, and to them I have only this to say: We have every right to exist and be proud of who we are," Muhammad Syed, president of the group, said in an online posting. "There is nothing about our name or logo that can be considered offensive to any reasonable individual."

Andrew Seidel, an attorney from the Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation, wrote a letter to Wegmans on June 20 calling attention to the issue, describing it as a potential civil rights violation.

Businesses can't deny service to someone based on their religious identity, Seidel argued. It's discriminatory and illegal in the same way bars, restaurants and other venues can’t refuse service to someone based on race or sexual identity, he said.

"We are one of the most maligned groups in the country and this was another example of that," Seidel told me in a phone interview about the Ex-Muslims of North America.

Sadly, cakes and other tasty treats have become a new battleground for overzealousness and individual fights in recent years.

A Colorado bakery has been under investigation for refusing to write anti-gay messages on a cake. An Oregon bakery was ordered to pay $135,000 in an anti-discrimination case for refusing to sell a cake to a same-sex couple for their wedding.

There was a pastor in Texas who accused Whole Foods of giving him a cake with a homophobic slur that read, "Love Wins F--." It turned out to be a hoax. He apologized. Both parties dropped their lawsuits last month.

In Fairfax, Wegmans wasn't going to let the decision to deny service stand.

Trying to do the right thing is one of the reason why the company has topped several lists for customer and workplace satisfaction, although the Occupational Safety and Health Administration came down on it again last week, faulting the company for failing to properly train a worker who broke multiple bones in her arm while cleaning a machine at the grocer's Brooks Avenue site.

Wegmans facing $140K fine after workplace injury

But Wegmans tries to fix issues and is fairly transparent about those fixes. Its Twitter feed is full of examples.

After corporate found out, the cake order was filled for the Ex-Muslims of North America. Workers were coached on other ways to better handle the situation, if something similar arises again.

"It was the wrong decision," Jo Natale, a company spokeswoman, said in an email. "We should have made the cake. The decision to not fill this cake order was made at the store level by a well-intentioned employee, who was trying to act in the best interest of a diverse employee population."

Seidel said Wegmans was quick to act, adding that it's "nice to see when you write to a group and they act and take it seriously."

It's also a good lesson for any small-business owner and its workers.

If you deny service, you need a better reason than that.

Todd Clausen is the work life reporter for the Democrat and Chronicle. Email him at TCLAUSEN@Gannett.com or call (585) 258-9883.

Single-use plastic is wreaking havoc on the planet. Here's what you ...

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The life cycle of plastic begins underground, where oil and gas are extracted from deep below the surface of the planet. These fossil fuels are then refined in facilities, using extreme temperatures and significant amount of water and energy, where they are transformed into pellets that are eventually melted and molded into things like water bottles, packaging, garbage bags and clothes.

And the widespread use of single-use plastic — the stuff we use once and then throw away — is only made worse by its disposal. Plastics do not break down once they’re thrown into nature. And, alarmingly, only around 9% plastic in the US is actually recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency — even the stuff you specifically threw into the recycle bin.

What you might not realize is this isn’t just a pollution problem. It’s a climate problem. And by the time we start talking about recycling, the damage is already done.

The process of making plastic is so energy intensive that if the plastics industry were a country, it would be the fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, according to a 2021 report from Beyond Plastics.

Plastics are the “new coal,” said Judith Enck, a former Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator and now president of Beyond Plastics. Generating energy from coal — the most polluting fossil fuel — is already being phased out. But Enck said it’s likely that plastics may be sticking for a while longer, unless consumers significant cut their plastic use.

“It’s a climate killer,” Enck told CNN. “We’re finally seeing an increase in renewable energy and energy efficiency. And the fossil fuel industry knew that they were losing market share on transportation and electricity generation, so plastic production is the plan B for the fossil fuel industry.”

From its production to its end-of-life, plastic belches greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of its life cycle. Here’s why experts say the convenience of plastic comes at a terrible cost for the climate, and what you can do to help reduce its impact.

Quantifying the impact

Switch to reusable bags for shopping to cut down on single-use plastic. Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images

The plastic industry is responsible for at least 232 million tons of planet-warming emissions each year, according to the Beyond Plastics report.

That’s the same amount as the average emissions released by 116 coal-fired power plants in 2020, according to the report’s authors. It’s also the same annual emissions as around 50 million cars, according to the EPA. And more plastic-making facilities continue to come online.

“Remember that when you’re making plastic, there’s the greenhouse gas emissions, but these facilities also emit massive amounts of air toxins and particulates,” Enck added. “It’s really a health threat.”

Refineries and production facilities also tend to set up shop in marginalized communities of color, Enck said.

“If you look at where more than 90% of the climate pollution is released by the plastic industry, it’s in 18 communities in the whole country, and they’re all low-income communities and the residents are more likely to be people of color,” Enck said, outlining other findings in the report. “Plastic production is an environmental justice issue.”

And plastic recycling doesn’t work, Enck said, because most of what we think we’re recycling just ends up in the landfill. It also doesn’t address the planet-warming emissions that comes from making it in the first place.

Jacqueline Savitz, chief policy officer for Oceana in North America, said people should think of the plastic crisis as an overflowing bathtub.

“When the bathtub is overflowing, you don’t want to just run for the mop; first, you want to turn off the faucet,” Savitz said. “Recycling is the mop. You’re not going to get very far, if the faucet is still on. So what we have to do is reduce the amount of plastics that we’re producing at the source, and that’s turning off the faucet.”

What you can do about it

Saying "no" to plastic cutlery is one way to limit your use of single-use plastic. Adobe Stock

Recycling alone will not solve this massive problem, Enck said, but we should still do it — bearing in mind what can and cannot be recycled.

The number system on the bottom of plastic items are not a guarantee they will be recycled. Only things marked 1 and 2 — and on rare occasion, 5 — are sure bets, depending on what your municipality can handle.

This is why it’s so important to focus on reducing plastic use in the first place, Enck said, and our individual changes can add up.

“It’s just not going to solve the problem unless we change the law,” Enck said. “But with individual actions, what I urge people to do is look at their own home or their worksite — what is your heaviest use of plastic?”

You won’t know what you can change until you take stock. Make note of all of the plastics in your home. Most of the single-use stuff you’ll find around the kitchen and the bathroom. Then, armed with a list of where you use single-use plastic the most, you can start to make replacements.

Here are some examples:

Say no to bottled water — Get a couple of canteens and cut a major source of plastic out of your life.

Reusable grocery bags — You can easily go a step further by not using the plastic produce bags the store provides for your apples and broccoli. If you’re uncomfortable putting produce directly in the cart, have a special bag to carry it in until you get to the checkout. There’s no rule that says you have to wrap your fruits and veggies at the store.

Choose paper (or no) packaging over plastic — If you’re looking at two versions of the same product and one is packaged in paper or cardboard and the other is in plastic, then the choice is obvious. And look for plastic-free options like bar shampoo.

Buy in bulk to reduce plastic waste — Nuts, rice and beans are all things that come in plastic bags, but they don’t need to. Bring your own reusable containers to fill with your favorite bulk foods. (Just make sure to zero-out the scale before you start filling them, so you don’t pay for the weight of your container.)

Refuse plastic cutlery — Take your own utensils to restaurants that typically provide plastics. Or, if you’re ordering takeout, tell the restaurant they don’t need to add it to your bag.

And Enck’s group has more suggestions for how to cut your personal plastic use.

Think bigger

We can do our part to minimize our own plastic use, but the world needs big solutions for this big problem. Natan Dvir/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Ultimately, the world needs large-scale change to address the climate impact of the fossil fuel and plastics industries, Savitz said. Oceana, for example, is working with local volunteers from cities and counties around the country to help pass new laws to reduce single-use plastics, in hopes of sparking change at the national level.

“We think that if we could start to reduce single-use plastics at the local level with local ordinances, that can start to become more of the norm,” she said. “Then we can start taking it to higher levels of government, even getting to the point of getting national policies that will drive reductions in plastic use.”

Ultimately, Savitz said consumers need to continue urging major corporations to provide plastic-free solutions and help support refill and reuse programs to encourage society to shy away from plastic use and stave off the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

“Our country is burning and flooding and hurricanes are coming earlier and earlier,” she told CNN. “I really think it’s shocking that one of the things that’s really leading to that is plastics, and it’s hurting us in other ways, too. So if we could find a way to reduce our production of plastics as a country and as a global society, we’d be taking a bite out of climate change.”


New Jupiter moons: Planet has most in solar system after 12 ...

There's a new moon king in our solar system: 12 new moons were discovered around Jupiter, which makes it the planet with the most moons.

Jupiter is already the biggest planet in our solar system. It used to be known as the planet with the second-most moons with 80, trailing only Saturn with 83.

Astronomers using telescopes in Hawaii and Chile in 2021 and 2022 were able to spot the moons and report them to the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center. Astronomers then followed up the observations to make sure the moons orbit the planet, and that was recently confirmed.

Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science, who was part of the discovery team, posted the findings online.

James Webb Space Telescope: Webb telescope reveals icy space cloud containing the 'building blocks of life'

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What are Jupiter's newly discovered moons like?

Sheppard told The Associated Press the moons range in size from .6 miles to 2 miles in diameter, but only half of them are big enough – at least 1 mile in diameter – to have a name.

The moons also take a much longer time than ours to orbit its planet. Sky and Telescope reported all of the newly discovered moons take more than 340 days to orbit Jupiter, and nine of them take at least 550 days. By comparison, our moon takes about 27 days to orbit Earth, NASA says.

How many moons does each planet have?

The discovery gives Jupiter 92 total moons, the most of any planet in the solar system. Counting the new moons, here's how many moons each planet has, according to NASA (which has not officially recognized Jupiter's new moons):

Mercury: 0

Venus: 0

Earth: 1

Mars: 2

Jupiter: 92

Saturn: 83

Uranus: 27

Neptune: 14

Sheppard, who has been part of past moon observations on Jupiter and Saturn, believes there are moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn that haven't been discovered yet. He said both planets have small moons believed to once be bigger moons that collided with space debris like asteroids.

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Missions to Jupiter moons

The discovery comes as space agencies are preparing to observe the planet and its moons.

The European Space Agency will be launching its Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, in April to observe the planet and its three large ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa – with the goal of characterizing the moons "as both planetary objects and possible habitats."

In October 2024, NASA plans to send its Europa Clipper orbiter to observe the planet and its moon Europa. The moon is believed to be mostly water ice and have twice as much water as Earth, and there is evidence of an ocean of water or slushy ice beneath the surface. The goal is to see whether Europa could be suitable for life.

Contributing: Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press

Follow Jordan Mendoza on Twitter: @jordan_mendoza5.

Saturn is now 'king of the moons' thanks to discovery of 20 more ...

Saturn now has 82 moons while Jupiter has 79.

Each of the newly discovered moons is about three miles in diameter.

Seventeen of them orbit the planet backwards.

Forget Jupiter. Saturn is now the solar system's moon king.

Astronomers Monday announced the discovery of 20 new moons in orbit around Saturn, giving the planet a total of 82. That tops Jupiter and its 79 moons.

The finding was announced Monday by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center.

The Carnegie Institution for Science’s Scott Sheppard, who led the discovery team, said 100 even tinier moons may be orbiting Saturn, still waiting to be found.

“Using some of the largest telescopes in the world, we are now completing the inventory of small moons around the giant planets,” said Sheppard. “They play a crucial role in helping us determine how our solar system’s planets formed and evolved.”

Read this:You may see some brilliant meteor showers thanks to the Draconids and Southern Taurids this week

Each of the newly discovered moons is about 3 miles in diameter. Seventeen of them orbit the planet backwards, or in a retrograde direction, meaning their movement is opposite of the planet’s rotation around its axis.

The other three moons orbit in the same direction as Saturn rotates.

Sheppard and his team used a telescope in Hawaii to spot Saturn’s 20 new moons over the past few months.

The moons don't have names yet, and scientists are asking for the public's help to name the objects.

Last year, Sheppard discovered 12 new moons orbiting Jupiter and Carnegie hosted an online contest to name five of them.

"I was so thrilled with the amount of public engagement over the Jupiter moon-naming contest that we've decided to do another one to name these newly discovered Saturnian moons," Sheppard said.

"This time, the moons must be named after giants from Norse, Gallic or Inuit mythology," he said.

Go to the Twitter page @SaturnLunacy to submit your ideas for names. The contest opens Monday and closes in December.

Contributing: The Associated Press

Massive object could be an interstellar moon, a rare find | CNN

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Astronomers may have found a moon that’s completely different from anything in our solar system.

It’s only the second space object discovered that may be an exomoon, or a moon outside of our solar system. The giant moon was found orbiting a Jupiter-size planet called Kepler 1708b, located 5,500 light-years from Earth.

A study detailing these findings published Thursday in the journal Nature Astronomy.

The newly detected celestial body is 2.6 times larger than Earth. There’s no analog for such a large moon in our own system. For reference, our own moon is 3.7 times smaller than Earth.

It’s the second time that David Kipping, assistant professor of astronomy and leader of the Cool Worlds Lab at Columbia University, and his team have found an exomoon candidate. They discovered the first one, a Neptune-size moon orbiting a giant exoplanet called Kepler-1625b, in 2018.

“Astronomers have found more than 10,000 exoplanet candidates so far, but exomoons are far more challenging,” Kipping said in a statement. “They are terra incognita.”

Understanding more about moons, such as how they form, whether they could support life, and if they play a role in the potential habitability of planets, could lead to a greater understanding of how planetary systems form and evolve.

Hard-to-find objects

Kipping and his team are still working on confirming that the first candidate they found is actually an exomoon, and this latest discovery will likely face the same uphill battle.

Moons are common in our solar system, which has more than 200 natural satellites, but the long search for interstellar moons has largely been unfruitful. Astronomers have had success locating exoplanets around stars outside our solar system, but exomoons are harder to pinpoint because of their smaller size.

More than 4,000 confirmed exoplanets have been discovered across the galaxy, but that doesn’t mean finding them was easy. Many of them have been detected using the transit method, or looking for dips in starlight when a planet passes in front of its star. Spotting moons, which are smaller and cause even more diminutive dips in starlight, is extra difficult.

To find this second potential moon, Kipping and his team used data from NASA’s retired planet-hunting Kepler mission to survey some of the coldest gas giant exoplanets the telescope found. The researchers used this criteria in their search because in our solar system, the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn have the most moons orbiting them.

Out of the 70 planets they studied, only one revealed a companion signal that appeared to be a moon, with only a 1% probability of it being something else.

“It’s a stubborn signal,” Kipping said. “We threw the kitchen sink at this thing but it just won’t go away.”

3 ways a moon could form

The newly discovered candidate shares similarities with the first potential exomoon discovery. Both are likely gaseous, which accounts for their massive size, and they are far from their host stars.

There are three primary theories about how moons form. One is when large space objects collide and the blasted-off material becomes a moon. Another is capture, when objects are captured and pulled into orbit around a large planet – such as Neptune’s moon Triton, which is believed to be a captured Kuiper Belt object. And the third is moons forming from the materials, like gas and dust swirling around stars, that created the planets in the early days of the solar system.

It’s possible that both exomoon candidates started out as planets that were eventually dragged into orbit around larger planets like Kepler 1625b and Kepler 1708b.

Giant moons are likely an anomaly

Kipping believes it’s unlikely that all moons outside of our solar system are as large as these two candidates, which may make them the oddballs, rather than the standard. “The first detections in any survey will generally be the weirdos,” he said. “The big ones that are simply easiest to detect with our limited sensitivity.”

To confirm that the two candidates are exomoons will require follow-up observations by the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope in 2023. Meanwhile, Kipping and his team continue to gather evidence in support of the exomoons.

The fact that each associated planet takes longer than one Earth year to complete an orbit around its star slows the process of discovery.

“Confirmation requires seeing the moon transits repeat multiple times,” Kipping said. “The long-period nature of our target planets means that we only have two transits in hand here, just not enough to see a series of moon transits necessary to claim a confirmed detection.”

If they are confirmed, it could be the beginning of a new acceptance that exomoons are as common as exoplanets outside of our solar system.

The first exoplanet wasn’t discovered until the 1990s, and the bulk of the exoplanets known today weren’t revealed until Kepler launch in 2009.

“Those planets are alien compared to our home system,” Kipping said. “But they have revolutionized our understanding of how planetary systems form.”

Jupiter moons: Astronomers discover 12 more around giant planet

The solar system's largest planet has some "new" neighbors.

Astronomers have discovered 12 additional moons orbiting Jupiter, bringing the total to 79, the most of any planet in the solar system, a new study found.

The moons were discovered while astronomers were searching for objects at the edge of the solar system, according to Scott Sheppard, a scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science who co-authored the study.

“Jupiter just happened to be in the sky near the search fields where we were looking for extremely distant solar system objects, so we were serendipitously able to look for new moons around Jupiter while at the same time looking for planets at the fringes of our solar system,” Sheppard said.

One of the objects they were looking for is the mysterious "Planet X" or "Planet Nine," which remains undiscovered.

The discovery of the new moons was reported Tuesday in the Minor Planet Electronic Circular, a publication of the International Astronomical Union.

Researchers say the new Jupiter moons weren’t seen before because they are tiny – the biggest ones are only about two miles across.

One of the newly discovered moons is an "oddball," Sheppard said. "It has an orbit like no other known Jovian moon,” he explained. It orbits in an opposite direction from the other moons near it, meaning head-on collisions are much more likely to occur.

“This is an unstable situation,” said Sheppard. “Head-on collisions would quickly break apart and grind the objects down to dust.

“It’s also likely Jupiter’s smallest known moon, being less than one kilometer (0.6 mile) in diameter."

Telescopes in Chile, Hawaii and Arizona were used for the original discovery and year-long confirmation of the moons.

“It takes several observations to confirm an object actually orbits around Jupiter,” said Gareth Williams of the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center. “So, the whole process took a year.”

Legendary Italian scientist Galileo first detected Jupiter’s four largest moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto in 1610.

Contributing: The Associated Press

Dwarf planet Quaoar has a ring, and scientists are confused by it

Just on the outskirts of our solar system exists the dwarf planet Quaoar, and recent observations of the planet found a dense ring around it, but scientists can't figure how – or why – it's there.

Discovered in 2002, Quaoar exists in the Kuiper Belt, a region in space beyond Neptune where at least 3,000 planets are known to orbit the sun. The planet is about 690 miles wide, making it the seventh largest trans-Neptunian object, while former solar system planets Pluto and Eris are the biggest in the region. Pluto and Eris are now considered dwarf planetsQuaoar is about 4 billion miles away from the sun and takes around 286 years to orbit it, and has a small moon called Weywot.

The recent observations were made by scientists with the European Space Agency from 2018 to 2021 using ground-based telescopes and the agency's space telescope Cheops. It was during these observations that scientists made the puzzling discovery.

Putting a ring on it

Since Quaoar is so small and far from Earth, scientists observed the planet through a process called occultation, when the planet crossed in front of a succession of distant stars, allowing it to block out light.

Scientists noticed drops in brightness from the planet but weren't sure if it was because of effects from Earth's atmosphere. That was when the Cheops satellite came to the rescue, as it was also able to spot the changes in brightness.

"When we put everything together, we saw drops in brightness that were not caused by Quaoar, but that pointed to the presence of material in a circular orbit around it," Bruno Morgado, lead researcher from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, said in a statement. "The moment we saw that we said, 'Okay, we are seeing a ring around Quaoar.'"

Moon king: 12 new moons discovered orbiting Jupiter, giving it the most in our solar system

Habitable planet?:NASA just found a planet almost the size of Earth and it's in the habitable zone of a star

The ring doesn't fit

It's not unusual for planets to have rings, especially since Saturn has them. Even dwarf planets like Chariklo and Haumea have rings.

"What makes Quaoar’s ring unique, however, is where it is found relative to Quaoar itself," the agency said.

Known as the Roche limit, scientists have long believed any object with a gravitational field can't form a ring beyond a certain distance. When it gets beyond a certain distance, the objects making up the ring will morph into a moon, according to the theory.

Saturn, Chariklo and Haumea all follow the Roche limit, except Quaoar; the ring is "7½ times the radius of Quaoar," meaning it's past the Roche limit and should have formed into a moon.

Why does Quaoar have a ring?

Scientists have not yet understood why the planet has a ring and hasn't morphed into a moon.

The leading theory is the icy planet has such frigid temperatures that it's preventing particles from sticking together.

Scientists said more investigation is needed, but acknowledged what was known about space has now been challenged.

Follow Jordan Mendoza on Twitter: @jordan_mendoza5.

Pluto has giant ice volcanoes that could hint at the possibility of life ...

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Images of Pluto captured by NASA’s New Horizons mission have revealed a new surprise: ice volcanoes.

The spacecraft performed a flyby of the dwarf planet and its moons in July 2015, and the insights gathered then are still rewriting nearly everything scientists understand about Pluto.

Pluto was relegated to dwarf planet status in 2006 when the International Astronomical Union created a new definition for planets, and Pluto didn’t fit the criteria.

The dwarf planet exists on the edge of our solar system in the Kuiper Belt, and it’s the larger of the many frozen objects there orbiting far from the sun. The icy world, which has an average temperature of negative 387 degrees Fahrenheit (negative 232 degrees Celsius), is home to mountains, valleys, glaciers, plains and craters. If you were to stand on the surface, you would see blue skies with red snow.

A new photo analysis showed a bumpy region on Pluto that doesn’t look like any other part of the small world – or the rest of our cosmic neighborhood.

“We found a field of very large icy volcanoes that look nothing like anything else we have seen in the solar system,” said study author Kelsi Singer, senior research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Pluto's volcanic region is unlike any other area on the dwarf planet. NASA/JHU Applied Physics Laboratory/SRI/Isaac Herrera/Kelsi Singer

A study detailing the findings published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

The region is located southwest of the Sputnik Planitia ice sheet, which covers an ancient impact basin stretching 621 miles (1,000 kilometers) across. Largely made of bumpy water ice, it’s filled with volcanic domes. Two of the largest are known as Wright Mons and Piccard Mons.

Wright Mons is about 13,123 to 16,404 feet (4 to 5 kilometers) tall and spans 93 miles (150 kilometers), while Piccard Mons reaches about feet 22,965 feet (7 kilometers) high and is 139 miles (225 kilometers) wide.

Wright Mons is considered to be similar in volume to the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii, which is one of the biggest volcanoes on Earth.

Some of the domes observed in the images merge together to form even bigger mountains, Singer said. But what could have created them? Ice volcanoes.

Ice volcanoes have been observed elsewhere in our solar system. They move material from the subsurface up to the surface and create new terrain. In this case, it was water that quickly became ice once it reached the frigid temperatures of Pluto’s surface.

“The way these features look is very different than any volcanoes across the solar system, either icy examples or rocky volcanoes,” Singer said .”They formed as mountains, but there is no caldera at the top, and they have large bumps all over them.”

While Pluto has a rocky core, scientists have long believed that the planet lacked much interior heating, which is needed to spur volcanism. To create the region Singer and her team studied, there would have been several eruption sites.

The research team also noted that the area doesn’t have any impact craters, which can be seen across Pluto’s surface, which suggests that the ice volcanoes were active relatively recently – and that Pluto’s interior has more residual heat than expected, Singer said.

“This means Pluto has more internal heat than we thought it would, which means we don’t fully understand how planetary bodies work,” she said.

The ice volcanoes probably formed “in multiple episodes” and were likely active as recently as 100 million to 200 million years ago, which is young geologically speaking, Singer added.

If you were to witness an ice volcano erupt on Pluto, it might look a little different than you expect.

“The icy material was probably more of a slushy mix of ice and water or more like toothpaste while it flowed out of a volcanic vent onto the surface of Pluto,” Singer said. “It is so cold on the surface of Pluto that liquid water cannot remain there for long. In some cases, the flow of material formed the massive domes that we see, as well as the lumpy terrain found everywhere in this region.”

When New Horizons flew by this region, the team didn’t witness any current ice volcano activity, but they were only able to see the area for about a day. It’s possible that the ice volcanoes are still active.

“They could be like volcanoes on Earth that remain dormant for some time and then are active again,” she said.

Pluto once had a subsurface ocean, and finding these ice volcanoes could suggest that the subsurface ocean is still present – and that liquid water could be close to the surface. Combined with the idea that Pluto has a warmer interior than previously believed, the findings raise intriguing questions about the dwarf planet’s potential habitability.

“There are still a lot of challenges for any organisms trying to survive there,” Singer said. “They would still need some source of continual nutrients, and if the volcanism is episodic and thus the heat and water availability is variable, that is sometimes tough for organisms as well.”

Investigating Pluto’s intriguing subsurface would require sending an orbiter to the distant world.

“If we did send a future mission, we could use ice-penetrating radar to peer directly into Pluto and possibly even see what the volcanic plumbing looks like,” Singer said.

New Webb telescope images show Jupiter in a new light | CNN

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The James Webb Space Telescope’s first stunning images of the distant universe have been followed up by something a little closer to home.

Data collected during the telescope’s commissioning period, before its science operations officially started on July 12, have been released on the Space Telescope Science Institute’s website. The publicly available data is now ready for scientists around the world to study.

That data includes new images of Jupiter, which were taken while the space observatory’s instruments were still being tested.

“Combined with the deep field images released the other day, these images of Jupiter demonstrate the full grasp of what Webb can observe, from the faintest, most distant observable galaxies to planets in our own cosmic backyard that you can see with the naked eye from your actual backyard,” said Bryan Holler, a scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, in a statement.

Holler helped with the planning for the observations.

Webb is an infrared telescope, so it captures light that is invisible to the human eye. One of Webb’s images of Jupiter shows the giant planet’s telltale atmospheric bands as well as the Great Red Spot.

This famous feature is a massive storm about twice the size of Earth that has churned for over a century. It looks white in the image due to the processing of the infrared image.

Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, is visible to the left of the planet. The shadow of the moon also makes a cameo left of the Great Red Spot.

Jupiter, center, and its moon Europa, left, are seen through the Webb telescope's NIRCam instrument. NASA/ESA/CSA/B. Holler/J. Stansberry/STScI

“I couldn’t believe that we saw everything so clearly, and how bright they were,” said Stefanie Milam, Webb’s deputy project scientist for planetary science based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement.

“It’s really exciting to think of the capability and opportunity that we have for observing these kinds of objects in our solar system.”

Some of the telescope’s other perspectives of Jupiter revealed some of the planet’s faint rings. The images prove that Webb is able to observe faint details and objects close to bright planets like Jupiter and Saturn.

This is especially exciting because it means that Webb may also be able to observe plumes of material releasing into space from ocean worlds in our solar system, like Europa or Saturn’s moon Enceladus.

Interactive: The search for life on Mars and ocean worlds in our solar system

“We’ll look at our own solar system with new infrared eyes, looking for chemical traces of our history, and tracking down mysteries like Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, composition of the ocean under the ice of Europa, and the atmosphere of Saturn’s giant moon Titan,” said John Mather, Webb senior project scientist at NASA Goddard, in a statement.

The first images were anticipated by Mather for 25 years. “What comes next? All the tools are working, better than we hoped and promised. Scientific observations, proposed years ago, are being made as we speak,” Mather said.

“We want to know: Where did we come from? What happened after the big bang to make galaxies and stars and black holes? We have predictions and guesses, but astronomy is an observational science, full of surprises.”

Exoplanets: The search for habitable planets may have just ...

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The hunt for planets that could harbor life may have just narrowed dramatically.

However, it’s also using its stable and precise image quality to illuminate our own solar system, and so far has taken images of Mars, Jupiter and Neptune.

Without a carbon-rich atmosphere, it’s unlikely a planet would be hospitable to living things. Carbon molecules are, after all, considered the building blocks of life. And the findings don’t bode well for other types of planets orbiting M dwarfs, said study coauthor Michelle Hill, a planetary scientist and a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Riverside.

“The pressure from the star’s radiation is immense, enough to blow a planet’s atmosphere away,” Hill said in a post on the university’s website.

M dwarf stars are known to be volatile, sputtering out solar flares and raining radiation on nearby celestial bodies.

But for years, the hope had been that fairly large planets orbiting near M dwarfs could be in a Goldilocks environment, close enough to their small star to keep warm and large enough to cling onto its atmosphere.

The nearby M dwarf, however, could be too intense to keep the atmosphere intact, according to the new study, which was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

A similar phenomenon happens in our solar system: Earth’s atmosphere also deteriorates because of outbursts from its nearby star, the sun. The difference is that Earth has enough volcanic activity and other gas-emitting activity to replace the atmospheric loss and make it barely detectable, according to the research.

However, the M dwarf planet examined in the study, GJ 1252b, “could have 700 times more carbon than Earth has, and it still wouldn’t have an atmosphere. It would build up initially, but then taper off and erode away,” said study coauthor and UC Riverside astrophysicist Stephen Kane, in a news release.

Where it started and how it’s going

GJ 1252b orbits less than a million miles from its home star, called GJ_1252. The planet reaches sweltering daytime temperatures of up to 2,242 degrees Fahrenheit (1,228 degrees Celsius), the study found.

The existence of the planet was first suggested by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, mission. Then, astronomers ordered the nearly 17-year-old Spitzer Space Telescope to set its sights on the area in January 2020 — less than 10 days before Spitzer was deactivated forever.

The investigation into whether GJ 1252b had an atmosphere was led by astronomer Ian Crossfield at the University of Kansas and involved a collection of researchers from UC Riverside, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, the University of Maryland, Carnegie Institution for Science, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, McGill University, the University of New Mexico, and the University of Montreal.

This illustration shows one possible scenario for the hot, rocky exoplanet called 55 Cancrie, which is nearly two times as wide as Earth. Data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope showed that the planet has extreme temperature swings. NASA/JPL-Caltech/NASA/JPL-Caltech

They pored over the data produced by Spitzer, searching for emission signatures, or signs that a gaseous bubble could encase the planet. The telescope captured the planet as it passed behind its home star, allowing researchers to “look at the starlight as it’s passing through the atmosphere of the planet,” giving a “spectral signature of the atmosphere” — or lack thereof, Hill said.

Hill added that she wasn’t shocked to find no signs of an atmosphere, but she was disappointed. She’s looking for moons and planets in “habitable zones,” and the results made looking at worlds circling the ubiquitous M dwarf stars slightly less interesting.

Researchers hope to get even more clarity about these types of planets with the help of the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful space telescope to date.

Webb will soon set its sights on the TRAPPIST-1 system, “which is also an M dwarf star with a bunch of rocky planets around it,” Hill noted.

“There’s a lot of hope that it will be able to tell us whether those planets have an atmosphere around them or not,” she added. “I guess the M dwarf enthusiasts are probably holding their breath right now to see whether we can tell whether there’s an atmosphere around those planets.”

There are, however, still plenty of interesting places to hunt for habitable worlds. Apart from looking to planets farther away from M dwarfs that could be more likely to retain an atmosphere, there are still roughly 1,000 sunlike stars relatively near Earth that could have their own planets circling within habitable zones, according to the UC Riverside post about the study.

Scientists might have discovered an Earth-like planet. Let one of ...

There's more important work for the James Webb Space Telescope. A team of astronomers at the University of Montreal hopes to use it to study a newly found planet beyond our solar system (an exoplanet) that could be almost completely covered in water.

Astronomers believe that TOI-1452 b, larger in size and mass than Earth, could be an “ocean planet” covered by a thick layer of water, much more than Earth. That's because though about 70% of Earth's surface is covered by ocean, water makes up actually less than 1% of its mass.

On this newly found planet, water might make up between 20-30% of its mass.

TOI-1452 b appears to have a temperate climate because of the distance from the star it orbits, but don't get your space suit ready just yet. We probably won't be relocating there anytime soon. Though astronomers say it's close, close for them is still about 100 light-years from Earth.

Earth may have 'mini-moons' captured in its orbit, says study

Scientists say in a new study the discovery of 'mini-moons' caught in Earth's orbit could offer a better understanding of what makes up asteroids.

Researchers say the mini-moons are small asteroids temporarily captured in Earth's orbit. The objects are usually between 1-2 meters in size and have been difficult to detect because they move out of Earth's orbit so quickly. To date, only one mini-moon has ever been discovered.

"These asteroids are delivered towards Earth from the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter via gravitational interactions with the Sun and planets in our solar system," said Dr. Robert Jedicke, lead author, based at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Hawaii, in a statement. "The challenge lies in finding these small objects, despite their close proximity."

Some mini-moons may fly past Earth, while others complete a revolution around the planet before either escaping its orbit or entering its atmosphere, scientists say.

The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Science.

Researchers say the creation of a new telescope — the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) — will make it easier to capture these mini-moons as they move through Earth's orbit.

The discovery of these objects will help experts get a better scientific understanding of the origins of asteroids.

"We don't know whether small asteroids are monolithic blocks of rock, fragile sand piles, or something in between," said Dr. Mikael Granvik, an author on the study and planetary scientist for the Luleå University of Technology in Sweden and the University of Helsinki in Finland, in a statement. "Mini-moons that spend significant time in orbit around Earth allow us to study the density of these bodies and the forces that act within them, and therefore solve this mystery."

Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23.