A California wind farm will become the first in the U. S. to avoid charges if a limited number of eagles are injured or die when they run into the huge turning blades(桨叶), the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday.

    The Shiloh IV Wind Project LLC, 60 miles east of San Francisco, will receive a special permit allowing up to five golden eagles to be accidentally killed over five years. Previously, such eagle deaths could potentially draw criminal charges and discourage private investment in wind farms.

    Agency Director Daniel Ashe said the permit encourages development of renewable energy while requiring the wind company to take steps to protect eagles from turbines(涡轮机)and power lines. The move will help California reach its goal of producing one-third of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, he said.

    Michael Hutchins of the American Bird Conservancy said he believes the five-year permit for the California wind farm is reasonable, but he said the rapid expansion of wind energy has gotten ahead of the science and regulation to protect all types of birds. Too often, he said, wind farms are built in migratory patterns or near wetlands.

    Birds on the hunt can become dizzy by what's on the ground and fly into the blades, Hutchins said.

    “Is it really green energy if it's going to kill hundreds of thousands of birds or bats each year?” he said. “The whole system needs a much harder look.”

    Shiloh IV Wind Project is a 102-megawatt wind farm operating since 2012 and made up of 50 turbines in Solano County.

    Shiloh is the first to obtain a permit. Marie Strassburger, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service's regional migratory bird chief, said that obtaining one requires a lengthy process, and because this is the first of its kind, officials have carefully made conversation plans with the wind company.

    “It's not a quick, efficient process by any means,” Strassburger said.

    Federal wildlife officials in California, Nevada and Southern Oregon are working on two more applications for five-year eagle permits and one for 30 years, said Scott Flaherty of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Sacramento. Eagles are not listed as endangered, but they are protected under a federal act.

    Why do you go to the library? For books, yes--but you like books because they tell stories. You hope to get lost in a story or be transported into someone else's life. At one type of library, you can do just that--even though there's not a single book.

    At a Human Library, instead of books, you can “borrow” people. Individuals volunteer as human “books” and participants in the event can “read” the book--meaning they would have a one-on-one conversation with the volunteer and share in a dialogue about that individual's experience. “Books” are volunteers from all walks of life who have experienced discrimination (歧视) based on race, religion, class, gender identity, age, lifestyle choices, disability and other aspects of their life

    For a certain amount of time, you can ask them questions and listen to their stories, which are as fascinating and as attractive as any you can find in a book. Many of the stories have to do with some kind of stereotype. You can speak with a refugee (难民), a soldier suffering from PTSD, a homeless person or a woman living with HIV. The Human Library encourages people to challenge their own long-held beliefs-to truly get to know, and learn from someone they might otherwise make a quick judgment about.

    According to its website, the Human Library is “a place where difficult questions are expected, appreciated and answered.” It provides the opportunity for the community to share and understand the experiences of others in their community.

    The Human Library Organization came to be in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2000. Ronni Abergel, his brother Dany, and some colleagues hosted a four-day event during a major Northern European festival, hoping to raise awareness about violence among youth. After the success of this event, Abergel founded the Human Library Organization, which has been growing ever since.

    Though there are a few permanent human libraries, most aren't places at all, but events. Though many do take place at physical libraries, you don't need a library card—anyone can come and be part of the experience. There have been human library events all over the globe, in universities and in pubs, from Chicago to Tunis to Edinburgh to San Antonio.

The stories these "books" tell range from fascinating to heartbreaking and everything in between. And that's the very point of the organization--to prove that no person can be summed up in just one word. It seeks to show people that you truly can't judge a book by its cover—or by its title or label.

    October 15th is the Global Hand washing Day. Activities are planned in more than 20 countries to get millions of people in the developing world to wash their hands with soap（肥皂）. For example, donators（捐献者）will give 150,000 bars of soap to schools in Ethiopia.

    Experts say people around the world wash their hands every day, but very few use soap at so-called important moments. These include after using the toilet, after cleaning a baby and before touching food.

    Global Hand washing Day is the idea of the Public-Private Partnership for Hand washing with Soap. Partners include the United Nations Children's Fund, American government agencies, the World Bank and soap makers Unlever and Procter and Gamble. The organizers say all soaps are equally effective at removing disease-causing germ（细菌）. They say the correct way to wash is to wet your hands with a small amount of water and cover them with soap. Rub it into all areas, including under the fingernails. Rub for at least twenty seconds. Then rinse well under running water. Finally, dry your hands with a clean cloth or wave them in the air.

    The Partnership for Hand washing says soap is important because it increases the time that people spend in washing hands. Soap also helps to break up the dirt that holds most of the germs. And it usually leaves a pleasant smell. The Partnership for Hand washing also says washing with soap before eating or after using the toilet could save more lives than any vaccine（疫苗）or medicine. Hand washing could also prevent the spread of other diseases. When people get germs on their hands, they can infect（传染）themselves by touching their eyes, noses or mouths. Then they can infect others.

    Cities usually have a good reason for being where they are, like a nearby port or river. People settle in these places because they are easy to get to and naturally suited to communications and trade. New York City, for example, is near a large harbour at the mouth of the Hudson River. Over 300 years its population grew gradually from 800 people to 8 million. But not all cities develop slowly over a long period of time. Boom towns grow from nothing almost overnight. In 1896, Dawson, Canada, was unmapped wilderness(荒野). But gold was discovered there in 1897, and two years later, it was one of the largest cities in the West, with a population of 30,000.

    Dawson did not have any of the natural conveniences of cities like London or Paris. People went there for gold. They travelled over snow-covered mountains and sailed hundreds of miles up icy rivers. The path to Dawson was covered with thirty feet of wet snow that could fall without warming. An avalanche(雪崩) once closed the path, killing 63 people. For many who made it to Dawson, however, the rewards were worth the difficult trip. Of the first 20,000 people who dug for gold, 4,000 got rich. About 100 of these stayed rich men for the rest of their lives.

    But no matter how rich they were, Dawson was never comfortable. Necessities like food and wood were very expensive. But soon, the gold that Dawson depended on had all been found. The city was crowded with disappointed people with no interest in settling down, and when they heard there were new gold discoveries in Alaska, they left Dawson City as quickly as they had come. Today, people still come and go — to see where the Canadian gold rush happened. Tourism is now the chief industry of Dawson City — its present population is 762.

    Blue Planet II's latest episode focuses on how plastic is having a disastrous effect on the ocean and slowly poisoning our sea creatures. Researchers recently also found that sea creatures living in the deepest place on Earth, the Mariana Trench, have plastic in their stomachs. Indeed, the oceans are drowning in plastic.

    Though it seems now that the world couldn't possibly function without plastics, consumer plastics are a remarkably recent invention. The first plastic bags were introduced in the 1950s; the same decade that plastic packaging began gaining in popularity in the United States. This growth has happened so fast that science is still catching up with the change. Plastics pollution research, for instance, is still a very early science.

    We put all these plastics into the environment and we still don't really know what the outcomes are going to be. What we do know, though, is disturbing. Ocean plastic is estimated to kill millions of marine animals every year. Nearly 700 species, including endangered ones, are known to have been affected by it. One in three leatherback turtles, which often mistake plastic bags for jellyfish, have been found with plastic in their bellies. Ninety percent of seabirds are now eating plastics on a regular basis. By 2050, that figure is expected to rise to 100 percent.

    And it's not just wildlife that is threatened by the plastics in our seas. Humans are consuming plastics through the seafood we eat. I could understand why some people see ocean plastic as a disaster, worth mentioning to the same degree as climate change. But ocean plastic is not as complicated as climate change. There are no ocean trash deniers (否认者), at least so far. To do something about it, we don't have to remake our planet energy system.

This is not a problem where we don't know what the solution is. We know how to pick up garbage. Anyone can do it. We know how to dispose (处理) of it. We know how to recycle. We can all start by thinking twice before we use single—use plastic products. Things that may seem ordinary, like using a reusable bottle or a reusable bag—when taken collectively, these choices really do make a difference.

    It's a real case of fish out of water. Blennies (鲇鱼) in the South Pacific Ocean are gradually relocating to land to escape their predators (捕食者), in an example of evolution in action.

    Fish first began crawling onto dry land about 400 million years ago, kicking off an evolutionary chain of events that led to humans. But their reasons for exiting the sea have been uncertain.

    To look for clues, Terry Ord at the University of New South Wales in Australia has been studying several species of blennies at Rarotonga, the largest of the Cook Islands.

    At low tide, blennies are commonly found swimming in rock pools around the edges of the island. But when high tide moves in, they climb up to dry land and move around the rocks until the tide retreats.

    The researchers found that this is most likely to avoid predators that swim in with the rising tide – mainly bigger fish like lionfish.

    To test what would happen if blennies did not have an escape plan, they made blenny models and sank them in the sea. The mimics ended up with wounds, bite marks and chunks-missing.

    Of course, there are still dangers for blennies on land, like the occasional bird attack, but the predation risk on land is a third that of underwater.

    What's more, moving onto land has additional benefits for blennies. Holes in the rocks provide sheltered nests for laying eggs, and they can maintain their diet of bacteria.

    In fact, several species of blenny fish at Rarotonga have already made the full transition to land-dwelling (陆生的) species. They continue to breathe with their gills, but have developed stronger tail fins and jump from rock to rock.

    Ord believes that many evolutionary processes have been driven by the need to escape predators. “It is often assumed that animals move homes to find new sources of food, but in many cases, escaping predators is a stronger motivation.” he says.