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This is NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.
Thirty years ago, poor Brazilian women were paid for their breast milk, leaving their children at the risk of malnutrition. Equipment at the few milk collection centers was so costly that it limited the country's ability to expand the program's reach.
That has changed dramatically, thanks in part to Joao Almeida, a chemist who has turned the Brazilian Milk Bank Network into a model studied by other countries and credited with helping slash infant mortality by two thirds.
Brazil is the world leader in milk bank development. Relatively unusual in much of the world, donating breast milk is common in Brazil. The network of milk banks works in much the same way as blood banks, testing, sorting and storing milk used mostly to feed premature infants in neo-natal units.
When a mother is unable to breast feed her baby due to illness, drug addiction or other problems, the network steps in to offer free milk. Last year, it collected milk from some 150,000 women to nourish around 155,000 babies.
Since 1985, Brazil's infant mortality rate has plummeted from 63 per thousand births to less than 20 per thousand last year.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
A 12-year study has found that Americans' eating habits have improved, except among the poor. That's evidence of a widening wealth gap when it comes to diet. Yet even among wealthier adults, food choices remain far from ideal.
On an index of healthy eating where a perfect score is 110, the study found that American adults averaged just 40 points in 2000. It climbed steadily to 47 points in 2010.
Scores for low-income adults were lower than the average and barely budged during the years studied. They averaged lower than those for high-income adults at the beginning; and the difference increased in 2010.
Higher scores mean greater intake of heart-healthy foods including vegetables, fruit, whole grains and healthy fats; and they also mean a low risk of obesity and chronic illnesses, including heart disease, stroke and diabetes. Meanwhile, a low score means people face a greater chance of developing these ailments.
Public health experts say the widening diet gap between the rich and the poor is disconcerting and "will have important public health implications".
Diet-linked chronic diseases such as diabetes have become more common in Americans in general, and especially in the poor.
Meanwhile, declining diet quality over time may actually widen the gap between the rich and the poor.
You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
The giant African snail damages buildings, destroys crops and can cause meningitis in humans. But some people still want to collect, and even eat, the slimy invaders.
The Agriculture Department in the United States is trying to stop them. Since June, the authorities have seized more than 1,200 live specimens of the large snails. Also known as giant African land snails, all of those in the U.S. can be traced back to one person in Georgia, who sold them illegally.
The Department discovered the snails through a tip-off from social media at the end of June. From that tip-off, the department seized more than 200 snails from a person on Long Island in New York, who identified the seller in Georgia. The Department then interviewed the seller and seized almost 1,000 more snails in Georgia and several other places.
The authorities say it's important to capture the snails without delay because they multiply very fast, producing 1,200 or more offspring a year. And the snails can grow larger than the size of a fist, and have no natural predators in the United States. People are their only threat.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
For years scientists have theorized about how large rocks, some weighing hundreds of pounds, zigzag across Racetrack Playa in Death Valley National Park in the United States, leaving long trails etched in the earth.
Now two researchers have photographed these "sailing rocks" being blown by light winds across the former lake bed.
Cousins Richard and James Norris say the movement is made possible when ice sheets that form after rare overnight rain melt in the rising sun, making the hard ground muddy and slick.
On December 20th last year, the cousins catalogued 60 rocks moving across the playa's pancake-flat surface.
They observed rock movement occurred on sunny clear days, following nights of sub-freezing temperatures.
The conclusion proves theories that have been floated since geologists began studying the moving rocks in the 1940s.
The phenomenon doesn't happen often because it rarely rains in the notoriously hot and dry desert valley.
The rocks move about 15 feet per minute.
The two scientists launched their "Slithering Stones Research Initiative" in 2011. After getting permits from the National Park Service, they installed a weather station in the area and placed 15 stones equipped with global positioning devices on the playa to finish the research.
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