Ripped from the Headlines: November 2024: This Week in Words: Current Events Vocab for November 3–November 9, 2024

A NASA satellite captured images from the eastern region of Spain where flooding killed more than 200 people. The photos show the extent of the flood's devastating aftermath, including parts of Valencia that remain underwater and a transformed coastline where former wetlands are filled with sediment. Some towns received a year's worth of rain in eight hours, with disastrous outcomes. An aftermath was originally a second crop planted after the first had been harvested.

A new copyright rule will allow McDonald's to fix its own broken soft-serve machines. The machines are infamous for frequently being out of order, and the unreliable availability of McDonald's ice cream is a widespread online joke. Previously, only the manufacturer was allowed to repair the machines because it officially owns the code embedded inside. The new rule means that outside vendors will be permitted to bypass the copyright protection and fix the soft-serve dispensers.

Ancient curses and carvings described as "witches' marks" were found etched into the walls of a medieval English building. A researcher at Gainsborough Old Hall in Lincolnshire discovered dozens of designs, including some meant to summon protection or ward off evil and danger. In addition to these protective spells, there were also people's names carved upside down, which historians say was a curse intended to bring calamity upon that person.

On November 5, Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris to win the presidential election. When Trump gained a combined 29 electoral college votes in the states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, he achieved the 270 needed to win the presidency. The final tally of votes by state electors gave Trump 295 and Harris 226. In contrast to 2016, when Hillary Clinton lost despite winning a majority of the popular vote, this time Trump prevailed in both the popular and the electoral college votes.

A New Zealand airport's new rule limiting curbside embraces is meant to keep traffic moving in drop-off zones. Signs outside the terminal at Dunedin Airport show two hugging people and read "Max hug time three minutes." Responses to the rule have been mixed, with some people observing that three minutes is actually a fairly long time to be locked in a farewell clinch. Embrace is from an Old French word meaning "clasp in the arms" and a Greek root meaning "arm."

Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley pulled off an amazing backwards hurdle over a Jacksonville Jaguars player on November 3. An ordinary 14-yard reception turned into a stunning acrobatic feat when Barkley caught the ball, spun around, and evaded a tackle by executing a reverse leap over cornerback Jarrian Jones without even glancing back over his shoulder.

Japanese American baseball players gathered at Manzanar National Historic Site in California for the camp's first baseball games since World War II. The exhibition games were meant to draw attention to the story of Japanese American internment, when tens of thousands of people with Japanese ancestry were imprisoned at such camps. Many brought with them a love of baseball, building fields and forming teams during the war. The Latin root of internment means "within."

More and more airports around the world provide therapy dogs to soothe travelers' anxiety, but Oregon's Portland International Airport expanded the concept significantly this month. Among the newest animals providing emotional support there is Benji the llama. Towering over travelers as they hurry to their gates, the woolly, long-necked mammal gives many of them a reason to pause and relax. Most visitors report being surprised and delighted by the gentle, cud-chewing airport greeter.

Researchers at a Chicago museum put 26 mummies through a mobile CT scanner to get a close look at what lay beneath their layers of wrappings. The Field Museum in Chicago created thousands of X-ray images of the preserved bodies of ancient Egyptians, part of a larger project of conserving the mummified remains and understanding the individual people themselves. Mummy derives from the Arabic mumiyah, "embalmed body."

Biologists have learned more about how parrots get their vibrant plumage. New research describes the way a single enzyme gives the colorful tropical birds brilliant red and yellow feathers. Scientists say the findings are an important step toward understanding the genetics of avian color — and they hope to expand their knowledge of parrots based on the pigment contents of their feathers. The Latin root of plumage is pluma, "a small soft feather."

A new study found that people born during a time when the British government rationed sugar were less likely to be diagnosed with high blood pressure or diabetes as adults. During World War II, sugar supplies were so limited that only small amounts were doled out. When it became widely available after the war, UK sugar consumption doubled. The situation provided clear data for researchers, who found a compelling link between childhood sugar intake and chronic diseases later in life.

Schools in Lahore, Pakistan, were forced to close for a week because of dangerously smoggy conditions. Record-breaking levels of air pollution in the second-largest Pakistani city were deemed "extremely hazardous" by public health officials. While Lahore's average air quality index is about 200, the recorded AQI reached over 1,000 on November 3, when the air was thick with dark smog. Smoggy is from smog, a portmanteau of smoke and fog.