Ripped from the Headlines: December 2024: This Week in Words: Current Events Vocab for December 8–December 14, 2024

An ancient Greek aqueduct is being brought back to life in response to a water shortage in Athens. Hadrian's Aqueduct is a 15-mile network of underground tunnels and pipes that began supplying water to the city during the Roman Empire. New pipelines will channel the gallons of unused water that currently flow through the system, directing it to homes and businesses. Aqueduct is from the Latin roots aqua, "water," and ducere, "to lead."

The Environmental Protection Agency banned two commonly used carcinogens. A spokesperson from the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention said the new rules will protect consumers and keep the cancer-causing chemicals out of soil and waterways. The two substances affected by the ban are found in dry cleaning and auto repair solvents, and in products used for furniture care and degreasing. The Greek root of carcinogen is karkinos, "a cancer."

According to the United Nations, most of the land on Earth became more dry over the past few decades. Every continent had areas that lost moisture due to climate change, with already parched regions becoming even drier. The report was timed to coincide with a desertification summit in Saudi Arabia, where participants discussed ways to prevent future droughts from transforming land where people live and grow crops into barren deserts and wasteland.

Taylor Swift's 21-month Eras tour grossed an unprecedented $2 billion, according to the first official tally of ticket sales. The proceeds of the pop star's concerts, calculated before taxes and expenses, were twice as much as the previous record, which was set by the band Coldplay. Eras tickets cost an average of $204, and more than ten million fans attended Swift's concerts between March of 2023 and this month.

After a five-day manhunt, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione was arrested on charges of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City. Investigators searched for the suspect using surveillance camera footage, tracing him first to Central Park and then to Port Authority, where he boarded a bus to Pennsylvania. The FBI joined the manhunt, and a $60,000 reward was offered for Mangione's capture. He was eventually identified and apprehended at a McDonald's in Altoona.

A new national monument tells the story of the oppression experienced by thousands of Native American children taken from their families by the U.S. government. For 150 years, these kids were sent to boarding schools and "reeducated" to be more American and less Indian. There they had their long hair cut, were stripped of their names, assigned numbers, and beaten for speaking their languages. The monument in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, is on the site of one of more than 400 such schools.

Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, was forced to flee the country by insurgents who seized the central city of Hama. Assad's ouster came after 24 years in power, during which he led a totalitarian regime that brutally repressed Syrians who demanded democratic reforms. The collapse of his government marked the end of a half-century of rule by the Assad family. Ouster derives from the Old French oster, "remove," and its Latin roots, meaning "stand against or hinder."

Four years after keepers at an English wildlife park began eagerly waiting for one of their penguins to lay an egg, DNA results showed that Maggie was biologically male. The ten-year-old flightless seabird, whose behavior and short stature had him pegged as female, was renamed Magnus. All king penguins are large and black-and-white, but males tend to be taller. Some experts suggest that penguin derives from Welsh roots meaning "white head."

New research suggests that robotic pets can improve the quality of life for elderly people, particularly those with dementia. Scientists found that well-made animatronic dogs and cats, which move, feel, and sound very much like real animals, are especially comforting to lonely or agitated people. While experts caution that the electronic animals can't replace family visits or solve problems of isolation, the robot pets do seem to provide solace without the complications of a living pet.

A survey showed that most Americans prefer suburban sprawl and large houses to walkable neighborhoods with smaller homes. The neighborhoods created when populations spread out from urban centers into new suburbs tend to correlate with higher obesity levels, increases in traffic deaths, and environmental damage. Still, 57 percent of people said they wouldn't trade a big house and yard for a denser neighborhood where they could walk to school, work, shops, and public transportation.

An earthquake that triggered tsunami warnings from San Francisco to central Oregon was a reminder of the real risk of such an event along the Pacific coast. The quake occurred near the Cascadia subduction zone, which is vulnerable to huge earthquakes that could cause massive displacement of ocean water and devastate coastal areas. Experts say a tsunami will eventually hit the West Coast, though it may be centuries from now. In Japanese, tsunami means "harbor waves."