Nonpolitical news of early Jan 2019

From National Geographic (link below)

A living bridge
The photo comes from a wonderful article about one of the wettest villages in the world, on the India-Pakistan border, where villagers gradually coax Ficus trees into forming living bridges.  I’d like to see them.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/destinations/asia/india/living-root-bridges-clean-village-mwalynnong-india/

How does your state make electricity?
This article (“How does your state make electricity?”) has excellent graphics.  It’s fascinating because it shows how different the states are, and which ones have quickly-growing renewable energy (can you guess where wind energy is growing fastest?)  Also surprising to me is to see how big nuclear still is, and that solar is so small but growing the most quickly of all.
https://nyti.ms/2GDAzD8

Hawaiian snail
The  last individual of a Hawaii tree snail species just died.  The  statistics are horribly grim: a researcher says that since he  began fieldwork on endemic Hawaiian snails in 2007, he has probably been the last human witness who will ever see 10 to 20 of the species in the wild.
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/07/682908544/george-reclusive-hawaiian-snail-and-last-of-his-kind-dies-at-14

Reintroducing iguanas
But  to balance that news, this looks like a lot of fun: these folks are re-releasing iguanas on a Galapagos island called North Seymour Island.  The last person to see them there was Darwin!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/08/galapagos-island-gets-its-first-iguanas-since-darwin-after-mass-release

Humor
Classic headline from CNN yesterday: “A would-be kidnapper chased a woman into a karate studio.  It went just like you think it would.”  No need to read the article.