By Katie Hunt, CNN

(CNN) — Scientist Veerabhadran Ramanathan yearned for the American dream while growing up in southern India in the 1960s: specifically, a Chevrolet Impala, a muscle car he learned about from his father, a tire salesman. Ramanathan made it to the United States in his 20s, but he never bought his gas guzzler, largely because his scientific knowledge of global warming quickly eclipsed his income.

Fast-forward to the 1970s and Ramanathan, now a newly minted postdoctoral fellow in planetary sciences, was spending his days working as a visiting researcher at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and his evenings on a side project he hid from his supervisors. His solitary nighttime research would end up changing how scientists viewed global warming.

The young scientist had discovered that chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, then widely used in the manufacture of refrigerators, air-conditioning units and spray cans, had a significant greenhouse effect. Ramanathan had briefly encountered these industrial chemicals in his first job at a refrigeration company. Like carbon dioxide, CFCs trapped heat in the atmosphere. In fact, Ramanathan’s calculations suggested, they were more potent: One molecule of a CFC could have the same warming effect as up to 10,000 molecules of carbon dioxide. For three months, he repeated the calculations looking for an alternative explanation. He found none.

“I was just a postdoc immigrant from India. I didn’t know if I should tell NASA about this or not. I just sent the paper off,” Ramanathan recalled.

The journal Science published the findings, and his work made the front page of The New York Times in 1975. The idea that CFCs could potentially be such a powerful force in global warming was also met with disbelief, not in the least from Ramanathan himself, who embarked on the project purely out of curiosity at a time when climate change was not a pressing concern.

Ultimately, Ramanathan established the now widely accepted fact that greenhouse gases other than CO2 are a major contributor to global warming, vitally important knowledge that underpinned the first successful climate mitigation policy.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Thursday awarded Ramanathan, a distinguished research professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, the prestigious Crafoord Prize, which for some winners has been a harbinger of a Nobel Prize.

“He has expanded our view of how humankind is affecting the atmosphere’s composition, the climate and air quality and how these three interact,” said Ilona Riipinen, professor of atmospheric sciences at Stockholm University in Sweden and member of the committee that awarded the prize, which is worth 8 million Swedish krona (around $900,000).

Accidental climate scientist

Ramanathan, who studied engineering in Bengaluru, India, before moving to the United States, said his career’s first breakthrough was a result of several happy “accidents” that allowed him to connect the dots between different fields of study.

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in engineering, he had spent an unhappy stint working at a refrigerator company making sure that the cooling agent — CFCs — did not leak. When he was 26, he moved to the United States and embarked on a doctoral degree at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in an engineering-related field.

Ramanathan, however, found his supervisor had unexpectedly switched focus, and his dissertation ended up detail

By Deidre McPhillips, CNN

(CNN) — People in the United States can expect to live longer than ever, as death rates returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2024.

Life expectancy in the US had been trending up for decades before dropping by nearly a year and a half between 2019 and 2021, but it’s been on the rise again since 2022.

Another 4% drop in the death rate between 2023 and 2024 raised life expectancy by more than half a year.

This dramatic rebound has brought life expectancy at birth up to 79 years in 2024 — the highest it has ever been, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

There were 722 deaths for every 100,000 people in the US in 2024 – nearly 3.1 million deaths overall – according to final, age-adjusted data published Thursday by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.

The 10 leading causes of death accounted for more than 70% of all deaths in the US in 2024, led by heart disease and cancer that killed more than 600,000 people each.

But death rates declined for each of the 10 leading causes of death in 2024, including a particularly sharp drop in unintentional injuries — a category that is largely comprised of drug overdose deaths.

Drug overdose deaths spiked during the Covid-19 pandemic, but the rate has been declining since 2022, according to the CDC. In 2024, drug overdose death rates fell among all age groups and among all racial and ethnic groups — leading to a sharp overall drop of more than 26% in one year.

Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids are still involved in most overdose deaths, ​but their involvement is becoming less prevalent — likely a key factor driving the overall decline in overdose deaths. About 6 in 10 overdose deaths in 2024 involved fentanyl or another synthetic opioid, CDC data shows, down from more than 9 in 10 in 2023.

Deaths involving psychostimulants such as methamphetamine and cocaine also declined in 2024, according to the CDC data.

Drug overdoses are still a leading cause of death in the US — more than 79,000 people died from one in 2024 — but provisional data from the CDC shows continued drops into 2025.

Covid-19 quickly rose to the third leading cause of death in the US in the first two years of the pandemic, falling to fourth in 2022 and tenth in 2023, according to CDC data. But it dropped out of the 10 leading causes of death in 2024, replaced by suicide.

There are still tens of thousands of Covid-19 deaths in the US each year, but suicide mortality reached a record high in the US in 2022 and has decreased only slightly in the years since.

In 2024, more than 14 million adults had serious thoughts of suicide, 4.6 million made a suicide plan and 2.2 million attempted suicide, according to survey data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Millions of people have called, texted, or sent chats to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline since mid-2022; about a tenth of those individuals who reached were routed to a specialized subnetwork for LGBTQ+ youth — a service the Trump administration ended last year.

Overall, women can still expect to live a few years longer than men but that gap is shrinking, CDC data shows. The life expectancy for women increased by 0.3 years to 81.4 in 2024, while life expectancy for men increased 0.7 years to 76.5.

Death rates decreased across all racial and ethnic groups between 2023 and 2024, but stark dispa

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (KEYT) University of California, Santa Barbara students held a Solidarity Vigil on campus.

The vigil included a moment of silence below the Storke Tower landmark.

They held candles and read the names of people shot or missing due to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minnesota and California and other states.

A student speaker said it is their responsibility to speak up for those who cannot.

She said it is easy to feel alone at times like this, but when she asked students to look around she said they can see they are not alone.

She said the fear people are feeling is common

Neighbors and professors also took part..

Tania Mancilla is a fourth year UCSB students who said her immigrant parents sacrificed so that she could have an education.

Chicano Studies Professor Dr. Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval reminded students that the campus has a long history of activism.

He said it is good to be with people sharing their feelings following traumatic events like the shooting deaths of U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.

Students also carried their candles during a walk to the University Center, known as the UCEN.

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By Manu Raju, Jeff Zeleny, CNN

(CNN) — The White House and Senate leaders are moving closer to a deal to avert a government shutdown but are seeking to resolve final sticking points in eleventh-hour negotiations ahead of Friday’s deadline, according to several sources familiar with the talks.

The sources indicated that the White House was moving closer to the Democrats’ demands to split funding from the Department of Homeland Security from a larger funding package in order to give them time to negotiate new policy measures on the deployment of ICE agents across the country.

The deal in the works would provide funding for the rest of the agencies in the package through the end of September — including the departments of Defense, Labor, State, Transportation and Health and Human Services. But it would only temporarily extend funding for DHS. That would allow time for the two sides to negotiate over ICE, after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer laid out a list of demands that he says must be included in final legislation.

The two sides are still trying to sort out the timeline for extending funding for DHS, the sources said, underscoring that a deal has not yet been reached.

But the fast-moving talks are a clear sign that President Donald Trump and GOP leaders recognize that they need to respond to the public outcry over ICE agents’ harsh tactics following the deadly shootings of two US citizens in Minneapolis this month. Plus, it’s a sign that Trump is eager to avoid the second government shutdown of his second term, after the 43-day shutdown from last fall left him upset about the fallout.

CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.

Earlier Wednesday, Schumer laid out a list of new restraints on immigration enforcement as a condition for Democratic support, including to restrict roving patrols, tighten parameters around warrants for searches and arrests, toughen use-of-force policies and require ICE agents to wear body cameras and remove their masks. Democrats, who have enough votes to sustain a filibuster in the 53-47 GOP-led Senate, say such changes must be in legislation — and that promises of executive action are not enough.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The-CNN-Wire
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SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (KEYT) In a space at the Santa Barbara County Courthouse arch, known for recent vigils for Alex Pretti and Renee Good people rallied on Wednesday night.

Many are upset about ICE activity involving pepper spray on Santa Barbara's Eastside. 

Ana Garcia witnesses it.

She said they have been trying to protect their neighbors.

Garcia said it is not clear if anyone was taken from the Eastside but people have been taken into custody by ICE in many neighborhoods up and down the coast.

City Council Member Wendy Santamaria witnesses the activity in the First District that she represents.

She is calling for a Town Hall.

And she wants people to know where the Police Department stands.

A commotion near a political projection on the courthouse wall was diffused during the rally when someone step in to hug a veteran walking by.

A march to the Santa Barbara Police Station followed.

Some participants are upset about the money going towards the building of a new station at a time when people feel traumatized.

Your News Station will have more on the rally and march tonight on the news.

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