Henrietta Lacks' descendants accused a biopharmaceutical company in a lawsuit Thursday of unjustly profiting from the Black woman's tissue, which was harvested without her knowledge or consent and later used for medical breakthroughs.
State of play: The lawsuit, filed in Baltimore federal court against Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical, comes just over a week after her estate settled with another biotechnology firm it also accused of profiting from the harvesting of Lacks' cells when she was being treated for cervical cancer in the 1950s.
The Perseid meteor shower peaks this week, and it's sure to be one of the best cosmic shows of the year.
The big picture: The Perseids grace our skies each year at around this time when the Earth passes through the stream of dust and rockdebris left behind by the comet Swift-Tuttle.
When NASA slammed a refrigerator-sized spacecraft into an asteroid last year, the impact spawned a swarm of at least 37 boulders that are now coursing through space, according to a new study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Why it matter: The crash was key in determining if it was possible to smash dangerous asteroids off of a collision course with Earth, but the study reveals a possible consequence of that planetary defense technique: the generation of smaller space rocks that could still reach the planet.
The ongoing 2023 Atlantic hurricane season may be more active than initially thought, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said in an updated hurricane season outlook released Thursday.
Why it matters: There have been four named storms so far this season, but historically, 90% of hurricane season's activity has occurred after Aug. 1.
Severe storms that swept much of the U.S. in the first half of this year resulted in $34 billion in insured losses — the "highest ever" recorded in a six-month period.
The big picture: That's according to a report out Wednesday from Swiss Re Group, which estimated global insured losses from natural catastrophes at $50 billion — the second highest since 2011. "The effects of climate change are evident in increasingly extreme weather events," the report notes.
